The Zen master

Henry had reached Zen mode. It felt perfect: meaningful yet light.

“Dad, have you seen Tom’s Switch?”

And that was about it. The question pulled him back to his bedroom in an instant. His teenage daughter was standing in front of him, with her arms crossed, annoyed. He made sure he had locked the door, although he had been suspecting for a while that the kids had been messing with the locks.

“Lisa, I would think you are old enough to get a hint. Like your father sitting alone, in his bedroom, with the door locked.”

Realizing how odd that sounded, Henry quickly added:

“Ask your twin brothers. You know they are really getting into games recently.”

Cain and Abel had just turned eight years old, and they were the life energy of the house. Lisa, being the first, “would always hold a special place”, as Henry once admitted to Tabitha when coming home drunk after a night out with the “old gang”. However, things had changed since then. First, the morning came and with it, the headache and shame. This time, the humiliation Henry would feel towards Tabitha, while she fed all three kids and cooked for him was unbearable. He promised he would stop drinking, at least as much (“I will stop whenever John starts telling us about his latest crypto investments. That usually means we are halfway through the night”). Second, Lisa reached puberty. Henry had always been close to her daughter, and he always told himself that no matter how this important stage of life would affect her, he would be reasonable and give her space. He tried to remind himself of this through the constant hair colour and make-up change, the tighter jeans, the shorter skirts, and the higher heels. However, when the first guys started showing up at the door, he had to take a stand. They simply weren’t good enough for her. They looked like losers! An early morning “intervention” on the porch, as he would call it, right when Lisa was just making small talk with Tom, as she would call it, would finally freeze the father-daughter relationship. Tom was definitely special. He was one of the biggest losers and he would have none of that.

Henry was about to ask why would she have Tom’s Switch anyway, but Lisa stormed off, slamming the door behind her. Henry followed but decided against a confrontation. Normally he would have, but this time he was too happy. Just five minutes ago he had made a huge breakthrough. He had finally reached Zen. He stopped in the hallway and listened. It was pathetic that he had to do this, but even as the supposedly “head of the family”, finding a quiet spot in this 3-floored, 3-bathrooms, 2-living room mansion was a problem. “As much as one loves his family, any man needs his own time” his dad used to say before pushing him outside the house and locking the door. Even now, Henry still oscillated between finding this repulsive or completely justifiable. Henry was currently on the 2^nd floor. He could hear Lisa fighting with the boys on the same floor and the TV playing upstairs, hopefully from Tabitha, which meant the ground floor was his chance. He went down the stairs as fast as he could and ran straight to the guest room. He locked the door behind. A cold fear engulfed him as the sudden realization hit: what if the kids have been meddling with all the door handles in the house? That would mean no more safe spaces left in his own home, no more sanctuaries in which to retreat. He felt naked, impotent. He turned around to face his faith. The hand slowly slid across the handle and pushed with a mind of its own. The door shuffled for a moment but didn’t open. It worked! Rejuvenated, he took a sit on the couch.

“Ok, let’s see, where were we?” The reality hit him again, this time harder. He left his phone upstairs!

After the porch debacle, the whole family dynamic changed. Henry was hopeful that everything was just temporary, but it seemed that Lisa had completely blocked him out and was not interested in reconciliation. However, the brothers were growing up and picking up more and more of his hobbies. They started to like cycling; thus, the local forest became their free exploration area. Cain got into tennis and Abel into swimming and Henry was happy to join and support.

One day, Henry joined Abel’s swimming session. He would sit on the bench and answer emails, sometimes giving Abel a thumbs up or taking a picture for Tabitha. This time, he looked up but couldn’t find him. He asked Cain, who usually joined to support his brother, but he denied knowing what happened. Finally, he heard a desperate cry. It seemed another kid had been pulling Abel under the water as a childish joke. Henry went blank. The next time he remembered being awake, he was holding the attacker, feet above the ground, staring into his scared eyes, and shaking him violently. He was wet from the waist down and beams of shock looked down on him. A man grabbed him by the shoulder and punched him straight in the face and everything went blank again. Things moved quite fast after that. Henry agreed to stay away from that swimming pool, pay a fine, and apologize to the child and parents that had to watch a stranger jump in the water, run after their child and drag him out to shake him. Ultimately, Henry was lucky that so many people had witnessed Abel being pulled underwater and screaming for help. The fact that the lifeguard was not to be found also deterred the pool not taking any legal action and trying to mediate the situation. However, there was one final condition Henry agreed to: meditate for 3 months.

