Tantric Coconuts (23 page)

“Life of Ted, part two.”

“Belief in an afterlife allows us to avoid dealing with our own mortality. What we don’t understand is that denial diverts
a great deal of energy away from healthy growth, acceptance, and moving down this path. Eastern cultures venerate the wisdom and maturity that come with age. Western ones, however, are ageist, denigrate maturity, and will go to any lengths to avoid looking older.”

Ted nodded. “Our economy seems to rely on us wanting to avoid aging, sickness, and death. Cosmetics, hair dyes, plastic surgery—the list goes on. I’m not sure why we find something as natural as aging and death so terrifying. Toward the end, my grandfather seemed to come to terms with dying. He liked to say to me that not living was far sadder than dying.”

“I think the Buddha was trying to say the same thing. He emphasized that this life is a blessing, but a short one. We have a limited amount of time to get it right. Institutionalized Christianity and Islam both place a great deal of emphasis on heaven and hell. Judaism is far more circumspect about such claims. Father Chuck will tell you that most Christians ignore or deemphasize that Jesus said heaven exists in the now and not in an afterlife.”

“I’m no shrink,” Ted said, “but surely this fear of death is part of our Mr. Digit self. I think, too, this gets back to the second realization. We spend a great deal of energy creating a thing called a self and then worrying about protecting it. So what’s the Second Noble Truth?”

“The Buddha’s Second Noble Truth focuses on the gap between the way the world really exists and the way our minds perceive it. As you just suggested, our ego and our Mr. Digit personality get in the way of awareness about life’s true condition.
Much of our unhappiness stems from the ignorance of our true condition; our view of the world and how we fit into it is flawed on many levels.”

“Don’t all of us want to be happy and not suffer? What’s so profound about this?”

Angel nodded approvingly. “I think these first two Noble Truths are the foundation for the most important point, which the Buddha describes as our ‘ignorance.’ Because we do not understand the true nature of causes and effects, we engage in avoidable habits and practices that make us miserable. Mr. Digit is convinced that having a gold ring on his finger is the path to nirvana. It’s difficult to get Mr. Digit to see his higher purpose or true self.”

“The Third Noble Truth?” Ted asked.

“Precisely. By following the dharma path, doing the Work, we can eliminate much of our ignorant, Mr. Digit worldview. Albert Einstein described it as the religion of the future. Some Catholic monks are also practicing Zen Buddhists, and plenty of people, if pushed, would describe themselves as Christian Buddhists. It’s a more consistent belief system than you might think.”

As they entered the outskirts of the small community where Singleton kept his bike shop, they drove over speed bumps in the road signaling free-ranging animals. Angel slowed Bertha to a crawl to avoid jostling her passengers. Ted asked, “So what’s the Buddha’s secret for making us happy?”

“That’s where the dharma practice begins. It’s the Eightfold Path: the Buddha’s Fourth Noble Truth—at bottom, a
systematic process for disabling our Mr. Digit ego. It’s the Buddhist’s treasure map that leads us to the upper-grade classrooms. If we can understand these Four Noble Truths and incorporate them into our lives, then we can achieve a peace here on this earth, a nirvana. I think this is what Jesus was referring to as the Kingdom.”

On a brick street lined with lush green grass, they came to a clapboard Victorian house with a sign in front,
SINGLETON HOUSE. A BED & BREAKFAST
, and beneath that, another sign read
CYCLE RENTAL AND REPAIR
.

Angel excitedly parked the bookmobile. They snapped the leashes on their dogs, gave them a few minutes to sniff about the yard, and approached the front of the bike shop.

When Stephen Singleton—bike repairman, innkeeper, and Buddhist teacher—heard that Angel and Ted were planning to sleep on the floor of old Bertha the Bookmobile and that they had been sustaining themselves primarily on granola bars and fruit for the last three days, he insisted on cooking them a warm meal and putting them up in his cozy inn. They offered no resistance. He wasn’t sure whether to offer them two rooms or one, so he took the cautious approach and handed them each a room key. What they did afterward was their business. Each room in his bed-and-breakfast was named after a Nebraska-bred movie star. Angel was in the Marlon Brando room and Ted was in the Fred Astaire suite.

