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On which negative but happy note, the good doctor proposi-tioned me in a bored
sort of way that left it open whether he was so used to women falling into his
arms that he'd got out of the way of putting much effort into it, or was so
frightened of rejection he thought it wise not to invest the suggestion with
too much significance.
I did my impression of the Roman Empire, and declined.
*
*
*
Blue pine and chir pine, prickly leaved oak, Himalayan hemlocks and silver
firs, juniper and scrub juniper filled the crannied spaces where any soil had
gathered, the last stunted, blasted by the wind, burned by frost but still
just growing
only finally petering out at five kilometres above sea level.
'This is a pluralist society. We respect the beliefs of our Hindu brothers
and sisters. Buddhists tend not to see themselves as being in competition
with others. The Hindu faith is like Judaism, providing an ancient set of
rules by which one may live one's life and order one's thoughts. Ours is a
younger religion, a different generation of thought, if you like, grafted upon
a set of much older traditions, but having drawn lessons from them, and
respectful of them. Westerners often see it as more like a philosophy. Or so
they file:///F|/rah/Iain%20Banks/Iain%20Banks%20-%20The%20Business%20v2.0.html
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us.'
'Yes, I know a few Buddhists in California.'
'You do? So do I! Do you know ?'
I smiled. We swapped a few names but, predictably, came up with no matches.
Sahair Beies was Rinpoche, or head lama of Bhaiwair monas-tery, the biggest in
the country. I had already seen it, albeit from a distance, strung across the
rock faces above the old palace a few kilometres out of Thuhn. He was slight,
indeterminately old, shaved bald and wore very deeply saffron robes and little
wire-frame glasses behind which intelligent-looking eyes twinkled.
'You are a Christian, Ms Telman?'
'Nope.'
'Jewish, then? I have noticed that many people whose names end in "-man" are
Jewish.'
I shook my head. 'Evangelical atheist.'
He nodded thoughtfully. 'A demanding path, I suspect. I asked one of your
compatriots what he was, once, and he replied, "Devout Capitalist."' The
Rinpoche laughed.
'We have a lot of those. Most are less open about it. Life as acquisition.
Whoever dies with the most toys wins. It's a boy thing.'
'He gave me a lecture on the dynamic nature of the West and the United States
of America in particular. It was most illuminating.'
'But it didn't persuade you to move to New York City and become a venture
capitalist or a stockbroker?'
'No!' He laughed.
'What about other faiths?' I asked. 'Do you, for instance, get Mormons and
Jehovah's Witnesses turning up here?' I had a sudden comical image of two guys
in sober suits and shiny shoes (covered in snow)
shivering outside the giant doors of a remote monastery.
'Very rarely.' The Rinpoche looked thoughtful. 'Usually by the time we see
them they are& changed,' he said. His eyes bulged. 'Oh, I find physicists much
more interesting. There have been some famous
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American professors and Indian Nobel Prize winners I have talked to, and it
struck me that we were as
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says on the same wavelength in many ways.'
'Physics. That's our Brahmin faith.'
'You think so?'
'I think a lot of people live as though that's true, even if they don't think
about it. To us, science is the religion that works. Other faiths claim
miracles, but science delivers them, through technology: replacing diseased
hearts, talking to people on the other side of the world, travelling to other
planets, determining when the universe began. We display our faith every time
we turn on a light switch or step aboard a jet.'
'You see? All very interesting, but I prefer the idea of Nirvana.'
'As you said, sir, it's a hard path, but only if you think of it.'
'One of your American professors said that to study religion was merely to
know the mind of man, but if one truly wanted to know the mind of God, you
must study physics.'
'That sounds familiar. I think I've read his book.'
The Rinpoche pinched his lower lip. 'I think I see what he meant now, but I
could not explain to him that the thoughts of people and the phenomena we seek
to explain through physics might all be revealed as& subsidiary to the
attainment of true enlightenment, which would be like the result of one of
those experiments which use high energies to show that apparently quite
different forces are in fact the same. Do you see what I mean? That having
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