Way of the Peaceful Warrior (6 page)

“Hi, Danny! I haven't seen you for days. I've called every night, but you're never home. Where have you been hiding?”
 

“Oh, hi Susie. It's good to see you again. I've been… studying.” Her words had danced through the air. I could hardly understand them but I could feel what she was feeling--hurt and a little jealous. Yet her face was beaming as usual.
 

“I'd like to talk more, Susie, but I'm on my way to the gym.”
 

“Oh, I forgot.” I felt her disappointment. “Well,” she said,
 

I'll see you soon, huh?”
 

“Sure.”
 

“Hey,” she said. “Wasn't Watson's lecture great? I just love hearing about Churchill's life. Isn't it interesting?” “Uh, yeah--great lecture.” “Well, bye for now, Danny.”
 

“Bye.” Turning away, I recalled what Soc had said about my “patterns of shyness and fear.” Maybe he was right. I wasn't really that comfortable with people; I was never sure of what to say.
 

In the gym that afternoon, however, I certainly knew what to do. I came alive, turning on the faucet of my energy full blast. I played, swung, leaped; I was a clown, a magician, a chimpanzee. It was one of my best days ever. My mind was so clear that I felt exactly how to do anything I tried. My body was relaxed, supple, quick, and light. In tumbling, I invented a one and one-half backward somersault with a late half twist to a roll; from the high bar, I swung into a full twisting double flyaway--both moves, the first ever done in the United States.
 

A few days later, the team flew up to Oregon for the Conference Championships. We won the meet and flew home. It was like a dream of fanfare, action, and glory but I couldn't escape the concerns that plagued me.
 

I considered the events that had occurred since the other night's experience of the bursting light. Something had certainly happened, as Soc had predicted, but it was frightening and I didn't think I liked it at all. Perhaps Socrates was not what he seemed; perhaps he was something more clever, or more evil than I'd suspected.
 

These thoughts vanished as I stepped through the doorway of the lighted office and saw his eager smile. As soon as I'd sat down,
 

Socrates said, “Are you ready to go on a journey?”
 

“A journey?” I echoed.
 

“Yes--a trip, travel, sojourn, vacation--an adventure.”
 

“No, thanks, I'm not dressed for it.”
 

“Nonsense!” he bellowed, so loudly that we both looked around to see if any passersby had heard. “Shhh!” he whispered loudly. “Not so loud, you'll wake everyone.”
 

Taking advantage of his affability, I blurted out, “Socrates, my life no longer makes sense. Nothing works, except when I'm in the gym. Aren't you supposed to make things better for me? I thought that's what a teacher did.”
 

He started to speak, but I interrupted.
 

“And another thing. I've always believed that we have to find our own paths in life. No one can tell another how to live.”
 

Socrates slapped his forehead with his palm, then looked upward in resignation. “I am part of your path, baboon. And I didn't exactly rob you from the cradle and lock you up here, you know. You can take off whenever you like.” He walked to the door and held it open.
 

Just then, a black limousine pulled into the station, and Soc affected a British accent: “Your car is ready, sir.” Disoriented, I actually thought we were going on a trip in the limousine. I mean, why not? So, befuddled, I walked straight out to the limo and started to climb into the back seat. I found myself staring into the wrinkled old face of a little man, sitting with his arm around a girl of about sixteen, probably off the streets of Berkeley. He stared at me like a hostile lizard.
 

Soc's hand grabbed me by the back of my sweater and dragged me out of the car. Closing the door, he apologized: “Excuse my young friend. He's never been in a beautiful car like this and just got carried away--didn't you, Jack?”
 

I nodded dumbly. “What's going on?” I whispered fiercely out of the side of my mouth. But he was already washing the windows. When the car pulled away, I flushed with embarrassment. “Why didn't you stop me, Socrates?”
 

“Frankly, it was pretty funny. I hadn't realized you could be so gullible.”
 

