INQUIRING MIND MAGAZINE— October 1998
Beyond the Grip of Fear
by Gavin Harrison
When I first heard the teachings of the Buddha seventeen years ago, it was his wild, radical
passion for truth and his defiance of external authority that got my own blood boiling and
catapulted me on a spiritual journey:
“Believe nothing, merely because you have been told it or because it is traditional. Do not
believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for your teacher. But by whatever
way, through thorough examination, you find to be one leading to good and happiness for all
creatures, that path follow like the moon follows the path of the stars.”
The Buddha’s words, spoken two and a half thousand years before, were speaking now
to my own broken, confused and closed heart. He was not telling me what to do. He certainly
was not threatening me with damnation, retribution or punishment. He was simply suggesting
that I listen, look and find out the truth for myself.
When I look back over the years, long before I learned to meditate, to moments when I
was able to say no to external voices, when truth burst through inner and outer confusion to
protect me, when I refused to sacrifice my spirit to the will of another—those moments were
the most important, defining and certainly the most mobilizing junctures of my life.
My first moment of defiance happened when I was sixteen years old. I had been
conscripted into the South African army. I was terrified. There was so much anger, violence
and malevolence around me in the army camp. The identified enemy was Communist, everpresent and very black. We were required to kill for and protect the whiteness of our country.
Early one morning we were all taken out to the shooting range in camouflaged trucks. Dressed
in battle gear and holding our rifles, we traveled deep into the veld. It felt like war. In military
formation, we lined up and were issued live ammunition for the first time. Suddenly, a siren
blew, and a series of concentric circles appeared on targets before us. Superimposed upon the
chest of the silhouette of a man was the bull’s-eye. I knew in that moment that I was being
schooled in murder. I refused to fire at the target. Instead, I sprayed my bullets wildly, hitting
the surrounding targets but not my own. In front of my fellow soldiers, the sergeant major
thundered at me in Afrikaans, “Is jy’n moffie of is jy’n man?!” (“Are you a faggot or are you a
man?!”) I paid dearly for my defiance, but as I look back, it was the first time in my life that I
was truly able to say, No!
Perhaps one moment of courage—when we allow the wisdom of our hearts to lead the
way—conditions further moments of deeper listening. After military service, I and other
students at the university in Johannesburg rioted and protested against apartheid. For weeks
we kept a twenty-four-hour vigil day and night beside a busy street. It was lonely as we stood
there night after night with our placards and our candles flickering in the darkness. One
evening a woman stopped and gave us a plate of fresh, warm baked pies. We were hungry and
very grateful. Before devouring them, a friend suggested we give thanks for this unusual
kindness. Then, we opened the pies and inspected them carefully before eating. There in the
moonlight twinkled bits of ground glass mixed into the meat. I realized in that moment how
much they feared our young and independent spirits. Though we were bludgeoned, tear
gassed, beaten and dragged by our hair; though we were jailed by police and some of us died
in custody for participating in these protests, I was blessedly able again to defy the
intimidation and authority of the State.
At this same time in my life, I had the courage to honor and at long last to admit to
myself that I was gay beyond any shadow of a doubt. I refused to deny my sexuality to myself,
my family or my friends any longer. It felt triumphant to defy those voices within and outside
of me that tried to convince me I was deviant, sick, abnormal, amoral or just going through a
phase.
*
*
*
Had I known what was in store for me on the Buddhist path, many years later in December
1980, I probably would never have had the courage to leave the straight and narrow road from
Pietermaritzburg to Ixopo for the wild adventure of vipassana meditation practice. It would
have seemed ludicrous that my ascent to that mountaintop retreat center in Ixopo, Zululand,
would begin a long journey that would shatter every notion of who I thought I was. Years later,
within the fire of vicious disease, this left turn up the mountain would unquestionably sustain
me as I entered a life close to death.
Diagnosed with AIDS eight years after beginning meditation, I was able fiercely to affirm:
I will not be defined by this illness. I am so much more than a person living with AIDS. AIDS
ultimately has no authority over my life. In spite of everything, it remains my birthright to
know the greatest joy, love and that peace which passeth all understanding.
