The Secret Library of Tiruvannamalai

When you have lived awhile in Tiruvannamalai, if people decide that you are basically all right, or anyway harmless, then someone will say at last -- after first quickly looking around, and lowering their voice, and leaning over to speak directly into your ear – Have you visited the library?

At this moment you become one of the elect: a richer existence opens to you.  Because, if no one ever told you, you might live here for years without ever knowing the library existed.  Indeed, many must live this way, grimly enduring their lives, never even imagining a library.  Like the treasures of Advaita, the library is centrally located, it is convenient, and you’d never find it on your own.  You could walk past its gate every day of your life and never suspect it was there.

Deemed worthy of trust, a friend leads you down the alley, through a dour and unpromising gate, across the littered grounds of a neglected temple, to what appears a very ordinary outbuilding, a simple sort of shed.  Do not be fooled by rustic appearances: this is the secret library of Tiruvannamalai. 

Most extraordinarily, the library is unguarded and unstaffed.  It relies upon human integrity.  Impossible! you say, but I am not a liar.  The secret library of Tiruvannamalai actually exists.  Like Arunachala itself, it possesses both vast spiritual power and a humble unassuming form. 

Your friend must then demonstrate the function of the lock and teach you the secret code.  There are many mantras in Tiruvannamalai and many secret practices, but there is only one secret which is guaranteed to function and that is the four digit code that opens the lock of the door to the library.

Inside the neglected grounds, within this corrugated shed, is a modest but resplendent library.  It is an ideal library.  It is as close as a library could ever be to a dream of a library.  It is likely that Jorge Luis Borges, wizard of libraries, has chosen to be reincarnated simply to have the opportunity to visit this library.

The library consists of two rooms, entirely comfortable, with light and fan.  Everything is clean and neat and demonstrates the care of the guardians.  (One assumes the library has powerful invisible protectors as well.  Certainly anyone who tries to harm the library in any way must inevitably suffer monstrously.  The results of stealing books are less severe but nonetheless undesirable: book thieves forfeit all sexual potency until the books are returned.  They become unable to eat without suffering curry stains.  Patchy hair loss is also often observed.)

As you might expect, one room of the secret library consists of spiritual books, representing nearly every tradition and discipline, books left behind when their owners ascended to the heights of spiritual attainment – and thus no longer required them – or simply suffered back pain from hauling them around.

I must confess that the contents of the second room mean the most to me.  The second room contains non-spiritual books.  Non-spiritual books!  Please understand that, after a few weeks in Tiruvannamalai, where one cannot walk down the street without bumping into a god, or a saint, or a cow, all synonymous and disgruntled, where one cannot enjoy a cup of coffee without hearing the extended discourse of a spiritual master, it is intensely delightful to come upon a treasure trove of non-spiritual books, books in which no one awakens.  In these books, folks just open their eyes, wait for their heads to clear, and haul themselves out of bed.

It’s such a relief. 

You have to be as spiritual as we are here, to fully appreciate non-spirituality, to savor the unexpected opportunity to read Marguerite Duras or Jeanette Winterson, to indulge one’s desire for a bit of mystery or science fiction. 

Naturally I acquire a sense of safety and well-being, just knowing that I have the option to reread, for the umpteenth time, Mikhail Bulgakov.  I feel more secure just knowing that, if my spirit is faltering, I may turn directly to Chapter 19:

Follow me, reader!  Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world!  May the liar’s vile tongue be cut out!

Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!

The library’s creator and caretaker are not seen.  In this way the library is like a midnight banquet feast in a fairytale, presented by invisible hands.  Though no one is seen, great care is everywhere apparent.  Consider, for example, the library’s impeccable catalog, wherein new acquisitions have been listed, and losses crossed out with a ruler, and never mind that, in a library dependent on human honor, books must come and go like snowflakes.

