Free Dinner with Buddha by Roland Merullo

seemed somehow fitting when, at a little shop on that main drag, a waitress with a Sanskrit OM symbol tattooed on her neck sold Shelsa a strawberry ice cream cone. In a weary travelers’ silence we walked back and climbed the four flights of stairs to our Silverado-Franklin suite. We had two bedrooms with forest-green carpet, torn wallpaper, an upright piano, and a huge TV in the sitting room. A framed, yellowed newspaper clipping on one wall claimed that Jack Dempsey, the famous boxer, had once slept here. This made zero impression on Rinpoche and Seese. They did their before-bed meditation with Shelsa, and I joined them there, beside the cot on which she’d sleep. Under the good monk’s guidance we all envisioned a blue lake, the surface of the water ruffled at first by a small wind, and then growing calmer and calmer until it was perfectly flat and still, like the mind in deepest meditation. “Little wind blow on across this water now,” Rinpoche said quietly, resting a hand on his daughter’s forehead, “and then he go still again. Flat. Blue. Sleep now, beautiful child. Sleep with wrapped around you like a blanket our love.”
    I peeked once. Shelsa was sitting cross-legged on the pillow, eyelids steady, face set in an expression of the most perfect peace. I closed my eyes again and instead of envisioning the lake, I thought:
What would our world be like if every child were put to sleep this way?
    The prayer completed, I hugged my niece warmly and went into the sitting room so they could have a last few minutes of family time.
The Godfather
was on the TV. Part I. I turned the volume low and watched. Luca Brasi, the vicious enforcer, was handing an envelope of money to Don Corleone and saying, “And I hope that their first child will be a masculine child.”
    I turned off the set and sat on the worn leather couch in a small stew of anxiety. What if Rinpoche’s bloodline, with its history of purified souls,
had
produced a kind of anti-Godfather, a blessed heir, and the line of Buddhist spiritual leaders would now switch genders? Why, in the modern world, was such a thing impossible? And then, close on the heels of that idea: What if, instead of power madness and envy leading to the assassination of a mafia figure, it led to the assassination of a spiritual figure? My niece, to be exact. Wouldn’t it be better for her to keep a low profile, if she turned out, as her mother claimed, to be this special spirit?
    Seese emerged from the bedroom, long hair falling on her Scottish plaid sleeping shirt, which did not go at all well with her red-checked pajama pants. She closed the door quietly behind her and came and sat opposite me. “I don’t like to upset you,” she said.
    â€œI’m fine.”
    â€œI could see the change in your face in the restaurant. I know what you must have been thinking about me.”
    I shrugged.
    â€œDon’t you see that Shels isn’t an ordinary girl?”
    â€œSure, I see it. She predicts the future, she stands outside in the snow and warms herself up by
thinking,
for God’s sake. She talks like an adult half the time. But it’s a bit of a stretch to go from that to being the next Dalai Lama, don’t you think?”
    She slanted her eyes away and back. “In every life, brother, there comes a point where you have to make a stand inside yourself, spiritually. You have to say, I believe this and I don’t believe that. I’ll commit to this, I’ll abandon that. It’s in the Bible, the Torah, the Sutras, the Vedas, the
Tao Te Ching.
Muhammad said surrender to God is the only way to salvation. So here’s your moment. You can think I’m just a flake, a nutcase, a mother who wants her child to be special to compensate for her own failings. Or you can give me enough benefit of the doubt to travel with Rinpoche for a little while and see where it leads. If I turn out to be wrong, then you can tell