Songs of the Dragonfly

 

Songs of the Dragonfly

 

“The first drop of enlightenment is the realization that perception determines our reality, and if we can change our perceptions, we can change our whole world.” – The Singing Dragonfly

 

CHAPTER ONE — ONE DROP OF WATER

 

“So, what was it like being dead?” The doctors told her that they had to resuscitate Jason’s heart, but she didn’t really think he’d have any “near-death” stories to share. She wanted to keep the mood upbeat and thought entering the room with a joke might help. The man who hit Jason with a truck was drunk and had no license or insurance, and with how short-tempered Jason was, she knew he’d be fuming mad. Plus, she might not be a very welcome visitor, even if she did come bearing gifts.

Jason didn’t reply or move at all. He stared out the hospital room’s window intently. Through some swaying trees, the jagged Rocky Mountains of Colorado could be seen on the horizon in the late afternoon sun.

She came closer and confirmed his eyes were open. “Jason! Hello!” Nothing.

A little louder, “Jason! Can’t you hear me?” She sounded concerned but was more curious than anything else. If he was not conscious, it would actually make her visit to drop off his stuff much easier.

A moment later, Jason blinked and slowly panned his head about to find the noise. Lost in a barrage of distant colors and shapes, he flinched as his eyes stopped on her, realizing there was a human being standing beside him…speaking to him. It had been several days since the accident, but he still kept slipping in and out of linear thought. It took some effort for him to feel as though he was part of the reality around him.

“Jason…it’s me, Candy.” She was not accustomed to this kind of response from men at all. She decided she didn’t like it and Jason had better cut it out fast or she would just drop off the bag of his things and leave.

He took a quick breath and acknowledged her. “Candice.” The name came out, but he was not sure how he recalled it.
“Candy,” she corrected him, referring to her official stage name. “They said you were ready for visitors.” He seemed so disoriented that she wondered if they had made a mistake removing him from Intensive Care.

He blinked and regained some focus on her. “Yes, I can have visitors now,” he said, sounding a little unsure, struggling to push himself up on the bed pillow. He slowly looked about the room, noting each item he saw — blankets, table, wall, window, curtains. They all seemed like ordinary, common objects to him, yet still oddly unfamiliar as if he was visiting a planet he had only seen pictures of.

“Are you sure it’s okay that I come by?” She held up a large duffle bag. “I’ve got a few things from your apartment for you.”
“Yes, I can have visitors now,” he said again, more confidently this time, remembering a nurse who told him that he was doing better.

Jason didn’t look at her the way he had in the past. Something was odd about his eyes. She couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was, but his stare seemed more direct and penetrating.
Candy placed his bag of clothes on the floor. “I hear they brought you back from the dead.” Her voice was lighthearted, but inside she was wondering if the accident had left him with some brain damage or something. Perhaps his oxygen was cut off a little too long.

He tried to recall his conversation with the doctor who had treated him in the emergency room. “Yes, they had to restart my heart. Apparently, the force of the vehicle hitting me had convinced my heart to take the rest of the day off.” This was what the doctor had said, jokingly, but Jason still didn’t get it. More frustrating however, Jason was still confused by the idea that he couldn’t remember his heart stopping or anyone trying to save him.
His hand slid up the side of his hospital pajamas to a tender row of large stitches in his skin. The stitches were all taped over and he had several small sensors stuck to his chest where his thin chest hair had been shaved. Rubbery wires were tangled all about him under his blankets. He didn’t remember doctors putting all this stuff on him either. It was like he had been away on vacation and returned home to find his house rearranged. What had they been doing to his body while he was gone? Then he recalled asking himself these same questions several times before over the last few days since he arrived at the hospital.

“So,” she said, just trying to test his coherency. “Any great insights into death?”

He stared at her, considering the question. A whole wave of thoughts about life and death converged on him. He couldn’t seem to sort it all out. Then he realized he hadn’t replied. “I was dead?” he tried to confirm with her.

“Well, that’s what they said. Just for a while at least.”
“And now I’m alive?” He knew this was true, but needed to establish the facts around her question, suspecting he was getting the concept of “life” and “death” mixed up.

