Hindu Medicine c5.s2.37

c5.s2.37

man is unlike nature, an “animal endowed with humanity.” To one who thinks of the abyss of the soul as it is revealed in the Hindu myth, the European world may seem shallow, just as the laughter of the Greck gods—these eternal symbols of rationalism--is shallow as compared to the ambiguous smile of the Hindu deities.¹⁸ But Zimmer was not romantically longing for the wisdom of the East as the truer or higher form of knowledge. Conscious of the inescapability of the situation in which the European mind finds itself, he did not uphold India as a model. He only wished to understand its truth, and by so doing to contribute to the understanding of our own truth: “The real treasure, to end our misery and trials, is never far away; it is not to be sought in any distant region; it lies buried in the innermost recess of our own home, that is to say, in our own being. . . . But there is the odd and persistent fact that it is only after a faithful journey to a distant region, a foreign country, a strange land, that the meaning of the inner voice that is to guide our quest can be