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The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions
Colonisation Translation and Commodification 1st
Edition Elliot Cohen Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Elliot Cohen
ISBN(s): 9780429354922, 0429354924
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 4.52 MB
Year: 2022
Language: english
THE PSYCHOLOGISATION
OF EASTERN SPIRITUAL
TRADITIONS

This essential book critically examines the various ways in which Eastern spiritual
traditions have been typically stripped of their spiritual roots, content and context,
to be more readily assimilated into secular Western frames of Psychology.
Beginning with the colonial histories of the Empire, the author draws from the
1960s Counterculture and the subsequent romanticising and idealising of the East.
Cohen explores how Hindu, Buddhist and Daoist traditions have been gradually
transformed into forms of Psychology, Psychotherapy and Self-Help, undergoing
processes of ‘modernisation’ and secularisation until their respective cosmologies had
been successfully reinterpreted and reimagined. An important component of this
psychologisation is the accompanying commodification of Eastern spiritual practices,
including the mass-marketing of mindfulness and meditation as part of the
burgeoning well-being industry. Also presenting emerging voices of resistance
from within Eastern spiritual traditions, the book ends with a chapter on Trans-
personal Psychology, showing a path for how to gradually move away from
colonisation and towards collaboration.
Engaging with the ‘mindfulness movement’ and other practices assimilated by
Western culture, this is fascinating reading for students and academics in psychology,
philosophy and religious studies, as well as mindfulness practitioners.

Dr Elliot Cohen is a Chartered Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Social and

Interdisciplinary Psychology at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He is the current
Secretary of the British Psychological Society’s Transpersonal Psychology Section
and an active member of the Discourse Unit, which promotes more critical/
radical approaches to Psychology.
Concepts for Critical Psychology:
Disciplinary Boundaries Re-thought
Series editor: Ian Parker

Developments inside psychology that question the history of the dis-

cipline and the way it functions in society have led many psychologists to
look outside the discipline for new ideas. This series draws on cutting
edge critiques from just outside psychology in order to complement and
question critical arguments emerging inside. The authors provide new
perspectives on subjectivity from disciplinary debates and cultural phe-
nomena adjacent to traditional studies of the individual.
The books in the series are useful for advanced-level undergraduate and
postgraduate students, researchers and lecturers in psychology and other
related disciplines such as cultural studies, geography, literary theory,
philosophy, psychotherapy, social work and sociology.
Most recently published titles:

Internet Addiction
A Critical Psychology of Users
Emaline Friedman
Radio Activism
Breaking the Silence and Empowering Women
Annette Rimmer
The Event of Psychopoetics
Imagination and the Rupture of Psychology
Raúl García
THE
PSYCHOLOGISATION
OF EASTERN
SPIRITUAL
TRADITIONS
Colonisation, Translation and
Commodification

Elliot Cohen
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2022 Elliot Cohen
The right of Elliot Cohen to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Catalogingn-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-0-367-37539-3 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-37536-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-35492-2 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429354922

Typeset in Bembo
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
CONTENTS

Acknowledgements vi
Preface vii

1 ‘East is East and West is West?’ 1

2 Counterculture and the return to the East 21

3 The Buddha as a psychologist, the Dharma as a

psychotherapy 40

4 The Dao of psychologisation 60

5 The commodification of ‘the East’ 78

6 Resistance 97

7 Transpersonal psychology 116

References 134
Index 144
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In loving, living memory of my mother Lynda Marilyn Cohen

Extra special thanks to Professor Ian Parker for supporting and believing in
this project.
Sincere thanks to my family – Zhilu, Natan and Ezra for allowing me the
time to write.
Thanks to Lama Jampa Thaye and Kagyu Ling Buddhist Centre, Venerable
Akurala Samitha and the Dhamma Nikethanaya Buddhist Academy, Man-
chester Fo Guang Shan, Seishin Clark and Tendai Buddhism UK, The
British Daoist Association, Les Lancaster and the Alef Trust, William Pruitt
and the Pali Text Society, Valerie Roebuck, Michael Saso, Livia Kohn,
Stephen Sayers, Steve Taylor, Conrad Russell, Madeleine Castro, Tom
Goodwin, Amalia Rubin, Jeffrey Kotyk, Ben Joffe, Cody Bahir, Joy Bose
and Daniel Langton.
PREFACE

