Marcia farted right through the servers’ evening metta. You have to laugh.
So laugh!
Why aren’t you laughing, Beth?
May all beings visible and invisible on this Dhamma campus be free from all suffering, all attachments. May all beings be liberated, liberated, libbberated.
I love those words: I seek pardon, seek pardon. With all my heart, I pardon him or her, I pardon him or her.
Kneeling in the silence with the others, sinking into the ache of knees and thighs. I love the metta. What’s with the invisible beings, though? What do they need to be liberated from? Imagine if the thoughts go on after you die. In invisibleness. Fruit all gone and the thoughts still peeling off. Nobody, but still thinking. Or in the unborn, the miscarried. Unborn but churning thoughts.
Whose are the faces I see? And the eyes that gaze when my eyes are closed? A face turns to me. A little girl. A young man. The eyes, peeled eyes. Incinerate. The mind burns and burns but never burns out.
The Buddha meditated and meditated and meditated until he found the Third Noble Truth: the cessation of suffering. That’s good news. Video day four. ‘Buddhism is not a pessimistic doctrine, my friends. Not a shred of pessimism in it. What does the Buddha say? He says your suffering can cease. Your suffering can cease. Is that pessimism?’
Dasgupta on his armchair in his white suit. He has a folded handkerchief to dab at the sweat. Narrow shoulders, big bulk. Bombay Rotary in the sixties. My diarist’s words. The cessation of all suffering. Dad asks if Pocus will play at the Ealing Rotary. They’ll pay five hundred pounds. Better than a kick in the crotch. Me blind drunk. Blind as a Beth. A batty Beth.
‘Beth, this is Jonathan.’ Dad introduces the famous painter. Supposedly. He was painting someone’s portrait. A founding member.
‘Beth, Jonathan. Jonathan, Beth.’
Jonathan Beth Jonathan Beth Jonathan Beth Jonathan Beth. Say it a million times. Say it for years and years while the world turns and the stars fall.
Romance. I sang, Better off on my own. The acoustics were awful. Mum shocked. ‘Your skirt, Elisabeth!’ Carl played brilliantly. What a brilliant guitarist Carl is!
‘There’s some famous painter here,’ I told him, ‘said he’d like to paint my picture.’
Peel it, bin it. Nibbana. Cessation of all mental formations. All your old sankharas burned away. Peel peeled and gone. Fruit of nothingness at last. Passion fruit. Nothing fruit. ‘I can’t believe this numbers crap,’ my diarist wrote. ‘Three refuges, four noble truths, five precepts, seven stages of purification, eightfold path to enlightenment, ten perfections, and counting counting counting, all to get to zero, to nothing.’
Bliss.
Dana
AT FIVE O’CLOCK I took Marcia to the cells to listen to the Dhamma Service CD. There were no cells free. What a relief. I had no desire to sit with Marcia for an hour and more. She was a lawyer, she said. I hadn’t asked. She specialized in cases of child abuse, which required ‘experience and sensitivity’. People are so proud of their lives, their jobs, the words they use. ‘We mustn’t talk when we are in areas where we might meet meditators,’ I told her. ‘They mustn’t even see us talking.’ In silence we headed to the female leader’s bungalow to hand back the CD.
This was only the second or third time I had been to the bungalow. I never volunteer to bring the teacher’s lunch tray. Why not? I would rather clean the loos or mop the floors. Mi Nu lives in the bungalow. Her whole life is lived between the bungalow and the Metta Hall. That’s thirty yards. Maybe fifty. Does she ever leave the campus? Every day I plan to go to Mi Nu and ask a question, at interview time after lunch, or in the evening kneeling before the others. I have never spoken to her. Has she noticed I never volunteer to bring or fetch her tray? I hope so. I’m waiting for the day when I’m ready to ask her my question. What question? I don’t know. It’s the question Mrs Harper would like me to ask her, but that will only make sense because I am asking Mi Nu Wai. Mi Nu Wai. I don’t know what the question is, but it will come. It will come quite soon now. Oh, but why am I so mysterious? Isn’t it silly?
‘Many abused children are particularly attracted to the parent who was most dangerous to them,’ Marcia was saying. After I had told her not to talk. Perhaps I could ask Mi Nu why I dislike Marcia so much. Mi Nu Why! The Australian still had her shiny nylon tracksuit on her fat bum. I hate fat people. I hate people with poor posture. I’m so critical. At least the finishing school has taught Meredith to stand up straight.
There was a trellis of roses round the bungalow door with a few ragged flowers in the wet leaves. Very picturesque. We were knocking on a picture. Let me in. I was expecting Livia maybe, but Mi Nu came to the door. She had loose off-white trousers and top, her black ponytail hanging round her neck over one breast. Only she doesn’t have breasts. Her bare feet are tiny.
‘Mrs Harper told us to bring back the Dhamma Service CD.’
She looked at me, then at Marcia. I hid my teeth.
‘The cells are all taken with students following the guided session,’ Marcia said. ‘In different translations.’ Her Aussie accent was a sort of smell.
‘You haven’t been able to listen?’
‘No. I guess we’ll just go and sit in the session.’
A flicker lifted the corners of Mi Nu’s mouth. ‘No, please come in.’
If Mi Nu had asked whether we wanted to come in, I would have found an excuse. It was too soon. We took off our shoes. At the end of the passage ahead of us I could see a large room opening out with dim, tropical colours and a strange, scented coolness. It seemed a special place. Perhaps the bungalow was bigger than I’d thought. Had I ever walked round it? But Mi Nu pushed a door to the right.
‘Sit down, you can listen here.’
She left.
It was a small room. There were half a dozen cushions and a CD player on a low table.
‘Is she Thai or Burmese?’ Marcia asked. ‘Don’t you envy their figures?’
I put in the CD, crossed my legs, closed my eyes, shut down my senses. If anyone has a figure to envy, it’s Beth. ‘You are sunshine made flesh, Beth.’ Mi Nu is a sort of lunar eclipse.
‘Blessed is the man who gives.’
Dasgupta began his spiel on dana. However little you possess, you can always make dana in some way or other and you will always reap the rewards. Giving is always better than taking. You always get greater benefits from generosity than from caution.
It’s not a stupid talk. Dasgupta is never stupid. All the pleasure in sex is giving, Jonathan used to say. Even learning how to take, in sex, was a form of giving. Funny how Dasgupta talks about dana and I’m thinking of sex. No, I’m thinking of Jonathan talking about sex. We talked so much. I never think about sex itself. I’m cured of that.
It was harder to give time than to give money, Dasgupta was saying. It brought you more merits, it helped fill the jars of your perfections. When you have money to spare, what’s extra costs you nothing. You don’t have any less for yourself because you’ve given some away. Try telling my dad that. But time is all we have. Now and now and now. You say it and already it’s gone. Time is the supreme gift. And the same for rich man and poor. Giving time is giving life.
‘So your Dhamma Service, in the kitchen, my friends, or in housekeeping, or gardening, or offering your assistance to the teacher, is a chance to accumulate many merits, many parmi, or perfections, which will be of service to you in this life and the next. It is an important step on the Dhamma path.’