The Breath of God (38 page)

“At the Taj, you mentioned how Jesus was similarly tempted in the desert during a spiritual retreat before he began his ministry.”

Grant smiled. “After one night, the Buddha saw the light, a path that would lead to inner peace. He became, as we say today, enlightened. Thus, we now refer to Siddhartha as the Buddha which translates literally as ‘the Enlightened One.'”

The next scene depicted the Buddha standing on a small hill. “After becoming enlightened, the Buddha traveled here to Sarnath, where he gave his first lecture.”

“At the stupa outside?”

“I guess that's the legend.”

“Do you think this has something to do with the Issa texts? Why else would Kinley have sent us here?”

“That's what I've been trying to figure out.” He cast his eyes to the ground. Kinley wasn't there waiting for them as they'd hoped, but the monk had sent them to a mural nearly identical to one he'd shown them in Bhutan for a reason, just as he'd led them through the three sacred towns of Agra, Varanasi, and Sarnath. Did Kinley simply mean for him to draw a comparison in the similar stories of the lives of Jesus and the Buddha—the birth myths, the spiritual practices, the temptations, the parables, and the disciples?
There has to be more than that
, he thought.

Kristin turned back to the fresco. “So Buddhists worship the Buddha as a god, like Christians believe in Jesus?”

“A complicated issue.” Grant recalled Kinley's love of such complications. “Throughout his life, the Buddha's followers tried to deify him, but he resisted. He insisted that he was nothing more than a man who understood the truth. He had been enlightened, and he taught that others could become similarly enlightened.”

They reached the end of the long wall, stopping in front of the altar and the statue of a golden Buddha sitting on a lotus petal throne, his eyes half closed, one hand resting on a knee and the other raised in a blessing.

Kristin whispered, “I suppose it's only natural for people to want to worship a concrete image rather than an abstract ideal.”

“Like Christians kneeling before the cross at a church altar.” Grant then recalled Kinley's words:
But the true nature of Buddhism lies in how we apply its teachings to our lives today, not in worshipping an individual from the past—no matter how great he may be.
Kinley taught his students that drawing guidance and inspiration from the Buddha was fine, unless Buddha worship became an end in itself.

He felt Kristin tug on his sleeve. “If Issa did indeed travel here, what would he have learned that could have changed his spiritual being?”

Grant shrugged. “According to Kinley, the Buddha's early lectures here were about human suffering, what he called
dukkha
, and how we can move beyond suffering to find peace—eternal nirvana.”

“I guess we could all use a little less
dukkha
.”

“The Buddha realized that our unhappiness or discontent, if you will, results from our cravings, our grasping at the things we desire.”

“Like more money, a better job, more friends?” Kristin asked.

“Or the Issa texts,” he added and then stopped. Grant suddenly recognized how much he'd been grasping at the idea of finding the manuscripts. He'd imbued their quest with the power to determine his future purpose in life, his security, and his happiness. He looked to Kristin and saw that she was waiting for him to continue.

“Our cravings come in different forms: we seek sensual pleasures—food, alcohol, sex, excitement; we seek to obtain what we don't have—a bigger house, a new car; or we seek to get rid of something we don't want—annoying people, extra pounds, a physical ailment. The origin of
dukkha
comes down to wanting what we don't have or trying to become what we are not.”

“So Buddhism doesn't rely on supernatural explanations for our current state or, I assume, our salvation?”

He nodded. “The Buddha laid down certain steps to break out of the cycle of
dukkha
.”

“And the steps are?” Her blue eyes appeared to Grant as if they were lit from within. She didn't blink as she waited for his response. He realized how much he'd assumed Kinley's role in the past few minutes, relaying the monk's teachings to Kristin.

“First, you must have the correct mental framework to start down the path. You have to understand intellectually the origins of suffering. Next, you should strive to live a clean, moral life, treating others with compassion and speaking well of them; many of these teachings closely parallel the lessons in Jesus' parables, which came five hundred years later. Finally, you must practice meditation diligently in order to train the mind to move past the clutter of thoughts that lead to grasping and craving.”

Kristin furrowed her brow in concentration. “So the path to salvation for Buddhists contains an intellectual, a moral, and a spiritual practice.”

Watching Kristin make sense of it all, Grant noted how his transformation from student to teacher energized him. Then he realized how much he missed Kinley.

“Black and white,” she said suddenly.

“Huh?” The painting was multicolored.

“Kinley and Deepraj. Both said we view the world too simplistically. What if the three spiritual paths—the Buddhist, the Hindu, and the Christian—are interrelated?”

“I've been thinking along the same lines these past few days.” A pang of sadness shot through him as he recalled meeting Razi at the Taj. Then their conversation with Deepraj the previous night replayed in his head.
Connection.
He repeated the word to himself. Not only were these events connected, but the teachings were as well.

Kristin grasped his arm. Her fingers radiated an electricity that seemed to run through her entire body. “What if following the Buddha's path—the practical steps that help us to eliminate suffering—also provides a mechanism to cultivate the divine spark within that Deepraj discussed? Issa learned both of these traditions during his travels. His spiritual practices may have involved aspects of both Hinduism and Buddhism.”

Grant nodded. “In Agra, we learned that the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad each engaged in similar meditative practices. Maybe those practices allowed them to shed their external cravings, to move past their inflated views of their own selves, and brought these men into direct contact with the presence of the divine within themselves: that inner spark of God, Allah, the breath of the spirit, nirvana.”

