is?”
“Replenishing the tub.”
“You must be joking.”
“That is correct, Taktra Kunga. I am joking. It’s a funny idea — isn’t it? — filling the big tub you so recently emptied.”
“Very funny, yes.”
“However, please know that, come tomorrow afternoon, I may wish to bathe.”
“I see,” I said evenly.
“Do you?”
“Alas, yes. Might I use a bucket this time?”
“No. Sorry. The spoon. You should aim to finish by three o’clock, whereupon the nun will start warming my bath.”
I figured I had no choice, and so the next day, right after consuming my two oranges, which were truly delicious, I spent another seven hours wielding my pathetic spoon, transferring the water ounce by dreary ounce. Midway through the ordeal, I realized that my anger at Chögi Gyatso had largely vanished. Here I was, receiving personal instruction in a magnificent religious tradition from the world’s most famous holy man. It behooved me to be glad, not to mention grateful. At the very least I must become like a luscious female operative in thrall to Agent 007, surrendering to my teacher with a willing spirit.
“And now let me ask a question,” said Chögi Gyatso after I’d finished drawing his bath. “What if I commanded you to empty the tub all over again?”
“I would gnash my teeth,” I replied.
“And then?”
“I would growl like a snow lion.”
“And then?”
“I would gasp like a dying climber.”
“And then?”
“I would empty the tub.”
“That is a very good answer, Taktra Kunga. Now go home to your woman and make love to her long into the night.”
At the start of the third lunar month, the hulking emissary Lopsang Chokden reappeared in my lair and delivered a new message from His Holiness, but only after once again consuming a mug of pineal-gland tea and sorting contemplatively through our skulls. Chögi Gyatso, I now learned, wanted me to return to Sikkim forthwith and seek him out in the New Ganden Monastery. I should anticipate spending four full weeks with His Holiness — and pack my luggage accordingly.
“Twenty-eight days of celibacy,” sneered Gawa. “Really, Taktra Kunga, your guru is asking a lot of you — me — us.”
“Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder,” I replied.
“Horse manure.”
“Please try to understand. I’m not at peace with myself.”
We passed the rest of the day alternately quarreling and copulating, and the following morning Gawa sent me off with her resentful blessing. I made my way south through the Lachung Pass, pausing to dine on Robin Balaban, an NYU film studies professor, then crossed the border into Sikkim. Digesting Professor Balaban’s thoughts, I came to realize that he’d been troubled by a question that had often haunted me, namely, why has there never been a good movie about a yeti? Man Beast is atrocious. Half Human is risible. The Snow Beast is a snore. Only the Hammer Film called The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas is remotely watchable, although everyone involved, including star Peter Cushing, writer Nigel Kneale, and director Val Guest, went on to make much better thrillers.
“During the first half of your sojourn here, you will experience intimations of the primordial Buddhist vehicle, the Hinayana, keyed to purging mental defilements and achieving personal enlightenment,” said Chögi Gyatso as we connected, hand to paw, on the steps of the New Ganden Monastery. “During the second half of your stay, you will taste of the plenary vehicle, the Mahayana, which aims to cultivate a person’s compassion for all living beings through the doctrine of sunyata, emptiness. In the fullness of time I shall introduce you to the quintessential vehicle, the diamond way, the indestructible Vajrayana.”
“Diamonds Are Forever,” I said.
“Probably my favorite Double-O-Seven. But let’s not delude ourselves, Taktra Kunga. Whether Homo sapiens or Candidopithecus tibetus, a seeker may need to spend many years, perhaps many lifetimes, pursuing the Hinayana and the Mahayana before he can claim them as his own, and yet without such grounding he is unlikely to attain the eternal wakefulness promised by the Vajrayana.”
“Given the immensity of the challenge, let me suggest that we begin posthaste,” I said. “There’s no time like the present, right, Your Holiness?”
“No, Taktra Kunga, there is only a time like the present,” my teacher corrected me. “The past is a tortoise-hair coat. The future is a clam-tooth necklace.”
I passed the next seven days in the Tathagata Gallery, contemplating the canvases, four completely white, four completely black. His Holiness’s expectations were clear. I must endeavor to fill the featureless spaces with whatever random notions crossed my mind — imperiled mountaineers, tasty yuppie brains, voluptuous yeti barmaids, crummy Abominable Snowman movies — then imagine these projections catching fire and turning to ash, so they would cease to colonize my skull. Despite my initial skepticism, before the long week was out I succeeded in slowing down the rackety engine of my consciousness, the endless kachung, kachung, kachung of my thoughts, the ceaseless haroosh, haroosh, haroosh of my anxieties, or so it seemed.
“I’m a much calmer person,” I told my teacher. “Indeed, I think I’ve achieved near total equanimity. Does that mean I’m enlightened?”
“Give me a break, Taktra Kunga.”
My second week in the New Ganden Monastery confronted me with a different sort of sunyata, the bare trees of the Dzogchen Arboretum, their branches bereft of leaves, fruit, and blossoms. This time around, my instructions were to focus my drifting thoughts on the here and now, the luminous, numinous, capacious present. Once again I profited from my meditations. Within twenty-four hours a sublime stillness swelled at the center of my being. I was truly there, inhabiting each given instant, second by millisecond by nanosecond.
“I did it,” I told His Holiness. “I extinguished the past and annihilated the future. For now there is only today, and for today there is only now. I see nirvana just over the horizon.”
“Don’t crack walnuts in your ass, Taktra Kunga.”
My troubles began during week three, which I spent in the Hall of Empty Mirrors, alternately meditating with closed eyes and contemplating with a rapt gaze the twenty-one ornately carved frames, each distinctly lacking a looking-glass. I was now swimming in the ocean of the Mahayana. It would not do for me simply to still my thoughts and occupy the present. I must also shed my ego, scrutinizing my non-self in the non-glass. Good-bye, Taktra Kunga. You are an idea at best, a phantasm of your atrophied awareness. No person, place, thing, or circumstance boasts a stable, inherent existence. Earthly attachments mean nothing. Nothing means everything. All is illusion. Flux rules. Welcome to the void.
“I don’t like the Hall of Empty Mirrors,”
