Maybe It's Norbu?

After dark I returned to my room at the monastery guesthouse. I was pleased with myself because I’d finally remembered to buy milk powder. Moving the curtain aside, I thought I’d put the powder on the windowsill beside the coffee – but found that I could not, because that space was currently occupied by an extremely impressive spider.

The big spindly black spiders I knew already – they were harmless, though it was best not to bother them, because then they started jumping and big spiders splayed out on the walls were infinitely preferable, in my opinion, to big spiders jumping.

This however was not a spider I knew. It was big, brown and stocky – it looked like the sort of spider who took being a spider very seriously indeed.

I’m sure I bowed to it, as I always do when I meet someone for the first time and feel a little bit afraid. I then shuffled, respectfully, backwards out of my room.

The monastery café was closed but the lights were still on in the kitchen. The cook was there getting stoned with three bald middle-aged backpackers who felt they were extremely cool. During the day they were incredibly spiritual. At night they were hipsters.

The four of them looked at me as if I were their ancient mother, whom they resented, and who was now about to chastise them.

“Hi guys!” I said, as goofy as I could, so as not to seem like narc or a granny. “One quick question! Big brown spider, kinda stocky. Not the big black spindly kind. Is it OK?”

The stoned cook and the stoned bald backpackers all looked at me and said, “OK!”

And I realized my level of trust in their ability to classify arachnids was distinctly underwhelming. So, more serious now, I repeated my description directly to the cook, who likewise made his face serious, and cocked his head to the side, and said, “Maybe it’s Norbu?”

So, because I am a longterm student of Tibetan Buddhism, because I’ve been to Dharamsala many times and consider myself, more or less, up with the program, I immediately assumed (as anyone would) that Norbu (which I knew to be a common name) was one of the monks here, who’d been extremely bad, and thus was currently incarnated as a stocky brown spider in Room #5.

I stood there for a moment, trying to decide whether this piece of information resolved my question or not.

Then, one of the bald hipster backpackers, looking at me with withering disdain, because I was so un-cool, unlike himself, said, “Norbu means lucky.”

I laughed and smiled and accepted, finally, that the spider and I were on our own and it was up to us to get along.

I returned to my room and moved the curtain aside very gently. The big brown stocky spider was still there, perched beside the instant coffee.

“Goodnight, Norbu,” I said. Then I moved my chair to the opposite side of the room and said my usual prayers: to benefit all sentient beings or, at least, not to hurt them.

Guttersnipe Reviews: The Story of Tibet

Thomas Laird

The Story of Tibet

Atlantic Books, 2006

Anyone with an interest in Tibet should read this book -- even if they typically find history books dull or daunting. Not only does it offer a clear overview of Tibetan history – a subject notoriously difficult to untangle – it does two other things that are entirely fascinating.

First, of all the books I’ve read by and about the Dalai Lama, this one gives the clearest view of what he’s actually like as a person. Despite his elevated status, the Dalai Lama is stunningly matter-of-fact. His stories about crashing cars in the Norbulingka or going to meet Mao are unforgettable, as is his willingness to tell the truth about the times in his life he has felt fear or anger or even hopelessness.

When Thomas Laird asks, on page 322, if the Dalai’s Lama’s dettachment means he does not suffer as much, the Dalai Lama gets irritated and snaps, “Dettachment does not mean that I am like a rock.” Indeed, the man found in this book is nothing like a rock and nothing like a god, but he remains extraordinary. Over and over as I read this book, I thought, “My mind is like a matchbox; the Dalai Lama’s mind is like a ballpark.”

The other reason to buy and read this book – in my opinion the number one reason – is the unparalled view it gives of how the sacred may intervene and interact with human history. The Dalai Lama believes “the Tibetan case is unique because there is a connection to a mysterious level of sorts”. That belief is central to his discussions with Thomas Laird, who loves to challenge him, to ask, basically, “How could you possibly believe that?!” Mr. Laird pushes the Dalai Lama; he’s even willing to be a little rude – and the answers he receives may blow your mind!

