梭羅《湖濱散記》之道家意涵

The Taoist-like Vision in Thoreau’s Walden

亨利•戴維•梭羅是個超越論的先驗主義者，他深入地去體驗大自然，並從而追尋永恆的真理。梭羅在優美的瓦爾登湖畔居住的那段日子裡，對大自然做了一番巡禮，在精神上也因而有所轉化，他並且體會了道家「遊」的境界，那是瀟洒自在的意境。梭羅在瓦爾登湖畔漫遊時，其精神上的超越可與《莊子》一書中大鵬鳥翱翔青天追求恆常的道體相比擬。又，梭羅在湖畔的生活亦可謂回歸自然的表徵，在那兒，社會化生活的機巧與頹風是不存在的。同莊子一樣，梭羅想進到自然大道、宇宙主宰的本體，一方面或者想領會自然大道對人們精神轉化的作用力。梭羅的超驗論類似道家的思想，本文企圖以道家思想的觀點來閱讀他的《湖濱散記》。

Being an empiricist of his transcendentalism, David Thoreau lived in and looked into Nature for ultimate Truth. In his Walden Thoreau explores the great truths of Nature and experienced a spiritual transformation. Thoreau's Walden experiment demonstrates how carefree a man can be when he is living in much the same way as a Chinese Taoist, or a Taoist-saunterer. On the one hand, Thoreau's roaming by Walden Pond can be compared to the big bird's soaring in the sky in Chuang-tzu, in which spiritual transcendence is coupled with the perennial Tao; on the other, it can be seen as a return to Nature, where the artifice and depravity of society cannot reach. Both Walden and Chuang-tzu try to reach the conviction of the entity of the natural world and God, or the realization of the significance of Nature's essential role in realizing man's spiritual transformation. As Thoreau's transcendental philosophy corresponds to Taoist-like thought, in this paper I intend to read Thoreau's Walden in the light of Taoist philosophy so as to see how Thoreau works out his Taoist-like vision in Walden.