John Updike - S

Fondly,

S.

P.S.: If by any dreadful misestimation of your rights and powers you carry out your threat to show up here, please understand that you will be taken into custody by our ashram security forces, a team of zealous young men I don't think you will find as cute as I do. They wear lavender uniforms and carry real guns and all graduated in the top third of their classes at the Arizona Police Academy. You will be held in a little detention room filled with pictures of the Arhat while tapes of his discourses play continuously through a loudspeaker. You will be released only when (a) a sannyasin vouches for you as a visitor (b) you find yourself on fire with love of the Arhat and humbly request to join the ashram (c) you make a generous contribution to our manifold good works and promise to go away. Since (a) will not forth-come from me, nor, most likely, {b) from you (though your expertise would be very useful here-the medical services are overstrained.and the head of the clinic, a woman called Ma Prapti, seems to be in a gloomy trance most of the time), you should 'save yourself the ignominy of (c) and stay where you are and take care of our joint property. I assume you will be renting the Cape place this summer. Be sure to send me half the proceeds.

Dear Mrs. Blithedale

It filled me with limitless sorrow to receive the letter of your lawyers inquiring after the whereabouts of the principal amount so graciously made available to the work of the ashram some few years ago. Our accounts fail to show that any fixed term was set for the return of these most precious and cherished funds, nor that any rate of interest was determined. Had interest been your aim, perhaps you should have entrusted these funds to a federally insured bank, with its glass windows and fashionably attired tellers and total lack of spiritual benefits.

But no, at such time by no means were you interested in the banks: you were interested in the peace that Brahman brings when reunited with your atman; you were interested in samadhi and casting off the sordid claims of our illusory material life. Your legal servants write that you now regret your months as a sannyasin with us and have re-embraced your forefathers' creed of Presbyterianism-a Calvinist sect which presents earthly prosperity as a sign of divine election. We rejoice if you have thus purchased inner peace. Vishnu has many avatars.

However: we have been carefully consulting your records and conclude that your ascent to samadhi was regrettably arrested at the third, or Manipura, chakra. As you will doubtless remember, this is the "gem center," whose presiding deity is Rudra, whose lotus displays ten blue petals with an inverted red triangle, and whose subtle-body site is the solar plexus. We now believe that the burning you felt there, which we joyously took as a sign of ascent toward the fourth chakra, Anahata, located at the level of the heart, may have been merely psychic resistance or simple indigestion. Your practice (abhyasana) of the asanas and mudras was ever desultory, Madame Blithedale, and your attachment to the five counterproductive vrittis of the psychomental stream (ignorance, individuality, passion, disgust, will to live) was never-we now sorrowfully feel-disengaged. The cleansing fire of asceticism (tapas) encountered in you an ego (aham) sheathed, as it were, in asbestos. Your vasanas-your subconscious sensations and urges-have stubbornly retained phalatrishna: the egoistic "thirst for fruits."

Yet we cannot find it in our hearts to condemn you, to cast you out. Such is the lavish scale of our generosity that we would welcome you back. You would rejoice to behold the many practical improvements at Ashram Arhat made possible by the ocean of generosity of which your own constituted but a single small, though infinitely treasured, drop. Our work does not cease, that ocean must flow on! Even as I dictate this affectionate missive, the steel girders of our splendid mandir, our Hall of a Millionfold Joys, are rising and being thunderously riveted together! There is not time nor strength for the backward glance! Come and rejoin us and all accountings will be made anew! Your Presbyterian legal advisers merely cast doleful shadows upon your atman, which longs to be free. As the immortal Utterly Enlightened proclaimed in the. blessed Dhammapada, "Sorrow cannot touch the man [or woman, the scribes assuredly meant to add] who is not in the bondage of anything, who owns nothing."

Your eternal servant,

Shri Arhat Mindadali, M.A., Ph.D.

Supreme Meditator, Ashram Arhat

/spw

Dear Mr. Rogers:

It filled me with sincere regret to hear of the loss of your two heads of prize cattle. However, your accusation of theft against the Ashram Arhat because the fence between us had its barbed wires snipped falls upon barren ground, for we are vegetarians at this place and have no need of rustling protein'from you. So kindly look for your cattle elsewhere, among your other ranching friends, who are rumored to relish liquor and gambling to the extent of unhinging their better judgment.

And no, we will not join you in the costs of repairing the fence and reinforcing the same. The fence is your affair, as all who are in our ashram wish to stay in and, unlike underfed steers living under sentence of death, they have no need of barbed wires.

With neighborly affection and esteem,

Shri Arhat Mindadali, M.A., Ph.D.

Supreme Meditator, Ashram Arhat

/spw

Gentlemen:

The large unpaid bill for six Lincoln limousines must be a deplorable clerical error. I have referred it to our chief accountant, Ma Prem Nitya Kalpana, who is unfortunately enjoying two weeks of uninterrupted meditation.

With my generous blessings,

Shri Arhat Mindadali, M.A., Ph.D.

Supreme Meditator, Ashram Arhat

/spw

Dear Irving-

Just a quick Monday-morning note on my trusty office Selectric with its lovely augmented memory and magical erasure features. I often think of you and assume that Midge has shared at least the gist of the tape I sent her it must have been three weeks ago. Time flies! Things hum along here, though the noon sun is getting so hot now the Master has decreed a siesta time from eleven-thirty to three. People were fainting-in the fields, especially some of the girls who have been up half the night absorbing energy at the Kali Club.

Your lessons have really stood me in good stead-a lot of the younger people have complimented me on how flexible I am. They run the Salutations to the Sun at a somewhat slower pace than yours, but then you were trying to fight flab on middle-aged matrons where here the Master is getting us in training for Sahasrara. The adept who supervises our group-Bhava, his ashram name is- cruelly emphasizes heels flat on the floor on the forward stretch and not only the throat bent way back,but the tongue out just as far and hard "as you can do. It hurts at first and feels embarrassing but is the very best thing for the thyroid and even the viscera apparently. Then, on the standard asanas, he likes you to do the Fish out of the lotus position, and the strain on the Snsides of the thighs is agony, plus the ache on the top of your head after a while. And on the Pashchimottanasana I really can't come near touching my forehead to the floor no matter how wide I spread my legs. But Bhava loves my Plough, he says, and I must say it's always been my favorite: with my knees pressed against my ears and my bottom straight up in the air I always feel so cozy, like I used to as a little girl hiding behind the sofa, so cozy and safe and absolutely me -I hold it to the point that when I close my eyes I get these things that I don't know if they're what they call visualizations but I do feel I'm in another world, or just on the verge of it. They like us to hold the asanas, except of course the Locust and the Bow, for fifteen deep breaths instead of the five you let us off with, you old softie. But some of the people, like this crybaby Yajna who's in my group,' just stop when they feel like it. There's a lot of that kind of freedom here; nobody is "uptight." Whatever we do is within the Master's love, and that gives a great feeling of ease and suppleness. You should see me go into my headstand now-I absolutely uncoil and am up in about two big breaths, and using my elbows at the two other points, too, instead of the hands, which I could never bear to lift up before. Such a scaredy-cat! You were right-once you've found the zero point the trick is to completely relax your shoulders and you can go on upside-down forever. One tip, though-here they always follow the Cobra with the Locust and not the other way around the way you taught us. The Half-Locust (the Ardha-Shalabhasana) makes a very nice transition and the stretching in the abdomen doesn't feel so violent then when you go into the Bow.