“May the world arising in the mind of little Snow Lion, and all living beings, be very happy.” The Dalai Lama spoke softly, as though in prayer.
At the doorway, Oliver paused. “Is there any particular reason you wanted to see this book today?”
“Oh yes,” the Dalai Lama said, nodding. “I am studying the terma that was brought to us recently. The more I study, the more parallels I find with quantum science. I think it will prove to be one of the most remarkable discoveries in recent times . . .”
CHAPTER NINE
It was the middle of one of those brilliant Himalaya mornings when the skies are perfectly azure and the air, having blown from the ice-capped mountains, is so crisp that it seems to sparkle. I was on the filing cabinet, watching Tenzin and Oliver pore over their paperwork.
“That completes the returns from Sera, Ganden, and Drepung,” announced Tenzin, pushing aside a thick set of printouts he had just finished checking. “A minor celebration is called for.”
Opposite him, in the chair previously occupied by Chogyal, Oliver looked up with a smile. “I know you may think me perverse, but I’m actually quite enjoying this. It’s something different for me.”
“Doing the work is celebration enough, you mean?” tested Tenzin.
“Oh,” Oliver said, his eyes twinkling. “I wouldn’t go that far!”
Two weeks earlier, the Dalai Lama had invited both men into his office.
“They say that no one is indispensable, but still we can find no one to replace Chogyal,” His Holiness had observed.
“It has been difficult,” agreed Tenzin, looking somewhat embarrassed. He had been leading the search for an adviser to His Holiness on monastic matters but so far had been unable to find a person with the rare combination of organizational knowledge, people skills, and the quiet authority needed for such a sensitive role.
“I know you have been doing a lot of his work yourself,” acknowledged the Dalai Lama, “but we have the census coming up, and you’ll need much help with that.”
Tenzin nodded. Every two years a census was held of the sangha, or Buddhist community, within every monastery in India and the Himalaya region. The results were sent to Namgyal to be aggregated and analyzed. It was a massive undertaking that took Chogyal several weeks of concentrated effort.
“Oliver, would you be willing to assist?” His Holiness turned to his translator. “This job does not require your language skills, but you may perhaps find it interesting.”
“I am very happy to help in whatever capacity you wish,” agreed Oliver. “If you like, I can hand over the translation of the Tsongkhapa exposition to that very promising young monk from Ladakh.”
Oliver had been training a linguistically talented young monk as an assistant in recent months.
“You will supervise him?” His Holiness confirmed.
“Yes.”
The Dalai Lama looked from one to the other of them with a level expression. “The two of you are happy working together like this?”
As Tenzin and Oliver nodded, they exchanged an expression of amused anticipation.
In the months since Oliver had arrived as official translator, they had spent an increasing amount of time in each other’s offices. Not only that, they had taken several extramural excursions together. The soiree at the Himalaya Book Café had been one. On a different occasion, they had both gone to watch a cricket match at the local grounds. And two weekends before, the two of them had traveled down to Delhi to watch a special performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado.
Within days of taking on this new assignment, Oliver began sitting in the chair once occupied by Chogyal. He pored over spreadsheets, transcribed figures from printouts onto a computer, cross-checked them for accuracy, and compared them to the previous years’ data.
“If we could only automate this, it would save a huge amount of time and cut down on human error—by which I mean my errors,” Oliver observed during his second day on the job as he pushed his chair back from the desk.
Sitting opposite, Tenzin looked at him over the tops of his glasses. “Chogyal used to say exactly the same thing. But getting all the monasteries to use the same software is where things come unstuck.”
“Legacy issues?”
“Precisely.”
“You don’t think a request from above would be enough to get it over the line?” Oliver asked, tilting his head toward His Holiness’s office.
“Only if combined with a lot of diplomacy. We’re already imposing on the abbots’ goodwill to get the figures sent. Asking to receive them in the format of our choice . . .”
“Well, if anyone is up to that task,” observed Oliver, “it would have to be you.”