Without knowing anything of the library’s creator or guardian except for the library itself, I can say without hesitation that I have the very greatest respect for this person and am, in fact, very fond of him or her.  I would without qualm entrust my life to this person, knowing that, whilst my disorderly life could never meet with full approval of this divine librarian, my existence would doubtless be better organized and managed than it is now.

Greatness is not an effect of size.  Arunachala is not less because it is not Everest.  In the same way, it is possible for a great library to consist of only two small rooms.  As I hope you are already aware, the universe is patrolled by invisible angelic librarians, who are forever trying to get the right book into the hands of the person who needs it.  Therefore it matters not how many books are available, but only that you receive the book intended for you. 

For the joy of libraries, one must inevitably resort to metaphor.  Therefore: it is as if you are a lonely and discouraged gay man, arriving in an isolated rural area, a place where, it turns out, there’s only one other gay guy in the entire county – a man who just happens to be ridiculously good-looking and very anxious to go to bed with you. 

Alone in the library, one could weep with gratitude and relief.  The library exists.  A balm to the enervated and worn human soul, exhausted by spiritual yearning and bus traffic in Tamil Nadu.  Here is a secret library, where no one would ever have suspected it.  Despair not.  Give your soul a rest.  Relax, please, your spiritual disciplines and shroud yourself in mystery, or sci fi, or suspense. 

Long may it endure, with covert generosity, with sweet improbability, the great and small and secret library of Tiruvannamalai.    

Confessions of a True Devotee

Oh Lord!  I went all round the world to do pradakshina to you but you are in fullness everywhere.  How then could I complete a round?

-- The Ribhu Gita

         

From time to time I am accused of being a skeptic.  I ought to appreciate such occasions more.  It is not often that I am accused of being something so reasonable and accepted by society.

Alas, it is not true.  I am not a skeptic.  I am a believer.  Worse, I’m a devotee, I’m of that spooky and unnerving breed.  Even if this essay ran to a 1000 pages, it would not be long enough to list the perfectly preposterous things in which I believe.  I believe in karma and moisturizer, in ayurveda and marriage, in invisible spirits and social justice.  I believe a giant panda who once lived in the National Zoo was a great spiritual being.  I believe that certain people, who have never been warm or kind to me, will one day become warm and kind.

If it appears that I sometimes doubt or question the colorful gurus and earnest devotees of holy Tiruvannamalai, please know that I am only saying neti neti -- not this, not this – like any good devotee. 

To suppose that I truly disapprove would be to assume that I approve of and find reasonable the world from which they turn away, the world they’re cautiously sticking their noses out of, the world of materialism and consumerism, of owning and competing, of progress and success.

The assumption is not correct.  The beliefs and practices of a Tokyo commuter are not less strange and inexplicable than those of a tantric yogi living in a cremation ground.  Whether you are working for enlightenment or for retirement, you are seek to live in a magic story, one where suffering ends.  We are vulnerable, hungry and soft-bodied creatures.  Mortals.  No matter the location, there will never be a shortage of nonsense to report.

As for Tiruvannamalai, what room is there for skeptics here!  For skeptics three days would be enough.  Considering the power outages, the beggars, the crabby spiritual types, the sheer filth.  For a skeptic I think it would be enough to come for lunch.

I am a devotee.  I’ve been here seven weeks now.  If you tried to dislodge me from this place, I’d probably bite you.  Devotees do things like that.  Please beware.

Even if I may be forgiven for believing in karma and skin cream, if I may then still qualify to take my seat at the charmless and interminable dinner party known as Reasonable People, surely there is no place for a person such as myself, who believes a stubby rocky hillock to be a visible form of the very most sacred mystery.

Arunachala.  Just like meeting a famous person; the first thing you think is “I thought it would be taller.”  Even the smitten don’t call it a mountain.  It’s a hill.  A rocky scruffy jagged-looking hill, a pile of gravel, the sort of place you’d think that only goats and goat keepers would notice.

