Shirley Alexander [SA]: Zoe, you know that assisted suicide is legal in Oregon now. We could drive you down there to my sister's house.

Zoe Alexander [ZA]: I know that, Mom. I do not want to do that. I just want to ride the entire wave. I hope it does not get to be too much for you.

SA: Don't say that, Zo.

ZA: For now could you just get me out of here and up to Erin's cabin?

SA: Yes we will.

ZA: Actually I’d like to go camping again too.

Erin Hughes [EH]: Yah, we’ll do that too. Just rest now.

Sarah McLachlan: In the arms of the angels.

ZA: --Erin, want to read some more?

EH: ok.

[Pause]

Ananda: I have heard that on one occasion the Master was staying at Varanasi, in the Game Refuge at Isipatana. There he addressed the group of five monks:

The Buddha: Physical form, monks, is not the self. If physical form were the self, this body would not lend itself to dis-ease. One could get physical form to be like this and not be like that. But precisely because physical form is not the self, it lends itself to dis-ease. And one cannot get physical form to be like this and not be like that.../ How do you construe thus, monks--is physical form constant or inconstant?.

The 5 monks: Inconstant.

The Buddha: And whatever is inconstant: is it easeful or stressful?

The 5 monks: Stressful.

The Buddha: And is it right to assume with regard to whatever is inconstant, stressful, subject to change, that "This is mine. This is my self. This is what I am?"

The 5 monks: No it is not right to assume that.

ZA: Thank you. That is enough. Do you agree it is not right?

EH: What?

ZA: Not to assume physical form is mine?

SA: Well, I think the Bible would say that.

St. Paul: Not exactly. I specifically said resurrection of the body -- your body.

EH: That’s true. That was his position.

St. Paul: The stuff from the Greeks about immortality of the soul got imported in later. That so-called Saint Augustine really fucked things up.

ZA: That means you should be able to deal with non-density ok? Why don’t you straighten out those guys in Kansas?

SA: Where is this from?

EH: The Buddha.

SA: Oh. Should we be reading it?

ZA: It is ok. It will not hurt. By "not right to assume" do you suppose he means "not true" or does he mean "not helpful"?

SA: I think you should focus, dear, on what is going to help you.

ZA: Yes. I cannot imagine him all that interested in ontology anyway. The self exists and this stressful form is mine. To pretend otherwise is fantasy. But it is not a good practice --it is just not right, it just does not help --to get fixated on its being mine.

Marvin Gaye [MG]: Hey! Hey! what's happenin'?

EH: Hmm..this looks interesting--

MG: It's a party--

Ananda: The group of five monks delighted at his words. And while this explanation was being given, the hearts of the group of five monks, through not clinging (not being sustained), were released from the mental effluents.

SA: What are effluents?

ZA: Like sewage, I think.

SA: Oh.

[Pause]

Erin: Dana, how about this?

Jo Macy [JM]: And I‘d like to say that I have yet to meet anyone who is not in grief over what they see happening. Anyone who is conscious today sees that there is hunger, that there is inequality and progressive destruction.

MG: I just want to ask a question: who really cares? There'll come a time when the world won't be singing .. Flowers won't grow -- no! bells won't be ringing. -- Who really cares?

JM: Many in the East and in the Third World have immediate survival issues uppermost in their minds--feeding the family, getting shelter. Among affluent Westerners this suffering appears as awareness of a kind of global pain. It does not necessarily depend on one’s politics. It is even felt among those like Joe who say they aren’t interested in reducing armaments or the decimation of the rainforests. Everywhere there is a dis-ease, a malaise, a grief that we cannot count on there being a future. I think for most people this pain for the world is barely conscious; it is seldom discussed.

MG: Who's willing to try?

Martin Luther King, Jr: I have seen the promised land! I may not get there with you

BBC: Aung San Suu Kyi agonizing with spouse dying far from Myanmar. Her husband, British scholar Michael Aris, is dying of cancer, but Myanmar’s military government won’t let her return if she goes to visit him.

ZA: I believe he preached those words on the very day he was assassinated.

