What can we learn from over 2,000 years of fascination with the East? Chris Harding explores this question in The Light of Asia – a book that shares its title with a poem about the Buddha from the nineteenth century. He focuses on characters whose personal engagement with Asian traditions shaped Western perceptions.
Together, we reflect on the impact of efforts to reconcile different viewpoints. Does one way of seeing predominate? What guards against cherry-picking? Among other topics, we also consider:
The early influence of Jesuits in spreading ideas
Alan Watts as a priest, blurring multiple boundaries
Bede Griffiths and inter-religious experiments in India
The importance of community to spiritual practice
What it might mean to “decolonise philosophy”
Chris is a cultural historian at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in modern India and Japan. He contributes regularly to the BBC and a range of publications, including Aeon and Unherd. He is also the author of
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