"East-West": wazzit about?

[Egeides]

There's lots of exageration on the topic, lots of "ohhhh" and "ahhhh" without an overall view including both sides as one piece with its middle ground. This is just a weak little try, only a relation to Western "approaching truth",not an overall answer but a try at clarifying a point. I hope everyone interested will add their own thinking on this and the general East-West topic.

Many tried to "always get closer to truth" but getting a better global picture to approach this particular truth. Some did otherwise (more, or less). They tried to discuss what this truth would be/is like (or similar).

It is about bothering for the particular rather than global picture, as poets so often do (which Plato distrusted, as a Plato-enthusiast I know). Mysticism is the most extreme point of particularity (I know... I should define). Japanese art and then influenced van Gogh stupefied the West by that attention to the particular, should it be details or ONE person's perspective (van Gogh).

Looks to me Van Gogh got a pretty Occidental reaction, similar perhaps to Schopenhauer and then-influenced Nietzsche with Buddhism - extrapolation of Eastern thought from its universal context to an indvidual one? Alienation comes with acknowledging to be/have parts without acknowledging the whole necessary to support it - included when Buddhism/else is taken as a package). This particular became alienated from the whole as the links between particular and universal (the world) were not drawn enough. Universalizations compatible with Western traditions take time to come and instaure new complete packages: lots of links are to be done, some try not to get some part of other systems' un-science/individual/freedom/else parts, etc.

I read about a guy (Robert Pirsig) who started from getting into details. He ended up into a form of close-to-daoism mysticism in which he drowned himself (analysis, reality dissociation then schizo in psychiatric hospital. yay). I see risks on both sides; he went full-speed, missed a sign somewhere, continued off-road and now lives with a created "new personality" with which he got out.

Specificities about China:

From Daoism, links to alchemy are possible by "essence of material things". Lao Tzu's Daoism seems to have some links with the older I Qing. I see the same general lines with Chinese language and culture (nature/older elements as an "essence of it", art situation, the importance of proverbs - all elements over "technical" rationality). There is a potential mythos with its initial bases on Time and Nature of Things, a system tested time-base with some "if it's not broken and falling, it's not kicked" (empiric-based Chinese pragmatism). Of course, the "Modern/Postmodern" brings serious changes too. I heard that debates with Westerners still ended in "Oh well... you can't really understand" and I guess we could see a gap. Perhaps, for example, a reliable approach from (global, not "detail-polishing") scientific method perspective could be psychology towards Feng Shui.

As for discussions specific to Indian context, someone said to me that the Bhagavat Gita and the Upanishads are good pillars to not get ahead blindly (context etc) and not distinguishing errors; might, or not (dunno).

Last note:

This exterior situation of course brings a specific way of thinking/feeling and perhaps way of living too, but I'm limited there and went from a "global picture" ;)