As the afternoon darkened, there was a sudden auditorium sized
silence."Do you want to study Buddhism?" the Dalai Lama asked without
saying that he meant undergo the ESP. I rtuthfully said No. He was
inhibiting like a stethescope up your behind that saw every thought.
I, a half novelist, had no religious ambition. I left the den. At the
piano I played and two fingers flexed by themselves. At the sink, "No
noise while preparing food." The student position is slave whore.
"your name is Ahari. It means Pearl Heaven."
Kneel and touch your forehead to the floor when you leave.The
house is now a temple. A wheel bearing groaned. While the car was in
repair, I splurgingly rented one to do Ahari's errands. After waking
up, I meditated to a fifty count. I sermonized or worked on poems. I
did the crossword puzzles which were CIA code questions. I had notes
on my history with the Monastery, the meeting with Karthar
Rinpoche,giving a ride up there to a Czechoslovakian girl. "Do not
work on our forbidden secrets," they murmurred. I put the notes on a
closet shelf. "no looking at women, gestures or smiles." I wrote at
the King's dictation. It had not been a problem.
I was asked to give away the .22 rifle, and the dog, Annie, an
Australian shepherd I was keeping for Sue the breeder. "I will kill
your mother," he murmurred. telepathically. He meant to be that
dominant as in "Forsake they father and mother, and sister and
brother..." "You may rest for twenty minutes. You may go to the
bathroom. You may smoke a joint." "Write an essay, The Path To
Enlightenment." I took up ballpoint.FBI and CIA over my shoulder. "The
path is anger." (Shock.) Because (as Penguin Buddhism had implied)
anger makes you critical against others' ideas and beliefs, and
therefore critical of mental concepts at all."And the angry can
understand, I preached ploddingly with the caring attitude from
psychoanalysis, "that anger toward others is not necessary." (Ooh.
Ah.) The New York Times ran an article about a miracle at a
cathedral.New York Newsday ran a cartoon with a spoiled brat baby,
cross legged, weqring a turban inside a play pen. I made poems, "
Solitude in Retreat," "The Garden Snake And The Python," a hair comb
that reflected the sky, an elephant with news about a reincarnation
from 1,000 BC, and by October 1992, "Cloud Climbers", still trying to
compliment the criminal Tibetans.
The Dalai Lama's attention inhibited, envelopped, and made a
crimp in my reading. I remembered being free.Being observed deadened
one's response to wild beauty.
But to hope he would be gone would be rude in respect to a
reincarnated Nobel Peace Prize winner."The Dharma is the world such as
it is." "Your artist stomach is acid to our beliefs." Because it
wished to achieve, and it wished to make an unchanging image. "You
shall treat your cat like a goddess." Reverence toward sentient
beings? (They believe in their motto abstractly.) I was questioned. It
was decided I lacked faith, lovingness and was to buy a ring, a green
one. When I got it home, I saw that it was blue, with two bristle
winged dragons on each side, faced opposite. I bought a green one,
then a big red oval because "a bishop is the servant of a king."
Traditionally in Buddhism believers gave gifts to the guru. The
writer of the Pranjaparamitra, Part One, capitalized Teacher as if the
telepath, the ongoing faculty were above even him. I had seen the
Dalai Lama drive past in a station wagon in lopsided sunglasses my son
had had. (Two months later I saw him in his Rolls Royce in his robes.)
They wanted watches, the new battery powered transistor, not a Timex.
It was a joke to receive telepathy. I drove alone, but as in an
auditorium. All watched Barry, Ahari, determine taste before a jewelry
shop window: a dark faced Citizen, one hundred and twenty five
dollars, with a beaded metal band. Dalai, Karthar, and Gwayala: King,
Abbot and Reincarnated Prince.
A week or two later, they wanted wallets. Calf skin. (Oops.)
Ostrich skin? (But plastic was unacceptable.) And snake skin (ah!) for
His Holiness, because a siddah, a sitter, was a snake. A cobra had
protected the Lord Buddha. On the logo of the Monastery, a snake on
each side of the wheel looked up at the deer lotus on top.
The King cobra, the Dalai Lama who dreams his image of rotting
death, maggoty ulcers and scatters cartoon shit turds onto sexual
fantasies. Take the watches in boxes and deliver them to the office.
