The Psychologisation of Eastern Spiritual Traditions

Colonisation, Translation and Commodification

Elliot Cohen

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000457827
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Philosophy
• Sous-sujet: Eastern Philosophy

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 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 Transpersonal 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.

1

‘East is East and West is West?’

DOI: 10.4324/9780429354922-1

‘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 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 volume 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.

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 ‘objective’. (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 preoccupations 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 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 unstoppable, 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 current, 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 believed the East to contain a veritable treasure trove of lost (in the West) esoteric techniques. Long before the ‘hippy trail’, occultists are journeying 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 designing 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 demonstrate 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, 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 fantastical tales and portrayals of the Buddhist path, in contrast to his more scientific 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 concerning 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 teachers. 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 ‘threatening Other’. Atavism suggests a ‘throwback’ to an earlier stage of evolution, it initiates related discourses of primitive, superstitious, childlike, 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 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 dichotomies – particularly the contrasting qu...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 ‘East is East and West is West?’
• 2 Counterculture and the return to the East
• 3 The Buddha as a psychologist, the Dharma as a psychotherapy
• 4 The Dao of psychologisation
• 5 The commodification of ‘the East’
• 6 Resistance
• 7 Transpersonal psychology
• References
• Index