Psychology seems to be everywhere, working its way into the curriculum of

every adjacent discipline, reframing academic and media debate about the
causes and consequences of social ills, seeping into the fabric of our subjectivity.
This is what critical psychologists have named ‘psychologisation’, and in the
process we are all, as it were, ‘colonised’ as our behaviour and experience is
translated into psychological vocabulary and then sent back to us as a most
scientific way of understanding ourselves, and it is in this manner that we are
turned into things, ‘commodified’. Commodification is the necessary flipside
of psychologisation; our activities and attributes are turned into things while
the discipline of psychology busies itself with turning us into the kind of
subjects it can work on.
Elliot Cohen’s profound book is an analysis of how this psychologisation
reaches across to the East, to capture and reformat spiritual traditions that
should provide an antidote to Western psychology. This book is about how
commodification reduces Eastern understanding of the evanescence of the
self to an individualised and isolated core of our lives that can then be
predicted and controlled, in the behaviourist and cognitive traditions that
scaffold fake-scientific research in the discipline, or exalted as the ‘mindful’
centre and source of our ‘well-being’ indulged in by the more humanist
versions of Western psychology.
This surely is the moment to turn the critical gaze of the psychologist back
on their own discipline, and to engage in a thorough scholarly decolonisation
of psychological discourse. That is what this book accomplishes; giving us the
conceptual resources to grasp what the ‘psy complex’ is doing to us, enabling
viii Preface

us better to resist psychologisation. One might hazard a bet that this serious
detailed examination and decolonisation of the psychologisation of Eastern
spiritual traditions might entail some playful manoeuvres that deconstruction
of prevailing assumptions about subjectivity and text specialises in. Indeed,
this is a most intensely argued book, but leavened by way of lucid explanation
and critique, at moments witty, enjoyable in its passion for what has been lost
in translation, what has been lost in the process of absorbing and recuperating
valuable descriptions of the self from the East, and showing how we might
recover what has been lost, redeem it for a genuinely radical ‘transpersonal’
critical psychology.
Is it not the case that the so-called ‘mindfulness’ that psychology scoops
out of the East might be better combated with an appeal to a more authentic
‘mindlessness’, the emptying of the self and the emptying out of the
psychological bibs and bobs that the discipline trades in as its trademark
objects of study? Could not ‘well-being’ as the current favoured leitmotif of
psychological culture be opposed, countered by the cultivation of a more
radical ‘bad-being’, of subjects who behave like subjects instead of mere
objects to be described and predicted and controlled and adapted to the
order of things?
This book retrieves what is radical, arguing for a notion of what is
‘transpersonal’ that does not confirm present-day Western psychology but
challenges it. The Psychologising of Eastern Spiritual Traditions: Colonisation,
Translation and Commodification is critical psychology at its best, with
‘transpersonal’ here operating not as something inside the individual, hidden as
if cognitive and waiting to be transcribed into the language of psychology, nor
something entirely outside us, a system of rules as if behavioural waiting to be
observed by the psychologist. As in the most radical humanist traditions, this is,
rather, ‘outwith’ us, and this book shows us a way to be ‘outwith’ psychology
itself.
Ian Parker
University of Manchester
1
‘EAST IS EAST AND WEST
IS WEST?’

‘Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet…’
So begins Rudyard Kipling’s (1899a) iconic ‘Ballad of East and West’,
with a familiar, idiomatic refrain that still resonates today; proclaiming and
framing the East as possessing an inherent quality of irreconcilable
otherness.
However, defenders and admirers of Kipling will be quick to note that
the proceeding lines, which are often omitted, appear to contradict and
challenge this popular sentiment:

But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
when two strong men stand face to face, though they come from
the ends of the earth! (ibid.)

