Wit & Attitude Quote by Matthew Fox

Fox is doing a very Western thing here: importing “the East” as a corrective, then insisting the real destination is home. The line pretends to be a rejection of spiritual tourism (“We’re not going to change the West by going East”) while quietly keeping the East on retainer as teacher, foil, and mirror. That’s the rhetorical trick. He grants Asia authority long enough to leverage it against Western complacency, then uses that authority to argue the West already contains what it’s looking for.

The subtext is less interfaith harmony than intra-Western frustration. Fox is scolding a Christianity he thinks has forgotten its own contemplative and mystical traditions. “Mirror” is the key metaphor: Eastern practices don’t so much deliver new truths as expose Western blind spots, the way an outside gaze can make your own habits suddenly look absurd. The crude punchline (“what are you, stupid?”) is deliberate; it yanks the conversation out of polite comparative-religion mode and into moral impatience, the tone of someone tired of seekers treating Buddhism or Hinduism like exotic supplements.

Context matters: Fox, known for “creation spirituality” and his clashes with Church authority, speaks from a reformer’s posture. He’s not advocating retreat into purity; he’s trying to weaponize comparison to force recognition. The East becomes a diagnostic tool: if Westerners can revere mindfulness when it arrives in saffron robes, why can’t they recognize parallel resources in their own scriptures, saints, and practices? It’s a call to stop confusing distance with depth, and to stop outsourcing spiritual credibility to somewhere else.