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Slapping Zen in the Face
2025-05-31T10:52-07:00
I spent $15,000 on a noise I hate. Just let it go? Fat chance.
It sounds like a wasp square dancing on my left eardrum. I don't care if the car's ultramodern radio drowns it out with block after block of manic pop jams. Sometimes while driving I just want to listen to a quiet podcast—one that whispers about finding peace—in peace, dammit!
I guess if I was looking for a quiet ride then I shouldn't have bought a Mini Cooper. It's a loud British box that rumbles down the road, bouncing on every bump, yet it's not all bad. Actually, it's the most fun I've had behind the wheel maybe ever, but this sexy go-cart drives me up the wall with one godforsaken rattle!
After a mechanic tore off a large section of the interior trim, the din kept mocking me somewhere deep within the B pillar's welded frame. I could spend hundreds, maybe thousands more on a body shop gutting my new blue baby with a blowtorch, or perhaps I could be chill about it and revere this buzz like some ancient zen koan.
But what even is zen, anyway? The more I read about it, the less I understand. I think that's the point, but I'm too confused to argue. Is that zen? Maybe. I don't know.
A long-dead monastic once asked, "What's the sound of one hand clapping?" I think it's the sound of a slap in the face. That's what this silly nuisance of a noise is to me. It has no effect on the function of the vehicle. Like everything else about the ride, it's mini. A mini pain in my ass.
I can't let it go, and it makes me feel like a shit Buddhist. When I first started studying Buddhism, I read a lot about equanimity. It was a foreign word to me, and I had to sound out every syllable like some esoteric chant. Eq-quan-nim-mit-tee. Equan-nimit-tee. Aqua mini me. Apparently it means not giving a fuck. I'm still working on it, but I don't really care.
What I do care about is inner peace, goddamn it. I will destroy everything on Earth just to find some peace. Burn it all to the ground. Is that zen? Maybe. I've read a lot and still don't get it. Why are these old monks slapping each other in the face? Smacking one another with sticks? Tugging on each other's noses? Perhaps zen isn't about living up to some ideal of peace, but about laughing at the bullshit while flipping it off.
In the end, does anything really matter? I read a long treatise by some expert about how zen isn't nihilistic. Who the hell cares? It seems it is and it isn't. It sounds morally uplifting yet utterly self destructive, because at the end of the day there is no self. How can you destroy something that doesn't exist? How can you hear a buzz that isn't really there? What's the sound of one hand clapping?
Another zen snippet for you: "If you see a buddha on the road, kill him." I guess it means abandoning your ideals. What you think is right makes the world wrong. One sound is lovely and another is excruciatingly annoying, or maybe I've got that backwards. I think I'll just drive down the 5 and hum in harmony with this wasp in my ear, while also yelling out the window because it pisses me off.