Philosopher, novelist, comics professor

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Game-changing Supreme Court Justice

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.
Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Theodore Roosevelt, he became one of the greatest judges but disappointed and alienated Roosevelt when he ruled against an anti-trust case particularly close to him. He approved trade unions and their ability to organize and strike, supported eugenics laws, and earned a reputation as 'The Great Dissenter.'

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Great poet and major influence on the Renaissance, Humanism, and world literature

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Poet, musician, spiritual seeker

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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“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.

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).

(–1850)
Novelist, playwright, journalist, founding influence on European realism; Balzac only lived 51 years but wrote 92 novels, many short stories and plays. Famous for his 2000+ morally ambiguous and multi-faceted characters, he called himself a “Secretary of Society” and thought of his novels as a kind of history. He pioneered and made popular both the “novel of ideas” and the multi-generational, sequencing novel that carried characters from one story and period of their life to another. A dramatic failure in most of his life, he ran for a political office but only received 20 votes while just one of the other candidates had almost 160,000. No matter how much money he made, he was never self-supporting because of an insatiable appetite for luxuries and he had to frequently change homes and names to hide from creditors. Multiple business ventures failed miserably but his money-making optimism didn’t fade. His influence extended to luminaries like Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Jack Kerouac, Henry James, Akira Kurosawa and Friedrich Engels among many more.

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Translator, author, visionary

(1920-2006)

Conductor, composer, clinician, acupuncturist, researcher and prolific writer of over 70 books and videos; Dale translated the Tao Te Ching into verse and wrote a deeply thought-through chapter-by-chapter commentary applying Lao Tzu's wisdom to modern day challenges. In his profession, his writing, and in his life; he seems to both understand the deeper Tao Te Ching messages as well as develop insightful ways of incorporating this wisdom into solutions for modern political, cultural, and social challenges. While not minimizing modern confusions, he stays positive and optimistic, predicts new evolutionary cultural realizations, the actualization of Taoist visions of wholeness and harmony.

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(1929–1968)
Baptist minister, one the the 20th century’s most admired people, “the conscience of his generation,” most famous civil rights leader, and known for one of history’s most influential speeches; Martin Luther King became one of the world’s most effective forces for equality, peace, and poverty alleviation. An enemy of J. Edgar Hoover, investigated by the FBI, and assassinated; his life proved the power and unstoppability of a good and pure heart. Practicing Gandhian nonviolence and Thoreauvian civil disobedience, he won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, 50 honorary university degrees; and today, a national holiday and hundreds of US streets are named in his honor.

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(1931–2006)
Historian, professor, author; Avrich specialized in 19th and early 20th century anarchism. He wrote 10 books (several nominated for Pulitzer Prizes), supported anarchism's major figures, and named his cats after Bakunin and Kropotkin.

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Benjamin Lay (1682 - 1759)
Physical dwarf but moral giant, “the world’s first revolutionary abolitionist,” inspiration for generations, wild, confrontational, and uncompromising opponent of slavery; Benjamin Lay wrote over 200 polemics against slavery, sweatshops, over-consumptions, capital punishment, the prison system, decadent rich elites, and for vegetarianism, animal rights and sustainability. Living a lifestyle of almost complete self-sustenance, he grew his his own food, made his own clothes, lived in a cave eating only fruits and vegetables, and wouldn’t use anything that came from the killing of animals. Unconstrained even when abandoned by his fellow Quakers (who later commonly kept pictures of him in their homes), he became the prototype of a class and race-conscious, environmental ultra radical and pioneered ways of protesting still used today.

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Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941)

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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

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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.

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.

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.

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