Rosie shook her head.
“Just like you and Claude. Poppy. Just like everyone. Story of change, of not-knowing to knowing, ignorance to enlightenment. But enlightenment is long, take a long, hard time. If it does not, it does not result enlightenment. Buddha was many lives before last one. In last life, Buddha was prince. You know?”
Rosie did. Rosie knew all about stories about a prince.
“Very shelter life in palace so ignorant of poverty, sickness, old age, death. Then he go out into world and learn. Then he help. That is important part. Once he learn, he listen and tell, he help. He leave family, leave palace, leave being a prince.” Rosie nodded along. This part sounded familiar. “He learn about the world and the people. He meditate to learn to be. He give up all food and water and house, but then his body too loud to achieve peace so he learn again: too little as bad as too much. He teach, tell his story, help people see truth. He say be kind and forgive, honest and share. He say everything will change so okay. He say middle way. He enlighten. That is the story. Learn mistake and fix and tell. Not-knowing to knowing. Even the Buddha. You see?”
“But I’m not knowing,” said Rosie.
“Not yet,” said K.
The Color of Monday
The Buddha was everywhere. Not Everywhere everywhere, though maybe that too for all Claude knew. His ubiquity was worrisome because you weren’t supposed to point your feet at him, but you could never tell where he might pop up—there was a Buddha statue in the cafeteria, two in the schoolroom, three in the intake center, one in the waiting area. Claude had counted five so far in the guesthouse. On the bike ride to the clinic, they passed seven of them. When they went into town for an afternoon, he counted fifteen. The Buddha hid round a bend or on the crest of a hill or among the trees. Claude’s little students had tried to explain all about the Buddha who was Lord but not God, a prince, a teacher, a reminder, and a path, but what Claude liked about him was he looked like a girl.
He didn’t realize this until their trip to Chiang Mai, where they went to get supplies for the clinic and then stayed a couple extra days because his mother decided they had earned some time off. K told them Chiang Mai was Thailand’s second city, so Claude steeled himself for Bangkok again, but Chiang Mai was nothing like Bangkok. There were gardens and parks and mountains in Chiang Mai. There was a quiet treetop restaurant and a hotel with the giant cushy beds the guesthouse so completely lacked and a market where you could buy supplies without live animals looking at you tragically from buckets or cages. There were flowers everywhere and fruit stands and bike paths. There was a fish spa, where you sat on benches over an aquarium, and hundreds of garra rufa fish came and nibbled at your calves and feet.