But either I had not been able to erase them from my mind or else my interpretation of the koan was wrong. As soon as I drew near them, they all leaped upon me, knocking me to the ground, and kicking me repeatedly. “You macho turd! We’ll teach you some respect!”
What could I do, with five against one? I protected my head as best I could and allowed my body to receive the punishment without protest, taking refuge in my spirit. The blows did not prevent me from remembering another koan: “A monk asked Master Ummon:*18 ‘What happens when the leaves wilt and fall from the tree?’ Ummon answered: ‘An autumn wind blows from my heart.’”
What is irremediable deserves to be loved. With this in mind, I accepted the beating that I could not avoid — partly because I deserved it and also because I felt my life was not in danger, though I would have some bad bruises to deal with later. These boys would not take the risk of committing a serious crime, but my calm evaporated when they started to drag me into an alley, pulling down my pants. In the stinking shadows of the place, I could see their penises were out. My hair stood on end. No koan could convince me to let myself be raped! I started kicking back and screaming, but they immobilized me, holding me flat on the ground, my face against the pavement and my legs spread. Accompanied by a chorus of mocking hoots and insults, a deft hand was rubbing saliva into my anus — but their laughter died suddenly at the sound of a female voice.
“Leave him alone! He belongs to me!”
Obeying this order instantly, the aggressors desisted and left, making the sign of the cross as if confronted by the Holy Virgin herself.
I had thought that all my Zen meditation had rid me of the pride of ego, but as I lay in that stinking, dark alley, my pants down to my knees, limp and crumpled as a dead mollusk and shaking with nervous tension and pain, I found myself suddenly sobbing like a humiliated child.
“Don’t be ashamed, my boy. Don’t give so much importance to being penetrated. These kids aren’t evil. I know them well. They always come to me when they get sick. They attacked you because you offended one of them. Anyway, they’re professionals — even if they had done it to you, they wouldn’t have hurt you. Perhaps they wanted to make you accept your yielding side, which men suppress beneath their hairy chests because of their contempt for women. Come now; get up and come with me. I live very close by, near the taco shop. Look, your knees are raw and bleeding. I’ll disinfect them for you.”
The woman before me was dressed with stark simplicity, and the dignity of her bearing and gestures made me trust her. As we walked toward the taco shop, she spoke to me.
“That day, when you attacked that poor boy, you were talking out loud to yourself without realizing it as you walked down the street. You walked right past me, but you didn’t even see me. I heard you insulting yourself [here she produced a perfect imitation of my voice and accent]: ‘I’m a spiritual whore, inviting the Buddha to possess me and offer me enlightenment as payment.’ You despise yourself and you despise those boys — but you don’t understand that they, just like you, are offering a service. They help their clients (most of them husbands and fathers) to discharge their homosexual impulses, and you serve the goddesses. By meditating, you develop consciousness, and that is what the goddesses created us to have. Their divine game is for the entire material universe to become conscious. At the end of time, this cosmos is to become pure spirit. In making your body more subtle, you help the supreme Mother Creators accomplish their task. You were right when you said [and again, her imitation was perfect]: ‘I’ve had enough! Meditating, immobile as a corpse, serves no purpose!’ When you transform your body into a statue, you are following the wrong path. It is one that the goddesses have already exhausted: the materialization of spirit. All that your eyes see, all that you hear, taste, and touch are petrified divinities. Within every stone, plant, and animal, a consciousness is trapped and must be liberated — not through destruction, but through mutation. You may not believe it, but what you call reality is essentially a song of love. Everything — even excrement — must have wings. You must realize that even these prostitutes are, in a sense, saints — as saintly as that beggar woman sleeping next to the garbage cans. The Other is the one you see in yourself.”
Next to the taco shop, between high, peeling walls, an alley appeared. At its end we arrived at a dilapidated spiral stairway. Filling my nostrils was a greasy cloud of smoke that came from the chimney of the taco kitchen, where tortillas were cooked over coals. I began to cough. The stench was unbearable. Without seeming to notice it, doña Magdalena climbed the stairs with the dignity of a queen. We arrived at a steel-plated door. It was so low that we both had to bow our heads in order to enter. I heard her murmur: “Humility is the key that opens all doors.”
In her small apartment, a sweet perfume filled the air, banishing the greasy odor. “It is copal,” she explained. “It is used in temples and also in tombs.”
The room was rectangular, with one small window and bare white walls. Instead of electric light, there were long, thick wax candles placed in each corner. In the center, under a small awning, was a massage table. Behind a curtain, there was a small toilet. Behind another, there was a small kitchen. A medium-size wooden case served as a closet.
Doña Magdalena invited me to sit on the massage table. No sooner was I sitting upon the cotton padding than she was rubbing the bruises on my face with a cream that smelled of benzoin. My pain was soothed quickly.
She seemed to have changed personality. I felt as if she came from another world. Her deep, pure regard had an intoxicating effect on me. I no longer heard the noise of the streets outside; voices and odors faded and reality became like a dream. She spoke in a slow, careful monotone, as if dictating to me.
“For the moment, you do not know who you are, but you are searching for yourself with such intensity that we have decided to help you. . we, the elementary particles of eternal consciousness. What we are going to teach you is not just for yourself. Seeds are given to he who sows in order for him to fructify the earth. What you will be given will also be for others. If you keep it, you will lose it. If you give it, you will finally be able to have it. Until now, you have worked by immobilizing your body, considering as ephemeral everything that does not belong to you, thinking to find in a corpse the immortal spirit that you are. Yet, my son, your mind is also on loan to you, and it too is doomed to disappear. Just as the body does, it must abandon all hope of immortality. They both must cease to live as separate beings and must unite the male and female, free from the tyranny of time, plunged into a now without end, giving totally to the work of creating a sublime state of happiness. When you dissolve the opposites that you have coagulated and, having been two, become one, then a star will shine in the dark night. . This happiness in being alive nourishes the divine eye that has been watching you from the center of your ephemeral existence. If your joy is authentic, if you have burned away all hopes, if you cease to be a body carrying a mind or a mind carrying a body, if you are at once dense and transparent matter, you will be received in the heart of the goddess like a lost sheep who returns home. Your individual luck will be the same as the luck of the cosmos. Until now, you have been traveling the way of the intellect, but we shall guide you in the way of the body.