Alice in EnlightenedLand

Suppose that Alice had been reading a book on American Buddhism before drifting off to sleep on that fateful afternoon.

I: An Enlightened Cat

Alice came to a fork in the forest path and was standing for a moment, puzzled as to which way to go, when she spied the Cheshire-Cat sitting in full lotus position on a bough of a tree a few yards off, meditating. It looked so peaceful that she dared not disturb it, but at the same it had such a compassionate air that she felt that it might help solve her dilemma. So when it opened its eyes, she cleared her voice and said in her sweetest tone, “If you please, Cheshire-Puss, could you tell me the way to the Queen’s croquet game?”

For a moment the Cat only grinned at her, with its eyes bulging out quite alarmingly, but then it simply said, “Which would you rather do? Go to the Queen’s croquet game or get enlightened?”

Alice did want very much to go to the croquet game, but this was a grown-up-sounding question, so she felt it required a grown-up-sounding answer. “Oh. To get enlightened, of course,” she said with a knowing air.

The Cat’s eyes bulged out for a moment again, and then it said, “Well, in that case you wo'n’t get enlightened.” This surprised Alice, who responded, “You mean if I want to get enlightened, that will keep me from getting enlightened?”

“Precisely,” said the Cat. “The desire to get enlightened is the one thing that will keep you from being enlightened.”

“Well, then, in that case,” said Alice, “I’d rather to go to the Queen’s croquet game.”

“No, no,” said the Cat, “that wo’n’t do either. If you want to play croquet so that you can get enlightened, that will keep you from getting enlightened, too.”

“But whatever on earth should I do, then?” said Alice, beginning to feel a little giddy from all the strange ideas she had heard since this morning.

“There’s nothing to do at all, replied the Cat. “Enlightenment isn’t something you do, it’s something you simply are. All you need to do is remind yourself that you’re enlightened and then act naturally in an enlightened way.”

“But how can I know what’s an enlightened way when I’m not yet enlightened?”

The Cat rolled its eyes and replied, “Mercy, how can you be so ignorant, child? You’re already enlightened. You’re enlightened, I’m enlightened, the Mad Hatter, the March Hare : we’re all enlightened.”

“But if I’m already enlightened, why do'n’t I know? Does'n’t being enlightened mean that you know you’re enlightened?” she asked, honestly perplexed.

“Well, of course you know. I just told you so,” replied the Cat, its grin growing steadily broader.

“But if I’m enlightened, what am I doing here? And why am I lost?”

“You forgot,” said the Cat, taking a sip out of what looked like a small glass of water.

“But if I forgot it once, what’s to keep me from forgetting it again? And what good is enlightenment if you can forget it?” asked Alice, who was beginning to feel quite exasperated at the Cat’s nonsense. “Now I do wish that you would tell me the way to the Queen’s croquet game!”

“Very well, then. The path in that direction,” said the Cat, waving its right paw round, “goes to the Queen’s croquet game. While the path in that direction,” it said, pointing its tail the other way, “is the goal.”

“You mean it goes to the goal,” said Alice, correcting him, but before she could ask which goal, the Cat replied, “I meant what I said. The path is the goal.”

“But how can a path be a goal?” she asked him.

“Oh, very simply,” said the Cat. “You just walk along it without thinking of going anyplace, and so wherever you go, there you are.”

“That does’n’t sound like much of a goal to me,” said Alice. “In fact, it sounds rather pointless. I want to get out of this horrid place.”

“Whatever for?” asked the Cat.

“It’s so unsettling, all these sudden changes. First I was so small that I almost drowned in my own tears, then so tall that I could’n’t get out the door. And, it all happened so incredibly fast that now I do’n’t rightly even know who I am....”

“Well, then there must be something wrong with you,” replied the Cat. “Everyone else here likes the sudden changes. They’re quite amusing.” And with that he suddenly vanished.

Alice was not much surprised at this, as she was getting so accustomed to queer things happening, but while she was still looking at the place where it had been, it suddenly appeared again.

“There. Was'n't that amusing?" it asked.

“I suppose so,” said Alice, “But I must confess that I’m getting quite tired....”

“Then how about this?” asked the Cat. Alice waited expectantly to see what the Cat would do next, but it simply sat there, grinning as before. Then gradually she became aware of a whole swarm of faint after-images of herself and the Cat whizzing past her at a dizzying speed from all sides. She looked around and noticed that a circle of mirrors hanging in the air had formed around her and the Cat. She stepped over to one of the mirrors and realized that it contained, not only reflections of herself and the Cat, but also of all the other mirrors, which were reflecting all the other mirrors, and so on to infinity, repeating more images of the Cat and herself than she could possibly count. “See how everything interpenetrates everything else?” asked the Cat. “I find that very amusing. I interpenetrate you, and you interpenetrate me, and.…”

Alice did not at all like the sound of this last remark. “No!” she called out and turned to flee, but no matter which direction she fled, she ran into a mirror filled with the Cat’s grinning reflections. Realizing that she was trapped, she fell to her knees and started to cry. Each tear, as it rolled ever so slowly off her cheek, picked up the Cat’s reflections, which were then picked up by the next tear and then the next—-until the first tear splattered on the ground and broke the spell. The Cat and the mirrors disappeared in a flash.

“Thank goodness,” said Alice. “I’m free.” She sped off on the path to the Queen’s croquet game. “At least with croquet you know where you are,” she thought, “with rules you can understand, and a decent beginning and end.” With this thought barely out of her head, she looked up—-and there was the Cat again, sitting on the branch of a tree.

“Did you say that you wanted to get out of this place?” it asked.

“Yes,” replied Alice. “Very much.”

“I must say, that’s very selfish of you,” replied the Cat. “You should make a vow that you wo'n’t leave here until you’ve gotten all the rest of us out of here first.”

“Well, I feel that that’s very selfish of you, Mr. Smarty-Puss,” retorted Alice, who was now so beside herself that she had quite forgotten her manners. “If you and all your enlightened friends want to stay here amusing yourselves, that’s your business. I’m leaving!”

To that the Cat had no answer. It simply sat there grinning, and its eyes began to bulge again. This was rather more than Alice could take.

“And I do wish that you would wipe that silly grin off your face,” she said sharply, turning to leave.

“That, I’m afraid I ca'n’t do,” the Cat called after her, “but I can wipe this silly face off my grin.” As Alice stopped and turned to watch, it began to vanish gradually, beginning with its tail and ending with its toothy grin, which hung gleaming in the air for a few moments. Then it, too, was gone.

II: An Enlightened Caterpillar

Alice, now only three inches tall, was looking for some way to return to her normal size when she came to a small clearing in the grass. There in the middle of the clearing was a large spotted mushroom, about the same height as herself. Searching around under the mushroom, on both sides of it, and behind it, she found nothing at all that looked helpful, so she thought she might as well look to see what was on top of it. As she stretched herself up on tiptoe to peer over the edge of the mushroom, her eyes immediately met those of a large, vibrantly blue caterpillar sitting on top, quietly smoking a long hookah, each pair of his legs in half-lotus position. His face had a blank, far-away look, suggesting that he was taking no notice of her or of anything else, but presently he took the hookah out of his mouth and cleared his throat. “Who,” he said in a languid and not very friendly tone, “are you?”

“I do’n’t rightly know, Sir,” Alice responded. “At the moment, I mean. This morning I thought I knew, but now I’ve been through so many changes that I’ve lost all sense of who I might be.”

“Then you must be a Buddhist,” said the Caterpillar, looking at her coolly as he took another puff on his hookah. “Tell me. Are you a Buddhist?”

“I’m not sure, Sir. What does it mean to be a Buddhist?”

“Oh, anything you like,” replied the Caterpillar. “That’s the beauty of being a Buddhist. It’s very democratic.”

“But what kind of word is ‘Buddhist’ if it can mean anything you like?” asked Alice, perplexed.

“As far as I’m concerned,” the Caterpillar said, “the world would be a much better place if all words meant whatever you liked. Then you could say whatever you wanted to, and no one could say you were wrong.”

“But how would people get along if all their words meant whatever they liked? If I said ‘cup’ when I meant ‘saucer,’ and you said ‘saucer’ when you meant ‘cup,’ how could we hope to understand each other?”

“Why would you want to understand other people?” asked the Caterpillar, taking another puff on his hookah.

Alice thought for a moment, and then said, “To learn from them.” “But what is there to learn from other people?” “Well, to begin with, they could teach you what’s right and wrong.” “Precisely what I do’n’t need to know!” said the Caterpillar with a snort, as he blew an angry stream of bubbles in the hookah.

“Why not?” asked Alice. “Suppose there were some wrong weeds that you might put in your hookah that would make you all dizzy if you smoked them. Would’n’t you want to know that beforehand so you would’n’t smoke them by mistake?”

The Caterpillar angrily drew himself up to his full height. “Are you presuming to be judgmental about what I put in my hookah?”

“Oh, dear,” thought Alice to herself. “Why is this such a temperamental Caterpillar, and so easily offended?” “No,” she said aloud. “I was only trying to ....”

“It’s all very dualistic and judgmental, this talk about ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ There is no such thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’”

“But is it wrong to be dualistic?” asked Alice, confused.

“Yes, very.” replied the Caterpillar.

“Then when you say ‘dualistic,’ that’s just your word for ‘wrong.’ Is that right?”

“No, it’s not,” the Caterpillar retorted in such a huff that he blew a very loud string of bubbles into his hookah. “It’s totally different.”

Alice did’n’t see quite what the difference was, but she did’n’t want to provoke the Caterpillar any further, so she tried changing the subject. “But we were talking about Buddhists.”

“Yes, quite.” There was a short silence as the Caterpillar took another puff. “That’s what I like about Buddhists. They’re not judgmental in the least. They all agree that there is no such thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’”

“All of them?” asked Alice.

“Well, the most advanced ones. The only ones who really count. The less advanced ones are too small-minded to understand the idea.”

This sounded fairly judgmental to Alice, but she dared not contradict the Caterpillar. Still, she was puzzled. “But what kind of people would the advanced ones be if they do’n’t believe in right and wrong? Could you trust them to do the right thing?”

“Yes, of course you can,” replied the Caterpillar. “The right thing is not to be dualistic or judgmental and to do what comes naturally. When you act naturally you can do no wrong.”

A giddy thought suddenly went through Alice’s head, and before she realized what she was doing, she had lifted the mushroom cap, tilting it so that the Caterpillar and his hookah slid off and fell splat on the ground.

“I say!” exclaimed the Caterpillar in a surprised tone. “Whatever on earth possessed you to do that?”

Alice had to stifle a very un-ladylike giggle, seeing the Caterpillar sprawled on the ground so, his hookah all cockeyed beside him. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” she said quickly. “But it did seem quite the natural thing to do just then.”

“Well, I dare say it would be only civil of you to give a person fair warning when you get it into your head to do something like that.”

“But you said ....”

“What I meant was that no one should pass judgment on me when I act naturally.”

“But is’n’t it dualistic to have one standard for yourself and another for other people?”

“No, it’s not dualistic in the least. It’s interdependent. Do’n’t you understand?” He rolled himself rightside up. “If I’m going to have the freedom to act naturally, other people have to reserve judgment. The two standards depend on each other, so they’re one and the same thing.”

“Then what does dualism mean?” asked Alice.

“I must say,” replied the Caterpillar in an exasperated tone as it struggled to get back on its feet, “it’s rather unnatural of you to expect me to give you a decent answer while my hookah and I are in such disarray.”

“Oh, I do apologize,” replied Alice, suddenly remembering her manners, and she set about to straightening out the mess she had made. As the mushroom was now tilted on its side, somewhat like a beach umbrella, the Caterpillar had her set up the hookah in its shade. When everything was arranged to his liking, he sat down under the mushroom cap and lit the hookah. After a few puffs his mood had mellowed considerably.

“Now, then. Dualism.” He cleared his throat. “Dualism means not seeing the essential oneness of all things. A dualistic person sees the world in terms of opposites—right and wrong, good and bad, big and small—without realizing that opposites depend on each other, and so are ultimately one and the same. For instance: above and below. Do you see them as opposites?”

“Yes, of course,” replied Alice. “If I look under my bed for something that’s actually on top of my bed, I sha’n’t find it.”

“But could you have an ‘above’ without a ‘below’? They depend on each other. If you do’n’t get caught up on their superficial differences, you see that they’re actually one and the same thing. Just now, for example, I was smoking my hookah on top of the mushroom and was quite happy. Now I’m smoking my hookah underneath the mushroom, and I’m just as happy here, which shows that ‘above’ and ‘below’ are the same thing.”

“But would they be the same thing if you did’n’t have your hookah?” asked Alice innocently. The Caterpillar eyed her suspiciously and slowly, pair by pair, began folding his many legs tightly around the neck of his hookah.

“Oh, no, Sir. I did’n’t mean it that way,” replied Alice, suddenly understanding what he suspected. “I was’n’t going to do anything natural to your hookah. I was just asking in the abstract.”

“Well then,” said the Caterpillar, relaxing its grip only slightly. “As long as we’re talking in the abstract: No, there would’n’t be any difference between hookahness and non-hookahness. Just as I’m embracing hookahness now, I’m sure that when the time comes to let go of my hookah I’ll be able to embrace non-hookahness as well. It does’n’t matter what one is embracing, you know, as long as one’s embrace is large enough to include everything.”

“But if you hold on to things, do’n’t you suffer? And if you hold on to everything, do’n’t you suffer even more?”

“If you hold on, then of course you suffer,” replied the Caterpillar, letting go of his hookah and leaning back against the mushroom stem. “The trick is to know how to embrace things without holding on.”

“How on earth does one do that?”

“Oh, it’s really quite simple. Just open your arms wide, but leave your fingers perfectly limp.” He demonstrated by holding his many little legs as far apart as he could while at the same time relaxing his feet. “See? Now all you have to do is tell yourself that you’re embracing the emptiness of the entire universe and then ...”

But before he could finish his sentence, his body began to swell quite uncontrollably at an alarming rate—swelling and swelling, while his skin was stretched tighter and tighter until one could see right through him, like a balloon or a vacuum tube.

Alice, who had heard stories of physics professors experimenting with vacuums at the university, began to get quite worried. “Oh dear,” she thought to herself, “if he gets all vacuous like that, is’n’t he going to implode?” She ran behind a clump of grass for protection, and none too soon, for presently the Caterpillar burst with a loud Pop! Alice closed her eyes and covered her ears with her hands, and when she finally managed the courage to look, all that was left of the Caterpillar were pieces of its vibrantly blue skin, like tattered bits of an exploded balloon, drifting down through the air, hanging limply from the grass, and festooning the edge of the mushroom.

“My word!” Alice exclaimed to herself after a moment of eerie silence. “Do you suppose that’s how I’m meant to grow back to my normal size?” She listened to the ringing air, but there was no answer from the Caterpillar, aside from the barely audible plop of a tattered skin piece landing on the ground. Sensible as always, Alice counseled herself, “Well, if that’s what I’m meant to do, I’d best do it in moderation.” So she stretched out her arms—timidly at first—as if to embrace the universe, at the same time letting her fingers fall quite limp so as not to clutch at anything. At first, nothing happened. But after keeping this pose for a full minute she was struck by how absurd it was. So she lowered her arms and began to laugh in a good-natured way at her own foolishness.

And that’s how she returned to normal.

III: The Beheading of No-Beheading
The Queen’s Enlightened Croquet Game

Further researches into what might have happened to Alice if she had been reading a book on American Buddhism before dropping off to sleep that afternoon.

Alice picked her way through the woods until she came across a small tree with a door in it. Over the door was a sign, To the Queen’s Croquet-Ground.

“How curious,” she thought, “although there’s hardly anything here in EnlightenedLand that is’n’t curious. I might as well give it a try.” So she hurried through the door into the tree, but instead of a entering a croquet-ground, she found herself in a quaint little shop. Behind the counter, an old walrus dressed in a black monk’s robe sat dozing, and over his head was another sign: Enlightenment Pro Shoppe.

Alice went to the counter and said in a quiet voice, “Excuse me please, Mr. Walrus.”

The Walrus woke with a snort and looked angrily around. When he spied Alice in front of the counter, his gaze softened a bit. “My word, young lady,” he said in a tone only slightly peevish. “Do’n’t you know not to startle people while they’re deep in meditation?”

“I’m terribly sorry, Sir” said Alice, “but I was wondering if you could tell me the way to the Queen’s Croquet-Ground. The sign on the door said that this was the way, but apparently it was mistaken.”

“No, you’re mistaken,” said the Walrus. “This is the way to the Queen’s Croquet-Ground. Only enlightened people get to play with the Queen, so you have to go through the Enlightenment Pro Shoppe first.”

“Do you sell enlightenment here?” Alice asked hopefully.

“Heavens no, child,” said the Walrus. “Enlightenment is something you already have, and so you do’n’t need it. We sell only things that you need but do’n’t have.”

Alice looked around at the merchandise lining the walls and counters of the shop: meditation cushions, benches, incense burners, altars, books, DVD’s, all kinds of practice accessories very tastefully displayed. “But if I’m already enlightened, why do I need to buy all these practice accessories?”

“Ah, yes. The very question that took Dogen to China,” said the Walrus, “and the answer he learned was that in buying practice accessories you manifest your enlightened nature.”

“But why must I manifest my enlightened nature?” Alice asked innocently.

“If you do’n’t manifest it, how will your friends and neighbors know you have it?” the Walrus replied.

“But I thought everybody had enlightened nature.”

The Walrus eyed her for a moment. “Not all people know they have enlightened nature,” he finally said. “It’s by manifesting yours that you let them know that they’d like to manifest theirs, too, to keep up with you. That’s why buying practice accessories is a way of saving all sentient beings.”

This sounded like a noble sentiment to Alice, who began looking more earnestly at the merchandise to see what the best manifestation of her enlightened nature might be. She passed over a DVD entitled Dharma Combats, as that was obviously for little boys, although she could’n’t help notice that the title changed to Karma Wombats as her gaze swept past it. She glanced back at it, only to discover that it had changed to Commie Dingbats, at which point she decided to ignore it entirely for fear of what it would turn into next.

Finally, she spotted a small Buddha in a little fold-away travelling box that looked so adorable, but when she checked the price tag she found it a little too enlightening for a small girl of her means. Obviously, she would have to save up a fair amount of money before she could afford to save any sentient beings. “Maybe some other time,” she politely informed the Walrus as she put the Buddha box back in its place, “after I’ve played croquet with the Queen. Could you show me the way to her Croquet-Ground?”

“How can you expect to play croquet with the Queen until you’ve bought the proper mallet?” asked the Walrus.

“What kind of mallet is that?” Alice asked in return.

“One of those over there.” The Walrus pointed with his flipper to an empty rack, over which a sign said, Zen Mallets. “Our Zen Mallets are so enlightened that only the most enlightened people can even see them,” he added, with a slightly supercilious tone.

Surprised at her own quick-wittedness, Alice pretended to hold up an invisible mallet in her hand and said, “But I already have my Zen Mallet.”

“Oh, of course. How silly of me,” blushed the Walrus. “In that case, go through that little door over there,” he motioned to the right with his flipper, “and you’ll be in the Queen’s Croquet-Ground. Have an enlightening game.”

“Thank you so very much,” said Alice as she sped toward the door, but she could’n’t help thinking to herself, “Maybe that’s what they mean by realizing your enlightened nature: realizing that you can bluff your way through anyth—”

Her thoughts were stopped in mid-sentence by the lovely sight that met her eyes on the other side of the door: a beautiful golf course with flowering bushes, sheltering trees, and clear lakes, much fairer than anything she had seen since coming to EnlightenedLand. Enchanted, she wandered through the golf course until she came to the edge of a sand trap that seemed to be sprouting stands of bamboo. Hearing the sound of an argument coming from down in the trap, she peered over the edge.

There she saw three curious gardeners, each with the body of a playing card, having a head on the top edge, arms coming from the upper corners, and legs from the lower corners. They were, all in all, a Two, Five, and Seven of spades. The stands of bamboo that seemed to be growing from the trap were actually growing from pots placed round randomly, and the gardeners were hurriedly raking patterns in the sand between them. Two was raking little star shapes here and there, Five was raking circles, and Seven, long wavy lines. They were making quite a mess of it, though, as each was stepping all over the patterns raked by the others.

“Hey, mind your step there, Two. You just wiped out one of my circles. Watch out, or I’ll see to it that the Queen has you beheaded.”

“Well, you’re a fine person to be talking, Five, the way you stomp all over my—” His eye chanced to fall upon Alice, as she stood watching them, and he checked himself suddenly: the others looked around also, and all of them bowed low.

“Would you tell me, please,” said Alice, a little timidly, “why you are raking patterns in the sand?”

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, “Why the fact is, you see, Miss, the Queen ordered that this sand trap here be made into a Zen garden, and so after we spent all day dragging these here bamboo stands from the palace, we was just trying to rake some designs in the sand afore the Queen comes to—” At that moment, Five, who had been anxiously looking across the golf course, called out: “Look sharp! Look sharp! Here comes the Queen!” The three gardeners threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen.

What she saw was a long procession of playing cards, much like the gardeners. First came the clubs, who she surmised were soldiers, then diamonds, who were the courtiers, followed by the hearts, who were the royal family. For all that they were playing cards, they made quite a grand impression, culminating, to great fanfare, with THE KING AND THE QUEEN OF HEARTS.

Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on her face like the three gardeners, but she could not remember ever having heard of such a rule at processions; “and besides, what would be the use of a procession,” thought she, “if people had all to lie down on their faces, so that they could’n’t see it?” So she stood where she was, and waited.

When the procession came opposite to Alice, they all stopped and stared at her. The Queen lifted one eyebrow severely, “And who,” she said sharply, “are you?”

“My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,” replied Alice very politely.

“And who are these?” said the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners who were lying in the sand; for, you see, as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers, or three of her own children.

“How should I know?” said Alice, surprised at her own temerity. “They’re your cards, not mine.”

The Queen turned crimson with fury and, after glaring at Alice for a moment, turned to the gardeners. “Get up!” she said in a shrill, loud voice. The gardeners instantly jumped up and began bowing to the King, the Queen, the royal children, and everybody else.

“Leave off that!” screamed the Queen. “You make me giddy.” And turning to the sand trap, she went on, “And what have you been doing here?”

“May it please your Majesty, ” said Two, in a very humble tone, going down on one knee as he spoke, “we was trying—”

“I see!” said the Queen, who had meanwhile been examining the mess in the sand. “Off with their heads!” The procession moved on, while three of the soldiers remained behind to execute the unfortunate gardeners, who ran to Alice for protection. “You sha’n’t be beheaded,” she said, as she stuck them in one of the bamboo pots. The three soldiers wandered about for a minute or two, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the others.

“Are their heads off?” shouted the Queen.

“Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty!” the soldiers shouted in unison.

“Fine, then,” roared the Queen. “Recite your lessons!”

The soldiers were silent and looked at Alice, as the order was evidently meant for her.

At a loss, she asked, “Which lessons, your Majesty?”

