[Buddha-l] The frog in the water

[Katherine Masis]

Richard Hayes said:

"My condolences for 1) having lived in the U.S., 2)
been involved in such a Zen group. (If I were more
inclined to rudeness, I might ask why the hell it took
you more than fifteen years to bail out. Fortunately,
I am the very picture of politeness, so such questions
never even enter my mind.)"

Thank goodness you're polite--otherwise I wouldn't
satisfy your curiosity! ;-)  

As it so happens, I'm a product of a bicultural
marriage (U.S. mother and Costa Rican father).  I grew
up in Costa Rica and have only lived in the U.S. for
about 9 or 10 years out of my life, 5 of those to work
more closely with my former Zen teacher.  I had
started sitting here in Costa Rica in a group
affiliated with a well-known center in the U.S.  We
only saw the teacher twice a year for 7-day sesshin,
which ensured that we, the members of the affiliate
sangha in Third-World exotic Costa Rica, could foster
our starry-eyed idealization of that teacher.  Those
were my first 10 years of that brand of Zen--not
interacting very much with the teacher.   The
proverbial frog-in-the-water had gotten used to the
temperature being turned up slowly, that's why I
stayed.  I moved to the center itself in the 1990s
only to have the temperature turned up to a boiling
point in the last 2 of the last 5 years of involvement
with that place.  I left 7 years ago and never looked
back.  I came back home to Costa Rica 2 and a half
years ago as soon as I got my old teaching job back. 
That's it.  

As for the idea that philosophy never existed outside
of Europe, luckily that's changing, slowly but surely.
 At least in the Spanish-speaking world, the
husband-wife team Fernando Tola (Peru) and Carmen
Dragonetti (Argentina) have written several articles
that have helped to dispell that viewpoint.  

Switching gears completely, I would appreciate some
guidance on materials that relate Sankhya to Buddhism.

Katherine Masis
San Jose, Costa Rica





       
____________________________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! oneSearch: Finally, mobile search 
that gives answers, not web links. 
http://mobile.yahoo.com/mobileweb/onesearch?refer=1ONXIC