“Don’t worry,” she said. “Those two wouldn’t understand anyway. They both think they know the world so well. Despite the fact that they’ve reached totally opposite conclusions.” She was scrutinizing the ground. As I watched, she collected the ends of our cigarettes, held them loosely in her left hand. She never left anything behind. I noticed again the soft red strings that circled her wrists.

“Protection cords,” she told me, when I asked. “Whenever an advanced teacher comes to the Center, they make a few of them. They tie a knot, and say a mantra into it.”

“They’re pretty,” I said.

“They serve a purpose,” she said. “There’s a difference.”

Here, this may help. Six teachers on the nature of enlightenment:

Dōgen: “Like the moon reflected on the water.”

Chögyam Trungpa: “Ego’s ultimate disappointment.”

Osho: “You are, but the mind is utterly empty.”

Krishnamurti: “A state of negation.”

Bodhidharma: “Lots of space, nothing holy.”

Suzuki Roshi: “What do you want to know for? You may not like it.”

When we separated that night, Serena to return to her tent, me to go down the mountain, she squeezed my hand. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “I think I’ve been waiting for you.” The sky was a scrub of stars, the kind of wide-open sky that only hangs above wilderness. But it didn’t make me feel small. I felt enormous. I felt that every star in that whole vast nothingness had pushed aside the drapes, opened her bedroom door, and turned her wide white face to look right at me.

I didn’t pull her comb out of my pocket until I was safely back in the dormitory. I hadn’t stolen it, I reasoned, I had simply picked it up from the blanket when she wasn’t looking. Borrowed, that was the word. I would give it back, if she asked. A few long black hairs were wound around the wooden tines. I crawled under the covers and held it to my heart like a talisman.

6

Often, when I was a child, I would sneak into my mother’s studio to commune with the Mournful Fatties. No part of their bodies, of course, was left to the ecstatic imagination. My mother found her ecstasy in overflow, not obscuration. This is an essential thing to understand about her.