Coda by Huei Lin Free Preview

RCN Media
Feb 11, 2021
11 min read

Enjoy this free preview of Coda by Heui Lin.

“May all beings be happy.”

The venerable S. N. Goenka squinted. Then he launched into a mesmerizing chant, closing out our seventh day of silent meditation. He was our teacher: the world’s eminent and tireless champion of Vipassana, a warmhearted old man with a mission. Under his tutelage, a forlorn cast of down-and-outs had assembled in this pastoral getaway and committed themselves to ten full days of noble asceticism. After confiscating our belongings for the duration of the retreat, our instructors then presented us with a stark list of prohibitions to observe during our stay. Among the banned activities: speaking, making eye contact, eating meat, killing, consuming intoxicants, reading, writing, masturbating, and fraternizing with members of the opposite sex.

We rose at 4 AM and winnowed the rest of the day away chasing the dissolution of the self, or a cathartic moment. Nothing but this, twelve hours a day. Punctuated by two very light vegetarian meals that made the most of brown rice and miso soup. Sleep, it turns out, was a precious commodity in perpetually short supply. Crammed in a room with twenty other devotees, we moaned in our creaky beds and waited for the wakeup bells to sound.

The one highlight of our day was the evening discourse. Each night we congregated in a small room to receive S. N. Goenka’s wisdom, which he dispensed with saintly calm and deadpan wit. But he wasn’t in the room with us. Actually, he was no longer with us, and hadn’t been for more than a decade: the late Goenka had moved on to greener pastures in the cycle of samsara, leaving us with mere video recordings of his lectures. Shot on VHS, these videos served as a kind of communion: the shoddy camerawork, paired with Goenka’s droll anecdotes, was a welcome dose of slapstick philosophy. Huddled around an old TV monitor, we hung on to every word. It was the S. N. Goenka Show.

“Breathe. Breathe with a calm and equanimous mind.”

On this particular night, I had forgotten my hair elastic in the room after the evening discourse had finished. While everyone else dozed fitfully in their beds, I tiptoed back to the lecture room. Failing to locate the light switch, I knelt on my hands and knees, feeling around in the dark for my hairband. I didn’t find it, but something else happened. The TV screen turned itself on.

The room was suddenly aglow, the TV monitor crackling drunkenly. The image stuttered for a few moments, as if something were trying to rip through the curtain of pixels and materialize onscreen. Then, he was there. The distinguished S. N. Goenka— smiling at me with his trademark equanimity. The sudden burst of light from the TV startled me. Figuring that the VCR must have been activated somehow, I grabbed the remote control from beside the screen. But before I could turn off the TV, S. N. Goenka deigned to speak.

“Hello there. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

I dropped the remote and shrank back against the wall, cowering speechlessly. S. N. Goenka eyed me with ruthless compassion.

“You seem frightened, good sir. Don’t be scared. I don’t often get to chat with anyone, on account of my being quite dead.”

When I’d told my friends that I planned to attend a mediation course, they’d immediately tried to dissuade me. They warned that nothing would come of such masochism— aside from, possibly, some very unpleasant hallucinations. At the time, I had blithely shrugged off their concerns. Now, I was talking to a dead man.

“You know— after I died, I was reincarnated as a cat somewhere in Manhattan, in New York City. Not a bad life, but somehow less than satisfactory when it comes to sophisticated thought. That’s why I keep a signpost to my previous vessel here, in this realm.”

I gurgled something unintelligible.

“Well are you going to say something? How are you liking bootcamp? How do you like the food? Pretty bleak, eh?”

S. N. Goenka then proceeded to pick his nose, examine the booger, and flick it onto the floor.

“I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never seen such a sorry pack of dunces in my entire life. Hopeless, every single one of you. I don’t know why you’re wasting your time here at this New Age gangbang. Here’s some real advice for your problems: marijuana and fried chicken.”

His thick Indian accent— which generally enhanced the rhetorical content of his lectures— now seemed somehow incongruous with the astonishing utterances coming out of his mouth. Presently, he reached over to his left, out of the frame. When his hand came back into view, it was holding what looked like a greasy drumstick. Into this, S. N. Goenka sank his saintly teeth with the frantic pleasure of an addict. The camera quickly zoomed in, moronically drawing the viewer’s attention to his ravenous jowls. It was like a bad KFC commercial.

At this point, I found my voice again.

“So… you’re not a vegetarian?”

S. N. Goenka snorted between bites of chicken that seemed way too large.

“Hell no! Who do you think I am? You suckers can starve yourselves silly with those twigs and leaves they serve, but I’ll stick to real food, thank you very much.”

He drove this point home with another mouthful of flesh, more copious than the last. Before I could respond to this frankly breathtaking disclosure, S. N. Goenka burst into spontaneous chant— his gullet still stuffed with fried chicken. It was much louder than the prerecorded version at the end of his lectures. Every few seconds a piece of meat would get lodged in his throat, setting off a violent fit of coughing before he resumed his thundering incantation. Eventually, he ran out of chicken.

