76 Suspect

Billy did say that we had seen the pain that comes from free love and how hard it actually is to do it right. He recalled the "four-marriages" on The Farm. Stephen Gaskin's four-marriage—I think it eventually became a six-marriage and maybe even an eight-marriage—was the only one, Billy suggested, that seemed not to end in neurosis. When the young Trungpa had landed in a hippy commune in Vermont, Billy said, everybody was fucking everybody and Trungpa—"skillfully" was Billy's word—became part of their scene. When people experienced neurosis, Billy said, Trungpa taught them that we have no territory to protect and he showed them how far they were from ultimate truth. Billy remembered only vaguely the article I had read in Newsweek and he could not recall if the reporter had alleged that by his unconventional behavior Trungpa had hurt somebody.

"Did you read that someone was abused, manipulated, deceived, or injured by Trungpa?"

Billy asked me.

No—

No, I had not.

But this whole business of choosing a teacher had become much more complicated than I thought. In a reminiscence titled "Absolutely Suicidal," Larry Mermelstein recalls a conversation he had one day with Trungpa Rinpoche on the subject of sex. Mermelstein acknowledges what he, too, calls Trungpa's "unconventional" behavior. Trungpa was married, Mermelstein writes, yet he also had relationships with many women. According to Mermelstein, Trungpa neither hid the fact nor did he exhibit any embarrassment about it.

"So should we follow your example in our own relationships?" Mermelstein asked his teacher. "Do you mean for us to do that?"

"No," Trungpa replied. "Absolutely not!"

Unconvinced and still curious, Mermelstein asked if Trungpa really meant what he had said.

He had.

"It would be suicidal for you to do what I do," Trungpa declared.

Did this apply to all of his teacher's students from the regent Ösel Tendzin on down?

Mermelstein wondered.

"Yes," Trungpa said. "Absolutely suicidal. People should not try to copy me."

Mermelstein reports that he was overwhelmed and moved by what he calls the clarity of Trungpa's response.

"Why don't you tell people this?" Mermelstein asked his teacher. "Why don't you say something?"

"Why don't you?" Trungpa replied.

But as one student commented after reading Mermelstein's anecdote, it is unfortunate that many students did indeed try to imitate the behavior of their teacher in relationships and by doing so they did cause other people needless suffering.

Do as I say, not as I do?

Hmm.

Though he admired both Trungpa and the Dalai Lama, John thought the Tibetans were suspect.

"They are too secretive," he said, "and too hierarchical."

I agreed.

I read more articles on teachers and gurus. Online I found even a guru rating service. I reread Krishnamurti, "the no-guru guru," as another good friend of mine had called him. Krishnamurti in one of his books had written that in order for one to live without inner conflict the only thing necessary is to keep in one's mind—without answering it—this question:

"Is it possible to live without inner conflict?"

I was astonished by the way this simple device stopped my discursive thinking.

Is it—

As I record these recollections I am astonished by it all over again.

Is it—

No teacher necessary?