It is worth considering for a moment, why these proceeding lines are so

less well-known, and whether this stems from an inherent ethnocentric
bias in the way we are culturally conditioned to conceptualise and divide
the world up, or whether it is simply due to the ballad possessing a more
emphatic and memorable opening.
Considering the context of the original ballad, one may also reflect on
the extent to which this strength and manliness, which is capable of
transcending geography and culture, is to be demonstrated by conforming
to a particular Nineteenth-Century colonialist standard of bravery and
honour, which is further informed by the popular and persistent tropes of
the ‘noble savage’; the thieving tribal Chieftain Kamal, duly recognising a
DOI: 10.4324/9780429354922-1
2 ‘East is East and West is West?’

resonant nobility in the brave colonel’s son, who has pursued him with
the seeming sole purpose of retrieving his father’s prize mare. Of course,
it was never a simple matter of retrieving a stolen horse – there is the
weighty matter of principle; this rebellious act simply ‘wasn’t cricket’ and
so the poem seeks to rectify impudence and injustice, whilst reifying and
further propagating the ‘traditional’ British discourse, sense and sentiment
of ‘fair play’.
Born in Bombay, Kipling presents familiar and popular portrayals of
‘the East’; the colourful characters and bazaars, a land characterised by an
exciting blend of the exotic and the barbaric, with the ever-present
promise of high adventure – indeed India itself becomes a board for vying
world powers (primarily the British and Russian empires) to engage in
what became known as ‘the Great Game’ (Hopkirk 2006). Fellow author
George Orwell, who was also born in India, sees Kipling as an apologist
for and supporter of the colonialist project and consequently labels
Kipling a ‘jingo imperialist’ (Newsinger 1999, p. 11). This ‘jingoism’ is
characterised as an unthinking, uncritical support of one’s Empire, which
promotes a sense of superiority, exceptionalism and entitlement to the
nations one subjugates. It’s not simply a matter that ‘East is East’ but
rather, more implicitly and insidiously, that the West is always superior to
the East.
But what is meant and understood by ‘the East’ or indeed ‘the West’?
These are intimately familiar ‘common sense’ terms, with their emergent
derivations of ‘Western thought’ and ‘Eastern thought.’ Though it must
be acknowledged that they are terms that lack any nuance and
thoughtlessly homogenise vast and varied regions, linguistic groupings,
cultural and religious identities.
Noted Japanese Indologist and scholar of early Buddhism, Hajime
Nakamura’s (1971) The Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples is a creative
exploration of the distinctions and cultural divergencies to be found in
‘the Orient’. He demonstrates an Emic, ‘Eastern’ insider’s perspective,
whilst simultaneously challenging the contention that there is such a thing
as ‘Eastern thought’ per se. Rather, Nakamura seeks to demonstrate the
variety of Eastern styles of thinking, primarily through closely examining
the ways Indian, Chinese, Tibetan and Japanese cultures engaged with,
translated and transformed Buddhist thought to better fit their respective
and varied cultural worldviews. It should be noted that this current vo-
lume also seeks to continue this analysis by considering the various ways
Hinduism, Buddhism and Daoism have been translated, transformed and
adapted to ‘Western’ (mainly American, Canadian, Australian and British)
English-speaking audiences, or markets.
 ‘East is East and West is West?’ 3

Prior to this exploration, Nakamura considers the popular terms

‘Occidental’ and ‘Oriental’:

… the Oriental way of thinking is represented as ‘spiritual’,

‘introverted’, ‘synthetic’ and ‘subjective’, while the Occidental is
represented as ‘materialistic’, ‘extroverted’, ‘analytic’ and ‘objec-
tive’. (Nakamura 1971, p. 3)

