Defender of the
Dharma:
Tales of a
Buddhist Murderer
by
Thomas K. Shor
He was not who I would have expected to appear
out of the fog in that narrow alleyway late on a mid-February afternoon
in Darjeeling. The Himalayan town had been in the clouds for weeks,
and after a succession of cloaked figures and women wrapped in damp
shawls appeared out of the gray fog only to dissolve back into it, when
I first saw him I thought it couldn’t be. Only the hardiest of
travelers make it as far as Darjeeling in winter, people with a reason
for being there. I was there to collect stories for a forthcoming book,
though I was in the alley trying to make myself invisible with my camera,
taking a break from writing to photograph, trying to make the best of
bad weather by photographing the interplay of figure and fog. I hadn’t
seen a tourist in weeks.
What struck me was how normal he looked, like your
typical American guy. Middle-aged, rounded, balding, what hair he did
have was crew cut. He wore a light-gray windbreaker with a corporate
logo and loafers. His loafers were encrusted in mud. He looked cold
and out of place, as if his Chevy had broken down somewhere outside
Kansas City and he suddenly found himself walking down an alleyway in
the middle of a cloud. The majority of Americans never leave North America.
This man looked a part of that majority.
He came right up to me. “If you think this is
bad,” he said, sounding a little like a stand-up comedian, “it’s
even worse in Gloom—I mean Ghoom.” Ghoom, a town a few miles
from Darjeeling, is foggy even when the sun shines everywhere else.
The sun hadn’t shown itself in Darjeeling in weeks. Ghoom must
have been dripping.
“My lama is down there, staying at the monastery,”
he continued. “God, it was horrible. The clouds were so low I got
lost right in the courtyard. I’m still chilled to the bone. You
know what pilots say who fly in the Himalayas: You have to be careful,
the clouds have rocks in them.” He laughed heartily at his own
joke. He did not fit my idea of someone with a lama in Ghoom.
He put out his hand with the assertiveness of a traveling
salesman. “The name’s Johnny Hill,” he said. I introduced
myself.
“Do you know where one can get shelter from
this weather, and maybe a glass of beer?”
I knew of a place close by, the Shangri-La Restaurant,
upon whose back wall was painted a huge mural of de Vinci’s Last
Supper, with Buddha sitting in for Christ and monks in burgundy robes
with shaved heads taking the place of the twelve disciples. It was getting
too dark to photograph anyway, so I led the way to the Shangri-La. As
my reward, he offered to buy me a beer.
Since we were the only customers, we chose the table
next to the fireplace. We ordered beer.
“I’ve done many things in this life,”
he said. “Now I’m on the lama circuit with Geshela—that’s
my lama. He lives in the States, you see, and I’m his lead disciple,
I’ve been with him the longest, more than fifteen years. We asked
him how long he’ll live. He doesn’t think that long. He’s
in his eighties. Maybe another five years. That’s why we’re
here. To take him to his old haunts, the monasteries where he lived,
so he can see his old friends one last time. I’ve done enough in
this lifetime to fill a few incarnations. I’m a filmmaker, but
I’ve done many things. I even used to work for the PLO.”
His rapid fire of words ended suddenly with those
three letters. Maybe he had said too much. I didn’t care. I asked
him what he did for the PLO.
He took a sip of beer, glanced around the room, and
leaned forward.
“It’s a long story,” he said, “but
I started by smuggling hashish from Morocco and Tunisia. This must have
been in ‘68. I was driving a van in Tunisia and the police caught
me and brought me to the police station. And there I was in cuffs next
to my van, my hashish piled up on the sidewalk, about a hundred bystanders
looking on. I thought, O-oh, I’m in trouble this time. There was
a lot of money in that shipment—and the money wasn’t mine.
I could bribe my way out of jail, but I needed the hash too. So I had
to do some fancy negotiation. I insisted on speaking with the big boss,
the district commissioner of police. They brought me to him, but my
problem was to find a solution mutually acceptable and beneficial to
us both. You see, you have to find a way to make the other guy save
face. You can’t just come out and bribe such an official, not someone
that high. He has his dignity.
“Then I hit upon an idea.
“So I says to him, ‘Do you have a son?’
“He says, ‘Yes.’
