Читать книгу Enlightenment Blues - Andre van der Braak - Страница 10

2

YOU HAVE TO CHANGE

Everybody wants to be enlightened but nobody wants to change.

-Andrew Cohen

2.1. Amherst

Amherst, the small town in the middle of Massachusetts, home to five colleges including Smith, Holyoke, and the University of Massachusetts, is also an area where many western Buddhists live. Nearby, in the small town of Barre, is the prominent Insight Meditation Society where famous American Buddhist teachers such as Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield teach. Andrew has been invited to teach in Amherst by a middle-aged American named Jacob who had been a Buddhist monk in Asia for six years, and had been meditating for twenty when he met Andrew, a meeting which has turned his life upside down just as it has mine.

In May 1988, with a few thousand dollars in my pocket, I fly there on a one-way ticket. Sarah stays in Amsterdam for another month to make some more money. There are about a hundred students in Amherst by the time I arrive. The college students have gone for the summer, so we live in the big fraternity houses in groups of ten or more. After Sarah arrives, she and I live with eight others in a house called The Yellow House. We settle into the familiar rhythm that we know so well from Devon.

Andrew gives satsang almost every evening in the living room of his large house. During the days we go to the beach, or for walks, or out for coffee with each other. We are from all parts of the world, and the most important thing that connects us is Andrew, his teachings, and the community that we are starting to form together. And that’s mostly what we talk about. What did Andrew speak about last night? Who’s been invited to cook for Andrew? The letters we write to him are another inexhaustible topic of conversation. Night after night we have powerful experiences of oneness and intimacy in satsang. They powerfully confirm for us that the revolution is under way. Although we live in different houses spread out over Amherst, it feels like we live in a single ashram. The town is ours. We are high on enlightenment all the time. To live in such ecstatic abandonment, with nothing to hold on to, is thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

As it turns out, the very insecurity and vulnerability of such a way of life seems to be too much to bear for some of us. I hear an unsettling story about Jacob. He is no longer there when I arrive. He apparently had a falling out with Andrew and left. From what I hear, Jacob was having doubts about Andrew and having difficulty surrendering. His ego must have come back in and pulled him back into familiar territory. It’s a reminder to us all how important it is to have clarity of intention and to guard the precious realization of enlightenment against the poison of our mind.

And indeed living together with so many people from different countries and cultural backgrounds is not as easy as we expected, especially in this situation where the future is so completely open-ended. No one, including Andrew, knows where this is going. We have to trust and surrender. Although at the deepest level we feel everything is perfect, at the more mundane level of living together, some problems begin to develop. We find that in spite of our newly found recognition and celebration of enlightenment, most of us still behave in less than enlightened ways. For Andrew this is unacceptable. “Once you’ve realized the truth,” he says, “you have to live up to it.” So, no more neuroses, no more selfishness, no more temper tantrums. Get your act together. Andrew encourages us to have house meetings where we can come together and evaluate how we are doing.

In this way, Andrew’s message begins to change. He still speaks about clarity of intention as the way to enlightenment, but he also begins to speak now about the need to make clear choices in day-to-day life, choices that will keep our enlightened state free from obstacles, such as attachments and conditioned patterns. And that could mean making very different choices than we have been making, whether out of psychological habit, laziness, or simple ignorance. Andrew calls this ‘the law of volitionality’. It means total responsibility at all times. We are always free to choose, so we are also always responsible and accountable for what we choose. He starts to emphasize the need to change, which means letting go of the old conditioned tendencies and no longer acting out of them.

Having to change? I’m still utterly happy; nothing could be more perfect than it is now. So what needs to change? When I met Andrew I was profoundly relieved that I could be done with my Buddhist self-improvement program, meditating hours every day, inching my way towards final enlightenment, chipping away at my ego with every minute of meditation. There was no thrill there, no revolution, only spinning your wheels, one part of yourself trying to improve the other part. Andrew’s message had been, nothing has to change, everything is perfect as it is, just realize this and surrender to it deeply and all your problems will be over. Your whole life will be over. So what is all this talk about having to change now? From what I’ve heard, Andrew’s own teacher Poonja never speaks about having to change. Is Andrew going back to a Buddhist approach?

