Customer Reviews

Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religous Traditions (Library of Perennial Philosophy)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I can only concur with Prof. Huston Smith, who writes about this book "This is the most comprehensive, engaging, and responsible treatment of the advent of Asian thought to the West that has ever been written -- 'Journeys East' will be indispensable for students of comparative religion".

This extraordinarily well written work ranges across enormous terrain covering more than 100 years of intellectual history reflecting the influence of Asian thought on major 20th century philosophers, artists, spiritual seekers and adventurers. Although it is a serious work of scholarship, reflecting astonishing depth and breadth of erudition and great sensitivity to the subject matter, it is also a highly readable book which will fascinate any reader who is even marginally interested the impact of Eastern thought on the Western mind.

Following Prof. Oldmeadow's previous introduction to the Traditionalist school, "Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy", this new work brings him into the ranks of the most important historians of religion in our day.

The title of this book suggests that it is a history of 20th century Westerners studying or practicing Eastern religious traditions. Really, the first 330 pages of the book deliver just that, and they do so very well. I was pleased to get good biographical information about figures such as the Theosophists, Jung, Campbell, Eliade, Marco Pallis, D. T. Suzuki, Allen Ginsberg, Ram Dass, Alan Watts, Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, Ken Wilber and many others. In fact, I really would've enjoyed more of that: more extensive accounts of their lives, their thought and what influenced them.

That section of the book gets five stars from me; even though the sections are way too short and shallow. Figures such as Jung, Merton and Watts, not to mention many others, deserve a richer coverage than this. Nevertheless, the breadth of the coverage is very nice. It is a fine introduction.

I nearly deducted a star even in the first section because the author does not see his task to be one of history, but of evaluation according to Traditionalist criteria (elaborated especially by Schuon and Nasr). He is concerned to report about whether these figures fulfilled the Traditionalist ideal, which in my opinion is a distraction from the more interesting account of what they did, taught and what influenced them.

In the last hundred pages or so, he slips into a defense of Traditionalism and an attack on methodological materialism. I've also recently read Huston Smith's Why Religion Matters, which had this project as its sole subject, and I think that's the better way to handle it.

Essentially, the issue is how to study religion academically. Generally, practitioners and believers of religious traditions study in order to better understand the values and teachings of their tradition, rather than to understand mere historical or psychological contingencies. On the other side, many scholars want universities to be sites of skepticism and questioning rather than indoctrination; but that is inevitably a secular approach. The struggles between the two sides disturb the faculties of many religious studies departments.

I was underwhelmed even by Smith, but Oldmeadow's discussion never rises above sermonizing. I think he anticipated having a sympathetic audience, because he did not address any of the reasons that people disagree with him. He presents ridiculously parodied visions of science and philosophy, casually blaming them for all the ills of industrialism and commercialism.

It would be enough for me to say that I disagree with him; but I want to emphasize how unfairly he presented science and philosophy, and wonder why.

Quite often, in fact, he attacks evolution not only as a cultural or spiritual theory (where it is very questionable), but in biology itself. He claims to have no quarrel with the actual findings of science, merely with the way they are interpreted. That seems to imply that we can search for interpretations of scientific facts to fit our nonscientific intuitions (moral and mystical, for instance).

However, (p. 358):

"[I]t is preferable to believe that God created the world in six days and that heaven lies in the blue skies above the flat surface of the earth than it is to know precisely the distance from one nebula to another whilst forgetting the truth embodied in this symbolism, namely that all phenomena depend on a higher Reality which determines us and gives our human existence meaning and purpose. A materially inaccurate but symbolically rich view is always preferable to the regime of brute fact."

That is a fascinating admission, and ultimately this is why I will remember this book (although I will happily return to its better parts for reference).

Is it not better, I would ask, to know the brute facts and face them honestly, and then to discover and elaborate their rich symbolic, spiritual potential?

I would answer affirmatively without hesitation, and look for inspiration to examples such as Chet Raymo, Loyal Rue, Ursula Goodenough, Carl Sagan or Ed Wilson, perhaps even Brian Swimme, not to mention stars like Einstein. That is on the scientific side of the question, with which I am well familiar.

