Peek-a-boo

Now consider, if you will, the unfortunate Tibetan Buddhist.

I’ll pause here to give you a few moments to do this…

Done? Where was I? Oh yes, Tibetan Buddhists, isn’t that right? I mean admittedly, the scenery is great. Run a Google image search on “Tibet,” and you’ll see what I mean. Or don’t run the search – it makes no difference to me. I-I’m just s-s-saying…

And the uniform, well, the uniform makes every other religious get-up on the planet its jailhouse bitch. You just don’t stumble across many outfits that look so comfortable, do you? In the world of hardcore belief, I mean, where the norm is more along the lines of hairshirts and crowns of thorns and beds of nails and so forth.

  The thing is, Buddhists have been exiled from Tibet for, um, well, a long time now, suffice it to say. Longer than most of you have even been alive. So I worry, sometimes I do, about the unfortunate Tibetan Buddhists and how they will ever locate their next spiritual leader – the 15^th Dalai Lama, presumably – after this current dude, the 14^th Dalai Lama, kicks the bucket in the next few years.   You see, when a Dalai Lama dies, the other, lower Lamas, well, they gather some of the dead leader’s favorite things – maybe his signed LP copy of Frampton Comes Alive or something – and they go off on a journey. They go looking for the body he’s reincarnated into.  

Other, lower Lamas, did I say? That can’t be right. But alas, I must continue…

 

Eventually, with any luck, the Lamas end up in some small, out-of-the-way mountaintop village and see a kid. Looks like any other kid. Only this kid, when they spot him and he spots them, he hikes up his diaper and marches right up to them inasmuch as a baby just learning to walk marches right up to anywhere.

“Hey, Rinpoche!” the kid barks. “Daddy-O! It’s about damn time. I’ve been jonesing to hear ‘Baby I Love Your Way’. You didn’t bring Gere or Bono with you? I wanted to show them the new skin.”

Now, far be it from me to be so presumptuous as to speak for upper echelon Tibetan Buddhists. They can speak for themselves. But it seems to me that this search – which has probably always been reasonably hard, if you think about it – is going to be near impossible this next time. The other, lower Lamas will have to look not only in Tibet, but everywhere for the reincarnation!

After all, he (or she, maybe?) probably won’t reincarnate in Tibet, will s/he? It would be an exceedingly poor idea if s/he did!

And anyway, this entire mess strikes me as just a horrible way of naming a new leader, temporal or spiritual! Worse even than naming as leader the son of your last leader, or (heavens, no!) letting everybody and anybody have a vote on who they want. 

Let me see now… “14^th Dalai Lama”… “Richard Gere”… Tepid joke about democracy… It seems I have wandered so very far from my point that I fear I shall never get back on track.

The thing I’d wanted to say when I set out here was that I do not understand what it is that gets reincarnated or lives on. There’s simply nothing I’ve seen in nature I could use as an analogy, although it is true I have not seen very much of nature, zooming by it (or, just as often, over it) on my motorcycle as I do.

Whatever it is inside people – inside most people, I mean – that either lets them or forces them to believe in a part of us that lives on when our bodies die, well, I don’t have it. I was born without Belief Cells. It is my hope that, with recent advances in stem cell research, Belief Cells might be manufactured in a laboratory someday soon.

Because I’d kind of like to see what all the fuss is about.

Not that I’m overly thrilled about the prospect of having a soul. I don’t want one. Thanks but no thanks, right? People around me sometimes complain about how difficult I am for them to put up with for even a brief time, to share a workplace or a townhouse or a jail cell with. Can you then imagine how difficult it is for me? There’s no way for me to get away from the annoying and possibly evil thing that is Adri!

Honestly, having to be ME for all Eternity, for ever and ever Amen, hardly seems like a blessing. In fact, it could be argued that it’s the very definition of damnation!

And it’s always been that way for me. That’s why it’s so hard to believe that before my boyfriend, Steve, died back in 2001, I agreed to leave myself open to the possibility that he might “live on” in some way. Maybe even in a way I couldn’t imagine, which could be any way, if you think about it, since I can’t imagine anyone living on after dying from cancer or a long fall or decapitation or being devoured by wolves.

But Steve and I, during his last days, you know we made our plans.

We set post-mortem dates to meet up.

Such-and-such day at such-and-such place.

We chose a secret password – a song lyric, if you’d like to get precise about it. As precise as I’m likely to be with you.

To date – as of this writing, I mean – no fewer than seven of those meeting dates have come and gone and Steve has stood me up for each and every one of them.  

But not this time. No, this time, I’m ready. On August 28^th – which would have been Steve’s 31^st birthday – I’m going to his old childhood home prepared. Armed to the teeth with every half-witted method of perceiving, contacting, or receiving word from the hereafter that has ever been concocted. Or nearly every method, anyway.

Wyatt and the Flatliners are pulling out all the stops. Harry is bringing theogenic assistance. Greg is bringing audio and video equipment. My brother the Catholic priest shall be in attendance. Even Bhoomi, well, she’s hired Bill Murray and some psychic quack from the neighborhood.

We’re going to descend on that house, and if he’s there to be found, damn it, we’re going to find the bastard. We’re going to get us some answers once and for all.

Because that’s just how we roll.

I might even have to wave a few of his favorite rock and roll albums in front of the neighbor kids to see if I get any hits. Hey, it’s worked for the Tibetans fourteen times now!

If I thought it would work, I’d interview every six-year old in Nepal to find some strange reincarnated glimmer of him. If I could find him.

Because even today – six years, thirty-eight weeks, and two days after Steve died – he still makes me want to believe I can.