Hopelessly Devoted to You

Hopelessly Devoted to You

My essay, "Metta Meditation for Hot Male Action: how to practice love in sleazy bars", originally published in RFD, is now available here, on the blog of Don Shewey, writer and critic. I thought people who enjoyed that essay might also enjoying this one, about returning to Dharamsala after many years away. (And, yes, it is best if you read it while listening to Olivia Newton John.)

Hopelessly Devoted to You

for JYC

(Dharamsala, August 2009)

I used to be a spiritual person, but I’m not anymore. Years ago I joined all the religions, lived in India, bowed to everything. I suspect it was a kind of hysteria, frankly. Madness runs in my family – or, rather, it gallops, and it doesn’t miss anybody.

I used to be religious and India was all that mattered to me, especially Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama lives. All I ever talked about was freakin’ Dharamsala. I would have driven you out of your mind, I swear.

But I got over that. I don’t believe in any of it anymore. It just melted away. I live in Tokyo. I study ecology and literature. I’m as spiritual as an old carpet in an adult movie theater. And that suits me fine. I’m not the sort of person you’d want your son around, if he was cute and impressionable and below the age of 70.

Yes, I’ve come back to India a few times, but I don’t join cults and I don’t go to Dharamsala. In fourteen years, I’ve never once been back, not until the day before yesterday.

Now that I am here, I understand why I avoided it for so long. Trying to maintain one’s atheism here is like trying to stay sober in a shot bar.

It’s beautiful, this spiritual stuff, especially the Tibetan variety. It’s a valuable cultural artifact and we ought to help them maintain it. It’s lovely, but it’s not true. I don’t just want consolations, you understand, I want something that’s factual and proven, like penicillin, or global warming.

For a really spectacular and lively take on Indian spirituality, you must read Wendy Doniger’s new book The Hindus: An Alternative History. She shows, for example, how the idea of karma arose parallel to the idea of money. Doesn’t that make sense? There are clear societal and practical reasons behind various religious beliefs – and they’re often about keeping folks in line. It’s not magic in other words. It didn’t just bloom in mid-air when Guru Rinpoche snapped his fingers.

I have explained this to myself, repeatedly, but in Dharamsala that has absolutely no effect. I am suffering profound lapses in non-belief. It appears that I am wired for bowing down. I am obviously severely devotion-prone.

Of course I assure myself I don’t believe any of this stuff. I’m just circumambulating for my health. Prostrating for upper body strength. Nonetheless, I fear my atheism could not be detected by even the most sensitive instruments. Last night, in an unguarded moment, I nearly bought offering bowls.

The fact is, despite considering myself fully cured, I am obviously suffering from an outbreak of Buddhism. All over my body, even inside my mouth. And don’t reassure yourself that it will stop there. Because in 48 hours I could be in Vrindaban chanting Hare Krishna. It has happened before. Far gone on a bhakti bender. Basically, if devotion were herpes, I would be in the hospital now.

What can I do? Would it help to visualize Christopher Hitchens (author, God Is Not Great) or pray five times a day in the direction of Richard Dawkins (author, The God Delusion)?

It’s not that I’ve suddenly become fond of theology, or find the idea of rebirth any more convincing. It’s just that – how can I say it? – the sacredness of the world becomes forcibly apparent and I want some way to participate in that, to respond to that. Just walking around with my ordinary mind I can see that the trees, the mountains and the faces around me are (oh damn) holy. It’s obvious, I mean, this sacredness. It’s downright pushy. Things glow.

Yes. You are right. I did stop taking my medication. But my drugs are all for anxiety and I haven’t felt afraid since I left Tokyo.

This morning I was sitting in the main temple in front of the image of Tara. I wasn’t praying. I was just tired after all the circumambulating and prostrating and needed to sit down. I may have been accidentally reciting the Tara mantra. I was given this mantra long ago when I was just eighteen. It’s not my fault if I still recite it sometimes, in spite of myself. Think of how hard it is to stop smoking. Modern medicine has not yet developed a patch for the goddess Tara.

When I was a religious person, I was smitten or, rather, afflicted, with both Buddhism and Hinduism. Tara is a goddess in both faiths. I visited her fierce Hindu aspect in West Bengal once, in Tarapith. A poor and ragged place. And nonetheless radiant. (This is precisely the kind of fuzzy thinking I abhor.)

I'm a Tara devotee. I mean, I was. But I wasn't a devotee in the sensible Western Buddhist way, wherein they remind themselves every minute that she's just a symbol of their own inner wisdom. No, I was a swooning, bhakti-ridden "Oh Mother of the Universe" type. It smacked of Hinduism. I got in trouble with the Buddhists for my Hindu sympathies. The Hindus didn't care. I mean, I was white and gay. I was already literally beyond the pale.

