Sincerely,

Sarah Price Worth

Dear County Commission Chairman Aldridge:

"He who does whafshould not be done and fails to do what should be done, who forgets the true aim of life and sinks into transient pleasures-he will one day envy the man who lives in high contemplation." Thus spoke our Lord Buddha, as recorded in the sacred Dhammapada. We are in receipt of your letters, documents, and diagrams. The nature of our offenses remains obscure. The wiring and plumbing arrangements that your inspectors discovered are inappropriate, you say, to "winterized tents," as the jargon on our initial permits had it. Then, let us call them "substantial dwellings," which more befits the condition they have grown into. When the sapling becomes a tree, or the bulb a flower, we do not cut it down because it is no longer what it was. You accuse that we applied for a permit for a "greenhouse" and that the greenhouse is now a two-acre assembly hall and an attractive vinyl-clad meditation center of fourteen soundproofed rooms. Is this not cause for rejoicing rather than official rebuke? Is this not the American way, to progress from the humble log cabin to the mighty skyscraper? And you say that our initial announced intent to form an "agricultural commune" of no more than twenty-five members has been played false by our present-day shopping mall, terraced A-frames, paved avenues, trailer parks, printing plant, fabrics factory, and population numbered in the hundreds. Our agricultural commune has prospered; shall it therefore be destroyed, as your Hebraic God destroyed with fire and brimstone cities too happy and serene to make bloody sacrifices to Him every day and twice on Sundays?

You assert that your statewide "land-use" laws were enacted by concerned environmentalists. It is our impression, instead, that such laws are the pliable tool of fat-cat ranchers owning tens of thousands of utterly idle acres, snobbish restriction-minded "snowbirds" from the teeming Northeastern states, and Los Angeles-based real-estate developers who have already transformed Phoenix into a smaller version of their nightmare metropolis. We are the concerned environmentalists, we of the ashram, who have taken an arid, abandoned environment and made it not only habitable but paradisaical. The technicalities you raise could be settled in an hour by men of true good will.

If our population exceeds that allowable without declaring the existence of a city, then let us declare it a city. We propose the lovely name Varunaville, in honor of Varuna, the heavenly encompasser. This celestial god placed fire in the waters and hung the golden pendulum, the sun, to swing above, regulating day and night. The rhythm of his order is the order of the world, called rta. In his mansion of a thousand doors Varuna sits observing all deeds; everywhere his spies survey the world and are undeceived. He is a glorious deity, appropriate to this sunny land and a county called Golden. But if you wish to give our city a more indigenous-sounding name such as Crusty Elbow or Flat Tire, please do. We will govern ourselves nicely, posting speed limits and route signs and all that. Already we have been constrained to create quite a large police force, due not to any derelictions within but to harassment from without. Perhaps once our legal status is clarified we can work with the law-enforcement officers of your estimable county to rid its territory of ruffians and rascals and rednecks and reactionaries. To quote once more the Dhammapada (which means "Truth-Path"): "Weeds harm the fields, passions harm human nature."

We future citizens of Varunaville look forward to hearing from you in a spirit of amiable cooperation in achieving our mutual goals.

Most hopefully,

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

Supreme Meditator, Ashram Arhat

/k

Dear Sheriff Yardley:

We of the Ashram Arhat are indeed sorrowful to hear of these two unfortunate young women, Rhoda Lou Pollitt and Phoebe Gellerman, who were apprehended in the act of intravaginally smuggling cocaine across the border at Nogales. A search through our records shows that two sannyasins named Bhanda and Gauri originally registered with us under these two state-imposed "Christian" names on November 19, 1985. They stayed here for three months, offering up to the Arhat, and to the aspects of Shiva made manifest through the' Arhat's overwhelming presence, worship in the form of work as chambermaids, kitchen assistants, and messengers on ashram business to the outside world. They were absent, singly or together, for various periods and were last in residence seven months ago. Notations on their records credit both Bhanda and Gauri with above-average spiritual energy and egolessness.

We of course greatly grieve to learn that, according to you, both women in their confessions have implicated the ashram not only in their reprehensible drug-smuggling activities but in numerous acts of prostitution and petty theft committed in three states and Mexico. But what, really, is meant by their claim that "they did it all for the Arhat"? The Arhat, even if omniscient (as many believe), cannot be held responsible, surely, for illegal acts committed by his misguided devotees. These former sannyasins claimed to you that, after their modest living expenses were met, all the profits of their various sordid activities were forwarded to our ashram. Sheriff Yardley, we receive many donations every day from those literally uncountable grateful men and women who have been brought closer to lasting peace and unalterable enlightenment by the teachings and example of Shri Arhat Mindadali.

You ask whether our records show receipts from these poor young women whom you have so cleverly apprehended in the act of bringing a controlled (for obscure reasons, since it is relatively harmless, except to the nasal membranes and the attention span, and certainly less corrosive and lethal than tobacco and alcohol, those brother poisons that powerful vested interests keep pumping into our national bloodstream with scarcely a demur from legislators and law-enforcement officers) substance to those that peaceably desire it for recreational purposes. Our policy is to pay all receipts into the Treasury of Enlightenment without any numerical notation that might encourage an ethic of competition and invidious comparison among our benefactors. The widow's mite (to use a phrase perhaps familiar to you) and the millionaire's largesse dissolve one and all alike in our Treasury, which has been likened to a vast white-hot cauldron that accepts all earthly scrap, be it in the form of pistols or clockworks or bracelets or ploughshares, and resolves this dross to a molten formlessness then poured into pure ingots of the Arhat's deep and serene intent.

So we most regretfully cannot aid your investigation, only ask your mercy upon the two accused. Their "crimes" are so labelled by a Puritanical and patriarchal society that seeks to punish its own dark cravings. How much better it would be to legalize drugs and prostitution and out of surfeit discover, as did the Lord Buddha, the middle way that leads to non-attachment and nirvana. To quote the Bhagavad-Gita: "Action rightly renounced brings freedom, and action rightly performed brings freedom." As you doubtless know, there existed and perhaps still exists in India the "left-handed" path (Vamachara) of tantrism, in which unspeakable orgiastic excesses, even murder and necrophagy, were performed as acts of worship under the rubric that "perfection can be gained by satisfying all one's desires." Certainly temple prostitution held an honored place not only in Hindu but in Hellenic religion, and is dimly echoed in the numerous scandals in Protestant churches today involving church secretaries, choir sopranos, etc. While we at the ashram hardly dare hope that these somewhat general considerations will deflect you from the enforcement of laws however stupid and unjust, I myself would feel remiss if I did not point out to you how frequently these life-denying laws pertaining to "vice" are used to afflict not the men who serve as both administrators and consumers of the prosecuted activity but-as in this case-the women whose only offense has been to satisfy the desire of others.