Religion (2002) 32, 243–258
doi:10.1006/reli.2002.0429, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on
The Easternisation Thesis: Critical Reﬂections
M H
The inﬂuence of Eastern religions upon the West is often portrayed as a phenomenon
of growing signiﬁcance marking a watershed in contemporary religious and spiritual
culture. In the most radical version of the Easternisation thesis, articulated most
systematically by Colin Campbell, indigenous developments within Western culture
point to the demise of the traditional dualistic religious conception of divinity as
personal, transcendental and beyond worldly reality and its replacement with a
monistic conception characterised by impersonality and immanence. This article
subjects this thesis to critical examination and ﬁnds it deﬁcient is four major respects.
Firstly, it tends to stereotype Eastern religions in a somewhat misleading way.
Secondly, it is insensitive to the marked diﬀerences between various Eastern religious
traditions. Thirdly, it characterises those trends in Western culture which it sees as
constituting Easternisation too readily and unequivocally as speciﬁcally religious
developments. Fourthly, it ignores or glosses over the very this-worldly and therefore
quintessentially Western character of these trends. The article concludes with an
attempt to rescue some the insights of the Easternisation thesis by incorporating
them into a broader framework and by oﬀering some alternative suggestions for
understanding the developments with which the thesis is concerned.
 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
In Tai-Chi, when used as a means of self defence, an opponent is defeated not by direct
assault upon him but by going with the ﬂow of his own movements in such a way that
he defeats himself. This could be seen as analogous to the whole history of the
encounter between East and West. The latter has rather aggressively and forcefully
subordinated the East technologically and economically yet in its relative or
apparent non-resistance the East has come inexorably to triumph spiritually as Western
materialism has brought about a crisis of faith and spiritual bankruptcy.
The idea that Western religious life has become increasingly susceptible to inﬂuence
from Eastern traditions, and by Eastern is meant East and South Asia rather than the
Middle East the inﬂuence of which upon the West is generally acknowledged to go
back several millennia, is one which has been around since at least the nineteenth
century. In the latter half of that century interest in Eastern religions and in particular
Buddhism had been steadily growing and the inﬂuence of Eastern religions could most
notably be seen in movements such as Theosophy and transcendentalism. By the turn of
the century some voices were predicting that such developments heralded a spiritual
transformation of a West in the throes of a spiritual crisis (see Clarke 2000, p. 46). In the
mid-twentieth century such views gained further momentum an example being the
prediction of Joseph Needham that the future belongs to Taoism (1956, p. 152). These
were largely prognostications, however, rather than descriptions of current realilties and
few at the time had much actual involvement with Eastern religions.
More recently the idea has tended to take on an even ﬁrmer shape in the claim that
Western forms of religion are now actually in the process of demise and giving way to
Eastern forms. The impact of Buddhism upon the West by the 1960s, echoing in even
louder tones the impact it had in the context of the crisis of faith of the Victorian era,
has been described as a new Reformation (Parrinder 1964, pp. 12 and 22). Jacob
Needleman speaks of the 1960s as witnessing a ‘spiritual explosion’ which recognised in
Eastern religion the ‘mystical core of all religion’ (1977, p. xi). Harvey Cox (1977)
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0048–721X/02/$-see front matter
worried that the West was abandoning Christianity and turning East so unprecedented
was the intensity at the time of the wave of interest Americans were showing in Oriental
religion. Many others have made similar general observations (see Bellah 1970; Glock
and Bellah 1976; Wuthnow 1976) while some have sought to document the
contemporary impact of speciﬁc traditions, especially Buddhism (see Green 1989;
Wilson 1990; Bauman 1991, 1995; Somers 1991; Heelas 1996b; Bell 1998).
They are, however, less radical than the most recent version of this namely that
proposed by Colin Campbell (1999). This goes much further in claiming that a thoroughgoing
sea change is occurring in Western mentality by which assumptions, dispositions
and parameters fundamental to the Western ethos and outlook are giving way to others
which are at heart Eastern in character but not necessarily Eastern in provenance. It claims
not only that there is increasing penetration of the West by religions and groups of Eastern
origin and inspiration but that the West is essentially changing its entire ethos towards that
of the East. This is a view which lays stress not simply upon the importation of Eastern
religions into the West in the form of groups and organisations, whether Buddhist,
Hindu, Suﬁ or other, the popularity of meditative practices and disciplines, of Eastern
writings and scriptures and mystical ideas and so on, but also, and more crucially, upon the
emergence of a range of ideas and trends of thought, which are, whether self-consciously
or otherwise, essentially Eastern in character.
‘The traditional Western cultural paradigm’, Campbell argues, ‘no longer dominates
in so called ‘‘Western’’ societies, but . . . has been replaced by an ‘‘Eastern’’ one. This
fundamental change may have been assisted by the introduction of obviously Eastern
ideas and inﬂuences into the West, but equally important have been internal indigenous
developments within that system, developments which have precipitated this paradigm
shift’ (p. 41).