I share my concerns with Andrew in satsang.

“Oh well,” he says, “it’s not such a big deal. It’s like housekeeping, taking care of business, cleaning up some old karma.”

“But I thought enlightenment meant the end of all the old karma, the end of the road?”

“Well, yes, if you’re lucky. That’s how it happened for me. But apparently it’s not that way for everybody. It’s not like that with most of you, or so it seems, unfortunately. So then you just do what you have to do. You take responsibility for all the karma that’s still there.”

“But isn’t that what I was doing as a Buddhist?”

“No, it’s very different. Then you all the time felt that something was wrong, something was missing. Now you know for sure that nothing is wrong, and nothing is missing. And that should give you all the energy and the passion you need to change where you have to change.”

“But what happened then with enlightenment being no limitation?”

“Well, there still is no limitation. We can all change at any moment. It doesn’t have to take time. You don’t need to do years of therapy, or meditate for years. You can just decide to change, like this!” Andrew snaps his fingers.

“Just by wanting to change, you mean?”

“Yes, but also by recognizing that everything is volitional. You always have a choice! You can always choose to do the right thing, and not to do the wrong thing. We know what’s right and what’s wrong. Once you’ve realized enlightenment, you can no longer plead ignorance. You can’t say any longer what people usually say, “Well, I just didn’t know any better.”

“So by changing do we get more enlightened then?”

“No! Absolutely not. You see, enlightenment is not some gradual process in time. It’s there, in a flash, when you realize it. It’s an eternal reality beyond time and space that we can dip into at any time. You only need to have the guts to see your neuroses for what they are and take a leap beyond them into the unknown. Otherwise, what good would enlightenment be? If it doesn’t lead to a beautiful human being, what’s the point? You can’t say ‘that’s just the way that I am.’ You have to change. It’s a moral obligation to life, to the cosmos itself. You have to align yourself with the standard of enlightenment.”

But the standard of enlightenment proves to be difficult to meet. One by one, Andrew’s housemates have to leave his house because they don’t meet the standard. Kathy, an English girl who knew Andrew personally before his enlightenment, has to leave because she can be opinionated and have a bad temper. Alan, a fragile former hippie from New Zealand, has to leave because he is too fearful and insecure. Harry at this time is also living with Andrew. He tells me what it’s like to live with Andrew in the house. “It’s very intense,” he says. “Because Andrew is immersed in enlightenment he can’t bear any selfishness or impurity around him. Around Andrew all those kinds of impurities come ruthlessly to light, and you have to be prepared to give them up. You have to be willing all the time to dare to reach beyond your limits.” When Harry tells me these things, I’m on the one hand jealous that he’s so close to Andrew and that he has such a unique chance to have his impurities brought to light. On the other hand I find that I don’t mind being a little further removed from that all-consuming fire, so that I can warm myself with it instead of being burned.

In Devon, the seventeen of us living in the villa in Dittisham were the first rank of Andrew’s students. Other, newer students looked up to us, tried to get our attention, tried to get invited to our house. Now, in Amherst, there are about ten student houses, and there is a kind of hierarchy which seems clear. Andrew’s house is of course the first, with Andrew, Alka, and a handful of intimate students. In the second house, which is near Andrew’s, live students who often cook for Andrew, and whom Andrew often visits. Our house is the third in rank. The ranking of a house is determined by the degree to which Andrew’s teachings are being lived. To keep us focused we begin to have regular house meetings in which we evaluate how well we are living the teachings. The problem is there are no clear guidelines for that, only unwritten ones. One of Andrew’s main points is that you don’t have to do anything to be free; you don’t have to meditate, pray, perform rituals or do other spiritual practices. We are already free, and we only have to stay aware of that. But then what does it mean in day-to-day reality to be free? There’s only a negative definition of that: if we behave in an egocentric way, cut ourselves off, want to protect our privacy, hold on to special relationships, then we are not free. Or, it means we resist the fact that we are always already free because we want to hold on to our separate ego. So to keep a standard we have to take a firm stand with each other if we notice such resistance.

