S

Dear Gladys Grumbach, I return your love a million-fold and with tranquil exultation await your reply. Come and join me! Yoxi and none other ignite my heart's flame. As the Lord Buddha asked, "Who shall find the Dhammapada, the clear Path of Perfection, even as a man who seeks flowers finds the most beautiful flower?"

Shanti,

Shri Arhat Mindadali, M.A., Ph.D.

Supreme Meditator, Ashram Arhat

/spw

Sir:

Your recent editorial in the Forrest Weekly Sentinel condemnatory of the Ashram Arhat as a "glorified summer camp" for "bored yuppies" and "pathetic societal strays" would be beneath our notice were we not sincerely anxious to cultivate good relations with our fellow-citizens of Dorado County and to have our substantial contributions to the regional economy recognized. A barren tract of exhausted range has been transformed into productive agricultural land at no cost to the water table. Our extensive irrigation and sanitation draw solely upon an aquifer confined to the valley of Gritty Creek, now happily renamed the Sach-chidananda River and not to be confused with the miserable alkaline trickle the good "citizens" of Forrest have amusingly dubbed Babbling Brook.

To correct a few other misapprehensions or deliberate misstatements: (1) Our facilities for meditation, therapy (both physio- and psycho-), non-soil-depleting agriculture, and hand manufacture have never claimed tax-exempt status; via real-estate tax and other levies the ashram has contributed $46,742.07 to Dorado County coffers in the fiscal year ended this March, in return for which we have received precisely no public services-neither police protection nor trash pickup nor highway maintenance nor water nor sewer mains nor anything but the forced enrollment of sixteen of our children in public schools where, after sickeningly long bus rides, they are bullied and tormented by their teachers and fellow-students alike and subjected to a bowdlerized, anti-evolutionist, right-wing curriculum that would insult the intelligence of a chuck-walla. (2) Our armed security forces exist solely to defend our property and perso

With united voice, therefore, we remind you that this is supposedly a free country. Accredited lawyers among us stand ready to defend our constitutional rights. Defamatory and false information infringes these rights. Ashram Arhat holds out the hand of peace to its neighbors in Dorado County and the "city" of Forrest. Let us live side by side and strive to make our hitherto sadly neglected region the paradise it can become. The world is weary of the old agendas; let us welcome in the new agendas. Vindictive and mendacious editorials such as yours feed the atmosphere of hate that has grown up needlessly, and in his ineffable sorrow our Master has empowered me to compose this letter of friendly correction.

Yours most sincerely,

Ma Prem Durga

Executive Director, Ashram Arhat

/spw

My dear Charles,

I was sorry to receive your letter. I am so sorry that Midge gave you my address, after I begged her not to. She is still, as I must not forget, very much of your world, very much attached. Even Irving, I fear, is just playing at dvandvanabhighata-the cessation of trouble from pairs of opposites. You and I, my dear, I see now, were such a pair of troublesome opposites.

You speak of our bank accounts and stocks. You even write the slanderous word "theft." Were not those assets joint? Did I not labor for you twenty-two years without wages, serving as concubine, party doll, housekeeper, cook, bedwarmer, masseuse, sympathetic adviser, and walking advertisement-in my clothes and accessories and demeanor and accent and even in my body type and muscle tone-of your status and prosperity? How can you be so mired in prakriti as to care what numbers are printed on the bank statements that you never used to read anyway? Those numbers flowed effortlessly and inevitably from your work-you did not work to produce those numbers. I always did the accounts and the budgeting. For you as well as for us here at the ashram, work is worship-but you worship a stupid god, a stodgy pudgy god of respectability and outward appearance, a tin snob god of the "right" cars and shoes and country clubs, of acceptable street addresses and of acquisitions that dissolve downwards into d£mod£ junk rather than, as for those who take the path of yoga and non-ego, dissolve upwards, into samadhi and the blissful void of Mahabindu. I pity you, darling. Your anger is like that of an infant who with his weak little rubbery arms beats his mother's breast and produces no effect but her loving, understanding laugh.

You dare drag in our daughter. You say Pearl is appalled. You threaten me with the loss of not only her love but all communication with her. You say she will renounce me. How absurd. One ca

I do hope you aren't letting the lawn boys scalp that humpy section out by the roses with that extra-wide Bunton. They should be spraying for aphids now. The peonies should be staked-the wire support hoops are in the garden shed, behind and above the rakes, on nails, in the same tangle that last year's boys left them in. I do hate missing the azaleas-that deep pink is so stu