Campbell draws upon Weber’s contrast between an Eastern ethos which holds a
conception of divinity as essentially impersonal and immanent in reality and the Western
view of the divine as essentially personal, transcendental, separate from and outside the
world. The former is monistic and views the world as an interconnected, self-contained
cosmos; the latter is dualistic viewing the world as governed, and even having been
created, from somewhere else and by something beyond or above this world. The
Eastern model is congruent with Troeltschian mysticism, about which Campbell has
said elsewhere, of course, a great deal (see Campbell 1972). In this model the idea of
spiritual perfection or self-deiﬁcation replaces the traditional Western idea of salvation,
and the Church is replaced by a group of seekers attached to a guru.
Campbell utilises in support of his thesis the work of Gilgen and Cho (1979) and Krus
and Blackman (1980), psychologists who have devised ‘measures’ of Easterness and
Westerness of thought. Gilgen and Cho characterise the Eastern and Western traditions
under the following typiﬁcations.
Eastern
 man and nature are one;
 spiritual and physical are one;
 mind and body are one;
 man should recognise his basic oneness with nature, the spiritual and the mental
rather than attempt to analyse, label, categorise, manipulate, control or consume the
things of the world;
 because of his oneness with all existence, man should feel ‘at home’ in any place and
with any person;
244 M. Hamilton
 science and technology at best create an illusion of progress;
 enlightenment involves achieving a sense of oneness with the universal; it is a state
where all dichotomies vanish;
 meditation, a special state of quiet contemplation, is essential for achieving
enlightenment
Western
 man has characteristics which set him apart from nature and the spiritual;
 man is divided into a body, a spirit and a mind;
 there is a personal God who is over man;
 man must control and manipulate nature to ensure his survival;
 rational thought and an analytical approach to problem solving should be
emphasised;
 science and technology have given us a good life and provide our main hope for an
even better future;
 action and the competitive spirit should be rewarded
Krus and Blackman provide the following list of attributes.
Eastern Western
synthesis analysis
totality generalisation
integration diﬀerentiation
deduction induction
subjective objective
dogmatic intellectual
intuition reason
anti-science science
personal impersonal
moralist legalistic
non-discursive assertive
aﬃliative power
ecstasis order
irrational rational
imaginative critical
This process of Easternisation is perceived by Campbell to underlie a series of signiﬁcant
speciﬁc changes in Western thought in recent decades; the rise of environmentalism
and in particular radical, holistic environmentalism or deep ecology; the emergence
of the human potential and psycho-therapy movements and of the religions of
the self; declining belief in a personal God; and increasing prominence of a belief in
reincarnation.
Environmentalism as a set of concerns and as a philosophy emerged as part of the
counter-culture of the 1960s. By the 1980s its ideas had become commonplace and even
mainstream. More radical versions emerged, known as deep ecology, which questioned
the anthropocentrism of the traditional Western intellectual paradigm and the
The Easternisation Thesis: Critical Reﬂections 245
assumption that human life was of greater value than other forms of life. Such beliefs are
characterised by a holistic outlook which, in the form of some interpretations of
Jim Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, sees the planet as a single ‘living’, self-regulating
super-organism infused with quasi-spiritual if not religious signiﬁcance.
Holistic also are the many strands of the human potential, personal growth and
psychotherapy movements and the life aﬃrming new religious movements and
self-religions. These have little time for talk of God. Even among those who are not
involved in them the notion of a personal God had declined markedly in Western
nations. Gallup has documented a steady fall in the percentage of the population
espousing such beliefs from the high nineties after the Second World War to the low
sixties today. Alongside this, assent to the belief in reincarnation has steadily risen to a
ﬁgure of around 20 to 25 percent of the populations of Western countries.
Such changes are coming about as a result, he argues, of the fact that
. . . the dominant paradigm or ‘theodicy’ which has served the West eﬀectively for
2,000 years has ﬁnally lost its grip over the majority of the population in Western
Europe and North America. They no longer hold to a view of the world as divided
into matter and spirit, and governed by an all powerful, personal, creator God; one
who has set his creatures above the rest of creation. This vision has been cast aside and
with it all justiﬁcation for man’s dominion over nature. In its place has been set the
fundamentally Eastern vision of mankind as merely a part of the great interconnected
web of sentient life. (p. 47)
The primary reason for this shift in dominant paradigm lies in the rise of science and its
undermining of traditional religion and the way in which, in turn, the optimistic faith
and trust placed in science has itself been undermined. Eastern religion oﬀers a new
paradigm far more compatible with the scientiﬁc outlook or, at least, less vulnerable in
the face of it. The Eastern religions have, however, been able to utilise the gaps in the
scientiﬁc picture of reality and the uncertainties endemic in science to open up a space
for more mystical orientations.
There are a number of problems with the Easternisation thesis, which is, perhaps, only
to be expected with one as bold and challenging as this. Before discussing some of these
problems, however, it should be acknowledged that there is a great deal that is
enlightening and fruitful in it. What I shall suggest, however, is that it requires extensive
modiﬁcation, elaboration, speciﬁcation and completion rather than outright rejection.
Firstly, it is founded upon a misleading stereotypical characterisation of Eastern religions.
Secondly, it is insensitive to the many and marked diﬀerences between Eastern religions.
Thirdly, it too readily accepts these developments as unequivocally religious. Fourthly, it
tends to ignore or to be unable to deal with the very inner-worldly character of trends
within Western thinking.
