The Schopenhauer Cure

18

Pam in India

(2)

_________________________

Nothingcan alarm or move him

any more. All the thousand

threads of willing binding us

to the world and dragging us

(full of anxiety, craving,

anger, and fear) back and

forth in constant pain: all

these he has cut asunder. He

smiles and looks back calmly

on the phantasmagoria of this

world which now stands before

him as indifferently as chess–men at the end of a game.

_________________________

It was a few days later at 3A.M. Pam lay awake, peering into the darkness. Thanks to the

intervention of her graduate student, Marjorie, who had arranged VIP privileges, she had

a semiprivate room in a tiny alcove with a private toilet just off the women`s common

dormitory. However, the alcove provided no sound buffer, and Pam listened to the

breathing of 150 other Vipassana students. The whoosh of moving air transported her

back to her attic bedroom in her parents` Baltimore home when she lay awake listening to

the March wind rattling the window.

Pam could put up with any of the other ashram hardships—the 4A.M. wakeup time,

the frugal vegetarian one–meal–a–day diet, the endless hours of meditation, the silence,

the Spartan quarters—but the sleeplessness was wearing her down. The mechanism of

falling asleep completely eluded her. How did she used to do it? No, wrong question, she

told herself—a question that compounded the problem because falling asleep is one of

those things that cannot be willed; it must be done unintentionally. Suddenly, an old

memory of Freddie the pig floated into her mind. Freddie, a master detective in a series of

children`s books she hadn`t thought about in twenty–five years, was asked for help by a

centipede who could no longer walk because his hundred legs were out of sync.

Eventually, Freddie solved the problem by instructing the centipede to walk without

looking at his legs—or even thinking about them. The solution lay in turning off

awareness and permitting the body`s wisdom to take over. It was the same with sleeping.

Pam tried to sleep by applying the techniques she had been taught in the workshop

to clear her mind and allow all thoughts to drift away. Goenka, a chubby, bronze–skinned,

pedantic, exceedingly serious and exceedingly pompous guru, had begun by saying that

he would teach Vipassana but first he had to teach the student how to quiet his mind.

(Pam endured the exclusive use of the male pronoun; the waves of feminism had yet not

lapped upon the shores of India.)

For the first three days Goenka gave instruction in theanapana–sati —mindfulness

of breathing. And the days were long. Aside from a daily lecture and a brief question–and–answer period, the only activity from 4A.M. to 9:30P.M. was sitting meditation. To

achieve full mindfulness of breathing, Goenka exhorted students to study in–breaths and

out–breaths.

«Listen. Listen to the sound of your breaths,” he said. «Be conscious of their

duration and their temperature. Note the difference between the coolness of in–breaths

and the warmth of out–breaths. Become like a sentry watching the gate. Fix your attention

upon your nostrils, upon the precise anatomical spot where air enters and leaves.»

«Soon,” Goenka said, «the breath will grow finer and finer until it seems to vanish

entirely, but, as you focus ever more deeply, you will be able to discern its subtle and

delicate form. If you follow all my instructions faithfully,” he said, pointing to the

heavens, «if you are a dedicated student, the practice ofanapana–sati will quiet your

mind. You will then be liberated from all the hindrances to mindfulness: restlessness,

anger, doubt, sensual desire, and drowsiness. You shall awaken into an alert, tranquil, and

joyous state.»

Mind–quieting was indeed Pam`s grail—the reason for her pilgrimage to Igatpuri.

For the past several weeks her mind had been a battlefield from which she fiercely tried

to repel noisy, obsessive, intrusive memories and fantasies about her husband, Earl, and

her lover, John. Earl had been her gynecologist seven years ago when she had become

pregnant and decided upon an abortion, electing not to inform the father, a casual sexual

playmate with whom she wished no deeper involvement. Earl was an uncommonly

gentle, caring man. He skillfully performed the abortion and then provided unusual

postoperative follow–up by phoning her twice at home to inquire about her condition.

Surely, she thought, all the accounts of the demise of humane, dedicated medical care

were hyperbolic rhetoric. Then, a few days later, came a third call which conveyed an

invitation to lunch, during which Earl skillfully negotiated the segue from doctor to

suitor. It was during their fourth call that she agreed, not without enthusiasm, to

accompany him to a New Orleans medical convention.

