Like many Westerners, I used to think Eastern philosophy was bullshit. DaoDeJing, Confucius, and the Bhagavad Gita don't have anywhere near the technical refinement of works from Kant, Hume, and such. Then I met a French guitarist at a jam session whose cockiness matched his accent: “What, euh, you don’t know about the difference between the lydian and dorian scales?” and followed with an unrequested technical lecture. When we got to playing, it turns out he couldn’t groove for one bit. And what’s the point of theory if you can’t apply it?! Later that night, I found myself telling people about Kant’s categorical imperative, and was asked “What’s the point?”. Which had me realize… I had no idea! And if I have no intuition for it, how can it meaningfully improve my life? The problem for many Westerners like me is we get so obsessed with the theory that they forget to feel the philosophy, while many Eastern thinkers internalized that you can't write down the feeling of grooving with life, only suggest it. Grokking it makes their classics a lot more enjoyable. -- PS: the Western/Eastern dichotomy is arguably nonsensical but hopefully gets the point across. Also, it's fun to realize how much cross pollination there has been - for example Greek philosophers like Plotinus (~300 AD) were such Indian texts fanboys they joined military campaigns to get closer to India.