The Nature of ‘Eastern’ Religion
The ﬁrst problem is that the thesis is founded upon a characterisation of ‘Eastern’
religion (in so far as we can speak of such an entity, an issue tackled in the next section)
in rather essentialist terms and which is, in the process, idealised, selective in emphasising
certain aspects and neglecting others and which overlooks the way in which Eastern
traditions or elements of them are modiﬁed in the process of importing them into the
West.
While the immanentist/transcendental contrast, derived from Weber, seems sound
enough it refers largely to philosophical, doctrinal religion of intellectuals and virtuosi
246 M. Hamilton
rather than to the far more widespread religion of everyday practice and of ‘eﬀective’
belief, as manifested in such practice, of people in Eastern countries. In many instances
the form in which Eastern religions have inﬂuenced the West is, in any case,
signiﬁcantly modiﬁed to suit Western circumstances or in accordance with the speciﬁc
interests or prejudices of Western scholars. The general processes are insightfully
discussed by John Clarke (1997, pp. 186–90) and have been thoroughly documented in
the case of Tibetan Buddhism by Peter Bishop (1994). Tibet, Bishop notes, has been
treated by the West as if it were a museum of a fantasised past. The West has taken from
it what suits it and has ignored what does not. Pure Land Buddhism, for example, which
is extremely popular in Tibet and all Mahayana countries, has been almost entirely
neglected by the West (see Bishop 1989). The process of reinterpretation is sometimes
so marked in the case of Buddhism that Deidre Green (1989) raises the question of
whether some of the rather more worldly interpretations of it that have been successful
in the West could be considered to have ‘sold out’. The Vajradhatu community in the
United States is a combination of Eastern hierarchy and devotionalism with Western
individualism and licence; a combination that has proven problematic in that it has
tended to distort the teacher-disciple relationship. The consequence of importing Asian
devotional traditions without corresponding Asian social controls has been scandals and
crises (see Butler 1991). Bryan Wilson (1990), quoting Ernst Benz (1976) notes how
Western versions of Buddhism lay little stress upon escape into nirvana or upon rebirth
and more upon the achievement of a this-worldly enlightenment. Monastic Buddhism
tends also, he notes, to attract less interest than the relevance of Buddhism for everyday
life and he points out that the Friends of the Western Buddhist order have tended to
play down the Buddhist tenet that life entails suﬀering because it is too depressing a
sentiment for the Western mentality. Philip Mellor’s study (1991) of this particular
group stresses the extent to which its followers interpret and practise Buddhism as a
project for the development rather than transcendence of the self. In general, Mellor
argues, Buddhism in the West has become part of a liberal Protestant trend. If Buddhism
is a signiﬁcant new cultural development in the West it is so not because it diverts
western culture into new religious channels but because it explores existing religious
channels in new ways (see also Batchelor 1994). Finally, few of the respondents in Tony
Walter and Helen Waterhouse’s study (see Walter 2001) were interested in the idea of
dissolution of individual identity. Most of those who professed a belief in reincarnation
linked it to a very Western and modernist notion of self and identity that is
individualistic and reﬂexive.
Also, it is not unusual for a more reﬁned, reformed and allegedly puriﬁed version of
a tradition to be actually re-exported back to the East and then re-imported again into
the West as the ‘authentic’ tradition as opposed to folk or allegedly debased forms. This
for example, it is claimed, is the case with ‘Protestant Buddhism’ as it has been called
(see Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1990; Southwold 1983). In this case the ‘authentic’
tradition is very much more immanentist and monist than the indigenous tradition
appears to have been. In the case of Hinduism, Lucy DuPertuis (1987) points out that
Neo-Hinduism reacted to Western and Christian critiques by incorporating a number
of innovations which sought to answer them. Even then, the version of Neo-Hinduism
that has taken root in the United States is selective in the elements of this Hindu revival
it emphasises and tends to interpret them in quite a diﬀerent way to the meaning they
have in the indigenous tradition. Its devotees do not seek as their ultimate goal to
transcend ordinary time, self and existence. Their interpretation is much more
this-worldly. Meditation, for example, becomes a panacea for the ills of modern urban
The Easternisation Thesis: Critical Reﬂections 247
civilisation and a healthy alternative to tranquillisers, oﬀering relief from stresses without
any fundamental change in lifestyle.
As for the more popular forms of the indigenous traditions these are often a great deal
less immanentist and monistic than the more sophisticated forms. There is little evidence
of the more popular beliefs and practices of the East coming to have much of a following
in the West. For example, Sandra Bell (1998) found in her ﬁeldwork studies of Buddhist
groups in Britain an emphasis upon meditation and an almost complete rejection of the
notion and practice of merit making which is fundamental to popular Theravada
Buddhism in South East Asia and Sri Lanka. And while monastic life in Britain is
somewhat austere relative to standards outside the monastery, in South East Asia and Sri
Lanka the situation is reversed. In the West the monastic life is admired for its ascetic
renunciation which is seen as the antithesis of materialism while in South East Asia it is
the withdrawal from worldly involvement that is admired and not material privation. In
the West it is the lack of consumption which is admired; in the East the withdrawal
from production.
