Several people turned to look at me, and I cannot say that I felt the same glow of friendliness in their faces. I had not raised my hand and waited for the teacher to call on me, maybe that was the reason.
Rinpoche smiled. “Yes my friend. Very good. He is my friend,” he said, speaking to the crowd now. “His sister, too. Very good friend. Yes. What is the purpose, my friend? The purpose . . .” he paused several beats and tapped on his right thigh with the fingers of his right hand. “The purpose is life itself. This is what life is for, this education of the spirit inside you. Everyone says this. Every teacher in all religions. Life is for to learn, to make a progress, to make a movement toward—”
“But if you don’t compound your learning, it can still be a good life, can’t it?”
There was a murmuring among the faithful. I felt foolish, angry at myself, but could not seem to simply stand there quietly, nodding and adoring.
“Yes, of course. As I said—”
“Then what would be the motivation for someone to do the extra work? I mean, life is hard enough, isn’t it? And what if you’re happy with things the way they are? Why change yourself? Why meditate, or pray, or go to church, or try to alter your thoughts from bad to good if you are happy and decent without doing those things?”
“Ah,” Rinpoche said, and I thought I had him. That was the phrase that trotted through my mind. I have him. He was a nice enough guy, the Rinpoche, probably harmless, but a bit of a phony, I could see that now. The people in the room were the type of people who needed to have someone to call “guru,” the way Cecelia did. It made them feel better about the raw adventure that was actual life. It was a kind of safety blanket, one that people like me did not require.
Rinpoche sipped his tea calmly and deliberately, then looked up and sent a beaming smile my way. But I was not about to be disarmed so easily. “You are a good man,” he said, fixing the same direct look on me that he had fixed on the previous questioner. It made me strangely angry to hear him say that. I was being worked, manipulated. “You do not hurt people,” he went on. “You love very much your wife and your children and your work and your sister. I know this about you. Yes, you eat a little too much, my friend.” He laughed, and by this point the entire crowd had turned around to look at me and they were laughing, too, and—this was exceedingly strange and done out of embarrassment perhaps—I found myself putting my hands on my belly as if it were much bigger than it is and shaking it. “Yes, a little too much,” he went on, “but you do good instead of bad. Tell me, why do you?”
A silence fell over the room. I thought at first, I hoped, that the question had been a rhetorical one, but as the silence persisted I realized the Rinpoche wanted an answer. The problem was that no answer came to mind. When the silence became difficult to bear I said, “I’m not sure.”
“Not sure,” Rinpoche said. “Not sure is all right.” He laughed, and the crowd laughed with him. “But when you understand why a person like you chooses the good and not the bad, then you will have your answer to your own question. Think about it now, my friend. Tomorrow I will ask you again and you will answer me, yes?”
“Sure, okay,” I said, but something was burning in me, giving off an acrid, invisible smoke. My thoughts spun in little spiteful circles, so much so that I did not really pay attention to the last two questions and refused to let myself eat any of the not-too-unhealthy snacks that were offered on a side table when the whole performance was finished. I loitered at the edges of the room like a boy at a high school dance, not wanting to be rejected, or rejected again, or laughed at, feeling somehow superior in his shame and embarrassment and envy and shyness. Furious, superior, and ashamed. It was not like me at all.
FIFTEEN
By the time the final question had been asked and answered, I was anxious to get back on the road, and angry without knowing why. As if to spite me, Rinpoche lingered for a long time after he’d finished his presentation, talking to people near the refreshment table, chuckling, answering questions, putting a hand on shoulders, accepting reverent bows. After a while, I went out and stood on the sidewalk in the cooler night air, just stood there and looked out at the devastation. What had happened here? How could something like this happen in America?
