The Empty Chair

by Bruce Wagner

  “Almost a month passed. I lost 30 pounds. I kept no food down; my hair fell out; I was always cross. Everyone thought I’d become ill, can you recall? Acute ambivalence was killing me. Then I dreamt I was at the foot of my guru’s chair, in agony. I longed for commiseration but no words came. The question Why? hung telepathically in the air. He answered, out loud: Why not? He told me that by impersonating a guru, I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘the worst that can happen is the realization that you’re a shitty guru. And so what? Then you can run.’

  “The vision came just hours before my first satsang—your first too, no? Your first in Bombay? Father always admired the bold stroke and I knew it was time . . . the weeks of struggle were over. He once said that it was best to live this life with the threat of a sword hanging over one’s head. My task would be to keep the sword of egotism suspended by serving all sentient beings. His retort—‘Why not?’—was the only mantra that made sense. Perhaps this dream bookended the other, the one where my guru ran alongside those murderous horses. The latter, a vision of my teacher’s death; the former, a rebirth on Mogul Lane. My own . . .

  “I summoned all my courage and entered the shop to the awaiting crowd. It was packed to the gills, no? I carefully picked my way through. I was no longer in my body—it felt like something had seized control and was walking me toward my beloved’s chair. To this day, I have no idea what anyone could have possibly been thinking when I turned to face them . . . My own mind could not have been emptier. And so it all began.

  “At the end of satsang, I fought to remember who and where I was. I was like Kipling’s Kim, disoriented from fever at the end of that great novel. ‘I am Kim. I am Kim. But what is “Kim”?’ I did have a small sense of relief from a vague feeling it hadn’t been a complete disaster. Then I was shaken from my reverie by 100,000 volts! A yogi can experience his death quite distinctly during advanced meditation. It is instructive to watch one’s soul depart one’s body . . . which is precisely what occurred, but because I was no yogi as yet, it was the most painful and disturbing sensation! I heard a great death rattle from my very bones. An earthquake opened up a void, a bottomless pit into which I tumbled for seven torturous years. And you, dear Kura—dear teacher—were the instrument that destroyed me, yet allowed me to live!”

  I didn’t think it possible for Kura to pay the American any more attention than he’d been giving but with this last remark, that was what happened. As if to break the tension, the guru gestured to some shaded tree stumps whose surfaces had been made suitable for guests. To my relief, Kura sat. The American remained standing. He had 20 years on his former student though looked younger and less fragile by the minute. The telling of his story energized him.

  “Do you remember the moment you touched my feet, that very first time? Think back! Meditate on the moment and you just might capture my face, enshrined in the fossilized resin of memory. At the exact moment of their tender caress, the weight of your hands stung like all the hornets of the world! Those hands, oh my teacher, kindled a fire that became a holocaust. In that instant, I knew: I had made a grievous mistake. Instead of sitting in Father’s chair, I should have run, run, run! For at the touch of your hand, the merciful earth did unmercifully break asunder . . .

  “In an ashram, arrogance arrives in bare feet. One hardly notices; it leaves its shoes at the door and insidiously walks in. Allow me to expand upon the theme. A fundamental method of a siddha is repetition. A true guru knows it is impossible to be understood by language alone; he finds ways around it, patiently working with what he has. A sadguru brings the word from the tip of the tongue to the throat, from the throat to the heart, from the heart to the navel. That is how he escorts you to Silence. During satsang, he may expound upon his own answer until the question is forgotten. He will repeat himself again and again but don’t be fooled! These redundancies are mantras, an extension of Silence itself—what is called ‘mantra yoga’—though to the ignorant it appears to be nothing more than a lack of imagination or even a functional dementia that must be patronized and indulged. The fact of the matter is, the endless reiterations of a siddha are painstakingly deliberate. The guru knows full well he must drill the seeker of truth with mantra like a woodpecker drills a dying tree! The guru watches over his students as the sergeant who supervises blindfolded troops while they practice breaking down and reassembling rifles. And so it is with the student learning the ABCs of Infinity. Anyone who has had the privilege of sitting with a most venerable Master for a week, a day, an hour—a minute!—will naturally be exposed to the repetition I speak of. God is the repetition; sound and language, the mantra; the mantra is the guru; the guru is God. The Great Guru, like a strong, kind father, demanded a soldier’s homework be done, for the war against the ego is no mere battle but a massacre. Just ask Krishna!

