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CHAPTER 1

THE BEGGAR

Each morning on her way from the subway to her office in the pyramid building, Cheryl passes hundreds of beggars. And each evening on her way home, she passes most of the same beggars again. And there are beggars in the subway station, too.

Every few weeks, moved by a compulsion she has no explanation for, she empties the kitchen change jar into a paper bag and carries these hundreds of coins with her to work. On her way home at the end of the day, she gives this change to the only beggar she has ever admired. She has never told her husband or children what she does with the money, nor have they ever inquired about its repeated disappearance.

The man she gives this money to is tall and handsome, olive-skinned, with short brown hair and a well-trimmed beard. He is, she believes, close to her own age — forty-nine — and he wears the saffron robe of a Buddhist monk. He sits cross-legged on the sidewalk in front of the Costa Rican consulate, a stone's throw from the subway entrance. His back is perfectly straight, his head unbowed, and he sits absolutely still. He is not there in the mornings, but he is there every evening of Cheryl's workweek, except Wednesday evenings.

His large brass bowl sits on the ground directly in front of him. When money is dropped into the bowl he does not alter his pose in the slightest, nor does he make any outward gesture of thanks.

AS THE WEEKS and months and years go by, Cheryl finds herself thinking constantly about her favorite mendicant. He has become something of a hero to her, though she knows nothing about him. She begins to wonder where he lives and what he does with the money he collects. She has no idea when he arrives at his begging post or when he leaves. She doesn't know if he is mute or deaf. Does he beg on Saturdays and Sundays, too? She only knows that he is there at six o'clock on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday evenings, sitting very still and gazing straight ahead, receiving alms.

WHEN SHE BEGINS waking in the night from dreams in which she and this man are fleeing together from some unseen terror, she decides to change her path to work. She tells herself that if she stops seeing him four times every week, she will eventually stop thinking about him. So she chooses another subway stop, one a few blocks farther from the pyramid building, but with only the rare beggar along her way.

For the first week, her new route gives her sweet satisfaction. She feels as if an enormous weight has been lifted from her shoulders. She hadn't realized what a tremendous strain it was for her to pass by all those poor people every day. And she no longer sees him — that impeccably silent man in his golden robe. She no longer sees his piercing eyes or his sensuous lips or his beautifully formed hands resting palms up on his knees.

Still, she thinks of him constantly. She wakes exhausted from dreams of making love to him, of being his wife, his judge, his executioner. But it is only when she fails to sleep at all for three days and nights in succession, and feels herself dissolving into madness, that she decides to learn all she can about him.

SHE TAKES A week off from work, though she doesn't tell her husband she is doing so. On a cold morning in November, she rides the subway into the city at her usual hour. She stands on the sidewalk across the street from the Costa Rican consulate and waits for the object of her obsession to arrive.

At noon, his spot still vacant, Cheryl goes to a restaurant and fortifies herself with a meal, though she has little appetite. She has lost several pounds during the weeks of her growing concern about this man. Her husband believes she has finally discovered a successful diet.

Tired of standing, she is sitting on the sidewalk, her back against the wall of a bank, when he appears a block away — a golden flower in a river of darker flowers. He walks with stately grace, his begging bowl in his left hand, and a small rug, tightly rolled, in his right. When he has attained his place, he bows slightly in each of the four cardinal directions, places the bowl on the sidewalk, unfurls the rug, sits down upon it, and assumes his meditative posture, his eyes fixed on his bowl. He takes a deep breath and exhales, after which his breathing becomes imperceptible.

A moment passes, and now money begins to rain down, the bowl filling so quickly Cheryl is certain the monk will move to empty it, but he does not.

A man in a filthy black coat, a beggar Cheryl has seen a thousand times before, approaches the man in gold, nods to him, and empties the overflowing bowl into a small cardboard box.

A few minutes pass and the bowl is full once more. Now the veteran with one leg who sits in his wheelchair by the fire hydrant with a cat on his lap, rolls up to the man in gold, and leans down to dump the rich bowl into a red tartan sack.

And so it continues hour after hour until the last commuter has gone home and the bells of a distant church chime eight o'clock — seventy-seven beggars of every age and sex and color gifted by the begging bowl of the man in gold. Cheryl has tallied them in her notebook, the ink smeared by her tears.

A few minutes past eight, the man rises from his rug and stretches his arms to the sky. Now he bows to each of the four cardinal directions, rolls up his rug, picks up his empty bowl, and crosses the street to stand in front of Cheryl.

She looks up at him, speechless with love.

To which he replies softly, and with the force of a hurricane, "Hello, my dear friend."

EXPECTATIONS

Karen is eager to have an interview with her teacher. She has been silent for seventeen days. She will be the last of the retreat participants to have a private hour with the renowned Buddhist. She is impatient to hear her thoughts given voice and to hear what he will say to her alone.

Her teacher is a small, round man from Tibet. Rumors abound that he is an alcoholic and a lecher, but nothing in her personal experience of him suggests he is anything but a wise and compassionate being.

