“After you departed, I realized something I had been unable to voice or admit, even to myself. I was in love with you. There! I said it. O, how I suffered, Queenie! How I grieved. And all the while, I told myself such torment was unavoidable, that it was the anguish of the old, attached Self, an unhealthy aspect of the ‘me’ I was struggling to snuff out for good. After all, I had just begun my love affair with the renunciate’s way, my foolhardy fling with enlightenment. Ah, but enlightenment turned out to be a bigger tease than you ever were!
“As soon as you returned to Paris, I became very, very ill. Do you remember how sick I was when we first arrived, the night before going to Mogul Lane? That was merely a foreshadowing, the appetizer if you will. The entree came after you’d gone. Looking back, it’s clear I’d acquired that sickness unto death diagnosed by a certain melancholy Dane, the fear and trembling that accompany the realization the Self must die — this walking, talking collection of vanities, addictions and absurdities calling itself ‘Kura’ must die. As you may well know, my love, one has never been truly ill unless one has been ill in India! You lay in your sweaty bed of nails, riveted by the ceiling stains, scanning them like tea leaves for meaning — and none of the outcomes are good. One’s mood becomes quite dire. The American sent two ladies of a certain age to take care of me. The fever raged for two weeks. I hallucinated freely — mad dogs and midday sun but alas, no Englishmen. I was certain I would die, which in effect I did. Between visions I thought, What fatal idiocy to have journeyed all this way! I’d traveled thousands of miles to reach here—you traveled with me — to finally meet the Great Guru, the man I dreamed would consent to be my teacher. Astonishingly, I’d failed to give any credence to the rather ominous detail that I’d pinned the tail of my spiritual aspirations on a corpse! The aunties sponged me down with cold rags while my troubled mind wandered this way and that, like an imbecile in top hat and tails on a serious errand… and all of it came to nothing. In the end, I stood before pride’s funhouse mirrors and took my full measure. What reflected back was my obsession with the goal not the journey — ergo, finding my guru — and in that febrile moment, it became painfully obvious the adventure had been doomed to failure. My fate was sealed! How could I have been so blind? So you see I couldn’t very well run away and follow you, not after all the metaphysical ruckus I’d raised. I was like a mountain climber so close to summiting that he defies that inner voice telling him the weather has turned and he must descend if he is to live — the devil take it, he summits anyway! Now it was too late. I was near the summit, freezing, without oxygen… dying in a cheap room in Bombay, far from Paris, far from anyplace called home, far — oh so far, my Queen! — from the realm of Pure Land Rebirth. The fever raged, scorching the earth of the American, when I had no reason to fault him — not as yet. Fire and brimstone! I surmised that it was not a mountain I had tried to summit but a mountebank—and an American one, to boot! My descent would not be to the foothills but down, down, to the hell of Hungry Ghosts! And to make things worse, if that were possible, I’d chased off my lady. Whilst casting about for false gods I had excommunicated the real one, the yogini in front of my very nose! I tell you, Queenie, those were miserable times!
“When the fever receded, I lay seared in my bed, a shell-shocked soldier after furious battle. Weak but clear-headed. I don’t think I’ve ever been that lucid in my life — I no longer pined, nor did I mourn you, but celebrated your existence without remorse. I thanked the Heavens that our lives had intersected for the brief and beautiful time that they did. Upadana8 left my body. Like dye entering water, my gratitude extended to everyone I’d ever loved and to everyone I’d ever hated too. My anger, fear and consternation, my seizures of longing became those of the world and the world gave them back; and somewhere in that process, gold was spun. My guru—‘the American’ as you like to call him — later said I’d experienced metta, an instantaneous if temporary bodhicitta.9
“After a week of convalescence, I attended my guru’s satsang and — how to convey — he smiled at me from his chair and all seemed right with the world. A simple smile that encompassed everything! O, Queenie, I had the strongest feeling — quickly ratified by my guru himself — that he knew, knew exactly what had transpired. He saw the change that had taken place within. That was when he spoke to me so tenderly of bodhicitta and the Six Perfections. He said how humbled and grateful I should be for having had the experience and not to let pride carry me away.
“I never looked back. It took some doing but with the help of a blood-brother — the Samoan who watched over you at the clinic, you knew him as ‘Gaetano’—with Gaetano’s long-distance help, I pulled off the trick of disengaging from various undertakings (there’s a deliberate play on words there), both legitimate and illegitimate. He saw to it that final debts were paid and collected too. A large sum of money accrued to a Swiss account for ready access should the need arise.
“I applied myself to the concepts of ‘the American’ with indefatigable resolve and rigorous intent. I kept a close eye on him, my Queen, to be sure! There was still a touch of the cynic in me, vigilant in its search for a chink in the armor, a flaw in his assertions, a sophistry in thought and action. But I failed at finding one. The harder I looked, the more convinced I was that the Great Guru’s reluctant successor was also a reluctant saint. I repledged my fealty and devotion. The truth being, each day this blond enigma loomed larger and more difficult to parse. I suppose it didn’t hurt that there was an ease, a ‘naturalness’ between us — at least I imagined there was! — as if we shared an agreement of some sort, one that transcended Mind. ‘The Fifth Column’—that’s what he called Mind. O, he didn’t think very highly of it at all, which was mildly ironic, in that one needed a very fine mind in order to have had such a thought in the first place. But he thought it a saboteur of the first rank…
“I craved being near him and gladly paid the price. For my guru was exhausting to be around… it wasn’t that he was ‘intense,’ which of course he was though not in the way we define the word. No, there was something about his energy, a heaviness, but an openness and lightness too. Like an inverted bell… I know I’m not explaining it too well. Perhaps you’ve met such beings in your own travels on the path? Anyway, it’s my understanding that such a characteristic — this heavy, dominating energy — is shared by any muni worth his salt. These men are not sweethearts! Another consequence was more personal. The more time I spent with my guru, the more likely it was that he’d pounce, cudgeling me for an idiotic or glib remark, some inanity he’d found worthy of teasing me about for months! Which was actually of great benefit though it never felt that way in the moment. He was a wonderful mimic — it’s not easy to watch oneself be eerily caricatured, especially in front of a large group. But always instructive… With public shaming, he dissembled your ego and pride, forcing you to examine your behavior, actions and beliefs. One had to be very much on one’s toes. When he focused on you, look out! He saw right through me. Do you remember my fear? That the Great Guru was sure to have my number? Well, that worst fear came true after all! In spades. The best teacher, they say, is the one who tells you what you don’t wish to hear. Unpleasant truths… ‘The American’ was no pushover. In the beginning, his admonishments sent me to bed for a week. He never raised his voice but the sting could be felt for days, like a scorpion’s. Yet he was capable of unutterable tenderness. If one despaired, he poured nectar on the wound. At the same time, he was completely without pity.