“Ahem. Now, it’s your turn. Young man, who the hell are you? What’s your deal?”

The amazing thing was that throughout this decidedly irreverent binge, S. N. Goenka never lost his composure. His kindly gaze never drifted from the camera lens. I swallowed.

“Well, uh, I’m a writer. But I’ve been feeling a lot of anxiety recently because I can’t seem to finish a story and…”

His eyes glazing over, S. N Goenka gnawed at the chicken bone and snapped it in half, sucking greedily at the marrow before tossing the pieces on the floor. Then he wiped his hands on his robe and reached out of the frame. When his hand reappeared, it was holding what was unmistakably a joint. He stuck it in his mouth, retrieved a lighter from offscreen, and lit up. The camera zoomed in, then out, then back in. The esteemed Goenka took a pull, coughed violently, then let out a sigh of deep contentment.

“Ahhhhh, that’s better. Please, continue.”

Somehow, I continued.

“Yes well, I guess you could say that I’m at a sort of crossroads. I’m not really happy with my work, and I’m not sure what I want to do with my life. I’m trying to write a novel…”

S. N. Goenka interrupted me.

“A novel about what?”

“I guess it’s mostly about being young and disillusioned in the modern world.”

The illustrious Goenka groaned.

“Stop right there. I haven’t read your book yet, but I’m already bored. Don’t you have anything else to talk about? You millennials are such a drag. Always on about being lost and confused, or stricken with guilt because your Chinese grandmother doesn’t understand you.”

Beneath a cemetery somewhere in suburban Virginia, my own Chinese grandmother gave a gargle of approval from the other side. S. N. Goenka took the opportunity to take the joint out of his mouth and hold it in front of him, right up against the screen.

“Want to get in on this?”

He winked.

“I am joking. You look like you could use some, however.”

He laughed a thick, belly laugh while the camera went in for an unflattering close-up of his chin. The preeminent Goenka blew a cloud of smoke toward the camera lens and plowed ahead.

Coda by Huei Lin

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“So what do you think of the chicks here? Assuming of course, that you’re a cis-gendered hetero, as you young people say these days.”

“What? I mean, we’re not allowed to talk to anyone, so…”

“Sex. Now there’s a hook I can get behind. Why don’t you write about that?”

“Well actually, I do explore modern sexuality and the internet…”

S. N. Goenka again reached for something offscreen and the camera panned in the opposite direction, practically cutting him out of the frame. When it re-centered, he was holding a magazine. It was an old issue of Penthouse from 1985. He flipped through it and squealed with delight, turning it around and holding up a centerfold spread for my pleasure. Comfortably seated on a gaudy chaise lounge, a serene-looking Goenka beamed at the camera with two pouting, svelte models perched on either side. A headline read: “Equanimous Desire: A Silent Romp with the King of Dhamma.” I couldn’t make out the text of the article underneath, but it hardly mattered.

“I can’t stand these ‘journalists’— they make me out to be some kind of nymphomaniac. I simply teach dhamma, and sometimes the females want a photo with me. That’s it. I’m not some sicko bastard like ‘guru’ Bikram. Hot yoga is a total farce, anyway. It’s just an excuse to undress and fill a room with sweaty bodies.”

He paused, and put the magazine on the floor.

“But back to your book.”

“Yes?” “I just have one piece of advice for you.”

“Okay?” “Write about whatever you want, but don’t call yourself a ‘writer.’ Once you start thinking of yourself as a ‘writer,’ you’re finished.”

“Oh.”

“Take me, for instance. I’m not a guru, meditation czar, expert, yogi- these terms are just conveniences to make it easier for people to understand the world. I’ve been busting my ass to get people to meditate- that’s it. Just a regular guy who’s gone down the rabbit hole with this meditation thing.”

The joint, which had been burning through at a startling clip, appeared to be done. S. N. Goenka took one last hit and then flicked the spent end onto the ground. He continued, visibly blazed but still present.

“Remember this. People who feel the need to call themselves ‘artists,’ ‘leaders,’ ‘mixologists,’ ‘dim sum specialists’- they will never be great. Possibly good, but never great. It’s the difference between Salieri and Mozart.”

I didn’t catch the reference, but I could vaguely imagine what Goenka was getting at. The camera zoomed out, and then in slightly. It occurred to me that I should try to get some sleep; in any case, maybe this whole spectacle was simply the result of prolonged sensory deprivation. Yawning, I informed the renowned S. N. Goenka that this was all very interesting but that I would be retiring for the night. Goenka nodded and raised his hand magnanimously.

“That is all fine and good, sir. Sleep well, with a calm and equanimous mind.”

As I stood up to leave, I asked him if I should turn off the TV on my way out. S. N. Goenka waved me away.

“No, no. I’ll turn this contraption off myself.”

The TV screen went dark, noiselessly. I wondered if this was because it had, in fact, never been on in the first place.

