Hidden Buddha

Lama Rinzen Mysteries, Book 2

In this second Lama Rinzen crime mystery wrapped inside a Buddhist mystery, the lama finds herself reborn as a doctor into the Hungry Ghost Realm inside a haunted hospital on Colorado's eastern plains. She is there to learn the realm's lesson, and also to discover why the hospital's patients and staff are mysteriously disappearing.

Rinzen does not believe in ghosts. Still, she feels haunted by them and by other apparitions of past lives when other patients disappeared on her. Then nine-year-old patient Claudia says Rinzen is wrong, and she herself has seen the ghosts. They are here to trap Rinzen so she might never escape the Hungry Ghost Realm. Not in this lifetime, and not in any future rebirths either.

How can the lama learn from the things she refuses to see? It feels like a lesson she should learn and a question she must answer. Could this be what the Buddha means when he talks about emptiness? These little bits of ourselves we keep suppressed and hidden and never admit to?