Miss Buddha (5 page)

A tall monk in white robes raises a Bible
for him to see. Bruno looks away. The monk speaks. Bruno does not
listen. The monk moves himself and the Bible into Bruno’s line of
vision. Bruno looks away again, averting the detestable thing that
has brought this about—though, of course, he knows the book is not
to blame, but the surrounding imbeciles who—slaves to the word—know
no better.

The tall monk moves again and speaks again,
and again Bruno refuses to listen—turning nearly shouted words into
unintelligible sounds—and refuses to look. Instead, he closes his
eyes, firmly, deciding never to open them again.

A short-lived decision, for the sudden
crackle of flame swings them open, morbidly curious. Smoke rises,
acrid, black, oil-fed. Straight up into still morning air, and
Bruno follows its rise against pale sky where curious stars still
shine, wondering what on Earth?

Talking among themselves, speculating,
glittering, distantly.

Beckoning?

Curious little things they are—or not so
little, he reminds himself. Only distant. Distantly curious
greeting the ever-thickening smoke as it rises and rises and now
begins to obscure the throng the far side of it.

Bruno looks around, a little stunned. So
many. From what he can see the square is full, and none of them
well-wishers. Another Bible is calling for attention, or is it the
same one? He cannot tell for the ever-thickening smoke. He shuts it
out and listens instead to the greedy flames, innocent in their
collaboration. They know not what they are doing, though the asses
in long white frocks sprouting Bibles know perfectly well. They are
protecting territory, securing coffers, removing competition, is
precisely what they are doing, and what they will never forgive him
for pointing out.

And now he registers heat. Something—he
muses, and again he wishes he could smile at his sardonic path of
thought—he will soon come to know quite intimately.

Someone he had not seen or sensed approach
strikes his left ankle from behind sending a sharp pain up through
his calf and sings of more to come. He looks down, his neck
straining against the iron noose who wants to keep his feet a
secret. He does manage to look down, the iron noose cutting and
most likely drawing blood (he reflects), but has trouble seeing,
then sees. Then sees no hand, no stick, no weapon, but flames.
Making their way from behind they are the first to reach him, and
now they lick his calves again, and then his legs, and then the
chorus of pain rises into the screaming of more and more and more
until he is surprised he is still alive, and still feeling, still
capable of having ever more pain poured into him.

And now they rise, like and army of small
yellow and red bears on their hind legs to take larger and large
bites of the kindling and of the wood, and now those a-front draw
near as well, as do those from the sides and now, now he can feel
his hands—have the thongs burned free?

What an odd thought, and one immediately
replaced by a fresh rising of searing flesh now, cornered and
screaming in protest at all avenues of escape aflame.

He feels himself crumble into this searing
ocean of fire, feels his knees either buckle or disintegrate, but
the ring, that metal ring still intact, holds him—he was
right—chokes him, though not lethally.

Perhaps it is a fact that
when the roar of pain reaches a certain volume and pitch, it cannot
be increased. Perhaps a body’s capacity to register can be
out-pained. Once there is only pain, once every nerve screams in
unison, once all there is
is
this roar, this pain, perhaps it reaches a point
where there can be nothing more of it.

Bruno reaches this point.

It is now a pain edged by darkness, or
should have been, would have been for any normal mortal, but Bruno
is no mortal, and still he can think and still he thinks:
screaming, on the one hand, through every cell in his body; amazed,
on the other, that he still can, and still does, think.

Amazed, yes, and off now a
little to the left of the pyre—the little body turning black and
still trashing around like a reeking medallion at the end of the
chain—Bruno watches and then—and this is a conscious thought, a
knowing decision:
enough
. Enough. He recognizes and
severs the channel of perception and no longer feels the anguish of
what manner of life still fights on within the charcoaled puppet by
the stake. That charcoaled, suffocating thing is not him, or his,
never was. He knows with every thrash that it is no more but an
unfortunate congregation of expiring cells, once his home, now but
one last communal suffering.

A breeze of compassion rises then fades into
yellow and red of still greedy flames as he takes his leave.

:

While the remains of what had once been
Giordano Bruno, the Nolan, smoldered and thrashed, his hovering
essence remained for some moments. Curious. Studying the greedy
fascination of the many faces, each drinking in death with every
beat of what seemed to be a collective heart. Drinking in the agony
of the dying as if being in death’s presence bestowed life,
bolstered their living.

He should have felt disgust, fury even, but
he felt only sadness. True compassion now for the so terribly
misguided need of these poor people.

For a while longer he remained, high above
the square, until the remnants of his charred abode finally came to
rest: still now in a sea of fire. Soon he could hear, as the word
spread, the rising cheer: the evil is dead, the world once again
made safe for us by the Holy Church. And so they began to
dissipate, these poor people, ignorant beyond ignorance.

Again, he should have felt disgust,
irritation, hatred even, but all the true Bruno could feel was
compassion.

Then he sighed and ascended.

::
7 :: (Tusita Heaven)

The Tusita Heaven, to where the not-long-ago
Giordano Bruno was now headed, could do with some explaining.

The time and the place we call now and here
on planet Earth is, of course, not the only time nor place there
is. A glace up into the night-time sky—with its trillions of
glittering thens and theres—should make the point nicely.

And as you glance, find a
single star, or what looks like one. What you see is a speck of
light: perhaps it
is
a star, perhaps it is a distant galaxy, or even a group of
untold numbers of galaxies, its light many millions of years on its
way across the cold and vast, to finally reach you here and
now.

But what arrives, what
settles in your eyes, is not a now, what you see is a
then
, just arrived. The
current now for that source of light is just setting out on its
million-year journey to eventually be seen by your
way-in-the-future offspring.