“I say, ‘Has he made his haj?’ You
know, the haj, that’s the pilgrimage to Mecca. He says, no his
son hasn’t made his haj. So I say, ‘Don’t you think I
could make a contribution towards your son’s haj?’ He smiled
a crooked smile, as if my hook got him right in the lip! So I ask him
how much a ticket would cost to Mecca and he tells me and I say, ‘No,
a first class ticket.’ I was out of there in no time. And for the
next couple of years, I sent many a police official’s son on his
haj.
“The finest hash wasn’t in North Africa,
though; it was in Lebanon. So I started smuggling hash from Lebanon.
In Lebanon, it was mostly the Palestinians selling the hash. Their struggle,
just to survive, took money; and the more traditional methods of making
money were closed to them. Remember, I had spent a long time in Muslim
countries and had many Muslim friends. I must have gained lots of good
Muslim karma by sending so many fine and outstanding sons of North African
police officials on their haj.
“Smuggling arms or drugs—it wasn’t
that different. Many of the same skills. I was in my twenties—I’m
in my mid fifties now—and I was idealistic, fighting the good fight.
Or so I thought. When you’re young, you have lots of energy. I
used to smuggle shipments of high-powered weapons. I even once delivered
a shipment for the Black Panthers. We stole them from an armory in North
Carolina and drove them to the West Coast.
“The whole world was on fire. Vietnam was raging.
People were freaking out all over the place. It couldn’t go on
forever. For me the end came when I got busted with a shipment of guns
for the PLO. The PLO were both honorable and loyal. They busted me out
and helped me flee the country.
“That was long ago,” Johnny said, laughing
nervously. Maybe he had said more than he wanted to. With hardly missing
a beat, he changed the subject.
“I believe we all have many incarnations in
this very life. In this one, I’m with Geshela. He’s been in
the States a long time, you see. He’s on the lama circuit there—you
know retreats, the whole thing. Our retreats are by donation only. By
relying on peoples’ consciences, you get more. Most put in $100.
We have a hundred people. That’s $10,000. For a weekend. Not bad
wages.”
Johnny Hill cracked a wry smile and produced a pregnant
pause by simply closing his mouth for a second and allowing the underlying
silence to manifest.
“To tell you the truth,” he continued,
“though he wears a simple monk’s robe, Geshela’s a rich
little fellow.”
“How do you think the money and the West effects
him?”
“I think he plays into it. They all do.”
“These Tibetans are a bit like children,”
he said, laughing. “Right there in the moment. They’re probably
the most developed human beings the earth has ever produced; but socially—sexually—they’re
unsophisticated. They’re really mountain people, you know. And
then they go to the West and the women fawn over them. They can have
their pick.”
As Johnny spoke he shifted constantly on his chair
and ran his hand over his closely cropped, bristly hair. He wiped beads
of perspiration off his forehead and upper lip as he told his tales
at breakneck speed.
I asked him how he dealt with the elaborate ritual,
all the demons and gods, in Tibetan Buddhism.
“That’s a problem, even for me,” he
said. “Actually I’m a Theravadan—you know that’s
the southern branch of Buddhism. I first encountered Buddhism in Cambodia,
where it’s all much cleaner and to the bone. No gods, nothing.
Just meditation and cleaning the mind. Later, I lived in Sri Lanka,
with my second wife. My daughter was conceived there. I’ve been
married three times, you see. Long story. Have two children. A son who’s
twenty-nine. My daughter’s now nineteen. Geshela kids me. I’ve
been with him fifteen years now and he says, ‘Johnny, you’re
still a Theravadan.’ So I say, ‘When will you convert me?’
“So I ask Geshela: You can pick your parents
for your next life, right? And he says yes, if he wants. He’s known
my daughter since she was four. I named her Alexandria because of Lawrence
Durrell’s Quartet. Did you know that Lawrence Durrell went to school
here, in Darjeeling? That’s right, he went to Saint Andrews, just
up the road.
“Anyway, the first time I brought my daughter
to meet Geshela she asked me if he was going to be like a raisin, all
bald and wrinkled. I told her yes.
“So I bring her to him—this was in the
States—and there were many people there and I had to speak to someone.
I lost track of her and then there she was with Geshela in the next
room sitting on the floor playing jacks. Ever since, they’ve had
a special closeness.