One might argue, however, that there has been a revival of vernacular religious forms
in the West; a return to ritual and magical practices in the form of borrowed and
reinvented traditions. But they have not been borrowed speciﬁcally or primarily from
Eastern sources. Also, just as the cosmological ethos to which the Easternisation thesis
refers is very much that of an elite tradition, so its appeal in the West tends to be
conﬁned to rather limited sectors of the population rather than being in any sense a
grass-roots movement (see Bruce 2000). It is instructive in this respect to recall that in
an earlier article Campbell (1978) describes Troeltschian mysticism as ‘the secret religion
of the educated classes’. More accurately, Campbell’s thesis might be modiﬁed to that of
the Easternisation of the Western spiritual intelligentsia.
Even then, the more detailed characterisation of both Eastern and Western traditions
based upon the work of Gilgen and Cho and Krus and Blackman seems in many respects
either too sweeping or misleading. One might question both the characterisation of
both the Eastern and Western ethos by these authors. In some respects the Western
ethos is more that of the Protestant West than the Christian West in general. The
characterisation of the ethos of the East might be considered to entail more than a hint
of orientalism (see Said 1978). To take just one or two examples, even if the
characterisation of Western thought as scientiﬁc and rational were to be accepted, it is
highly dubious to characterise Eastern thought as anti-scientiﬁc and irrational.
The contrasts being made here are, in any case, deceptive in that they appear to be
between Eastern and Western thought. The comparisons are, in fact, between traditional
Eastern thought and modern Western thought. To this extent the contrast is as much
between traditional and modern thought as it is between Eastern and Western and could
probably be drawn just as clearly, if rather diﬀerently, between traditional Western
thought and modern Western thought. If this is acknowledged, the process to which
Campbell is referring could be characterised as one of the re-traditionalisation of
Western thought but on a somewhat Easternised model. Moreover, that model is one
which has itself been, to a considerable degree, de-traditionalised prior to its adoption.
Much Eastern religion is not lacking in respect for tradition, the authority, or at least
deep signiﬁcance, of ancient scriptures and texts, the necessity for the subordination of
the self and the ego through ascetic regimes and disciplines in order to acquire spiritual
understanding and enlightenment, and so on. While much of this is admired and to
some extent followed in the West, it is so only up to a point and not without
re-interpretation. If a de-traditionalised West is turning East it is in search of a
248 M. Hamilton
selectively de-traditionalised form of Eastern spirituality which involves the raiding of
Eastern traditions for elements congruent with a de-traditionalised world view which
emphasises immanence of the divine, seekership and the self, the inward search for truth
and meaning and plural paths to enlightenment.
Alternatively a number of recent developments in the sphere of spirituality in the
West suggest a re-traditionalisation along the lines of a pre-Christian rather than Eastern
model and might as much be considered a form of paganisation as a process of
Easternisation (see Bowman 1993, 1995). Actually, however, this would be no more
accurate a view than the Easternisation thesis. The picture is actually more complex
since such movements are highly eclectic in the sources they draw upon and are by no
means conﬁned to the, largely reinvented, pre-Christian beliefs and practices of Western
cultures but utilise also many allegedly native and folk traditions from around the globe,
for the most part radically reinterpreted or even largely imagined.
The Diversity of Eastern Religion
The second set of problems with the Easternisation thesis is that it ignores the many and
marked diﬀerences between various Eastern religions, attributing to them a greater unity
than they, in fact, have. Again, the broad contrast between Eastern immanentism/
monism and Western transcendentalism/dualism does, to a considerable extent, stand
up. The problem is thus not so much that the Easternisation thesis is wrong on this
count but very incomplete. The major contrast that can be drawn within the set of
Eastern religions is that between the traditions that developed in the Indian subcontinent
and those of China. In so far as contemporary Western developments have
been inﬂuenced by Eastern traditions they have been diﬀerentially so. Certain ideas,
particularly reincarnation and the self-orientation of human potential and psychotherapy,
have been inﬂuenced by the Indian and Buddhist traditions (see Puttick 2000),
while others, particularly in the area of radical environmentalism, by the Chinese, and
especially the Taoist tradition. This is an important point because it shows again the
characteristic eclecticism of contemporary Western spirituality which takes certain parts
of various traditions whilst leaving aside others. These elements are, furthermore, far
from being integrated in any coherent way nor do they inform practice or behaviour in
any signiﬁcant manner.
Belief in reincarnation, for example, seems largely to ﬂoat freely in isolation from
other aspects of this allegedly Easternised mode of thought and to have no concrete
implications for behaviour whatsoever (see Walter and Waterhouse 1999, 2001). It is
not always, for example, accompanied by the adoption of the idea of karma or of
transmigration. When such ideas are associated with it they generally involve a one way
process of mobility, namely upward. The idea of sinking to lower stations of human
existence or to some non-human form of life seems largely to be absent (see Walter and
Waterhouse 2001). Aspects of such beliefs are, in fact, deeply repugnant to Western
values. Witness the furore in 1999 over the pronouncement of the then manager of the
England football team, Glen Hoddle, a convert to Buddhism, that the disabled may well
be suﬀering the eﬀects of bad karma in previous lives and have, therefore, only
themselves to blame.
Neither is belief in reincarnation connected in any way with the other major strand
identiﬁed by Campbell, namely deep ecology. Interesting in this respect is Campbell’s
mention of the growth of vegetarianism associated with the environmental movement;
in his view an expression of our changing relationship with the natural world and with
The Easternisation Thesis: Critical Reﬂections 249
animals. In most historical traditions, however, vegetarianism is closely associated with
belief in reincarnation and with the idea of transmigration. This is the case in the
Hindu/Buddhist traditions and was so in ancient Greece as well as among the Cathars.