On page 191, Laird writes, “As he had said to me earlier about conventional and unconventional perceptions of reality, ‘Both are true.’ Or at the very least, both are possible, and it is impossible to pin reality down any further than that..” Conventional historians may scoff at such a statement – or else despair – but Laird beautifully accomodates both views, the Dalai Lama’s sacred vision and his own disbelief, producing in the process a history book like no other.

Guttersnipe Reviews: Flann O'Brien

Flann O’Brien

The Third Policeman

Plann O’Brien couldn’t publish this book and so he gave up, told his friends the manuscript was lost, and drank. After his death The Third Policeman was finally published – and found to be strange and hilarious. Above all, the book is a work of non-stop madcap invention, with seldom fewer than three perfectly crazy theories to a page. As a visit to a bicycle-obsessed Hell does not provide sufficient scope for O’Brien’s ingenuity, he introduces a mad philosopher, de Selby, who devotes himself to useful activies such as diluting water.

I hope Flann O’Brien devotees will excuse me for saying this book could be introduced as “Alice in Wonderland – in Hell”, a book which tests how far nonsense can go – extraordinarily far, it turns out – to eternity in an elevator.

This is not the first time I’ve wished I had a time machine, so that I could go back in time and say, “Sir, the book you’ve written is brilliant. Please don’t give up. But, please, sir, drink less!” (In Dublin I met a Flann O’Brien scholar at the Writers’ Museum who told me, when I said I wanted to go to all the places associated with the great man, “Aw, you couldn’t possibly! You’d die of alcohol poisoning!”)

Readers new to Flann O’Brien should start with his masterpiece “At Swim, Two Birds”, but this book, too long neglected, should follow immediately after.

Guttersnipe Reviews: Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Gulliver’s Travels

It staggers me that a man could see this much of human nature, admit he saw it, write it down, publish it, and be allowed to die of old age. How did he ever get away with it? Our 21^st century satirists seem cowardly in comparison. Who would dare suggest now, as Swift does, that we solve the bickering of Congressmen by sawing their brains apart and swapping halves with brains across the aisle? Attractive idea!

For Swift, fantasy is a scalpel disguised as a diversion. Constructing elaborate fantasies allows him to confront the human truths we hide in plain sight. He seldom allows us to forget that our bodies, like our institutions, are a filthy stinking mess. Would a popular writer of the 21^st century be allowed to be so scatalogical? How many readers today, who proudly consider themselves tolerant and open-minded, would put up with descriptions like that of the dog’s death on page 170?

The introduction and notes, by Robert Demaria Jr, are unusually helpful and graceful. There are often beautiful definitions from Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of 1755 and thus one’s reading is littered with small satisfactions, like discovering that “new fangled” is a very old word.

It’s bizarre that we somehow managed to turn the first part of this book into a charming children’s story. Maybe we just don’t know what else to do with it – just as a tank is parked in a town square so that children can play on it.

Guttersnipe Reviews: Julio Cortazar

Julio Cortazar

Blow-Up and Other Stories

I read many collections of short stories and I often find that they are like pop albums: a few catchy numbers up front followed by fillers, repeats and instrumental versions. But every one of these stories is entirely interesting, including “The Distances” which I admit I didn’t understand at all, even the second time through.

Many of these stories exist in the territory of terror and awe, but the three I liked best were all occasions of sustained compassion, and each revolved around a death. “At Your Service” is about a paid mourner who ends up grieving for real. “The Gates of Heaven” is about the death of a dancing girl. The novella “The Pursuer”, based on the last days of Charlie Parker, is so convincing that I fell for it hook, line and sinker and believed I was reading an actual memoir, that he must have actually sat in a Paris hotel room with a ranting naked Charlie Parker. This novella is also a meditation on genius, which unfortunately does absolutely nothing to exempt one from ordinary misery.

If you enjoy this, make sure you read ‘Cronopios and Famas’, Cortazar’s playful eccentric book of tiny stories and prose poems – there’s nothing like it.

Automatic Miracle Area

for Gelek

1. Tap / 1.

I live downstairs behind the green metal door with the painted number 5. I live beside the oasis, the outdoor faucet. At 4:30 the monks come: the young monks scrub their armpits, the old monks hack up phlegm. As the sun rises, the manager brushes his buck teeth, the cook washes his hands. The Nepali man with the tea stand down the hill comes with two big plastic jugs to fill. The foreigners scrub their faces, apply creams. The nakpa’s teenage son arranges his bushy hair. His mother washes the dishes first and laundry when there’s time.

