“I didn’t recognize you for a moment,” I admitted to him.
He held his arms up slightly at his sides, displaying the coat. “My robes of office can sometimes be a distraction for people. I thought this would be better.”
I nodded.
“Besides,” the Rinpoche continued, “it made it easier to slip away from my assistants.” He looked at Yamashita. “It was like the old days, Sensei. I’m glad that you reminded me.”
My teacher nodded and closed his eyes briefly in acknowledgement. The light, misty rain caught on the stubble of his shaven head. Dark spots peppered the Rinpoche’s raincoat as well. My teacher gestured toward a restaurant door. “Tea?” he suggested.
I followed the two men inside, totally clueless as to what was going on. It was a familiar sensation: time spent with my sensei was routinely composed of confusion. Or terror. So far, the evening was shaping up nicely.
The Rinpoche sat there, his hands wrapped appreciatively around a teacup, comfortable with the silence. I merely watched. We had gotten tea, but the waitress came by again to ask if we needed anything else. I saw Changpa’s face cloud over, as if he felt an unexpected stab of pain. The waitress went away. He watched her with a sad look, and then caught me staring at him.
He shrugged. “The Buddha’s compassion at times seems inadequate for all the pain in the world.”
I turned to watch the woman as she worked the room. I saw nothing out of the ordinary and my face must have shown it.
“Sporadically, Dr. Burke, I am sensitized to the inner state of other people,” he said. “When it happens it is sometimes quite unexpected.”
Yamashita regarded me for a moment and then spoke. “Burke has some experience of this, Rinpoche. But he is just beginning to develop that sense…”
Haragei
again. But what the Rinpoche experienced seemed pretty vivid. For me, it’s a subtle phenomenon: a wash of certainty or insight that creeps up over you. You can feel it in the electric tension rippling along your skin. It usually happens to me during periods of great danger. I’m in no rush to feel it again anytime soon.
Changpa brightened and looked interested in Yamashita’s comment. “I have found this ability to be an extremely difficult one to develop in my pupils,” he said. My sensei nodded in agreement. “How do you go about it?” the lama asked.
Yamashita sipped his tea. “Ah, Rinpoche. I have found it… challenging… to even begin to anticipate who will and who will not develop it.” He looked at me pointedly, as if to illustrate the bewildering vagaries of fate. Yamashita’s hands were not as large as Changpa’s, but they were thick and powerful-looking. He held out a hand, palm up and continued. “I try to create opportunities for the experience through training. But it is difficult.” Again, the significant glance at me.
It was a curious thing, sitting there as both a spectator and an object of discussion. It was like being a child in the company of adults.
The Rinpoche nodded in sympathy for my teacher. “Just so. These sensibilities seem to fascinate many people.” He sipped some tea. “They are useful, of course, but too intent a focus on them obscures, I believe, the True Path.”
“Yet ability is sometimes what moves us along the Way,” Yamashita continued, “even if it is not the Way itself.”
They both looked extremely gratified by the exchange. I thought it was interesting to see two people come at the same idea from diametrically opposed positions. An eavesdropper would have thought that they were writers for a fortune cookie business.
Changpa smiled at me then. “It sounds like the cryptic messages in Chinese cookies, does it not Dr. Burke?” I smiled back, but felt suddenly cold, unbalanced. Could he really get inside my mind?
The Tibetan very carefully pushed his tea away and to one side. He looked directly at me, and the clarity of those eyes was silent acknowledgment of what he had just done. “But I am being rude,” he continued in an apologetic voice. “Has Yamashita Sensei told you of our conversations?” He looked across the table.
My teacher shook his head. “No, Rinpoche. I only told him that he was needed.”
The lama regarded me carefully. “And that was enough?” he asked. I said nothing. “I have found Americans so… talkative,” Changpa continued. There was almost a tone of wonder in his voice. Then he bowed slightly toward Yamashita. “You are to be congratulated. It is rare to find a disciple who knows the value of silence. And obedience.”
Sensei bowed back and smiled as well. Then he nodded slightly in my direction. “He is a good student,” he commented modestly. Which was the closest he ever came to giving me a public compliment.
