Miss Buddha

by Ulf Wolf

  “Ready when you are,” he said to Clare.

  Clare looked over at Ruth. Again, she was struck by her startling eyes. Close up they stood in such amazing contrast to her hair that they actually detracted from an otherwise remarkable face.

  “You okay?” said Clare.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re happy with the questions?” She held up a sheets in her hand, of which she had given Ruth and Melissa each a copy. She also had a copy of Ruth’s paper handy.

  “Yes. They’re fine.”

  “I may expand on some of them.”

  “Fine.”

  Melissa was sitting in the sofa, behind and to the right of Lars. The old monk, Ananda, stood in the corner, not really frowning, but not really smiling either. Clare had a hard time putting her finger on exactly how he fit into this household.

  “Okay, let’s roll,” said Clare. Lars nodded, and the red light came on above the camera lens. Recording.

  “How do you define ‘non-local communication’ Ruth?”

  That was not the first question Ruth had expected, apparently, for she straightened slightly, then smiled to herself, as if gathering things, and took a deep breath. “Non-local communication was at the core of the much overlooked experiment that Doctor Lawson successfully performed in 1999.”

  Clare was about to restate her question when Ruth continued:

  “By ‘non-local’ we mean that there is no locality involved, no geography, no geometry, no world—no space, no time. And ‘communication’ may be a misleading word in this scenario for that word implies that something is emanated from one point, to then travel a distance and arrive at another. This is never the case with non-local communication. It is best described, I think, as instant co-knowing, regardless of physical distances between what is doing the co-knowing.”

  “And not only living things can establish, or perform, or execute this—I’m not sure which word is the best here—but what we normally consider dead things as well, particles, photons. Is that correct?”

  “On the surface of it, yes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am not so sure that we can summarily pronounce these particles dead. They move, you know. They wave—I mean move in wavelike patterns. Whenever we observe them, or rather, observe traces or effects of their actions—for no one has ever seen these particles, we have only seen the traces or shadows they cast; but, whenever we do, there is motion involved. So can we really call them dead?

  “We consider something alive because of motion. There’s a lot of motion about in life. Take the human body. The heart beats, the lungs expand and contract inhaling and expelling air. Blood rushes around, T-Cells fight wars with bacteria and viruses, billions of microbes hustle to work every day in your stomach to break down food—for which they charge very little, just a small portion of the take.

  “It’s motion. It’s activity. That’s what we mean when we say alive. Now, while this tabletop,” and she knocks gently on the tempered glass, “seems immobile, as in dead enough, there is a small infinity of motion constantly occurring within. So is it really dead?”

  “Normal people—no offence, mind you—would call that tabletop dead.”

  “Yes, they would.”

  “So, my question then is: why do we really care? Why would the man or woman on the street give a second thought to whether or not non-local communication occurs? I mean, it occurs at a level that the normal person will never encounter in a million years.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “So, why then? Whether subatomic particles instantly co-know or not has absolutely no bearing on your paycheck, or whether your wife loves you or not, or whether your children come home safely from school.”

  “You’re talking about reality? The reality we know and love.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Well, that’s just it, Clare. The reality we know and love, and where non-local communication—or co-knowing—doesn’t mean a thing, this reality is just the very tip of the iceberg we call life, of a much more comprehensive reality. And this tip is not fundamental, and it is not, ultimately, true.”

  “But why should we care?”

  “We should care because in truth we are not of this tip-of-the-iceberg reality. Actually, most people suffer in this reality. I think it was Thoreau who said that most men live lives of quiet desperation. They’re just trying to survive one day to the next, some even one moment to the next.

  “The sea of pleasure we see portrayed on television day in and day out, and the euphoric smile that this sweet model flashes at you from behind her American Express card, new dress in hand, is more often than not just an appearance.

  “It may very well be that in her heart this model, this person, is in agony. Her mom has just died, or her boyfriend has just cheated on her, or she is hooked on prescription drugs, or she cannot sleep at night: this is the normal, this is the man or woman on the street. Suffering.

  “And if not suffering today, in this very moment, there is suffering tomorrow. In their heart of hearts every sentient being wants to know why they are here and where they are going. They are not satisfied with their lot. No one is. Even the richest person on earth believes he needs ‘a little more’ to finally be happy, as Henry Ford is reputed to have said even though he was sitting on billions by then.

  “This tip-of-the-iceberg reality we are living is, quite frankly, a sham. It’s a surface manifestation which we treat as truth. When we take a closer look, which our EPROM experiment did, it falls apart. It yields up its secrets. It displays a more fundamental truth. And this truth lies on a level we have to reach unless we want to suffer forever.”

  “You sound like a Buddhist.” It was the natural thing to say, both the professional and the personal in her agreed.

  “I am a Buddhist.”

  “And people really don’t care about this more fundamental reality, do they? Not as a rule.”

