RENE GUENON 20

Rene Guenon, Studies in Hinduism (Collected Works of Rene Guenon), translated from the French by Henry D. Fohr & Cecil Bethell, edited by Samuel D. Fohr (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 1966, 2001) (From Chapter 2, "The Spirit of India": 'The opposition of East and West, reduced to its simplest terms, is basically identical to that often held to exist between contemplation and action." Id. at 6. However, "contemplation is superior to action, just as the immutable is superior to change. Since action is only transitory and momentary modification of being, it could not have its principle and sufficient reason within itself, and if it is not joined to a principle that lies beyond its contingent domain it is but pure illusion, which is to say that the principle from which it draws all the reality of which it is capable--both its existence and its very possibility--can only be found in contemplation." Id. at 7. From chapter 12, "Eastern Metaphysics": "For us, the great difference between the East and West (meaning here exclusively the modern West), the only difference that is truly essential, since all the other differences are derivative, is this: on the one hand, preservation of tradition and all that it implies, and on the other hand,  the negate an loss of that same tradition; on the nose side, the safeguarding of metaphysical knowledge, on the other, utter ignorance of ll that relates to that realm...." Id. at 86, 101. "The material superiority of the West is beyond dispute; nobody denies it, but it is hardly grounds for envy. But one must go further: sooner or later this excessive material development threatens to destroy the West if it does not recover itself in time and if it does not seriously consider a 'return to the source', as goes a saying current in certain schools of Islamic esoterism. Today one hears from many quarters of the 'defense of the West', but unfortunately it does not seem to be understood that is chiefly against itself that the West seem to be defended, that the greatest and most formidable of the dangers that threaten it stem from it own present tendencies...." Id. at 101-102.).