“Yeah,” she smirked, giving him a confused look. “Are you joking with me? Of course you’re alive. Give me a break.”
What a strange idea, he thought. How could he ‘give her a break?’ He imagined trying to pick her up and break her like a giant piece of celery. And why would she, or anyone, want this done to them?

“Jason!” she snapped, trying to get his attention again.
Startled, he made eye contact with the being speaking to him. It took a moment to recognize her again. “Candice?”
“Candy!” she corrected again, with a tone of irritation. She was sure he had brain damage. “What happened to you Jason?”
His eyes drifted away, slowly working across the room, back to the window. “I do not exist.”

“What?”
“I do not exist,” he replied again, confident that what he said was an obvious fact he just never noticed before.

“Of course you exist.” Now she really regretted coming to bring him his clothes. She didn’t love Jason, but technically they had been dating when the accident occurred. Their relationship had been so tumultuous lately it seemed they’d surely break up soon. When she heard about the accident, she figured it was her responsibility to do the deed of retrieving some personal items for him, to make him more comfortable at the hospital. Jason didn’t have any family except for a brother that lived far away that Jason didn’t get along with. Candy felt bringing a few clothes from his apartment was the least she could do after all they had been through together. Plus, there was another more personal reason she felt obligated to keep tabs on his whereabouts – a very personal reason.

Jason slowly turned back to her, confirming she was serious. “Of course I exist?” He couldn’t help but smile. Motioning toward the widow and the foliage outside, he said, “Moving tree limbs in the wind shouldn’t be mistaken for proof that the tree is waving at us.” He looked past her makeup, her voluptuous body, her tight clothes for accentuating her features, her well-prepared fluffy blonde hair, seeing the bare human under all of it.
“Jason, if you don’t snap out of this, I’m leaving.” His big grin was freaking her out.

Regaining a little clarity, he realized she didn’t understand him at all. Desperately he wanted to reach out to this human and try to share the great truth he felt. “When you changed your name, did you become a new person?”

“What?” She knew he was referring to her going from “Candice” to “Candy” to have a more appealing stage name. It seemed appropriate since she was a professional stripper, and though extremely cliché, the patrons at the strip club seemed to like it. At the conclusion of her dance routine, she’d spray her name across her breasts with colored whipped cream, then lay down on a blank t-shirt to have her balloon-like chest silhouette imprint on the fabric. As she paraded the shirt about, she’d auction it off to the patron with the largest cash offer in hand. It always got the crowd jumping out of the seats. Jason had begged her repeatedly to change her name to something less cheesy for a stripper, but Candy always refused, considering it a shrewd business decision.

“If you changed your name, or I changed my name, would we still be who we are?”

“Of course.” Candy actually wished she could abandon much of her past with a simple name change.

“If I lost my penis in the accident, would I still be me?”
This was getting too weird. “Jason, you didn’t lose your penis,” she assured him. “The doctors surely would have mentioned it.”

“But if I had…if I became a woman for instance, or you decided to become a man, are you still you?”

“Sure, but my tips probably wouldn’t be as good.”
His speech got faster, almost excited. “Take your memories, if they changed, would you change? Or if you started to like a food or a politician you never liked before, would that change who you are?”

She was relieved the conversation was at least a little more coherent, even if she didn’t know what he was getting at. “Well, if my opinions changed, perhaps my behavior might change a bit I guess. But no, I’d still be me.”

“If you are not who your appearance or name says you are, if you are not your memories, who are you? Who am I?” It was obviously a rhetorical question. He stared at her with a strange smile, knowing she didn’t have an answer. “Who were you before you were born, before you acquired all your insecurities, your needs, your opinions, your desires?”

“What difference does it make Jason?” She was not so naive as to be oblivious to the fact that everyone was just a living stew of their current fears, desires, and opinions. Life was always adding new fears and everyone spent their life trying to satisfy trivial desires — from impressing their parents, to owning bigger and better material items that make them feel special. That was the game of life to her, and our small transient part in it was who we are whether we liked it or not. Candy didn’t really care if there was anything more to it.

