In The Mystery of the Ivory Charm, fictional sleuth Nancy Drew encounters an “oily” and “cumbersomely turbaned” Hindu named Rai. Rai, a circus performer, comes from India “the land of mystery,” and practices a faith described as “very superstitious, a cult, and not normal.” In this action-packed mystery, Nancy Drew, representing Western “rationality,” rescues the young maharajah Rai has helped kidnap and recovers a treasure of valuable jewels.
In 1978, Palestinian literary critic Edward Said published a book called Orientalism. In it, he described how the West has created a construct called “The Orient” in order to more easily dominate and appropriate Asian cultures. He writes, “The Orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West.… Its progress and value are judged in terms of, and in comparison to, the West, so it is always the Other.” The concept of the “Orient” itself, Said points out, reduces a vast diversity of cultures, languages, and religions stretching from the Middle East to China to a monolithic sameness.
Orientalism can manifest in several ways. The Mystery of the Ivory Charm depicts “Oriental” religion as having a sinister, exotic, and superstitious character. Alternatively, Eastern religions can tantalize by representing a purity and perfection we long for and lack in our own traditions.
Lyn Miller, a Buddhist and religion professor at Earlham College in Richmond Indiana, encounters those who have an idealized view of what non-Western faiths can offer:
“Since many students have turned toward Buddhism, in particular, as a palatable alternative to all the flaws of their inherited religion, they want Buddhism not to have the problems that Christianity or Judaism has had for them. … I have to teach them that there’s no escape from the enmeshment of a religious tradition in history and society, and [from] human flaws and even evils ... Human beings are human everywhere… So, as both the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh have taught, there’s no innocent refuge to flee to, where spirituality is wholly pure and peaceful.”
We distort faiths— including our own — when we project on to them our own fears or desires. When we declare all Muslims — whose faith encompasses a multitude of cultures — to be “terrorists,” it is easy for us to become complacent about the inherent “superiority” of Christianity. When we posit Buddhism as “wholly pure,” it becomes easy to dismiss Christianity by noticing only its hypocrisy and violence. In reality, all the major faiths witness to the world both their soaring acts of generosity and their glaring failures of humanity.
Longing for a Shangri-La — or a faith group that is truly one with the Creator and all creation — is an almost universal yearning of the human heart. In The Mystery of Ivory Charm, that longing is realized in the “mysterious and superstitious” Hindu faith when Nancy improbably finds a life-giving elixir in an ivory elephant charm that brings the young maharajah back from the dead.
Likewise, for many years Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly harbored the illusion that he was more likely to find the divine union he sought under a Buddhist “bo tree” than his despised Indiana “sugar maples.” Yet, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, he came to maturity as he embraced his own place and tradition.
Sages such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh advise resisting the fantasy of a perfect faith. According to Miller, “Both teachers say that it’s best for most of us to remain in the traditions we were born into, and by which our imaginations have been formed, and to make them more just and peaceable.”
Yet this doesn’t mean we ought to turn our back on other faiths. As Miller puts it, “to truly enter another tradition is very, very difficult. I’ve found this myself, and I don’t pretend to have done it except as an attentive and grateful visitor. This is what I tell my students, while also telling them that they can learn life-saving truths from traditions they can’t hope to join.”