The Buddha didn’t have a huge, fancy tent or anything. He wasn’t easy to find, camped among his followers, because he slept on the ground just like the rest of them. But Milo reasoned that wherever the Master sat down and made his fire, a lot of his people would try to sit down near him. So he went where the fires and talking and laughter were thickest, and there, indeed, was the Master.
Milo expected to find some of the elder disciples sitting in a circle, with the Master sitting in the middle, staring into the fire. But what he found was confusion. There were several disciples, older men Milo recognized from the Master’s inner circle, whispering loudly at one another. In the middle of them stood the Master, crying and looking pissed off.
Other pilgrims, at fires nearby, busily pretended not to see.
Milo advanced, anxious to see what was wrong. If someone had hurt the Master…
“Why would you say something like that?” the Master was sobbing. “That’s cruel, is all. What’s wrong with you all?”
Two disciples—one fat, the other short but thin, like a dormouse—were having a spat of some kind, off to the side.
“Why did you argue with him?” asked the fat disciple. “You know you’re not supposed to contradict him when he’s like this! He doesn’t understand. It just upsets him.”
“I know!” whispered the dormouse, looking pained. “But he was fine, that’s the thing. One second he was breezing along, saying mountains are like rivers, only slower, and he was having a great day. Then he said, natural as you please, ‘I must remember to ask Yi if he still has that bit of volcanic glass,’ and before I could catch myself, I said, ‘Master, Yi has been dead now for seven years. Remember the tiger?’ and he came unglued.”
The fat disciple seemed to calm himself.
“We have to be careful,” he said. “I know you would never upset Bodhi on purpose.”
Strong hands grabbed Milo by the shoulders and spun him around.
Fuck! The Buddha had goons! Who knew?
Balbeer.
“Milo,” said Balbeer, his eyes sad, “just go and eat. You can’t help here.”
“But what’s wrong?” he sputtered.
Balbeer steered Milo out of the woods. Behind them, the Master’s voice rose angrily.
“He’s old,” said Balbeer. “Old people get confused sometimes.”
“But he’s—”
“He’s not a god.”
Milo found his way back to his own fire and sat down.
“Did he have an answer?” asked Ompati. “About the dream?”
Milo sat with his shoulders hunched.
“I couldn’t find him,” he said.
—
He tried to sleep, and couldn’t.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the Buddha in tears, frightened of his own friends.
He closed his eyes and tried to meditate. Maybe that would help.
Meditation was something the Buddha people did. It seemed to help them be cool about things. He had been trying but without much luck.
“See and listen to what’s happening in your mind,” Balbeer had told him.
“My mind is noisy,” Milo had answered. “I can’t see or hear.”
Balbeer had shrugged and closed his eyes and appeared to ignore him.
Milo tried again now.
Breathe in. Don’t think of anything. Breathe out. Notice that you are breathing.
What’s wrong with the Master? his mind asked.
Milo noticed the question.
Do people live on the moon, wondered his mind. No matter how hard he tried, random shit just kept floating up.
My ankle hurts. I haven’t had an asthma attack in a long time; maybe I’m cured? Do Buddhists have sex? What was that noise?
Shut up, he thought. Shut up, shut up. Breathe! Stillness…breathe…
I can feel my hair growing.
“Fuck!” he roared.
“Shhh,” admonished some nearby pilgrims. “We’re meditating.”
—
The next afternoon, the travelers reached a place called Sravasti.
Sravasti was a town. The Master had been there many times. A long time ago, they had built a whole complex of monasteries there. It was one of the main places people went if they wanted to learn the Master’s teachings. Some of his best students and disciples taught there, and the town was sort of an ongoing Buddha-fest. You could hardly go downtown to buy bread without stumbling over meditating pilgrims.
When the Master himself came to town, it was like Jesus entering Jerusalem, except Jesus hadn’t been invented yet.
The traveling throng became a parade, showered with blossoms and song. They were all bowed to and knelt to and touched with reverence. Part of this was because the Sravasti crowd was primed to honor anything remotely associated with the Buddha, but it was also because they didn’t know which of the travelers was the Buddha.
Like most people, these spirit tourists expected to know the Master on sight. He should be ten feet tall, with flames shooting from his eyes. This, they said, was the man who had made a rice bowl float upstream just by asking it to. This was the man who had slain a horrid jungle monster by permitting it to eat him and then burning his way out with Perfection rays. This was the man whose soul was one with all time and the universe.
Yet he passed before them, a hunched old man like any other old man. He had the X-ray eye thing, true, but that was hard to see if he wasn’t looking straight at you.
“They don’t recognize him,” muttered Ompati, picking magnolia petals from his hair.
Milo nodded.
“It’s just as well,” whispered one of the travelers, walking nearby. “He’s been asking about the wedding preparations all day, especially the belly dancers.”
Milo frowned. “Whose wedding?”
“His own.”
“He’s getting married?”
“He got married. It didn’t work out.”
“Oh,” said Milo. “Sorry.”
“Also,” added the disciple, “it was sixty years ago.”
—
That night, amid the soft lawns and simple walls of the monastery complex, torches were lit. The thousands came and sat, waiting to hear the Buddha, buzzing excitedly.
It’s like an outdoor rock concert, said a voice in Milo’s head (the voice was from a future life).
The elder disciples emerged from the central monastery, plopped a big, fancy pillow on the grass, and sat around it in a semicircle, looking nervous.
Out came the Master. One step at a time, assisted by Balbeer.
The crowd hushed. Insects chirped. Bats zipped between torches.
The Master sat on the pillow, forming the mudra with his fingers.
Some time passed.
The moon rose.
The Buddha looked up. His eyes were bright but distant, like faraway fires. Milo recognized the lost look.
Oh, no!
The Master started talking about the wedding.
“I’m getting married,” he announced softly, with a slippery kind of grin. “It will be at my father’s palace, to my love and my destiny, my cousin Yasodhara. There will be belly dancers.”
Looking around, Milo saw the crowd nodding to itself, to one another. They listened and tried to follow.
“You have to admire a good belly dancer,” the Master continued. “They don’t dance so much as they flow. They’re like truth, or a river. Like a wave. Think about that. We’re going to ask them to wear emeralds in their belly buttons.”
The crowd ate it up. Truth! A river! Unity! Impermanence! No idea that the Buddha was wandering the undiscovered country of his own memory.
His closest disciples watched him with genuine love and awe. But their glances shared a question they dared not voice.
How much longer, they were thinking, can we get away with this?