Miss Buddha

by Ulf Wolf

  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.

&nbs
p; “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.

  Ruth waited quietly for her book to be returned.

  Kristina closed it again, turned it over and scanned the back cover. Much praise. Then she looked up at Ruth for some time before she said, “Who are you?”

  That was not the question Kristina had intended to ask. She had intended to ask how, and why. But when the question left her lips it surprised Kristina more than Ruth.

  “Your most precocious student,” said Ruth.

  “I’d say,” she said. The, “Do you understand this?” meaning the book she was now preparing to return to Ruth.

  “Yes,” said Ruth. Again, truthfully.

  Kristina handed the book back to her. “No, really, Ruth. Who are you?” Not really believing her own question, but feeling the need to ask it. “No ten-year old girl reads, much less understands books on quantum physics.”

  “This one does.”

  Kristina pulled out a chair from a nearby desk and sat down. Thoughts came tumbling down like boulders, large and clumsy. Ruth, still as a tree looked at her, unopened book in hand. Curious. Waiting.

  “I know,” began Kristina. “I know that you’re advanced for your age. But this,” she nodded at the book, “is more than advanced. It is,” she paused, looking for words, found them, then added them, more to herself, “it’s a little frightening.”

  Ruth nodded an adult nod, yes, she understood. A little frightening.

  “Are you someone?” said Kristina, unable to let go of the notion.

  “Yes,” answered Ruth. “I am someone.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Kristina. Though that didn’t come out right. It sounded like something she would have said to her husband in an argument. She felt her face color. Looked down.

  “I do know what you mean,” said the child.


  “Well, then. Are you?”

  “Yes,” said Ruth.

  “Who, then?”

  “One day,” said Ruth, and with such finality that Kristina knew not to inquire further, “I will tell you.”

  :: 70 :: (New York)

  Julian Lawson was sitting in the back seat of the family car when he shocked his father.

  He was eleven, curious, and bored. The weekend at the upstate cabin had been a rain-out. Five people in the small house, pinned down by pelting weather, for two days. Not a recipe for tranquility.

  Now he sat behind his father. Sally to his right. Alice to her right. Both older than Julian, both reading. Julian looked out at the gray skies through the rain-streaked car window, and wondered aloud, “What makes gravity pull?”

  His farther Alex thought of himself as a theoretical physicist. Not that he thought of himself as anything very often (or of himself at all), he preferred thinking in formulae. In aesthetic symbols and numbers that ebbed and flowed like music across blackboards, whiteboards, and screen, boards and boards and screens of them, pages thick with of them, code void of life or meaning to all but the initiated.

  Alex Lawson was one of the initiated.

  Then, still wondering from the back seat, his son said, “There doesn’t seem to be a good reason why it should, does it?”

  Alex did not answer, unsure of what to say. He was actually holding his breath.

  “Perhaps it’s a matter of longing,” said Julian, to whom that seemed natural enough.

  “What are you talking about?” said Alice.

  “Gravity,” said Julian.

  His father shot him a long glance via the rearview mirror, “What do you mean by longing, Julian?”

  “Perhaps it feels separated.”

  “What feels separated?” said Sally.

  “The things that long to be closer,” said Julian.

  “That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Alice.

  “Stupid as they come,” said Sally.

  “Girls,” said Olga, their mother. She did not like them ganging up on Julian. It was unfair, and childish, and she tried to convey all of that in that one word thick with her still heavy Russian accent, both the “r” and the “l” very distinct.