As Good As It Gets

Since late August, I have been working on a novel about my years in a Sufi ashram. It is called "Cult Du Sac." Occasionally, I write chapters that are more like studies or sketches but not fully realized parts of the novel. One such study--an imagining of a meeting between the protagonist's two teachers, his father and his guru--took place on my iMac screen on Saturday. I share it with you because it conveys life as I would love to lead it--a zany, inspired life very much like that which typically takes place in the ancient Zendos of "The Blue Cliff Record." 

Chapter 33: CANDID CAMERA

My father met the ghost of himself on the road out of a Manchurian town in 1931; You would think such an aberrant event would have left its place of occurrence permanently affixed to memory. But the town's name escaped him soon after and forever more. Furthermore, he is not sure if the encounter took place in a dream or vision or was part of what he called "waking, walking life." The semblance was older and, it seemed, wiser than the person he then was. "It was as if the most, or best, I could be lie years in the future," he wrote to me. "The specter came to fill me with hope not fright; to tell me, just by sheer force of presence, that I would survive the soldier-self I then was and outlast the reach of remorse for its sins." Judging from my father's fragmented functionality during the next few decades, it must have been one of his earliest exercises of faith to take the wraith's whispered word for eventually finding a life worth living. "It distinctly told me, 'All is well'."

I have never glimpsed the ghost of my future self, nor have I needed to. Instead, as my father wrote in that same letter, "You met the flame of your future person, fully embodied in a teacher and just waiting to find the sconce within you for its continued light." Hisamatsu often spoke of "seeing the Buddha by candlelight" and "the intimate chit-chat of this companionship." In one of his poems, he described an especially star-studded night sky as a "sequined tapestry of friendship." 

This is why I believe my father loved my guru, Mordecai, more than I did. "There are no limits between men of dharma," he said. "The Way follows them wherever they go." It was not that we were competitors for Mordecai's affection. My father was just more practiced in the capacity to receive and capability to give love freely. Hence whenever he visited Mordecai's ashram, the host acted like he had been given a dish full of his favorite candy. The two men would co-exist in a kind of wordless rapture, whose surface was like a still lake where fish occasionally rose for air. They spoke in murmurs of quietude, occasionally sighing or laughing softly. I once told me father that it was beautiful to watch him and Mordecai "mooning over each other." Hisamatsu laughed at my characterization of their love-struck intimacy. "We're just two old dilettantes of the divine rummaging through scrapbooks together," he responded.

Fortunately, there is I a video tape of a meeting between them. I watched it this morning. There was not a single complete phrase exchanged between them for the first ten minutes, just nearly inaudible "oohs" and "aaahs." Suddenly Mordecai asks his guest, "So what am I to do with this numbskull son of yours?" 

"If I knew the answer," Hisamatsu answers, "we'd be having this conversation in Kyoto and you would be playing the role of guest." 

"Have you consulted with Buddha or any of the patriarchs on a course of action?" Mordecai continues. 

"They all tell me you are making the best of a bad situation, and to carry on," Hisamatsu replies, looking straight at me and chuckling. 

"I have been accused of polytheism for allowing your son to heed two fathers," Mordecai kids. 

"Last I looked, there were ten fingers folded in the Buddha's lap," Hisamatsu remarks. "We're just two of them." 

"Should I ask your son to choose between us?" Mordecai asked. Suddenly the camera is fixed on me. I blurt out, "Anybody who thinks that two heads are better than one should have his head examined." "You mean 'godhead'," Mordecai corrects. "And all godheads are one. If you could just examine that godhead of yours, you wouldn't have any need for me or your father. In fact, we'd have need of you." 

You see why I had no need to meet any spirit because my hands and head were already full with the antics of two immortals. It's at this point the videotape turns serious and, for me looking at it 30 years later, aching in its apparency. 

"Look," I say facing Mordecai, "a bountiful God has given me two fountainheads but I can't drink from either one of them." 

Mordecai turns to a female room attendant, Alexandra Boyd, and says, "Please fetch this boy a glass of water. He thinks he's dying of thirst." She does as she is told and leaves the room. Mordecai faces me. "I am talking now to the man who will watch what is happening at this moment as a replay several decades hence. It is he who will realize that he was sitting in a Fort Knox with more gold than he would ever need." 

Mordecai pretends to look at the distance, and calls to it: "'Hey, future man, you must take over for us. Teach him and others like him how to spend this gold wisely. Teach him that there is no vault he must break into, no Brinks truck he must rob. The streets here are paved with gold. The world is made out of this wealth'." 

I am overwhelmed by emotion and fling myself at Mordecai's feet. I can't see my face but I am pretty sure I'm near tears, both salty and sugary. My father who is seated slightly to Mordecai's right, cups his hands in glee. "Joaquin, you could never have learned this at home. Like Buddha, you had to leave the palace and find a father of your choosing." 

Mordecai nudges my father, and requests him to leave a message to the future-me. Hisamatsu looks into the camera and waves, "Hey, kiddo, the message to you tomorrow will be the same as it was to me yesterday in Manchuria: 'All is well.'"