Sin and Zen, #1

by S. W. Stribling

  It always fascinated me when people said they were from two places. Either they considered two places home, which is admirable in its own sense, or they were just some dickhead that enjoyed showing how full of culture they were because they once spent a stint in a foreign country or their great grandmother’s dog-walker did.

  ‘Spanish parents. Lived in Mexico where I mostly grew up, then back to Spain where I live now.’

  He gave a no nonsense answer. Not a bad guy.

  ‘You?’ he asked.

  ‘Soy Gringo.’ I said.

  ‘Neighbors then.’

  ‘Indeed. You don’t hate me, do you?’

  ‘Ha. No.’ he said. He seemed genuine. ‘I traveled up there, good people really. Just a bit...’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  We got to talking for a bit. I told him I was living in France and loved Barcelona. He concurred his admiration for Barcelona and his ‘meah’ feeling for France. He had a cigarette, and then another and talked about how he was always going off and on. I didn’t mind sharing the cigarettes. He was a good conversation, and like most things, the cigarettes were cheap. I enjoyed the cigarettes here too. Cloves or something unique about them.

  ‘So you are doing the course up here too?’ He asked.

  I had avoided the meditation course. Sometimes I felt proud of myself for seeking some sort of spiritual enlightenment or peace with myself, other times it felt like some hippy, bullshit holistic idea I should be embarrassed to even mention. With this guy I shouldn’t have been too worried about his judgements, but I was still hesitant to mention it. He won me over though and it looked like he was going too.

  ‘Yeah, you?’

  ‘Si,’ he said.

  We had been speaking back and forth between English and Spanish. His English was much better than my Spanish, but he entertained my attempts to capture the language.

  ‘How much do you know about it?’ I asked. ‘I read everything I could online. It seems straightforward, but can’t help but feel I will still be surprised when I get there.’

  ‘Have you ever quit smoking before?’

  ‘Yeah, couple of times.’

  ‘Good. Then you know how hard it is. No smoking there.’

  ‘So you’ve done it?’

  ‘I did it in Spain. This one here will be my third time.’

  I had a lot of questions for him now.

  ‘So what should I know?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t need to know anything. You just gotta show up.’

  This sounded like the bullshit they warned you about with cults. I looked at him and tried to see through his answer. No arrogance or beguiling, but he seemed happy, anxious yet calm.

  ‘Is there anything you could tell me?’ I asked.

  He looked at me.

  ‘I’d like to tell you all about it. Really.’ He said. ‘But I truly believe it’s best for you to find out for yourself, for the full experience.’

  ‘No expectations, eh?’

  ‘Right.’

  We sat for some time more; the sun had well set, and we each lit up another cigarette.

  We talked more about my plans for Nepal after. He said I planned it perfectly, because after completing the course you would be focused and want more time alone. I hadn’t really planned at all; I didn’t even have a plane or bus ticket to Nepal yet. I just wanted to go and had the time. But I felt like a master planner.

  He started to leak some information. Letting me know it would be hard in the ways I imagined. No talking. Light eating. No smoking. No drinking. And forced time for yourself, no distractions, to think and not think. He said I shouldn’t worry about my leg. There aren’t any rules exactly for how you sit and I could use a chair if I wanted. He just recommended not using the back, sitting up helps with the experience.

  All this opening up, I told him about my unsettling feeling. This feeling I had been carrying around that eventually led me to this course.

  ‘This course is like cleaning the brain.’ he said.

  ‘Brainwashing sounds good.’

  ‘Ha, no. Clean. Not full of shit. The opposite of ‘brainwashing.’’

  This guy was speaking my language now.

  ‘That unsettling feeling,’ he said, ‘is like hunger.’

  I listened.

  ‘When you are hungry, you are looking for something to eat.’ he said. ‘Sometimes you are an hour away, sometimes five. Either way, once you walk inside the restaurant you are relieved because you know you are about to eat soon.’

  It was strangely poetic and settling what he said. Sitting on the balcony in Bodh Gaya with the course two days away he said, ‘You are in the restaurant. We are in the restaurant.’

  22

  Another sleepless night tossing about over Claudia. I had fucked up fantasies of her sleeping with other men in our bed, in an almost mocking way, while I was here. Yet when the sun rose again, and I faced a new day, I felt almost nothing of the sort. Indifferent to what she may or may not be doing. What good is there to think about it? There is nothing I can do about it. Reason over worry, over emotion, over heart. She was most likely not having orgies in a celebration of my absence. I was probably only feeling anything because of withdraw. Even from an ice queen, a man can have withdrawal symptoms. I couldn’t deny the symbolism of my love for her. Madly, deeply, obsessively. Then no attachment. I was still holding out that the following six weeks would release me from this too.

  I had no big plans for the day. I spent it eating a tropical pizza and reading. I checked the internet to see that my package had arrived in Marseille; I imagined Claudia got it without too much trouble. My course to enlightenment started tomorrow.

  Just sitting in Bodh Gaya gave me the peace of a real quiet life. Where doing nothing really is doing nothing. It didn’t mean video games or movies in bed. It meant listening to birds sing and the wind blow. Just sitting still.

