A Step Away from Paradise: A Tibetan Lama's Extraordinary Journey to a Land of Immortality (52 page)

Food on the boat had been prohibitively expensive, so the first urge that directed my steps was hunger. I wanted spaghetti. I was, after all, in Italy. So I stopped at a place not far from the port and ordered a bowl of spaghetti. When it came it was greasy in a way that just wasn’t right. I couldn’t get it down, thinking the whole time of Lord Byron, who caught the cholera that cost him his life in Brindisi. I left the restaurant feeling angry that I had to pay for something I couldn’t eat. Nothing about Italy seemed right. I walked back to the port and bought a ticket for the boat’s return trip to Greece.

Thinking I was the first one on the boat, I went straight to the large passenger cabin to claim the same seat I had occupied on the crossing to Italy. Entering the cabin, I noticed it was empty except for an old man sitting in
my
seat. Many people were still boarding the boat or exploring the various decks before finally finding places to settle for the journey. There were probably a hundred seats in this cabin, and though some people came in behind me and were now stowing their luggage, the only person sitting was this old man, and the seat he occupied was the one I wanted.

His head was turned away from me and he was looking out the window, probing his teeth with a toothpick. Standing in the aisle, I looked around for another seat, wondering at the same time whether the old man spoke English.

He sensed my presence and turned. “Please,” he said, motioning to the seat beside him, “sit down.”

I wanted to sit alone and meant to refuse; instead I found myself accepting his offer. With a sigh I heaved my pack from my back and propped it on the back of the next row of seats. And as I sat I noticed his pack, a small canvas daypack on the floor by his feet. It was bright orange and slightly frayed around the edges.

The man turned to face me fully. “My name is Ed Spencer,” he said, holding his hand out for me to shake. His hand was large and strong. I introduced myself.

“Judging from your voice,” he said, “I’d say we hail from the same country.”

“Yes,” I said, “I’m originally from Massachusetts.”

“I once lived there,” he said. “In Cambridge, not far from Harvard Square. But that was many years ago. I was raised in New Jersey.”

His head was large and his white hair and beard were cropped short. The bones in his face were prominent, and I could see his collarbone beneath his shirt. He wore sandals, and his pants ended well above his ankles. His clothes had the look of clothes bought at the Salvation Army.

Beneath his left eye I noticed a small bruise. In the center of the bruise was a tiny opening in the skin in which a drop of thick white liquid had formed. He noticed me looking at his cheek. He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a piece of tissue, with which he dabbed the puss.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Oh, this? A few months ago I was hitching to Miami. I was just on the edge of the city when it started to rain, so I took shelter under a bridge. A homeless man had put an old tarp between the abutments, and he was living there. I thought it quite enterprising of him. I had an orange, and I offered him half. Unfortunately, he didn’t like me taking shelter under his bridge, and he decided to use my face as a punching bag. The police found me unconscious, and I was in the hospital for a month. The doctors had to reconstruct my face, and they left a hole here for the discharge from my eye. They say it will dry up on its own. Sometimes I think it’s infected.” He pressed the tissue on the wound again and winced.

“You’re coming from the States now?” I asked, again eyeing his tiny pack.

“Yes,” he said. “I flew to England about two weeks ago. It took me two weeks just to get to Brindisi.”

“You hitched?”

“Yes, though I’ve had pretty rough luck. Seems I’ve walked half the way. I wanted to take the boat from northern Italy, but it was too expensive. I thought of hitching through Yugoslavia; then someone told me about this boat, so I hitched down here.”

I felt sorry for him. He was obviously down on his luck. He must have been pushing seventy. It is sad, I thought to myself, to see old people all alone and without money.

“Is that all you have with you?” I asked, nodding at his pack.

“Is that
all,
” he said. “Usually I have less than that—far less. The best way to travel is with the clothes on you back and with what fits in your pockets. That’s the way I see it. Anything more than that only gets in the way. Eventually you get fooled into thinking you need all sorts of possessions. And then you think you need even more. And then—well, then the straps that bind you to your pack are stronger than the straps that hold the pack to your back. The world has it wrong. Less is more, as far as I’ve seen it.”

“Then why the pack?” I asked.

“Probably because I’m getting soft in my old age,” he said with a dry laugh. “Or maybe it’s because I was walking by a dumpster in upstate New York and saw it right on top and thought, Why not? One takes what comes one’s way. I’ll get rid of it by and by.”

He put the toothpick back in his mouth and gazed at my pack with the same bemused smile he’d had when he first turned and saw me standing in the aisle. Under his gaze my pack did look ridiculously large. It was heavy and it slowed me down. It made me feel like a tortoise. It was like moving a house. My tent, cook stove, clothes for both hot and cold climates: all these conveniences bound me to their upkeep; I was their slave, carrying them around. I had never used three-quarters of the stuff. His pack couldn’t have held more than another shirt and maybe a pair of pants.

He looked at my pack for a long time; then he turned and looked me straight in the eye. He locked me in his gaze with a probing look, as if he wanted to know whether I understood what he had meant. I could feel his eyes plumbing my depths. It was an uncanny feeling.

“Where are you coming from now?” he asked.

“Greece,” I said.

“Greece!” he said, laughing. “But I was led to believe that Greece is where this boat is
headed!
”

He had a way of cocking his head to one side, as if to present his ear to my words.

“You’re right,” I said. “We
are
headed for Greece.” I told him I had to get a new visa. I didn’t tell him how uncertain I was about my destination. “I came over earlier today on this very boat,” I said. “You’re sitting on the seat I sat in on my way here. That’s why I was standing here, eyeing your seat.”

