The Buddah, before she ever became the Buddah, was a princess named Sarah. She was born to a King and Queen who owned large shares of stock in companies like Pantene Pro-V and Herbal Essences. From the time the first five hairs sprouted on her little infant head, she was pampered with deep conditioning treatments, highlights, and blow outs. You'd never seen such voluminous, golden, and silky-straight baby hair.
When Sarah was twelve years old, her mother learned from a mystic that if she were to set her eyes on coarse, wavy, damaged, or over-bleached hair, she would become a hairscetic and wander the world for truth. The Queen wanted for Sarah to become the next monarch, of course, and multiplied the number of soldiers guarding the palace. She even ordered that Sarah's hair have a chemical relaxer.
One day, the light of Sarah's divine vocation began to glimmer on her tresses, and she decided to visit a nearby town, to see what lay outside her privilidged and protein-treated life. The Queen ordered a spa day for that town, ensuring that every individual with whom Sarah would come in contact was blow-out, high-lighted, and glossed, and that every sad or ugly sight be removed. Yet the queen's efforts were all in vain. While wandering the streets, Sarah was approached by an old woman with wrinkles, age spots, and wily, silver hair. She learned that loss of pigmentation in the hair follicle was inevitable for all who reach at least forty. Later that day, she met a young woman whose split, broken ends had seen too much chemical treatment, and later still, a woman whose hair completely died and snapped off from over-processing.
Lastly, Sarah met a woman with crazy-long hair and wild, unkempt locks. She said that she had passed beyond this life of suffering and superfluous hair manipulation to attain peace of the heart and hair.
Through these wild locks Sarah saw something simply radiant and beatific. She wanted what this wise woman had. Without further ado, Sarah left her life at the palace for one of hairsceticism. She left a life of pampering to seek a life of truth.
Overcome with grief, the queen got a perm.
During her journeys, Sarah met many cosmetic ascetics who taught her their ways. With one teacher she fasted, but her hair became damaged and nutrient-deficient, so she gave up that Hairspiritual path. Sarah then met a group of five ascetics who practiced hair-mortification. The goal was to do some serious damage to the ends with double and triple processing, and heat, and to thereby transcend bad hair, into a state of bliss and truth. Still, this path did not feel authentic to Sarah, and was perhaps simply an intensification of what she experienced in the Palace.
Finally, Sarah broke off on her own. Despondent, she sat under a Bodhi tree in deep meditation, resolved either to die with bad hair, or to reach Hair Enlightenment before getting up.
She began to pass through various stages of illumination that she had gained in her travels and studies. She understood the condition of the hair, and why people damage it. She saw the beauty of grey, of curls, of naturally straight, and naturally coarse hair. By meditating on the bad hair day, she transcended suffering and became enlightened; she understood both the genesis and destruction of bad hair.
From Hair Enlightenment, Sarah discovered the Four Noble Truths of Haircare.
1. The Universality of Bad Hair
2. The root (teehee) of Bad Hair is desire for unrealistic results
3. There is a solution to Bad Hair
4. The solution to Bad Hair is to accept what nature has given you
Not Making Any Sense? Let me break it down without the allegory:
The gist of spiritual enlightenment (so I hear), is to accept things exactly as they are. When we embrace the as is, we see that our life is entirely perfect, and as it should be, because it simply could not be any other way than it is, at present. To reject the present, is to deny reality, which is both insane, and also a cause of suffering/cognitive dissonance.
The same is true of Hair Enlightenment.
We're often changing and manipulating our hair to make ourselves become someone we think we "should" be, rather than simply working with what our hair is already doing to realize our ultimate fabulousness. In effect, we shortchange ourselves and create suffering. The truth is that we all already have fabulous hair, and simply need to learn how to work with it in all its gnarly kinks, cowlicks, and glory.
Embrace your hair as it is! Work with what nature already has it doing, and you and your hair will begin a flowering lifelong partnership!
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