“If you pour a drop of water back into the ocean, do you think you’d ever be able to find that drop of water again?” His eyes seemed to dilate as he said this. To him, it was the most profound thought he had ever had.

“Huh?” She was beginning to suspect that he didn’t have a point and his thoughts were just rambling.

“Drops of water…we are all drops of water.” He laid back against his pillow, staring through the ceiling above him. “Our lives here add chemicals, texture, baggage, like extra ingredients in water. But the ingredients are not who we are.”

Clearly he was serious and it spooked Candy. She always thought of people as just being characters in a big silly play. Her family taught her the Judeo-Christian version of Heaven and Hell and she just assumed whatever personalities people developed in life continued with them into the next life. “Jason, did you see something…when you were…dead?”

“I didn’t ‘see’ anything; I felt it. If I chose to form mental images of what I felt, I could say I ‘saw’ a radiant ‘light’ coming at me. And everyone and everything was in it. But to ‘see’ anything in it would be to see nothing but self-imposed forms in clouds. It was truly beyond sight. To visualize it is to dilute and limit what was really there. To the touch, to my very being, it was more of a great sonic vibration consuming all things. It was an ocean of energy…an ocean of pure wisdom.” He realized that no words could adequately describe what he felt. Every time he tried, it was clearly insufficient. He wondered if anyone could share such a profound sensation with mere words.

“Jason, you better not be joking around with me.” She knew that there were people that came back from the dead with amazing “floating into the light” mystical stories, but she was skeptical about them. Surely many of them saw what they wanted to see, to confirm their preferred belief systems, or for personal attention, or out of simple delusion. But Jason never exaggerated and was usually a very rational person — except when he lost his temper.
The sun began to set on the mountains in the distance, blending with the mountains in the horizon, slowly casting an orange glow into the room.

Jason turned back to her with all the seriousness he could manage. “After rising out and away from my body, I felt a warm, radiant, comforting energy that was without judgment or prejudice, as if I was coming home to the power that holds the universe together. I knew if I let it consume me entirely, my life as I knew it would vanish. It touched me, and I started to become one with it.”

Candy wasn’t entirely sure she could let herself believe Jason, but his story still ran shivers down her body. She half expected to have him suddenly fall forward unconscious, and she’d find a huge gash on his head that the doctors missed. Or maybe some of the drugs they gave him in the emergency room interacted with him as he began dying. There had to be a logical answer, even if she had no personal doubt that some sort of afterlife did exist. It was all too strange to hear such a tale from someone like Jason — a man who never expressed any belief in any spiritual possibilities.

“Listen, I think you better get some rest.” Candy didn’t want to hear any more. As politely as possible, she wanted out of there, glad they were breaking up so she wouldn’t have to see him ever again. Something about Jason was clearly different, and he obviously wasn’t going to snap out of this odd spiritual trance anytime soon. It made him seem like he had x-ray vision, able to look into her soul, and she didn’t like it.

“It’s okay; you can leave,” he smiled affectionately, accepting that the subject had agitated her, and he had no intention of spoiling her comfortable view of the world just to appease his own desire to share his experience. “Take care of yourself Candice.” Jason knew she wouldn’t visit again.
Candy didn’t correct him for calling her the wrong name once more. She backed out of the room slowly, giving a phony smile and a polite wave goodbye, praying she was wrong about being pregnant.

Darkness crept into the room and gentle stars began to peek in on the night sky. Jason had a remote switch near him, but he didn’t bother turning on the room’s light.

“One drop of water,” he murmured to himself. “One drop of water…in one amazing ocean.” Everything he knew and everything he was would never be the same again — at least he hoped so.

 

“He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self. Accordingly, he then looks on all beings with compassion, as he would wish for compassion for himself.” — Siddhartha Gautama, 550, B.C.E., teacher, prince who gave up his kingdom to find wisdom.

“I don’t pretend we have all the answers.
But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.”
— Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction author

“Waking up this morning, I smile.
Twenty-four brand new hours are before me.
I vow to live fully in each moment
and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh, author, peace activist, Zen teacher, nominated by Martin Luther King Jr. for the Nobel Peace Prize

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite.” — William Blake, artist, poet

CHAPTER TWO – ONE DROP OF BLOOD

 

The determined samurai warrior knelt to pray before the large gold doors engraved with the emblem of his enemy. So much passion surged through his veins, he took deep breaths trying to maintain his focus.