Perhaps, in the current now of that
light-source, there is a planet similar to ours where someone,
looking in your direction (perhaps through a very powerful
telescope) is wondering about the when of our local star, Sol; and
whether there might be someone in its planetary system looking back
at him or her or it across the cold and vast.

Wondering, guessing, but never knowing, for
distance—especially of this magnitude—is a formidable fortress.

And beyond these untold
theres and thens—or above, or below, or perhaps in a wholly
different direction—lies an
elsewhen
, six of them, so the story
goes. Or four. Or five. It can vary, for these elsewhens do not
exist unless and until someone is born into them and by residing
there creates them. We here on Earth like to call these elsewhens
“heavens” for in them everything is lighter, airy.

Bodies are lighter and often transparent,
light is lighter and always kind. Devas are born into these realms
as a reward for lives well lived, perhaps here on Earth, perhaps
elsewhere. Perhaps elsewhen.

Tusita is that heaven, that
elsewhen closest to Earth, where—so the same story tells—the most
joyful of Devas dwell, and it is also the heaven where the
Bodhisatta
Setaketu
lived before (some thousands of years ago) he was reborn
as
Siddhattha Gotama
—who, as you may know, refused to rise from beneath the Bodhi
tree until he
knew
, and in that giant act of will succeeded in so knowing and
became the Buddha Gotama.

Those who dwell here are
three thousand of our feet tall and live for 576 million years,
give or take. This may sound like a lot of Deva and a lot of years,
but don’t forget that when it comes to size everything is
relative—dwellings and all surroundings (trees, grasses, rivers) in
the Tusita Heaven are of course to scale, and no Deva thinks of
himself (or herself—yes, there are female Devas, of course there
are, else how could that pleasure be enjoyed, that pleasure which
in Tusita is so far above and beyond what we know here on Earth as
sex, as to make the diluted sensation that goes by that name here
seem like so much faint promise), thinks of himself or herself as
three thousand feet tall. They think of themselves—as we do
of
our
selves—as
just the right size.

All such things are relative. They probably
think of us as two thousand nine hundred ninety-four feet too
short. As antish.

Perhaps appropriately so.

And as for time, remember that for the
spirit anything short of eternity is ephemeral.

When Gotama Buddha, to the
happy cheer of the many Devas who welcomed him back, returned after
his brief Indian spell on Earth, he assumed the Deva form and self
of
Natha
, to enjoy
a brief respite. At least that was the plan.

Natha, however, was concerned and not a
little impatient. He often thought back on Earth, on his time with
the Sangha, and with his friend Ananda and the other monks, and he
would not let go of the love, of the compassion he felt for the
place.

“Natha,” they would say, the other Devas,
“Natha is troubled.”

“Natha is troubled,” Natha would agree.

“But you have so much reward,” they would
point out. “So much yet to savor.”

“Things are not well with Earth,” he would
answer.

“Bother yourself not with Earth now,” they
would say, there is a time for that soon enough, but that time is
not now.”

“That time is drawing near,” he answered, as
often as not.

Then, one day, Natha was gone. But they
knew, these many dwellers in the Tusita heaven—for they are nothing
if not wise, even if a little too fond of sensual pleasures, these
dwellers—they knew that Natha had returned to Earth, and had been
born a man in a small Italian town called Nola.

“Probably just to take a look around,” said
the Devas. “He will be back soon.”

“Probably, yes,” others agreed.

Then the Devas pondered and discussed
Natha’s curious impatience for a little while, but soon threw all
such thoughts to the wind and returned to what they were here to
do: enjoy themselves.

While Natha burned at the stake.

And now, rising, rising.

:

Below him the square grew smaller, though
still stabbed by the angry plume of smoke rising from what were
once Giordano Bruno and the pyre surrounding; the plume rising,
too—along with him—into dissipation and lighter air.

Perhaps he should not have returned—he
certainly had no taste for martyrdom; but he had to see for
himself. And so he had seen: things were not well with Earth. No,
far from it.

Soon the square was no longer discernable,
though the plume still was, for another heartbeat of rising, maybe
two, then the plume, too, was gone; and then the city, and then the
big boot that was Italy, and then the small blue pebble that was
Earth, all gone, vanished into black. Sol, too, now fading into a
point familiar.

And rising still, or gliding perhaps, or
shifting.

The gates that guard Tusita, the golden
portals that mark, and serve approach and ingress, are not
physical—though often described as such. In truth they are state of
mind, and when you reach the proper height, Tusita gradually
appears, until its fields and waterfalls and untold number of birds
and trees have grown as real—nay, much more real—as anything here
on Earth.

And so Giordano Bruno, shifting into Natha
now as he dons his tall body of light, enters once again this
wondrous place called the Tusita Heaven.

And soon the others, one by one, recognizing
his presence, ceased their doings and turned in wonder. Natha was
returned.

“Nathadeva,” one of them addressed him. “You
are back.”

Bruno now nothing but a brief glimpse at a
troubled world, flickered in Natha’s eyes, as he replied, “Yes, I
am back.”

“You will stay this time,” suggested the
fair voice.

“No,” said Natha. “I will not stay
long.”

“How long?”

“A day and a night,” Natha replied. “No
longer.”

“Let us take leave properly this time,” said
another.

Natha did not answer this. Instead he sat
down, folded his new and nimble body into a perfect lotus and
reflected upon his first visit some two thousand years earlier,
then upon his recent visit, upon what he had seen, then upon what
he now had to do, and how he would do it.

Seeing him thus, the other Devas withdrew,
not a little awed. For they were, all of them, parched for the
water of sensation, and could not fully grasp the strength of Natha
who did not seem to care about such things, or about enjoying all
those things he had earned by so many good deeds over so many
lives.