by Bajaj, Karan
‘I don’t teach anything here,’ he continued. ‘I am not a godman, I don’t fly on carpets, I don’t walk on water. I can only be a guide on your journey to free yourself from the craving that binds us to this ultimately unfulfilling cycle of life and death. But this journey is yours and you have to walk the path alone.’
He was addressing weighty topics - birth, death, rebirth, bondage, enlightenment - but his tone wasn’t patronizing. Every bone in his body screamed sincerity, his face radiated truth. He wasn’t a quack -as I had half hoped he would be.
‘Make no mistake, it’s a tough journey. Through intense meditation, you will annihilate the self, destroy the ego, and lose the “I” that craves. I haven’t reached this goal myself. I am not the Buddha, the enlightened one. I am just rowing the ferry that separates this world from the other, but the peace in my heart tells me I am paddling in the right direction. You can choose to follow my imperfect path and perhaps waste a lifetime or maybe more getting there - or you can choose to return to the life you know. Whatever you choose, I wish you peace.’
For the rest of the discourse, I stared at him in a daze, watching his calm face mouth words which sometimes made sense but mostly sounded esoteric and obscure. But all of it sounded sincere. Was there really a chance that the body was just a shell? That losing an arm wasn’t a tragedy, but not taking steps to achieve nirvana - the union of the individual soul with the universal soul - was? I looked around the room full of impassive faces deep in concentration. There were monks as young as ten or twelve, and they were ready to devote their lives to this important but ultimately elusive quest, unsure of the outcome but trusting in the path paved by someone thousands of years ago, who had left no written record of his existence. If they could have faith, couldn’t I believe once more?
There was a sudden buzz of activity in the small room as the discourse drew to a close.
‘I hope that wasn’t too boring.’
I was taken aback for a moment. I had forgotten that David was sitting next to me.
‘Let me introduce you to the monk who will take you to Bangkok tomorrow,’ he said as he helped me up.
I would soon take a flight from Bangkok to New York, I thought, and hopefully still be able to join NASA in some capacity. If I was lucky, I would help build equipment to transport people to a distant, perhaps kinder world. And one day I would be married to someone who wouldn’t care that I was a cripple. Maybe we would have two children and live in a quiet suburban home, and I would never understand the madness of these last two years, I would never be able to explain to my children why there was evil in the world and whether it would ever cease.
‘We don’t have a phone here, but as soon as you reach Bangkok, you should give your family a call.’ He smiled. ‘They won’t be able to believe their ears, will they? How absolutely delighted they will be!’
No one was waiting for me. A few spare friends, a couple of professors perhaps, but I was a footnote in their lives, at best an interesting subject for cocktail parties, forgotten as the complexities of their own lives took a grip on them. Someday, I would matter less than a missed promotion or a failed relationship, if that hadn’t already happened. Sam would care, yes, but he must think me dead by now, which was better for both of us. I wasn’t big enough not to grudge him his health and happiness and he, in turn, would be obligated to me in a way that would threaten our friendship. No, my going back would help no one at all. I was better off away from the memories of happier times.
‘The bus leaves early morning. Try to get a good night’s sleep.’
Would I ever be able to have a good night’s sleep again, I wondered. I would probably continue to be scared of the dark, terrified of every footfall I heard in the corridor, tormented by the nightmares of the past.
‘Come, let’s go back to your room,’ he said.
I didn’t move.
‘Is something wrong?’
‘David, I want to stay here,’ I said in a rush. ‘I don’t want to go to Bangkok or New York. I want to stay in the monastery. I want to try and walk the Buddha’s path. Will you give me a chance?’
