Talking to the Buddha Boy

Recently writing to a friend, I was told that an old mutual acquaintance was learning an obscure South Asian Language, a Dialect really, in order to speak to a young man, Ram Bomjon, of whom the most extreme claims are being made, all the way up to asserting that this is the Second Coming of Christ, the Matraiya Buddha, God on Earth.

What I know of the Young Man is that several years ago he seemed to sincerely to wish to go out into the Jungle and meditate for 6 years uninterruptedly, but couldn’t really stick to his plan. He was bitten by snakes several times, and now entertains a serious phobia of them, tooting about this big sword, and has retreated back to Civilization, now meditating in a nice cozy cellar. Now that he is Famous he now breaks his Constant Meditation in order to give Speeches on local holidays. A recurring theme of his Speeches is that people should try to be more quiet because he finds it so difficult to meditate while people are making so much noise. But perhaps that is a faulty translation.

Initial claims for this Ram Bomjon which did the most to garner Fame was that he was living a continual fast, not eating at all, living only by the Grace of God. But then those who listen and look closely found that this was only a pretense… witnesses were chased away at dinner time, and witnesses saw him always casually picking and munching away on jungle salads. Those of Little Faith were disillusioned and disenchanted. After all, many young men have expressed the wish to Meditate, and then meditated sporadically, and fasted now and then, all without pretending to be God on Earth. When this Young Man was found to be patently Un-Special, it is bazaar that he is still treated as though he were, well, still, Divinity Incarnate. It is as though Spirituality must take second place to Deceptive Public Relations Practices. If one had ever once CLAIMED to be God for five minutes, and it had ever been considered even vaguely plausible, then it seems to be taken as Un-sportsman-like that anybody should ask for the least little Good Reason to suppose one should continue so.

I guess there is the underlying assumption that the Truth of it all depends upon all the Faith that it IS true. I suppose people think that the least Doubt will jinx the matter. People forget that Jesus did everything he did in the face of tremendous onslaughts of Doubt. A Real God will not be afraid of a Question Mark.

Anyway, what the Guru Movements throughout the 20th Century have shown us is that Guru Organizations can make a lot of money, even if they register as Charitable Organizations. You see, those who manage to worm into such Organizations can be put on Salary, and with so much Unemployment in the World, a Paycheck is a Paycheck.

So we should naturally suppose that where a Guru pops up, natural economic forces will exert themselves so that Organizations soon follow.

Yes, I suppose there is also such a thing as Spiritual Pride… to be God’s Right Hand Man.

Oh, the Acquaintance I speak of is in fact in Partnership with Owners of a Ram Bomjon Webpage. Very tightly run outfit. I was banned the very moment I expressed my first doubt. These People definitely want the Stock Price of Ram Bomjon to go up, and will not tolerate the least murmur… or whatever it is that I do. In fact, banning the likes of myself probably was seen as a Special Mark of Faith and Loyalty… whoever Fired the Gun against the Heretic took a step up in the Organization. Probably it was my Acquaintance that arranged to give me the Ax. No one is ever told about how such things come about… one simply finds one can no longer sign on. And the Intolerant Bigots never need to worry of any unpleasant confrontations. Curtailment of Freedom of Speech comes like a Stab in the Back. But it would be beneath me to bear a grudge, wouldn’t it?

Well, but back to their Viewpoint…with so many Partners sitting equally, how could an aspiring young Apostle break the tie and climb to the Top of the Ladder? As in the case of my old acquaintance, as I had mentioned, he or she (I never could figure out which) put forward the claim that he or she was making every effort to learn the obscure local dialect of the God Boy, the Buddha Boy, the Who-Ever. He or She has gone to Nepal with the expectation that there will be an Interview and a Discussion with this Adolescent God.