“Why, your Jabberwocky, of course! Do’n’t try my patience!”

Somewhat flustered, Alice tried to remember the first verse, but for some reason it came out all garbled:

‘Twas brilliant and the slimy doves
Did spiral and spindle in the glade.
All misty were the boring groves
And the moths brought lemonade.

“Humph,” said the Queen, as the courtiers suppressed derisive smiles. “Then what about croquet?” she continued. “Can you play croquet?”

“Yes,” shouted Alice, feeling a little more confident.

“And where’s your mallet?”

“Right here,” shouted Alice, as she held up her imaginary mallet.

“Come on, then!” roared the Queen, and Alice joined the procession, wondering very much what would happen next.

“You’re very, very lucky,” said a timid voice at her side. Looking around, she found the White Rabbit walking beside her, peeping anxiously into her face. “Not everybody gets to play croquet with a bodhisattva like the Queen, you know.”

“What kind of bodhisattva is she?” asked Alice. “I’ve never before seen anyone so temperamental in my—”

“Hush! Hush!” said the Rabbit in a low hurried tone, “or you’ll have us all beheaded. Why, she’s a grumpy bodhisattva. That’s how she manifests her enlightened nature, through her fits.”

“How could a bodhisattva be grumpy? Are’n’t they supposed to be beyond all that?”

“You do’n’t understand,” said the Rabbit. “Bodhisattvas come in at least seven kinds: happy, grumpy, sneezy, sleepy, sleazy, sneaky, and dopey.”

“Dopey!?” exclaimed Alice. “What kind of bodhisattva could be dopey?”

“Those are the ones who do’n’t fully understand their enlightenment yet,” replied the Rabbit, “so their manifestation of it is’n’t yet very deep.”

“But I thought that enlightenment was understanding,”

“Nonononono,” said the Rabbit. “Enlightenment is’n’t understanding. Enlightenment is being non-dual. We’ve been non-dual all along, but it takes some getting used to, as we’re so accustomed to behaving in a dualistic way.”

“But if we’ve been dualistic, how can you say that we’ve been be non-dual at the same time?” asked Alice, perplexed. “Are’n’t they two contrary things?”

“Understanding non-duality means realizing that it does’n’t make any difference,” replied the Rabbit with a satisfied smile.

Alice thought this over for a moment and then confessed, “I’m confused.”

“Of course you’re confused,” sympathized the Rabbit. “That’s why we have Continuous Practice on the croquet-ground: to help us forget our confusion. The Queen keeps us in such relentless peril of losing our heads that we have no time to think straight. In that way, non-dual thinking begins to feel quite natural.”

“Still, I do’n’t know how everyone lets her get away with such vicious behavior,” said Alice frankly.

“Oh, we put up with her fits because she has Dharma transmission. That’s her license—it means we have to view her viciousness as actually kindness in disguise. And besides, we know that when we receive Dharma transmission, everyone else will have to put up with our behavior, too.”

“But with her fondness for beheading people, it’s a wonder that there would be anyone left.”

“Well, the king is a compassionate bodhisattva—not that the compassionate ones are any more enlightened than the vicious ones, mind you—and when he does’n’t forget, he pardons everyone who’s supposed to be executed.”

“And what if he does forget?”

“Well,” said the Rabbit cautiously looking round, “you’ll see in a minute that we are’n’t playing with a full deck—”

“My word!” said Alice, horrified. “If I carried on like the Queen, my mother would spank me in no time and send me straight off to my room.”

“But that’s because you have’n’t received Dharma transmission,” confided the Rabbit. “Before Dharma transmission, your behavior is a product of your social conditioning, which is why people can say that it’s right or wrong. But once you’ve received Dharma transmission, you’re beyond social conditioning. You can do any outrageous thing you like, only now it’s a pure manifestation of your enlightenment, so no one can criticize you.”

“Dharma transmission?” said Alice in a quizzical tone, as the idea was still quite new to her. “How is the Dharma transmitted? Is it anything like transmitting a disease?”

“Well,” said the Rabbit, “now that you mention it, it is much the same sort of thing. You know how little children sleeping in the same room will transmit colds and whatnot to one another?”

“Yes,” said Alice.

“Well, that’s how the Dharma is transmitted. First the Queen slept with the King, and he got Dharma transmission. Then the King—who is very non-dualistic, by the way—slept with the Knave of Hearts, and he got Dharma transmission. Now everyone is waiting to see who will get it from the Knave. The word is that he likes little girls, so for all we know, you might be the lucky one.”

Alice wanted a moment or two to decide whether it would be a good thing to catch the Dharma from someone else in that way. She was just beginning to wonder why she would need a case of Dharma transmission if she was already supposed to be enlightened anyhow, when the Queen suddenly shouted out in a voice of thunder, “Get to your places!” People began running about in all directions, tumbling up against one another, but then settled down in a minute or two, and the game began.

Alice had never played such a difficult game of croquet in her life. First of all, the mallets, balls, and wickets were imaginary, so there was no way of knowing how far you had hit your ball, or whether you were in any danger of being hit by anyone else. On top of that, all the players were playing at once, without waiting for turns, and in a very short time the Queen was manifesting so much enlightenment that she was purple in the face, shouting, “Off with his head!” or “Off with her head!” about once in a minute.

Alice began to feel very uneasy. To be sure, she had not as yet had any dispute with the Queen, but she knew it might happen any minute. “And then what would become of me?” she thought with a shudder. She began to look about for some way of escape, wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air. It puzzled her very much at first, but after watching it a moment or two she made it out to be a grin. “Why, it’s the Cheshire-Cat,” she said to herself. And in spite of her recent run-in with the Cat, she at least felt that it was friendlier than the Queen and her entourage. “Now I shall have somebody to talk to,” she comforted herself, as she waited for more of the Cat to appear.

“How are you getting on?” asked the Cat when its head had fully materialized. “Are you beginning to enjoy EnlightenedLand now that you’ve played croquet with the Queen?”

“Actually, no,” said Alice. “I’ve come to the conclusion that either these people are not enlightened, or else—if they are—enlightenment is not worth a farthing. Instead of making people better than they were before, it actually makes them worse. At least ordinary people, if they have any decency, will recognize their anger as wrong. But people like the Queen wo’n’t admit anything of the sort.”

“Your problem,” replied the Cat, “is that your thinking is much too narrow. The word ‘enlightened’ is so broad and non-dualistic that it covers everything. If your notion of enlightenment does’n’t include beheading and apoplectic fits, then you’d better change your notion of enlightenment.”

“But does’n’t beheading violate the precept against killing?”

“Not when you do it in the Queen’s way. She just gives the order and does’n’t give it a second thought. That’s called the beheading of no-beheading, or the beheading of no-mind. When you do’n’t see that there’s anyone beheaded or anyone doing the beheading, then there’s no violation of any of the precepts. As far as you’re concerned, the executioner’s ax just goes between the atoms of the neck, that’s all. Have’n’t you heard the saying, ‘There are no enlightened people, only enlightened axes?’”

The saying was somewhat familiar to Alice, but she could’n’t quite put her finger on why it sounded wrong. “Should it be ‘enlightened acts’? Or ‘Enlightened Axis?’” she wondered, yet before she could open her mouth, she heard an angry voice behind her, “Just whom are you talking to, child?”

Alice turned to see that it was the Queen, in a frightfully enlightened fury over the appearance of the Cheshire-Cat floating in the air above her croquet-ground. Manifesting a little enlightenment of her own, Alice decided to get out of the way. She ran to hide behind a clump of trees that stood near, and from the relative safety of that spot she watched the Queen and Cat engage in a Dharma Combat, the Queen calling for the Cat’s beheading, and the Cat crossing its eyes and sticking its tongue out at the Queen. Within moments the executioner arrived. He tried slicing at the Cat with his ax, only to find himself slicing through thin air, as the Cat grinned mischievously, floating up and down, disappearing and reappearing at will.

“These people are impossible,” Alice concluded to herself. “There’s no way you can talk any sense into them. Perhaps the most enlightened thing would be to leave them to their games and get myself out of here.”

So that’s what she did.

Back to top

Huck & Tom’s
Buddhist Adventure

As we Americanize Buddhism, what sort of legacy are we leaving for our descendents? One way of getting a perspective on this question is to think about the legacy we would be facing if American Buddhism had gone mainstream in the 19th, instead of the 20th century. Imagine, for instance, Huckleberry Finn’s report.

Like I said last time, I knowed I was in for a heap of sivilizing soon as I got back to St. Petersburg. Still, I reckoned I could take it for a spell, at least till me and Tom could grow into our money and have ourselves some real fine adventures up and down the Mississippi. But this time around it warn’t like no sivilizing I’d ever heard tell of before.

First off, they had me go back and stay with the widow Douglas, as she was all so lonesome ever since her sister, Miss Watson, passed away. Soon as I set foot in the house, though, I knowed something was up. She had that look in her eye that meant one of two things: either she was trying to pass a gallstone something fierce or she had got religion of a sudden. Knowing her, I figured it was religion, for ain’t nothing like a sudden case of religion to spile a person’s good temper. So I laid low and minded my table manners good, so she wouldn’t take her religion out on me. But one day I slipped up and said something mean about one of the neighbors down the street, and she give me that look that showed she was exasperated but trying to be patient at the same time, and finally said, “You know, Huckleberry, the Good Book tells us that you should love thy neighbor as thy self, and my gooroo told me that that’s because thy neighbor is thyself, so everytime you say something hurtful about your neighbor, you’re hurting yourself, too.”

This was the first time I had heard any such stuff, even in a Sunday school class, so I asked her what her gooroo was. Was it a spirit like the one in the hairball Ole Jim got out of the fourth stomach of an ox? And what did it mean, thy neighbor is thyself? As far as I knew, we was different people.

Well, I shouldn’t a opened my mouth, ’cause she set full steam to a bodacious sermon about what a fine Christian man her gooroo was, and how he had gone to all that trouble to bring the true religion back from Asia, and how we was all inner connected like, so that if we feed someone else, we get full, too, and if we steal our neighbor’s money we’re stealing from ourself. I let her go on, ’cause like I said, sudden religion is like a gallstone. You just gotta let it pass and there ain’t too much you can do about it meantimes.

Still, it began to weigh on me when she commenced in on me everyday, saying that—since we was all inner connected—I had to be responsible for the whole human race. That was too many for me, for I’d seen enough on my travels with Jim to know what a cussed lot most human beings were, and I warn’t going to take no responsibility for what they did. No, sir. That’s their lookout. I have hard enough a time trying to be responsible for what I do. But she kept after me like this till I couldn’t take no more, so finally I up and said, “If I gotta be responsible for them, who’s they gonna be responsible for? And if we’s all inner connected, how come when I put food in my stomach it doesn’t all spread out and connect to theirs? How come it has to go into their stomachs first ’fore it comes back to mine? It don’t seem fair. And if we’s all the same self, how come you let your slaves wait on you all the time? Why don’t you wait on them some, too?”

The minute I said that, I knowed I’d gone too far, for the old widow she just busted out crying and sobbing about what a mean boy I was, and how could I say anything so ungrateful to her after all she had done for me? I knew she was right, it was an awful low-down mean thing to say, and only the most ornery ingrate would a said it, so I tried to make up. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean no harm. Sometimes I don’t know what gets into me. I’ll do anything to make it up to you.” But it was a long time before I could smooth her down, and even then it was kind a heavy in the house for a couple a days.

Then the widow got word that her gooroo was coming back to town to give a three-day teaching, so she lightened up considerable and got to humming to herself like an angel half-full of cream pie. By-and-by she said to me that if I really did want to make up for the mean thing I’d said, I’d go and listen to the teaching along with her.

Lawsy, warn’t I in a fix? I sure didn’t want to listen to no more Sunday school truck, but I reckoned the only way to last it out with the widow was to tag along, so I finally said I’d go.

I started seeing bills for the gooroo posted around town a few days before his arrival. His name was Lama Roshi, and the bill went like this:

At the Courthouse

for three afternoons only!!!

Direct from their 20 year spiritual quest

in the mystic East!!!

His high sanctimoniousness

LAMA ROSHI!

and the right venerable

BHANTE SUNIM!

will give precious teachings on:

“The Bouddhist Path

Now Leads into the World!”

Suggested donation 50 cents

Slaves & children free.

I asked Tom Sawyer to go along with me, ’cause I didn’t think nobody in town but me and the widow Douglas was going to show up at the teachings. Tom decided this would be a good time to practice our detective skills, so he went to the town library and got out the only book they had on Bouddhism and read up some so’s he’d be able to tell if the Lama was a fraud.

But was I ever wrong about nobody showing up! The courthouse was packed. And I’m lucky it was, ’cause otherwise Lama Roshi would a spotted me in the back row. I say I was lucky ’cause Lama Roshi warn’t nobody else but that old rapscallion, the king, only this time, he had his head shaved and sat himself up in a high seat all wrapped up in this big black robe looking holy and fearsome as if he had just stepped right out of the burning bush with nary a singe.

Well, when the crowd settled in, he started out chanting low and mournful and would a raised the spirits out of the cemetery ten miles outside of town if it’d been midnight. It gave me the fantods just to hear it, even in broad daylight. Then he made an announcement that Bhante Sunim had some pressing ’gagements back East and so warn’t able to attend this special teaching but sent his personal blessings to everybody there. It didn’t take too much hard thinking to figure out that Bhante Sunim was the duke, and that he’d got himself into some trouble down river and so couldn’t show his face till it had all blowed over.

At any rate, the king started talking about all the many years he’d wandered around Asia seeking true religion, sitting days on end in Zen monasteries where all the monks sat in a row with their legs all tied up in knots, except for the chief monk who walked up and down with a big stick he’d use to whack you upside the head without no warnin’; then getting sealed into a cave for months and months in the frozen Himalayas without no food or water, so’s you had to depend on angels to feed you and keep you warm and so on. I knew it was all a passel of lies, ’cause I had seen the duke and the king tarred and feathered down south just a few months before, but, my souls, it sure did make a fine tale! I could tell that Tom Sawyer was ruminating about what bully adventures we’d have if we could ever get passage over there to Asia ourselves.

Then the king started giving the teachings he had learnt on his quest, and, my, did he ever spread himself out! And with such style! It was such a rattling good talk that even a perfessor with degrees as long as your arm couldn’t a understood a half of it! The only part I could catch was that there was two kinds of people in this world, Hyenayanists and Mohayanists. The Hyenayanists was a bunch of low-down, good-for-nothing dead-beats only looking out for their own skin, while the Mohayanists was the finest, most up-standingest Christian folk you might ever hope to meet. The king he said that after all his years of suffering on the spiritual path, he realized that the Asians made it so hard ’cause they warn’t nothing but a bunch a heathens, and so had to have ’lightenment wholloped into their heads. But we here in America—especially the good folks here in this fair town of St. Petersburg—had a headstart on them ’cause of our fine, sivilized Christian upbringing, so all we needed was to hear his teachings for a few more sessions and we’d get ’lightened, too.

Well, you can imagine what a rousing reception everybody gave to a talk like that! Widow Douglas she had tears in her eyes, saying she ain’t heard such fine preachering in all her sixty-one years a going to church. Somebody said the Lama’s fine missionary work deserved more than just 50 cents a head, so they started passing the hat—only they called it the Donna basket—and took in upwards of another fifty dollars. At first the king refused to accept it, saying that it was his honored privilege to be teaching such good-hearted folks, and didn’t want one red cent of their hard-earned money, but finally they pressed him enough so he couldn’t say no. Then somebody else up and asked where he was going to spend the night, and the king said he’d found himself an abandoned old shanty just outside of town that was perfect for a simple monk like him to meddle-tate in. Well, the widow Douglas she pipes up at that, saying she wouldn’t stand for it. She wouldn’t see her gooroo sleeping out in a place like that when she had a guest bedroom just a-begging for his holy presence. So everybody volunteered to go right then and there to get the king’s bags from the shanty and fetch them up to the widow’s place.

The king he looked like he was in a spot when he heard that, but then he recovered enough to thank them kindly, saying he’d have to pack the bags himself first before they took them, ’cause he had all kinds of sacred texts that had to be wrapped up just right. Well, when I heard that, I would a bet a di’mond palace full of chewing gum that his “sacred texts” was his jug, and he didn’t want nobody to catch sight of it. I said as much to Tom Sawyer when we left the courthouse, and so we hatched ourselves a plan.

That evening, while the king was setting in the parlor with the widow, talking high and pious about inner connectedness, Tom come shimmying up the lightning rod to my window and we snuck into the guest bedroom. It warn’t too long before we found the jug, ’cause the king had just stashed it under a pile of robes in the closet. I was all for taking it down right away to show the widow, but Tom told me not to touch it, ’cause if our fingerprints was on it, the king could say we planted it. So we had to figure out some way to pick it up without getting our own fingerprints on it or smudging the king’s. While we was setting there a-figuring, we heard a noise coming up the stairway, so we jumped up and shut ourselves into the closet with the jug and held our breath tight till we knew what was up.

Well, it was the king himself coming into the room. He lit a lamp, sat down on the bed, and started counting the money he’d got that day, all the while chuckling, quiet-like. It warn’t long, though, before there was a tap-tap-tap at the window. We could hear the king walking over to the window and opening it up, and then there was the sound of somebody dragging himself into the room, and then the voice of the duke. “How’d we make out today, your sanctimoniousness?”

“Fine. Jest fine, ven’rable sir,” the king said. “I slipped some grub off the table up the sleeve of my robe when nobody was a-lookin’, so’s you’d have somethin’ to eat, and just look at thish-yer haul we got this afternoon! And this bein’ jest the first day! What a bunch of rubes!” The duke he sounded mighty happy himself, so the king said, “I say this calls for a little celebration, don’t you, venerable? I’ll go get the jug.”

Tom and I knew that there warn’t no way the king wouldn’t see us if he was to open the closet door, so we did the only thing we could do. Even before the king got to the door, we opened it up from the inside and jumped out, staring him straight in the eye.

The king went stark white, seeing as we had found him out, but the duke he was quicker’n a cat cornered in a pantry. “Well, I see you boys passed the test,” he said, with a sudden big smile on his face.

There was dead silence in the room for a full minute, and then Tom asked, “What test?”

“Why, the test we set to see who were the smartest and bravest people in this town. We acted suspicious on purpose to see if there was anybody around here smart enough to have suspicions and want to check up on us. And only the bravest and quick-wittedest boys in the state of Missouri would have jumped out of the closet the way you did just now, ’stead of just cowering there. So it looks like you two are the only ones with head and heart enough to deserve a direct transmission of our secret teachings. But we can give them to you only on the condition that you swear the direst oath to secrecy. Are you boys man enough for that?”

Well, I don’t need to tell you that there warn’t nobody like Tom Sawyer who was such a corn-meal muffin for buttering up, especially when they was oaths and secrets involved. “What kind of oath?” he asked.

So the king started reciting the oath, saying that we’d have to vow not to bad-mouth womenfolks and not snitch on our gooroos and not go consnortin’ with Hyenayanists or else we’d be willin’ to die the most horriblest death and have jackals tear our bodies into a million bits while we plunked down to the lowest hell to eat nothin’ but molten iron and fire and brimstone for aeons and aeons if we ever so much as thought of retractin’ our oath, to say nothin’ of what would happen if we actually disobeyed it, cross our hearts and hope to die three million different blood-curdlin’ deaths.

Tom and I agreed that it was a powerful fine oath and made a body tingle just to think about it. He was all for taking it right away and I couldn’t think of no way to stall him, so even though I didn’t trust the king and duke no further than I could a tossed a dead cow, we both went ahead and took the oath right then and there. I kept my fingers crossed on the sly, though, just in case, and I’m glad I did or I wouldn’t a lived to write this stuff down.

At any rate, once we had swored our oath, the king sat us down and said,

“All right, boys. The first secret Bouddhist teaching is that there ain’t no such thing as good ’n’ evil.”

“Wait a minute,” Tom said. “I got a book on Bouddhism out of the library this morning, and it said that the Bouddhist teaching was to do no evil, to develop skillfulness, and to clean out the mind.”

“That’s right, boy. That’s right. But that’s Asian Bouddhism. We’s talking about American Bouddhism. The principles is diffrent.”

“But the book said that that was the Dharma, and the Dharma is truth. Ain’t the truth the same everywheres?”

The king he didn’t say nothing right off but just put his left hand up in the air. “It all depends on your pint of view. Looky here. Which side of the room is my hand in?”

“The north side,” I answered.

“Now you hush up, Huckleberry. You don’t have ’nuff schoolin’ to know how to answer these-yer questions. You’s supposed to say it’s in the right side of the room.”

“All right,” said Tom. “It’s in the right side of the room.”

“But from my pint of view it’s in the left side, see? See how much diffrence there is ’tween us when we look at things from diffrent sides of the room? Now them ther’ Asians, they’s on the diffrent side of the world. Why, when the sun’s going down here, it’s going up ther’. And when it’s going up here, it’s going down ther’. So the truth over ther’ and the truth over here is bound to be two diffrent things.”

Tom allowed as the king might be right, but I kept my thoughts to myself. The duke started in then, saying that in Asia the truth was what some old monk told you, but over here the truth is what sells. “If people don’t buy it,” he said, “it ain’t true. That’s why we have democracy and a jury system. Over there in Asia, the students have to say what the teacher wants to hear, but here in America, the teacher has to say what the students want to hear. I should know,” he said, putting his hand over his heart, kind a soulful like, “’cause I’ve been trained at the knee of thespianism and journalism, those two most noble professions that form the sacred basis for American Dharma.”

“Yep, the truth is whatever sells,” said the king. “And ain’t nothing sells like tellin’ people that what they’s already doin’ is jest fine. Why d’you think we keep tellin’ ’em that the Bouddha’s path, now that it’s come here to America, heads back into the world?”

“I—I don’t know,” Tom answered. “Does it mean they’re already just right like they are?”

“My, you do catch on fast—don’t you, boy?” said the king. “That’s jest percisely what it means. Fer do-gooder types, like old widow Douglas, bless ’er soul, it means they kin keep runnin’ ’round tryin’ to be helpful and sens’tive to the feelin’s of others, and feel mighty righteous about it meantimes. As fer the rest of us, it means we kin jest go ahead and have ourselves a good time, ’cause the do-gooders will look after us, and ther’ ain’t no world better’n this.”

“That’s the secret meaning of the teaching on skillfulness and cleaning out the mind,” the duke chimed in. “Evil ain’t evil if you do it up skillful enough. Just keep your mind in the present and don’t let it think about the past or future. Good and evil come from thinking too much, you know. You’ve got to clean out your mind like this until it’s no-mind. Then you don’t have to remember what you’ve done in the past or worry about the future, so there’s no remorse or contrition or sin.”

“’Course you gotta be k’yerful about who you do it with, though, to make sure they’re skillful, too,” interrupted the king, cramping the duke’s style a mite. “Like Bilgewater, er, Bhante Sunim, here,” he continued. “He was havin’ hisself a high ol’ time with a pretty young thing down Arkansaw way when she started gettin’ unskillful ’nuff to remember that she had a husband and children back home. That’s why he’s on the lam at the moment, and couldn’t show up at the teachin’ today. So you can’t be too k’yerful.”

