I Met Someone

by Bruce Wagner

  And became a religion unto herself.

  And eventually her followers were legion.

  A pew within that lone church was forever reserved for none other than Diana Vreeland, who, during that season of hell and high water, had taken the young actress under her wing. The gimlet-eyed Garuda told her early on to “go with your heart,” and whenever Dusty flinched she need only direct her gaze to wise doyenne Diana, who never learned how to blink. (She loved that Diana injected her pillows with perfume-filled hypodermics.) She couldn’t number the hours she spent on the phone being firmly/gently talked down from the trees by that woman. Around the same time, D.V.’s dandyish grandson Nicholas, who resembled a softer, nebbishier Jerry Seinfeld, underwent a notable refurbishing himself (more a going in than a coming out): from womanizing apprentice-photographer to humble monastery-living monk. Handpicked by the Dalai Lama to become the abbot of an important tenth-century monastery in India, he was also director of the Tibet Center in New York. Dusty met “the Geshe” in 2005 (and many times since), courtesy of Richard Gere.

  When the actress heard he was on his way to L.A., she decided to throw a dinner party. She thought it might be healing.

  She reached out to the usual Maui Wowee bohos, spiritual simpaticos who enjoyed laying bread on the cause. (Of course Jeremy came, and Elise, who was on fire with beginner’s-mind excitement over TM. The gal was full of surprises.) Invitations were last-minute, so she couldn’t snag Jim Carrey, or her old friend Jeff Bridges, who texted love and namastes from Fiji. On a lark, she reached out to Laura Poitras, who sent regrets from Rio. But she was glad Shandling could come—he was a bit of a recluse, and no one made her laugh like Garry. A hundred years ago, Mike Nichols introduced her to the comedian at a dinner in Paris, and the three wound up taking an impromptu trip to meet Thich Nhat Hanh at Plum Village in the Dordogne.

  Rounding out the group were her Point Dume neighbors, the Ruschas; one half of the sisters Rodarte and one third of the sisters Haim; Donna Tartt; and Michael Imperioli, who drove in from his Santa Barbara home—they’d met through Jim Gandolfini, whom Dusty actually roomed with in the early New York theater days. She didn’t know Michael that well but was surprised to learn he was on the “Vajrayana path” under the guidance of a man called Garchen Rinpoche. (Maybe Richard had already told her that.) The soirée was padded with enthused fillers as well—a sweet girl from Annapurna and an agent from UTA, both active in David Lynch’s foundation. Joan Halifax, who’d been giving a lecture in a private home in the Palisades, came halfway through dinner, all apologies. (Dusty met her through Eve Ensler.) Joan was a live wire, a charismatic, politically active Buddhist who, Dusty found out, via a Wikipedia refresher, had received “transmission” from Bernie Glassman and Thich Nhat Hanh. She was the abbess of a monastery in Santa Fe. There was something posh about her and Dusty called her Downton Abbess, which always got a laugh out of Joan.

  The night was funny, spirited, messy, and profane. Per usual, Jeremy played court jester, the heterodox, half wiggy wag who relished his role as goad, gadfly, and sometimes churlish upender of the status quo. In other words, the man was fairly deep in his cups. Tonight, Joan was the one to get under his skin. (There was always somebody.) After she went on a bit about her favorite subject—the suffering of Afghani women—Jeremy suggested her concerns were “a little nineties.” Good thing she was a tough broad with a sense of humor. What really galled him was when she said it was “okay” to want to die for a moral cause and went on to invoke burning nuns as if self-immolation was something everyone should aspire to. In the same breath, he admitted there’d be something immensely appealing about watching Cara Delevingne, Kendall, and Gigi Hadid set themselves on fire in real time on BuzzFeed.

  He got laughed at, laughed with, and forgiven.

  “I was just in Hawaii with Ram Dass and Bernie,” said Joan. “And we had this whole conversation about Buddhism not being fun. So, that was my New Year’s resolution—make Buddhism more fun!”

