I do sort of think that the West (and I'm saying this as a Westerner) sometimes takes traditions from other cultures and strips away a lot of the meaning behind them in the name of making these traditions purely utilitarian or material. I guess this isn't a bad thing in and of itself - meditation does help with overcoming a lot of negative feelings and the like, that's for certain - but I can see why people from other cultures do feel a bit irritated or even worried when they see how watered down their teachings can become.
I agree. It's probably the result of our ethnocentricity for two different reasons. For one, western religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and all of their branches, focus much more on the intellectual aspects than spiritual aspects. Yes, there is prayer and holy observances and lessons in spiritual metaphysics, but we don't put anywhere near as much emphasis on spirituality. More often than not, we're spent focusing on philosophy, ideology, dogma, and splitting hairs on the most minute of religious laws. When it comes to something like meditation then, it's no wonder we're more drawn to the physical aspects of it and not the spiritual aspects, because we as a religious culture seem to be more focused on what is practical and understandable and therefore in our eyes, more easy to practice. Second, and probably more importantly, because cultural history plays a strong part in any religion and how it is expressed, in order to better understand Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and other eastern "isms" we'd have to invest a lot of time and effort in learning about the cultures that those religions sprang from. That's something not many people are willing to do, and understandably so. As a result it's easier to take what we do understand, the meditation and yoga, the dietary practices, etc. and practice them as best as possible and then pay lip service at best to everything else. After all, it's still there if we want to learn about it and we can always get around to it tomorrow.I do sort of think that the West (and I'm saying this as a Westerner) sometimes takes traditions from other cultures and strips away a lot of the meaning behind them in the name of making these traditions purely utilitarian or material.
I do agree that people often pay lip service to the spiritual elements of the cultural bits and pieces we've amalgamated, like yoga and meditation. And yeah, Western religions do tend to focus on dogma so it is pretty easy to see why the spiritual benefits of such practices are overlooked. In fairness though, the Abrahamic religions do have spiritual sects to them - namely the Sufis in terms of Islam - but I think certainly in mainstream, modern practice the spiritual elements have become pretty diluted. Still, you'd be surprised as to how much that is the case in certain sects of Buddhism as well - the Tibetan school in particular prides itself on debating every little detail of the religion (to the point where, interestingly enough, crowds in Tibet gather to watch two scholars debate, much in the way we treat sporting matches in the West). There is, I think, a lot more similarity between Western and Eastern religions than than is often assumed (personally, I dislike sort of grouping them up in such broad labels - as a historian I'm a bit averse to it for a few reasons). I think generally in a modernized Western society though, as you said, we look towards the practical and stay away from something that might be considered a bit too 'out there'
I definitely understand where you're coming from. Personally though, I don't think there is much harm in saying "Here are some overarching similarities between these cultures, but please refer to the footnotes for statistical outliers." While it's not something that either you or I touched on, I do think it's important to point out that we in the west tend to over romanticize eastern cultures and practices. To us, their ideas and beliefs seem exotic and compelling. To them though, it's every day life and they probably don't give much of it a second thought the way we don't give a lot of our beliefs a second thought.I dislike sort of grouping them up in such broad labels - as a historian I'm a bit averse to it for a few reasons.