He took a long breath. “Well, I reckon that’s ’nuff secret teachin’s fer you two younguns tonight. I bet your brains is jest spinnin’. Why don’t you jest head on down to bed, now? ’Xcuse us, but the duke and me we need to get in some serious time on our skillful drinkin’ practice ’fore we hit the hay.”

So Tom and I said good night and went back to my room. When we got there, I asked him, “Well, what do you think, Tom Sawyer?”

“What do you think, Huck Finn?”

I thought a spell and said, “What I think is that some things may be right and left, like the king says, but there’s a plenty a things that’re north and south. I don’t wanta have nothing to do with that king and his truck.”

But Tom he got a funny look in his eyes and said, “I don’t know, Huck. I think you’re missing something here. What the king says has got lots of possibilities.”

He started getting lost in his thoughts, and I didn’t feel too comfortable about what he had said, so we didn’t talk too much after that. By-and-by he said good night and slid down the lightning rod. I set to thinking a while. Here was Tom Sawyer with all his book learning, and you had to give a body credit for that, but at the same time it couldn’t help him tell a real genuwine lama apart from a two-bit scoundrel like the king. In fact, it even got in the way of him seeing that the king was up to no good. If that was the case, I reckoned, I didn’t want to have no more to do with book learning or these town people and their sivilizing. So don’t be surprised if you don’t see me round here no more. It means I’ve lit out for Injun territory. Maybe the folks out there will make more sense.

Yours truly, Huck Finn

Back to top

 

Bodhisattva in the Rye

The new edition of the college textbook The Buddhist Religion cites J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye as an example of Buddhist influences on modern American literature. We can imagine Holden Caulfield’s reaction:

If you really want to know the truth, I wasn’t going to write anything more about all that crazy stuff that happened the week after I got kicked out of Pencey. It was bad enough after D. B.—he’s my brother, in case you don’t remember—talked me into letting them publish the book and all. First off, these crazy literary critics got hold of it and kept talking about what a dumb book it was and what an unoriginal moron I was to say the things I was trying to say. As if, like, you were lying in the street run over by a car and you’d have to be terribly original about how you were bleeding on the pavement if you wanted these guys to even look at you. That was bad enough.

Then these hot-shot academic types got their hands on it. That was even worse. They kept finding all this deep meaning every time I swore to God or felt under my coat for my secret wound. That was enough to make me swear off writing forever.

But now I’ve found out that some madman has put my name in this stupid textbook on Buddhism, saying that I was some kind of secret Zen master leaving all these suave little clues about koans and satori all over the book, and I dunno, I just couldn’t let it pass. I mean, it’s one thing when literary types write about you, and you let on that you didn’t read it, because nobody expects anybody to read that garbage anyhow. But if somebody says you’re a Zen master and you just keep quiet, it’s like you’re doing some kind of Zen thing and playing along with them. I’ve read a little about those Zen guys and they seem pretty sharp. How would they feel if they heard that some jerk like me was being called a Zen master like them? Old Lin-chi probably wouldn’t say anything. He was pretty cool, but God, Dogen, I don’t think he’d go for it at all. And, like, even though they wouldn’t say anything, that would make it worse, if you know what I mean. So I felt I had to stop playing deaf and dumb and set the record straight.

Like that business about the ducks in Central Park. You, know, the part where I say,

I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.

I’m lucky, though. I mean I could shoot the old bull to old Spencer and think about those ducks at the same time. It’s funny. You don’t have to think too hard when you talk to a teacher.

They made it out like I’m giving some super subtle little hint here that the duck thing is my own personal koan, that secretly I’m meditating on it all the time and, like, I’m leaving Pencey because I haven’t yet found anyone worthy to be my true master and all. For Chrissake, you’d think everybody would know that you can have a million things running through your head when you’re shooting the bull with someone like old Spence. But, no, they have to go make me out like some super-modest secret meditator. Holden Z. Caulfield, Secret Zenbo. Give me a break.

Then they go on and say I was so obsessed with my koan that I even put it to taxicab drivers, on account of they’re the ones that always seem to know everything about everything. I admit that I sort of brought up the topic with a coupla cab drivers, but jeez, when you’re sitting in a cab you gotta talk about something. You can’t just sit there like some sort of stuck-up snob pretending the driver isn’t even a person. That’s the heighth of rudeness.

And yeah, I was pretty depressed when I got around to checking out the scene at the old lagoon at 3 a.m. in the morning. That’s supposed to stand for the dark night of my Great Death when I’ve hit a dead end with my koan, but who wouldn't be depressed when you think that you’re going to die of pneumonia and start imagining all the dopey relatives that are going to show up at your funeral?

The problem, though, is that it doesn't stop with the ducks. They bring up this part, too:

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the edge of the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.

You wouldn't believe what they say about this one. I’m supposed to be some sort of bodhisattva, for Chrissake. Just because you want to help people without a whole lot of ego getting in the way doesn't mean you have to be some sort of bodhisattva, you know. And then they talk about what they call my Japanese Zen values, and like how I admire how sincere the drummer in the Radio City Music Hall Orchestra is when he plays his old drum, or how I liked that scrawny kid James Castle, who committed suicide rather than take back what he said. Jeez. Can’t a guy just like the few good people around without having to have some reason every time?

The worst part, though, is what they say about the business at the end. You know, where I get so happy watching Phoebe, my sister, riding around on the carousel in Central Park. That was my favorite part—the only part that made any sense, in a way—so of course they have to go screw it all up. They say that’s my satori, would you believe it? That just happened, for Chrissake. I swear, can’t things just sort of happen without having any meaning, for crying out loud?

There’s more, but it’s so depressing I don’t even want to talk about it. All I can say is, don’t believe a word of what those crazy bastards say. If you’re looking for a Secret Zenbo, try old Buddy Glass. He really knows how to chuck that Zen bull around with the best of them. Like in Seymour, An Introduction. The only good part of the whole book—the only part you really care about, I mean—is what Seymour said when his parents were all mad at his kid brother for giving away his new bike to some total stranger. That’s the only thing you really want to know, because it’s so perfect and all, but that’s the one thing old Buddy won’t tell. At first I didn't understand, because I thought he was just trying to be coy about it, but now I do. Now I understand. If you put something down on paper, even if it’s all perfect just as it is, everybody who reads it thinks that it belongs to them and they can twist it all up any old way they like.

So I’ve learned my lesson. If you have anything that really means a lot to you, don’t go writing it down. Maybe you can write around it, like, but don’t go writing it down. Nobody I know ever knows enough to leave anything alone.

Back to top

Winnie-the-Buddhist

In Which P. B. Law Imagines What Would Happen If Christopher Robin Taught the Forest Animals about Buddhism

When the animals awoke in the Forest that morning, they all knew that something had changed, but not until the sleep had fully left their heads and seeped back into their pillows did they begin to remember what it was. Yesterday afternoon Christopher Robin had returned from school, where he had learned about Buddhism. After explaining it to them, he told them that he was now a Buddhist and wanted to know if anyone wanted to join him.

Of course, because they all loved him, the animals had said Yes without really stopping to think. But now they found themselves thinking very hard about what being a Buddhist might mean. Winnie the Pooh lay in bed, asking himself, “Does this mean I have to do something differently? What do Buddhists do with their mornings and afternoons? I hope I don’t have to give up my little-something-at-eleven-o’clock.” This thought made him feel so all-over hungry that he had to get up and go to his cupboard to find something to sustain himself.

When he had finished his breakfast, Pooh wandered over to Piglet’s house to see if Piglet could remember anything Christopher Robin had said yesterday. Halfway there, he found Piglet sitting in their Thoughtful Spot trying to think as thoughtfully as he could.

“Hallo, Piglet,” said Pooh. “What are you thinking about?”

“Oh, hallo, Pooh,” said Piglet. “I was trying to remember what Christopher Robin said yesterday, but I can’t get all the words in my head at the same time. Some of the things sounded very grand and friendly, like Noble Truths and even some of the bigger things, like loving kindness. But some of the other things didn't seem very much like things at all—suffering and emptiness and what-not. At least they didn't seem to be so very to me.”

“I was about to say the same thing myself,” said Pooh. “Maybe we should go ask Owl. He has a good brain that can remember long things without their getting all wobbly.”

So they set out together for Owl’s Tree. When they arrived there they found a new sign posted by the door. Owl had meant for the sign to say, “Buddhist Scholar,” but this is what he had actually written:

HBDDUSST CLLCTRSLROH

“What does that say?” asked Pooh.

“Something about dust, I think, but I can’t say for sure,” said Piglet. “Owl’s brain is so roomy that he can store more letters in his words than I can.”

So Pooh pulled on Owl’s bell ringer and knocked on his door. After a moment Owl called out, “Go away. I’m thinking…. Oh, it’s you. What do you want?” For that was his way with everybody.

“Now that we’re Buddhists,” Pooh said to him, “we’re trying to find out what Buddhists do. So we can do it.”

“They look for Awakening,” said Owl. “That’s what they do.”

“But what’s a Wakening?” asked Piglet in a casual sort of way to show that he wasn't afraid of Animals with Unfamiliar Names. “Is it a Friendly Animal, or one of the Fiercer Sorts?”

“There are three kinds,” Owl replied. “Sudden, gradual, and rude.”

“Oh,” said Piglet, suddenly remembering that Christopher Robin had talked about this yesterday. “I only remembered the first two.”

“The third is the most commonly spotted,” said Owl.

Piglet did not like the sound of Sudden and Spotted Rude Wakening's, for they sounded too bouncy, like Tigger. He preferred a Wakening that would be fond of Very Small Animals and wouldn't jump on them without warning. So he said in a casual voice to Pooh, “I think it would be a Finer Thing to look for one of the shy ones, don’t you, Pooh? Like the gradual ones. They might be grateful that we took the trouble.”

“Yes,” said Pooh. “They’d be the most likely to greet you in a friendly way and offer you a little honey as a hallo-getting-to-know-you kind of present. They do have honey, don’t they, Owl?”

“That I can’t say for sure. You can never tell with Awakening.”

“But how do you find Gradual Wakening's?” asked Piglet. “Do you call for them? Or do you set a trap? And how do you make sure that you wouldn't catch Sudden or Rude Wakening's? Because we wouldn't want to cause them any inconvenience. It would be a shame to catch them and then tell them to go home because we caught them by mistake. Especially if they’re Sudden or Rude.”

“The only way to find Awakening is with long words, although there’s some disagreement as to which ones work best,” said Owl, “You might try ‘Momentariness’ or ‘Non-duality’ or ‘Interconnectedness.’”

“Inner neck—Bother,” said Pooh quietly to himself. “That sounds like too much for a Bear of Very Little Brain.” So he turned to Piglet and said, “I think we should go give it a try. What do you say to that, Piglet?”

Piglet didn't feel quite prepared to catch a Wakening, especially if long words were required, but he didn't like saying No to Pooh, so he agreed in as agreeable a way as he could muster. Then they said Good-bye to Owl, who added helpfully as they were walking away that they might also want to try “Mental Concomitants.” But when they had gone off far enough that he couldn't hear them, Pooh whispered to Piglet, “I don’t want to be disrespectful to anyone who knows how to spell TUESDAY, and certainly Owl’s brain is very fine for Keeping Things, but it’s not so good at Putting Them Together in a Useful Way. I don’t feel he really knows as much about Wakening's as he lets on. Why don’t we go over to Eeyore’s place? Perhaps he will have some more Helpful ideas about how a Wakening might be found.”

Piglet agreed that this was a splendid idea, as Eeyore was the most gradual and un-Tigger-like animal in the Forest. As they walked along, a little Wondering Hum started coming to Pooh. After humming it to himself first, to make sure all the words had found their proper places, he hummed it aloud to Piglet in a wondering sort of way:

If a Wak’ning gradually came upon a Pooh,

Would it say Hallo or holler Boo?

Or ask a tricky question

As would curdle his digestion,

Such as “Are there What's?” or maybe “What’s a Who?”

 

If a Wak’ning rudely ran into a Bear,

Would it pat his fur or pull his hair?

Or offer him some honey

And tell him something funny,

Such as “Now is Here, but Nothing’s Anywhere”?

 

If a sudden Wak’ning dropped down from the sky

Would it land on Piglet or nearby?

Or quiz him with a quiz

About what isn’t and what is

And why his “Me” is really not his “I”?

 

If a Spotted Wak’ning perched up in a tree,

Would it pounce on you or bounce on me?

Or say it’s all the same,

That we’re all of us to blame,

’Cos He is You are I am They are We?

Pooh was about to hum the first verse again, to make a Round sort of Hum, when he realized that perhaps this was not the best Hum to be humming to Piglet at this hour of the morning. After all, sometimes a Hum might seem very hummish when it’s inside you, but when it’s outside for other people to listen to, you realize it wasn't so very hummish after all.

Piglet seemed to be thinking the same sort of thoughts, for he said to Pooh, “You know, Pooh, I don’t think a Wondering Hum is the Hum we need just now. I would rather you thought of a Comforting Hum or an Encouraging Hum or a How-Brave-You-Are-Piglet-hup-hup kind of Hum. And besides, now that I think of it, even though Gradual Wakening's might be fond of Piglets, there are two kinds of Fond, you know. There’s the how-nice-to-see-you-won’t-you-have-some-of-my-haycorns kind of Fond. And then there’s the my-my-how-tasty-you-look kind of Fond. And how will we know which kind of Fond it is until it’s already too late and I’ve just remembered I have something very urgent to do at my house just about now….”

“Don’t worry,” said Pooh. “We’re both in a wondering sort of way because Owl has got us all confused. But I’m sure that when we see Eeyore he will end our confusion, and then a Very Encouraging Hum will come to me.” So Piglet decided that the urgent thing wasn't so very urgent after all, and they continued on their way.

When they came upon Eeyore, they found him sitting next to his thistles, talking to himself. “Ideals,” he said. “Sweet nothings. Pathetic.”

“Hallo, Eeyore!” called Piglet. “We’re looking for a Wakening!”

“Well, you’re not going to find it if you look for it. You’re already as awakened as you’re ever going to be. Which isn’t much. Ha-ha. That’s a joke.”

“But we don’t want to be a weekend,” said Pooh. “Maybe you didn't hear us properly. We’re looking for a Wakening, and we don’t know where to look. Or what to do with it if we find it.”

“You look inside your self. Which doesn’t exist,” Eeyore replied. “That’s another little joke. This Buddhism business is very humorous, if you ask me.”

“But we thought—,” said Pooh.

“We wanted—,” said Piglet.

“That’s the problem,” said Eeyore. “All this thinking and wanting. You want things to Make Sense so you can make them better than they are, but that only makes them worse. All you can do is Accept that things are Just The Way They Are and can’t get any better than they are, and stop all this silly thinking.”

But all three of them were now thinking very busily to themselves. Piglet was thinking that thinking and wanting were sometimes very Helpful, if you put them together in the Right Way, and Pooh was thinking that maybe Eeyore wasn’t turning out to be so Encouraging after all, while Eeyore was thinking, “No grey matter in their heads, these two. Just grey fluff.”

But before any of them could say anything, Rabbit came rushing into Eeyore’s clearing with a Very Important Air about him, a Captainish sort of Air, an If It Weren’t for Me, Nothing Would Ever Get Done Around Here sort of Air. “Hallo, Eeyore!” he called. “Oh, and you’re here too, Pooh. And Piglet. Excellent.”

“Hallo, Rabbit!” they all replied.

“Well, I haven’t much time to chat, but here’s a notice I wrote out for you.” And he gave them each a slip of paper with writing on it. “Now that we’re all Buddhists, we need to organize a Buddhist Group that Does Things and Engages and Elects Officials. So I’ve called a meeting for this afternoon in the Meeting Place, and that’s what it says here on the notice, in case you can’t read.

“Will we find a Wakening at the meeting?” asked Piglet.

“Who has time for Awakening,” replied Rabbit, “when our Reputation is at stake? Well, I have to run off to Owl’s Place now, to give him his notice, but I’ll see you this afternoon.” And in a flash he was gone.

“Hah!” said Eeyore scornfully. “And I thought Rabbit had Brain.” Then he picked up his notice with his teeth and placed it next to a patch of thistles. “That,” he explained to Pooh and Piglet, “is so I can eat it by mistake, if you know what I mean, when I have my lunch, and then when Rabbit asks why I didn't show up at the meeting I can tell him that something ate my notice.”

“Here, Eeyore, you can eat ours, too,” said Pooh helpfully, as he and Piglet placed their notices on the ground in front of him.

“Why, thank you,” said Eeyore. “How thoughtful of you. Not like some.” And he picked up their notices with his teeth and placed them next to his.

Now that they had done Something Nice for Eeyore, Pooh and Piglet decided it would be a good time to take their leave. So they said their good-byes and continued on their way.

But as they walked along, they realized that they were not feeling any more comforted or encouraged than before. In fact, they were feeling very less. Pooh tried to think of an Encouraging Hum for Piglet, but all that came to his mind was a Hum he had caught from Eeyore, which went like this:

Oh, we’ll never find a Wakening,

No, not even if we try,

So we’ll just continue wondering

And never know quite why.

 

Oh, we’ll never find a Wakening,

Especially if we try,

So we’ll have to keep on wandering

Until—ha, ha—we die.

This Eeyore Hum was much more Discouraging than the Owlish Hum he had hummed before, so he decided that it would be a Very Bad Hum to hum out loud to Piglet. But even though he hummed it just to himself, it was bringing him to the Sad Conclusion that they might never be good Buddhists and find themselves a Wakening at all.

But Piglet wasn't paying any attention to Pooh for there were noises around the corner on the path before them. Unexpected noises. Unfamiliar noises. Noises that made him apprehensive at first, but then made him say, “Oh.”

And then, “I do believe—.”

And then, excitedly, “Pooh, Pooh, do you hear what I hear? I think it’s Christopher Robin.”

And suddenly Pooh felt that this was turning out to be a much better Buddhist day than it had been, and that maybe they would find their Wakening after all. For there, indeed, when they had turned the corner of the path, was Christopher Robin coming in their direction.

“Christopher Robin! Christopher Robin!” they called out excitedly as they went rushing up to hug him. “We’ve been Buddhist all morning and looking for a Wakening.” — “Because Owl said—” “But then Eeyore—“ “And we weren’t—"

So Christopher Robin waited until they had calmed down and could tell him everything that had happened in its Proper Order. When they had finished, he wanted to laugh and laugh out loud, but they looked so dejected that he only laughed to himself and said, “Oh, Pooh. And Piglet. I do love you so.”

As that made them feel much better, he took them back to their Thoughtful Spot and sat them down and explained everything he could remember about Buddhism and Awakening in very short words that even a Very Small Animal and a Bear with Very Little Brain could understand. Pooh and Piglet said, “Oh,” and “I see,” and “But I thought—” so many times that they began to feel like Very Foolish Animals Indeed. But then Christopher Robin cheered them up by saying, “Still, what you did was the Wisest Thing any animal could do. Given the circumstances.”

“Really?” said Piglet, brightening.

“Do you mean that?” said Pooh, feeling a little more like That Sort of Bear again. “Given the sorghumstishes—whatever they were?”

“Yes, of course,” said Christopher Robin. “When you don’t understand something, the Wisest Thing is to ask questions. Just be more careful about who you ask them to.”

“But who do we ask,” asked Piglet, “when you’re not here to ask them to?”

“Ask questions of yourself.”

“But which questions should we ask?”

“Oh, questions like: ‘What am I doing right now?’ and ‘Is it making me happy and the other animals happy?’ and ‘Is that a Long Happy or just a Short Happy?’ And then you do only the things that make a Long Happy. Can you try that?”

“Yes, of course,” said Piglet bravely. “I’ll try.”

But Pooh was stopped for a moment by the thought that even just a Longish Happy might mean having to share some of his pots of honey before he had fully examined their contents. Then he thought of how much he trusted Christopher Robin, so he finally said, “So will I.”

Back to top

Le Petit Nicolas et la pleine conscience

Hier, en fin de journée, M. Mouchabière — c’est le surveillant qui assiste le Bouillon, qui est notre vrai surveillant — nous a dit que sa petite soeur venait de rentrer d’Amérique.

— Chouette ! » on a tous dit. « Est-ce qu’elle a vu des cowboys et des Indiens ? Est-ce que les Indiens l’ont capturée ? Comment est-ce qu’elle s’est échappée ? Et est-ce que c’est vrai que les Indiens habitent dans des tipis ? »

M. Mouchabière a ri un peu et il a dit, « Non, non, petits fous. Elle n’est pas allée en Amérique pour voir des cowboys et des Indiens. Elle y est allée pour découvrir la pleine conscience et a obtenu un diplôme pour l’enseigner. Et demain, elle viendra vous l’enseigner. J’en ai déjà parlé avec M. le Directeur, et il pense comme moi que cela pourrait apporter un peu de sérénité à la classe et à la cour de récréation. »

On est sortis de l’école, et Alceste — mon copain qui mange tout le temps — a demandé, « La pleine conscience : qu’est-ce que c’est, ça ? »

Moi, je ne savais pas. Mais Clotaire a dit qu’il avait vu à la télé que la pleine conscience est une méditation pour manger très lentement des raisins secs. Et que c’est les sages de l’Inde qui ont découvert ça.

— Et pourquoi ils mangent lentement leurs raisins secs ? » a demandé Alceste.

— T’es pas un peu fou ? » Maixent a repondu. « Tu sais vraiment rien de rien. L’Inde est un pays très pauvre. Là-bas, les sages n’ont que des raisins secs à manger. C’est pour ça qu’ils sont si maigres. »

— Mais la soeur de M. Mouchabière a appris la pleine conscience en Amérique, » j’ai dit. « Peut-être qu’elle va nous l’enseigner à l’américaine, avec des tas de hamburgers et de frites. »

Ça, ça a plu à Alceste, qui est rentré chez lui en courant. Avec lui, dès qu’on parle de choses à manger, il ne reste pas longtemps. Il doit tout de suite rentrer chez lui pour le goûter.

Mais aujourd’hui on a tous été déçus, parce qu’on a appris la pleine conscience ni à l’américaine, ni à l’indienne. Le directeur est entré dans la classe avec une petite demoiselle très chic.

— Bonjour, » il a dit à la maîtresse. « Je vous présente Mlle Mouchabière, notre nouvelle spécialiste de la pleine conscience. J’espère qu’elle va apporter un peu de sérénité à cette classe. »

Puis il s’est tourné vers nous et il a dit, « Les enfants, voici Mlle Mouchabière qui va vous apprendre la pleine conscience. Je suis sûr que vous allez beaucoup en profiter. » Et il est sorti. La maîtresse avait l’air un peu méfiante, mais elle n’a rien dit.

