you are experiencing the dukkha of life.”
Without looking up from his notepad, he responded, “Suffering.” He resisted the temptation to glance at the monk to gauge his surprise at Grant’s knowledge of the Pali word: it was the language of the ancient Buddhist canon. Grant enjoyed near-photographic recall of the texts he’d studied. His comparative religions class had been six years earlier, but he still remembered the basic tenets of Buddhism as if he’d read them yesterday.
“Yes, that’s the common translation, but not entirely accurate,” Kinley said without missing a beat. “Actually, dukkha means out of balance, like a cart with a broken wheel.”
“So you’re saying that my life is out of whack right now.” Grant put his pen down and looked Kinley in the eye. “I could have told you that.”
“Indulge me in a story,” Kinley began, as if he were telling a fable to a group of children gathered at his feet. “A farmer in the foothills of the mountains had a beautiful horse that ran away. The farmer’s neighbor stopped by to console him on losing such a magnificent animal, but the farmer surprised his neighbor by saying, ‘Who am I to judge what is an unlucky event or a fortunate one?’ The next day his horse returned, bringing with it a herd of similarly beautiful wild horses. The neighbor returned and said, ‘You were right yesterday not to wallow in your loss. Look how fortunate you are now with all these horses.’ But the farmer surprised him again by repeating his comment from the previous day, ‘Who am I to judge what is an unlucky event or a fortunate one?’ A few weeks later the farmer’s son fractured his leg while trying to break in one of the new horses. Of course, the neighbor returns to offer his condolences again, certain that the farmer cannot be unaffected by his son’s injury.”
“Let me guess,” Grant intervened, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “Even with his son lying in bed, his leg in a splint, the farmer repeats his previous response, ‘Who am I to judge what is an unlucky event or a fortunate one?’”
Kinley grinned and rested a hand on Grant’s cast. “The following week the army came through the farmer’s village, drafting men to go to war, but they passed over the farmer’s son because of the broken leg.”
“Well, I’ll be safe then, if the Bhutanese army comes looking for soldiers,” Grant said. He added a smile so the monk who had just saved his life wouldn’t think him rude. But really, he thought, I need time alone to work through my predicament.
“You are a student?” Kinley asked.
“Grad school. I’m ABD, sorry, all but—”
“Dissertation,” Kinley added. “I spent some time in a Western university.”
Grant raised his eyebrows. “Well, that explains the accent. Which one?”
“When I was a young monk, I often asked questions my elders felt were out of place. Spent quite a few hours in extra cleanup duty. The senior monk suggested to my parents that my taking a break from the monastery would be better for everyone. Fortunately, I earned the highest marks in my class and was given the rare opportunity to attend Oxford on scholarship.”
“Oxford? Impressive.” This gentle monk who had saved his life was also a scholar?
Kinley shrugged. “Once I finished, I returned to Bhutan and to monastic life. And you? You didn’t travel to the East on a spiritual quest?”
Grant shook his head. “My PhD is in religious studies, but my interests are strictly academic—historical.” Unlike my father’s, he thought. Grant’s sole regret concerning his father’s death was that he hadn’t had the opportunity to prove to him the many ways in which the preacher was wrong where religion was concerned.
“You believe that the nature of religion lies in history?”
Grant’s eyelids were becoming heavy from the effects of the doctor’s tea, but he willed them open. His body wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep, but this Oxford-educated monk intrigued him. “I’m interested in the early development of Christianity during the first century, and”—he hesitated for a moment as he pondered how to phrase the next part—“how contact with other cultures may have influenced this development.”
“What kind of influence?”
“I’ve been tracking several apocryphal stories.” Grant remembered his promise to himself not to reveal too much. In spite of Kinley’s Western education, Grant knew that the culture of these monasteries was insular and cautious of outside disruptions. Finding what he was seeking would certainly cause a disruption. He decided to use an example from his first trip to India, rather than his most recent. “For example, some evidence suggests that in fifty-two AD, twenty years after the death of Jesus, the apostle Thomas sailed to India. A small Christian community on the coast in Kerala traces its founding to Thomas and the several churches he established before he was martyred.”
“Have you found what you came for?”
Grant shook his head. “I’m still missing a key piece of my research, which is why I’m ABD.” He closed his eyes, giving in to the weight of his eyelids.
Kinley rose from the bed. “Sometimes we find not what we are looking for, but what we should be looking for.”
Through closed eyes Grant noted that the pain was fading from his body. Whatever was in the tea was working. He heard Kinley’s voice as if from a distance. “And I wish you good fortune on your search for the story of Issa.”
Grant’s eyes snapped open.
The monk responded to the look of shock that Grant knew was plastered over his face. “You spoke aloud at night during your period of unconsciousness. Gave us quite a fright at times.”
Grant’s pulse quickened. How much did I say? He’d planned to reveal that name carefully, especially after the monks at Himis clammed up at the mere mention of the Indian saint.
“Ah, yes,” Kinley continued, “the legend of a boy on a journey through India seeking answers to his questions, much like you.”
Grant forced his face to relax. “You know the story of Issa?”
“Rest now. Karma’s medicine will help you sleep until tomorrow.” Kinley bowed from his waist and left the room in a flurry of orange robes. His apprentice, who had been standing so quietly in the center of the room that Grant had forgotten he was still there, followed him out.
Grant wanted to call after Kinley. Did the monk know the importance of the Issa story, that it could answer one of Christianity’s great mysteries? A mystery that would challenge everyone’s assumptions of how the religion came to be. Could it be possible that the evidence he’d been searching for—the evidence that his colleagues at Emory didn’t believe existed—was here in this very monastery? Despite the flurry of questions swirling in his mind, the narcotic effects of the tea finally won the battle, and Grant slipped into unconsciousness.
CHAPTER 4
GATEWAY BUSINESS PARK BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
TIM HUNTLEY’S FINGERS stabbed at the keyboard. He used only the first three digits of each hand, but he entered code so quickly that the lines scrolled down the
