Questions East And West

Dif­fer­ent philoso­phies ask dif­fer­ent ques­tions. Phi­los­o­phy is more of a sport than any­thing else. The major divid­ing line is referred to as “East” and “West” — like some of the divi­sions in foot­ball con­fer­ences. The West is more insti­tu­tional. The East is more med­i­ta­tive. I like liv­ing in West­ern cul­ture, but often yearn for a lit­tle of the East. It is fun to pick and choose. It also pays to exam­ine the prin­ci­ples by which we live. East and West both have a lot to offer, and yet they both have lim­i­ta­tions.
In the West, we like to ask, “How much can I have?” In the East, the ques­tion is more, “What can I live with­out?” On both sides of the Pacific the trends are now mixed. A uniquely Asian form of cap­i­tal­ism and con­sumerism is tak­ing hold in tra­di­tion­ally East­ern cir­cles. Bud­dhist Tem­ples and Zen set­tings can be found more fre­quently in the United States — espe­cially along the Pacific Coast. Over­all, we look for some sort of bal­ance. Mate­ri­al­ism and min­i­mal­ism have their place. I tend to use the tools of the first with the mind of the sec­ond. It is amaz­ing how eas­ily I can part with things. Then again, I do not dis­dain what I have either.
Mys­tics of the East tend to embrace the whole. Ana­lysts of the West seek to break every­thing down to their essen­tial ingre­di­ents and look for cause and effect. Both have con­tri­bu­tions to make. Jesus had a foot in both worlds. He would pray as a mys­tic and heal as a prag­matic. His fol­low­ers kept the bal­ance for a while…but with more dif­fi­culty. The sci­en­tific world does not know quite what to do with the phe­nom­e­non of the church. But for all of their objec­tivism, they can­not help but dab­ble in sci­ence fic­tion, the arts, and other forms of non-rational or a-rational activ­i­ties.
Glob­al­iza­tion gives us a chance to com­pare notes on a world­wide scale. I am a ratio­nal West­erner with mys­ti­cal East­ern hopes for things like tran­scen­dence and res­ur­rec­tion. I do real things with an eye on the meta­phys­i­cal. There are ani­mals and angels in my world. For me, the sound of one hand clap­ping is the same as one hand writ­ing a check.