2.2. The House Meeting

We’re all sitting in the living room facing each other. Dinner and coffee are finished, and it is time for our house meeting. There is an uncomfortable silence. There are eight of us. I sit in the chair near the front window. On a couch next to me are Lucy and Jean, two English women in their thirties. On the chair opposite me is Luna, Andrew’s mother. Over the past weeks I’ve grown very fond of her. She’s psychologically astute, and unafraid to be critical of Andrew and the community. After Andrew’s miraculous meeting with Poonjaji, Luna was one of the first people he’d called. Ecstatic about the transformation he’d experienced, he told her to take the first plane to India. And she had done so, becoming one of his first students. Now, after having been with her son in Rishikesh, she’s moved out of her apartment in New York City to join us in Amherst. Sarah is sitting in the chair between Luna and me.

Lucy starts to speak. “I want to bring something up that I’ve been noticing,” she says, “having to do with how Andre and Sarah are relating to each other.”

I freeze. Is there anything wrong with our relationship? Sarah and I are the only two in the house in a sexual relationship, and Andrew has been speaking in satsang these days about the attachment in sexual relationships, and how the romantic illusion can lead us away from enlightenment because we get infatuated. I remember the couple from Boston that Andrew has been speaking to about this—they’ve decided to split up for six months to investigate their attachment to each other. Lucy has also recently split up from her husband Rudy. She lives with her two sons in our house, while he lives in another student house.

She continues, “You know how Andrew has been speaking about no personal attachments, about the importance of not holding on to our fixed relationships just out of habit and conditioning. I’ve noticed how there is something sticky in the way that you relate to each other. You give each other special looks, and special attention. I feel, Andre, that you are spending more time with Sarah than with the other people in the house.” Other people nod in agreement. Obviously, this point has been discussed prior to the house meeting.

I shift uncomfortably in my seat. My first impulse is to rebel, to jump out of my chair and tell them that I don’t agree, that they should mind their own business. But that’s my ego speaking of course, wanting to protect my private life. It doesn’t want to investigate honestly and without prejudice, doesn’t want to consider that maybe Sarah and I are too attached to each other. But I have to admit to myself that I don’t fully trust Lucy’s motives for speaking out against Sarah and me. I know she and Sarah don’t get along very well. And maybe she’s taking it out on us because she had to split from her husband.

But this is all personal, secondary stuff. The main thing is to look at this from the standpoint of Andrew’s teaching. That’s what we’re trying to do in these house meetings. And I recognize that what Lucy is saying is exactly the point Andrew has been speaking about. Sarah and I are spending more time together than with the others. I find that difficult to give up; in a certain way it simply feels natural to me for us to spend more time together. We’re in a relationship after all. But this stickiness is a personal conditioning that we are both holding on to. To give up this personal attachment is the sacrifice that Andrew is asking from us. So I say to Lucy that she has a point, and that this is something that Sarah and I have to look into. The others question me about how serious I am about changing this pattern, and after a bit of talking they seem convinced by my sincerity.

Now the conversation turns to Sarah. Jean, a fairly dominant woman with glasses and middle-length red hair, talks about a conversation that we had a few days ago. During that conversation Sarah had said with a happy smile that she and I had had sex every night for the past week. Jean now throws that in to prove that Sarah is indulging in her sexual desires, that she is not living the teachings, that she is throwing away her freedom by taking refuge in her attachment to me. Other people agree. I keep silent. I feel it’s hardly appropriate for me to say anything about this. But I don’t like the way Jean is going about it. I feel she’s exaggerating. But then, my judgment is probably clouded because of my attachment to Sarah. Maybe this is exactly a sign of how attached we are.

Sarah is now questioned more deeply by several of us, and she’s becoming more and more upset. She starts crying. Lucy tells her not to try to escape facing the truth by pretending to be emotional and weak. And so the meeting goes from bad to worse. It feels terrible to see Sarah under the gun, but at the same time I feel she has to look into this. She has to take a stand with this emotional weakness, for the sake of her own liberation. But the others in the house don’t feel Sarah is doing this now. They tell her she is being evasive, defensive, emotional, and sentimental. At the end of the meeting everyone is quiet. Sarah has not ‘come through’. Coming through would have meant that she not only agreed with the criticisms, but would have also apologized in an emotionally convincing way, and have shown to the others that she was genuinely abhorred with the behavior that had just been exposed. She is unwilling to face herself in this way. Instead, she has just fallen apart—buckled under the pressure. This is not a good sign. It pains me to see her like this.

