by Ulf Wolf
“Wow,” said Clare again. “You should write an article or something about this. I’ve never heard it explained like this, though this makes perfect sense.”
“It’s true,” said Ruth.
Ananda nodded in agreement.
“Is that why swearing off intoxicants is part of the five precepts?”
“It’s hard enough to truly see with the prism we drag around day-to-day,” said Ruth, “confusing the prism with chemicals just makes it harder. Also, THC stirs physical urges and cravings. Sexual urges, and a craving for food, sweets in particular.”
Clare nodded. “Right on both counts.”
“Alcohol will also get you into sexual trouble, not because of stimulation but by dissolving restraint.”
Clare nodded again.
“None of these things, alcohol, marijuana, drugs, sex, sweets, what have you, are intrinsically bad. Nothing is intrinsically bad. But they are unskillful in that they hamper your path.
“This, again, is why you meditate. In the fourth Jhana things have really slowed down—meaning that you are now, not physically mind you, but as a consciousness, sampling the present more often, perhaps even in real time—things have really slowed down to a point where you can see, directly, not by the use of your prism, which you have left behind by now, but directly as consciousness, as view.
“Now you can, prism-less, see what things really are. Anything that hinders this is unskillful. That’s why we have the precepts.”
“No killing, no stealing, no lying, no illicit sex, no intoxicants,” said Clare.
“Those are the five for the lay person,” said Ananda. “There are others, more stringent ones, all aimed at removing obstacles to seeing clearly.”
“Yes,” said Clare. “Yes, I know.”
“Is that really true?” said Roth from behind them, obviously now listening in on the conversation.
Ruth turned to him, “Absolutely.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Roth.
Even Melissa showed that Ruth’s little lecture had caught her attention and brought her fully awake, “Clare’s right. You should write an article about this, or something. You explained it very well.”
“The important thing,” said Ruth, addressing Clare again. “Is that no one thing is good or bad innately—same as no one thing is beautiful or ugly innately. Things are good or bad to the degree they help or hinder your progress on the path. And when it comes to beauty and ugliness, well that’s just a matter of opinion, isn’t it?”
“Though,” said Clare, “it seems there’s quite an agreement about that. I mean, most of us considers a sunset beautiful.”
“Agreed upon opinion, yes,” said Ruth. “But neither the sun, nor its setting constitute beauty. It is truly in the eyes of the beholder.”
In the silence that followed, the drone of the four colossal jet engines seemed to fill the air and carpet the cabin.
Then Roth—who had been mulling the phrase and could not let go of it—said, “What do you mean by in real time? How long is the present, then? Or is there even such a thing as an actual present?”
Ruth turned to him, interested, “What do you think I mean?”
“I don’t know. Well, what I do know—I did the math—is that you said that even fifty samplings a second is not actually real time, if I heard you right. That means that the present is less than a fiftieth of a second long.”
“Do you think that there is a discrete present, a distinct now?” said Ruth.
“There has to be, doesn’t it? We’re here, aren’t we? In the present.”
“Or is that an illusion?” said Ruth.
“I don’t know,” said Roth.
“Perhaps the present is the width of a molecule. Perhaps a razor’s edge could hold countless nows.”
“I don’t know,” said Roth. “I hope you do.”
“You do, too,” said Ruth.
“I do?”
“At heart.”
Roth was about to reply when the captain came on the air to announce the start of their decent to Los Angeles International airport, and to tell the flight attendants to begin to prepare for landing.
Once the drone-filled silence returned Roth said, “What do you mean, at heart?”
“What is true, what is illusion, what is the present, past, and future? These questions can only be seen by experience, can only be answered by the person himself, or herself. Have you ever meditated, Agent Roth?”
“No.”
“I will teach you.”
“I’d like that,” said Roth, and then sank bank into his pondering, into his sensing of patterns, and into the surprising certainty that the young woman in seat 14J was incapable of lying.
:: 119 :: (Pasadena)
Ananda could not help but overhear, for Melissa did not seem to care who heard her, and her voice—more wielded than spoken—sounded now and then like tears. He could not remember the last time, if ever, he had heard Melissa so emotional.
The exchange was taking place in the kitchen, Ruth—he could picture—at the table, Melissa by the stove for dinner was just about ready.
“You made me a promise, Ruth. I don’t care who you are. You promised me.”
Ananda could not make out Ruth’s reply, if indeed she did say anything.
“You promised,” said Melissa again, this time turned back toward the stove, for her voice now arrived as if from farther away.
“I promised,” said Ruth quite clearly, as if she wanted Ananda to hear, and to arrive sooner rather than later to corroborate, “that I would no longer travel. I never promised that I would stop lecturing altogether.”
That was true, Ananda could corroborate this.
“If you did,” said Melissa, louder now, so facing Ruth again, “I did not hear that.”
“You did, too,” said Ruth. “On the flight back home from Paris, remember?”
“I do not remember that,” said Melissa. “I remember you promising me to never lecture again.”
