Asia and Europe: A cultural history in portraits and encounters
Xanadu – Asia's place of longing for researchers, theosophists, and those seeking salvation. It represents a secret something that unites the gods with the self as well as a meeting place of the cultures of the world. Elmar Schenkel writes of the two-way perceptions of the other: from the first clashes of western and eastern culture in Japan and India, to the western discovery of Jaoanese Zen, Chinese thinkers, and Indian gurus. What is the role of Mahatma Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore, or, conversely, of Madame Blavatsky, C. G. Jung and Hermann Hesse? How did Taoism come to the West, and what do Zen or Yoga have to do with politics? In short, sparkling pieces of prose, Elmar Schenkel familiarises us with the search of cultures for things that will offset their own deficits.
