The monk confesses his sin and reveals the secret of love to the Kid.
“Hey, kid, I’m back.”
“Tell me how I can get rid of you.”
“You can’t … I need you to help me get back to earth.”
“But, that’s not something I’m looking forward to. Why is your torment suddenly my torment?”
“Maybe you can avoid what happened to me.”
“What harm can a butterfly do … sounds like there is more to this story.”
“Yes, there is more that arose from my monastery experience.”
“Sounded like a good position to me. Why would you blow it like that?”
“How naïve you are. There is much more to Tantra than your little mind imagines.”
“Trust me, my imagination is pretty good.”
“The Dalai Lama kept instilling in us the need to be totally indifferent to our Tantra practice. As an example, he said that a meal of crap with a glass of pus should be as appetizing to us as the finest meal.”
“I know which I would choose.”
“Alas, I know what I chose. I did the unthinkable and fell in love with a beautiful nun named Leonora de la Cruz.”
“No wonder they never made a movie of your life.”
“This is no joke. I took a vow of indifference and it was a bad example to the novices. That is why I hoped that math and physics would clear up my mind. Alas, it didn’t work so I was forced into this series of incarnations.”
“So have they served to subdue your ardor?”
“Quite the contrary, it has only increased. As a toad, I kept dreaming she would be the princess that came to rescue me. And then I thought she was the geisha girl … so close yet so unapproachable. And now, where they incarnated me, there is no hope of seeing her again. Yet, strangely, I have not yet lost the power of being happy from my thoughts of her.”
“Interesting. Then which is sweeter, to see your beloved or to think of her?”
“That’s hard to say. When I was physically with her, she seemed a woman; from a distance, she appears to me to be a goddess.”
“How does that work.” He was finally sounding a little interesting to me.
“These goddesses are so considerate, that whenever one of them approaches a mortal man, she doffs her divinity, hiding her halo in her pocket, in order not to dazzle the mortal who stands before her.”
“I hear you. Don’t you see that as a fault of women, that they are so different from what we imagine them to be?”
“Son, is it their fault that they are made of flesh and blood and not of nectar and ambrosia? Which amongst the ten thousand things possesses even a shadow of the perfection you imagine women to have? You have no such illusions about men—do you?— who are so often of little worth. Why would you expect women to be angels?”
“I’m beginning to understand. There is someone I, too, am dying to see and speak to again.”
“Ah, tonight I will bring her to you in your dream. She shall be so beautiful and courteous that you will take courage and speak to her much more freely and readily than you have ever spoken to her before. You will be satisfied with the sweetness that will fill your soul. And tomorrow, whenever you think of this dream, you will feel your heart overflowing with tenderness.”
“Is that a consolation? A dream in exchange for truth!”
“Between knowing the truth and the dream there is only this difference, that the dream is always many times sweeter and more beautiful than the truth can ever be.”
“So is the dreamed pleasure then as good as a real pleasure?”
“It is. I know of a monk who, after his lover appeared to him in a dream, the whole next day he avoided meeting her and seeing her, because he knew that the real lady couldn’t compare with the dream image. Reality would deprive him of the extraordinary delight the dream gave.”
“I don’t know whether to thank you for this advice or throw you into the microwave!”
Saint Leonora sees in her dreams the dark future of humanity: floods, wars, revolutions, falling governments and more. With her eyes closed between dreaming and meditation she dictates her visions to a nun seated by her bedside.