Authors: John Updike
Well, not to make a sob story out of this, it got to be the late Fifties, the early Sixties. I read Alan Watts and Krishnamurti and Salinger and Ginsberg. I read the Upanishads and, right there, hit this terrific verse, where the King of Death says to Nachiketa: “The Supreme Person, of the size of a thumb, the innermost Self, dwells forever in the heart of all beings.” That was Him!—my old pal God, the size of a thumb, and with just that backwards curve, you know, that a thumb has. I was at Northeastern at the time, reading poli. sci. and introductory psych., and a lot of other crap that was supposed to translate into some ass-kissing desk job at John Hancock or City Hall. Suddenly I was sick of competing with nerds. I could have been shipped to Vietnam but turned out to be 4-F—too asthmatic. I thanked old God and took off for India. Unlike a lot of the trash went there after the Beatles cruised Calcutta, I stuck. Where’s the imposture in that? I found peace, I gave peace. India made sense to me—Buddhism made sense to me—the way you can take as much or little as you want, the way even nothing is
something.
After fifteen years I
was
Indian. The people that came to that first ashram in Ellora—there on the edge of town, this falling-down tin-roofed lime-green house—were almost all of them Westerners. Why would they want to come to another Westerner? Subliminally, of course, what attracted them was that I
was
a Westerner—my vasanas spoke their language. I spoke to their hangups. But up front I had to be strange—I had to look like something else, a fresh chance. So I gave myself an Indian childhood as a beggar boy in Bombay—what’s the big deal? Maybe I once
was
a beggar in Bombay, a Shudra gone to seed, and not good enough even at that, so for my sins I got shoved into the incarnation of a messed-up little Armenian just across the Cambridge line, across the line from all those hotsy-totsy bits of ass like you. You’ve been bliss, frankly. The way you talk in complete sentences, the way you hold your head, your
posture. Nice. I mean really nice. Now you begrudge me everything because of a little name-change. What’s the point of living if you can’t shuck skins?
No point, Art.
Come on, Kundalini. What’s your old name? I’ve forgotten
.
Sarah.
Come on, Sarah, put away that long face. Stop trying to lay a guilt trip on me with those big dark eyes. Guilt trips went out with the rest of the garbage
.
Tell me. What is not garbage to you?
Purusha is not garbage. The eternal present is not garbage
.
Don’t touch my breasts. I mean it.
What’s this protecting your tits again suddenly? We’ve been friendly—didn’t you like it? Multiple o’s, every time
.
They were lovely but, as you said, partook of flux. Flux and duhkha.
Fuck flux and duhkha. Listen. I need a vacation. Every man needs a vacation. For a man, a woman is a vacation. I need you to love me the way only you can
.
I do love the way you used to say “love.”
My luff for you wears a million guises. You are Shakti, I am Shiva. I am Krishna and you are Radha, shlippery with your own sweat and rajas, your hair all in shnakes and your clothes torn in delirious disharray
.
No, really—hands off, Arthur. Arthur Steinmetz.
My father used to say Steinmetz was a genius, my mother would say he was a dwarf. The brains behind Edison. The feeling of your ass in my hands, one cheek in each
.
Darling, I’m not kidding. We’ve had it.
Why? Because of names? What does it matter, what name I have? Or you have? A little flick of karma, and I’m a centipede, and you’re a chestnut tree in blossom
.
I can’t exactly say why. For a woman to give herself—and it’s utterly lovely, to give yourself—there has to be an illusion, or it’s no good. Maybe “illusion” isn’t the word, since everything is illusion. There has to be an appearance—a possibility—of progress. There has to be rectitude.
We’ll make progress. We’ll have rectitude. The garbage’s gone, all that drugs and paranoia. Melissa’s coming with her moola. Stay here and we’ll build it up again, along more classic lines. Hinayana this time instead of Mahayana. Less group stuff, more one-on-one. Cut out all the commercial crap, keep off TV. Just the how-to-live books and the less far-out tapes, and go for a more modest operation that won’t make waves in the courts. Keep peace with the local squares. This is a great spot, if we don’t abuse the water situation
.
Why do you want me? In your philosophy, one woman is as good as another. We’re all lotus to your linga. With this particular lotus, I fear the bloom is off. Though of course I do adore you. More this moment than ever; there’re all these new layers of you to get to know.
