Esalen: In the Air - "Skippy, the Buddha, and Me"

Skippy, the Buddha, and Me

Peter Friedberg

I suppose I could say that I have been a Buddhist-in-the-making all along, for most of my life I have desperately and dogmatically clung to Buddha's first principle-Life is Suffering-as if suffering was all I had. At times it was all I had, but at least it was my suffering. And in the stormy sea of life, I wasn't about to relinquish my life preserver.

One February, my search for expanded awareness and peace of mind took me and my spiritual wish-list to a small vipassana meditation retreat just south of Yosemite for ten days of sitting and silence. I wanted to locate a still place within, to increase my ability to concentrate with single-pointed focus, and to heighten my sensory awareness. Also, I desperately craved non-attachment. And equanimity. And self-acceptance. And an end to craving. And, if truth be told, I wanted to be more attractive to vipassana babes. Moreover, a minuscule peek, however brief, at the Oneness of All Creation would have been really neat.

The retreat presented vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka, a Burmese teacher in the lineage of Gautama, the historical Buddha. It is a tradition preserved in Asia for twenty-five hundred years. The practice involves scanning one's body repeatedly, up and down, attending to sensation, noticing its mutability and impermanence. If, as this teaching asks, we can only experience the world through our senses, and if this sensory experience is continually changing, then what is there, pray tell, for one to possibly attach oneself to? And if attachment is the root of all suffering, could not this simple practice, once truly embodied, be a first step to suffering's cessation?

Goenkaji was not there in the flesh, yet his spirit, humor, and wisdom filled the meditation hall, thanks to audiotaped instructions each day and videotaped discourses every night. His very first instruction made me immediately at home. "Pay attention to your desperation." This was frequently repeated, an ostensibly odd yet, for me, comforting message. "Pay attention to your desperation." I couldn't believe my ears. Never had I received such a personalized teaching, for I was acutely aware of all the time and energy that I had spent trying to disregard my own ever-present desperation. It wasn't until the second morning that I realized that Goenka, with his thick Burmese accent, was, of course, directing us to "pay attention to your respiration." Ah, an early lesson in non-attachment.

We had been given assigned seats in the meditation hall, which meant that for ten days I would be meditating next to Skippy, a tall, boyish, moonfaced man who, from day one, with the exactitude of a fine chronometer, cleared his throat every ten minutes in a manner that suggested a steady diet of buttermilk and Drano. These were no polite ahems. They were loud, guttural, phlegmy bursts. Not only that-he was somehow able to time his laryngeal eruptions to coincide precisely with that moment in which I was finally letting go of all incessant mind-chatter and at last becoming empty. Since we were seated but an arm's length apart, the simplest solution would have been a sharp jab to the right to separate Skippy from his zafu and his senses. I couldn't recall anyone having told us, "No hitting." However, in classic, party-line, it's-all-an-opportunity-for-growth fashion, I optimistically resolved that Skippy's throat-clearing was placed before me as a lesson.

Each afternoon, we were called two by two to the front of the hall to sit for a few minutes with Veena, the assistant teacher, a warm. solemn Indian woman. It was our sole opportunity to speak during the retreat, a chance to ask questions about the problems and pitfalls in our sitting. Skippy and I were stablemates in this daily ritual, yoked together by our fixed seating arrangement. Skippy always spoke first, his words slightly slurred. No, he wasn't having any problems. In fact, he was surprised at how easy it was. He was having a great time, relaxed and peaceful.

"And how are you doing, Peter?" Veena asked me.

"I'm constantly distracted by thoughts," I said, afraid that I was close to whining. "And unable to string together more than three empty breaths in a row." I didn't bother to reveal the contents of these distracting thoughts, which focused obsessively on the same three subjects: imaginary fights with my ex-girlfriend, polishing and repolishing a vipassana stand-up comedy monologue, and sex with every woman I've ever known. I didn't tell her that, having been awakened at 4:30 every morning by a Tibetan gong, I was unable to attentively examine the hindrance of torpor-one of the Five Hindrances to meditation, along with desire, aversion, restlessness, and doubt-without immediately thereafter exploring sleep. And, of course, I said nothing of Skippy.