The keyword in the previous quote is ‘represented’, and in considering

different modes of representation, it may help to refer to the social science
of semiotics. Semiotics deals with the relationships between signs, symbols
and their significance, including words – their meanings and associations.
In this sense ‘the East’ may be thought of as a Western signifier; a signifier
that acts as a repository for various Western fears, fantasies and pre-
occupations concerning ‘the East’. In the proceeding discussions and
chapters, I will hope to explore ‘the East’ as a particular kind of signifier
for the West; what was and is actually being signified is far from fixed and
has changed quite dramatically over time and continues to change. In
particular, one may observe how over the preceding centuries ‘the East’
has metamorphosed from a ‘threatening Other’ to a ‘beckoning Other’;
transforming from a fear of the unknown to an idealisation or fetishisation
of what might be.
As terms and concepts ‘East’ and ‘West’ exist in dynamic and reactive
contradistinction to one another – East is East precisely because West is
West. Or perhaps we may elucidate further and reframe the relationship
through a social psychological lens and duly recognise that in order for
there to be a West we need there to be an East. This may be achieved by
considering Henri Tajfel’s (2010) classic works on Social Identity Theory
(SIT); concerning the establishment of group norms and social identity.
West and Westerner presupposes and necessitates an East and an
Easterner, just as an ‘us’ presupposes and necessitates a ‘them’.
More simply summarised, through an SIT lens, the colonial’s idealised
in-group’s need for ‘Western superiority’ is maintained through their
collective projections onto and of a lesser out-group’s ‘Eastern inferiority’.
One such example may be seen in late Nineteenth- and early
Twentieth-Century European popular caricatures of China as the ‘sick
man of Asia’ (Amelung and Riebold 2019). Such a loaded phrase evoked
and exploited the then ‘weak’ and ‘divided’ condition of the Chinese
nation, in sharp contrast to the ‘strong’ and ‘unified’ British Empire.
This slur of the ‘sick man’ would not be forgotten or forgiven and was
indirectly referenced in Mao Zedong’s defiant declaration, at the opening
4 ‘East is East and West is West?’

address at the first plenary session of the Chinese People’s Political

Consultative Conference in 1949, following the reunification of China,
that ‘Ours will no longer be a nation subject to insult and humiliation.
We have stood up’.
But the consequences of standing up led to a revival of an earlier and
equally othering slur – that of the ‘yellow peril’ (Marchetti 1994). In
contrast to ‘the sick man of Asia’, the ‘yellow peril’ was characterised as
representing a viable, existential threat to Western civilisation; this may be
partly due to the terrifying historical tales and folk memories of un-
stoppable, merciless Mongol hordes, sweeping across the East all the way
into central Europe.
In colonialist writings and early Hollywood depictions, we see that the
Chinese people are presented as possessing an inescapable otherness –
pitied and dominated when weak, feared and persecuted when strong.
But one of the deep-seated fears in regard to the ‘yellow peril’ was that
‘their’ manner of fighting did not simply rely on military might, but also
on psychological and occult means of warfare. It is worth remembering
that during the height of the cold war, and ‘the red under your bed’
McCarthyist paranoia rested to a large degree on the collective fear of
‘brainwashing’.
The Chinese term 洗脑 Xinao – ‘brainwashing’ itself remains a cur-
rent, controversial and emotive term, originating in Mao’s ideological
goal to cleanse the Chinese mind of imperialist, capitalist ideologies.
‘Brainwashing’ soon becomes a sinister, covert method designed to bypass
one’s psychological defences and remould the minds of one’s enemy;
tellingly and typically it was often depicted as ‘a mysterious Oriental
device’ (Lifton 1989, p. 4).
This ‘mysterious Oriental’ quality is worth considering in more detail
in relation to colonialist depictions of the East, as not only ‘spiritual’ in the
contemporary positive sense but also in regards to Western phantasies
concerning, and the desire for secret knowledge and occult powers.
No history of Western esotericism would be complete without a
consideration of the key role ‘Oriental’ Gurus, Sadhus, Fakirs, Lamas and
Magicians would play in the Western imagination. One need only look to
the histories of Spiritualism and Theosophy to see a preponderance of
mysterious Oriental figures frequently taking the role of invisible ‘spirit
guides’ for Western mediums or Mahatmas (the Sanskrit title meaning
‘great souls’) ‘ascended masters’ – telepathically guiding seekers from
remote destinations (typically India, China and Tibet).
Theosophists and Occultists sought to cultivate the untapped power of
the mind for more mystical and magickal purposes, and many of them
 ‘East is East and West is West?’ 5

