Karma for Beginners Read Online Free PDF

who doesn’t have someone like that to think about, someone to think about me. I switch it off.
    The Guatemalan blanket scratches my thighs, heavy and too stiff to keep me warm. I could close the windows, but without at least the crickets, I think I’ll feel so by myself that I won’t be able to stand it. I hate this feeling. It’s the same feeling I get when my mom stays out at night and leaves me home. She says the extra quiet will help me rest, but it’s just the opposite; the air gets so still that every noise is deafening and I spend the night scared, tracking every creak and crack. I’m more used to it now, at least. When I was six or seven it used to keep me up all night and I would fall asleep in school.
    I notice Jayita’s paperback on the counter by the tongue depressors. It’s called The Supreme Journey , and on the back is yet another picture of the bearded guy. I open to a random page. It says:
It is only by renouncing our own desires that we may destroy the illusion of our thoughts. Then we may achieve the true peace of solitude. Not separateness, but the bliss of true connection with all the other solitudes in the universe.
    Then it goes on to say a bunch of other stuff in another language that I guess is Indian. I read the paragraph again. “Destroy the illusion of our thoughts?” I don’t think my thoughts are an illusion. How else are you supposed to know anything besides by thinking about it? I like thinking about stuff. Understanding things makes me feel more connected to them, not less. Plus, “destroy” sounds awfully mean.
    The solitude part I do get, though. I certainly can feel my universal solitude right now, trapped in this trailer, crickets creaking through the screens. I don’t understand how that feeling would be something that anyone would want. To me it doesn’t feel holy or sacred or peaceful, it just feels lonely. I think about Jayita and Dev, holding hands down the trail in the crickety dark, headed up the stairs to their room. I think about those people on the radio, liking each other enough to dedicate a song. I think about my mom, up late like me, in the huge soft yellow cotton T-shirt she always sleeps in, and I think about my dad, out there somewhere in the big open empty of America, wondering where I am, or maybe not. I fall asleep crying with nothing but the scratchy cot to hold me.

T HREE
    . . .
    Purity of Being is attained by delving wholeheartedly into the community of seekers.
    Jayita comes back at sunrise, hands me my clothes, and washes my hair again. When she finishes combing she pats me on the shoulder in her stoner-yoga way and says, “You’re good. You can go ahead and meet your mom.”
    â€œWasn’t she going to come get me?”
    â€œOh, she was? I don’t know, I guess maybe she was thinking she’d come later? But I gotta get First Aid cleaned up by eight. You can just head over to Sadhana Mandap to find her.”
    Everything has weird names here and everyone expects you to already know what they mean. I’m starting to suspect that the weird names exist just to make people who aren’t part of it feel stupid, like the popular girls who make up their own words for stuff and speak it like a secret language and then laugh. “What’s Sadhana Mandap?” I have to ask her.
    She doesn’t laugh, at least. “Oh, that’s where meals are served. It’s breakfast now. It’s over in the main building; you can’t miss it. Just don’t forget your name tag.” She nods to the counter where she left it last night, right next to The Supreme Journey . I hope she can’t tell I was reading her book.
    It rained during the night; the wood chips are damp deep dark reddish-brown. They crunch soft under my sneakers and the leaves glisten above, red and yellow and green all dotted with little silver drops. It’s only sunrise. After a while the trees thin and