the accidental buddha

by Mick Theebs

At 5:02 on a rainy Saturday afternoon, Jack Valentine was sitting high on his couch next to his wife when he reached enlightenment. They were watching television when he looked from his wife to their dogs napping on the floor before them to the plants on the shelf near the window and it happened. Like the final puzzle piece clicking into place transforming a chaotic jumble of disparate parts into a singular portrait of unity and beauty. He sat there, stunned as he watched the characters on the screen speak. He could not hear them. He was seeing far beyond them. Past them, through them. Within and without them. A faint humming filled his ears and grew louder. It increased in complexity as other tones joined in perfect harmony that made his skull vibrate with bliss. He blinked, otherwise paralyzed on the couch as the sound grew louder and more complicated until finally order emerged from that perfect beautiful chaos and the sounds transformed into words.

Jack raised his eyebrows. Slight panic began to overtake him, dulled by the buzz of weed and existential illumination. The thought occurred to him, but he did not quite know how to express it. Part of him wanted to brush it off as paranoia from being high, but as he heard those words the cold reality set in that his life was, in fact, being narrated.

He sat perfectly still and kept his attention on the screen, though he had long lost track of who was doing what. He thought, with increasing fear and panic, that if he didn’t do anything perhaps the narration would stop, as there would be nothing for the narrator to speak about. What hadn’t occurred to Jack was that even if he was doing nothing, there was still something to be said about how he was doing nothing and why he was doing nothing and how he felt about that and what those feelings reminded him of and so on and so on with every thought branching out in an infinite tree of words running through his head and down some unseen page (or, in this case, word document).

“Are you okay?” His wife, Isabella, frowned over her phone at him. “You don’t look so good.”

“Uh,” Jack said, blinking quickly. It was difficult to think with the words in his ears. They were so loud and beautiful that any thought of his own was swallowed up by the sweet buzz of the universe. Finally, he managed to blurt “grood”: an unfortunate combination of good and great.

Isabella laughed. “Wow, you must be really high.” She widened her eyes and spoke slowly as if he had just experienced a head injury. “Are you okay?”

“I’m… well,” He raised a hand to the back of his head. He knew that he would have to tell her eventually. It wasn’t as if enlightenment was a temporary thing. A person doesn’t just peer into the soul of infinity and then pretend nothing happened. Jack knew he was in it for the long haul, even before the words had told him so. “It’s complicated.”

True concern began to appear on Isabella’s face. “What do you mean, ‘it’s complicated’? What’s complicated?”

Jack immediately regretted his choice of words. Just two weeks ago, the biggest fight they had ever had in their relationship had begun with the words ‘it’s complicated’ and they were both acutely aware of that fact. “I’m sorry I mean more that it’s hard to explain,” Jack quickly added with uncharacteristic tact and empathy. A barb of resentment followed as Jack heard the unkind but accurate assessment of his character.

“What is it then? Are you sick?” The concern began to transform into fear.

Jack took a deep breath as though he were preparing to plunge into freezing water. “Do you believe in enlightenment?”

“What?” Isabella blinked.

“Enlightenment? You know, like… Buddhism? Nirvana? Spiritual bliss?”

“Uh, what about it?” Confusion had overtaken Isabella’s worry.

“Well, I think I just achieved it.” Jack said, knowing the truth in no uncertain terms that he had indeed achieved enlightenment.

“Just now?” Isabella tipped her head to the side.

“A few moments ago, actually.”

“What?” A laugh followed the word, flapping out of her mouth like a bird. “Here on the couch?”

“Yes.” Jack nodded gravely, setting his face in the most serious expression possible.

This, unfortunately, only made Isabella laugh more. “Shut up, you’re high. Stop messing with me.”

“I’m not messing with you. I’m serious. I just achieved enlightenment. I don’t know what I did, but I can’t turn it off.” Under normal circumstances, Jack would be in a panic bordering on frenzied mania. However, because of his new condition, he found himself to be a wellspring of patience and grace. Though he could not help but bristle as the words once again insulted him by telling him the truth.

“Are you serious?” Isabella said, still suspicious that this was some kind of elaborate prank.

