Isolated in our castles

Steve Himmer commented "The American Dream is to buy a big house and build a fence around it, and the more isolated you become the more successful you are.", in response to my dolorous post about a lack of a good social circle.

Last night I read in The Spirit of Zen by Alan Watts an interior version of the same:

Briefly, [Buddha's] doctrine is that man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep for ever things which are essentially impermanent. Chief among these things is his own person, for this is his means of isolating himself from the rest of life, his castle into which he can retreat and from which he can assert himself against external forces. He believes that this fortified and isolated position is the best means of obtaining happiness; it enables him to fight against change, to strive to keep pleasing things for himself, to shut out suffering and to shape circumstances as he wills. In short, it is his means of resisting life.

Joe's bemusement with the question "what religion are you" reminded me of an interview with Martin Prechtel I read in The Sun magazine (April 2001), where he talks about the Tzutujil language of Santiago Atitlan:

...the Tuzutujil language...has no verb to be. Tzutuil is a language of carrying and belonging, not a language of being. Without to be, there's no sense of this or that...One cannot say, "She is a mother", for instance. In Tzutujil, you can only call someone a mother by saying whose mother she is, whom she belongs to... In a culture with the verb to be, one is always concerned with identity. To determine who you are, you must also determine who you are not. In a culture based on belonging, however, you must bond with others. You are defined by where you stand and whom you stand with.

How interesting that these threads weave together, and even to my surprise mention a Guatemalan community.

Discuss

July 26, 2002 11:10 PM