Far Eastern spirituality in Europe

Abstract

In recent decades, we are witnessing in Europe a great interest towards religions, teachings and spiritual paths coming from Central, South and East Asia, such as Buddhism, Daoism, and different trends of Hinduism. The influence of these teachings pervades almost imperceptibly through art and the interest in Eastern healing and self-development practices: yoga, martial arts, meditation. In their depth, all these activities are charged with concepts and ideas that are incompatible with traditional Christianity. However, in most cases, the followers and sympathizers of the Eastern teachings do not see any contradiction between Eastern spirituality and their own initial or traditional religion, and they might follow such a path still regarding themselves as, e.g., Christians. The aim of this paper is to analyze the reason for the interest in Europe towards Eastern teachings, in terms of intersection of the peculiarities of the contemporary “spiritual” European situation with the peculiarities of “Eastern religions”. The analysis of the East-West interaction raises many open research questions concerning understanding of the self and perception of otherness, which need discussion.