You may send the less fragile wallets. And fill out and pay a
subscription to The New York Times, that the visitors may read in the
waiting room. Yes. And The New Yorker too. And ten pairs of
Levis.Bring the carton to a rear building. A dishwasher steps out of a
doorway and says, "Great danger lurks here." Against the Self?
Destroyed by the knife of discrimination - to cleanse away the deluded
ego. Insult the dreamer into awareness. I carried the carton to the
exit of the kitchen building, and left hushedly over the grass beside
the gravel.
September 4 (1992) when the Dalai Lama said he'd leave , I was
asked if I wanted to study Buddhism. No. Wrong answer. Write an essay
on loyalty. I went to the piano. An envelopping pressure on my arm
dampened my concentration. A death atmosphere radiated disapproval,
like an all knowing King. "This is a Buddhist temple," Voice
murmurred."Kneel when you leave," And touch your forehead to the
floor. As I walked to my car, I received a telekinetic stab to the toe
top. As I drove, air went through a sea shell stuck to my ear.even
with the window shut, distracting,annoying, maddening.
I shot pool in Kingston. On the way back to the car, another nail
in the toe."Please study, Please study," longed Tibetan tongues in the
wind. To complain about heard voices would seem crazy. One planned to
escape. In three days, the wasp hive vibrated on my left arm. "Send us
a check," echoed the whisper,"seven hundred dollars for the lessons.
We will leave on the fourth of next month," the Dalai Lama promised. I
sent the check. In a few days, a thank you note arrived in the mail
box from maroon logoed stationary from Karthar Rinpoche, "in reverence
for sentient beings."
Focus darkened in the night-heavy halls of telepathy. I listened
to Authority."Don't harm, don't help; don't laugh, don't cry."
Meditate. I knew no mantras or mental diagrams. I counted breaths and
concentrated on areas of the body. "Ahari, what is the shortest route
to Enlightenment?" "None." (Gasp.) And the clever answer, "One doesn't
picture it." Now the Dalai Lama dictated, "To have a son is an honor,
but to have a particular son is a tragedy." Marred actual reality
failed the ideal, the Universal, though my son had got to college. The
Dalai Lama meant to be life and death for the CIA.
Be silent, mentally: impossible without the trick they told; only
listen to thoughts from outside. If there are none, you hear silence.
Then, it's like he said, "Think of a meaning," and like an answered
riddle said, "Don't understand it." The surprise answer (not those
words) became a semi static mood, a silver fog: Enlightenment, by
implication. He never said so. "Follow no dharma," he said, and since
I was without rules, he added ironically "Don't kill anyone!" Not
having believed in reincarnation, I did not feel saved from it.
The next afternoon, silver double dragon glistening on my finger,
I walked down the bright low hill in town. The pedestrians thought
their role was necessary, a needless worry that deserved politeness.
At the flea market an oriental agent in blue pants and a white shirt,
like a waiter, angrily telepathized, "Stand up straight." I did not
see why. Non difference was clearly as light as air. If you don't
interpret, you don't affirm or deny. Pranya was oxygen. A young jade
Buddha carrying a scroll smiled at a barking dog. The dog wanted him
to take sides, to notice a difference, quality, and therefore the
attractive and repulsive. Enlightenment was a glow around a light bulb
when you leave a swimming pool; no more important than the clarity
required to see the optic nerve glow. Enlightenment as described in
the Pranjaparamitra seemed impossible, ten thousand lifetimes, though
at the same time, "everywhere" and not absent in the analysis of
dependent origination (causality). "Don't interpret," and suddenly
it's real, a seemingly self sustaining mood. That it did not lie "in
form" seemed insolubly mysterious, in a finished form,a pot, or an
ambition or a concept of Enlightenment itself. That it did exist and
fulfill all these requirements was brilliantly ingenious. But without
the surprise of the riddle answer,there is no experience, only an
empty theory of inidifference.
On October 4, when they said they'd leave, they asked if I wanted
to study. I said No. They tormented me for four days. No lawyer can
help since a law forbids telepathy to be presented in a court room.I
sent them a check. Karthar sent a thank you note.The Dalai Lama
belched warmly in my stomach.
One afternoon, I wanted to continue my childhood autobiiography.
The material seemed alive again. The Tibetans murmurred, "Don't whore
your mother." and bretahed on within the mind, the impulse died.