I was hungry. And I felt vaguely as if I had sinned—and believe me, that is not a term I use. With their empty interiors and dirty plywood eyes, the fine old stone buildings on Youngstown’s main drag somehow seemed to mirror me: nice enough on the outside, architecturally pleasing and structurally sound, but with some hollowed out places where the rats ran. Why should I have such a feeling? I was not a bad man. Standing there, waiting for the festivities within to come to their smiling conclusion, I carried on an argument with myself. I had done nothing wrong. On the contrary, with only the mildest of fuss I’d rearranged my schedule to get Rinpoche to his talk more or less on time in spite of the fact that he’d been holding on to the letter from my sister for almost two days and had not thought to mention it. True, I had pressed him a little with my questioning, but wasn’t that what the whole thing had been for? What was I supposed to do, just go along with it like the rest of the people in the room? Accept everything he said because he was supposed to be a spiritual master? That wasn’t my style, not at all. My style was to ask, to analyze, to question, to weigh all sides of an issue, and if something didn’t seem like the real truth, to squeeze it until the lie showed itself plainly. Where was the sin in that? I had been respectful, and more honest, it seemed to me, than the other people in the room. Rinpoche hadn’t seemed put off.
Yet something nagged at me, some vague guilt. Compounding that, was Rinpoche’s reply. Why did a person like me do the right thing and not the wrong thing? Fear of jail, divorce, eternal punishment? A belief in heaven? Just in case there turned out to be an afterlife? And for the people who did more “spiritual work” in their lives, who not only didn’t cheat on their spouse or steal from their company or condemn citizens to torture, but spent hours each week in prayer—for those people were there different, higher, more pleasurable levels of paradise?
I sensed I was missing part of the argument. What about those who didn’t do good, for instance, why was that? And what about the issue of death? What was the point of it? How did one prepare for it? I was worrying these questions like a loose button on a shirt when, at last, Rinpoche and a small bevy of admirers spilled out the door. There must have been two dozen thank-yous there on the Youngstown sidewalk, at least as many bows. The smiles, the shining faces, the childlike adoration—why was it all so irritating?
Finally, Rinpoche said his last good-byes to the beautiful woman in braids, made his last bow, and we were backing out of the parking space and heading out of town on 422, a road I’d found while stewing in the car. Rinpoche had gone totally quiet. This, in my experience, was unusual for someone who’d just given a talk. Part of my editing duties included chaperoning authors to readings when they were in town, and almost always after the more successful ones had read, or talked, after they had basked in the admiration of a group of people for an hour or two, there was a certain postpresentation ebullience, a high. It took them an hour, or a few hours, or in certain particularly egotistical cases, several days to realize they actually belonged to the level of ordinary existence, despite the fact that people periodically asked for their autograph or requested their opinion on this or that cooking technique.
Perhaps I sound jealous here. I am not. I’ve never really had much urge to write a book, or go on tour, to sign my name on something I’ve written, to have a cooking show on television and be invited to start a restaurant in SoHo. It’s just that, over the years, I’ve noticed the effect an hour or two of public admiration has on a person, and I saw none of that in Rinpoche.
He sat staring out the window at the wreckage, dark now, of the city. In time, we passed some factories—enormous, hulking wrecks where things had once been made, where people had once worked and earned a paycheck and spent that money in Young
stown’s shops and stores. Only one of these factories had lights on and seemed to be still in use. Soon we were out of Youngstown and riding through a commercial strip where things were still more or less intact.
“Hungry?” I asked my companion.
“Not so much.”
“Even after all that work?”
“Not so much work, talking.”
We went along for a few moments in silence, and I could feel the irrational guilt still clinging to me like a smell. There seemed to be a kind of accusation in the guru’s silence. Possibly I had insulted or embarrassed him. “Listen,” I said, “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I was a bit off-base back there. I came on like an attack dog at the back of the room.”
“Attack dog?”
“You know, my questions were pointed. They were a bit strong. Not appropriate. I should have just kept my mouth shut.”
He was shaking his head in the dark car, looking out at the street and not at me. “No,” he said, sincerely enough. “Your question was the best question, Otto.”