We stood there, in the middle of the night, staring each other down. Socrates grinned as I clenched my teeth, I was getting angry. “I'm really tired of playing the fool around you!” I yelled.
 

“Well, you have to admit that you've been practicing the role so diligently, you've got it nearly perfect.” I wheeled around, kicked the trash can, and stomped back toward the office. Then it occurred to me. “Why did you call me Jack, awhile ago?”
 

“Short for jackass,” he said, passing me.
 

“All right, god damn it,” I said as I ran by him to enter the office. “Let's go on your journey. Whatever you want to give, I can take!”
 

“Well, now. This is a new side of you spunky Danny.”
 

“Spunky or not, I'm no flunky. Now tell me, where are we headed? Where am I headed? I should be in control, not you!”
 

Socrates took a deep breath. “Dan, I can't tell you anything. Much of a warrior's path is subtle, invisible to the uninitiated. For now, I have been showing you what a warrior is not by showing you your own mind. You can come to understand that soon enough--and so I must take you on a journey. Come with me.”
 

He led me to a cubbyhole I hadn't noticed before, hidden behind the racks of tools in the garage and furnished with a small rug and a heavy straight-backed chair. The predominant color of the nook was grey. My stomach felt queasy.
 

“Sit down,” he said gently.
 

“Not until you explain what this is all about.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
 

Now it was his turn to explode. “I am a warrior; you are a baboon. I will not explain a damn thing. Now shut up and sit down or go back to your gymnastics spotlight and forget you ever knew me!”
 

“You're not kidding, are you?”
 

“No, I am not kidding.” I hesitated a second, then sat.
 

Socrates reached into a drawer, took out some long pieces of cotton cloth, and began to tie me to the chair.
 

“What are you going to do, torture me?” I half-joked.
 

“No, now please be silent,” he said, tying the last strip around my waist and behind the chair, like an airline seat-belt.
 

“Are we going flying, Soc?” I asked nervously.
 

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” he said, kneeling in front of me, taking my head in his hands and placing his thumbs against the upper ridges of my eye sockets. My teeth chattered; I had an excruciating urge to urinate. But in another second, I had forgotten all. Colored lights flashed. I thought I heard his voice but couldn't quite make it out; it was too far away.
 

We were walking down a corridor swathed in a blue fog. My feet moved but I couldn't feel ground. Gigantic trees surrounded us; they became buildings; the buildings became boulders, and we ascended a steep canyon that became the edge of a sheer cliff.
 

The fog had cleared; the air was freezing. Green clouds stretched below us for miles, meeting an orange sky on the horizon.
 

I was shaking. I tried to say something to Socrates, but my voice came out muffled. My shaking grew uncontrollable. Soc put his hand on my belly. It was very warm and had a wondrously calming effect. I relaxed and he took my arm firmly, tightening his grip, and hurtled forward, off the edge of the world, pulling me with him.
 

Without warning the clouds disappeared and we were hanging from the rafters of an indoor stadium, swinging precariously like two drunken spiders high above the floor.
 

“Ooops,” said Soc. “Slight miscalculation.”
 

“What the hell!” I yelled, struggling for a better handhold. I swung myself up and over and lay panting on a beam, twining my arms and legs around it. Socrates had already perched himself lightly on the beam in front of me. I noticed that he handled himself well for an old man.
 

“Hey, look,” I pointed. “It's a gymnastics meet Socrates, you're nuts.”
 

“I'm nuts?” he laughed quietly. “Look who's sitting on the beam next to me.”
 

“How are we going to get down?” “Same way we got up, of course.” “How did we get up here?”
 

He scratched his head. “I'm not precisely sure; I had hoped for a front-row seat. I guess they were sold out.”
 

I began to laugh shrilly. This whole thing was too ridiculous. See clapped a hand over my mouth. “Shhhh!” He removed his hand. That was a mistake.
 

“HaHaHaHaHa!” I laughed loudly before he muffled me again. I calmed down but felt giddy and started giggling.
 

