Miss Buddha (14 page)

“He doesn’t like me, does he?”

“No.”

Ananda nodded. He knew that.

::
28 :: (Pasadena)

It is an odd sensation to have a body go to
sleep on you.

One moment it’s quite awake, everything’s
working just fine: ears, eyes, bowels, lungs, heart, just humming
away like the incredibly well-designed pieced of machinery they
are. Then, for no apparent reason—other than, perhaps,
over-contentment—curtains are rapidly pulled shut and, if you don’t
manage to scramble out of the theater before they lock the doors,
suddenly all is one black and deep oblivion.

I did manage to scramble out of my head
before sleep arrived like a hastily assembled midnight, and now I
watch her, this little body of mine—which really has no reason to
cry, and seems well aware of that—lies oblivious to all but the
tick-tick-tick of a tiny heart. There’s a gentle almost smile on
her face, and those lashes: Charles’s dark, long lashes. She will
grow a startling face, this Ruth of mine.

Melissa is talking, and Ananda is listening.
He is a good listener, my Ananda. And Melissa, as she unburdens,
finds a peace in being heard and understood. I see the bond forming
between them, and that is precisely why I needed Ananda to come
down in person.

::
29 :: (Pasadena)

Melissa was putting Ruth’s little socks away
when someone came into the room and now stood behind her.

Watching her.

That was the sensation. Someone was watching
her. She felt eyes.

Socks still in hand, she turned very
slowly—and very afraid now, for she had heard no one enter the
room. The one watching her made not a sound. She turned all the way
to no one there, to empty bedroom. Only Ruth, shifting now in her
bed to look at the ceiling.

Aware of her heart racing, though beginning
to slow again, and aware of perspiration forming on her brow,
Melissa stood stock-still for many breaths, listening hard to the
noises reaching the very attentive. But there were no footsteps
hurrying away from beyond the door among them. Only her own breath,
and Ruth’s, and distant sounds of outside world—the muted growl of
an engine angrily up the street, the distant waterfall of freeway,
a thin call of anxious bird, and its answer. And her still slowing
heart.

Ruth turned her head again, away from the
ceiling (and its paper cosmos) and back toward Melissa,
six-weeks-old eyes falling into and holding Melissa’s equally blue
ones in an embrace far too mature.

Melissa did not notice at first, but her
heart did and seized on this something unnatural, this very alive
glance that spoke of intelligence and curiosity, concern even, and
alarmed it shook several times as if to wake its owner, then began
racing again.

Ruth, as if noticing the telltale heart,
looked away, past Melissa, and out the window, to decipher cloudy
secrets.

Melissa had yet to move.

::
30 :: (Pasadena)

“Charles.”

Charles, chewing carefully the way his
mother had taught him, did not respond immediately. He finished
chewing first. In fact, made a point of it. Then he said,
“Yes?”

Melissa drew a deep breath but seemed to
think better of it.

“What?” said Charles, looking at his
wife.

“You know how you can tell,” began Melissa,
but did not continue.

“You know how you can tell, what?”

Another intake of air by Melissa failed to
produce a finished sentence, and Charles, knife and fork suspended
above his plate of food, began to cloud. Darkly. “You know how you
can tell, what?”

“You know how you can tell when someone’s
looking at you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone’s looking at you from behind. You
can tell.”

After a brief pause, Charles said, “I don’t
see how.”

“You don’t?”

“I don’t see how you can tell that.”

“Well, you can.”

“If you say so.”

Melissa took a long look at
her husband, as if searching for something, or
some
one
. Charles,
in turn, waited what seemed to be a required number of seconds,
then arranged another bite onto his fork, brought it to his mouth,
and began chewing.

Melissa, too, looked down and returned to
her meal.

Ruth, in her portable cot on the floor by
the door looked from one of her parents to the other.

::
31 :: (Pasadena)

“Charles.”

To my ear she sounds part apprehensive, part
uncertain, though perhaps mostly discouraged—as if she does not
hold much hope that her husband will understand; but Charles,
chewing away, does not seem to notice.

I realize that I have been careless, or
inconsiderate, or both.

She does not know for certain, for that is
one of the conditions of being human, one of their shackles. She
does not know, but she is afraid that what she fears is true. This
amidst doubts that tell her not to look closer, to let go, to
dismiss. For what if it were true? This thing that cannot be. And
what cannot be, cannot be true. This is what doubt preaches, that
is its mission.

Her startled, searching, frightened eyes
have met mine and at least this once I did not veil my curiosity in
time—she saw this, this mature interest so impossible in a human
only six weeks old.

“Yes?” he says, but not until he has
finished what he was doing—for what Charles does must not be
interrupted. I am not sure how much mastication his mother may have
prescribed per bite, but he is staying true to that amount.

Melissa is afraid, there’s no other word for
it. Her memory in turmoil, images of my eyes upon hers, claiming
the impossible, but how could they possibly? Still, she saw what
she saw. But cannot have.

And warring thus within, she says
nothing.

“What?” says Charles, before starting the
next bite. Annoyed with his wife for interfering.

“You know how you can tell,” she says, but
no more.

“You know how you can tell, what?”

Still she says no more, and Charles, quick
to an anger he suppresses mostly unsuccessfully, asks again, a
little louder—making the point that now he is actually being
inconvenienced, “You know how you can tell, what?”

And Melissa—ignoring warring images—takes
what must be a plunge. “You know how you can tell when someone’s
looking at you?”

No, Charles does not know. “What do you
mean?” he says.

“Someone’s looking at you from behind. You
can tell.”

He ponders. Though not the question, for to
him it’s a meaningless question, but his wife. Has she taken leave
of her senses? “I don’t see how,” he says, truthfully.