“Yes. Look at my face. I swear to God, I am serious.” Jack pointed at his chin, which he apparently supposed was the most serious part of his body.

“Are you really serious?”

“What can I do to prove it to you?” He wished somehow for a way to let her hear the words bouncing around in his head in their magnificence, but there was no way. Enlightenment was not something that could be properly put into words. How could someone capture a state of being in something as limited as language? It would be like trying to pour the ocean in a teacup.

Isabella smirked. “What am I thinking right now?”

Jack rubbed an eye, still smiling a tired smile. “It doesn’t work like that. I can’t read your mind. At least, I don’t think I can.” He paused and listened, waiting to see if the narration was going to give him any clue about the extent of his abilities. After a few moments, he realized that there was no help to be had. He sighed and turned back to his wife.

“What was that?” Isabella asked.

“Oh that,” Jack said, suddenly realizing his opening on how he might be able to communicate his new state of existence. “Well, part of achieving enlightenment I guess means that I can… hear the narration of the universe? Does that make sense?”

“What? Narration? What do you mean? Like a Scrubs inner-monologue kind of thing?”

“No, more like a Morgan Freeman Shawshank Redemption kind of thing.”

“Wait, so the narrator is in the story? So, like you’re hearing someone we know talking?”

“No, it’s more like…” Jack tried to think of a movie closer to what he was experiencing. Then he remembered one of their favorites. “Like Alec Baldwin in The Royal Tennenbaums. It’s just a disembodied voice describing things.”

“What’s it sound like?”

“Like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s like the vibration of the core of the universe. Like, I don’t know, a string being plucked. Except it’s everything. We live on these peaks and troughs of the string bouncing and I guess my brain is processing it as language,” Jack said, pleased with his mostly accurate if overly simplistic explanation.

“Okay so what’s it saying now?” Isabella leaned forward.

“Nothing it just said you leaned forward.” Jack shrugged.

“Okay, what now?” She raised her left hand.

“It said you raised your left hand.”

“How about now?” She quickly dropped her left hand and raised her right hand, clearly not understanding that the narration was happening at the same time.

“It said you dropped your left and raised your right hand and that you clearly do not understand that the narration is happening at the same time.” Jack laughed.

Isabella was less amused. The playfulness on her face was quickly replaced with smoldering fury. “Why do you always have to do that?”

“Do what?” Jack said, the words creating a new layer of panic within him.

“You always talk to me like I’m dumb. You’re so condescending sometimes, Jack.”

“No, it wasn’t me. I was just telling you what the narration was saying.” Jack tried to keep a level tone. Before he had achieved enlightenment, Jack would have gotten angry at the mostly correct assessment of his condescension. Now, he understood that anger in response to being told how his words and actions made his wife feel was not appropriate. He also no longer felt a need to minimize his own insecurity by showing others how much smarter he was than them. “I’m sorry if you thought I was being condescending, I really wasn’t trying to be at all.”

Isabella crossed her arms, disarmed by the sudden apology when she had been expecting a fight. She cut her eyes at him, not entirely convinced. “What’s the voice saying now?”

“It says you’re not entirely convinced. Plus a bunch of other stuff. Mostly about me. It’s third person limited, I think. I’m not sure of the technical term.”

“Well yeah, obviously I’m not entirely convinced. What you’re saying is crazy.”

Jack smiled. Until that point, it hadn’t occurred to him that perhaps he was going crazy. Certainly, it was a more logical explanation that spontaneous enlightenment. It’d also be much easier to explain. But, in spite of the convenience and plausibility of insanity, Jack knew that his enlightenment was nothing of the sort. Or perhaps, his enlightenment did not resemble in the slightest what people normally referred to as insanity. He did acknowledge there was an argument to be made that enlightenment could be considered a form of insanity in the world he lived in, where traits like patience, kindness, and compassion were virtues in name only and rarely practiced let alone actually incentivized. “Yeah, I can see why you’d think that.”

“Well, what’re the words saying now?”

“Just a bunch of stuff about insanity and how it’d probably be more convenient if I actually was going crazy instead of just achieving enlightenment. There’s also a little editorializing about how insanity is a relative thing based on the values of a society.”

“Hmm. So, the narrator is just going on about what we’re talking about?”

