Oriental Osmosis of Occidental !!!
Western colonialism has caused resentments in the East and Eastern enlightenment is affecting the conscience of the West. It has been said that “East is East and West is West”– and never the twain shall meet. But they must meet to realize the common universal aspiration. Why this dichotomy?
Where is the ‘West’ and at what point does it begin? Where is the ‘East’ and at what point does it end? Our perceptions are more passionate than precise. We know how we feel but no clue what we mean.
Where is this mythical frontier between East and West located? Is Eastern Europe of the East because it is Eastern or the West because it is America? What about Africa or South America, which are on the same longitude with Europe and North America, the citadel of the so-called West? They have older cultures, which resemble the Eastern more so than the Western.
Are the American Indians Easterners or Westerners? Their culture is more of the Eastern, yet they are the inhabitants of a region regarded as Western. On what fundamentals do we make the distinction of East and West? If it is by race, we must reminisce that many of the people of East those of India and the Middle East are of the same Caucasian race as the people of Europe. If it is by colour of skin we should note that the Southeast Asians have a white skin colour like the Europeans. If it is by religion, there are a number of Christians and Muslims in East especially Middle-East & South-East Asia. Are they Easterners or Westerners? Muslims share the same general Biblical religious background as the Christians. Are they therefore Westerners? And what of the many Americans and Europeans who are embracing Hindu and Buddhist practices? Are they thereby ceasing to be Westerners? If it is by language, we must note that most of the languages of India and Iran are of the same Indo-European family as those of Europe, whereas those of near East are of different families like the Semitic. According to the English linguist David Dalby, based on present trends India will become the largest English-speaking nation in the world by 2010 crossing the United States. By the judgment of language India should then belong to the West.
If the division of East and West is by technologicaladvance, then Japan & Singapore belongs to the West and as various Asian countries develop economically then we would have to say that they have joined the Western bandwagon, even if they may have preserved their older Eastern religious practices. Similarly, Mexico and other Latin American countries as well as Eastern Europe by their poverty would have to be Eastern. If economic affluence makes the division between East and West then in medieval times when China and India were affluent and Europe was poor, was Europe then of the East and Asia of the West?
Presumably, the conjecture is a hypothetical boundary, which has gained credence in the philosophical talks and in the minds of polemics…. and continues to garner debates in a contentious manner across the geographical boundaries. The human mind has invented countless divisions, some of which explicate things in the world; others that create barriers that inhibit understanding. One of the most common divisions in culture & civilization is that of humanity into East and West. This can be a convenient way to designate different types of cultures and civilizations. Acknowledging it as a real boundary can only aggravate the socio-cultural prejudices and techno-economic disparity what may be only a provisional or philosophical distinction.
In the eighteenth century European trade enclaves began a systematic colonization of the East. Both at scholarly and popular levels developed a set of stereotyped views of ‘How’ and ‘Why’ the people of the East were different and inferior. These were based on an array of unbridgeable oppositions between East and West - 'and never the twain shall meet', as Rudyard Kipling, speaking derogatively of the East. Subsequently, the views have taken political-economic undertone and have shaped into the East-West divide. The drivers for such division were principally some Western Europeans and, to a lesser extent, some Americans, as a demonstration of cultural pre-eminence of the West, particularly in the realm of science and technology. Proponents were: Abbe Dubois a priest who wrote a famous book titled “Culture and Rituals of the Hindoos”, Katherine Mayo a journalist of US in ‘30s & others - ‘Drain Inspectors’ as Gandhiji described the latter. We must exclude Western pioneers in the study of Eastern philosophy and culture, such as Max Mueller, David Frawley ------ However, everything to the East of them became the dominion of the backward Easterners, whether it was such diverse groups as the Arabs, Hindus or Chinese. Primarily, divergences in social customs, sexual mores, social etiquette, family culture, religion, language, dress, cuisine, and the rituals of the life cycle contributed to the East-West divide. The scholars, philosophers and leaders contrasted the development of modern civilization in the West with the backward civilization in the East, a fracas that persists today.
Western tends to mean modern, as Eastern tends to mean ancient. India or China were once at the forefront and over a couple of decades could be once again at the vanguard of technology or what we now call Western civilization. In mathematics the Indians have been the inventors of the symbol “Zero”. The Indian astronomers developed the concept of “infinity” & “atom” and made great progress in understanding of the universe. Indian dyers invented fast colours and discovered “Indigo”; the Indian ironworkers may have produced the first steel. Susruta Samhita enumerates eight branches of medical science that includes complicated brain surgery. In the thirteenth century the Chinese had gunpowder, the compass & (more such unearthed by Joseph Needham a famous scientific historian on Chinese science)…. the basis of modern technology, and the Europeans were technologically primitive. Such temporal distinctions are seldom enduring. Yet, today, the term “Western culture” usually excludes both Western religions and Western intellectual culture. It is Western pop culture: rock music, swanky cars, tattered jeans, sex talk, fast food, and so on. In many ways it’s more of an anti-culture than a true culture. Why? It not only annihilates the culture of the countries it invades, but it has already undermined the ethical or aesthetic refinement that was in itself to begin with. A sizable portion of ‘Western culture’ after the Second World War has actually been a ‘commercialization of culture’----- very powerful and illuminating insights into modern Western culture are the commentaries of Tom Wolfe.