Their courtship proceeded with astonishing quickness. No man ever knew her so

well, comforted her so much, was so exquisitely familiar with her every nook and cranny,

nor afforded her more sexual pleasure. Though he had many wonderful qualities—he was

competent, handsome, and carried himself well—she conferred upon him (she now

realized) heroic, larger–than–life stature. Dazzled at being the chosen one, at being

promoted to the head of the line of women packing his office clamoring for his healing

touch, she fell wholly in love and agreed to marriage a few weeks later.

At first married life was idyllic. But midway into the second year, the reality of

being married to a man twenty–five years older set in: he needed more rest; his body

showed his sixty–five years; white hair appeared in defiance of Grecian formula hair dye.

Earl`s rotator cuff injury ended their tennis Sundays together, and when a torn knee

cartilage put an end to his skiing, Earl put his Tahoe house on the market without

consulting her. Sheila, her close friend and college roommate, who had advised her not to

marry an older man, now urged her to maintain her own identity and not be in a rush to

grow old. Pam felt fast–forwarded. Earl`s aging fed on her youth. Each night he came

home with barely enough energy to sip his three martinis and watch TV.

And the worst of it was that he never read. How fluently, how confidently he had

once conversed about literature. How much his love ofMiddlemarch andDaniel Deronda

had endeared him to her. And what a shock to realize only a short time later that she had

mistaken form for substance: not only were Earl`s literary observations memorized, but

his repertory of books was limited and static. That was the toughest hit: howcould she

have ever loved a man who did not read? She, whose dearest and closest friends dwelled

in the pages of George Eliot, Woolf, Murdoch, Gaskell, and Byatt?

And that was where John, a red–haired associate professor in her department at

Berkeley with an armful of books, a long graceful neck, and a stand–up Adam`s apple,

came in. Though English professors were expected to be well–read, she had known too

many who rarely ventured out of their century of expertise and were complete strangers

to new fiction. But John read everything. Three years before she had supported his tenure

appointment on the basis of his two dazzling books,Chess: The Aesthetics of Brutality in

Contemporary Fiction andNo Sir!: The Androgynous Heroine in Late Nineteenth–Century

British Literature.

Their friendship germinated in all the familiar romantic academic haunts: faculty

and departmental committee meetings, faculty club luncheons, monthly readings in the

Norris Auditorium by the poet or novelist in residence. It took root and blossomed in

shared academic adventures, such as team teaching the nineteenth–century greats in the

Western civilization curriculum or guest lectures in each other`s courses. And then

permanent bonding took place in the trench warfare of faculty senate squabbles, space

and salary sorties, and brutal promotion committee melees. Before long they so trusted

each other`s taste that they rarely looked elsewhere for recommendations for novels and

poetry, and the e–mail ether between them crackled with meaty philosophical literary

passages. Both eschewed quotations that were merely decorative or clumsily clever; they

settled for nothing less than the sublime—beauty plus wisdom for the ages. They both

loathed Fitzgerald and Hemingway, both loved Dickinson and Emerson. As their shared

stack of books grew taller, their relationship evolved into ever greater harmony. They

were moved by the same profound thoughts of the same writers. They reached epiphanies

together. In short, these two English professors were in love.

«You leave your marriage, and I`ll leave mine.»Who said it first? Neither could

remember, but at some point in their second year of team teaching they arrived at this

high–risk amorous commitment. Pam was ready, but John, who had two preteen

daughters, naturally required more time. Pam was patient. Her man, John, was, thank

God, a good man and required time to wrestle with such moral issues as the meaning of

the marriage vow. And he struggled, too, with the problem of guilt at abandoning his

children and how one goes about leaving a wife, whose only offense had been dullness, a

wife transformed by duty from sparkling lover into drab motherhood. Over and over

again John assured Pam that he was en route, in process, that he had successfully

identified and reconnoitered the problem, and all he needed now was more time to

generate the resolve and select the propitious moment to act.

But the months passed, and the propitious moment never arrived. Pam suspected

that John, like so many dissatisfied spouses attempting to avoid the guilt and the burden

of irreversible immoral acts, was trying to maneuver his wife into making the decision.

He withdrew, lost all sexual interest in his wife, and criticized her silently and,

occasionally, aloud. It was the old «I can`t leave but I pray that she leaves» maneuver.

But it wasn`t working—this wife wouldn`t bite.

Finally, Pam acted unilaterally. Her course of action was prompted by two phone

calls beginning with «Dearie, I think you`d like to know...” Two of Earl`s patients under

the pretense of doing her a favor warned her of his sexual predatory behavior. When a

subpoena arrived with the news that Earl was being sued for unprofessional behavior by

yet another patient, Pam thanked her lucky stars she had not had a child, and reached for

the phone to contact a divorce lawyer.