Interspersed with these are the dogs, who lap the puddle underneath, and the cats, who lick drops directly from the tap. When the monkeys see me looking they act entirely offended and bare their teeth.

When there is plenty of water – what harmony! But for the last week there has been barely a trickle and it is a constant hassle. The manager quarrels with the chaiwallah when he comes to fill his jugs. (Turned away, he sneaks back ten minutes later when the manager isn’t looking.) The monks are grubby. The French lady is astonished when ordered not to do her laundry. She points to the sky. “But the sun is perfect!”


2. Bully.

At breakfast the manager asks my help. “The water man does not listen to Tibetans. 500 rupees we pay him. Every day he says the water is coming. Maybe he will listen to an American.” The water man isn’t answering his phone, so we go into town looking for him. He’s not in his usual spot, on the bench by the bus stand and he’s not in his favorite chai shop either. We find him in a back alley, trying to wedge a rock under the wheel of his bike so it won’t roll away.

He won’t look at us. He is an old man almost, a bully caught off his guard. His tilak is so smudged it may be last week’s blessing he hasn’t washed off. Maybe his house doesn’t have water either.

What a pleasure it is to be invited to be a loud and boorish American. How naturally it comes to me! I am the product of a long line of bullies.

In truth I permit myself only just a tincture of my father. I rely mostly on my aggrieved professor voice.

They are trying to run a business, sir! They are losing money! Guests leave because they cannot shower! They paid you the money, now you fix the water!

He only looks at me when I say the word money, as though that were his name.

How easily, how naturally I bully him. Imagine being frightened by me – a gremlin so obviously contrived!

Thirty minutes later he is at the guesthouse fixing the pipes. I do not know whether to feel proud or ashamed. I have to admit it was fun.

A few days later, however, there is no water at all.


3. Uprising Day.

The last time I was in Dharamsala for Uprising Day, I was eighteen years old. The Dalai Lama stood in front of his temple and called for full independence. Now it is a far more dignified and official event -- and the Dalai Lama asks for far less.

The performance of the Tibetan National Band and Color Guard is impeccable, as are their traditional costumes. The bagpipes do not sound a false note. His Holiness sits surrounded by dignitaries: the members of the Tibetan parliament, several U.S. senators, and a goodwill delegation composed of Chinese people residing in a number of countries, not including China.

The members of the Tibetan parliament, in preparation for the day when they must lead the country alone, give long and emphatic speeches. To no effect: it is as if they are transparent. His Holiness holds a transcript of each speech and, as each official speaks, he reads silently along. The audience watches him read.


4. Nothing.

After the official speeches, I stand on the roof of the temple in the brilliant sun, looking at the jagged edges of the Dhauladars. Down below a crowd fills the street, waving flags and crying out for the freedom of Tibet. Headbands, handmade signs and Indian policemen. Here are the young people. Someone is shouting into a megaphone. “Free Tibet” someone screams, but it is nothing like the phrase found so often in the gift shop, it is a horrible piercing shriek, as a mother would wail for her stolen child.

The official request – painted on banners at the entrance of the temple – is for ‘genuine autonomy within China’. This crowd however is perfectly aware: they will be receiving nothing.


5. Exile World.

The TCV School in Gobalpur has created a six page newspaper, Exile World, and they’re passing it out to people as they leave the temple. The lead article is absolutely standard praise for the Dalai Lama – except for the last sentence which comes out of nowhere, like a man with a gun from around a dark corner: “For all the global compassion and sympathy the Dalai Lama has won, his lasting legacy may be one of sad, crestfallen failure.”


6. Insomnia / 1.

Every third or fourth night, I cannot sleep. A wrathful insomnia: as if my bed and body seethed with biting ants. All day I spend walking the kora, taking notes, chatting companionably with backpackers and tea men, closing my eyes with a smile and a prayer.

