Recently
I was walking down one of the main streets in Bellingham on
my way to a
friend/supporter's house to obtain some very
important
dental floss
and instant coffee, when
I caught up
with a young
man strolling
along the sidewalk. Before overtaking him I noticed that he
occasionally waved his arms about in a symmetrical manner (with both
arms synchronized, like mirror images of each other), but aside from
that he seemed nothing out of the ordinary. He
looked to be in his late twenties, and wore a rather dirty-looking
orange T-shirt, baggy pants, and white sneakers, with a tattoo
sticking out above the back of his collar.
As
I passed him he glanced at me and said something like, “Hey Bro,
what is that apparatus you're wearing?” I explained that it was a
monk's robe, and that I am a Buddhist monk. Then he asked me to slow
down (I was walking faster than him) and engaged me in an
increasingly strange conversation, the likes of which I had never
participated
in before. He said,
“I've seen them in movies, in shows, in plays, and so forth, but
what is a Buddhist monk?”
While I was considering
how to answer
this question he did
not wait for the answer and said
something along the lines of, “That is not a monk's robe---that is
Buddhism. You
are not a Buddhist monk---you are Buddhism. Buddhism
means that you don't have to take shit off anybody.” Then
he began
meandering in
the general direction of Comparative Religion, often inventing words
as he went along, like “disattachmentality” and “religiousment.”
He almost totally monopolized the conversation, and
I listened.
Before a
minute had passed
I realized that he was very
far from the mainstream,
psychologically speaking.
It
was rather interesting hearing him talk, and he seemed friendly
enough, so I continued walking with him. After a few blocks he asked
if we could sit and talk for a while, pointing to a low curb nearby,
so I pointed out that right across the next intersection were some
benches. We went to the benches, but neither of us sat down. There he
spoke at length about subjects so arcane and personal to him that I
could hardly follow what he was talking about. Much of his vocabulary
was invented improvisationally as he spoke. Sometimes he would ask me
leading questions, like “What are the three things that all
Buddhists are against?” I replied that a Buddhist shouldn't be
against anything, whereupon he grinned as though slightly embarrassed
and said, “That's one,” holding up two fingers. He
then explained that all Buddhists are against “free exercise of
will,” which did not include “sexual exurgencies” (I am unsure
about much of his wording). Shortly thereafter he assured me that
although he had been a “gangbanger”---presumably meaning a member
of a gang---he was not a crook because he was not a sex offender. He
placed much emphasis on this.
Before
long he began asking if he could spend the night with me in prayer.
Considering that he seemed mentally ill and quite
irrational
this seemed like a bad idea to me, and I honestly told him that I was
a guest myself at the place where I was staying and couldn't
invite him there. He was insistent that I had powers that he needed
immediately, and at one point began weeping in
earnest as he
pleaded
for my spiritual assistance. I told him that he would get what he
needed and that my “energy” was with him---but
this was not enough for
him: he needed
to spend the night with me. At one point he tried to explain some of
the secret religious
reasons why
immediate interaction between him and me was absolutely necessary,
but fearing that others would overhear, asked “Do you read lips?”
and then silently mouthed his more or less incoherent reasonings. He
thanked me more than once for my patience, shook
my hand, and seemed
really to like
me. I can't say for sure whether I liked him, but I certainly felt for the guy. Once he
intended to explain some important truth to me and warned, “I may
speak
Arabic,” then with
a deadpan expression made
a number of incoherent sounds,
ending with a loud clicking noise.
After about twenty minutes of participating in this strange
conversation I politely informed him that I had somewhere to go, and
wished him well. The evening prayer issue not yet being resolved in
his mind, however, he asked if he could follow along with me for a
while. Politely yet reluctantly, I told him it was OK.
I wondered, with true wonderment, what kind of strange karma was
coming up.
As
we cut through a grocery store parking lot he told me with much
agitation that _____ (I didn't catch the name) had tried to murder
him. I
calmly reassured him that only the body can be murdered, which he
seemed to appreciate. Before reaching the far side of the parking lot
he asked me to stop; told me that even if someone like me blew his
brains out with a gun he couldn't be killed; then requested that I
look at his shadow, not at him, and demonstrated in pantomime himself
shooting himself in the face. At that I turned and continued on my
way. He continued to follow. One statement he repeated more than once
during this
time is “I
am not God.”
