I’m not even sure how, but somehow in bouncing around the forums, I came across this from Uccisore. I think it’s very important:
I have a tendency, as some of you know, to consider things from a sales and marketing perspective (an occupational hazard). And it occurs to me that Uccisore is right. Eastern philosophy seems to have done a poor job of communicating itself to the West. There’s a tendency, of course, to blame the West for its lack of understanding. And yet a major rule that we have in marketing is that if the people aren’t getting the message, the problem is not with the people…the problem is with the message and how it is being delivered. Believing otherwise is arrogance.
Why has there been such a lack of communication? Why has Eastern philosophy not been able to put itself into a language that the West can understand? Oh sure, there have been the occasional exceptions like an Alan Watts or some such person, who empathized (a key characteristic one simply must possess if one is serious about communicating ideas) with his western audience, thus enabling him to translate ideas in a way that could be understood by that audience.
But this has been rare.
What’s the deal here? Why the lack of communication? Is it arrogance, self-absorption, lack of empathy, or something else? Why does Uccisore, in other words, have the perception that he does? Uccisore is obviously smart. One can’t simply dismiss the Uccisores of the world and say, “Oh, well, he’s just never going to understand.†That just won’t do, I don’t think.
Now, I use the word mysticism and talk of Eastern philosophy but the same goes for western brands of mysticism. Christian Mysticism suffers from the same problem, it seems to me, as I am sure Uccisore would agree.
Anybody care to comment?