Such a connection seems entirely absent, however, in the allegedly Easternised West.
Campbell is not unaware of this apparent absence of such a link but his attempt to deal
with it and to discern a connection behind immediate appearances are quite unsatisfactory.
Firstly, he notes how Greenpeace has made a link in one of its advertisements
which says ‘When you come back as a whale you’ll be bloody glad you put Greenpeace
in your will’, but, of course, has to acknowledges its playfulness. More seriously, he
suggests that, while not technically a belief in transmigration, the advocacy that all
sentient creatures should be treated not merely in a manner which takes cognisance of
the fact they have the capacity to feel pain and to suﬀer but that they are possessed of
a form of consciousness not dissimilar from that possessed by humans, is, nevertheless a
logical corollary of belief in reincarnation. While deep ecology and the animal rights
movements do indeed uphold the idea of a kind of kinship between humans and
animals, Campbell’s claim goes rather too far in suggesting that they see animals as
having a consciousness not essentially dissimilar to that possessed by humans. It is also
diﬃcult to see how the attribution of certain rights to animals is the logical corollary of
reincarnation.
The contemporary Western eclecticism referred to above is related to the fact that
various elements of other traditions are utilised by very diﬀerent, even if sometimes
overlapping, groups, sectors or movements. Taoist ideas, for example, are often
emphasised by the deep green movement (see Naess and Rothenburg 1989; Devall and
Sessions 1985; Ip 1983; Fox 1995). But even here the prevailing ethos is one of
eclecticism. Alongside Taoism frequent reference is made to Zen Buddhism, Christian
mysticism and Native American or similar traditions. These, moreover, serve largely as
reference points which help to root deep ecology in spiritual traditions thereby lending
it an authority derived from ancient wisdoms. As Steve Bruce points out (1995,
pp. 205–8) much of the new and holistic spirituality of the West seeks to found itself
upon the borrowed authority of ancient, exotic and mystical systems of belief. This is
done in the case of deep ecology largely by evoking these traditions in order to align it
with them rather than to explore them in any real depth or to apply them in any
extensive or systematic way. Fragments and pieces of these traditions are selectively
utilised, reinterpreted, reconstituted and mixed with other ingredients to comprise a sort
of spiritual equivalent of chicken tikka masala.
Religion or Quasi-religion?
A third area of diﬃculty with the Easternisation thesis relates to its assumption that the
developments to which it refers are religious ones as opposed to certain tendencies in
Western thought more broadly understood. To be fair to Campbell, he does
not quite go so far as to designate radical ecology as unequivocally religious but
claims it is ‘at the very least, quasi-religion’; quasi-religion but, note, at the very least,
and, therefore, probably really religious. It is the contention here that we should avoid
such equivocation. Some, at least, of these developments are better understood as
representing a movement of thought away from religion per se and towards nonreligious
meaning systems, or for want of a better term, quasi-religion, rather than as a
change within the Western religious outlook (see Hamilton 2001). As Zygmunt
Bauman puts it ‘post-modern cultural pressures, while at the same time as intensifying
250 M. Hamilton
the search for peak experiences, have uncoupled the search from religion-prone interests
and concerns, privatised it, and cast mainly non-religious institutions in the role of
purveyors of relevant services’ (1998, p. 70). In this sense they embody features of
secularisation as much as they do a sea change in religious conceptions. Yet they retain
a spiritual or quasi-religious character whilst eclectically drawing upon a wide range of
ideas, values, beliefs and traditions including science and quasi-science whatever their
provenance, Eastern or Western. It has been pointed out by Campbell himself (1972)
that a key element of the cultic milieu is seekership. A characteristic of this is
experimentation, readiness to try anything interesting that comes along and relatively
low commitment to any particular set of ideas and beliefs. Steven Sutcliﬀe calls it ‘serial
seekership’ (1997, 2000). Eastern ideas and religions are in this sense just elements of a
diverse cultic milieu to be sampled and customised to suit rather than commanding any
ﬁrm commitment.
Instrumental Activism
In so far as the last point is correct, the Easternisation thesis tends to ignore or to be
unable to deal with, to use Weber’s terminology, the very inner- or this-worldly
character of the currents of ideas with which it is concerned. While some Eastern
currents of thought have adopted an inner-worldly orientation, they have been for the
most part other-worldly in ethos and when they have not their inner-worldliness, as in
the case of Taoism, has been, as Weber put it, markedly apathetic and non-activist in
total contrast to the ethos of most Western adaptations and borrowings from such
traditions. The deep ecology movement may be inspired by Taoist this-worldly
mysticism but it is, however, notably activist. Campbell is well aware of this diﬃculty
with the thesis, the problem of ‘instrumental activism’ as he calls it, but confesses to have
little by way of any answer to it apart from suggesting that there may be slight signs of
a move away from it in calls for lower growth strategies, Buddhist economics and
low-tech rather than high-tech solutions to problems. In the age of the internet this
seems somewhat feeble. If the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century did little
to aﬀect the advance of industrialism we can be sure that something like Buddhist
economics, which to the Romantic movement is as a gnat is to an elephant, is unlikely
to play much role in any transformation of the ethos of Western instrumental activism.