Only to wake up thirty minutes later saturated with lust or rage or terror. A middle-aged man who has burnt his bridges, living out of a bag in a two dollar room, with more paperbacks than articles of clothing, with little stacks of index cards lined up like soldiers.


7. Notes for Maitreya Buddha / 1.

I am not a Buddha but I will be someday. Probably around the time the Sun is swallowing the Earth. (By which point I also hope to have paid off my student loans.) Even though my buddhahood is not necessarily imminent, I nonetheless have some ideas about what the Buddha would do if he or she showed up today.

DAY ONE: Flowers raining from heaven, celestial musicians, free food, etc. DAY TWO: The Buddha never makes rules arbitrarily but only because a problem has arisen. Two days would be plenty to show the need for a new set of rules to facilitate mindfulness while using electronic devices, cell phones and the Internet.

Since the monks didn’t spend all night texting each other and downloading porn, they are well-rested on DAY THREE during which the Buddha attempts to take a shower and is informed of the water shortage. Also, the power has gone off a few times. He notes the absence of animals, the effects of erosion. Remembers how, back in the day, he sometimes wished for a shawl this time of year – whereas now he needs anti-perspirant.

The Buddha hears the hum of suffering from the Earth. And on DAY FOUR the Buddha sets resolutely to work.


8. Monks to Watch Out For.

Raw and broken after a sleepless night, I sit hopeless by the window until I see Vanessa marching up the hill with an absolutely gorgeous monk she’s picked up somewhere. Before I know it, I’m standing outside and grinning back at them. When I tell the monk how much I love Dharamsala, he makes a pronouncement which lunges at me through the air and covers me all at once and all over, like a luminous web.

The monk pronounces his words loudly and exactly, as if I am a lost and befuddled traveler who must be told things very clearly, who must have it all spelled out for him.

The monk announces:

“This is the God-King Place!
This is the Automatic Miracle Area!”

Against my will, I am lit up. This is one vastly charismatic monk, I think. And also appalling gorgeous. Somebody really ought to put up a sign at the Post Office: Monks To Watch Out For.


9. Display.

While the Dalai Lama speaks, a little girl plays with a diaphanous blue shawl and gives a fashion show to those in the audience who have tired of the talk on selflessness.


10. Renunciation.

As a suicide bomber believes the dynamite strapped to his chest will transport him to heaven, so I believe that everything in my life would be really all right, if I only I were better-looking.

How unnerving, therefore, to feel the muscle melting off me, the end of the official One Thing I Have Got Going For Me. A stay in rural India, away from a gym, involves a voluntary renunciation of sexual currency. A quite terrifying prospect for the variety of fool that I am.


11. Monks to Watch Out For / 2

As I lock my door, Vanessa and her monk walk past. We walk to town together as though by previous arrangement. I am a little jealous of Vanessa. Just as an apple-picker knows in a glance that the fruit is still too green, or else too spotted and misshapen to be worth bothering with, spiritual people nearly always stare right through me.

How pleased I am therefore, when the monk at once begins seriously to address me, to speak about necessity of dharma and the real chance of enlightenment. He stands very close: tenderness blasts from of his eyes. He’s a nonstop talker and several times I nearly step off the edge of the crumbling cliffside road. More dangerous, I catch myself paying more attention to his mouth, adorned with an adorable goatee, than to what he is actually saying. This monk has the full lips of an incorrigible seducer.

He begins to speak about the problem of love affairs between monks and foreign women. It’s natural, of course, for differences to attract each other. The foreign women are sometimes very beautiful. And monks – monks are simply more attractive than other men. It’s a side-effect of spiritual practice, a problem and a fact.

As the monk speaks about clinging to the dharma, I find myself veering from the path – both physically and otherwise. If possible I ought to excuse myself briefly, step aside, and slap myself firmly upside the head.


12. Penalty.

I have forgotten the exact penalty for having sex with a monk. I remember, however, that it involves fire and molten lead and lasts for hundreds of thousands of years.


13. Loneliness Departing.

Exhilarating, yes – but also dangerous. I understand terribly well.