believed the East to contain a veritable treasure trove of lost (in the West)
esoteric techniques. Long before the ‘hippy trail’, occultists are jour-
neying to India, China and Tibet in attempts to retrieve lost, secret
knowledge. Although the history is rich and colourful, I will only briefly
identify two key characters that illustrate this view of the East, through
the lives and writings of Madame Helena Blavatsky and Aleister Crowley.
Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical movement greatly contributed
to the interest in and spread of Buddhism in the West (Sand 2020).
Theosophy’s primary texts, including ‘The Secret Doctrine’ were believed
to have been channelled by Blavatsky – their original source was believed,
by Theosophists, to be an otherworldly community of ‘ascended masters’,
that were typically addressed with the Sanskrit term Mahatma.
Although the Earthly origins of these Mahatmas were said to be India
or Tibet, the principle of ‘ascension’ suggested that they had transcended
the physical realm and now resided in the spiritual domain; one that could
be accessed by sufficiently trained adepts. One of the key claims made by
the Theosophical movement was that they had access and were the New
Age’s heirs to an ancient, perennial wisdom. In reality, this wisdom
consisted of an eclectic and syncretic mix of broadly ‘Eastern’ terms and
concepts (primarily Hindu and Buddhist) mixed with Spiritualist and
other Western esoteric traditions.
It does appear that many Theosophists were particularly enamoured
with Buddhism, including Blavatsky herself. Indeed, the origins of a great
many Western Buddhist institutions have their roots in former
Theosophical Societies. This includes Blavatsky’s former partner, Colonel
Henry Steel Olcott, who helped revive and revise Theravada Buddhism
in Sri Lanka. His revisions and more modernist emphasis contributed to
the emergence of what some scholars have referred to as a novel form of
‘Protestant Buddhism’ (Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1990). Olcott also
brought his love of pageantry and regimentalism to Buddhism, by de-
signing the universal Buddhist flag – a flag that is still used today by
Buddhist groups across the globe. Additionally, in England, one of the
founding members of The Buddhist Society in 1924, was the
Theosophist, Buddhist convert and High Court judge Christmas
Humphreys. My purpose in highlighting this background is to demon-
strate that it is against a backdrop of this late Nineteenth Century turn to
the spiritual and esoteric, which is the rightful ancestor of today’s ‘New
Age’ movements, that Buddhism first found fertile ground in the West.
Crowley, by contrast, is rarely discussed in regards to the history of
Buddhism in the West; most likely this is due to his controversial reputation
and association with more sinister aspects of occult lore. It appears,
6 ‘East is East and West is West?’

however, that Crowley considered himself a Buddhist earlier in his magical

career, and was particular attracted to Theravada Buddhism, as a way to
focus and train the mind. In particular Crowley’s 1903 essay ‘Science and
Buddhism’ demonstrates a respectable grasp of and grounding in basic
Buddhist terms, teachings and principles. The paper also presents a rather
practical, arguably protestant approach to Buddhism. It appears Crowley
somewhat resents Theosophy for misleading the public with more fantas-
tical tales and portrayals of the Buddhist path, in contrast to his more sci-
entific approach to Buddhism – ‘some of the Theosophic mud still sticks to
the Buddhist chariot’ (Crowley 1903). His paper concludes with a
surprisingly familiar and contemporary sounding tone:

Buddhism is a logical development of observed facts; whoso is with

me so far is ‘Sammaditthi’, and has taken the first step on the Noble
Eightfold Path. Let him aspire to knowledge, and the Second Step
is under his feet. The rest lies with Research. (Ibid.)

The term Sammaditthi is the Buddhist term for possessing ‘right view’,
which constitutes a correct understanding, or awakened realisation con-
cerning the truths of Buddhism. It is significant that Crowley promotes a
more empirical approach to the Buddhist teachings, as this approach is
commonly favoured by many of today’s leading Western Buddhist tea-
chers. There is also the strong sense, in Crowley and others’ writings, that
Buddhism somehow anticipates a modernist, empirical attitude towards
the world and our experiences of it.