JM: Joe has a self-protection mechanism, to protect his mind from fear, especially the fear that his mind will lose control. "I can’t bear to think about it because I might fall apart. I can’t bear to think about this because I might get stuck in despair. I might shatter into a thousand pieces. Don’t ask me to take it in." There is fear of experiencing the pain that goes with this information.

Jesus wept.

SA: Zoe, did you say something?

ZA: oh ..I am sorry, I think i must be hallucinating. Could you please stop Erin putting drugs in my food, treating me like a fuckin’ dog? I can take an Advil when I need it.

SA: Yes, dear. I’m sorry.

EH: I’m sorry, Z. I apologize, baby. I won’t do it again, I promise.

ZA: Ok. Don’t.

Christopher Titmuss [CT]: Are you saying, "don’t close off to the pain"?

JM: Yes. To close off to the pain is to go dead inside. It is a form of death. I believe the greatest danger Zoe faces is denial--thinking she can’t look at the dangers--in economics, in the environment, or with the military. She imagines she is so fragile, that if she looks at what’s happening she’ll break.

MG: Mother, mother! --There's too many of you crying--

CT: But it takes courage to open up one’s heart to the pain of the planet. Jo, where is this courage going to come from?

Muhammed Ali: I ain’t got nothin’ against them Viet Cong. They ain’t never called me nigger.

Martin Luther King, Jr: It is a war that he considers unjust, his conscience will not allow him to do it, and yes, I certainly would support him.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama [DL]: The Buddha also wept. Don’t let the motionless statues fool you. That was only one pose! Besides, Jesus was only 32 years old --or 33? He was cut down so young! I can assure you when Siddhartha the Buddha was 32 years old he wept many times; --for it was when he was searching and seeking, earnestly, before he was established in the buddha-nature of mind, coming out of concentrated states and realizing they were not going to last. Sure, yes, concentration stabilizes the mind. Yet he really could not control even those states. When the heart opens it becomes obvious the merely calm mind is not really what he sought--

Dr. Laura Schlessinger [LS]: Yet he was wasting his life--

Lauryn Hill. Lauryn Hill?: You may win some, but you just lost one!!

Dana, can we patch in the whole song?

Larry King [LK]: So he wept many times between the ages of 29 and 35?!

ZA: But age is irrelevant, isn't it? How old you are. Younger, older, does not matter. Even when younger. Like when the Buddha was leaving his wife and child to take up the renunciate’s life. Even when he was older than 35. Even when weeping the heart is open and free. It is nearer--

John Wesley: As I walked in Aldersgate, my heart was strangely warmed!

ZA: I know! I know exactly what you mean! Yet I would like to ask you something: Were you wrapped up in it? Or free in it? To what extent? I am so curious! I would love to talk with you about this. Me, I needed some concentration practice to deal with the power of the open warm heart, to get some stability with it & not to fear it--I mean, not to fear being swept away by it.

Tsok Nyi Rinpoche [TN]: And then abide in empty essence, cognizant by nature, devotion and compassion flowing like water in a river, from little streams, off dancers, off flowers upon which the morning dew has condensed from water vapor in thin air.

Dr. Laura: But according to Epstein you isolated the self as a result! You got stuck in calm separation, stable concentration!

ZA: Relax

Joe Carson [JC]: Your critical mind, what I am calling rage, does not blend into desire.

ZA: What about that time up in the tent?

Mark Epstein [ME]: The girl you want is not named Zo!

JC: Oh, yes. I do remember that!

The Buddha: my heart was composed like a fine thoroughbred steed.

Mark McGwire: You mean Zoe?

Sarah McLachlan: In the arms of an alien--

David Cone: I've wondered if I'd ever get another chance to pitch a perfect game.

Sammy Sosa: Zoe Alexander?

Sarah McLachlan: --may you find some comfort here.

Cone: Going into the latter innings today, that was running through my mind, about how many times I've been close and how this might be the last chance I get.

McGwire: The artist up in Seattle?

Cone: My heart was pumping!! I could feel it through my uniform!

[unidentified]: I saw the suitcase in the water, I just knew it was from JFK’s plane!

SA: Look at the tv, Zo. The MTV Real World kids are on a ship going to India and two of the girls are fighting. They won’t even talk to each other, and the other four are trying to help. Now they have to work together to install solar power in a village. Oh man. Look at the village!

