Description
THIS Book is the exception that proves the rule spelled out in the familiar line, "East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet." For this book furnishes not only a meeting ground-a point of entry for the mutual understanding of two heritages and cultures-it formulates a method for each to enter into, complement, and enrich the other, to the immediate and practical benefit of both and to the ultimate enrichment of all mankind.
If this sounds like an extraordinary statement, it is only because the subject matter itself is extraordinary. The West has long accepted as a fact the "spiritual wisdom of the East," but pretty much on faith and without any widespread under- standing of just what it was that this wisdom consisted of. Even to those scholars whose studies brought them a degree of familiarity, the East's spiritual wisdom has been largely acknowledged as the province of the monkish ascetic, the holy scholar who lives apart and shuns all but the most necessary contact with the everyday world. Thus the West has been apt to regard Eastern religious and mystical teaching as something which, while undoubtedly profound, authentic, and perhaps even close to the root answers to questions posed by all men, was still essentially a museum piece to be viewed under glass and of little practical worth to Western man who has to live in the world, deal with its problems, and meet the responsibilities which it thrusts upon him.
For Westerners, teachings which counsel withdrawal from the world and its temptations might be studied as curiosities, but they offered no real possibility of application as creeds to be lived or followed.
