How Did a Nice Jewish Girl Like You Get So Interested in Asia?

This essay traces the role of Asian art in catalyzing the author’s appreciation of varied Asian spiritual traditions and describes how she compared and contrasted those approaches to both art and religion to her own Jewish traditions, in attempt to better understand Asian spirituality. She highlights how psychologists Erich Fromm, who was reared as an Orthodox Jew, and Marsha Linehan, who retained her Catholic faith, incorporated Zen meditation practices into their personal lives, and how that Zen “in-the-moment” mindfulness evolved into mainstream psychiatric treatments, and either encouraged or anticipated the recent explosion of both professional and popular interest in “mindfulness.”