Jason knew it was a dream — the same potent dream he’d had the night before. But this time it would not have the same ending. Before, his samurai persona had rushed into the room with furious rage and was stuck down by his enemy while blinded by his own hate. No, this time, he swore to himself, it would be different. He didn’t want to be in this dream, or any dream with such anger and violence, but if he had to be here, he decided it was going to have a more conclusive ending this time.

With a firm march he approached the door and kicked it open with his powerful armored boot. The royal citizens halted their chatter, each trying to eye the intruder. They recognized him, withheld their astonishment, and slowly began to bow and exit behind the pillars around the giant chamber.

Across the smooth stone floor at the other end was an imposing emperor. He sat on a majestic throne raised several feet off the floor by a platform on solid gold snow lions. The emperor didn’t flinch. Putting down his gemmed cup on the large armrest, the emperor leaned back and frowned in disapproval.

Jason unsheathed his long arching sword and gave a curt bow, announcing his formal intent to attack the emperor like a proper samurai. In other circumstances, he would have waited for his opponent to get a weapon to defend himself, but the emperor was well armed without lifting a finger.

As Jason took his first step into the room, a shadow appeared on the high terrace above the throne. With a powerful slice through the air, a spear raced toward Jason’s heart. His keen senses felt it rippling through reality toward him. Dipping to one side, he forcefully slashed at the projectile, cutting the staff in half in midair. Jason could have simply dodged it, but he decided to show his agile prowess and make it clear that anyone who trifled with him was a fool. They would feel his deadly blade break them like the reinforced spear that now splintered uselessly at his feet.

Quickly, another spear came at him from a different shadow, and Jason merely threw back his shoulder and shattered the weapon into pieces — happy to prove that the first counter strike wasn’t luck.

The whole time Jason never took his eyes off the emperor. Nothing would distract Jason this time – not even his own rage.

As armed fighters ran into the room, slinging large blades with wrathful battle cries, Jason remembered that these people, as much as he wanted to love all people, deserved to die. In the dream, they had somehow wronged him regardless if he could remember how. His hate for them was almost as great as it was for the emperor. They rushed him with great violent effort, and he gladly confronted each of them with quick talented strikes from his long blade.

In the dream the night before, when he dodged their strikes and made crippling slashes at their limbs, he finished them off with all his might, looking into their faces as he made sure his sword severed critical areas. This anger cost him his life. He woke up in a terrible panic, fearing he’d find a spear still in his chest. Now, in this second chance to confront the nightmare, he took out their legs or their eyes and left them to bleed and scream as he stepped over them without regard. Though there was less satisfaction in it, his focus on the emperor would not waver.

When he bothered to remark on these savage actions, and how contrary they were to his perception and new value of life, he reminded himself that the enemy was coming at him with intent to harm him. It was a poor validation of his own behavior, but it would suffice for now. His heart wanted desperately to value the sanctity of life, but for some reason the emperor had to die. It was as if his heart was a slave to the power of his anger.

Steel clashed and bulky leather slapped the skin it was protecting. Yells of rage and pain echoed in the hall. With each calculated hit, Jason stepped confidently toward his goal. The battle quickened and the air grew thick in all directions with spears and flailing swords. Like a lightning-fast chess master, Jason stepped and blocked when needed, only to lure the next enemy into an advantageous position.

It seemed natural and logical for Jason to be so fast and accurate against so many adversaries. His instincts were clear as he let his body jerk and dance with each new attack, always one move ahead of his opponents. Without any fear or hesitation, with each injury he inflicted, with each kill, he took a few more steps closer to the emperor.

In Jason’s hospital bed, a faint veil of perspiration covered his twitching face as he gripped tighter onto the book he had been reading when he fell asleep. The book had nothing to do with samurais or Japan; it was the true story about a humble prince in India over 2,500 years ago who gave up all his luxuries to live in the wild and master his own mind. It was this simple wise man, this awakened “Buddha,” who Jason wanted to be like, not this angry warrior in his head. That hateful fighter was closer to who he had been, without the respect, the honor, or the talent…just the driving blind anger and passion. It was a nightmare he was forced to play, like being possessed by his hostile past.