I ended up going back every night after that.

Each time, S. N. Goenka would appear just as before and expound upon such hard-hitting topics as polyamory (“the more the merrier!”), psychotropic drugs (“why do you think I got into meditation in the first place?”), and religion (“Hahahahaha!”), always with a joint or cigarette in hand. This apparition bore an exact physical likeness to the real S. N. Goenka— the sober voice of enlightenment— but departed from him in all other respects. This thing was Goenka on the loose, Goenka at large; a rogue shaman, free from the shackles of orthodoxy. He talked endlessly. And we always managed to get on the topic of my book.

“Don’t try so hard to write. Nothing kills good writing like words. Words are death. It’s the space between the words that you should be interested in.”

Slowly, things were starting to make sense.

“During the evening discourses I’m always telling you: when you get down to the level of elementary consciousness, you realize that there is no self. Now, the same applies to writing. There’s no writer, do you understand? The novel is already there. You just have to invite it in— and that’s where you need a pliable mind, and some introspection. I know some herbs that can help you with that…”

This went on until the final night of the retreat. After ten grueling days of self-actualizing, it was time to go at last. The next morning, I would leave this place forever and go back to my plodding, uncertain routine. Kneeling before the TV screen for the last time, I thought of something.

“Do you… Do you talk to any of the other students? You know, after class?”

The honorable S. N. Goenka took a deep drag on his cigarette and smiled.

“Each and every one of them. Not always through the TV screen, but yes.”

I suppose this shouldn’t have surprised me. For someone capable of communicating from beyond the grave— through a TV screen, no less— engaging in dozens of simultaneous conversations was surely child’s play. But nonetheless, this revelation left me feeling jealous and territorial.

“Really? But I haven’t heard anything from anyone else…”

S. N. Goenka coughed phlegmatically and ashed his cigarette onto a hypothetical tray offscreen, followed by a dizzying camera maneuver up to his forehead, down to his lips, then out again until his torso was perfectly centered in the frame.

“When you leave this place, you won’t remember these conversations. What you’ve learned from me—that is to say, him— will remain with you, but these clandestine sessions will disappear from your memory completely. It is my gift to you, to everyone who passes through. And once they finish the course, they will forget.”

This was distressing news, and I told him so. I begged him to reconsider. Losing these nights, I told him, would rob me of the most compelling material to ever come my way. As a writer, holding these dialogues in my heart would give me an edge over the other chroniclers— perhaps affording my work a level of insight that would take the literary world by storm. I waxed indignant and morose, droning obnoxiously about phantoms and the caprice of inspiration. S. N. Goenka listened to my sycophantic bluster with a smile, but did not budge. In the end, I succeeded only in exposing the depth of my own conceit.

A long silence hung in the space between me and an undefined netherworld inhabited by spectral entities such as the late S. N. Goenka, broken only by the sound of my own heartbeat. Finally, we said our farewells.

“Well, goodbye then.”

“Goodbye, good sir. May your mind be peaceful and equanimous. May all beings be happy.”

Then, he added:

“Send me a copy of your book once it’s published. It may be unreadable, but send it anyway.”

And that was it.

The next day, I woke up with no recollection of the “after hours” discourses. I felt fresh and full of purpose. I took the first bus to the train station, and then took the train back to the city. Happy, for once, to return to my shabby apartment, I immediately started writing. Within a few days, a manuscript of value was taking shape. I ascribed this surge in productivity to my time spent in spiritual sequestration, gushing to my friends and family about the benefits of meditation and the value of ascetic restraint. They nodded politely, with strained enthusiasm, but expressed genuine surprise at my uncharacteristically positive demeanor. I wrote late into the night, drinking cups of green tea and blasting the complete Yellow Magic Orchestra catalogue in order to stay awake. Finally, it was done. Upon publication, my debut effort made a splash, commanding public and critical acclaim. I remembered nothing of my evenings with the “other” Goenka. Until I saw him again.

Years later, walking to the train on Baxter Street in lower Manhattan, New York, I stepped into a neighborhood joint called Sun Sai Gai Restaurant for a quick snack and a respite from the sun. The place was overrun with tourists, construction workers, mid-west hipsters, and me. Unfinished chapters of a new novel wrote and rewrote themselves in my mind while I stuffed myself with chicken, rice, and jasmine tea. Something out there was stirring— I didn’t know it then, but we were about to get pulverized by a mysterious new pathogen and an unprecedented political realignment in its wake. But none of that mattered right now. I closed my eyes. An equanimous moment in a sensual world.

When I left the restaurant, I heard an unusually loud meow coming from above. I looked up and locked eyes with a black cat perched on the fire escape. Distinguished old eyes. We stared at each other for a full ten seconds while the city convulsed around us, staggering along a rusty conveyer belt in the wrong direction. The fragrance of oil and death kissed us good day, and a car full of students slammed into a taxi. Old scores were left unsettled, left to macerate in the shadows. The cat blinked, once. And I remembered.