Changpa adjusted his glasses. The lenses caught the light and, for a moment, his eyes were flat, silver slashes. “Students,” he sighed, and turned his head to face me. “That is part of why we are here today. To be a teacher, Dr. Burke, is not really about showing people new things. It seems rather to consist of repeatedly trying to steer them away from old mistakes.”
I was familiar with this idea. The Japanese masters spend years making you do things in a way that seems totally at odds with your instincts. That, they tell you, is because what they are showing you is the natural way to do things. The reason it is so hard is that you have developed bad habits. When my sensei twists your joints until they scream, he says that he is just clearing the dust from them. You nod and think about it later, but mostly are just glad when he stops.
“Illusion is the enemy of the Buddha nature,” the lama continued. “And we manufacture so much of it for ourselves.” He drew spirals on the table with a blunt finger, watching the pattern emerge and fade in the white tablecloth as he spoke, then suddenly looked up. “There are patterns in each life. We are drawn to repeat them over and over again. It is understandable…” and here his voice took on a dreamy, sad tone. “The future is so uncertain. And the familiar is such a comfort…”
His head moved and his glasses flashed and then were once again clear. “People ask me about my prescient abilities.” He smiled suddenly at a thought. “They want to know, of course, who will win the next championship game. Things of that sort. I try to explain that looking into the future is like standing on a high mountain. You can see far. But only the peaks. The valleys are in shadow.”
He stopped drawing and played with his teacup for a moment, making the fluid slosh around before going on. “And the landscape moves. It heaves and reforms… it is, I suppose, much like the sea,” Again the smile. “But I come from the Himalayas. Mountains are a more appropriate metaphor.”
I tried to imagine what the experience of prescience would be like: the sight of things to come and the taunting awareness that this vision was incomplete and transient.
“But some things I do know,” Changpa continued after a while, gathering himself and using a stronger voice. “Some peaks jut up too high to be discounted. And then I must act on them.” He seemed like he was looking for agreement.
“Knowledge without right action is futile,” Yamashita said in sympathy. I kept quiet.
“And yet the correct response to that knowledge is difficult to see,” the holy man murmured. “Can we really shape the future?” He said it almost to himself. Then the Rinpoche picked up his cup and sipped at the tea like a man searching for an anchor in the familiar and solid. He looked at us both, one after the other. “When I see a distant future… the path leading to an event is difficult to make out. But we must try nonetheless…”
“Is there something you need done for you, Rinpoche?” I finally asked quietly.
He straightened in his seat. Unconsciously, one hand dug into the pocket of his coat and emerged with his prayer beads. He fingered them as he spoke. “A teacher’s duty is to point out the Right Path. And to protect his students from taking wrong ones. What I see… is unclear as yet. But there is danger there, Burke. A high peak. And a path that descends into shadows. I would…” he took a breath, as if the mere act of recalling his vision was painful. “I would steer someone from this valley.”
Yamashita had watched him intently and now leaned forward to speak. I got the sense he did it to spare Changpa further pain.
“This ability of the Rinpoche, Burke,” my teacher began, “is without question real. His perception is incomplete,” he bobbed his head in apology toward the lama, “but that is the flaw we all share. All the advanced disciplines speak of this ability. The transfer of consciousness to another plane…”
“We call it
powa
,” Changpa commented.
“But it is of limited utility,” Yamashita continued. “It is much like the ability to sense an attack. It does not relieve you from the need to be ready for the many variations that the attack may come in. You must act, even if you are uncertain.” I nodded.
“The Rinpoche has asked for our help in a specific matter. As a friend, I can do no less.” Yamashita smiled modestly. “Action, after all, is what we do best.”
I wondered again about this friendship.
Changpa sat back in his chair and smiled at me. “You wonder, of course, Dr. Burke, about our relationship.” I just nodded in response. “It is of long standing and we were much younger then…”
My teacher gave an uncharacteristic smile. “Even then, you were a serious man, despite your years.”
Changpa’s eyes crinkled in acknowledgment. “But not, I fear, always as wise as I should have been.”
I worried for a split second that we were getting off the track.
“But I digress,” the lama told me. “I was fortunate enough to meet your teacher when he was still attached to the body-guards for the Imperial Family.”