One wonders if this is all sincere. A Skeptic might wonder whether there even NEEDS to be an Interview, to serve the purpose of my Acquaintance. He or She can come back telling any Story, and who could possibly ever know the Difference? What if anybody asks if a Tape had been made, capturing the moment? Well, the easy answer is to say that the Guru’s attendants asked that all such gadgetry be left outside. Yeah, sure… sounds very plausible. Indeed, I know a great many people who had gone to the Far East, Guru-hopping, so to speak. In most cases people don’t get Interviews. With thousands of people milling about, and Gurus in great love with their own privacy and comfort, a fraction of a percent of people ever get a private word with the Holy of Holies.

But what of somebody who crosses the Globe with the express purpose of some Empowering Interview. To make such a Gamble to become a Big Respected Group Leader and then NOT getting an interview… that would really be a Big Risk. But young people are not afraid of Big Risks, and my young acquaintance is, well, young. Well, there is Bribery, but more on that later.

But the Language Learning makes me wonder. Is this Sincere or just more Smoke. I myself have studied languages. Yes, one can learn enough to be polite, to catch a bus, to get a room, and to order food. But to discuss Spirituality, Theology, and the Problems of Life!? Particularly when the language involved is a Local Dialect, some Provincial Patois. Such languages are chuck full of colloquialisms and slang – almost nothing is spoken of directly but everything is a local saying, some locally understood metaphor. Of have my doubts as to whether anybody, with even the best intentions, can find sufficient Study Materials to master such a backwoods Dialect for such desired intentions. But my young Acquaintance may simply be unaware of such complexities. In any case, already my Acquaintance is already being granted the respect of due to an Expert… without yet even having successfully hailed the first local Taxi. Shouldn’t we first wait to see whether this ‘Expert’ can even whistle in Nepalese, let alone discuss the most subtle intricacies of how many Angels reside on the head of a pin.

However, language aside, that is, even if one spoke the same Mother Tongue as some such Super Guru, then what would one say anyway? I’ve done some Guru-Hopping myself, and never could decide upon anything particularly clever. To ask of anything Universal and Metaphysical, well, the problem then would revolve upon understanding the Answer. I take for granted that I ALREADY understand what I am capable of understanding – formulating the Question implies that I would have a good idea what the Answer would be. And why ask a Question if one already knows the Answer? As for what I didn’t know – there the problem would come in even putting together a coherent question. And if one could finally ask about what one did not already understand, then the problem would be in understanding the Answer. Oh, yes, well, one could ask Personal Questions and ask for Personal Favors… but meeting with some Universal Being in order to deal merely with some small Particular issue of comfort and convenience, well, that seems too grubby to admit to. I am honestly ashamed of People who had visited Gurus to speak only of mundane details of Material Life.

Oh, I have an example. Once, sitting in a Group Interview with a rather famous Guru, he explained, using a Metaphor, about how the World and Dualism were Qualified, and that the Divine was Unqualified. It was all quite Easy philosophy for me and I had seen it all before at least a hundred times. He used the metaphor of Cloth and Thread, that the World and Duality were the Cloth, and that God was the Thread. Form and Substance, blah blah blah. I think I probably had to stifle a yawn. Well, when the Interview was over and the Leader of the Group held a meeting to discuss what was Said, she explained that the Guru told them that while the World offered thread on every occasion and in all places, God was the perfect cloth and the product of the best fabrication and sewing. You see, she got it completely backwards. She was Qualifying God (well don’t most Ignorant People Quality God?).

Anyway, so what good is asking questions if one can’t understand the answers… or for that matter, to ask questions if one is already quite comfortable with all these Philosophies and Doctrines, and anything really NEW might only rock the boat?

So I have always just given these Gurus my polite greeting and then waited to see if they had anything to say to me… appointing me Leader of this or that Branch Office, with salary, of course. But, as it were, Polite Greeting were always answered with Polite Greetings. But, after all, this may have been very fortunate for me.