  “When I was a boy, I was quicksilver in body and mind. I lorded my speed over fellow students, and family too. I was shameless! I wished to show my parents how dumb they were, how much better off they’d be if they looked to their son for the answers. My father was a poor reader so I read the newspaper aloud to him in a faster than normal tempo, to throw it in his face. My mother was bad with figures so I pored over her accounts and showed her all the places her calculations had been wrong. We have a lot in common, dear Kura, dear teacher. When I first arrived at Mogul Lane, like you I could find nowhere to sit other than at my guru’s feet. (The Source had arranged it thus.) After I’d been with him a few years, I grew restless during satsang. I became bored by those periods of repetition I spoke of. I’d heard it all before! I couldn’t discreetly take my leave because my position at his chair was too prominent. Instead, I played a little mental game to keep myself from falling asleep . . . a child’s game. Whenever a seeker asked a question, one I’d heard a thousand times before—the guru is not the only one who repeats himself!—I formulated a response, awarding myself points for varying degrees of accuracy. I made up little rules to keep it lively, but soon even the game was in danger of incurring my boredom and contempt.

  “The compulsion continued for years, too petty and intermittent to take myself to task yet too consistent to ignore. I never spoke to my guru about it though wish I had, for only now do I know he could have arrested it as easily as a case of hiccups. It was nothing more than a neurotic figment of ‘the Fifth Column,’ hence unworthy of any attention that might validate it. To focus on the Mind was to feed it . . . this is what I told myself. If you can’t beat it, revel in it! I had platitudes and justifications galore. How smug! What hubris! It was my distorted belief that self-awareness alone provided amnesty. I basked in my advanced knowingness, rationalizing the game away as a juvenile travesty, a tool with which I might ‘hone’ myself.

  “Year after year, I spent part of satsang predicting Father’s response to myriad questions. And I was often ‘in the ballpark,’ as they say . . . Now, I don’t want to give the impression I was completely out to lunch for his talks, not at all. I listened quite closely. Still, there was always that moment as we neared the end—around 10:30 or quarter to 11—when I grew bored: with the game, with India, with myself. My thoughts flew elsewhere, the guru and his acolytes a drone in my ear. I’d return to my body in the nick of time to fabricate an answer to some stupid query, by rote . . . but invariably, the moment came when my beloved’s response would be so far afield from the one I concocted, so wrenchingly poetic and outlandishly simple, so onionskin-unknowable, beautiful and direct that my body stiffened with shame like a boy caught stabbing snails with a butter knife. The game would quickly be retired. For a few days, anyway!

  “Here is what happened on that fatal, fateful morning. During satsang, though disembodied, I somehow glanced down to take you in throughout. You were like a small anchor attached to the chair that kept me from floating away . . . and there was something else. Your initial disappointment was easy to read on your face. (For good reason—I later learned you
had traveled a long distance to sit before the Great Guru and got me instead!) With your desperate eyes, in your hard-won spot at Father’s feet, I saw myself, from another time. Then, slowly but surely, my extemporaneous efforts seemed to win you over—floating near the roof, incognizant of my own words, guided by arrogance cunningly dressed in a humble kurta, I was still able to acknowledge your purity, your innocence, your yearning for Truth. I watched your hard features soften . . . and it mattered, you mattered. I actually believe you carried me through that abominable, terrifying hour—Sri Kura! Mahatma! Baba!—and that your attention formed the cornerstone of the edifice of illusion I built for myself—and others—on Mogul Lane. You gave me your heart. On that morning, everyone did. It was the Great Guru who was carrying us both . . . us all.

