Towers

“if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off and cast them from thee” Matthew 18.8

Richard felt exhausted. The sangha couldn’t help him, he realised. Traditionally, the seeker has to endure some delay before receiving the teaching. Sometimes it’s little more than a formality – you have to wait outside the monastery for a day or two without food. It demonstrates determination, a real hunger for the Dharma. In Milarepa’s case he had to build towers. Marpa made him build towers and then tear them down again. Back-breaking work. Soul-destroying. Each stone felt as heavy as his bad deeds. Each tower three-storeys tall. Strong. Surely this time Marpa would be satisfied. But no, actually he wanted the tower in a different part of the field. Worse than Sisyphean labour. In his case gravity played the destructive part. But Milarepa had to pry each stone from its bed and hurl it down to the ground. Each thud shook the earth. What was Marpa playing at? Was this supposed to provide an outlet for his rage? It enraged him. His hands blistered. Was he paying a price for his murders? And then his blood thickened with fear. For how could any amount of playing around with stones make amends for the blood on his hands? Maybe it was meant to destroy his soul, or at least his ego. His submission to this task demonstrating the death of the selfish person who had killed rather than suffer in the past. Richard felt dizzy with fear; knowing that Mark had been at his talk on Milarepa – he’d been impressed by the story. Had he influenced the young man? Yes. Mark’s reading of the story was wrong-headed. As if you would set out to emulate Milarepa: developing homicidal powers with a view to turning it all around and becoming enlightened later. That was partly the appeal of the story. No-one wants to be mediocre, on the spiritual path any more than in any other arena. Better to be a great sinner and then a great saint than to muddle along, working in meditation, working on the self. Because that was what it was, so much of the time. Meditation just another thing on that long list of things to do. Eat well, exercise, read, keep up with the news, support a charity, get into some new music, get really good at your job, keep your house nice, stay in touch with your friends, forgive your parents. How quickly we prune that list. Richard reflected on the years when he did no exercise for almost the whole winter. Somehow in those months he felt the need to stay indoors, eat more and put on a little insulation. The same with meditation. When under pressure at the lab he stopped altogether. All that stuff about maintaining a practice seemed a luxury when put against meeting deadlines. Work. Work. Sorry.
So maybe Mark needed to suffer. Maybe he had even sought that out. But I am responsible too (Richard couldn’t escape the thought) I linked killing and Buddhism in his mind. How else could such a link have been made. It’s my fault she’s dead (no, don’t think about that). I set him going. An impressionable young man. Really it would be better never to do anything. Why does every action I take seem like violence? How did it end up hurting her? It is I who should atone. I need to suffer in order to be worthy of the truth. The Truth. The truth I was finding with her. A truth about sex, about male violence, about my own rage. Can I transform all that male evil force into love through an esoteric practice? What you set your heart upon, that you become. Mark wanted to be Milarepa. He was well on the way. I choose Tara. I want to be a green-skinned embodiment of compassion. My foot off the moon-mat, ready to step into the world to help whoever. Yes, even him. Green-skinned, female. I am not a man, I am a person with a penis. A good gender-studies soundbite. What if what’s wrong with me does reside in my sex organs? What you set your heart upon, that you become.
Richard, not sure of himself but full of self-hatred and wishing to rid himself of hatred. Richard, not setting a precedent, not inviting followers in his road of self-abnegation, self-purification, self-mutilation. Richard, setting his heart upon something perhaps impossible (as enlightenment too, seems impossible much of the time) took a sharp knife.
And you know what happens next. Because I’m guessing that if you’re a woman or a girl there have been times when you’ve wanted to hit where it hurts. Yeah, maybe we are the violent ones, but revenge is different. Take those weird, unbodylike growths out of the sack. What’s it about anyway? Horrible outside genitals in a wrinkly bag. Something wrong there. All you do is slit the sack. They’re only held on by some pretty minor plumbing. A couple of swipes and they’re gone. Better flush those bad eggs, you never know what they can do at the hospital nowadays, bet they’d sew a rapist’s cock back on out of some misguided idea of the right thing to do. Yeah, stick those murderer’s hands back on. He’ll never do it again. Lesson learned. Yessir. Boys, I know you’ve cradled them when they’re swollen and sore from denial. Take them out. They feel like tumours already. Malignant ones. Take them out. They’re where the bad thoughts come from. You know it. You know what happens next. He operates on himself and successfully removes the cancer that makes him sick. He destroys them utterly. With the last strength that remains he calls for an ambulance. Guiltily. Blood on the phone keys as he stabs the 9s. Shouldn’t be wasting their time on me. I did it to myself. But I don’t want to die yet. This is just the start of the experiment. What you set your heart upon. I will be Tara. I shall work for the benefit of sentient beings, but not in a male body. Green-skinned eunuch bodhisattva of compassion. I will sing a sweeter song than the castrati. Ordeal? Check. Ready for the Dharma!