Space and silence, breathing and concentration, hearing without judgment, listening without speaking. In the stillness of the hall with its solid, wooden columns and the rhythmic rotation of the prayer drums, days passed, then months, then years. Time lost all relevance. Instead of moving from space scientist to senior space engineer to explorations project leader in NASA, I climbed the monastic hierarchy and went from the novice monk samanera, to the middle-ranked majjhima to the more senior thera. But even that meant nothing. I didn’t want to get anywhere. All I wanted was not to feel the wrench every time I saw the empty sleeve dangling by my side, not to feel regret on seeing the impish grins on the faces of the young monks shuffling through the large, silent hall. Peace was too lofty a goal; acceptance would do just fine.
‘Are you okay? Nick? Nikhil? Buddha?’
Someone was shaking me vigorously.
‘Haanh?’ I said.
I looked up to see the handler hovering over me, looking irritated.
I shook myself out of my reverie. He hadn’t brought me here to think about my past.
‘Yes, yes,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I just got distracted.’
Distracted, thinking about how life would have turned out had I gone back to the US immediately. It would certainly have been better than this; anything would have been better than this.
Get on with it, the handler’s expression said. Blow your brains out quickly. People are waiting. Unlike you, they have things to do and places to go.
The room went silent as I positioned the gun against my temple. The crowd around me clapped tentatively and egged me on in muted tones. Dayaram peered at me anxiously.
Slowly, deliberately, I squeezed the trigger.
Click. I drew a blank.
A collective sigh went through the room. I passed the revolver to Dayaram. His hand trembled as he took the gun. I don’t know who was more disappointed that I hadn’t managed to kill myself - he or I.
With shaking hands, he picked up the revolver.
‘Don’t wait, just do it,’ I whispered. ‘It’s always better that way. Just hold steady.’
He looked at me gratefully and managed to point the gun at his temple. He seemed to lose his nerve when he looked around at the sweaty, expectant faces in the room.
‘Don’t look at those fuckers,’ I said. ‘Look straight into my eyes.’
He did as I asked, his hands steady again.
‘Go,’ I said.
Click.
Another blank. I sighed with relief. His eyes filled with tears as he handed me the revolver.
Everyone tensed again. I held the gun to my temple as they shuffled closer to the table.
Finally, I thought, a chance to end what should have ended in Cambodia twenty years ago. So many people could have been spared the grief I caused in the years that followed.
The Donos
Don’t say it’s a fine morning or I will shoot you.
John Wayne
17 April 1985, Flight from Phnom Penh, Cambodia to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
‘Is Rio de Janeiro your final destination?’ the air hostess asked.
I smiled. My final destination was nirvana, liberation from the cycle of birth and death that binds us humans, and the cessation of all suffering. For now, Rio de Janeiro would do just fine though.
I nodded.
She smiled at me. ‘Have a pleasant flight.’
The last time I heard those words, I lost my arm. But that was a distant memory now, a mere event that took place almost ten years ago and which I now looked back on quite dispassionately - with some degree of success. The Buddha taught me that all that happened to me was the fruit of my karma, and that I was in fact lucky to be given a chance to pay off the debts of my past lives so I could strive for the ultimate goal in this life. On most days, immersed in the ten hours of mandatory meditation in the quiet, peaceful mon
astery with its clanging prayer bells and deep, resonant chants, I believed this explanation. But on some days, when a phantom pain seared through my absent left arm and the smell of Ishmael’s decomposing body pervaded my senses, despite the omnipresent incense, the words seemed empty and unfulfilling.
But the hours of constant meditation and the weighty spiritual discourses had had an extraordinary impact on my wellbeing. It had taken eight years of living an intense, disciplined life secluded within the four walls of the monastery, protected by the singha, the mythical lion-head, but I had finally made a grudging, fragile peace with the past. Now, I could sleep at night with both the nightmares and the images of a happier, uncomplicated past gradually beginning to recede. And I wanted nothing to upset my silent, if sometimes uneasy, calm, which is why I had deeply resisted David’s - Monk Dechen’s -suggestion that I travel with him to set up Brazil’s first Vipassana meditation monastery in Rio de Janeiro.