Might her act force John into decisive action? Even though she would have left her

marriage if there had been no John in her life, Pam, in an astounding feat of denial,

persuaded herself that she had left Earl for the sake of her lover and continued to confront

John with that version of reality. But John dallied; he was still not ready. Then, one day,

he took decisive action. It happened in June on the last day of classes just after an ecstatic

love fest in their usual bower, an unrolled blue foam mattress situated partially under the

tent of his desk on the hardwood floor of his office. (No sofas were to be found in

English professors` offices; the department had been so racked by charges of professors

preying on their female students that sofas had been banned.) After zipping up his

trousers, John gazed at her mournfully. «Pam, I love you. And because I love you, I`ve

decided to be resolute. This is unfair to you, and I`ve got to take some of the pressure

off—off of you, especially, but off me as well. I`ve decided to declare a moratorium on

our seeing one another.»

Pam was stunned. She hardly heard his words. For days afterward his message felt

like a bolus in her gut too large to digest, too heavy to regurgitate. Hour upon hour she

oscillated between hating him, loving and desiring him, and wishing him dead. Her mind

played one scenario after another. John and his family dying in an auto accident. John`s

wife being killed in an airplane crash and John appearing, sometimes with children,

sometimes alone, at her doorstep. Sometimes she would fall into his arms; sometimes

they would weep tenderly together; sometimes she would pretend there was a man in her

apartment and slam the door in his face.

During the two years she had been in individual and group therapy Pam had

profited enormously, but, in this crisis, therapy failed to deliver: it was no match for the

monstrous power of her obsessional thinking. Julius tried valiantly. He was indefatigable

and pulled endless devices out of his toolkit. First, he asked her to monitor herself and

chart the amount of time she spent on the obsession. Two to three hundred minutes a day.

Astounding! And it seemed entirely out of her control; the obsession had demonic power.

Julius attempted to help her regain control of her mind by urging a systematic

incremental decrease of her fantasy time. When that failed, he turned to a paradoxical

approach and instructed her to choose an hour each morning which she would entirely

devote to running the most popular fantasy reels about John. Though she followed

Julius`s instructions, the unruly obsession refused containment and spilled over into her

thoughts just as much as before. Later he suggested several thought–stopping techniques.

For days Pam shouted no at her own mind or snapped rubber bands on her wrist.

Julius also attempted to defuse the obsession by laying bare its underlying

meaning. «The obsession is a distraction; it protects you from thinking about something

else,” he insisted. «What is it concealing?» If there were no obsession, what would you be

thinking about? But the obsession would not yield.

The group members pitched in. They shared their own obsessive episodes; they

volunteered for phone duty so Pam could call them anytime she felt overcome; they

urged her to fill her life, call her friends, arrange a social activity every day, find a man,

and, for God`s sake, get laid! Tony made her smile by requesting an application for that

position. But nothing worked. Against the monstrous power of the obsession, all of these

therapy weapons were as effective as a BB gun against a charging rhinoceros.

Then came a chance encounter with Marjorie, the starry–eyed graduate student cum

Vipassana acolyte, who consulted her about a change in her dissertation topic. She had

lost interest in the influence of Plato`s concepts of love in the works of Djuna Barnes.

Instead she had developed a crush on Larry, Somerset Maugham`s protagonist inThe

Razor`s Edge, and now proposed the topic of «Origins of Eastern Religious Thought in

Maugham and Hesse.» In their conversations Pam was struck by one of Marjorie`s (and

Maugham`s) pet phrases, «the calming of the mind.» The phrase seemed so enticing, so

seductive. The more she thought about it, the more she realized thatmind–calming was

exactly what she needed. And since neither individual nor group therapy seemed capable

of offering it, Pam decided to heed Marjorie`s advice. So she booked airline passage to

India and to Goenka, the epicenter of mind–calming.

The routine at the ashram had indeed begun to offer some mind–calming. Her mind

fixated less on John, but now Pam was beginning to feel that the insomnia was worse

than the obsession. She lay awake listening to the sounds of the night: a background beat

of rhythmic breathing and the libretto of snores, moans, and snorts. About every fifteen

minutes she was jolted by the shrill sound of a police whistle outside her window.

But why could she not sink into sleep? Ithad to be related to the twelve hours of

meditation every day. What else could it be? Yet the 150 other students seemed to be

resting comfortably in the arms of Morpheus. If only she could ask Vijay these questions.