“Yeah, basically.”

“While it’s happening?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“That sounds really boring.”

“It’s… fine.” Jack scratched a cheek. “Definitely different from what I’m used to.”

“The narrator sounds a little full of themselves, don’t they? A little preachy?”

“I guess. I think it’s supposed to be a reflection of my own thoughts? I don’t really know how it works. I just hear it.”

“Well, if that’s the case then they’re definitely full of themselves.” The laughter returned to her voice.

Up until a few minutes ago, the dig would have inspired a flutter of self-conscious resentment in Jack. He would have laughed it off and maybe returned fire with a little mean-spirited jab of his own. However, with his newly found enlightenment, Jack was able to recognize and accept that he was, indeed, full of himself at times and this teasing was just his wife’s way of indirectly addressing that fact. He smiled. “Yeah, well if you think my ego was big before, just wait. It’s not every day someone achieves enlightenment you know.”

“I will say, you are acting different.” Isabella leaned back, again surprised at the change in her husband’s demeanor. “And I wouldn’t call it a bad thing. You seem more… calm. Happier, too. You’re not getting as worked up as you usually do. I don’t hate it.”

“Yeah, I guess enlightenment will do that. Like I said before, it’s hard to explain. I just feel… at ease. Like everything is in perfect harmony. I don’t know. It’s so much bigger than that. Like…” Jack fumbled for the words. He saw a vector to potentially explain his newfound state of ease but knew that it was going to broach the tender subject of their recent fight. He sighed and looked down at the remaining half of the joint on their coffee table and briefly considered smoking more, though he knew that it would no longer work on him. “Okay, promise you won’t get upset?” He said, instantly realizing that such a phrase usually primed a person to get upset.

“No, not at all. Why would I ever promise that?”

“Okay, well, I guess what I’m trying to say is what I’m about to say has a point and I am not purposefully trying to hurt your feelings.” He said, as gently as he could. He focused on his own thoughts, trying to tune out the words. He found that with some effort, he could turn down the volume on the narration and downgrade it to background noise as if they were talking in a crowded café or a cocktail party. He took a deep breath and continued. “Do you remember two weeks ago when you asked me if I was happy with my life and I said ‘it’s complicated’?”

The joy in Isabella’s face disappeared like air from a balloon. Her mouth drew into a tight line and her voice was low and angry. “Yes.”

“Well, I guess I can say with complete certainty, without a shred of doubt or hesitation, that I am happy right now. I guess that’s like the… overview of my enlightenment. I’m just happy… being. I could sit here in this spot until the end of time. I don’t feel like I need anything ever again. Does that make sense?”

Isabella looked at him with some residual anger in her eyes. It was clear that the subject of their fight was still a sore one and that she had been spending some time in the past two weeks thinking about the heated words they had exchanged. Beyond that lingering hurt, Jack could also see that she was assessing him, as if this existential peace was somehow written on his face.

“I don’t think you’re going to be able to see what I’m talking about.” Jack said quietly. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “And let me just say, I am so, so sorry if I hurt you during our last argument, or ever at all. I can tell you’ve been thinking a lot about what we said to each other. Well, the words told me, but still. I’m sorry. I love you so much. Probably more than ever now.”

The pain in her eyes disappeared, blown out like a candle. Tears welled up as she squeezed his hand back and smiled. “I love you, too.”

“I know you do. And I am so happy right now. I wish this moment could just go on forever.” But he knew that was impossible. At least in a literal sense. His new insight into the nature of the universe told him that every moment existed at the same time like a row of photo prints tacked up on a wall and that his consciousness was passing from one frame to the next in an inevitable march toward infinity. “I guess in a way it is.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. The narrator is getting a little out of hand here.”

“Well, I don’t care. I’m just happy you’re happy.” Isabella smiled.

Jack smiled back, though there was a twinge of sadness in his chest. Part of him desperately wished to be able to share this experience with her. But he did not know how he had attained enlightenment. It had just happened. Like he had won the lottery, his number was called. It could have just as easily been her, or anyone else in the world. But for reasons even now inscrutable to him, he was the one who was chosen. “I wish I could share this with you, somehow.”

