G O W Est , Y Oung M An
GO WEST, YOUNG MAN
There is a tongue-in-cheek saying in the Hindi language: “desi murghi pardesi chaal.” It sarcastically refers to a local person who returns from abroad and puts on airs as if he is now above the locals. It literally translates, “a local chicken with a foreign walk.” Much of the New Spirituality that we witness in the West is the reverse of this saying; it is a foreign chicken with a local walk. No unkindness is intended here, but it amazes us from the East to see this hybrid so brilliantly marketed and accepted in the West. I like to call it “Weastern” Spirituality because of the genius in combining Western materialism and Eastern spirituality.
Years ago, the ultimate attainment of Eastern spirituality was represented by bony “sadhus,” or holy men, who walked the dusty miles every day and found shelter at night in a “dharamsala,” or inn. You can still see them along the highway from Delhi to Mathura, their staffs in their hands and a bundle draped over one shoulder. They get their meager daily meal of rice and lentils from anyone willing to share his food with them, and engage in conversation with anyone willing to listen as they expound on the benefits to the soul of not living for the body. Following a ceremonial bath and their time of puja and bhajans (their hymn singing), they settle in for the night on a cement floor.
Eastern spirituality is represented quite differently in America today. Those whose books are most quoted and make the New York Times best-seller lists, the frontline figures in the movement, are generally at the head of very wealthy empires. No excessive attachment to detachment is in evidence. Though our clothes these days may bear the label “Made in China,” there is no doubt that the new form of spirituality is “Made in India.” There is both an explanation for it and yet a lack of explanation when I ponder “Weasternism.” In the earlier part of the last century, missionary E. Stanley Jones’s best-known book was titled The Christ of the Indian Road. It will not be long before a publication emerges titled Krishna of the American Road. Better yet, Dharma of the American Road.
There is actually some very serious vitriol in the continuous debates between Indian practitioners on this. Deepak Chopra likes to imagine his religion as disentangled from Hinduism and instead calls it “Sanatan Dharma,” or the “Eternal Religion.” But some Hindu apologists are not happy with this disavowal of Hinduism. I suspect I know why he does not want that tag of Hinduism on what he is teaching: By disavowing the tag he can retain his beliefs, and a very gullible American audience is not able to see what is really at work here. Besides, it conveniently frees him from having to defend anything in that system of belief that is embarrassing. But the thinking of Chopra and of others like him, such as Eckhart Tolle, is generally built upon the work of at least one of the great exponents of this pantheistic thought. “Three Gurus Who Changed the Face of Spirituality in the West” is the title of a very recent article in the Huffington Post written by Philip Goldberg, the author of American Veda. The title says it all.