27

Dr. Ando limped to the witness box and sat rigidly in the large wooden chair. It seemed to dwarf him, reminding Finney of the way Yoda looked when he took his seat among the council of Jedi knights in the Star Wars movies.

Finney stood to examine his dangerous little foe. “You want to trade?” he whispered to Kareem.

“Why should I?” Kareem responded, his gruff voice a little louder than a whisper. “I’ve got the easiest witness of all.”

Finney snorted. Kareem would be tomorrow’s problem. Today’s was sitting there waiting to get started, his bright eyes following Finney’s every move. Finney knew he would have to keep the questions focused on religious differences. Attacking this sympathetic man, who obviously lived what he believed, would gain Finney no points.

“Are you a Mahayana Buddhist or a Theravada Buddhist?”

Ando smiled. “Very good, Judge Finney. You even managed to get the pronunciations correct. I follow the original form of Buddhism.”

“Theravada?”

“Yes.”

“As a Theravada Buddhist, you take quite literally the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha—true?”

“Yes. He was the enlightened one.”

“When did he live?”

“The fifth century BC—near the border of present-day India and Nepal.”

“When were his words written down?”

“Sometime later.”

Finney made a mental note. Ando acted like the perfect gentleman, but he was not going to make this easy. “How much later?”

“Perhaps two hundred and fifty years or so.”

Finney wanted to make sure the good folks at home nestled in front of the TV caught the significance of this. “How do you know Buddha actually said these things? Two hundred and fifty years is a lot of time.”

Ando smiled thinly. He actually seemed to be enjoying this. “The Buddha’s culture was an oral culture. It was not unusual for people to memorize and accurately preserve massive amounts of information without the benefit of written documents. It is no different from the teachings of your Jesus, which were not written down for many years either.”

“About thirty years, to be precise,” Finney responded. “When thousands of people were still alive who had heard Jesus teach and could verify the written Scriptures. How many people who actually heard the Buddha teach were still alive when his teachings were written down?”

“That sounds more like a speech than a question,” Ando said evenly. “But as you know, the answer is none.”

“And your scriptures are about ten or eleven times longer than the Bible, isn’t that right?”

“That is correct, Judge Finney. You should read them sometime.” Though the comment was biting, Ando said it with no apparent guile. Finney realized how difficult it would be to fluster this witness. He decided to change the subject.

“As I understand your faith, we are all involved in a cycle of transmigration called samsara, or the ‘endless wandering.’ When we die, we are reborn into one of six possible realms—gods, titans, humans, ghosts, animals, and hell—and the cycle continues without end until we reach nirvana. Is that a fair synopsis?”

“There is much more, Judge Finney. But you are correct in what you have said.”

“And we reach nirvana, in part, through the principle of nonattachment—that is, freeing ourselves from involvement with the things of this world?”

“Yes. The Four Noble Truths teach us that life is suffering and that this suffering is caused by attachment to the world and the people around us. We end our suffering by dropping all worldly attachments and through extensive meditation, austere living, and strenuous exercises.”

“I see,” Finney said. “Now, I notice that you said the Four Noble Truths require detachment from the world and the people around us. Does that include family?”

“It includes all people, Judge Finney.”

“And in fact, the Buddha, who is your model, abandoned his family to become a wandering monk. Is that true?”

“At great sacrifice, the Buddha renounced his wife, his infant son, his wealth, and his power when he fled to the mountains to meditate upon the way of truth.”

“He named his son Rahula, Dr. Ando. What does that mean?”

“It means ‘obstacle.’ But, Judge Finney, again, this is not so much different from your own religion. Did not your Jesus say that a man should hate his own mother and father, his own wife and children, for the sake of the kingdom—or words to that effect?”

Finney wanted to remind the witness about who was supposed to be asking the questions here. But he knew the folks at home wouldn’t appreciate that. “But Jesus said it in the context of comparing our love for family with our love for Him. In a broader sense, Jesus taught us to love everyone—our enemies, our neighbors, certainly our family. Our Scriptures teach husbands to love and honor their wives as Jesus loved the church, Dr. Ando. What do your sutras teach about loving family members?”

