“Wake up you lazy bastard!” screamed Oscar.
I opened the door and lay back down on the filthy carpet. From
my position on the floor I was able to look up his robe, surprised to
see that he was wearing a pair of brightly-colored, orange jockey
shorts.
“What’s with the weird underwear?”
“Oh, my Buddha briefs, you mean.”
“Buddha briefs?”
“Yeah, get dressed, I’ll tell you all about them.”
Buddha briefs? Is nothing sacred? After dressing and getting
cleaned up, I confronted Oscar about his latest religious deviation.
“Well, its like this,” he said, cheerfully pulling out a stack of
multicolored underwear from his sack. “Monday is yellow, Tuesday is
pink, Wednesday is green, Thursday is orange, Friday is blue,
Saturday is party day—we’ve got black, brown, green and purple…”
“Yuck,” I said.
“…and Sunday is red. Today is Thursday, so I’m wearing orange.
It’s simple, really.”
“You’resimple. What does this have to do with becoming
enlightened?”
“It’s a common practice among Thai Buddhists to wear certain
colors on certain days, and since I like wearing only blue robes, I
figured changing the color of my underwear would be a sufficient
concession.”
“Wait, let me get this straight. The major tenets of Buddhism are
release of the ego and the material, right?”
“Yeah, that’s part of it.”
“Well, don’t you think wearing different colors on different days,
particularly on your underwear, is a pretty material and ego-centered
enterprise? Who gives a shit what color underwear you’re wearing?”
Oscar’s voice resonated with guru-honey as he calmly shared
with me his embryonic wisdom, hands together, eyes peering warmly
into mine:
“Yes, you have a point. But if you look at it another way, you’ll
realize that by letting my underwear do all the work I never have to
concern myself with what day of the week it is, which helps to liberate
me from the illusory boundaries of time and the confines of the
Judeo-Christian calendar.”
“That’s idiotic.”
BIG AMERICAN BREAKFAST
156
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