Buddhism and Self

[Greg Goode]

At 01:17 AM 9/26/97 -0400, Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
>The living lineage of Shankaracharya must number in the 10's or 100's of
>thousands.  Not all of them in India either.  And even though it is
>considered a dirty word by some people Advaita Vedanta is an orthodoxy.

Is there any presence of this lineage in the U.S.?  There are lots of
"Vedanta Centers" from the Ramakrishna Math in Europe and the U.S.  But
these are an example of Vedanta of the non-Advaita kind.  I had gone to one
for a while.  Lots of emphasis on the Gita and Ramakrishna's writings, and
they stress karma- and bhakti-yoga, offering Ramakrishna as the object of
devotion.  Most of the American attendees yearn for jnana yoga however.
The swamis say they are not ready, not enough purification and
discrimination (in the sense of "The Crest Jewel of Discrimination") have
been performed.

I would really like to get in touch with a representative of the living
lineage of Shankaracharya in the U.S.  In bookstores and catalogues I don't
see any books written by anyone that I can tell to be from this lineage.
Where are the contemporaries?  Other than the excellent multi-volume
collection edited in London by (I think the first name is Allan) Alston,
and some SUNY publications, I see no books in English on Shankaracharya or
his works.

Any ideas?