“Another interesting speech,” Ando said calmly, offering a subtle chastisement of Finney’s approach to cross-examination.

“Yes,” Judge Javitts agreed. “I’m giving you a lot of leeway here, Mr. Finney, but you need to stick to asking questions. You’ll have your turn to testify later.”

“My question is,” Finney said, “what do your sutras teach about loving family members?”

“Love is an emotion,” Ando replied. “We must lose every emotion.” Finney had to hand it to the man—he didn’t blink when it came to defending traditional Buddhism. “Attachment to other individuals means embracing a lie. We end up showering our family with material expressions of our attachments and we ‘spoil’ our children, as you would say in the West. But the Buddha said, ‘I have killed all of you before. I have been chopped up by all of you in previous lives. We have all killed each other as enemies. So why should we be attached to each other?’”

Finney smiled. “So you may have chopped me up in a prior life, Dr. Ando?”

“The more surprising thing,” the witness said without returning the smile, “is that we may have been friends. Perhaps family members. Perhaps I was your family pet.”

Finney didn’t miss the implication. Perhaps Ando had been reincarnated into a higher form, whereas Finney was stuck or regressing on his march toward nirvana. Oh, well, if Buddhism was true, Finney would probably be a cockroach in the next life after this cross-examination.

“Sounds a little like the story about the monk named Katayana,” Finney said. He thought he detected a brief flicker of surprise shoot across Ando’s face. Finney had done his homework.

“Yes. That story illustrates my point.”

“Please share it with us, Dr. Ando.”

“The short form goes something like this. A monk named Katayana walked through a forest and saw a man, a woman, and a baby eating lunch. Katayana laughed at the scene before him, and when his disciples asked why, he told them. ‘They’re eating a fish they caught from the lake,’ Katayana said. ‘In a former life, that fish was the grandfather. The dog who is now barking for the fish was the grandmother. The nursing baby in a former life was an enemy of the husband, a man the husband killed for attacking his wife.’”

Ando paused and took a drink of water. “That may sound foolish to you, Judge Finney, but that is because you have a Western mind-set. We look at reality differently. You grew up in the most prosperous country on earth—you have never been truly hungry or seen a family member murdered. But in other parts of the world, people suffer greatly. My religion helps them detach from the things of this world and overcome that suffering.”

Now who’s giving the speeches? Finney thought. “I appreciate the explanation, Dr. Ando, but I think the story speaks for itself.”

“That it does.”

Finney and the witness sparred for another half hour, with Finney spending most of his time on the concept of nirvana—the extinction of all personality. Javitts eventually interrupted, telling Finney he had one more minute.

“So you’re saying that real enlightenment comes from realizing that our situation on earth is hopeless and we just need to detach from it?” Finney asked.

Ando thought about the question for a moment and gave Finney a patient smile. It was almost as if the witness was waiting just long enough before starting his response so that Finney wouldn’t have time for a follow-up.

“You ask excellent questions, Judge Finney, and as long as we keep asking these questions, we will find the truth. Your own King Solomon, one of the smartest men in the Jewish and Christian tradition, asked a lot of the same questions. He searched for the purpose of life. He tried everything—wealth, labor, women. In the end, what did he conclude?” Ando did not wait for Finney to answer. “‘Vanity of vanities . . . All is vanity.’ Material things did not satisfy. That’s why Buddha teaches nonattachment. Perhaps your Solomon was not so far from Buddha?”

“Time is up,” Javitts said.

“Didn’t Solomon conclude that book by saying we should fear God and keep His commandments?” Finney asked.

“Time is up,” Javitts repeated.

Finney frowned and reluctantly returned to the counsel table. When he did, Kareem leaned over and provided his assessment: “Not bad for an infidel.”

“Not bad for which infidel?” Finney asked. “Me or him?”