Maya (48 page)

“Yes, of course,” I exclaimed, contritely. “That's right. I want to trade English lessons for Tibetan lessons.”

At this he positively vibrated with delight. Maniacal glee radiated from his body like a gravitational force, pulling me into his orbit. I could think of nothing else to say, so I simply stood there with an idiotic grin on my face.

“Nice,” he wagged his head up and down, “very nice! When we begin?” His eyes glittered with shameless exuberance. “Now?”

I explained that I had come from Banaras and that I would have to go back for another month or so, but perhaps we could start in May? This too was “nice.”
Very nice
! He wanted to know if I would be willing to spend the summer in Dharamsala, near the residence of the Dalai Lama. “No
Indian people, you know? Only Tibeti.” He gave me another meaningful look, one foreigner to another. “Good place for practice speak Tibeti language.” He had a close friend who would help me find a place to stay. In fact everything would be fixed up when I arrived. How did that sound? I assured him that it all sounded very nice, and with that the deal was settled. We would meet sometime in late May. He gave me his uncle's name and told me to ask for him at the post office in McLeod Ganj; someone there would contact him for me. Part of me wanted nothing more than to sit right down and begin. No time to waste!
Let's haggle
!

The rosary hummed through his fingers. I watched the beads fly past and thought of how quickly the months had disappeared since coming to India. I noticed for the first time that he was wearing another fabulous ornament on the middle finger of his right hand. A chunk of ivory, or maybe some kind of bone, polished smooth and yellowed with age, the surface fractured by an intricate web of hairline cracks, like tiny veins in a dry leaf. It had been carved into a ghoulish carnival mask with two bulging eyes and a broad, hooked nose, nostrils flared over a row of crooked teeth that rose and fell hypnotically as the beads clicked by underneath.

“Well then,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the ring, “I guess it's all set.”

Again his hands groped out over the desk, stirring up the mess, shuffling and restacking, all the while importuning me to remain for just a few minutes more. He had something very important that he simply had to show me before I left. At last he produced a copybook of the sort that Indian schoolchildren use for their lessons. Several loose threads dangled from its frayed binding.
Delux Sarasvati Register
was printed on the cover in bold red letters.

“Come.” He gestured in the direction of an unopened crate that rested on the floor in front of the table. “Sit.” I obeyed his command; there was just enough room to tuck my knees under the desk. “My work,” he exclaimed, patting the book with one hand. “Is
translation
.” He spoke the word proudly and then seemed to reconsider. “Please, I must request you not laugh on my English. I work alone, you know? Like you!” This realization obviously restored his enthusiasm. “I have wait too long for meeting right person. Foreigner, you know. For help improve English. But now you come! From today we work together! No problem!”

He opened the notebook, turned it around, and pushed it toward me.

“What you think?”

At first I assumed that I was looking at an idiosyncratic style of
umey
, the cursive Tibetan calligraphy that Dorje Sherap had used to write his letter of introduction, a script I had never learned. Closer inspection belied this initial impression. It was English. But if Nortul Rinpoche's spoken English was idiosyncratic, then his handwriting—and his prose style—was genuinely original. It passed through my mind that this might be a weird joke of some kind, but I took one glance at the face rising over my shoulder like an impatient moon and dismissed the joke hypothesis as improbable. His expression was far too ingenuous. Painfully so. There could be no question that he was anxious to solicit my reaction to his work. I swam through a quagmire of tortured syntax and highly inventive spelling, then stopped short when halfway down the page a single line of perfect English caught my eye:

I read it a second time, then a third, for good measure, before turning to Rinpoche. “What is this?”

He was obviously taken aback. “Is English translation.”

“No. I mean, sure. Right. From a Prajnaparamita text. I can make out that much. But which one?”

Now he flashed me a broad, knowing grin. “Mr. Tsan-lee never see this
sherchin
. Before today only one man see.”

“You?”

“Yes. Is true. I am only one man.”