Once while furtively looking about for him in the meditation hall, Manil, the attendant

who cruised up and down the aisles, poked her with his bamboo rod and commented,

«Look inward. Nowhere else.» And when she did spot Vijay in the back of the men`s

section, he seemed entranced, sitting erect in the lotus position, motionless as a Buddha.

He must have noticed her in the meditation hall; of the three hundred, she was the only

one sitting Western style in a chair. Though mortified by the chair, she had had such a

back ache from days of sitting that she had no choice but to request one from Manil,

Goenka`s assistant.

Manil, a tall and slender Indian, who worked hard at appearing tranquil, was not

pleased with her request. Without removing his gaze from the horizon, he responded,

«Your back? What did you do in past lives to bring this about?»

What a disappointment! Manil`s answer belied Goenka`s vehement claims that his

method lay outside the province of any specific religious tradition. Gradually, she was

coming to appreciate the yawning chasm between the nontheistic stance of rarified

Buddhism and the superstitious beliefs of the masses. Even teaching assistants could not

overcome their lust for magic, mystery, and authority.

Once she saw Vijay at the 11A.M. lunch and maneuvered herself into a seat next to

him. She heard him take a deep breath, as though inhaling her aroma, but he neither

looked at her nor spoke. In fact, no one spoke to anyone; the rule of noble silence reigned

supreme.

On the third morning a bizarre episode enlivened the proceedings. During the

meditation someone farted loudly and a couple of students giggled. The giggle was

contagious, and soon several students were caught up in a giggling jag. Goenka was not

amused and immediately, wife in tow, stalked out of the meditation hall. Soon one of the

assistants solemnly informed the student body that their teacher had been dishonored and

would refuse to continue the course until all offending students left the ashram. A few

students picked up and left, but for the next few hours meditation was disturbed by the

faces of the exiled appearing at windows and hooting like owls.

No mention was ever made again of the incident, but Pam suspected that there had

been a late–night purge since the next morning there were far fewer sitting Buddhas.

Words were permitted only during the noon hour when students with specific

questions could address the teacher`s assistants. On the fourth day at noon Pam posed her

question about insomnia to Manil.

«Not for you to be concerned about,” he replied, gazing off into the distance. «The

body takes whatever sleep it requires.»

«Well then,” Pam tried again, «could you tell me why shrill police whistles are

being blown outside my window all night long?»

«Forget such questions. Concentrate only uponanapana–sati. Just observe your

breath. When you have truly applied yourself, such trivial events will no longer be

disturbances.»

Pam was so bored by the breath meditation that she wondered whether she could

possibly last the ten days. Other than the sitting, the only available activity was listening

to Goenka`s nightly tedious discourses. Goenka, garbed in gleaming white, like all the

staff, strove for eloquence but often fell short because an underlying shrill

authoritarianism shone through. His lectures consisted of long repetitive tracts extolling

the many virtues of Vipassana, which, if practiced correctly, resulted in mental

purification, a path to enlightenment, a life of calmness and balance, an eradication of

psychosomatic diseases, an elimination of the three causes of all unhappiness: craving,

aversion, and ignorance. Regular Vipassana practice was like regular gardening of the

mind during which one plucked out impure weeds of thought. Not only that, Goenka

pointed out; Vipassana practice was portable, and provided a competitive edge in life:

while others whiled away the waiting time at bus stops, the practitioner could

industriously yank out a few weeds of cognitive impurity.

The handouts for the Vipassana course were heavy with rules which, on the

surface, seemed understandable and reasonable.But there were so many of them. No

stealing, no killing of any living creature, no lies, no sexual activity, no intoxicants, no

sensual entertainment, no writing, note taking, or pens or pencils, or reading, no music or

radios, no phones, no luxurious high bedding, no bodily decorations of any sort, no

immodest clothing, no eating after midday (except for first–time students who were

offered tea and fruit at 5P.M. ). Finally, the students were forbidden to question the

teacher`s guidance and instructions; they had to agree to observe the discipline and to

meditate exactly as told. Only with such an obedient attitude, Goenka said, could students

gain enlightenment.

Generally, Pam gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was, after all, a dedicated

man who had devoted his life to offering Vipassana instruction. Of course he was culture–bound. Who wasn`t? And hadn`t India always groaned under the weight of religious

ritual and rigid social stratification? Besides, Pam loved Goenka`s gorgeous voice. Every

night she was entranced by his deep sonorous chanting in ancient Pali of sacred Buddhist

tracts. She had been moved in similar fashion by early Christian devotional music,

especially Byzantine liturgical chants, by the cantors singing in synagogues, and once, in

rural Turkey, was transfixed by the hypnotic melodies of the muezzin calling the

populace to prayer five times a day.

