How The Brain Unites Us All

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat. "The Ballad of East and West," by Rudyard Kipling

Eastern and Western minds are different. Of that much, we can be sure, but the difference is cultural and we can learn to use both modes of mind.

"As A species, we possess remarkably little genetic variation, yet we tend to overlook this homogeneity and focus instead on differences between groups and individuals. At its darkest, this tendency generates xenophobia and racism, but it also has a more benign manifestation - a fascination with the exotic.

Nowhere is our love affair with otherness more romanticised than in our attitudes towards the cultures of east and west. Artists and travellers have long marvelled that on opposite sides of the globe, the world's most ancient civilisations have developed distinct forms of language, writing, art, literature, music, cuisine and fashion. As advances in communications, transport and the internet shrink the modern world, some of these distinctions are breaking down. But one difference is getting more attention than ever: the notion that easterners and westerners have distinct world views.

Psychologists have conducted a wealth of experiments that seem to support popular notions that easterners have a holistic world view, rooted in philosophical and religious traditions such as Taoism and Confucianism, while westerners tend to think more analytically, as befits their philosophical heritage of reductionism, utilitarianism and so on. However, the most recent research suggests that these popular stereotypes are far too simplistic. It is becoming apparent that we are all capable of thinking both holistically and analytically - and we are starting to understand what makes individuals flip between the two modes of thought." More at New Scientist.

Terence Grey/Wei Wu Wei

Terence Grey/Wei Wu Wei
Here is a radically different note on happiness, by Wei Wu Wei (literally, "doing without doing"). Born as Terence Grey, an Irish aristocrat, later become a Taoist/Buddhist philosopher, his profound essays reveal a life-long quest for answers:

"Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 % of everything you think, and everything you do is for your self, and there isn't one."

Between 1958 and 1974, Grey published a series of eight books under his nom de plume, Wei Wu Wei. Profound in their insights, the books indicate somebody who had extensively studied Eastern and Western thought. They suggest a man who not only knew the teachings but was adept at living them.

Although born in Ireland in 1895, he was raised in England on an estate outside Cambridge, and studied at Oxford University. He became interested in Egyptology, and in 1923 published two books on ancient Egyptian history and culture. During the 1920s and 1930s he was an arts theorist and theatrical producer. He also created radical dance-dramas, and published several arts magazines, as well as books. His cousin Ninette De Valois was a founder of the Royal Ballet, which originated from Grey's dance troupe at the Cambridge Festival Theatre, leased by him from 1926-33. He died in 1986.

This excerpt is from Ask The Awakened, 8 and is titled That I Am:

"When I have looked at a jug I have supposed that eye-subject was looking at jug-object. But eye-subject is itself an object, and one object cannot be the subject of another object. Both eye-supposed-subject and the jug are objects of I-subject. That is apparent transcendence of subject-object.

But only when we realise that, in split-mind, I-as-subject must always be itself an object while it also has its own supposed-object, do we understand that this constitutes an infinite regression, and that final transcendence is the understanding that I am not-subject, for, since in reality there are no objects, there cannot be a subject.

No-objects and no-subject constitute impersonality, the resultant of the negation of each member of every pair of opposites, or No-Entity.

Only whole mind can know this, and that is 'that I am'."
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Hong Kong University has an extensive collection of his works, which had been publicly available, although since British departure I can no longer confidently ascertain its location.