[Buddha-l] Filtered Buddhism

[Katherine Masis]

Regarding Vicente González' comments:

I agree with most of what you say.  Argentina and
Mexico are ahead of the game as far as Asian thought
goes in Spanish-speaking Latin America.  El Colegio de
México has an international master's program in
Eastern Studies where people can specialize in Indian
studies, Chinese studies or Japanese studies.  But in
other countries people are stepping forward. 
Buddhologist Elías Capriles of Universidad de los
Andes in Venezuela has written several books and given
conferences in other Latin American countries, where
he is well-received.  I feel optimistic about the slow
but steady exposure to Eastern thought in this part of
the world.

I'd like to share a personal story about what I call
"filtered Buddhism."  This applies only to Buddhist
centers in the West that are meditative in nature, not
to what Rick Fields called "ethnic Buddhism" where
whole families of Asian ancestry in the West gather.  

As I said before, I had started sitting here in Costa
Rica in a Zen group affiliated with a well-known group
in the U.S.  After ten years of sitting "the (mostly
Catholic) Costa Rican way," I went to the U.S. to sit
"the Calvinist way" for five years.  (After that, I
left.)  The difference in the attitudes and approach
to Buddhism in the two sanghas, and how the two
sanghas socialized (or didn't) was **astounding**.  I
often wonder if the extra ingredient that made the
U.S. Zen center so exceedingly harsh was the Calvinist
inheritance--the Calvinist filter, so to speak.  It
was quite the repressive, guilt-ridden, Puritan
experience.  Ten years of deep involvement with the
Costa Rican sangha had not prepared me for this.  I
saw two Zen people who migrated from Costa Rica to
that center in the U.S. and eventually stayed (one
married there, another found meaningful work)
metamorphose into an odd blend of Latino Calvinism.

On the Internet, I've discovered that some Tibetan and
Zen centers in Brazil, Mexico and Argentina have *not*
had the "U.S. filter."  That is to say, they have had
Asian teachers come directly to their countries to
establish centers.  Others have had the "U.S. filter,"
that is, U.S.-born teachers who have done the same. 
And then there are the centers whose Asian teachers
have died off without local successors and then the
sangha imported U.S.-born teachers who bring their own
brand of "filtered dharma" into the mix.  

Someday, if I ever have the time and funding to do it,
I'd like to research the differences among all these
centers in Latin America.  For my part, I'm at the
point where I'd rather be at a center that lacks a
"U.S. filter."  There are only a couple of them here.

Katherine  
San José, Costa Rica








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