  Jeremy couldn’t help compare the haughty glibness of the head-shaven grande dame with that dangerously deranged couple, Devi and the Sir. What a gulf separated the parties! Queen Halifax was of the entitled, huckstering American Buddhist Hall of Fame ilk—serenity profiteers—that so enraged him, whereas “the travelers” were unfathomable, unpredictable, unfriendly, with the innate ability not only to astonish but (he sensed) transform. Now, that was crazy wisdom . . . It gave him a pang to wonder what they were doing, this very moment. He hadn’t yet made arrangements to see them again.

  After supper they sat in the living room campfire-style and told ghost stories. Garry’s was about a friend who bought a home in Upstate New York. He set about enlarging a pond to make it suitable for koi. The day it was drained, a woman in monk’s robes knocked on the door. She said she lived there twenty years ago and wasn’t sure what compelled her to visit—she hadn’t been back to the place in all that time. He invited her in. When she noticed the wimpled waters of the pond outside his library window, she revealed that her little boy drowned there. After his death, she sold the house and took her vows at a Buddhist monastery up the road. Garry’s friend said it was obvious that by disrupting the waters, the child’s spirit awakened, calling to its mother.

  Geshe Nicholas Vreeland, who was incredibly learned, was prompted to speak of the River of the Dead in Kusatsu’s Sainokawara Park. He said that a god called Jizo lived there, guiding the lost souls of children to save them from demons trying to prevent their passage. He spoke of reptilian creatures called kappas that lived in ponds and rivers—dirty tricksters who kidnapped toddlers and drowned them. They liked to fart a lot as well. Apparently, they were adept at stealing the shirikodama, the soul essence “that lives in the anus.” (Jeremy muttered, “Been there, done that.”) Ironically, Nicholas said, the kappas could be quite friendly and were famous for their almost compulsive sense of decorum. If an enemy bowed, they couldn’t help bow back, even knowing such formalities left them vulnerable to fatal attack.

  Half of the Rodarte sisters listened with great intent, as if drawing future inspiration for a textile pattern; a third of the Haims was similarly entranced, lost in the acoustic, compositional mists of a nascent lullaby that might one day feature their bestie Taylor Swift.

  While studying Indian folklore, Donna Tartt learned about women who die in childbirth during the Hindu Festival of Lights. She said they became a churel, a ghost known for its bloodcurdling scream. The churels sought revenge on family members who didn’t properly care for them during pregnancy. Other ghosts were called ubume—also spirits of women who died giving birth. When the babies grew up and cried in their sleep with longing for their mothers, the ubume comforted them with gifts that by morning turned into dead leaves.

  “Amazing stories for sure,” said Mr. Imperioli humbly. He asked the author if she’d read Lafcadio Hearn, and Ms. Tartt said that she had. “Of course you have,” blushed the actor. “I forgot who I was talking to! You’re a great, great writer, Donna. My wife read The Goldfinch three times.” He quickly added, “I loved it too. And The Secret History.”

  Jeremy thought Michael charming and without conceit; he marveled at the witchcraft of actors, of this one, who could reach into himself, or out of himself, and bring his seeming antithesis—“Christopher Moltisanti”—to savage, gangstery life.

  “This isn’t really a ghost story, though maybe it is,” Michael said. “A ‘hungry ghost’ story, anyway. Those tales of ponds and rivers made me think of it. A friend of mine asked me to go with him to a retreat, up past Ukiah. This was a while ago, when I was in California. A few years before The Sopranos. A Rinpoche was going to be giving a talk. A tulku—I’m sure a lot of people in this room know him. Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche.” Joan and Nicholas nodded in assent, telegraphing that they knew the man personally. “His father was Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, the great Dzogchen master. Anyway, my friend and I were going through some hard times—not wi
th each other, but separately. I’m not even sure what was happening in my life back then, but I was . . . kind of unsettled, in mind and spirit. Body too! Though I do think he was a bit more troubled than I was. My friend. At that time.

