Zen and...

By John Heuser, Ghost Writer

For the Lost Patriarch

            Zen is an evil trap to be avoided at all cost. I can assert this, sisters and  brothers, because I am finally able to speak  to you through this strange medium of the mind of John Heuser. How I have longed for this day, when I would be released from this sterile monotony of a hell! What a bizarre twist in John Heuser's mind that allows me to speak thus!

            Brothers and Sisters, I come to you with dreadful tidings from the place where Zen can lead. My story began long ago. Know you that I am lost in the memories of the World, for I was born centuries ago in the Year of the Snake, during the era of his Holiness, Bodhidarma himself. In fact, I became one of his thousands of disciples during his very life. Because of my affinity for things apart from the concerns of the Saha World, I readily advanced as a lay priest, and was fully tonsured at age 30. For many years after, I sat at my Master's feet, and thousands of hours did we spend in the state of Zazen, meditating on the impermanence of all things. Little did I know that for all my effort, I was on the path toward a doom worse than Death-Without-Rebirth.

            After twenty years of supreme effort, I was able to stay in Zazen for months at a sitting. I was able to abandon the fetters of the Four Lower Worlds of desire. A full begging bowl of discarded rice hulls per week was enough to sustain my existence. I could have done without that, had I chosen to draw all my nourishment from the very air.

            It was, at long last, time for my Master to test whether I had attained the state of Arhat, which is the attainment of  the Enlightenment called "Practice Beyond Backsliding". Toward the purpose of my testing, my master composed a koan-poem, of which I was to demonstrate my full understanding, or be ejected from his August Presence as one incorrigibly unable to attain Buddhahood.

            Brothers and sisters, the poem was worded with the intention to create a transformation in the quantum level of my being, such that as soon as I uttered the words, my very existence would shift beyond all that sentient beings know as the Real World, and so that I would enter a realm which would guarantee my eternal emancipation from karma.

But because of an unfortunate accident, (which was not my fault!) until this day, the koan only succeeded in imprisoning me in its endlessness!

            I often think of what must have been the astonishment of those present when I uttered the words. They would have seen me quietly mouth the syllables. They would have seen a look of puzzlement, then shock spreading over my visage. And, Brothers and Sisters, they would have seen my appearance start to quaver, before I disappeared with an audible POP!

            Friends and sentient beings of the Saha World, if I permit John Heuser to write the fateful words of that awful koan-poem, who knows what could become of you, whose quantum energies might be vibrating at the right frequency and therefore susceptible to the same doom as I? If I were guilty of such a carelessness, might my lack of mercy not awaken the wrath of Lord Shakyamuni Himself, and cause me to be cast into a hell even worse (surely unimaginable to this humble monk) than the one which traps me now? Therefore, I shall not relate the words themselves that comprised the koan-poem, but shall instead relate what effect they had in my pitiable history. Believe me when I tell you, faithful ones, that my motives are rooted in the soil of my wretched experience, and that whatever humanity my entity retains enjoins me to omit the koan-poem, out of deference to the Buddha's mercy upon you.

            My master's words were in his beloved, if cryptic style. I recall his superbly forceful and yet graceful calligraphy, which was every bit as rigorous as disciplined swordsmanship. I can picture him now, kneeling at his calligraphy table, concentrating all his life-force into the moment of creation. His characters were the shadow of an attacking dragon. And how they stood out against the cream of the parchment!

How could he know that there was, at that moment, millions of miles in space, a comet which passed through a time-space disturbance? That this comet triggered a neomorphogenic psychosubethereal null-field which was about to engulf our planet? Or that it would cause a subtle shift in the very atoms of me, his favorite disciple?

            Indeed, beloved readers, this is what happened to me. This subtle shift in the World's quanta was such that it affected only my body and my mind, which were attuned in a precise combination of vibrations exactly resonant with my master's koan-poem. It was a situation analogous to Twentieth-Century crystal radio receivers, which John Heuser's memories tell me are able to amplify only those signals with frequency lengths that are multiples of the dimensions within the crystal lattice.

             Beware! The effect of such a cosmic singularity as encountering a neomorphogenic psychosubethereal null-field during the precise moment of Awakening is at best, unpredictable, and in any event to be avoided at all cost. In my case, As the Satori experience washed over me in a flood of Awakening, my body went to the same place my mind did. I--along with my body-- entered the place/no place where the gateless gate opens/closes into the Void. And so my mind and my body have been ever since, caught in an endless repetition of the singularity of the Master's koan-poem, which I dare not repeat, but which I can tell you refers to itself in a peculiar way that negates itself. It is a pernicious trap of a statement, which requires that its negation be stated before its assertion, but which needs to refer to the assertion in the negation. But, the negation is a necessary condition for the assertion; the assertion is a necessary condition for the negation; the..... you get the point, I'm sure. I was trapped by the singularity, forced to live and relive the assertion/negation of the koan-poem--billions of times!

            How many centuries did I meditate on this koan-poem? I was meditating on it while the Holy Roman Empire rose and fell. I was transfixed, locked into it while Leonardo and his friends enjoyed the Western Renaissance, and still trapped in it when my own beloved China was forced open by the great barbarian, Gunboat Diplomat Admiral Perry. All those possible incarnations! All that possible history missed! All those missed opportunities to serve Sentient Beings of the Saha World and gain the respect of Buddhas in the Ten Directions! Ah, but the past is past. Lord Shakyamuni, in His great mercy, has seen fit that I suffer no longer; for He has sent John Heuser into the world so that I might be released from this incessantly boring hell of a koan-poem trap.

            Dear sisters and brothers, it was another singularity that saved me. The odds against such a thing happening even once to a person such as myself are comparable to the likelihood of finding a single pure jewel hidden among the pebbles of the sands of all the seas of a major world system of Earths. And twice! Such is unimaginably unlikely!

            But, it is undoubtedly true that it did happen, since I have been freed from the bondage of my Master's koan-poem, and from the purgatorial existence caused by the first neomorphogenic psychosubethereal null-field. I am still trapped, in a sense, by being constrained to flit about in the odd chambers, voids, and fogs in John Heuser's head, but the variety is refreshing.

            The conditions that allowed me my emancipation were created during a discussion John was having, with some of his erudite friends, of Godel's Theorem, a favorite subject my Master, Bodhidarma, used to meditate on whenever he had a free moment from his busy schedule of practicing Zazen. It so happened that a neomorphogenic psychosubethereal null-field washed the Earth with its strange quantum-shifting properties, just at the precise moment that John Heuser was drifting off into a semi-awake state not unlike that of a monk just prior to attaining Arhat. At the same precise moment, a friend of John Heuser was pointing out how Godel's Theorem asserts that a complete typographical system capable of describing all the properties of real numbers would also create a statement that is self-negating-- much in the way of my own koan-poem!

            The singularity, in john Heuser's case, was less disastrous than in my own. His experience was that he heard a sound like an audible POP! inside his head. He shrugged the noise off as being the result of drinking too much coffee, but I know better. I live within him, here in his Unconscious. For it allowed me to be released from my endless enthrallment, and to be flung back into the sordid realities of the flesh. Buddha be praised!