It was the Buddhist dhamma to spread the message of acceptance and inner peace, and Rio de Janeiro, the most violent city in Brazil, was a natural first stop for Vipassana’s South American pollination. We were lucky that the new civilian government in Brazil had allowed us this opportunity, David said.
I hadn’t yet progressed from the lowest form of personal fulfillment to the noble task of spreading joy in the world. I had sacrificed myself for someone once, and I hadn’t become sanguine enough not to regret that decision - especially when I struggled with the hundred basic tasks that I had taken for granted all my life.
But David persisted, and I eventually acquiesced, considering it small repayment for the gift of life that the monastery had given me. Besides, I knew that his request for help was actually a desire to help me. For the past few years, he had been urging me to break the wall of silence that I had carefully constructed around myself. But I felt neither the inclination nor the need. Meditating for hours, staring vacantly at the statue of the smiling Buddha in the courtyard, ruminating on the discourses, disengaged from the small talk and petty politics of the monastery, and just being by myself made me happy - or perhaps I didn’t know what being ‘happy’ meant any more. I was living without fear, anger or hatred. Did that qualify?
‘Are you a monk?’
I shook myself out of my reverie. I was sitting next to a fashionably dressed olive-skinned woman about my age, with bright, curious eyes, high cheekbones, long, flowing hair, and a regal air. I had been taught to practise non-judgment - to be unmoved by any person, word, action, or event, to just be - but I liked the way her smile reached her eyes. ‘Not technically,’ I said as the flight took off. ‘Monasteries have rigid hierarchies. I am a thera, one step below a maha-thera, which is full monkhood. It will take me a few more years to become a monk.’
She laughed and said in thickly accented English. ‘You don’t talk like a monk. You don’t even look like one, except for your bald head and your robes. Aren’t monks supposed to be round and clumsy? You look like First Blood Rambo!’
‘Who?’ I said absentmindedly, glancing out the window. We were flying steadily over the green forests along the Thai-Cambodian border. There were too many memories associated with those forests, none of them pleasant. I turned away and found myself staring into her curious brown eyes.
‘Never mind.’ She laughed. ‘You exercise a lot in the monastery? Is it like Shaolin, with martial arts and kung fu?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Shaolin is a Chinese interpretation of Buddhism. We practise Vipassana meditation, which doesn’t propagate martial arts at all. In fact, it forbids any form of intense physical exercise because the artificial high from such exertion distracts from true dhyana. But I still exercise for different reasons.’
Unmentionable reasons like a deep-rooted fear of being caught off-guard again. Despite the Buddhist belief in the unity of the soul, I was unable to trust mankind any more. Every day, I ran like a madman through the dark streets of Rong Glua, did hundreds of push-ups with my remaining arm, used bricks as weights and the thick, concrete walls of the monastery as a punching bag - all surreptitiously, in the dead of the night, breaking every monastic rule.
Next time, I had vowed, I wouldn’t be a victim.
‘Quite fascinating. I didn’t realize there were sects within Buddhism,’ she said and stretched out her hand. ‘My name is Lara.’
‘Monk Namche,’ I said and we shook hands.
I felt a vague stirring. Despite myself, images I’d spent the last eight years banishing from memory flashed through my mind - making love to Lavanya by the warm fireplace in our cold Alaskan camp, walking hand in hand through the New England autumn, hidden kisses in the MIT corridors. Immediately, I reminded myself of the second tenet in the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. Right intention, it said, the intent of renunciation and resisting the pull of desire. This craving was maya, an illusion, which ultimately causes suffering.
‘I am in the entertainment business,’ she said.
‘I figured,’ I said involuntarily.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, ashamed to be behaving like a schoolboy. ‘I mean, you look very, well, accomplished.’
‘Why, thank you,’ she said, looking a little surprised. ‘That might just be the most honest compliment I’ve ever received. Are you interested in movies?’
I paused.