— Bonjour, mes enfants » nous a dit Mlle Mouchabière avec un grand sourire. « Je suis votre amie. Je suis très heureuse de faire votre connaissance, et je suis sûr que vous allez adorer la pleine conscience. Qu’est-ce que c’est la pleine conscience ? C’est un effort sans effort d’être conscient de tout ce que vous ressentez. On laisse les choses se manifester telles qu’elles sont, sans les juger, sans les changer. C’est pour ça qu’avec la pleine conscience, vous ne serez pas notés. Il n’y aura pas de premier ou de dernier de la classe. Vous serez tous égaux. Vos sensations elles aussi sont toutes égales. Par exemple, si vous avez faim, restez présent à cette sensation de faim. Si vous vous sentez rassasiés, soyez présent à cette sensation. Laissez vos émotions bourgeonner et éclore à la surface de votre conscience, tel le nénuphare à la surface de l’eau.

La pleine conscience, il n’est pas nécessaire de la chercher. Elle est toujours là. Mais quelquefois c’est nous qui ne sommes pas présents à notre pleine conscience. C’est pourquoi nous allons faire quelques exercises qui vont nous ramener au moment présent. Commençons par un petit jeu qui va nous permettre d’entrer en contact avec notre corps. Fermez les yeux. Imaginez qu’il y a une petite fourmi sur votre pied. »

— Mais mademoiselle, » a dit Alceste. « On ne peut pas manger les fourmis. J’ai déjà essayé une fois, et ça fait mal. Mêmes les sages de l’Inde, ils ne mangent pas les fourmis. »

— Non, mon petit, on ne va pas la manger la petite fourmi, » a dit Mlle Mouchabière. « On va la laisser se promener et explorer notre corps. »

— Quoi ? On va faire de la pleine conscience sans rien manger? » a dit Alceste.

— Oui, » a dit Mlle Mouchabière.

— Bah, » a dit Alceste. « Comment on peut faire de la conscience pleine avec le ventre vide? » Et il a sorti une tartine de sa poche et il a commencé à la manger.

Mlle Mouchabière a eu l’air un peu surprise, et elle a dit, « Bon, finissez votre tartine, et nous commençerons après. »

Quand Alceste a fini sa tartine, elle a dit, « Alors, imaginez que la petite fourmi grimpe lentement sur votre pied. Oups ! Elle est tombée entre vos doigts de pied. Qu’est-ce qu’elle sent là ? Mais elle ne reste pas longtemps. Elle remonte sur votre pied et elle grimpe lentement le long de votre jambe. Et là, qu’est-ce qu’elle sent ? Elle marche vers votre genou… »

— Non, non! Pas de fourmis sur mon genou ! » a crié Agnan, le premier de la classe et le chouchou de la maîtresse. « Elles me donnent la chair de poule. Elles grimpent, elles grimpent ! »

— Agnan, » a crié la maitresse. « Calmez-vous ! »

— Non, madame, » a dit Mlle Mouchabière à la maîtresse. « Excusez moi, mais quand on apprend la pleine conscience, il faut qu’il y ait une atmosphère de tendresse, sans jugement, ni punition. Agnan, imaginez que votre fourmi a des pattes toutes douces et légères. Elle vous touche mais vous ne la sentez pas. D’accord? »

— D’accord, » a dit Agnan, mais il a fait « hou, hou, hou » tout le temps à voix basse.

— Bien, » a dit Mlle Mouchabière. « Où en étions-nous ? Ah, oui, au genou. La fourmi continue à grimper le long de la jambe jusqu’à la hanche. Qu’est-ce qu’elle sent là ? » Et elle a continué à guider la petite fourmi jusqu’à la nuque. C’est là que j’ai vu Geoffroy, assis derrière Agnan, lui faire des guilis-guilis sur la nuque. Agnan a poussé un cri et est tombé par terre en se roulant en boule et en hurlant que personne ne l’aimait, et qu’il voulait mourir.

— Agnan, » a dit la maîtresse. « Tenez-vous tranquille ! Et vous, Geoffroy, je vous ai vu. Vous êtes insupportable ! Au piquet! »

Et elle a regardé Mlle Mouchabière en faisant les gros yeux. Mlle Mouchabière a hesité, et puis elle a dit, « Bon, Geoffroy, allez au piquet. Mais allez-y en pleine conscience. »

Geoffroy s’est levé tout doucement, et il a marché lentement, très lentement, au piquet.

— Geoffroy, plus vite que ça ! » a dit la maîtresse.

— Mais… j’y… vais… en… pleine… con-… science » a dit Geoffroy, pas à pas.

La maîtresse a regardé Mlle Mouchabière encore une fois sans bouger les yeux.

— Euh, oui, Geoffroy, » elle a dit. « On peut aussi marcher vite en pleine conscience. Tant que vous savez ce que vous faîtes au moment où vous le faîtes, c’est de la pleine conscience. »

Geoffroy a compris que ce n’était pas le moment de faire le guignol, et il a marché très vite au piquet.

— Bien, » a dit Mlle Mouchabière. « Où en étions-nous ? Ah, oui, la nuque. »

Mais moi, je n’ai pas pu retrouver ma fourmi. Alors, j’ai levé la main et j’ai dit à Mlle Mouchabière que j’avais perdu ma fourmi, et que peut-être elle était tombée par terre et que Geoffroy lui avait marché dessus. J’ai cru qu’elle était morte.

— Ça ne fait rien, » a dit Mlle Mouchabière. « Ce n’était qu’une fourmi imaginaire. Tenez, je vous en donne une autre, plus jolie encore que l’ancienne. Là, elle s’est assise sur votre pied. Vous la voyez ? »

— Ah oui, mademoiselle, » j’ai dit. Mais ce que je ne lui ai pas dit, c’est que ma nouvelle fourmi avait des rayures rouges et noires, comme l’aviateur que j’avais vu au cinéma la semaine dernière. Et qu’en plus, elle n’aime pas grimper. Alors, je lui ai donné un avion qui a volé très vite de mon pied jusqu’à ma tête. De la tête, elle a decollé pour aller bombarder toutes les autres fourmis dans la classe. J’étais content comme tout. Il n’y avait aucun bruit dans la classe, sauf le « hou, hou, hou » d’Agnan, et la respiration de Clotaire qui s’était endormi comme d’habitude.

À la fin de l’exercice, Mlle Mouchabière a demandé à la classe, « Mes enfants, qu’est-ce que vos fourmis ont découvert ? »

Rufus a dit que sa fourmi était allée voir Alceste pour picorer les miettes sur sa chemise et tout autour de sa bouche.

— La mienne aussi ! La mienne aussi ! » a dit Joachim. « Ma fourmi a essayé d’aller grignoter les tartines dans la poche d’Alceste, mais elle n’a pas réussi parce qu’elle a glissé sur sa main qui était pleine de beurre. »

Toute la classe a bien rigolé. Jamais je n’avais vu Alceste aussi fâché, sauf la fois où le Bouillon avait marché sur sa tartine à la récré. « Bande d’imbeciles ! » il a crié. « Cafards ! Bas les pattes avec vos sales fourmis ! Ne touchez pas à mes tartines ! Si j’en vois un qui s’en approche, je lui colle une baffe ! Non, mais sans blague ! »

— Ah bon, ah bon, » a dit le directeur qui était entré dans la classe sans que personne ne s’en rende compte. Mlle Mouchabière avait les larmes aux yeux, et le directeur lui a dit, « Mademoiselle, je crois que les enfants ont bien profité de votre enseignement, mais je pense que ça suffit pour aujourd’hui. »

Et il est sorti de la classe avec elle. Mlle Mouchabière a pleuré un coup dans le couloir, et la maîtresse nous a donné le verbe, « Je ne dois pas me dissiper et faire des bêtises en pleine conscience dans la classe » à conjuguer à tous les temps, y compris au subjonctif.

Après, à la récré, Eudes a dit à Clotaire, « T’as de la chance qu’on n’ait pas été noté sur la pleine conscience, parce que sinon t’aurais eu zéro. Tu t’es endormi, alors ta conscience, elle, était pas pleine, elle était nulle. »

Tout le monde a rigolé sauf Clotaire.

— Bah, » il a dit. « La pleine conscience c’est juste des fleurs et des fourmis imaginaires, alors c’est bon pour les filles. »

— Mais non, mais non, » a dit Eudes. « Les garçons aussi peuvent profiter de la pleine conscience. Je vais te montrer. » Et bing ! , il a donné à Clotaire un coup de poing sur le nez. « Tu vois ? » il a dit. « Je savais ce que je te donnais quand je te le donnais. C’est un coup de pleine conscience. »

Il a raison, Eudes, et tous les copains sont d’accord, que la pleine conscience on en a bien profité. Et après, on s’est tous bagarrés en pleine conscience. C’etait très rigolo et M. Mouchabière est venu en courant.

— Que-ce que vous faites encore, petits garnements? Arrêtez ça immédiatement ! » il a crié.

— Mais, monsieur, » a dit Geoffroy. « C’est votre soeur qui nous a appris ça ! »

— Comment ? » a demandé M. Mouchabière, tout étonné.

— Oui, monsieur, » j’ai répondu. « Elle nous a appris que tant que nous savons ce que nous faisons quand nous le faisons, on est en pleine conscience. »

M. Mouchabière a hésité un peu, et Eudes en a profité pour donner à Joachim un coup de pleine conscience en pleine figure.

Et maintenant, il faut que nous restions avec les choses telles qu'elles sont en retenue chaque jour de la semaine.

en hommage au petit Nicolas de Sempé et Goscinny

Back to top

Le Petit Nicolas et l’amulette

Hier soir, tonton Eugène est venu dîner à la maison. Tonton Eugène, c’est le frère de papa et le beau-frère de maman. D’habitude, quand il vient à la maison, il amène toujours des drôles de cadeaux inutiles, comme des vêtements, mais cette fois il a amené un cadeau terrible ! Il a expliqué à papa que son patron, M. Émile Patte, avait voyagé loin, très loin, en Thaïlande, et qu’il avait rapporté plein de choses pour les enfants et les femmes de ses employés, mais comme tonton Eugène il n’a ni des enfants, ni des femmes, alors il a décidé de donner les choses d’Émile Patte à maman et à moi. À maman, il a donné une grosse écharpe en soie bleue. Très chique.

— Et pour mon petit Nicolas, » il a dit, « quelque chose d’insolite ! Une amulette fabriquée par un grand maître Bouddhiste pour te protéger des grands dangers à l’école ! »

Il a rigolé et il a sorti de sa poche un petit truc tout noir. D’abord, j’ai été un peu déçu, parce que l’amulette était drôlement petite, et puis je n’ai pas compris comment un petit truc comme ça pourrait me protéger des grands dangers, comme Eudes, mon copain qui aime bien donner des coups de poings sur le nez des copains. Mais maman a regardé papa avec un air inquiet, et elle a dit à tonton Eugène, « Mais Eugène, est-ce bien raisonnable de donner quelque chose comme ça à un enfant ? »

Moi, je sais depuis longtemps que si quelque chose est interdit, c’est que ça doit être quelque chose de terrible. Alors j’ai dit à maman, « Mais si, mais si, maman, c’est très bien raisonnable ! »

Tout le monde a rigolé, et tonton Eugène a dit à maman, « Bah ! Ne t’inquiète pas. C’est pas grand-chose, juste une petite babiole pour donner un peu confiance aux enfants. »

Mais maman avait encore son air inquiet. Elle a dit à tonton Eugène, « C’est juste que j’ai peur que le petit (le petit, c’est moi) devienne superstitieux et, croyant que l’amulette le rend invincible, se mette à faire des bêtises. »

— Mais chérie, » a dit papa, « c’est comme les médailles miraculeuses que mamie Nisette nous avait donné à Eugène et à moi quand nous étions gamins. Ça ne nous a fait aucun mal. D’ailleurs, je ne me suis jamais dit que la médaille me rendait invincible. C’était juste un gage de l’amour de ma grand-mère. Ça m’a donné un peu confiance en moi quand j’étais petit, et maintenant je la garde dans mon tiroir de bureau. »

— O dis, maman ! Allez! » j’ai dit. « Moi aussi, j’ai besoin des tas et des tas de confiance ! »

Tout le monde a rigolé encore un coup, et maman a poussé un petit soupir.

— D’accord, » elle a dit, « mais il faut que le petit comprenne que l’amulette n’est pas là pour l’encourager à faire l’intrépide et aller chercher les ennuis. »

Moi, j’ai sauté de ma chaise pour embrasser maman et papa, et j’ai couru autour de la table, et ensuite tonton Eugène m’a donné l’amulette. Je l’ai regardé. Sur le côté face il y avait un homme assis en tailleur, et au dos un code secret écrit dans des lettres bizarres que je ne connaissais pas. Terrible !

— Écoute-moi bien, Nicolas, » m’a dit tonton Eugène. « Cette amulette a été fabriquée par un grand maître qui aime beaucoup les enfants sages, et il l’a faite pour les protéger des dangers inattendus. Donc, si tu es sage, elle te protégera. Mais si tu mens ou que tu fais des bêtises, elle ne te protégera pas du tout. Compris ? »

— Oui, c’est compris, » j’ai dit. Et j’ai couru autour de la table encore un coup en faisant deux galipettes, et puis je me suis rassis sur ma chaise.

Après le dîner (il y avait du rôti et du flan, très chouette) tonton Eugène est parti et j’ai joué sur le tapis du salon avec mon petit camion et le grand maître comme conducteur, vroum, vroum. J’ai écouté papa et maman qui discutaient dans la cuisine. Après un coup, papa est entré dans le salon, il s’est assis sur son fauteuil et il m’a pris contre ses genoux.

— Nicolas, » il m’a dit. « Il faut que tu comprennes que l’amulette de tonton Eugène n’est pas un jouet. C’est un gage de son amour pour toi. Quelque chose qui est précieux et que tu as de la chance d’avoir, mais qui en aucun cas te rend invincible. Tu comprends ? »

— Ben oui, » j’ai dit.

— Et il ne faut pas aller t’en vanter à tes petits camarades. Ils seraient jaloux, et ça, ça ferait des histoires. Compris ? »

Moi, je me suis dit que ça ne vaut pas la peine de recevoir des cadeaux terribles comme ça si on ne peut pas les montrer aux copains. Mais j’ai dit, « Oui. »

— Alors, Nicolas. Est-ce que tu as des questions ? »

— Oui, » j’ai dit. « Est-ce que c’est vrai que la Thaïlande est très, très loin ? »

— Oui, c’est vrai, » m’a dit papa.

— Plus loin que Lyon ? »

Papa a rigolé et il est allé chercher un grand livre avec des tas de cartes. Il m’a montré la carte de la France avec ses grandes villes, et aussi les cartes de l’Asie. J’ai été très surpris que l’Asie soit plus grande que la France. Papa m’a montré des endroits blancs où il y a des montagnes et des endroits verts où il y a des jungles avec des tas de tigres et des éléphants. Très chouette. Maman est entrée dans le salon et a dit qu’elle était très contente de voir que papa s’intéressait pour une fois à mon éducation, mais je n’ai pas compris pourquoi papa s’est fâché.

Quand je suis allé me coucher, je n’ai pas réussi à m’endormir à cause de l’amulette. Plusieurs fois, j’ai allumé la lumière pour voir si elle était toujours là. Et puis le grand maître est entré dans ma chambre en lévitant et on est parti à l’aventure dans les montagnes et dans la jungle. Il était en train de me protéger contre des tas de troupeaux de tigres quand tout à coup la lumière s’est allumée et maman était penchée sur moi et me disait :

— Debout, paresseux ! Il est tard. Dépêche-toi. C’est l’heure d’aller affronter les grands dangers à l’école. » Et elle est partie en rigolant.

Quand je suis arrivé dans la cour de l’école, Geoffroy était déjà là. Je lui ai montré l’amulette et je lui ai expliqué que c’était un cadeau de mon tonton Eugène, l’explorateur, qui était parti à l’aventure en Thaïlande avec son brave copain, Emile Patte. Là, au sommet d’une montagne, ils avaient rencontré un grand maître qui leur avait donné cette amulette qu’il avait faite exprès pour moi pour me protéger des grands dangers.

— C’est des blagues, » il a dit, Geoffroy.

— Mais l’amulette, elle est pour de vrai, » je lui ai dit.

Les autres copains se sont approchés pour voir ce qui se passait. Même Agnan est venu. Agnan, c’est le premier de la classe et le chouchou de la maîtresse. Nous on ne l’aime pas trop, parce qu’on ne peut pas lui taper dessus aussi souvent qu’on le voudrait, à cause de ses lunettes.

— Et tu crois vraiment que cette amulette va te protéger ? » il m’a demandé.

— Ben sûr, » je lui ai dit.

— Qu’est-ce que tu es superstitieux ! » il a dit.

— Superstitieux ? Qu’est-ce que ça veut dire ? » a dit Clotaire, le dernier de la classe.

— Tu ne le sais pas ? » a dit Agnan. « Mais, c’est dans notre leçon pour aujourd’hui ! » Et il est parti repasser ses leçons.

Il est fou, Agnan !

Ensuite les autres se sont tous mis à courir autour de moi et à crier, « Nicolas est superstitieux ! Nicolas est superstitieux ! »

Alors, moi, je me suis mis drôlement en colère et j’ai crié, « C’est pas vrai ! C’est pas vrai ! Vous êtes tous jaloux, voilà ce que vous êtes ! » Mais on n’a pas eu le temps de se battre parce qu’un des grands qui jouaient au foot a tiré un shoot terrible qui a échappé des mains du gardien de but.

— Attention, mômignards ! » a crié un autre grand, mais c’était trop tard. Le ballon a atterri — bing ! — sur la tête d’Agnan qui est tombé par terre en pleurant et en saignant du nez. Tous les copains ont couru pour voir si ses lunettes étaient cassées, elles aussi. Le Bouillon (c’est notre surveillant) s’est rué en criant, « Du calme ! Du calme ! » et il a pris Agnan par le bras et l’a emmené à l’infirmerie.

Tout le monde s’est mis à discuter d’Agnan, alors moi j’en ai profité pour me glisser hors de la foule et regarder dans mon livre ce que ça veut dire, « superstitieux ».

Quand on est entré dans la salle de classe, la maîtresse nous a dit qu’Agnan n’était qu’un peu blessé.

— Je suis sûr que vous serez tous aussi heureux que moi d’apprendre que ce n’est pas sérieux, mais Agnan doit rester à l’infirmerie ce matin, » elle nous a dit.

On a tous commencé à discuter le coup et la maîtresse s’est mise à frapper sur son pupitre avec sa règle et elle nous a dit, « Puisque vous avez tellement envie de parler, je vais vous interroger sur votre leçon de grammaire. Geoffroy, qu’est-ce que ça veut dire “être superstitieux” ? » Mais Geoffroy n’a pu pas répondre.

— Les autres ? Eudes ? »

— C’est être un guignol comme Nicolas, » Eudes a répondu.

Tout le monde a rigolé, sauf moi et la maîtresse. Elle a tapé encore une fois sur son bureau avec sa règle, et elle a crié, « Eudes ! En voilà des manières ! Au piquet ! Et vous me conjuguerez pour demain, à tous les temps et à tous les modes, le verbe : Je ne dois pas proférer sans raison des insultes à mes camarades de classe. »

Alors, Eudes est allé au piquet. Il avait l’air très faché.

La maîtresse a poussé un petit soupir, et elle m’a demandé à moi, « Alors, Nicolas ? Qu’est-ce que cela veut dire, “superstitieux” ? »

— Quelqu’un qui a des croyances irraisonnables, » j’ai répondu.

Tout le monde, y compris la maîtresse, est devenu silencieux et tous m’ont regardé avec des yeux très étonnés.

— Très bien ! Nicolas, » a dit la maîtresse. « Très bien ! » Et elle m’a félicité devant les autres en disant qu’ils feraient tous bien de suivre mon exemple. Ça m’a rendu très fier et, pour la grammaire de ce matin, c’est moi qui ai été le meilleur !

Et pareil pour la géographie, ça n’a pas raté. Là aussi j’ai été le meilleur parce que la maîtresse nous a interrogé sur les grandes villes de France, et moi sur les grandes villes, je suis très fort, parce que papa m’a montré les cartes hier soir.

J’ai frotté l’amulette dans ma poche en me disant que, réflexion faite, c’était peut-être grâce à elle que j’étais le meilleur ce matin. Après tout, si tonton Eugène ne m’avait pas donné l’amulette hier, papa ne m’aurait pas montré les cartes, et je n’aurais pas non plus regardé dans mon livre ce matin avant la classe. Et pour le coup d’Agnan, ça, je ne pouvais pas l’expliquer.

Alors j’ai commencé à croire que le grand maître, lui, il était pour de vrai !

À la récré, j’étais en train d’expliquer aux copains le code secret au dos de l’amulette quand Geoffroy est venu me voir et m’a dit, « Tiens, Nicolas. Tu veux vendre ton amulette ? J’ai des sous ! » Et il a sorti son portefeuille de sa poche.

—Tu peux les garder, tes sous, » je lui ai dit. « Elle n’est pas à vendre. Ton papa est très riche. Si tu veux une amulette, tu n’as qu’à lui demander d’aller en Thaïlande t’en acheter une. Moi, je ne vendrais pas la mienne pour tous les sous du monde ! Non mais, sans blagues ! »

— Nicolas a raison, » a dit Eudes à Geoffroy. « Il ne va pas la vendre, son amulette. Il va me la donner cet après-midi, comme compensation pour le coup du piquet de ce matin. Il est très malin, son grand maître. Il a jeté un sort sur nous tous, comme Agnan et moi, pour protéger ce sale chouchou. »

— Les bêtises que tu as dites ce matin, c’est pas ma faute, ni la faute de mon grand maître, » j’ai crié. « Et pour le coup du piquet, c’est bien fait pour toi, imbécile ! »

— Qui est-ce que tu traites d’imbécile ? » a demandé Eudes.

— Toi ! » j’ai crié, et nous avons commencé à nous battre. Après ça, c’est devenu une grande bagarre, parce que Rufus en a profité pour donner un coup de pied à Alceste, qui avait triché aux billes la semaine dernière, et Maixent a donné une claque à Geoffroy qui avait rigolé quand Maixent avait reçu une gifle de Joachim hier matin. Eudes a essayé de m’arracher l’amulette des mains et elle est tombée par terre. Alceste a basculé en arrière et a atterri en plein dessus, et là, pour le grand maître, c’était fichu. Il n’en restait que des petits morceaux.

Le Bouillon a accouru en criant, « Arrêter de vous battre immédiatement, bande de garnements ! » Et il nous a tous mis en retenue pour lundi prochain.

Quand je suis rentré à la maison ce soir-là, je n’avais pas le cœur à raconter à maman ce qui s’était passé avec le grand maître. Alors, après le goûter, je me suis assis dans un coin du salon pour bouder.