Not everybody was as lucky as myself. Those who donated heavily to the Cause, well, they attracted much more attention from the Guru, and if it was discerned that such people had even further Influence and had connections back Home, they would indeed be given Positions of Authority in the Organization. Yes, that could be considered good, if one were really a True Believer. But complications can arise. For instance, I have had many friends in the Sathya Sai Baba Organization… back in the 60s and 70s a most promising Organization, and many people joined up and moved up. Then the Scandals broke out. Sathya Sai Baba took on the Persona of some bloated old accused child molester, on numberless counts, and all kinds of accusations of fraud and deception coming out from everywhere. What can Leaders in such an Organization do? Admit they were duped all along and resign? But one builds one’s life around such things. One becomes financially and even emotionally invested. Some old friends of mine are still bowing down before that Tarnished God. Too old to start Guru Hopping again, I suppose.

And this brings to mind the old Adage that God is Within. Really. My best Religious Revelations had come to me during my own Dreams and Meditations. One of my earliest was when I found myself dreaming that I had found myself in the Ancient Cave of the Prophet Elijah, with soot covered rough hewn stone walls lit by candlelight, and then the Prophet came up behind me and spoke softly “Remember that Perfection consists in randominity and be not One Thing and be not the Other”.

Maybe that was not so much an injunction, or even advice, but a declaration of how it would work out to be for me. You see, I have never been able to fully agree with any of these Organizations, nor even to fully disagree. No particular Group had ever been able to fully encompass God, or give a full enough Vision of Divinity. But they all found at least some small bit. The only Guru I ever really agreed with was one that told me to keep up my research, but his Organization People… well, they were idiots.

Anyway, what can my Acquaintance really expect, going to Nepal to see a Teenager? No, I don’t know the Language, but I watched a video of last years Big Speech. He went on for close to an hour. People were walking out. People in the first rows were chatting with each other. The Hot Dog Vendors were doing brisk business. It was clear that nobody was listening. The Young Man was no overpowering Orator, no Captivating Speaker. I subsequently saw a ‘Translation’. The Translation could be read in a few minutes, which means that the Speech had been severely edited… or it was compiled by somebody who pretended to know the language but was too lazy to put something together that would take roughly an hour to read.

But will this year’s Big Speech be much different from last year’s? Indeed, if my good Acquaintance has really taken much pain in order to learn the Language, he or she might find she knows it better than our Inarticulate Young God. His or Her Contribution to World Divinity may be to correct God’s careless grammar and imprecise constructions.

Oh, it would not be the first time. There was one Famous Guru who had hired a University Professor of Sanskrit Philosophy to ‘edit’ and publish his speeches and personal essays. This Guru became famous for his erudition and good sense. Then the Professor quarreled with the Guru was fired and he was replaced as ‘Editor’ by a mere, well, Editor… a man who had run a small newspaper somewhere. Suddenly the Guru lost all his good sense and erudition. The jaded among us suspected that the Professor had never attended a single Speech but simply sat at home, next to the fire, and drew the Words of God out from his own Head… oh, with the generous help of his own well stocked Sanskrit Library.

Anyway, having learned the Language, even if just to recognize a trend or direction of the Speech, my dear Acquaintance may be sufficiently astute as to be able to detect whether or not the Published Translation is at all close to the Speech that is actually given. However, and this is the rub, what if it is not?

When a Faithful True Believer finds something amiss, what then? When a Partner with Stock in the Company uncovers the Fraud, what then?

The World if full of Hopeful Statistics. For instance, more than 75% of Catholic Seminary Students drop out of Seminary, I guess when they finally understand what ‘Saint’ Paul was really saying. That is to say that 75% of at least these Young Catholics have Intellectual and Spiritual Integrity strong enough to overcome their Emotional and Financial Investments.

So what about my Young Acquaintance. Will he or she come back with the Truth and Integrity. Or will we hear some reassuring Blah Blah Blah along with a shift-eyed and self-conscious appeal for membership fees and donations.