  I thought about home. Just being able to be back in my bed, under the covers, with my shit food and lit-screen distractions. A comfortable environment I knew. I even had a dream of going back home before Nepal and then debating whether to come back and finish my trip. I didn’t come back in my dream.

  Silence. Seclusion. A gift and a fucking test of a man’s endurance.

  THE VISUALS OF CLAUDIA and this imaginary lover continued the next night. No orgies this time. Just one man that I would come home to find out. I would then take the bed, the couch, everything ‘he’ had touched and throw it out.

  ‘Whether she loves me,’ I said to myself. ‘I doubt she’d bring this guy to a place where everybody knew we were together.’

  ‘No, she is fine.’ I told myself. As if the quality of her state had anything to do with whether she was destroying my quality of state.

  This paranoia, this evil in my mind, might make me go crazy after six weeks rather than enlightened. Connecting the days, I could see why the past few nights I had been like this.

  Besides losing the girl and most of my furniture with her, I saw myself losing my friends over it. Insecurities, weaknesses like this, running wild over myself from just a few days alone.

  I had a lot of work to do starting tomorrow.

  I SLEPT WELL. SO, I sent Claudia one last email before I was to truly disappear for ten days. I made a reply to her email about the package. She still hadn’t received it. I made up a small story about a young girl reading ‘Le Petite Prince’ in braille and sent it to her. I told her about my days in Varanasi and then I told her about my perturbing thoughts that involved her. I finished by telling her about the Spanish guy I met and spoke with. I told her I was in the restaurant.

  I emailed her with more than enough angst as I knew I would not be able to see a reply for so many days. I would only think about the response the entire time I waited for a chance to check it.

  I had a nice big breakfast after that. Packed and left the hotel and checked in to the Dhamma Bodhi at 11:30.

  The registration was simple enough, a name in a
book. My room, my home for the next week and a half, had four stone walls, two low beds, a toilet, a faucet, and a bucket. It wasn’t the first time I had washed myself with cold water from a bucket, and I knew it wouldn’t be the last on my trip. I enjoyed the simplicity of it and wondered if I would have a roommate. I didn’t imagine they would since there was a no-talking policy during the course.

  It was damn quiet here. It was the middle of the day and I could hear crickets outside my window. My anxiety turned to excitement. I felt comfortable. I felt ready.

  23

  The course seemed like nothing but pain until the last day. I came to learn many things during my stay. As far as my obsessive worrying over Claudia, I spent many nights pondering, contemplating, and stressing. Some nights were just rambling, emotional thoughts similar to before starting the course. Sometimes my thoughts were more rational and analytical. Debating how she felt about me and what I should do under every outcome. It wasn’t until the ninth night, after another long day, while I was walking around in circles in a small garden, that I really felt and accepted what I considered being an absolute truth. That I should not expect Claudia to love me as I love her. That in fact, it is a selfish love to love someone and expect them to love you in return. Doing this only showed that I loved myself more. As strange as a concept as that was for me to comprehend. I looked at most relationships around me and saw it all much clearer. From the outside and inside, I knew it to be true. Pure love is love given with nothing expected in return. I imagined the men and women of faith would say true love, real love, is like God’s love.

  Give.

  Give.

  Give.

  And that is what I planned to do from here on out.

  For the emotional torment, I learned my way of dealing with it had been wrong. Surprise. The answer is not to express these emotions or to push them deeper inside. Observation is the key. Equanimous observation. I was to just be aware they are there and then watch them fade away all by their lonesome. I laughed as though this was some secret weapon to turn me into a Shaolin monk who would now have flying superpowers and a stone face. I’d have a drink and celebrate every victory over these damn intrusions of emotion.

  Which pointed to another pitfall. Being the emotional child that I was, I only knew how to express myself when drunk. Repress. Drink. Explosion. Shame. Repress. Drink. Explosion. Shame. Repeat until death. I thought about how much meditation it would require to eradicate all these seeds I have sown. I was fucked.

  ‘My less-than-noble mistress.’ I said ‘Alcohol. You yourself are not the sin, my dear.’

  I felt a tear of sadness running on the inside.

  ‘You are not the sin, but you encourage the sin.’ I was breaking up with the me I had always known. ‘Craving. Of cigarettes. Shit food. Ego-driven sex. Selfish love. You multiply that need, that craving, my dear. If I am to be a better man. A man who can die in peace. A man who can live without the need to be liked by laughing friends, flirting girls, and unwavering love from one. I should probably let you go.’

  I said it all as an affirmation, in my newfound strength of solitude and clarity. This clarity was easy in my solitude and in a place of no distractions, but I knew the story would change once I got back home. Back to the girls at the bar. The friends at the table. Claudia in front of me.

  My first meal back into the real world would probably be the biggest piece of meat I could fit between two slices of bread. The vegetarian meal and a half per day left a man feeling cleansed, but empty. It’s a shit world where something has to die in order for me to live, but I can only conquer one idea at a time.

  The noble silence ended this morning after we learned the ‘Metta’ technique to end the course. I didn’t feel as though I had answers to questions, but I felt I better understood the questions. I had enough table space to work through them.