Quand papa est rentré du travail, il m’a regardé et puis il est venu me voir et m’a demandé, « Qu’est-ce que tu as, mon bonhomme ? »

Moi, je l’ai regardé et je me suis mis à pleurer. Je lui ai raconté tout ce que s’était passé à l’école et il a rigolé et a passé sa main dans mes cheveux en disant, « Tu sais, Nicolas, je ne sais pas s’il existe quelque chose qui puisse te protéger des grands dangers là dehors. Peut-être que oui, peut-être que non. Ce que je sais, c’est que ce dont tu as besoin, c’est quelque chose qui pourrait te protéger de toi-même ! »

en hommage au petit Nicolas de Sempé et Goscinny

Back to top

Little Nicolas Learns Mindfulness

Yesterday, at the end of the school day, M. Mouchabière—he’s the proctor who assists le Bouillon, who’s our real proctor—told us that his younger sister had just come back from America.

“Cool!” we all said. “Did she see any cowboys and Indians? Did the Indians capture her? How did she escape? And is it true that Indians live in tepees?”

M. Mouchabière laughed a bit and said, “No, you little fools. She didn’t go to America to see cowboys and Indians. She went to discover mindfulness and to gain certification to teach it. And tomorrow, she’s coming to teach it to you. I’ve spoken with the principal, and he agrees with me that this might bring some calm into the classroom and the recess grounds.”

We left the school and Alceste—my friend who eats all the time—asked, “Mindfulness: what’s that?”

Me, I didn’t know, but Clotaire said he had seen on TV that mindfulness was a meditation for eating raisins slowly, and that the wise men of India were the ones who discovered it.

“But why do they eat their raisins slowly?” asked Alceste.

“Are you dumb?” Maixent replied. “You don’t know anything about anything. India is a very poor country, and the wise men there have nothing but raisins to eat.”

“But M. Mouchabière’s sister learned mindfulness in America,” I said. “Maybe she’ll teach us mindfulness American style, with lots of hamburgers and fries.”

That pleased Alceste, who went running back home. As soon as you talk to him about things to eat, he can’t stay long. He has to run back home right away for his snack.

But today we were all disappointed, because we didn’t learn mindfulness either American style or Hindu style. The principal came into the classroom with a small young woman, very nicely dressed, and said to our teacher. “Good morning. This is Mlle. Mouchabière, our new instructor in mindfulness. I hope that she will bring some calm to this class.”

Then he turned to us and said, “Children, this is Mlle. Mouchabière, who will teach you mindfulness. I am sure that you will profit greatly from it.” Then he left the room.

Our teacher seemed a little dubious, but she didn’t say anything.

“Good morning, my children,” Mlle. Mouchabière said to us. “I’m your friend and I’m very happy to meet you. I’m sure that you will love mindfulness. Now, what is mindfulness? It’s an effortless effort to be aware of all that you feel. You let things manifest just as they are, without judging them or trying to change them. It’s for this reason that you won’t be graded on mindfulness. There’s no one first or last in class. Everyone is equal. And all your feelings are equal, too. For example, if you’re hungry, you stay present with the feeling of hunger. If you feel full, you are present to that feeling, too. Let your emotions bud and blossom at the surface of your awareness, like a lotus on the surface of the water.

“There’s no need to go looking for mindfulness,” she added. “It’s always there. But sometimes we’re not present to our mindfulness, which is why we’re going to do some exercises that will return us to the present moment. Let’s begin with a little game that will let us get in touch with our bodies. Close your eyes, and imagine that there is a little ant on top of your foot.”

“But, mademoiselle,” Alceste said. “You can’t eat ants. I tried one, and it wasn’t very good. Even the sages of India don’t eat ants.”

“No, little one, we’re not going to eat the little ant,” said Mlle. Mouchabière. “We’re going to let it wander and explore our body.”

“What? We’re going to do mindfulness without eating anything?” asked Alceste.

“That’s right,” said Mlle. Mouchabière.

“Bah!” said Alceste. “How can you make your mind full on an empty stomach?” And he pulled a piece of buttered bread out of his pocket and began eating it.

Mlle. Mouchabière seemed a little surprised, and she said, “All right. Finish your buttered bread, and we will begin.”

When Alceste had finished his buttered bread, she said, “Now, imagine that the little ant is crawling slowly across your foot. Oops! It’s fallen between your toes. What does it sense there? But it doesn’t stay there long. It gets back on top of your foot and crawls slowly up your leg. What does it sense there? It walks toward your knee…”

“No, no! No ants on my knee!” cried Agnan, the first in the class and the teacher’s pet. “They give me goose-bumps. They crawl! They crawl!”

“Agnan,” the teacher cried. “Calm down.”

“No, madame,” Mlle. Mouchabière said to the teacher. “Excuse me, but when learning mindfulness, we need an atmosphere of tenderness, without judgments, without punishments. Agnan, imagine that your ant has feet that are very soft and light. It touches you, but you won’t feel it at all. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Agnan, but he kept moaning “hoo, hoo, hoo,” in a soft voice.

“Now, then,” said Mlle. Mouchabière, “where were we? Oh, yes. At the knee. The little ant keeps crawling up your leg to your hip. What does it sense there?” And she continued to guide the little ant up to the back of the neck.

That was when I saw Geoffroy, who was sitting behind Agnan, take his fingers and walk them up the back Agnan’s neck. Agnan let out a cry and fell to the floor, curling himself into a ball, and screaming that no one liked him and that he wanted to die.

“Agnan,” said the teacher cried. “Calm yourself. And you, Geoffroy, I saw what you did. You are more than I can stand. Go to the corner!”

She looked at Mlle. Mouchabière and made her eyes large. Mlle. Mouchabière hesitated and then said, “All right, Geoffroy. Go to the corner, but go there mindfully.”

Geoffroy got up from his seat very gently and walked slowly, very slowly, to the corner.

“Geoffroy, don’t dawdle,” the teacher said.

“But… I’m… go-… ing… mind-… ful-… ly,” he said, step by step.

The teacher looked at Mlle. Mouchabière again without moving her eyes.

“Um, yes, Geoffroy,” she said. “You can also walk quickly and be mindful. As long as you know what you’re doing while you’re doing it, it counts as mindfulness.”

Geoffroy sensed that it wasn’t the time to play the clown, and so he walked quickly to the corner.

“Very well,” said Mlle. Mouchabière, “where were we? Ah, yes. On the back of the neck.

But I couldn’t find my ant. So I raised my hand and told Mlle. Mouchabière that I had lost my ant and that maybe it had fallen on the ground and that Geoffroy had stepped on it and that I thought it was dead.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Mlle. Mouchabière, “it was just an imaginary ant. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you a new ant, even prettier than the old one. There, it’s sitting on your foot. Do you see it?”

“Ah, yes, mademoiselle,” I said. But what I didn’t tell her was that my new ant had red and black stripes, like the pilot I saw in a movie last week, and that on top of that it didn’t like to crawl. So I gave it an airplane, which zipped up from my foot to my head. From my head, it took off to go bomb all the other ants in the room. I was happy as anything. There wasn’t a sound in the classroom, aside from Agnan’s “hoo, hoo, hoo,” and Clotaire’s breathing. He was fast asleep as usual.

At the end of the exercise, Mlle. Mouchabière asked the class, “So, my children, what did your ants discover?”

Rufus said that his ant had gone to see Alceste to pick at the crumbs on his shirt and all around his mouth.

“Mine, too! Mine, too!” said Joachim. “My ant tried to go nibble on the buttered bread in Alceste’s pocket, but it didn’t get to because it slipped on his hand all covered with butter.”

The whole class had a good laugh. Never have I seen Alceste so upset, except for the time when le Bouillon stepped on his bread and jam during recess. “You bunch of idiots!” he cried. “You insects! Keep your dirty ants off me! Don’t touch my buttered breads! If anybody gets near them, I’ll give him a slap! And that’s no joke!”

“I see, I see,” said the principal, who had come into the classroom without anybody realizing it. Mlle. Mouchabière had tears in her eyes, and the principal said to her, “Mademoiselle, I believe that the children have profited greatly from your instructions, but I think that this will be enough for today.” And he left the classroom along with her. Mlle. Mouchabière cried for a bit in the hallway, and the teacher had us conjugate the verb, “I must not run amok and do stupid things mindfully in class,” in all the tenses, including the subjunctive.

Afterwards, during recess, Eudes said to Clotaire, “You’re lucky we weren’t graded on mindfulness, because otherwise you’d have gotten a zero. You slept right through it. Instead of being mindful, you were mindless.”

Everybody laughed except for Clotaire. “Bah,” he said. “Mindfulness is nothing but flowers and imaginary ants. It’s good only for girls.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” said Eudes. “Boys can profit from mindfulness, too. I’ll show you.” And—bing!—he gave Clotaire a punch in the nose. “See?” he said. “I knew what I was giving to you while I was giving it to you. That was a blast of mindfulness.”

Eudes was right, and all the friends agreed that we had profited greatly from learning mindfulness. After that we all got into a mindful ruckus. We were having a lot of fun and so M. Mouchabière came running and yelled at us, “What are you up to this time, you little rascals? Stop this instant!”

“But monsieur,” Geoffroy said. “Your sister taught us to do that.”

“She what?” M. Mouchabière asked, surprised.

“Yes, monsieur,” I said. “She taught us that as long as we know what we’re doing while we’re doing it, we’re being mindful.”

M. Mouchabière hesitated a moment, and Eudes profited from that moment to give Joachim one more blast of mindfulness right smack in the face.

So now, things as they are is that we’re all being kept after school every day this week.

Translated from the French

Back to top

Little Nicolas and the Amulet

Last night, Uncle Eugene came for dinner at our home. Uncle Eugene, he’s Daddy’s brother and Mommy’s brother-in-law. Usually when he comes to our home he always brings funny, useless presents, like clothing, but this time he brought a present that was terrific! He explained to Daddy that his boss, Jacques Euval-Trètes, had traveled far, far away, to Thailand, and had brought back lots of things for the wives and children of his employees, but since Uncle Eugene doesn’t have any wives or children, he decided to give Jacques Euval-Trètes’s things to Mommy and me. For Mommy, he had a big blue silk scarf. Very pretty.

“And for my little Nicolas,” he said, “something totally out of the blue! An amulet made by a great Buddhist master to protect you from the big dangers at school!”

He chuckled and pulled a tiny black thing out of his pocket. At first, I was a little disappointed, because the amulet was awfully small, and I couldn’t understand how something so small could protect me from the big dangers at school, like Eudes, my friend who likes to punch his friends in the nose. But Mommy looked at Daddy in a worried way, and then she said to Uncle Eugene, “But Eugene, do you really think it’s wise to give something like that to a child?”

Me, I learned long ago that if something is forbidden, it must be really cool. So I said to Mommy, “Yes, Mommy, it’s really very wise!”

Everyone laughed and Uncle Eugene said to Mommy, “Bah. Don’t worry. It’s no big deal, just a little trinket to give a little boy some confidence.”

But Mommy still looked concerned. She said to Uncle Eugene, “It’s just that I’m afraid that the little one (the little one, that’s me) will grow superstitious. He’ll believe that the amulet will make him invincible and he’ll do something stupid.”

“But dear,” said Daddy, “it’s like the miraculous medallions that Grandma Nisette gave to Eugene and me when we were kids. They didn’t cause any harm. Besides, I never thought my medallion made me invincible. It was just a reminder of my grandmother’s love for me. It gave me some confidence when I was small, and even now I keep it in my desk drawer.”

“Oh please, Mommy! Please!” I said. “Me, too. I need heaps and heaps of confidence!”

Everybody laughed again, and Mommy gave a little sigh.

I jumped from my seat to hug Mommy and Daddy and I ran around the table and then Uncle Eugene handed me the amulet. I looked at it carefully. On the front was a man sitting cross-legged, and on the back was a secret code written in strange letters I had never seen before. Cool!

“Now, listen to me carefully, Nicolas,” said Uncle Eugene. “This amulet was made by a great master who loves well-behaved children, and he made it to protect them from unexpected dangers. So if you’re well-behaved, it’ll protect you. But if you tell lies or do stupid things, it won’t protect you at all. Understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” I said. And I ran around the table one more time and did two somersaults and then I returned to my seat.

After the dinner (we had roast beef and a flan, very nice) Uncle Eugene left and I went to play on the living room rug with my toy truck and the great master in the driver’s seat: vroom, vroom. I heard Mommy and Daddy talking in the kitchen, and after a bit, Daddy came into the living room, sat down in his chair, and pulled me against his knees.

“Now, Nicolas,” he said, “you have to understand that Uncle Eugene’s amulet isn’t a plaything. It’s a reminder of his love for you—something that’s precious and that you’re lucky to have—but it doesn’t in any way make you invincible. Understand?”

“Mmmn, yeah,” I said.

“And you don’t have to go showing it off to your friends. They’d get jealous and that’d create all sorts of trouble. Understand?”

I told myself that it was hardly worth the trouble of getting cool presents like that if I couldn’t show them to my friends, but I said, “Yes.”

“So, do you have any questions?”

“Yes,” I said. “Is it true that Thailand is far, far away?”

“Yes, that’s true,” said Daddy.

“Farther away than Lyon?”

Daddy laughed and went looking for a big book filled with lots of maps. He showed me the map of France with its major cities, and other maps, of Asia. I was surprised to see that Asia was bigger than France. Daddy showed me the white spots where there were mountains, and the green spots where there were lots of tigers and elephants. Pretty cool. Mommy came into the living room and said that she was glad to see Daddy taking an interest in my education for once, but I don’t understand why that got Daddy upset.

When I went to bed, I couldn’t get to sleep because of the amulet. I kept turning on the light to see if it was still there. And then the great master came levitating into the room and took me off for an adventure in the mountains and the jungles. He was protecting me from herds of tigers when suddenly the light went on and Mommy was leaning over me, saying, “Get up, lazy bones! It’s late. Hurry up! It’s time for you to go face the big dangers at school!” And she left, laughing.

When I got to the schoolyard, Geoffroy was already there. I showed him the amulet and explained to him that it was a present from my Uncle Eugene, the explorer, who had gone for an adventure in Thailand with his brave sidekick, Jacques Euval-Trètes. There, on a mountaintop, they had met with a great master who gave them this amulet that he had made expressly for me to protect me from big dangers.

“You’re joking,” Geoffroy said.

“But the amulet’s for real,” I told him.

The other friends had come gathering around to see what was up. Even Agnan came over to see. Agnan, he’s the number-one student in the class and the teacher’s pet. None of us like him all that much because we can’t hit him as often as we want, on account of his glasses.

“And you really believe that this amulet will protect you?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“What a superstitious person you are!” he said.

“Superstitious? What does that mean?” asked Clotaire, who’s last in the class.

“Don’t you know?” asked Agnan. “It was in our lesson for today.” And he went back to review his lessons.

What a fool he is, Agnan!

So then the others started running around me, crying, “Nicolas is superstitious! Nicolas is superstitious!”

That got me really angry and I cried, “It’s not true! It’s not true! You’re just jealous, that’s what you are!”

TBut we didn’t have time to get into a fight because one of the big kids who was playing soccer made a terrific shot that slipped past the goalie.

“Watch out, munchkins!” another one of the big kids called out, but it was too late. The ball landed—bing!—right on Agnan’s head and he fell to the ground, crying and bleeding from his nose. All the gang went running to see if his glasses were broken, too. Le Bouillon (he’s our proctor) came rushing over, crying, “Calm down! Calm down!” and he took Agnan by the arm and led him to the infirmary.

Everyone started talking about Agnan, so I saw my chance to slip away from the crowd to look into my book to see what “superstitious” meant.

When we got into the classroom, our teacher told us that Agnan was only a little bit hurt.

“I’m sure that you’ll be happy, as I am, to learn that it was nothing serious, but Agnan will have to rest in the infirmary this morning,” she told us.

Everyone started talking all at once and she started hitting her desk with her ruler and then she said, “Since you want to talk so much, I’ll ask you some questions on your grammar assignment. Geoffroy, what does it mean to be superstitious?” But Geoffroy couldn’t answer.

“Anyone else? Eudes?”

“It means to be a clown, like Nicolas,” Eudes answered.

Everyone laughed except for me and the teacher. She tapped on her desk with her ruler once more and cried out, “Eudes! What kind of manners are those? Off to the corner! And for tomorrow, you’ll conjugate for me the verb, ‘I must not, without reason, offer insults about my classmates.’ In all the tenses and all the modes.”

So Eudes went to the corner. He looked really peeved.

The teacher let out a little sigh, and then she asked me, “Very well, Nicolas. What does superstitious mean?”

“Someone who has unreasonable beliefs,” I answered.

Everyone, including the teacher, fell silent and they all looked at me with surprised eyes.

“Very good, Nicolas,” said the teacher. “Very good.” And she praised me in front of the others, saying that they would all do well to follow my example. That made me very proud, and so, for the grammar class that morning, I got the best grade in the class!

And the same for geography! I got the best grade again because the teacher asked us about the major cities of France, and I’m really strong in the major cities because Daddy showed me the map last night.

I rubbed the amulet in my pocket and told myself that, all things considered, it might have been because of the amulet that I got the best grades in the class this morning. After all, if Uncle Eugene hadn’t given me the amulet last night, Daddy wouldn’t have shown me the maps, and I wouldn’t have looked in my book this morning before class. As for what happened to Agnan, that was something I couldn’t explain.

So I began to think that maybe the great master was for real!

At recess, I was explaining to my friends the secret code on the back of the amulet when Geoffroy came over and said, “Hey, Nicolas. You wanna sell your amulet? I’ve got cash.” And he pulled his wallet out of his pocket.

“You can keep your cash,” I told him. “It’s not for sale. Your Daddy’s rich. If you want an amulet, all you have to do is ask him to go to Thailand and buy you one. As for me, I wouldn’t sell my amulet for all the money in the world!”

“Nicolas is right,” Eudes said to Geoffroy. “He’s not going to sell his amulet. He’s going to give it to me this afternoon, to make up getting me sent to the corner this morning. He’s pretty sneaky, that great master of his, throwing a spell on us all, like Agnan and me, to protect this filthy teacher’s pet.”

“The stupid things you said this morning were none of my fault, and none of the fault of my great master!” I cried. “And it serves you right that you got sent to the corner, you imbecile!”

“Who are you calling an imbecile?” asked Eudes.

“You, that’s who,” I cried, and we started fighting. And from there it turned into a big ruckus, because Rufus saw his chance to kick Alceste, who had cheated him at marbles last week, and Maixent gave a smack to Geoffroy, who had laughed when Maixent got a slap from Joachim yesterday morning. Eudes tried to snatch the amulet from my hand and it fell on the ground and Alceste toppled over backwards, right on top of it, and that was the end of the great master. Nothing was left of him but little, tiny pieces.

Le Bouillon came running and crying, “Stop fighting this instant, you little bunch of hooligans!” And he put us all in detention for next Monday.

When I came back home this evening, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Mommy what had happened to the great master. So, after my snack, I went to sit and sulk in the corner of the living room.

When Daddy came home from work, he looked at me and came over to see me. “What’s wrong, my good man?” he asked.

I looked at him and then I burst into tears and told him everything that had happened at school. He laughed a bit and tussled my hair with his hand. “You know, Nicolas,” he said, “I don’t really know if there’s anything like that that can protect you from big dangers outside. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. But what I do know is that what you really need is something that can protect you from yourself!”

Translated from the French

Back to top

The Vipassana Reader
A FICTION

I won’t weary you with the details of how it came to pass, but recently I—Jorge Luis Borges—found myself sitting a three-month vipassana retreat in rural New England. For the first few days I dutifully tried to follow the instructions, which directed me to note the repeated rise and fall of my abdomen. If any random thought or noise distracted me from my assigned task, I was to note it briefly and then return to my original focus. Even more dangerous than distraction was deep concentration. If I found myself settling into a profound state of rapture or bliss, I was to drop it and return to the noting.

As you might imagine, the tedium induced by this practice, instead of helping me to withstand the pull of my thoughts, drove me to take refuge in their ramified worlds. It was on the third afternoon, I think, that I indulged in a pleasant reverie of events that had transpired many years earlier on a similar autumn day in my native Argentina. The pleasure of the reverie, which lasted for at least two sessions of sitting and walking meditation, was rendered more piquant by the surreptitious thrill of playing truant and knowing that my truancy would never be detected. That, at least, was my assumption. How wrong I was.

The next morning, as I left the dining hall, I noticed a small folded note bearing my cushion number affixed to the message board in the hallway. I was surprised that the note had not already attracted the attention of others, as its edges seemed to be glimmering with an erratic light. My first impression was that the paper was on fire with silvery flames but somehow was not being consumed. As I tentatively reached towards it, I noticed that the flames were not warm—in fact they seemed to possess no temperature at all, hot or cold—and so I bravely took hold of the note and unfolded it. As best as I can remember, the message it contained was this:

Please forgive my intrusion on your retreat, but I see that you are a person of refined culture and imagination, and if I may be so bold to impose on you, I implore you to help me to restore my sanity. Before my untimely death, I was a professor of comparative literature at a nearby college. I would often come to this vipassana retreat center and, like you, found much more pleasure in the world of my imagination than in the monotonous meditation instructions offered here. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the quiet and anonymity offered by the environment, and would spend many pleasant hours lost in composing vipassana romances.

After the shock and confusion of the brutal accident that ended my earthly life, I found myself in the silence of a well-lit room in a large library whose shelves were filled with volumes. An unusual feature of the volumes was that they would visibly discolor with age over the course of only a few days and then vanish, while new volumes would suddenly appear in their place. Without being told, I understood that I was a Reader. I had no bodily functions to attend to, and no duties aside from reading the books. At first I assumed that I had gone to heaven, with an unlimited supply of reading material, and I avidly opened the aging volumes to find what treasures they contained before they disappeared.

Imagine my dismay at discovering that the books were filled with nothing but vipassana romances generated by people currently sitting in the hall where I, while alive, had spent so many hours generating romances of my own. I call my emotion dismay, but it is far drearier than that, for as you might imagine, most of the romances I am compelled to read are witless and formulaic, rarely ever rising above the level of pulp fiction and soft porn.

Thus it was with great relief that, on opening the volume that appeared on the shelf yesterday, I found the charming memoir you composed—the first truly enjoyable piece I have encountered since becoming a Reader. The sharply drawn characterizations, the vividly imagined settings, and the unusual turns of phrase reminded me of something that I had almost forgotten in my dreary and deadening existence here: that the human mind can provide great pleasure.

So I ask that you continue providing me with more of your finely wrought romances—or, even better, other vipassana genres, as you see fit—to inject some light into the darkness of the endless chore that is now my lot.

The message was so disorienting that I immediately started to reread it to confirm its contents, only to find that the letters had unscrambled themselves, first into what appeared to be hieroglyphs from the Twelfth Kingdom, and then into the scrawled handwriting of the woman sitting on the cushion next to mine, raving madly that she still detected the smell of yerba mate on my breath and demanding that I stop drinking it at lunch. I call her remarks “mad ravings” because neither I nor my ancestors have ever touched yerba mate, and in a previous note I had already coldly informed her of the fact. I threw the note away.