On the nightstand next to his hospital bed was a notepad on which Jason had made a list of all the things he was going to change in his life when he was healed. It included things like ‘find a new job,’ ‘move to a cheaper place’ so he could work less and read more, ‘do charity work,’ and most important, ‘stop getting into fights.’ Jason had assumed the last one would be easy; just stop getting so angry when people do things to piss him off. From common drunk arguments to occasional full-out fist-throwing brawls, Jason felt like a magnet to abrasive people. He hated that constant friction between himself and others, especially now that he truly believed all people were meant to live and feel for each other as one human family. All his fights had made the world seem like an angry place to be. Surely, cutting off that cancerous part of his life would make his entire reality more pleasant. But Jason hadn’t even left the hospital yet and he was already beginning to sense how ingrained his own hostility really was.

The battle suddenly ceased and the remaining guards of the emperor abandoned him, seeing there was no way to stop Jason. The emperor’s pride would not allow him to leave. He took his gaze off Jason and focused on the distant doors at the entrance, accepting that he had no defenses left.

With moaning in the background from the wounded, Jason lowered his sword and casually began to advance around the throne to the royal steps at the side. Jason didn’t bother glancing toward the bloodshed he had left; the painful sounds and his contaminated memory of the conflict were more than enough. He knew the ghastly sight was there and he could cry about it later. For now, to end this dream, it was best not to think about it. The enmity between him and the emperor was too toxic to fathom or question, so Jason just accepted it. All he felt was acidic hate eating at his veins and it would not dissipate until the dream ended with his vengeance satisfied. This was enough to keep him going, regardless of the horror all around and growing within him.

Out of respect and tradition, and to save his honor and maintain his prestige as a samurai, Jason approached the emperor slowly and laid a smaller “kozuka” sword at the emperor’s feet. It was not a challenge to fight, but a chance for the emperor to acknowledge his dishonor and commit suicide.

Jason stepped behind the throne and gently took some silk cloth draped down from a curtain behind the imperial seat. He meticulously folded the material in his hand to make a proper crease. He then cleaned the blood off his blade in one slow-pressured swipe from end to end. It was disrespectful to mix the blood of a noble with that of a common man — not that Jason really cared. His sincere dedication to this intense role seemed to be the only way to play the dream out to its proper end so it would never bother him again.

If the emperor impaled his stomach in the traditional manner for “seppuku,” it was up to Jason to be the Kaishaku-nin and finish the job by decapitating the emperor with one giant strike to the back of the neck as he bowed down before Jason. This was supposed to be a sign of acceptance — like accepting an apology. By ending the emperor’s suffering quickly, Jason the samurai maintained his own honor by showing mercy for the sacrifice. He could wait, or not do his duty at all and let the emperor bleed to death, but that would be considered cruel and barbaric, even for an act of vengeance.

Jason noted in his dream that he had no idea how he knew about these traditions. Perhaps he was making it up in his dream. Maybe he’d seen it in an old movie. Some of it seemed eerily familiar, but he was clearly ad-libbing a lot of it.

Enough time had passed for the emperor to take the opportunity to disembowel himself. As anticipated, the emperor was not going to comply. Killing the unarmed emperor now would make Jason more of an assassin than an honorable warrior, and that was his final attack on Jason – to rob Jason of his honor.

The defiance was like a steaming sunburn on the emperor’s stern face as he glared out motionless across the room waiting to die. Though it was not following tradition, Jason had no qualms about killing the emperor, regardless of the emperor’s rank or his lack of weapon. It needed to be done and this dream could not end until this enemy was properly dealt with. At least Jason had offered the emperor an alternative. Who cared what others might think? Jason’s duty seemed clear.

As Jason raised his shiny sword to the royal neck above the golden-lace robe, the emperor unfroze his expression and turned sharply to Jason. With a massive blow, the emperor shot a wad of spit into Jason’s eye.