When
we reached the house of my supporter I told him that I would spend
some time inside, and that since it wasn't my house I couldn't invite
him in, hoping that with his short attention span he would eventually
lose interest and wander away. Also I hoped that my supporter wasn't
home, but she was. As she opened the door for me her response on
seeing my companion was like, “Oh, who's your friend?” with my
response to her being an intense look and a slight shaking of the
head signifying “No---Don't invite him in.” As I explained the
situation to her inside
the house and we discussed what to do, he
didn't go away, but doggedly
alternated
between standing and sitting crosslegged on the ground as though in
meditation.
By
now I was sweating, although that was largely due to the fact that I
had just walked a mile or so on a hot August day; and also I was
shaking
a little, not so much from fear as from the intensity of the
experience---I
had never been in
such a situation before
and was not
sure what to do. Calling the police seemed
to be a desperate last resort. I really wished that I could help him,
although not enough actually to spend the night with him.
After
a little while both of us went out and met with him on
the front porch.
My friend gently
asked, “What do you need? What can we do for you?” He vehemently
replied, pointing to my robe, “I need a sheet like his!” At this
my friend's eyes lit up, and she knew exactly what to do: she went
inside and got a set of regulation Burmese monk's robes that she had
stored in the house, and came out and gave them to him! Then he said
that he had to be “cleansed” before putting on the robes and
performing whatever ceremony would follow. (He obviously used the
word “cleansed” in more than just a physical sense.) I tried to
persuade him to go home and take a shower, but he ignored this idea, so my friend told him that there was a garden hose in
the back yard that he could use to wash up. He went into the back
yard with the robes, stripped himself, and hosed himself off naked on
the lawn.
While he was doing this, my friend and I went back inside and
conferred some more.
I
got an idea which seemed like a good one at the time: A few weeks
previously I had found near
a river what
looks like
an old
native American spearhead; so when he came back to the front door
dripping wet with the Burmese robes on, I offered it to him, saying,
“This is an ancient spearhead. Go with it until you feel energy
emanating from it. That place will be safe for you.” As it turned
out though, he immediately refused to accept it, and
when I offered it a second time he said, “You know where you can
put that?” and began snaking his hand around in a peculiar manner,
so that I suspected it would wind up in an obscene gesture, but
perhaps tangential thought got the better of him, and he was
distracted into another direction. He asked if it was necessary for
me to see his tattoos before
we started. I
said no, but he showed them to me anyway. He had several. A
large one on his back said “Liberty or Death.” On
one part of his body he had a rather erotic, scantily-clad female
angel that he said was his guardian; and on the corresponding part on
the other side he had a demonic-looking Grim Reaper, reminiscent
of something from an Iron Maiden album cover, that
he said was his deity. He
began speaking animatedly of the Dark Carnival, a conspiracy in which
Jesus Christ is endeavoring to destroy the world, with the Devil and
his followers trying to prevent this. Again I told him firmly that I
had done what I could, that he would get what he needs, and that my
energy was with him, but he became more agitated, even annoyed.
He repeatedly insisted that he was in “disarray,” and did not
want “discontinuation,” meaning of
course that
our business together was not finished. As he became more angry I
kept glancing at a large pair of hedge clippers lying on the porch
near
our feet; I considered nonchalantly putting my foot on them just in
case he got worked up enough to use them as a weapon, but figured
that he might be offended by my lack of trust and become even more
worked up.
He
claimed to be a murderer, but without sin, as he was not a sex
offender. He repeatedly referred to his father with increasing anger,
sometimes calling him Chico, sometimes Samsonite, sometimes other
names. He repeated that he himself
was not God,
but was descended from an obscure yet
powerful native
American spirit. Then he furiously declared that he would kill a
blond, blue-eyed fathead bastard named David Meyer, or Miller (I
didn't remember the name, but afterwards considered that I should
have). I'm not sure why, but at this point I began standing before
him with my arms extended downward and outward from my sides with the
palms open and towards him. I
still wonder about why
I did that.
He
furiously insisted that I had been observing him and his father, that
I knew all about them, and that he
and I must be
together now.
