Paradise Park (19 page)

All my connections to the outside world—like balloon strings—I just let them go. All my valuables—just gave them up. And the giving didn’t mean a thing. I didn’t feel a single pang. Except for Grandpa Irving’s watch. I have to admit, I almost kept it. I almost hid it in my clothes. I’d rubbed and rubbed the silver case until my hand was worn from rubbing. What would I do now to rub away my worries and my fears? But that was the point—I was giving up my superstitions. I was sacrificing my attachments that weighed my soul. So when I thought of keeping back the watch, I knew right away I should give that thing up first, because it was more precious than the others. And when I mourned its loss, I thought, Well, that proves it was just a big distraction.

I stayed at the monastery, and for months and months my soul just grew. Not from experiences or hard knocks or from revelations that
were at hand, but by itself in the meditation room, just hydroponically, like the lettuce heads in their tubs of water, without any roots in the ground. I stayed, and my mind opened. My spirit hummed to itself; it rose and fell on my breath. I walked and I breathed. I sat and I simplified. I ate only lettuce and fruits and a few grains. I drank only water. I took almost nothing from the world, and the world took nothing from me. I wasn’t running around looking for some Western conception of God—as if any day I’d turn him up under some rock. I’d exchanged that whole crusading questing Holy Grail hang-up for something so much better; this smooth stillness.

So of course, that was too good to be true. Pretty soon, deep into my stillness, like a guy you’ve broken up with who can’t believe you aren’t still attracted to him, my imagination came around to tempt me. My imagination started whispering at me, “Sharon! Shaaaron!”

And I’d hiss inside myself, “Stop that, you fool.”

“Shaaaron! The color blue.”

“No colors.”

“Purple.”

“Sh.”

“Periwinkle, lavender, plum, oregano.”

“Oregano? That’s a spice.”

“Made you look.”

“Sh!”

And then all would be quiet, until he’d start up again, my imagination, and now he’d take some other form, like of a little kid, “Sharon. Sharon, can I touch the Buddha? Can I touch him? Is he real gold?”

Because there was a benevolent gold Buddha sitting on the table in the meditation room, and he was so soft and rounded he looked like he was cut from pure buttery gold. But, of course, I would never dream of touching him, except this little voice inside me kept bringing it up. I began to have some very hard days. I began to feel like Satan was inside of me trying to subdivide my spaciousness.

I started oversleeping in the mornings. Instead of getting up before dawn with Michael and the rest of the community, I’d be fast asleep having these wild dreams. I’d dream about Molokai and the guavas hanging down from the trees, and I’d dream about Tonic and the birds, and they’d be speaking to me with their intelligent beaks. They’d be
speaking to me in tongues, yet I’d understand them. “Where are your feathers?” they’d scream at me. “Feathers! Feathers! Where is your chick? Where are your wings?”

Ding! Ding! The little wake-up bell would ring far away, yet my eyes just would not open. I kept lying there. And being my own personal mentor, Michael was pissed.

Four months into my stay I was sitting in the meditation room with the monks and teachers, and the visitors retreating on that weekend. We were observing three days of silence. The whole community was round and still with listening. The ears of every human in the place were open; every pore was awake. Now. Now. We are breathing now. We are living now. That was the rhythm like a drum inside of us. But all of a sudden I felt myself about to speak! My hand flew up to my mouth to cover the words before they spilled out. I was so embarrassed.

We rose up and went walking through the neighborhood. There were about thirty of us, and I was walking next to Michael, and I felt the words burbling up inside of me, and again I had to cover my mouth with my hand, like when you’re trying to stifle hiccups, but the words kept coming, and they were question words, like “How come? … How come? …” All of a sudden my whole being was itchy with questions; I was just growing questions all over my body. It was as if I were three years old again, when everything you see makes you ask why. Like “Where did the stars go now that it’s morningtime?” Only, my questions were about our meditation practice—like “How come you guys chose this day to be a silent day? Why this day and not a different day?” And “Why is it important for us all to walk together now as a community?” And “How do you maintain your focus when sometimes everything seems to be distracting you?” And “Why, all of a sudden, is this stuff not working for me?”