The Atavistic East, the Mystic East and the

Scientific East
Popular depictions of the East, particularly in the Nineteenth Century,
could be read in three distinct ways, which for clarity I will term the
‘Atavistic East’ the ‘Mystic East’ and the ‘Scientific East’; although distinct
ways of viewing the East, all still engage in a process of othering.
The Atavistic East belongs to the earlier characterisation of a ‘threa-
tening Other’. Atavism suggests a ‘throwback’ to an earlier stage of
evolution, it initiates related discourses of primitive, superstitious, child-
like, barbaric and potentially dangerous. ‘Jingo colonialism’ tends towards
seeing an Atavistic East in need of ‘civilising’ and ‘saving’.
The assumed superiority of the coloniser and the salvational nature of
his mission may be further explored with reference to Edward Said’s
(2014) seminal writings on Orientalism. Said’s descriptions of Orientalism
 ‘East is East and West is West?’ 7

centred around popular European depictions and caricatures of Arabs and

Arabia, which typically manufactured and magnified their perceived
difference, deviance and the consequent potential dangers posed to
Western ‘civilisation’; an Arab equivalent of the ‘yellow peril’.
In this sense Orientalism is irrevocably bound up with notions and
qualities of otherness; stemming from and reliant upon ideological di-
chotomies – particularly the contrasting qualities of civilised versus savage.
But this projected otherness was not unique to the Arabs, nor does
Said limit its application in any such way – it can be extended to include
all ‘Eastern’ peoples subjected to imperialist whims, colonial injustices and
excesses; including the Indians and Chinese.
Such an Atavistic otherness justified and even required colonialism,
and if we briefly return to the work of Kipling, we can clearly see such
sentiments being expressed in his then popular poem (published in 1899)
but now mostly forgotten and very rarely quoted ‘The White Man’s
Burden’, where colonisation is elevated to the lofty heights of sacred duty:

Take up the white man’s burden –

Send forth the best ye breed –
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captive’s need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child. (Kipling 1899b)

The poem is clearly shaped by earlier evangelical appeals of missionaries

seeking to bring ‘light’ and ‘salvation’ to those who lived in ‘darkness’ and
‘ignorance’. The East is there, waiting to be saved; first in the salvational,
theological sense and later according to more modernist notions of
‘progress’ with the introduction of industry and technology.
The colonised subjects are simultaneously demonised and infantilised;
their ‘fallen’ condition directly necessitating their subjugation.

From the noble savage to the Mystic East

With the advent of the industrial revolution, the rise of locomotive
transport, the first motions of mechanisation emerged a burgeoning new
enthusiasm and confidence in the technological superiority of this ‘in-
dustrious empire’. These are the early Eighteenth-Century roots of
modernism and technocracy and its civilising dream. The language
8 ‘East is East and West is West?’

