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By Root 672 0

damned thing I’d ever read in the Buddhist sutras was confirmed in a single instant. The universe was me and I was it. I looked up at the sky and that experience was exactly like looking at a mirror. I don’t mean that metaphorically either. You know the feeling of recognition you get when you look in a mirror? “That’s me,” you think to yourself, “My hair needs to be combed and, hey, there’s a pimple on my nose!” Well I got that same feeling no matter where I looked. I looked at the asphalt road and it was my face. I looked at the bridge and the bridge was me staring back at myself. It was a physical sensation, as if the sky had my eyes and could see me staring up at it. There was no doubt that this state was “true.” It was far more true than the state I had considered to be normal up until then. I had no need to confirm it with anyone.

It’s all me.

Even if I want to put this realization down I can’t. Sometimes it’s excruciating. You know those morons that rammed those planes into the World Trade Center? That was me. The people that died in the collapse. Me again. Every single person who ever paid money for a Pet Rock? Me. I don’t mean I identify with them or sympathize with them. I mean I am them. It’s impossible to explain any more clearly than that, but this isn’t a figure of speech or bad poetry. I mean it absolutely literally.

But the universe is sooooo much bigger than any of that. The sky is me, and the stars too, and the chirping crickets and the songs they make; sparkling rivers, snow and rain, distant solar systems and whatever beings may live there: it’s all me. And it’s you, too.

Was this the same state that Gautama Buddha experienced that early December morning 2,500 years ago? Yes it was. It is. Absolutely.

Is there anything special about me? Not a damned thing.

Has it changed my life? Yup.

Was it a big deal? Buddy, everything’s a big deal, but yes, this was a big deal.

I’d been driving through a dark tunnel for countless years when all at once I emerged into the sunlight along the shore of a lush tropical island. Yet there were no bells, no whistles, no gongs; no thunder, no earthquakes; no peals of laughter, no tears, no drama.

And then I went to work and did my job.

It was all very ordinary and normal. But in that very normality and ordinariness was something more wonderful than anything special I could ever have imagined. All imagination pales into nothing compared to what your real life is right here and right now. There’s not a single dream you can have, no matter how pure or beautiful, that’s better than what you’re living through right now no matter how lousy you think right now is.

WHY SHOULD YOU BELIEVE in any of this? Why should you care? No reason. No reason at all.

There’s nothing I can possibly tell you that could communicate this state to you. Because human language by its very nature just isn’t up to the task. If I say “kumquat” or “droopy granny boobs” or “Johnny Ramone on stage at CBGB’s circa 1975,” you have an idea what I mean. But there’s nothing I can say that can communicate the reality of that experience.

Do a lot of zazen though and you’ll see it for yourself. I can promise that, without doubt and without reservation.

But what happened to me won’t happen to you. At all. And yet it will. Exactly.

Sounds like nonsense doesn’t it? I empathize.

Here’s as clear as I can be about this stuff: The only enlightenment that really matters is right here and right now. You have it right in the palm of your hand. It shines from your eyes and illuminates everything you see.

Oh, and one last thing: People imagine enlightenment will make them incredibly powerful. And it does. It makes you the most powerful being in all the universe—but usually no one else notices.

WHY GENE SIMMONS IS NOT A ZEN MASTER

Doing zazen, you become king of the world.

GUDO NISHIJIMA

I’m the king of the night time world!

GENE SIMMONS

WHEN I HEARD THAT KISS® was coming to Tokyo for what they were billing as their final tour (again), I had to be there. KISS® was one of my favorite