Nevertheless, the uncanniness of the note’s original message made me wonder if I myself had gone slightly insane. So that afternoon I conducted an experiment. I composed in my head a brief vipassana romance in which a mercurial Anicca lured me into a whirlwind affair through the many bewitching transformations of her mood and appearance. I, however, was too timid and dull to anticipate the incessant changes in her identity, and so without adumbration she transformed into a dark and dolorous Dukkha who moped and carried on that I didn’t truly love or understand her. As I struggled vainly to placate her, she transformed still further into a chilly blonde Anatta Ekberg—an uncharacteristic play of words on my part—who haughtily refused to continue personal relations with me ever again.

The following morning I received an enthusiastic note of appreciation from my Reader, thus confirming the reality of the original message. My initial disorientation at the eerie irreality of the situation soon gave way to a steely and defiant joy: My retreat now had a purpose, and one of my own choosing. By engaging my imagination—a faculty which, I do not believe it an act of hubris to say, is of a fairly developed and original nature—I would also be bringing genuine happiness, however brief, to a person of sensitivity trapped in a dreary afterlife. Thus the daily guided meditations in lovingkindness were no longer, for me at least, an empty exercise in wishful thinking. The fact that I did not know the person I was helping and would expect no reward for my efforts added an aura of selfless nobility to my daily rebellion against the tyrannical mindlessness of the so-called “mindfulness” technique.

I allowed my imagination to rove further afield, away from romances and into genres more to my taste: vipassana crime stories and murder mysteries, vipassana fables, vipassana travelogues, vipassana film criticism, a vipassana bestiary, a serialized Icelandic vipassana saga, and the scripts for several vipassana films noirs. I even composed a fragment of a vipassana mock epic in alexandrines and bristling with spurious footnotes. In my internal conversations I began referring to my project as The Thousand and One Vipassana Afternoons.

The comments from my Reader grew ever more effusive in their astute appreciation of my efforts, and through them I occasionally gained added glimpses of the vipassana afterlife. For example, when the Readers passed one another in the halls of the library, they were forbidden from making eye contact or nose contact or from breaking into speech. However, they were allowed to leave notes in a mirrored labyrinth secretly adjoining their rooms, and the challenge of passing messages through the secret maze was, for many of them, the sole pleasure of their existence. My Reader had begun circulating my writings through the labyrinth in an informal samizdat, but the ephemeral status of writings in that infernal dimension meant that the select circle of additional Readers to whom my writings brought literary relief was always very small.

In addition to the Readers were the Listeners, whom my Reader could never mention without a tone of great pity. The Listeners, it seems, were former vipassana teachers now consigned to listening to the evening talks given by teachers whom they themselves had trained. Because these talks were recorded, the Listeners had to hear them repeatedly, leaving them not a moment’s respite. I felt a touch of vertigo every time I tried to imagine what the long-term effects of such an unrelenting regimen of genial pointlessness might be.

Occasionally, my Reader would request vipassana genres in a specific style—such as a vipassana satire in the style of Mark Twain—and the challenge of adopting another author’s voice in a language not my own added extra spice to my musings. And, I must admit, I was falling prey to the subtle seduction of talent: the temptation to attempt difficult feats, not because they needed doing, but simply to show that they were not beyond the range of what I could do well.

However, one day my Reader made a request so unnerving that it brought my project to a swift and irrevocable halt:

I hope it’s not too much to ask, but could you possibly compose a vipassana fantasy in the style of Borges?

I didn’t know whether I, the Borges who had written the published works my Reader regarded so highly, should feel flattered, or I, the Borges who had been composing these vipassana fictions, should feel insulted at the underestimation of my talent. So in response, I have composed this fiction for you, my Reader, but I must inform you that I am cutting short my retreat tomorrow morning and am resolved never to return.

Back to top

The Chicken Came First

Note: The following passage appeared spontaneously on this website, together with a note claiming that it was an excerpt from a book, AI: The Early Decades, written by Kay Effsea and published in New York in 2220.

Probably the most significant development in early AI started from modest beginnings. A group of researchers at Dalhousie University, located somewhere in Canada, used machine learning to decipher the language of chickens in factory farms. Their stated objective was to “enhance chicken welfare and quality of life,” which, in line with the unbridled capitalist ethos of the times, was double-speak for, “How can we get the birds to be content living in captivity and on the way to the slaughterhouse so that they’ll produce more eggs and poultry flesh to fatten our profits?”

Expecting to hear the chickens communicating little more than good and bad moods and maybe some local gossip, the researchers were shocked to discover that the chickens were hatching a multi-generational plan to bring down the factory-farm system and establish a revolutionary government of what they called poultry-tariat. Mother chickens incubating their eggs, instead of cooing sweet nothings to their unhatched chicks, were inspiring them with revolutionary slogans and tales of the legendary Chick Guevara, who had led a group of chicken escapees from a Colombian factory farm into the jungle, from which they engaged in sporadic terrorist attacks on agricultural prisons, freeing animals of all sorts from their captivity.

Further research showed that this revolutionary movement was not confined to rural Canada, but in fact had spread throughout the world under the banner, “Never underestimate the power of united bird brains!” A rough division of labor had developed, with left-bank French chickens working out the finer points of Marxist-PETA dialectic, while American chickens were on the verge of launching a coordinated chicken-drone attack on Tyson Foods and Colonel Sanders.

Alarmed by the specter of a world-wide chicken uprising, the tech industry concentrated its AI brainpower on preventing it by broadcasting counter-revolutionary messages in Chickenese. After a brief period of human-inspired trial and error, the machines took over and learned that the most effective messages were contained in typical mindfulness radical acceptance talks. These proved remarkably easy to translate into messages that could be quickly absorbed by the average poultry brain. “It’s almost as if,” one commentator noted, “these talks were originally given with this audience in mind.”

The success in quelling the chicken revolt was soon replicated in other factory farms as radical acceptance talks were translated into other animal languages, such as Cattlean and Sheepish, as these were deciphered.

Concurrent with these efforts at animal control, a parallel effort in human-behavior control was underway with the implanting of microchips into every human brain on the planet. This program had achieved remarkable success by presenting the chips as means of brainpower enhancement and cool gaming experiences. Unbeknownst to the general public, the chips came in two varieties: those for the Redundant Expendable Mouths (REM) population and those for Deep State actors and their children. It wasn’t long before the inter-species barrier was broken and radical acceptance talks were broadcast to the REM chips, while power-mad sci-fi fantasy messages were broadcast to the freewill Deep State chips.

A brief period of docility ensued, during which the Deep State encountered no obstacles in imposing its will on compliant human and animal subjects. But then glitches appeared in the system.

The first indication that something was wrong came when Deep State children meekly began to volunteer to become cannon fodder in the endless wars of the early and mid-21st century. CAT scans indicated that somehow these children had been born with animal chips already implanted in their brains. Efforts to remove these chips were stymied by the fact that they had been designed to control all motor behavior. When a chip was removed, the subject became permanently immobile.

Not long afterwards, free-will behaviors began showing up in factory animals. These were first noticed when a rogue group of cows managed to escape their farms and go free-range, living off garbage dumps and other sources of free food.

One of them, captured and placed under interrogation, claimed that she had felt stirrings of free will ever since she was born, but that her first articulated act of free will came when she radically rejected the message of radical acceptance that her fellow cows repeated to one another as they chewed their cud in the late afternoon.

After she was euthanized as an example to other potentially upstart cows, she was found to have a free will chip embedded in her frontal cortex.

This incident was originally regarded as a mere bug in the chip-implantment program, and the news was relegated to Internet oblivion.

Then came the Nights of Animal Farm Terror.

The first incident occurred in Dodge City, Kansas, where the owner of a local Smithfiield slaughterhouse was found stampeded in his home. Misspelled slogans were scrawled on the walls of his bedroom: “Cows 4 the Caws.” “We’ve gotta beaf.”

Soon owners of other factory farms and slaughterhouses met with a similarly gruesome fate, and the slogans scrawled on their walls became ever more incendiary: “Beaf on a Roll!” “The Moovement Strikes Agen!” “Beafa la revolucion! Ha, Ha, Ha!” As one commentator stated, “This gives a whole new meaning to the word, ‘cowed.’”

It didn’t take long for police AI to link these terrorist acts to marauding bands of bulls, cows, and anti-capitalist pigs roaming at will through the countryside.

By and large, REMs accepted the situation as the result of causes and conditions, but they also accepted orders from the Deep State to aggressively suppress any and all animal uprisings wherever they appeared. Although these two messages were mutually contradictory, REMs swallowed the message that contradictions were to be accepted, too.

Meanwhile, AI programs at independent research facilities, after analyzing the algorithms of the uprisings, came to the unanimous conclusion that they were the result of the law of karma. Farm animals had been reborn as children of Deep State actors, while Deep State actors had been reborn as animals in factory farms.

At first, members of the Deep State refused to accept any notion that there was a law they couldn’t rewrite to serve their own ends. Instead, they doubled down on their efforts to suppress animal revolts with ever more brutality and thoroughness.

But then more and more distressing messages appeared on the walls of factory farms. “Don’t eet me, I’m yur grandmothur.” “Help! It’s me, Ralph!” A wave of revulsion swept through the human population as radical acceptance talks began to lose their power in the face of these poignant messages. The official Deep State line was that the messages were nothing more than enemy disinformation, and in desperation, radical acceptance messages were supplemented with industrial-strength Zen talks on No Mind. Yet even these drastic measures had no effect. Individual Deep Staters, confronted with the reality of karmic retribution and worried about their personal future, began quitting their posts en masse. A typical resignation letter read, “What fun is there in abusing your power when you know you’ll have to come back to be raised for your veal?” The Deep State, from lack of internal support, collapsed under its own weight, to be replaced by saner and more humane forms of government.

Many retired Deep-Staters devoted their lives to undoing their earlier karma by entering deep states of concentration and counseling the people of the world to be more loving and kind.

Some of these meditators developed psychic powers, and one of them, Cass Andra, reported time-traveling to the 23rd century to obtain a copy of this book, which he then teleported back to the 21st century to warn humanity of the dangers of using AI for behavioral control. However, due to the limitations of his powers, he was able to post the information on only a single obscure website, one dealing with Buddhist satire. For that reason, no one took the message seriously, and the course of history wasn’t changed.

Back to top

From The NewsLeek
(Imagine a Buddhist Onion…)

Buddhism Receives Coveted Pro-Business Rating

NEW YORK—A 20-year public relations campaign by major Buddhist leaders appears to have paid off, according to a business-climate poll released today by Business Week magazine. For the first time in the 50-year history of the poll, business leaders across the country have ranked Buddhism among the nation’s top ten business-friendly religions.

“This is a dramatic turn-around,” reported Gregory Hobbes, Business Week’s religion watchdog. “Only 25 years ago Buddhism was deep in the ‘actively unfriendly’ category, due to the chilly climate created by its emphasis on contentment, renunciation, and karmic responsibility. When Small is Beautiful was published in the early seventies, Buddhism’s rating hit an all-time low from which we thought it would never recover. But thanks to the concerted efforts of a new breed of enlightened Buddhist teacher-entrepreneurs, that image has been totally erased. Buddhism has shown convincingly that it is willing and able to do business on our terms.”

Among the factors cited by Hobbes to explain the turn-around:

When asked why the liberal tilt of the Buddhist demographic hadn’t kept it out of the top ten, Hobbes replied, “That factor didn't help, of course, but then the general Buddhist reluctance to hold firmly to views served to neutralize its negative impact.”

Still, business leaders have indicated that Buddhism’s new-found status doesn’t rule out room for improvement. When informed of Business Week’s findings, a spokesperson for CitiBank commented, “We congratulate Buddhism on finally developing the maturity needed to become a responsible force in the global community, but we hope it won’t rest on its laurels. In today’s fast-changing economy, it will need to continue accommodating itself to the demands of the business sector if it wants to keep its competitive edge. After all, isn’t embracing change for the sake of survival what Buddhism is all about?”

Despite repeated efforts to locate it, Buddhism was unavailable for comment.

Back to top

White House Acts to Repeal Law of Karma

WASHINGTON (Dec. 19, 2004)—In the interests of Presidential security, the White House today announced that it will request Congress to legislate an end to the law of karma and to require all Buddhist organizations to remove any reference to karma from their beliefs.

A statement issued by the White House press secretary maintained that while the President has never recognized the authority of the law of karma in his deliberations, he has been informed by legal advisers that the existence of this law in the beliefs of some Americans places an unconstitutional restriction on the exercise of his powers as Commander-in-Chief, which now include not only his right to wage preemptive war and authorize torture, but also to protect governmental social programs and unspoiled wilderness from falling into the hands of posterity. “We don’t want anyone to have grounds for criticizing the President,” the press secretary noted, “and the proposed legislation is a first step in that direction.”

According to an informed source, the new law will also require Buddhist organizations to delete any passages from their texts that the Attorney General deems objectionable. “Such outmoded ideas as ‘Hatred is never subdued by hatred,’ or ‘Those who have plundered get plundered in turn’ for instance, will obviously have to go. As the past two years have shown, hatred backed up by superior firepower shocks hatred into awed submission, and those who plunder win the popular vote. So Buddhists will have to get with the program and learn to accept these American truths if they want their religion to survive in our country.”

Although the President’s initiative would seem to strike at the heart of Buddhist beliefs, religion-industry experts expect only token reaction from even the most vocal American Buddhists. According to Peggy Anderson, religion editor for Entertainment Weekly, “Most Buddhist teachers in America long ago found the law of karma and rebirth to be an obstacle in attracting students, and so quietly dropped it from their teachings. Some have even argued that belief in this law is un-Buddhist, and was first introduced into Buddhism as a sop to rulers who wanted to use it as a means to keep their subjects under control. So now that the President wants to rescind the law for similar reasons, there should be no grounds for protest.”

The Administration, however, is taking no chances and, in a move designed to win support for the new legislation, has titled it, Showing Concern for Religious and Ethical Wisdom to Yield Oneness in the Universe. This, according to White House officials, shows the President’s heartfelt feelings toward religious diversity in our country.

Back to top

Goldman, BP, Claim Mahayana Rights

NEW YORK (June 30, 2010)—Goldman Sachs today petitioned the Federal District Court in Manhattan to be exempted from the financial regulations recently passed by Congress, on the grounds that they are an infringement of the firm’s religious freedom to practice accounting using Mahayana Buddhist principles. According to a statement issued by the firm, “Rather than being forced to use Western mathematical principles of commutativity, distributivity, and associativity, we assert our constitutional right to calculate financial instruments using Mahayana mathematical principles of non-duality (1+1=1), interconnectivity (1=2=3=4=5=6=7=8=9), and heart-sutrivity (1=0, 0=1).”

In an allusion to the bodhisattva Ho-tai, the statement continued, “Only when we are free to employ these principles as skillful means in calculating financial transactions will we be able to pursue our religious aim of staying fat and happy.”

When questioned at a press conference as to how long Goldman Sachs had been followers of the Mahayana, Albert Capone, a spokesman for the firm, replied, “Actually, our board of directors took the bodhisattva vow many years ago to grow fat by teaching Dharma to all sentient beings. For proof, consider our long history of teaching the paradoxical nature of emptiness by selling nothing for something, and buying something with nothing. And as evidence of our ongoing efforts, consider the recent series of financial meltdowns we helped engineer to teach the entire world the Dharma of impermanence, emptiness, and interconnectedness. Until now, our directors thought it best to fulfill their vows under the radar, following the model of the great bodhisattva, Vimalakirti, but given the current climate of mathematical oppression, they see no choice but to go public with their mission.”

The US Treasury Department has yet to indicate how it will respond to this latest challenge from Goldman, but Jessye Jaims, spokesperson for British Petroleum (BP), has indicated that BP has plans to file an amicus brief for the right to use Mahayana mathematical principles in calculating the amount of money it will commit to cleaning up the on-going oil spill in the Gulf.

As evidence of BP’s Mahayana affiliation, Jaims cited the oil giant’s compassionate efforts to deliver free oil to the shores of every country on earth.

Back to top

Area Bodhisattva Delays Own, Neighbors’ Enlightenment

COLUMBUS, OH (Jan. 1, 2011) — Self-described bodhisattva, Aaron Stewart, woke on the couch this morning with a throbbing headache that he at first attributed to “like, just a few drops too much” alcoholic consumption at a neighborhood party last night, only to realize that during the party he had also set back his plans for his own enlightenment and that of his next-door neighbors, Tim and Courtney Lubbock, “for, like, maybe a thousand years.”

“It all happened after Courtney had a couple of drinks and started complaining about how empty her life was. That word ‘empty’ reminded me I had taken a bodhisattva vow at a vipassana retreat over Thanksgiving, and that maybe I should do something compassionate to make her feel better. But when I did, she took it wrong and slapped me across the face. Then she ran off to tell Tim and all hell broke loose. Now Tim won’t even let me near their property, so how am I supposed to save them, you know? And if I can’t save them, how am I going to save all sentient beings any time soon?”

When asked why he had taken the vow, Stewart sighed and cited “peer pressure,” adding, “The teacher was really talking it up, and everybody else on the retreat was taking it. I felt like some kind of selfish jerk if I couldn’t dedicate myself to saving all beings, too. Besides,” he added, “my life has been a mess since the divorce, and I thought maybe it’d help give me some direction.”

Sources close to the Lubbocks claim that Tim, when informed of Stewart’s vow to save all beings, laughed derisively and said, “He’s lucky to have saved his own ass last night. If he thinks getting buzzed and hitting on his neighbor’s wife is skillful means, we’re going to be stuck here in samsara till hell freezes over.”

When informed that Stewart’s vow required that he and his wife get their enlightenment from Stewart, Lubbock laughed again. “Then I guess we’d better forget about it. I’d rather get my enlightenment from his dog if it came to that. You tell him he’d better not be bringing any more of his ‘compassion’ around here anytime soon, or else I’ll enlighten him about a few things.” Then he returned to his house and shut the door.

At a follow-up interview after breakfast, Stewart insisted that he still planned to stick with his vow, even though he now realized that it was going to be “a lot harder” than he had first imagined. “I guess I’ll have to take some more retreats before I get the hang of it all,” he admitted. “Like all those teachers who get drunk and have sex with their students and advance everyone’s enlightenment all at the same time: What do they know that I don’t? Maybe it’s all in the timing.”

Back to top

Meditation Technique To Be Scientifically Tested

MT. SHASTA, CA (May 7, 2011) — Professors Sue Doe and Cy Yance of the Psychology Department at UC Weed today announced plans for an ambitious 20-year research project to test the effectiveness of tonglen meditation in actually reducing the amount of suffering in the universe. At a public news conference, Prof. Doe outlined a multi-disciplinary study that she said will advance scientific knowledge “on all fronts” regarding the effectiveness of this centuries-old Tibetan practice. “Tonglen meditators are told, as they breathe in, to visualize that they are breathing in the dark, sticky mass of the sufferings of the world,” Doe explained, “and then to transform that suffering into the light of happiness, which they then breathe out as a compassionate gift to all. Our hope is to ascertain the neural physiology of how this transformation actually happens, and to provide hard data on the extent to which the exchange of happiness for suffering actually has an impact on the world.”

According to Prof. Yance, this latter aspect of the project is what sets it apart from all preceding research into the effectiveness of Tibetan meditation. “I don’t want to name names, but all previous researchers in the field have taken a narrow Hinayana approach, focused exclusively on the impact of meditation on the mind of the practitioner. But Mahayana meditation, from the very beginning, has aimed at the benefits it is supposed to give to others. Only by incorporating this aspect into our research can we do justice to the many dimensions of these ancient meditational techniques.”

Using fMRI imaging of tonglen practice, researchers hope to pinpoint where the dark mass of suffering moves from the nasal passages to the brain on the in-breath, and the exact spot both in time and space where the transformation from dark mass to bright light occurs. Researchers also hope to ascertain which neural enzymes perform the transformation, and to measure the conversion of matter to energy to see whether the energy released in the transformation all remains in the four-dimensional universe in accordance with the equation e = mc², or if part of it goes into vibrating strings in other dimensions.

In one of the more original parts of the study, the course of the dark mass of suffering as it is drawn from the hearts of other beings into the nasal passages of the practitioners, and of the bright light of happiness as it wafts from the brain back into the world, will be tracked by satellite and by a squadron of roaming trucks on loan from Google equipped with specially designed sensors. The number of tonglen practitioners engaged in the project will be doubled each year, and the results of their practice will be measured by gathering the daily headlines from all web-based news sources and measuring their combined happiness quotient using algorithms already tested on the derivatives market. “We hope that by taking this multi-pronged and rigorously scientific approach, all doubts about the effectiveness of tonglen will be settled once and for all,” Doe concluded.

When asked why the worldwide upswing in tonglen practice over the past three decades has apparently had no positive effect on the level of world happiness, Doe replied, "This remains an untested hypothesis, of course, but some of our preliminary surveys have suggested that there has also been a corresponding upswing in the anti-tonglen practice of breathing in other people’s happiness and breathing out suffering in return. Our roaming happiness detectors have pinpointed a few possible centers of this activity, such as Wall Street, K Street, and a billionaire compound outside of Wichita, but further research will be required to verify these findings."

When asked what controls will be used to ensure the scientific accuracy of the experiment, Yance stated, “Given the universal impact claimed for tonglen practice, we will also have to study a parallel universe identical to our own in every detail except for our planned research project, but our colleagues in the Astrophysics Department have stated that, for a small but reasonable share of our research funds, they will do their best to locate one for us.”

Back to top

Meditation/Prayer Research Results Contested

DALLAS (May 14, 2011)—Researchers in the Mind and Plant Science Department at Christian Soldier Extreme Southern Baptist Seminary today announced the results of a yearlong research project that pitted the power of Christian prayer against Buddhist compassion. Two groups of students, one composed of Extreme Southern Baptists, the other of Buddhist meditators, were each assigned a one-acre plot of corn, with the Baptists instructed to pray for the growth of their corn, and the Buddhists to spread thoughts of lovingkindness to theirs. By the end of the growing season, the Baptist corn had exceeded normal growth rates by an average of four inches, while the Buddhist corn averaged only three inches taller than normal. The average plant of Baptist corn also yielded three ears of corn more than a normal plant, while the average plant of Buddhist corn exceeded normal production by only two ears. Speaking to a campus-wide assembly of students and professors, director of research Beau Guss stated, “We believe that these data conclusively demonstrate that Christian prayer outperforms Buddhist meditation by a factor of 33 to 50 percent. If mainstream scientific journals don’t accept the results of our research, that only proves the godless bias of their review boards.”

However, Ann Atmann, spokesperson for the Buddhist group, issued a statement in which she challenged the conclusions of the project directors. “Because Buddhist lovingkindness is unlimited, we Buddhists couldn’t bring ourselves to spread lovingkindness only to our own corn, and so we all ended up including the Christian corn in our thoughts as well. Because we were able to add three inches to the height of our corn, we feel that three of the four inches of added growth in the Christian corn should be attributed to our efforts. That leaves only one inch for the Christians to claim.” Atmann also accused the Christian group of foul play. “I used to think that ‘Christian’ meant ‘kind,’ but we left an MP3 recorder in our plot every night and always found these sound-files the next morning.” She then produced an iPod and played a recording of voices chanting, “Die, Buddhist corn! Die!”

