Miss Buddha (30 page)

Yes, I tell him, yes, I am Tathagata.

“And you have come,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Bearing questions?”

“One, yes.”

The river that sings his words is deep and
untroubled. Far beneath the rumble and mumble of earth, far beneath
the constant longing of gravity. Slow and still the deep note rises
and falls with meaning.

“What would you know, Tathagata, that you
don’t already know?”

“I would know—for in this world, I don’t
know—how best to help.”

“And I would know?”

“You never left,” I answer. “Half a life you
had lived before I returned the Buddha Gotama, half a life again
you have watched the folly of the world, from here, safely aloof,
pondered its many fates and stirrings.”

“This is so,” he answers.

“Surely you know humankind as well as
anyone.”

“That may be so.”

“So you would know,” I say.

“You may be too late,” says the
bristlecone.

“I must not be too late. I must never be too
late.”

Hearing the tree think its regal thoughts is
like listening to slow moving water deep below the Earth’s surface,
eddies like galactic arms converging, conversing, comparing
impressions and conclusions, sifting through memory deeper still,
and so finally arriving in unison, through roots older than any
other living thing on this Earth, “He reveres science,” he finally
tells me. “Science is his new religion.”

“Man?” I ask, just to clarify.

“Yes. Science is his new God.”

I taste the meaning and it tastes like
truth. “You know this,” I say. Not so much as a question as a
confirmation.

Again, the tree consults his roots, as if he
too needs confirmation. “Yes,” he says finally. “This is so. The
twin doors of religion and mysticism are mostly shut.” Then he
adds, “There was a battle, a long battle, a thousand years ago.
Religion the victor at first, then not.”

“Science the victor?”

“Yes.”

“That is the door then,” I say.

“That is the one door seen by all, respected
by all, revered by all.”

“I don’t know anything about science,” I
protest, but that is not really true.

“Modesty does not become you,” says Ananda
at which the tree, I swear, chuckles.

“Ananda!” I say.

“I invited him,” says the tree.

“But I don’t see how,” I begin.

“Science without religion is hollow,” Ananda
says. “And religion without science is blind.” Then adds,
“According to Einstein.”

“I still don’t see how,” I say.

“You will,” says the tree. “If you are to
touch and redirect this folly, you must.”

I can feel Ananda agreeing somewhere behind
me, though he says nothing.

:

That evening at the motel the three of them
gathered in Ananda’s room, all on the floor. Ananda was leaning
against his bed, Melissa sat just by the window, and Ruth to the
side, underneath the wall-mounted (dark and silent) television,
facing the two of them.

They had said little on the way back from
visiting the bristlecone, each perhaps a little stunned—or
elevated—by the encounter and now immersed in private thoughts.
Neither had they spoken much since.

Looking first out the window, and then at
Melissa and Ananda in turn, Ruth said, “I am well versed, but I
don’t know how to tell it.”

Melissa said, “You’re well versed in
what?”

“In science,” said Ananda.

Which Melissa didn’t follow.

“He knows what science knows, and more, but
not in its current terms,” explained Ananda.

“What do you mean?” she asked of them
both.

Ruth said, “Today, the Bristlecone said that
the door leading to the minds of men is science. It is the new god,
the almighty and the most revered.”

“But you don’t know how to tell it,” she
said. “What do you mean?”

“I know science, I know it well,” answered
Ruth. “But I don’t even know the English words that might
approximate what I know—if, indeed, they exist.”

“Then,” said Melissa, “if that is the door,
you must learn the words.”

Which to both Ruth and Ananda was such an
innocently perfect answer that they both looked at her in wonder,
then smiled.

“From the mouth of babes,” said Ananda,
realizing as the words left him that they were not the right
ones—though perhaps relatively speaking they had bearing.

“What?” said Melissa, confused by smiles and
words both.

“You are right,” said Ruth. “I must learn
the words.”

Ananda nodded in agreement.

