I left her at the table. The waiter wouldn’t be bringing the main course for another ten minutes at least, and one of the busboys had already opened the wine. It was a good time to excuse myself and use the restroom. I didn’t want to have to leave her in the middle of dinner.

It was a nice restaurant and the bathrooms were gorgeous. It didn’t even smell like a bathroom, but rather, a dutch field of tulips. The urinals were made of spotted glass, which was something I had never seen before. They alternated in color too, between yellow and blue, like a Van Gogh painting in the middle of his Urinary Period. They humbled me. How was I supposed to piss on obvious works of art? Thankfully, my body didn’t care how much effort some glass artisan had put into the urinals; it took me to the bathroom because it had a job to do, and by Jove, it was going to do it!

I was about ten seconds into my piss when an old — and I mean old! — Chinese man walked in the door. He was dressed very traditional: a single cloth intricately wrapped around his entire body and tied with a white and silver threaded sash. He had a beard that went in a single line all the way down below his navel. I imagined some crazy little man, a homunculus, who climbed down the man’s beard every night, retiring into a hovel in the Chinese man’s bellybutton, where the homunculus’ wife and children lived, and every morning, the homunculus would rise for work and climb back up the beard, into the man’s mouth, and take the controls inside the man’s head. I blamed my imaginary fancies on DesCartes.

I tried not to watch as the old man went about the very long and very deliberate process of removing his wrap and preparing for his duty at the urinal. I concentrated on finishing my own business, or at least, I tried to until the old man started speaking to me.

“I am not someone who was born with knowledge,” he said.

It took me a few moments to process the words. When he saw that I had and before I could respond, he continued, “I simply love antiquity and diligently look there for knowledge.”

“You recognize a belonging with the past,” I translated.

“More than that,” he said, untying his sash with more devotion than I’ve seen in churches, “I recognize that we all do. Any sense of self that you may possess is dependent upon its place in our history. You are you, of course, but you are also your father’s son. You are the recipient of a great history of life. That gift of your ancestors, though, comes with a great responsibility. You must always remember that you are only the current manifestation of them. You must be filial to their wishes.”

I shook off what remained in my body, and said, “Hinduism would have me recognize my connection with the Brahman before it would have me recognize my connection to my great-grandfather.”

He stepped up to one of the yellow urinals, “I know a little about my Indian neighbors. But remember,” he said, as I heard the splash of his urine against the glass, sounding like a holy rain on my window, “The man who has seen the truth thinks ‘I’m not the doer.’”

“True,” I said, “But neither was my great-grandfather. All of us, as individual as we are as Atman, are all part of — and in some sense, serve at the pleasure of — Brahman.”

“Couldn’t Brahman be seen, then, as your first ancestor — as The Ancestor?”

“In some sense, I guess.”

“Then my Indian neighbors and I agree — you have no business here. You are to take no actions that aren’t directed by The Ancestor.”

I began washing my hands. I watched the water swirl into the sink, taking with it different particles of my body, but never threatening to wash all of me away. I said, “Your countrymen say, ‘Tao endures. Your body dies.’”

He laughed, “They also say, ‘Become the channel of the world.’ And again it leads to the notion that you are emptiness, that you should surrender your self to the notion of what came before and moves through you. They call it Tao. The Indians call it Brahman. I call it Ancestor. Whatever it is, it’s greater than you.”

I laughed and returned to my meal.