I'm not a New Age person, but I do believe in meditation, and for that reason I've always liked the Buddhist religion. When I've been to Japan, I've been to Buddhist temples and meditated, and I found that rewarding.

Borrow What Works, Skip the Rest

There's something refreshingly honest about admitting you can borrow from a tradition without buying the whole package. Eastwood isn't claiming to be enlightened or adopting Buddhism wholesale—he's just saying that certain practices work for him, and that's enough. We often feel like we have to commit completely to something or not at all, but the reality is that most people find value in picking what actually serves them. Meditation doesn't require you to believe in reincarnation or adopt a whole lifestyle; it's a tool that either helps you or doesn't.

What's interesting is how meditation has become divorced from its religious origins in Western culture, which some people see as dilution and others see as democratization. But Eastwood's approach suggests a middle ground: respecting where something comes from while being practical about how you use it. He visited temples in Japan, sat with the practice in its original context, and found something real there. That's different from cherry-picking spirituality from a catalog.

The underlying tension here is worth sitting with. We live in an age of customized everything, where we can build our own worldview à la carte. That freedom is real. But it also means we might miss something deeper by never letting a tradition challenge us rather than just comfort us. Sometimes the most grounded approach isn't taking everything, but taking something seriously enough to actually do it.