John McCain looked at KR, his Zen master, and asked, "But, won't people know that I used to support a woman's right to have an abortion?"
KR hit McCain on the shoulder with a bamboo stick. "Wrong, are you," KR told him as he stifled a wince of pain. "Short memories, today, have people. Also, you. Teach you, tried, what have I?"
"To become an empty vessel," McCain dutifully replied.
"Yet, cling to your monkey mind beliefs, do you," KR ruefully scolded him. "Chatter, chatter, chatter. Tax cuts for the wealthy, permanent, should not be made. Campaign finance, reformed must be. Religious right, agents of intolerance are."
"Yes," McCain chuckled, "I have been something of a maverick, haven't I?" KR wiped the grin off his face by hitting him on the shoulder with the bamboo stick. "Hey! Cut that out!" McCain yelped.
"Maverick, will you be," KR advised him. "But, Republican maverick, become you must."
"How do I do that?" McCain asked.
"By an empty vessel, becoming," KR replied. "Signs of attachment to desire, are these positions all. Desire, let go, you must if win, you want to."
McCain thought about this for several minutes, the only sounds in his Phoenix mansion being the snipping of the Latino help trimming the hedges in his well tended garden. He momentarily reconsidered the pleasure he had gotten when he was told that the guru made house calls, but he immediately banished the thought from his mind as being unworthy.
McCain was about to ask further, when KR, anticipating where his mind had taken him, hit him on the shoulder with the bamboo stick again. "Oww!" McCain protested. "What was that for?"
"Question becoming an empty vessel, about to, you were," KR wisely pointed out to him. "Your presumption, preempted I."
McCain looked blankly at KR for several more minutes. With a sigh, KR explained: "Rid of all attachments yourself to your old political positions, must you. Filled with the image of a war hero, will be, you. Continue to carry out his policies, in the meantime, will old Bush cronies."
"So," McCain thought it through, "I have to stop being a maverick in order to keep being a maverick?"
"Sense, finally speak, you," KR approved. When he saw the slightly doubtful expression on McCain's face, he hit him on the shoulder with the bamboo stick.
"Hey!" McCain shouted. "Don't do that! I get it! I GET IT!"
"With your monkey mind, understand, you do," KR stated. "Of your monkey mind, let go, must you! At a deeper level, understanding is!"
"I was treated better in the POW camp in Vietnam," McCain muttered.
"To win, want, do you?" KR shortly asked him.
"Yeah," McCain admitted, "I want to win."
"The man in the empty suit," KR told him, "become, you must. For George Bush, worked, this method. Almost too well for Ronald Reagan, worked, this method. What you must do, know, do you. Continue to resist, do you, why?"
McCain hesitated. "Honestly?"
"Of course," KR told him. "To wisdom, paths lead, all. No contradictions, there are. Your truth, please, speak."
"Well, abandoning my old positions and falling in line with the current administration just seems to me to be the opposite of being a maverick. Actually, it feels...kind of...icky," McCain said, then flinched in expectation of a bamboo attack.
However, KR didn't hit him with the bamboo stick. No, KR smiled. Emboldened by this, McCain continued, "It also strikes me as more than a little strange that I have to empty myself of policy positions when everybody around me clings to theirs."
This, unfortunately, was too much for KR. "Insignificant speck in vast cosmos, are you!" the diminutive teacher raged. "Plans by better minds than you, upset will you! Attached to your ego, so, are you?"
"Ow! Ow! OWWW!" McCain responded as he was pelted about the shoulders with the bamboo stick.
KR bade McCain meditate for the rest of the afternoon. Poorer material to work with, had he had. Succeed, must he. Succeed, would he. The project to install a permanent Republican government in the White House was too important to jeopardized by a "maverick" clinging to his fading ideals be.