East v West

If I ever doubted the interconnectedness of true society and the fact that my own mind is really made from bits of the world outside me, it was again crushed last night. Just reading "The Catcher in the Rye" by Salinger. They said it was a classic; I figured I should have read it - so I have.

Toward the end our young man Holden Caulfield experiencing a continuing disquiet and nausea with the world has called upon a school acquaintance to meet him at a bar. Luce is a smart, philosophical and self-obsessed fellow. During their conversation it emerges that Luce has a Chinese girlfriend. When examined on whether her being Chinese is a feature of the relationship he says 'I simply happen to Eastern philosophy more satisfactory than Western. Since you ask.' (Chp 19. p152)

Amazing to read that - these are my most intimate words from 10 years ago. Since then I have found that Eastern people are no more aware of Eastern philosophy than Western are of Western philosophy - and my old dream that somehow the wisdom is present in an organic implicit way - in the mythos - in the culture - so that in a smile or touch one may be able to discern like with an intoxicating liquid a change in one's own outlook and wisdom: that dream I woke up from.

Maybe 6 years at a Chinese Buddhist temple layed the ground-work for re-reading the Dao De Ching last month. But without the groundwork in Dialectics from a Philosophy BA and a lifetimes interest in this material, and my own catalogue of mistakes and blunders it would have ment nothing.

My great disappointment is realising that the immigrants to UK from China and India (never having visited the places myself) are as ignorant of Life as the Westerners. The Human Race is blind and wisdom is only thinly and evenly spread. "My Muse" never read the Bhagavad Gita despite me insisting it was a very good book. I once argued that I could cook a better curry than her and she protested that this was impossible because I was not Indian. Yet she had to learn it - so anyone can learn it. Indian, Chinese, European - they mean nothing.

Another feature of that exchange on the book is reflected upon by Edward Said in his thesis of Orientalisation. The myth we have of the Orient in the West as being one of mystical wisdom and alluring exotic delights is a simple dialectical negation of our view of the West. By implication the West views itself as explicitly rational and restrained and sensually dull. Not far off the Protestant puritanical view. Of course it is the West seeking to negate their own view of themselves - and any view of oneself is inauthentic - that leads to this equally inauthentic view of the East. Distinctions are always false.

The type of arguments that I practice here of late are calssically viewed as Eastern - yet I learned them in Western philosophy first. Some want to argue that the Western philosophers got them from the East. Schopenhauer inspired by reading the first Buddhist translations, Heideggar inspired by his Chinese students. I imagine that mankind was mixing a long time before modern history and these ideas are as old as the hills. Modern distinctions do little to inform.

So I realise that what I once thought was mine, reallybelongs to History and the Human race.