I took one of the notebooks and brought it back to the female side. Not smart. While the others were in the hall this morning I read it. I mean I flicked through it. The handwriting is terrible and I’m not sure I care that much. Then in the next hour of Strong Determination, when the coast was clear, I took it back, with the disinfectant, before hurrying to the hall. We all have to go to Strong Determination, servers and students alike. It wasn’t smart because after reading it I couldn’t concentrate on my meditation. Suddenly all the old thoughts and memories were shouting and screaming and stamping their feet again. Suddenly I’m wondering whether all my time at the Dasgupta hasn’t been completely wasted.
Total Surrender
EVERY TEN DAYS there is a changeover at the Dasgupta. The vow of silence is lifted before lunch. The meditators chatter like crazy for an afternoon, make their donations while they’re still excited and leave the following morning. Retreat over. So if I don’t go back to look at the diary for another eight days it will disappear with whoever wrote it and I’ll be safe. Another group will arrive and I’ll sink back into Dasgupta ways. I’ve already managed one day. I’m feeling better, my equanimity is returning. I can tell by the tension level in my thighs when I’m sitting. Of course I’ve no way of knowing who wrote it because I can’t be on the men’s side when people go back to their rooms. Even then I’d have to be right in the dormitory corridor to see who went to that door or right outside the room when he came to the window to draw his curtains. I don’t really know which women are in which rooms. Why should I? There are so many. We don’t clean the bedrooms during the retreat, but at the end when you sweep under all the beds it’s amazing the stuff you find. Cigarette packs, food wrappers, Cadbury’s, Mr Kipling. A brandy bottle once. People look so solemn when they walk to the Metta Hall before dawn with their hoods over their bowed heads but nearly all of them have stuff they shouldn’t in their rooms.
‘What we are asking of you for the next ten days,’ Harper says, when people arrive, ‘is total surrender.’ It’s the only time he actually makes a speech and he keeps it downbeat and straightforward. ‘You must put yourself totally in our hands. That is the only way you will get results.’ People look solemn and accepting. They’ve read the spiel on the website, so it’s hardly a surprise. But they all hold something back: a magazine, cigarettes, an MP3, something of themselves to hang on to through ten days of silence. Once I found an anal massager. That upset me. It made me laugh. I showed it to Harper. I get pretty angry when people break the rules. You can see they’re exchanging looks when they shouldn’t. Noble Silence also means no eye contact, no intimacy, no sniggering. You think, Why should I bother, if they’re not going to? But it makes me smile too and I’m glad they do it. After all, I talked a fair bit myself the first ten days I was here. There was a nice French girl in my room who hugged me when I cried and gave me mints. She was sweet and very soft. I forget her name. Carl and I used to talk a lot about giving yourself. He said with love the only way was to give yourself absolutely, totally and completely. That’s what love was. I said it wasn’t something a person could just decide yes or no. Some people gave totally when they didn’t want to and others couldn’t give when they did want to and that was the same with music and with anything that needed commitment. You did or you didn’t, you could or you couldn’t, depending on you, depending on the situation. It wasn’t a decision you could take. Now I’ve started sneaking looks at the men in the Metta Hall wondering which one it could be. Why do I want to know? Two days ago I would have taken refuge in the triple gem. Buddham saranam gacchami. Dhammam saranam gacchami. Sangham saranam gacchami. It was a pleasure just to say those words. I take refuge in the Dhamma. But not now. I’m not going to now. Something has changed. Anicca.
Three refuges and also three places on the site where you can check out the men. It’s amazing how sly the Dasgupta people are about separating the sexes. When the first-timers arrive, in their cars, or ferried from the bus stop in the minibus, they have the impression they’re walking into an ordinary old farm building. There’s a porch and a corridor — everybody is chatting, laughing — then a locker room on the left. You put your things in a locker, like at the swimming-pool, your money, books, pens, phone, laptop. Then when you turn the key, it pops out in your hand, so you don’t feel you’ve lost touch with your stuff. You have the key. You can go back any time. You think.
