Groovy. And tragic. This time he wouldn’t lose it.
He opened his eyes. There was a noise but not a jungle noise. Voices in distress, from the outskirts of the village. Milo jogged out of the woods, to find the Master’s disciples fluttering around like panicked storks.
“What is it?” he called. “What’s wrong?”
“He’s missing,” answered Ompati, appearing at his elbow.
“Maybe Heaven has taken him!” one of his elderly disciples was saying, nearby. “Look, his robes are here. All his things are here. I tell you, he has been taken up.”
“Let’s go,” said Milo, tugging Ompati’s sleeve, and they joined a number of pilgrims to spread out through the village, searching.
It didn’t take long to find him, and, again, noise was their clue. Raised voices from down the road, from the village center. Milo and Ompati ran and discovered a small crowd gathering in the marketplace.
Peace, thought Milo. He feels better and has come to the village to teach.
The crowd parted. Milo excused his way through and found the Master standing at a market stall. He held a pomegranate in one hand, inspecting it closely.
He was stark naked.
The crowd, now that Milo glanced around, didn’t look awed or spiritual or even curious. They wore the faces of a schoolyard crowd, the faces of children who have found an injured bird to torture.
“Perhaps it is wash day,” someone suggested.
Laughter.
“It’s awfully hot,” said someone else, and someone said, “He is in the market for a tattoo!” and then someone threw a stone at him. It bounced off his shoulder.
Milo didn’t see who had thrown the stone, but Ompati did. He grabbed the young man’s arm and threw him to the ground.
Several other young men stepped forward.
Milo, who had raised his hands, lowered them.
“Peace, friend Ompati,” he said. “This isn’t what we’ve learned. It isn’t what we teach.”
He breathed in. He breathed out. The air and the crowd and the town were part of him.
He turned to the Buddha and took him by the arm, saying, “Our friends are waiting, Father.” He didn’t call him “Master.” Maybe the crowd didn’t know. They didn’t need to know. This wasn’t a story the future needed.
“I want this pomegranate,” griped the Master.
“I don’t have any money,” Milo whispered in the Buddha’s ear. “Neither do you. I’ll bring you one later.”
The Master subsided. “This one,” he said, putting the pomegranate back. “I want that one.”
“Fine. But for now we have to go.”
Ompati took the Master’s other elbow, and they steered through the crowd. The young men noticed the look in Milo’s eyes, which was a look of peaceful power he had gained, like an ocean wave, and they parted before him. Some even bowed and looked ashamed. They noticed the look in Ompati’s eyes, as if he wanted an excuse to kick someone in the balls, and they made way for that, too.
—
After they dropped the Master off with his old friends, Milo went back into the trees, alone. He found the bo tree again and sat down to think.
You wouldn’t call it meditating. Meditating didn’t look like this, with the furrowed brow and the dark eyes. It was the look of a man who is trying to find courage.
The Master needed help.
The kind of help he needed was so, so difficult. He needed an act of Perfection.
Milo meditated on that for a while.
Part of meditating was knowing when to put meditation aside and get up and go do something.
So he got up. He left the trees, carrying his food bowl. He asked Balbeer for the Master’s food bowl and walked into the village.
“Wait up,” called Ompati, running behind him.
They begged enough food for themselves and the Master. Milo made a pitch for some coins, too, and their last stop was the marketplace, where they bought the Buddha his pomegranate.
—
Sitting around the litter an hour later, Milo noticed a brighter look in the Master’s eye.
“How do you feel, Master?” he asked.
The Master didn’t answer right away. He looked at Milo for a long time, without blinking. Then he looked at the sky.
“I feel good, Milo,” he said. “Thank you. It is an excellent evening.”
They all felt good. The evening was warm and filled with birdsong. Flying clouds laced the sky like shredded cotton, turning gold at the edges as the sun slipped away.
“I won’t preach tonight,” said the Buddha. “Let’s have music instead.”
So they had music. Villagers came with rudra veena and lyre.
The sunset colors spun from gold into pink and purple and dark. The stars brightened and began to turn, and the Master ate his pomegranate. Half of it, anyway. The other half he handed off to Ompati.
Green eyes surrounded them, glowing in the brush. They moved and came closer. Shadows like tiny people.
“Monkeys,” whispered Ompati. As soon as he said this, an old grandmother baboon walked out of the dark and sat gazing at him in the firelight. She reached out with a thin dark paw and let her fingers rest on his knee.
The stars turned. The rudra veena sang.
“It’s okay, friend Ompati,” said the Master. “You’ve taken no vow of celibacy that I recall.”
The disciples’ laughter drowned the music for a time.
—
In the morning, the Master felt unwell.
“I think we will stay here another day,” Balbeer announced.
At noon, the Master felt worse.
“Say prayers,” asked Balbeer. To Milo, he said, “Take the Master’s bowl and see if you can bring back some kale, some aloe, and some didi juice. Something bad has got into him. We need to get it out.”
Balbeer’s voice was calm and even, but Milo saw real fear in his eyes.
He did as he was asked, and when Milo returned, Balbeer and the disciples were sitting in a loose circle around the sleeping Master, looking grave.
“Set it down,” said Balbeer. “He won’t take anything.”
They all pretended to meditate.
The sun crept down the sky.
Ompati mixed leftover fruits and greens into a salad and split it with Milo for a snack.
The Master stirred after a while. He sat up and then, despite Balbeer’s remonstrances, stood. Hunched at first, and looking a little green, but then he straightened up and peered around at them all with his cosmic eyes.
“I am going to die,” he announced.
Voices clamored, but the Master raised a hand and silenced them all.
“Why should this bother you?” he chided. “I’m eighty years old. My soul is going out into the Everything. Be happy for me.”
His stomach made a horrible noise.
“If you would,” he said, “please ask in the village if they would bring some blankets and pillows and make for me a bed in that grove, just there.” He pointed to some sal trees, not far away. Then he excused himself and made for the woods at an awkward trot.
—