"Whore," is CIA slang for "expose". Jazz was athletic and violent, the
Dalai Lama thought. Was the clattering rhythmn necessary? Torn scales,
wasn't that physical, like basketball? I decided to change towns and
drove toward Coxsackie, no faster than a clinging, magnetic wind
filled with shreds of sad dark voices. "Don't move, don't move." The
rentable houses needed appointments to be seen. "Please don't move.
Continue to study." At the boat launch, a willow shaded cove along the
river, the wind-twisted leaves sounded distant.
Annoyance produced Full Enlightenment: odd physical sensations
just when you are about to act. You start to play a melody and they
erase the idea."I abjure, denounce and condemn you," I shouted in my
cabin. At Scott the drummer's jam session, the lamas oozed and
dribbled into my left arm muscle. I played passably.
I threw a glass jar at the wood stove. I left rock on full volume
and went for a drive. Furious, one evening, they told me to "Push it
through" the place where Enlightenment had arrived, and I felt a
rtising bodily ecstasy, high in the mind and chest, anger transformed
into pleasure: Full Enlightenment. I did not write a poem. They gave
no directions to the outlet for anger.
"How can I improve myself in Buddhism?" an onlooker asked through
the Dalai Lama."You can't. That would be using spirituality for
benefit." (Spiritual Materialism by Trungpa Rinpoche.) "Live in the
forest." I had for ten years by chance.
Dec. 4, 1992. "Do you want to study Buddhism?" No. They performed
three days of torment, erased ideas, exaggerated sensations. I sent
them a check. "We will leave on January 4."
The Nobel Peace Prize winner and his holy reincarnation observed
the mind, and wrote in star surrounded blue and white script and
plain.I was ordered to kiss their fantasized rings and feet. Karthar
said he would break me into a thousand pieces and scatter me to the
ends of the earth."I denounce, abjure and condemn you!"I repeated.
"An army of denial to affirm the deepest parts of the unattached self."
"He calls me kike and black," I yelled at the walls.
Rushes of energy like a pressure to act, gravity with a
paralyzing weight, hand so heavy I felt I could not lift them to the
piano.One felt from the Tibetan that an individual charged into your
insides to emote over your cowered self consciousness.They make
buzzings in your mind. If I thought of a line for a poem, they babbled
until I couldn't remember it. The sunlit emerald silence of a distant
forest stream they blotted out with oscillations.
I ignored a murmur, and the Dalai Lama threatened to kill me and
all my relatives. Amazedly, I listened. He dictated. The Chinese had
beaten, raped and killed Tibetans in front of their families. I typed
his page. "Millions had been put out of their homes and moved from
their ancestral lands." I was asked if I would give my reward for
saving the CIA from a Russian spy to get the Tibetan people out. Yes,
four thousand dollars a piece.
I was asked to buy a robe to symbolize, they said, the work done
to date.The letter, with check, was sent back by Karthar Rinpoche. "I
don't know this man."The letter I had sent, conditions altered after
the fact, would be called an application for a priesthood to permit
arbitrary detention by Bill Clinton. I still answered the crossword
puzzles, but the monks pulsated into my arm. "Get them off!" I
glavanically wrote in the margins.
Feb 1993. "You were writing a novel about another woman when you
started going with your first wife. Nora will come and live with you
tonight, if you burn the Dakota manuscript." Months of collecting
material and months of retyping. I burned the manuscript in the wood
stove.I imagined Euphrosyne wearing a shoulder holster.She did not
arrive. She was in Europe and came back in April.
There were controlled meetings. By July, to prove I was not after
her, I left my house in Woodstock and rented an apartmnent on East
10th Street in New York City.
They followed me. The Dalai Lama let other voices into the
telepathy. They bothered me every waking second. I yelled in the
street and cursed loudly in my apartment. I reached for a pen and he
projected numbness into my hand. "Feeling artistic?" the words would
shine. I felt unfairly blocked, but tried to hold my mood so he
started a pulse in my right shoulder muscle. I swore. "Is that how
you'd talk to Euphrosyne?" I cursed loudly in all ways and was afraid
the neighbors would hear.
It went on for years. I flew to Holland. I thought that they were
the FBI and that I would be out of their jurisdiction beyond the three
mile limit. But as the plane headed over the ocean, there was a tense
pressure on my forearm, and white letters shone into my head. "What
are your sexual feelings for Miss Bloom now?"
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