“Well,” said Melissa, understanding, and
smiling now as well, “You’re welcome.”

::
67 :: (Pasadena)

He answered me, and his answer was
science.

I have done little else all weekend but
reflect on this, on whether the old tree is correct or not. But why
should I doubt him? He simply spoke truth as he saw it. Still, has
he seen enough, and does he then judge correctly? Is science really
my path then?

The more I ponder, the more I add all these
impressions of the world I have gathered through television, at
school, in the papers Ananda says he prefers to that ignorant tube
as he calls it, the more I agree with the tree, the more I see that
he is right. The new priesthood is science—particularly medicine.
If I am to be believed, if my voice is to carry, it must resonate
with the authority of that field.

I know now that the tree is correct.

:

They reached a new consensus that
evening.

Ruth was to become, among other things—they
all agreed—a physicist.

::
68 :: (Pasadena)

Ananda returned from the library bearing
quantum gifts.

“Here you go,” he said, placing a stack of
what must have appeared to Ruth as tomes on the living room
table.

Ruth closed her Mortimer and surveyed the
impressive little tower of paper. “What is it?” she asked.

“Your path,” said Ananda. “Elementary and
advanced physics.”

“Dinner is ready,” said Melissa from the
kitchen.

“I have this,” said Ruth, holding up her
Mortimer.

“It is good; I grant you that. But you need
more than that. You need the grounding to prove your understanding
in their field.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dinner is ready,” Melissa’s voice carried
emphasis this time.

“What do you mean?” repeated Ruth.

“You need to know quantum mechanics and
string and other theories well enough to contribute to their
current research, not just enough to sound intelligent on the
subject.”

Ruth looked from Ananda to
Melissa who appeared at the doorway, “Dinner
is
ready,” she said.

Ruth put the Mortimer aside and scrambled to
her feet. Ananda said, “Sorry,” and followed Ruth and her mother
into the kitchen.

“I think Ananda is taking this a little too
far,” said Ruth.

Who disagreed by not responding.

“Taking what a little too far?” said
Melissa.

“This physicist thing.”

“How so?” Then, “Pass me your plate,
please.”

Ruth did, and said, “He wants me to not only
walk like a physicist, and talk like a physicist. He wants me to be
a physicist.”

“And Ananda is wrong, why precisely?” said
Melissa, handing Ruth her plate back, now home to a generous
helping of steamed rice and vegetables.

Ananda looked to Ruth for her answer, in no
way straining himself to hide his amusement. Ruth frowned, and
began eating.

After several well-chewed
fork-fulls, as if careful mastication would serve up the answer,
she said, “I can be science
literate
in a few months.”

“What exactly
is
a science
literate
person,” said
Ananda, clearly enjoying this.

“A science
literate
person,” said
Ruth, keeping up the stressing-the-word-literate game, is someone
whose voice will resonate with today’s population.

“You once told me,” said
Ananda. “Or asked me, rather, how you tell the truth from its
perfect impersonation, and you stressed
perfect
, as in perfect in every way,
as in indistinguishable from the original.”

“Yes,” said Ruth. “I remember.”

“And do you remember the answer?”

“Yes,” helping herself to another fork-full,
and chewing it well.

“And?”

“And,” she said once done with her toothy
task, “you can tell.”

“Even if the impersonation is perfect in
every regard?”

“Even if the impersonation is perfect in
every regard.”

“Explain to Melissa,” said Ananda.

“Even if perfect in every regard,” said Ruth
in her mother’s direction. “Even if the impersonation is
indistinguishable from the original, the impersonation remains
impersonation—even if perfect, still impersonation—and the person,
the spirit, life will always know the true from the false. At
heart, life always does.”

Melissa listened carefully, and Ananda saw
that she understood. “And now Ananda has the temerity to suggest
that you become the real thing,” she said.

“Yes,” said Ruth. “That’s precisely what he
has, temerity,” but looking by this time like someone who has
managed to talk herself into a corner.