"You," her friend Marie declared, "will be a great temptation to him. He is hopelessly attracted to beautiful young women."

Karen does not believe she will be sexually attractive to her teacher, nor does she aspire to be. Indeed, one of the gifts of her seventeen days of silent meditation is the pleasant absence of thoughts about her physical appearance.

SHE APPROACHES HER teacher's cottage at the appointed hour. The day has been warm, and now, as the sun hovers above the horizon, a cool breeze moves across the meadow of wild oats and tickles Karen's ears.

She knocks on the door — gray wood beginning to splinter. There is no response from within. She knocks again. No voice invites her to enter. Rather than turn away, she pushes lightly on the door and it swings open.

The small room holds two armchairs facing a black wood-stove. A large, spotlessly clean window gives a view to the west of brown hills descending to the sea. Beneath this window is a small bed, the mattress covered with a yellow sheet. Karen's teacher and a young woman are asleep in each other's arms. They are naked, the young woman's curly black hair glistening with sweat.

"What did I expect?" Karen asks, watching her teacher's face.

She wants him to open his eyes and reply to her. But even when a shiny blue fly lands in his nostril, her teacher does not stir.

MAMA

"Can you tell me," asks Sweeney, handing the teapot to McDougall, "what this is worth?" McDougall, a portly man with a gray handlebar mustache, takes the little pearly white teapot in his big fleshy hands and nods slowly. "Baleek," he says quietly. "Irish porcelain. Late eighteen hundreds. Extremely rare. I'll have to examine her with a magnifying glass, but if this is the original glaze, and she's flawless, I'd say she's worth ten thousand dollars. Possibly more. And I'll tell you right now, I want her."

Sweeney, a slender man with brown hair turning gray, had hoped to get thirty or forty dollars for the old thing. Desperate for money, he had finally done what he'd been avoiding for three years. He'd gone through the two boxes of stuff left to him by his mother. In the first of the boxes he found only memorabilia — pictures and letters. But the second box contained the teapot, six matching cups and saucers, and a matching sugar bowl and creamer.

"That much?" he says, trying not to show too much astonishment at McDougall's estimate of the teapot's worth. "And what if I had the matching cups and saucers and things?"

McDougall gazes thoughtfully at Sweeney, his right eyebrow rising dramatically. "Six cups and saucers?"

"Yes," says Sweeney, holding his breath. "And a sugar bowl and creamer."

McDougall carefully sets the teapot down on the table between them. "A complete set of this Baleek, circa 1870, in excellent condition, would be worth at least fifty thousand dollars, and possibly a great deal more."

"Why so much?" asks Sweeney, staggered by the sum.

"Well, first of all we're talking about extremely rare and fragile ceramics that are nearly a hundred and fifty years old. A complete, original set outside of a museum is virtually unheard of in this day and age." He pauses. "Handles intact?"

"Yes," says Sweeney, turning to go. "I'll be back with them in twenty minutes."

"No, no, no!" cries McDougall, emphatically shaking his head. "I will bring my padded carrying case and come with you."

"EXCUSE THE MESS," says Sweeney, unlocking the door to his apartment.

"I'm used to messes," says McDougall, following Sweeney into the cramped little room. "In the mud lie the nuggets."

The place smells sour, the sink full of dirty dishes, clothes strewn about the floor, the squalid bed unmade. On a rickety table by the only window, six cups on six saucers surround a sugar bowl and creamer, each piece the same pearly white as the teapot. McDougall reverently approaches this still life, his eyes wide with wonder. When he is satisfied that the pieces are immaculate, he turns to Sweeney and says, "I will be happy to write you a check for fifty thousand dollars."

"And I will be happy to accept it," says Sweeney, his tired eyes filling with tears.

WHEN THE RARE and delicate tea set is safely packed away, the padded case closed and locked, McDougall says, "Now, if you don't mind, could you tell me what you know about the set and where your mother got it?"

"I don't know anything about it except that my mother's mother was British, so maybe it was hers."

"You don't remember your mother using it?"

"No," says Sweeney, his voice full of disdain, "but then I don't remember much of anything about her."

"When did she die?"

"Three years ago."

"You were her only heir?"

He nods. "She didn't leave me anything except a box of photographs and the tea things."

"Would it be a terrible imposition if I looked through those photographs?"

"No, not at all." Sweeney hands him a well-worn cardboard box. "In fact, you can have them if you want."

McDougall takes the box from him. "Have you looked at these?"

"No," says Sweeney, shaking his head. "My mother hated me. She used to call me her big mistake. These wouldn't mean anything to me. And now, if you'll excuse me, I want to get to the bank before it closes."