It is instructive, in this regard, to note that while certainly Eastern in provenance, the
East from which some of the more successful forms of Buddhism in the West have come
is, in fact, Japan (see Wilson 1990; Wilson and Dobbelaere 1994), where instrumental
activism seems even more vigorous and deeply rooted than it is in the West. What seems
entirely absent from this new allegedly Easternised ethos is any sense of the value of
renunciation which is so much a part of many Eastern traditions and, most notably, of
the more philosophical and virtuoso dimensions of those traditions which, rather than
folk and popular forms, have had some appeal among the spiritual intelligentsia of the
West. Renunciation is not even an ideal in the West, not even admired in the few who
are successful in practising it by those who are not, as is often the case in the Eastern
traditions. When and to the extent that it does make an appearance, for example fasting
and dieting, it is for the most part very much just an element in the eclectic mix,
practised alongside relatively high levels of material consumption, use of stimulants and
so on—a sort of spiritual bulimia.
As equally prominent in contemporary Western thought and culture as renunciatory
ideals are absent, despite the current fashion of post-modernism, is the belief in change,
The Easternisation Thesis: Critical Reﬂections 251
evolution and even progress which is something almost entirely alien to the traditional
Eastern way of thinking. The West has far from abandoned its love aﬀair with
technology which advances in all spheres with bewildering pace, despite all the
anxieties, suspicion of science and scientists, concerns about pollution and the destruction
of the environment, and so on. The fact is the mass of the public, and especially the
younger generations, take to new technological developments like ducks to water while
we all clamour for more high-tech health services, more high-tech leisure goods and
faster transport systems made safer by high-tech devices. Campbell forgets that much of
the human potential and psycho-therapy movement to which he refers is thoroughly
world aﬃrming rather than world rejecting. One could even interpret the belief in
reincarnation in this way; as a desire to dwell as long as possible in material existences
and, therefore, indiﬀerent to notions of escape from the cycle of rebirths. In this
particular respect, perhaps, belief in reincarnation does reﬂect the more popular and
pragmatic complex of Buddhist and Hindu tradition rather than the more virtuoso
emphasis on anatta and nirvana. For many of those who do interpret reincarnation in a
highly non-material and spiritual way, however, their belief traces not to Eastern origins
at all but to spiritualism (see Walter and Waterhouse 1999). For these believers
attachment to material and bodily existence is not a part of the appeal of reincarnation
which is rather seen by them as the means by which spiritual progress can be
pursued, the spiritual being valued much more highly than the material and the bodily
aspect.
Congruent with this-worldly interpretations of Buddhist and Hindu ideas, and even
more so than instrumental activism, another key aspect of contemporary Western
holistic, quasi-spirituality is its very embodied nature. Campbell does not mention
holistic healing, complementary and alternative therapies, bodily ﬁtness regimes, and so
on. But what about Yoga? What is interesting here is that in the West it is almost
entirely divorced, at least in terms of popular following, from its religious, spiritual,
philosophical background which in the East deﬁnes its sense and purpose, to become
merely a physical and bodily discipline. That there might be the hope of psychological
and mental beneﬁts as well as physiological ones is not to be denied but these are to be
gained almost entirely from the bodily disciplines as they might be from a good
work-out in the very high-tech gym, daily jogging or a marathon run.
Again, certain Taoist ideas and practices focused upon the body have proved attractive
to some in the West, such as Tai Chi and Qigong. The way these seek to integrate mind
and body, their emphasis upon mental concentration in pursuit of inner harmony and
balance and a heightened state of consciousness has been, as Clarke points out,
‘traditionally associated with religious experience’ and might be seen ‘as part of a
tendency, albeit a minority one, towards a religiosity without gods or beliefs, a
cultivation of a sense of well-being and self-transcendence that implies no credal
commitment or institutional identiﬁcation, and which sees no clear break between the
cultivation of physical and spiritual excellence’ (2000, pp. 138–9). One wonders,
however, just how much of the religious or philosophical basis of these martial arts is
known or understood by most Western practitioners. As Clarke reports, it is precisely
this lack of grounding which has recently prompted some who are more knowledgeable
to attempt to remedy the situation through books and publications which seek
to re-root the techniques in these broader religious, spiritual and philosophical
foundations.
Another sphere in which Taoist thought has been particularly prominent in the West
in recent decades is in relation to dietary regimes such as macrobiotics. This is largely
252 M. Hamilton
because they promise longevity, namely an embodied, material existence. The whole,
health and organic food movements, often associated with vegetarianism and embodying
as they do notions of balance and harmony, naturalness, wholeness and purity, along
with ﬁtness regimes, are as central to the kind of developments with which the
Easternisation thesis is concerned as those upon which it focuses, namely environmentalism,
reincarnation and the decline in belief in a personal God. These, together with
holistic healing and physical ﬁtness regimes, can be as ‘spiritual’ as radical ecology and
are much more inﬂuential. But as important as this ‘spiritual’ dimension of the food and
dietary movements is a very material concern, namely the key aspect of risk perception
associated with food and food production. Yet it is not just that there is a spiritual as well
as a material aspect to them. As with health and ﬁtness movements, it is as if spiritual
goals are attainable through the material; the spiritual is redeﬁned in terms of material
regimes and disciplines; salvation through the body rather than through the soul. While
there may be some aﬃnities here with Taoist thought (see Clarke 2000) it is,
nevertheless, profoundly Western.