With the assaulted eye closed, Jason watched the emperor go slowly back to his defiant stare. Jason took his time wiping the spit off his face, letting his anger quietly grow inside him. Jason wanted to make the emperor’s death slow and painful, but that would defy the role too much. He would have to simply enjoy the pleasure of beheading his enemy as the role called for. It wasn’t as satisfying as other acts Jason could imagine, but to end the dream it would have to be enough.

With both hands gripping tightly the carved-ivory dragon handle, Jason prepared to take a mighty swing. Jason fully expected to take off the emperor’s head and the back of the throne as well. It was going to feel so good, like releasing annoying waste that had been festering in his bowels for some time. The promised relief was finally here and he assumed the dream would end and he would awaken feeling refreshed like never before.

Just as Jason swung back the blade, twisting his torso to its limit so he could maximize his force, a deep penetrating voice spoke. “Find The Middle Way!” it demanded. Startled, Jason bounced his eyes franticly all over the room, determined to find the source. The emperor seemed unfazed by the mystical voice. Jason pointed his long weapon everywhere his eyes went, waiting for someone to appear.

“Find The Middle Way!” the voice said again, more commanding this time.

Jason wanted to scream, “Show yourself!” but feared breaking from his stern samurai role.

“Fair goes the dancing when the Sitar is tuned…”

Jason knew the story. The Middle Way was an ancient teaching to guide people to the wisest decision in any situation.

“Tune us the Sitar neither low nor high. And we will dance away the hearts of men.”

Jason spun about, checking every corner, every shadow; sure someone was cunningly throwing their voice about the chamber to confuse him. Jason knew this character he played had never been fooled like this, feeling his fingers tremble as he fought to maintain a steady blade so his fear wouldn’t show.

“The string overstretched breaks, and the music dies,” the voice continued. “The string over slack is dumb and the music dies. Tune us the Sitar neither low nor high.”

The voice boomed through Jason’s head, bringing back several teachings he had recently pondered. He suddenly realized that this dream actually was about the book he was reading. It taught the folly of extremes. Too much sun caused the skin to burn and fields of food to die; too little sun and the plants freeze and night devours the earth. Jason acknowledged that survival in life was dependent on a proper balance between hot and cold, starving and overeating, greed and helpless poverty; the examples were endless, and he fought to see how the lesson might apply now.

He put the sword back to the emperor’s neck, tapping into the rage between him and his enemy. Jason could see no other option. This murder was the only way to end the nightmare. Jason was certain he had come too far and done too much already to start questioning his intentions.

“Find The Middle Way!” The voice ordered, sounding almost horrified, as if the beheading would bring the end of the world.

The ancient teaching clearly didn’t support his desires to get revenge. The dangerous cycle of violence begetting violence was clear enough to see, but with the hate burning his veins, the optimistic advice seemed like idealistic philosophical nonsense. When attacked, extreme pacifism was suicide and extreme retaliation risked the lives of innocent bystanders and blinded one to wiser solutions. Only the Middle Way, though complicated and hard to see at times, was the wisest solution. But here, right now, Jason couldn’t see how any Middle Way was an option for him.

The stern face of the emperor screamed at Jason for a rebuttal. He pulled his long blade back again. Jason wanted so much to do the right thing, to be at peace with the universe, but his hate wouldn’t die until the emperor died. The emperor seemed to represent everything Jason hated about the universe. The evil ruler was the neglectful foster care system, the bullies who stole his toys, the foster parents that didn’t care, the real parents that abandoned Jason and his brother, the religion that had absorbed his brother’s mind, and his brother who now refused to speak to Jason because he didn’t worship his brother’s god. The emperor also represented any god that allowed such a selfish world to exist, and anyone and everything that had caused Jason pain. He wanted to get rid of all of them…from his mind…forever. Jason realized he was not about to kill a man, but all the evil ideas that haunted him from his past.

It all provoked startling questions for Jason. “How do we change who we are without forming great resentment toward who we once were? If hate is the enemy we wish to be free of, how do we change without hating what made us what we were?”

He couldn’t help but try to scream as he pulled the sword back to strike. He wanted desperately to put an end to all the tormenting ghosts from his past. With all his power, Jason held the sword at bay, trembling, ready to leap forward with a massive burst of energy he could barely contain. He knew this was wrong; there had to be another way.