His portrait of philosophy was just as unfair; in order to do it he had to pass over figures as central as Wittgenstein and as relevant to the stated theme of the book as Jaspers.

The greater part of this review has focused on content in the last 100 pages of this book. The first two-thirds of the book, when he generally stuck to the theme announced by the title and subtitle, were very interesting and deserve the customary five stars of Amazon reviews. But the final pages are not only irrelevant, but so poorly argued, if they were meant to be an argument rather than a sermon, that they deserve one star at best. So I compromise.

I want to close by emphasizing again that the first 2/3 really are a good introduction to the subject, and if that's what you want you'll find it there.

"Journeys East" deals primarily with Western responses to Eastern wisdom in the 19th and the 20th centuries. Written from what can be broadly called a traditionalist perspective (i.e. agreeing fundamentally with the philosophical perspectives of René Guénon, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, and Frithjof Schuon), this is a profound and comprehensive guide to the interaction between Western thinkers and seekers of the modern era (Carl Jung, Joseph Needham, Bede Griffiths, et al.) and the traditional wisdom of the East (encompassing India, Tibet, China, Japan and South East Asia).
As an undergraduate my twin majors were in Studies in Western Traditions and Chinese Studies. I saw nothing inherently conflicting in studying the best of both East and West (and contra Kipling have found that they often meet). During this time I was lucky enough to study under Kenneth "Harry" Oldmeadow, and this book conforms to the high standards that I have come to expect from him both as a teacher and a scholar. "Journeys East" is an entertaining and philosophically challenging reference source for those who either wish to learn more about those modern Westerners who have studied Eastern religions in depth, or who wish themselves to make a journey East of their own.

The title, cover art and much of the content of this book serve as masks for a more profound intention. After I read Professor Oldmeadow's fascinating historical study I was left with the impression of both reverence and caution for what lies behind the masks. Journeys East with a forward by Huston Smith performs as a survey of "Western encounters with Eastern religion" yet it serves as a seeker's manual. The cover art, an image from a painting of Tibet by Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947), brought out a smile when I first saw the book. Oldmeadow mentions Roerich only in passing on p 142 and as a footnote. Roerich's fine paintings remain an attractive if not always noted contribution to the religious art of the 20th century, so I completely understand why Oldmeadow chose that cover image. In context on page 193, Roerich receives "scorn" among "dreams and vagaries of the Theosophists, which are nothing but a tissue of gross errors, made still worse by methods of the lowest charlatanism." Oldmeadow quotes René Guénon whose withering critiques of modern occultism (New Age spirituality), materialistic progress, and hard line scientism attracted my attention in the early 1980s. Reading about Guénon again re-energized my interest in him.

Guénon's "Traditional" philosophy (and as represented by Coomaraswamy, Schuon and others) is at the core of Oldmeadow's purpose for writing this book. We learn that there is no rejection of science as science in Traditionalist views but there is a firm conviction that all religion, science, philosophy and art participate in an absolute reality. In as much we deny or misrepresent this "ground of being," we are at peril of losing our identity as human beings if not our very existence. That is what I sense is behind the mask of this book. The journeys east described by Oldmeadow are not all equal or successful in this endeavor to find the holy grail of seekers described as the perennial philosophy by Huston Smith and others.

Whether the reader accepts the Traditional message or not, this book remains a valuable resource for its mention of a host of intriguing, often brilliant characters that have moved the West to find itself in the East and, I dare say, the East to find itself in the West, for better or for worse.

I give this effort five stars with a few reservations. In one, for example, I find on 367 Oldmeadow citing "Hitler's Pope" by Cornwell (1999)as authoritative. Cornwell himself by 2004 had retracted his errors in fact and admitted that he overreached in indicting Pius XII. In "The Pontiff in Winter" Cornwell (2004: 193) stated, " I would now argue....that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence...while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans."

A century of Westerners encounter Eastern religious traditions in this scholarly study. Emphasizing "traditionalism" in its academic history of religions contexts, it challenges reductionist anti-Orientalism. Oldmeadow insists upon an immutable, eternal source of wisdom that persists no matter how diverse the forms it takes as Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, or Taoist practice.

