by Ulf Wolf
“No, Phil. Engaging, yes. Spellbinding, yes. Dangerous? No. No, I don’t see it.”
“Some see it that way.”
“Who?”
“At this point I’m not at liberty to say. Need-to-know thing.”
Roth nodded, yeah, the need-to-know thing. Said, “What precisely is the danger? What precisely are we looking for?”
Anderson seemed to pull himself even straighter, if that were even possible, a clear sign to Roth that he had hit some nerve or other.
“She is going viral, George.”
“I know. She has for some time.”
“Three hundred twenty million YouTube views since her first lecture, and additional tens of millions on other services. Millions, George.”
Then, just in case Agent Roth was not yet sufficiently impressed, “Topping five hundred million, George. A billion soon at this rate.”
“I know.”
“How viral is that?” asked his boss. “By viral standards.”
“It’s pretty viral.”
“Dangerously viral?”
“Define dangerously, Phil. I can’t do my job if I don’t know what you’re looking for.”
Phil Anderson looked at his wunderkind agent for a long silent moment, then looked out the window, then finally sat down and motioned for Roth to do the same. Regarded Roth again for some silent time. Arrived at a decision.
“Okay, but this stays between us for now. Does not leave this room.”
Anderson had a way of saying most things twice. “Of course.”
“Eli Lilly, Merck, Abbott, you name them, are silently screaming bloody murder.”
“You’re talking Big Pharma?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Why are they screaming?”
“Sales.”
“For heaven’s sake, Phil, spell it out.”
“Do I have to spell it out?”
Roth sighed. “Yes, Phil. You have to spell it out.”
“It seems these boys are monitoring sales very closely these days, and sales of both prescription and over-the-counter anti-depressants are noticeably down.”
“And?”
“And they blame the girl.”
“Ruth Marten? The blame her?”
“That’s the one we’re talking about, George. Yes, Ruth Marten.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Our chain of command begs to differ.”
“It’s been what? Four weeks, five?”
“Since when?”
“Since her first lecture.”
“And?”
“That’s not long enough to establish any sort of cause and effect.”
Again, “Our chain of command begs to differ.”
“The Pharma lobby?” Roth shook his head.
“The pharma boys are hurting, apparently.”
“And how has Marten caused this sinister drop in sales?” began Roth, doing his best to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
Phil Anderson leaned forward as if about to impart sensitive state secrets. “Viral, George. She’s going viral. Seductive, George. That’s the word they’re using. The girl is seductive. Promises.”
“Promises? What promises?”
Anderson sat back again, almost in a recoil. “Not sure. But whatever it is she promises them, they don’t seem to need or buy their meds anymore. Not the way they’re supposed to.”
Roth shook his head again. Either this whole notion was totally insane, or he was missing something. “I’m telling you, Phil. If their sales are down, and I can’t argue that one way or another, because I don’t know, it’s too soon to establish a valid cause.”
Phil drew breath to speak.
“Yes,” interrupted Roth. “I know. Our chain of command begs to differ.”
“Precisely.”
“What do you want me to do, Phil?”
“Keep a very close eye on her, George. Very. As in under a microscope.”
“I already am.”
“Well, keep a closer eye on her, then. Full background. All movements. Plans. Record all her lectures.”
“They’re already doing this for us,” meaning the students with their viral videos. Phil continued as if he hadn’t heard.
“Anything she does. Anywhere she goes.”
“How many men can I have?”
“How many do you need?”
“A dozen perhaps.”
“Done,” said his boss.
“Cars.”
“Whatever you need.”
Again, Roth shook his head at the folly of his “chain of command,” but rose to comply.
“Anything you need,” repeated Phil Anderson.
Then Roth decided to take one last stab at reason. “You know that my specialty is patterns. I’m not sure I am the right man for this.”
“You’re the one they want.”
He knew who they were: the chain of command. “But you’re talking surveillance, here. Potential threat drill.”
“She is a potential threat.”
“My specialty is patterns,” he tried again.
“I know.”
There was no talking his way out of this. “A potential threat to what? Pharma sales?”
“National security.”
“National security?”
“Yes.”
“Come on, Phil. That’s ridiculous.”
“Nonetheless.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Well, take a closer look then, George.”
“Okay, Phil. I will.”
“Everything,” said Phil.
“I know the drill,” said Roth. Then turned to go.
“Everything,” repeated Phil to his back.
“Everything,” said Roth, tossing the word back over his shoulder.
:: 110 :: (UCLA)
Ruth Marten’s first guest lecture was held at UCLA on the 2nd of February, a Saturday. At one point the university administration had wanted to sell tickets to the Royce Hall event, but Ruth vetoed that idea. This was not entertainment, she said, this was a lecture, part of the curriculum. Their tuition fees covered the students’ right to attend, she said.
The administration eventually saw the wisdom of that, but not before Ruth threatened to cancel the lecture.
