Read Online Dinner with Buddha by Roland Merullo - Free Book Online Page B

Kobe Bryant of the spiritual world. So she’d convinced herself that, not only was her daughter spiritually gifted, the girl was special, extraordinary, the holiest of holies.
    â€œSeese,” I said, with as much restraint as I could manage, “the Dalai Lama is always a man. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the present Dalai have to pass on before a new one is selected?”
    â€œIt could be different this time, Otto. There could be a man
and
a woman,” Seese said. “They’d share the duties.”
    â€œSays who?”
    â€œSomeone in His Holiness’s inner circle.”
    â€œHe told you all this?”
    â€œ
Hinted.
In a talk I read about, not face-to-face. But it’s a she, not a he.”
    â€œThen why don’t you all just fly off to Dharamsala?”
    â€œBecause we’re not sure. I said
might be.
And in any case we’d have to wait for a formal invitation.”
    â€œWhy are we on this wild goose chase, then?”
    â€œBecause it came to me in a vision and because the woman who gave that talk—a very famous Rinpoche—said they’re still looking for the other person, the one who’ll be Shelsa’s partner.”
    â€œDo you realize how this sounds?”
    â€œTo whom?”
    â€œTo the average sane person.”
    â€œThe average sane person wouldn’t even believe in the way the Dalai Lama is chosen. The average sane person—as you call it—would never believe Jesus rose from the dead, or that the Buddha was enlightened, or that prayers have any effect whatsoever, or that dreams mean anything.”
    The waitress came back with the little leather book that held my sister’s credit card. She looked at us and nodded, as if she’d stumbled upon yet another married couple in the midst of a post-prandial spat. Rinpoche and Shelsa returned just in time for the waitress to shoot him a call-me glance. I half expected to see her phone number scribbled on the receipt.
    Rinpoche appeared to sense that we’d been discussing a difficult issue but he only sat there, hands folded, watching us as if he were a graduate student taking notes for a thesis on sibling conflict.
    â€œRinpoche,” I said, perhaps too forcefully. “I’d appreciate it now if you’d tell me my sister isn’t crazy. I want to hear you say those words.”
    My brother-in-law looked at me without expression, the muscles of his face firm and unmoving, the eyes steady, a shaft of overhead light reflecting from his bald head. He said, “I like wery much the potato here.”
    I wondered at that moment if both of them had been mentally crippled by their years of isolation on the farm. With its endless winters and long distances between towns, North Dakota could do that to people. A friend of my parents, one George “Buster” Fynch, was widowed in midlife, kept farming his five hundred acres alone, but then took to nudism. He could sometimes be seen on his tractor, naked as the Good Lord made him, singing church hymns and plowing circles on flat land.
    I decided I’d keep an eye on Rinpoche as we traveled, see if there’d been any change, any slippage. We left our difficult conversation at the table and strolled the sidewalks of Deadwood for a little while. There was a series of interesting historical plaques—in the late 1800s the city’s Jewish mayor, Sol Star, had made sure, during hard times, that no one in town went hungry; in 1876, Wild Bill Hickok had been killed while holding a great poker hand; Calamity Jane was buried next to him; the buildings of the original gold rush town had burned to ash in 1879, and had been rebuilt in brick. The place had a Disney-esque feel, families licking ice cream cones, shops selling T-shirts, couples in motorcycle leather holding hands, a yuppie in a Yale cap taking photos with his iPad while his stern-faced wife and tow-headed twins trailed along behind.
    It