“So I say to him, ‘If you can pick your
next mother after you die, why don’t you wait a few years and then
pick Alexandria? She’ll be of child-bearing age, and she’d
be a good mother for you.’ His face lit up with the thought. He
really beamed with the idea. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think
I’ll do that!’
“But then I told him, ‘If she’s your
mother, then I’ll be your grandfather—and it’ll be payback
time!’ His whole face turned red; from his chin, it moved up right
to the top of his shaved head. ‘Oh—no,’ he said, ‘oh,
no!’”
Johnny Hill laughed a staccato laugh, wiped the sweat
from his upper lip, and changed directions yet again:
“Everything has its purpose, you know. Even
our meeting. It’s not often we meet someone on this level. There’s
a reason our paths have crossed. Can’t you feel it? There is no
coincidence.”
Though strange to say it, I knew he must be right.
He was some sort of madman with a motor mouth, intent on telling the
mad tale of his life by stitching the disparate facts of the universe
together into a unified whole, making connections like flashes of lightning,
hugely powerful, yet ephemeral.
Out the window a bevy of Western women passed by
in the darkening gloom, shaved headed, in the robes of Tibetan nuns.
When I turned back to Johnny Hill, he had a strange look on his face.
He told me he knew what it was like to kill a man.
This is how he put it: “I know the feeling of
a knife go into flesh. It was difficult the first time. It weighed on
me. But then, well, you have to defend yourself...
“The whole problem of humanity is courage. Fear—that’s
the block. I’ve always defended myself. The only difference now
is that I’ve taken the bodhisattva vow, the Buddhist vow of love
and compassion for all sentient beings. I’m a follower of the Tibetan
dharma—the sacred teachings, the Way.
“I have defended my life—with death. Now
I am a defender of the dharma.”
I asked him what the circumstances were, when he
killed a man. For the first time, Johnny Hill was silent. He closed
his eyes and rocked gently in his seat, rather like an inmate in an
asylum. A full minute went by. Then, with eyes still closed, he started
nodding his head. He opened his eyes.
“I’ve rarely spoken of this. My three wives
know, and two or three close friends. My children don’t even know.
I haven’t spoken of it in years.
“It was after I got in trouble in the States,
with the guns and all, and been busted out by the PLO. They smuggled
me out of the country—and I couldn’t return. Nor did I want
to. America.
“America was waging war in Southeast Asia, shredding
villages in Vietnam. It was also the time of the secret bombing of Cambodia.
And they considered me a fugitive from justice? I had grown up the son
of a career military man: World War II vet, American Legion—the
whole thing. I saw how the war had destroyed him. And now America was
doing it again, sacrificing their young on the altar of war.
“The war had done a job on my father, and in
turn he did a job on me and my three brothers. My youngest brother was
a heroin addict. When he was nineteen, he said to me, ‘I’m
not going to stick around here for long.’ I asked him what he meant.
‘I’m opting out. There’s too much pain down here.’
Two months later, he was dead of an overdose.
“Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of death—and
too much destruction. Both my godfather and godmother committed suicide.
“It’s all karmic, the life one leads. Even
one’s death, one’s pain. I told you, I’m a defender.
It’s true that I’ve defended myself by killing. And although
I’m now a defender of the dharma, I could kill again—if I
needed to. The stance of the warrior is always defense, never offense.
All true warriors know this. And I was bred for it. I’m a Scott.
I come from four generations of military men.
“After I married my German wife, I told my brothers
we had to forgive Dad. You see, his problem was that as a soldier he
had killed a lot of innocent people. And because of this, he was embittered,
alcoholic, and we all hated him. But you know, you get older—and
maybe a bit wiser?—and by then I had been with Buddhism a long
time, so I thought we should have compassion for him and forgive. Dad
was old by then, and all alone. My brothers refused. So I went myself
to see him, where else but at the American Legion Hall. He was drinking
with his buddies and they all knew I was married to a German, and none
of them would look me in the eye. But not because of why you’d
think, because I’d married the ‘enemy.’ They just stared
into their glasses of Budweizer. They were so ashamed—of the death.
Of all that death. They knew they had killed innocent people. Just think
of Dresden and the firebombs. This is what bonded them, what kept them
knocking back the beer. Not the glory. If it were only the glory, they
could have gotten on with their lives. No, it was the death they had
delivered to innocent people, to women and children.