Following the introduction of meditation to my life, I spent the happiest year of my life
at Ixopo and then sought to bring the meditation practice to the fast, racy and successful life I
had left behind in New York City. Back in the U.S., to my horror and surprise, I found the
trappings of my affluent lifestyle—my Persian rugs, my collection of silver and goldware and
paintings from around the world—all meant absolutely nothing now. After great anguish and
confusion, I decided to shave my head, ordain as a monk, and give away all my possessions. I
would soon fly to a Burmese forest monastery in the redwoods of California. Before entering
the holy life, however, I had one final, wild, fateful fling during which time I was infected with
the AIDS virus.
I saw him the moment I entered the hotel bar. He stood in the semi-darkness holding a
beer, leaning against the wall. A black leather cap hung down over his forehead. He was very
handsome, and I knew instantly that a decision had already been made. Suddenly, he was
beside me. Voices within me whispered their caution. The longer we talked, the louder the
voices said, “No, no, no.” Regretfully, my courage flew out the door as I silenced all sense of
the truth calling to me. I sublimated my will to that of a complete stranger. When he invited
me home, I immediately accepted his invitation. How could I refuse? He was, after all, gracious
enough to invite me. How could I say no?
Over the years, I’ve returned to this encounter many, many times. Why had I jettisoned
the voices of caution that called from within me? In retrospect, I was probably determined to
have one last fling, knowing instinctively that I was leaving behind forever a life that had
offered only fleeting moments of titillation and gratification. Perhaps also it was a gesture of
defiance against the momentum of the spiritual journey that at times seemed to carry me
faster than I understood. Or maybe this fateful episode was a speed wobble to ensure that I
would never again sidetrack myself from this journey. It was many years later that I fully
understood why my courage failed me.
It was fortuitous that my meditation at the monastery was an ancient death awareness
practice, a systematic reflection and visualization upon the thirty-two classical parts of the
body. I remember the first five: hair of the head and body, nails, teeth and skin. Then the
reflection moves on to pus, blood, feces, fluid of the joints and other succulent imagery. My
ongoing repetition of this visualization practice dissolved all sense of bodily solidity. The
physical experience was one of enormous flux and flow. It felt both courageous and
precipitous to touch the truth of my body, to bring into question my lifelong alignment and
identification with a body that now appeared so unstable and ephemeral.
Late one night, a number of fellow nuns and monks, all practicing the same meditation,
were taken to the department of anatomy at a local university. We were each seated beside a
table upon which lay a huge, zippered, plastic envelope. Under the guidance of the head nun,
we sat quietly together and extended loving kindness to ourselves and others. Later, we were
asked to unzip the envelope beside us. To my great surprise, I found beside me the body of a
middle-aged woman preserved in formaldehyde. I noticed her gold earring, her painted toe
nails, her youthfulness. After a while, I moved to the other side of the table and was
astonished and quite unnerved to discover that she had been sliced in half right down her
middle! Fear gripped my heart as I slowly observed her brains, jaw, neck, heart, lungs, organs,
intestines, bones, genitals. The fear gradually subsided as interest and compassion arose
within me. As I moved from side to side of the table, I had the privilege of feeling the texture
of the individual organs. If I pulled a tendon, the toe responded. I perceived for the first time in
my life that the surface of the skin, the outer appearance, what I had always identified with,
was paper thin and so vulnerable.
Eventually, I sat beside the body, held this stranger’s hand, and extended compassion
and gratitude for the lessons I had learned. I gazed at countless bodies lying upside down and
upright in the huge pool of formaldehyde nearby. All had no doubt yearned for happiness, all
had suffered, and all were now deceased.
I returned to the woman lying on the table. Once again I perceived the spleen, the brain,
the ligaments, the overlapping muscles, the vertebrae, all with their intricate physiological
interconnections. I was filled with awe and wonder for the miracle that lay beside and, of
course, within me. The idea that I, Gavin, might in some way be a fixed aspect of my own
bodily complexity seemed like a ludicrous and impossible notion. “My body is simply a
vehicle,” I realized, “Pure, awesome, miraculous—hers deathly still and mine blessedly and
thankfully breathing, for the moment.”