You are both lucky and endangered, when you have been alone in a windowless room for a very long time and suddenly there is a knock at the door and you open it to find a stranger with a smile you think you couldn’t possibly deserve but which begins nonetheless begins at once to warm and cheer you.

A vulnerable place. The mother of true love and a thousand catastrophic bad decisions.


14. Gelek / 1.

Nearly twenty years ago, a monk named Gelek lived in a crumbling meditation house beside the stupa of Trijiang Rinpoche. It was a much more basic place than it is now. A simple stupa crumbling in the rain; very basic huts constructed from mud and a few sheets of plastic or corrugated tin.

The monk Gelek was a particularly bad carpenter, it seemed, because nearly every time I walked past his house he was repairing a wall or section of roof that had collapsed. It wasn’t his fault really. The monsoon was well-underway and his mud house was just that – mud.

Just the same, Gelek always greeted me tenderly and often brought me inside for a cup of tea and a biscuit. Gelek, it seemed to me then, had a special power. As soon as he appeared, I felt myself warm and comfortable – even if we were both standing soaked in the pouring rain.

Drinking tea in his dripping house, my troubles vanished. Not in some vague way, but utterly and at once, as if he had lifted them off me, as though my troubles were suitcases, as though they could simply be taken from me.

Gelek had this effect on nearly everyone and was adored by many people at the nearby retreat center. The foreign nuns especially adored him. They suspected he might be a great saint in disguise.

Gelek was, I realize now, perilously close to being a “pet monk”, a situation I’m sure the Buddha warns about, somewhere in the sutras.


15. Possessiveness.

By the third day of the Dalai Lama’s teaching, I’m pretty sure the security guard and I have each other figured out. Because we always grin at each other and he always checks twice for any weapons I may have, concealed against my skin inside my belt.

Wouldn’t he get a black eye if he patted another guy’s junk so thoroughly and repeatedly?

As for me, I am always careful to stand in his line. As I wait, I suck a mint. I’ve even started to think of him as “my guard”.


16. Eagle Scouts

Sometimes it all seems very spiritual, this Tibetan stuff. Other times, it seems like the Eagle Scout School of Buddhism, at least the way the foreigners practice it. Like if you collect all your badges you will receive enlightenment or, at very least, a lucrative gig on the Buddhist circuit.

All day I hear: I have done this many prostrations, this many mandalas, this many offering bowls. I did Vajrasattva. I did Vajrasattva twice. I have received teachings from So-and-so Rinpoche. I had a private audience. I think it’s fair for me to call him a friend. He came to my house. My geomancy is totally perfect; I don’t need to have a puja or anything.

Doubtless it would be easier to like these people if they didn’t always talk about how utterly they have been transformed. My life has turned 360 degrees! They’re spinning in circles, these people.

And the initiations! Even a person who seems entirely decent may abruptly lean across the lunch table and announce, “You couldn’t possibly think of a deity whose initiation I have not received!”

Because I am a wimp and a fraud, I nod right along, very impressed, wishing that I, too, was so spiritual that a rinpoche would come and eat pizza at my house.

Meanwhile an evil voice whispers: Does this man with all his prostrations and initiations seem one bit nicer than a guy who has completed 37 screens of Tetris?


17. Gelek / 2.

I was gone for a few months and when I came back the foreign nuns whispered about Gelek, “He disrobed.” They said this with infinite disapproval, as if he had been waggling his private parts in front of schoolchildren.

A German woman had fallen in love with him apparently. She threatened to kill herself if he didn’t marry her.

The nuns talked about what a waste it was. Such an auspicious rebirth! Such a golden opportunity to practice dharma! And he’d thrown it all away for some woman.

I saw Gelek once after that and he did seem much sadder, as if his light had been somehow taken from him. The foreign nuns thought it was just a tragedy.

At no point did anyone suggest that we had all played a part in the loss of his vocation, by making a pet monk of him.


18. Old Cow.

The old white cow with the green tarp on its back stands by the side of the street and thinks, “Maybe if I stand very still and concentrate, this will all go away.”


19. Second Chances.

The terrifyingly handsome monk, his full lips framed by his goatee, would like to know why I spent so much time in Dharamsala, years ago. When I admit I wanted to be a monk, he is very pleased.

