Lamb The Gospel According to Biff Christs Childho - By Christopher Moore Page 0,100

to fade away. There was a peace in his aspect and for a moment he could have been as young as we were. "That is correct, Joshua. You are truly an enlightened being."

"I will be a bodhisattva to my people," Joshua said.

"Good, now go shave the yak," said Gaspar.

I dropped my rice ball. "What?"

"And you, find Number Three and commence your training on the posts."

"Let me shave the yak," I said. "I've done it before."

Joshua put his hand on my shoulder. "I'll be fine."

Gaspar said: "And on the next moon, after alms, you shall both go with the group into the mountains for a special meditation. Your training begins tonight. You shall receive no meals for two days and you must bring me your blankets before sundown.

"But I've already been enlightened," protested Josh.

"Good. Shave the yak," said the master.

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when Joshua showed up the next day at the communal dining room with a bale of yak hair and not a scratch on him. The other monks didn't seem surprised in the least. In fact, they hardly looked up from their rice and tea. (In my years at Gaspar's monastery, I found it was astoundingly difficult to surprise a Buddhist monk, especially one who had been trained in kung fu. So alert were they to the moment that one had to become nearly invisible and completely silent to sneak up on a monk, and even then simply jumping out and shouting "boo" wasn't enough to shake their chakras. To get a real reaction, you pretty much had to poleax one of them with a fighting staff, and if he heard the staff whistling through the air, there was a good chance he'd catch it, take it away from you, and pound you into damp pulp with it. So, no, they weren't surprised when Joshua delivered the fuzz harvest unscathed.)

"How?" I asked, that being pretty much what I wanted to know.

"I told her what I was doing," said Joshua. "She stood perfectly still."

"You just told her what you were going to do?"

"Yes."

"She wasn't afraid, so she didn't resist. All fear comes from trying to see the future, Biff. If you know what is coming, you aren't afraid."

"That's not true. I knew what was coming - namely that you were going to get stomped by the yak and that I'm not nearly as good at healing as you are - and I was afraid."

"Oh, then I'm wrong. Sorry. She must just not like you."

"That's more like it," I said, vindicated. Joshua sat on the floor across from me. Like me, he wasn't permitted to eat anything, but we were allowed tea. "Hungry?"

"Yes, you?"

"Starving. How did you sleep last night, without your blanket, I mean?"

"It was cold, but I used the training and I was able to sleep."

"I tried, but I shivered all night long. It's not even winter yet, Josh. When the snow falls we'll freeze to death without a blanket. I hate the cold."

"You have to be the cold," said Joshua.

"I liked you better before you got enlightened," I said.

Now Gaspar started to oversee our training personally. He was there every second as we leapt from post to post, and he drilled us mercilessly through the complex hand and foot movements we practiced as part of our kung fu regimen. (I had a funny feeling that I'd seen the movements before as he taught them to us, then I remembered Joy doing her complex dances in Balthasar's fortress. Had Gaspar taught the wizard, or vice versa?) As we sat in meditation, sometimes all through the night, he stood behind us with his bamboo rod and periodically struck us on the back of the head for no reason I could discern.

"Why's he keep doing that? I didn't do anything," I complained to Joshua over tea.

"He's not hitting you to punish you, he's hitting you to keep you in the moment."

"Well, I'm in the moment now, and at the moment I'd like to beat the crap out of him."

"You don't mean that."

"Oh, what? I'm supposed to want to be the crap I beat out of him?"

"Yes, Biff," Joshua said somberly. "You must be the crap." But he couldn't keep a straight face and he started to snicker as he sipped his tea, finally spraying the hot liquid out his nostrils and collapsing into a fit of laughter. All of the other monks, who evidently had been listening in, started giggling as well. A couple of them rolled around