“And that the kid of a buddy of theirs was married
to a German woman brought it all back, the memories beer could not erase.
All they could do was drink more beer and wish for stronger medicine.
“And compared to the soldiers of Vietnam, they
were mature when they went to war. Did you know the average age of a
soldier in World War II was twenty-four? In Vietnam, it was only eighteen!
But they had stronger medicine. They had heroin and ganja.
“After I got caught with the guns and was busted
out of jail by the PLO, the PLO helped me out of the country. I had
had some pretty rough characters after me before, but now I was a wanted
man, and a big enough fish that I was on the FBI’s short list.
The CIA were expending resources on me as well.
“I was in my mid twenties. I didn’t care
whether I lived or died. Actually, I thought I was invincible, that
nothing could get me. I had been in many ‘situations.’ I had
killed and was always the one to survive. I was in flight from the United
States government, and where better to flee than to the center of the
maelstrom, to the very heart of dark violence.
“So I went to Cambodia. It was in Cambodia that
I first encountered Buddhism.
“The country my country was bombing was going
to teach me about peace.”
Johnny sipped his beer and looked into space over
my right shoulder.
“I was traveling through the countryside—hot,
steamy Cambodian jungle, staying in villages, always on the move, sleeping
in Buddhist monasteries, trying to stay one step ahead of America’s
bombing raids. This was 1972. The stench of death was everywhere.
“Then I found a peaceful place, a village in
the jungle. I stayed there about a month, got to know the people there.
And then we saw the formations of bombers; we heard the distant rumblings.
Then the bombs exploding in the neighboring villages. We were next.
There was a bus in the village, and a bunch of us jumped in. We were
a few miles from the village when we heard above the engine’s drone
the sound of the missiles coming in, a high whine followed by silence,
followed by a tremendous explosion whose impact blew the bus’s
windows out. The sides of the road exploded. Everybody panicked. The
driver froze. He didn’t know what to do. Bombs were exploding now
one after the other in long lines.
“If I had learned anything it was how to act
in a situation of life and death. So I ran to the front of the bus,
peeled the drivers’ fingers from the wheel, grabbed him by the
shoulders, and threw him out of his seat.
“I was now responsible for a busload of souls
the might of the US Air Force was hell-bent on killing.
“Since the bombs were pressing forward before
us, I thought the safest place was back in the village. So I turned
the bus around. And when we got to the village, the village was in ruins.
There were craters everywhere, half the size of this restaurant.
“We staggered out of the bus and the trees were
filled with shredded meat. It was impossible to tell which meat was
human and which was water buffalo.”
Johnny closed his eyes and tears ran down his cheeks.
Any question of whether his stories were true or not vanished. “I’m
sorry,” he said. “I’ve only spoken of this a few times.”
He collected himself and continued: “Then we
heard the unmistakable sound of choppers coming in—you know the
sound.”
His face lit up. He was suddenly the stand-up comedian.
“You know the mantra of Cambodia in those times, don’t you?
‘Chicka.’ The sound of helicopter rotors. Chicka—chicka—chicka—chicka.”
He howled with a sudden burst of laughter like machine
gun fire. The tears running down his cheeks were for this brief moment
tears of laughter.
“Two helicopters came in over the village and
landed. We were all too stunned and in shock to do anything—neither
to fear nor to hide. And out of the helicopters came these American
Southern Baptist fundamentalist missionary medics. They were there because
they were Christians and felt it their duty to administer to the wounded.
“Remember, this was Nixon’s dirty little
secret, his bombing of Cambodia. And mind you, they had come in about
$300,000 worth of equipment, all from passing the hat in churches in
Alabama and Mississippi and who knows where else.
“I went with one of the nurses—she had
a beautiful little body and a sweet Mississippi accent—and assisted
her with the wounded. The whole time I thought they’d take me with
them. I thought I was saved, being a white guy like them and an American.
But when they started up the rotors and I began running with the nurse
toward the chopper, she grabbed my arm and stopped.
“‘We can’t take you,’ she said.
“I was stunned. Smoke from a distant town rose
on the horizon. She pointed to it and said they were headed there to
do their good works. ‘It is all we can do to lift ourselves and
our supplies,’ she said. ‘We can’t afford the weight.’
“For the first time in a long while I cared
whether I lived or died.
