Enlightenment for Idiots

by Anne Cushman

  Then, in the middle of the afternoon, it hit me—a golden river of emotion breaking through a dam. I loved my baby, wriggling inside me. I loved the woman with irritatingly perfect hair on the cushion in front of me; the acned guy in the corner with the T-shirt proclaiming, “Darling, I Suffer, Please Help.” I opened my eyes and beamed at Harold. Thank you! Thank you for showing me my own inner radiance! I don’t need Matt. In fact, I don’t need any man to open the door to my heart.

  And then, bang! I was in love with Harold.

  He was perfect for me! He was so evolved spiritually that he wouldn’t mind the fact that I was having someone else’s baby, because ordinary life is the best spiritual teacher there was, he said so himself in the dharma talk last night. We would travel around the world leading meditation retreats together. I would teach yoga, he would give dharma talks. Students would babysit for us as their yogi jobs.

  I floated through the next few hours on a cloud of bliss. Late that afternoon, I looked out the window during walking meditation and saw Harold in the garden, talking to a young woman with a pink streak in her black hair. Rage and suspicion flooded me. Talking! How can he be talking? Here I am struggling away hour after hour, trying to become enlightened—for our sake! For our survival as a couple!—and he is talking to a woman??

  It was all over between us.

  Day 9

  ONE BREATH, I longed for the retreat to be over. The next, I wished it would never end. It was hard to believe that what I wanted made no difference.

  That evening, the wind picked up. It rattled around the building, whipped through the screens, blew a thin layer of reddish brown dust over the floor, the cushions, the bell. Karen closed the windows and lit candles on the altar. The room was a dark cocoon of peace. I didn’t need anything, didn’t want anything. If I could just stay there forever, I would be happy.

  I remembered a rainy winter night at Tom’s apartment, not long after we’d started seeing each other. Candles flickered on a low table in front of a fire in the fireplace. He’d picked up take-out Thai food, and we’d eaten in front of the fire: soup with coconut and lemongrass, red curry tofu. Then we’d watched a DVD of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

  The whole night had been so ordinary, so domestic; so unlike anything I had ever experienced with Matt. I’d called it dull, at the time; added it to the secret arsenal I was accumulating of Reasons Not to Be with Tom. But looking back, I now understood that Tom had picked out every detail with me in mind: ordering tofu instead of chicken because I was a yoga student, selecting a chick flick he’d never have watched on his own. With Matt, I was along for the ride on his wild adventure. With Tom, it was always all about me. And that in itself had been enough to make me dismiss him.

  Day 10

  THE RETREAT WAS OVER. A river of words flooded the meditation hall.

  Out in the street, bicycle rickshaws pedaled down a street jammed with shops selling shawls, CDs, sandals, luggage, Buddha statues. A pony trotted past pulling a cart emblazoned with an Airtel slogan. A cow rooted through garbage by a crumbling wall painted with an underwear ad: MACHO INNERWEAR. NOTHING FITS BETTER. I stared at everything with incredulity and awe. I couldn’t tell what was ordinary, what was extraordinary.

  Devi Das and I picked our way through the traffic, heading back to our room at the Japanese temple guesthouse, pursued by a pack of boys selling malas made from seeds from the Bodhi Tree: “You buy! Good karma!” I bought one for a hundred rupees, even though Devi Das told me I shouldn’t pay more than ten. I ran the rough, speckled seeds through my fingers, marveling. Who would think that something so huge could grow from something so small?

  In the pleasure-room, decorated with flowers, and fragrant with perfumes, attended by his friends and servants, the citizen should receive the woman, who will come bathed and dressed, and will invite her to take refreshment and to drink freely….At last when the woman is overcome with love and desire, the citizen should dismiss the people that may be with him, giving them flowers, ointments, and betel leaves, and then when the two are left alone, they should proceed…

  —The Kama Sutra, ca. AD 400

  CHAPTER 17

  THE MAN AND the woman were naked, locked in an embrace. The man was balanced on one foot, with the other leg twined around the woman’s waist; the woman was also on one foot, with a leg twined around the man. Naked servants supported them on either side, hands tucked coyly between their own legs.

