Loring, A Writing Life

7: Connecting

Much as I needed my solitary writing and walking hours, I needed to be with people, too. Teaching helped. Always a pretty affable teacher, I mostly enjoyed my Metro students and gave them a good deal of after class time. I visited schools and learned kids’ names quickly, then forgot them just as quickly as I drove away at the end of a week-long residency. My friend Leonard and I had almost-daily phone conversations and sometimes we met for walks. My Tibetan friends kept me busy with rides here and there and impromptu community meals, and I stayed in touch with family—mostly my son—by phone. And once a week I went to a meditation group at a little monastery in a rented South Minneapolis apartment.

A rag-tag group of Americans and Tibetans sat on the monastery’s living room floor and chanted, sat for silent meditation, and drank tea. I’ve forgotten now which night of the week we met. Whichever night it was, though, it became the anchor of my week. I arrived early and set my meditation pillow down next to the kitchen, behind where everyone else would be sitting. People filed in—a truck driver/preacher’s son who’d gone astray, a tall HIV-positive actor who had survived the AIDS epidemic in New York, a white-bearded old hippie who spoke in wide-eyed wows and right-ons, a couple of Tibetan women exhausted from working two separate jobs seven days a week, a silent, middle-aged American woman who looked nobody in the eye, random visitors, and three or four other regulars. Attended by a young monk named Lobsang, Geshe-la, the leader and teacher, came out of an adjoining room and took his place in front. Lobsang, in his hilariously nervous, chattering way, handed out Tibetan prayers we didn’t understand but recited anyway from their phonetic transcriptions.

After chanting, we meditated and then had a question and answer time. A third monk, the elderly Gen-la, prepared tea and cookies in the kitchen as Lobsang translated. Gen-la must have been in his seventies. He and Geshe-la, close old friends, had come over the Himalayas with the Dalai Lama in 1959. He loaded up a tray with little cups of milk tea, and I stood up to serve it to the group. I don’t remember how we began to do this. Before then, though, he had taken it around and then gone back into the kitchen to get the tray of cookies. He might have invited me to help or I might have simply decided it was my job. At any rate, we worked it out without a word. Our silent interaction was the best part of my week.

It took a humid summer evening for me to realize his true worth. I had taken Geshe-La, Gen-la, and Lobsang to Lake Harriet for a picnic. We spread a blanket out on the wide lawns near the band shell and set about munching snacks and drinking Gatorade. Nothing much was going on. It was a pleasant evening, and I’d brought a Frisbee, thinking Lobsang and I would toss it around. But after two or three throws, Lobsang—ever the lovable comedian complainer—pooped out.

 “All I ever wanted was a simple, peaceful life,” he liked to moan. “I thought that’s what being a monk would be like, but now they tell me ‘Go here.’ They tell me ‘Go there.’ Always busy. ‘Do this. Do that.’ Always busy.”

He said it with a smile and a little chuckle, but he meant it.

Disgusted, I began heading back to the blanket where the two old monks sat. Lobsang beat me there and flopped down on his back, as if he’d been hauling bricks up and down a ladder all day. Before I join him, though, both the elderly monks stood up and fanned out to have me throw them the Frisbee.

I threw it first to Geshe-la. An easy throw before he’d gone very far. He tossed it back to me while Gen-la kept increasing the distance between us. I thought, “Oh, boy. I’d better get it straight to old Gen-la so he isn’t tempted to run for it.” I took extra care, but the Frisbee’s flight veered far to the left. Gen-la’s feet were planted. He didn’t move. I was just ready to yell that I’d retrieve the bad throw when he casually reached out his arm and caught the Frisbee. With the same casual ease he threw it back to me. All I had to do was take an easy step and reach my hand out. I threw it to Geshe-la and around we went for the next half hour. When Geshe-la headed back to the blanket, Gen-la quietly increased the distance between us again and kept me busy running back and forth for the Frisbeee. No misses. No great effort.

Throwing the Frisbee can be a beautiful thing. You can set it in a chest-high dart straightlining to your target. You can send it out on a diagonal climb that gradually catches enough air to bank it dive bombing to where your partner stands. You can make it hang in the air while your partner runs to where it is waiting to meet him. You can use the air and the disc to move your partner back and forth across the field. Gen-la could put it—and me—anywhere he wanted. He knew I wanted to run and we both delighted in the disc’s flight. I’d never had such a connection throwing the Frisbee.

Later, as we walked back to the car to go home, I turned to Lobsang and said, “Geshe-la is the teacher and head guy, but Gen-la is really in charge, right?” The thought had only that instant occurred to me. Lobsang looked at me seriously for once and shook his head and said, “Oh, yeah. He’s the boss, the really big boss.” 

I sat every day and performed the meditation Geshe-la had taught, but it was Gen-la who intrigued me. I felt I understood why, though I couldn’t then have put that feeling into words. Maybe I’ll get back to that later in this story. He never learned English and we never spoke. We nodded, smiled, gestured, and fell into step with one another as effortlessly as he had caught and thrown the Frisbee. I felt a great warmth from him. Many years later when I hadn’t seen him for I don’t know how long, we recognized one another across the room at a large public event, and he drew me to him in the middle of prayers and wrapped me in his arms. Nothing had been lost, though my life had changed so much by then.