Traditionalists assert that psychology, Marxism, Edward Said, Freud, or Foucault among many, lack understanding of deeper, primordial revelations that endure through particular religious expressions as doctrine, ritual, and belief. They hold that "divinely-appointed forms" in timeless expression exist, and that "the prevailing modern worldview (secular, humanistic and scientific) which originated in the Renaissance and which has been strengthening its tyrannical grip on the modern mentality ever since" cannot suffice to account for the truth within "Sophia perennis." (183-4)

Oldmeadow argues from this dogged perspective. He fairly acknowledges the contributions of those who oppose this p-o-v, and strives to illustrate their objections at length. His book ranges over the 20th century widely if erratically. I found its earlier chapters more engaging as they recounted the struggles of those who sought a deeper wisdom that scholarship alone could not explain. Later chapters, which shift away from a chronological into an ideological dimension, skim more rapidly past feminism, scientism, ecology, ecumenism, and post-modernism with equal density of support, but less clarity, as the sheer amount of sources and viewpoints threaten to overwhelm this formidable presentation. That being said, it remains a valuable attempt to synthesize crucial data as promulgated by many leading intellectuals and teachers.

For instance, Oldmeadow's generous towards Allen Ginsberg's role in pioneering Buddhist practice and corrective towards Alan Watts' glib if earnest popularizations. He mingles the more famous such as Thomas Merton or D.T. Suzuki with the less acclaimed such as Marco Pallis or Bede Griffiths. And, his style can prove pithy and amusing: "Neither Tim Leary nor Ken Kesey was ever going to write 'The Cloud of Unknowing'!" (267-8) He distinguishes neatly the "absolute certitude" and "radical and spontaneous 'self-transformation'" of a mystic experience from the drug-induced psychic and self-contingent mental projections. His chapter on the Beats, hippies, and counterculture shows Oldmeadow's skill at presenting spiritual truths vs. cultural trends, and how they run parallel but not necessarily intersecting tracks over the past century's course.

However, such information as Merton entering the monastery in "1948," or Samye-Ling being founded in "England," or "Ojia" and "Shaster Abbey" both in California exemplify a few errors I caught, so I suspect that others remain undetected; typos also mar the pages as the text goes on. This detracts from the value of the bulk of this work. Certain connections appeared missed, such as Merton's analogy of Zen vs. "the birds of appetite" with one that begged for illustration, Chögyam Trungpa's "spiritual materialism," a concept which is barely touched upon but which demanded more attention given the countercultural contexts Oldmeadow otherwise intimately explores.

The pace of the book slows noticeably as it verges into Oldmeadow's defense of Traditionalism against a scientific inquiry which has only itself to answer to. I understood his densely cited and rather convoluted counterargument, but coming fresh to this school of thought, it appeared that much more support needed to be marshalled against what to nearly any modern student appears self-evident, the establishment of facts and data. Traditionalists as Frithjof Schuon cleverly charge: "The rationalism of a frog living at the bottom of a well is to deny the existence of mountains: this is logic but it has nothing to do with reality." (qtd. 344)

Yet, I am unsure if many newcomers to this debate will be swayed by the expectation that "the inner meaning of religion through an elucidation of immutable metaphysical and cosmological principles and through a penetration of the forms preserved in each religious tradition" will supplant the historian of religions or the comparative studies that dominate any university. "Revelation, tradition, intellection, realization" as the sources of the Traditionalist vision are admirable, no disagreement there, but I do wonder how Oldmeadow and his colleagues figure to overthrow the rule of reason that controls their academic colleagues and those whom they indoctrinate. (447) Still, it's more admirable than ever to strive to lead others to what the Qur'an lauds as "light that is neither of the East nor of the West." (qtd. 449)

So, a welcome addition-- if a tonally uneven work that assembles much incisive commentary. It relies often on tertiary references from other scholars-- notably Donald S. Lopez regarding Tibetan Buddhism-- rather than the primary narratives and proof-texts. I wondered why he did not delve deeper into the original texts, but this documentation does reflect Oldmeadow's credit being given the many scholars who preceded him in this vast field. I recommend it with reservations for editorial imperfections, but with enthusiasm for its own range and depth.