Then Ryan emailed.
Ryan and I met at a coffee shop where we talked for three and a half hours.
It felt serious and real.
Deep.
The great matter of life and death.
Urgent.
Ryan thought the book was too long by half and he suggested that I cut all the classroom material, digressions he thought, and because of its repetition half the dialogue with the master.
Ouch!
Ryan had participated in only one practice period himself and because of the abusive responses to his journal he had received from the master he never participated in another.
"I don't understand why you continued to write," Ryan said.
Hmm.
I thought I'd explained in the book.
No.
"Why did you?"
Okay.
"He required it."
"But why didn't you just say no?" Ryan asked.
"Refuse."
"Yes."
"I was determined to be a good student," I said.
"But—"
"It was a requirement."
"But why didn't you just not reply to his comments?"
"I tried that."
"And—"
"He demanded that I write whatever came up."
"Oh."
"Yes."
"That's right."
Ryan inquired about my defensiveness in the dialogues.
In my self-portrait.
"Denial?"
"Maybe."
"Do you think it possible?" he asked.
"Sure."
I was curious.
"Do I appear to you like a man in denial?"
"No—"
He thought a moment.
I waited.
"I'm not sure," he said. "It's complicated."
We were friends.
Ryan asked a lot of questions about my dark side.
"The shadow."
Ryan had himself spent a year in Jungian therapy.
In analysis.
He was experienced.
Intelligent.
He knew defense and denial.
Ego.
We talked of desire, sex, taboo, privacy, confidentiality, secrecy, guilt, and deceit.
"I know shame," Ryan said.
I asked.
He told his story.
I mine.
He questioned my equanimity.
My calm.
To Ryan it seemed suspect.
Fine.
No problem.
Ryan asked the same thing that the master had asked.
Really—
Was I as happy as I claimed?
Uff da!
Had the war ended and the killing stopped?
Am I dishonest—
Angry—
Afraid—
In the end I couldn't tell Ryan any more than I'd already written 500 pages about.
Lightning bug.
My version of the truth, "my" story.
My "me."
The hero! The new postmodern Socrates! His reincarnation!
Bob!
Ryan's main reaction, though, was disappointment that at the end of my story there was not a revelation and a resolution. I just had to tell Ryan that there was not. He was intensely curious about the experience I had so many years before and I told him that I, too, sometimes wished that the plot of my story had worked backward and ended with that marvel.
Enlightenment!
Peace.
That's not what happened.
Life goes on.
War.
Killing.
Ryan spoke at length of his longing for enlightenment.
For "it."
For the mystical "religious" experience.
For "god."
"You must want to experience it again," he said.
"No!" I exclaimed. "I don't!"
"Why not?"
"I had it!" I said. "I want others to experience it!"
"That makes sense."
"Good."
I told Ryan of some of the many mistakes I had made in trying to recreate for others the conditions and circumstances of my own awakening in the effort to effect a similar experience for them and of the misunderstanding, confusion, enmity, failure, pain, and futility that were the result. We traded stories of our psychological and spiritual highs and lows.
Ryan was a gentle man, thoughtful, diffident, kind.
Educated.
He reminded me of Billy.
Sensitive.
"I'm hoping my portrait of the master doesn't appear vindictive," I said.
"Not at all."
"Or the story an attempt to settle scores."
"No."
"That's good," I said.
"I would be more negative than you are," he said.
"I'm relieved."
I handed Ryan the four books I had brought for him.
He returned mine.
We hugged.
We agreed to meet and talk again.
Friends.
John did not reply.
buddhism
