Miss Buddha (68 page)

“Anandamide?”

Ruth held up the magazine to show Ananda the
article. “Right here. Says right here.”

“Anandamide.” Ananda sounded insulted.

“Anandamide.”

When Ananda didn’t reply, Clare, who sat
behind Ruth, and who had overheard the conversion, leaned forward
and said, for Ananda’s benefit, “It’s true. My sister did all this
research into cannabis—she was quite the user, too, for a while—and
that was one of the things she discovered.”

“Anandamide,” said Ananda again. Still
unhappy about being so plagiarized.

“AEA for short,” said Ruth.

“I prefer that,” said Ananda.

“I have a question for you,” said Clare,
addressing Ruth.

Melissa, who was still trying to sleep, and
who was not all that interested in the conversation, suggested that
Clare and she trade seats, which they then did.

Once she slipped past Roth (who was trying
to sleep as well) Melissa pulled down the window shade and returned
to her dozing.

“What did you want to ask?” said Ruth.

“My sister,” said Clare, “as I mentioned,
was a great proponent of marijuana. She swore that it helped her
see, and especially hear, things she would otherwise never have
noticed.

“Me, I only tried it once or twice in
college—and who didn’t?—but I have to agree with her, it seemed to
me as if time slowed down allowing you to perceive detail that
otherwise would simply slip by in a blur.”

Both Clare and Ananda looked over at Ruth.
Clare clearly curious, Ananda a little amused, as if wondering how
Ruth was best going to put this.

This is how Ruth put it: “Life, at least
here on Earth, needs some vehicle or agent to perceive. This agent
or vehicle is the body. Even the tiniest of creatures, say the
microbe, perceives not directly, but via the body.”

Then she pauses for thought. Looks over at
Ananda who says nothing, meaning he likes what he hears and is now
also, same as Clare, curious for more.

“The body, whether that of a microbe, or
insect, or animal, or human, is like a lens, or better yet, a
prism. The eyes and ears or tentacles or other sense organs receive
input from the objective world, waves of sight and sound, pressure
of touch, and particles of taste and smell. Our prism, a chemical
wonder if I ever saw one, then processes this input and presents it
in digestible form to us, the consciousness that perceives.

“I guess that what I’m trying to say is that
we all view the world through a chemical prism. We could perceive
the world without it—and that might be a wholly different world—but
life chooses not to.

“The neurochemical processes that allows us
to see and hear with some sense of stability, in turn depend on the
nutrients we consume. Day to day this is a fairly stable process.
The body knows what to do with the molecules it consumes, and all
is well.

“Something like THC, a very short-lived
cousin of which, as I just read, the body can produce—although
never in quantities anywhere near what you inhaled,” nodding at
Clare, “alters the chemical makeup of the prism, skews from normal,
the paths of perception.”

“Things slowed down, to a crawl,” said
Clare.

“Actually,” said Ruth. “One effect of the
chemically altered prism is that your sampling of the present—for
you do sample the present constantly, though never in real
time—speeds up quite tremendously. Meaning that under normal
circumstances you may sample a passing second, say, five times.
Under the influence of THC, you might sample the same second fifty
times, giving you the appearance that each second is actually ten
seconds long.”

“Where did you learn this?” said Ananda,
impressed.

“I’ve given it some thought,” said Ruth.

“Wow,” said Clare, still digesting.

“You’ll probably remember that things in
your body, after you inhaled, began to speed up,” said Ruth.

“They did,” said Clare, remembering.

“Giving the appearance of slowing down,”
said Ruth.

“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.”