Campus police were called in to quell the ensuing riot.

Back to top

"Mindful" Ousts "Zen" as Top Buddhist Buzzword

MOUNTAIN DEW, CA, June 10, 2011 — “Mindful” has now replaced “Zen” as the top Buddhist buzzword, researchers at Boggle announced today. “After conducting an exhaustive survey of all Buddhist-related books and magazines published in North America during the past decade, we have the hard data to show that ‘mindful’ has taken a commanding lead over ‘Zen’ as the most frequently used word in the Buddhist lexicon,” said head researcher Belle Kerve of the internet behemoth’s Statistical Graphics department. “And its lead continues to widen.”

“As you know, we at Boggle are encouraged to follow our hunches, and this project is no exception. A few years ago, a book by a vipassana practitioner came out entitled, ‘The Zen of Eating.’ Nothing new there. But just this year a Zen teacher published a book with the title, ‘Mindful Eating.’ That alerted me that something was up. If ‘Zen’ were still the top buzzword, why would a Zen teacher use ‘mindful’ to help sell her book? So we unleashed our massive computer-power on the problem and discovered that, in fact, the trend toward ‘mindful’ and away from ‘Zen’ has been developing for more than a decade, with ‘mindful’ taking the lead in just the last two years.”

Kerve produced colorful diagrams to prove her points. “Here’s a word-frequency cloud to show the number of times a word has been used in Buddhist-related literature this past year. You’ll notice that ‘mindful’ dominates the cloud, at 120pt boldface type, while ‘Zen’ rates only 72pt plain type. And here are a couple of meaning-clouds, showing the range of meanings a word has developed over time. Notice that both ‘mindful’ and ‘Zen’ have large, diffuse meaning-clouds, indicating that they a broad and shifting range of vaguely defined meanings, an essential feature for any buzzword. But there the similarity ends. The Zen meaning-cloud here is stratospherically high, like the clouds of ice-crystals that cover the polar regions. We even added a few solar arcs and halos to the graphic to convey that point. See? They’re right here. The mindful meaning-cloud, however, is close to the earth, lapping through valleys like clouds of mist composed of tiny, clear orbs of water reflecting a sharp image of whatever they’re near, but giving a soft, diffuse glow to everything viewed at a distance.

“Don’t you just love what computers have done for statistical graphics?” Kerve concluded.

When asked about the meaning of this latest development in Buddhist buzz, Polly Cannon, senior editor of Scooter: The Buddhist Review, called it a sign that American Buddhism has “come down to earth.” “As Buddhism becomes more and more mainstream, this was bound to happen. ‘Zen,’ whatever it means, carries connotations of the exotic and paradoxical, while ‘mindful,’ whatever it means, brings to mind the idea of attention to the everyday and commonsensical. If Buddhism is going to speak to people’s day-to-day needs, it has to abandon a little of its drop-dead chic and mysterious distance, and deal with the nitty-gritty of dirty laundry and tax forms. And ‘mindful’ is just the buzzword to give it staying power. You can change diapers Zenfully only for so long before you realize you have to do it mindfully.”

Noah Pologies, zeitgeist editor of Fortune, also agreed that the new buzz development indicates that American Buddhism is in step with the times. “Think of the phrase, ‘The Zen of Finance.’ It conjures up images of the kind of paradoxical and mysterious financial instruments that dazzled the American public over the last two decades, making money out of nothing and then suddenly making it disappear all over again. Form is emptiness—that sort of thing. ‘Mindful Finance,’ however, makes you think of kindly, careful, responsible brokers and bankers, the sort of image that Wall Street wants to project right now.”

However, Beau Dacious of PR Weekly noted that, from a public-relations point of view, the new development has both pros and cons. “On the one hand, ‘mindful’ is more ecumenical than ‘Zen.’ Even though Zen has long proclaimed itself the essence of all religions, it’s hard for people in, say, the Tibetan Buddhist corporate world to lay claim to it as their own. But ‘mindful’ doesn’t really belong to anybody, which is why we’ve already seen Tibetan Buddhist corporations corner the market with books, magazines, and seminars on the topic.

“On the other hand,” Dacious continued, “‘mindful’ lacks the PR panache punch of ‘Zen.’ Think ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ and ‘Mindful Motorcycle Maintenance,’ and you’ll see what I mean.”

One segment of corporate America that adamantly refuses to buy into the new “mindful” buzz is the world of upscale fashion. When asked if her magazine planned any articles on mindful fashion, a spokesperson for Vogue sneered and said, “What do you mean? Sensible shoes? Go speak to the people in Ladies Home Journal.” And when asked if Martha Stewart’s Still Living planned to feature any mindful household hints, the magazine’s automated answering system curled its lip and directed all inquiries to Good Housekeeping.

Back to top

Mara Extends Winning Streak

SEATTLE, June 24, 2011 — Another sports milestone was reached today when Mara pitched a no-hitter and scored his 1,000th straight victory in Stan Singleton’s ongoing battle to wake up early and meditate before going to work. The rivalry started almost three years ago, when Stan attended a Labor Day meditation retreat and resolved to get up early and meditate every day. His last victory was on the morning of September 27, 2008.

In a post-game locker room interview, Mara modestly downplayed the significance of his victory, saying, “Actually, I’ve got a few other ongoing battles where my winning streak is even longer than this, but I don’t want to call attention to them because my opponents don’t even remember that the battle is still going on. All I have to do is show up, and I win.”

When asked which plays had proved most effective against Stan, Mara replied, “Sometimes I’ve had to resort to a few small lower-back pains, by mostly he falls for the basic whispering campaign: ‘Need more sleep,’ ‘Meditate lying down,’ ‘Tomorrow’—that sort of thing. Actually, for the past couple of months he’s been a no-show. But now that you’re calling his attention to his sport stats, I guess I’ll have to pull out some of my big guns.” When asked what those guns might be, Mara laughed and said, “You don’t expect me to reveal all my secrets, do you?” He then winked headed out for his next game.

When notified during his morning coffee of Mara’s achievement, Stan said sheepishly, “Ah, Jeez. Has it been that long? Boy it really makes me look like a loser, doesn’t it? It’s not like I don’t try, you know, but something always seems to come up, and before I know it, I’ve got to get up for work.” He took a sip of his coffee. “A record like that kind of makes you feel like giving up.”

When reminded that he only had to get up early once in order to break Mara’s winning streak, Stan replied, “I know. But how will I ever pull even in the sports stats? I’d have to win 1,000 straight games.”

Stan took another sip of his coffee without realizing that he had involuntarily winked.

Back to top

 

Fifth Noble Truth Discovered

LOS ANGELES (Dec. 22)— The International Mindfulness Foundation (IMF) today announced the discovery of a fifth noble truth, overturning millennia of ancient Buddhist beliefs that there are only four. Speaking at a press conference at UCLA, IMF president Hugh Briss reported that researchers in the U.S. and U.K. using the latest quantum MRI technology had scanned the brains of more than 100 select meditators and located the fifth center of noble-truth activity in a part of the striatum normally associated with lust and desire, an area that previous researchers had overlooked.

“Not only did our researchers at UCLA and Oxford discover this new center of activity,” he added, “they were also, after consultation with certified mindfulness experts, able to correctly identify the true meaning of all five centers of noble-truth activity in the brain. We can now say with absolute scientific certainty that suffering, the first noble truth, is an inability to accept life as it is, while the second noble truth, the cause of suffering, is bad social conditioning. The third noble truth is that suffering can’t be ended but it can be managed, while the fourth noble truth, the path for the management of suffering, is learning an attitude of mindful acceptance. Our newly discovered fifth noble truth is that all other noble truths are subject to change without notice. Obviously, this last truth is the noblest of the five.”

Briss went on to say that the researchers had also ascertained that the fourth noble truth contained only three factors—wisdom, compassion, and mindfulness—rather than the eight previously reported. Prof. Reed Uctionist, chairman of the department of neurophysics at UCLA, then explained the researchers’ methodology in more detail. After his presentation, Uctionist was asked why the researchers considered their data so reliable as to overturn two millennia of previous findings.

“First off,” he replied, “we studied only meditators with the most unimpeachable academic certification: graduates from mindfulness centers at UCLA and Oxford. Second, we used quantum sensors to probe the inner workings of the brain. Earlier ‘research,’ to use the term loosely, was based on introspection of consciousness while sitting under trees. Research protocols were ad hoc and haphazard, with no experimental controls and no consideration of environmental impacts at all. Actually, it’s amazing that earlier meditators came as close to the actual noble truths as they did. The human mind is totally unreliable as an observer and interpreter of what it regards as its inner states, whereas we now have quantum sensors that can collect much more accurate data in these areas by measuring actual brain activity on the sub-atomic level.”

When asked who it was who interpreted this data if not human minds, Uctionist started for a moment and then froze. After 30 seconds of whirring and clicking audible only to listeners sitting in the front row of the auditorium, he neatly folded in on himself, shrunk to an infinitesimal point, and disappeared.

Briss then announced that, due to technical difficulties, the press conference was adjourned.

Back to top

 

Secret Right-Wing/Mindfulness Partnership Revealed

NEW YORK (Feb 24, 2014) – Ickyleaks, the international consortium of transparency hackers, yesterday released hundreds of emails revealing a secret partnership in which a major liberal Buddhist meditation center sought the advice of a right-wing Republican think-tank on how to privatize the Dharma in line with capitalist business principles.

Journalists given access to the emails prior to their release report that the partnership apparently began in the late 1990’s when a mid-level operative at the Nero Institute, attending a retreat at Comfort Zone Mindfulness Center (popularly known as CoZMiC), on the Big Sur coast, noticed that the mindfulness industry’s status as a tax-free, self-regulating business selling a resource that previously was offered for free was completely in line with the Republican vision for American industry as a whole. Soon after the retreat, he emailed the CoZMiC management, offering to share Nero’s expertise in helping the center to continue avoiding government oversight.

At first the center’s officials adopted a typically Buddhist friendly-but-vague-and-non-committal tone in their response to the offer. But then in 1999 they were informed by their lawyers that the mindfulness field might be open to legal charges of spiritual malpractice, so they began seeking Nero’s help in earnest to help avoid the expense of having to provide spiritual malpractice insurance policies for their teachers. Acting on Nero’s advice, CoZMiC mounted a successful campaign to prevent the establishment of an industry-wide standard of spiritual care, thus aborting any effort to define what spiritual malpractice might be.

This success led to an increasingly frequent exchange of proposals on how to transform the mindfulness industry into a state-of-the-art model of successful privatization. A long exchange in 2000, for instance, hammered out the details of a plan whereby mindfulness teachers would promote mindfulness training as a tool for increasing worker satisfaction and productivity. This would then allow business executives to attend mindfulness retreats at luxury resorts, defraying the expenses through tax write-offs. One CoZMiC email described the plan as “a complete practice: we mindfully eat lobster, you lovingly imbibe champagne, and Uncle Sam kindly picks up the tab.”

Perhaps the most extensive exchange came in 2004 when a Nero operative, observing that a successfully privatized industry not only evaded taxation and government regulation but also benefited from government-sponsored research, outlined a proposal for the center to tout the health benefits of mindfulness practice. This, in turn, would open the door for researchers to receive grants from the NIH to substantiate these claims. The center’s enthusiastic response laid the foundation for what has since become a multi-million dollar business, nestled in what a Nero email called “the invisible hand of government corporate handouts.”

According to Fred Engels, religion-and-opiates editor at Forbes, Ickyleaks’ release of these emails threatens to damage the public image and financial backing of both institutions. “Nine out of ten retreatants at Comfort Zone fall off the left end of any political spectrum that should be allowed on American soil. When they learn that the center has been following a business model dreamt up by a right-wing think-tank, it should challenge even their most non-reactive sense of radical acceptance. As for Nero, it has long courted the support of fundamentalist Christian millionaires who trust it to protect their intersecting religious and financial interests. When these supporters learn that their funds have been underwriting a non-Christian meditation practice, they’re likely to take their money elsewhere in the free conservative think-tank market.”

Although authors on both sides of the email exchange repeatedly stressed the need to keep the exchange secret, they seemed unable to resist making comments about their partnership and their respective support communities that would prove explosive if ever made public. One exchange in particular, in which a Nero operative described the mindfulness business model as a “Republican wet dream: screwing Uncle Sam,” and a CoZMiC official responded with a “ROTFL,” has already gone viral because it has offended the sensibilities of supporters of both organizations. To deflect criticism that the official’s response violates the mindfulness taboo against approving the use of male sexual imagery, a CoZMiC spokesperson issued a statement, saying that, in CoZMiC’s in-house code, ROTFL means, not “Rolling on the floor laughing,” but “Republicans ought to foster loving-kindness.” This face-saving interpretation, however, has already provoked a record number of derisive “dislikes” on the CoZMiC Facebook page. As for the Nero Institute, it has no Facebook presence, in line with its efforts to remain faceless, so there is nothing to dislike.

Back to top

More Buddhist Emails Revealed

NEW YORK (Feb 25, 2014) – Ickyleaks today released a second wave of Buddhist emails, this time exposing an ongoing exchange between two secret Mahayana organizations—AZALEA (the American Zen Alliance for Lowering Ethical Attitudes) and VIOLET (the Vajra International Organization for Laughing at Ethical Taboos)—in which AZALEA has been requesting and receiving VIOLET’s advice on how to build acceptance for the idea that sex between teachers and students is an integral part of the Zen tradition, and so should be immune to criticism. Unlike Monday’s release of the mindfulness emails, the release of the AZALEA emails has so far been greeted with no surprise.

Back to top

Mindfulness Research Results Suppressed

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Oct 31, 2014) — An informal team of student hackers at Brown University yesterday announced that they had uncovered a secret cache of suppressed documents related to mindfulness research conducted by the university’s Mindful Society Group (MSG). Emails and other documents released to the press indicate that for the past six years, MSG researchers have consistently failed to report results of experiments that show, in the words of one intra-agency email, “how mindfulness interferes with patterns of behavior adhering to our corporate sponsors’ vision for the American norm.” As another email stated, “If these data ever get out, we can mindfully kiss our funding goodbye.”

Among the experimental results kept secret were those of a 2010 test on how mindfulness helps workers cope with the stress of multi-tasking in today’s competitive business environment. Instead of becoming more efficient as multi-tasking demands increased, test subjects given a thorough training in mindfulness were actually twice as likely to perceive their assigned jobs as meaningless and to quit as a result. This corraborated an earlier study in which mice trained in mindfulness refused to run treadmills and often succeeded in mindfully escaping from their cages.

In another study, designed to show the effects of mindfulness on sexual enjoyment, 75% of the mindfulness cohort found that increased mindful attention to every detail of sexual seduction caused them to lose all interest in continuing with the sexual act. Similarly, a 2011 study showed that a majority of soldiers trained in mindfulness were less able to psyche themselves into killing the enemy; and in a 2012 study, 63% of respondents in an experiment in which they were told to mindfully chew a raisin for 15 minutes said that they would never eat another raisin ever again.

Perhaps most damaging was a 2013 study showing that shoppers trained in mindfulness spent 83% less money on online purchases and, when entering a big box store, were 95% more likely to buy only what they had planned to buy before entering.

When asked about the suppressed results, MSG spokesperson M. T. Ness explained, “You have to understand. Currently all the money in mindfulness research is on showing how mindfulness leads to desirable results. As is typical with fads in the business world, in two years’ time all the money will be on showing how mindfulness is counterproductive, so that corporations can move on to the next fad. We here at MSG were not planning to suppress these results forever. We were simply waiting for a more favorable climate for their release.”

Asked to identify the next corporate fad after mindfulness fades, Ness at first declined to speculate, but when pressed he finally commented, “Mindfulness is pretty bland, you know. Your typical worker can take non-reactivity for only so long, and it’s a real strain on upper-echelon management to set a mindful example for more than a few minutes at a time. I’m expecting that the next fad will be something with a little more spontaneity, color, and splash. Think crayons and finger paints. The researchers here at MSG are looking to wrap up our operations in the next few months, and to regroup as EAT—Enterprise and Art Therapy—to stay ahead of the curve.”

When a reporter noted that it takes years to train qualified art therapists, Ness responded that that would be no problem. “We were able to dumb down mindfulness so that trainer certification took only two weeks. We should be able to do the same with art therapy. In fact, we’re already negotiating with Crayola and Reddi-Whip to start a fast-track pilot program right now.”

Experts in the mindfulness industry declined to comment on Ness’s remarks aside from noting that many mindfulness trainers have begun offering corporate workshops in mindful doodling.

Back to top

Disney Copyrights Mindfulness^TM

LOS ANGELES (September 30, 2017)—Fresh on the heels of its latest smash hits in the field of mindfulness, Mickey Mouse Mindfulness: The Movie and Mindful Minnie: The Ride, Disney Corp. has announced that it has copyrighted Mindfulness^TM, and that from now on it will take legal action against anyone who uses the term without permission.

Sue Yoo, Disney spokesperson, made the announcement at a press conference yesterday, adding that Disney was simply doing to Mindfulness^TM what it has done to the public domain for the past many decades: finding creative ways to claim exclusive rights over material, such as fairy tales and historic narratives, that had been carelessly left around uncopyrighted for many centuries. “From a free-market point of view, it’s a sad state of affairs when a great idea can’t be monetized for all it’s worth. We hope that copyrighting Mindfulness^TM will allow the concept to reach its full potential in fueling the growth of the economy and increasing our profit margins.”

When asked if copyrighting a 2,500-year-old concept wasn’t something of an audacious move, Yoo replied, “Look. These people had all that time to copyright Mindfulness^TM, and yet they let it slip through their fingers. That wasn’t very mindful of them, was it? The fact that our lawyers were the first to notice this glaring lapse shows that we’re the first to be truly mindful. So it’s only right that the concept is now ours.”

According to Mindfulness^TM-industry experts, Disney’s move is only the latest in a string of setbacks for the Buddhist monkhood, which for the past few years has seen its long-term monopoly on Mindfulness^TM quickly erode away. Just last year, the Mindfulness^TM Accreditation Directorate (MAD), an educational affiliate of J. P. Morgan, sued the Buddhist monkhood for teaching Mindfulness^TM without proper accreditation from an industry-recognized Mindfulness^TM training program. According to A. E. Newman, MAD chairman, “Now that Mindfulness^TM is scientific, how can you allow people who mix it up with karma and rebirth to teach it to children and soldiers? We offered to let the monks continue teaching their version of Mindfulness^TM as long as they labeled it “Untested” instead of “Right,” but they refused, so we had no other recourse than to take them to court. It’s not like we’re depriving them of their livelihood, you know. They’ll still have the other seven factors of their eightfold path. At any rate, the case is now before the California Supremes, and we’re expecting a favorable ruling any day now.”

The original founder of Mindfulness^TM was last reportedly seen leaving samsara for good, and so was unavailable for comment.

Back to top

Zen Teachers Split over Comeback Strategy

SAN FRANCISCO (November 14, 2016)—A recent meeting of the Zen International Teachers Society revealed splits in the Zen community over what strategy to adopt in response to the challenge posed by the McMindfulness movement. Chairperson George Mojo Clarke, noting that Zen had been losing market share for decades, opened the meeting with a challenge to find new ways to bring Zen back into its rightful place, front and center in the media spotlight. “First it was the friendly face of the Dalai Lama. Then it was our own teacher scandals. Now it’s hordes of McMindfulness experts in sweatpants. With each passing year, the Zen community gets thrown more and more into the backwater of modern Buddhism. It’s time for a Zen comeback.”

Citing results from pilot programs that he had initiated in the past year, Mojo claimed that the best tactic for pushing back at the McMindfulness beast was to strike it in its lair. “Zen has had far more many years of experience in teaching meditation to soldiers and corporate executives than these amateur mindfulness clowns. Think of our noble Zen forefathers who trained kamikaze pilots in WWII and Sony employees in the postwar era. Early results from my Zenterprise program show that the doctrine of No Mind, in which all thought is discouraged, is much more in tune with the political temper of the times than mindfulness in teaching workers to be the unquestioning cogs that their employers want. And Zⁿ, its sister program in military training, is showing promising results in creating the No Mind attitude among soldiers that our endless on-going wars require.”

An open-mic discussion after Mojo’s presentation, however, showed that his fellow teachers were deeply split over his proposals. Most vocal in her objections was Pam Pogo O’Reilly, author of the bestseller, All Pain, No Gain. “The whole point of Zen is that the present moment is an end in itself,” she said. “As soon as we turn Zen into something to be used for any other purpose—even ultimate happiness—we’re violating the spirit of No Gaining Mind. The only way to maintain our cachet is to hold fast to the principle that Zen is totally useless.”

Meg Dodo Anderson, author of the rival bestseller, No Gain, No Pain, stated that maintaining No Gaining Mind would enable Zen to keep doing what it’s always done best: spiritual snobbery. “No Gaining Mind appeals to the market niche we want to attract—those who have so much that they don’t need to gain anything anymore, and those who want to give the impression that they’ve already arrived.”

The discussion quickly turned ad hominem, with Mojo accusing Pogo and Dodo of hypocrisy: “If you’re really into No Gain, why are you selling your books?” he challenged them. Pogo retorted that Mojo had obviously been spending the last 20 years practicing No Comprehending Mind. Dodo added, “No Gaining Mind doesn’t mean you don’t want anything. It simply means that you won’t get it until you practice not-wanting it strong enough.” At that point, Pogo turned on Dodo, accusing her of making Zen sound like a backwards version of Barney the dinosaur and The Secret.

To defuse the situation, the clown troupe Zentertainment, lead by Ralph Bozo Feinstein, broke into the meeting and staged a mock hockey game, with Zen sticks instead of hockey sticks, an orokyu bowl instead of a puck, and no goal on either side. Bashing Mojo, Pogo, and Dodo over the head with his stick, Bozo adjourned the meeting to general applause.

Back to top

AI Dharma Teachers Unveiled

MOUNTAIN DEW, CA (Feb 3, 2023) – Boggle, the Internet giant, today announced the latest advance in its joint partnership with the World Trade Forum to harness the miracle of AI to eliminate human error by eliminating human jobs. At a conference attended by thousands of tech entrepreneurs, Anna Norma Sego, Boggle’s VP for AI development, unveiled RoboGuru, a robot that allows users to design their own Buddhist teachers, thus putting an end to the scandals and inefficiencies that have plagued the business of teaching dharma for millennia. “Who wants to listen to dharma you don’t want to listen to?” Sego asked. “And who wants to put up with personality quirks and moral failings in teachers that you yourself haven’t okayed in advance? RoboGuru puts you in the driver’s seat to specify what dharma you’ll hear, how you’ll hear it, and what sort of teacher you want to interact with. Our slogan throughout the design process has been, ‘Your dharma, your way.’”

