Plan Ahead, Know your rights, Shop around, Avoid a big-ticket urn and columbarium, Create your own memorial, Donate to Science, Saying goodbye
God bless! The 800 dollar funeral, why not? — she was saving everything for the kid, the Lionelhearted boy, and knew he would want the very same—
now he was at the door, he’d crawled to it, a blond man on the other side said, “Sir? Sir? Are you there? Are you in there?” Through thin curtains, Ray saw the group in uniform, huddling amongst themselves with fish and tackle boxes, peering in. He vomited. “He’s there! On the floor!” the door broke and they rushed him with all kinds of gear and IV wetbags and needles and thread: he thought of that day when he first met Ghulpa at pier’s end: water stretching out, infinitesimal expanse, fishing rods buckets and smell of bait.
They put a spike in him, so kind and methodical, the blond bent over and said
No engulfment. No tearing asunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is a whisper. Have you seen that episode too? Ray asked.
relax. Relax oldtimer. You’re gonna be fine. Clean him up. Clean his chin. Can you breathe? Got a good airway. Nothing in there. OK oldtimer Clean him up All around there were holes in the ceiling of the tenement with light pouring in
because there is no sin. The guru said we suffer needlessly from shame and guilt that stem from bad actions but we also suffer pride and arrogance from good actions. Likewise, what happens to us is not personal, but the result of Cosmic Law. We are as sandcastles, elaborately carved yet destroyed by children at the end of a summer’s day — swallowed up whence we came.
The root of guru was Sanskrit: Gu meant darkness, Ru meant light. Pain being from the Latin poena: punishment.
The more he listened, the more Chess felt at ease. Ramesh said events happen, deeds are done, but there is no individual doer of the deed. These are the words of the Buddha. Enlightenment is nothing but the removal of suffering, not of pain — we live in a world of pain and pleasure. We live in a world of duality but must not rest in dualism. To be enlightened is like climbing a ladder or racing up the spiral staircase to get to these rooms: until one reached the final step, one was not there, one did not know how much longer it would take, or what the rooms would look like once one arrived. The strange thing is that enlightenment looks much the same; the only change is perception.
They ended satsang with a prayer.
Give me only one boon, my Lord: May I never forget that Your will alone prevails. I will joyfully sing of Your glorious deeds. Give me the association of people who have total trust in You. I don’t care for Liberation, fame, or fortune. Tukaram says: If you don’t want Enlightenment to happen in this body, let it not happen, my Lord — I don’t care.
THEY stayed with Ramesh for 10 days.
They ate boondi laddoos and coconut burfi to celebrate Lord Ganesha and his sister Laxmi, washing down pumpkin-colored jalebi with cups of chai.
Laxmi (the mortal one) wanted to remain in Bombay, she didn’t know for how long, and Chess was fine with that but said he was going to move on. He gave her some money. 90 % of the settlement was in a bank in the States. When he had a little more energy, he was determined to remove the entire sum and open an account here in India, if legally possible; he hadn’t looked into it yet. He should have done that before they left but it was too much of a megillah. Maybe he would open an account in Canada or the UK or Frankfurt or Switzerland. Anywhere but the States. (Plus, he didn’t like the idea of being traced through financial records.) America was dead to him. America was a country where people went on eBay to buy vintage Hot Wheels for a hundred-thousand dollars, and performed cunnilingus on 7 month old babies in private, peer-to-peer file-sharing chatrooms. America was a place that spent $35,000,000,000 a year to lock up one out of every 138 citizens. The guru’s concepts and words made him less paranoid but there still existed a part of him that worried his friend might awaken and snitch him off. He would then be sought after by authorities, and the IRS would garnish his accounts, whether related to the student loan, Maurie Levin, or some other specious investigation/prosecution. Maybe he’d renounce his citizenship, but Chess needed to make certain such an act wouldn’t send up any flags. He would have to get his money out of there first. (Renouncing was probably a little dramatic.) For now, he considered himself retired. Gone fishin. The Scout is out!