It was the first time I’d heard him use my name, and it sounded odd on his lips. “You’re just saying that to flatter me, to make it so I don’t feel bad.”
“I do not flatter,” he said, in a tone rather more forceful than anything I’d heard him use with me. “Your questions were precisely very good. Your answer to me,” he chuckled and touched my arm lightly, “not so very good.”
“I’ll give it some thought. You said I had until tomorrow.”
“Yes. Tomorrow breakfast.”
“Well, I’m hungry. Do you mind if we stop? We have a ways to go if you’re going to make your lecture in South Bend tomorrow night. I thought we could have dinner and then drive another hour, so we wouldn’t be in such a rush in the morning.”
“Not to rush,” he said.
“Never?”
“Never rush.”
“Right. How about Italian?”
We were passing a place with a sign out front, ALBERINI’S, and the parking lot was full, always a good omen. We parked, went in, and were seated in a sort of greenhouse facing the street. The hostess who seated us, I noticed, had beautiful breasts. It was hard not to notice because she was wearing a very tight, low-cut top that seemed designed to display them. Such was my state of mind that I found myself wondering if my noticing them, my small spasm of almost reflexive lustful thoughts—that I knew would lead nowhere, and didn’t want to lead anywhere—I wondered if somehow these thoughts would hurt, however slightly, my progress along the spiritual path. If there were such a path. If it led anywhere I wanted to go. Look too long at a hostess’s breasts and you end up in a slightly less wonderful level of heaven than you otherwise would have.
This, I said to myself, is where all the mumbo jumbo leads. You’ll start worrying about every little thing—Is the coffee free trade? The chicken free range? Should you stop looking at attractive women? Recycle the wrapper of your chewing gum? Should you go home, lock yourself in your room, and pray, as the Bible instructs, without ceasing?
From this mental morass, the busboy rescued me with a basket of fresh rolls. The waiter was attentive, the rolls warm, the menu extensive, the breasts world-class. Rinpoche had spring water with lemon. I ordered a salad to start, then the duck in a port wine sauce over risotto, and a glass of Pinot Noir. I looked once again at the hostess’s chest, in a sort of childhood stubbornness—no one was going to deny me this small, harmless, aesthetic pleasure—then made myself stop. I missed Jeannie.
The salad arrived with a fine, light, somewhat sweet house Italian dressing that went beautifully with the warmed rolls. The Pinot was just tart enough, plummy and rich. The duck was perfectly cooked, if soaked in a somewhat heavy port wine sauce. But the risotto beneath it, touched with amaretto, fit the dish perfectly. It was awkward, eating in front of someone who was not, and I tried, by apologizing again, by offering him a taste of everything, to work my way free of the guilt that clung to me like a rain-soaked shirt on a humid summer afternoon.
“You are a good man,” Rinpoche said, as if we had been talking about that all along.
“Please, stop with the good man remarks. It sounds false to me, to be perfectly honest. It sounds like flattery.”
“Ah,” he said. “You do not believe you are a good man.”
“Of course I do. I don’t hurt people. I’m a good father, I know that. A good husband. A decent citizen. We do our share of charitable work, Jeannie and I. We give generously to various causes.”
“But something,” he said, and he waved both hands around in a way that he had, as if he were playing an imaginary, upside-down keyboard with floating fingers, the notes not quite beside each other, the piano itself not quite level. “Something missing.”
“No, not really. No.”
“Afraid of some things maybe.”
“Not particularly. I don’t like flying, I’ll say that.”
“Of death,” he said. “Of losing everything.”
“I’m not a death worshipper. I don’t think about it. Life is for the living. What comes with death, well, we can’t control that.” He was nodding and smiling in a way that profoundly irritated me. “Let’s leave it,” I said. “Let’s change the subject.” I took another forkful of the risotto, another sip of the wine, and went on the offensive. “You never had any urge to have children?”
“Of course,” he said. “Sad to me I do not have children yet. I love children very much.”
