I kind of like Japanese, Chinese, Persian, Arabic, and East Indian writing for a kind of "otherness," so I think that's a fair criticism there. I feel compelled to defend myself a bit here, for fear of sounding like a hipster. There's "otherness" in everything I read in the sense that stuff written in 19th Century England is very different from stuff written in mid-20th century America, which is very different from something from someplace that doesn't speak English and is far removed from our time. Poetry, fiction, religious and philosophical writings, and on and on. It's all very different. The interesting thing is, there's a lot of similarity as well. There's a lot of common elements in philosophies across culture (be good and honest is a basic human tenant after all) to very similar myths (flood myths, fear of darkness, etc.).

That said, one of the appeals to oriental writing for me is that it often has a very different tempo, both literally as well as emotionally and intellectually. I'm gonna have to dig deeper, cause between my discovery Sunday and yours and Odder's responses, I'm starting to question how much of that might actually be artificial. Like readers are being sold a concept of an otherness that is familiar and unthreatening.

You also bring up a very good point about religious texts and I'm glad you touched on it. A very common conversation that we'd have in the religious history/theology classes I'd take was that A) the father removed you are in time from the source of the writings, the more they've been affected by politics and cultural changes and the changes are often over a slow period of time that they often happen unnoticed and B) many languages are open to interpretation, like you just pointed out, which means people often turn to scholars for guidance on interpreting said texts, and since the opinions of scholars are often malleable and subject to their time and environment, this just exacerbates point A.

The thing is, for guys like Rumi and Hafiz? They're old, but they aren't ancient. Chances are there are verifiable written copies of their work somewhere that people can go back and reference. At least I can take comfort in that.