Tim Parks - The Server

Day 7 Three things at war:

1. Experience of sitting in silence: the breath, the mind sinking into the body, the body drawing the mind through it, like sap. Definitely something new. Worth coming for .

2. My thoughts resisting this, clamouring to get back to misery and melodrama. Huge desire to wipe my whole mind-slate clean. How?

3. Dasgupta’s evening explanations of what is going on in my head, in all our heads: our physical and mental pains are ‘the consequence of accumulated karma or sankharas following the principle of conditioned arising ’.

Not much clarification there .

Forgot to mention the high point of the day: a Band-Aid in my salad. Must have been wrapped round somebody’s finger. I was taking it to a server to complain, then relented. Didn’t want to break the Noble Silence. The silence is the best thing about this place, like a cocoon. I would never have imagined the intimacy, eating together in silence .

Meredith’s plaster in the gentleman’s Waldorf salad. She’s hopeless.

The second cigarette is not as good as the first. I’m already hawking.

Conditioned arising is a funny expression. Nice title for a novel maybe. Nothing is absolutely itself. Everything arises as a consequence of certain conditions. Nothing is independent or permanent. Ergo, to get rid of something all you have to do is remove the conditions for its arising .

Easy .

Buddhism is an optimistic way of life, says Dasgupta with his droll, gala-evening smile. There is suffering, but there is also an end of suffering, a path that removes the conditions that allow suffering to arise. I’m getting to like him, the way you do get to like an old fraud. So much of what he says is rubbish, so much is self-regarding, but it makes sense, in its way. It makes sense that a man preaches against self-regard in a self-regarding way. Why would he be aware of the dangers of self-regard if he wasn’t so insufferably self-regarding? Full of self-regard he preaches against self-regard, and acquires adoring disciples. Convenient. Maybe I’ve said this already. Half the writers I publish write indignantly against pride and arrogance, then get more indignant when people take no notice .

Blessed are the poor in spirit, says Jesus, spiritedly .

I like Dasgupta’s glistening cheeks and his immaculate white outfits on the red armchair. He wears gold cufflinks. I like the way he preens after getting a laugh from his crowd. It must have been an American crowd, to judge by the cackles. Mainly women. Or, at least, it’s the women’s voices you hear. On the video you don’t see anyone but Dasgupta. Perhaps the men don’t respond because they sense the banter is meant for the ladies. Do gurus get a leg over from time to time, the cock arising in response to certain conditions? I haven’t had an erection all week. Not surprising with no T and no pornography .

Is this all men ever think about?

Jonathan reckoned modern civilization couldn’t survive without pornography. To be condemned in public and enjoyed in private, he said.

So, no conditions, no sweet arising. Maybe it takes a Buddha to see the obvious .

No woman, no fuck .

No fuck, no children .

No marriage, no divorce .

No bottle, no drunk .

No business, no bankrupt .

No gun, no shoot .

No birth, no karma .

No karma, no birth .

The aim of Buddhism: to avoid the conditions for arising again, for being born again .

Opposite of Jesus. Always wanting people born again .

In Buddhism the very fact of being born is a sign of failure. Old karma kicking it all off again. Sorry, kid, you screwed up .

What a welcome. Every start a bad start .

There’s optimism for you .

On the other hand, being born human is better than being born animal. You can develop sila, samādhi, paññā. Glass half full after all .

Because of man’s superior consciousness .

Does anyone believe this guff?

We must make best moral use of being human because the chances of a human rebirth are equal to those of a blind turtle that rises to the surface of the ocean only once every hundred years finding, by pure chance, that he has poked his head through the single narrow yoke floating up there on the surface .

What is this all about? Why a yoke? What sort of yoke? Do yokes lie on the surface of oceans waiting for blind turtles to stick their heads through them?

What kind of turtle can stay under water a hundred years?

How many of them must there be when you look at all the human life around you?

Did they mean joke?

What is this story?

Actually, it’s quite pleasant thinking about this crackpot Buddhist stuff instead of my own miseries. Maybe I should launch an esoteric religions list as ultimate escapism — Beginner’s Guide to Tantric Meditation. A Hundred Reincarnations To Avoid At All Costs .

Bet there’s a market .

I’m enjoying this too, Mr Diarist. Maybe if you and me just got together and chatted and smoked and had a quiet drink and a game of pool we could forget all the shit that has been driving us mad.

No daydreams of sex now the curse has arrived.

It never bothered Jonathan.

First time we made love I was bleeding like a pig.

He said …

Stop.

Breathe.

The time I came to get my stuff having said I was leaving. I was leaving for ever. She had cooked big tomatoes stuffed with couscous. She had bought a bottle of whisky and chocolates. Susie was excited about an audition. I sat in my chair and ate the tomatoes and the couscous, which was flavoured with nutmeg and pinoli. I sat in the garden on the bench beneath the wisteria and poured a shot of whisky, chose a chocolate. I never got up again. Maybe that is what bourgeois means. Birthright sold for a few liqueurs .

Then the coldness. The rancour .

Mum used to make Dad steak tartare when he threatened to leave. And shush the cats into the spare bedroom.

Dream. I’m on the floor wrestling with some kind of man-animal-monster that is also part of me, in me, and I’m trying to push him away, but it’s dark and I can’t see what’s me and what isn’t. It’s a wild struggle. I’m making a superhuman effort to push this creature inside me, indistinguishable from me, away from me. Woke in a sweat with the word ‘exorcism’ on my lips. Exorcism, exorcism. Not ready yet. I don’t feel ready. So many dreams. All intense. The locked room with the broken Christmas tree. The car crash .

My dream is I’m walking along the seashore with Jonathan. The breakers thunder and rush right up to where we’re walking. He has his arm round me and we’re in love. It breaks my heart, that dream. It sets me back weeks.

Suppose for the sake of argument I’m reborn as a newt. Of course I don’t know I was previously a man. I don’t know I was previously married to L. Relief. I don’t know it was Everests of negative marital karma that led to this humiliating downward transformation. Prince to newt. Actually, I don’t feel transformed or humiliated at all. I don’t even realize I’ve been spared the frog. I’m a newt. I’m very happy slithering in and out of the weedy pond. Don’t even have to decide between earth and water. I’m amphibian. It’s a great life being a newt. Dukkha is for humans. Humans suffer, not newts. Humans make themselves miserable with their thoughts, their need to decide things. Newts are in nirvana from day one. Without even trying. Is there anything that makes me suffer aside from my thoughts, my impossible decisions? Nothing. I have a dreadful pain in my back. That’s not suffering. I have merciless haemorrhoids. A joke. Not a yoke. My haemorrhoids are old pals. Give me a lobotomy and I’d be happy as Larry. If I don’t want a lobotomy, it means I don’t want happiness, or Larriness. I don’t want nirvana. I want to be alive and suffering with a messy, mixed-up personal story. My little intruder with the cute cantaloupes was spot on there: ‘You love your pain too much.’ She really did look