Anyway, a group of Indian tourists traipsed into the temple where I was sitting. Dharamsala is unmistakably on the middle-class Indian tourist circuit now. They all troop in chatting, stare at the monks, take pictures with their cell phones, their kids run all over the place, and then they troop out again. Buddhism, remember, is not an Indian thing anymore, it was wiped out here around the 12th century. I guess a lot of the Dalits became Buddhists in the Fifties but I’ve never actually seen Indian Buddhists myself.

Well, this group comes in -- the women are in gorgeous saris, really high class. They sashay past Shakyamuni Buddha and the wrathful deities, walk up to Tara and suddenly their hands are over their heads, the little boy too, and they’re hitting the floor, prostrating over and over. An old Tibetan woman is standing there too, beaming, saying “Tara Devi! Tara Devi!”

I’m sitting there in back and in my mind the words appear: this is how the Buddha returns to India. And I bawl. Dumb screwed-up foreigner in his torn gay bar camo pants and Moosehill Reunion t-shirt, tears rolling down his face.

It’s a shame I don’t cry fresh water. They could send me to Yemen to solve the problems caused by global warming. Lately I cry so much, I’d reverse desertification. Those Yemenites could all have green lawns. Big leafy trees with ferns growing on them.

If worse comes to worse, I’ll start hanging out with devotees. Western Buddhists. Have you met these people? Watch out for them. Yipes. I was one for years. I went to America’s only Buddhist college, Naropa, where I was permanently cured of usefulness. Of course, I’m sure some Western Buddhists are fine people. I’ve heard those Insight Vipassana people are actually quite sane, but in my experience, most of the time, you could hardly meet a nuttier, more uptight, disapproving crew. Dick Cheney does not take himself more seriously than the Western Buddhists I knew.

In the early nineties I lived above McLeod Ganj at Tushita Meditation Center. The Era of Angry Nuns, I call it. Anytime I saw a foreign nun, I took off in the other direction. Because those nuns were always in a rage and you did not want to get in their way.

As for the rest of us, we boasted about how early we got up and how many prostrations we did. There were people in long-term silent retreat whose entire spiritual practice consisted of stomping around and scowling at people.

People had umpteen high higher highest beyond high tantric initiations. And everyone appeared to be obsessed with some kind of special cheese that could only be bought in Delhi. Or a very special rice paper lampshade that was just perfect for their meditation hut.

In those days, all I talked about was wanting to become a monk. You see, I wanted more than anything to be one of them. I wanted to be good.

I see now how brave they were, those Western Buddhist monks and nuns. They didn’t have much in the way of role models or support. The minute anyone donned robes, the rest of us basically expected them to levitate and never fart.

We all tried so hard. And it didn’t seem we wound up any more loving or enlightened, just uptight. I remember how we disapproved of those who’d given up their vows, stopped being monks. “He DISROBED!” people would say in a voice hushed and aghast, as if the guy had been waggling his private parts in a schoolyard.

And I remember how those ‘fallen’ monks and nuns seemed to have a special grace about them, when they came around in regular clothes with their new boyfriend or girlfriend. It seemed they’d learned something very special – to pursue truth as themselves, and not as holy people.

Anyway, I’m ashamed to admit that, whenever I was pissed off while living in a religious community, I used to take a very quiet passive-aggressive form of revenge. You see, I got angry and self-important, when I saw the very most pucker-faced, disapproving devotees -- the ones who never ever spoke except to tell me what I was doing wrong – those same prickly devotees often turned into warm gushing piles of goo whenever a rinpoche was around.

When this happened I’d go off by myself and, in a low and evil voice, I’d sing Olivia Newton-John, “Hopelessly Devoted To You”. Remember that syrupy insipid song? I adore it.

But, now, there's nowhere to hide,
Since you pushed my love aside. . .
I'm not in my head,
Hopelessly devoted to you

I used to sing that song and take quiet revenge. And it serves me right now, if people sing it about me. Because me atheism has been severely compromised. Actually, I guess it was basically found Dead-On-Arrival in Dharamsala. It’s possible it was never particularly hardy.

I chant, I circumambulate, I bow down. I write. (Writing is the worst of all.) Because there is this radiance, this very pushy sacredness, and I want to participate in it. I want to respond to it.

I opened my door at the Green Hotel this morning and thought, “I get to be here all day.” (Presuming that I continue to successfully dodge the homicidal Maruti tourist vans.)

