by Bill Turpin
MAX IS ON a pro bono publico “communications” assignment organized for him by the CEO. He is still sufficiently newsroom-oriented that he regards pro bono public relations as an oxymoron. And, as a journalist without a newsroom, he has a new appreciation of the phrase “fish out of water.”
He walks up two creaky flights in a building that appears to have been designed by Raymond Chandler. Each office door has a large frosted glass window emblazoned with a number, and sometimes a business name in a large fancy font.
Max knocks on the door marked 202 and half-expects to hear a hard-bitten voice say something like “C’mon in, sweetheart. Sit down and give those long legs a rest.” But the words below the door number — Bernie’s Meditation Services — don’t quite fit with that. Even so, Max isn’t ready for the short rotund fellow about his own age who opens the door, phone in one hand. He gestures to Max to come inside and then disappears into a side office.
Seating is problematic. The room has a single chair on a dais and about a dozen bright futon mats about two feet square. A small boxy cushion sits atop each mat.
Max tests a cushion and confirms that it’s filled with dense foam. He parks his backside on one and settles in to wait. His client is soft-spoken, but Max can hear his end of the phone conversation. He thinks he detects a slight East Indian accent.
“Yes, that’s right . . . I owe you $18,235.23 . . . that was my trip to Nepal . . . no, I can’t pay it back . . . yes, I understand the terms of an American Express account, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t have the money . . . no, I will not be sending you any money whatsoever this month . . . you see, I don’t have money . . . not soon, no, but sometime in the future . . . oh yes, I am willing to look at an arrangement . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . .” There is no indication in his tone that Max’s client is in any way perturbed by the conversation.
When the client walks out, Max gets a better look at him. His greying black hair is unruly but not sloppy. His glasses have prominent black frames set on a bulbous nose. His clothing is unremarkable: shirt and slacks. Max sees humour in his eyes and senses he’s in the presence of someone who is never surprised; that if he had found an alligator in the room instead of Max, he would have calmly called animal control and returned to work while he waited for their arrival.
The client extends his hand and Max rises from his cushion to greet the first Guru he has ever encountered. Max starts off the relationship by apologizing for overhearing the Guru’s difficult conversation with American Express.
“I’m sorry to hear you’re having difficulty.”
“No difficulty for me, mate,” the Guru says.
“Really?”
“It’s all a matter of perspective. Let’s say I spent $18,235.23 of your money on my trip to Nepal and can’t repay it. Who’s got the problem, me or you?”
“Me.”
“Exactly. Same with American Express.”
“What are you going to do?”
“No, chum, you still don’t get it. The question is, what are they going to do?”
“OK. What are they going to do?”
With no apparent irony, the Guru says: “They are upgrading my account and working out a payment plan for me. Now, let’s have a conversation.”
The Guru sets up two cushions so they can sit cross-legged, facing each other. He bows to Max without ceremony, Max follows suit as best he can. “It’s good to formally acknowledge each other at the beginning of the conversation,” the Guru says.
The problem or “challenge” — which the Wife has explained is now the correct term — is that, after a year in Halifax, the Guru still lacks enough meditation students to support himself. He has studied meditation in India, Tibet, Nepal and Colorado for most of his adult life and is a well-regarded teacher. However, he has never adopted a religion or any of the many lineages associated with meditation. He believes he is the victim of “credentialism”.
“There is nothing spooky or life-threatening about meditation,” he says. “Still, you should know what you’re doing if you’re going to teach it. My problem is that the places where I’ve studied don’t issue framed certificates.”
Max is well aware that he is newly-minted as a “communications expert” and also lacks credentials. Further, this is his first consultation, so he resists the impulse to immediately suggest the Guru change the name of Bernie’s Meditation Services.
The Guru also believes that his humble meditation hall is off-putting, but he can’t afford to upgrade until he’s paid for the trip to Nepal.
“Why don’t you just put it on American Express?”
“Well,” the Guru says. “Despite my upgraded status, I don’t feel they are ready to offer me more credit right now.”
The Guru switches the topic to Max’s truncated career, which he finds hilarious. Max is still raw from the experience and finds it difficult to join the laughter. The Guru sees that and apologizes.
“I’m not laughing at you, my friend,” he says. “I’m laughing at the predictability of it all.”
“I didn’t predict it.”
“Really? You had no idea?”
“Well, in retrospect, it shouldn’t have surprised me.”
“Exactly. That’s why it’s good not to live in our heads. But you had a good time at the paper. Your new CEO said so. And now you’re moving on. It’s like you’ve done the roller coaster and now you’re going to try the Gravitron.”
“I’m not sure I can do communications.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just like journalism, only in reverse, eh?”
They laugh at the use of “eh”, which gives Max the confidence to say what’s been on his mind.
“You sound Indian, which is probably good for your line of work, but ‘Bernie’?”
Max is no marketer, but it seems to him that westerners wouldn’t look for someone named Bernie for a meditation instructor.