He whispered at me harshly, “this journey is real--more real than the waking dreams of your usual life. Pay attention!”
 

By this time the scene below had indeed caught my attention. The audience, from this height, coalesced into a multicolored array of dots, a shimmering, rippling, pointillist painting. I caught sight of a raised platform in the middle of the arena with a familiar bright blue square of floor-exercise mat, surrounded by various gymnastic apparatus. My stomach rumbled in response; I experienced my usual pre-competition nervousness.
 

Socrates reached into a small knapsack (where had that come from?) and handed me a pair of binoculars, just as a female performer walked out onto the floor.
 

I focused my binoculars on the lone gymnast and saw she was from the Soviet Union. So, we were attending an international exhibition somewhere. As she walked over to the uneven bars, I realized that I could hear her talking to herself! “The acoustics in here,” I thought, “must be fantastic.” But then I saw that her lips weren't moving.
 

I moved the lenses quickly to the audience and heard the roar of many voices; yet they were just sitting quietly. Then it came to me. Somehow, I was reading their minds!
 

I turned the glasses back to the woman gymnast. In spite of the language barrier, I could understand her thoughts: “Be strong... ready.”
 

I saw a preview of her routine as she ran through it mentally.
 

Then I focused on a man in the audience, a guy in a white sports shirt in the midst of a sexual fantasy about one of the East German contestants. Another man, apparently a
coach, was engrossed with the woman about to perform. A woman in the audience watched her too, thinking, “Beautiful girl… had a bad fall last year... hope she does a good job.”
 

I noticed that I was not receiving words, but feeling-concepts---sometimes quiet or muffled, sometimes loud and clear. That was how I could “understand” Russian, German, or whatever.
 

I noticed something else. When the Soviet gymnast was doing her routine, her mind was quiet. When she finished and returned to her chair, her mind started up again. It was the same for the East German gymnast on the rings and the American on the horizontal bar. Furthermore, the best performers had the quietest minds during their moment of truth.
 

One East German fellow was distracted by a noise while he swung through handstand after handstand on the parallel bars. I sensed his mind drawn to the noise; he thought, “What…?” as he muffed his final somersault to bandstand.
 

A telepathic voyeur, I peeked into the minds of the audience. “I'm hungry .... Got to catch an eleven o'clock plane or the Dusseldorf plans are shot.... I'm hungry!” But as soon as a performer was in mid-flight, the minds of the audience calmed too.
 

For the first time, I realized why I loved gymnastics so. It gave me a blessed respite from my noisy mind. When I was swinging and somersaulting, nothing else mattered. When my body was active, my mind rested in the moments of silence.
 

The mental noise from the audience was getting annoying, like a stereo playing too loud. I lowered my glasses and let them hang. But I had neglected to fasten the strap around my neck, and I almost fell off the rafter trying to grab them as they plummeted straight for the floor exercise mat and a woman performer directly below!
 

“Soc!” I whispered in alarm. He sat placidly. I looked down to see the damage, but the binoculars had disappeared.
 

Socrates grinned. “Things work under a slightly different set of laws when you travel with me.”
 

He disappeared and I was tumbling through space, not downward but upward. I had a vague sense of walking backwards from the edge of a cliff, down a canyon, then into a mist, like a character in a crazy movie in reverse.
 

Socrates was wiping my face with a wet cloth. Still strapped to the chair, I slumped.
 

“Well,” he said. “Isn't travel broadening?”
 

“You can say that again. Uh, how about unstrapping me?” “Not just yet,” he replied, reaching again for my head.
 

I mouthed, “No, wait!” just before the lights went out and a howling wind arose, carrying me off into space and time.
 

I became the wind, yet with eyes and ears. And I saw and heard far and wide. I blew past the east coast of India near the Bay of Bengal, past a scrubwoman busy with her tasks. In Hong Kong, I whirled around a seller of fine fabric bargaining loudly with a shopper. I raced through the streets of So Paulo, drying the sweat of German tourists playing volleyball in the hot tropical sun.