  “I think the public reaction to Doctor Lawson’s 1999 experiment paints an unequivocal picture. His experiment, for the first time on a macro scale, proved non-local communication as fact. Proved it. Categorically. There were no arguments in the scientific community about it. It was a done deal. Proof. But, relatively speaking, it did not even cause a ripple on the pond of news. A few mentions on pack pages, completely overshadowed by who was terrorizing whom at the time, or what strikes were staged, or what celebrity had slept with what celebrity, and what kind of traffic to expect on the freeways.

  “Doctor Lawson delivered firm proof to the world that the reality we live is indeed only a surface reality, but honestly, the world did not then, and still does not, want to know.”

  “Do you ever think it will?”

  “Oh, I hope so.”

  “But you went a step further in the EPROM experiment, did you not? Not only did you in essence replicate Doctor Lawson’s 1999 experiment, but you showed that without life looking there is nothing there.”

  “And that,” said Ruth right away, “is the level of reality that we need to confront and be aware of to end suffering.”

  “There was some contention about the MIT replication. What happened?”

  “MIT initially used Flash memory instead of EPROMs. That was the problem. Nature, at this fundamental level, is alive enough, or resourceful enough should I say, to attempt to revise history to keep up the façade of constancy. And when it comes to Flash memory, it manages to do that just fine.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Flash memory is written to and erased or revised with electricity available at the computer mother board level. Given the right direction, available electricity does any reading or writing that you wish. That is what the software using the Flash memory is designed to do.

  “In the case of the MIT experiment, once they had counted their four seconds of looking away to then look back at the screen, the photon—or
nature, rather—realized that it was being viewed again, and in essence re-materialized. And it re-materialized not only in the present, but it went back to the beginning of the four seconds of looking away and materialized, as far as the trace went, from the moment—at four seconds after firing—they began to look away.

  “What I am saying is that nature revised the last four or so seconds of history to show that it had existed all along.

  “The EPROM, on the other hand, requires special equipment that provides a hefty dose of ultraviolet light to erase what’s written on that chip, and we were very careful not to provide nature any channel of acquisition of such light, so to speak. So when we viewed the particle trace after our four seconds of looking away, the truth—that the particle had in fact not even existed during our looking away—was clearly displayed on the screen. There was no revision of history, and so, there was no trace from the moment of looking away and looking back at the screen four seconds later.

  “In other words, we looked it into existence.”

  At this point Clare fully realized what Ruth Marten was talking about, and also why Ananda the monk finally smiled.

  “And this,” she began. Then started over. “And this experiment has been replicated, hasn’t it?”

  “At four very respected research institutions,” said Ruth.

  “My God,” said Clare.

  “Precisely,” said Ruth.

  “The world needs to know about this.”

  “Precisely,” said Ruth again.

  Clare shivered at the clarity that formed in, or around, her—she wasn’t sure which. Then she looked down at her copy of Ruth’s paper, found what she was looking for. “Here you say, if I’m not misreading this, that you remembered the sequence of nature’s agreements that made the EPROM experiment possible.”

  “Yes.”

  “What sequence of agreements?”

  “All of this,” said Ruth, and took in the room with a hand gesture, “didn’t just happen. Agreements were made in order to make things persist.”

  “What do you mean? Who agreed? And to what?”

  “Nature had to fool itself into existence.”

  “What?”

  “Imagine a cat.”

  “What, now? Me?”

  “Yes. Imagine a cat.”

  “Sure. Okay.”

  “Close your eyes and imagine a cat. Can you see it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Describe it, please.”

  “Well, it’s black with a white tip on the tail.”

  “Now, you know that you have created this mental cat, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “So you know that, unless you will it to, it will never, say, fly up in your face and scratch you?”

  “That’s true.”

  “The cat really doesn’t have any existence apart from what you grant it, isn’t that true?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “So, how would you, as life, make a cat, or imagine a cat, that will do things on its own volition?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, think about it.”

  Clare did think about it, and saw, quite clearly, that as long as she knew that she had created that cat, she could also un-create it at any moment simply by ceasing to put it there. The only way that this cat of hers could take on any sort of independent life was if someone else—perhaps the cat itself—had created it.

  “Precisely,” said Ruth.

  Which froze Clare into absolute stillness.

  “Sorry,” said Ruth. “You were saying?”

  “I wasn’t saying a thing,” said Clare. Not at all sure now what kind of ground she was standing on.

  “But you were about to.”

  “Yes.”

  Had Ruth, the Buddha, just read her mind? She took a deep breath and looked her straight in the eyes. Said nothing though. She looked over at Lars who seemed to know that something was going on but not exactly sure what. Clare looked back at Ruth, collected herself, and said, “As long as I know I created the cat, it won’t harm me. If someone else created this cat and put it here, then it’s free to act on a volition other than mine. So either someone else has to create the cat, and give it volition, or I have to fool myself into believing that is the case. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, that is what I am saying,” said Ruth.

