“Aussie, you don’t usually lie indoors like this during the day. Are you depressed?”

“Damn right I’m depressed. And you’re not doing anything about it.”

“Me? It wasn’t me who grabbed Henry, coyotes did. And everybody’s very, very sad. I miss him in all the little spaces he occupied. He loved to lick the warm froth when I made cappuccino, and I would ladle a little into his bowl; I thought of it as Henry having his coffee break with me. I miss the scratching on the door in the morning to let him in and announce that day has come, sun is shining. I miss him with us when we walk.”

“But you’re a Zen teacher, a spiritual teacher. You’re not supposed to miss anybody. You’re not supposed to be sad, you’re supposed to transcend these things.”

“Who says? Aussie, there are two different versions of what happened when the Buddha died. The first reports that the younger monks around him wept bitterly and the older monks, who’d been with him for a long time, sat calmly by his body and didn’t cry. The second version says that it was the younger monks who sat with tranquility, and the older monks who wept and sobbed. The younger monks asked them: ‘Why are you crying? The Awakened One preached anatta, no-self, no solid self, so what has died?’ And the older monks said: ‘We cry because the Buddha died.’”

“I wish you Buddhists would make up your mind.”

“Aussie, my practice is not to transcend anything.”

“What good are you if you can’t tell me how to avoid pain and suffering? What good are all of you teachers?”

“If you’re alive there’s pain and loss. Nothing I know changes that.”

“But Buddhists have always focused a lot on death, because they’re masochists. They’re the ones who say you should prepare for death even from a young age. Isn’t that why so many chaplains and people who work in care of the dying are Buddhists? You got there first. Turns out that becoming a Buddhist was a good career move.”

“I don’t believe in transcendence, Aussie, never did. I like to see things as clearly as possible and not turn away.”

“So why do you say that you don’t plan to return to the conservation area where Henry was killed?”

“For now, Aussie. Eventually, I will, just not now. The pain and hurt have to fade before I go back.”

“They will never fade for me. I wanted the illegal Chihuahua to be deported to Mexico, for God’s sake, not to a pack of coyotes. Let me tell you, ICE would have been much nicer.”

“Aussie, the three of us have been walking together for close to six years, and guess what got in the way?”

“Coyotes?”

“Nature, Aussie. Wild nature. In 24 years of walking here I saw single coyotes, but never a pack. And finally, we ran into one at a time when they have young mouths to feed back in the den, and they ambushed us and got Henry. But it’s nature we ran into, nature not just in its pretty side, with green apples dropping from the tree out front and ruby hummingbirds at feeders. Nature in its wild and terrible aspect.”

“We were in Leverett, not in the Serengeti!”

“Nature is wild and terrible here, too. How often have we been awakened by a terrible cry in the middle of the night, something taken by an owl, a hawk, a fox, a coyote? What about the small animals you’ve killed, Aussie?”

“Chipmunks are yummy!”

“Yummy to some, and a loss to others. None of us avoids that dance, Aussie. It’s the price we pay for being alive and loving a little dog.”

“If that’s all you can say after years of training and practice, then I’d get my money back if I were you. You know, Henry’s work wasn’t finished with me.”

“What work, Aussie?”

“Okay, don’t tell anyone that I’m saying this, but he was the liveliest thing around. It was so much fun having him here. It didn’t matter that he was Mexican, it didn’t matter that he was small and had a chronic illness which caused him to tremble from pain sometimes. He had so much life in such a little body! I guess there was something there for me to learn, much as I hate to say it. I mean, what would the Man say if he heard that I had something to learn from a chihuahua?”

“I think you’re wrong, Auss.”

“That’s exactly what he would say. He’s say that good American dogs have nothing to learn from illegals.”

“No, not about that. I think his work was finished with you. After all, his life, with all its forces and energy, ended.”

“No, his life was incomplete, I tell you! We still need him in this house.”

“Not him personally, Aussie, but his aliveness. You want to bring him back to life? Bring forth his qualities, his humor, his silliness.”

“And he was so gracious. No matter how I abused him and called him names, no matter how often I threatened to call ICE on him, he always seemed to forgive me. I hope he isn’t hearing me say this. Do Buddhists believe in heaven?”

“After Bernie died, Aussie—”

“Was he also devoured by animals? I mean, I know he had some trouble with certain students.”

“No, but he did die suddenly and unexpectedly. After some time passed, I wrote out a promise to myself: I will express de-light in my life and work, and help others awaken to de-light in their own lives. I didn’t promise to keep his social programs going, or even the Zen Peacemaker Order. I promised to manifest as well as I could his lightness of being, his jokiness, his refusal to take life too seriously. You could do the same with Henry. Make a commitment to keep those characteristics alive.”

“You aren’t saying anything comforting.”

“Like what, Auss?”

“That I’ll meet him at the end of some rainbow bridge, whatever that is. That he’ll be reborn in a land of illegal Chihuahuas. That he’ll bark at God and have lots of virgins. What’s a virgin?”

“It’s true, Auss, I don’t say those nice things. In fact, facing somebody’s deep pain, like Lori’s now, or facing my own, I don’t have anything to say, nice or otherwise. I just ask Lori if she wants me to make her a cappuccino. At night I offer to make her corn.”

“Why aren’t you offering to make me something special? A second marrow bone? Steak? Do you promise that this sadness will finally fade?”

“Usually it does, but I can’t make promises. I can’t say that we will live happily ever after—or die happily, for that matter.”

“In that case, I’m calling it quits for religion. I’m calling it quits for God, for the Buddha, for Jesus, everybody. Leave me alone, I want to be depressed in peace.”