‘Once upon a time,’ I said, remembering the nights spent with Sam, discussing Guru Dutt and avant-garde French films over unending cups of tea in our MIT dorm. ‘Now, I get very little time.’
‘Really?’ she said curiously. ‘What do monks do all day?’
I smiled. ‘You don’t think much of monks, do you?’
‘I didn’t mean it that way,’ she said, looking flustered. ‘Not at all.’
‘I know.’ I smiled. ‘I actually have a pretty busy day. We start by begging for food. Then…’
‘You beg! Why? A person like you - you could do anything!’
Not a mention of my arm, not even a glance at it.
‘Begging for alms is mandatory for a monk because it destroys his ego, the root cause of all craving, which leads to dukha or anguish,’ I told her.
She listened quietly.
‘Then we meditate for ten hours with a small break for lunch,’ I continued. ‘After a rest period in the evening, we listen to a discourse by the oldest and wisest monk in the monastery.’
‘That’s a lot of meditation!’ she said. ‘What do you meditate on?’
‘The impermanence of existence,’ I said. ‘Buddhists believe that all human suffering originates from our craving for sensory pleasure, whether physical or emotional. Sustained meditation rids you of such attachment by destroying the self that craves these pleasures.’
‘But why would you do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Stop seeking these pleasures.’
‘It is this craving that leads to a vicious cycle of disquietude,’ I replied. ‘You seek pleasure and feel disappointed if you don’t attain it. And if you do, you seek even more. You are always restless, unhappy, looking for the next high like a drug addict. Then you get tired of the kick and start looking for a new one - and so it goes.’
‘So?’ she said. ‘Isn’t that life? Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, gaining and losing, ambition and failure - that’s what makes it interesting, surely? If there isn’t any darkness, how do you appreciate the light?’
‘There is a higher spiritual plane where there is only light,’ I said. ‘No amount of joy in the material plane can substitute for that.’
‘How do you know?’ she demanded.
‘Well,’ I said hesitantly. ‘That’s what Buddhists believe.’
‘But you haven’t experienced it yourself, have you?’ she said with interest.
‘In flashes,’ I said, recalling the sudden, electric joy that filled me sometimes after meditation. A sense of utter, indescribable joy, an eternal peace that enveloped me for a few brief moments before vanishing.
‘It takes a lifetime of practice to achieve that light permanently and, well, it’s hard to define it in words.’
‘You are prepared to spend a lifetime meditating for an end you can’t even define!’ she said incredulously. ‘Isn’t it better to live a full, interesting life now - even if it has a measure of suffering -rather than chase an elusive goal that others have talked about? Anyway, why were we sent into this world if we weren’t supposed to experience it?’
Her hazel eyes bore into mine, demanding an answer.
‘Just what kind of entertainment business are you in?’ I asked.
She burst out laughing and woke up David, who was sleeping across the aisle with his mouth open. He eyed me curiously.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry,’ she said. ‘I don’t usually have such conversations with anyone. Something you said triggered off a memory.’
What memory, I wondered. I found myself drawn to her despite my efforts to remain detached.
‘No offence taken. I’ve asked pretty much the same questions myself over the years.’ I paused. ‘But sometimes meditation helps make sense of the world. It helps explain suffering and loss in ways that the rational mind can’t. It allows you to accept, even to make peace with the past.’
She looked at my crippled arm for the first time. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.
I hadn’t thought about my age in a while. Once upon a time, being young and successful had seemed like the most important thing in the world; now I didn’t even know how to define success. Like Rip Van Winkle, I had unknowingly checked out of the world I knew.
‘Thirty,’ I said, mentally calculating the years and overcome again by the same creeping sense of failure that had haunted me in the monastery recently.
‘You are young. You have your whole life ahead of you,’ she said. ‘I am a year younger, by the way.’ She smiled at me.
I felt my face flush.
‘I could show you around Rio,’ she said. ‘How long will you be there?’