Student interest in the lecture was overwhelming. So much, in fact, that remote feeds were arranged for the expected attendance overflow. Part of the reason for this interest was Ruth herself, of course, and her viral video lectures which still garnered millions of viewers each day. Another reason for this interest—and what gathered the media and other seekers of scandal and thrill—was the now reputed FBI interest in Ruth Marten.
It was a classic leak. Sources had spoken on the condition of anonymity. Yes, the FBI was conducting an investigation. Yes, strong interest from the very top, apparently. Yes, the FBI considered Ruth Marten a potential risk. These sources could not specify, and would not speculate, what kind of risk, precisely, but risk enough to warrant interest.
Officially, the FBI would not even dignify the rumor with a comment.
This, of course, ensured wall-to-wall media coverage, and when they arrived at UCLA campus, Ruth, Melissa, Ananda, and Abbot White—who had been invited to join them—had to be escorted by a small band of security personnel to shield them from a barely short of frenzied media onslaught.
Safely delivered backstage, Ananda was the first to speak. To no one in particular.
“That was a little more than we bargained for.”
“I’d say,” said Melissa, sitting down.
“Is there any substance to the FBI rumor, do you think?” asked Abbot White.
“I believe there is,” said Ananda. “Clare Downes swore that they were in attendance at one of Ruth’s recent USC lectures.”
“Whatever is going on, you certainly have their attention,” said the Abbot. “Surely, that should be a good thing. Fitting nicely with your plans.”
“A little too nicely,” said Ananda.
<
br /> “Attention is good,” said Ruth. “As long as it’s on the message and not on the peripherals.”
“The circus,” said Melissa.
“Circus, indeed,” said Ananda. Then he asked Ruth, “Are you going to take questions this time?”
“No,” said Ruth. “The hall is too large. And you’re right about the circus. I don’t want to invite circus questions.”
“Good decision,” said Ananda.
“What will you talk about,” asked the Abbot.
“Stillness. I want to revisit stillness. With all this noise, it makes for a very clear contrast.”
“I thought you meant to address parallels between science and religion,” said Ananda.
“Stillness is better,” said Ruth. “I’ve changed my mind.”
Ananda nodded at this. Yes, he agreed.
Melissa and the Abbot saw the wisdom of that, too.
A young girl appeared at the door. “Five minutes, Miss Marten. Should I seat your guests?”
“Yes,” said Ruth. “Please.”
As they rose to follow their guide, Melissa hugged her daughter and said, “Break a leg, Sweetheart.”
“Of course,” said Ruth.
With three minutes to go, there was only Ruth Marten in the backstage room, listening and trying to plum the mood of the nearly two thousand people expecting her only a few steps away.
After a few long breaths, the door opened again. The young girl was back. “It’s time, Miss Marten.”
:
I remember addressing such multitudes in the past. The difference between then and now is almost frightening. In long-ago India I spoke to a still lake, a collective calm you could almost touch.
These people, this age, makes for a very stormy surface.
It’s a windy room. The rustle of a million leaves, bending in my direction. Many of them are here for the message, and that pleases me. But not a few are here for other reasons, something that rarely, if ever, happened in India.
Values. The emphasis has shifted so darkly, so deeply. These poor people struggle to find a true footing, overwhelmed by the need to own, the urge to consume. Their bodies playing into the hands of the profiteers.
Of course this happened in India too, man has not changed much when it comes to his fundamental greed, but never, never on this scale, with this force, with this volume. Wave upon wave of the commercial, of the demand that you open your mouth wide, wide, wider and do nothing but swallow, that you do nothing but consume. It makes for a very rough surface to first still then enter.
I see Ananda in the front row. He, more than anything, brings to mind those long ago days when he was the live recorder, when he tasked himself with remembering every word I spoke that he may ensure the Dhamma lived on. These digital days this remembering, of course, is no longer needed. I can see a dozen or more video cameras, all trained on me. Within minutes after I finish the lecture, my entire talk will be available to the world online. That, if anything, is a boon of the day, is the one edge—despite all darkness—that technology has brought to the world. The one blessing.
The lights flicker a warning that they are about to dim and the rustle grows quieter. I can feel the expectation rise like some living thing with many arms. It reaches for me.
:
Ananda, seated in-between Abbot White and Melissa, took in the Buddha where she stood, herself taking in the packed hall in turn. And like Ruth, he also thought about that long-ago India when his task was a crucial three-fold: to hear every word of the Buddha, to understand every word of the Buddha—he had a carte blanche to ask about anything he did not fully understand, and the Buddha had promised that he would explain until it was fully clear to him—and to remember every understood word so that it could be passed on as living Dhamma.
And like Ruth he also took in the many video cameras trained on the stage, doing his job for him, and so much more efficiently—but without understanding, of course.
The lights dimmed now, and a single wide, soft beam fell upon the shimmeringly black hair of his friend.
And for a third time, she began her lecture with that one word, spoken into itself:
“Silence.”