He recalled Deepraj's comment that each person would interpret the ultimate divine reality according to the lens through which they viewed it. The Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad were three separate men who lived in different cultures and times. Each of their experiences of an infinite divine would be understood by them and then expressed in different ways.

“Take away the supernatural but leave the spiritual,” she said.

Grant stared at her for a full minute. “What I'm still struggling with, though, is the ultimate conclusion itself—the ability to touch the divine. What Deepraj and Kinley have said makes sense from a certain perspective. I just—” He frowned. “I'm just not sure that I believe that.”

“I think if Kinley were here, he would say that you're not supposed to believe.”

He shook his head. Understanding wasn't enough for him. He needed physical proof.

He turned to the next scene: a pale Siddhartha lying on his deathbed, surrounded by his weeping disciples. He recalled Kinley's explanation of how the Buddha instructed his disciples not to mourn the death of his body because the body of his teachings would live on. He also told them that one day he would return to them in a different form. How eerily similar it was to the concept of the resurrection of Jesus and predictions of a Second Coming.

“Grant, over here!” Kristin no longer stood beside him but waved from the far side of the room at the end of the mural.

He approached her. “What?”

“This section of the fresco is new.”

He saw that the segment of the painting she was standing in front of was brighter than the rest of the mural.

“When I was here a few months ago, it ended there”—she pointed to where he'd just been standing—“with the Buddha's death.”

“Just like in Punakha.”

“Right, but now ...”

Grant studied the scene. It wasn't part of the story he'd learned in Bhutan. A group of monks were crossing a mountain range.

“A depiction of the spread of Buddhism east?” she asked.

“They must be monks from India heading into Tibet across the Himalayas. Look at this monk.” He pointed to a seated monk on top of a forested mountain in a land divided in half by a long wall. “That must be the Indian monk who brought Buddhism to China.” He thought about his own journey to India in search of the history of Christianity.

“This Buddha-looking guy riding an elephant probably represents Thailand,” he continued, “and this island must be Japan.”

Then he saw it.

“No way,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kristin staring at the same section.

Near the top of the fresco, painted above the other scenes, was a man in flowing robes flying on the back of a tiger toward a cave opening on the sheer
side of a cliff. Grant had not thought about this strange tale in weeks, but now it flooded back to him.

The story was one of Bhutan's most cherished: the Tibetan monk, Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche, who flew to a cave on the side of a cliff near the town of Paro. After meditating in the cave for several months—like Muhammad did, Grant now realized—Padmasambhava hiked down to the valley and began teaching Buddhism to the people of Bhutan.

“That's the location of the Tiger's Nest Monastery Kinley told me about,” Grant said.

“It's Bhutan's most-photographed site, a stone monastery impossibly perched on a narrow ledge two thousand feet up the side of a sheer granite cliff. I'd planned to go there, until I met you and saw the texts.”

Grant marched to the altar. This was surely the clue they were looking for. “Excuse me, sir, do you speak English?” he asked the old man arranging the flowers.

“Yes, may I help you?”

“We were wondering about the addition to the mural there. When was that done?”

“Wonderful, yes? Finish just two days ago. We have painter young in age, but very talented.”

“Yes, very talented. Why was this section added?”

“We have need for money for renovations some time now. We receive generous donation from fellow Buddhist country Bhutan.”

“Do you know the person in Bhutan who gave you the money?” Grant asked.

“No, I only clean here and lock doors at end of day. You may talk to our director or one of his assistants.”

“That would be great,” Grant said. “Where can we find them?”

“Oh, they not here now. Gone to Dharamasala until next week.”

Grant and Kristin strode down the dusty road from the temple to the parking lot in silence. On the one hand, Grant was disappointed that Kinley hadn't
met them in Sarnath, but on the other hand, he had a hunch that they would find what they were looking for at Tiger's Nest.
What better place for Kinley to hide the texts than in a monastery perched on a granite cliff in his own country?
The texts would be out of the lama's reach, but Kinley would not have had to violate Bhutanese law by removing them from the country. Grant also now understood Issa's travels in a new light.

One question nagged at him, though. Someone from Bhutan had arranged for the mural they just saw to be painted, and they knew from talking to Professor Deepraj Bhatt that Kinley had recently been here. But how had Kinley come up with that kind of money, not to mention the political pressure it must have taken to accomplish this feat so quickly?

“Hey, do you have your phone?” Kristin asked, interrupting his thoughts. “Left mine plugged in at the hotel for when the power comes back on.” Another of the city's frequent power outages had left the hotel dark for an hour that morning.

“Yeah, here. Who're you calling?” Grant waved to the front taxi queued along the dirt road.

“I want to let Deepraj know we're stopping by. We have to tell him about the new section of the mural.”

After holding the phone to her ear for a minute, she gave up. “No answer. He must have stepped out of his office.”

T
IM'S ARMS SWUNG LOOSELY by his sides as he hurried out of the salmon-colored gate of Banaras Hindu University. He was relieved to be free of the basket containing the cobra as he headed straight on Assi Road. He wanted to distance himself as much as possible before the authorities arrived, but he didn't want to draw attention by running. A brisk walk would do him good anyway. His interrogation methods had been brilliant but had yielded an unsatisfactory result. The effete professor hadn't told him much he didn't already know. Misaki and Matthews had traveled to Sarnath, and then they would return to Varanasi.