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Author Name | Biography |
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Benoît Peeters | Benoît Peeters Philosopher, novelist, comics professor |
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. | Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Game-changing Supreme Court Justice One of America’s most respected and influential judges of all time, Holmes still holds the record for the oldest Supreme Court Justice. His family was close friends with Henry James Sr. and Ralph Waldo Emerson; he became close friends with William James and Henry James Jr. His often-cited, penetrating comments supported civil liberty, freedom of speech, and progressive, democratic ideals. His legal opinions formed the foundation for Roosevelt’s New Deal. His book, The Common Law (still in print after more than 140 years), remains a source for heated debates. Opposing attitudes based on opinions about any kind of absolute truth, it describes law as an evolving process based on the changing attitudes and insights of society. |
Ovid | Ovid Great poet and major influence on the Renaissance, Humanism, and world literature Roman poet, inspiration for Renaissance humanism, consummate love elegist, and a tremendous influence on both Western literature and art; Ovid was staggeringly popular during his own time, during the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance, and still in our own time today. Fashioning himself as a love doctor, he wrote a 3-volume treatise called The Art of Love complete with instructional images and poetry about oral sex pleasure. It begins with teaching men how to best find a lover, seduce them, and later hide affairs. It continues with advice for women on how to avoid the traps and deceptions he has taught men. This also became immensely popular but his popularity didn’t serve him well politically. Emperor Augustus exiled him to a remote, harsh location where his friends avoided him and he remained until he died 9 years later. |
Henry S. Mindlin | Henry S. Mindlin Poet, musician, spiritual seeker |
Paul Simon | Paul Simon |
Bankei Yōtaku | Bankei Yōtaku Zen Master of the unborn Along with Dogen and Hakuin, one of the most influential Zen masters, Bankei developed a description of realization he called "Unborn Zen." D. T. Suzuki thought this one one of the most important and original descriptions in all the history of Zen. A rebellious child always getting into trouble, his early studies with Confucian and Buddhist scholars led to frustration for both Bankei and his teachers, to him getting expelled from his family home and having to live in a neighbor's tiny hut. He practiced so long and so hard that his health deteriorated to an extent causing his doctor to predict an imminent death. Healed by his realization however, he lived another 48 years. Refusing a high status position in his monastery, he worked in the kitchen and later lived alone in the mountains. |
Walt Whitman | Walt Whitman Premier "poet of democracy" and model for Dracula “Father of free verse,” one of the most influential American poets, humanist, journalist, Civil War volunteer nurse; Whitman blended realism and transcendentalism and became known as the first "poet of democracy.” His most famous work, Leaves of Grass, was called everything from "trashy, profane & obscene, the author a pretentious ass" to a work more central to American culture than Melville's Moby-Dick, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and Emerson's The Conduct of Life. Vociferously criticized for being obscene with sexuality themes, it was admired by Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Oscar Wilde. Though biographers assert that Whitman was gay, he always denied it and claimed to have 6 illegitimate children. In a contrast between his poetry and personal views, he promoted equality and true democracy in the former, status quo views of nationalism and racism in the latter. His poetic and vagabond lifestyle inspired the Beat movement, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Dylan, and Bram Stoker who used him as the model for his character, Dracula. |
Francis Bacon | Francis Bacon “Father of the scientific method,” Lord Chancellor of England, orator, jurist, and philosopher; Francis Bacon represents a huge step in the evolution of consciousness but not before indulging in a sybaritic lifestyle, being charged with 23 cases of corruption, being banned from Parliament and imprisoned in the Tower of London. In his ex-con life, he undermined the strength of religion, railed against tradition and authority, became “the most powerful and influential intellect of his time,” warned of the rich getting too rich as a cause of social disease and revolt, the likelihood of new inventions causing more harm than help, and championed the rise of reason and science that brought about our modern world. |