Instrumental activism is, of course, closely associated with ideas of progress and this in
turn stems from a deeply rooted assumption and expectation of change and development
associated with an evolutionary outlook quite alien to Eastern thought. Even if
one accepts post-modern scepticism regarding the viability of the idea of progress, and
this could be challenged in so far as it applies to most sectors of society outside certain
intellectual circles, change, quite rapid change, is now endemic and the normal
expectation for most people in the West. The inﬂuence of evolutionary theory and of
Darwinism has, however, been double edged. One can clearly discern in the radical
ecology movement the inﬂuence of this very Darwinism which displaced humans from
their central place in nature and as masters over it, relocating them clearly within the
animal kingdom. It renders them just as subject to nature and to their own natures, that
is to biological forces, as controllers of it (see Oelschlager 1991). There is indeed a
convergence of evolutionary science and Eastern inﬂuenced environmental thinking
here. However, it is precisely the perception of continuous change and its possibility
that drives the instrumental activism of the very ecological movements and groups that
the Easternisation thesis stresses as marking a radical shift from Western to Eastern ways
of thinking.
A Broader Perspective
So much for the problems with the Easternisation thesis. The remaining part of this
article attempts to incorporate some of its insights into a broader framework and to oﬀer
some alternative suggestions for understanding the developments with which the thesis
is concerned.
In so far as there have been a number of developments in Western thought which
appear to reﬂect the inﬂuence of Eastern paradigms we should ask whether this is a
product simply of Easternisation or whether it can be seen simply as an aspect of
globalisation. Globalisation may, of course, mean diﬀerent things. In one sense it refers
to the process by which the whole planet becomes a single place within which
commodities, ﬁnance and, to a more limited extent, people ﬂow as freely as they do
within nation states or more circumscribed regions. To a very large extent, in this sense
it is a process driven by Western capitalism and enterprise leading to an extensive
international division of labour. In another sense globalisation can refer to the global
extension of forms of communication leading to the global spread of ideas, practices and
The Easternisation Thesis: Critical Reﬂections 253
cultural elements. In this latter sense religious and spiritual ideas might travel in all
directions; Western ideas to the East and Eastern ideas to the West. Easternisation is, in
this respect, simply the other side of the coin of Westernisation. This raises the question
of whether such Eastern inﬂuences as have had an impact upon the West are as much
the result of a process of globalisation as they are of Easternisation. In this respect the
spread of Christianity to parts of the East are on a par with the spread of Eastern ideas
in the West; simply a part of the process of exchange of ideas and inﬂuences which has
been going on for a considerable time but which has accelerated in pace with the
development of communications, migration and rise of multiculturalism. In fact, one
can argue that they have been going on for a very long time. In this respect globalisation
can be seen as the process by which such transmissions occur more rapidly rather than
as any qualitatively diﬀerent sort of process. Globalisation as a new phenomenon is
simply this qualitative change through diﬀusion at a pace whereby it can be perceived
to make an appreciable diﬀerence within the average life-time.
But globalisation is but one process in the shaping of contemporary spirituality. It has
been observed above that there has been to some degree a revival of magical and
pre-Christian ideas and thought or at least of an imagined pre-Christianity. This goes
along and may be mixed with borrowings from the magical and shamanic traditions of
tribal peoples from around the world and with elements of archaic traditions both
Eastern and Western. To this extent we might just as credibly speak of the paganisation
of the West as of its Easternisation since pagan thought, or at least its imagined forms,
could be claimed to espouse just the same sort of immanentist and monistic cosmological
view as Eastern thought. In fact there are a whole series of inﬂuences and movements
that are signiﬁcant in this respect. We could just as easily speak of re-traditionalisaton or
archaicisation as we can of de-traditionalisation, of scientisation (scientology, UFO cults
etc.), of re-enchantment, or of simultaneous scientisation and re-enchantment (Star
Wars). Catherine Albanese (1993) characterises New Age in the United States, and New
Age is in many ways at the heart of the processes referred to as Easternisation, as a form
of American nature religion. And as Wouter Hanegraaﬀ (1996) argues, New Age owes
as much if not more to the esoteric tradition as it does to anything else. It is, in his view,
a syncretistic synthesis of esoteric and secular elements. Even the belief in reincarnation
could be traced as much to platonic, pythagorean, and kabbalistic sources, and to
philosophers such as Leibnitz, as it can to Hinduism and Buddhism. While New Age
owes much to Theosophy, this itself, Hanegraaﬀ reminds us, was rooted in Western
esotericism and drew very selectively from Hinduism and Buddhism only those
elements which could be readily assimilated. Much the same is true, in his view, of
transcendentalism and of the metaphysical movement. All of these borrowed very
selectively from Eastern traditions and ignored what did not ﬁt. In the case of Hinduism
itself, Hanegraaﬀ characterises the interpretation for Western audiences of one its most
prominent exponents, Vivekananda’s version of Advaita Vendanta, as a synthesis of
Indian and Western Enlightenment ideas.