“Or your voice will not resonate,” said
Ananda. “Not truly.”

To which Ruth had no answer, so instead she
smiled like Ananda had seen the Buddha Gotama do when the former
Ananda’s advice held up to scrutiny and was accepted by the
Buddha.

:

“Interesting?” said Ananda one night.

Ruth looked up from a book on string theory
with many diagrams and not a few equations. It was one of the many
books Ananda had brought back from the library. “I’d like to have
my own copy of this one,” she said. “So I can mark it.”

“Interesting, in other words,” said
Ananda.

“Yes,” said Ruth. “They are
so
clever
,” she
added.

“In which way?”

“They think in such microscopic detail, and
harmonize things so well. And they extrapolate—well, theorize—so
well.” Then she said, “I need to understand their mathematics
better. Their symbols and logic.”

Ananda nodded. He had seen this coming; for
many—if not all—of the writers of the books he had surveyed were
well versed in the theoretical structures and formulae of their
subject, and there probably was no way to enter their field, on
their terms, without that dialect as well.

“That would be quite an undertaking,” said
Ananda.

“Nonetheless,” said Ruth. “I think it’s
something I’ll have to face.”

Ananda nodded, yes.

“Much of this is true,” said Ruth, giving a
nod to the book in her lap.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Ananda, and meant
it. He had little or no stomach for the tiny particulars of myopic
investigation—as he thought of it.

“They do look,” said Ruth. “And hard.”

Again, Ananda nodded, yes, he was sure they
did.

“But do people really listen to them?”

“What do you mean?”

“These people, these physicists, are at the
forefront of physical science. They are looking and thinking their
way into the heart of mysteries, and they understand each other,
that seems clear. But does anyone else understand them? Does anyone
else really care? Does anyone actually listen to them?”

“Several of these writers are Nobel
Laureates.”

“So the Nobel committee cares.”

“Or seems to.”

“Or seems to.”

“I don’t know, Tathagata,” said Ananda. “I
don’t know to what extent, if any, the man in the street cares
about quantum physics.”

“Or even knows about quantum physics,” said
Ruth.

“Or even knows about quantum physics,”
agreed Ananda.

“And the world is mainly made up of men in
streets,” Ruth pointed out.

“True.”

“It seemed so clear to me,” she said. “That
science would reach them. As the bristlecone said.”

Ananda took an age to answer. “Maybe the
average man does not know about, or care about quantum mechanics,
but he respects the scientists that do.”

“Is that enough, Ananda?”

“If you can bridge, or reconcile, science
and religion.”

“That is a tall order.”

“And your mission isn’t?”

“Touché.”

::
69 :: (Pasadena)

That day—it was now early April—Kristina
Medina arrived back from lunch early in order to prepare for her
next class. On entering the quiet classroom, she didn’t even notice
Ruth at first. It was only when her young pupil turned the page in
the book she was reading that Kristina looked up to quickly survey
the room for the source of this papery whisper. And saw: Ruth, in
her seat, immersed in story, unaware of Kristina’s arrival.

Kristina walked up to her. Ruth, first now
sensing her presence finally looked up.

“What are you reading, Ruth?”

Ruth placed a finger at her place and closed
the book show her teacher the cover.

“The Self-Aware Universe,” read Kristina.
“What is it about?”

“Religion and quantum physics,” said Ruth,
truthfully.

“Religion and quantum physics?” Kristina
wasn’t completely sure she had heard this right, but there was the
book, there was the cover, there was the eye as universe—which
struck her as a clever design. “Can I have a look?” she said.

A little reluctantly, Ruth opened the book
to her fingered place, then ruffled through the pages following to
find her marker. Located, she placed it at the open page, re-closed
the book, and gravely handed it to Kristina. Following orders.

“Thank you,” said Kristina. Then read from
the cover, “How consciousness creates the material world.” She
opened the book, scanned the table of contents: The Integration of
Science and Spirituality. Quantum Physics and the Demise of
Material Realism. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox.