The Day I Woke Up

The day I woke up started just as usually as any other, a hopeless indifference came over me as I made my way through the packed city streets to work. The usual wired radio personality stumbled his way onto my palate, clamoring with all the subtlety of a demolition derby commercial on a peaceful Sunday morning drive. Comic perfection, yet so tragic.
He was singing to the tune of:
“Cars Battle Cars!”
“Grid Match!”
“Time… The Only Prize!”
As I watched the busy intersection ahead, I sneered back at the announcer in my mind,
“These vultures.”
Only one day had passed since I was sitting half lotus on the floor of a Buddhist Temple in the mountains around Chino Valley, Arizona, reciting the 37 Bodhisattva Practices aloud in a room full of strangers who also believed they were called upon to walk the path of the Bodhisattva. This time around however, I was among a new breed of strangers, and we were separated by tons of steel and rubber, hating each other for being in the way.
I was stopped halfway up the street from the intersection I so desired. It was occupying my attention each passing minute, remaining so elusive. The newly discovered “compassion for all sentient beings (Bodhichitta)” I felt so strongly about the day before was nowhere to be found. It was as if my very understanding of Dharma was being held captive in a cell somewhere by a grizzly road rage beast, forbidden to peer out the window and see the reality that was: steel, rubber, and appointments for all. I admit, it is much easier to feel this compassion for all sentient beings when you are on a silent retreat nestled in the mountains, far away from a three hour commute into Los Angeles during morning rush hour.
My eyes burned with fixation upon a single, arbitrary red arrow, and with imagination in full gear, the light pole became exposed as a long steel shaft fitted with a hard rubber head, spring loaded by the Powers that Be and ready to kick me back out into the grid system. Any second now. Any second now it would.
Feeling somewhat helpless to change the situation, I just observed as we were all lined up in single file. We were all ready for that immense force. We had all been there hundreds of times before and we all knew what to expect from “this device”. Negative thoughts ensued, money owed… love lost… blah blah, they kept on coming, as numerous as the hordes of cars in my way.
“You too can be the proud owner,” chuckled Tom Waits sarcastically in some deep recess of my mind.
Frustrated by the entanglement of cars and thoughts alike, I said to myself, “Fuck this, I’m stopping here.” I saw my chance and made a hard left from my stopped location in queue into the Circle K parking lot, exchanging wolf tickets with a righteous spandex adorned cyclist.
This action empowered my ego; and my thoughts wandered away from Zen practice once again, but eventually would come full circle back into true Zen awareness. Observe this cycle: “That red arrow… that my eyes burned with fixation upon, which I begged for passage from, is no longer in control of me. I am now back in control of me. I am in control, as it should be. I should expect to be in control at all times because I am only happy when I am in control. I only want to be happy. Wait, I cannot control my happiness, because this happiness hinges on controlling the environment around me. I have no control over the environment around me. If I always base my happiness on whether or not I have control of a situation, there will always be outside influences to end my happiness. Happiness can only come from within me as I have discovered many times before. Damn, I almost forgot Zen lesson number 1.”
Maybe I was being a little too hard on myself for noticing a hole in my idealistic philosophy; specifically the challenge of practicing my beliefs in such a large city where I appeared to be the only person with this consciousness. But how was I going to stay in such a peaceful mindset, while living and working in the “belly of the beast”? I felt I had better figure this out if I planned on becoming enlightened here.
Like the junkie in Axl’s “Jungle”, I was craving some external comforts. I sought comfort for my senses, since that was the only thing I could do to ease my immediate suffering. I needed something really good, really bad. “Coffee… yes, and candy. Maybe that will calm this crabby infant accompanying my mindset today.” I knew it would ease my suffering to some degree, because it had thousands of times before. So what if it was temporary? I needed to take a break from taking a break. I know what all the Zen Masters teach: these things will never lead to true, lasting happiness. In fact, to them, the attachment to the idea that these substances will ease my suffering at all is actually the root cause of more suffering for myself, at some level. Despite this knowledge, I thought, “I’m only human. Coffee makes me feel good- candy tastes good. I deserve it damn it. Screw Zen for now, it’s not working.”