*
*
*
I left the monastery after nine or ten months and continued intensive meditation practice at
the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with Michelle McDonald Smith and
Joseph Goldstein, whom I had first met at Ixopo. It was during this retreat that a terrifying
episode occurred that was directly related to my fateful sexual encounter before entering the
monastery.
During meditation on this retreat, there was a considerable accumulation of pressure in
the lower part of my body below the groin. When I thought I couldn’t bear it any longer, there
was a huge release. Immediately, pressure reappeared in the pubic area, and the same
sequence of events continued to unfold elsewhere in my upper body. Finally, energy shot out
the top of my head. The next days were highly energized. I felt elated and open, but soon I was
again in excruciating pain. To practice awareness of breathing felt too complicated and fearfilled for me at this time. Gasping for breath, I shifted my attention to touch points on my body
as objects of meditation—my lips touching, my fingers touching one another, my knees and
feet on the floor. During one meditation, completely unbidden, forgotten episodes of history
started arising with difficult emotions related to the terrifying imagery.
Back in my room at IMS, with the first snow falling outside, I was inundated with
memories relating to excessive alcohol abuse by my father as I was growing up, of much
whiskey poured from elegant crystal decanters into cut-glass goblets. Then images of boarding
school began to arise. I vividly remembered all the times I’d been beaten by teachers. I
remembered the terror of older and bigger boys—often the tough jocks who despised and
ridiculed me by day—forcing themselves into my bed night after night as they fondled, kissed,
hurt and masturbated me.
I crawled down to the frozen basement of the meditation center and huddled in a
corner alone. I felt safe and isolated there as I had years before when I retreated to my hiding
places around the school, safe for a while from those who tormented me. Under the retreat
building in the middle of winter, the frigid concrete floor chilled my body. I wept and wailed
and shuddered in the stark reality of what had occurred all those years earlier.
Joseph and Michelle supported me through the nightmare of the next years. Each year I
did a long retreat at IMS. There was no stopping the process. I picked up at the point I had left
off months earlier. I began an ongoing practice of forgiveness meditation.
Over the years, I’ve come to realize that the abuse left me with a pattern of conditioning
that may be triggered in the present, causing me sometimes to regress to the vulnerable,
terrified and reactive child I once was. I probably will not know absolute deliverance from the
effects of this wiring, but I can change my relationship with what arises now. Certainly one of
the most painful and courageous acknowledgments over the years has been the recognition
and acceptance of an ethic of victimhood that has profoundly defined my life. Learning to
respond rather than to react to this conditioning has been a primary blessing and joy of the
meditation practice. Through the eighteen years of grappling with this legacy of abuse, I have
today an unshakable faith that everything that arises in the meditation is ultimately workable.
1989 was unquestionably the most difficult year of my life. This was a time when many
friends were dying of AIDS—about fifty loved ones had already died. My therapist told me he
had AIDS and was winding up his practice. I returned to South Africa to be with two close
friends, one a lover of many years. Roy died as my plane touched down in Johannesburg, and
Michael died a few weeks later. A couple of days before I was to leave, my father died in my
arms. When I eventually returned to the United States, I immediately had my blood tested. On
the ninth of July, 1989, I discovered that I, too, was living with AIDS. The virus that was killing
my friends was wildly proliferating in my own bloodstream.
As soon as possible I returned to IMS and began a long retreat. In a leaf-strewn
sanctuary deep in the New England forests, I felt the presence of my father all around me. I
had an opportunity at last to mourn his death and find a measure of completion with his
passing. During the final weeks of the retreat I experienced a great pressure on the front of my
head. I allowed the awareness to move to the sensations across my nose and mouth—a
feeling of being pushed and smothered. One day the pressure across my face was so sudden
and strong that I was knocked from my cushion and fell flat on my back. Several surrounding
meditators screamed in alarm, for by now we were all very quiet and extremely sensitive to
shock, surprise and loud noise. I meditated in my room for the remainder of the retreat. The
pressure and the falling continued. Slowly the pressure took the form of a palm of a hand, and
I also noticed that my breathing had become particularly difficult at this time. A fiery pain
increasingly enveloped my groin. Sometimes the nauseating smell of tobacco and alcohol
accompanied these episodes.