There were a lot of things Ruth could have replied at this moment, for Ananda knew that she felt wrongly accused by Melissa. But instead she said:
“It is my job, Melissa. I am a teacher.” And then Ruth added the word she rarely used these days, “Mom.”
Melissa did not answer, and Ananda decided this was the right moment to join in the conversation. He rose, stretched a little—those almost ancient limbs protesting, though not too much—and made his way into the now silent kitchen, but for the murmur of food cooking.
“Ananda,” said Ruth. “Tell her.”
“Tell her what?” said Ananda, mostly—or entirely—for Melissa’s benefit.
“Tell her that I never promised to stop lecturing.”
Melissa turned to him, but Ananda could see that either she had known this all along or she just remembered the air-exchange.
Still, he said, “She never promised to stop lecturing.”
Melissa didn’t answer, but turned back to stirring the fry. Ananda took his seat. Then she said, quietly, to her hands or the just about ready now tofu, “I know.”
Ruth and Ananda exchanged glances. Ruth drew breath, but Ananda gently shook his head. No, it would not improve upon the silence.
When Melissa had served them, and taken her own seat, she said, “I am just so, so incredibly worried about you, Ruth.”
“I know,” said Ruth. “I really do know.”
“Yes,” said Melissa, more to herself now. “Yes, of course you do.”
“I’ve spoken to USC security,” said Ananda. “They are fully aware of all that happened in Europe. Agent Roth has spoken to them as well, and offered his services, which they apparently have accepted. They will make sure, absolutely sure, that Ruth is safe.”
“Can they make absolutely sure? Is there even such a thing, especially under these circumstances?” said Melissa.
Ananda and Ruth exchange another glance: there was, of course, no such thing, not under these or any circumstances. But who of
them was to admit that?
Neither, as it turned out.
“USC security guarantees her safety,” said Ananda.
“Words,” said Melissa.
“That may be, but those are words we have to believe,” said Ananda.
“She could have been killed,” said Melissa. “Twice.”
“But I wasn’t,” said Ruth. “And I have a job to do.”
“You can do that from here,” said Melissa. “Tape your talks from here.”
“No,” said Ruth. “I need; I want a real audience. Besides, I am not hiding.”
“Agent Roth,” said Ananda before Melissa could offer another objection cum suggestion, “told me that it is very unlikely that they would try something on U.S. soil, as he put it. Europe was one thing; they could try things at arms’ length. Here, there is no such distance. It’s all on them if something happens. It’s their home turf.”
“Who are they?” asked Melissa after a short spell, her face slightly pained as if she was digesting something unpalatable.
“He does not really know, but he believes that the U.S. Government is involved, at least on some level. He’s doing his best, he says, to find out.”
“Well, that’s just it,” said Melissa, tears not far off. “If our Government sees fit to kill my daughter, does it matter where she props herself up as a target?”
“By that token,” said Ruth. “I’m as much of a target right here.”
Brutal, thought Ananda, but true. Melissa fought but failed to hold back new tears.
“Sorry, Mom,” said Ruth. “That wasn’t fair.”
“But true,” said Ananda. “If they truly want her dead at any cost, and neither I nor Agent Roth believe that they do, she is not truly safe anywhere. Roth believes that they will abandon any assassination plans now that she’s back home, but warns that they will probably deploy some other tactic to stop her.”
“Just because she threatens their bottom line,” said Melissa, wiping her eyes with indignation. “Big Pharma’s profits.”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Ananda, Ruth nodding in agreement.
“That just isn’t fair,” said Melissa, almost petulantly.
“No it is not,” agreed Ananda.
“At least we’re getting a lot of coverage,” suggested Ruth—attempting to lighten the discussion with a silver lining no matter how tenuous.
As a statement it could hardly be more true. Recent U.S. and world-wide news had been about little else. Two attempts on this young prodigy teacher’s life. Many outlets had revived earlier coverage from her Cal Tech days, as well as her Federico Alvarez episode. And her (outrageous) claim to be the Buddha. Her youth. Her genius. Many papers and stations, however, even though critical of Ruth herself, took serious issue with anyone in Europe shooting at an American citizen, and in essence took her side. Some even questioned the authorities’ capability to keep her alive on American soil, to which a spokesman quickly responded with glossy assurances.
“Are you saying this has been worth it?” said Melissa, clearly not pleased. “Someone trying to kill you is worth it?”
“Frankly, since they failed, yes.”
“You’re not helping,” offered Ananda.
“Damn right, she’s not,” confirmed Melissa.
“I’m sorry,” said Ruth. “I don’t want to appear flippant about this. But you know that I have a job to do, and the job is getting done. I think—no, I know—that I’m touching people, that I’m reaching people, when the powers that be feel threatened to this extent.”
“Is that supposed to be the silver lining?” said Melissa.
“It’s supposed to be the truth,” answered her daughter. “It is the truth.”
Melissa looked over to Ananda for support, surely he saw reason.
“What she said,” said Ananda, pointing at Ruth with his fork.
“This is not funny,” said Melissa.
