The Button of Origin

The master wasn’t pleased with me. I wasn’t making much progress, even though I honestly tried my best.

“You try too hard,” he said, “your thoughts are the problem.” I gave him a long look. I deeply resented his cryptic communication style. I had to admit it was very Zen though. 

“I don’t even know what that means,” I sighed, “um, respectfully,” I added, seeing his eyebrows come together. Master Hao gave out a growl and stood up. His brown, oak silk robe rustled and I felt a delicate smell of citrus flowers. He walked to a small table in the pavilion and fetched an iron teapot. He sat down, setting the steaming teapot between us. He poured some tea into two tiny cups. I looked up over the garden wall at the pinkish sky. It was springtime and the cherry trees were just starting to bloom.

Master Hao gave lessons in a tiny jewel garden, fenced by tall brick walls on all sides, right in the middle of downtown. It was one of those spaces forgotten by busy people in a bustling city. Everyone’s been throwing garbage in here for years. Some had used the pavilion as a storage for office equipment in the 90’s and then forgot about it. The master had taken over the plot three years ago and brought the garden back to its original charm. White hydrangeas grew along the front wall on either side of the gate. As one entered the garden, there was a pavilion to the left and a long, stone covered patio, where we usually sat to meditate. Tall pampas grass hugged the narrow path leading to the pavilion. There was a moss garden along the wall to the left and in the back, a miniature maple tree and a tiny pond inhabited by indistinct, brown fish. I had a suspicion that they weren’t a decorative type of fish, but a food source for the master. The only thing that disrupted the garden’s harmony was a pile of beige, boxy monitors from the previous era, stacked in the far corner. The master had told me he had a plan for them. 

Master Hao was an ancient man. I had no idea how old he was and didn’t dare ask. But the white bun on the top of his head gave a hint. He had some wrinkles on his face, but not the thin papery wrinkles you might see on people, who are standing on the brink of death. No, he had just a few wrinkles, but very deep, like scars. The kind of scars you get from living life on Earth and dealing with Earth humans. He was old, but not weak. Life didn’t wear him out. It toughened him. In fact, he looked as if he had been aggressively tempered to the point of invincibility. And now he was here, in the tiny jewel garden, shielded from the rest of the city by four tall walls, willing to share his wisdom with me, a graphic design student, who never showed much talent in meditation or martial arts. I considered myself lucky. So, despite my weak progress, I pushed through.

Every Saturday, I’d meet Master Hao at eleven o’clock, to learn the art of meditation and hopefully gain some confidence with the girls. I never told my master about this, but I think he knew. I took a sip of tea. There was a bit of a rumble and a warm spring shower sprayed the pavement. A smell of ozone and warm concrete filled the air. 

“We’ll try something different today,” the master said, “now close your eyes and smooth out your emotions, like a wave calming down." 

“Alright,” I murmured. I knew how to do that. I closed my eyes and concentrated. I heard the wind rustling in the pampas grass. 

“Now breathe,” the master said slowly, “and go to the root of your thoughts.” 

“How?” I asked, puzzled. This was something completely new to me.

“Just do it,” he said firmly. I sighed quietly. I didn’t know what I was doing but I tried to follow his instructions. Root of my thoughts. I closed my eyes. Well, I figured, all thoughts had to start somewhere. I observed my thoughts like the master had taught me in the last few weeks. A root of the vegetable is beneath the vegetable. So I guess, I would have to look at what was beneath the thought. The trouble was, when you go inwards, there is no up or down. All you can is try to imagine an up and down. I strained my imaginary brain muscles. Wow, who would have thought it was so hard to twist your mind’s neck to look at the back of your own head, I thought. I went deeper, trying to lock my focus and find the root. And I did. I opened my mouth in awe as the uncanny picture unfolded in my mind. 

“What do you see?” the master asked. 

“I can’t tell but… It’s definitely the root,” I said, feeling my head spin. I clearly saw a place where all thoughts appeared out of nowhere. A whirl of images, colorful and full of sound, spewing out of some mysterious source.

“What does it feel like?” the master asked, unsurprised and ready, like clockwork.

“Like…” I didn’t want to say it.

“Yes?”

 “Having sex. But not in a good way. Like… all exertion and no pleasure,” I tried describing the odd feeling. 

“Huh,” the master said. It sounded like he was surprised, but not by what has been said as much as the fact that I was the one who said it, “like taking a shit?” he asked. I opened my eyes immediately. The revered master never used filthy words. He didn’t seem flustered at all, he just sat there with his Zen poker face.

“Um, yes. Something like that,” I said, perplexed. 

“I cannot believe it,” he murmured, “a student like you rarely gets it the first time.”

“A student like me?” I asked.