ZA: They are doing a good job on this. I feel so at home in India. I would love to travel there with you some time, Mom.

[unidentified]: My heart was pounding so hard!

ZA: Let me venture this. The heart opening selflessly in love is nirvana. Then it literally doesn’t matter to you what happens to you or does not happen.

EH: I thought nirvana was cessation-- no experience at all. Vast nothingingness--isn't that the goal?

ZA: Maybe that's only deep concentration. Actually I don’t know. What's relevant is to stop grasping-- one's heart opens, literally--that's the relevant cessation-- to face the greed, selfishness, all that shit --to get some measure of freedom

Elvis: You are always

ZA: Happens quite naturally when you fall in love.

EH: The Buddha never used this image because maybe it just didn't happen then?

Elvis: You are always on my mind.

Dr. Ruth: Or for that matter just a plain good old-fashioned spur-of-the-moment fuck! It’s not necessarily just a genital thing, you know.

ME: The Chinese expression for orgasm, "having a high tide" describes this effectively. In a high tide everything is floating, the self is submerged or dissolved, there is no longer any foothold or point of reference, but it is not chaos. I wrote about it on page 47.

ZA: I mean literally. Literally. You are floating free.

Derek Parfit [DK]: The glass tunnel separating me from others dissolves.

Patsy Cline: I fall to pieces

LH: You’re just too good to be true.

Casey Kasem: That’s a cover.

[Unidentified, country western singer]: Not too good to be true--

LH: Can’t take my eyes off of you.

[Unidentified, country western singer]: Just too good to be true to you.

Joe Carson: That’s a joke, Zo.

The kitchen sink.

ZA: Usually is diminished fast, yet falling freely in love one knows--

SA: Or when you conceive and give birth. That’s more than a romantic fantasy--

LH: Marchin’! Marchin’! Marchin’! Marchin’! --Beautiful beautiful Zion!

Mohandas Gandhi: There is enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.

ZA: Kids falling in love are knowing it all the time. Of course its mixed up with yearning and images, wanting to be kissed--

Garrison Keillor: Love belongs to those whose hearts have been broken.

Sixpence None the Richer: Kiss me!

ZA: --and usually so fleeting!

Eurythmics: who am I to disagree?

Sixpence None the Richer: Bring your flowered hat! We’ll take the trail marked on your father’s map!

JC: Transcending myself for a few moments.

Britney Spears: Give me a sign!

SA: Huh?

Britney: -- Hit me, baby, one more time!

Eurythmics: some of them want to use you.

SA: Why would she say that?

Eurythmics: Hey! Hey!

ZA: I don’t know, Mom. I never understood it either. She’s only 17. It was #1 for a couple of weeks last winter.

Eurythmics: I saved the world today!

ZA: I never promised to do that--

EH: Of course not.

ZA: --or any magic either. Just some skills.

Shantila: Want to hear a poem?

ZA: Yes!

Shantila: It’s about a fish.

SA: Zoe, earlier did you mean Nirvana, the rock band?!

ZA: Mom, the hearts' release.

Eurythmics: Everybody’s happy now!

Kurt Cobain: Rape me! Rape me! Rape me!

SA: Why does he sing that?

Courtney Love: Ok. So he hated rock and roll -- Why not just quit, do something else?

ZA: They were married, Mom, had a little girl. He killed himself a few years ago. The girl’s now about Zo’s age, four or five, the brilliant age.

HHDL: It gets expressed in cultures and lives in all sorts of diverse ways completely independent of conscious thoughts. Its in our bones--

Friedrich Nietzsche: it is nearer than near

J. Gordon Liddy: Moreover, I would like to point out that, if I am not mistaken, Nietzsche’s image of Zarathustra dancing on the mountaintop "6000 feet above man and time" led to uniformed Nazis swing-dancing in Berlin clubs.

Sigmund Freud? [Nietzsche?]: [unclear] ...natural selection in the evolution of consciousness.

Beastie Boys: As I develop the awakening mind I praise the Buddhas as they shine

ZA: What?! So anybody who disagrees with you about how to dot an i is a Nazi!!! You’re the fuckin’ Nazi, Liddy! Anyway, Lindy’s Hop started in Harlem on May 20, 1927! And Zarathustra wasn’t swing dancing! He’s a raverkid!