Veena's reply, which did not deviate for the entire ten-day retreat, was succinct. "Keep trying. Start again."

As the retreat progressed, I began to be able to witness the rising and formation of my thought patterns, and whereas I had once concluded that my brain entertained its thoughts in much the same way that a dog hosts fleas, I was now willing to concede some choice and responsibility in the matter. I began to acknowledge the projections and fabrications that constituted my "objective" view of "reality." This realization, however, provided little consolation in the matter of Skippy who, in addition to obstructing my path to samadhi in the meditation hall, was invariably directly ahead of me in the buffet meal line, shuffling slowly and unsteadily with, I was soon convinced, the gait of a dying man. This, this guy was again holding me up, first on the spiritual plane and now on the material plane. He was standing between me and my lone source of pleasure-food-in this fortress of spiritual tortures! Skippy was turning into a roadblock on my highway to fulfillment. I began to seethe with rage, a rage that foresaw no release in a meditation retreat that required ten days of Noble Silence.

On the morning of day seven, I suddenly found myself needing to clear my throat with alarming frequency. Naturally, I leaped to the only plausible conclusion: (1) Skippy was possessed of a fatal and contagious bronchial disease; (2) he had come to the retreat to pass on peacefully; (3) I had picked up whatever it was he had; and (4) I was going to die. I could restrain myself no longer. I signaled to Frank, the bearded retreat manager, who had on opening night announced his availability in case of emergency. This was an emergency. Frank and I exited the hall into the chilly February sunshine.

"Frank, this probably sounds crazy-" I began. Through wire-rimmed glasses, he looked at me solicitously and-was it my imagination?-delightedly. I laid out the entire concocted scenario, the throat-clearing, Skippy's halting walk, his slurred speech, and concluded with, "I need some assurances that I have not caught some terminal illness from Skippy."

Frank was calm and reassuring. No, Skippy had not mentioned a fatal disease in his application. Yes, he would watch Skippy for any disturbing and telltale signs. No, he didn't think I was crazy.

I returned to my place in the hall, only slightly mollified. That afternoon it happened.

Sitting on my cushion, scanning my body for physical sensations as we had been instructed, I felt a slight, tingly current coursing in my hands and feet. As I paid attention to this pleasurable sensation, it began to travel throughout my body, from head to toe and back again, up and down, as if I were being massaged inside and out with a loving, streaming, vibrating energy. I was alive with this energy, watching it, sensing it gradually spread and intensify until I was bathed in a continuous, gentle, ecstatic, full-body rapture. I remained in this state of blissful reanimation for fifteen, thirty, forty-five minutes, an hour. So this was the state of "free flow" that had been described to us earlier in the week.

And while I was experiencing this radiating energy, there was Skippy-Old Faithful-going off with familiar regularity. And there I was, hearing the rumble of Skippy's pipes, neither reacting nor feeling reactivated, simply hearing, hearing, hearing, as I was hearing the rustle of a woman shifting on her cushion across the room and the whisper of the wind through the tall pine trees outside the hall and the pulsation of my own heartbeat in my ears. Why, it was as if-as if I had had a choice all along, as if it had not been Skippy who had been driving me to near-homicidal fury, but rather I myself who was first choosing and then willingly wallowing in good old, delicious, self-inflating, self-important, self-righteous rage. And I began to consider the implications. . . .

I knew my return to terra firma was inevitable. I wish I could say that I was never again reflexively enraged at Skippy, lovers, friends, family, co-workers, the President, life. But these days, when it seems so easy to be driven crazy, I sometimes take a moment to remember that I'm the one who is doing the driving.

Thank you, Skippy, wherever you are.

Peter Friedberg is co-editor of the Esalen Catalog.