yesterday’s big question

I love these Irish hotel breakfasts, where it’s just assumed that they bring you a giant plate of toast automatically (that’s the way it should be, in a civilized country). But I don’t love walking out into a rainy day. My room and the breakfast room are buried partially in the earth, so I had no real sense of the weather in “the Great Outdoors” until now.

However, this cybercafe (the hotel’s wireless is still down) has turned out to be a nice resource center. Not only do they offer communications, food, and hot drinks, and pleasant manners, they even sell adaptors so that I can run my French laptop on UK-type wall outlets.

I forgot to mention the best question from yesterday’s grumpy, aggressive passport control man at the airport. (Emphasis not added; it was there in the original):

“Why is there an American University in Cairo?”

This morning it occurs to me that I may have been wrong to find this a bit hassling. It may have been meant as a Zen koan along the lines of the sound of one hand clapping.

“Once it happened that Vivikanda landed at the airport in Dublin. He approached the passport check area, and saw there a withered old sage clad in saffron robes. Before him was a bowl of simple rice, and a plate filled with alms.

‘What is the Buddha?’ asked Vivikanda.

The sage waited three minutes, then said: ‘Non-Buddha.’

At this, Vivikanda was enlightened.

His passport was stamped, and he exited the terminal. Following him were 76,000 lotus-bearers; 94,000 elephants covered with jewels; 112,000 dancers with tambourines; 254,000 mendicants begging for alms with wooden bowls; and 10 million million bodhisattvas. This created congestion in the airport at first. But Buddha expanded the universe, and let them pass.”

Yes, I sort of made a hash here mixing Japanese and Indian genres, but it still cheered me up when remembering that stupid curmudgeon from yesterday, who looked like a stereotypical New York precinct captain from around 1934.