How wildly grateful I am to return to Dharamsala, to see it again with my own eyes while I am still alive.

What a pity I can’t cry fresh water.

My head is saying "Fool, forget him",
My heart is saying "Don't let go"
Hold on to the end, that's what I intend to do
I'm hopelessly devoted to yoo-oo-oo-ooo
Hopelessly devoted to you.

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Robert Walser

Robert Walser, Speaking to the Rose: Writings 1912-1932

University of Nebraska, 2005

Readers new to Robert Walser should start with 'Selected Stories' or 'Masquerade' but by Walser's devotees -- and it appears that, even in English, our numbers are finally growing -- this book will be joyfully devoured.

'Speaking to the Rose' contains dozens of uncollected Walser stories, some hermetic, others as deceptively plain as children's stories. All are lovely -- and unsettling.

In his brief introduction, Christopher Middleton writes, "As author and individual, Walser articulates a large and general cast of mind, such as strictly 'personal' writings seldom do. He can be considered a voice of the unvanquished downtrodden (in early work, of the employee) of people never quite small enough to slip through power's mesh, of the powerless who do not squirm but resist."

There are stories here that seem to me absolutely essential Walser. These include "The Story of the Prodigal Son" ("One of the two sons was distinctly easygoing, whereas the other's conduct was egregiously sound.") or "The Cave Man" ("Card games and bowling were virtually unknown to him." "It is no exaggeration to say that he read little.")

Everywhere there are sentences to copy out and swoon over.

"Frequently life seemed to me like a cramped little house on the edge of everything, because it was so insignificant; yet I loved it and tried to be warm with everyone." (27)

"She had a cage full of lions and tigers and tubs full of snakes. What had he got? Countless sins on his conscience. But at least he wasn't dull. That decided it." (32)

"The monotony to which the lions are doomed serves the tamer just as an active and capable assistant might." (43) (This piece alone, "An Essay on Lion Taming", will make the reader glad to have the book.)

"Fool that I am, I supposed the countess to be so tall that her feather hat, which she might have borrowed from the thirteenth century, touched the edge of heaven, I mean its infinitely inviting breath, which is indefinable for us and will probably remain so." (45)

There are also clues toward the mystery of Robert Walser. The piece "My Endeavors seems as strangely straight-forward as anything he ever wrote. "With books as with people I consider complete understanding to be somewhat uninteresting, rather than productive." And: "I crossed over in the past from book-composition to prose-piece writing because epic connections had begun, as it were, to get on my nerves. My hand became a sort of refusenik."

Speaking to the Rose includes 14 translations from 'The Pencil Region' the hundreds of pieces Walser wrote in a minuscule code. (Anyone fascinated by these will want to treat themselves to Bernofsky's newly translated "Microscripts", which includes images of the actual manuscripts, written on scraps, book covers and envelopes.)

These are sly and marvellous stories -- I hope that Bernofsky or Middleton will not make us wait too long before they hand over another volume. I'd camp out on their doorstep if I thought it'd help. ("I'll leave when you've translated another story! Short is fine! It's cold out here!")

prayer

prayer: (n.) the means by which we ask God to touch what we ourselves would rather not.

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

Knopf: 2010

I never come home from India with less than 25 kilos of luggage. I throw away clothes to make room for books. Therefore, let me save you the backache: this is the book you must read.

Presenting itself as nine "non-fiction short stories", 9 Lives portrays expressions of faith that are often romanticized or sensationalized, such as that of a tantric priestess, or ritual prostitute, or Tibetan soldier monk. As an obsessive reader of books about India, I can assure you that much of what is found here cannot be found anywhere else -- the alternatives are often sensationalist nonsense, or else dry as dust.

For example, the first chapter, about a Jain nun: I dare you to find elsewhere a readable brief narrative of Jainism that explains the basic beliefs and shows how they can continue to compel those that believe.

I've spent time in three of the places Dalrymple explores here -- Sravanabelagola, Dharamsala and Tarapith -- and still I learned so much about each.

(I admit I have an awful fear that the chapter about Tarapith -- the very most beautiful in the book -- will provoke a tourist boom in dusty Tarapith. In which case, let me warn you, the road is one of the most treacherous in India. Potential devotees are strongly advised to take the train.)

Dalrymple writes in spirited opposition to the forces that threaten to homogenize spirituality in India. Almost all of what he profiles here is in danger of being blotted out.

Particularly praise-worthy is Dalrymple's ability to get entirely out of the way of his subject. We learn nothing whatsoever about Dalrymple's personal spiritual journey -- and I mean that as very high praise.