I knew of my teacher’s affiliation with the Imperial House-hold Guards of Japan. It was an experience in his past that had come back to haunt the both of us before. And now here was another aspect of Yamashita’s past intruding once again on the present.
Sensei waved a hand. “The details are not particularly interesting, Burke. I was attached to a diplomatic mission with members of the Royal Family as they toured India. In the north, near Dharamsala, there were, as there are today, various elements intent on seeking independence from the government. They seek any means to draw attention to themselves and their causes…”
“The human wish for self-determination is a universal one,” Changpa commented. “My own countrymen struggle for it even now. But the methods some groups choose for their causes sometimes create more suffering than they seek to alleviate, Dr. Burke. Such was the case when a separatist group plotted to kidnap a member of the Imperial family.”
“The Rinpoche learned through his contacts of this plot, Burke,” Yamashita blinked. “I was able to… neutralize… the threat in a way that satisfied all parties. And I have always remained grateful for his assistance.”
The lama nodded in acknowledgment of the statement. After thinking a minute, he spoke. “Your teacher and I have discovered over time that we share much in common. It is a joy of a kind to discover another seeker in this world…” he glanced out the restaurant window at the concrete and cars, bluing in the waning light of evening Manhattan. Changpa seemed once again caught in the grip of some powerful internal experience. Then he brightened. “And it appears that each of us has a pupil in need of more than we are capable of providing…”
The lama let the statement hang in the air and began again. “Within each of us, there is a time when we feel the urge to seek the Buddha Nature. Indeed, it is within us always. But illusion cloaks its presence. It is as if…” and here his voice took on the tones of a teacher, speaking of things at once familiar and remote “… as if each of us is outside a beautiful walled city. We burn to enter, yet the walls—the illusions—keep us out. So we build ladders.
“Each person’s ladder is made from a different design.” The mala beads clicked faintly as he continued. “In reality the appearance of the ladder is not important. Only its ability to breach the wall.”
I nodded sagely, but was not sure where this was going. Again I got that piercing look from the lama. It wasn’t threatening, but it gave you the feeling that you were totally exposed to him.
Changpa smiled. I thought of the way he had greeted Yamashita the first time they met: a hand gesture,
have no fear
. The smile had the same impact. “But I am being obscure. People grow attached to their ladders, Dr. Burke. They understand the climb over the wall only in terms of the rungs on the ladder they have built.” He smiled ruefully. “The climb is difficult enough without removing that small comfort.”
My sensei broke in. “There is a disciple in danger, Burke. A martial artist,” Yamashita said. He obviously felt I was a little slow on the uptake. “Changpa Rinpoche has asked for our help. I have agreed that we would.”
“Who is it?” I asked. When they told me Travis Stark, I wasn’t particularly surprised. I had been preoccupied with the Sakura murder, but even so I must have been making connections at some unconscious level. Yamashita had brought me to two different places where Stark was present. He rarely does things without a purpose, although he doesn’t often tell you what it is. I sat now and waited for an explanation.
“A brother lama worked with Stark on meditative techniques in California. And Stark eventually came to me seeking more advanced training. Personal issues have drawn him here as well…” He paused as if thinking of saying more, but didn’t elaborate on that point. “I have attempted to guide him while he simultaneously pursues his interest in the martial arts. Stark has been a challenging pupil. But he is, I think, good at heart.”
“He has studied with Asa Sensei,” Yamashita commented.
The lama nodded. “Now he seeks another challenge.”
“The Yamaji,” Yamashita breathed.
“I know something of Stark’s new interest in this master, Kita,” Changpa confirmed.
“Why do you need us?” I persisted.
The lama picked up the teapot and poured us each more tea. I noticed his free hand touched the underside of the arm doing the pouring. It was a habit developed by people who wore robes with wide sleeves.
“Remember the ladder I spoke of, Dr. Burke. Stark is someone who is focused on the martial arts. I have attempted to lead him along more…” he smiled at me with those clear eyes “… gentle, what you might call ‘noodley’ paths. But he yearns for more active pursuits. Kendo satisfied him for a time.” Changpa sighed. “He has volunteered to work as a security person, but really…” he looked at each of us in turn, then sighed again. “He creates more problems than he solves.”