Ирвин Ялом - The Schopenhauer Cure

especially Byzantine liturgical chants, by the cantors singing in synagogues, and once, in

rural Turkey, was transfixed by the hypnotic melodies of the muezzin calling the

populace to prayer five times a day.

Though Pam was a dedicated student, it was difficult for her simply to observe her

breathing for fifteen straight minutes without drifting off into one of her reveries about

John. But gradually changes occurred. The earlier disparate scenarios had coalesced into

a single scene: from some news source—either TV, radio, or newspaper—she learned

that John`s family had been killed in an airplane crash. Again and again she imagined the

scene. She was sick of it. But it kept on playing.

As her boredom and restlessness increased, she developed an intense interest in

small household projects. When she first registered at the office (and learned to her

surprise that there was no fee for the ten–day retreat), she noted small bags of detergent in

the ashram shop. On the third day she purchased a bag and thereafter spent considerable

time washing and rewashing her clothing, hanging them on the clothesline behind the

dormitory (the first clothesline she had seen since childhood), and, at hourly intervals,

checking on the drying process. Which bras and which panties were the best dryers? How

many hours of night drying were equal to an hour`s day drying. Or shade drying versus

sun drying? Or hand–wrung clothes versus non–wrung clothes?

On the fourth day came the great event: Goenka began the teaching of Vipassana.

The technique is simple and straightforward. Students are instructed to meditate on their

scalp until a sensation occurrs—an itch, a tingle, a burning, perhaps the feeling of a tiny

breeze upon the skin of the scalp. Once the sensation is identified, the student is simply to

observe, nothing more. Focus on the itch. What is it like? Where does it go? How long

does it last? When it disappears (as it always does), the meditator is to move to the next

segment of the body, the face, and survey for stimuli like a nostril tickle or an eyelid itch.

After these stimuli grow, ebb, and disappear, the student proceeds to the neck, the

shoulders, until every part of the body is observed right down to the soles of the feet and

then in reverse direction back up the body to the scalp.

Goenka`s evening discourses provided the rationale for the technique. The key

concept isanitya—impermanence. If one fully appreciates the impermanence of each

physical stimulus, it is but a short step to extrapolate the principle ofanitya to all of life`s

events and unpleasantries; everything will pass, and one will experience equanimity if

one can maintain the observer`s stance and simply watch the passing show.

After a couple of days of Vipassana, Pam found the process less onerous as she

gained skill and speed at focusing on her bodily sensations. On the seventh day, to her

amazement, the whole process slipped into automatic gear and she began «sweeping,”

just as Goenka had predicted. It was as if someone poured a jug of honey on her head

which slowly and deliciously spread down to the bottom of her feet. She could feel a

stirring, almost sexual hum, like the buzz of bumblebees enveloping her, as the honey

flowed down. The hours zipped by. Soon she discarded her chair and melded with the

three hundred other acolytes sitting in the lotus position at the feet of Goenka.

The next two days of sweeping were the same, and each passed quickly. On the

ninth night she lay awake—she slept as badly as before but was less concerned about it

now after learning from one of the other assistants (having given up on Manil), a

Burmese woman, that insomnia in the Vipassana workshop is extremely common;

apparently, the prolonged meditative states make sleep less necessary. The assistant also

cleared up the mystery of the police whistles. In southern India, night watchmen routinely

blow whistles as they circle the perimeter of the territory they guard. It is a preventative

measure warning off thieves in the same way the little red light on auto dashboards warns

car thieves of the presence of an activated auto alarm.

Often the presence of repetitive thoughts is most apparent when they vanish, and it

was with a start that Pam realized that she had not thought about John for two entire days.

John had vanished. The entire endless loop of fantasy had been replaced by the honeyed

buzz of sweeping. How odd to realize that she now carried around her own pleasure

maker which could be trained to secrete feel–good endorphins. Now she understood why

people got hooked, why they would go on a lengthy retreat, sometimes months,

sometimes years.