“You can still be monk! It is not too late!”

“It is definitely too late.”

“Do you have a family?”

I don’t know the answer to that question, so I just let it hang there.

He says it’s good to have monks with experience of the world. They speak in ways that people understand. He looks ready to throw his maroon shawl around me and give me vows on the spot.

I hurriedly change the subject. This is ridiculous. If we keep talking like this I am going to start crying and not be able to stop.


20. Insomnia / 2

In the night when I cannot sleep my lovers return to me in a cloud stinking of the baths: sweat, steam, spunk, bleach, amyl. They return not tenderly but in a sort of stampede. I desire them as much as ever but they remain out of reach.

One night in three or four the habit of voracity bears down on me. The men I loved are there, as well as plenty of others I hardly noticed at the time: the shoe salesman, the policeman, the gym attendant in Bangalore. The automatic Turk, the Italian boy with 144 entirely different faces, the Czech who, when he was not receiving enough attention, would thump his cock against the wall. (A strategy that was invariably successful.)

A rancorous hankering United Nations of lust. The bitter habit of hunger. Lovers return to me.

Sleep is out of the question.


21. Notes for Maitreya Buddha / 2.

The monks may feel somewhat put out when the Buddha cancels the mandala workshop, as well as the ongoing showdown between the philosophical schools of Cittamatra and Madhyamika. The tantric initiations, as well, are indefinitely postponed.

One brave monk questions the Buddha. Why these disruptions of tradition? And the Buddha says, “Even tantra is not fast enough if you have no water.”

Seeking always to remedy suffering and its causes, the Buddha focuses his attention on the devastated Earth. The miniscule likelihood of success does not dismay him. This is the Buddha after all, who teach the dharma to courtesans and mass murderers. It might even be said that the Buddha has a certain fondness for what are generally seen as hopeless causes.

Morality and immorality are now imbued with an awareness of atmospheric carbon levels. “The abhorrence of the body is no longer suitable to this day and age,” says the Buddha. “Abhor plastic, which looks good but is actually filthy, which is impermanent, but not nearly impermanent enough.”

Just as a doctor focuses first on the most urgent problem, the Buddha focuses his attention first upon the devastated earth. The forest dwelling monks defend their forest. The Buddha proclaims that there is no dharma separate from the dharma of the earth.


22. Tap / 2.

It had been a day which could not possibly go well. After all, in Tokyo a day which began horrendously was dependably horrendous throughout.

All night the dogs had barked, dogs inside and out. At dawn I crawled from bed feeling like a crumpled scrap geriatric venom. Imagine Madame Minh, age 106.

Yet, as I watched the sunset, I found myself full of happiness, astonished by a day which, entirely against my will, had turned out to be full of joy and wonder.

How was it possible? Perhaps the gorgeous monk was right and there were special properties to this, the God-King place, the automatic miracle area.

I tried to think of when things had begun to change. I remembered: the young blonde man with the enormous beard was brushing his teeth. He tried to turn on the outdoor tap. An entirely superstitious act, it seemed to me. Since we had been dry for days.

But this time water came out.

A Spontaneous Asylum

(notes from a monastery guesthouse on the edge of McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala, India.)

1.

Here at the monastery there is a one-eyed orange tomcat who teaches me the dharma. I met him two years ago, when he was a one-eyed kitten. Presumably we have spent many lifetimes together. One of us is always the stupid one; the other is the cat.

A few nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and needed to piss. But to get to the toilet I had to go down the hall, down the stairs, outside, up more stairs and around the corner.

I can piss off of the porch, I thought – who’s going to know?

Next morning, first thing, the one-eyed tabby is at my door. Soon as I open it, he darts in, ducks under the bed and pisses. Gives me a little meow, exits.

Karma, according to this cat, means you do not get away with anything.

Another thing: Why do I always have be the stupid one? When do I get to be the cat?

2.

Beside the dumpster, on the way to Dharamkot, someone has thrown away a bag of tsampa. The monkeys are shovelling it into their mouths, so that they all appear to have white tsampa beards, and to be wearing white gloves.

3.