  “Did you just read my mind?” said Clare. No use holding back on this.

  Ruth did not answer her question, however; only smiled. Clare took that to mean: yes.

  Instead, Ruth said, “There’s a considerable amount of natural sleight-of-hand involved in all this,” again indicating the room with her hand. “This surface reality we know so well. And there is a long string of all but forgotten agreements—what to remember, what to pretend, what is senior to what in terms of consideration, a long and rather convoluted path of agreements that determine how the universe we see today holds together and works. We’ve given all these agreements a name: We call them Natural Law.”

  Then Ruth added, “The Buddha gave it another name: Dharma.”

  Which led Clare to repeat the question, or re-state it: “And you, Ruth Marten, remember these agreements?”

  “In a word, yes.”

  “How is that even possible?”

  Ruth knocked on the tabletop again, “How is this even possible? Really?”

  “No, seriously.”

  “I am serious.”

  “How can that be? How can you remember? I have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast.” Clare needed an answer to this question.

  “All life has that capability. When life wakes up to what it is, it remembers how it got here.”

  “And you have woken up? That is how you end your paper. ‘I am awake’ you say.”

  “I am awake, yes.”

  “Fully awake?”

  “Fully awake.”

  Clare looked down at the last page of Ruth’s paper, and read, “Those who have woken up to this fact are called Buddhas.” Then looked up at Ruth for a comment.

  “They are,” said Ruth.

  “You are a Buddha. That is what you are saying.”

  “I am saying that I am awake.”

  “And you say in your paper that the awake is a Buddha,” insisted Clare.

  “I do.”

  “So, what conclusion should I draw from that?”

  “Whichever comes natural to you.”

  “So you are the Buddha?”

  “So I am the Buddha.”

  Clare was not sure where to go with this, she had made her point, Ruth Marten was the Buddha, and she hoped that she would agree to leave it in the final edit.

  Ruth spoke next, “You are a Buddhist.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you believe the Dharma.”

  “I do.”

  “Would you believe it if I told you that I was the Buddha? Tathagata.” then added, “Honestly, now.”

  Clare had already accepted this, at least to the degree that she was capable of. But Ruth wanted to stress the point, she, or the Buddha, wanted to convey a message.

  Clare said what would make sense for the interviewer to say, “It would seem too implausible. Impossible, even.”

  “So, if you, a Buddhist, find it hard—if not impossible—to see me as the Buddha, what conclusion would the general population draw?”

  “They would conclude that you are pulling their legs.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “Still, you said in your paper. Quite clearly.”

  “I know. Perhaps that was a mistake. Perhaps I was a little too optimistic.”

  Then those calm, blue eyes held Clare’s for a long time. “Tell me about your experience,” said their owner.

  To Clare there was only one experience worth telling. And Ruth Marten, the Buddha in the opposite chair, knew about it.

  “About the light?”

  “Yes.”

  So Clare told them. All listening intently
to her recounting of the light living the light. When she had finished her telling, Lars—while still training the camera on her—was the only one to speak, “You never told me,” he said. Not accusingly, just matter-of-fact.

  She looked at him, “No, Lars. I didn’t. Would you have believed me?”

  “Good point.”

  “And you heard the voice whisper Nirvana?” said Ruth.

  “Yes.”

  “Who could that have been?” she asked.

  “I have no idea. I have absolutely no idea.”

  “Have you not wondered?”

  “Of course I have wondered. It’s one of the most wondering I do.”

  “Maybe Nirvana whispered Nirvana,” suggested Ruth. Though it sounded more like plain statement of fact.

  Clare had never considered that. But now did. And in the light of the experience itself, and of the current conversation, yes, that was as feasible an answer as anything. “Maybe,” she said. “Yes, why not?”

  “Yes, why not,” said Ruth.

  In the silence that followed, Clare tried to retrace her steps to regain the thread of the interview. Then found it:

  “You said it was a mistake to imply in your paper that you are the Buddha.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you could do it over, would you omit that reference?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ruth. “Those with little dust in their eyes may still be able to connect the dots.”

  Clare nodded that she understood. Then looked down at her notes, found her place, and asked, “Is the bottom line of your EPROM experience that matter does not exist?”

  Ruth, with no apparent gear-shifting problems, tapped the top of the glass table. “No, it does exist all right, there’s no denying that.”

  “But if you didn’t expect the glass top to be there, and if you didn’t expect your hand to be solid enough to tap it, would either then exist?”

  “Now that is a good question. That is the right question.”

  “So, would they?”

  “What did the EPROM experiment show?”

  “It showed that unless we look—expecting to find, I guess—there is nothing there.”

  “And that is precisely true. We proved that unless we look—which in scientific circles really translates to measure—there is nothing there to see, or measure.”