Hey girl-- don’t box him in!

Eminem: My name is

now seems to me that it is difficult to see how it could worsen, Miller. Even an idiot who is walking around saying "I am Jesus Christ" would think you were the idiot if you were walking around asking me "Scully, who is saying this?" No. Wait. We would like to correct that point. We could imagine an interesting meditation technique that looked for the thinker of a thought in that self-reflexive way, for example, by asking you as I write, "Mulder, who is writing this? --Hmmm, that is interesting. Of course it might be better just to ask myself than to ask you, if what is going on is that I am looking for myself. But your question differs from this profound meditation technique. For you are not asking "who is saying this?" but you are going around asking "Scully, who

Eminem: My name is

said this?" as if your utterance has already been said in the past, but the truth is that when you are actually saying the word "this" your utterance is not in the past but is in the vivid living open happening vibrant real present moment! I repeat, the present moment!! It is not in the past at all but you are searching throughout the vast dead past for the speaker. You are never going to find him that way. And we regret to inform you that if you keep walking around doing that, Mulder, you may never get over the delusion that the speaker of your utterance is lurking somewhere in the past to be found whereas, as we just pointed out, when "this" is being said the speaker is to be found in the sparkling soft open present, if, that is, the speaker is anywhere to be found at all.

Perhaps this is as good a time as ever to address some wider issues, Mulder. I know I have said this before but we must repeat it is a shame you are wasting your skills on the skullduggery with which you are obsessed. I have become really concerned about you, Mulder --we all have. --does he ever go out dancing?--No I don't think so, I never saw it. --Quite obviously the whole gol'darn file should just be closed as there is nothing of interest in it. And Mulder, if you think Liddy and Carson are ETs then you need to get your head examined. To be more precise, you need to get much better evidence than what you've got in the files so far. Even one piece of evidence would be nice. Your forays into metaphysics are pitiful. You are never going to trap them this way!! We will agree they appear to have some trouble just being human. And, yes, their attempts to prove that Carson is Joe are so clumsy one has to wonder if they aren’t up to something. And, yes, it is quite true that Alexander admits that she has had her doubts. --yes, one or two doubts. --But, as she will be first to admit -- yes, let me be the first to admit it, admit what? --her judgment is not reliable; she is all over the map, here a pose, there a pose, everywhere a pose pose. Old MacDonald had a farm. E-I-E-I-O. But Mulder, to continue, to any objective person there's not really even one little tidbit of conclusive evidence for anything except the conclusion that Carson and Liddy are the two stooges -- and, for all we know, you’re the third one. --As for me, I left a career in medicine because I thought I could make a difference at the FBI. But it hasn't worked out that way. I was assigned to be your partner in order to debunk your work, and we have had some good adventures together. Of course there hasn't really been much to debunk. I am sorry but I am going to quit this job unless I get more interesting assignments within the next week.--Yah you can take this job and shove it!!

As for those reports, yes, we examined them --yawn --and mostly concur. Yes, Earth to Parfit: Forget about Fission!! Zoe says she wasn't quite done with her thesis but the semester was getting over and she just needed to move on. She can do it better. Or, we mean, she could do it better if her brain weren't rotting. But anyway we have one small bone to pick with you. We cannot agree with you about the "2 truths" stuff -- that whole business is just plain slimy. --let's put this in a secondary file, Dana!!--then we get to make hieroglyphs!!--ok, Mulder, that's right; you are going to have to go to a secondary file to find our explanation about that. --Does he know how to do it? --I don't know, let him figure it out..-- ok, here we go then.

Ok. did you get it? --I wonder if he got it. --To sum it up, then. Miller, the speaker is you. But to find yourself, you need to quit looking in the past. Frame your question in terms of the present, then ask it again. Actually that’s pretty cool. "Who is thinking this?" If you insist upon continually fixating upon the past you will never get beyond the idea that you are looking for some dense, solid, substantial thing that is doing, indeed controlling, the talking. We assure you there is no such thing to be found. Neither in heaven nor on earth nor under the earth. Please let me know if you have any further questions about this matter or if we can be of any further assistance.]

ok now, where were we?

