Sam nodded.
I wondered if Franc had spoken to Geshe Wangpo about his bookstore idea after class that week, but it seemed unli
kely. Geshe Wangpo encouraged self-sufficiency in his students. As for Sam, he had no idea who Geshe Wangpo was, apart from an unusually forward monk.
“It is most useful,” Geshe Wangpo told Sam, “to share one’s knowledge with others. Otherwise, what is the point in having it?”
Sam looked up at the lama—and held his eye. This was not his usual darting glance but contact that continued for an improbable length of time. What was it in the lama’s face that held his gaze? Was it something that reassured him, perhaps, conveying a sense of the safety and profound compassion that resided beneath the Tibetan’s stern exterior? Was Geshe Wangpo holding Sam’s gaze simply through the force of personality for which he was well known? Or was a different connection being made—one less easy to explain?
Whichever it was, when Sam finally replied, it was without any of his customary shyness. “Strange that you should say that. The owner here asked if I would run a bookstore for him.” He gestured toward the unused area Franc had in mind.
“Do you want to?” asked the lama.
Sam grimaced. “I don’t think I’d be any good at it.”
Geshe Wangpo’s expression was unchanged. He tried again. “Do you want to?”
“I couldn’t let him down. He’d have to invest a lot of money in stock and display units. If it all went wrong because of me … ”
“I hear, I hear.” Geshe Wangpo leaned forward. “But do you want to?”
A small, rueful, but irresistible smile appeared at the corners of Sam’s mouth.
Before he could say a word, Geshe Wangpo told him, “Then you must do it!”
Sam’s smile broadened. “I have been thinking about it. A lot. It could be a … stimulating fresh start. But I have reservations.”
“What are ‘reservations’?” The lama’s eyebrows crinkled theatrically.
“Reservations?” Sam consulted the thesaurus in his mind. “Doubts. Concerns. Uncertainties.”
“That is normal,” the other told him. Then, to emphasize, he said it again, deeper, louder, and slower: “Normal.”
“I was analyzing the opportunity—” Sam started to explain.
But Geshe Wangpo cut him short. “Too much thinking is not necessary.”
Sam stared at him, taken aback to hear cognitive inquiry so casually dismissed. “You haven’t seen me with people,” he continued. “Ordinary people.”
Hands on his hips, the lama sat forward in his seat. “There is a problem?”
Sam shrugged. “You could probably say a self-esteem issue.”
“Self-esteem?”
“When you don’t think you’re up to it.”
Geshe Wangpo was unconvinced. “But you read many books. You have the knowledge.”
“It’s not that.”
“In Buddhism”—the lama tilted his head back challengingly—“we would say that you are lazy.”
Sam’s reaction was the opposite of his usual. Color drained from his face.
“Despising yourself, thinking you are no good, saying ‘I can’t do this.’ This is the mind of weakness. You must work to overcome it.”
“It’s not through choice,” Sam protested faintly.