“It wasn’t meant to be,” said Ananda. “Tathagata has a job to do. She is doing it. And she is doing it well. That much is true. It is a frightening situation, yes, I agree, but we have to make the best of it. We have help, we have exposure. I am sure, as sure as I can be under these circumstances, that Ruth, that her life, will be safe. But regardless, she has a job to do, and we, she, cannot stop now. She cannot cower or hide. And you, Melissa, in your heart know this.”
In her heart, Melissa does know, and there is no need for a reply.
:
The following Tuesday, it’s now the 17th of March, Ruth Marten returns to her lecture hall, and—as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place at all since she last saw them—gives her class (and a curious faculty, almost outnumbering the students) the first in a series of lectures on Anapanasati, meditation on in- and out-breathing.
“Anapanasati is what the Buddha practiced during his night of enlightenment,” she tells them. “And it is what he mostly practiced for the rest of his life.”
She suggested two books on the subject, both of which—within days—had set national and international download records, much to the publishers’ delight. The few print copies that remained were bought up within an hour of the first lecture (as usual) going viral on the Internet.
It was as if Ruth Marten could not have planned it better. Events, along with her earlier history and recent lectures, had made her a national, and international, celebrity, and an unusual celebrity at that: a believable celebrity.
The media soon reports a true Anapanasati meditation swell; the word tsunami is used, and a little too often (it soon wears thin). Still, fact remains, more people than ever in the history of the world were in fact setting out on a path of meditation. Even some of the television news anchors admitted to trying it—initially out of professional curiosity, but soon, as one major network admission went, there was no denying the peace it gathered. This, of course, did nothing to halt the swell.
The word craze was also used a lot, especially among those who gleefully predicted the imminent and worldwide abandonment of this collective insanity, an abandonment that refused to materialize.
And refused to materialize.
And so, by the time the April 15th Faith Summit convened in New York, organized religion had a problem on its hand, very much so.
:: 120 :: (New York City)
Though effectively kept from both press and public, it was common knowledge within the agency—and Roth, through hints (and some direct comments) from his former colleagues, soon pieced things together: the New York Faith Summit was in fact suggested, financed, and in large part arranged by Big Pharma under the auspices of the United Nations. In fact, it was the UN that facilitated the two-day conference.
And: the FBI also had a say in the proceedings—off-stage, of course.
The purpose was clear enough, and readily agreed to by those concerned and therefore invited: to eliminate the disruptive influence of one Ruth Marten.
Otto Jones, the as-a-rule jovial (and always bow-tied) attorney with strong ties—all at a carefully constructed arm’s length, mind you—to the pharmaceutical lobby in general and the Biotechnical Industry Association in particular did not have to engage in arm-twisting to recruit his delegates.
On paper, Jones was representing The Church of Chrystal Faith, the fastest growing New Protestant movement in the country, and was also the chair of the conference.
Jones’ office saw a flurry of activity during the last week in March and the first week in April in order to select, contact, and recruit (as he put it) viable delegates for the summit—viable in the sense of sanctioning official action: the already established, though hidden, agenda.
The selection (based both on influence with their respective organizations and publicly voiced calls for action regarding Ruth Marten) had been finalized by the 2nd of April, and by the 6th all invitees had accepted.
The conference was set for Monday the 15th of April, beginning at 10 a.m. and was to run for as long (or as short) as needed.
T
he room, which was to hold eight delegates, Jones included, was rather small—Jones thought of it as homely when he first saw it—considering the stature of the gathering, and dominated by the large teak conference table seating the eight who would eventually sign the now famous (or infamous, depending on view) resolution:
Otto Jones, the chair at the head of the table, and farthest from the door leading to the much larger hall filled with assistants and members of the press.
John Keeler, the newly appointed Boston Archbishop facing Jones from the other short end of the table, and representing the interests of the Catholic Church.
Along one side of the table, the one to Jones’ right, sat, first, the Reverend Blackburn Moses, the head of the Southern Baptist Convention. His response to Otto Jones’ phone call had been that if Jones had not called this summit meeting, he would have called it himself in order to stop the Devil in his (or her, with a vocal sneer) tracks.
Next, and in the center, sat the unquestionably beautiful Aisha Amiri, the well-known secretary of the American Muslim Federation.
Rabbi Doron Hefter occupied the third seat at that side of the table. Rabbi Hefter had been the first Rabbi to denounce Ruth Marten and her subversive tactics to befuddle the youth of today—this, apparently, after attendance at his New York synagogue had dropped by well over fifty percent due to all this “Anapasti Mumbo Jumbo” as he put it.
Down the other side of the table sat, first, and nearest to Jones, a somewhat uncomfortable Laron Miller, representing the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. He had the feeling (and perhaps correctly so) that he had only been invited to meet some preordained quota of delegates, and—while he did have serious reservations about Ruth Marten—wasn’t quite sure what he had to contribute. Still, the elders had agreed it was a good idea that he participated—for PR reasons if nothing else—so here he was, participating.
To his left sat the flush-faced Reverend John Fielding, the long-time head of the United Methodist Church, and apparently in need of drink. He checked his watch once, twice, and then again, to get this thing started so we can move onto lunch.