Eminem: My name is

Ok let’s see. I’ve got one.

Krishnamurti [K]: The physical organism has its own intelligence, which is made dull through habits of pleasure. These habits destroy the sensitivity of the organism, and this lack of sensitivity makes the mind dull. Such a mind may be alert in a narrow and limited direction and yet be insensitive.

HHDL: The Methodists' heart-warming experience, I conjecture, is the same as the five monks' hearts' release. I’m not so sure about kids falling in love. [laughing] Maybe a glimpse or two. Even if so it makes a difference how we live. Different practices, differing methods, have varying effects. This can be explored.

Robert Thurman: This is the most outrageous new-age watered-down hip-hop crap-version of buddhism I have ever heard!

Beastie Boys: For the sake of all beings I seek the enlightened mind that I know I’ll reap

Lauryn Hill: hey Y’all its funny how hip-hop changed the situation

ZA: Ok. Sorry.

Dana Scully: Yah sorry y’all. We just made that up. We were only joking. His Holiness didn’t really say it exactly that way but we thought we could imagine him saying it.

HHDL: No its true! [Laughing] I’ll say it. You do glimpse it when you fall in love! Yet there are better and worse ways to stabilize it in life, make room for it, bring it into daily experience, so we don't have to settle for occasional glimpses of it randomly striking us now and then so that it basically gets forgotten about when we grow up. As human beings we can cultivate and protect it. [Laughing] And, hey girls, have your fun but remember don’t get stuck there in those analytical forms of meditation and long footnotes!

Robert Thurman: Ok. If he did say it, can you take out what I said before?

ZA: Can we take it out, Dana? Hey, I have an idea. Tell him we’ll take it out if he can get Joe a date with his daughter. He’s going to need a new girlfriend in a few days.

Scully: With Uma? I don’t know. I think she’s like way out of Joe’s league.

SA: Besides isn’t she married?

Erin: Joe doesn’t care about that.

Scully: Isn’t Joe married?

Erin: No, we don’t think so. Krishnamurti was wrong.

ZA: Mom, he does care now. Not the ownership type, but the Alternative Story type.

Scully: The what?

Erin: Literally sharing nondense identity I think she means. Rather than the mutual co-ownership of dense objects. I’m not sure its coherent.

Dear MTV: could you please play ‘n sync and Gloria Estefan "the music of my heart" because I’m scared because I’m starting college and this song will definitely put some courage in my heart. -- Kristen, CA

SA: Dana, let’s try to get the Pope in too. Would you mind?

ZA: He’s said some good stuff.

EH: No. that’s going too far.

ZA: What about when he apologized for the Crusades? That was commendable.

EH: Let him apologize for opposing birth control. If he did that, I would vote to put him in.

Scully: Mulder would notice it if the Pope were here.

K: The interrelationship between the meditative mind and its organism is a constant adjustment in sensitivity; for meditation needs freedom. Freedom is its own discipline. In freedom alone can there be attention. To be aware of inattention is to be attentive. Complete attention is love. It alone can see, and the seeing is the doing.

ZA: What the hell is he saying? Do you understand that, Erin? That is meaningless crap. Just hot air. Tell him to shut up. Why does he talk so much?

The "P": --love your wife as yourself.

Billy Graham [BG]: I thought it sounded pretty good!

Hey girl! Don’t box him in!

Scully: Our pace, our way of life, does not enourage this sensitivity. To feel it requires renunciation--

Dr. Laura: See! There they go again!

Erin: --for renunciation is the key, not holding on to anything, a willingness to feel, a courage to be free, continually renewed every moment. It is not a game. It is vital for life. You don’t just do it once or twice--

K: --even with culture, words, songs--

SA: Zoe, Joe's on the phone.

ZA: Oh. Ok.

[Pause]

ZA: --Hi baby.

[Pause]

ZA: Not too hot.

[Pause]

ZA: I can't think straight. Kinda’ dizzy. It hurts. Not nauseous though--

[Pause]

ZA: it’s ok. Listening to some music, watching tv. We’re having some fun--

Scully: Shh. Don’t tell him--

[tape end]