The Buddha meditated and meditated and meditated until he found the First Noble Truth: suffering is universal. Is it? Really? What’s so noble about that? Mum suffered, no doubt. She was treated like shit. Imagined she was. Dad suffered, in his way. I think he did. The world was never as he wanted. I made sure of that. Carl definitely suffered. Carl suffered with Dad. With Mum. I just could not be what he wanted me to be. Love Dylan. It’s funny Carl was such friends with Mum and Dad. He was the only friend they had in common, maybe the only thing they agreed about at all. Carl would save me. ‘Help yourself to the Scotch, lad. Have yourself a chocolate, son.’ They knew Carl would chuck the music soon enough, and that would be the day he married me and we had a kid, pets, a house. ‘Our Elisabeth’s a kamikaze, lad. Slow her down before she does for all of us.’ Marry Beth, have a kid, get out of the music, make some sensible money. Marry Marriot’s! There’s work for everyone. If only mad Beth would say yes. Why doesn’t she? He’s such a nice boy, so handsome. The son we should have had. Carl. It drove them crazy that they couldn’t force me. Marry Carl, make us happy. Give us a son. Then a grandson. How they suffered! Dukkha. The more blindingly obvious the solution, the more it drove them mad I wouldn’t go for it. Did Jonathan suffer? I don’t think so. I did my best but I couldn’t hurt Jonathan. I didn’t even draw blood. What do you expect from an onion?
The Buddha meditated and meditated and meditated until he found the Second Noble Truth: the origin of suffering. Video day two again. Near the end. ‘The origin of suffering, my friends, is our craving. We are always craving this and craving that. Are we not? Our hunger, our thirst. Our materialism. Or the opposite: we are craving to be free from this, to be free from that. Aversion. We hate this task. We hate this headache.’
Is it true?
My diarist was furious after the video: ‘I crave nothing but to be left alone.’ Words to that effect. ‘Nothing but not to be myself, nothing but to have L vanish into thin air.’
Already a long list, if you ask me.
I craved a man who didn’t crave me. Craving success I could handle. Pocus would have made it, with time. We would, we really would. And I could handle being craved without craving. That was flattering. It was fun. Friends were so impressed by Carl. He was so good-looking, so in love. With me!
‘You’re so lucky,’ Zoë sighed. ‘Why in God’s name do you screw around, when you have a guy like that?’
Because I was craving Jonathan. Who didn’t crave me, didn’t crave anyone, didn’t crave at all.
‘So you would let me go, Jonnie, if I told you I’d found someone else?’
‘Yes, Beth.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Is there any other way?’
‘Carl would never let me go, never. Carl loves me.’
‘I know, Beth. Carl’s young.’
He was smoking. He didn’t crave cigarettes. It was one of my roll-ups. Jonathan could take them or leave them. Take chocolate biscuits or leave chocolate biscuits. Beer, dope. He could take love or leave love.
‘What if I said I’d kill myself, Jonnie? What then?’
I loved to say his name. I’d been drinking, from the flask in his coat pocket.
‘My mum tried to kill herself, you know.’
He shook his head.
‘You wouldn’t fight to stop me?’
‘I’d do everything to dissuade you, Beth.’
‘You’ll never find anybody like me.’
‘I know that.’
‘Never. You can never replace me.’
‘I don’t want to replace you, Beth.’
He was smiling. A bit sadly. Did he suffer? I think he enjoyed smiling sadly. Did he realize how much he was making me suffer? Yes. He did. He really did. What kind of craving is it sends me back to this stranger’s diary? I acquiesce to my punishment, he writes. Acquiesce?
I liked it that Jonathan knew he was making me suffer. That’s weird but true. Why wouldn’t he fight for me? Why? He did care for me. I’m trapped in a process. This is stuff the diarist wrote. What process? I’m writing down another person’s thoughts. But they feel like mine. Thoughts are peelings. You’re turning over someone else’s peelings, Beth. Waste. Leavings. You live in a bin full of crap. Yours or someone else’s. Who cares? Meditation equals sifting through crap. Old thoughts, old peelings. When will they decompose? Six months? Six years? Six lifetimes? One day Jonathan did this — OK, but now, peel it off. Another day Carl said that — fine, now peel it, chuck it. Mum screamed, ‘I’ll kill the bastard!’ — into the bin. Dad says: ‘Your mother’s impossible, Elisabeth.’ Hoover it up. What about waste separation? Sort the shit into separate boxes? No need. It recycles itself anyway. I must have chucked that thought a thousand times already. The peel grows back. Like a scab on a scratch. So peel it off again. Chuck it again. If only we’d never met — feed it to the dogs. If only I hadn’t got drunk that night — kill it, bury it. If we hadn’t met the French boys, if we hadn’t camped on the dunes — stop, Beth, stop! In January — get rid of it! Born in January, an Aquarian — I said, Get rid of it!
But I did. I did get rid, I did I did I did get rid.
Jesus.
Peel till there’s nothing. Think till it’s all thought and gone. But there is nothing. Nibbana’s what’s left after the peeling, after you find there’s no self under all that thought? Nibbana is anatta, then? No self. Nothingness.
Where did you put the veg, Beth?
I peeled it all, Ines.
But I can’t find it, Beth, I need to get the stew on. I’m head cook today, you know. I have my responsibilities.
I’m afraid there was nothing there, Ines. It was all peel.
Heaps of peelings, years of sticky fingers and now all this crap I’ve been writing through the night, all this dirty paper to be thrown away too. Paper peel. Scribbles. Why does it cling to my fingers, why won’t it go? Oh, just go. Fuck off!
What craving is it makes you go back and back and back to the diary of a bloke you don’t even know, a bloke who hates himself, hates his wife. Nothing special there. Doesn’t even seem to love his girlfriend. The craving to suffer, to suffer again, to suffer the same things through someone else. I was so alive when I was dying. Fantastic. And now I’m dead I wish I was dying again. I’m dead I did get rid of it, I did get rid I’m dead.
Oh, do go on, Beth. On and on. Keep repeating so the moments pass. As if they wouldn’t anyway. Keep writing. Fill the pages. The pen is a peeling knife, peeling the thoughts from my head. Throw the pages straight in the bin, recycle the paper. Why not? Then write it again. And again. It would be exactly the same. What else could come out? My songs were all the same in the end. They all sounded the same said the same meant the same. An Aquarian. Forgive me forgive me forgive me.
If I have offended anyone in today’s Dhamma Service, I seek pardon of him or her, I seek pardon of him or her. If anyone has offended me in today’s Dhamma Service, with all my heart I pardon him or her, I pardon him or her.
Loving kindness.