We noticed the Zen Master walking toward our hut. He was carrying a thick yellow book under his arm. He knocked and we told him to enter. He staggered around and finally placed the large book on our table. We looked at the title. It had something to do with Yoga Meditation.
“I will teach you the secrets of this book!” the Zen Master yelled at us with heavily slurred words. “I only show this to people who are really worthy of my special teaching! You should consider yourselves very fortunate!”
We stared at him as he pounded his fist drunkenly on the cover of the big book.
“But this book concerns Yoga Meditation,” I said. “We are Zen Buddhists. Why would you teach us this stuff?"
The Zen Master hesitated, staggered a little, and finally shouted: “IT'S A VERY SPECIAL TEACHING. You will see MANY INTERESTING VISUALS if you follow the steps outlined in this book. Lights, figures, fractals, spirals, ornamentations, YOU WILL HAVE POWERFUL VISIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS IF YOU FOLLOW THIS TYPE OF SPECIAL MEDITATION!”
We could see he was plastered. Drunker than we'd ever seen him before. On a few prior occasions we had witnessed the Zen Master drink rice wine to slight excess, but we had never seen him this thoroughly inebriated.
My friend spoke up: “But we don't really care about visuals, Zen Master. We wish to be free of delusion and have clear minds. We want to see our true natures and understand reality as it truly is.”
“BUT YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!” the Zen Master yelled. “WAIT TIL YOU SEE THE GLIMMERING LIGHTS! THE FRACTALS! THE SWIRLING SPIRALS AND VIVID HALLUCINATIONS! THEY ARE OUT OF THIS WORLD! THE BEST ENTERTAINMENT YOU'VE EVER EXPERIENCED!”
He pounded again violently on the large book in front of us. BANG! BANG! BANG! He belched and staggered and almost fell. Then he sort of woke up and began beating on the table again, very hard. We watched him sway back and forth on his skinny legs.
I wanted to tell him to get out until he sobered up, but I decided to reason with him further: “You don't understand Zen Master, we want to free ourselves from the cycle of birth and death. We want to reach Nirvana. How will doing Yoga meditation that's similar to seeing a Las Vegas light show help us with that?”
“YOU'LL SEE! JUST TRY IT! WAIT UNTIL YOU DISCOVER WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN MISSING ALL THESE YEARS! YOU WON'T BELIEVE IT! AAHHGGHGHGH, CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND ANYTHING? KATZ!”
I folded my arms and looked down. “We don't want it,” I said.
“That's right, we refuse this teaching,” my friend said, backing me up.
The drunken Zen Master stared at us intensely without blinking. He stared at us for a long time with his lips tightened, bracing himself against the table so he wouldn't fall. “YOU FOOLS DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE MISSING!”
“We don't want to try it. We're not interested,” I said.
The Zen Master shook his head slowly, still staring at us with narrowed eyes, completely infuriated. Finally he picked up his Yoga Meditation book and tucked it under his arm. He swayed slowly, turned and staggered out the door.
We didn't feel too disappointed in him. We didn't want to abandon him as our teacher.
We knew that when he sobered up from drinking too much rice wine, he would return to Zen.