«Does that mean we will not be able to speak to one another during the retreat?»

«No communication, not written, not sign language.»

«E–mail?»

Vijay did not smile. «Noble silence is the correct path to benefit from Vipassana.»

He seemed different. Pam felt him already drifting away.

«At least,” she said, «it will offer me comfort to know you are there. It`s less

foreboding to imagine being alone together.»

«Alone together. A felicitous phrase,” Vijay responded without looking at her.

«Perhaps,” Pam said, «we may meet again on this train after the retreat.»

«Of that we must not think. Goenka will teach us that it is only the present we must

inhabit. Yesterday and tomorrow do not exist. Past remembrances, future longings, only

produce disquiet. The path to equanimity lies in observing the present and allowing it to

float undisturbed down the river of our awareness.» Without looking back, Vijay hoisted

his bag onto his shoulder, opened the doors of the compartment, and walked away.

Schopenhauer`

s Main Woman

_________________________

Onlythe male intellect,

clouded by the sexual impulse,

could call the undersized,

narrow–shouldered, broad–hipped, and short–legged sex

the fair sex.

—Arthur Schopenhauer on women

Youreternal quibbles, your

laments over the stupid world

and human misery, give me bad

nights and unpleasant dreams....

I have not had a single

unpleasant moment I did not

owe to you.

—A letter to Arthur Schopenhauer

from his mother

_________________________

The most important woman, by far, in Arthur`s life was his mother, Johanna, with whom

he had a tormented and ambivalent relationship which ended in cataclysm. Johanna`s

letter liberating Arthur from his apprenticeship contained admirable motherly sentiments:

her concern, her love, her hopes for him. Yet all these required a proviso: namely, that he

remain at a convenient distance from her. Hence her letter of liberation advised him to

move from Hamburg to Gotha rather than to her home in Weimar, fifty kilometers away.

The glow of warm feelings between the two following Arthur`s emancipation from

servitude evaporated quickly because of the brevity of Arthur`s stay at the preparatory

school in Gotha. After only six months the nineteen–year–old Arthur was expelled for

writing a clever but cruelly mocking poem about one of the teachers and beseeched his

mother for permission to live with her and continue his studies at Weimar.

Johanna was not amused; in fact the prospect of Arthur living with her sent her into

a frenzy. He had visited her briefly a few times during his six–month stay at Gotha, and

each visit had been the source of much displeasure for her. Her letters to him following

his expulsion are among the most shocking letters ever written by a mother to a son.

...I am acquainted with your disposition...you are irritating and unbearable and I

consider it most difficult to live with you. All your good qualities are darkened by

your super–cleverness and thus rendered useless to the world...you find fault

everywhere except in yourself...thereby you embitter the people around you—no one

wishes to be improved or illuminated in such a forcible manner, least of all by such

an insignificant individual as you still are. No one can tolerate being criticized by

someone who displays so many personal weaknesses, especially your derogatory

manner which, in oracular tones, proclaims that this is so and so, without even

suspecting the possibility of error.

If you were less like you are, you would only be ridiculous but, being as you

are, you become most annoying.... You might have, like thousands of other students,

lived and studied in Gotha...but you did not want this and so you are expelled....

such a living literary journal as you would like to be is a boring hateful thing because

one cannot skip pages or fling the whole rubbishy thing behind the stove, as one can

with the printed one.

In time Johanna resigned herself to the fact that she could not avoid accepting

Arthur at Weimar while he prepared for the university, but she wrote again, in case he

missed the point, and expressed her concerns in even more graphic terms.

I think it wisest to tell you straight out what I desire and what I feel about matters so

we understand one another from the outset. That I am very fond of you, I`m sure you

will not doubt. I have proven it to you and will prove it to you as long as I live. It is

necessary for my happiness to know you are happy but not to be a witness to it. I have

always told you that you are very difficult to live with.... The more I get to know you

the more strongly I feel this.

I will not hide this from you: as long as you are what you are, I would rather

make any sacrifice than consent to be near you.... What repels me does not lie in your

heart; it is in your outer, not your inner, being. It is in your ideas, in your judgment,

your habits; in a word, there is nothing concerning the outer world in which we agree.

Look, dear Arthur, each time you visited me only for a few days there were

violent scenes about nothing and each time I only breathed freely again when you

were gone because your presence, your complaints about inevitable things, your

scowling face, your ill humor, the bizarre opinions you utter...all this depresses and

troubles me, without helping you.

Johanna`s dynamics seem transparent. By the grace of God she had escaped the

marriage that she had feared would imprison her forever. Giddy with freedom, she

exalted in the idea of never again being answerable to anyone. She would live her own

life, meet whomever she wished, enjoy romantic liaisons (but never marry again), and she

would explore her own considerable talents.

The prospect of relinquishing her freedom for Arthur`s sake was unbearable. Not

only was Arthur a particularly difficult, controlling person in his own right, but he was

the son of her former jailer: the living incarnation of too many of Heinrich`s unpleasant

features.

And there was the issue of money. It first surfaced when Arthur, at nineteen,

accused his mother of lavish spending, which imperiled the inheritance he was to receive

at the age of twenty–one. Johanna bristled, insisted it was well known that she served

only bread–and–butter sandwiches at her salons and then excoriated Arthur for living far

beyond his means with expensive dining and horseback–riding lessons. Eventually, such

quarrels about money were to escalate to unbearable levels.

Johanna`s feelings about Arthur and about motherhood are reflected in her novels:

a typical Johanna Schopenhauer heroine tragically loses her true love and then resigns

herself to an economically sensible, loveless, and sometimes abusive marriage but, in an

act of defiance and self–affirmation, refuses to bear children.

Arthur shared his feelings with no one, and his mother later destroyed all his

letters. Still, certain trends seem self–evident. The bond between Arthur and his mother

was intense, and the pain of its dissolution haunted Arthur his entire life. Johanna was an

unusual mother—vivacious, forthright, beautiful, freethinking, enlightened, well read.

Surely, she and Arthur discussed his immersion in modern and ancient literature. Indeed

it may be that the fifteen–year–old Arthur made his momentous choice in favor of the