I looked around me at the jumble of boxes and crates, and in that moment, somewhere deep inside the labyrinthine tunnels and chambers of my brain, neglected synapses crackled and sparked for the first time in months. Massive, dusty wheels began to revolve, decrepit machinery shuddered and groaned, setting in motion cranks and levers that dislodged the lid on a bubbling cauldron of ambition. I was growing ever more excited just imagining what a dissertation this would make. For the better part of a year I had barely thought about academics, and yet—in a matter of seconds—here I was, lost in a vision of my brilliant future as an internationally acclaimed Indologist. I saw myself walking into Abe Sellars's office with an edition, annotated translation, and text-critical study
of Rinpoche's sutra.
So you think I've been fucking around over in South Asia, drinking chai and smoking ganja? Or, worse yet, playing out some juvenile fantasy of a spiritual quest? Is that it? Well take a look-see at this!
Tattered old Banarsi briefcase springs open and out it comes, five hundred pages of meticulous philological scholarship that lands on his desk like a mortar shell. And the journal articles it would generate, the papers . . . I envisioned myself as the honored respondent to a panel at the national conference for the Association for Asian Studies, six top-drawer North American and European scholars presenting papers on a previously unknown Indian Prajnaparamita sutra rescued by yours truly. Edward Conze banging on my door. Lamotte might even drop me a card from Brussels. Suddenly I wished Margaret Billings were still in town so I could look her up.

“You found it here?” I asked.

“Oh no, no!” He flapped his hands in the air. The rosary was wrapped around his left wrist. “No, Mr. Tsan-lee.” His voice roused me from the glory of my heraldic vision.

“No? No what?”

“No find in this library.”

“Then where did it come from? Tibet?” I began to get excited all over again.

“Come from India. Is old sherchin sutra from India.”

“But how did you find it?”

“Someone give me.”

“Someone? Who?”

“Someone in here,” he exclaimed with a broad grin, pointing a finger at his head. But his smile waned when he saw the unguarded look of utter disappointment that swept over my face as the big fantasy of academic fame and fortune evaporated. This old lama had not the slightest idea of why I might be so profoundly disappointed. How could he? “Come from mind,” he repeated, as if perhaps I hadn't understood him the first time. “
Gong-ter
.” He smiled again, a bit meekly this time. “Very mystery, you know?”

“Are you saying,” I cleared my throat, trying my best to appear as though it made no difference to me one way or the other, “that you, uh, made it up?”

His eyebrows rose uncomprehendingly.

“Made up?” “Made it up. It means, well, that you wrote the sutra. You know, all by yourself.”

His fist thumped down on the open copybook. “No, I am not made it up. Is word of Buddha. Very old sutra. And now you help me translate to English.” He smiled mischievously, and I felt for a moment as though I were being drawn into some outlandish conspiracy.

“Tell me,” he demanded, “how you translate
sherchin yigey mepa
?”

I pushed the copybook over toward him. “Can you write it down? In
uchen
, please.” He picked up a fluorescent pink ballpoint pen, wiped a blob of ink off the tip by smearing it onto the corner of the page, and began carefully printing the characters in a single line of surprisingly legible classical Tibetan script. When he finished, I studied it for a minute and then ventured a translation. “‘The perfection of wisdom with no letters . . .' No, wait. How about, ‘the
unwritten
perfection of wisdom'?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding his head earnestly. “‘Unwritten perfection of wisdom.' Yes, yes. Very nice.” He gazed at the letters a moment longer and then looked up. “You hear before?”

I shook my head.