In the vicinity of Arunachala, people say strange things happen.  People say they can’t sleep.  People say their lives are changed.  I believe them.  But it is not necessary to resort to the word believe.  It is enough to say that this is also my experience.  Just as my experience of trains in Tokyo is that they are smooth and convenient.  Of course I may be wrong; I may be fooled.  I have been fooled about many things, sometimes for years.  Nonetheless, I do not deny my own experience.

Like any new pilgrim to Tiruvannamalai, I read a lot of books and learn different styles of meditation and practice from the gurus of this place.  But nothing else I have done has anything like the force of getting up an hour before dawn and walking for three hours around Arunachala.

Girivalam, it’s called in Tamil or pradakshina in Sanskrit.  The circumambulation of the hill.  Keeping the hill on one’s right side, walking clockwise.  14 kilometers approximately.  Always on the left side of the street.  Sri Ramana explained that the right side is reserved for ghosts and invisible beings.

There is nearly always a trickle of pilgrims doing girivalam, obvious because of their bare feet and measured pace.  On full moon nights this stream broadens, becomes a river of visible ghosts moving steadily down the street. 

Girivalam on a full moon night seems a supernatural event composed of ordinary people – how else could a procession be produced without break or interruption, without emotion or noise, a flow so dense that there is hardly room enough for bicycles to dart and swerve.

Upon seeing such a crowd it is natural to wonder, What’s happening? Where are they going?  But they will only arrive, in 14 kilometers, back where they are now, only subtly changed and with tired feet.

For a parade this size you might expect banners and cheers, signs and uniforms – but there is none of that.  Well, I suppose the orange robes of the sadhus are a sort of uniform.  Some of the sadhus have improvised bands, with drums and finger cymbals, and are singing the names of God for merit and for alms.

This is a sacred procession, in honor of the god, but there is little religious paraphernalia or even obvious devotion, aside from occasionally chanting the name of God and checking in at each roadside shrine.  This ordinary and un-awed way of being seems entirely right to me.  If God was in the room with you – if God is here as this hill, this Shiva lingam, this banyan – then it would be foolish to wave a banner or shout a name.  You don’t cry out to someone across the table.  You don’t bellow at someone in your arms.

The sacred may be impossible to define or explain but, take heart -- we have been able to locate it.  It is exactly here.  I am sitting in the middle of it.  So are you. 

But then, this is just the sort of madness you can expect, from a love-struck true devotee.

 

15 Minutes with the Mother of the World

Tiruvannamalai, 2013

The mother of the world sees visitors every morning from 10:00 to 10:15.  She does not just see them, she very specifically looks at them, one at a time, and some people come an hour early, and take a seat in the front row, just to make sure they are seen, because it would certainly be a great misfortune to be overlooked by the mother of the world.

The audience hall – the entire ground floor of the Siva Sakthi Ashram – is full in this season, perhaps 150 people, and the devotees are exclusively foreigners.  The only Indian face in the hall is that of Ma Siva Sakthi.

Ma Siva Sakthi is said to be fully enlightened.  She bestows her grace in silence, by means of sight, as Sri Ramana did.  For years she did not speak at all.  Now she speaks, but only rarely.  Several of her speeches have been transcribed and translated.  Copies are available beside the door.

So many foreigners!  To go for the darshan of Ma Siva Sakthi is to be made aware of just how many well-to-do white people are looking for the meaning of life in central Tamil Nadu.  I shudder a little to look at them, though I guess that they are only meditating.  They look terribly fussy.  I feel a little sorry for the Mother of the World, who has to look, one by one, at so many grim-faced white people.

The mother of the world is a small dark round woman, perhaps sixty.  She is appropriately motherly.  She wears the brownish peach colored robes of a renunciant and moves in absolute silence.  Looking out the window, you can see her descending the stairs; her step is as measured as that of a sleepwalker.

She enters the room slowly and sits in a chair front and center.  She greets us silently, her hands in namaskar.  Some of us respond.  Some do not.  There are many different styles and strategies for receiving the grace of Ma Siva Sakthi.  Some, like myself, watch her every move.  Others keep their eyes screwed shut the entire time.

