LMAO???

Honestly, they all have the same sort of face: the quiet kind, the kind that’s gentle and just barely smiling, and still you sort of want to smack the look right off because it’s infuriatingly subtle. The best I can come up with is that it’s the same look your mom gets when it’s getting close to your birthday and you mention how much you want something and she just sort of smiles and for the life of you, even after practically two decades of studying those faces she makes, you can’t figure out if it means she’s bought it already, or she’s just decided to, or if she’s got something better, or if you’re going to wake up on your birthday to find your bags packed because she’s had enough of you living in her house. And they’re each one of them making that face. Tiny, maybe one-degree angle quirks at the corners of their mouths, more like they’re bursting with a thousand things to say and they haven’t been given the okay yet than like they’re smiling. But me, I’m frowning because it’s all I can do not to scream, not to spout some swear and end up using one of their names for emphasis.

 

“So,” I say instead, “I liked your books.” They all laugh but it’s not the ‘ha ha, oh, what a hilarious conversation starter,’ it’s the small and condescending laugh reserved for someone who just Doesn’t Get It.

Strike one for me. I figure it’s best to start keeping a tally now, when I’m still more or less on the same level as they are.

 

“Mine is far from my own,” one says, finally. The laughter dies out like ripples do on water, with minor echoes and a slow dissipation. “Except in the sense that the book is also paper, and it is in the same way also myself, god, and the Buddha” (and he nods, here, like the respect for the man next to him is weighing his head down a fraction) “just as all things are, but as itself it is not mine. There is no point to the words in it, to any words, as they may very well be that which hinders learning. I hold no high regard for words and thoughts and teachings, not when I myself learned not from a man but from a river.”

 

“Yeah,” I mutter, “I know, I just said I read your book,” but some sort of other smarter conscience grabs me and keeps me quiet so I won’t have to knock off a couple more tally marks. I’m going to get myself smited. Smote? This probably isn’t the time to worry about that.

 

“How is it you can say that teachers and their words have no worth?” This table is something like two parts raised eyebrows, at this point, one part smug smiles, and one part me looking for a quick exit because if I’m not out of place then I don’t even know what a place is. Jesus – the actual Jesus, as in the one sent by God, and somehow I’m not completely amazed by this, which I guess is just the nature of the beast – has his hands folded gently over his lap. He says, “For much of my life, I taught. I understood that to be the reason for my existence, given that I was told as such by my Father. My words reached many, and still reach many today, and you would have it that they be seen as nothing.”

 

“I, too, spent much of my life thinking and teaching,” says the Buddha. I guess I should be boggling. The way all three of them are keeping this tight leash on, well, everything is keeping me quiet. “I made the sacrifice to avoid reaching Nirvana in hopes that I could assist others in also reaching it. Are you suggesting that my teachings did not aid many in learning to abandon their selves and break the cycle of suffering?”

 

“Perhaps,” Siddhartha says, and in that so-called enlightened smile he wears all I can see is a target for a couple of knuckles. I actually consider hitting him because I know neither of the others will. “Perhaps not. You have certainly taught knowledge, but you cannot teach wisdom. Both of you are as enlightened as I, but we do not seem to understand the same points. Your selves are different than my own, even if we are all the same self.”

 

“Ah,” I say intelligently, “this stuff.”

 

“One should aim to have no self,” the Buddha says. “The self only exists if suffering exists, because the self is strongly tied to passion and material. By deserting such things, one deserts the self and reaches true enlightenment.”

 

“Yes, you’ve said that, any number of times,” Siddhartha says, and I nearly let out a low whistle because for someone who’s all enlightened, Sid is kind of a funny jerk. “And you would have me not experience love.”

 

Jesus has his eyebrows raised, now, and his eyes turned to the Buddha, and I figure this is as close as three pacifists get to things going down as it’ll get. The Buddha bows his head and says, “True. But only because love is as much of a material passion as any other, and must be abandoned in order to achieve Nirvana.”

 

“The self relies on love more than anything – love for one’s brothers, for one’s family, for God – you cannot simply abandon it!” I guess I should have remembered those verses where Jesus wrecked a market, or the one where he got ticked off at a fig tree, because he actually looks upset. “Love is what makes life right or wrong, what allows forgiveness.”

 

It’s so sweet it’s like I’ve just chugged a couple of Pixy Stix.

 

“Look, can I, uh, butt in for a sec?” I ask, hands up all defensive even though, I mean, what’s the worst they’ll do to me, frown? “Because you guys can talk about this all you want, all this teaching and learning and self stuff, but you’re all coming from the same exact position and you can’t really talk about how people are getting your teachings, can you.”

 

Oh God, I think as I talk, I’m going to hell for talking back to Jesus. Double hell because the Buddha’s there. May as well just dive off the deep end while I’m at it.

 

“This whole learning from a river thing is probably great,” I start off, “I mean, if you can talk to rivers? Which I guess you can, but I’m not all that great at it. Have you ever watched Pocahontas? You’d probably like it, Siddhartha. But, uh, anyway, I can’t just magically understand stuff by waiting and hoping. I need someone to guide me. Even you had that, you know? You had ages and ages of learning and relearning. So did the Buddha, and Jesus, well, you had the advantage of having God for a dad, so you don’t even count. Me, I’m just a normal kid. Not even, if you count my ADD, so thinking for hours on end about this stuff just isn’t feasible for me. I’m going to need a teacher if I want to learn about all this complicated self whatsits and enlightenments whatevers.

 

“And, like, the self? Why is that… such a thing? I mean, I know why it’s a thing. Identity is really really important. I get that. But I just don’t think your ideas apply as neatly anymore.” I shift; they’re all just looking at me and it’s starting to make me feel like I’m porcelain cracking under the pressure. “I mean, I’m a college student, not an ascetic or a religious miracle. I can’t just up and ditch my studies – it would feel deeply wrong, probably as wrong as it would for you to go out and gamble, or to, uh, buy a cell phone and start texting or something. The point is it just would go against part of my identity, which at the moment really tightly includes student, even if it means holding tight to something that doesn’t necessarily matter in the state of the universe or to God or whoever it is who’s going to judge me after all is said and done.”

 

“You are not enlightened,” one of them says very precisely, and I don’t even check who for the way I’m rolling my eyes because yeah, no duh. I say as such.

 

“I just dunno about this enlightenment thing,” I say back. “I don’t think I’m ready to be enlightened. Is that a thing?”

 

“So long as you are living according to the right path,” Jesus says, and I really wish Buddha would cast him a sort of sideways glare for using his words, but he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.

 

“Does any of that make sense, though?” I ask of them, sitting back. “What do you guys think?

 

“…Guys?”

 

They’re gone.

 

Religious apparitions are the worst.