Though Pam was a dedicated student, it was difficult for her simply to observe her

breathing for fifteen straight minutes without drifting off into one of her reveries about

John. But gradually changes occurred. The earlier disparate scenarios had coalesced into

a single scene: from some news source—either TV, radio, or newspaper—she learned

that John`s family had been killed in an airplane crash. Again and again she imagined the

scene. She was sick of it. But it kept on playing.

As her boredom and restlessness increased, she developed an intense interest in

small household projects. When she first registered at the office (and learned to her

surprise that there was no fee for the ten–day retreat), she noted small bags of detergent in

the ashram shop. On the third day she purchased a bag and thereafter spent considerable

time washing and rewashing her clothing, hanging them on the clothesline behind the

dormitory (the first clothesline she had seen since childhood), and, at hourly intervals,

checking on the drying process. Which bras and which panties were the best dryers? How

many hours of night drying were equal to an hour`s day drying. Or shade drying versus

sun drying? Or hand–wrung clothes versus non–wrung clothes?

On the fourth day came the great event: Goenka began the teaching of Vipassana.

The technique is simple and straightforward. Students are instructed to meditate on their

scalp until a sensation occurrs—an itch, a tingle, a burning, perhaps the feeling of a tiny

breeze upon the skin of the scalp. Once the sensation is identified, the student is simply to

observe, nothing more. Focus on the itch. What is it like? Where does it go? How long

does it last? When it disappears (as it always does), the meditator is to move to the next

segment of the body, the face, and survey for stimuli like a nostril tickle or an eyelid itch.

After these stimuli grow, ebb, and disappear, the student proceeds to the neck, the

shoulders, until every part of the body is observed right down to the soles of the feet and

then in reverse direction back up the body to the scalp.

Goenka`s evening discourses provided the rationale for the technique. The key

concept isanitya—impermanence. If one fully appreciates the impermanence of each

physical stimulus, it is but a short step to extrapolate the principle ofanitya to all of life`s

events and unpleasantries; everything will pass, and one will experience equanimity if

one can maintain the observer`s stance and simply watch the passing show.

After a couple of days of Vipassana, Pam found the process less onerous as she

gained skill and speed at focusing on her bodily sensations. On the seventh day, to her

amazement, the whole process slipped into automatic gear and she began «sweeping,”

just as Goenka had predicted. It was as if someone poured a jug of honey on her head

which slowly and deliciously spread down to the bottom of her feet. She could feel a

stirring, almost sexual hum, like the buzz of bumblebees enveloping her, as the honey

flowed down. The hours zipped by. Soon she discarded her chair and melded with the

three hundred other acolytes sitting in the lotus position at the feet of Goenka.

The next two days of sweeping were the same, and each passed quickly. On the

ninth night she lay awake—she slept as badly as before but was less concerned about it

now after learning from one of the other assistants (having given up on Manil), a

Burmese woman, that insomnia in the Vipassana workshop is extremely common;

apparently, the prolonged meditative states make sleep less necessary. The assistant also

cleared up the mystery of the police whistles. In southern India, night watchmen routinely

blow whistles as they circle the perimeter of the territory they guard. It is a preventative

measure warning off thieves in the same way the little red light on auto dashboards warns

car thieves of the presence of an activated auto alarm.

Often the presence of repetitive thoughts is most apparent when they vanish, and it

was with a start that Pam realized that she had not thought about John for two entire days.

John had vanished. The entire endless loop of fantasy had been replaced by the honeyed

buzz of sweeping. How odd to realize that she now carried around her own pleasure

maker which could be trained to secrete feel–good endorphins. Now she understood why

people got hooked, why they would go on a lengthy retreat, sometimes months,

sometimes years.

Yet now that she had finally cleansed her mind, why was she not elated? On the

contrary, a shadow fell upon her success. Something about her enjoyment of «sweeping»

darkened her thoughts. While pondering that conundrum, she dropped off into a light

twilight sleep and was aroused a short time later by a strange dream image: a star with

little legs, top hat and cane, tap–dancing across the stage of her mind. A dancing star! She

knew exactly what that dream image meant. Of all the literary aphorisms that she and

John shared and loved, one of her favorites was Nietzsche`s phrase fromZarathustra :

«One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.»

Of course. Now she understood the source of her ambivalence about Vipassana.