  “This position is impossible without yoga!” Our tour guide, Rajesh, flashed light from a handheld mirror toward the sculpture. The noon sun beat down on the sandstone lovers and the temple walls they were carved on. Sweat beaded on Rajesh’s mustache and soaked the armpits of his pressed linen kurta. “At the time these temples were built, many people were becoming Buddhist. These temples showed people that it was much more fun to be Hindu. All the carvings represent the union of the human being with God. Now move along, please.”

  “The rudest sculptures I ever saw,” sniffed a British man to his wife, as our clump of a dozen or so tourists trailed after Rajesh, snapping pictures and marveling in Japanese, French, English, and Hindi.

  “Personally, I can’t comprehend why they can’t become one with God with their clothes on.”

  THE THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD temples of Khajuraho were in the central plains of India, a three-day trip by train and car from Bodh Gaya. So that had given me plenty of time to think about sex on the way there.

  Not just ordinary sex, of course. Tantric sex. Sex that could lead directly to enlightenment, without breaking your back over metal chairs or sweating on a cushion trying not to scratch the heat rash in your armpits. Sex that I could write about for Maxine, who had sent me a blistering email warning that the notes I’d sent her about my vipassana retreat were about as inspiring as the instruction manual for repairing a vacuum cleaner.

  Now I pushed my sweaty hair back from my forehead and followed Rajesh. My underwear was getting too tight; I yanked the waistband down to accommodate my belly. Rajesh paused before another carving. “In tantra philosophy, God energy is not separate from sex energy!” He pulled out a bandanna and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “This one is also known as Monica Lewinsky pose.” He waited for the obligatory titter, then flashed his mirror at another frieze. “And this group of sculptures shows the wedding night of Shiva and Parvati. All the women in village are preparing for the celebration—bathing, putting on makeup, things like that.”

  Devi Das and I stepped closer. I examined a woman bathing, her filmy undergarments clinging wet to her skin, one arm reaching back to soap her spine. Another woman studied her face in a mirror, her lips pursed in an expression I recognized from watching girls put on makeup in the high school bathroom. Simultaneously complacent and critical, absorbed in making herself beautiful. Convinced that her beauty, once achieved, would make her happy forever.

  “The marriage of Shiva and Parvati equals union of world with God,” Rajesh said. “Shiva and Parvati are divine lovers.” He gestured at the wall again. “Energy, matter. Form, formlessness. Spirit, flesh. They make love and make the whole universe. Without Shiva and Parvati—there is nothing. Am I clear?”

  Clear as Ganges water. I looked up at what I presumed was a statue of Shiva and Parvati. Their regal faces were pressed close together, their arms laced around each other’s waists. Let’s see…Shiva’s first wife was Sati, but in a fit of rage because her disapproving father didn’t invite Shiva to a sacrificial feast, she immolated herself. Insane with grief, Shiva scattered her ashes all over India and went back to his lonely ascetic life, thereby threatening the existence of the entire cosmos. So Sati was reincarnated as Parvati (also known as Shakti), and—with the help of Kama, the god of love—was able to seduce Shiva from his yogic meditations.

  But then Mr. Big showed up again and…wait, no, I was confusing it with the plot of Sex and the City. Sex and the Siddhis? The sun glared off the sandstone; I squinted, wishing I hadn’t left my sunglasses on the train. I p
ulled my sweat-soaked shirt away from my belly, fanned myself with my bundle of postcards. Black spots danced in front of my eyes. The sculptured walls began to swim.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Devi Das grabbed my elbow as I swayed against him.

  “I think I just need to sit down for a minute.”

  Devi Das steered me down the temple steps and over to the shade of a fig tree. We sat down on the clipped grass, and I took a long swig from my water bottle. My hands were shaking. “Sorry. I should have brought a hat.”

  “It’s not just the sun.” Devi Das pulled a chocolate bar from his bag and handed it to me. “Here, have a bite of this. The energy in a place like this is powerful. Remember, it’s a thirtha.”

  “A what?” I unwrapped the chocolate and took a bite.

