Questioning Reality

           In my early life I was living the American dream. I was the oldest of three children. I had two loving parents that were school teachers. We lived on a cul-de-sac in a quiet middle class neighborhood. We went to church on Sundays. I had a best friend, a girlfriend, and friends from school and around the neighborhood. Life was perfect.

            Then I turned five years old. That year was a blur, and the end of the dream. At one point my mom explained that my dad had a “tummy ache”. It turned out to be cancer of the small intestine. We were all very worried. Soon my dad was in the hospital. I began to get the idea that it was something serious. I remember being angry and frustrated because the hospital wouldn’t allow young children to enter the hospital rooms, so I couldn’t see him when he was there.

            I was afraid and feeling helpless in the face of uncertainty. Many people from church came to visit. They told me that if I had enough faith and prayed very sincerely, that God would heal my dad. Outside of my window in the distance was a radio tower. I didn’t know what it was, I just saw the blinking red lights going on and off, up and down the tower. As I prayed at night, that became my visual focus. I prayed and prayed and prayed.

            One morning I got up, happy and full of energy. There were a lot of people at our house and they had brought lots of food. Thinking that it was a party, I saw my mother and asked her what was going on. She just started to cry and couldn’t speak. A kind lady said to me gently, “Tommy, your father passed away last night.” “What are you talking about?” I asked. “Where’s my dad?” “Tommy, your dad has gone to heaven.” “When is he coming back?” “Son, your dad is dead. He is not coming back.”

            My energy and enthusiasm for the day left as abruptly as if someone had punched me hard in the stomach. I began to bawl, and then in a trance like state, I went outside, got on my tricycle, and slowly pedaled around the cul-de-sac, sobbing and sobbing.

            That night at bedtime, I looked out of the window at the radio tower and became really pissed. To my five-year old mind the deal had been straight forward. If I had enough faith and prayed very sincerely, God would heal my dad. I was sure that I had done my part, yet God didn’t do His part. I felt utterly betrayed. I told God how I felt about it too, and not kindly. But it was not God’s fault really. It was the fault of the false beliefs and expectations that had been programmed into my mind. These were ideas that I took as “truth”, until I found out otherwise. This is when I began to question everything.

            You see, I found out that adults can lie. Later I found out that they can also be deluded and pretend that the delusion is truth. My dad told me he was Batman. That turned out to be a lie. Then I discovered that Santa Claus was another lie. I realized that I couldn’t just trust that people’s ideas and opinions were truth.

            In math class someone asked why we had to learn “this stuff”. The teacher said that it was meant to teach us how to think. He said that math was a model of reality. I made the conscious decision then and there that I would learn how to think first, to discover reality for myself, and then learn their math.

            So at the tender age of five I began to question reality. This was a sad and difficult time of my life. What I didn’t know then was that this is what set me on the path to self-realization. Questioning reality is an absolutely essential element of the path.

            The Buddha talked many times about seeing “reality as it really is.” Most people confuse their thoughts about reality with reality itself. With words (or numbers) and concepts, it is like we build a map of reality so that we can understand what is going on around us. Yet at some point we begin to believe that the map is reality. This mistake results in what we call dukkha, suffering, or dissatisfaction. The Buddha compared dukkha to a wagon wheel that got flattened and goes, thump, thump, thump, as the wagon rolls along. When we notice that the wheel is out of kilter, that the map has flaws, this pain sets us on the path to self-realization. To understand the true self is to understand reality.

            There is a tendency to see “suffering” as a bad thing that must be overcome. I see it more as a compassionate alarm clock, calling us to wake up. When we can see suffering as a gift, we can use it skillfully to awaken. Suffering properly understood is like a mother shaking her son to wake him up from a bad dream.

            To this day, my allegiance is to the truth, to reality as it is, not to a particular religious ideology. If a belief or concept is not a true representation of reality, then I let it go. To make truth one’s highest value takes a lot of courage. In fact the old Zen formula for walking the path is: great effort, great courage, and great doubt/question. Truth then outranks even our cherished opinions and teachers.

            Taking this path may not make us popular, but it can make us free. In John 8:32 of the Bible, Jesus says, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They killed Jesus for teaching truth. However, the profound impact of awakening is worth any worldly penalty. Another old saying tells us that “It is better to live a single day in the freedom of awakening, than to live a hundred years in ignorance and delusion.” I encourage everyone to seek the real truth, reality as it is, and discover your own authentic freedom. Become free from the limitations of your own concepts, and wake up to the joy and wonder all around you. 

-Haeja Sunim