  “When I finally peeled myself off the ceiling, I remembered the game I played during my teacher’s satsang. I looked at you and thought, What if he stays? What if the one who sits where I once sat stays? And begins to play the game, just as I did? The corollary of that supposition hit me like a gust of foul air, for I could never be expected to surprise, to humble the seekers as the rishi had done. Eventually you would be able to mimic my recycled trove of responses—anyone with half a mind could!—my personalized plagiarisms of the Great Guru’s words—and win the game. Every time. Because it simply wasn’t possible for me to usher you or anyone into Silence. The Great Guru had already spoken to me from a dream and told me the worst possibility—discovering the ‘shitty guru within.’ But there was something worse: to know it and stay on! To remain in the chair with full knowledge of the fraud, spreading the vile gospel of Self. Because you see I liked the chair—that was the flaw—the kid with all the answers—all the marbles—sat in the chair and fell in love. It was love at first seat!

  “That insight (to know and yet remain) lit the fuse, and the bomb detonated in the exact instant your hands touched my feet. Because that was the moment I realized I would never run—nor would I ever have the courage to ‘face the demon in battle.’ Nothing would stop me from wallowing in guru shittiness, no! The rewards were too amenable. That moment—the laying on of hands—your hands, Kuraji!—destroyed and healed me, sealing my Faustian pact with the Mind. Flesh touching flesh was key . . . if I was still capable of staying on at Mogul Lane under such grotesque circumstances, what else might I be capable of? In an instant, I became no more than a guru-thuggee—my worst imagined enemy, my assassin . . . Do you see my point? When you touched my feet, how it burned! Remember my reaction? Think! Think back! Can you? Turn back the page. Perhaps your friend Cassiopeia remembers—yes, she’s nodding her head. She sees. Return to that time with your mind’s eye, old friend, and you might catch me in a petit mal seizure of the eschatological variety. I recovered quickly; I told you that little boy was fast as quicksilver, especially when it came to saving his butt. I have always been a ‘trooper’—I pick myself up, dust myself off, start all over again—one of the qualities I share with my former countrymen. But at the moment I speak of I was like the actor who goes up on his lines then improvises with such alacrity that he earns a thunderous ovation. I covered over my torment with an elegant soft-shoe. And they lapped it up! Didn’t they, Cassiopeia?

  “Perhaps I’ve been telling my tale with more cynicism than intended. I don’t mean to—I wasn’t so much cynical as lost. I should have been found with the touch of your hands, which after all represented the touch of all seekers, all hearts. Instead, I literally died . . . and was born: for such brutally one-pointed bhakti was the very thing that, under the loving eyes of the zodiac, arranged—ordained—our extraordinary assembly today.

  “For seven years, it was hell. No one could have known; such was my art. Like any good counterfeiter, practice makes perfect . . . While each successive day grew more agonizing than the last, an evolving expertise made it virtually impossible for even a close observer to distinguish false notes from true. What a connoisseur I became! After awhile, even I managed to fool myself. I was a cross between a chimpanzee and a parrot, without the integrity of either. Mind you, I was never contemptuous of the teachings I had retained enough of to pervert and drew comfort from making use of the dirty dishwater that soaked round my teacher’s pots. As time went on, my respect for Father compounded—my awe—as did my self-hatred for having betrayed a sacred trust. The only respite from anguish came in dreamless sleep, but even then—! At night, before losing consciousness, I ruminated that there must be some purpose to it all and if only I persevered I might be pardoned . . . perhaps even emerge enlightened, worthy of the chair at last. Upon awakening, such fantasies were totally expunged. Again I dove headlong into the daily routine, flogging myself for the guilt I carried and for what I had become. Would you mind very much if we went inside?”

  Kura blinked, flustered by a comment outside the narrative.

  “I’m mindful of the sun,” said the American. “I’m used to it—but it may sneak up on you.” He gestured amicably toward the cave. “I assure you it’s geologically sound. And Cassiopeia looks as if she’d enjoy some cool water.”

