John Updike - S

If you and your voracious boyfriend are going to keep eating out at Polynesian, Mexican, and Cajun restaurants every night you shouldn't be surprised by an irritated duodenum or even diverticulitis. What you need is bran and raw iron-rich vegetables (dark-green leafy ones- not iceberg lettuce) and eggs in moderation, and to cut out all grease and fatty meats, except maybe liver once a week for the iron. Don't tailor your diet to the Admiral's-he is a man and has altogether different needs, since he has a prostate and you don't and you have smaller bones. Men can absorb much more calcium than women, and you should never drink milk for a pre-ulcerous condition-milk, it turns out, is rather bard to digest. Try Gelusil-Maalox somehow has a bad aura, a faint vibrating violet glow like those public toi :let seats that supposedly sterilize themselves. Please don't tease me about your marrying this sailor-boy-it would be much kinder to the heirs and save a lot of legal fees if you would just live in sin. Couldn't you find another condo, with an elevator and a peek at the sea? Or get used to the pool view from his, and ignore the rattle of the diving board and the sound early in the morning from the sprinklers? If you wouldn't wake up at four in the morning you wouldn't hear, the sprinklers. Have you ever tried wax earplugs? The best are made in Europe, Oropax-little fuzzy balls that go deli-ciously soft from your body heat-but Flent's from any old American drugstore might help you. Warm them in your hand before poking them in, otherwise you could break an ear drum. I'm sorry your know-it-all swain thinks the real-estate action is moving inland and that your place is depreciating. In Florida housing may be more like cars than in the North-new is best and almost-new is second-best and then it's all downhill. Also I suspect there's a subconscious pull away from the seaside now with the icecaps melting from these holes in the ozone. But what would the two of you do with a view of a golf course? Balls through the window, and electric carts being driven right through the yard. As I remember, you never liked men having fun by themselves. And think how you'd miss the little shops at the Palm Royal Plaza -you know you didn't like Del Mar Village near as well. We Price women need to see the sea. That was a rather funny cartoon from the Miami ^ Herald but men never wear those dots (tikkas) on their foreheads, and he never claimed to be a Brahmin, only an honest Shudra (the artisan caste).

Happy Thanksgiving, and even Merry Christmas. I don't know what will be happening to me. I have to confront the Arhat and do dread it. I waited twenty-two years to confront Charles and then it was by being out of the house when he came home from work.

Thanks for letting me cry on your shoulder about Wa-tertown, etc. You were a good mother, given the vik-shipta (scatterbrained) style of your generation. I guess that's all any of us can do, follow the fashion and trust biology to override culture-if we try to be better parents than our peers, our children will feel uneasy. I mean, children aren't entirely the point of a woman's life, are they? But if not, what is 5Tell me if you've learned.

Addled love,

Sare

[tape]

Namaste, Master.

My little Kundalini has been avoiding me these past days.

These past days have brought many duties and distractions.

And disasters.

Disasters only to those who have not yet disengaged from prakriti. Whose vasanas still harbor phalatrishna.

That is well spoken. You are wearing Western dress. It has sharpened your tongue.

Now that it is almost December my saris seemed thin.

Your sweater indeed appears bulky. It conceals the shape of your beautiful breasts.

I blush to hear you call them beautiful. Only Buddha and his peace is beautiful.

Within bisp'eace there are a million million jewels. It is one of the priceless insights of Mahayana that particulars do not cease in nirvana. They are simply at last freed from disturbing motion. The wind of decay no longer caresses them.

As executive assistant, I have a number of sorrows to report, and one cause for joy.

I wish to bear the cause for joy. Let our lawyers deal with the sorrow. Sorrow is their trade.

The joy is that Melissa Blithedale, after months of meditation and growing disenchantment with the Presbyterian Church and her mirthless financial advisers, has experienced a change of heart. In our letter of late May she was told she would be welcome back here. Now she wants to come. And to secure your benevolence she not only offers to cease demanding return of the loan she made three years ago but wishes to kick in another five hundred K. What shall I tell her?

Tell her of course to come. Write and say, "Come, ineffable Melissa! Be no longer buffaloed!"

She will find the puram much diminished since her last stay. Then, I believe, she was thoroughly coddled.

We will coddle her again, the good Mrs. B. We will take her into our innermost councils, which since Durga V departure are underpopulated. We will bouse her in high style, in her choice of abandoned A-frames. She will find spiritual advantage in the many challenges. You have never met her, Ktindalini. Her ashram name is Mahima, which means "the power to swell to enormous size and touch the moon. " She is quite short and squat, yet with a charm, a monied bounce. She has that sexual confidence of rich women. She is of.an old San Francisco family. You will enjoy her. She is amusing. You and she will speak the same language, that of the manner born.

I am not sure she and I will speak any language.

How is that, my most precious? No. Don't touch me yet.

As you wish, my nayika.

When I first came here, my leader in dynamic meditation kept shouting at me, "Who are you?" Now I ask the same question of you, Master. Who are you?

Who do you think I am?

I think you are my Master and love and my living path to Buddha.

[ Silence. ]

But now I have been told that you are not a holy man from India but a Jewish Armenian from Watertown, Massachusetts.

[ Silence. ]

Which is true, Master?

Wherein is the contradiction? Why may not a holy man come from Watertown? Why may not the living path begin there?

Perhaps there is no reason.

And yet you feel one. You feel deceived. Worse, you feel mocked.

Yes, I suppose.

Our tantric lovemaking, the highly successful technique of vajrolimudra, now seems a mockery, a loss of your dignity because behind the mask and accent of the guru a pair of Western eyes watched, and a brain thinking with a coarse American accent?

Something like that. Let me hear your real voice.

I'm not sure I can still do it. Even my brain now, when it talks to itself, has the Arbat's voice.

When did this incredible imposture first occur to you?

I resent the word "imposture." I grew into it organically. It's a phase of my being, a karmic reality. In India I became Indian. I never applied for citizenship, but the rest of it - the diet, the clothes, the languages, the mind-set-just came and filled me in. But they didn't forget - the Indian authorities. They remembered, and when enough little embarrassments at Ellora bad piled up - injuries, bad trips, complaints from parents, complaints from neighbors - they kicked me out. The wogs deported me.

Why isn't this generally known?

I wasn't getting stateside publicity in those days. I was just one more guru obscuru. Coming to the States was Durga 's idea, and she was right: this is the place to score. This is the place where dubkba translates into money. Back in India, once I was gone, what did they care? To them, I was one more piece of foreign klisbta - as long as I left and the ashram dissolved, they were happy enough. Their dirty little secret was, our farm-bouse and its bit of land was where they were putting one of their cardboard-and-plaster bousing projects, with rakeojfsfor everybody. Our getting out quietly was pan of our price for not balking at their price. What you got to realize about India, it may be poor but it's a capitalist country. People are on the take. For peanuts by our standards, but on the take.