Yet now that she had finally cleansed her mind, why was she not elated? On the

contrary, a shadow fell upon her success. Something about her enjoyment of «sweeping»

darkened her thoughts. While pondering that conundrum, she dropped off into a light

twilight sleep and was aroused a short time later by a strange dream image: a star with

little legs, top hat and cane, tap–dancing across the stage of her mind. A dancing star! She

knew exactly what that dream image meant. Of all the literary aphorisms that she and

John shared and loved, one of her favorites was Nietzsche`s phrase fromZarathustra :

«One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.»

Of course. Now she understood the source of her ambivalence about Vipassana.

Goenka was true to his word. He delivered exactly what he had promised: equanimity,

tranquility, or, as he often put it,equipoise. But at what price? If Shakespeare had taken

up Vipassana, wouldLear orHamlet have been born? Would any of the masterpieces in

Western culture have been written? One of Chapman`s couplets drifted into mind:

No pen can anything eternal write that is not steeped in the humour of the night

Steeped in the humour of the night—thatwas the task of the great writer—to

immerse oneself in the humour of the night, to harness the power of darkness for artistic

creation. How else could the sublime dark authors—Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Virginia

Woolf, Hardy, Camus, Plath, Poe—have illuminated the tragedy lurking in the human

condition? Not by removing oneself from life, not by sitting back and observing the

passing show.

Even though Goenka proclaimed his teaching was nondenominational, his

Buddhism shone through. In his nightly discourse cum sales pitch, Goenka could not

restrain himself from stressing that Vipassana was the Buddha`s own method of

meditation, which he, Goenka, was now reintroducing to the world. She had no objection

to that. Though she knew little of Buddhism, she had read an elementary text on the plane

to India and had been impressed by the power and truth of the Buddha`s four noble

truths:

1. Life is suffering.

2. Suffering is caused by attachments (to objects, ideas,

individuals, to survival itself).

3. There is an antidote to suffering: the cessation of desire, of

attachment, of the self.

4. There is a specific pathway to a suffering–free existence: the

eight–step path to enlightenment.

Now, she reconsidered. As she looked about her, at the entranced acolytes,

the tranquilized assistants, the ascetics in their hillside caves content with a life

dedicated to Vipassana «sweeping,” she wondered whether the four truths were so

true after all. Had the Buddha gotten it right? Was the price of the remedy not

worse than the disease? At dawn the following morning she lapsed into even

greater doubt as she watched the small party of Jainist women walk to the

bathhouse. The Jainists took the decree of no killing to absurd degrees: they

hobbled down the path in a painfully slow, crablike fashion because they first had

to gently sweep the gravel before them lest they step on an insect—indeed they

could hardly breathe because of their gauze masks, which prevented the inhalation

of any miniscule animal life.

Everywhere she looked, there was renunciation, sacrifice, limitation, and

resignation. Whatever happened to life? To joy, expansion, passion, carpe diem?

Was life so anguished that it should be sacrificed for the sake of

equanimity? Perhaps the four noble truths were culture–bound. Perhaps they were

truths for 2,500 years ago in a land with overwhelming poverty, overcrowding,

starvation, disease, class oppression, and lack of any hope for a better future. But

were they truths for her now? Didn`t Marx have it right? Didn`t all religions based

on release or a better life hereafter target the poor, the suffering, the enslaved?

But, Pam said to herself (after a few days of noble silence she talked to

herself a great deal), wasn`t she being an ingrate? Give credit where it was due.

Hadn`t Vipassana done its job—calmed the mind and quashed her obsessive

thoughts? Hadn`t it succeeded where her own best efforts, and Julius`s, and the

group members` efforts had all failed? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. Perhaps it was

not a fair comparison. After all, Julius had put in a total of about eight group

sessions—twelve hours—while Vipassana demanded hundreds of hours—ten full

days plus the time, and effort, to travel halfway around the world. What might

have happened if Julius and the group had worked on her that many hours?

Pam`s growing cynicism interfered with meditation. The sweeping stopped.

Where had it gone—that delicious, mellifluous, buzzing contentment? Each new

day her meditative practice regressed. The Vipassana meditation progressed no

farther than her scalp. Those tiny itches, previously so fleeting, persisted and grew

more robust—itches evolved into pinpricks, then into a sustained burning that

could not be meditated away.