As we go to bed Sarah apologizes to me, tells me that she will make herself stronger. I try to reassure her that everything will be all right. I tell her it’s good that we let go of our attachment to each other; that this is why we are here with Andrew. She nods. I hope that she will come through but I’m not sure about it.

The next day there is a lot of talk about our house meeting the day before. Andrew has been briefed, and he wants this sorted out to the bottom. I go for a walk with Luna. She is very outspoken. She feels that Lucy and Jean were on a power trip. I hesitate. I tell her that I had similar suspicions but that I can hardly be expected to be objective.

“Nonsense, you should have said something,” she says in her usual direct way, “let’s call another meeting.”

So that evening there is another house meeting. Luna speaks out about her misgivings with Lucy and Jean. Lucy and Jean argue with her. They say she is too psychological, too intellectual. I try to keep the peace and steer a middle course. Then Sarah herself begins to speak. She agrees with everything that Lucy and Jean have said. Sobbing loudly, she berates herself for being so weak and sentimental. I don’t know what to say. I feel angry at Lucy and Jean for making Sarah go to pieces like this, but at the same time I can see that Sarah is clinging to me. Maybe everyone’s right. Maybe she would grow up more if she were forced to stand on her own two feet. Would it be better for us to separate? Should we sleep in separate rooms for a while? I find it hard to put aside my personal feelings for Sarah and stand by the larger, objective truth of the situation. But that is exactly what Andrew is asking us to do.

The situation with Sarah continues for what seems an eternity but is probably about a week. In satsang Andrew speaks again against the insidious attachments of romantic relationships. Then Sarah makes a panic-stricken move. Without talking to me, she tells Jean and Lucy that she is breaking up with me. Is this a heroic deed in service of the revolution, or a desperate measure to placate her attackers? Jean and Lucy are satisfied with Sarah’s sudden move, but I feel hurt because Sarah hasn’t told me anything. Even though I’ve seen other couples in the community split up, I am taken aback now that it is our turn. Everyone consoles me and tells me that this is the price we have to pay for liberation. They compliment me for the firm stand I’ve taken in all this. But I have a feeling that I should have done more to stand up for Sarah. Was this the best way to deal with the whole situation? Is this bringing us any closer to enlightenment?

“I understand it’s very tough for you now,” Harry says. “But really, this is all for the best. We’re in the midst of a revolution, you know, and that revolution is asking a big price from all of us.”

“Yes, but what does it have to do with enlightenment, for God’s sake?”

“Well, you know that enlightenment is not just a blissful state of surrender, some kind of bubble to spend the rest of our lives in. Enlightenment demands personal change from each of us. We have to take responsibility for our conditioning, our shortcomings, our selfishness, and attachments. After realizing the secret of enlightenment, our behavior should express that realization perfectly, that’s the whole point. That’s what is so revolutionary about what Andrew’s trying to do.”

“Yes, but should we be so ruthless with each other?”

“I understand that you feel bad about what happened, but that’s the price we have to pay. The challenge is to do it with passion, with determination and an absolute commitment. That’s what we need to pull it off. But look at how amazing this all is! This is an evolutionary experiment; we are the forerunners in an evolutionary wave that will transform the western spiritual world!”

The whole drama has obviously not gone unnoticed in the community. Andrew has been kept informed all along. He calls Sarah and me to his room after satsang. He is upset with Sarah because of the way she has ended the relationship. He tells her it’s like sticking a knife in my back. I think back to my conversation with Andrew in Devon. Was he right after all to be cautious about Sarah and I being in a relationship?

Sarah moves into another house, and for about a year we hardly have any contact. After that our relationship becomes more normal, like any two community members.

This is my first personal experience of the price that has to be paid for liberation. Now I’ve felt first-hand that Andrew means business when he says that clarity of intention is all-important, and that we have to be completely responsible for the choices we make. Taking a stand with Sarah, allowing the relationship to end has been my first real sacrifice for the revolution.

