“Why shouldn’t we be able to put into words what the Buddha was talking about?” Prometheus asked.

He meant it ironically. I asked him whether he likes his answers straight or with a chaser.

Nine days later, Prometheus was a snake.

I remained Erminio Lemarchand, waiter at the Nondual Café—your last stop before nirvana. That is a promise, though perhaps not the one you expect. Everyone is already in nirvana. It may not feel that way when you’re trying to cancel a subscription that can only be cancelled over the phone. But if nirvana is eternal, why should now be excluded? The difficulty is noticing it. Until then, our revolving door has a habit of bringing people back.

That is why I like working here. Recognition needn’t wait for silence, incense, or improved circumstances. It can happen in the middle of an argument. It can remain present while somebody misunderstands you.

At the Café, people enter with all the answers. Then they gradually become curious about their questions.

Prometheus brings several. He has little patience for spiritual truths kept safe from thought, as though one sensible question might break enlightenment. Why should nonduality become vague at precisely the moment it matters? If the Buddha recognized something, why should careful language threaten it? A truth that cannot bear inspection sounds less like liberation than a bridge its engineer refuses to cross.

This annoys Orpheus, who knows perfectly well that no sentence can contain direct experience. A description of coffee will not keep you awake. Words remain still while life moves, and Orpheus has already paid dearly for confusing the two.

Each is defending a truth the other needs.

Then Adrian Noone walks in and complicates the quarrel. Adrian teaches the uncompromising version of contemporary nonduality: no separate self, no cause, no path, no awakening. There is only This. Prometheus immediately starts testing the claim for structural weaknesses. Orpheus hears his own longing returned to him: the beloved before the mind turns it into an object. Adrian speaks in Orphic language while denying that anyone is speaking. He never loses arguments because he removes the people having them.

So I take a coaster from beneath a glass. It bears the Café’s emblem: a flame for Prometheus, a lyre for Orpheus and a ring passing through the middle. At first it looks flat. Tilt it, and the ring reveals a depth that should not fit inside a beer mat. Somewhere in that design is the reason Prometheus eventually becomes a snake.

But I am getting ahead of the service.

The coaster is on the table. Adrian has noticed its hidden depth. Orpheus has recognized the outline of someone he once lost. Prometheus is already looking for a flaw in the design.

Perhaps you have begun doing the same.

Shall I bring another cup?

The Nondual Café is the seventh book in the Simply Nondual Collection. A café argument between Prometheus, Orpheus and Adrian becomes a mythic philosophical adventure about nondual recognition, reason, and freedom from purpose. It is for readers who want direct recognition and critical thought to remain on speaking terms.

The Nondual Café, with a foreword by Katrijn van Oudheusden, can be found here:

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