Can Eastern meditation techniques work for a Western mind?

Through the 1950's and '60's there was a movement in the Western World to introduce Eastern mysteries into the philosphies of personal development. This came primarily from two distinct sources, firstly the interest shown by the Thule society in Germany during the Second World War linked to the Nazi ideology of the Aryan as an archetype civilisation. There was research across China, Tibet and Mongolia into the indigenous peoples and traditions, and there was a general looting of historical artefacts, many of which can still be seen in German museums. The second was the development of the "Hippy trail" roughly following the ancient spice routes, through North Africa and on into Asia Minor and China. This later movement in following the spice trail, also followed the drug trail, through Hashish in North Africa through to opioids in the Far East.

The consequence of these two movements, and the linking of Eastern philosophy and practice through the drug trade to hippy culture, as seen in Timothy Learys use of the Tibetan Book of the Dead as a backdrop to his writing on LSD, has been to embed Eastern traditions such as meditation and Feng Shui into the Western psyche, but has this necessarily been a positive thing. I am frequently faced with talking to someone who has practiced buddhist meditation techniques but has found it extraordinarily difficult to achieve the "quiet mind" state required by the practice. Similarly, I have found that Westerners tend to have a great deal of difficulty successfully practicing tantric sex techniques for similar reasons. This has led me to postulate that there are key differences between the development of mind in Western educational systems, and those found in the East, and that these differences make it far more difficult for a Western minds to successfully integrate these mysteries.

I don't suggest for a minute that it is impossible to do so, but simply that in order to achieve success one is required to take an almost immersive principle, engaging fully with Esatern culture at all levels, even to the extent of learning one or more Eastern languages and engaging in Eastern customs in order to fully understand and therefore successfully practice these techniques. I would further argue that if one is going to engage in practices from a tradition outside ones own upbringing, that this immersion technique should be a start point anyway, but I wonder how often that is the case. For me it is similar to the principles of Chaos Magic, popularised slightly later in the later 1970's and '80's whereby there is a requirement to adopt certain paradigms in order to access useful skills inherent to that system, but that this paradigm shifting must be complete and entirely open. It is a strategy that is not without its risks, but one which is worth exploring before trying to integrate what can become a mish-mash of conflicting ideologies and beliefs.

Eclecticism has many things going for it, but only when practiced with rigour and consistency....