After sitting for a moment, she stands, walks toward the assembled devotees, and begins the process of looking at us, very carefully, one at a time.  She runs her eyes very carefully down the rows and, in my opinion, late arrivals need not be concerned.  I do not think she misses anyone.

It is rather like a wave, rising in the distance, drawing nearer, you feel her gaze grow close and then, here you are: the mother of the universe is looking at you.

Being looked at by Ma Siva Sakthi is not like being looked at by anyone else.  Note that I do not intend to make claims of sanctity, or to debunk such claims.  I only mean to say – here is something else.

Her gaze is entirely impersonal, as rain cloud might make to the earth.  She looks at you, but she does not appear to be seeing whatever it is that most people see when they look at you.

Her eyes themselves are very strange, one of a kind eyes, splintered almonds of eyes.  I thought of a cat, of a mentally handicapped person, and most of all of the narrow eyes painted in silver upon images of the Divine Mother, the eyes you see when you push forward in the crowd for darshan of the Mother at the temple’s center.

I admit that I can only speak of what I see when Ma Siva Sakthi looks at people near me.  When Ma Siva Sakthi looks directly at me, I do not see anything at all.  Nothing whatsoever of her face, which appears hidden behind a black cloud until she looks away.

I cannot see Ma Siva Sakthi when she looks at me.  I do not know what that means. 

Her eyes then continue along the rows, one person at a time, and, when she is finished, she joins her hands in namaskar and returns upstairs with the same slow, silent and unvaried steps.

The foreigners leave slowly.  Days, weeks, or months of this treatment have not visibly sweetened them.  But I am too much a cynic.  Some people feel she is very powerful.  Others feel nothing at all.  Many are not sure what they feel but believe it has to be doing them good, in a deep down sort of way.  It is like discussing homeopathy.

I do not know.  The speeches, translated and available beside the door, are thoroughly disappointing.  They are a disjointed mix of well-wishing and perfectly generic predictions of natural disaster. 

Natural calamities will happen in India.  There will be loss of lives.  Tamilnadu will also be affected: wind and heavy rains; extreme heat. 

For the old politicians, both former and current, the time is very close for them to leave their bodies.  It will happen one by one.

Ma Siva Sakthi said the climate was changing because the Earth was spinning too fast.  Then she said it is because the Earth is tilted wrong.  She says that starting in 2022, the world will prosper: a prediction which may well be unique.

It seems to me that silent saints should think long and hard before opening their mouths.  Perhaps it is best never to open them.  It may be that Ma Siva Sakthi has found exactly the correct procedure: to stare at the foreigners for 15 minutes and not say a word.  As for what occurs, we may think as we choose, and as we require.

We have come so far.  We want to see a true saint of India.  We want, for once, to feel the eyes of God rest directly on us.

  

Don't Do Anything About the Pain

Don’t Do Anything About the Pain

Notes from Tiruvannamalai

Part  Four

The Mad Bihari

Here in Tiruvannamalai, the saint once known as “The Mad Bihari” desired that a temple be built for himself.  This was near the end of his life, nearly all of which had been spent on the streets as a beggar.  He instructed his devotees exactly how the temple was to be built, he dictated its vast dimensions, and so a ramshackle basilica was built on the edge of town, a place perhaps five times the size of the nearby temple dedicated to Sri Ramana Maharshi, one of India’s most famous saints.

Beneath the exact center of the floor, dozens of books were books were buried.  These books had been filled with the name of Ram, handwritten thousands of times by devotees, and then sealed into a box.  No one knew the purpose of this.  Much later, the saint announced that a statue would be placed above that exact spot, a likeness of himself in bronze.

I met the saint only once, many years ago.  A group of us first chanted his holy name.  Then we were instructed to circumambulate the statue – as the man himself stood off to side, looking bored and somewhat disgruntled, as if waiting for an overdue bus in the rain.

