John Updike - S

Why do you want me? In your philosophy, one woman is as good TLS another. We're all lotus to your linga. With this particular lotus, I fear the bloom is off. Though of course I do adore you. More this moment than ever; there're all these new layers of you to get to know.

But no rectitude. Who'd you ever know who bad rectitude? Your husband - what was his name? Charles. Charles the Worthy. Whenever you mention him you get prim and cute and arch your back. What's going on between you two? I get the feeling be and I exist in some sort of symbiosis. It 's making me jealous as bell.

Don't be ridiculous. I can't stand him.

You ask me why I want you. One, you 're a knockout, with these super knockers and a two-bandsful ass.

Keep your hands to yourself. Don't be so adolescent. I'm almost forty-three.

Ripe. That's nice. Two, you 're every inch a lady, and I seem to be a sucker for that. My own social insecurity, no doubt. Everything goes back to having a lousy childhood.

Mine wasn't that great, you know. My mother-

Three, you know the ropes here, and, frankly, I don't. I reach into myself and say what comes but the organizational part of it has always been over my head. There's always been women to do the -

The dirty work.

The nitty-gritty, the stbula side of things.

You would have to do with fewer limos.

Absolutely - that was just an image kind of thing. The humor of it appealed to me, being dragged along these dusty washboard roads like they were Fifth Avenue.

And the diamonds. They should be sold.

Sure, sell 'em - though you won't get half of what we f aid. Again, it was the symbolism, the Buddha Realm bit, the pan-nirvana part of It. It got people's attention; gave 'em a little shock. Stop people short for even a second, and you have that much more of a chance of enlightenment fighting its way past the abam and all that defensive furniture.

I understand the theory; but the practice has proved to be very expensive.

You may or may not believe this, but I really don't give a shit about any of this material garbage. It's all external, it's all just semiotics. I am non-attached, that's not just bullshit.

Then I, too, may be dispensed with.

To you I'm attached. Maybe not forever; as you say, I'm subjected to a lot of temptation. But for now I'd like you to bang around. I'd luff for you to bang around.

Don't do that to me. Say that word that sweet way.

Hey… Flash: Watertown boy confesses emotional dependency on North Shore matron! Ashram recovers, Arizona declares bank holiday.

Thanks, dear, but, truly, no thanks. I figure I've had as much sahasrara as I can stand. And if you or your other in-residence Shaktis try to keep me from going, I'll tell the world you're really Art Steinmetz. Now that would be a news flash.

Don't talk ugly, Sarah. We're trying to get back on an even keel, you and I. I don 't know bow good that is as blackmail - it might leak out anyway, if the media keep working me over, or Durga tries to make a killing on her story. It might not hurt so much. It might just stop people short for that second we were talking about and let in some light… You 've beard me at dar-sban - you can say it 's all bullshit and still they dig it. They think your saying it's bullshit is bullshit. Deep in Kaliyuga as we are, it's bard to come up with bad publicity.

Well, at the least you'd have to scrap a lot of T-shirts. I think you're a teentsy bit bluffing. I think you like being the Arhat.

All it means is "the deserving one." I deserve all I can get, after the lousy upbringing I bad.

What do the scriptures say of the arhat? "In character as excellent as the gods, in meekness as the ascetic, and in wrath as the thunderbolt."

That's me. Speaking ofvajra, let's lie down to talk. I got to get used to this idea of doing without my Kundalini. I'll miss those multiple o’s .

I'll miss them too. But I think they were just a stage.

Sure. Use me and throw me away.

We throw ourselves away. All of us. Isn't that what "you taught?

I forget what I taught. I get frightened, Sarah. All this spiritual responsibility is frightening. I need you to give me some structure. I need those big tits of yours to suck. I need to bold on to your ass.

Stop trying to sex me up. That's very chauvinistic, what you imply-that women don't get frightened too.

Buddbatvam yosbidyonisamsritam.

Oh sure. Women are gods. Women are dirt. It comes to the same. Women are just like men are-little bits of purusha caught in prakriti, lost and isolated in all that duhkha. Why did it happen? How did purusha get so 'polluted?

The explanation is, it allowed itself a moment, just a moment in all that eternity, of self-reflection. And, whoomph, everything clouded over. Bingo: maya. But fear not, Kun-dalini. A way out exists. The thinking brain - buddbi - can lead man - and woman, if you insist she needs an out - to the edge of awakening. When prakriti is recognized as itself, it flees the spirit, the Sankhya-sutras put it, like a dancer who has satisfied her master's desire.

And isn't that a chauvinistic image, by the way?

Come on, ease up on the gender politics. I'm trying to answer your question. People want to confuse purusha with the cbitta-vrittis, or with buddhi; but these are just the most complex and rarefied manifestations of prakriti. Prakriti, like purusba, is eternal, but it has a kind of incipient motion, a teleological instinct. Once it departed from its original state of alinga, energy appeared, monstrous amounts of it, called "mabat." And then evolution, parinama, took over. Come here, you sweet botsy-totsy. Let me check if Buddhahood still resides in your yoni. I'll eat the bastard out.

Don't be gross. What I've never understood about nirvana-

Yes, you little yum-yum?

How does it differ, from extinction?

Who says it differs?

All that Mahayana business does-but maybe that's just popular superstition, icing an originally austere cake. The same thing happened in Christianity. But I can appreciate how the popular mind works: why have all this religion to attain just what we're afraid we're going to get anyway? I mean utter death, utter extinction.

Cut it out, Sarah. You're frightening me. It was bad enough always having my parents threatening each other with genocide.

See? You're no help. You just reduce everything to the personal.

You haven't been a sannyasin long enough to understand. You haven’t burned away your ego, your pbalatrisbna. You must become sbunya. You must become emptiness. Sbunya also means a girl of low caste, a slut. When you become an utter slut, then vajra will shatter you. Buddha will fill you.

When does he fill you?

When be fills you.

Thanks a lot.

Baby, all your questions - they are optical illusions of the mind. They disappear in the right light. You still have that Christian capitalist me-first mind-set.

Look who's talking-Art Steinmetz, the pseudo-Hindu.

Steinmetz, the Arbat, Krishna, Buddha - you 're bung up on these secondary distinctions.

If your mind-set is so great, why do you keep saying you're frightened? Why are you begging me to stay?

Being a jivan-mukta, you 're still a person. You 're like the potter's wheel that keeps turning, though the pot is finished. I am not begging. I am respectfully inviting.

I respectfully decline.

We bad such super maitbuna.