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is the message which Billy Kwan finally gives to Sukarno. To the contrary of the scholars who
assume that Kwan was planning an assassination, this was all which was required by the will
of God. Peter already feels the brunt of Jesus’ attention, and notices how St John then asks
Jesus, ‘which is he that betrayeth thee?’, for the disciples think they should follow the law of
Moses and kill the one who betrayed Jesus. Peter asks Jesus, ‘What shall this man do?’,
offering his life in just—according to the Law of Moses—retribution. Jesus answers with a
clear, ‘If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?’ (St John 1:15-23). In other words,
it is my will that these things pass, and if you do not understand because it does not conform to
canon law or to your conception of justice, then you must simply accept them, for I am the Son
of God.
‘What shall this man do?’ parallels Mike Langford’s question as he is wondering about
his role and the motivation for his disinterest in Cambodia’s civil war. Christ’s answer to Peter
corresponds to Krishna’s Supreme Utterance, requiring action without attachment to its
consequences. ‘The whole point about my work is to stay uninvolved,’ Langford says,
convinced, however, that ‘the formula was sounding more and more feeble to me lately, and
Chandara seemed to know this. He smiled now as though I were a slow child. Mike, you are
coming to middle age like me, he said. As a Buddhist, I know it’s time to start acquiring merit.
Maybe you should know this too’ (HW, 278). As Peter must learn to follow God’s will
unquestioningly, so must Arjuna follow Krishna’s will, and Chandara Buddha’s; Langford
follows this tradition.
Koch, however, does not draw Billy Kwan’s question from Peter of The Gospel
According to St John but from St John the Baptist in The Gospel According to St Luke, which
picks up on the story told in St Matthew about the Pharisees and Sadducees who were rebuked
as unworthy by St John the Baptist. St Luke expands on the story, telling how first ‘the
multitudes’, then the ‘publicans’, then ‘soldiers’ were rebuked, and each then asked the
question which Billy Kwan asks: ‘What shall we do then?’. In answering, John lays out the
new law of justice, virtue and righteousness. To the multitudes he says, ‘He that hath two
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