He let the ‘phone drop from his hand. Pain. Thudding, welling. It scared him like being lost on the hills, miles from your car or anywhere. You panic. I don’t know if I can get through this. I can’t see and end to this. Just pain though. The body sending you a message. Big problem here. Still, that’s dealt with. What was it Simone Weil said – something like nothing on earth can stop us thinking clearly. And to think clearly now is the way to transform this moment from suffering into metamorphosis.
Pain. The pain is black smoke. This pain is worse. It’s like particles suspended in the air. Sharp, crystalline. Black razor fragments. Never mind that. Breathe it in. Suck it in, like a fag, like poison. But I am medicine for the sick. Within my heart is a brilliant white light. The white light absorbs the dirty blade shards. It destroys them, it transforms them into itself, into purity. Another breath in. More particles. This time it’s like dust. Like walking into an old bookshop. The white light laughs at the cloud of dust. Absorbs it, transforms it. Now there’s not much of the sooty stuff left. It’s like a lover breathing on you. Her smoky breath - the cigarette smell you might normally gag on somehow tastes exciting. In the metaphor the white light is lust, consuming the death smoke like a candle absorbing a smell. But now it’s diamond-like awareness. Firmly rooted loving-kindness. Swallowing the pain.
Richard isn’t in a meditation position. He can’t put his limbs into a prescribed arrangement. He’s flat out on the floor. The phone beside him is still live. He doesn’t hear the voice telling him someone’s on the way. He can’t respond.
He allows everything to go away. Blue sky. Emptiness. Shunyata. The void that is ultimate reality. He allows it all to dissolve, like salt in water. Except this is real dissolution. It’s annihilation. The flat’s gone. His chair. The shrine. His stereo. All gone. Not transformed even. Just faded out, leaving only blue sky. His books are gone. Memories slip away, like labels from cans left soaking in the washing-up. And thoughts too, the bit of his brain that makes those crazy images, always putting one thing with another. Making patterns. It’s gone into the pure cool blue. The blue is electric. It’s like cyberspace. Unreal. Everywhere.
Out of the empty sky, out of the electronic void, grows a lotus. Pale blue. It spreads its petals to reveal a moon-mat. So smooth, perfectly round. Looking like something you might eat. Looking like a mint. On the mat is Tara. I am Tara. Green. Born of Avalokiteshvara’a tears. Sixteen. My body is made of green light. It’s empty. Perfectly pure. I am smiling and beautiful. My right foot steps down, my right arm hangs down readyy to help all beings, a posture of supreme giving. That old thing I used to identify with is long gone. That damaged and damaging set of needs and fears has dropped into the blue sky, vanished like a star in the sunrise. A star that will not re-appear on any future night. And Tara begins to sing her mantra. Om tare tuttare ture svaha. She sets the words dancing round her infinitely compassionate, beautiful heart.
Richard is carried out of the flat into an ambulance. The mantra letters of the manta circle his heart like the ring of a kaleidoscope. Looking into the eyepiece you would be able to see rainbows. Tara, the swift rescuer. Tara, the saviouress. The paramedics listen to the strange muttering. Om tare. The kaleidoscopic ring rotates anticlockwise. What’s that he’s saying? Ture. Rainbows begin to pour out from his heart. It’s like a visual on a LSD rush, those moments when you can see things that are not normally visible to the human eye. Is he on drugs? Tuttare. The green body is filled with rainbow light. God, he’s made a mess of himself. Poor bastard! Ture. The body is purified by the light. Svaha. Richard has left the house of the senses. Tara, elfin princess, takes his place.
The mantra at Tara’s heart now begins to emit more light. The surgeons sew him up. The new wound will leave a scar, parallel to the seam where his body joins up between penis and anus. Om. Rainbows pour from Tara’s heart. Tare. Wherever a rainbow touches someone all their sufferings, physical and mental, are annihilated. Tuttare. Richard is taken out of surgery. Is the patient singing? Ture. Infinite compassion propagates from her heart like the light from the sun. Svaha. The universe is full of rainbows.
Tara wakes. She leaves the hospital. She walks to the prison. We are all prisoners in the world of samsara. She renews her vow to the Bodhisattva ideal. I will not leave until all beings have been released.