I wasn’t impressed.  I confessed as much recently to one of his devotees, an earnest and affable European whose judgment I respect.  He did not appear offended.  He was obviously accustomed to responding to complaints about the statue.

“He insisted the statue was himself,” said my friend.  “He put his power in it.  My father, he called it.  For him everything was My father.” 

He told the story of a time when the saint, in the presence of his devotees, had abruptly become very uncomfortable.  He began to scratch and twitch and peer inside his shirt, where a red rash was found to have broken out.

“No one knew what to do, or what was going on, until someone thought to look at the statue.  A garland had been placed on it which was crawling with red ants.”

My friend also told this story: “He was dying.  Everyone knew it.  He was dying very slowly.  Toward the end chanting of the name of God was kept going in his temple twenty-four hours a day.  Late at night there weren’t enough people to chant and so my wife and I would go and sit for seven or eight hours at a time.

“Several times during those last few weeks the doors to his private chambers would open and out he came, in a stretcher pushed by his nurse attendant.  Wheeled before the bronze image of himself, he paid his humble respects to it and prayed.”

Guru’s Grace

I would just like to say, officially, that I am totally and completely fed up with gurus who preach strict monogamy – and meanwhile have four wives and numerous lucky recipients of. . . the guru’s tantric blessing rod.

More specifically, I am fed up with this senior student of the guru’s inner circle, who, after three days of flirting, said, I would allow you to give me a massage.

I really liked him, too.  That’s why it got to me.  But he couldn’t say he liked me.  Or wanted to touch me.  Of course not.  Maybe he was supposed to be desire-less, whereas I was a greedy grubby mortal.  Maybe he didn’t even like me.

I get nostalgic for non-spiritual people, who just say, Hey yer cute, wanna come to my room?  For non-spiritual people who say, Suck it.  For non-spiritual people, who during sex are willing to actually move.

Maybe somewhere there are spiritual people who are good in bed.  My experience has been horrendous.  In my life I’ve been to bed with perhaps five very religious people.  They all just laid there.  What do they write in personal ads?  Highly spiritual person.  NO reciprocation.

I tried to explain to this handsome senior disciple that I only wanted to. . . do something. . . if it was mutual. . . I said I didn’t really know how to give a massage. . .  I did not understand. . . what he meant. . . would he really just lie there?

I got tears in my eyes.  It was awful.  Everything fell apart.  The senior student retreated in embarrassment.  He never again acknowledged my existence.

Why is it I’ve never gotten this knack that some guys have, of just indicating – It’s time for you to worship me now.  I cannot even imagine doing that. 

I only know how to be the devotee.

Furthermore

When I become a spiritual master, I will send out fliers.

Hi!  I’m starting a new religion!  (It’s all about me!)  My new religion will require STRICT MONOGAMY of all practitioners.  Only monogamy will be respected.  Or celibacy.  Your choice.

However, IF YOU SIGN UP NOW, you can be designated a TANTRIC MASTER, which will allow you to have as much sex as you want, with absolutely anyone!  Think of how much your appeal will increase when you are a TANTRIC MASTER!!!

Interested?  Sign up today.  Send 34.95.  The moment your payment is approved, my grace will descend upon you!  Go online now!  Be a TANTRIC MASTER! 

The Beggar’s House

It is the only place I have ever been which seems like an imaginary place, and goes on seeming like an imaginary place, no matter how often I go there. 

As if a dream would have emergency lights or water damage or peacocks banging around on the roof!  But the drawbacks of reality are powerless to interfere with the essential preposterousness of the place, which seems too unlikely to exist, even while you are standing there looking at it.

As you enter, you come upon is a sign which reads: This beggar has not built any temple nor has he written any books. . . he has only left a name for mankind. . .  This sign is posted next to a gigantic temple.  (Books are for sale by the exit.)

