The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery by Gay Hendricks, Tinker Lindsay Page B
Authors: Gay Hendricks, Tinker Lindsay
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said.
“After she was saved, McMurtry turned into a mover and a shaker, I’ll give her that. Her husband passed pretty early on, but that gal didn’t miss a beat. She started a born-again school up here so her two kids could avoid learning about dinosaurs and monkeys, and the dang thing is still going strong. Don’t worry. We’re sending Ashley to one of them Montessori places.”
I heard a door slam.
“Uh-oh, the light of my life’s home from a birthday party, and she’s going to need a scraper to get that icing offa her face.” John D chuckled. “Better go. Nice talkin’ to you, Ten. ’Bye now.”
John D sounded as happy as I’d ever heard him. I fed Tank and cleaned his litter box with a light step, then rewarded myself with a second beer. I settled on the deck outside to savor it. But sometimes my spirit refuses to float above the clouds for long, and my inner hijacker soon intervened.
I haven’t heard from Heather since breakfast. The nosedive was swift—and swiftly made worse by my fishing the Post-it from my pocket. I frowned at the little hand-drawn daisy. Heather adored daisies and had taught me a favorite girlhood game early on in our courtship. Now I tried to decipher from the daintily sketched petals if we loved each other or loved each other not.
Tank brushed against my ankles. I reached down to stroke his back, and he arched slightly. No daisy petals necessary to read my feelings for him. Tank slipped from underneath my palm and ambled inside. I leaned back in my chair. The canyon sky was blue-black, and empty of stars. I finished my beer and followed my cat’s lead.
As I was getting ready for bed my phone buzzed. It was a text from Heather: U STILL UP ?
The obvious answer was yes, because yes, technically, I was up. But the question was, did I want to talk to her? That answer was no, but no hooked into an immediate and contradictory you should , and then it was on: ignore the text and go to bed was swiftly elbowed aside by you read the text, so you owe her a reply. They multiplied into so many dueling versions of don’t want to and you have to that I had an entire courtyard of arguing monks in my head, just like the debating sessions of my Tibetan Buddhist youth. I knew what came next, and sure enough, I was soon visited by shame, the same shame that was so brilliantly instilled in me by my teachers years ago.
Shame was a big motivator at Dorje Yidam, its hot body crawl more feared than any of the stick-swats or ear-twists handed out. Whenever Yeshe, Lobsang, and I were caught misbehaving, we were informed that we had not only disappointed our teachers but had let down the entire Dharma, the lineage of teachings that stretched back to the Buddha. That’s 2,600 years’ worth of disappointment.
I shuddered, remembering the grave, pained look on the face of my tutor, Lama Sonam, or the angry look on my father’s when I had broken yet another rule. It was a look nobody could ever fake, communicating something like, “Your behavior makes me question whether my whole life as a teacher has been a waste. Your behavior causes me to wonder if I’ve betrayed the Dharma and will be reborn as a horny toad.”
I can testify that a shaming look is a very strong deterrent to most people. I must have been about six the first time I experienced it at Dorje Yidam. My gut froze, as if a giant hand was gripping my entrails. A split-second later, fire bloomed in my calves and spread up through my thighs to meet the ice deep in my belly. The collision of these two—shame and fear—triggered an awful alchemy, sending toxicity throughout the body.
Right now, looking at Heather’s text, my blood was streaming with it.
Breath is the only thing that will clear the taint of that particular poison. As I mutely stared at the text, I breathed deeply and slowly, in and out, until the toxin began to disperse. After about ten breaths, the disharmony was more or less resolved. But I still didn’t know what to
“After she was saved, McMurtry turned into a mover and a shaker, I’ll give her that. Her husband passed pretty early on, but that gal didn’t miss a beat. She started a born-again school up here so her two kids could avoid learning about dinosaurs and monkeys, and the dang thing is still going strong. Don’t worry. We’re sending Ashley to one of them Montessori places.”
I heard a door slam.
“Uh-oh, the light of my life’s home from a birthday party, and she’s going to need a scraper to get that icing offa her face.” John D chuckled. “Better go. Nice talkin’ to you, Ten. ’Bye now.”
John D sounded as happy as I’d ever heard him. I fed Tank and cleaned his litter box with a light step, then rewarded myself with a second beer. I settled on the deck outside to savor it. But sometimes my spirit refuses to float above the clouds for long, and my inner hijacker soon intervened.
I haven’t heard from Heather since breakfast. The nosedive was swift—and swiftly made worse by my fishing the Post-it from my pocket. I frowned at the little hand-drawn daisy. Heather adored daisies and had taught me a favorite girlhood game early on in our courtship. Now I tried to decipher from the daintily sketched petals if we loved each other or loved each other not.
Tank brushed against my ankles. I reached down to stroke his back, and he arched slightly. No daisy petals necessary to read my feelings for him. Tank slipped from underneath my palm and ambled inside. I leaned back in my chair. The canyon sky was blue-black, and empty of stars. I finished my beer and followed my cat’s lead.
As I was getting ready for bed my phone buzzed. It was a text from Heather: U STILL UP ?
The obvious answer was yes, because yes, technically, I was up. But the question was, did I want to talk to her? That answer was no, but no hooked into an immediate and contradictory you should , and then it was on: ignore the text and go to bed was swiftly elbowed aside by you read the text, so you owe her a reply. They multiplied into so many dueling versions of don’t want to and you have to that I had an entire courtyard of arguing monks in my head, just like the debating sessions of my Tibetan Buddhist youth. I knew what came next, and sure enough, I was soon visited by shame, the same shame that was so brilliantly instilled in me by my teachers years ago.
Shame was a big motivator at Dorje Yidam, its hot body crawl more feared than any of the stick-swats or ear-twists handed out. Whenever Yeshe, Lobsang, and I were caught misbehaving, we were informed that we had not only disappointed our teachers but had let down the entire Dharma, the lineage of teachings that stretched back to the Buddha. That’s 2,600 years’ worth of disappointment.
I shuddered, remembering the grave, pained look on the face of my tutor, Lama Sonam, or the angry look on my father’s when I had broken yet another rule. It was a look nobody could ever fake, communicating something like, “Your behavior makes me question whether my whole life as a teacher has been a waste. Your behavior causes me to wonder if I’ve betrayed the Dharma and will be reborn as a horny toad.”
I can testify that a shaming look is a very strong deterrent to most people. I must have been about six the first time I experienced it at Dorje Yidam. My gut froze, as if a giant hand was gripping my entrails. A split-second later, fire bloomed in my calves and spread up through my thighs to meet the ice deep in my belly. The collision of these two—shame and fear—triggered an awful alchemy, sending toxicity throughout the body.
Right now, looking at Heather’s text, my blood was streaming with it.
Breath is the only thing that will clear the taint of that particular poison. As I mutely stared at the text, I breathed deeply and slowly, in and out, until the toxin began to disperse. After about ten breaths, the disharmony was more or less resolved. But I still didn’t know what to
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