remains quasi-Theological, but now instead of saving ‘souls’, industry

promises to save ‘time’, ‘labour’ and ‘money’. Leaders of industry proudly
and loudly proclaim messianic, salvational themes and discourses of
‘progress’ that all should aspire to and move towards.
But all this ‘progress’ comes at a cost, as we see industrialisation brings
with it the loss of England’s countryside and breathable air; replaced with
Blake’s famed ‘dark satanic Mills’, or the equally dystopian Dickensian
London with its famed fog and smog. The ordinary, ‘common’ folks of
these new sprawling metropolises are literally choking on progress, whilst
they are also slowly beginning to realise, amid the first stirrings of ‘class
consciousness’, that it is through their increased labour that time is being
saved and fortunes being made for the benefit of the upper and newly
emerging middle classes. Somewhere between increasing pollution and
exploitation, a pining for a simpler more innocent past emerges.
Romanticism emerged from and responded to this yearning for a re-
turn to a more natural state of being – escaping the worst excesses of
technology and artificiality. The promise of progress began to be seen as
akin to a Faustian pact; technology had made us faster and more efficient,
but at a terrible, dehumanising cost. As with Hans Christian Andersen’s
famed fairy-tale fable of ‘The Red Shoes’, we were like the proud little
girl showing off our new shiny new shoes to the world, whilst all the
while unconsciously, collectively dancing ourselves to death in quickstep
to the marching music of the new machinery.
A renewed appreciation began to emerge for more ‘primitive’ peoples,
as yet untouched and uncorrupted by our technology. The literary trope
of the ‘noble savage’ (McGregor 1988) was an increasingly popular, ro-
mantic response to mass mechanisation. ‘They’ were typically of the land,
simpler, more innocent, their tribal loyalties and outlook became re-
framed as an equivalent and arguably admirable, more authentic code of
conduct – perhaps most importantly they valued what they already had
and didn’t seek to dominate others.
On one hand, the myth of the noble savage may be understood as
beginning with some soul-searching reflection of who and what we are as
a society, what we have allowed ourselves to become and a subsequent
projection of all the qualities we feel we may have lost or abandoned in
our modernist quest. Indeed, the emergence of voices critical of empire
and the colonialist project begin to ‘flip’ the colonialist ‘script’ – re-
cognising the inherent barbarity in subjugating and exploiting indigenous
peoples in the name of Christian ‘salvation’ or industrial ‘progress’. We
may in fact start to reimagine ourselves as the savages, justifying our ac-
tions by hiding behind the increasingly thin veneer of civilisation – we are
 ‘East is East and West is West?’ 9

‘cultured’ but they are a ‘culture’. And alongside the increasing dis-
illusionment with the colonialist project begins a re-evaluation of the
cultures that have been subjugated and declared inferior.
A self-serving relative of the noble savage trope, that we still see in
popular culture (most notably in film) is the ‘white saviour’ trope. In
essence, the white saviour recognises what is of value in the Other’s
culture, rapidly absorbs and improves upon the central tenets and
teachings, and very soon assumes the role of leader or authentic re-
presentative of that culture.
A relatively recent example of this trope, which also serves to illustrate
the Mystic East and the beckoning Other is the ‘The Last Samurai’
(2003). Significantly this is set during the period of Japanese history
known as the Meiji Restoration. This was a period marked by rapid
industrial transformation, with an emphasis on modernising Japan’s
military. The film’s protagonist is a world-wearied and disillusioned
General, still recovering from the trauma of having participated in gen-
ocidal campaigns against the Native American/First Nations tribespeople.
His commission was to instruct the Japanese army in modern soldiery.
This in itself is a familiar setup intended to demonstrate Western super-
iority, similar to the scene in the 1975 film adaptation of Rudyard
Kipling’s (1888) The Man Who Would be King, where two British soldiers
strut before the assembled ranks of shabbily attired Kafiristani soldiers and
arrogantly announce:

Now, listen to me you benighted muckers. We’re gonna teach you

soldiering, the noblest profession. When we’re done, you’ll be able
to slaughter your enemies like civilised men! (The Man Who
Would Be King 1975)

By contrast ‘The Last Samurai’ explores and laments the loss of traditional
forms and codes of combat; namely that of Bushido and the Samurai,
moving away from the traditional katana – Japanese swords, to a more
mechanised military – the firing of artillery and rifles now signifies the loss
of one’s roots and culture. It is left to the white protagonist to rediscover
and embody these values, putting even the Emperor to shame.
In anthropology, this phenomenon was once considered akin to a
cardinal sin, described as going native. We can see a classic example of
both the white saviour trope and the consequences of ‘going native’ in
the 1990s multiple Oscar-winning film ‘Dances with Wolves’ (1990); as
the former soldier and civil war hero John Dunbar, who still yearns for
adventure in the wild ‘frontier’, is slowly won over to the Native
10 ‘East is East and West is West?’

American way of life, following his encounters with the local Lakota
tribespeople. Following his later capture and incarceration by the US
army, one former fellow soldier sneers and reprimands Dunbar, who is
now attired in native dress and speaking the Lakota language, sitting
alone, battered and bruised in a cell, distastefully observing “turned Injun
didn’t yeh?” (ibid.)
The message appears to be that the West can ultimately manage and
accept otherness, so long as it can inhabit, master and perform otherness
better than the Other can; in the process becoming more native than the
natives.
However, in our critique of the ‘white saviour trope’, we must not
miss the significance of the authentic transformation that takes place in the
protagonist, which may be seen to be mirrored in real-life historical
examples.