“After all, my mind has a mind of its own” I thought with a sense of defeat.

I jumped over the curb and forced my way through the front doors of the store swiftly and suddenly, so as to deter any dawdlers from lingering in my line of sight- I was intent on finding my prize. After my eyes adjusted to the poor lighting in that meth lab of a mini mart, I located the liquid brown life machine in the back corner and made a bee line to it. I poured 25 ounces of Espresso Roast into my 24 ounce plastic cup and slapped a 16 ounce lid on half way. I grabbed some Chewy Sprees and headed for the counter, where a skinny brunette waited for me with a bored stare. Burning my hand from the coffee lid misalignment on the way to the register, I winced at her, hinting at the “long morning” I was having within. Realizing she was actually kind of cute, I attempted to transform my wince into a half smile. Sensing the awkwardness of the situation, I turned to look at the magazine rack instead. “Hmm, I wonder if Brad really loves Angelina…”

This is the moment that it happened.

For whatever reason, out of nervous habit I suppose, I raised my hand to my head to run my fingers through my hair. This in itself was nothing new, and would raise no eyebrows- except to myself. You see, I had just shaved my head before the Buddhist retreat in Chino Valley 4 days earlier, and now I had a full head of hair again, as if it didn’t happen at all! It was not possible in “the real world” for this to happen I knew, and a “supernatural” fear came over me. But then, immediately after feeling the hair again I realized, “I’m dreaming. This is all a dream. I am sleeping in a bed right now at my friend Glenn’s house in Riverside, and I am experiencing a dream.”
The “real me”, my conscious self that is, had the unique opportunity to experience what I realized was the most ultimate control possible. I was fully conscious of myself, and my life outside of the dream taking place within my own mind. I slowly turned back around and looked at the checkout girl, saying to her with an excited grin, “I’m dreaming, this is all my dream!” She smiled back at me with a shocked, “really?” expression on her face. I got the sense that she was just as excited about this whole concept as I was, wishing she could experience this in her dreams one day also. She looked on at me congratulatory, “good for you”.
Immediately, I thought I should take advantage of this limitless freedom, before I woke up. Hell, just the realization itself might be enough to wake me out of it.
“I need to be careful that I don’t get too excited and wake myself up”, I thought.
“So, how could I enjoy this best? What will I do? Fly? Eat cheeseburgers? Have sex?” (Interesting side note: these are the same earthly desires I have while conscious).
I began to pace quickly around the store with my arms out, taking in the whole dream landscape. I was in awe of the details in the store, the shelves, the walls, and the door. I realized my unconscious mind was actually creating these images as I went along. I became a single force of creativity with my unconscious mind, having the ability to create anything I wanted at random, because after all, I was the God in this world.
I had complete and ultimate control of my surroundings immediately upon touching my hair, which was the “wormhole” into this realization. Funny- it happened during a moment of Zen struggle, when I attempted to gain control of a situation due to feeling ultimately helpless in my environment.
I was freed from the attachments in my dream, since it was my mind that created them to begin with- I realized an absolute truth in one instant. It was the most enlightened I had ever felt up to that point, and ironically, it was in a dream. As soon as the moment came, it went away. I didn’t have the chance to experiment at all with my surroundings. I just feel fortunate to have remembered it at all when I woke up in the morning for my “real life” commute into L.A.

What should I have learned from this dream?
What correlation does this have to the “real world”?
Realizing that most of the suffering we experience in life is caused by desire and attachment, struggling to maintain control in an otherwise uncontrollable universe, what are we to do?
Just as in the dream state, we live in a constant illusionary state while we are awake. Our minds create the illusion of comfort and happiness through the consumption of substances, the attainment of objects, and the achievements of social and career endeavors. However, the soul continues to suffer, reaching extreme levels of frustration after it realizes that despite its valiant efforts to provide happiness (the only way it knows how), it continues to suffer in so many other ways- experiencing only fleeting moments of comfort and happiness. The soul has an unreasonable expectation that suffering should not come to it because of all the “hard work” it has done providing comfort from moment to moment, “patching leaks” and “putting out fires”. In the words of a 6 year old child, “It’s not fair” that they should suffer after all they have done.
Still we try and try again to create a more comfortable world around us, despite never having been successful doing so. The soul encounters endless struggles while trying to maintain this illusion of comfort and happiness, and after time it becomes weak, bitter, and depressed. We continue to believe that with a few simple adjustments: coffee, candy, new job, sex, we will have lasting comfort.

Here’s the clincher: that is the purpose of this life- to “torture” your soul by providing the illusion of happiness through material gains until you realize you’re helpless using this technique. The soul will eventually come to realize that true happiness comes from within, but it could take a long time, hundreds of lifetimes even (depending on the soul). We are always one “fist full of hair away” from “awakening” to the truth about this life- that we are on a “hamster wheel” of suffering, and that the only way off is to stop running, sit down in meditation (Zazen), take a few deep breaths, and begin to seek happiness elsewhere- namely within. That is the purpose of this life, to suffer until we reach the breaking point and seek true, lasting happiness through divine understanding- or Dharma.

Enter the Buddhist perspective: Samsara…
Samsara, “The wheel of life and death”, “birth and death”, is the Buddhist approach to this life. It’s a process that slowly atones us through trial and error. We are empowered to continue going on the way we do until we can’t handle it any longer and turn to look elsewhere for answers. Sound familiar Christians? Alcoholics and addicts?
What is your tolerance for pain? At what point you seek a “pain killer” depends on this tolerance, and your tolerance depends on the strength of your armor (the age of your soul). According to Buddhist doctrine, through reincarnation it may take several lifetimes (revolutions of the Samsara process) before its ultimate goal is reached, and that is to transform the raw, needy soul which like a baby believes “I” is the center of the Universe, and to eventually lead that soul into an enlightened state of true happiness through divine understanding; that is: God is not a noun. God is an endless verb that we are all an intimate part of, and only through unconditional love and compassion for all sentient beings, do we experience pure joy within God.
But like I said before, this understanding is achieved only through the suffering we experience while we hold onto the reigns. Without suffering, what motivation would we have to seek the truth of this life, or see its ultimate purpose? Enjoy the suffering, thank the suffering. So that is the purpose of Samsara, it’s an illusion designed to teach us the truth about ourselves, and the very nature of our souls. At least that’s my interpretation of it.

When I was a child, my family lived next to a golf course. I would gather up all the balls I could find in the woods and ponds and sell them to golfers as they passed. Before I sold them I made sure I cleaned them well using the golf ball cleaners around the course. To those who are unfamiliar with this device- you put the dirty ball into the top of a large, hollowed out plastic ring and crank a handle on the side. Around and around it goes through the solution and wiry bristles until it becomes presentable. While I don’t see our souls as “dirty golf balls”, I do see them as raw and in bad need of this transformation process known as Samsara. The wiry bristles are all the car crashes, diseases, and broken hearts you will undoubtedly experience while you are caught in the wheel. Samsara is painful, but it’s painful for a very good reason- it exposes us to our true selves through the hard and fast Karmic Law of causation.

Only through trial and error, over the course of many lifetimes, blindly picking up where we left off before, will we learn this true reality of self. Unfortunately for us, the only way is the hard way; this is not something we can learn overnight, or take a class on to pass. The “lab” is mandatory.
See your pain as progress, but use it as a stepping stone to get closer to a state of Nirvana.

Good luck to all of you on your own paths toward inner peace. I hope that in some small way this story could help you achieve a greater vantage point.
May you continue to seek happiness, and the causes of happiness.

Love,

B-Zennan