And this is exactly what he had been trying to do. It started off slow. Henry knew he was too good for this. “My mind is too fast for me to just sit still and think about nothing. I need stimulation!”. The first weeks he could connect 3 minutes at most before he got sleepy. However, something changed around week 4. Something so out of the ordinary that he was afraid to divulge it to anyone, even to his therapist: he started to have stronger experiences. It wasn’t clear yet why, if it was just him giving simple moments of his existence more attention, or that his senses were really being somehow enhanced, but it worked, and he loved it! However, for this, he had been following a very specific meditation program from an app called SpaceHead. And he needed his phone for that.

He thought again and decided against going back. Cain and Abel might already have it. Plus, Tabitha might hear the commotion and ask him to run some errands. He wasn’t ready for that. He decided it was time. Henry had tried mindfulness meditation without guidance in the beginning but got lost in his thoughts and fears. However, now he was ready with an arsenal of breathing and focus techniques that should get him through the process. He was feeling adventurous thus he set an alarm for 30 minutes and closed his eyes.

Almost immediately, he felt excited and small. He struggled a little to regain his composure and started breathing. “Breath in 1-2-3-4, Hold it 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, Breath out 1-2-3-4-5-6. *Cough*. Dammit!”. He could never breathe out to the count of eight. He never understood how that was even possible (even mathematically it didn’t make sense). He started breathing again and managed to find a rhythm. Thoughts were rushing through his mind. The porch, the flickering light above as he was screaming at Lisa, the phone in his room, the car that needs to be washed, is Tabitha still upset? Lisa crying while her “best friend” tried to sneak away, Abel being embarrassed by his bloodied-nose father, John’s drunk face explaining the latest in the crypto world, his phone upstairs, that homeless guy that made eye contact with him last Friday, the dog he saw shitting in the park and the owner not picking up, the scared boy starring at him incessantly, even after being hit by his father, the wet pants against his skin, the war, the hungry people in Africa. Henry opened his eyes.

“I really need my phone”. He walked towards the door defeated. He thought that once Zen had been reached, going back would be a piece of cake. But it seems his mind was still putting up a fight.

He had read about Zen recently, on one of his late-night internet rabbit hole blowouts. He had been curious to see if anyone else had experienced his “spider-man like senses” and found entire communities dedicated to meditation. He absorbed everything and was delighted to discover that there was an ultimate state, the so-called “Zen”, which can be reached through intense meditation and training. This state promised perfect body-mind connection, serenity to a degree never felt before and final content with one’s own. The instructions were simple to understand and hard to master. “Clear your mind and focus on nothing. As soon as a thought comes, allow it to pass. Zen is when no clear thought can be formulated anymore. Your body will feel light, almost missing and the body-mind connection will be achieved entirely.” Henry had been trying this for weeks but nothing so far. Until today. The morning session started like any other, but this time he felt more focused, which allowed him to focus less. He felt more energetic, which allowed him to relax easier. Finally, he managed to let his mind not think of anything, until his daughter ruined everything. Now he was addicted to that feeling and was determined to achieve it again.

He was back in the hallway, listening to the house. Everything seemed clear on the floor. He walked upstairs and opened the bedroom door. Tabitha was laying on the bed, seemingly waiting for him.

“You are finally back. I texted you but saw your phone here and knew you would come for it. I managed to send the kids away to buy themselves some sweets, so we have around 15 minutes, 30 if they start fighting. Think you can work with that?” She looked at him provocatively, almost challenging him. Henry was taken aback. While it had been a while, he simply could not think about this right now. Especially with a timer hanging above his head. A Zen master would never do this. A Zen master would disconnect from such worldly, carnal pleasures and orient towards higher-level interests. Such as becoming a Zen master in the first place!