Another movement which has tended to promote a synthesis of Eastern traditions
with pre-Christian European pagan traditions, not mentioned by Campbell, is feminism
and in particular eco-feminism. This has perceived in Eastern religions an absence of
patriarchal attitudes and assumptions which have been strongly associated with Western
and Middle Eastern religious traditions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam. While it
would be an exaggeration to say that those strands of the feminist movement that have
been concerned with religious and spiritual matters have been a major conduit for the
easternisation of western thought and culture, they have contributed to a growing
254 M. Hamilton
interest in Buddhism and Taoism in the West. Here again though, these religions are
seen as providing useful resources for the feminist anti-patriarchal project; resources to
be selectively drawn upon to the extent that they are advantageously deployable or
ignored if they are not. In the case of Buddhism it is its antipathy to violence and
compassion that attracts most; and in the case of Taoism its emphasis upon the feminine
characteristics of passivity and yielding above the masculine characteristics of strength
and resistance (see Clarke 2000, p. 112). This is a far cry of course from, for example,
black Americans actually converting to some form of Islam.
What is striking, then, about the contemporary Western spiritual ethos is its
extraordinary eclecticism. Of course, it could be that being too close we simply cannot
see the wood for the trees. A little more perspective might reveal that among these many
diverse elements one stands out as predominant or potentially so and will be so revealed
in time. However, this is unlikely. There does seem to be not only a plurality of
inﬂuences, a supermarket of spiritual choices on oﬀer but a clear proclivity not to choose
any one of them. That is to say, not to make choices between them but to choose all or
at least many of them.
This is sometimes understood in terms of an alleged post-modern condition.
Zygmunt Bauman (1998) for example, characterises our post-modern state as one of
constant choosing in every aspect of life including one’s identity and in being so it is also
a state of fearing of missing out on opportunities for having or experiencing something
or being someone. This does not call for religious consolations as we have seen. It calls
into being, rather, the spiritual supermarket of experiences all of equal validity relative
to the location, background or condition of their potential devotees (see also Beckford
1992; Lyon 1993). Paul Heelas (1996a) has argued, however, that New Age, at least, is
not post-modern in character since, in its more serious forms, it is not de-traditionalised,
it is compatible with modernity and even exhibits at the same time pre-modern aspects.
Signiﬁcant in this respect is the way much of what the Easternisation thesis is concerned
with is clearly counter-cultural. This is true of Buddhism according to Mellor (1991), of
Taoism according to Clarke (2000) and of New Age, as Hanegraaﬀ (1996) reminds us,
while Sutcliﬀe and Bowman (2000) stress the dissenting and ‘alternative’ character of
this ethos. In short, it percieves itself and deﬁnes itself as running counter to the
mainstream, both religious and secular, and much of its attraction lies in this and its
challenge to the main thrust of change in the West, rather than in its congruence with
such change as a new incipient orthodoxy.
These are clearly complex processes and on this question none of us can yet clearly see
the wood for the trees let alone predict the course of Western religion or spirituality. As
far as the importation or adoption of Eastern religions is concerned the analysis above
points to a continuing process of interaction, mutual transformation and synthesis in
which the Eastern traditions are themselves transformed rather than the supplanting of
Western traditions by Eastern ones. But not just of Eastern and Western ideas. What is
so characteristic of contemporary Western society is its pluralism and eclecticism. All
and any sources might be drawn upon in the search for more satisfactory constructions
of life’s meaning and signiﬁcance.
In so far as such searching will continue to draw upon Eastern religions, one suspects
that however inﬂuential and attractive Buddhism has been and continues to be, it will
increasingly be Taoism to which seekers will turn. The chief strength of Campbell’s
more radical version of the Easternisation thesis is its acknowledgement of the West’s
disillusionment with transcendentalism and dualism and shift towards more holistic and
immanetist ideas. Its main weakness is the diﬃculty it has with Western instrumental
The Easternisation Thesis: Critical Reﬂections 255
activism. The resolution may lie in the recognition that the convergence he discerns is
actually between modern Western spirituality and Taoist thought. The latter seems to
oﬀer sprituality without transcendence, a holistic basis for a better way of relating to
nature, a de-emphasis upon dogma and acceptance of relativism and the limitations of
rational, conceptual thought, an acceptance, even celebration, of our material, bodily
nature and of physicality as not incompatible with our spiritual nature, and a thisworldly
orientation which is not incompatible with instrumental activism.
It is diﬃcult to imagine, however, that the development of Western religion and
spirituality will simply come to reﬂect or echo Taoist ideas. Most probably the Western
ethos of instrumental activism and of individualism will act as a prism through which
holism and immanentism will be refracted to be mixed with many other strands of
thought producing not one but an ever evolving and diversifying array of ideas, beliefs
and practices.
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Acknowledgements
This article is a revised form of a paper presented to the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group
Annual Conference at the University of Exeter in March/April 2002. I am grateful for all the useful
comments and suggestions made there and by colleagues at Reading.
MALCOLM HAMILTON is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the
University of Reading where he has taught since 1974. His more recent major works
include The Sociology of Religion: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives. 2nd Edition.
London: Routledge, 2001 and The Sociology of the World’s Religions, Basingstoke:
Macmillan 1998. His research interests in the area of religion are centred mainly on
alternative spirituality, quasi-religion, and the ‘spiritual’ dimensions of social and cultural
movements.
Department of Sociology, University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 218, Reading,
RG6 6AA, U.K. E-mail: m.b.hamilton@reading.ac.uk
258 M. Hamilton