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anger, Ari - you’re like a steamy fart on a winter’s morning!’<br />
Rosella.<br />
<strong>Buddhas</strong> <strong>and</strong> <strong>Bikinis</strong> 50<br />
Rinpoche laughed aloud, then turned his back on me <strong>and</strong> resumed feeding the<br />
What an idiot, I thought, storming through the gardens surrounding Karuna. Damn<br />
it! Are all these Buddhists the same; so casual about living or dying, like death was just<br />
walking out of the room? Had all this meditation in pursuit of an altered state or altered<br />
fate just rotted their brains? Perhaps, I feared, Karl Marx was right when he said that<br />
religion, like television, is just another form of opium.<br />
impotent rage.<br />
I went to Hiroshi’s room <strong>and</strong> listened to music from the radio, stewing with<br />
At sunset, the gong rang for evening prayers. I lay on the small hard cot, harried by<br />
mosquitoes. Finally I got up <strong>and</strong> walked around the grounds until the sun had set <strong>and</strong> the<br />
temple had all but emptied.<br />
A cool wind blew up from the valley floor. Through the darkness I saw the only<br />
light, coming from the library. I walked off past the long line of stupas <strong>and</strong> statues, climbed<br />
up the stone stairs <strong>and</strong> into temple.<br />
Inside, Hiroshi was still meditating.<br />
‛Hiroshi, you need to see a specialist. Rinpoche doesn’t know shit.’<br />
‛My answer is the same. I do nothing now or later. You can’t underst<strong>and</strong> the light<br />
when you’re sitting in the dark.’<br />
I slumped in a chair defeated.<br />
‛It’s our child.’<br />
She turned on me, ‛No, my child.’<br />
The words hit me like a hammer. In that moment, I understood that a woman<br />
becomes a mother not at a baby’s birth, but at its conception, <strong>and</strong> I had paid the ultimate<br />
price for motherhood, irrelevancy.<br />
‛This religion!’ I shouted, ‛It’s brainwashed you!’<br />
She turned polemic, ‛The one who is brainwashed is the one who leans on recited<br />
ideology. You think in your arrogance that every illness has a remedy <strong>and</strong> every disease a<br />
cure, but you never once consider the cause. Have you ever asked what causes cancer?’<br />
‛How would I know? I’m not a doctor.’<br />
‛The cause is here!’ she shouted, tapping her head with her fist so violently, I could<br />
hear the thunk of her knuckles against her skull. ‛I caused the cancer. And I will deal with<br />
it, not you!’
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