  “A thirtha. It literally means a ford in a river, a place where you cross over to the other side. But on the spiritual level, it means a place where the divine and the human worlds intersect. The veil between humans and the gods is thin in a place like this.”

  I reached out and picked up a soft, ripe fig that had fallen from the tree. I rolled it over and over in my hand. “Devi Das. You’ve been celibate a long time. Don’t you ever miss having sex?”

  He shrugged. “Oh…we miss it sometimes. But we don’t miss all the drama that goes along with it. We don’t miss the pain. We find that it’s simpler just to skip the whole thing.”

  “But don’t you get lonely?”

  “Having a girlfriend is no guarantee we won’t be lonely. Some of the loneliest people we know are in relationships.” He took the fig out of my hand and bit into it. “And anyway, statistically, most relationships don’t work out. Even most marriages don’t work out. Not to mention the fact that there’s a hundred percent chance that eventually one of you is going to die and leave the other person alone.”

  “But, when you look at it that way—isn’t everything doomed, eventually? Sex, love, marriage, family, career, home—why do any of it, when it’s all just going to end in death?”

  Devi Das beamed at me. “Now you’re talking like a good sadhu!”

  “What I mean is—does the fact that something is going to end mean it’s not worth doing? Shouldn’t we throw ourselves into things, while they’re here? While we’re here?”

  “And now you’re talking like a good tantrika!” He lay back on the grass. “We’re going to take a little nap. We recommend that you do the same thing.”

  I lay down next to him, turning onto my left side; according to HeyBaby.com, I wasn’t supposed to lie on my back anymore, for fear of cutting off blood supply to the uterus. I propped myself up on my elbow, reached for my notebook, and scribbled the first few lines of a chapter for Maxine.

  If meditation, yoga, and celibacy aren’t your thing, don’t worry! Enlightenment has something for everyone. In the ancient tantric rituals, all that was forbidden in traditional yogic practice became a sacred act. The tantric yogis and yoginis ate meat, drank wine, and had ritualistic intercourse on the sacred altar. Through sexual activity, the tantrikas believed, they could awaken and unite the cosmic energies of masculine and feminine deities that flow within everyone. Then they could draw these energies up the spine to bring the mind to enlightenment.

  I put down my notebook and gazed at the temples, their peach-colored sandstone reflecting white in the sun. Parvati had managed to seduce Shiva, an ascetic god—the ultimate unavailable guy. Now their love for each other kept the whole universe alive. Why couldn’t any of my relationships look like that?

  “Excuse me,” said a voice by my ear. “But I was just wondering—are you a huffer?”

  I opened my eyes and sat up. Squatting next to me was a guy with brown hair cascading loose over his shoulders, a beard, and soulful brown eyes. He was dressed in white kurta pajamas. He looked like Jesus at a slumber party.

  “A what?”

  “I’m sorry—I thought you might be from Huff. A lot of us here this week are huff people.” I stared at him blankly. Huff the Magic Dragon? I huff and I puff and I blow the house…“You know—the Human Unfoldment Foundation,” he clarified. “HUF. They’re based in Ojai, California. They’ve been holding a tantra workshop in the Taj Hotel.”

  “Oh. No. No, I—don’t huff.”

  “HUF is open to anyone. All they need to have is a genuine openness to exploring their own sacred sexuality.” He held out his hand.

  “My name’s Om.”

  I put my hand in his. “Amanda.”

  He held my hand for a moment in both of his, then gave it a gentle squeeze before setting it down. “I’m really happy to meet you.” He continued to gaze in my eyes, a little too intently. I recognized the look of someone who’d been overdosing on personal-growth workshops; overpumped emotions, like the biceps of a guy who’d been working out too much. Sensitivity on steroids, Matt used to call it.

  “So what do you do at a HUF workshop?” I asked.

  He nodded in the direction of the temples. “Exactly what they used to practice right here. We learn to free up our sexual energy so that we can come together in the primal dance of Shiva and Shakti, without shame or inhibition.”

  He looked at Devi Das, sprawled out asleep next to me. His skinny legs stuck out below the fringe of his lungi. A fly buzzed around his face, landing on his upper lip, then darting away each time he breathed out. “So, is that your consort?”

