You Are Nothin but a Cheeseburger Buddha -prologue?

 

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You Are Nothing but a Cheeseburger Buddha

It was a winter evening in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

I was working as a security guard at the McDonald’s on East Side Main Street. My job that night? Keep the high school kids from tearing the place apart after the basketball games. It was always the same—the local teens would flood in like a pack of wolves, loud, hormonal, full of sugar and school spirit.

But for now, the restaurant was quiet. I was on my break.

Outside, snow was falling—thick, silent, and relentless.

Inside, the heating was cranked high, and I was sweating through layers of thermal clothes beneath my stiff security uniform.

I sat in a corner booth, peeling open the wrapper of a cheeseburger, trying to ignore the sweat on my neck. In one hand, I held Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen—a well-thumbed copy, my constant companion.

And then, just like that, in the middle of this surreal moment—a voice rose from deep within.

"You are nothing but a Cheeseburger Buddha!"

I nearly choked on my bite.

I looked around. No one else heard it. But I knew it wasn’t just a passing thought—it was a revelation.

There I was—an Asian man in America, soaked in sweat, eating processed meat under fluorescent lights, reading about the illusory nature of self and form…

And suddenly, I got it.

Not through a temple bell or mountain silence—but in a McDonald’s, during a lull between teenage chaos.

I laughed—softly at first, then uncontrollably. It wasn’t mockery. It was recognition.

That evening, when my shift ended, I went home and pulled out my sketchbook.

I drew him for the first time:
An old monk with tired eyes, slouched in a robe that looked more like a bathrobe than anything ceremonial. A cheeseburger in one hand, a side glance full of cosmic mischief.

The Cheeseburger Buddha.

He was born that night—not just as an idea, but as a character. A symbol. A reminder.

He reminded me that the sacred doesn’t wait for perfection. It shows up in the mess.

In uniforms. In noise. In hunger. In sweat.

From then on, the Cheeseburger Buddha lived in my sketchbooks, journals, and thoughts. He followed me to Alaska, to Japan, to the mountains of Ecuador.

He was my alter ego, my mirror, my comic relief.

He didn’t preach—he chuckled. He didn’t renounce the world—he observed it with one raised eyebrow.

And every time I felt lost, he'd appear in my mind’s eye and remind me:

"Don’t take yourself too seriously, seeker. Enlightenment might be waiting in your next bite."

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