We walked along through the neighborhood, which was damp and misty and green. We walked past these pretty tract houses with lychee trees in their yards, and mango trees laden with purple mangos, and occasionally little decorative ponds with teensy arching Oriental bridges, and once in a while a Shinto shrine. I started to pull at the sleeve of Michael’s orange robe. He averted his face from me. He was absorbed in his own steps. So I tugged a little more. “Michael,” I whispered.

He looked at me, aghast. I’d said a word.

I started gesturing at him like this was urgent. I made the time-out signal with my hands. I looked at him imploringly.

No good. He was furious. He began walking faster. I ran along trying to keep up. Yet the New Yorker in him was starting to come out. Even on those side streets off Old Pali Road you could see it happen. His pace was quicker and quicker. His eyes glazed over. He was striding through the community to the front, just to get away from me. Like saffron flowers the monks drifted to the edges of the road as Michael marched through. Like a hyper Scotch terrier I ran after him, worrying the edges of his consciousness. Faster and faster, he kept walking. His legs were long; his mouth was set, until finally we left the rest of the community behind.

“Michael.” I panted. “I’m sorry. I really am. I tried not to speak. I couldn’t help it. I’m probably not ready to be this quiet. I’m probably not even deserving to be your student. But I have to talk. I have to say something. This silence isn’t working on me. My brain is going haywire. I’m hearing voices. My imagination and my ego and everything else. My whole subconscious is out of control.”

He stopped walking and turned on me right there in the street. He said, “You have broken my peace.”

I threw up my hands. Now, all of a sudden, no words would come.

“How dare you,” he said to me. His face was turning red. “How dare you!”

My voice came back. “How dare I what?” I shot back at him. “And since when is it
your
peace? I thought it was all of ours”

“You said you came here to learn.”

“I am here to learn. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“And I was trying to teach you!”

The monks had caught up to us, but in their serenity they didn’t bat an eye. They walked right by us, and the weekenders followed—except they turned back to stare like rubberneckers at a traffic accident.

Michael’s hands twitched against his orange robe. His jaw was working. “I’ve tried to put up with you,” he said. “I’ve tried to be patient with you. When you interrupt. When you start with your questions …”

“You are not patient,” I told him. “You haven’t been patient at all! You’re an anal-retentive control freak, that’s what you are!”

He breathed in, and he breathed out, and he said between clenched teeth, “I am expending every ounce of energy right now not to wring your neck.” And he glowered at me, huge in his robes, and beads of sweat stood on his brow and on the stubble on his shaved head. He looked like the Jewish-Tibetan version of Friar Tuck.

“Learn to listen,” he said, and he left me standing there on the gray asphalt, and all the car ports on the street blurred together, each with its own copy of the
Honolulu Advertiser
rolled up in a rubber band.

“But, but …” I called after him. Michael was gone. And one last question died on my lips. The one I really wanted to ask. Which was: How could you devote your life to contemplation and practice meditation for so many years and still be such a tight-ass?

Yet I calmed down by evening, and Michael regained his cool. The truth was, this guy was teaching me a lot. He was just understandably protective of his inner space. So over the next few weeks I respected his boundaries and stifled my own nagging curiosity. I realized I and only I could put to rest those nagging voices inside of me. I focused, and I practiced. I lived in the present and did not bother the community or the day students or weekend visitors around me.

Once I’d stopped irritating Michael so much, and showed I could live without constantly breaking the peace around me like I was a bull in the meditative china shop, he began to work with me again. He talked to me once a day, and instructed me, and he mentioned something to me which I had forgotten, which was that I had a lot of detritus inside of me from my former life. And I considered how I’d lived, and what I’d eaten, and in turn what had consumed me, like my love of beer and pot and acid, not to mention men, and there were a lot of toxins in my system, to say the least. So with Michael’s guidance I went on a course of fasting, during which I drank water and some juice, but ate nothing, and that helped a lot. That really restored me to myself, and quieted me down. My body was lighter, my head was cooler, and it was like I bid each of my wandering selves good-bye, like I sent each one on pilgrimage with a pilgrim’s staff. The child in me, and the wild girl, and the mixed-up traveler. Good-bye, good-bye. The house of myself was empty, and I had two days of perfect peace.

