HOW THE ORIENTAL DISCIPLINES DIFFER FROM THE OCCIDENTAL ONES
Frequently this question is asked
to me: what is the difference between the oriental and the
occidental disciplines? The answer seems very obvious to me.
Both of them descend from their respective cultures. The first
ones mainly tend to unify the psychosomatic complex toward the
spiritual substance, the second ones toward the material
substance. They are like the two universe’s poles that represent
the manifestation’s concrete expression. Hence I don’t think we
ought to give life to the useless controversy in which we
speculate on what should be superior and what inferior.
The discussions some “sectarian” yields to, trying to obtain for
example the supremacy of man on woman and vice-versa, I think
never really brought to anything good. What we have to
understand is that the manifest Universe needs to support itself
on both poles. I say that because in the West lately there is a
sort of “orient-philia” that brings people to snub the western
materialistic view, and people do not notice that, as I’ve said
more than once, the Orient, and especially India, strongly tends
toward this direction.
This is right, and the Right is in the strong presence of both
poles. Strong women and strong men improve the quality of the
human race. A good material realization together with a good
spiritual realization brings man to test stages of satisfaction
and joy that are the premise of tranquility and peace. According
to who’s writing, the humanity will be always more involved on
the way that brings to the finding or to the recovery of
“psychosomatic” disciplines, as after all the last years proved,
conscious of the different quality of the result. The “balanced”
Orient, that is the Orient free from interpretative excesses,
already gave clear indications toward this direction. Some wise
suggested a “middle way”, a third experimental way that should
bring to the equilibrium.
I join them by stating that the wellness that everyone of us is
looking for in the disciplines, oriental and occidental ones,
can be reached when the fanaticism is kept away and when in the
human behavior there is absence of competition. After all, the
sectarian fanaticism is even present in some occidental
discipline that becomes bad for the subject’s psychophysical
health. Just think about what happen when, because of an excess
of physical “appearance”, we arrive to use not only the
“weights” but also medicines dangerous for the health.
But I even think that, often, the “weights” are not indicated
for a normal vertebral column, a bone structure and muscles of a
human kind that is now weak because of this kind of life. Too
much are the damages that I, as therapist, personally observed
in a lot of people who worked in gyms where the philosophy of
appearance, and not the one of the Being, is followed. Physical,
sometimes irreparable, damages and of course also “inner”
damages. Good thing that the Orient taught us to think,
stimulating the recovery of other values.
by Amadio Bianchi