“Well, honestly, you stink, Josh.”

“The last time we went to the village for alms, a woman gave Number Fourteen and me a thousand-year-old egg. It didn’t sit well.”

“Can’t imagine why. I don’t think you’re supposed to eat an egg after, oh, two hundred years or so.”

“They bury them, leave them there, then dig them up.”

“Is that why I can’t see you?”

“No, that’s because of my meditation. I’ve let go of everything. I’ve achieved perfect freedom.”

“You’ve been free ever since we left Galilee.”

“It’s not the same. That’s what I came to tell you, that I can’t free our people from the rule of Romans.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not true freedom. Any freedom that can be given can be taken away. Moses didn’t need to ask Pharaoh to release our people, our people didn’t need to be released from the Babylonians, and they don’t need to be released from the Romans. I can’t give them freedom. Freedom is in their hearts, they merely have to find it.”

“So you’re saying you’re not the Messiah?”

“How can I be? How can a humble being presume to grant something that is not his to give?”

“If not you, who, Josh? Angels and miracles, your ability to heal and comfort? Who else is chosen if not you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I wanted to say good-bye. I’ll be with you, as part of all things, but you won’t perceive me until you become enlightened. You can’t imagine how this feels, Biff. You are everything, you love everything, you need nothing.”

“Okay. You won’t be needing your shoes then, right?”

“Possessions stand between you and freedom.”

“Sounded like a yes to me. Do me one favor though, okay?”

“Of course.”

“Listen to what Gaspar has to say to you tomorrow.” And give me time to think up an intelligent answer to someone who’s invisible and crazy, I thought to myself. Joshua was innocent, but he wasn’t stupid. I had to come up with something to save the Messiah so he could save the rest of us.

“I’m going to the temple to sit. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Not if I see you first.”

“Funny,” said Josh.

Gaspar looked especially old that morning when I met him in the tea room. His personal quarters consisted of a cell no bigger than my own, but it was located just off the tea room and had a door which he could close. It was cold in the morning in the monastery and I could see our breath as Gaspar boiled the water for tea. Soon I saw a third puff of breath coming from my side of the table, although there was no person there.

“Good morning, Joshua,” Gaspar said. “Did you sleep, or are you free from that need?”

“No, I don’t need sleep anymore,” said Josh.

“You’ll excuse Twenty-one and I, as we still require nourishment.”

Gaspar poured us some tea and fetched two rice balls from a shelf where he kept the tea. He held one out for me and I took it.

“I don’t have my bowl with me,” I said, worried that Gaspar would be angry with me. How was I to know? The monks always ate breakfast together. This was out of order.

“Your hands are clean,” said Gaspar. Then he sipped his tea and sat peacefully for a while, not saying a word. Soon the room heated up from the charcoal brazier that Gaspar had used to heat the tea and I was no longer able to see Joshua’s breath. Evidently he’d also overcome the gastric distress of the thousand-year-old egg. I began to get nervous, aware that Number Three would be waiting for Joshua and me in the courtyard to start our exercises. I was about to say something when Gaspar held up a finger to mark silence.

“Joshua,” Gaspar said, “do you know what a bodhisattva is?”

“No, master, I don’t.”

“Gautama Buddha was a bodhisattva. The twenty-seven patriarchs since Gautama Buddha were also bodhisattvas. Some say that I, myself, am a bodhisattva, but the claim is not mine.”

“There are no Buddhas,” said Joshua.

“Indeed,” said Gaspar, “but when one reaches the place of Buddhahood and realizes that there is no Buddha because everything is Buddha, when one reaches enlightenment, but makes a decision that he will not evolve to nirvana until all sentient beings have preceded him there, then he is a bodhisattva. A savior. A bodhisattva, by making this decision, grasps the only thing that can ever be grasped: compassion for the suffering of his fellow humans. Do you understand?”

“I think so,” said Joshua. “But the decision to become a bodhisattva sounds like an act of ego, a denial of enlightenment.”

“Indeed it is, Joshua. It is an act of self-love.”

“Are you asking me to become a bodhisattva?”

“If I were to say to you, love your neighbor as you love yourself, would I be telling you to be selfish?”

There was silence for a moment, and as I looked at the place where Joshua’s voice was originating, he gradually started to become visible again. “No,” said Joshua.

“Why?” asked Gaspar.

“Love thy neighbor as thou lovest thyself”—and here there was a long pause when I could imagine Joshua looking to the sky for an answer, as he so often did, then: “for he is thee, and thou art he, and everything that is ever worth loving is everything.” Joshua solidified before our eyes, fully dressed, looking no worse for the wear.

Gaspar smiled and those extra years that he had been carrying on his face seemed to fade away. There was a peace in his aspect and for a moment he could have been as young as we were. “That is correct, Joshua. You are truly an enlightened being.”

“I will be a bodhisattva to my people,” Joshua said.

“Good, now go shave the yak,” said Gaspar.

I dropped my rice ball. “What?”

“And you, find Number Three and commence your training on the posts.”

“Let me shave the yak,” I said. “I’ve done it before.”

Joshua put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be fine.”

Gaspar said: “And on the next moon, after alms, you shall both go with the group into the mountains for a special meditation. Your training begins tonight. You shall receive no meals for two days and you must bring me your blankets before sundown.

“But I’ve already been enlightened,” protested Josh.

“Good. Shave the yak,” said the master.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when Joshua showed up the next day at the communal dining room with a bale of yak hair and not a scratch on him. The other monks didn’t seem surprised in the least. In fact, they hardly looked up from their rice and tea. (In my years at Gaspar’s monastery, I found it was astoundingly difficult to surprise a Buddhist monk, especially one who had been trained in kung fu. So alert were they to the moment that one had to become nearly invisible and completely silent to sneak up on a monk, and even then simply jumping out and shouting “boo” wasn’t enough to shake their chakras. To get a real reaction, you pretty much had to poleax one of them with a fighting staff, and if he heard the staff whistling through the air, there was a good chance he’d catch it, take it away from you, and pound you into damp pulp with it. So, no, they weren’t surprised when Joshua delivered the fuzz harvest unscathed.)

“How?” I asked, that being pretty much what I wanted to know.

“I told her what I was doing,” said Joshua. “She stood perfectly still.”

“You just told her what you were going to do?”

“Yes.”

“She wasn’t afraid, so she didn’t resist. All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren’t afraid.”

“That’s not true. I knew what was coming—namely that you were going to get stomped by the yak and that I’m not nearly as good at healing as you are—and I was afraid.”

“Oh, then I’m wrong. Sorry. She must just not like you.”

“That’s more like it,” I said, vindicated. Joshua sat on the floor across from me. Like me, he wasn’t permitted to eat anything, but we were allowed tea. “Hungry?”