Different beholders. “What,” she asked, “is a bodhisatva? Is that what he meant by ‘holy man extraordinary’?”
Ngunda’s eyebrows jumped. “Ah! Probably, in a humorous vein. A bodhisatva, as we use the term, is a soul which has graduated from the Earth School, so to speak. It has completed a full curriculum of lessons, of lives and deaths, and of course the between-lives reviews. But it chooses to be reborn anyway, to carry out some task, some project. And having no further karma to deal with, and no necessary lessons still to learn, is more perceptive than other humans. Thus Lor Lu gained a sense of you, simply by putting his attention on you from a distance. Then, by meeting you, his perceptions of the vectors were both strengthened and expanded.”
The words washed over her without sticking. She should, she thought, be perturbed by all this weird, New Age credulity, but somehow it didn’t seem that terrible. Crazy, yes, but she could deal with it—as long as it didn’t seriously infect her daughters. That was the bottom line.
“When he returned from Bridgeport,” Ngunda continued, “he told me you would be able to examine a complex of situations, see potential problems, and intuitively recognize approaches to their solution.”
Lee nodded. She’d never looked at it that way, but it fitted. “Thank you for your courtesy,” she said, almost as if dismissing him. “I’m happy things are working out that well.”
“You are quite welcome,” Ngunda answered, and turning, left.
Bodhisatva! she thought as the door closed behind him. The first time I hear that word from Becca or Raquel, I’ll blow my top.
23
What does the Tao intend us to do? Why, to choose, make our own choices. Which we can’t help doing, even when we choose to follow someone else’s orders or advice. Or when we choose not to choose, for that too is a choice, with effects on ourselves and on others. The Tao intends us to navigate our own way among the shoals and whirlpools of life, learning as we go.
Hopefully keeping an eye on our life task as we steer. Not some goal or task that someone else—our parents, our peers, society—has selected for us, but the goal and the task that each of us chose for this life before we were born into it.
Such remembering is easier said than done. Our Essence knows, and undertakes to remind us; but given the pressures and distractions of life—perhaps what others think we should do—too often we don’t notice or heed those nudges and impulses. So it can be useful to sort out for ourselves what our life goal and life task might be.
But if we go astray, we are not damned. The Tao damns no one. We don’t even damn ourselves. We simply experience results, and take responsibility for our actions. There are lessons and growth in every choice we make. No choice is wasted, and the Tao continues to love us unconditionally.
From The Collected Public Dialogs
of Ngunda Elija Aran
The old Dodge all-wheel-drive carryall looked like a lot of vehicles used by backcountry types—large mud tires, a front-mounted winch, and camouflage paint, recamouflaged by dried mud and road dust. A spotlight, cleaned of mud, was mounted in front of the driver’s door, available for poaching at night. The Colorado license plates were not those it normally wore, back home in Albuquerque. They’d come from a junk vehicle.
It was Lute Koskela who drove, though the rig was not his. They’d set up this operation on a tight timetable, and he was the one who’d scouted the area. He drove slowly, without lights, till the ill-graded gravel road took him into pine forest. There, dimmed headlights would not be visible from a distance, and in the forest they were necessary; trees drastically reduced the natural twilight. Now he watched for the faded pink surveyor’s ribbon he’d tied round a tree more than two weeks earlier. An old inconspicuous ribbon, taken from a roadside tree miles away, a meaningless leftover from some years-old survey job. Which was exactly how he’d wanted it to look.
He was perhaps an hour behind schedule, the result of slow service at a restaurant, and a flat tire. But they’d continued. Sarge wanted to get it over with, and the delay didn’t seem serious. And Lute wasn’t much given to reading omens into things. By nature, he was alert and observant, and by training and experience doubly so. Spotting the ribbon, he turned off the graveled road onto a primitive truck trail, which wound half a mile to the forest’s edge. There he parked, the carryall screened by a fringe of saplings. Then he and the others climbed out.