“Why don’t you then? Vow of celibacy?”
“Sellacy?”
“Celibacy. No sex.”
“Sex, sex,” he said, too loudly. There were people at the nearby tables, and they all heard. It seemed we could not eat a meal in a restaurant without attracting stares. “Rinpoches like sex!”
“Really?”
“Of course. Like women very much!”
“But they would cloud the glass, right?”
He laughed at this as if I were making a joke, and tilted his chin up at the ceiling showing the sinews of his thick neck. “No, no. Women could not cloud the glass, Otto! Rinpoches would have a spiritual wife.”
“Spiritual wife? No sex, you mean.”
He laughed again. “A little bit sex. Not too much. Nothing too much for Rinpoches. Food, sex, sleep, business, giving talks, happiness, sadness . . . not too much.”
“But why? Why only a little sex? Why not a lot of sex if there’s nothing wrong with it?”
“You feel inside when you do something right or when you do something wrong, yes?”
“Yes, sure.”
“I feel inside when I have the right balance.”
“And too much sex would throw you off?”
“Too much anything. Too much meditating, too much talk.”
At this, I fell quiet. I considered the idea of ordering another glass of wine, wanted to—I had no balance problem there—but, thinking of the drive ahead, I refrained. I did savor a piece of tiramisu and a decaffeinated coffee. And then one of the waitstaff was kind enough to suggest a town where we might stop, an hour or so up the road, and a nice inn he thought would be suitable for us. I asked him to pass on my compliments to the chef, on the meal I’d just eaten, mentioned that I edited food books, and the waiter told this to the chef and owner, a man named Richard Alberini. Richard came out for a brief chat, shaking Rinpoche’s hand exactly as if he fit the profile of the typical Tuesday-night customer.
Youngstown, Alberini said, had not so long ago been a thriving place with a strong middle class and a wonderful cultural life. And then the jobs had been shipped elsewhere and the city had begun a long slide from which it still had not recovered. Business in his place had declined, he said, but they still drew customers from all over that part of Ohio. I wondered, talking to him, if the people who had moved the jobs, whoever those people had actually been, ever came back to the city now, even just to drive through. And I wondered, when they did, what kind of feelings they might have, how they would explain the situation
to themselves in a way that left them feeling like good people. Profit fed the life we lived, I knew that, and saw the necessity of it. But those people had made a god of profit, it seemed to me, and according to the rules of their religion, if it was profitable to close the factory and ship the jobs overseas, then it was morally right. In order to keep from feeling guilty, they had, I supposed, devised all sorts of ways of thinking about what they did and didn’t do, all sorts of clever rationalizations. It occurred to me that, in a different arena, I might be in the habit of doing the same thing.
SIXTEEN
The place where we ended up staying on that warm night—the Inn of Chagrin Falls in Chagrin Falls, Ohio—was a few miles off Route 422, down a dark road, tucked behind a town we caught only a glimpse of as we drove in.
The young woman at the reception desk was perfectly welcoming, though Rinpoche flinched when he heard the price of our rooms. I resolved to find a way to take the financial burden of my luxurious tastes off his shoulders. He lingered in the first-floor library, perusing the shelves of books there. We said good night, exchanged bows; I went off to my well-heeled solitude.
Whereas, at the General Sutter Inn, which had zero pretensions and simply was what it was, the creaky floors, patched ceilings, and undersized TV didn’t matter to me in the slightest, the small imperfections at Chagrin Falls nagged like an aching tooth. Unfair, of course, because it really was a very comfortable place, the room cozy and cool, the pillows abundant. But chief among the small imperfections was some kind of air conditioner or air filter machine located outside my window. It hummed loudly until midnight. I was sitting at the glass-topped desk trying to compose a letter to my son, and then, a while later, lying in bed trying to make sense of the day, wondering about internal balance and sex and food, and all the while this loud hum cut into my thoughts like a talkative neighbor on a long flight.
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