  “Oh—no! No. He’s a sadhu. He’s celibate. We’re just traveling together.”

  “Ah—celibacy.” Om shook his head in disbelief, as if I’d just told him that Devi Das had squandered an inheritance in a night of gambling at Las Vegas. “What a misguided concept.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a folded piece of pink paper, and handed it to me. “HUF is hosting a party tonight in our suite at the Taj. I’d love it if you and your sadhu friend could make it.”

  I opened the flyer. On the top was a blurry photocopy of a detail from a Khajuraho sculpture: a woman and man seated naked with their legs wrapped around each other’s waists. Beneath it, in ornate calligraphy, the text read: “An evening of music, dancing, ritual, and sensual exploration for gods and goddesses of all ages and sexual orientation. Invitation only.”

  “Bring your yoga mat,” said Om. “It’s always good to have a nonskid surface.”

  From: HeyBaby.com

  To: Amandala@yahoo.com

  With all the focus on decorating the nursery and planning the baby shower, don’t forget about romance! You’re in Week 18, well into the second trimester, and with morning sickness well behind you, you may notice that you’re feeling frisky again. Pick out some sexy maternity lingerie and plan that candlelit dinner with your husband. Substitute a nice sparkling grape juice for champagne. And don’t worry—you can’t hurt the baby by making love!

  SIX HOURS LATER—after a nap, a shower, and a falafel dinner at the Mediterranean restaurant near our guest house—Devi Das and I were walking into the marble-floored lobby of the Taj Hotel. A doorman in a red uniform with silver buttons held the door for us, averting his eyes from Devi Das’s bare feet. Crystal chandeliers sparkled. A fountain bubbled behind a goddess statue holding out a bowl with an oil lamp burning in it. A flute player sat cross-legged by the elevator, playing a raga.

  “I wish I had stopped in town to buy some nicer clothes,” I said as we stepped into the elevator and pushed the button to the top floor. I’d put on the white salwar kameez I used to wear at the Satyanam Ashram, just because it was the cleanest thing I owned; but even after repeated scrubbings, there was still a faint green stain of cow manure on one leg. Not to mention that it radiated celibacy. Still, it seemed more appropriate than my yoga pants or my vipassana shawl. I hadn’t realized that the road to enlightenment would require so many different outfits.

  “Don’t worry. Isn’t the whole idea that you’ll be taking your clothes off, anyway?”

  We walked down a carpeted corridor and knocked at the door of the Royal Suite. It was opened by a chubby man in a white T
-shirt, which was riding up to expose a pale roll of flesh hanging over the top of his jeans. He scrutinized our invitation, then greeted us each with a long, intimate hug, as if we were best friends with whom he shared a history so private that even we didn’t know about it yet. “Make yourselves at home. Drinks are on the table under the window. You’ll find dance cards next to them, if you want to start making plans for later in the evening.”

  He gave us each a friendly pat on the rear, then headed back into the room. I looked at Devi Das. “Dance cards?”

  He pirouetted.

  Inside, a couple of dozen guests drifted through the suite of rooms, which were illuminated by candles and the bluish glow of a large-screen television. The brocade curtains were drawn shut. The beds and sofas had been pushed to the sides to make room for futon-like pads scattered here and there on the floor, piled with silk pillows. Most of the women were wearing filmy dresses belted loosely at the waist, like togas. The men were wearing loose cotton pants and T-shirts, except for one mammoth man in an Indian lungi with metal-studded leather straps around his biceps. On one wall a slide show of images from the Khajuraho temples was being projected, one image dissolving dreamlike into the next. Flute music crooned reassuringly from speakers nested in a grove of potted palms.

  “Wait here. I’ll get us some juice.” Devi Das headed toward the table under the window, where bottles stood sweating next to a stack of paper cups.

  The air-conditioning was set too cold; goose bumps stood out on my bare arms. Trying to look nonchalant, I edged deeper into the room to look at the enormous television. On screen, an erect penis waved back and forth, with a mouth in violet lipstick a few inches away. Red-nailed fingers kneaded a mass of curly black pubic hair. I looked away quickly.