Deshi. John Donohue
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the head of the room, Changpa looked placidly into the audience and held up a hand to quiet them. The lama smiled sheepishly. It was, I thought, the most genuine moment of the night. He had a good smile. A human face. I liked him.
“This is, I know, a thing of intense interest for people.” He looked around the room. “There is, even in a place like America, where science is so powerful… there is this need for mystery.”
I nodded to myself. I had seen the same hunger in the dojo. Many trainees worked long to get behind the veil of technique and effort and practice, hoping to find a mystery. Each student had his or her own idea of what the mystery should be, of course. And what many found depended on what they had set off to see in the first place. If you stayed long enough, however, I thought that what you discovered after hard training and discipline was simply more discipline. And maybe a small, tiny voice, whispering that the human spirit’s ability to endure was the greatest mystery of all.
“There is no mystery here,” the Rinpoche continued. “No magic. Please. I have no desire to appear on the cover of your supermarket tabloids.” He grinned at the appreciative laughs from the audience.
“And I do not know what to call the… experiences I sometimes have.” Changpa looked around. “You cannot turn it on and off like a light switch. It is not a conjurer’s trick.” Again, the smile. “So I will read your minds just once tonight and add that, no, I will not be able to demonstrate this experience to you further.” There was some laughter again and a smattering of applause. Then he grew more serious. “But I have thought long and hard on a question very much like yours.”
Changpa looked into the rear of the room, toward his questioner. For a brief moment, I saw the flash of focus in his eyes. It transmitted a sense of power and perception that was almost frightening in its directness. It was similar to what I often glimpsed in my own teacher: a revelation of an ability as intriguing as it was scary. I could see the young man standing next to me almost sag at the impact of Changpa’s gaze. I don’t know what he had hoped to achieve through his question. I only know that he got more than he bargained for. He sat down then, slowly, collapsing like a deflated balloon.
The lama continued his explanation as if nothing had occurred. But I noticed the tilt of Yamashita’s head: he had seen it, too.
The holy man’s words grabbed my attention again. “Certainly Chenzerig, the Buddha of Compassion, provides people with an awareness of many different things in different ways. Some people hear the beauty of music more clearly than others. Artists are more attuned to the subtlety of color. These are sometimes vehicles to lead us to dharma, to truth.”
The room grew quieter as people listened intently. For the first time that evening, Changpa sat on the platform provided him. His hand reached into his robes and drew forth a string of prayer beads. He gestured with the beads. “But sensation often can serve as an impediment. Each bead on this mala represents four obstacles to truth. There are twenty-seven beads here, and four times twenty seven is one hundred and eight.” I saw a number of heads nodding in recognition of the point. Changpa smiled again. “We believe that there are one hundred and eight basic obstacles that need to be removed or purified to reach the True Way.” His fingers worked the beads almost automatically. “In our daily lives, the endless details of existence can sometimes obscure the dharma, the true path. It is like the old saying you have: a man cannot see the forest for the trees.” He looked around the room.
“My gift is that I can sometimes be elevated to a place where I can see the forest. Or even beyond it. I do not think it a mystery. Perhaps it is that, for a brief time, the Way is less…” he struggled for a word, his eyes remote. Then he finished. “… less occluded.” He smiled sadly. “It is, I believe, what the Lord Buddha seeks for us all.”
Out of the corner of my eye I had noticed Yamashita leaning forward, as if to better catch Changpa’s explanation. As the lama finished, my teacher sat back, slowly exhaling in a sound that telegraphed a release of tension and a sense of deep satisfaction.
There was a reception for Changpa after the lecture. It was an invitationonly deal, but Yamashita’s name and mine were on the list. It was held in a special exhibition gallery near the auditorium—not because the space was conducive to crowds, but, I suspected, because there was no furniture to move.
Even so, it was packed. The audience streamed out of the theater, setting up currents of movement, eddies of conversation. I tried to work our way through the crowd, but gave up and took my teacher around to the gallery’s back entrance. A few people had the same idea. And they were being screened by a large guy with a clipboard. He wasn’t wearing a museum staff uniform. And there was a subtle undercurrent in the air around him, a hint of barely suppressed anger. Or fear.
As we moved closer, I got a better look. He was in his mid-twenties, and had the easy stance of an athlete. Maybe six-two or three. Not huge by NFL standards, but big enough. He certainly loomed over me. I don’t think Yamashita, who’s even smaller, noticed. He’s not even concerned, with these things. Size to him is merely part of an equation of angles, distances, and lines of attack. It’s certainly not an element of intimidation.
But you could see that this guy liked to use his bulk that way. He was dressed all in black; an affectation that I vaguely associated with show biz or the art world. The dark clothes hid the musculature, but you could see the hint of power in the neck that swelled from his stylish little turtleneck. The guy was a people-handler. He seemed an odd companion for the Rinpoche.
We got to the head of the line.
“Hi,” I said, giving the man my card. “I’m Dr. Burke. My guest and I should be on the list of invitees.”
He took the card and didn’t look at it. He looked down at his clipboard, flicking back and forth among the pages. His face took on a hard look. “No. Uh-uh. I don’t see it.”
I glanced at Yamashita. My job as his student is to pave the way for him. He is, after all, my sensei. It was embarrassing to have this sort of snag pop up. But I stayed calm.
“Sure, I understand,” I told the man guarding the door. “Arrangements were made through the Office of Special Events.” I could see that none of this made the slightest impact.
The man shook his head. “Yeah, well look. I don’t know about that.” You could see him make his final decision: it was like watching a shade roll down behind his eyes. His hard look got harder. “I’m gonna have to ask you to move along, now.”
“Maybe we should talk to your supervisor…” I offered. “I’m sure the head of security can clear this up.”
The man moved closer to us, trying to use his body to reinforce his request. Yamashita watched dispassionately, like a scientist viewing an interesting, yet routine, experiment performed by a colleague. But he didn’t budge. And I got the subtle message: this problem was mine to deal with.
“I’m telling you once,” the guard said tightly. “You’re not on the list. You don’t get in. Now beat it.”
You could sense the shove coming. It was in the way his tone of voice began to cycle upward. A slight adjustment of his feet. I think his nostrils even flared slightly. In Yamashita Sensei’s dojo we call it telegraphing. So I wasn’t surprised when he tried to move me.
He shoved, and I could see his eyes narrow with anger when I stayed rooted to the spot. It’s a pretty basic skill, once you get the hang of it. Without balance, my teacher says, nothing can be achieved. The naive think he’s waxing philosophical. In reality, he thinks fighters should avoid falling down.
“I want you out of here,” the big man hissed at me. He was getting ready to do something else. This was not the place for a shoving match. And I got the sense my friend here was getting ready to take things to the next level. It worried me. Not in terms of the physical stuff. But I could see the headlines in the paper: Museum Mayhem: Martial Artist Crashes Party.
“Is there a problem?” a woman’s voice asked from the room beyond the door. I got the initial impression of an attractive, fit form with dark hair. She