Roland Merullo’s Spiritual Journey

Breakfast with Buddha traces the journey of Otto Ringling—a middle-of-the-road, middle-aged food lover, former book editor, and confirmed skeptic—who is boondoggled into taking an enigmatic holy man on a journey across America. In the process, Otto sees his homeland anew through the eyes of a maroon-robed Buddhist monk named Volya Rinpoche, and also finds, in the most unexpected place, something he’d been missing. It’s a humorous road-trip story with spiritual questions at its core.

The author, Roland Merullo, said he has felt truly honored to have his novel chosen for the Saint Mary’s freshman common reading and was somewhat surprised and pleased that a Catholic college had chosen his book about Buddhist spirituality for this purpose.

“I grew up Catholic,” said Merullo, who describes himself as the product of a Massachusetts, Catholic, ethnic Italian, working-class background, “and I still have a great reverence and respect for the faith, although I am no longer a practicing Catholic.” A committed Buddhist for many years, Merullo believes his lifelong interest in spirituality, in asking big philosophical questions, and writing about it, is likely rooted in his Catholic upbringing.

“Those questions were presented to me in one form or another every Sunday in my early life,” he said. “I grew up on Biblical stories and took them very seriously. They made me ask and I have always wanted to know—why are we here? What are we supposed to do? Why do we suffer and why is suffering spread around so unevenly?”

In his 20 novels and nonfiction books, Merullo addresses such big questions, and leavens them with humor, adventure, and keen observation. In Breakfast with Buddha, the protagonist attempts to show Rinpoche some American fun—from a chocolate factory in Hershey, to a bowling alley in South Bend, a Cubs game at Wrigley Field to his family’s farm in North Dakota. In the process, Otto gets a different perspective on his world and his own life and comes to an important realization—that there is more to life than being a good guy, as Merullo put it.

“Otto is a really good guy, a good husband, father, and citizen,” Merullo said. “He has his issues, but he doesn’t hurt people. Then Rinpoche comes into his life and tells him that’s all good, but it’s just the beginning, not the end.” The Buddhist monk leads Otto to consider what lies beneath the good guy exterior—the spiritual self that will sustain him in crisis and ultimately at the time of his death.

“Clearly a lot of what Rinpoche tells Otto is preparation for such a moment. It’s a very Christian idea, too,”said Merullo, who cites the writings of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk whose books have been profoundly influential in his life. He points particularly to Merton’s Wisdom of the Desert, a translation from the Latin of stories from fourth-century Christian hermits living in the deserts of Egypt and Palestine.

“A beautiful book,” Merullo said. “There’s a story of an abbot near death. One of the young monks tells him he is blessed because he has prepared his whole life for this moment. That’s what Rinpoche means when he tells Otto to pay attention. It doesn’t mean you don’t live, you don’t enjoy. But rather, where will you want your mind to be when it’s your moment?”

Merullo, who noted that he’s certainly been influenced by his undergraduate major, Russian literature—“all very deep, very serious and concerned with big life and death questions”— said the road trip in Breakfast with Buddha just serves as a framework, a factual skeleton on which to hang the spiritual journey Otto makes with Rinpoche. While that aspect of the journey derives from age-old wisdom, the actual road trip is based on one Merullo took with his wife and daughters in preparation for writing the story.

“The same roads, the same signs, restaurants, and meals, what we heard on the radio. It’s all true.” Merullo’s wife, a photographer, took pictures, and his daughters immersed themselves in the story and advised their dad, “Rinpoche would totally want to do this.” Two subsequent books—Lunch with Buddha and Dinner with Buddha are also based on real family road trips. “Different roads in different parts of America, all family trips, all great,” he said.

“I just love to get on the road and drive,” Merullo said, and wishes he could drive from Massachusetts to Saint Mary’s for his visit. “I think it makes you pay attention. If you stay in your own small geographical circle all the time, it’s very easy to become blind and deaf to what’s around you. And new scenery, different people, different ways of speaking, wake me up.”

A new book coming out next from Doubleday is also based on a road trip in which the Dalai Lama pays an official visit to the Vatican where he and the pope decide to sneak away in disguise and take a road trip with the help of a husband and wife. “It’s funny, spiritual and quirky,” said Merullo. “A lot of fun to write.”

Merullo is quick to point out that even with the serious spiritual discussion that infuses his work, he likes to laugh and make his readers laugh. He’s looking forward to his talk at Saint Mary’s, which he predicts will be relaxed, interactive, unscripted and devoid of preaching. “I try never to preach,” said Merullo, who confessed to a little ritual he practices before every talk. “I say a little prayer by myself that one person in the audience will find some value in what I say. If that happens, then I feel like it’s okay.” Merullo’s talk is on Jan. 26 at 7 p.m. in the Soda Center as part of the January Term 2016 Speaker Series.