“Dammit honey, you know how much I would love to, especially when you wear those sexy socks of yours, but I really cannot linger. Our new client has just made a proposal and we must seriously consider it.”

“New client?”

“Yeah, I didn’t have time to tell you, but this is urgent.” He was raving, throwing his hands around, trying to look preoccupied and annoyed. Henry grabbed the phone and stormed out of the room, leaving Tabitha speechless. He knew this cover wouldn’t last long since he was on holiday and he never had been responsible for any new clients anyway, but it might just buy him enough time. He went upstairs to their spare guest room and opened the door shaking with excitement. This time it was Henry’s turn to be speechless.

Between the screams from his embarrassed daughter and the rages of an overprotective father that did not know how to deal with such a situation, Tom managed to sneak out of the house. This was the second time her father ruined his chance to finally lose his virginity. Third time if we consider the night when he came in through the window. Unfortunately, Lisa gave him the old “they are not ready yet for that step” speech. Maybe she is not worth the trouble after all. If he could just find his Switch before breaking everything up…

Finally, Lisa broke. While part of Henry was satisfied to see her finally cry, he quickly realized how petty that was of him. He approached her and tried to hug her but got pushed away. Tabitha stepped in and, as always, saved the day.

“Just go and answer your ‘client’. We can talk about this later”. Henry could clearly distinguish the venom in Tabitha’s voice, but, again, decided not to engage. All this commotion had exhausted him. At that moment he knew where he had to go to find peace of mind. He headed downstairs, leaving the girls behind. He was both relieved and embarrassed. He liked to believe to had grown as a person and every time he would take a step back and analyse his past years, either with his professional therapist or his informal counsellor, his wife, they would both agree unanimously. Nonetheless, moments like this made him wary that everything was a sham. He was still a coward, a weak little man that was hiding behind his influential job position and past achievements.

He was still ruminating over his failures as a human being when he reached his sanctuary. While he never had been a car enthusiast, he always did like his own space and it seemed that even with such a big mansion, the only place that did not attract attention was his garage. He would come here from time to time, simulating various hobbies just to get away from everything. He even managed to put together his second office in this small, poorly illuminated room, out of a second-hand desk he found down the street. Ironically enough, this had proved to be more productive than his 50 m2 office packed with mahogany custom order furniture and fireplace.

He sat at his modest secondary desk and took a deep breath. Finally, he was in his most comfortable environment, doing what he was most comfortable doing. He had just messed up the relationship with his daughter and his wife which meant that they would not need him for a while. “I will make up for that later. For now, it’s just about me.” He took another deep breath and closed his eyes. Henry was worried that he would be distracted by the recent events, but the thoughts came and went. He kept breathing in and out, constantly reminding himself to breathe through his belly. This was another trick he had learned that he was proud of.

After around 10 minutes, he realized that he was not even using the phone! He had rushed so much to start meditating that he didn’t even consider following any instructions. This distracted him for a bit but managed to put his mind back on track; off the track of thoughts that is. And suddenly, he felt light. He was leaving the desk behind, slowly pushing upwards towards the ceiling. A rush of adrenaline flooded his awareness, but he regained his composure. He had reached Zen! His worldly existence had been melted and poured into his consciousness and the two previously separated states were flowing as one through the universe of mind, dancing majestically and playing. Time and space were just distant concepts. At that moment he felt he could have had deep conversations and give lectures on spacetime to the most versed physicist and astrophysicists, laughing at their shortcomings and crying at their ignorance. Comparingly, the potent drugs he used to take in college were aspirin and alcohol rainwater. He reflected on distant possibilities of self-actualization and determined that…

“LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”

The voice sounded familiar. Could it be that in this distant galaxy loved ones inhabited it and…

“DAAAAAD!!!”

Henry was yanked from his trance. While still dizzy he knew that that was one of his sons crying for help. He opened the garage door and saw Tom holding Abel in one hand and the Switch in the other. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but everything become clear. Tom brought his palm down with force and slapped Abel across the cheek.

Henry went blank.