“But that’s my name. My father was from Toronto. He stayed in India after the war and married a good Indian girl. Both have passed away, so I decided to use my Canadian citizenship and immigrate. I don’t want to change my name to boost sales. I need to be honest with my students. That’s not negotiable.”
Max is certain there’s a solution to this somewhere.
• • •
A few minutes later, having ascertained that Gurus drink, Max has led his client to a bar he knows too well.
“Why are there fish swimming through this . . .?” the Guru asks, gesturing to the clear tube surrounding the bar.
Max raises his eyebrows, expels a breath and shrugs, as if to say that no one really knows. “But they’re here, so successive owners just keep feeding them.”
“Do they have names?”
Max begins to ruminate on appropriate names for fish but catches himself.
“What’s your full name?” he asks the Guru.
“Bernard Ashok Carruthers.”
Hmmm.
“Ashok?” Max asks. “Does that name have a meaning?”
“Why is it that when people hear a foreign name they want to know what it means? Does anyone ever ask you what Max means? Do you even know?”
“It was a professional question, but the answer to your questions are dunno, no and no.”
The Guru nods. “Ashok honours Ashoka, a great Indian emperor who one day realized that victory at any cost is actually defeat. Then he adopted Buddhist principles and instituted a reign of peace.”
“That’s good, but not great,” Max says. “What’s the name actually mean? Like Miller — everyone knows what Miller means.”
“Let’s see if I understand you. My name — my actual name — is good, but not great,” the Guru says. “You seem to have an instinct for your new business.”
“Irony is not lost on me, you know,” Max says. “I’m fully aware that I�
�m staring at goldfish in a Plexiglas pipe with some kind of sarcastic guru. Are you going to tell me what Ashok means?”
“Well, it means something like ‘without sadness’ or ‘without sorrow’.”
Without sadness, Max thinks. Thank you, Jesus. This job is even easier than I imagined. All you have to do is buy your client a beer and get him to cough up the meaning of his middle name.
“Don’t you think,” Max says, “that ‘without sadness’ is a much better name than Bernie — no offence?”
“But meditation is not about driving away sadness.”
“It’s not?”
“Can’t be done. You can make room for sadness, though.”
Max is about to ask why it can’t be done, but realizes that if driving out sadness was that easy, there wouldn’t be any sadness. He thinks about ways to turn this obvious communications weakness into a strength, one of the perversities of his new trade.
“Well, can’t you use it as a talking point?” Max says.
He suggests the Guru say something like: “My name means ‘without sadness’, but don’t take that too literally.”
“And then you go on to make your real point,” Max adds.
“My real point,” the Guru says. “As opposed to my phony point.”
“No, your talking point. There’s a difference. Think of it as a teaching point.”
The Guru signals for more beer, is disappointed to learn there is nothing on tap from Hungary, and orders a Remy Martin instead. Max sticks with beer.
“That’s actually a good idea,” the Guru says. “It’s an opportunity to teach. What do you call it? It’s a teachable moment.”
“Exactly,” Max says, who has orbited the sun enough times to know that students will choose to believe that Ashok the Guru can drive away sadness, no matter how often he denies it.
“Okay. On your advice, I will call myself Ashok.”
Max offers a toast, but the Guru demurs.
“Classes aren’t going well. It’s too early to celebrate,” he says. “Perhaps you can come to one tomorrow evening?”
• • •
Max is back in the Guru’s place of business at seven the next evening. He takes a seat on a cushion with the others and follows his client’s instructions on meditation, just to get an authentic experience. He even meditates for 30 minutes.
Everything seems fine, until it’s time for questions.
“So, why would we want to do this every day?” asks a guy in his forties still wearing his shirt and trousers from work. His tone is sceptical and meant to be incisive. A pretty younger woman wearing a rescue-dress with small flowers on it rolls her eyes at him.
“You will help save the universe,” the Guru says.
Now it’s office-guy’s turn to roll his eyes.
The Guru explains that there are two opposing forces in the universe. The first is gravity, which works to squeeze the universe back together into a single point. When that happens there will be another Big Bang, re-starting the cycle of the universe. The opposing force is pain, which is driving the expansion of the universe. Every instance of pain, mental or physical, in humans and animals, drives the universe to expand. Even crushing an insect helps drive the universe apart.
A neatly turned-out guy who looks like he spends his weekends distributing religious literature puts up his hand. “Isn’t it a good thing if the universe goes on forever?”
“No, because at some point it will become empty and lifeless. The energy will be spread out too far, it will be too diluted to support life. Too much pain will bring about true death, the death of everything. By meditating, you reduce the amount of pain you inflict on yourself and others.”
“When?” office-guy asks.
“When what?”
“When will everything die?”
“I don’t know exactly,” the Guru says. “About a million years from now.”
“Well, the hell with that,” office-guy says, standing up. “I’m not going to sit on my butt for hours to prevent something from happening a million years from now. I gotta pay the power bill next month.”
And, of course, so does the Guru, Max thinks. Three others follow office-guy out of the room.