Even the early work inanapana–sati was undone. The dike of calmness

built by breath meditation crumbled, and the surf of unruly thoughts, of her

husband, John, or revenge and airplane crashes, came breaking through. Well, let

them come. She saw Earl for what he was—an aging child, his large lips pursed

and lunging for any nipple within range. And John—poor, effete, pusillanimous

John, still unwilling to grasp that there can be no yes without a no. And Vijay,

too, who chose to sacrifice life, novelty, adventure, friendship upon the altar of

the great God, Equanimity. Use the right word for the whole bunch, Pam

thought.Cowards. Moral cowards. None of them deserved her. Flush them away.

Nowthere was a powerful image: all the men, John, Earl, Vijay, standing in a

giant toilet bowl, their hands raised imploringly, their squeals for help barely

audible over the roar of the flushing water!That was an image worth meditating

upon.

19

_________________________

The flower replied: You

fool! Do you imagine I

blossom in order to be

seen? I blossom for my

own sake because it

pleases me, and not for

the sake of others. My

joy consists in my being

and my blossoming.

_________________________

Bonnie opened the next meeting with an apology. «Sorry to one and all about my

exit last week. I shouldn`t have done that but...I don`t know...it was out of my

control.»

«The devil made you do it.» Tony smirked.

«Funny. Funny, Tony. Okay, I know what you want.I chose to do it

because I was pissed. That better?»

Tony smiled and gave her the thumbs–up signal.

In the gentle voice he always used when addressing any of the women in

the group, Gill said to Bonnie, «Last week after you left, Julius suggested you

might have felt pissed at being ignored here—that basically the group replayed

your description of what routinely happened to you in your childhood.»

«Pretty accurate. Except I wasn`t pissed.Hurt is a better term.»

«I know pissed,” said Rebecca, «and you were good ‘n` pissed at me.»

Bonnie`s face clouded over as she turned to Rebecca. «Last week you said

that Philip had clarified the reason you don`t have girlfriends. But I don`t buy

that. Envy of your good looks isnot the reason you don`t have girlfriends or at

least why you and I haven`t become close; the real reason is that you`re basically

not interested in women—or at least you`re not interested in me. Whenever you

say something to me in the group, it is always to bring the discussion back to

you.»

«I give you feedback about the way you handle—or, mostly,don`t handle—

anger, and then I get accused of being self–centered.» Rebecca bristled. «Do you

or don`t you want feedback? Isn`t that what this group is about?»

«What I want is for you to give me feedback aboutme. Or about me and

someone else. It`s always about you, Rebecca—or you and me—and you`re so

attractive it always swings things back to you and away from me. I can`t compete

with you. But it`s not only your fault; the others play into this, and I need to ask

all of you a question.»

Bonnie swiveled her head looking briefly at each member in turn as she

said, «I never really get your interest—why not?»

The men in the room looked down. Bonnie didn`t wait for an answer but

continued: «And another thing, Rebecca, what I`m saying to you about girlfriends

is not news to you. I can remember clear as a bell you and Pam having an

identical go–around about this.»

Bonnie turned to Julius. «Speaking of Pam, I`ve been meaning to ask you,

«Any news of her? When is she coming back? I miss her.»

«That was fast!» Julius said, «Bonnie, you are the master of the whirlwind

segue! But for the moment I`m going to let you get away with it and answer your

question about Pam, mainly because I was going to announce that she e–mailed

me from Bombay. She`s finished her meditation retreat and will be returning soon

to the States. She should be here for the next meeting.»

Turning to Philip, Julius said, «You remember I mentioned Pam, our

missing member, to you?»

Philip replied with a brief nod.

«And,you, Philip, are the master of the fast nod,” said Tony. «It`s amazing

how much you stay in the middle of things without ever looking at anyone and

without saying very much. Look at all this stuff going on around you. Bonnie and

Rebecca squabbling over you. What are you feeling about all this? What are you

feeling about the group?»

When Philip did not immediately reply, Tony appeared uncomfortable. He

looked around the group: «Shit, whatis this? I feel like I`m breaking some kind of

rule here, like farting in church. I`m just asking him the same kind of question

everyone asks everyone else.»

Philip broke the short silence. «Fair enough. I require time to collect my

thoughts. Here`s what I was thinking. Bonnie and Rebecca have similar

afflictions. Bonnie cannot tolerate being unpopular, whereas Rebecca cannot