A. Homes - This Book Will Save Your Life

The roommate is puffy, pale, pasty — Wayne. He does not talk, does nothing except unzip his duffel bag and take off his clothes, flashing his hairy bright-white ass in Richard's face. Richard turns out the light and sleeps face-to-the-wall. He's too old for this.

In the middle of the night, he wakes, not knowing if he is in Los Angeles in a hotel, in Brookline at his brother's house, or in a hospital somewhere. The sound of Wayne snoring is deep, sonorous, and Richard cannot get back to sleep. At 4:30 a.m., someone is up and down the hall, jingling bells. They rise, descend upon the bathroom — cold water, cold showers, rough towels — and then head into the meditation hall.

Someone has moved his cushion. This morning it is on the other side of the room; the shaved-head man, Mr. Happy Arrogance, is on his dot. Was it his dot? Is anything any of ours? If it was not his dot, then why did the man take it? Why did he covet the dot? Is Richard being punished, picked on? He takes it personally and vows revenge: he spends half the morning meditation mulling it over, trying to transform the movement of the cushion into something smaller, trying to make it not matter. Maybe whoever moved it thought it was someone else's? Maybe they thought they were doing him a favor, maybe they had no idea that it would matter to him? Maybe he should just go over there and shove the guy off his dot? The guy would have to know why, would have to feel bad about it. Maybe the guy is just so evolved that he doesn't care about anything, maybe all of this was a setup to prove to Richard how badly he needs to be doing this? Maybe it's just something to prove that anything can drive you crazy if you let it? He will not let it, he will not let it, and in not letting it he cannot let it go. Go, go go, he tells the thoughts, this is not helping me; like a hot potato, it goes back and forth.

If you sit with discomfort it will change.

Halfway into the session, he craves a donut. Not Anhil's donut, but an earlier donut, a donut from his youth. He remembers it perfectly, an orange cruller. A glazed frosting with flecks of orange rind in it — crisp, curled, but softly sweet. He is tasting the donut. Is it a coincidence that he remembers a donut, one of the few perfect moments from his childhood, and that he met Anhil — the old donut and the new donut?

He is starving. They break for breakfast. He eats a huge bowl of yogurt with a lot of honey on it, and raisins. It's delicious. So good, as though he hadn't eaten in a very long time.

Back in the meditation hall. He fixates on the other people; some of them are beautiful. He watches one woman's arms for a very long time, another man's back. He is watching how they hold themselves, graceful, elegant. And then something changes, he has no idea what, and he's looking around and everyone appears needy, pathetic, deformed. He suddenly hates Lusardi, thinking there's something malicious in his recommending this retreat. He closes his eyes.

If you sit with the discomfort it will change.

Into what?

There is a person somewhere in the room with a tickle in his throat, a person who half coughs, trying to clear his throat quietly, but it never works, and he half coughs again, and then, a few minutes later, again, and at a certain point Richard wants to scream, Fucking really cough, will you?

His legs are hurting, his ass from sitting, from being in one position. Last night Joseph said that, before giving in and changing your position, you should go inside the discomfort and ask yourself, Can you let go of it, can you get past it and stay where you are?

What will he do when he gets out of here? Will he be a better person? He didn't tell his family that he was going away, he didn't change his outgoing message. Should he call? Should he leave word?

All this is before lunch.

In the afternoon, there is a walking meditation. They walk in a circle, round and round, very slowly. He is glad to be outside, to be in the air. The sunlight is very bright, glary. He squints; sometimes he closes his eyes for a few steps. It's like a bad prison movie where all the inmates are walking, shuffling chained together; if one falls, they all fall; if one falls, he is shot by the guards. He looks around; some of the people are in really bad shape, muttering, chanting to themselves.

Transforming suffering — maybe this makes it worse, wallowing in it, how do you transform anything, you tolerate it, you accept it, but what if it is intolerable?

He walks a little faster and then, knocking into someone, catches himself and slows down.

THE THIRD evening talk is "The Talk About the Dog." It has to be to some degree a play on words, "dog"/"God." It is a talk about joy, about pleasure, about the irritation of the flea, the pleasure of scratching, the lure of the bone, the compulsion to bury it, the tug of the collar, the master's pull, the freedom to run, to fetch the ball and bring it back to the master. Joseph speaks of the relationship between master and disciple, between student and teacher, which culminates with the teacher's withdrawing his attention, causing the student — the dog — to suffer from separation/abandonment, a kind of crisis of parenthood, that wears him down so that he is able to experience what is the aloneness that is reality and then transcend the limits of his ego, his need/desire to become one with the master.

The story of the dog is hopeful, but the story of the master and disciple feels like a manipulation, a head game, something Richard wants none of. He feels himself bracing, tightening, holding himself against it.

"What can you give someone without their seeing?" Joseph asks. "How do you give to someone next to you — without their knowing? Do you make yourself smaller on your cushion so that they have more room? Do you try and breathe happily, gently, so that they are not offended? Do you try to smell pleasant? Do you give off the feeling that you are glad to have been seated next to them?"

RICHARD FARTS. At every meal, he's been eating brown rice and lentils; he's convinced himself that it tastes meaty, like beef. He eats the brown rice and the raw vegetables, and yogurt for dessert, and he is farting all the time, uncontrollably. Because it's otherwise silent, everyone can hear; because they're meditating, they can't move away; and because of the silence, he can't apologize. It happens again while Joseph is speaking.

"When you feel yourself frustrated or angry, ask what the other person wants or needs, direct positive thought outward," Joseph says.

After the evening talk, Richard passes a man mopping the halls. Is he a person on retreat, working for room and board — on scholarship, they call it — or is he just a regular worker, a janitor? He nods at the man, the man nods back. "Joints for sale," the man says softly. "I've got joints."

He lies in bed thinking of Ben — Ben on his journey, his adventure. What would Ben think of him here? What would Ben think of joints for sale?

THE FOURTH DAY, he is exhausted from sitting, from getting up early, from the bad food. He feels the weight of his chest with every breath, he feels his lungs, his ribs, his skin lifting up and sinking down. He thinks of his brother: how nice it was to see him, but why would the brother and his wife invite the ex-wife on a vacation? Maybe it was the brother who turned Ben against him. Maybe not, maybe they were just trying to be nice, to be there when Richard wasn't? He thinks of his parents. He thinks of the night he was in the hospital, wondering if he would die. He tells himself that if he lives through the retreat he will make better plans. He will make funeral arrangements for himself, so that no one ever has to do it. If he died right now what would they do? Someone would call someone, and arrangements would be made. His parents would bring him home to Brooklyn, to the cemetery in Queens where his grandparents are buried, or maybe they would bring him to Florida and have him interred in a Boca mausoleum. His father's family used to talk about their plots — how many plots they had. Whatever it was, it was never enough. Richard will buy a place out here, a plot for himself. He will buy a plot for himself, and a couple of extras as well, in case anyone wants to join him.