The temple walls are stark concrete, like those of a parking garage.  The space inside is entirely open and resembles a vast warehouse, or perhaps the gymnasium of a immense and underfunded public high school.  The walls are emblazoned with gigantic pictures of the saint, looking merry and motley in his saintly beggar’s costume.  Signs remind us that all comers that all that is necessary for salvation is to chant the beggar’s name.

One woman’s voice rings out, chanting the name, and a few old women sing in response.  Their voices sound discouraged by the vastness of space they must fill, by the grace they are waiting for, which has not yet deigned to descend.

The immensity of the building is more pronounced because there are rarely more than a dozen people inside of it.  Often just two or three.  OK, a small crowd shows up for lunch but – lunch is free.

Inside the temple of the Mad Bihari, the beggar saint, I feel as if I am inside the world of a fabulist or else a philosopher’s argument.  I do not doubt that Italo Calvino was fond of this place and often spoke of it, despite dying twenty years before its construction.  Montaigne must have referred to this place, somewhere in his Essays, and illustrated masterfully some point about faith or human vanity. 

I have a variety of opinions of the Mad Bihari’s temple, all of which are strong and entirely in opposition to each other. 

On the face of it, it’s a personality cult that did not take off – a faith with funding but not fans.  Atheists must find it an effortless proof of the silliness and vanity of religion, especially a faith centered on a guru.  Here he is, Swami Ozymandius.  

On the other hand, I cannot help but feel fond of anything so ungainly and outrageous.  The saint said the temple had to be vast so as to accommodate the worshippers who would arrive in a century.  This despite the fact that the place is so poorly constructed I fear it could be a ruin in twenty years.  Just over ten years old now, it already looks run down.

Actually there are quite a few devotees.  The guru’s cult would seem to be thriving – if they met in a much smaller building.  Therefore, there is something automatically humbling about even showing up here, like going to a party in entirely the wrong clothes. 

More significantly: isn’t one of the central roles of the guru to give his disciples problems?  There is no question but that this building will continue to give problems to anyone associated with it for as long as the faith lasts – so may it not be said to be a form of the guru’s ungainly and exasperating grace? 

The impossible task has a long and venerable spiritual pedigree.  If the guru had been Tibetan he might have waited until the temple was finished and said, “No, no!  You’re obviously not listening.  I want it eighteen inches further to the left.”

At one end of the cavernous space is a small enclosed shrine in the traditional style – it looks like a small chunk of India that fell to earth in a hockey stadium.   Most of the devotional activity, however, is focused on the statue which stands in the center of the room.  It is a remarkable likeness and is said to possess wish-granting powers.

But I do not think people go to the statue just to have their selfish wishes granted.  I think they hurry there because the guru looks so lonely, vulnerable even in bronze, standing all by himself in the middle of that vast and empty space as the peacocks thump about on the corrugated roof above.

About the Pain

People become interested in spirituality for different reasons.  We may wish to be more calm or more compassionate, happier or more skillful.  We may seek direction or wisdom.  We may hunger for miracles or for powers.  But my guess is that these reasons are almost always secondary and auxiliary.  Their popularity lags far behind the principal reason, the burning reason, the one that really matters to us, which is that we would like to know what to do about the pain.

The pain, which can be so vast and so overwhelming, so encompassing and all-pervasive.  All this goddamn pain.

Abruptly I find myself in possession to the answer to this question.  Don’t ask me why.  Certainly I have no authority whatsoever.  However, since an answer has arrived and this is perhaps the central problem of the human condition – I thought I’d go ahead and pass it on. 

Here it is:

DON’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT THE PAIN.

DON’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT THE PAIN.

DON’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT THE PAIN.