Max stops taking notes.
The woman in the dress decides to take a shot.
“Don’t you get good karma for the next life?” she asks.
She smiles when the Guru replies enthusiastically in the affirmative, but soon learns she has not saved the day.
“Reducing pain in this life brings an amazing gift. And that’s why the next life will not be nearly as comfortable for you, but you will be able to do much, much more to alleviate the suffering of others,” the Guru says. “Mother Teresa didn’t live at the Calcutta Hilton, you know. If you want to alleviate suffering, it’s best to go where the most suffering is taking place.”
The room quiets. Only the religious guy approves, nodding. A pleasant, studious-looking woman in her middle years stands up.
“So, you’re saying the harder I work at making this life better for everyone, the worse my next life will be?” she says.
“You will encounter more suffering, but more importantly, you will better experience the suffering of others. That’s true compassion.”
The religious guy jumps up: “Yes! That’s why suffering makes sense! That’s what Jesus was all about!”
There follows some desultory discussion, but the consensus is that it makes no sense to put a big effort into this life so you can experience more suffering in the next. They’re here tonight because they want to suffer less and they want it now.
The Guru loses more ground by suggesting that executions might result in a net pain reduction. The trick would be to surprise the prisoner by shooting him in the back of the head when he’s not looking. That way he won’t suffer the agony of knowing his death is imminent, he stops causing pain in this life, and gets a fresh start in the next one.
“I want to be clear,” the Guru says. “I am not supporting execution, especially if it would cause pain to the victim’s loved ones. It would be a difficult calculation. I’m just saying this is how it could be done.”
Next, he discloses that, for similar reasons, he is not a vegetarian, thereby losing the woman in the rescue-dress.
And so it ends. Only two prospects sign up for the next class. Max and the Guru wordlessly agree that drinking with the fishes is in order.
• • •
Max barely gets his forearms on the Plexiglas tube before a huge goldfish with O-ring lips takes up his station beneath them. “Take it easy, Max. You’ll find a way,” it says.
He lets the Guru take a sip or two of Remy before opening the conversation. “Was that typical?”
“Oh-no. That was a huge success by comparison,” he says. His voice is full of self-pity unbecoming to a guru.
Max asks if the Guru truly believes all that stuff about saving the universe and backwards karma.
“You’re asking if I’m a fraud?”
“Just checking. Nature of the beast and all that. Are there any personal benefits to meditating?” he asks.
“Sure, lots, but if you focus on personal benefits, there won’t be any.”
“Hmm. If you try for it, you’ll never get it,” Max says. “It’s inscrutable, I’ll give you that.”
“Is that a key message, old chum?”
“Just fish-talk.”
“You know, I appreciate you offering to help, but I can’t lie about what I believe. That’s not right, not fair.”
Max stifles the urge to yell at his client. He dials down his tone and instead beseeches him.
“How did you come to believe in backwards karma? It’s the worst motivation for good behaviour imaginable. Worse than condemnation to Hell for bad behaviour.”
“Actually, Hell is a state of m
ind. Even the pope said that.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Max says.
“Where does anybody get their beliefs about the afterlife?” the Guru says. “They accept a ready-made belief straight off the shelf, or they make a guess.”
The Guru says that his idea just came to him one day. Unlike other beliefs, he argues, his is logical: If the idea is to reduce pain, enlightened people would naturally choose to be reborn where there is more pain to work with.
Once again, Max stares down at his fish, which interprets the gesture as an invitation to speak up: “He’s right, Max. Life is good here, but in my next life, I’m going to be human. I’ve learned a lot in this tube, and I think I can help.”
Max is wishing the damned fish would move on when it occurs to him that silence is not the same as a lie. It’s his first big insight as a flack, but he suspects it’s common knowledge in the field.
“You know, there’s nothing wrong with preparing the ground before delivering tough messages,” he says.
The Guru signals for more alcohol, which Max now understands to be a sign of agreement.
“So, I could make the karma issue the very last thing in my program, something we don’t discuss until they’re accomplished meditators and better able to understand.”
“Right,” Max says. “I wouldn’t rush to explain about saving the universe, either, or your possible support for the death penalty. Instead, you explain that becoming ready for certain advanced truths could take years of meditation practice. Not to mention lots of fees. This gives them something to shoot for.”
The Guru shoots him a look of disdain at the fees comment, but Max cuts him off before he can speak. “The only thing I know about karma, my friend, is that the power company won’t accept it as legal tender. You don’t need to be rich. But you’re doing honest work and you’re entitled to a decent living for it.”
The Guru again signals for more drinks before realizing they already have four glasses in front of them.
“Should I continue to avoid discussing any personal benefits of meditation?” the Guru asks.
“I think you’re right about that,” Max says. “Every spiritual leader offers benefits. But you’re offering benefits that are available only if you don’t strive for them. It’s got mystical ‘heft’. And Paul Simon’s already prepared them for it: ‘. . . the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip slidin’ away’.”