Tim Parks - The Server

‘Many abused children are particularly attracted to the parent who was most dangerous to them,’ Marcia was saying. After I had told her not to talk. Perhaps I could ask Mi Nu why I dislike Marcia so much. Mi Nu Why! The Australian still had her shiny nylon tracksuit on her fat bum. I hate fat people. I hate people with poor posture. I’m so critical. At least the finishing school has taught Meredith to stand up straight.

There was a trellis of roses round the bungalow door with a few ragged flowers in the wet leaves. Very picturesque. We were knocking on a picture. Let me in. I was expecting Livia maybe, but Mi Nu came to the door. She had loose off-white trousers and top, her black ponytail hanging round her neck over one breast. Only she doesn’t have breasts. Her bare feet are tiny.

‘Mrs Harper told us to bring back the Dhamma Service CD.’

She looked at me, then at Marcia. I hid my teeth.

‘The cells are all taken with students following the guided session,’ Marcia said. ‘In different translations.’ Her Aussie accent was a sort of smell.

‘You haven’t been able to listen?’

‘No. I guess we’ll just go and sit in the session.’

A flicker lifted the corners of Mi Nu’s mouth. ‘No, please come in.’

If Mi Nu had asked whether we wanted to come in, I would have found an excuse. It was too soon. We took off our shoes. At the end of the passage ahead of us I could see a large room opening out with dim, tropical colours and a strange, scented coolness. It seemed a special place. Perhaps the bungalow was bigger than I’d thought. Had I ever walked round it? But Mi Nu pushed a door to the right.

‘Sit down, you can listen here.’

She left.

It was a small room. There were half a dozen cushions and a CD player on a low table.

‘Is she Thai or Burmese?’ Marcia asked. ‘Don’t you envy their figures?’

I put in the CD, crossed my legs, closed my eyes, shut down my senses. If anyone has a figure to envy, it’s Beth. ‘You are sunshine made flesh, Beth.’ Mi Nu is a sort of lunar eclipse.

‘Blessed is the man who gives.’

Dasgupta began his spiel on dana . However little you possess, you can always make dana in some way or other and you will always reap the rewards. Giving is always better than taking. You always get greater benefits from generosity than from caution.

It’s not a stupid talk. Dasgupta is never stupid. All the pleasure in sex is giving, Jonathan used to say. Even learning how to take, in sex, was a form of giving. Funny how Dasgupta talks about dana and I’m thinking of sex. No, I’m thinking of Jonathan talking about sex. We talked so much. I never think about sex itself. I’m cured of that.

It was harder to give time than to give money, Dasgupta was saying. It brought you more merits, it helped fill the jars of your perfections. When you have money to spare, what’s extra costs you nothing. You don’t have any less for yourself because you’ve given some away. Try telling my dad that. But time is all we have. Now and now and now. You say it and already it’s gone. Time is the supreme gift. And the same for rich man and poor. Giving time is giving life .

‘So your Dhamma Service, in the kitchen, my friends, or in housekeeping, or gardening, or offering your assistance to the teacher, is a chance to accumulate many merits, many parmi , or perfections, which will be of service to you in this life and the next. It is an important step on the Dhamma path.’

I kept my eyes closed. I didn’t want any exchange with Marcia. I didn’t want to breathe the air she polluted. At the same time I knew exactly what Dasgupta was about to say: that just as this Service was a great opportunity to grow in Dhamma there was also the risk of slipping back, the risk of generating mountains of new sankhara s, oceans of new unhappiness, while actually serving at the Dasgupta Institute.

‘“How can that be, Mr Dasgupta?”’ you ask me. How can that be? We come to the institute to serve, you say, and yet we make bad karma, we generate new sankhara s, deep negative sankhara s. Then we are worse off than if we hadn’t made dana . ‘“What is Dasgupta talking about?”’ you ask.’

I could hear Marcia shifting her hams in their nylon. I had known her only a few hours and she had poisoned my mind. Tell yourself she will soon be gone. Seven days. Her and the diarist. And Kristin. And Meredith. Cravings, aversions.

‘Dear friends, if you knew how many letters I receive from people who have come to a Dasgupta retreat, in this or that campus — California, Germany, Spain, India, Australia, doesn’t matter — and their experience has been spoiled by the servers. Maybe a server was rude to them. They asked this server a question and the server, he or she, didn’t even reply, didn’t give them the time of day, as they say. That is a very interesting expression, to give someone the time of day, to give someone your presence, your nowness.

‘Well, this server thought himself superior. He thought himself too important to waste his time responding to a silly student who knew nothing about vipassana . He didn’t listen. Or worse still, he answered with a harsh word, or in a harsh manner.

‘“You can talk about serenity and happiness till the cows come home, Mr Dasgupta, and vipassana this and vipassana that, it is all very well and very interesting, yes, but if your own servers who follow your doctrine won’t listen to me when I say I have a bad headache or I am not understanding why we mustn’t change our posture in the hour of Strong Determination, well, I am sorry but all your teaching is so much hot air.”

‘And, my friends, my friends, this is a sensible deduction. We know a tree by its fruits. We know a doctrine by how its disciples behave. A server is rude to a student and the student deduces that the whole doctrine is false , it doesn’t work. This is understandable. And you who came here to help and to grow in the Dhamma have only hindered. You haven’t grown. You have shrunk , my friends, you have withered. And I ask, for heaven’s sake, what are you thinking of? What are you thinking, my friend? This is madness. You came here to serve and instead you have chased someone away. It was better if you had never come. Better for the student, but most of all better for you.

‘Or I hear of backbiting between servers. “I am a better server than she is, I have more experience, I can sit stiller than he can, why wasn’t I given the more important job? I have been insulted.”

‘What? What are you thinking of, comparing yourself with others, worrying about your prestige, your sensitive ego? Oh dear, are we mad? Are we mad?

‘Dear friends in Dhamma, it is much easier to come to a retreat as a student than as a server. Of course it is. True, the students must sit for many hours, true, they get pains in their legs, pains in the back, pains in the shoulders, but what wrong can a student do here at the Institute, what sankhara s can he or she cause? He has taken refuge in the Triple Gem. He has sworn to keep the Five Precepts. He is protected by the Noble Silence. It is much easier to keep the Noble Silence than to practise Right Speech. A silent man is a safe man, my friends. He is not tempted to gossip, to tell tales, to slander and disparage. In silence it is soon clear that the self is an illusion. What self can there be when I am silent, when I come to my meals with my begging bowl in my hand? But when we serve and there are jobs to do, ah, my friends, then we start imagining we are important. It’s true, isn’t it? We start to compete . We want to be first. “I’m the best server, I deserve the most important jobs.”’