One day the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, not by design, but in remembrance. I
remembered lying in my cot as an infant, way back beyond a time when I could verbalize or
speak. A great big tobacco-stained hand came down over my nose and mouth to quiet me
while another hand fondled my genitals. I was terrified then as I was terrified now, thirty-eight
or so years later. The hand was my father’s beyond a shadow of a doubt. This knowing is not
visual, nor is it verbal. It is founded in instinct, sensation and intuition.
Now I understood why at boarding school I was such an immediate and accessible
target and magnet for the abusive behavior that occurred there. By then, I was already firmly
on track for the abusive eventuality that was to follow. I knew, more deeply than ever, why it
had not been possible for me to resist those fateful sexual advances in Seattle, why there was
no self reference, no sense of boundary, and no capacity to honor the voices within myself at
the time. I realized why I had always loathed my father’s touch, why I hated him calling me his
baby (which he did all his life), why I always felt so instinctively ashamed of my father, and why
I so much wanted to be different from him.
Over the ensuing nine years I have gradually become able to accept more deeply and
forgive my father’s shortcomings and all he did. I feel today a genuine respect and
appreciation for his considerable strengths and virtues, many clearly alive within me now. I can
celebrate his good, kind and fallible heart. In some way, my struggle for freedom feels like his
also. We are in this together now. I believe that my father’s activity with my genitals, though
devastating and terrifying for me, was for him a desperate attempt to reassure himself that I
had not inherited his own impotency and malfunction (caused by a war injury that I later
learned about from my mother when I told her everything I had remembered). Back in 1989 I
had no idea how long, arduous and challenging the road to forgiveness would be—forgiveness
of myself, my father and my mother, Adelaide, also. I had no idea how deeply forgiveness
would eventually heal us all.
When the revelations surfaced, I felt defiantly unwilling to consider the possibility of
forgiving my father. The terror, rage and truth-telling of those years needed to happen first. As
my heart perceived and felt my father’s suffering and confusion, I found within me a
willingness and readiness to let go of the nightmare that had gridlocked my heart for so long. A
transition from the brittle terrain of anger, shame and victimhood to acceptance and letting go
with forgiveness is one of the great blessings of my life.
*
*
*
A few years ago, in 1994, I was admitted to the hospital in Northampton. My temperature was
106.7 degrees. I had pneumonia. My friends and the doctors all thought I was checking out. I
dropped twenty-five pounds; I was drenched in sweat day and night; my mind was dull, my
body exhausted. One night in the middle of all of this, I awoke from this nightmare with a jolt.
My mind was crystal clear. Surrounding me in every direction was a deep, comforting, velvety
blackness, and below me, stretching way ahead to a pinpoint in the distance, was a river of
salmon-apricot-colored rose petals. As the river disappeared, a bright white light shone back
towards me. In the embrace of this light, my heart erupted with great joy as I remembered
again a love that I’d somehow forgotten. At this point, my mind got really busy. This is far out,
I thought. I’m dying. Instantly, I did a ninety-degree turn into the blackness on my right, and
my eyes opened. I was back in the hospital. Life-support equipment surrounded the bed. My
fever broke, and the crisis was over.
My overwhelming memory of that night was of the loving light. I have no idea what
happened, but I’m left with an unshakable knowing that for me, in some unfathomable way,
the movement towards death is a movement towards a profound and boundless love, longforgotten. For me the fear of death is diluted by the indelible impression left by this
experience. More than ever these days, death feels like an illusion, a short step from one
garden to another. What increasingly defines my life is an unquenchable thirst to know the
deepest and most unconditional love possible within the fire and the drama and the
complexity of my life. The practice of meditation—mindfulness—is for me a practice of love.
Unconscious love is an oxymoron, an impossibility. To be fully present with oneself and others,
I believe, is the truest love there is.
Our courage to enter the darkest recesses of our hearts and minds births a deliverance
from all that has kept us tight, disconnected and loveless for so long. We forget and we
remember.
This excerpt originally appeared in the Fall 1998 issue of Inquiring Mind (vol. 15, no.1).
Inquiring Mind is a donation supported vipassana journal, and they can be found at
www.inquiringmind.com .