Tim Parks - The Server

I knew I shouldn’t have started thinking about this. I shouldn’t have started writing. One thing leads to another when you think and write your thoughts down. False empty fantasies, painful formations of the mind, sankhara s. These couples know exactly what things they’re between when they come for their ten days at the Dasgupta Institute. They’re between kisses and caresses. No wonder they don’t bother with the brambles in the wood. It would just spoil the fabulous time they’re going to have when they get their purified selves or non-selves back between the sheets. No condoms since she’s already got their baby in her belly. So much for renouncing attachment. So much for overcoming cravings. I knew I shouldn’t have started thinking about this. The time Jonathan came back from Australia. God. The mind is fire. That’s a true thing Dasgupta says. Words are sparks. Ideas are fireworks. You light the blue touchpaper and it’s always too short. The ideas blow up in your face. But I wouldn’t want their happiness. Really. Or their baby. No, I wouldn’t. They will let each other down soon enough. Be sure. All of them. They will live in fear of being let down, in horror of letting down. Or both. Love is waiting for betrayal, doesn’t matter which of you is guilty, then the turmoil, then the emptiness. So much for equanimity. The guy with the diary knows this. But I don’t want their illusions. I don’t want to write songs about their illusions, or their disappointments. A song about happiness is always a song about disappointment in the making. The more the happiness the more I hear people crying. I don’t want to write about them or imagine them. Or their baby. Mummy and Daddy. Still, I wish them well. I do. I try to. May they be fully enlightened, may they be filled with happiness and sympathetic joy, may their child grow healthy and beautiful in the path of Dhamma. May all beings be happy and peaceful, may all beings be liberated, liberated, liberated.

The third place, I was saying, where you can see the boys is the Metta Hall itself. They’re on the left, we’re on the right. Seventy mats their side, in rows, all with blue cushions and grey blankets. Seventy mats our side with blue cushions and white blankets, or sort of off-white. With a broad aisle between. The men with their video screen high on the wall up front. Us with ours. Our gazes mustn’t tangle when we watch Dasgupta’s talks. A man is a distraction for a woman and a woman is a huge distraction for a man. Of course, if you came into the hall a little late for the hour of Strong Determination, then you’d be able to check out all the men in a single glance across the other side as you walked to your place. But my mat is quite a distance from the aisle and I have no excuses for going closer. I like it that way. What do I need to look at men for? Unless I faked some reason to go and kneel before Mi Nu Wai, some special request.

People coming into the Metta Hall take their shoes off in the porch, men in their porch on the left side, women in our porch on the right. They pad into the hall in socks or barefoot, go to their designated mats, fuss over their cushions and blankets, settle themselves, close their eyes. No one looks around, except the teachers and their assistants. Two male assistants, two female. They are checking us in. They have lists. The recording won’t start till we’re all in our places. They check your clothing too. I got sent back once because I’d forgotten my bra. That was a long time ago. My T-shirt was tight, they said. I was embarrassed, but pleased too. On the way I stopped in the bathroom to look in the mirror. They were right. You could see the nipples. Anyway, today I glanced up and across to the left for a moment as I was walking between the cushions. But because the teacher’s assistants are always watching you, you can’t really check out the other sex. You’d be noticed. And without my glasses, what would I see anyway? I’m not going to start wearing glasses to meditate. In the end I don’t care who the diarist is. He’s another troubled man. A pig or a loser. Maybe both.

When I’ve settled on my mat the only person I look at is Mi Nu Wai. Meeee Noooo Waaaiiii. She sits up front on a broad, low stool, almost a table, with a white cushion, in loose white trousers and blouse. Her shoulders are slim as a bird’s, and when she pulls her shawl around her it’s as if her dark hair were the top of a pale triangle floating a little above us. Her back is straight but not vertical, she leans forward slightly, towards the meditators, and her face is upturned in earnest serenity. She is so still, so pale, so timeless, so almost not there that you can’t help but gaze at her, the way you stare at something on the horizon about to disappear. I sit and pull my ankles into my crotch. I want to be like Mi Nu Wai. I want her stillness, her ghostliness. Beth Marriot is too fleshy and fidgety with her big thighs and her big tits squeezed in their bikini top under her fleece. You’re a giggle of tits, Betsy M, Jonathan said, a gaggle a giggle a gurgle a goggle a google of tits. I always preferred bikini tops. I don’t need support. Just to hide the nipples. Drove him nuts. To his nuts.

Stop.

Breathe.

Observe your breath.

The in-breath, the out-breath.

The left nostril, the right nostril.

Breathing is so beautiful, when the faintest back and forth just tingles your lip.

How does Mi Nu sit so still? In a single move she settles and gathers herself and right away she is still. Not like something turned off or dead, switched on more like, luminous and alive. Her stillness glows like the moon. I can feel it from five yards away. Mi Nu is the moon, leaning over me from her raised seat, pale and bright and still. A faint smile lifts the corners of her mouth. I must become like her. Sometimes I think she is rocking a little, just barely, back and forward, like she wants to sink herself deeper into stillness and silence. Or maybe it’s me. I’m in a trance watching Mi Nu. My eyes are half closed. A slow, stoned tenderness wells up in my chest. Then I can’t say if it’s her rocking, very slightly, or me. We are fastened together, the way your eyes fasten to the moon at night, or the endless stars, on your back on a beach. ‘Are you moonstruck or what?’ Carl asked. ‘What are you thinking about, Beth? For Christ’s sake. Talk to me!’

I keep my eyes on Mi Nu. What is behind is behind. I must become like her. I love her black hair spreading on the whitish shawl. She never fusses when she settles. The soft white wool gathers round her and falls still. I love it when she wears her hair in a ponytail. Her skin and shawl melt together, ghostly and softly glowing. The air is a halo for Mi Nu. She is a cone of light. She is a cone of pale light gathering the room around her stillness. But already the chanting has begun. Only five minutes to go. Mi Nu has tied me to her stillness for a solid hour. I haven’t suffered or fidgeted at all. No strong determination required. Only adoration. Her face doesn’t respond to Dasgupta’s throaty voice, opening the chants. Buddham saranam gacchami . Not even a flicker of reaction. The smile floats, bright and quiet. The moon sails through time in quiet stillness. I love Mi Nu Wai.

Then the recording is over and in a single move she is on her feet. The shawl slips from her back. She rises in one quick, slinky move, like a snake from its basket. Not a trace of stiffness. She looks around and grins, pretty sassily actually, and tosses back her hair. Oh, I adore Mi Nu. I adore her flat chest. I want to be like her, sit beside her, eat beside her, meditate opposite her. I want to be on stage and sing with her, bump hips with her. I want to have my periods when she has hers, share the same bathroom, the same bed, share our clothes. I want to smell her breath and tie up her hair for her. Who gives a damn about sick men and their pompous diaries? Who needs their tales of misery and woe? Mi Nu has no story at all. She is a flow of stillness. Not like zinged-up Zoë, popping pills and lining up lovers. All the same, getting to my feet, I cast a glance towards the men. I can’t help it. They are stretching their stiff legs and shuffling and groaning. I’d need my glasses to make out much at this distance. A guy with a red bandana. Not him. One hefty oldie has built himself an armchair of cushions. But there are seventy guys over there. I want to spend my life with my eyes fixed on Mi Nu.