It was midweek and business was slow for both Singleton’s bed-and-breakfast and his adjoining bike shop. Not being a die-hard capitalist motivated by money and money alone, Singleton enjoyed these occasional slow days. It gave him more time to study, meditate, visit with friends, and hike or bike along north central Nebraska’s 321-mile Cowboy Trail, where he had anchored his business.

After an evening of getting acquainted but before retiring
to bed on full stomachs, Ted and Angel put Argo and No Barks in the fenced-in dog run in the side yard—a space Singleton had created especially for his canine guests. They fed and watered the dogs, gave them good-night hugs, and headed up to their respective rooms for what they both hoped would be a good night’s sleep.

Resisting the urge to immediately climb into bed, Ted moved about the room and inventoried all the Fred Astaire memorabilia that hung on the walls. The best part of the collection was a life-size movie poster of Astaire dancing with Cyd Charisse in Central Park. Beneath the poster Singleton had carefully typed and framed the lyrics to a melody Astaire had made famous.

Ted turned and thought a moment. He could see how, when read a particular way, the lyrics could be profound and very Buddhist. He tested the resistance of the mattress with his hands. It seemed firm and inviting. Ted kicked off his shoes, grabbed his phone, searched for Fred Astaire on iTunes, and listened to “Dancing in the Dark” until he fell asleep.

Having gone to bed early, Ted woke up at five thirty the next morning. Out of habit, he began sifting through his emails to find a response from John Shinn, Lilly Two Sparrow’s Legal Aid lawyer. Ted had written three times to Shinn, and now there were three separate responses waiting for him to review.

In the first, Shinn apologized to Ted for taking a few days to get back to him, explaining that he’d first had to procure his client’s permission to release the file or even discuss the case with Ted. With Aunt Lilly’s permission, Shinn e-mailed the requested portions of the file to Ted. Shinn encouraged his fellow lawyer to double-check every detail of his work. He openly admitted that he was running out of options for Aunt Lilly. Perhaps some stone had been left unturned. “Who knows?” he remarked. “If you can find something I missed, great. Just let me know. I’m pleased to have your help.”

Shinn followed up with a second e-mail a few hours later, where he elaborated further and responded to a couple of theories Ted was considering. Shinn told Ted that he felt sorry for Aunt Lilly. He added, “Although she might be a bit unhinged, unfortunately, as far as South Dakota law is concerned, she’s not crazy enough to get away with murder.”

Ted had mentioned that Uncle Harry might have physically abused Aunt Lilly and asked if this could bolster her self-defense claim. In a third and final e-mail, Shinn said that he did not believe this fact changed much about the case. He reminded Ted that there was no objective evidence that Uncle Harry had threatened her on the day of the shooting. Aunt Lilly had made no such statement to Shinn or to the police. When Ted asked Shinn about the state of mind necessary to claim self-defense, Shinn responded that while he also believed the law was a bit unsettled in South Dakota, any self-defense claim would be governed by a reasonable-person standard and not some murky subjective standard. Shinn’s view was the same as Ted’s: reasonable people don’t listen to bears
that speak to them in dreams and then shoot their husbands. Aunt Lilly’s best option was to accept the manslaughter plea that Shinn was hoping the State of South Dakota would offer her. After that, they could only hope she was still alive after serving her ten-year sentence. A hearing was scheduled for October. Unless something earthshaking came up in the next week or two, Shinn would push ahead and try to plead Aunt Lilly to an amended charge of manslaughter. With time served, she might be out in eight years. No matter how hard Ted thought about it, Aunt Lilly’s situation seemed desperate. Shinn was right. A bad dream simply couldn’t be the sole basis for a murder defense. They needed something more to show reasonable fear.

Ted rested in bed waiting for sunrise. He closed his eyes and concentrated on several of the meditation exercises Angel taught him. He continued with these exercises for twenty minutes and found it easier than he had before to occasionally find the space behind the Ted chatter. Still, even twenty minutes was a long time to work at it, so he turned to one of the books on Buddhism that Angel had given him. He heard Argo bark and this broke his concentration. Argo was having quite an adventure of his own, palling around with No Barks. With all his preoccupation over leaving Angel in a week, it hadn’t occurred to him until now that Argo might not be that happy back in Crossing Trails, alone all day while he worked. Ted would not be the only one regretting the end of their pilgrimage.