  He turned on his heel, marched to the cave and disappeared within. I was intensely curious and absolutely parched—both water bottles were finished, which of course he had thoughtfully noted. I got up but Kura didn’t budge. He just sat there like a robot on the fritz and mopped his brow, a move that never failed to trigger heart attack head-riffs. What if he keeled over right then, without getting closure?

  He lifted himself off the stump and shuffled toward the cave. The American’s sandals were at the door. I took mine off and Kura clumsily did the same.

  In an ashram, arrogance arrives in bare feet . . .

  Pitch-dark. We stood stock-still inside the entrance while our eyes adjusted. The sadhu gestured for us to sit at the bench of a small wooden table. I led Kura over, afraid he might stumble. Glasses of water and cups of tea were already waiting.

  “In my seventh year, something shifted,” said the American. He came and sat across from us. “I began plotting my escape. I was stunned it had never occurred to me. Some part of me believed that if I took definitive action—if I left Mogul Lane behind and threw myself on the mercy of the Source—all crimes would be forgiven. Very Catholic, no? My demeanor brightened with the knowledge I’d begun tunneling beneath the barbed wire. The Great Escape! Can you recall my sunny mood in the months before I departed? Even my enemies—a camp that was steadily growing—noted a jauntiness in my step. I meditated each day for hours, something I hadn’t done in years. My course of action, my destiny became clear. I likened myself to the prisoner who finishes lunch and straightens his cell before leaping from the top tier. Liberation was at hand . . . all was well with the world at last.

  “I plotted that escape as carefully as a murder. The possibility that I might be apprehended by those whose open hearts I had betrayed with my ‘teachings’ was unacceptable. I would not have it! Nothing would be left to chance. In the years I made book I’d become well acquainted with a host of shady characters. I see now why I cultivated those gamblers and thieves—I envied the integrity of their one-pointed purpose. What a brazen, wondrous thing it is to dream of winning by a nose, to stake everything on winning by a nose! However they might be judged, those men could never be robbed of the dignity conferred by that inviolate enterprise, for it came to be my opinion it wasn’t the horse they were straining toward but God Himself. It is said that this is how some escape the Wheel of Dharma—by a nose. With the help of my rogue’s gallery, I made a clean getaway. I loved them all the more for never asking Why? though of course I had a ready answer: Why not! A report on the details of my flight would be superfluous. Suffice to say I was like one of those merchants in 1,001 Nights, snatched by djinns and deposited far away from home. Only a few moments seemed to pass before I found myself hundreds of miles to the north.

  “You may not believe this but I had no plan beyond achieving my freedom. I was alone and deliriously with
out purpose. One day, during charnel ground sadhana13, my nostrils quivered at a whiff of perfume—the intoxicating, unmistakable odor of my teacher! The Great Guru spoke through a cloud of roses and sandalwood. He said the more directionless I became the stronger his scent would grow, until one day I became the scent itself. With that, I began my travels to that place called Nowhere.

  “After a decade of wandering, on awakening from an afternoon nap beneath a Tamarisk tree, the pungent smells of my guru at last returned to overwhelm my senses. As I went begging, roadside Samaritans were stunned by my exhalations, redolent with botanical Attar: the field of roses now resided within. I heard his voice a final time, so loud and clear tears gushed from my eyes—tears of essential oils! He told me of a sacred place in Uttar Pradesh, on the apron of Nepal.

  “It took months to make my way here. As I ascended the trail, I imagined Father leading me by the hand to my union with the Divine. Halfway up, a man with a thick black moustache (it’s whiter now) appeared on the path. His smile was auspicious. The village elder—you’ve already met, no? I’d hardly spoken in ten years but now the words poured forth. I told him I was an itinerant priest who wished to end his days in solitude and meditation. Without second thought he said, ‘I know just the place.’ He led me through the meadow to this cave, the home of a leper who had passed away a few months before. A vacancy sign was blinking! I’ve spent every day since racing toward emptiness full-gallop, bent on winning by a nose! Only recently did I catch sight of my beloved again. I redoubled my speed and now my guru and I ride together, side by side.”