Hence when Westerners insist upon maintaining the purity of Western culture what do they mean? Do they mean upholding Christianity? Do they mean upholding Greco-Roman or European intellectual values? Do they mean upholding modern Western pop culture or Western business interests? Is there a cultural purity of homogeneity in any of this? And what do so -called progressive Easterners mean when they speak of bringing in the benefits of Western culture? Apart from technological expertise, the West probably has very little culture to offer. Western religious leaders treat their Western religions as of global relevance, but instantly scorn at if natives of Eastern religious background consider that their religions also possess a global significance. This is palpably an abject religious chauvinism. Is not religion meant to deal with what is universal anyway?
Irony of parity; “The equality in East is… an equality in poverty”. Agriculture everywhere is seasonal occupation with days where there is nothing to do except watch the crops and the animals grow. In addition with its overwhelming cereal farming there are long periods of utter idleness. But in West, the mixed farming with its superimposition of the rhythm of mechanization upon that of the ripening of grain and animal husbandry, leisure has often been mechanically managed. The Korean farmer worked only 100 days; the Japanese 140 days and five months of idleness was common in the Deccan. The relative idleness might have advantage for the people who could use their leisure in sailing or hunting. But the Asian peasants often lived far from the hills or the sea, the rice fields stretching to the horizon. They lived on a diet lacking in variety and protein with insufficient surplus energy for politics or sports. Life was appallingly lackluster. The difference in background got reflected in political and social life but above all in religion. Where life is colourful, religion can be trivial but where life is appallingly droning religion becomes intense. Without the curry, the boiled rice can be very dull indeed.
The philosophy of Eastern culture has been generally understood by Western scholars in myriad ways…. as mystical, unscientific, autocratic and polytheistic. On the other hand the philosophy of Western culture has a contradictory manifestation… as scientific, rational, humanitarian and monotheistic. Practically speaking the ideological difference is that the Eastern people care more about what they can do for mankind whereas the Western care more about what they can do for me, the individual. One of the biggest questions in the West is "what good will it do to me?" The West has the idea that if it does not do themselves any good that it is not worth doing. The West is so individualized. Customarily, the East think about others, and they think about how it will affect the society and the world. For instance, the West predominantly had a belief that teaching is not a good profession because it does not pay well enough. Again, they are thinking of themselves and what a profession will do for them and not for others. The Eastern philosophy is so much more meaningful as they have an intrinsic altruistic motive… Krishna’s advice to Arjuna “Do your Work, don’t worry about the Results”. Till the recent past they had the belief that teaching was one of the best professions to have, primarily because it is helping others to learn and make their future better. Probably in the last couple of decades have been influenced by the West and has undergone an unwarranted transformation. Succinctly, speaking the evolutionary path of Western races has consciousness centered predominantly in the head, favouring an intellectuallydominated attitude with an objective focus. The evolutionary path of Eastern races has consciousness balancing head and heart, though a tilt existed towards the heart favouring an emotionally dominated attitude with a subjective focus.
However, there exist some glaring incongruity in what East-West philosophically preaches and what they pragmatically practice. The Muslim immigrants and the traditional French citizens have sparked a skirmish over issues as small as school dress codes and as large as the popularity of the National Front. In Turkey the tensions between the forces of modernity and tradition have flared up over “virginity tests." In India, right-wing Hindu activists have of late been attacking Christians and there is a perennial battle with Muslim. In Iran the struggle between Islam and Western secularism is being waged over the Internet. In Pakistan & India "true love" fights with a long tradition of arranged marriages. In the UAE drug and alcohol are leading to an alarming increase in divorce and child abuse. Cultural groups tend to see these issues in black or white. Unfortunately, what is white to one group is black to another.
Culture wars appear to be taking on a global dimension with increasing globalization. A culture with intertwining borders & languages, a culture that transcends geo-political national boundaries…can emerge in today's world. Digging into the evolution of the cultures, the ancient Greeks and Romans took much from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia and India. These interchanges were not signs of the poverty of their culture but its openness. Western or European culture has a base of Judeo-Christian religious and Greco-Roman intellectual values, on a diversity of predominately Indo-European people their languages and beliefs. Out of this arose European art and culture, and the developments of modern science and technology. Occidental culture therefore is a polyglot affair, put together from different sources over time, and hardly a pure breed of any type. On the other hand, Oriental culture more or less has an original flavour as in India, have had their own rational philosophy much like the Greek, as we can see in the Upanishads, integration of science & philosophy by Aryabhatta & Brahmagupta. The Buddhist schools also similarly emphasize reason and dialectic but combined with ethical and meditation disciplines. In fact Greek philosophy like Plato, Aristotle & Pythagoras has many affinities with the Hindu. Similarly Greek medicine and astronomy has much in common with Ayurvedic medicine and the astronomical systems of India. The cultural background from which science emerged via the Greeks therefore has more in common with the original religions and with the Hindu and the Buddhist that the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is a culture of hybridization, a culture that finds its identity in diversity, a culture in which otherness is an organic dimension.
