Chapter: Through the Back Door of Religion
I woke up from my dream this morning crying loud enough to wake up my daughter, who rushed in to comfort me, wondering what was going on. The dream had followed a misunderstanding between us, a moment where I had drawn the line, saying things like "Who is the father and who is the daughter?"—the kind of thing that hangs in the air long after it's said. I had struggled to fall asleep, tossing and turning under the weight of it all, and when I finally did drift off, my dream took me into a surreal world. We were together again, my daughter and I, surrounded by crowds of young people attending concerts and other events that blurred in detail but felt vibrant and overwhelming.
At one point, as I walked through an entrance, someone shoved me from behind. When I turned, ready to confront the person, I was met with a huge fist aimed straight at my face. The fist belonged to a young Chinese man with muscles like the Hulk. Calmly, I told him, “I’m 67 years old, you feel like hitting me?” The image dissolved. I walked on, searching for my daughter in the growing crowd. A young Indian man told me the one who tried to hit me had been stabbed with a knife earlier. Somehow, this didn't seem to connect.
I kept walking into an open area, the people thinning out. The landscape turned barren, almost alien, with barely a tree in sight. An overwhelming sense of loneliness washed over me, accompanied by a slow, melancholic melody—one my mind seemed to compose on the spot. I broke down. The grief and emptiness were so profound I awoke still crying, my chest heaving as though my heart itself had burst.
I spent the rest of the morning drained, my limbs heavy, my energy sapped. But I chose not to surrender to that darkness. I walked to the nearby coffee shop and bought roti canai and nasi lemak, handing them out to the workers there. Their smiles lifted my spirits. I chose to fight back against the despair, to ground myself in small kindnesses. Later, I sat in the museum, writing—this blog entry, and also the Malay version of my autobiography.
I can’t say with certainty what that dream was trying to show me, but I have an idea. I am getting older. My worries over my children and the loneliness of living without my wife have carved deeper grooves in my subconscious than I care to admit. Perhaps the dream was simply my inner self calling out for compassion. Not from others, but from myself. A reminder to let go of what I cannot control. To accept that my children, my relatives, my path—they all have their own tides to follow. And that mine is to stay the course I’ve carved with my own heart and hands, no matter how rocky it gets.
That wasn’t the first time I’ve been visited by dreams that seemed to carry more than just fleeting images. One such experience happened during a seven-day Seshin at the Page Street Zen Center. I had been sitting in meditation, facing the wall, when suddenly a circular window opened before me. Through it, I saw myself lying on the grass with my good friend Karen De Cotis at Golden Gate Park, just outside the Museum of Natural History. I decided to walk up the steps into the museum. At the entrance stood history's lawgivers—Gandhi, JFK, and others—chatting like old friends.
As I entered, two ushers took my arms, leading me down an aisle. One whispered, "Whatever you do, don’t look up at the altar." Inside the vast auditorium, worshippers filled the space, and ahead, a blinding light streamed down from above the altar. I bowed, once, twice... then defied the instruction and looked up.
There I was, staring at myself on the altar.
The shock was instant. I snapped back into my physical body, still sitting Zazen, still aching from the hours of silence. That dream never left me. It was like a mirror turned inside out, reflecting a truth I was barely ready to accept.
In my college days in Green Bay, another dream visited me. In it, I was walking across a vast field in India, a pilgrim among hundreds. We were chanting “OMM...” with such resonance that I felt it vibrating in my chest like a spiritual dynamo. As we approached a wall of rocks, we turned right and continued. The path was strewn with human bones—first scattered, then arranged in full skeletons, and eventually transformed into seated human forms in meditation.
Further along, these meditating figures appeared aged, barely alive, emaciated—then slowly more vibrant, more youthful, until a doorway appeared in what had become a stone wall. I entered. Inside, young monks sat in small rooms, some laughing, some quietly in meditation. Suddenly, a side door flew open, and I was thrown into the heart of bustling India—noisy, pungent, and hot. I awoke with a phrase echoing in my head: "You have entered religion through the back door."
Not long after that, likely triggered by my coursework in Comparative Religions, I had another dream. In it, I was Lord Krishna. My skin was blue, my body humming with energy. I was trying to convince my mother to return a child she had abducted. I remember projecting the story of the universe on the wall, swiping through the cosmic sequence like slides in a celestial presentation. Demons descended from the skies, but I knew exactly how to defeat each one. Those with long fangs—I bound them like rubber. Those with oversized ears—I wrapped around their faces. I felt divine. Not just in power, but in purpose.
These dreams may sound like myths, or the wanderings of an overactive subconscious. But to me, they are reminders. Messages from some deeper layer of being. They rise like smoke from the fire of lived experience—loneliness, meditation, spiritual longing, grief, love for my children, and the desire to understand my place in this world. They tell me, in their own peculiar language, that the path I’ve walked—sometimes in pain, sometimes with awe—is mine alone.
And sometimes, just sometimes, it shows up in dreams, so I don’t forget.
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