Reality by Other Means. James Morrow

private bedchamber, where a smiling nun hovered over a tea cart that held a ceramic pot and a You Only Live Twice collector’s mug, plus a plain white mug presumably intended for me.

      “I don’t doubt that I am ignorant, Your Holiness,” I told Chögi Gyatso. “What are the seven rightful branches?”

      “Correct mindfulness, correct discernment, correct effort, correct joy, correct pliancy, correct meditation, and correct equanimity, but don’t worry about it, Your Hairiness. Perhaps you have the makings of a bodhisattva, perhaps not, but for now we simply want to increase your compassion quotient. Your education will begin with a simple oath honoring Sakyamuni, his teachings, and the community of monks and nuns he founded.”

      “Sounds good,” I said, inhaling the sweet oily fragrance of the tea.

      “Recite the following vow three times. ‘I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the dharma, I take refuge in the samgha.’”

      “‘I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the dharma, I take refuge in the samgha.’”

      Twice more I repeated the pledge, and then His Holiness gifted me with a kata — a white silk scarf — draping it around my neck. The nun filled his mug with buttered tea, handed him the pot, and slipped away. He proceeded to load my mug beyond its capacity, the greasy amber fluid spilling over the rim and cascading across the tray, flooding the spoons and napkins.

      “Might I suggest you stop pouring?” I asked.

      Chögi Gyatso maintained his posture, so that the tray soon held the entire steaming, roiling, eddying contents of the teapot. “Like this mug, your mind is much too full. It runs over with useless musings and self-generated afflictions. You will not progress until you shed all such psychic baggage.” He pointed toward a huge porcelain bathtub, elevated on four solid-brass lion paws to accommodate a brazier for heating the water. “And if you are to empty your mind, Taktra Kunga, you must first empty this tub, transferring all twenty gallons to the cistern we use for flushing the toilets. I was planning to take a nice warm bath tonight, but that ambition has now fallen away.”

      “Where’s the bucket?” I asked.

      “You will not use a bucket, but rather this implement.” Chögi Gyatso reached toward the inundated tea tray and withdrew a dripping silver spoon.

      “That’s ridiculous,” I said.

      “Indeed,” said Chögi Gyatso. “Completely ridiculous. The cistern is at the end of the corridor, last room on the left.”

      “What if I refuse?”

      “Taktra Kunga, need I remind you that these lessons were your idea? In truth I have better things to do with my time.”

      “How long will the job take?”

      “About seven hours. I suggest you get started right after lunch.”

      “Do you want me to chant a mantra or anything?”

      “You are not yet ready for meditation, but if you insist on chanting something” — His Holiness offered a sly wink — “try the following: ‘That’s a Smith and Wesson, and you’ve had your six.’”

      “Dr. No, right?”

      The bodhisattva dipped his head and said, “To become enlightened is to encounter the perfect void, the final naught, the ultimate no. Alternatively, you may wish to ponder the following koan: when a chicken has sex with an egg, which comes first?”

      His Holiness laughed uproariously. Under normal circumstances, I might have shared his merriment, but I was too depressed by the thought of the tedious chore that lay before me.

      “Evidently it would be best if I did not ponder anything in particular,” I said.

      “That is the wisest remark you have made all morning.”

      With an aggrieved heart but a curious intellect, I did as my teacher suggested, consuming my lunch, a bowl of noodle soup, then getting to work. While His Holiness sat rigidly in his study, alternately reading Tsong Khapa’s The Great Exposition of the Stages of the Path and Ian Fleming’s The Man with the Golden Gun, I ferried twenty gallons of bathwater from tub to cistern, one ounce at a time. As Chögi Gyatso predicted, the task took all afternoon and well into the evening. Alas, instead of growing vacant my skull became jammed to the walls with toxic resentments. I wanted to put thorns in His Holiness’s slippers. I wanted to break his drums and shatter his James Bond DVDs.

      “The job is done,” I told my teacher at nine o’clock.

      “Go to your bedchamber, Taktra Kunga, first door on the right. An excellent dinner awaits you, mutton curry with rice. I would suggest that you turn in early. Come morning, the nun will bring you two oranges. After you have savored their sweet juices and exquisite pulp, you should begin your second labor.”

      “Which is?”

      “Replenishing the tub.”

      “You must be joking.”

      “That is correct, Taktra Kunga. I am joking. It’s a funny idea — isn’t it? — filling the big tub you so recently emptied.”

      “Very funny, yes.”

      “However, please know that, come tomorrow afternoon, I may wish to bathe.”

      “I see,” I said evenly.

      “Do you?”

      “Alas, yes. Might I use a bucket this time?”

      “No. Sorry. The spoon. You should aim to finish by three o’clock, whereupon the nun will start warming my bath.”

      I figured I had no choice, and so the next day, right after consuming my two oranges, which were truly delicious, I spent another seven hours wielding my pathetic spoon, transferring the water ounce by dreary ounce. Midway through the ordeal, I realized that my anger at Chögi Gyatso had largely vanished. Here I was, receiving personal instruction in a magnificent religious tradition from the world’s most famous holy man. It behooved me to be glad, not to mention grateful. At the very least I must become like a luscious female operative in thrall to Agent 007, surrendering to my teacher with a willing spirit.

      “And now let me ask a question,” said Chögi Gyatso after I’d finished drawing his bath. “What if I commanded you to empty the tub all over again?”

      “I would gnash my teeth,” I replied.

      “And then?”

      “I would growl like a snow lion.”

      “And then?”

      “I would gasp like a dying climber.”

      “And then?”

      “I would empty the tub.”

      “That is a very good answer, Taktra Kunga. Now go home to your woman and make love to her long into the night.”

      At the start of the third lunar month, the hulking emissary Lopsang Chokden reappeared in my lair and delivered a new message from His Holiness, but only after once again consuming a mug of pineal-gland tea and sorting contemplatively through our skulls. Chögi Gyatso, I now learned, wanted me to return to Sikkim forthwith and seek him out in the New Ganden Monastery. I should anticipate spending four full weeks with His Holiness — and pack my luggage accordingly.

      “Twenty-eight days of celibacy,” sneered Gawa. “Really, Taktra Kunga, your guru is asking a lot of you — me — us.”

      “Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder,” I replied.

      “Horse manure.”

      “Please try to understand. I’m not at peace with myself.”

      We passed the rest of the day alternately quarreling and copulating, and the following morning Gawa sent me off with her resentful blessing. I made my way south through the Lachung Pass, pausing to dine