A summary of "Secret Views of Mount Fuji" by Victor Pelevin

Published in 2018, Viktor Pelevin’s novel examines the clash between ancient esoteric teachings and the demands of modern Russian elites. This book is a satirical analysis of the spiritual impasse of early capitalism, where even the highest Buddhist trances are purchased for money, and Western feminism mutates into primal martial magic. Pelevin intertwines Eastern metaphysics with gender theory, pitting male thirst for absolute peace against female will to power.

A startup selling happiness

Russian businessman Fyodor Semenovich is languishing from satiety. Ordinary worldly pleasures have exhausted their supply. On a yacht, he meets Damian Ulitin, founder of the startup "Fuji Experiences." Damian offers exclusive indulgence treatments to ultra-wealthy clients. The first step is a "Pompeian Kiss" — a process that resolves old psychological gestalts. Damian arranges a meeting for Fyodor with his high school sweetheart, Tanya.

By this time, Tanya had experienced a severe life crisis. Having lost her status as the kept woman of the Moscow official Igor Andreevich, she bitterly noticed her beauty fading. She created a vision board with a photo of Fyodor pasted on it, hoping to become the billionaire’s wife. Soon, Damian contacts her and offers money for a meeting with an old acquaintance.

The organizers recreate the atmosphere of a school potato-picking trip at an abandoned state farm near Moscow. Tanya arrives expecting a romantic reunion. Fyodor meets her at the bathhouse, opens his blue mechanic’s robe, revealing his nakedness, and silently walks away. This absurd act seals a long-held adolescent insecurity for him. Tanya is left in a state of profound humiliation and despair.

Buddhist trances for the elite

Fyodor doesn’t get the catharsis he’d hoped for from Tanya’s humiliation. He demands something sublime, spiritual, and enlightening from Damian. Ulitin brings the Burmese monk Sayadaw Ahn and a special device to the yacht. The Emo-Pantograph reads the electromagnetic vibrations of a meditating monk’s limbic system and transmits them directly to the client’s brain.

Fedor, along with his business partners Rinat and Yura, begins sessions of immersion in jhanas — deep meditative absorptions. The men sequentially undergo four material jhanas. They experience indescribable cosmic bliss, in comparison to which any earthly pleasures pale. The oligarchs find absolute happiness. In these states, worldly vanity disappears, leaving only crystal purity and endless peace. The third jhana brings the subtlest joy, and the fourth bestows lucid detachment.

Raiding the Enlightenment

Yura persuades his friends to perform a mental trick. The oligarchs decide to arbitrarily employ insight meditation (vipassana) upon emerging from the fourth jhana. They observe the changing phenomena that arise. The friends’ goal is to achieve permanent spiritual transformation, free and forever.

An attempt to deceive the universe ends in disaster. The businessmen fall into "bhanga-nyana" and "bhaya-nyana" — epiphanies of decay and horror. They begin to see the illusory reality being destroyed every second. The familiar world loses color and meaning, turning into a meaningless set of torturous stimuli. Rinat is overcome by a panicky fear of complete ego loss. He fears the disappearance of the entity that owns the wealth. The monks learn of their clients’ self-will, break their contracts, and leave. Damian embarks on a fruitless search for new spiritual guides.

New Hunters

Tanya’s story unfolds in parallel. Wandering through the autumn forest after an offensive encounter with Fyodor, she meets a mysterious mushroom picker. He directs her to Giselle. Giselle turns out to be a muscular woman with a female gender identity and male physiology (polyorchidism — four testicles). Giselle introduces Tanya to radical feminist theory, explaining the nature of patriarchal oppression and the glamour imposed on women.

Soon, Tanya meets Clarissa, a Black American woman from the New Hunters network. Clarissa teaches Tanya ancient Mesoamerican magic. A practice called "pussyhook" allows a woman to become an "iguana," hooking an invisible hook into the energetic thread of the universe and altering reality with the power of her will. First, Tanya passes a dream test, meeting the Sacred Iguana in the crater of a volcano. The iguana grants Tanya power over the "rope of death" that runs through every woman’s womb.

To enhance her magical throw, Tanya discovers her unique sound name. By typing an English word on a keyboard with the wrong layout, she receives the battle cry "Zgyyn."

Healing by Sin

The oligarchs are stuck in depression and terror of the emptiness of existence. They desperately seek a way back to the comfort of human samsara. Damian devises a program of spiritual degradation for them. The plan prescribes methodically violating Buddhist commandments to reattach the mind to earthly suffering. The men drink, use cocaine, kill flies and mosquitoes from special dispensers, and swear. They engage in legally formalized mutual theft. Yura sponsors Buddhist conferences to sow discord among the believers. Fyodor commissions a mocking review of a book by the philosopher Alexander Pyatigorsky.

Their torment continues until Tanya begins actively practicing her invisible hook. Choosing her sixteen-year-old self as her ideal image (inner manga), Tanya casts this mental bait directly into Fyodor’s consciousness. Spinning around in her apartment, she methodically reels in his fate. Tanya’s mental blow pierces the oligarch’s Buddhist detachment.

Surrender

Feminine magic disrupts Fyodor’s mechanism of suffering. The businessman suddenly sees Tanya as his only anchor of salvation, his protection from the icy breath of space. Yura and Rinat are also cured. Being placed on the US sanctions list gives them back a solid foundation in the form of anger and attachment to their assets. The illusion of a stable world is restored, saving their sanity.

In the final scene, the monk Sayadaw An uses his spiritual vision to observe his former clients. He sees Fyodor in Barcelona. The powerful oligarch grovels on his knees before Tanya, begging for forgiveness and submitting to her will. Tanya coolly relishes her power, mentally stroking an invisible pussy.

Damian suffers a cruel punishment. Yura and Rinat take him out to sea on a megayacht and transfer him to a small rowboat. Abandoned in the middle of the ocean, Damian looks at the horizon. He whispers an ancient poem by Kobayashi Issa about a tiny snail slowly crawling up the slope of Mount Fuji.