“The nurse said, ‘Over there, in that direction,
is Thailand. It should be a three-day’s walk. Stay off the trails
and travel only at night, and God willing, you’ll make it.’
And I did. I walked to Thailand.”
Johnny took a long sip of beer.
“What happened that day in the Cambodian jungle
changed me forever. There was America, in the guise of B-52s, bombing
the shit out of the country, shredding innocent Buddhist villagers and
leaving their meat hanging in trees—all to protect civilization
from the godless commies; and there was America, in the guise of fundamentalist
Christians, coming in to mop up after them, performing their Christian
duty in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment gathered
by church donations, no doubt from good commie-hating, flag-waving bible
thumpers. It renewed my faith in America. It was in the jungles of Cambodia
suffering America’s secret bombing that I experienced America’s
diversity.
“You never heard of this in the press, did you?
But I was there. That both extremes could exist at one time changed
me forever—maybe because I was myself a nest of such contradictions.
I’ll tell you a secret—we all are.
“And by the very fact that America is still
wrecking havoc with the world at the same time that we are sitting here,
in a cloud in the Himalayas, connecting at such a high level—this
speaks to the fact that the planet is changing fast. It’s all coming
to fruit. There must be thousands of other conversations just like this
taking place all over the world—at this very moment! We’re
not the only ones pushing the envelope; it takes many minds, in joint
effort, to think new thoughts.
“Look: the Tibetans had the dharma, perhaps
the greatest kernel of ancient wisdom to survive to the 20th century;
but they hoarded it, they kept it for themselves. They also had a rigid
social system—vast landholders (often the high incarnate lamas)
and their tenant-slaves. They had internal wars going on all the time,
often between monasteries! They fought so much amongst themselves that
when the Chinese invaded, they couldn’t unite against them.
“It is because the Tibetans fled Tibet and have
been scattered around the planet that the dharma has spread. Without
the Chinese slaughter, my lama wouldn’t have left Tibet. Without
him, I wouldn’t have gotten the teachings. I wouldn’t be here.
I probably would have killed myself long ago. The Tibetans protected
this ancient kernel of wisdom for millennia. Now they’re sharing
it with the world. The Chinese gave them the push. These teachings could
just save the planet yet. And for that, we’d have to thank the
Chinese.
“I don’t condone what the Chinese did in
Tibet,” he said, “but I don’t like all this complaining
about it either, especially among Western Buddhists, who idealize everything
Tibetan. Look, two out of six million Tibetans were murdered by the
Chinese. Do you really think the Tibetans had nothing to do with it?
When it’s one’s karma to kill, it’s another’s karma
to die. What’s the law of karma worth if it only holds for when
good happens? When something bad happens and you don’t see how
you’ve brought it on, its only because you don’t see the connections.
That’s the law of karma: Everything’s connected. Everything!”
Johnny Hill’s compact Midwestern salesman’s
exterior seemed but a disguise, for there was something all-encompassing
about his vision, the way he explained how both butchers and saints
are needed for humanity’s new dawn, how if only one hundredth of
one percent of humanity understood the tenets of wisdom and compassion
as handed down by the Tibetans, that’s all it would take. One hundredth
of one percent—critical mass to turn the whole thing around. He
believed nothing could stop it now. He saw a new dawn. And in his presence,
I saw it too.
“Look, I’m a film maker,” he said.
“See it from third camera, from that objective place, like God
looking down. The lamas travel now to every country on earth, teaching
love and compassion. Think of how small their number next to the total
six billion.
“It’s all a big play,” he said. “We’re
all just out here on the planet. But we’re only here on parole!”
Johnny Hill reached across the table and put his
hand on my shoulder. He squeezed so hard I had to keep myself from wincing.
The greatness of a man may be known by the breadth
of his contradictions.
When we got up to leave, Johnny Hill told me he was
going to Nepal early the next morning with Geshela. I realized he had
never told me the circumstances around which he had killed.
We shook hands outside the restaurant, Western style.
Then we hugged each other. Then we stood with our palms pressed in an
attitude of prayer, knowing it was unlikely we’d ever meet again.
It was then I saw what was written on his windbreaker, what I had taken
for a corporate logo. It was from a film he had worked on. In big letters
it said, THE GUILTY. And under, in smaller letters, was written, CREW.
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