Free The Soloist by Mark Salzman Page A

college dropout who felt bored and unsatisfied with his life. He wandered for several years trying to “find himself” with drugs and mysticism, eventually joining the Los Angeles Zen Foundation, a Buddhist church in Pacific Palisades. He was attracted to this religion because it offered “enlightenment,” a blinding flash of insight that turns anyone who has it into a spiritual master.
    “Mr. Weber believed,” the prosecutor said, making a noticeable effort to sound matter-of-fact rather than sarcastic, “that if he was an enlightened Zen master, he would no longer have any nagging doubts or insecurities about anything, and spiritually advanced people would respect him and seek his advice and wisdom. In January of this year, during the foundation’s annual intensive meditation retreat, Mr. Weber apparently decided his time had arrived. On the afternoon of January fourth, he suddenly started shouting that he was enlightened and that he had become a Buddha. WhenMr. Kazuo Okakura, the Zen master leading the retreat, asked Mr. Weber to demonstrate his ‘enlightenment,’ the young man jumped up, grabbed a stick out of the Zen master’s hands and savagely beat him with it. There were eleven people in the church at the time, not counting Mr. Weber or Mr. Okakura, and all of them witnessed the assault. The blows crushed Mr. Okakura’s skull and broke his neck, and he died several hours later in a hospital.”
    As Mr. Graham described the crime, several of the potential jurors stared incredulously at the defendant. He looked too frail to commit such a brutal murder. I also noticed a bit of a commotion in the back of the courtroom. I looked out and saw a group of Asian people surrounding an old couple, also Asian. The younger members of the group seemed to be translating for the old couple. I guessed that they were the parents of the murder victim.
    “The evidence will show,” Mr. Graham concluded, pointing at the defendant and looking straight at him, “that Mr. Weber intentionally killed Mr. Okakura in order to demonstrate his spiritual strength to the rest of the world, and in order to eliminate the possibility that Mr. Okakura might challenge the validity of his self-declared ‘enlightenment.’ When you’ve heard the evidence, I believe you will find you have no choice but to find the defendant guilty.”
    The prosecutor returned to his seat and the judge ordered the defense to make its opening statement.
    Ms. Doppelt stood up and requested a private conference. Judge Davis reluctantly consented, and the court custodian led the jury out to the jury room so that we would not overhear what was said. When we returned to the courtroom I could see that Ms. Doppelt was unhappy about something. When the judge once again invited her to make her openingremarks, she faced us and said, “Members of the jury, I am only allowed to introduce evidence of mental illness during the ‘sanity phase’ of the trial. So you in the jury will be forced to go through the process of declaring Philip guilty of murder before I have a chance to properly defend him. I can only hope that when this part of the trial is over, you will be willing to try to hear the evidence of insanity with open minds. Thank you.” The judge raised one of his massive eyebrows and looked prepared to rebuke her, but just as quickly his eyebrow settled back again. The defendant noticed this and laughed quietly.
    As we filed out of the courtroom for the morning break the juror who read gas meters, whose name was Gary, asked me, “Sounds pretty weird, huh? Hey, I could be a Zen master—I have a baseball bat in my truck! Ha ha …” When he laughed I noticed that he had badly neglected teeth.
    We’d been told at least a dozen times not to discuss the trial at all until the deliberations started; I smiled and tried politely to drift away from him, but he followed me to the water fountain and asked if I knew anything about Buddhism. I said I didn’t, but that I