On the third day I saw something about myself. Just very clearly, and without a mirror. I saw that I was starving, and it wasn’t just my bones
sticking out and my hands and arms all skeletal. It was my mind; it wasn’t bright and spacious anymore; it had turned all thin and brittle, and all I could see when I looked inside myself was sludge and darkness. I was so disappointed I couldn’t even tell my teacher. I lay down and I slept for a day, because I didn’t know what else to do.

I woke up and lay on my sleeping mat, and Michael came to me and said, “What’s wrong?”

And I said, “Hey, Michael, I’m sick.”

He put his hand on my forehead.

“I don’t think I have a fever. It’s just inside of me. I’m all hollowed out. It’s like, the more I look inside myself, the less I see.”

Then he smiled at me—a real appreciative happy smile, like Now we’re getting somewhere. He said, “That’s right.”

“It’s right?”

“Yes,” he said. “The more I look inside myself, the less I see. That’s true.”

I said, “I look at my body, and I look like I’m dying.”

“Yes,” he said, “you were before, but now you see it.”

“I don’t get it.”

He didn’t answer.

“My practice seemed simple before,” I said, “but now it’s not.”

He said, “It is simple.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

He said, “I think you do know.”

And I sat up on my sleeping mat slowly, trying to figure out what I knew.

And wouldn’t you know my imagination came around again in my distress, just to plague me, and I was so weak it was hard even to argue in my head. My imagination just swaggering around like he was so hot and knowing any moment I’d have to give in. “Sharon! Shaaron!”

“What?”

“I’m hungry.”

“Go away.”

“I want something.”

“Go away.”

“I want something.”

“What?”

“Sprinkles on top.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Garnishes.”

“Stop that.”

“I’m bored.”

“Tough.”

“I’m so bored.”

“So, life isn’t about being entertained all the time.”

“Yes it is,” my imagination whined to me; and then he said, “How long is this eightfold path, anyway?”

“It isn’t about distance!” I said.

“Well, where’s it going?”

“It’s not about going anywhere,” I said. “It’s not about going, it’s about being.”

“Being is a drag.”

Then I closed my eyes tight and covered my ears. I tried to go back inside of myself, but I just started babbling, to my imagination, “Do you know how spoiled you are? Do you know what a total pain in the neck you are? Instead of joining me in mindfulness, you are dividing me and just forcing me into this Western duality and just making some kind of schism inside of myself, and driving me mad in the process! You are so shallow! Haven’t you ever heard of the possibility of peace?”

And my imagination said to me, “Yeah, I want peace.”

“Good.”

“But with music, and dancing, and ice cream and song!”

Well, all I knew was that everything that had been working before had stopped working now. My hungers were starting to return to me, my body was crying out for meat and eggs and cheese, and, believe it or not, milk. It seemed like all my blood and flesh was crying out to eat the products of other living creatures and to forget about being holy. And my lips and my hands were starting to yearn and feel sorry for themselves, because they so wanted to be touched. It just seemed like my whole body and my imagination and my memory had decided to rebel and conspire against me. I breathed and breathed and tried to give my spirit space enough to open up again, and my poor spirit tried to open, but whenever it did, it was like an umbrella pummeled by this horrible inner wind, and all its little wire spokes got bent, and it would turn inside out.

Then—remember; how I bade good-bye and let go of all my wandering selves, and gave them pilgrim staffs to go their own way? Well, they all marched right back inside of me again. The child and the wild girl and the mixed-up traveler. And the child was crying she was tired, and the wild girl was complaining I never let her go dancing, and the mixed-up traveler was just making all these demands like “What the hell is happening here? Are you on the verge of enlightenment here? Or are you just really screwed up? And how do you know which is which? Because it seems like there’s a fine line between purification and starving to death.”