  “Like so many of us, he was a lifelong seeker. He’d been a monk—he’d shot ketamine with Ginsberg, in Benares—did the whole Kumbh Mela nine yards . . . been through all kinds of phases. Jesus, I think he was even a Scientologist, a pretty high-up one too. For a while, he tried his hand at being a guru. Had a piece of land somewhere. He actually had followers! We went to college together—took different paths, but were very close. He was like a brother to me in a lot of ways; we had that connection. And I hadn’t heard from him in a while, maybe ten years, until that phone call. When he asked me to go to Ukiah to hear the tulku, I said yes, no hesitation. It was good to see him again—I really loved this guy. It was like no time had passed at all. Being with him, being together. And he gave me this kind of warning, he said he didn’t want to talk to anyone when we got to the retreat! (Not that it’s mandatory.) Told me he’d had enough of people, didn’t want to talk to anybody. He was always a little eccentric. But as you know, it’s not so unusual for people to do that. On retreat. To want to do that, to choose not to speak. So we drove up the coast, and when we got there he put a little sticker on his shirt that said ‘Silent.’ I didn’t care. But the thing was, I couldn’t quite understand why he wanted to go on the retreat in the first place. Because there seemed to be an undercurrent . . . of cynicism. Still, I thought, ‘Good for him!’ You know, he’s cynical or he’s whatever, maybe he’s hip to that and he’s working shit out. I was happy to be of service. And I was probably a little bit smug—you know: he’s cynical and I’m not. But I didn’t want to be there under those auspices—you know, the Skeptic Brothers, the Skeptic Twins. So I was watching myself kinda carefully. Because I was way past wearing that particular outfit. So I thought.

  “So we made the trip to Ukiah and it was good. On the drive, we cut up old times, caught each other up on who was dead, who was divorced, who’d gone off the rails—sex, dope, jail, whatever. All that. Turns out one of the casualties was his wife, which pretty much stunned me. Because I knew Meghan, fairly well. But I didn’t know they’d stayed together (whatever together is), stayed married all those years. He was her first love, her only love, and she hung with him through the craziness. And there was a lot of craziness. Meghan was always there when he came back home from wherever—you know, to dress his wounds before he returned to battle. He didn’t say how she died and I was almost afraid to ask because a voice kept telling me she’d taken her own life. What shocked me even more was the way he talked about her. You know, when he said that she died, that she was dead, there was very little emotion. I remember he picked up on my reaction, you know, my reaction on him not having a reaction. But all he would say was that he was at peace with what happened. (I still didn’t ask him for details!) And that sorta made sense, really, that he was ‘at peace,’ because for all that time, he’d been with her and not with her: the man had a lot goin’ on in the ladies department. So maybe his equanimity was healthy, I don’t know. And maybe enough time had passed anyway, for him to have reached that point, because it wasn’t like it just happened. I think it was maybe five years before. That she died. Anyway, I wasn’t his therapist.

  “When we got to Ukiah, we didn’t even go to register, we just went straight to the river and jumped in. It was incredibly beautiful, super hot day, in the hundreds, the water was cold, clear, perfect. We swam a while then sat on the bank, recovering from the long drive. Grooving. Starting to feel really good. A little full of ourselves—you know, Zen studs, spiritual good ol’ boys, too cool for school. Like, ‘this ain’t our first rodeo.’ Top guns.

  “So we’re tanning ourselves when this fat guy waddles toward us. And my friend and I kinda look at each other with a wink because he’s our ‘first victim’—the whole silent-retreat ruse. And I’m the straight man, I’m the one who’s going to have to tell the guy that my friend ain’t talkin’. (Because we’re shirtless and he doesn’t have his ‘Silent’ sticker on.) The whole set-up’s a bit passive-aggressive for my taste. A bit lame. You know, I wouldn’t have felt that way if my friend had been sincere . . . or if the guy waddling up had been some beautiful woman. It felt a little disrespectful, a little bullshitty, but I remember not wanting to get heavy about it either. I thought maybe I was just projecting my own shit onto it, and that would be one of my teachings for the weekend—to lighten up and not care what my friend or anyone else was up to. To just focus on my side of the street and get clarity that way. So I was able to sidestep those feelings.