Don’t drink whiskey.  Don’t seek counseling.  Don’t breathe in the white light.  Don’t breathe out the black smoke.  Don’t write angry letters.  Don’t attack.  Don’t forgive.  Don’t ask for advice.  Don’t listen to advice.  Don’t smoke dope.  Don’t be practical.  DON’T FIX ANYTHING.  Don’t twelve step.  Don’t explain.   Don’t watch porno.  Don’t recite affirmations.  Don’t think positive.  Don’t go to church.  Don’t complain.  Don’t justify yourself.  Don’t apologize.  Don’t go to the gym.  Don’t go for a night on the town.  Don’t be realistic.  Don’t call a friend.  Don’t get a divorce.  Don’t reconcile.  DON’T FIX ANYTHING.  Don’t pity yourself.  Don’t buck up.  Don’t protect yourself.  Don’t shout.  Don’t seek help.  Don’t expose.  Don’t defend.  Don’t do drugs.  Don’t pray.  Don’t kill yourself.  Don’t take vitamins.

      

Stand there in the pain.  Don’t do anything about the pain.

Who Dies?

Today I found a man lying dead by the side of the road.  A sadhu with long hair lying in the dirt with his hands clasped on his chest, and his robes neatly arranged.  Calm and collected.  Dead.  Nothing terrible except the shape of his mouth.  And the flies.

I was exactly myself.  (I always hope someone special will turn up for special events.)  I flagged down a white truck with three young men and a load of water jugs.  In my super-polite schoolteacher voice, which is just a little too high to seem natural, I asked, “Ex-cuse me.  Is he dead?”  And I pointed.

The three men got out of the truck and peered at him.  Yep.  He was dead.

The night before, again, I’d hardly slept.  Five nights that must have made it.  At one point I felt so helpless that I was ready to call a lawyer, as if I’d been possessed by the vengeful spirit of a celebrity ex-wife.  (Not that I had a phone, or a lawyer, or even electricity.)  It was a bad night.

Staring at holy Arunachala while sipping coffee helped, as did a chat I had with a curly haired German boy whose skin tone, self-confidence and aura were all improbably luminous.  He assured me that it was good that the pain was coming out now.  That was how it should work.  (In my experience, the pain goes out – buys protein powder, steroids, and heavy weaponry, and then comes right on back home, but never mind.)

I thought I’d take a walk to settle myself down.  Luckily it worked fairly well and I was starting to feel better – when I noticed the sadhu lying beside the road had way too many flies on his face.   

The sadhu was only dead.  He did not look sick or old.  He looked quite sturdy.  One of the guys from the water truck went to get the man whose house it was.  To let him know he had a dead man in his front yard.  This man, too, came out to stand over the sadhu and re-pronounce him dead. 

Providentially, the sadhu had been carrying a plastic tarp.  For the rain presumably.  It served now as his shroud.  We unfolded the tarp and spread it over him.  And, as far as any of the bystanders were concerned, that was end of the problem.  It was just a waste disposal issue now.  Maybe there’s a number you call when a sadhu is dead in your yard.

I stood there beside the plastic covered lump, wondering it there was anything else I should do.  No one had acknowledged me since I had asked the question and pointed.  For some reason I thought they might be a little embarrassed.  But there was no real sign of emotion whatsoever.  Certainly no one was upset.

I wasn’t upset either, which was really funny, considering that I’d been upset about absolutely everything since my eyes first shot open at 2am the night before.  Now here was a corpse.  And it just didn’t seem like such a big deal.  It didn’t even seem like a big deal for him.

At that moment I became an advisor to myself.  “You haven’t slept much in five days,” I said.  “And you just found a dead body.  Why don’t you go to the temple and stay there?” 

I went to Ramanasramam, to the samadhi shrine of Sri Ramana Maharshi.  Since I didn’t know what else to do, I stood in front of the statue of Sri Ramana which had been unveiled by Indira Gandhi, and I told the story of finding the sadhu’s body beside the road.  I also remembered to feel very grateful to the sadhu, because it seemed likely to me that he had taught me a lot, just by being dead.

Then I went to the New Hall and reread the story of Sri Ramana’s enlightenment, of how he’d pretended to be a corpse and then discovered he was neither the body or the mind but the universal deathless spirit.