If you love this book, the obvious next step would be to read Wendy Doniger's spectacular "The Hindus: An Alternative History": a beautiful service to Hinduism and human civilization, for which she has been, of course, thunderously condemned by fundamentalist panjandrums.

May the spirituality of India always bloom as richly and strangely and powerfully as Dalrymple finds it blooming here.

Clay

One of those women who do everything. 50 hours a week, at the absolute minimum, all the way from light secretarial to heavy industrial. As well, of course, as every bit of the housekeeping, bookkeeping, menu planning.

She did all this, in accordance with the wishes of her husband, their agreed-upon goals and plans for the future. Maybe she may had her misgivings, but she just the same she worked and her sacrifices were matter-of-fact and without complaint. An independent self-reliant spirit did not preclude in her a deep belief in the centrality of love and marriage.

Imagine her surprise when, on a bright Sunday morning, after tugging back a curtain and thrusting open a window to air the bedroom, she turned to beg the pardon of her husband -- for disturbing him while still in bed -- and happened to notice that her husband of seventeen and a half years was now a large and crudely-shaped clay doll.

There was, she admitted later, a moment when she considered going right on cleaning, as if she hadn't noticed anything.

That morning however, something must have gotten into her, because she tore the comforter right off, and the sheet with it, and had herself a good look at him.

Sure enough. Her husband was a large clay doll. The size of a man and that was all. Certainly the shape wasn't meant to deceive anyone. He was the sort of man rude children might build beside the sea out of mud. (He was inexactly but extravagantly anatomically correct.)

This very capable woman, who could do and endure so much, at once became loudly hysterical. Who could have done such a thing? Who had kidnapped or enchanted him? Call the police! Call the media! She'd spare herself nothing. (She never had before; why start now?) She'd talk to the tabloids. She'd cry for morning television.

She would not rest, she promised herself, until her husband had been restored to her, the man just as she'd known him, for seventeen and a half years.

A few days later, resting between interviews and sympathetic crumble cakes, an atrocious thought occurred to her.

What if her husband had done this himself? Got tired of her and couldn't face her, and -- ashamed at what he'd done, after so many years of uninterrupted and strenuous devotion -- left a clay doll in his place and wandered off? It was the sort of thing she expected men to do, other men, why not her own?

She became enraged. That cowardly bastard! She'd track him down, sue him for all he was worth, destroy his name in public, beat him with her own fists.

Into grief she sank. When she met her husband she'd been young, pretty and optimistic. Years of work and endurance had aged her -- prepared the ground for bitterness that now came rushing in. Youth, good looks and optimism were long since passed. She had a few months of salary saved -- and a husband who was a crudely shaped clay doll.

It seemed to her that her whole life had been wasted. Now there was no way it might be salvaged or set right.

She drank, took pills, considered suicide. Her mind was saturated with vengeance, then self-pity, then utter hopelessness.

When word first got out that her husband was a crude clay doll, there'd been a wave of sympathy and horror. However, it was not long before she became something of a pariah. It was just too horrible for anyone to think about too long, like that couple who'd run over their two children in the driveway.

She imagined she would go on living, as that tragic couple had, only technically alive, hollowed out, a simulacrum, not so different from her husband, still in bed propped up on pillows, with his few yellow sprigs of yarn hair, a button nose and coins for eyes.

Months and months passed. She drank, stopped drinking, embraced bulimia, renounced it, smoked cigars.

On this particular evening she'd had three cigars, as well as a cheesecake and several beers. She cried and raged for hours, counted out a likely lethal quantity of pills, and placed them in little multicolored rows before her.

As she sobbed there on the floor, the very worst possible thought came toward her through the dark. Circled her twice. Landed on her shoulder and whispered.

Was it possible he'd been a clay doll all along?

She brushed the thought away.

It circled the room and came back.

She had to admit it explained a few things.

A lot of things actually.

She laughed. A short sharp laugh. It would have sounded like an evil laugh, actually, to folks that didn't understand.

She understood.

Quietly she began to pack a few things. She didn't need much. Almost everything in the house belonged to her husband. She'd arranged it all for him. So many comforts. So many costume changes.

On her way out the door, she paused. Returned to the bedroom.

She kissed him where his ear had been. So many cracks and holes in him now: it was a wonder his head didn't fall off. She patted his shoulder affectionately. Wiped the dirt off on her skirt.

Pulling back the bed sheet, she contemplated his large crude penis. She'd always liked it.

She reached out to it. Shrugged. Why not?

She broke it off and put it in her pack.

Then, like a mischievous cameraman, she instructed herself, "One more time, girl. From the top. Once more, with feeling."

She was ready to go.