Everyone in the community praises me for my dedication to the teachings, and my willingness to make this sacrifice, to cut deeply into my own attachments for the sake of enlightenment. I had to make a choice between my attachment to Sarah, and the demands of enlightenment. I chose for the demands of enlightenment, and therefore against the feelings in my own heart for Sarah. From a human point of view it’s been painful, but from a larger perspective I’ve chosen wisely, they say.

2.3. Boston

Throughout the summer of 1988, more people from Europe arrive in Amherst. Nearly all of them have come to stay. They have finished up their business in Europe, sold their houses, quit their jobs, and taken their children from school. There are new American arrivals as well. Among them are four ex-disciples of another American guru. They live in Boston and travel one and a half hours each way to come to satsang in Amherst every day. But to our deep regret, the American Buddhists don’t come. One of the reasons appears to be that people are spreading tales about Andrew, saying there is a dark side to him, and that Andrew has a problem with power and authority. We’re outraged about such accusations. The four Boston students invite Andrew to come and teach in Boston. Andrew accepts. This means relocation for most of us. Hopefully Boston will attract more spiritually interested people.

Up until now we’ve lived together in an idyllic paradise as if money didn’t exist. Most of us had some savings, some people had borrowed money, a few lucky ones like Harry were financially independent. Andrew himself lives on a small yearly inheritance. But now most of us have to start looking for work. We take jobs that allow us to make good money while working a minimal number of hours. Most of us do house cleaning or window washing. I manage to find a job as a Dutch translator and computer consultant, which also gives me a working permit. Andrew teaches five nights a week in the local Montessori school. They are public teachings now, not living room gatherings as before. In the cold Boston winter we line up for forty-five minutes outside to get a good seat. Andrew sits on a podium, surrounded by exuberant bouquets of flowers. It has become customary to accompany letters to Andrew with flowers: as an expression of love, an apology after a faux pas, or to thank him for his wonderful teachings. The local florist becomes a good friend of many community members.

Although community life is more structured now and there is less time to simply hang out together, we still have great community parties. Everyone dances the whole night long. There are no distracting sexual vibes, just an ecstatic celebration of intimacy. There’s no alcohol served, but we don’t need alcohol to get intoxicated.

In Boston the house meetings become ever more central. It’s not the experience of oneness that is important (that is now a given), but whether our lives are an expression of what we have realized. More and more often people are being sent out of houses when they don’t meet the standard. My own house falls apart after a few months because of irreconcilable differences between people. Andrew is angry with me because he feels I’ve been too passive, and have been trying for too long to keep the peace instead of confronting people and taking a stand. He calls me a wimp. Andrew often uses such strong language in order to shock the ego. I agree with him that this is just my ego shrinking back from standing up for the truth. I feel ashamed to have disappointed him. I call his house to speak to him, but he doesn’t want to talk. I feel I’ve blown it. I have to move to another house. I apply for several houses but am rejected because now my track record is not good. Eventually I find a spot in a lower ranking house. To my surprise I discover that I’m actually much happier in this lower house, and start to make real friendships with the people there.

2.4. Luna’s Defection

Andrew stays in Boston until April 1989, but the community doesn’t grow substantially. Apparently the East Coast is not receptive to Andrew’s message, and Andrew decides to move to the Mecca of spirituality, Marin County in California. The entire community of one hundred and fifty people, still mostly Europeans, drives across the country to set up shop in Marin, to find housing and jobs.

I drive cross country with five others in two weeks. We drive in two cars from Boston to Virginia, Nashville, Memphis (where we visit Elvis’ house Graceland), the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Yosemite, to arrive in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have a great time.

By July we’re all assembled in Northern California, waiting for Andrew, who is still in Boston, to come. But then an unexpected event: Andrew’s mother Luna leaves. I know that over the past few months she has grown increasingly ambivalent about what she calls Andrew’s whole guru setup. As a result Andrew has given her an increasingly hard time about her lack of surrender and her cynicism. Now the shocking news comes that Luna has left the community together with four other students after meeting the Indian anti-guru U.G. Krishnamurti, who’s renowned for debunking gurus and “the whole enlightenment business” as he calls it. Luna now flatly disagrees with what happens in the student houses. She feels Andrew’s vision has deteriorated into a kind of fascism, where everyone lives in fear of punishment. U.G. has convinced her that there is no such thing as enlightenment, and that every guru, including Andrew, is only out to manipulate his students and control them.

