Cutting Free
- Dan enters the gas station and asks Socrates how to stop thoughts, besides developing a sense of humor. Socrates says stressful thoughts occur due to conflicts when the mind resists what exists.
- To illustrate his point, the teacher takes Dan outside so the student can watch him service an arriving car. The old man does so shirtless, winking at the formally dressed, tense couple inside. Seeing this, the customers speed off. Socrates explains to Dan that they unfortunately couldn't cope with a strange, spontaneous situation he exposed them to.
- Socrates tells Dan his mind is like a pond whipping with the waves of unplanned occurrences. The teacher puts his hands on Dan's head and gives him another vision: Dan is a fish underwater, growing accustomed to ripples from rocks crashing into the water.
- The student awakens from the vision and Socrates continues the lecture. He says that unlike fish, Dan has the capacity to realize the rocks and ripples in life—events and his mind's reaction to them—have nothing to do with him and must not be taken seriously.
- Dan asks how this can be accomplished. Socrates says training in meditation is the answer. He excuses himself and enters the restroom. From the couch, yelling, Dan reveals that he's ahead of the game because he joined a meditation group a week ago. He talks about how much calmer his mind is.
- Socrates suddenly bursts out of the bathroom, shrieking and wielding a samurai sword. Socrates slashes the sword inches above the student's head, then grins. Socrates withdraws the sword; Dan relaxes. At Socrates' direction, the two then meditate. Afterward, Socrates explains that the “sword” of meditation cuts through illusions, but its mystique can be a dangerous distraction.
- As if on cue, a VW bus with a rainbow painted on its side—probably not unlike the Mystery Machine —chugs into the station. Six, identically blue-robed people inside behave self-righteously, as though worldly things might contaminate them. Socrates gets obnoxious and tries to annoy 'em, leering at the women, making sexual innuendos. Angered, the customers leave. Socrates yells at them to keep meditating.
- Next, a jittery forty-year-old man who seems like a teenager pulls in, accompanied by a woman with false eyelashes. The driver asks to buy a cigarette, and Socrates very kindly tells him to try a market down the road. He treats their car with full attention. They leave.
- Dan asks his teacher why he treated the two sets of customers differently. Socrates says the spiritual seekers needed something different to reflect on, while the others needed kindness.
- Dan asks what he treatment he himself needs. Socrates answers that Dan needs more meditation practice. Back in the office, the teacher says the youth needs to see a map of meditation's terrain. Huh?
- Socrates puts his hands on Dan once more. This time he has one heck of a trippy experience wherein he becomes the universe, the pure light of love, and a bunch of other wonderful things. He morphs back into his body and sees a radiant prism. Its light shows him the purpose of the human body is to become a channel for this light, attentive and aware.
- He realizes the purpose of meditation is to ultimately surrender to the light of consciousness.
- Dan awakens from the vision, the map of meditation's terrain. The vision's beauty makes him assume the teachings have been completed. Socrates laughs and explains that visions fade, and this one will just serve as a reference point.
- They sit together. Socrates mysteriously tells Dan that he himself owes a debt due to something he calls the House Rules. It seems to be something connected with his ninja past, but he doesn't elaborate.
- He only gives Dan a business card that reads: Warrior, Inc. / Socrates, Prop. / Specializing in: / Paradox, Humor, / and Change. The old man tells the student he can grasp the card and call for Socrates in a true emergency, and the teacher will somehow be present.
- Socrates begins lecturing Dan about meditation and the mind. (For deeper analysis on the book's philosophy, check out the Themes section.) The teacher says meditation entails paying attention to what arises in your mind, but letting whatever arises go. In other words, not getting attached to it.
- Socrates says Dan defends his mind's thoughts as if they were treasures and believes he is his thoughts because he fears death and craves survival.
- Socrates keeps up the lecture—we hope you haven't fallen asleep. He says Dan acts as if he is a "mind" or a subtle something inside the body. The student agrees this sounds good: he might be able to escape the body when he dies. Socrates goes off on him, about how he is actually Consciousness, is both his body and everything else everywhere, immortal. Not his mind, personal beliefs, history, and identity, which do end at death.
- Dan says he isn't sure if he understood all that. He asks what he is, if not his thoughts. Socrates has him peel an onion until everything's gone. Dan finally says nothing is left. His teacher tells him he's wrong, that the universe is left.
- Socrates lectures Dan on how his attention must burn upon his every moment and action.
- To illustrate how attention should burn, Socrates relates how a roshi—a Zen Buddhist religious teacher—told him if he couldn't figure out a koan (a kind of riddle) fast enough, he should kill himself. The threat of imminent death—we get the feeling Socrates would have done whatever this roshi told him—made him break through the mind's barriers and solve the koan.
- Socrates tells his student that he, Socrates, has to play games for a while—such as his jumping on the rooftop earlier—to keep Dan's attention, but eventually, the young man will have to walk the path alone.
- As Socrates fixes a customer's car, his student reflects on how completely happy the old man is. Back at his apartment, Dan wonders what Socrates' secret to happiness is. He remembers the business card, takes it in hand, and calls out for Socrates.
- The lights go out; Dan trips over his chair. He remains unsure what happened, but the card now has an additional line: Emergencies Only!
- The next day, Dan shows the card to his teammates. But they only see a blank card. Disappearing ink, Dan decides. At the gas station, he asks Socrates to stop the gags. The card begins to glow.
- Flustered, the young man asks Socrates if the card changes or disappears and reappears. The old man says everything changes, and everything disappears and reappears. Mysteriously, Socrates cites the House Rules as the explanation for why the teammates couldn't see the card. Dan continues to press for answers, but Socrates tells him to let it go.
- Summer passes, with more gym training and Socrates lessons for Dan. The young man often asks about Joy, but his teacher says nothing.
- Dan decides to take a trip down to his parents' home in Los Angeles before classes resume. Shopping in preparation for his trip, he encounters a scrawny teenage beggar, who asks for change. Dan refuses him, not feeling sorry at all. Dan thinks the beggar should just get a job, and then feels conflicted “just because some guy” had asked him for money.
- The passage exclusively focuses on making the point that Dan should let such a social justice concern go so his mind won't be troubled. It's basically the opposite of anything by Charles Dickens, such as A Christmas Carol, or by John Steinbeck, such as Of Mice and Men.
- Dan tells Socrates that he, Dan, will be visiting his parents and training with gymnasts in Yugoslavia since the U.S. Gymnastics Federation thinks he's a potential Olympian. Frowning, Socrates says what will be, will be. As Dan heads out, Socrates tells him to meet at a fountain at noon.
- At the fountain, Socrates gives Dan the ominous message that he'll be tested severely, and will need great inner strength to continue his transformation. Dan turns toward Socrates, but the old man is gone.