A few weeks ago I thought Adam and I might be going to Chicago for a weekend. I was telling my Dad about this, and about how much I wanted to go see that city where my honey grew up. That reminded Dad that he had just read a book he thought I’d like (this happens a lot).
“It’s about a guy taking a road trip with a rinpoche,” Dad said, “across America.”
Since my Dad has been meditating and going on Buddhist retreats since I was a small child, I know what the word “rinpoche” means. Heck, I’ve even met a few!
I had some other books lined up that I wanted to read first, library books, but I knew that our friend Linda (hi Linda!) wanted to borrow the book after me, so I moved it up the list. (Tough decisions in my life, I know!) And I ended up being really taken with it.
It’s called “Breakfast with Buddha,” and it’s by Roland Merullo.
The main character, Otto Ringling, lives a peaceful, quite suburban life in New York with his wife, two kids and a dog. He keeps his (Christian) faith to himself and he likes it that way, doesn’t like to be pushed upon by other people’s ideas. Then his so-called ‘flaky’ sister asks him to take her guru, Volya Rinpoche, with Otto on a drive to North Dakota to settle their parents’ estate, since they (the parents) have just died in a car accident. Grudgingly he agrees, and ends up discovering new things about America, himself and faith along the way.
It was entertaining and a fairly quick read, with lots of dialogue and descriptions of the America they’re driving through.
(Unfortunately it’s not in the catalog of the library system, I checked. Who knows, though, it could be in another Nova Scotia library and you could do Interlibrary Loan.)