The news about Luna’s defection is unexpected and shocking to me. I am torn in my loyalties, not only because of my friendship with Luna, but also because of my former memories of U.G. In 1983, when I was in Saanen to listen to Jiddu Krishnamurti who gave talks there every summer, I had heard about “the second Krishnamurti” who lived in Gstaad next to Saanen. I was fascinated. The story went that U.G. (no relation to J.) had been raised to become a great spiritual teacher, that he had rejected the whole enlightenment business and had for years lived as a street bum. Somehow he had undergone some kind of transformation, almost in spite of himself, but he was strongly opposed to gurus. He claimed the whole enlightenment business was nonsense. That’s why he was called the anti-guru guru. I took a walk through the mountains right up to his porch. There he sat in his garden and invited me in. He seemed absolutely unsurprised to see me turn up like that. We talked for half an hour about meditation, spiritual practice, and enlightenment, and then I was on my way. Since that time I had been a fan of U.G.

Andrew, still in Boston, is furious. A community meeting is set up where Luna is declared a persona non grata. I find it impossible to understand why Luna has left Andrew in such a bitter way. Of course there are shortcomings in the community, but in all revolutionary movements there are mistakes made and things to be learned. I know she must still love Andrew. She shouldn’t listen to the objections of her mind. I try to phone her to tell her that, but she doesn’t want to speak to anyone from the community. I am sad to see her leave. I write her a letter: how could she hurt her beloved son and Master so much? A few weeks later Luna sends me a short note in return. The community has become a fascist organization, she reiterates, and everyone lives in fear of Andrew. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with it anymore. I have lost her as a friend, but there is nothing I can do. I tell Andrew about Luna’s note to me, and he says he is also deeply unhappy about how his own mother has turned against him. He’s happy that I’ve written to Luna and that I stand by him in these difficult times.

2.5. Birth of a Formal Sangha

In the summer of 1989, satsang starts in Marin, in the Corte Madera yoga center. Marin is a focal point of spirituality, like Totnes in Devon, home to a large number of spiritual seekers, meditation teachers, gurus, psychics, healers and therapists. Andrew, by now, has a reputation of being a controversial spiritual teacher who is out to shake up the contemporary spiritual scene. His message of enlightenment here and now is heresy for some of the western Buddhist meditation teachers who advocate spiritual practice and gradual improvement over time. His renunciate stance based on clarity of intention goes against the prevailing views of many transpersonal psychologists who say you have to integrate enlightenment into your personal life rather than giving your life over to enlightenment as Andrew says. So when Andrew starts satsang, quite a few of the local experts come to check him out. They like Andrew, they like the blissful experiences that satsang gives them, but they don’t like us, Andrew’s hundred and fifty, mostly European, students, that silently attend satsang, adoring our spiritual Master, writing him love letters. The Californians, used to an individualized and sophisticated lifestyle, are turned off by this European crowd of neo-hippies, who are content to clean houses for a living, live in groups of ten in three-bedroom houses, don’t mind a life without privacy, and generally seem like rather simplistic followers. They feel we behave like sheep. “Androids,” they call us.

We don’t mind. Life in Marin is still mostly paradise. There’s beautiful scenery all around. On the weekends we go to beautiful beaches or for long walks on Mount Tamalpais. We’re one big spiritual family on a continuous high. Four nights a week we go to satsang and spend a long time afterwards speaking about Andrew’s talks, his profound dialogs with people. We work two or three days a week, just enough to support ourselves, and for the rest of the time we hang out together.

There’s a hushed silence in the Corte Madera yoga center. A hundred and fifty of us are sitting cross-legged in a U-shape around a platform decorated with flowers, waiting for Andrew to arrive. Another twenty people or so, mostly newcomers, are sitting on chairs in the back. There’s a sense of anticipation in the room. The doors open and Andrew walks in. He’s dressed in smart black pants and a gorgeously colorful short-sleeve shirt with elaborate patterns, no doubt a gift from one of us. He sits down and closes his eyes. We sit in silence together for about twenty minutes. Then Andrew starts to speak. He welcomes everybody and asks if there are any questions.