“Um, respectfully,” the master said, without even a blink. I must have looked visibly hurt, because he quickly explained, “we’ll you’ve been a little... You know,” he said, “but, I had the right idea. That’s what I want you to keep working on.”

“Alright,” I said. 

“This is important. It’s the key to everything,” he said with sudden seriousness.

For the following week I meditated every evening, perfecting the technique. Looking inside my mind, I learned to find that space. It was like an ethereal well. There, thoughts and memories appeared as images or ghostly videos. They’d plop out of nowhere, one on top of another, linger for a bit and disappear. Some would appear multiple times. Funny, I didn’t remember ever consciously thinking any of these thoughts. They were so random. An obscure music video from the nineties. Running outside when I was ten. My old house. A flower. Explosions of one thought after another. Sometimes it felt… wrong. As if I was looking at something not meant for human eyes. As if I caught actors changing clothes backstage. I had peeked behind the curtain of my own mind, and it didn’t feel exciting. In fact, it looked boring, mechanical and somehow dirty. It was the underbelly of my personality with all the grim parts that my mind needed, in order for it to work. A secret, hidden well. I shared these observations with my master on Saturday.

“I can’t look. If I look at it for too long, I get sick to my stomach,” I said, making myself comfortable on my meditation pillow.

“Good, good. It will pass,” the master said.

“It just feels… disgusting.”

“Yes, that will pass. But you must continue, even if it feels unbearable.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Imagine you are swinging a rock on a rope. The longer the rope, the more damage you will do and the less control you will have. And other people, things, forces can grab that rock and pull you, tipping you out of balance and taking you places you don’t want to go,” Master Hao said, “the key to achieving a peaceful, clear mind is to keep shortening that line, to keep the rock swinging close to you.”

“What if I caught that rock?” I asked. The master blinked and for a split of a second, looked perplexed and almost dumb. He looked down and shook his head.

“...cker,” he murmured. 

“Um, sorry? I didn’t get that,” I said. 

“Nothing, nothing,” the master said quickly, “if you caught the rock, you’d be enlightened,” he said carefully, “but don’t do it yet! You need time to learn the art of balancing your mind first! To look beyond the root, you must first learn about it. You see, seeing your thoughts is one thing. Understanding the nature of thoughts is another. The further you go, the more you’ll discover.”

“But, like what?” I asked feeling completely inept once again.

“When the mind regurgitates your memories, you can clearly see the quality of the data you’ve been gathering. There are different types of thoughts. Different classes of experience,” Master Hao said.

“The memories of things I saw on television... gave me a nauseating feeling.”

“Yes. It’s processed reality. A meal someone already ate.” 

“And the hours of scrolling. The endless stream of stranger’s faces, cats and clothes. It felt like old, cold pasta. Ugh,” I shivered.

“And that’s exactly what it is,” the master nodded.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Feeding your head is like feeding your body. Quality matters.”

“So by that rationale… I should probably consume experiences that are raw, organic and unprocessed. Is that right?” I asked.

“...cker,” the master mumbled. 

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing, nothing,” the master said, “yes, that is exactly right. Anything that is unprocessed.

“So books, pictures, movies. That’s all kind of fake. I mean it’s not real,” I said.

“Real people in your life will provide the best nourishment. Observe your thoughts now. Feel the stream flowing. What feels good? Which memories?” the master asked. I sighed, closed my eyes and concentrated. I tried to remember. A warm feeling came over me, like a bright candle light in my mind. I saw the face I knew so well. I smiled.

“A talk I had with my grandmother.”

“Ah. See? That’s the raw food. Real energy. Everything else is an imitation of that energy.”

“But it didn’t feel important at the time,” I said, a little surprised.

“Of course. That’s because you’re living in an illusion.”

The practice made me feel dizzy and sick to my stomach, but I persevered. So many odd thoughts appeared and disappeared. Now and then a flower or a mundane, seemingly unimportant situation I had since long forgotten. The thoughts, images and memories appeared out of nowhere. Seemingly. But there was something under the empty space from which they appeared. It came to me in the next session with Master Hao. The thoughts were like the top of a gas flame. A flame on a gas stove is blue at the top. There was an invisible part of the flame below them. A part where the flame is invisible. 

“I see a flame! An invisible flame!” I said with my eyes closed.

“What do you see beneath the flame?” the master asked. 

“I can’t see it clearly. But there’s something there.”

“Focus!” the master said. 

“OK,”

“Try to look beneath the invisible flame. Look! What do you see?” the master asked. 

“Something gold. A shape," I said.

“What does it look like?”

“It’s a button. It looks like a golden button.”

“Hm. Interesting,” the master said.

"What will happen if I press it?” I asked. Inside my mind, the images of memories swam past me, and on the very bottom, the golden button shone in the darkness of my mind, tempting, alluring, begging me to press it.