She shrugged. “In a way, you are.” And Jack knew she was telling the truth. His calm was like a cloud of mist hanging around him and he could see that it was bringing her a kind of existential contact high. He also considered that perhaps he was just more pleasant to be around because he was calmer, kinder, and more considerate of her feelings.

They sat in silence on the couch, fingers intertwined. Jack sat back and smiled. Again, turning to his sleeping dogs and his plants. He half-expected the act to reverse the enlightenment, as if the universe was trying to teach him a lesson to appreciate all the love and abundance in his life and that once he did it would take away this feeling and bring it to the next person who needed it. However, that did not happen. The narration continued humming in his ears and the sense of peace and fulfillment did not leave him.

“Wait,” Isabella said with sudden urgency. “You said that your life is being narrated, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, wouldn’t that mean that we’re in a story? Only stories are narrated. And documentaries, I guess. But you know what I’m saying. Are we in some kind of story?”

Jack considered this, or at least made a show of considering it by putting his free hand to his chin. Instinctually, he already knew through his newly acquired insight into the universe that Isabella was correct. They were in a story being written by a thirty-year-old man in Connecticut in some other universe. Their entire lives, their memories, everything they had ever experienced and felt was a product of this man’s arbitrary whims. And it didn’t stop there. Everything in their entire universe was a fabrication of this one man sitting in a broken rolling chair clacking away at a keyboard for reasons entirely unknown even to him. However, none of this bothered Jack in the slightest. Such was the benefit of enlightenment. Even being directly informed that his life was a complete fabrication could not shake his grace and peace.

Jack knew that he could accept this truth of reality but was unsure about how Isabella would take it. It had nothing to do with his wife’s temperament or personality. Rather, it was a matter of the intrinsic human urge to assign meaning to the meaningless. To fumble and strive for purpose in a world that they were haphazardly thrust into full of joy and suffering and pleasure and pain distributed at the cruel whim of chance. To lovingly, obsessively craft creation stories and superstitions and rules and laws and deities and demons to justify these twists and turns of ruin and fortune, all illusory, all meant to serve the singular purpose of propping up an otherwise purposeless existence with a narrative thread. Surely, it was possible to deconstruct that careful illusion in the same way it was possible to perform open heart surgery. It was a matter of precision and fragility. Jack chose his next words carefully. “I suppose… that’s one way of looking at it. And even if we were just in a story, does that change things? We are still here. We still have to eat and drink and shit and go to work in the morning and go to your mom’s birthday dinner next Saturday and do all the things we need to do to keep living. Even with my enlightenment, I’m going to have to do all that as well, I think.”

“I guess…” Isabella said, her fear slightly assuaged. “But don’t stories eventually end?”

“Sure,” Jack answered, “but life ends, too. And so will the universe, some day. At least, this form of it. Because really, nothing ever ends. It just changes shape.”

“That doesn’t scare you or upset you?”

“I don’t think I’m able to feel those things anymore. Like I said before, I’m not sure how this all works. The idea of everything ending definitely doesn’t scare me like it used to. I guess part of the trouble with that is feeling like you’re not enough or that you haven’t done enough with the time you had. But I can say with certainty now that I feel like I’m enough and I can say with equal certainty that you are and always have been and always will be enough. I’m happy just sitting here holding hands with you and I can do that until the end of time, Isabella because I love you more completely and totally than I have loved anything in my life and if I’m being honest, really and truly honest, I love everything. I guess that’s the best way to describe how I’m feeling... It’s just pure unconditional love for everything in existence. It’s recognizing that all the matter and energy of this universe are inextricably linked. That you are part of it and it is part of you. That every particle is like a cell in a giant body. To know this not just on a logical level but on a fundamental existential level at the core of your being. It’s not something you think but something you feel.”

Isabella stared at her husband for a few minutes, allowing his words to wash over her. Finally, after some consideration she spoke again. “So, you’d just let the story end like this?”

“I think I would, yeah.” Jack nodded.

And he did.

Photo of Mick Thebes

BIO: Mick Theebs is an educator, visual artist, and writer living in New England. He once served as the Poet Laureate of Milford, Connecticut. Other titles of his include Somnambulist, Hamlet 2020, and Burn Rate.