East is east and west is west.

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Rudyard Kipling wrote "east is east and west is west, and never the twain shall meet." A bit strong, perhaps, but he didn't live in the era of globalization.

Be that as it may, I have a strong and perhaps slightly irrartional dislike of attempts to blend Eastern and Western mysticism and eaotericism. Yes, in many ways they take you to the same place. Yes, there have probably been crossovers like Hindu "Gymnosophists" traveling to Hellanistic Alexandria to teach yoga, or Greco-Buddhist encounters during Alexander the Great's time in Bactria, or the Manichean scroll they found in a Japanese monestary a few years ago, or literally everyone using the same zodiac out of ancient Mesopotamia. Yes, I accept these basic historical precedents and I'm not claiming there is zero porosity or exchange between east and west.

That said...I really dislike hodgepodge east-west eclecticism, like people trying to map the kabalah onto the I Ching, or Buddhist metaphysics mishmashed with dark-age European "wizards n' sheeeit."

It just reeks of new-agey dabbling and short attention span shallowness, where you toss the surface manifestations of all these complex systems together while ignoring the depths of all. It's got that "if you try to do everything you end up doing nothing" feel to it. Just pick a single path and stick with it. Know what I mean?