I met a stripper with a Three Stooges tattoo the other night at a bar called Tigress. She bitch slapped one of my companions hard while she gave her a ferocious lap dance. Threatened my balls with spike heeled platform shoes. Hissed in my face that she was into edgeplay. She said she got giant fish hooks stuck through her back with which they hung her bleeding body from the ceiling till her screams careened off the hard brick dungeon walls. Said they pierced her labia with five-inch needles. She worked for Lloyd Kaufman at Troma Films for years. I’ve heard what that’s like. The lady could take some pain.

Edgeplay. There’s a word I hadn’t heard before. Playing on the edge. Risking injury or even death for the sake of a thrill, a charge, an orgasm that will finally live up to all the lies they tell you about orgasms, a white hot bone rattling explosion of raw nerve endings that’ll blot out forever all the darkness at the center of your heart…

Look. We all do what we do to find our way in this wacky old world, to satisfy what we think needs satisfying, to make some money. It’s not my business to pass judgment on how she felt she needed to live her life. I’m glad there are people like her around. It keeps things interesting.

But you want edgeplay? I got edgeplay for you.

Zazen is edgeplay with your immortal soul. Zazen is edgeplay with God.

The atheists got all bent out of shape a few weeks ago when I suggested they were full of shit. What do you know about atheism? You sit there, stock still without even a dominatrix to torment you and thus distract you from what’s real. You spend a few years right there, nose to nose with yourself. Then you can come back and talk to me about whether God exists or not. Until that day you haven’t earned the right to tell me shit about God. So fuck off with all your oh so well thought out words and words and words and words. Atheists are full of shit.

There is no God and He is your creator.

If you want your meditation gentle and sweet, with a soothing, stilling voice to ease you through, stay away from Zen. But if you’re into real edgeplay stop by my place some Saturday morning and I’ll show you how it’s done.

But watch out. This kind of edgeplay doesn’t come baring fangs and out for blood. Nobody will yell at you, nobody will smack you with a stick, nobody will even tell you when you get all the steps wrong. It’s very warm here, very friendly and welcoming. All smiles. We’ll even brew you some tea and tell you lousy old jokes. No need for posturing. That’s because we know who the hardest mistress of all is. We’re not even going to try and match the punishment she can mete out. The best we can do is point you in her direction and let you decide whether you’d rather run away whimpering with your tail between your legs.

Most people haven’t got what it takes to face themselves. That’s not a judgment call. That’s just a fact of life. We’ll face anything else to avoid the terror of confronting our own hearts and minds. Leather restraints and single tail bullwhips don’t even come close. The fundamental nature of your own being? Now that’s scary. That can cut you up good. Slice you to ribbons and not even break a sweat.

I’ve never been interested in any kind of meditation that wasn’t edgeplay. I never had a whole lot of patience with people wanted to guide me through some kind of a process. “Envision the white light of the cosmos enveloping your body…” Fuck that. Don’t give me your pictures and stories. Every religious nut I met — and I met a few of them — had pictures and stories they wanted to stuff into my head and teach me how to regurgitate on command. As if God cared whether I could recite their stupid fairy tales when ordered to do so. They could stuff their stories. I wanted to slash away everything I didn’t need and get down to the raw burning core. The only way to strip away everything is to strip away everything.

The Zen way is excruciatingly slow. At least when they hang you from hooks in your back they take you down after a few minutes. We’ll just leave you sitting there twisted up like a pretzel for days or weeks at a time. It’ll take for-fucking-ever before you even have a clue why you’re wasting all this time staring at walls. Quick fixes are for hyperactive retards. If you’re looking for a speedy solution don’t let the door smack your ass on the way out.

But the scary stuff is just one side of the picture. We’re all afraid of reality. All of us. Me, too. But the truth about reality is that it’s never as scary as we imagine it. I suspect this is what people like my stripper friend discover in their edgeplay. When you actually come face to face with the things that scare you, usually you that what you thought was Satan come to burn you in the fires of damnation is really just Gene Simmons, a nice old Jewish man in freaky make-up.

Reality is always the best place to be. The truth is always the best thing to see. There are never any exceptions. You can’t run away anyhow. So why waste your energy trying? And God? God isn’t a million zillion miles away on his diamond throne somewhere in outer space. God is the wind on your face. God is the sky as your reflection. God is that something buried in your head that you always thought was you. It’s not you. There is no you. That thing you think is you, actually belongs to the universe. And the universe will take it back one day. On that day it will be just like you never existed at all. Cuz you never did. But the universe will carry on forever. And so will that something you always thought of as yourself. And so will God. So there.

Ms. Edgeplay stripper wrenched my friend’s nipples and stage-whispered to her how wet she was getting. As if I couldn’t hear. Humped her leg like a dog in heat. God wasn’t far away at all. If I ever doubted Her presence She showed it to me by grabbing my cock and telling me how She wanted to feel it inside Her.

There is no God and she dances for tips at Tigress.

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff and a MySpace page too. If you're in Southern California and you want to try some Zazen for yourself, he has a group that meets every Saturday in Santa Monica.