The conquering Mystic East

A similar transformative narrative appears to have unfolded in the real life
of General Francis Younghusband, who at first characteristically embo-
died the jingo imperialism of the period, but appears to have undergone a
dramatic shift in consciousness following his encounter with the land-
scapes and people of Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism.
The Lieutenant Colonel’s name is now synonymous with the
‘Younghusband Expedition’ into Tibet between 1903 and 1904. This
‘expedition’ led to a massacre – modern maxim machine guns against the
muskets of the Dalai Lama’s ill-equipped soldiers, during a march to the
capital Lhasa. Another memorable scene that appears loaded with sig-
nificance in regards to cultural divides occurs when Younghusband’s troops
treat the claps and shrieks of the local Lhasans as an appreciative applause to
welcome the conquering Inji heroes; whereas in fact, this act was a
common Tibetan practice to scare away demons and avert misfortune.
Younghusband was to undergo a remarkable and lasting psychological
and spiritual transformation following the expedition, which appears to
have been initiated through an encounter with a high Tibetan lama, the
Ganden Tripa. The Ganden Tripa, who was the head of the Geulugpa
school of Tibetan Buddhism, formally presents him with the gift of a
bronze Buddha statue. The following morning, Younghusband brings the
Buddha with him, as he rides his horse towards a panoramic view of the
towering Tibetan mountains. All at once, he is overcome in a scene re-
miniscent of what Maslow would term a ‘peak experience’ or Maurice
Bucke would recognise as a glimpse of ‘cosmic consciousness’:
 ‘East is East and West is West?’ 11

There came upon me what was far more than elation or

exhilaration … I was beside myself with an intensity of joy, such
as even the joy of first love can only give a faint foreshadowing of.
And with this indescribable joy came a revelation of the essential
goodness of the world … in short, that men at heart are divine.
(Younghusband quoted in French 1995, p. 252)

French concludes the chapter by quoting Younghusband, describing his

newfound condition as ‘boiling over with love for the whole
world’ (ibid.).
It is very tempting to summarise this turn of events in a manner re-
sembling a movie pitch with an accompanying tagline; although
Younghusband overwhelmed the Tibetan army with superior weaponry,
Younghusband was to be overpowered by the spiritual potency of
Tibetan Buddhism – it was not Younghusband that conquered Tibet, but
ultimately Tibet that conquered Younghusband.
From a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, it may even be interpreted that
Younghusband’s meeting with the High Lama constituted some form of
secret empowerment, that awakened a seed of Bodhicitta (the popular
Buddhist term for unconditional love and wisdom) in the Lieutenant
Colonel’s ‘mindstream’. There are even striking parallels that may be
drawn with India’s famous Emperor Ashoka (268-232BCE), who after
one particularly final bloody battle, abandoned warfare in favour of the
Buddhist teachings – erecting famous messages of unity and brotherhood
all around India’s Mauryan Empire, with his famous edicts, many of
which can still found on surviving pillars (Major pillar edict number 7):

Thus the glory of Dhamma will increase throughout the world, and
it will be endorsed in the form of mercy, charity, truthfulness,
purity, gentleness, and virtue. (Ling 1973, p. 161)

Younghusband also eventually abandoned the military in favour of more

spiritual pursuits. One of his enduring initiatives included his founding of
an early interfaith dialogue group; The World Congress of Faith (WCF)
in 1936 just prior to the breakout of the Second World War.
The WCF viewed its mission as uniting humanity through the mutual
discovery of a higher spiritual calling, that was willing and capable of
looking beyond otherness and difference. This ‘higher religion’ would be
beyond doctrine and dogma, and instead rooted in a common, universal
human experience of the Divine, promoting, in Younghusand’s words
‘fellowship between faiths’ (Younghusband 2020).
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