His question came back to me, though, on a late, gray winter afternoon several years later. I was ensconced in a library carrel in the Harvard-Yenching when I chanced to come across mention of the “‘unwritten' Prajnaparamita” while perusing Roerich's translation of the
Blue Annals
. I found the insignificant reference tucked away in a history of the Shije lineage, where this “unwritten perfection of wisdom” is reported to have been taught by an Indian ascetic named Dampa. According to the
Blue Annals
, Dampa on his third visit to Tibet met Machik Lapdron, the woman who went on to found the influential practice known as Chö. The story is that they got together at the home of a wealthy merchant named Rokpa, where Dampa passed along to her “three words of friendly advice.” This is the so-called “pith instruction”—
nying tam
—reported, once again, in the
Blue Annals
and other Tibetan chronicles. Rinpoche's lineage believes that the three words referred to in these texts are
see, relinquish, rest
, and that the whole thing is an esoteric reference to a particular “unwritten perfection of wisdom” that was passed along by Dampa that day.

As I say, I only put all this together much later, after returning from India, and even then it was many more years before I made any conscientious effort to document the claims made by Nortul Rinpoche. In India I pretty much swallowed whatever he said. For instance, according to what he went on to tell me that afternoon in Delhi, the “unwritten perfection of wisdom” was not a single sutra but an entire genre of Prajnaparamita
teachings that circulated throughout India during the same centuries when most of the other famous Perfection of Wisdom scriptures—like the
Heart Sutra
and the
Diamond-Cutter
—were being recorded for posterity on the pages of hand-lettered palm-leaf xylographs. If what Nortul Rinpoche told me is true, however, then the particular sutra referred to in this passage from the
Blue Annals
is the very one that lay open before us—a sutra that had been passed along orally for generations but never before committed to writing. A sutra he was now translating into English.

“This sutra,” he glanced at the copybook, then quickly back up at me so as to judge the effect of his words, “we call ‘mantra healing all kind sickness.'”

I had been listening quietly until then, but with that remark I stopped him. “The perfection of wisdom is the medicine for suffering.”

“Yes, is medicine for every kind suffering.”

“Then why all this talk of ‘terror' and ‘dread'? It's supposed to be a
cure
for suffering, right? Not a
cause
.”

He looked at me pointedly. “You want jump too far in front.” He said this and continued to scrutinize me, as if he were slightly perplexed. As if he were sizing me up. Gradually his expression became quiet, thoughtful. “When I was young man in Tibet, many year before, I once know old lama, Tsering. Tsering say that most person always look for magic. No interest philosophy. You teach philosophy, they go for sleep. Very tedious.” He actually used the word
tedious
. “Most people only want learn
mantra
—magic. So maybe you are same, eh?” He paused and searched my face for a sign of confirmation. And then in a flash his expression turned grave, his tone of voice uncompromising. “Mr. Tsan-lee, you want magic medicine for end suffering? You want make suffering finish? Right this moment?”

His eyes were locked on mine. My immediate impulse was to say,
Sure. Give me the magic pill
. But there was something about the intensity of his gaze that unnerved me. The beads clicked through his fingers. I quickly looked away—over his shoulder, then down at the copybook where it lay open on the table—and instead of answering, I deflected the question. “So what about the third noble truth of the Buddha? The end of suffering? Why should I
fear
nirvana?”

“A-
laaaay
. . .” He sighed.

I raised my eyes slowly and found him still watching me. Only now he appeared to be somehow disappointed.

“You read many Buddha sutra. Read in Sanskrit, no? But maybe you read too much quick. Miss important parts.” He adjusted himself in the chair, arranging and smoothing his faded robes. “I give some advice, okay?” I nodded dumbly. “Forget third noble truth. You see?
Oos ko fenk doe!
” The Hindi phrase was amusing, arriving unexpectedly in his Tibetan accent. I started to object, but he waved it off and continued. “Now please you tell me. What is first noble truth of Buddha?”

“
Duhkha
,” I replied confidently. “The first noble truth says that all life is suffering.”

“Nice. All life suffering. First noble truth. Very nice.” He looked at me and grinned. His mood seemed to have inexplicably improved. “Is true, eh? What you think?”

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

“What?!” he cut me off. “You do not know? Then you must know some happy in this life?” He seemed to be incredulous at the suggestion that I might ever have actually experienced happiness. “You know what is happy?” Once again he looked as though he were actually expecting an answer.