Abraham (Lincoln)
The Buddha visited Gettysburg on a Sunday afternoon in late September. Everything was green or gray, grass or mist. Cement sky, cloudy fallow. From the balcony of the Pennsylvania Monument, the Buddha sees Little Roundtop and Monument Alley. It’s just a graveyard, the Buddha realizes. An off-white obelisk. An iron-clad angel with a drawn sword. A granite man wearing a granite cap and granite coat with granite buttons carrying a granite musket and riding a granite horse.
When we visit a battlefield, we don’t want to be reminded of death. The Buddha knows this, but nature has its ways. At the entrance, a red sign reads: “STOP THIS INVADER! The Spotted Lanternfly is an INVASIVE species that poses a risk to the environment and agriculture of Adams County. DO YOUR PART: SPOT it! STOMP it!”
The Buddha remembers. He remembers the delicate drill of a mosquito’s needle into the nape of his neck, remembers waiting until it had slaked its red thirst before it floated into invisibility, remembers that his legs remained crossed, his fingers gently clasped in his lap, and he never opened his eyes, never even winced. A shimmering orange scene. When the Buddha was Prince Siddhartha Gautama in his father’s palace, he would snatch a fly out of open air with a single fist and hurl it against the floor: a soft black bead. Pure instinct. Muscle memory. It had taken years to retrain his reflexes, years more to care for consciousness, all sentience. To let a mosquito drink when it was thirsty. Hear it humming thank you.
But what is the circle of life in a transatlantic world? The Buddha fingers his iPhone, learns that the spotted lanternfly is indigenous to China and Vietnam where it has a natural predator—parasitic wasps. First identified in America in 2014, the spotted lantern fly costs Pennsylvania 335 million dollars annually and 2,987 jobs by eating soybeans, grapevines, and apple trees. Experts predict it’ll be one of the most common insects on the East Coast within two decades. At the visitor’s center, another sign in colonial New England script reads: “THE SECOND INVASION OF GETTYSBURG! The Spotted Lanternfly is an INVASIVE species that has ambushed the environment and agriculture of Adams County. Do Your Duty: 1. TAKE AIM! Carefully identify the insect. 2. SHOOT! Report a photo of the insect using the QR code. 3. CHARGE! Carefully stomp on it. You can assist with the war effort in Gettysburg.”
Even if the Buddha hadn’t seen the signs, he would have known something was up. The steps of the Vermont Militia monument were covered with bugs, splattered and not. Thousands of them. The Buddha squatted, watched one climb the marble column vertically. It had a beady black head, red fruit-fly eyes, six bent-angle spider legs, and two sets of wings. The forewings were a semi-translucent beige with oblong black spots. They ran like two rounded rectangles along its back. Directly beneath were the hind underwings—crimson red—giving the pest a pink strawberry sheen: a demonic ladybug. It was the color that the Buddha couldn’t get over. Blood red. When squashed, those two red underwings splayed out from beneath their translucent spotted veils, leaving little splotches of red all over the marble.
The Buddha imagined children jumping gleefully all over the courtyard, playing crunchy hopscotch, but he was alone. Only someone’s grandma in a wheelchair, wearing a black puffy coat, faced the statue. Her husband stood behind her with a Vietnam Veteran baseball hat.
Light wind.
The Buddha stands up, puts his hands in his jeans. I give these teachings with an open fist, he thinks. All things are one. All things are one. He’s been secular for years now. Jettisoning reincarnation and karma reduced his suffering.
He locates a spotted lanternfly on the nearest step. He plants his heel and hesitates. His foot closes like a trapdoor, emitting a small popping sound. He walks back to the car.
One, he thinks. One.