A still body is a still mind. Right concentration.
Stillness is awareness is equanimity. Right understanding.
What was Susie’s huge opportunity? Has she been signed up by a major recording studio? Have they invited her to play at the Coliseum? Do it, Susie! Your dad’s right. Blow ’em away! Or did they just give her a good place in college? A chance to go to Cambridge with Meredith? Then the hell with it. Go for your man, girl. You are in love with a man who is in love with you. How often does that happen? Do it. Go for it. Carl loved me, really loved me. Telling Jonathan love didn’t exist, I discovered what it was. I’d give anything, my diarist said. Who hasn’t got behind the wheel drunk some time? Who hasn’t risked killing and being killed? Damn.
‘Never try to regulate your breathing. If the breath passes through the left nostril, then let it be the left nostril. If it passes through the right nostril, let it be the right nostril. Just observe. Just observe.’
Between long pauses Dasgupta’s voice breaks the silence.
‘Things as they are, as they are, not as you would like them to be. The breath, as it is. As it is.’
I can’t sit still if I’m thinking. I tense up. The more I don’t want to think, the more I tense up. I think about tensing up. Everything aches and cramps, because I’m thinking. The thoughts are in my ankles now, they’ve crept up to my thighs, bad thoughts, gripping my shoulders, pressing their thumbs in my neck. Thoughts are pain, pain, pain. I’m thinking about thinking about tensing up. I start to hear everything. Every sniff and shuffle and cough. Marcia shifting from ham to fat ham in those nylon trousers. Huff puff, huff puff. The rain drumming. A man yawns on the far side of the hall. Pretty loudly. And again. So loud it’s even funny. And again! He’s doing it on purpose. I let my eye slide to the left. Yep, the course manager on the male side is hurrying along the aisle. He’s going to warn him.
I can’t go on. The pain in my ankles is worse. The thoughts in my ankles. Bad thoughts. Jonathan. Pain is a door. Locked today. Pain is a locked door, a bolted door. You can’t go through. Out of bounds. And there’s the drip. It falls from the roof and ploofs into the carpet, behind me, to my right. A couple of yards back. I never change my posture in Strong Determination. Never. Servers should set an example. Old students should be capable of sitting an hour in stillness.
Ploof.
Pain is welding my calves together. Painful thoughts. I can’t relax. I’m one with my diarist now. Back to day one, that is. Sankhara. Sankhara. The unskilled actions of the past resurface as pain when we meditate. How can anyone believe such crap? But they do. It’s true. I feel it’s true. Ghost words coming back. Pain is pus pushed from old infections, old betrayals. I was so skilled in unskilled actions, so good at playing off boyfriends, parents, producers. Now their words come back. Cruel words. Kind words. The kind words are the cruellest. Be happy, Beth, be peaceful, be liberated, li-ber-a-ted, liberated. You are in the present now, Beth. Not the past. The present where there is no conflict. Here in the Metta Hall there are no decisions. All memories, all plans, are insubstantial. Your diarist is insubstantial. His daughter insubstantial. Jonathan insubstantial. Carl insubstantial. Dad insubstantial. Beth insubstantial. Insubstantial the night on the beach, the night on the beach. Philippe. Hervé. The shouts. The breakers.
Despite all the murder stories? God.
On my left Kristin is silent as the grave. She is not happy or calm, but she is silent. How do I know that? How do I know that she has issues too? I know. She has issues but she is dealing with them, she is sitting her way through them. Her back is bowed. Her head falls a little to one side. Meredith is upright and composed. Meredith is a girl doing well at finishing school. Her back is so straight. She balances a book on her head. With no effort. She knows her ps and qs, pronounces her ts and ds correctly. Meredith is learning a lesson because her parents have paid for it, even if you pay nothing to come to the Dasgupta. The Dasgupta costs nothing but total surrender. Mrs Harper is in front of me, her big square back quietly breathing. Livia is to her right, then Stephanie, then Ines. They are all bathed in Mi Nu’s glow. Only Marcia and I are out of it. I hate Marcia. I’ve barely met her. Marcia’s a bag of shit.
Bless her. Blessings on odd days. Resist aversions on even.
The moon is impossibly distant. Was there a moon that night on the beach? Take all his diaries away and chuck them. Do him that favour. Take his life and trash it. Do it! Go to his room, gather his books, chuck ’em in the trash. Best forgotten. Concentrate on your breathing, Beth. The breath playing round the nostrils. You imagine your thoughts are so interesting, don’t you, Mr Diarist? That’s the truth. It doesn’t matter if they’re painful. Your thoughts make you interesting. Oh, I have such complex thoughts. Oh, I’m such an interesting person. He loves himself writing that letter, writing his diary. Oh, the poor tortured soul. I’m such a fascinating man. The way I suffer. I’m so tender to my daughter. Oh, bollocks! Spray the crap away. Excuse me, Professor Tony, could you scrape off these diaries? This wordshit. So I can stick them in the dishwasher. A professor of linguistics maybe? This storyshit. Or literature. Concentrate on your breathing, Beth. Your breathing is more interesting than this diary. The nature of your breath at the present moment is a matter of the utmost importance to you. The utmost importance.
I’d give my right arm to be in love the way—
No!
I uncrossed my legs and struggled to my feet. My ankles were numb. They weren’t there. I stumbled between the cushions and out into the porch.
Mrs Harper was on her feet, following.
I dragged on my shoes and out into the rain.
‘Elisabeth! You’re not supposed to leave the hall during Strong Determination. You know that. You’re a server.’
I made a face. ‘I’ve got wind, Mrs Harper. I didn’t want to disturb.’
Vegetables
THERE IS NO killing at the Dasgupta, but endless cutting up, endless topping and tailing, chopping and dicing and slicing and grating. We’re doing the veg again. This is a kind of punishment, as Paul sees it. Paul’s another blandly sexless Dhamma bloke, the kind who always obeys the rules. Without thinking. He doesn’t think. He has a barber’s haircut with a parting and wears pale blue shirts and grey pullovers. Harper wears a grey pullover too. They’ve surrendered totally. Kristin obeys the rules, but Kristin is thinking and suffering. Kristin is trying to grow. Oh, but it’s crazy liking and hating people you’re only going to see for ten days, especially when the whole point of the Dasgupta is how mad it is to get attached to anything since everything in all existence arises only to pass away.
At the three o’clock meeting, Kristin was the only one not to volunteer, for anything. We pull in chairs from the male and female servers’ rooms and sit in a semicircle round the Tasks Board by the small fridge. Tomorrow is black bean stew and fig roll. Day four. Vipassana day. Ines volunteered to be main chef. Again. Ines volunteers for everything. She has nominated herself for Miss Dhamma Server 2010. Bathing suit not required. Paul assigned Marcia to work alongside her. ‘The bean stew’s a bomb,’ I told Marcia. Meredith began to grin. Yesterday I found out that Meredith’s been coming to the Dasgupta since she was thirteen. Her mum brought her to the children’s courses. Now it’s a home from home. ‘I’ve always meditated,’ she says, and starts to giggle.