But no rectitude. Who’d you ever know who had rectitude? Your husband—what was his name? Charles. Charles the Worthy. Whenever you mention him you get prim and cute and arch your back. What’s going on between you two? I get the feeling he and I exist in some sort of symbiosis. It’s making me jealous as hell
.
Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t stand him.
You ask me why I want you. One, you’re a knockout, with these super knockers and a two-handsful ass
.
Keep your hands to yourself. Don’t be so adolescent. I’m almost forty-three.
Ripe. That’s nice. Two, you’re every inch a lady, and I seem to be a sucker for that. My own social insecurity, no doubt. Everything goes back to having a lousy childhood
.
Mine wasn’t that great, you know. My mother—
Three, you know the ropes here, and, frankly, I don’t. I reach into myself and say what comes but the organizational part of it has always been over my head. There’s always been women to do the—
The dirty work.
The nitty-gritty, the sthula side of things
.
You would have to do with fewer limos.
Absolutely—that was just an image kind of thing. The humor of it appealed to me, being dragged along these dusty washboard roads like they were Fifth Avenue
.
And the diamonds. They should be sold.
Sure, sell ’em—though you won’t get half of what we paid. Again, it was the symbolism, the Buddha Realm bit, the parinirvana part of it. It got people’s attention: gave ’em a little shock. Stop people short for even a second, and you have that much more of a chance of enlightenment fighting its way past the aham and all that defensive furniture
.
I understand the theory; but the practice has proved to be very expensive.
You may or may not believe this, but I really don’t give a shit about any of this material garbage. It’s all external, it’s all just semiotics. I
am
non-attached, that’s not just bullshit
.
Then I, too, may be dispensed with.
To you I’m attached. Maybe not forever; as you say, I’m subjected to a lot of temptation. But for now I’d like you to hang around. I’d
luff
for you to hang around
.
Don’t
do
that to me. Say that word that sweet way.
Hey … Flash: Watertown boy confesses emotional dependency on North Shore matron! Ashram recovers, Arizona declares bank holiday
.
Thanks, dear, but, truly, no thanks. I figure I’ve had as much sahasrara as I can stand. And if you or your other in-residence Shaktis try to keep me from going, I’ll tell the world you’re really Art Steinmetz. Now that
would
be a news flash.
Don’t talk ugly, Sarah. We’re trying to get back on an even keel, you and I. I don’t know how good that is as blackmail—it might leak out anyway, if the media keep working me over, or Durga tries to make a killing on her story. It might not hurt so much. It might just stop people short for that second we were talking about and let in some light. You’ve heard me at darshan—you can say it’s all bullshit and still they dig it. They think your saying it’s bullshit is bullshit. Deep in Kaliyuga as we are, it’s hard to come up with bad publicity
.
Well, at the least you’d have to scrap a lot of T-shirts. I think you’re a teentsy bit bluffing. I think you
like
being the Arhat.
All it means is “the deserving one.” I deserve all I can get, after the lousy upbringing I had
.
What do the scriptures say of the arhat? “In character as excellent as the gods, in meekness as the ascetic, and in wrath as the thunderbolt.”
That’s me. Speaking of vajra, let’s lie down to talk. I got to get used to this idea of doing without my Kundalini. I’ll miss those multiple o’s
.
I’ll miss them too. But I think they were just a stage.
Sure. Use me and throw me away
.
We throw ourselves away. All of us. Isn’t that what you taught?
I forget what I taught. I get frightened, Sarah. All this spiritual responsibility is frightening. I need you to give me some structure. I need those big tits of yours to suck. I need to hold on to your ass
.
Stop trying to sex me up. That’s very chauvinistic, what you imply—that women don’t get frightened too.
Buddhatvam yoshidyonisamsritam
.
Oh sure. Women are gods. Women are dirt. It comes to the same. Women are just like men are—little bits of purusha caught in prakriti, lost and isolated in all that duhkha. Why did it happen? How did purusha get so polluted?