Perhaps he is mad, I thought, when I saw the man at the next table. That or a drunk. But, no, the Danish gentleman, with his ravaged face and blonde mop of hair, has simply taken on the quality of everything here at the monastery guesthouse – sturdy disrepair.

Everything that was broken when I was here years ago is still broken – but it is not any more broken. It all still works, basically, in a makeshift way. You just have to remember to turn on the faucet using the knob on the floor.

The cook offers the Danish man an umbrella. He appears offended, “You know how I feel about umbrellas! It just rains! It is a natural process! No interference is required!”

4.

The extent to which everyone in the monastery guesthouse is half-cracked is – remarkable. Astonishing, nearly. It is as if we all spontaneously decided to come together and create a lunatic asylum.

I’ve gotten quite full of myself actually, since I just move my lips a lot and write compulsively on three-by-five cards. Whereas most everyone else here talks to themselves out loud. This distinction makes me pleased with myself. I’m almost too sane to be here, I think.

Then I correct myself.

5.

For example, at the other end of the hall, there’s a French woman with spiky blonde hair. She sashays when she walks and sings to herself and whenever she’s even slightly pleased with someone she pretends to kiss them, twice on each cheek.

This was how she acted when the guesthouse manager came by yesterday with butter tea and thick chapati to celebrate Tibetan New Year. How lovely it was that they included us, the riff-raff foreigners paying two bucks a night.

Ten minutes later the guesthouse manager came back and made clear he’d like to get those kisses for real. When she refused, he offered her ten rupees.

“He thought I make a living from my body!” she said, delighted and aghast.

“He only offered you ten rupees!” I said.

6.

The knot in my chest says I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I ought to be doing. I don’t know how. I am wasting my time, I have always been wasting my time. Twenty years have passed and I have learned nothing.

(Hailstorm! I hear the woman say o-leh, o-leh and now it turns to pouring rain and the dogs come running home.)

I know what to do. What I really want is some kind of guarantee that I will always be fed and loved. That there will be beauty and someone will notice. But that guarantee will never be forthcoming.

But I know what to do.

7.

The dilapidated Danish gentleman used to be a junkie. He smiles radiantly out of his ravaged face. “Thirty-five years. Now, I have been clean two years, ten months and some days.” He is here at the monastery guesthouse completing a hundred thousand prostations; I hear him sometimes in the room above mine, sliding repeatedly across the floor.

I admit to him that I sometimes feel like a lost cause.

“Never a lost cause!” he says. “I am here to learn, that’s what I always say to people. If I was a buddha I wouldn’t be here!”

We sit and discuss addiction, two experts in the field. I ask the same question I always ask.

“No,” he says. (I always get the same answer.) “You can do nothing. Nothing! He has to do it himself.”

8.

The man with one foot is not quite crippled enough to succeed as a crippled beggar. So he has chosen to expand operations and don the clothes of a holy man. His saffron robes are very fresh, he’s got rudraksha beads, and his beard is a work in process.

He completes the ensemble with a rainbow colored umbrella, which he holds tilted coquettishly as he begs on the side of the road in the rain.

Hey, baba!

9.

Almost twenty years ago, I lived in a retreat center above McLeod Ganj and wanted to be a monk. There were two of us, actually. Two promising aspirants. Ingo went ahead and became a monk. I decided I’d go back to Denver first. In a few days I had a job as a towel boy in a sex club. I’d get blue airmail letters from Ingo sometimes, news of Sera monastery, while I was busy at the Swim Club, breaking local and regional records for promiscuity.

For fifteen years I hadn’t been back to the retreat center. Then yesterday I went back. I stood in the garden looking at the stupa and I shook.

10.

“We lie to ourselves!” says Venerable Robina. “We lie to ourselves so much it becomes the automatic way we perceive the world. We act as if we aren’t supposed to change. Like death is something that shouldn’t happen, or not until we are 97. It’s all a lie we tell ourselves!”

Venerable Rita is sitting in the audience. Ani Rita, the knife-throwing nun, whom I adored for years. She used to tell a story about being a cook in Switzerland: she got so angry she was about to throw her chopping knife across the room at a man who’d pissed her off. She talked about how lucky she was to not have thrown that knife.