Next there’s a huge room, an old barn it must have been, or cowshed, with rows of tables for eating, and the women go to register on the far right, the men on the left. Then while Harper’s saying his piece about total surrender the locker room is locked up and the door leading back to the entrance and the outside world is shut and placed out of bounds. And as he’s winding up his speech, wishing everyone a good retreat, two servers quietly unfold a partition wall down the middle of the dining hall between the men’s and women’s tables and bolt it into place. And that’s it. You can’t get back to your stuff in the locker room, or out to the road, and you can’t talk to the other sex any more. The only way out of the hall now leads to the bathrooms, the dormitories, the meditation hall and the recreation field, all strictly divided into male and female.
Sometimes, when there are couples, someone gets upset. They knew they were going to be split up, but they haven’t had time to say goodbye. I remember one pregnant woman getting really hysterical. There’s always at least one couple expecting a child, always their first child. They want to feel holy and consecrated. They’re in awe about creation. This woman rushed over as we were pushing home the bolts. I quite like rolling out the partition. I always volunteer. She started shouting and banged a fist on the screen. ‘Goodbyes are overrated,’ I told her.
After this separation there are three places where you can get a look at the men, or more likely see them trying to get a look at you. The wire fence that runs from the bathroom block to the Metta Hall isn’t completely covered with climbers yet. There are gaps. So we’re talking about seeing the opposite sex through wire netting and breaks in jasmine and dog roses, you walking, them walking. With a bit of luck you might get a glimpse of a nice hippie type, but mostly it’s gloomy, gangly boys or older blokes shambling about with their heads bowed over their paunches. It must be tough for older guys at the Dasgupta. They’ve had more time to pile up their bad karma and sankharas. I bet their thighs and ankles burn like hell through the sittings of Strong Determination. Girls get through their shit younger, I suppose. By thirty I reckon I’ll be purified or dead.
Beyond the hall there’s another fence dividing the big field, then the wood. There is no ivy or anything on this fence, but the paths are miles apart and the grass either side is left unmown, so it’s deep and wet. If you turn your head while you’re taking a walk round the field you can maybe see a guy stepping slowly along in his loose meditation pants and shabby top. We’re all shabby at the Dasgupta. Or maybe there’s someone sitting on the bench at the top of the field looking out across the countryside. People sit and stare without really seeing. But that’s about it. Of course, if you pressed on across the field and into the wood, then left the path and fought your way through the brambles to the fence, theoretically you could talk face to face with a man there. I bet some couples do that. If you were desperate you could even climb over and kiss. It’s not so high. Couples have to sign a special clause at the Dasgupta saying they won’t speak to each other or touch each other for the whole ten days of the retreat. But why am I thinking of this? I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be thinking of lovers promising they won’t even try to look at each other. What a luxury! Imagine a couple, in love, she’s expecting a baby, he’s in adoration, and they make a solemn vow not to speak to each other or even look at each other for ten days. For ten precious days of her pregnancy they will be silent and devout, sitting in meditation and purifying their minds to be ready for the birth of their firstborn. They’re quite near to each other, physically — the Dasgupta is not exactly huge — but they don’t try to make contact in any way, except of course in their heads they will be sending constant whispered messages of affection and encouragement: I love you, Treasure, I love you, I really do, our baby will soon be born strong and beautiful and I will love him all the more, or her, because she will be our baby, I will love you in him, or in her, and of course both these parents-to-be are safe in the thought that even though they’re not actually in each other’s arms, the other can’t be cheating on them, it’s impossible, how could anyone cheat on anyone at the Dasgupta Institute? so for the whole ten days they’ll be feeling so pure because they’ve abstained from talking and touching and at the same time completely secure in the knowledge that the moment they’re home, still feeling clean and holy and chattering about all their weird and wonderful meditation experiences, they’re going to jump straight into the sack together and make the most loving and delicious love.