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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Undercover Buddha
>> H-1, ewa-bound
As they drove through the night, the former Frankie Kharma looked out from the passenger seat of Khamasami Khan's red Ram 1500 and felt immense compassion for the people of his hometown. Everyone was in such a hurry. Everyone was so recklessly me-me-me.
He was barely 2 when he declared that he was the first incarnation of Lama Jey Tsong Khapa, and shortly after was sent to a monastery in the Himalayas of India. At 12 he'd journeyed overland to a monastery in Nepal to study with a master there. Like the original Lama Jey Tsong Khapa, he did not want to limit himself to just one interpretation of Buddha's teachings. But that was the extent of his travels until his homecoming earlier today.
Except for snapshot memories of his parents' house and splashing in a sunshiny little blue wading pool, he had almost no recollection of Hawaii, and was shocked at what he saw 16 years later. In the Himalayas, surrounded by other living Buddhas, residing in a stark and severe land, there were fewer distractions to the pursuit of one's Buddhahood. Thus his compassion for the people of Honolulu.
But he was happy that he had this opportunity to live as a regular American, to understand the challenges they faced -- even if the reason he'd gone undercover was because Te-Wu, the Chinese secret police, had orders to make him disappear, just as they'd done with two Panchen Lamas in the past 15 years.
Still, he would consider his worldly experiences a blessing. In just a couple of hours he'd learned much. And in his pocket was a card from the police officer Quinn Ah Sun, who said he could arrange a ride on his motorcycle. And there was a name and a phone number on a piece of paper. The young lama had never seen anything in the Himalayas like Bodhicita Guzman.
Yes, his experiences would be expanding.
"Hey, Jey," his big brother Joe Kharma said from the backseat as Kamasami Khan took the Houghtailing exit. "Do you guys get 'American Idol' over there? You heard about the local kids?"
"American idol? I thought, Judeo-Christian teaching forbids idols."
"No, it's a TV show, everybody watches it! It's like a singing contest with judges, and this one, Simon, he just crucifies people he doesn't like! It's hilarious!"
"Ah, TV. This is something I have seen in certain stores in Dharmasala," the young lama said. "I am curious -- Americans find it amusing, this humiliation of a fellow human who has dreams and is trying their best."
"Jeez, when you put it like that, Jey, OK. But really ..."
"What other way of looking at it is reality?"
"... it's just entertainment."
As the young lama's understanding of his homeland grew, so did his compassion for it's people.
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Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