Because Rita is a helluva tough lady, I’m telling you. Anyone she’d thrown a knife at would not have survived.

Ani Rita taught me to sing Guru Puja, to offer water bowls, to make prostrations. She was always kind and funny and never the least bit impressed with me. “You look like an ironing board,” she’d say. Or, when I came back to the center after a few months, “Didn’t expect to see you again!”

One day at lunch, many years ago, I heard a young woman blubbering as spoke to Rita. “Ani Rita,” she said. “I had a terrible vision! I had a vision that I’m going to die in one year!”

“In one year?” Ani Rita said. “Are you kidding me? You could die tonight!”

11.

I decided I wouldn’t say anything to Ani Rita. It was enough for me just to see her. I didn’t need to go up to her, try to remind her who I was, say oh you meant the world to me when I was 19, 20, 21, say aw shucks.

As Ani Rita was arranging her robes to sit down, she looked across the crowd gathered for the free teaching.

She recognized me at once. She grinned, mimed her surprise and pleasure. I beamed at her, for a second. Then it was too much for me. I pinned my chin to my chest and cried.

Ani Rita had to leave before the talk was finished. She was running a retreat for people about to be ordained. I didn’t get a chance to speak to her.

12.

My first evening back at the monastery guesthouse, I glanced up to see a monk peering into my window. I opened the door to say hello. He was was wearing an orange cap. His face was young and wrinkly and bright. He was holding a balloon animal. It was yellow and black.

I said I was surprised. “Surprised!” he said.

He asked where I was from. I said, “America, I guess. Japan, too.”

“America!” he repeated. “Japan!”

He shook my hand and, because my hand was cold, he went on shaking it. First my right hand, then my left. He warmed my hands in his own. Then he thanked me and charged off, still grinning and holding his toy.

The Dalai Lama says that everyone should have fun at Tibetan New Year. Even monks.

I stood there at the door, feeling as though a row of candles had been lit within me. I didn’t feel cold at all anymore, not even in this cement cell with its rusty metal door.

How convenient this happened the very first day, I thought. Now all I have to do is tell people this story -- and anyone who is ever going to understand, will understand. Of course I had to burn my bridges and come back here again. It was the only possible decision, if I wanted to go on living.

The monk was holding a balloon animal. A honeybee.

Special Promotion

As a special incentive to passengers, travel on the Delhi Metro now includes the opportunity to be groped by a uniformed member of the Indian army. Personally, I find myself exploring the city as never before. I say “opportunity” but in fact it is a “requirement”, after passing through a metal detector (to ensure you have no weapons which might involuntarily discharge during the groping process) to step onto a small platform, upon which you will be touched, both tenderly and comprehensively. This so-called requirement is in fact a courtesy, so that no one need be embarrassed by how ravenously they yearn to be touched -- and especially by a uniformed member of the Indian Army!

It should be noted that the price of a ticket entitles the passenger to be groped only once per journey. If, for example, after receiving the caresses to which your ticket entitles you, you act as if you’ve forgotten something, exit back through the metal detector, pretend to study the map and then present yourself, all smiles, again – the attention you receive will be entirely perfunctory and unsatisfying.

Considering the evident success of this promotion – the trains are packed at nearly every hour of the day -- it can only be hoped that the Delhi Municipal Transit Corporation will further expand the promotion, and give us all even more reason to travel. How nice it would be to receive, for example, after groping, a big hug. Oh, to feel oneself held in the capable ever-ready arms of the Indian Army! For that matter, why not a small kiss? Or even a lingering one. . .

The official stated reason for this promotion is: terrorism. And it is certainly true that, after traumatic events, we find ourselves, more than ever, in need of simple human affection. What better way to re-establish well-being than through warm and intimate touch? In my opinion, monetary concerns may also be at the forefront, but, then again, I admit I do not particularly care, as long as I myself am receiving attention which is first-rate and professional, from someone in a uniform.

Objections are bound to arise. Considering that, currently, men are groped by men, and women by women, the system appears to be egregiously biased in favor of those seeking same-sex encounters. It may be, however, that other requests will be honored. I myself have not tried.