Dinner with Buddha by Roland Merullo Page B

little seed of concern. The army of my protective instincts—paternal, fraternal, avuncular—was suddenly at attention, weapons cleaned and at the ready. I was not, as they say, a New Yorker for nothing.
    We went inside, where Rinpoche had more casino misfortune. On only his third spin the bells went off—he won forty-seven dollars.
    â€œA wise man would walk out now,” I counseled from the neighboring machine.
    â€œWin maybe one more time, okay?”
    â€œSure, then dinner.”
    But, naturally, he won once, then twice, then a third time, while my machine swallowed money with the appetite of an underfed hen. I don’t believe there was any kind of spiritual magic involved. It was simply, as the expression goes, dumb luck, and I was sure that, in time, according to the unalterable calculus of gambling, the machine would turn against him. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe my brother-in-law was immune to the casino calculus, the way he was clearly immune to things like the common cold, anger, and America’s vast array of material and physical temptations. Part of me worried, though, that gambling was the chink in his armor, the Achilles’ heel, and that, if I didn’t take him by the arm and drag him into sunlight again, as I’d done in western Minnesota, he’d be ruined. Another part of me wanted to see, not his ruin of course, but a stretch of bad luck. Let him be human; let him lose; let him learn his lesson and give up gambling forever.
    And a third part of me wondered if this, too, was a trick, if he might be trying to impart some new pearl of wisdom as he sometimes did, without words.
    Bing! Bing! Bing!
Rinpoche was up sixty-four dollars, up eighty, up one hundred and twelve.
    â€œI like this wery much!” he exclaimed loudly, raising an arm to encompass the entire casino and attracting stares from all directions. He had to be joking, feigning, teaching. Had to be. He gave me a sly look, eyes shifted right, hint of a devilish grin.
    â€œThere’s some lesson here, isn’t there.”
    â€œEverywhere the wessons,” he said, yanking on the black ball with particular enthusiasm. He lost three spins in a row, betting the maximum, and then,
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Another sixty dollars.
    â€œWhat is it? That money doesn’t really matter to a spiritual man?”
    â€œMatters, sure.”
    â€œThat we’re always wanting more?”
    Rinpoche stopped playing suddenly, looked for a few seconds at what he’d won, then gathered up his coins, and led me, like an experienced casino rat, straight to the cashier’s window. He hadn’t answered the question but I could see an answer forming in his eyes. “I like it so much, the gambling,” he said, as we headed toward the entrance. “The feeling when you win, how you say it?”
    â€œThe thrill.”
    â€œTrill. Wery nice, this trill. Like the sex maybe a little bit. Like the happy feeling inside when you see your child smile.”
    â€œLike the first taste of a great meal,” I said.
    He laughed with his head thrown back and clapped me on the shoulder. “Like the candy. The ice cream, the how you say? Fadge brownie!”
    â€œFudge.”
    â€œFadge.”
    â€œThe sugar high.”
    â€œThe nice feeling makes you want more nice!”
    â€œAbsolutely. Always.”
    â€œIn your mind,” he tapped his right temple, “like a bells ringing, lights. The trill. This casino just like a mind with a trill inside it. Just the same.”
    â€œIt’s designed that way.”
    â€œWery smart!”
    â€œIt’s actually insidious,” I said. “It’s all set up to make you happy for a while, then take away your money.” But Rinpoche had gone to one of those places he went. He was beside me, fully present as always, but I knew him well enough by then to be able to detect a certain light in his eyes. As if in possession of some cosmic