Read Online Wreck and Order by Hannah Tennant-Moore - Free Book Online Page B

walking and listening to the mind’s harangues, for what?; when I had convinced myself that whatever I was doing in that room was irrelevant to who I should be as an individual, which was the same way I felt when I was depressed; when, snot running into my mouth and tears dripping off my chin, I kept on sitting still; when the heavy, wet sorrow of effort was suddenly, mysteriously replaced by the brightness and gratitude of this same effort—so this is sitting; this is walking; this is breathing; this is lying; eating; shitting; seeing; drinking; feeling wind and heat and cold—and sensing finally that this was enough, to pay attention was enough; when I noticed how the tiny muscles pulsed across the top of the monk’s foot with each step, like the pulse of the tiny flame of my breath, to which my whole being was, in that moment, reduced; when I felt a peace that seemed unshakable, that would surely last forever, even as the memories and plans and judgments oozed back in, because the peace-feeling understood that these thoughts came out of nowhere, or somewhere unseen, like the sounds from the forest all around—outside my control, having little to do with me, unstoppable but not at all terrible; when the seemingly unshakable peace-feeling did fall away, replaced by shrieking protests from my knees and hips as my numbed lap came back to life all at once; when I extended one leg, then the other, slowly, slowly, unfurling vein and muscle and bone—ah, a new kind of perfect peace, one that quickly dispersed, replaced by the thought that all of this was just one more experience and led nowhere and would give me nothing I thought that meditation ought to give me, unless I just hadn’t done it enough or hadn’t done it the right way—the candle flicker still there, though, the urge to come back to it still there—and on and on and on until at last, still entirely at a loss as to how to be a human being, I leaned back.
    Watched. Watched myself watching. Watched the watched self being watched. So who was the watcher, ultimately? Fuck if I knew. I leaned back again. This was what meditation had given me. Not what I wanted. What I wanted was a new kind of extreme experience—freedom, bliss, transcendence. The man in white robes—he didn’t seem to be a monk, but he didn’t seem to be a regular person either—was actually enlightened. You saw it in the tranquil openness of his face, even though he was nearly one hundred and his feet and knees were perpetually swollen and his eyes were red and oozing. Constant comfort divorced from circumstance—a possibility I had not considered real before. But one that came from what seemed like impossible effort. The man in white spent most of every day of most of his life meditating; he had achieved enlightenment after sitting perfectly still for two full days in a row. He explained this to us during a sort of question-and-answer session one night. Bulbous feet extending from beneath the folds of his robe, he smiled out at us and waited for us to speak. People asked many questions: I have been meditating for so long and am still unhappy—what will make me happy? I was not loved as a child and now I find it difficult to love others—how can I heal? I hate my job but I need the money—should I quit and live as a pauper? The monk answered them each the same way: Be earnest. If you want to be free, do not let anything stop you. Examine every thought, desire, sensation until you fully understand its source. Expect nothing from the world. Then you will naturally wake up to your true state. Remain open and quiet. That is all you can do.
    —
    I loved the prohibition against speaking, loved waking up before dawn and falling into sleep soon after sunset, loved the signs everywhere reminding us not to read or talk or wear clothing that revealed the contours of our limbs, reminding us that we were HERE TO MEDITATE. No other reason. The only point to my life at Shirmani was to notice my