I said “We are together now,” whereupon he replied, “Not now,
now now,
without
discontinuation,” indicating
that we still
had
urgent spiritual work to do together. Around
this time he heatedly said something about a goat with three horns,
and then, “There is no goat retard. Gort! Gort!” His eyes took on a certain intensity when he said “Gort,” as though he were making a particularly
salient point.
My
friend/supporter then opened the front door and looked out at us to
see what progress I had made. Our guest informed both of us that he
had had no heartbeat for six months, and had had no food for
five---although he assured us he was by no means hinting for a meal.
Then he asked if he could feel our spines, but
I refused. Then he asked us to feel our own spines. My friend looked
at me and asked in a quiet voice, “What should we do?” and not
knowing what else to say I silently mouthed to her, “Call the
police.” She closed the door and called 911.
Meanwhile,
he and I had some disagreement about ravens. He asked me what sound
they make, and I said they caw. “No! It's crows that caw! A
raven is not a crow!”
he
retorted. “Oh, yes, ravens croak,” I answered, knowing he was
leading up to the quote “Nevermore” from Poe's famous poem. (He
had already mentioned it once before.)
He turned around and asked me to feel his spine, asserting that it
had no discs between the vertebrae. I
felt it. My
friend opened the door again and said quietly, “I called,” and
within a minute or two he lost interest in us, went to the back yard,
took off the monk robes and put his old clothes back on, and went
away, leaving
the robes neatly folded.
Perhaps criminal instinct, or perhaps plenty of similar experiences
in the past, cued him to leave at last, before the police arrived.
Afterwards
I was sorry that we called the police, as though we had betrayed him
somehow, and I was glad that he left before they showed
up.
Actually, the police never showed up. They called back about an hour
later and asked a few desultory questions. Apparently mentally ill
people wandering the streets and threatening to kill people are
so common as not to be taken very seriously by the Bellingham Police
Department.
I
have little doubt that he was the most mentally disturbed
person I have ever met. I've met people with schizophrenia before, and people whose mind was pretty much absent through severe mental retardation or the extremity of old age, but nothing quite like this. He did not appear to be intoxicated, nor was
he faking it. His
mind seemed broken, fragmented,
with a few predominant themes, like obsession with his father,
stringing
it together.
One
remarkable thing was that there was no revealing wild, staring,
or haunted look in his eyes, as one sometimes sees in people who
would be diagnosed as “psychotic.” Just looking into his eyes was
not sufficient to let one know that anything was wrong with him. It
seemed that his human “spirit” was still intact. I
also have little doubt that if he had lived in Palestine
during the time of Jesus he would have been declared demon-possessed.
In his furious insistence upon my help he hinted more than once, but
did not actually say, that some force or forces---not some
person
wanting to murder him but some malevolent spiritual influence---was
causing his “disarray.” I
suppose that if Jesus or the Buddha were in my position they might
raise one hand and in a voice of authority drive out whatever
influence was afflicting him. At the time I was with him I was
thinking in terms of Western psychology and schizophrenia,
but afterward I kept thinking of demonic possession---for some reason
he reminded me of “Legion” in the New Testament, who lived in a
cemetery shrieking and cutting himself with sharp rocks. For days
after meeting him I was in a rather bleak, foul mood, with
a weird readiness
for
a
fight, as
though his state was somehow contagious.
I will say that if my foul mood was in any way a symptom of some of
his turmoil
leaving him and entering me, I was quite willing to take the hit for
his sake.
I had a strange
feeling
of helplessness and
humility not
being able to do much for him, even though I'm supposedly an
authority on spiritual matters, at least on Dhamma. I
do hope his interaction with me helped him in some way. I
blessed him silently
again
and again, and still do. If anyone out there can bless him better
than I can, please do so.
I
still wonder about the strange karma that suddenly brought him into
my life that day. I certainly could never have guessed when I started
walking that within two hours I'd be ceremoniously
offering
a stone spearhead to an incoherent demon-worshipper
dressed in monk's robes! I
have considered that many people who see me walking through
Bellingham
with robes on,
bare feet, and a shaved head simply see a lunatic. Truly,
Buddhism
teaches that anyone who is not fully enlightened is insane. It
may be significant that for perhaps half an hour he and I were
probably
the
only two beings
in
town wearing the Theravada
monk's
cīvaraṁ.
Ah, life is strange.
![]() |
Legion |