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I once saw a “Buddhist master” who told his students, “I can bring you to full awakening in three years!” And apparently this “full awakening” included sessions in isolation tanks, sky-diving lessons, and vacations in exotic Asian locales—with the students paying for all of the teacher’s hotels, food, and travel expenses. Don’t ask me how this works, I couldn’t follow it either. But that’s not Buddhism. It’s not even close.

The kinds of fantasies people like this promote are damaging in the extreme. Fantasies of melting into the void, of seeing incredible visions, of achieving peak experiences and making them last forever should be avoided at all costs.

Believe only in the universe as it is right now. See the world and yourself for what they are. Don’t be deceived by your imagination no matter how beautiful it is.

Dogen relates a neat story about this in the Shobogenzo: A monk’s walking around outside and he stubs his toe something fierce. Hopping around in utter agony he thinks, “I’ve read that pain is void, so what the hell is this?” And all at once he gets it. When his teacher asks him to explain, he says, “I cannot be deceived by others.”

We all want to be deceived by others. We want to pretend we believe in idiotic philosophies we find comforting. But in the end, no matter how much we try, we can’t possibly be deceived. Reality is always there. You can pretend the sky is green with orange polka-dots, but when you open your eyes and look up, it never is.

Zazen will put you directly in touch with the source of yourself. It will bring you into direct contact with something that has never departed from you, something that could never leave you. You can never escape yourself. The truth is always there. Try to look away from it and wherever you turn your head it’s right in front of you. Reality is the one and only constant thing in this universe. It’s always right there. Just as it is.

EPILOGUE

Cloquet hated reality but realized it was still the only place to get a good steak.

WOODY ALLEN

THE WORLD IS CHANGING. Things are getting better. I know that’s hard for lots of people to believe, what with terrorism and war and the price of Doc Martens.®

It was hard for me to really see, too. For most of my life I’ve been the darkest, bleakest most misanthropic pessimist anyone could want to meet (or to avoid, for that matter). I was utterly convinced the world was on the fast track to hell. When I first encountered Nishijima’s grinning, sunny optimism I wanted to smack it right off his face.

But here’s the thing: You can convince yourself that your pessimistic outlook is “correct” or “realistic” or “justified”—and any newspaper will give you plenty of evidence. You can wallow darkly in your certainty that anyone who sees things in a positive light is an unrealistic empty-headed ninny.

Spend your time doing that and you’ll be miserable, which you believe is your right, a personal choice that affects no one but yourself. But it’s not. It’s an inexcusable way to live because when you live that way you won’t do anything about any of what’s wrong in the world because, of course, if you succeeded that would prove you were wrong that nothing could be done.

Does letting go of your committed pessimism mean you ignore what’s wrong in the world? No. Far from it. Seeing what’s wrong and pointing it out is a big part of how you make things better. It is vitally important that you do this.13 With weapons of mass destruction within reach of nearly anyone who wants them, you have a duty to make certain that no one in this world ever has any reason to want to use such a thing. This is very much your own personal responsibility. To shirk it isn’t just wrong, it’s dangerous.

If the world is to change in any important way, that change will come from individual human beings who have the courage to discover who they truly are. And in making this discovery, they will find out what humanity truly is, what the universe truly is. Only people who understand their own nature thoroughly will be able to bring about the changes that must