  “This fat guy waddling toward us—he looks like a Dutch banker, some kind of big fat sweaty tourist. And at this point I’m in full judgment mode. He’s pink and absurd, and slathered with sunscreen. Awkward, comical. A Miami Beach Sancho Panza or whatever, an easy target—and he’s wearing this sombrero! He starts asking all these questions, with this thick accent, Dutch or German or whatever, he’s just being friendly, that’s all—he wants to know where we’re from, how we got here, how long we’ve been practicing . . . and my buddy’s kind of vibing him. He is not making Sancho feel very welcome! He’s looking at Dutch Boy like he’s some kind of dumb, nasty farm animal. Then my friend looks at me, with a crooked smile, like, See why I don’t want to talk to these assholes? And I have to say it’s a little contagious, you know, the rudeness and entitlement are contagious. Even though I’d already been practicing for a while—meditating, doing sesshin—‘lovingkindness’ flew out the fucking window. So it didn’t feel great, see, because I still had enough awareness to be watching myself. And I was really starting to feel like an asshole so I kind of cleaned it up, tried to clean up the mood. So I told fatso we were beat up from the drive and that maybe we could have more of a discussion at dinner. To kind of get him to go away. Which he did. And I could see the schmuck was bummed from the encounter. The whole thing got very uncomfortable—for me. I could have just said, ‘My friend’s on silent retreat,’ and engaged a little with him. But I didn’t. Because by then, it was kind of Us vs. Them. It got twisted. What made it worse was, the guy’s first questions were directed toward my bud, right at him, and he wouldn’t answer. Without the explanation of the silent retreat, it must have seemed very rude and very weird. Which it was! Not a great way to begin a long weekend with Buddhists! Or maybe it is.

  “So after he walks away, the ‘banker’ waddles to the shore and dives—no, cannonballs into the river, you know, the classic fat-guy move! That killed us. And my friend starts to imitate him, cruel, but funny. (The guy’s far away enough that he can’t hear.) Vare are you frome? How deed choo learn of diss place? ‘San Franciskie! Did you drove or did you flew?’ Remember that character Eugene Levy did on SCTV? I busted a gut but it still felt . . . wrong. We took a nap and I managed to shake it off. I figured I’d see ‘sombrero’ later and make things right. Or not.

  “The first lecture was in the evening. A beautiful hall, just stunning. And I felt great—you know, that magical feeling you get before hearing a dharma talk. I was rested and had put the earlier minor debacle behind me. Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche comes in, filled with light, with this chestnut energy. You know what he’s like: mischievous-looking but warm, and at the same time very serious too. Like a frog, a frog prince. You just love him right away. His translator was by his side—the Rinpoche spoke English but not very well, at least that’s my memory. That was my impression. My friend was wearing his silent-retreat sticker, at last! For all the world to see! And the tulku said, ‘Ask yourself, after five years of practice, ten years—fifteen, twenty—“Do I treat my enemies in the same way that I do strangers and friends?” Yes or no?’ That hit a nerve for me, in terms of our encounter with the fattie. Because it was still gnawing at me, I kept replaying the tape during his talk, you know, our bad behavior, my bad behavior. My participation in it. Just reflecting on it t
hroughout the talk . . .

  “Anyway, he went on about the ‘nine sublime qualities of an authentic dharma master’—how the foremost teacher is the one who exposes your faults. I really felt he was doing that with me right then! He talked a lot about death. I remember him saying there were two hardships put before us: those related to poverty, disease, adversity—and those related to luxury and fame, popularity and ease. That hit a righteous nerve too. He said fame and luxury were the far greater adversaries, and when I heard that, I thought whoa. He said that if fame, wealth, or position—if good fortune comes naturally, try to accept it, the impermanence of it, so that when it goes, it doesn’t hurt too much. Because we may die suddenly, he said. ‘While talking or walking, happy, angry, or sad.’ I’d heard those concepts before, but this time they sunk in. They really stayed with me.