I didn’t know if I was a deathless spirit or not.  It seemed unlikely.  Instead it seemed to me that humanity was a flowering tree – and one flower had just closed.  A beautiful flower on a tree that was likewise beautiful, even if the human species had turned out to be both pernicious and invasive.

I’ve never gotten the knack of the primary practice prescribed by Sri Ramana, which is to ask Who Am I?  and then to search for the ‘I’, discarding false identities and storylines, while diving ever deeper toward the fundamental experience of being.  I try, but – no revelations so far.

But somehow it occurred to me that instead of asking Who Am I?, I might better ask, Who Dies? And so I circumambulated the Mother’s shrine asking myself over and over Who Dies?  Who Dies?  Until the question speeded up and up in my mind like the blades of a fan.  Until I discovered I suddenly had to lean against the stone wall, and from there slid gently down onto the floor.

Guttersnipe Bookshelf: Marguerite Duras

Marguerite Duras, Practicalities

(La Vie matérielle)

Marguerite Duras speaks to Jerome Beajour

Translated from the French by Barbara Bray

HarperCollins, 1990

Near the end of her life, Duras dictated the pieces which make up this book to Jerome Bray.  Duras then revised and recast each transcription.  The end result is aleatory and intimate and wonderful to read. 

Here is Duras speaking about love and murder, alcohol and keeping house.  Many of the pieces are brief, some less than a page long, and are often based on the very slightest premise – like a scrap of cloth found at the back of the drawer. 

As one would expect from Duras, the sentences are surprising and sinuous -- and from time to time she even tosses out a slogan for living: “Sometimes you say I’m going to kill myself, and then you go on with the book.”  (Is there anyone else besides me who is ready to have that sentence inscribed on an arch in their home?) 

Reading Practicalities, I was continually reminded of the short fiction of Lydia Davis.  I wonder if fans of Davis’ work – might not discover that they like this as much or more.  Certainly these short pieces are a necessity for anyone who is interested in how mystery and ordinariness can co-exist in a very small space.

As ever, Duras is unafraid to tell the truths of alcohol or sex, no matter how scandalous or pathetic.  The last piece in the book, “The People of the Night”, details the delusions and hallucinations she suffered while suffering from emphysema and alcoholism, including a nurse she attempted to murder. 

“Alcohol”, less than three pages long, is perhaps the best take I’ve read on the subject.  “I was alone in that huge house, and that was how alcohol took on its full significance.  It lends resonance to loneliness and ends up making you prefer it to everything else.  Drinking isn’t necessarily the same thing as wanting to die.  But you can’t drink without thinking you’re killing yourself” (15).  And, as for the current mania for non-intervention: “We live in a world paralysed with principles.  We just let people die” (18).

“House and Home”, the longest piece in the book, ought to be put in the hands of anyone who doubts that true and compelling literature can be written about – keeping house.  (How is it possible that bootleg copies of this have not become a staple of every writing program on Earth?)  “I say it again.  It bears a lot of repetition.  A woman’s work, from the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed, is as hard as a day at war, worse than a man’s working day.  Because she has to make her time-table conform to that of other people. . .” (45) 

By the time I finished this book I felt that it ought to be presented, along with A Room of One’s Own to every woman who aspires to write – and when she’s done with it, her husband, brother, father, boyfriend ought to read it too. 

Fans of Duras will love this book for the sense it gives of sharing a rainy afternoon with the elderly Marguerite Duras.  But there is something more compelling. It is simply not common that someone would tell. . . this much of the truth. 

Who is actually willing to fully expose themselves as human, therefore pathetic?  While reading this book, I was also reading a collection of poems by Fernando Pessoa (et al.) and I came upon the following:

“If only I could hear some other human voice / Confess not to a sin but to an infamy, / Tell not about an act of violence but of cowardice! / No, all the people I listen to, if they talk to me, are paragons. / Who in this wide world would admit to me that he was ever despicable? / O princes, my brothers, / I’ve had it up to here with demigods! / Where in the world are there people?”

Well.  Here is one of them.