“Don’t press that button!” the master said. But then things took an even weirder turn, "Now try to relax it,” he said.

“Relax… the button?” I asked in panic. I started to hyperventilate.

“It’s a part of you, just like everything else.”

“I can’t. It’s too overwhelming,” I said, wheezing on the meditation pillow. 

“Of course it’s overwhelming. If it was easy, you wouldn’t need this garden, the practice, the tea or me.”

“Right,” I said, “there’s painful stuff coming up.”

“In order to achieve mastery, you must be indifferent to both pain and pleasure. What do you see now?”

“Calmer images. More light.”

“...cker,” the master mumbled the mysterious word again.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing. Good, good. Relax the button,” he said. I tried to relax the button while random memories bombarded my consciousness. I knew, that it didn’t need to make sense. If what appeared in my head was a boar, mountain or a castle, he would have told me to relax the castle. The work with my inner world seemed just wild. I mean, it was all just something I imagined in my head. It was all imaginary. But it was there. I couldn’t deny that there were things there. So if it was there, I couldn’t have made it up. But where exactly was there then? 

“The where doesn’t matter,” the master said, “your head is a door which leads to many places. So you need to be careful too. It is a flame. Most people use it to regurgitate television fodder, personal dramas or random memories. But if you tune it, the flame will burn out all that nonsense. 

“How do I tune it?” I asked. 

“Hah! If I could just tell you…” Master Hao said.

“There wouldn’t be a need for the garden, the tea or you,” I repeated his words.

“Yes. you’re starting to get it,” Master Hao smiled.

“I can see it! I can see the flame! It’s… like a raging waterfall now,” I gasped.

“No. Raging waterfall bad. Tune it down!” the master said.

“I can’t,”

“Just do it.”

“OK,” I said. I concentrated on turning down the flame, “what is the button?” I asked. 

“Don’t worry about it,” The master said, “just observe it,” he was always so unmoved and firm, but not in an angry way. It’s as if he was above any human emotion. I faintly remembered that Master Hao had been working as a smuggler before becoming a monk. In my head, something started happening. The button grew bigger and bigger and bigger. I could see the thoughts becoming gigantic swaths of moving images, hanging above me.

“It’s more like a platform now. The button is not a button. It’s a platform. It’s getting bigger. It… It’s huge!” I yelled. 

“...cker,” the master murmured again, but I had no time to think about it.

“I think I’m… having a psychedelic experience,” I whispered, “is that appropriate for a meditation setting?” The golden platform was now as big as a stadium, a huge, golden stadium, and I stood right in the middle, tiny and lost.

“Everything is a psychedelic experience,” he said. In my head, I was running across the golden stadium, looking up at the huge clouds of images of memories, flying above me.

“Why is it changing? I don’t want to be small, I don’t want to be small,” I whined with my eyes closed, encompassed by my trip, “I’m too small… I’m disappearing!” 

Suddenly there was a “PLOK” sound and I opened my eyes. I was back. I patted my body to check if I was really here. I touched my face. My cheeks were hot and covered in sweat. But I was here. I touched the cast iron teapot. It’s ruggedness was reassuring. The master looked at me with a blank expression. Before he could say anything, I was already sprinting to the gate. 

“Where are you going?” Master Hao looked at me like one looks at cute cats doing dumb things.

“I can’t do this. I disappeared. I disappeared! I mean, I am even really here anymore?” I gasped.

“It’s difficult to say, eh?” the master said and winked.

“Well, it’s one thing to hear people talk about it, but actually experiencing it is a whole different story,” I said, panting.

“Exactly.”

“But, that doesn’t answer anything. It just make everything more chaotic,” I stopped with my hand on the gate.

“Give it time,” Master Hao said and sighed.

“It doesn’t make anything easier. It doesn’t answer any questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“I don’t know.”

“See? No answer. No question.”

“The… button swallowed me. I don’t know who I am anymore," I gasped, feeling my breath calming down.

“Do what you always do. You have duties to attend to. Sit down,” he said. I hesitated. My panic had slowly faded away and my curiosity took over. I turned around and walked to the cushion. I sat down and closed my eyes. I could see the button clearly, the memories twirled in a circle now and inside of them I could now see the once invisible flame. The flame was white and oblong shaped. It was weird. It didn’t make sense. And then a thin slice of the flame started to peel off. 

“It’s not a flame. It’s a flower,” I whispered. 

“Motherfucker…” I heard a muffled murmur.. Wait but that couldn’t be the master. He never used unbecoming language. 

“What?” I asked weakly.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said, a little abashed. So that was what he had been mumbling all along, I thought. But he didn’t say it as an insult. He said it with… I looked at him and finally recognized the expression on his face. Master Hao’s eyes were wide open and he was looking at me - with awe. I smiled. I finally realized. The master was pleased with me. 

THE END