THE NEXT STAGE OF CIVILIZATION WILL NOT COME FROM ASIA | 2004-02-14
When the average American thinks of Oriental Wisdom, three pictures flash through his mind.
One is the 1970s television series called "Kung Fu," where David Carradine took the great Chinese Wisdom and fighting ability he had learned as a child in a Kung Fu academy in China into the American West.
Actually, Kung Fu was introduced to China by a man whose BLUE EYES supposedly burned a hole through a wall, according to the legend. His name was Bodhidharma, and he is mentioned as "the blue-eyed devil" in the quote below.
Another thing we always see in the Orient is the Buddha, whose statues are all very Oriental-looking. Actually, Buddha was an Aryan who lived and died in India.
As one Buddhist puts it,
"We're all prepared to visualize the Buddha's blue eyes. He was an Aryan, of European descent, a nobleman in a societal caste system that did not 'officially' intermarry with native populations. The rigidity of the system can be seen even in further generations. Nearly a thousand years later, Bodhidharma, another Aryan descendant, was called The Blue Eyed Demon by the Chinese.'"
"Also, in recent years we've witnessed the startling discoveries of three thousand year-old blond and red haired Caucasian mummies in the Takla Makan area of western China."
http://www.hsuyun.org/Dharma/zbohy/Literature/essays/czs/bluelotus.html
A third thing we Americans know about Oriental Wisdom is medical treatments we think were invented there, like acupuncture. The Ice Man, the body of a white man found preserved in the Alps, is three thousand years old. He has tattoos on him that mark the spots for acupuncture .
Reading a history of the Orient is like reading a history of false starts. They invent a printing press and then lose it. They invent a mechanical clock and then lose it.
As a human being, I am interested in where the next generation of great advances will come from. New areas of the earth are being opened up with the fall of Communism. But I do not look for China to produce fundamental advances.
How about Russia and Eastern Europe?