Ask yourself... "WWBD?"

It's nearly the two-year anniversary of my initial trip to the Buddhist monestery Tassajara back in June of 2002. That successful trip featured the birth of a very unusual friendship...

While browsing the bookstore there, a monk at the cash register named Judy Bunce picked at her lunch. She was a slender woman, probably in her fifties with her hair, not shaved, but cut very short.

"Where are you from," she asked.

"Los Angeles," I said. Not a lot of Angelenos go to Tassajara, so the question usually preceded comments remarking how far I'd driven for my visit.

"What do you do there?"

I looked back at her and grinned. "Nothing."

That would usually end it. It was the most zen and accurate answer I had. It also avoided a whole minefield of other questions.

Judy pondered this and wasn't satisfied. "What did you do before you did nothing?"

Bah! What a nosey little monk!

Now I was back in the minefield. TV writers never say they are TV writers because they know how the next ten minutes of the exchange are going to go. "What shows did you do"... "I loved/hated that show"... "What is (star name here) like?" blah blah... can't we just talk about something normal and human?

"I was a TV writer." There. I said it. I had feared opening myself to negative stereotyping, but surely a Buddhist monk in this spiritual, pure place would never do that.

"Oh," she groaned. "We don't like your kind around here."

She was being tongue-in-cheek, but maybe she wasn't. "I know," I sighed, "I know..." and continued to scan the book selection.

"Unless, of course, you write for my favorite show..." she said, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Of course I just about pulled a Chevy Chase over a table display of gongs. I was a huge Buffy fan, and poor Judy had been exiled to the mountains with no TV (or electricty for that matter) thus missing the entire sixth season.

For the next forty minutes, I stood there at the counter and updated my new best friend on every single character arc and plot: from Anya sleeping with Spike, to Willow's addiction to magics. People would come and go from the bookstore, catching only pieces of the conversation -- you can imagine the looks of bewilderment.

Now here we are, two years later, on the eve of the Slayage Conference in Nashville. Sponsored by Middle Tennessee State University, scholars from all over the country will present their papers examining the Buffyverse as it relates to every aspect of our culture.

One guest speaker is Jana Riess, whose new book "What Would Buffy Do?" places the slayer in a spiritual context. At the conference, Jana's topic is "Buffy and the New American Buddhism."

Hmm... those monks are smart. Very smart.