It was palpable, and into it she continued:
“Many considered Sai Baba of Shirdi an incarnation of Lord Krishna. Whether he was, I don’t know. But I do know that many Hindus, and many Muslims, consider him a saint. And saintly he was.
“And the saintliest thing he ever said—and he said many saintly things—was, ‘Before you speak ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve upon the silence?’
“Brilliant advice in its own right—something we all both can and should take to heart, and so improve upon both personal and political relations.
“We should all ask ourselves, is what we are about to say kind? Will it help our friend—or our enemy? Do we speak out of compassion?
“Do we in fact have to say it? Is it necessary? Is it needed? Will it in fact help the situation? Or are we speaking just to hear ourselves talk, because we are so enamored of our own sageness that we simply have to impart it to others?
“Is what we are about to say true? Really true? Not just truish, but in every aspect not a lie?
“How often do we let things leave our lips that are in fact unkind, that—were you really to observe—make our friends, or parents, or our children, wince a little at hearing? Things that leave little scars, seen were you to finely tune your sight.
“How often do we speak not from need or necessity, but from the wish to be heard? And how often do we not embellish, or twist, or simply make up out of whole cloth what we say? How often does truth not serve as the touchstone for speaking or not?
“And most importantly, and this is where I believe Sai Baba of Shirdi reveals his sainthood: Does what you are about to say improve upon the silence?”
As if to underline the last question, Ruth said nothing for nearly a full minute.
“Silence, at its core, is not a dead thing. It is not merely the absence of sound. Of course, there are degrees. There is the pleasant absence of noise. The wonderful stillness of the baby, now fed again, returning to contented sleep and no longer crying in her cot. That is silence, of course, but a silence spreading from the absence of hungry lungs thanking you for the meal.
“And there is the silence settling upon a forest where the storm has now died down to virtual stillness. Where the waving and rustling of branches—where that mumbling and scratching and sharing of foresty opinion has settled into peaceful and unnoticeable swaying to the rhythm of the earth. But that is a silence in contrast to the wind. A lack of rushing air. A lack.
“There is the silence under northern skies when you step out of the noisily warm cottage and into the snowy winter’s night. Again, a silence of contrast, and one that last no longer than it takes your ear to adjust, for soon the ear finds that this silence is not true, there is the whisper of stars above, a crackling of atmosphere, heard as not silence when you really listen.
“This winter’s night also holds the vast settling of snow, slowly pulled by a never sleeping gravity into the arms of the earth and with it the minute shifting of flakes so numerous as to give the number of stars above a run for their money.
“Again, this a relative silence, one of contrast.
“But there is a true silence, a living silence. A silence without which there would be no relative silence. A silence without which there would be no life.
“Wise men have always known this. Wise men have always practiced this. Lao Tzu was prepared to leave his home for the wilderness without saying a word. Nothing, he had decided, would improve upon his silence. The Buddha, until entreated to change his mind, leaned toward silence. Many a mystic have caught a glimpse, a living moment of utter stillness that says all, to then spend the rest of their lives discovering or walking the path toward it, for nothing else, nothing else—once you’ve heard, seen, experienced it, truly matters.”
Ruth paused to sip some water. She looked over at Ananda, who nodded, yes, yes.
She looked over at Abbot White as well, who also, Ananda noticed, smiled and nodded in agreement. He, too, knew the perfect stillness—hovering above his long-ago sunlit ocean—he, too, knew what she was talking about.
Then she said, “Another thing about true silence: it is unkillable. Many have tried to kill it, both in themselves and in others.
“And another thing: It does not gender greed. It does not gender craving. The more silent the man, the closer he grows to this unkillable thing, the less he needs, the more unprofitable to those chasing wealth at his expense he becomes.
“When I say unkillable, I truly mean that. It is also the only permanent thing there is. All other things in this cosmos rise and fade. They rise and they fade. True stillness never rises, it never fades.
“True stillness is, in fact, not of this cosmos and sees no need to play by its rules.
“Yet, without true stillness there would be no cosmos.”
Ruth paused again to let her words sink in, to let them germinate, perhaps take root. Ananda looked over at Abbot White. His eyes were closed but the smile on the Abbot’s lips spoke volumes.
Ruth continued:
“The true silence is deathless, it lies beyond the cosmos of cause and effect, yet it lies in the heart of every being. In the heart of everyone in this hall. In the heart of every person in this city. In the heart of every living thing in this world, in this cosmos.
“The Buddha once said that there is a dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind. Where there is neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, he said, there is neither coming nor going, nor stasis. There, there is neither passing away nor arising. This dimension has no stance, no foundation, no support.
“This, the Buddha went on to say, is the unborn, the unoriginated, the uncreated, the unformed. And were it not for this unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed dimension at the heart of things, escape from the world of the born, the originated, the created, the formed, would not be possible.
“This is true silence, the unconditioned stillness.
“Incidentally, and perhaps I should say luckily, this is also true happiness, the thing we’re all—were we to look deeply and be perfectly honest with ourselves—the very thing we’re all chasing.