She looks at him, more surprised now than
afraid, “You don’t?”

“I don’t see how you can.” Charles gets the
feeling he is missing something, and does not like it. His wife is
not being logical, and he likes logic.

Melissa is searching now—hope against
hope—for an echo, for an understanding, for some resonance within
her husband. Five heartbeats later, resigned to the lack of echo,
she looks over her shoulder in my direction, while I look at
Charles. She says, “Well, you can.”

“If you say so,” he answers. His well-worn
way of ending discussions he does not care to participate in.

Melissa looks back at her husband, a little
bewildered, and still afraid. He returns her glance according to
some predetermined protocol, then resumes eating.

The ensuing silence is quite profound.

Melissa looked and looked for one, but there
was no connection between them. It confounds her greatly, fanning
her apprehension. This does not move Charles, however, for he—back
now at his task of chewing properly—does not notice.

:

I wish that I could comfort her. Yes, I wish
that more than I can tell. But I also know that I cannot do that
without revealing myself, and I know that by appearing in her
internal world I will do more damage than good.

For what was once commonplace is now
supernatural, this visiting the internal worlds of others, and the
supernatural is, almost by definition, a frightening proposition
that only the awake, or almost awake, can tolerate.

Even so, I have been on the verge of doing
precisely that a few times when her worry colors the room, and
compassion for my mother threatens to explode my little heart; on
the verge of telling her it is all right, Melissa. Things will be
fine. I am the Gotama Buddha. I have come to visit. You have given
me birth. There is nothing to be afraid of.

Were she sufficiently awake not to scare and
assume the worst: that she is mad; yes, then I would tell her.

And I would tell her that this is the way
things are, this is how spirits commune.

:

While Melissa has yet to wake, she is
stirring—the surface not so very far. Her husband, on the other
hand, is very much asleep, deeply rooted in spiritual comatose.

Yes, Melissa does stir now
and then. She does not deny to herself, not entirely, that our eyes
did meet, and that she saw mature interest in mine. On some level
she allows: it
could
be. Of course it
isn’t
, but it could be. And so, part
of her stirs (and at times happily so) at the recognition of what
couldn’t possibly be.

Charles, on the other hand, would not only
deny hearing, he would not hear, were I to speak within him. He is
battened down hard and would let nothing not of this world
through.

Possibly, I could have chosen a better set
of parents. But I like her, Melissa, I like her very much, and I
believe she is the right mother for the Buddha Gotama. I believe we
will be fine.

Charles is another matter.

::
32 :: (Pasadena)

This little body I wear stills easily, each
little limb easing into calmness as I ask it to settle. Head
nestled into pillow, the body warm and content under my
blanket.

And so stilled, I now find its breath—that
gentle brushing of air against nostril, so softly in and so softly
out—the most natural of events, and always in the present; and I
follow it, this in and this out so gentle as to be almost
imperceptible, once, twice, three times, four times, and here I
find and enter in a small gust of recognition—like a comfortable
garment I know well—the meditative state of the first Jhana where I
now rest into the breath and dwell.

The world does not go away, but it fades and
becomes something lived next door by considerate neighbors.

And here is a bliss I recognize, along with
its softer sibling happiness. To me, this is a familiar
antechamber, the threshold to deeper states—or loftier, depending
on view—where I am now heading to contemplate, again, the best path
to absorb this current world, this modern and cynical place, in
order to shed it some new light.

The soft in and out of the breath fades as I
enter the second Jhana. Here, in the first true chamber of
meditation, verbal and conceptual thoughts have faded into pure
happiness—the almost abrasive bliss now taking a backseat. I could
remain here, and dwell in this happiness, but the bliss is still
vibrant and to that degree a distraction. So I sink (or
rise—directions are immaterial without gravity) into the third
Jhana where bliss fades, leaving a stiller happiness and a focus
stronger still.

I know this chamber, too. I
know it well. I have dwelled here often, immersed in this
gauze-like sea of beatitude. I can choose to stay, if I so wish,
but I don’t. I let go one more time, setting happiness free, to
ascent to the fourth Jhana to find and enter an equanimity so sheer
as to be indistinguishable from concentration. This is the chamber
I prefer when searching for answers, for here each view—wordless,
yet precise—cuts like a beam through darkness and into the light of
comprehension, into the clear seeing of things as they are. Here is
where I
know
most
easily. So here I settle.

The world surrounding, while still there, is
now too far away to really notice, and certainly too far away to
distract. Here, in the spacious light of the fourth Jhana, I am
free to simply be and to see. Here I am free to once again view and
determine how best to stir these slumbering people awake. This
suffering world.

Judging by Melissa, and
especially by Charles, and by the many I’ve seen come and go to
wish them—and me—welcome and good luck (and my, isn’t she cute), it
is as if they continue to slide down a long, and ever-steepening,
slope of ignorance. Surely this clinging, this craving for
possession and sensation—for wealth, for power, for entertainment,
always entertainment and more and more of it—was not as deeply
rooted, nor as thoroughly fused, when I walked northern India
as
Siddhattha Gotama, as the
Buddha Gotama.

Surely.

And while the greed I now see might not be
as overtly spectacular as what I saw when I, as Giordano Bruno,
grieved for the folly of the Christian Church and its insatiable
necessity to own and own and own, it has since then grown stronger
and more insidious, for it seems to now have fused completely with
the soul. In Bruno’s time there was still a discernable gap—the
finest crevice, to be sure, but still crevice—between soul and its
cravings, a fine space that had yet to fully close. Today, I see no
such gap.

Charles, for instance, is
his cravings,
is
his needs to possess and control; he has become, he
is
his owning and
directing and enjoying what he chews so well and then
swallows.