A Week with the Buddha and Woody

Danny sat in the office of his little Cape Cod that he had been fixing up since his wife passed away, five years this coming January.

He was contemplating writing a short piece about the troubles and tribulations of navigating the world around him. Things that might not have been so tough to work through if he’d had someone to hash them out with, that someone being his partner in crime for the past 46 years.

For someone who aspired to and had often been seen quoting the tenets of a man who sat under a Bodhi tree, his mind seemed to prefer the patterns one associates with the characters in a Woody Allen movie.

It being a cold October Saturday, his second cup of decaffeinated AeroPressed coffee getting cold next to his keyboard, he thought about the fact that there was a fundamental principle in life, and that Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy and an early idol of the young Daniel, would agree: All else fades into the background when a toothache is in the foreground.

Danny’s life, and each day within it, was split into a number of separate and unrelated segments. His work, his health, his interests, which now included puzzles, one taking up the entire surface of his dining room table. Oh, and his ever-increasing number of “just friends.”

And left to his own devices, Danny pulled at each one of those strings until they formed a Gordian knot.

He finally had the root canal this past Wednesday after suffering for a month. Enduring the pain, waking in the middle of the night, and finally scheduling the procedure, even though he was preparing for his company’s annual security audit just a few weeks away.

Sitting in the chair while the gorgeous dentist hummed to music he had danced to in the ’60s, he repeated a mantra that the Hindu monk Dandapani had spoken about in a lecture. Instead of muttering words in Sanskrit, he visualized the colors of the spectrum, one after another.

Red, like the setting sun; orange, you guessed it, like an orange; yellow, like the rising sun; blue, like the unclouded sky; and green, like the sea.

He smiled with a mouth full of the doctor’s instruments when he first got to violet and indigo because, although they were part of the ROYGBIV that he had learned in grade school, Dandapani had left them out of the visualization mantra.

The procedure complete, still numb from the Novocain, he walked out into the crisp fall day and into the quaint little square in the village of Scarsdale.

Walking past Bronx River Books, he saw a table with books and puzzles. He noticed a 1,000-piece puzzle featuring a cover of The New Yorker, with Grand Central Station, witches, and ghosts.

Recently, he and his youngest grandson had worked on a puzzle before a holiday dinner. He smiled as he remembered helping Norma with hers decades before, grabbed the puzzle, and purchased it.

He made it back in time to sit in on a Zoom dress rehearsal for the audit. That done, he took three Advil and the double dose of antibiotic that the doctor had recommended and made it to the workshop called Diving Deeper with his Buddhist meditation group.

The class was one in a series Danny had been attending for over two years, recommended by a yoga teacher who had become a friend and mentor.

The Dharma talk began with the teacher describing her weeklong retreat on an island off Vancouver and the silence she sat in almost all week. Dinner talk was optional.

Danny, now living in a comfortable silence most of his days, with the holograms of talking heads appearing in the Zoom rooms he occupied for work, thought about what it might be like to be face-to-face with other people and not communicate. He wondered what the upside was.

It hadn’t been that way just a few years ago, when he needed the sound of one of his smart speakers playing music and would tune in to one of the online radio channels that his friend Meg was on.

She had grown up with Norma and had attended her sweet sixteen. Funny, Danny hadn’t met Norma until long after high school but had known Meg.

Meg, living in Massachusetts, had FedExed him brownies she had baked when she learned that Norma had died. They chatted by text, and she played Harvest Moon for him.

A song he had played for Norma because he loved to see her dance.

All of these thoughts had been swirling through Danny’s head as he sat in a circle for the twenty-minute guided meditation with the teacher and four other people in the room, along with the bunch on Zoom who attended the class remotely.

Between the wanderings of his mind, he sat straighter, returned to his breath and the visualization that helped him center. His mind still buzzed in the background, but he felt gratitude for the community he sat with and the practice itself.

He drove home feeling groggy from the sleepless night, the procedure, and the antibiotic. He made a cold smoothie with frozen fruit and protein, sipped it, and fell dead asleep on the couch with the TV on.

When he woke up, he finished the now less-cold smoothie and decided it was time to book the not-silent retreat that his group was hosting in Mexico.

He had thought about going last year, but he was still being passed from doctor to doctor without a diagnosis for the various parts of his anatomy that weren’t functioning as originally designed.

His yoga teacher had pulled the trigger and booked her flight, and he had promised to do the same.

