‘Too bad we dirtied the saucepans,’ Tony says. He’s realized I deliberately left it late before telling them about the pan. He’s not stupid. A professor of psychology maybe? Meredith says since she can’t chop or wash up she’ll help me lay out the dining hall.
At the Dasgupta we move constantly back and forth between the same four or five spaces. The double doors of the kitchen open on to a short corridor. Ahead and left are the swinging double doors of the male dining hall. Ahead and right the female. We crash back and forth with our trolleys, pushing stacks of plates, cutlery, the salad, the rice and beans and, today, in the nick of time the curry. Done it. It’s all in place. No, we’ve forgotten the dressing. ‘Who was on salad dressing?’ The recipe book says tahini. I rush to find the ingredients. Ralph starts to measure and mix. Paul comes over and says, ‘Perhaps it would be better if you worked with Kristin, Elisabeth.’ Meaning what exactly? Then I remember the gong. ‘God, I’m on gong, Paul. Have to rush. You do the dressing.’
The gong hangs from a branch of the hawthorn tree a few yards from the Metta Hall. There’s a fresh stillness here after the steamy excitement of the kitchen. The low hills are damp and silent. Nothing stirs in the hall. It’s hard to believe there are a hundred and forty people in there. The gong is big and has a weird triangular hat shape with upturned corners. The hammer sits in a cleft between trunk and branch. It’s heavy, all of old wood, probably oak or something, with a felt cover to protect the surface of the gong, which you have to hit at the corners, not in the middle.
Boing!
I’m playing an instrument again. I’m calling the meditators back from their trance.
Boy-oy-oyng!
What a great sound. So loud and long. The meditators will be feeling it on their skin. Your whole body rings when the gong’s struck. The sound soaks through you. It’s the opposite of a siren. Loud, but calming. No, it’s the opposite of some small scratchy noise that irritates. The gnawing at night in our bedroom. Behind Kristin’s bed. Or the drip from the hall roof when it rains.
Boy-oy-oy-oy-oyng!
I’ve released my diarist from his pains. Stand up and walk, old man. Come and get your Brazilian curry, courtesy of Ines. Then I’m sad that I didn’t write those words in his diary. Your pain is a door, go through it. I mean, I did write them, but I tore the page out. I’m courageous, but not totally reckless. I hate that. Why can’t I be totally reckless and the hell with it, or not self-destructive at all, sensible and serene? A good wifey for Carl. Why am I never one thing or the other?
I tore it carefully, picking out the little ears of paper that stick in the seams, then put the diary back where I’d found it, on the floor by his bed. To compensate for chickening out like that I rummaged in his suitcase, found an envelope and took it. It was in a side pocket in the lining, an open envelope with sheets of paper. I wonder why he is using a woman’s suitcase, red with a pink lining. Why are the notebooks all red? ‘Dearest Susie’, it started. I felt pretty excited just having it in my pocket.
In the kitchen we’re noisy individuals. We yell over the sound of the liquidizer. We argue. But the meditators are a silent herd. They stream out of the hall like cows driven from stall to pasture. I love the commotion of cooking and preparing food, the way I used to love the last minutes setting up stage before Zoë hit her bass and the drums began to beat. I grabbed the mike. The lights came up and the pink smoke. But now I wish I was one of the herd. I really do. Watching the meditators pour out of the hall, I feel such a yearning, to be dumb, to be silent. Around day three people begin to walk more slowly. They’ve accepted that they’re really here, really in the Dasgupta, for the full ten days. There is nothing to hurry for. There is no more struggle. ‘The achievement of meditation is to get out of a mentality of achievement.’ Video day three. They find pleasure in moving slowly, opening and closing knees and ankles, shifting their weight from left to right and right to left. I wonder whether my diarist has begun to accept his pains, whether he has found the door he must go through if his time at the Dasgupta is not to be wasted. I wish I was opening that door now. I wish I was passing through pain to the other side, the vipassana side. Like Mi Nu Wai. Mi Nu is beyond pain. Even when she tosses her hair and flounces out of the hall, she’s still on the other side. I’m sure she is. I’m sure it is possible to be there always.
Two servers must watch the meditators eat. Since they can’t speak, can’t ask for things, we have to check that they have everything they need. They stumble out of the hall, come down the path, past the bathrooms, past the dormitories, into the dining hall. They really do look like a herd, ambling to their trough. We watch them queue at the serving table, ladle curry into bowls, sit down to eat. When the kitchen roll runs out and they have nothing to wipe their hands on, Kristin hurries to get some more. Kristin’s about a foot taller than me. Coming back, she brings a fresh stack of plates and bangs them down on the table. That’s the second time. I’ll have to talk to her about it. We must respect the meditators’ quiet. All our noise in the kitchen is to make their silence here possible.
The women fill their plates, take their seats and stare into space. The favourite places are the stools at the counter under the windows and along the wall. You don’t need to face people across the table. You can eat slowly, gazing out of the windows at the sheds and fields, or just staring at the white walls. A white wall is the perfect mirror for a calm mind.
I wish I could watch the men eating. That would be interesting. I’d like to know if they react the same way the women do. Maybe they don’t like the places by the wall. Imagine Jonathan coming here to meditate one day, Jonathan hearing Harper ask for total surrender, Jonathan bowing his head and accepting, Jonathan joining the Dasgupta herd.
Or Carl.
The salad needs replenishing. Meredith comes with the news that the men’s side is out of curry and can we spare some of ours. Even with total segregation the men are preying on us. Sorting her dirty plates on to the separate piles, a petite little girl lets out a loud belch. Brilliant. I wonder if she would have done that if there were men around. It’s a big relief not to have to look okay for a man, not to have to think about clothes or makeup. On the other hand I always loved making up. I love seeing other women made up. What a riot with Zoë before a gig. With her black cowboy hat and huge eyes. ‘Let me do your lipstick,’ she asked. ‘Please, Beth, let me.’
Not Strong Enough
PRIVACY IS NOT a priority at the Dasgupta. If you don’t have a self, why would you need to be alone? For eight months I’ve shared a bedroom with other servers, sometimes as many as four, women and girls, snorers, sneezers. I have meditated third from the end of a row of eight, six rows behind, two in front. I have cooked beside others, for others, cleaned up after others, eaten others’ leftovers, cold. I have no problem with this. I had settled down to watch myself change. Perhaps I could become a kind of mystic, despite that itch to sing and dance. I’ve seen visions at the Dasgupta. I have passed through walls, felt eyes open behind my eyes, seen other eyes, deeper still, staring upward through the dark. I have been happy here. Then I walked into a man’s room, opened a diary, picked up a pen.
Now I’m wired and zinging like I’d snorted a line. And anxious. After lunch duty I’d meant to go to the loo and read the letter. I even started whistling. Perhaps I was close to some big discovery. But what? And who cares? Who cares about this guy and his big dilemma? I’m ridiculous. I opened the loo door, stopped, closed it, walked away. At first I thought I was holding back till after we’d eaten. I’d been excited all morning thinking about this letter in my pocket, so I might as well stretch the feeling out and read it later when I had time to gloat. Then I realized I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t read it at all. It would be too much. I’d remembered something: Our minds are not strong enough to have the right relation to certain things.