Guru Nanak Gurmukhi | Guru Nanak Gurmukhi “One of the greatest religious innovators of all time” and founder of Sikhism – one of the world’s newest religions; Guru Nanak traveled widely learning and teaching in the non-thought lineage of non-duality beyond concepts of self and other. He spread a message of replacing revenge and anger with peace and kindness; of each person’s direct access to the highest realizations without need of priest or ritual; of the inseparability of spiritual and everyday life in the world. He set up a political-social-spiritual system based on goodness, virtue, and equality: a much-needed message for our modern world. |
Demeter | Demeter Eleusinian goddess, discoverer of agriculture “Where smoke, there’s fire” and where a god or goddess, probably real people beginning the symbolism. Like Shennong in China, the Greeks credited Demeter with the discovery of agriculture and like the Chinese Nüwa as the transition from matriarchal to patriarchal society. Assuring fertility with mystic rites and social order as "Law-Bringer;” she predates the Olympian pantheon and with her daughter Persephone is central to the Eleusinian Mysteries, a holy, psychedelic communion celebrating birth, death, and resurrection giving (along with the Egyptian belief in immortality) to Christianity a “weapon with which to conquer the Western world” (Durant). |
Balzac | Balzac (–1850) |
Ralph Alan Dale | Ralph Alan Dale Translator, author, visionary (1920-2006) |
Martin Luther King Jr. | Martin Luther King Jr. Leading world influence for equality, peace, non-violence, and poverty alleviation (1929–1968) |
Paul Avrich | Paul Avrich (1931–2006) |
Benjamin Lay | Benjamin Lay Benjamin Lay (1682 - 1759) |
Louis D. Brandeis | Louis D. Brandeis Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941) |
Thurgood Marshall | Thurgood Marshall Thurgood Marshall (1908 – 1993) Grandson of a slave, refused admission to a law school because he was black, and first African-American Supreme Court Justice; Marshall was instrumental in the Brown v. Board case that desegregated public schools, helped the United Nations draft the constitutions of Ghana and Tanzania, and - before he became Justice - won more Supreme Court cases than anyone in history. He ruled in favor of Roe v. Wade abortion rights, worked to eliminate the death penalty, and probably more than Malcolm X and Martin Luther King made the Civil Rights Movement successful. He remained a tireless and highly effective voice for human rights, individual freedom, the poor, downtrodden and for all people |
Upagupta | Upagupta 4th Zen Patriarch, disciple of the Buddha’s close attendant Ananda’s regent, the spiritual teacher of Ashoka who spread Buddhism from a very small community into the greater world; Upagupta is still remembered and venerated in many South East Asian countries, Bangladesh, and with a special, high status in Burma that celebrates a major festival in his honor each year. Immortalized in a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, he refuses the advances of his city’s most famous enchantress when she’s young and beautiful only to nurse and stay with her when she’s suffering from a disfiguring disease. |
Bhadrapa | Bhadrapa A “goody-two-shoes,” Brahmin purist intent on complete political correctness and purity; when the cleanliness obsessed and wealthy Bhadrapa met a homeless yogin he was repelled and cried out, “Unclean!” The teacher countered that physical form isn’t unclean, only the psychological corruption of body, speech, and mind. Bhadrapa realized his bigotry, that real purity means giving up ego-clinging and has nothing to do with following conventions and religious rules. He became a disciple, renounced his caste privileges and practices, cleaned latrines as his spiritual practice and became a great Mahasiddha himself. |
Bhadrapa | Bhadrapa A “goody-two-shoes,” Brahmin purist intent on complete political correctness and purity; when the cleanliness obsessed and wealthy Bhadrapa met a homeless yogin he was repelled and cried out, “Unclean!” The teacher countered that physical form isn’t unclean, only the psychological corruption of body, speech, and mind. Bhadrapa realized his bigotry, that real purity means giving up ego-clinging and has nothing to do with following conventions and religious rules. He became a disciple, renounced his caste privileges and practices, cleaned latrines as his spiritual practice and became a great Mahasiddha himself. |