The current politico-economic division is pertinent to encumber the tendency towards universalism. Probably elucidates why this tendency is skewed more towards interests-oriented than values-oriented. The focus is on the market rather than on the human being. Globalismis therefore, here primarily economic and political. As such it cannot be a globalism of equity and equality. Paradoxically, everything indicates that it is indeed a hegemonic globalism. This is because values-oriented universalism, based as it is on diversity, on dynamic and continuous change, threatens in a fundamental way the interests-oriented globalism, its proponents, their thought, and their methods of operation. Thus, we are seeing how a melting and tutelage replacing diversity and harmony. The West dominates political globalism in the name of the authority of decision; it dominates economic globalismin the name of the authority of wealth, and it dominates cultural globalism in the name of the authority of knowledge. The moot point is where is the scope of magnanimity of the Western civilization to embrace the best of Eastern civilization?
In an enlightened articulation by Daniel Rondeau on the French writer Pierre Loti; where Loti feared for the cities of the East which were threatened by "the foul blowing of pit-coal coming from the West" with the "flow of tourists," "the cities devoured by that "great octopus called civilization." In the same articulation Daniel Rondeau refers to what Paul Morand later wrote; "Perhaps a day will come when there will be no longer East or West but only one wretched nation on this planet." Today we can all see how this blowing is expanding and intensifying, how the wretchedness of the East-West…. is also expanding and intensifying.
Do we not have a right to vision anew a dynamic force harmonizing between nature and culture, between the self with the other, which will obliterate this wretchedness, and halt this type of blowing? Prudently speaking the West imperatively needs to extricate out of its political-economic and military self to find it in the other, in a universalism of participation and harmony in diversity. Unless the West's personality embraces this diverse and universal whole, it will be no more than a chasm.
Eastern cultures such as India and China did develop a more intense knowledge of consciousness of the internal world, just as Western cultures that of Europe and America developed a greater consciousness of the external world. Westerners need not feel culturally disparaged by benefiting from the wisdom of India. Similarly, Easterners need not feel debased by taking on the benefits of technology from America. Just as the people of Asia must adapt the occidental science of technology to their own environment, so must those in America & Europe must adapt this oriental mysticism of consciousness to their own lives. It is a concern of human growth, not of the advancement of categorical geographical regions.
Ancient Arab poets placed emphasis not on the geographic framework of the homeland but on its human essence; the homeland is the place that fosters honour… in the words of al-Mutanabbi… in modern terms it is the place in which man is able to live in dignity and freedom. If we add to this a word attributed to the Iman Ali, the fourth Caliph in which he says: “No country is more deserving of you than another. The best of lands is that which has borne you well," we find that the essential question with respect to affiliation involves not geographic boundaries but rather human values.
"All the world is one family," is a great statement from the Vedic tradition, which tradition therefore belongs to all of us. The challenge today is to create a global culture. Both need to come together for a healthy co-existence, as a global culture through an initial process of Oriental osmosis of the Occidental and the cyclic process of osmosis should continue.So, what is this osmosis process all about…. It’s a dynamic state of equilibrium between mysticism & science. Why oriental osmosis of the occidental? At the current juncture, the West need to acknowledge that East does have a point of view and that the flow of knowledge from east to west could also help in a Western awakening. Science deals with the exploration of the outer world and Mysticism deals with the exploration of the inner world. Metaphorically the two routes can be referred to as “atomic view of reality” and the “atmik view of reality”. Traditionally the West has focused its attention on the reality ‘out there’, hence has made many strides in development of science and technology through the experimental route thereby contributing to material progress. And the East has focused on the ‘search within’ through the experiential route and hence has made significant contributions to spiritual development. East and West are just the two sides of the same coin of human development as a whole and a wholesome co-existence can only bring semblance of orderliness to the dynamic state of equilibrium between the East and the West.
Humanity now divided into ‘East’ and ‘West’ probably arose from one source in the distant past. The memory of confluence got erased for many reasons. At present, after a hiatus of 2000 years the East and West are once again meeting in conflict. Nevertheless, it’s a convergence of Western science and Eastern mysticism. In the process, taking science beyond its narrow boundaries to the no-boundary condition of mysticism and bringing mysticism to the bounded boundary of science. We hope this meeting would be memorably distinctive and distinctively memorable in the future.
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