Suddenly, Jason noticed the emperor’s throat contracting, slowly manipulating another wad of spit. He was going to attack Jason again with another shot of total defiance. Jason’s instincts burst like a river of rage that had only been held back by a few idealistic words. Unable to resist anymore, Jason’s blade slashed through the air without resistance, cutting quickly through flesh and bone along the way. The emperor’s head toppled over and bounced into the great hall before Jason really knew what he’d done.

He watched as the emperor’s body drifted forward and fell without life to support it. Jason witnessed all this from the chamber floor, and he realized he was no longer on the royal platform. The throne was now empty and a headless body lay at its base. But the samurai he played was gone. He tried to look about for himself and found he couldn’t turn. A damp bloody floor stuck to his cheek and he couldn’t find his legs or arms to move himself. Horror struck him. Had he become the emperor’s head? Or, had there ever been a samurai in the room at all?

Jason’s eyes flew open in a panic. The sterile hospital room was just as he left it, with the door closed and his little reading light still on. He turned his head and flexed his neck to make sure it was still connected to his shoulders. Had he killed himself, or was he just visualizing that his own fears and hatreds were too much a part of him to actually destroy? The dream was over, but clearly it would return again. He had failed the test of his resolve to be a wiser person, and it was just a dream. Jason felt certain that this test, in real life, was still to come, and he was sure he was not ready.

Still gripping his book like he gripped the sword in his dream, it hurt to relax his stiff knuckles from its edges. With a forced sigh of relief, he tried to ease his mind. He reminded himself that these new books were all the swords he really needed in life now.

Jason had never believed in supernatural gods any more than he believed in the Easter Bunny or Santa Claus, but the accident that almost killed him had opened his mind to infinite possibilities. Jason assumed the samurai dream just felt like being confronted and tested by a god, and he tried not to take the vivid vision so seriously. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all some clandestine warning.

Jason quickly decided he needed a distraction if he was ever going to relax enough to get back to sleep. Surely some spiritual inspiration would help ease the fear that he was still a slave to his own rage. He needed all the confidence he could find if he was going to make changes to his wayward life.

The book opened to a page about limits of knowledge. It pointed out how someone with no political experience or understanding of international laws will righteously announce their opinion about world political events like a child describing what it’s like to be on the moon — never having actually been there. Forming opinions is instinctual, but a wise man always acknowledges his ignorance first. Jason agreed. He had to accept that if he studied hard, he might one day know maybe one tenth of one percent of all there is to know in the universe. Regardless of how smart he thought he was, there was always more to learn, and one event, like a car accident, or a dream, could change his entire perspective of the universe.

He probably would never know what had really happened to him when he died briefly that night in the emergency room. There was no way to tell if it was the same thing that happened to everyone else when they died, or if it was anything more than a traumatic hallucination. So, he declared to himself, it really didn’t matter which was true. The best he could hope for was to learn from the experience. It implied to him that all that mattered was to find a more harmonious life for himself, to get himself from this point in his life to the end of his life with as little conflict and suffering as possible. And of course, trying not to chop off anyone’s head in the process would probably help.

 

“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”
— Ambrose Bierce, 1900, writer and journalist

“Show me there is a Heaven and Hell,” said the Warrior to the monk. “Prove to me that my killing will harm me more than it harms my victims.”
The monk replied gently, “You are just a stupid Warrior. You’re too dumb to understand.”
“How dare you insult me!” screamed the Warrior. Pulling out his sword, he prepared to kill the monk. “I’ll strike you down for that.”
“Welcome to the Gates of Hell,” said the monk calmly.
The Warrior was stunned. He slowly put away his sword realizing that he was a slave to his own anger. Mere words could trigger his violent rage.
“I never even questioned it. I just wanted to kill.” He politely sat down by the monk. “Please teach me more.”
The monk smiled. “Welcome to the Gates of Heaven.”

“If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit,
give it nothing which may tend to its increase.”
— Epictetus, 100 A.D, born a slave then went on to teach philosophy promoting a daily regime of rigorous self-examination