The explanation is, it allowed itself a moment, just a moment in all that eternity, of self-reflection. And
, whoomph,
everything clouded over. Bingo: maya. But fear not, Kundalini. A way out exists. The thinking brain—buddhi—can lead man—and woman, if you insist she needs an out—to the edge of awakening. When prakriti is recognized as itself, it flees the spirit, the Sankhya-sutras put it, like a dancer who has satisfied her master’s desire
.
And isn’t
that
a chauvinistic image, by the way?
Come on, ease up on the gender politics. I’m trying to answer your question. People want to confuse purusha with the chittavrittis, or with buddhi; but these are just the most complex and rarefied manifestations of prakriti. Prakriti, like purusha, is eternal, but it has a kind of incipient motion, a teleological instinct. Once it departed from its original state of alinga, energy appeared, monstrous amounts of it, called “mahat.” And then evolution, parinama, took over. Come here, you sweet hotsy-totsy. Let me check if Buddhahood still resides in your yoni. I’ll eat the bastard out
.
Don’t be gross. What I’ve never understood about nirvana—
Yes, you little yum-yum?
How does it differ from extinction?
Who says it differs?
All that Mahayana business does—but maybe that’s just popular superstition, icing an originally austere cake. The same thing happened in Christianity. But I can appreciate how the popular mind works: why have all this religion to attain just what we’re afraid we’re going to get anyway? I mean utter death, utter extinction.
Cut it out, Sarah. You’re frightening me. It was bad enough always having my parents threatening each other with genocide
.
See? You’re no help. You just reduce everything to the personal.
You haven’t been a sannyasin long enough to understand. You
haven’t burned away your ego, your phalatrishna. You must become shunya. You must become emptiness. Shunya also means a girl of low caste, a slut. When you become an utter slut, then vajra will shatter you. Buddha will fill you
.
When does he fill
you?
When he fills
you.
Thanks a lot.
Baby, all your questions—they are optical illusions of the mind. They disappear in the right light. You still have that Christian capitalist me-first mind-set
.
Look who’s talking—Art Steinmetz, the pseudo-Hindu.
Steinmetz, the Arhat, Krishna, Buddha—you’re hung up on these secondary distinctions
.
If your mind-set is so great, why do you keep saying you’re frightened? Why are you begging me to stay?
Being a jivan-mukta, you’re still a person. You’re like the potter’s wheel that keeps turning, though the pot is finished. I am not begging. I am respectfully inviting
.
I respectfully decline.
We had such super maithuna
.
We did, but funnily enough that’s not a reason to stay. It’s a reason to go.
Spoken like a man
.
If you had spoken like a man you would have told me who you were.
I am what I have ever been
.
A liar. A sham.
You know, you
have
gotten a bit butch since coming here
.
I used to hear Durga call you Art and I thought I was mishearing her Irish accent.
So it’s jealousy of Durga this is all about. She was in on something you weren’t
.
Shams. That’s what men are. Liars. Hollow frauds and liars.
All of them.
You’re
the nothing, not us cunts.
You’re
the shunya.
Ah, shit, Momma. Suddenly you’re boring me
.
[
end of tape
]
December 1
(New Moon)
Dear Mahima—
It filled me with limitless joy to receive your letter announcing your rebirth as a sannyasin. The shanti of the Buddha penetrates everywhere, and will redeem every atom before the end. Your supplementary loan of five hundred thousand ($500,000) is hereby gratefully acknowledged and its instant repayment at your pleasure guaranteed. Its temporary repose within the Treasury of Enlightenment will go far to repair the damage in these past months done the ashram by its ego-ridden enemies both within and without, and to fuel the flame of dispassionate wisdom which we seek to set before the world. To quote the blessed Dhammapada: “It is sweet to have friends in need; and to share enjoyment is sweet. It is sweet to have done good before death; and to surrender all pain is sweet.”
You will find many changes when you return. The security force, now called the Peace Patrol, has been much reduced, and no longer wears its lavender paramilitary uniform, with belting and epaulettes. Instead, our young protectors, no less healthy and vigorous than before, wear loosely fitting karate pajamas, and instead of Uzis and Galils arm themselves only with wands of hickory wood and attitudes of impregnable
benevolence. Miraculously, the number of trespassers and spies they once had to repel has markedly diminished, and if you find the outermost sentry post deserted, have your driver himself swing back the de-electrified gate and serenely proceed.