Deshi by John Donohue Page A

it.
    “Sporadically, Dr. Burke, I am sensitized to the inner state of other people,” he said. “When it happens it is sometimes quite unexpected.”
    Yamashita regarded me for a moment and then spoke. “Burke has some experience of this, Rinpoche. But he is just beginning to develop that sense…”
    Haragei again. But what the Rinpoche experienced seemed pretty vivid. For me, it’s a subtle phenomenon: a wash of certainty or insight that creeps up over you. You can feel it in the electric tension rippling along your skin. It usually happens to me during periods of great danger. I’m in no rush to feel it again anytime soon.
    Changpa brightened and looked interested in Yamashita’s comment. “I have found this ability to be an extremely difficult one to develop in my pupils,” he said. My sensei nodded in agreement. “How do you go about it?” the lama asked.
    Yamashita sipped his tea. “Ah, Rinpoche. I have found it… challenging… to even begin to anticipate who will and who will not develop it.” He looked at me pointedly, as if to illustrate the bewildering vagaries of fate. Yamashita’s hands were not as large as Changpa’s, but they were thick and powerful-looking. He held out a hand, palm up and continued. “I try to create opportunities for the experience through training. But it is difficult.” Again, the significant glance at me.
    It was a curious thing, sitting there as both a spectator and an object of discussion. It was like being a child in the company of adults.
    The Rinpoche nodded in sympathy for my teacher. “Just so. These sensibilities seem to fascinate many people.” He sipped some tea. “They are useful, of course, but too intent a focus on them obscures, I believe, the True Path.”
    “Yet ability is sometimes what moves us along the Way,” Yamashita continued, “even if it is not the Way itself.”
    They both looked extremely gratified by the exchange. I thought it was interesting to see two people come at the same idea from diametrically opposed positions. An eavesdropper would have thought that they were writers for a fortune cookie business.
    Changpa smiled at me then. “It sounds like the cryptic messages in Chinese cookies, does it not Dr. Burke?” I smiled back, but felt suddenly cold, unbalanced. Could he really get inside my mind?
    The Tibetan very carefully pushed his tea away and to one side. He looked directly at me, and the clarity of those eyes was silent acknowledgment of what he had just done. “But I am being rude,” he continued in an apologetic voice. “Has Yamashita Sensei told you of our conversations?” He looked across the table.
    My teacher shook his head. “No, Rinpoche. I only told him that he was needed.”
    The lama regarded me carefully. “And that was enough?” he asked. I said nothing. “I have found Americans so… talkative,” Changpa continued. There was almost a tone of wonder in his voice. Then he bowed slightly toward Yamashita. “You are to be congratulated. It is rare to find a disciple who knows the value of silence. And obedience.”
    Sensei bowed back and smiled as well. Then he nodded slightly in my direction. “He is a good student,” he commented modestly. Which was the closest he ever came to giving me a public compliment.
    Changpa adjusted his glasses. The lenses caught the light and, for a moment, his eyes were flat, silver slashes. “Students,” he sighed, and turned his head to face me. “That is part of why we are here today. To be a teacher, Dr. Burke, is not really about showing people new things. It seems rather to consist of repeatedly trying to steer them away from old mistakes.”
    I was familiar with this idea. The Japanese masters spend years making you do things in a way that seems totally at odds with your instincts. That, they tell you, is because what they are showing you is the natural way to do things. The reason it is so hard is that you have developed bad habits. When my sensei twists your joints