John Updike - S

Yes. That was a good one. An early one.

And then the one where you answer questions about the aham and the burning away of the vrittis.

I had stupid questioners that day. Stoned hippies and Vishnu bums. All squatting on the din floor in Ellora. Before the solid middle class discovered Buddha and pulled out their fat wallets.

Should we be proceeding with the ceremony? Should you have all your clothes still on?

It is not important that the worshipper be naked; only the goddess, the worshipped. Now comes aropa, the attribution of qualities. You are woman, nayika. You are tall. You are dark. You are smooth. You are splendid. You have limbs like thick luminous snakes. Your belly is waxen and long, long; under my eyes it has dunes and hollows like desert sands in moonlight. It has shiny stripes like veins of expensive mineral. Your navel is an eye without an eyebrow. It is elegant and long and was well cut by the doctor the day of your birth. Bless that man. He is present in your navel.

I was born in the war, in '44. Daddy was in the South Pacific on a destroyer. The hospitals were understaffed and the doctor on emergency was a black man my mother had never seen before. Our own doctor had collapsed; he hadn't slept for thirty-six hours, there were fights and accidents all over Boston then, the soldiers and sailors and all these jazz places. It was wartime. My mother said she was so terrified she vowed she'd never bear another child. But she did, four years later.

People forget pain. They do not so quickly forget bliss.

Oh, stop looking. I am so old. My poor saggy body. My poor stretched belly, that's what those marks are, from carrying Pearl. This Paramahasukha should have come along when I was twenty.

You were not ready at twenty. You were only ready for Charles.

I was ready actually for a boy called Myron Stern, but my parents disapproved so violently I was scared off. What a docile nitwit I was.

With this Myron, too, dubkba would have entered in. Life is dubkba. Dubkba is incorrectly translated "pain." Buddha did not say, "Life is pain." Dubkba is disenchantment. He said, "Life is disenchantment. " He said, "Life is a letdown. " With Myron, as with Charles, there would have been enchantment, there would have been disenchantment. Even with Arbat.

Not with you, Master.

Why not? I am myself or another.

No, you are you. You have attributes. Let me see you.

I am afraid to disrobe. I am afraid of non-duality.

Don't be silly. Let me help.

[ Faint tumult. ]

I am fat, yes. My telly is in layers like a cake.

Just cozy. So much nice soft black hair.

My linga does not reach the sky.

It's trying.

In aropa, flowers are offered to the nayika.Sbe is beginning to become a goddess. Heryoni is a lotus. Her mouth is a lotus.

You're so sweetly prim here. Like a little cactus. Without thorns. With a little bitter dewdrop.

Your breasts are fruit with tips the color of eggplant. Your shoulders are a silver yoke. Your jaw is a wing, beating slowly up and down.

Those are nice attributes. I like this aropa part.

When the nayika is not there, the yogi remembers her beauty. That is the fourth stage, manana.

Will you remember me?

Ah, your voice is dark and sad. That is the question women ask. They always ask, "Will you remember me?"

They want to know.

Their asking so earnestly plunges the lovers back into time, the sad time that does not exist in Vrindavan.

I think you have many nayikas to remember.

The visbesha rati is not jealous. She is Shakti and is all women.

How very convenient for Shiva.

You ridicule your Master. You are being wicked Kali.'

I'm getting sexually frustrated. How many more stages are there?

No need exists to rush. That is very Occidental, your need to rush.

Couldn't you at least kiss me? Somewhere. Anywhere.

The next stage is dbyana, mystic meditation, in which the nayika sits upon the lover's left and is embraced, not for the sake of bodily pleasure but for the enhancing of the spirit.

That may be too subtle a distinction for this old girl.

No. Not subtle. Love is for bodies only when the spirits are in harmony. Love is more than fucking only when the god in the other is saluted. That is why we say, "Namaste."

I love the way you say "luff." I always have.

That is why we say, "So 'bam." I am He.

I'm supposed to say something back but I forget what.

You say, "Sa 'bam." You are She.

Sa 'ham. I am Stye.

Great Kundalini, stand so I may meditate upon your body, each glistening particle, each cell of skin, each hair and gland. Think with me of your body cell by cell, as something greater than galaxies, greater than all the jewel trees. You are like a Bodbisattva standing in the Land of Bliss, in Sukbavati. You are infinitely tall, infinitely splendid. You are immeasurably radiant, amitabha. You are amitayus, forever enduring.

Mm. That feels nice. Tickly, but nice.

I am bathing you with my tongue. I drink your perspiration, your rasas. This is fuja, the sixth stage. The nayika is bathed as if she is a statue of the goddess. As I do so I repeat formulas in my head.

Must you go through this every time?

To make it holy, yes. To exalt us, yes. You may sit now. On my left. On the bed. The worship continues. Open your thighs.

That's nice too. Nicer, even.

Can you feel my inner concentration?

So that's what I feel.

I adore your yoni. I drink your rajas.

Don't stop. Must you stop?

Now the seventh stage. The adept lays the nayika on the bed and repeats aloud the sacred formula.

There is one?

Hling kling kandarpa svaha.

What does it mean?

Hling kling kandarpa svaba.

O.K. Pardon my asking.

Now sit on me.

It's too big. It has reached the sky.

This is stage eight, maitbuna.

Oh. It's not too big. Not quite. Not quite quite.

Kundalini was impatient for this stage.

Keep talking to me, please.

Concentrate. Think of ida. Think ofpingala. Energy is rising.

Mm.

Think of Muladhara to Svadbisthana. Now she leaves the belly and files to the solar plexus, to Manipura.

Mmm.

From Manipura to Anabata, the heart. Up, up, to beyond the heart.

Nn.

Beyond the heart to Visbuddba, the throat. There are many throats.

To Midge

Dombi dances in the sambbogakaya. The washerwoman dances in the throat. From Visbuddba -

[ Unintelligible. ] Oh. My God. Goodness me. Now you.

No. I do not do. You do again, Kundalini. And again.

Really? Isn't that unfair?

Unfair to you. It puts you into time. It puts you into the clutches of Kali, while I am in samarasa. I have the bliss of vajrolimudra. The energy of the suspended semen enters my spirit and makes me immortal. You die again and again. You are cruelly used.

If you say so. I keep going?

Keep going.

Mm. Nn. Oh. Oh yes, yes. God. How do you do it?

Advanced technique. It is called "ujjana sadbana," "against the current. "// brings, through samarasa, sabaja. It brings the non-conditioned. It brings advaya. Sbakti and Shiva, vajra and padma, jiva and ajiva are one. You and I are one. What I will, you become.

Yes, Master.

If I scratch your fat rump, it is pleasure.

Pleasure.

If I slap you thus, that too.