From: laelth@yabbs
To: Xela@yabbs
Subject: re: Eastern Religions
Date: Sun Aug 14 00:49:07 1994
In message 237 xela said:

"Stop romanticizing mysticism just because it's mystic."

In no way did I intend to romanticize mysticism.  I said that I felt 
attracted to the teachings of Kung Fu Tse, but there's nothing mystical 
about that.  Kung Fu Tse is practical, political, and very realistic.  
He's not a mystic at all.  What I was trying to say is that it may be 
impossible for Westerners to understand Eastern Mysticism.  We can only 
understand the world through our own symbolic systems, and Eastern 
religions spring out of very different patterns of thought than those that 
we Westerners employ.

Xela also said:

"The East has done its share of rape and pillage."

I don't deny this claim, but that does not refute the fact that
Western civilization has been characterized by the need to expand and 
conquer other peoples and lands.  Take the English, for example, who began 
as a wandering barbarian tribe in Central Europe, moved to Northern 
Europe, then to England, then to Ireland, then to the US, then to 
Australia, Africa, India, etc.  We even put our flag on the moon, like we 
had colonized it, as if we owned it!  My point was that this trend is part 
of what it means to be us.  And we do it not only with land and property, 
but with ideas.  We find, capture, and transform everything that we 
encounter.  This is bound to be the case with Eastern religions as well.
We cannot"think" in the way that an Eastern religion would require.  Thus, 
we are doomed to mutate Eastern mysticism into something that it wasn't 
intended to be.  Thus my skepticism about the Western desire to turn to 
Eastern religions for answers.

-laelth