  I felt better, and I felt many things behind me. I still checked my email in priority. Claudia had written a few times. She received both packages. Unfortunately, the candle holders broke. She also had some difficulty with the package because I had addressed it to myself. The rug came in well though, and she was quite pleased with it. I thought about the trucks running over it.

  As far as our love story, she tried to tell me not to worry and that we would figure things out when I got home. The most meaningful sentence I read was where she told me the story I wrote her made her cry.

  Almost.

  24

  Four in the morning, I left my voluntary prison of silence and solitude, of war and peace. I left it behind me to face the same world in a new way. Another Hindu festival was beginning, and I started my search to make it north to Nepal.

  The train wasn’t possible. The bus was down to one, overcrowded, and required too many overnight stops. I decided to take the modern travel method of a plane. There was a small domestic airport nearby that could get me to Calcutta, and from there I could leave the next afternoon to Kathmandu. I had this new fear of flying that only showed itself this trip, but flying would be the most logical and dependable way to arrive and give me the time I needed to do my trek in the Himalayas.

  I bought my ticket from a travel agent. He said he was a travel agent, but when I arrived at the airport, they couldn’t find my seat. After a few exchanges of kind and unkind dialogue and contacting half of India, they found my seat. This little airport in Gaya was unorganized. There was only one desk to check in and like a construction site, there were four guys watching one guy work. This one guy was trying to juggle six to seven people at a time. What a sight.

  After that adventure, I went through the security checkpoint. I had forgotten that my knife was in my bag and I immediately got the attention of all the boys. It was a small airport. Literally one gate, one plane in and one plane out. I believe my knife was more action than they had seen in a month. They really didn’t know what they were doing.

  To make their poor souls even more miserable, they started to question my camelback.

  ‘What is this?’ three people asked me. I guess they wanted to make sure I heard the question. More people came over.

  ‘What is this?’ they were getting louder and angrier but wouldn’t give me a chance to speak.

  ‘Water.’ I said. ‘Water.’

  I looked at them like the idiots I thought they were.

  ‘Water,’ I said one more time for good measure and to match their enthusiasm of questions.

  Blank stares.

  Hindi talk.

  Suspicious stares.

  ‘Water.’ I said.

  Then they pulled out this fancy biochemical detector. They must have been too excited to use the equipment. I thought I would have to throw away my camelback now. I was about ready to anyway, but I doubt that would have prevented them from tossing me in prison if they really believed I was a terrorist. The Indian justice system was not the most reputable in efficiency or quality. They will imprison you on suspicion and hold you to wait for a court date. That court date could take one to five years to take place. During that time you would have already served your time and more for charges you may or may not even be guilty of, with people who actually are there for a good reason in a shithole with no bed or toilet.

  They scanned everything thoroughly, all of them staring at this one little piece of equipment waiting to pull out their guns and handcuffs and become national heroes.

  They opened the cap and stuffed the entire scanner right inside. They looked at it for five minutes, waiting for something to go off, then looked up at me waiting for me to tell them how to operate it or to admit I had liquid explosives in my camelback. I knew how to operate it. Why would I ruin the fun though? People were the best entertainment, this being one of the better shows, and it was all free.

  They looked back at their scanner, then two of them started to look in the black box it came out of, probably for instructions.

  I tried to grab their attention to remind them it was water.

  ‘Do you want me to dr
ink it?’ I asked.

  ‘Drink!’ they said. They felt very authoritative in this. I wanted to give them a ‘good job’ for such power.

  I put my hand out for them to hand it to me. They shoved it into my chest. I laughed and took a drink.

  ‘Mmm... water,’ I said with a mocking smile. ‘And look! I’m not dead!’

  The one female officer there smiled.

  I grabbed the rest of my stuff, gave a half salute, and went to find a quiet place to practice my meditation and observe, without attachment, my anger rise and fade away.

  Anicca.

  THE FLIGHT WAS SHORT and sweet. By the time I got my bag though, it was dark. As expected, no tuk-tuks at this airport. Only prepaid taxis. I took the cheapest one to the cheapest nearby hotel. The airport was quite a distance from the town center, plus traffic in the most densely populated city in the world was insane. And did I mention the Hindu festival going on? It would have cost 1000-1500rs and extra time to get to a cheaper guest house than the ones around the airport. So for a one-night stay and a lunch time flight for the next day, I paid the 500rs to take a taxi to a nearby guest house. The cheapest being 1600rs. After looking at the room and being disappointed, I got in a three-way argument with the hotel manager and taxi driver. I got the room for 1000 and my taxi driver promised to take me back to the airport for only 300rs. Not bad, I guess, but Bodh Gaya was half the price and twice the quality. Difference in cities, I suppose.

  Thanks to a pleasant walk through the ghetto I was staying in, I calmed down after my money struggle. The music was loud and everywhere, but the streets were nearly bare. I wondered if everybody was resting for the big festival the following morning. I looked for an internet cafe on my outing to book a guesthouse in Kathmandu. No dice.

  I kept walking around and realized I was the only white person around. Good experience, but unfortunately, last-minute traveling made it difficult to take full advantage of an area.