Vaastu is to Indians what Feng Shui (pronounced Feng Shway) is to Chinese. However, as is wont with Indians, while the homegrown Vaastu was always considered as a cryptic, ancient and outdated science, when Feng Shui made its entry all the way from China, we lapped this ?foreign? science of architecture. In reality, Vaastu and Feng Shui have so many similarities that it seems like it is just two names for the same concept.
The basic tenets of both the Sciences remain same: Both believe that every object in this world has positive life energy in it, which influences the well being of humans around it. While Vaastu calls its ?prana,? Feng Shui calls it ?chi?. While the former emphasizes the importance of having a mastya yantra (water and fish body) in the house, the latter underscores the benefits of having an aquarium in the house. Similarly, both of them believe that the world has five elements that influence the world. The five elements being earth, fire, air, water and sky.
But the only major difference between Vaastu and Feng Shui is that the latter lays emphasis on the placement of knick-knacks to attract positive energy and dispel the negative one, while Vaastu is more keen on the direction of a certain object, its alignment with the various elements etc.
But despite these certain contrasts, the soul of both the sciences is the same. Both of them stress on commonsense in decorating our house ? for instance clearing clutter from time to time, having windows parallel to each other for positive flow of life energy, keeping the heart of the house open, the placement of doors and windows, the direction one should sleep, sit and eat etc.
So when you confront with the question of whether you should follow Vaastu or Feng Shui to set up your house or office, just take the best of both and get going. All the best!