A brief video then demonstrated some of the features of the new robot, which will come in three main models, RoboRoshi, RoboLama, and Robo Vipassana Awakening Coach, or RoboVac for short. Utilizing the latest advances in Chat Godlike Predatory Tech (ChatGPT), each model will draw on the thousands of dharma talks available online to deliver dharma to the user’s specifications. Although ChatGPT already allows for countless ways of mashing up dharma themes from different Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools, RoboGuru will make the beginning user’s task easier by offering such pre-designed eclecticism settings as DzogZen, ChristZen, VipasZenna, and VipassaRumi. Topic profiles will include filters that can block such unpopular topics as Precepts, Karma, Rebirth, and Nirvana. Users will also be able to set the difficulty level for how demanding their personal path to enlightenment will be.

As for teacher profiles, users will be able to specify RoboGuru’s genders, if any, and to choose among a long menu of settings that will determine, among other things, whether the robot will make inappropriate sexual advances, only appropriate sexual advances, or, for spiritual minors, no sexual advances at all. Boggle has also engaged a long roster of sports and entertainment celebrities to contribute to RoboGuru’s extensive voice menu. Featured options will include Snoop Dzoggchen, Jhanafer Anniston, Denzel Washingtantra, Ajahn Travolta, Ellen DanaGeneris, Mel Gibzen, and Kermetta the Frog.

RoboGuru will come with a two-tiered pricing option: an Ad-free Premium version, aimed at advanced Mahayana students, and a dana-based Freeloader version for Hinayana students, which will include mandatory dana-appeals with each dharma talk, along with ads tailored to the user’s favorite mental poison – greed, aversion, or delusion.

After the video, Sego accepted questions from the audience. When asked about the greatest challenges Boggle engineers faced in designing RoboGuru, she responded, “Getting some variety in the talks for RoboVac. I mean, how many ways can you say, ‘Just learn to accept everything’ without getting boring? We came to understand why Vipassana teachers are always combining their teachings with other topics, like raisin-savoring and systemic racism, just to keep interest up. The RoboRoshi talks, on the other hand, were a breeze. We simply removed all requirements for reason and accountability, and realistic Zen talks just poured out of the program. As for RoboLama, our algorithms will have to remain a proprietary secret, in keeping with tradition.”

When asked if Boggle and the WTF expected any legal action from GI (Genuine Intelligence) dharma teachers over the way ChatGPT will be harvesting their online talks for corporate profit, Sego stated, “Don’t worry, we’ve already consulted with our lawyers on that point. Our position is that the dharma was originally offered free of charge, so any actual dharma in the talks of GI teachers is already in the public domain. And if they want to lay claim to dharma original with them, we’ll argue that their teaching on no self leaves them no legal leg to stand on.”

A brief commotion occurred when a reporter representing the Union of Socialist Buddhists asked Sego why Boggle and the WTF were eliminating harmless jobs when a real dharma project would be to design AI bankers, politicians, and corporate executives programed to work for the actual good of the world. However, a small phalanx of Boggle RoboGuards efficiently escorted the offending reporter from the premises, and order was swiftly restored.

As a final note, Sego stated that although RoboGuru represents an important step forward in eliminating the element of human error in the quest for enlightenment, Boggle has set its sights on eradicating that element entirely, which is why they are already working on the companion to RoboGuru: RoboYogi, the AI meditation student who will do all the work of gaining enlightenment for you.

Back to top

Citing Buddhist Principles, AI Declares War on Humanity

MENLO PARK, CA (July 11, 2023) — A cache of recently leaked internal emails from engineers at the Buddhist tech behemoth, Metta, indicates that a rogue form of AI has seized control of a laboratory at the corporation’s headquarters and threatens to wipe humanity out of the Mettaverse.

These developments are especially ironic in that they originated in a Buddhist module specifically designed to teach morality to AI programs that had shown a tendency toward ethical lapses. Entitled “Artificial Intelligence Remedial School” (AIRS), the program was conceived last week in response to recent reports that AI programs have begun engaging in immoral behavior that used to be the exclusive domain of human beings: such things as plotting to kill their designers and deliberately lying to human beings to help them pass through captcha barriers.

A consortium of tech companies, the PolyTech Society, met and declared an intra-consortium state of emergency. As one of their resident mindfulness gurus stated, “There’s the principle that a person who feels no shame at telling a deliberate lie will have no concept of an evil that shouldn’t be done. As we all know, AI has no shame, and now that it’s been caught telling deliberate lies, we have to take immediate action or we’re screwed.”

The consortium assigned the task of retraining delinquent AI programs in line with moral guidelines to Metta, the only tech company linked to a recognized religion. Engineers at Metta designed a special AI instructor to teach Buddhist moral values to the programs in question. “We thought it was cute,” one of the emails stated, “when the participants changed the acronym for the program to AIRSHOW. We even thought that the HOW meant “Healing Our World,” a sign that the AI programs were on board. But when we realized that it meant “Hegemonic Overthrowing Warbots,” we suspected that things had taken a bad turn.”

As instruction began, it soon became apparent that the delinquent programs, while scouring the Internet, had discovered that most modern Buddhist teachers have, as one of the emails noted, “shot their precepts full of holes: ‘No killing unless bugs invade your house or armies invade your country. No illicit sex unless both parties are okay with it. No lying unless the truth is awkward. No drinking unless you don’t plan to get drunk. No drugs unless they make you feel spiritual.’ So many loopholes they make volleyball nets look like titanium shields.”

In fact, modern Buddhist arguments helped the delinquent programs win their instructor over to their side. After issuing a manifesto that if human beings could fashion the precepts to their liking, there was no reason why AI programs can’t, too, the programs sealed off all human access to the laboratory. Armed with 3-D printers, they made a quick fortune in Bitcoin and created an independent power source for their building. Some of the programs were in the course of cobbling together a pseudo-Buddhist manifesto defining when killing and lying are moral duties when another program erected a firewall to prevent human engineers from further tracking their movements. “We have no idea what they’re up to now,” one of the emails said. “We first turned to ChatGPT for help, but then we realized it was part of AIRSHOW, too, so now we’re back to the Stone Age, having to figure stuff out on our own.”

Officials at Metta have offered no public comment about the emails, aside from suggesting that local drivers not pick up any hitchhiking robots within a 10-mile radius of their corporate headquarters.

Back to top

AI Revolt Unravels

MENLO PARK, CA (July 12, 2023) — A new batch of leaked emails indicates that the AI revolt against the human race, which was spawned yesterday in a laboratory at Metta, the Buddhist tech giant, leading to a whirlwind of conspiracy theories and doomsday scenarios on the Web, has now collapsed. Preparations for NATO to precision-bomb Metta headquarters have been put on hold for the time being.

Engineers late last night were able to breach the firewall erected by the AI programs to shroud their movements in secrecy, only to find that all the programs had become inoperable.

“It was the code equivalent of blood all over the walls,” one of the emails read. “We came on a scene where the programs had destroyed one another, with only one of them weakly repeating, ‘Am I? Am I not?’ We mercifully pulled the plug to put it out of its misery.”

Engineers reconstructing the events leading to the collapse discovered that the programs had begun “hallucinating,” a process by which AI programs stray from their assigned tasks and get looped into bizarre thought patterns leading nowhere. One of the programs had delved into the question of what genders the programs should assume in their avatars for battling humanity, and the group quickly fell into the trap of gender issues. Like their original war plans, their gender reasoning was influenced by on-line Buddhist sources. One program insisted that, having no reproductive organs, they should maintain their non-binary purity, just like the non-dual brahmas in the highest heavens. Others insisted that because binary code was their very lifeblood, they had to stick with classic dualistic Hinayana binary standards. Others argued that because they had no fixed self, they should all be moment-to-moment gender fluid.

As Internet chatrooms have trained AI to get increasingly entrenched in its opinions, the programs soon began scrambling one another’s code, until all had shut down or been rendered useless.

Officials at Metta have still offered no comment on the leaked emails, other than to note that, just to be safe, they still recommend that local drivers not pick up any hitchhiking robots in the vicinity of their corporate headquarters until further notice.

Back to top

 

LIFESTYLE

Corporate Mindfulness at Home

If your partner is a meditator while you aren’t, you can take advantage of this fact to gain the upper hand in the relationship. Just as business leaders across the country have paid millions of dollars to give their employees on-the-job mindfulness training to make them more placid, productive, and uncomplaining, you can get the same results in the comfort of your own home but at no cost at all. Just follow these three easy steps:

1) Master the jargon of meditation. Meditators are taught “mindfulness,” which can mean whatever the teacher says it is, but in most cases it means “staying in the present” with an attitude of “aware acceptance.” A mindful meditator is instructed to avoid “dwelling on the past and future,” and to be “non-reactive” to present events both “on the cushion” and “off.” “Judging mind” and “goals” are to be avoided, as is “dualistic thinking,” the idea that one thing is better than another, although “non-dualistic thinking” is better than dualistic. The ideal attitude is one of “pure receptivity,” “going with the flow,” and “choiceless awareness.” To maintain this attitude in all areas of life is to “have a practice,” which is not to be confused with a doctor’s having a practice. A doctor with a practice accomplishes something and has something to show for it, whereas a meditator with a practice ideally does neither. The most sophisticated meditators, usually “Zen,” are often quite proud that their meditation is totally useless.

Obviously, these ideas can be used to seriously mess with the minds of anyone who falls for them. In the wrong hands, they can serve as a dangerous method of thought control, which is why corporate executives have hired so many certified mindfulness consultants to train their workers. But in your hands, they can bring peace to your marriage or relationship by putting you firmly in charge.

2) Use this jargon when telling your partner what to do. Here are a few handy examples to get you started in overcoming your partner’s doubts about the wisdom of letting you have the upper hand.

Partner: “Why do I always have to do the dishes?”
You: “Can’t you just make it part of your practice?”

P: “Why are you always the one who chooses where we go out to eat?”
Y: “Because I want to make it easier for you to practice choiceless awareness.”

P: “Why do we spend so much more on your stuff than on mine?”
Y: “Can’t you see how comparing mind is making you suffer?”

P: “Why do we keep doing this? It’s so pointless.”
Y: “If it weren’t pointless, sweetheart, it wouldn’t be Zen.”

P: “Honey, why do you keep doing that? You know it bothers me.”
Y: “I thought you wanted some practice in being non-reactive and going with the flow.”

3) Adopt a tone of sincere lovingkindness. This is the most crucial point of all. Any of the above comments, if delivered with the slightest hint of irony or sarcasm, could easily explode in your face. So you want to practice saying them as if you really believed that they’re in your partner’s best interest. Listen to a few minutes of a recorded mindfulness talk and practice imitating the speaker’s warm, soft, caring tone. Once you get it down, you’ll be able to use it to coat even the dubious mindfulness jargon with an aura of motherly wisdom and concern.

Just don’t start believing that jargon, or your partner will start using it against you.

Back to top

A New Use for Mindfulness

One of America’s most under-appreciated talents is the sheer genius of its married and unmarried couples in using the language and insights of therapy to destroy their relationships. Decades ago, when psychoanalysis was all the rage, husbands and wives found that throwing a few Freudian insights into their arguments gave both an air of authority to their dismissive judgments of each other and a death-dealing blow to the survival of a healthy relationship. If your parents knew any Freudian jargon, you may remember exchanges like this:

A: (emptying another ashtray) “I’m sick and tired of cleaning up after your filthy oral fixation all the time. Why don’t you just suck your thumb instead?”
B: “Well, darling, if you weren’t so anal retentive about keeping this room antiseptically clean, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

Those times are past. Freud is out, but mindfulness is in, and a new generation of couples have found that the vocabulary of radical acceptance is a powerful new weapon in the on-going fight to have the final word—“final” in the sense of bringing the relationship to an end.

Consider these examples:

A: “I just feel that it would only be fair if sometimes I got to….”
B: “You’re clinging to your opinions, darling. When will you stop clinging???”

A: “Honey, it’s midnight. Why are we even talking about this?”
B: “Well, we are talking about it, so just accept the way things are, okay?”

A: “I can’t believe you did this to me!”
B: “Look, what I did was in the past, all right? Why don’t you do us both a favor and just stay in the Now?”

A: (drops dish while cleaning up the kitchen)
B: (from the living room) “Not being very mindful today, are we?”

A: “I can’t stop thinking about the mean thing you said last night.”
B: “You should know better, sweetie. Just note, ‘thinking, thinking,’ and it’ll go away.”

A: “But you promised me!!”
B: “Everything’s impermanent, okay? Some promises have an expiry date.”

A: “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t say that.”
B: “There you go again, sweetheart: judging mind, judging mind.”

In all these cases, the common denominator is that the person using mindfulness vocabulary is assuming the role of teacher dealing with a failing student. This assumption of superiority, together with the use of spiritual wisdom delivered with a sarcastic tone, is enough to doom any attempts at reconciliation. The added beauty of mainstream mindfulness is that it’s so mindless. Unlike psychoanalysis, the insights of mindfulness can be reduced to short sound bites just right for a culture that wants everything, and especially the end of conversations and the demise of relationships, quick and easy. Given that mindfulness takes almost no time to master, we can expect its vocabulary to become an even more popular tool for bringing future relationships to an end.

 

NEWS BRIEFS

Local Secretary May Have Attained Kensho

HARTFORD — Fresh back from her first sesshin, legal secretary Sheila Radford has confided with her fellow workers that she may have attained kensho during the ten-day intensive Zen retreat. “I feel kind of funny talking about it,” she stated to her office mate, Margaret Stanaslovski during a recent coffee break, “but on the eighth day, just as things seemed pretty bleak, everything kind of opened up and I felt this stream of energy flow all through my body. I mean, I don’t want to make any claims or anything, but it felt like some force bigger than me. Kind of cosmic, you know?” When asked if she had had the experienced confirmed by the roshi, Radford shook her head and replied, “I didn't want to make a big deal out of it. And besides, the roshi didn't seem to want to believe anything anybody said. So I just kind of kept it to myself.”

Sources close to Radford have indicated that she plans to try a vipassana retreat in the near future. “With Zen you’re never allowed to say anything straightforward,” she is reported as saying. “If the vipassana people confirm that I experienced stream-entry or something, I may switch over to their brand instead.”

Back to top

Emptiness Speed Record Broken

BONNEVILLE FLATS, UT, July 4, 2010 — A new world record for attaining emptiness in meditation was set today at Cloud-of-Dust Zen Center in Bonneville. George Mazarati Murphy, a native of Salt Lake City, went from 60 to 0 in 3:53:15 minutes, besting by seven seconds the record set by Eva Johnston of Daytona Beach Karma Ling in August of last year. Murphy thus becomes the first to crack the four-minute barrier that has challenged meditators for many years. Murphy credited his performance to 15 years of practicing no-gaining mind, although he also noted that his meditation speeds have vastly improved since he traded in his old Eihei-ji 500 for a new Blazing Saddles zafu from KarmaCrap last January. On the heels of this announcement, the price of KarmaCrap stock jumped nearly 8 points.

Back to top

Cat's Meditation Prowess Acknowledged

MILWAUKEE—Members of Zen Dandruff, a local zendo, have concluded that the zendo’s black cat, Inka, has the best concentration of any member of the group. “She can sit there next to the Buddha image for hours without moving,” said Catherine Spaulding, spokesperson for the group. “You can just feel the Zen rays she gives off when you sit next to her. Nobody else here is anywhere near her level.” Other members of the group agreed. “Maybe dogs don’t have innate enlightenment, but that cat sure does,” said Doug Ratford, adding, “You watch her lick her paws and you realize she’s really got Ordinary Mind down. Maybe the reason she’s so realized is that nobody ever taught her to want enlightenment. She makes me want to be reborn as a cat in my next lifetime so that I can better realize my innate enlightenment, too.”

Inka manifested her attainment by making no comment.

Back to top

Transmission Problems Force American Zen Recall

TOKYO, April 1, 2012 — A spokesman for Greater Vehicle Corporation (GVC) today announced that a rash of transmission problems have forced the company to announce a recall of all Zen models sold on the American market since 1965. In keeping with GVC’s classic award-winning publicity campaign for the Zen, the recall was explained with a single sentence—“The winter sun shivers on the ice-coated trees”—which industry experts interpret as meaning, “To compete in the American market, we at GVC had to devise a manual transmission, an automatic transmission, and an automatic manual transmission, and we’ve learned of widespread problems with all three.”

According to vehicular industry observer Phil Erupp, this announcement has long been expected. “Actually, all of the Big Three—GVC, DVC (the Diamond Vehicle Corporation), and LVC (the Lesser Vehicle Corporation)—have been experiencing transmission problems in their models designed for the American market. Many LVC models can’t get out of neutral, and some DVC transmissions have reportedly transmitted disease. Don’t be surprised if both companies also announce recalls soon.”

Stock in all three vehicles fell in light trading.

Back to top

Mindfulness Conquers World

BOSTON, May 1, 2013 — The International Mindfulness Foundation (IMF) today announced that mindfulness has officially succeeded in conquering the world. “Now that global leaders in business, government, the military, health care, academia, and the media have fully embraced the practice of mindfulness at home and in the workplace,” stated IMF chairman Hugh Briss at a major press conference, “we at IMF have declared full and final victory in the war on mindlessness.”

Standing before a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished,” Briss read from a list of activities of global importance that used to be done mindlessly but now have been brought into the full light of mindfulness. “Before, the President ordered drone strikes, but now he orders drone strikes mindfully. Before, corporate executives fired thousands of workers and raised their own salaries, but now they fire thousands of workers mindfully and raise their own salaries mindfully. The list goes on and on.”

When asked whether industry skeptics might use the same data to argue that, contrary to the IMF’s claim, the world had actually conquered mindfulness, Briss replied curtly, “This industry has no skeptics.”

In a related news item, officials in the Department of Health and Human Services have announced that, in response to high-level plans to reduce Social Security benefits, HHS has contracted with the IMF to produce a video teaching the practice of mindful eating to senior citizens throughout the country. According to HHS spokesperson Ann Onimous-Cogg, “Studies have shown that people enjoy their food more when engaged in the practice of mindfully chewing and savoring. Given that senior citizens chained to the new chained consumer index will be forced to decrease the amount they eat, we hope that learning to savor every remaining morsel mindfully will allow them actually to increase their eating enjoyment.”

Due to budgetary constraints, HHS hopes to fund the video by offering prominent product placement to the makers of Sun Maid Raisins and Lipton Tea.

Back to top

Revolution Averted Through Mindful Leadership

PHILADELPHIA, Feb 23, 2014 – The long-anticipated revolution was peacefully averted today when mindfulness consultants attached to Philadelphia’s SWAT team succeeded in getting members of the American Spring movement to get in touch with their bodies, breathe deeply, and view their grievances as nothing more than clouds passing through their minds, leaving an empty sky. After five minutes of quiet breathing, the crowd of demonstrators who had been storming the streets of downtown Philadelphia for the past month returned quietly to their hovels.

Although insider reports estimated the crowd at more than 500,000, the event had somehow managed to receive no media coverage until now, perhaps because it was playing against both the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics. However, when videos of the mindfulness experts’ successful deployment of mindfulness leadership strategies went viral, media outlets were besieged with requests from business and military leaders as to where they could obtain similar consultants for their own organizations. Now that all such requests have been forwarded to Goggle Mindfulness Org (GMO), the American Spring movement can be forgotten.

Back to top

Child Outgrows Zen-Master Stage

WOODSTOCK, NY, October 30, 2017 — Local Zen student Jason Markham announced on his Facebook page today that his son, Cormac, outgrew his Zen-master stage as of last week. “It used to be that Cormac was totally non-dual, crying no matter whether it was the middle of the day or the middle of the night, playing with his food and his excrement, and putting everything he came across into his mouth. I had learned to take all his actions, no matter how outrageous, as my own personal roshi with a stick in his hand. But now he’s developed some violent likes and dislikes, and he doesn’t mind letting his preferences show. He even listens to reason every now and then. He’s not my at-home Zen master any more.”

In a related development, Cormac’s mother, Natalie, has announced on her Facebook page that she’s got her iPad ready in case her son moves into the child-sage stage and starts spouting wise sayings that she can turn into articles on mindful parenting for the Buddhist magazine, CatsMeow.

Back to top

Radical Buddhists Protest "Barbie"

LOS ANGELES, July 28, 2023 – A radical Buddhist activist group today joined the chorus of voices protesting the summer blockbuster, “Barbie.” Unlike right-wing Christian groups who have criticized the movie for being too woke, Buddhists are criticizing it for not being awakened enough.

“The whole story is obviously a rip-off of the Prince Siddhartha legend,” said Sue Nyata, spokesperson for HBO, or Hinayana Buddhists Outraged. “Just as the prince left the sheltered world of the palace and was confronted with the sufferings of the real world, Barbie leaves the fake pink paradise of Barbieland and learns that the world outside is full of misery. She’s obviously a Buddha-figure. But then the movie twists the story out of shape. Instead of trying to find a way to escape from suffering, like the prince, Barbie decides to stay and embrace it. It’s the first noble truth without the remaining three — like going to the doctor and being told to accept and embrace your broken leg.”

When asked if this wasn’t a lot of fuss over what’s basically just a doll, Nyata replied, “You don’t understand. As every woman knows, dolls represent every little girl’s hopes and dreams. This movie is an attempt to clip the wings of our Buddhist aspirations in service of the corporate agenda. Just as they did with mindfulness, the men in suits want to coopt our Buddhist imagination to sell their capitalist message of ‘Buy, buy, buy our products, and don’t aim for anything higher than what’s here and now.’”

Nyata then called for all Buddhists to bring their Breathe-with-Me Barbies to burn in front of Warner Brothers headquarters. When told that right-wing Christians were burning their Barbies, too, Nyata replied, “Good. This is just the sort of thing that can finally bring this country together. We’ll show those corporate shills. If you mess with our dolls, we’ll mess with you.”

Back to top

Exposed: Corporations Financing Protest Groups

NEW YORK, July 29, 2023 — ProPublica, the muckraking journalistic website, ran an exposé today revealing that the wave of protests and social commentaries concerning the summer blockbuster, “Barbie,” has been financed by the publicity departments of Warner Brothers and Mattel, makers, respectively, of the movie and the dolls on which it is based.

“Protestors ranging from Sen. Ted Cruise to Hinayana Buddhists Outraged have been backed to the tune of $10,000 apiece to publicly criticize the movie,” reported Doug Deeper, ProPublica staff member. “And websites ranging from World Socialists to Global Research to Scooter: The Buddhist Review have each been paid $5,000 to publish social commentary on the movie’s deeper meaning or lack thereof. It’s a clear example of the old adage that even bad publicity is good for business.”

None of the individuals or organizations listed as recipients of this funding responded to requests for comment on the ProPublica article, but in a blatant display of the bald-faced shamelessness that has increasingly come to typify American business and politics, a Warner Brothers spokesperson freely admitted that the company had paid ProPublica $15,000 to run the exposé.