“Less and less has the ‘wisdom of the East’ anything to do with modern Asia, with the geographical and political boundaries of the world which such terms as East and West, Asia, Europe, and America, now represent. More and more ‘the East’ as a source of wisdom stands for something not geographical but inward, for a perennial philosophy which, in varying forms, has been the possession of traditional, nonhistorical cultures in all parts of the world. For the spiritual contrast of East and West is really a contrast between two styles of culture, two radically different categories of social institutions, which never really corresponded to the contrast of Europe and Asia as geographical divisions.”

— Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman