So at the Dorje Drak Lamaist monastery this week, a monk meditates in serene peace when he becomes aware of another monk approaching him from the wind-swept hillside.

They nod, and the newcomer says “Didja hear about A-Rod?”

“Dude,” says the elder, “Every bodhi has heard about it.”

Based on this conversation, we can only conclude that the reader also has heard about Alex “Stare” Roidriguez’s suspiciously lawyerly confession that, yes, he too used performance-enhancing drugs with the Rangers. This comes as a shock to most baseball fans, of course, who naturally assumed that his Herculean (or perhaps Icarian) rise to baseball glory was caused either by the will of God or, perhaps, his carving a Wonder Boy bat out of a lightning-struck tree.

And Bud Selig, who as baseball’s commissioner makes Casablanca’s Captain Renault a jack-booted draconian by comparison, is shocked, shocked to find drug abuse in the Major Leagues. And mark his words, there will be a reckoning, my friends, because this time he’s had it.

Just as he had it when Barry Bonds grew horns from his head and began to gore anything with a red cape two months ago. Just as he had it when Roger Clemens vomited syringes up a little while back while denying any involvement with PEDs. Just as he was consumed with righteous wrath that when Mark McGwire dodged Congress’s questions about the time he jacked a home run that broke a window in Nintendo’s headquarters building when it finally landed in downtown Kyoto.

And just as he buckled up his stomping boot when Jose Canseco simplified his accusations of MLB drug abuse by stapling together the last decade-and-a-half’s worth of lineup cards from every major-league team.

The Czar of Muscovy hates to say it, Bud, but your relentless quest for reform is looking every bit as passionate as O.J.’s hunt for the real killers.

Let’s not kid ourselves. There are two reasons why you’ve limited your search to your Milwaukee office (which the Czar has been to, and admits has a very freaking cool elevator lobby).

The first reason is, naturally, money. When you took the helm of the Majors, baseball was laughably dull. Suddenly, the power game was on. As former Cub Doug Glanville stated recently, ballplayers only get the big bucks if they bring in the crowds which waned so dramatically after the 1994 strike and cancellation of the World Series. The bigger the numbers you hang on the green board, the bigger the numbers on your check. It’s an easy 1:1 that even a horribly starved minor leaguer can figure out: hit home runs, and your paycheck goes up. (By the way, the Czar was stunned by Glanville’s eloquence in the actual radio interview, and strongly suggests that the intellectual Glanville immediately replace the rambling Jon Miller on ESPN; the Czar has every reason to think that at this very minute, Miller is missing a critical play on some crucial sporting event so he can lovingly reminisce in shattered detail on what 1978 Phillies pitcher Wayne Twitchell mistakenly ordered for breakfast in a Houston diner…and the Czar apologizes for his own ramble down the old side alleys of distraction, as meandering and musty as Tommy Lasorda’s sock garters…)

White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, who contrary to myth is not a member of the Ignorant Racist Loud-Mouth Association (application pending, though), openly wondered why so many of the exposed juiced players are Hispanic: Could there be, I dunno, a sinister force working against los Latinos de beisból?

Ahhhhh…no. It’s about money, Ozzie. When you’re a starving kid from the Dominican Republic, and your whole family is living in literal filth, you find a little baseball talent makes you a bit of money. And performance enhancers, which always seem to be sold “over the counter” in your home town, are evidently available in vending machines. You slather on a little cream or have your “cousin” drive a syringe into your ass—nothing too much, mind you—and suddenly you’re hitting 12 home runs a year. And your check goes up for next season. Slather on some more of the cream, and maybe a little of the clear, and now you’re at 20 dingers. Now you’re a star, and your entire family is moving out of a cardboard box into a house in a nice Santiago Domingo neighborhood. But next season, the contract is immense. You want a five-year, 20-million deal? Fine: keep those numbers. And so, inevitably, out comes the two-year-old tube of cream and your bleached syringe.

Which leads us to the second reason. The players’ union. Here it is, and you’ve heard it before: every player on every team can look at his teammates and point out which ones are juicing. You just don’t ever, ever reveal it. Because no good union drone ever blows the whistle on another without retribution. Why? Because if he loses the big bucks, you lose the big bucks. Reality comes back to baseball, and soon the megamillion contracts begin to shrivel like a pair of androstenedione-soaked testes.

So if four of your teammates are improving their numbers by self-medicating—even if you aren’t, and even if you object—you shut your mouth. You act all surprised, and say you’re outraged. Or do like the Yankees and “support your teammate.”Do that, and the checks keep coming. True for a bench player. True for an All-Star. True for a commissioner.

Pitcher Ted Lilly recently argued that revealing which players fail their drug tests is deplorable, because the possibility exists that innocent, hard-playing guys could be thrown out of the game, if corruption leaks into the system.

That sounds great, but Ted is a union steward for his team. It’s the old song-and-dance about non-union personnel risking others’ lives and limbs. If he were a school teacher, he might say that allowing non-union teachers into the classroom is deplorable, because their lack of mentoring and screening could result in a dangerous incompetent teaching your kids. Or a non-union city sanitation worker lacking the training to unblock a sewer line correctly. And so on. And so on.

So forgive us if we’re a tad dubious of Bud’s profound, profound outrage.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.