Goenka was true to his word. He delivered exactly what he had promised: equanimity,

tranquility, or, as he often put it,equipoise. But at what price? If Shakespeare had taken

up Vipassana, wouldLear orHamlet have been born? Would any of the masterpieces in

Western culture have been written? One of Chapman`s couplets drifted into mind:

No pen can anything eternal write that is not steeped in the humour of the night

Steeped in the humour of the night—thatwas the task of the great writer—to

immerse oneself in the humour of the night, to harness the power of darkness for artistic

creation. How else could the sublime dark authors—Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Virginia

Woolf, Hardy, Camus, Plath, Poe—have illuminated the tragedy lurking in the human

condition? Not by removing oneself from life, not by sitting back and observing the

passing show.

Even though Goenka proclaimed his teaching was nondenominational, his

Buddhism shone through. In his nightly discourse cum sales pitch, Goenka could not

restrain himself from stressing that Vipassana was the Buddha`s own method of

meditation, which he, Goenka, was now reintroducing to the world. She had no objection

to that. Though she knew little of Buddhism, she had read an elementary text on the plane

to India and had been impressed by the power and truth of the Buddha`s four noble

truths:

1. Life is suffering.

2. Suffering is caused by attachments (to objects, ideas,

individuals, to survival itself).

3. There is an antidote to suffering: the cessation of desire, of

attachment, of the self.

4. There is a specific pathway to a suffering–free existence: the

eight–step path to enlightenment.

Now, she reconsidered. As she looked about her, at the entranced acolytes,

the tranquilized assistants, the ascetics in their hillside caves content with a life

dedicated to Vipassana «sweeping,” she wondered whether the four truths were so

true after all. Had the Buddha gotten it right? Was the price of the remedy not

worse than the disease? At dawn the following morning she lapsed into even

greater doubt as she watched the small party of Jainist women walk to the

bathhouse. The Jainists took the decree of no killing to absurd degrees: they

hobbled down the path in a painfully slow, crablike fashion because they first had

to gently sweep the gravel before them lest they step on an insect—indeed they

could hardly breathe because of their gauze masks, which prevented the inhalation

of any miniscule animal life.

Everywhere she looked, there was renunciation, sacrifice, limitation, and

resignation. Whatever happened to life? To joy, expansion, passion, carpe diem?

Was life so anguished that it should be sacrificed for the sake of

equanimity? Perhaps the four noble truths were culture–bound. Perhaps they were

truths for 2,500 years ago in a land with overwhelming poverty, overcrowding,

starvation, disease, class oppression, and lack of any hope for a better future. But

were they truths for her now? Didn`t Marx have it right? Didn`t all religions based

on release or a better life hereafter target the poor, the suffering, the enslaved?

But, Pam said to herself (after a few days of noble silence she talked to

herself a great deal), wasn`t she being an ingrate? Give credit where it was due.

Hadn`t Vipassana done its job—calmed the mind and quashed her obsessive

thoughts? Hadn`t it succeeded where her own best efforts, and Julius`s, and the

group members` efforts had all failed? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. Perhaps it was

not a fair comparison. After all, Julius had put in a total of about eight group

sessions—twelve hours—while Vipassana demanded hundreds of hours—ten full

days plus the time, and effort, to travel halfway around the world. What might

have happened if Julius and the group had worked on her that many hours?

Pam`s growing cynicism interfered with meditation. The sweeping stopped.

Where had it gone—that delicious, mellifluous, buzzing contentment? Each new

day her meditative practice regressed. The Vipassana meditation progressed no

farther than her scalp. Those tiny itches, previously so fleeting, persisted and grew

more robust—itches evolved into pinpricks, then into a sustained burning that

could not be meditated away.

Even the early work inanapana–sati was undone. The dike of calmness

built by breath meditation crumbled, and the surf of unruly thoughts, of her

husband, John, or revenge and airplane crashes, came breaking through. Well, let

them come. She saw Earl for what he was—an aging child, his large lips pursed

and lunging for any nipple within range. And John—poor, effete, pusillanimous

John, still unwilling to grasp that there can be no yes without a no. And Vijay,

too, who chose to sacrifice life, novelty, adventure, friendship upon the altar of

the great God, Equanimity. Use the right word for the whole bunch, Pam

thought.Cowards. Moral cowards. None of them deserved her. Flush them away.

Nowthere was a powerful image: all the men, John, Earl, Vijay, standing in a

giant toilet bowl, their hands raised imploringly, their squeals for help barely

audible over the roar of the flushing water!That was an image worth meditating

upon.