He logged on to the site and tabbed through the form, missing some critical fields. Finally, he hit Enter, expecting the transaction to go through and to receive confirmation by email.

Danny had been in the field of technology when snail mail was the only mail.

After checking the member site, which showed the workshops he had signed up for, and still not finding the retreat registration, his blood pressure rising, he sent an email to one of the founders of the group.

He tried again, hoping he hadn’t double-booked, and finally received an email from the founder confirming that they had received his registration and that he could go ahead with the payment.

The instructions were to send the registration amount separately by Zelle or Venmo.

Thirty frustrating minutes on Venmo, and no luck with Zelle. He returned to Venmo and was finally successful without incurring the 3.5 percent fee for using a credit card.

Now, on to booking the flight.

The instructions were to book one airline there and another back. He wanted to travel with the group, who were taking the 9:30 flight there.

On his first try, he booked the 6:30 flight by mistake and noticed it only when the confirmation arrived.

Being of a certain age where anything can, and probably will, happen, he had booked the more expensive ticket that allowed cancellation with a full refund. He canceled the incorrect reservation and booked the proper flight down.

He now went to the other airline and saw ridiculous amounts for each flight. Instead of the three or four hundred dollars he was expecting, he saw 10,000 and 15,000 for each seat.

His BP now as high as if he were in the last half-mile of a marathon, he returned to the original airline and booked the return flight a few hours earlier than the others, for twice the price of his flight down.

It was only later that he realized the flight back was priced in Mexican currency.

He didn’t bother to do the math. He had enough angst for the day.

Danny’s hands flew across the keys as he captured the week’s events as they had unfolded.

The day after the procedure, he had texted his friend Gary while watching Thursday Night Football on Prime, expecting him to be watching the game.

Not true. He was immersed in My Cousin Vinny and the beguiling Marisa Tomei.

All through text, he caught Gary up on the fact that his gum beneath the tooth was inflamed, swollen, and pounding with his pulse, despite the Advil he shouldn’t have been taking anyway because of the other meds he was taking to support the pharmaceutical companies.

Gary made him promise to go to the dentist on Friday.

Danny had a prearranged 8 a.m. appointment with a doctor to discuss a procedure that would install a pacemaker-like device for sleep apnea.

The pulmonologist went through his list of medications and explained, in a thick Indian accent, that the two inhalers Danny was taking for breathing were not effective. Instead, he recommended one at 50 bucks a month that would do the trick.

He then explained what was involved with the installation of the device, and it wasn’t very appealing. Even though it was October, the month of monsters and ghouls, I will spare you the details.

While waiting for the doctor, Danny had texted the dentist’s office to let them know there was swelling and pain in his gums.

They called and arranged for him to take a picture of the swelling and text it to the dentist. They also arranged for him to return to the office at 9:30.

Two doctors before 10 a.m.

Lucky for Danny, his iPhone and his Subaru were communicating that morning, not always the case.

He punched the address into Google Maps and was sailing through the streets of Rye, past cemeteries and golf courses, into early morning traffic on the Hutchinson River Parkway, and on to Scarsdale, past more golf courses and ball fields, to the little town square.

He was whisked into the chair, dabbed with a topical anesthetic, and then immediately jabbed with Novocain multiple times, like the stabbing in the movie Psycho.

Again, sparing you the trauma Danny underwent, all he could think about, with the Novocain hardly having had time to work, was that he needed to improve his meditation techniques. He couldn’t move his awareness from the point of the doctor’s attack to a more serene place.

At this rate, he wasn’t going to make it to Nirvana or Carnegie Hall.

Doubled up on antibiotics and swallowing an Advil that would have calmed a bucking bronco, he wobbled out of the office and descended from the fifth-floor torture chamber to the lobby below, hoping he wouldn’t have PTSD at the sight of another dentist’s chair.

He made it home, sat in front of his three work screens to check mail and tidy up a few things before the weekend, and then hit the couch, something that wasn’t part of his normal routine.

When Danny awoke, he walked to the kitchen and grabbed an ice pop. He stuck it in his mouth, then walked to his office.

He booked a haircut at his gym, more like a spa than a gym. He found a free time with his favorite haircutter for later in the afternoon. Barbers and bartenders get to know their clients well, and haircuts always made him feel better.

Without stopping, he booked a massage for Sunday to soothe body, mind, and spirit after the events of the soul-sucking week.

He did shudder slightly as he approached the barber’s chair but was soon immersed in his haircutter’s tale of her own plans for a trip to Mexico.

The End