The way things have been going the past 30 years, and even well before that, there's been lots of condemnation of the Western tendency towards materialism and reductionism.
Now sure these tendencies are problematic at their extreme end. However the separation of particulars into discreet units of analysis for eventual material manipulation can be quite useful. Western technologies and medicine have done plenty of good.
Each of our bodies is indeed an engine for experiencing a sustained period of consciousness, and they should be understood.
We all come from the same place, and everything really is one, but then life itself is experienced out of difference. The only way to the consciousness we are familiar with is by being instantiated as a living, finite, decaying universe within a universe: a living body. The quickest way to absolute unity is through death after all.
Many followers of the great religions make the mistake of rejecting the material world in favor of some postulated metaphysics of a spiritual world. Such a tendency is understandable, given the origins of this type of ideology, which is usually birthed at a time when a material society is at the height of corruption and the values become inverted.
However this thinking carries with it its own set of problems. It leads to an ossified ideology whose pendulum has swung in the other direction, leading to rigid modes of thought in which the spiritual realm is accorded special privilege, where institutions form around interpreting this world, and then power forms around what is claimed to be the correct interpretation. Then the pendulum is set to be swung in the direction of materialism once again and so on.
The wiser Buddhists seem to be aware of this, as well as several other spiritual philosophies across cultures. Such philosophies usually identify a world of spirit and a world of man, a world of unity and a world of particulars, and carry special prescriptions for moving through both.
We do have to move through both worlds. It is the nature of our reality. This lesson should be well-remembered at a time when it is all too easy to become disgusted with materialist values at the sight of such widespread corruption.
Yes, everything has to come back together eventually. But everything exists as difference. The trick is achieving harmony with difference.