By six o’clock the sun was up and a cool breeze was coming
off the meadow behind Singleton’s inn. Incongruent sounds—distant car horns, music playing, sprinklers running, and cattle lowing—passed unfiltered through the window and diverted Ted’s attention from another of the exercises Angel had given him: Ted was to periodically take an inventory and notice, really pay attention, to his surroundings.

He walked over to the window and stared at the cattle grazing in their fields under the Nebraska sun, which was now well above the horizon. The sun slipped out occasionally from behind white clouds like a worried mother checking on her earthly children. Outside the second-floor window were window boxes spilling over with red and blue pansies. Ted tried next to notice the rich scents lingering in the air. The smell of strong coffee and freshly baked scones came up the stairs from the kitchen below, triggering hunger pangs in Ted’s stomach. Suddenly it clicked: this was the smell of a very old house. Over the years, many owners had scrubbed the old wood floors and dusted the woodwork with a wide range of cleansing agents that had lingered and coalesced into the old house’s smell. Ted imagined generations of housekeepers scrubbing floors—vinegar and water giving way to Pine-Sol, Mr. Clean, and others. But the scent that hung in the air now was distinctive. It reminded him of Angel. If Ted had asked Singleton, he would have discovered that his host was using an old-fashioned, handcrafted natural antibacterial soap made from sodium laurate—the by-product of lauric acid after it has been neutralized by sodium hydroxide—or, put more simply, coconut oil and lemon juice. The scent was sweet, clean, luscious, and inviting.

Ted could hear water running through the pipes from a nearby room and Singleton talking on the downstairs phone. He decided to end his noticing exercise and join his newest spiritual comrade at breakfast. Ted straightened the room and took a quick hot shower. As he dressed, Ted put at the top of his morning wish list some hot coffee.

Singleton was of medium build, his blond hair giving way to gray. Wearing a T-shirt that touted his own business, he leaned patiently against the frame of the kitchen door, discussing rental prices with a caller. “No, we only offer half-day or full-day rentals. That’s right. No hourly … Yes, plenty of bikes available for this afternoon. You won’t need a reservation.”

He had a gentle smile and glowed in a way that suggested pleasure, or at least contentment, with life. Finished with his conversation, Singleton hung up the old landline phone, quickly crossed the galley-style kitchen, and extended his right hand. “Good morning, Ted. How are you? I trust you slept well?”

“Yes, thanks. I got up early this morning. I had to do some legal research and I also read through some of the Buddhist writings Angel gave me. I got halfway through your book,
The Biking Buddhist
,
^*
before I realized that you wrote it. I was very impressed. It was excellent!”

Singleton was also appropriately pleased with his book—he thought it was one of his best. He had poured his life energy into it in the hope that he could share with others the understanding he had worked so hard to achieve. “Good, I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“I thought that a little preparation would allow us to better use our time together.” Ted hesitated. All at once it occurred to him that he was not sure why Singleton, Mashid, Father Chuck, or even Angel, for that matter, was bothering to guide him, show him how to do the Work. In today’s world, who just gave things away? Was spiritual knowledge less valuable than tax, medical, or legal advice? “It’s so kind of you to share your time with me,” Ted stammered, “I don’t mean to barge into your life like this.”

“You needn’t feel that way. Do you know what happens when the tide rises?”

Ted didn’t offer an answer, just smiled and waited for Singleton to continue.

“When the tide rises, all ships come up with it. It may not seem logical to you, at least not yet, why we are generous with our time. You may feel like others are more deserving. You will feel this way only if you are approaching the situation from the third level, rather like a lawyer who wants to follow the rules or an accountant who wants the ledger to balance. Today we are going to suggest another outlook, but first sit, eat, and relax. Then we’ll get to talk more about Buddhism.”

Ted was pleased to be sitting in Singleton’s kitchen on a late-summer morning. He filled his cereal bowl and poured in
some milk. “The books Angel loaned me have all been good, but Buddhism is nothing like I expected. I see why all of those Hollywood types are so attracted to it.”