“What were you doing in Greece?” he asked.

“I was living on Corfu, at a monastery on top of the island’s highest mountain.”

With this I obviously piqued his interest. He probed deeper with his toothpick. “A monastery…” he said, letting the word hang in the air. “Why were you living at a monastery?”

“Maybe you’ll understand,” I said, “traveling as you do. Living at that monastery was like living at the edge of the world. Sometimes it felt as if I were at the edge of the known universe. You see things differently from there.” My words, once they were out, seemed cryptic. But I sensed that he too was living on the fringe, on the outside looking in. “I left the monastery just a few days ago,” I continued. “It is still strange to be around so many people. It was a very distant place.”

“What brought you to this distant place?” he asked.

“I suppose there is a light that shines only when the light fades that holds us to our attachments,” I said, aware again that I was speaking in the shorthand that one uses who has spent a long time in solitude. “Maybe it’s the same as when you travel with only the clothes on your back.”

“That’s probably true,” he said. “I know what you mean by that other light. I’ve known that light. It is only from the edge of things that that other light can shine through.”

This man was obviously not what he had at first appeared to be. On first impression I had assumed that he was nothing more than a bum traveling with hardly a change of clothes, his face battered from a fight, a man with hardly enough money for his ticket. I kept expecting him to reach into his pocket, produce a bottle of cheap liquor, and take a slug. I could sense something broken in him. Yet his clothes, though shabby and miss fitting, were clean. His white hair and beard were neatly cropped. He thought before he spoke and picked his words carefully. I sensed in him a keen intelligence. All of which made me wonder what brought him to such an impasse.

But before I could ask him anything about his life, he started asking me about my experiences on the mountain. His questions were probing and to the point. They forced me to express what I never thought I could have expressed. He was interested in the inner dimension and depth of my experience. He plumbed my depths, as a sailor plumbs the waters around his vessel to determine how many fathoms lay beneath his keel. He seemed satisfied by the depths of my waters. We ended up discussing the importance of developing direct intuitive intelligence, which lies beyond the conscious mind.

“It is rare,” he said, “to meet someone who understands such things.”

Chapter 2

The boat lurched forward. The dock glided by the cabin’s window as the din of many voices rose above the engine’s drone. Ed Spencer looked out the window as our boat passed an oil tanker anchored in the harbor.

In the silence that grew between us I fell back into my first impression of him, the one I formed before he spoke. Looking again at his clothes that had obviously once belonged to someone else and the tiny pack he picked out of a dumpster, I wondered whether he was running from something, perhaps the law. He was obviously well educated. He must once have had a family, a home, and possessions. He seemed to have lost everything. He was too old, I thought, to be tramping the way he was. I sensed that he had endured much suffering. Something in him seemed broken. Yet whatever it was also seemed mended, and like a piece of metal that has snapped and been welded together again, the weld is always the strongest part. He possessed a great strength.

“Where are you headed now?” I asked, not sure if a man in his circumstances, whatever they were, would be
headed
anywhere.

“I am on my way to India,” he said. He intoned the word
India
with a deep reverence, as if it were the name of an old friend or lover. The word hung in the air between us a moment, then I asked whether he’d been there before.

“Yes,” he said. “Many times. I’ve lived longer in India than in the West. India is my home, as much as any place here on earth can be.”

“Why India?” I asked.

“As a child I dreamed of India,” he said. “Whenever I could get my hands on a book about India, I devoured it from cover to cover. I suppose this was because my life didn’t seem like much. Looking back now I can see that I understood from a very early age just how hollow and shallow the West is. Even as a child I knew this. I was not a happy child—unwanted and unloved. I’ve always been a fish out of water. I had to travel far to find my true home. Though I often dreamed of traveling to India, I never thought I’d get to go, transportation being what it was in those days. I came from comfortable circumstances—but still, India was very far away.

“Then World War II broke out. I didn’t believe in taking up a gun to kill others who happened to have been born on the other side of an arbitrary political line. I’d heard that the American Field Service was looking for drivers for their ambulance corps in India. It meant a deferment from fighting. So I signed up. Most of the time I was in Bihar and Bengal, in the east of India, north of Calcutta and what is now Bangladesh. Once, when I had some days off, I took a walk through the countryside. As I crossed a small village some people invited me into their hut for tea. On the mud wall was a picture of a man. I asked them who he was. ‘A very great teacher,’ they told me. ‘A mystic.’ They said he lived close by, in a neighboring village. They asked if I wanted to meet him, and I jumped at the opportunity. I was looking for answers, hoping India could provide solutions to my life’s conundrums.

“We walked for an hour across fields and through tiny settlements of grass and mud huts till we reached the village that had literally grown up around this man. They brought me to the central pavilion where he lived. They left me at the door and disappeared inside. Soon I was announced and led into his presence. The moment I saw him I felt as if I had come home after long wanderings. Tears came to my eyes as I felt his gaze fall on me. I knew he could see right into me. He was seeing me on a level more profound than anyone had ever seen me before. And I was probably cracked anyway; I was in need of healing. He saw straight through places where I could see only twisted paths. That is how I met Thakur, my teacher.”

Ed stopped and again looked out the window. Puffy white clouds sailed over the Adriatic’s gentle waves. Slowly he turned back. His eyes looked gentler now, almost misty.

“Did you stay there with him?”

“No, I couldn’t. The world was still at war. Time wasn’t my own. Though I did manage to see him a few more times before the end of the war. Anyway, I had a life to return to in the States.”

“What kind of life was that?” I asked, trying not to let my curiosity seem too keen.

“I was a teacher.”