The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes - Jamyang Norbu [65]
'Precisely so, Sir.' I agreed, 'Though it troubles me ... Good Heavens, Mr Holmes!' I cried. 'How the deuce an' all could you know my innermost thoughts?'
Sherlock Holmes chuckled, and leaning back on his saddle pulled the reins to make his pony accommodate its speed to mine.
'How do you think? Through magic? Clairvoyance maybe? Or just through a simple sequence of plain, logical reasoning?'
'For the life of me, Sir, I cannot see how reasoning could have enabled you to follow the course of my mental processes. My thoughts were all tightly locked up in my bally head like meat in a coconut. No, Sir! The only explanation is jadoo. Probably you enlisted the aid of some mind-reading djinn like Buktanoos or Dulhan, or Musboot — maybe even Zulbazan, son of Eblis.'
Sherlock Holmes laughed out loud. 'I really hate to disillusion you about my familiarity with the denizens of darkness, but the whole thing is absurdly simple. Let me explain. I have been watching you for the last ten minutes or so. You had Herbert Spencer's Principles of Biology open in your hand and were reading it with great interest. You then put the book down on the front of your saddle — open, somewhere in the middle —and you became thoughtful. Your eyes narrowed. Obviously you were thinking over what you had just read. If I am not mistaken, Spencer discusses certain theories of Mr Darwin and others somewhere in the middle of the book — about the continuing development of species from simple to complex forms. I could not be absolutely certain of this, but you helped to confirm my hypothesis by altering the manner of your reverie and observing the wild animals and birds around us in a deliberate and inquiring manner. Your views seemed to agree with that of Spencer's for you nodded your head on a couple of occasions.'
Mr Holmes lit his tartar pipe and, blowing out a stream of white smoke, continued. 'But then your thoughts were rudely interrupted. Do you remember the pitiful remnants of a gazelle killed by wolves that we passed just a littie while ago? It seemed to upset you. It is all very well to talk or write about "the survival of thefittest"1 in a warm comfortable drawing room in London; but actually encountering this aspect of nature even in the insignificant death of a poor gazelle,, is a humbling experience. The frown darkened on your face. What theories could explain the misery, the violence, and the brutality of life, you seemed to ask? You thought of your own brushes with violence and death. I noticed that you looked down at your right foot where you once lost a toe, and nearly your life, and shiver a littie. Your expression deepened into one of sadness, the melancholy that comes with the awareness of the permanence of our human tragedy.
'Then you noticed the gleaming towers of the monastery in the distance, and your thoughts seemed to lift a littlefrom their previous despondency. You gazed up at the open sky. Your expression was quizzical but not entirely melancholy. Probably you were asking yourself if religion had the answer to human suffering, where science did not. It was then that I ventured to agree with you.'
'Wah! Shabash! Mr Holmes. This is more astounding than any magic,' I exclaimed, amazed at this revelation of yet another facet of his genius. 'You followed my thought process with extraordinary precision. A most remarkable feat of reasoning, Sir.'
'Pooh. Elementary, my dear Hurree.'
'But how was it done, Mr Holmes?'
'The trick is to construct one's chain of reasoning from the initial premise of umm ... let us say, "dependent origination", to use this profound Buddhist concept. Then from a drop of water you could logically infer the possibility of a Pacific or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it.'2
The monastery was perched on a hill, below which was the settlement of Tradun. It was a regular bustling metropolis for those parts, consisting of over twenty houses, besides a number of nomad