WITH THE BALEEK safely installed in his vault, McDougall makes a strong pot of black tea and sits down to examine the photographic legacy of Sweeney's mother. There are hundreds of photos, and on the back of each is a note to Sweeney. The largest picture is of Sweeney as a boy of seven or eight having a tea party with his mother. They are using the Baleek set. On the back of the photograph Sweeney's mother has written

Here we are acting out the Mad Hatter's tea party from Alice in Wonderland. That's my mother's old Baleek tea set, which she got from her mother who got it as a wedding gift in 1872. Amazing none of the pieces ever broke. You even had tea parties with your friends Raymond and Cecily, but nothing ever broke. Proof of angels, if you ask me.

You know, Dearie, I wish I could have left you buckets of money, but all I have is this tea set. I hope it brings you joy.

Mama

RETREAT

The five-day retreat begins with a walking meditation, during which Andrew obsesses about everything he has left behind. At lunch, he eats three huge helpings of rice and vegetables, but during the afternoon sitting session he cannot remember eating anything. He burps, and the flavors of chard and vinegar tickle his taste buds. For a fleeting moment he sees again his brimming bowl of food. All his other thoughts have been about his stock portfolio, the car he wants to buy, his failing relationship with Stella, and his strategy for gaining an investment advantage in a promising new technology.

After supper, he attends the dharma talk given by a Buddhist nun. Her opening words are, "Why do we fear this moment? This moment. Here. Right now." That is all Andrew hears. For the rest of the talk, he is consumed by scenarios of the stock market going way up or way down. As he imagines the market rising, he becomes so excited he can barely stay seated. As he imagines the market falling, his limbs grow heavy and cold.

WALKING TO THE dormitory following the talk — the road awash in moonlight — Andrew hears someone ask, "What did you think of her?" For a long moment, he cannot separate the voice and the question from his thoughts about what clothes he should wear to the meeting with the men who own the new technology he wants to invest in. With a tremendous effort, he brings his attention to the present moment and finds he is quite alone.

On the road ahead of him, several people are standing together looking up at two white owls perched in an enormous oak tree. As the owls launch themselves into the night sky, Andrew returns to his dilemma of what to wear to his meeting with the new technologists.

He barely sleeps a wink that night, imagining himself attending dozens of meetings, changing clothes countless times, making and losing several fortunes. He finally falls asleep a few minutes before a monk enters the dormitory and strikes a gong to summon the retreat participants to early morning meditation.

Moments after sitting down in the zendo, Andrew falls asleep and tumbles off his cushion, bumping into the woman next to him. Deeply chagrined, he sits in abject misery for the rest of the hour-long session, his body aching from head to toe as he rehearses his apology. When the gong sounds, he can barely rouse himself to rise.

On his way to breakfast, feeling utterly drained and defeated, Andrew comes to the conclusion that this retreat is a colossal waste of his valuable time. He gobbles a bowl of hot cereal and hurries out of the cafeteria determined to withdraw. He skips down the gravel path to the office, elated to be leaving.

"What a gorgeous place," he says, smiling up at the billowy white clouds scudding through the brilliant blue sky. A breeze engulfs him in the scent of jasmine blossoms, and he slows to marvel at a bevy of delicate yellow butterflies fluttering drunkenly around a stand of voluptuous red lilies.

He steps through the open door of the cottage where the office is housed and finds a man speaking to the nun who gave the previous evening's dharma talk. The man is saying, "... just doesn't feel right ... couldn't get my head into the right space ... need to talk to my wife ... think I might have bounced a check ... maybe next time."

The man gives Andrew a sheepish grin and scurries out the door. Andrew gazes at the nun — a short, stout woman with a freshly shaved head. She finishes writing something in a large ledger and turns her gaze upon him. Her eyes are green and deeply set. There is something impish about her face — playful and mysterious. She smiles and says, "Hello."

"Hello," he replies, surprised and yet not surprised to hear himself say, "I want to thank you for your talk last night. I was barely here. I'm only just now arriving."

She wrinkles her nose and whispers, "Me, too."

MEAT

He had planned everything so carefully, Marvin had. And now, what with a long delay due to unforeseen road construction, a flat tire despite brand new steel-belted radials, and a state agricultural inspector at the Nevada border who found Dipa's turban possibly indicative of forbidden foodstuffs, they are hours late for, and ninety-five miles away from, their rendezvous with Mary, Marvin's wife, at the only vegetarian restaurant for hundreds of miles around.

Dipa, a tiny, bird-like man with brown skin, his dress a loose gown of gray cotton, is not the least disturbed by the various delays in their journey. He turns to Marvin and says, "Perhaps this next village will provide us with some tasty comestibles. I haven't eaten since I left Bombay two days ago."

"I am so sorry," says Marvin, grimacing sympathetically. "Two days? You must be faint from hunger."

"I believe I am." Dipa giggles. "Low blood sugar."

Marvin — a heavy-limbed man with wispy gray hair, the reluctant chauffeur of his wife's guru — terminates cruise control and slows his enormous silver Mercedes to a crawl as they enter Shotgun, population 97, home to Lacey's General Store and two taverns: the Buckshot and the 12-Gauge.

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Excerpted from "Buddha in a Teacup"
by .
Copyright © 2008 Todd Walton.
Excerpted by permission of Counterpoint.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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