I dream that I am riding in the back seat of a crowded bus in southern France. The road we're on is L'Autoroute du Soleil—Motorway of the Sun. Our destination is a tourist trap called the Shining Temple of the Annihilated Ego. It's a shrine devoted to "the worship of extinguished selfhood."

What the hell does that mean? I'm not sure. I'm thinking it has something to do with the Sanskrit word "nirvana," whose literal definition is "the blowing out of a flame."

Many of our fellow travelers are religious disciples dressed in robes and sackcloth: Buddhist monks and nuns, Christian monastics, and Hindu mendicants. There are also quite a few famous people from ages past. In my immediate vicinity, I can see Andy Warhol, General Augusto Pinochet, Marilyn Monroe, Babe Ruth, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jackie Kennedy, Elvis Presley, Coco Chanel and Ronald Reagan. Is that Virginia Woolf up in the front?

By temperament I'm more like a religious disciple than an Andy Warhol or Elvis Presley. I've been a dedicated student of Hermetic Qabalah for decades. But here and now I don't look in the least ascetic. I am dressed in red leather pants, a peach-colored silk shirt, a sparkly gold vest studded with opalescent beads, and a black ankle-length cashmere coat. I've also got on a red Stetson hat, size eight and a half, and a ring on each of my ten fingers.

I recognize the person sitting to my right. He's Shunryu Suzuki, the well-known Zen master whose books helped popularize Zen Buddhism in America. I've read every word the man published. In person, he's surprisingly conventional. He's wearing a dull brown suit and striped blue tie that make him look like a businessman from the 1950s.

This is a welcome opportunity for me. For years, I have had a bone to pick with him. In one of his books he told a story about the importance of keeping one's ego under strict control. A student had asked him, "How much ego do you need?" Suzuki's austere reply was, "Just enough so that you don't step in front of a bus."

I felt reverence for that hard-ass attitude years ago when I originally came upon it as a young spiritual punk. But later I came to see it as puritanical and pretentious and retrograde. At this moment, piqued by his presence, I actually feel peeved about it.

I spend some time working up the nerve, but finally initiate a conversation with Mr. Zen.

"Long-time listener, first-time caller," I say to him, copping the approach of a person who has just reached a radio talk show host on the phone. "Loved Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. Made it my Bible for a while." That was Suzuki's first book.

"Probably better not to make any book your Bible," he replies, in a tone that is neither friendly nor dismissive.

"Don't worry," I say. "I will always love you, but I will never worship you."

"There's nothing here to worship, anyway," he says. "I don't even exist."

"Good. I will keep that in mind if I feel any pangs of desire to turn you into a holy icon."

"Have you ever tried it?" he asks. "Not existing?"

"Well, that's the thing. As it turns out, I eventually discovered that I preferred existing to not existing. That's when I had to burn your books and take your photo down from my altar."

"I'm sorry to hear that," he says. "I mean the part about you preferring to exist. Burning my books and banishing my image were wise."

"I've always wanted to ask you a question," I say. "Do you mind?"

"I'm not even here to say yes or no. You are free to proceed."

"Remember how you said that no one needs much of an ego; that the best ego size is just big enough to keep one from getting hit by a bus, but no bigger?"

"I do recall that a mirage resembling me once said something like that."

"Well I wonder if you would consider the possibility that maybe your old idea could benefit from some revision. I mean, I acknowledge that the ego is the root of much mischief in the world -- more evil than the craving for wealth and religious fanaticism combined."

"In Christian terms," Suzuki interrupts, "the original sin."

"Yeah. Even for me, most of the stupidest and cruelest things I've ever done could be traced to my infected and inflamed ego."

"Which is why it's much better to live without it," he says.

"I don't agree," I say. "I think the ego has some redemptive uses. And besides, just because it is potentially dangerous doesn't mean that spiritual seekers like us should nuke it."

"Redemptive uses? Like providing you with the fuel to become an all-knowing rich and famous and powerful sex god?"

"No. Like providing me with the fuel to become a compassionate and creative and curious devotee of the Great Mystery."

"The ego appropriates those noble aspirations and turns them into disguised versions of being an all-knowing rich and famous and powerful sex god."

"Well, that's how a fundamentalist thinks," I press. "It would be like me practicing abstinence because I'm afraid of all the chaos I might stir up by risking the gifts that sex might afford me.

Suzuki chuckles derisively, but I am unflustered. I've argued with famous people before. David Bowie didn't take it personally when I questioned his feminism.

"Instead of repressing the ego," I say, "we should sublimate its brute force, use all our best psychological tricks to transform its greed into generosity, and turn it into a beautiful work of art."

"Good luck with that delusional dream," Suzuki says.

"How about this?" I say. "Let's be spiritual artisans who devote ourselves to crafting holy, exquisitely wrought egos. And let's do that with the same rigor and panache as a great actor preparing for a film in which he will play the Buddha. Let's add 'egos' to the list of beautiful things that talented creators want to produce, along with songs, books, films, sculptures, paintings, electronic games, and dances."

"What you propose," he replies, "is like putting lipstick and mascara on a donkey. Or worse yet: on a lipsticked and mascara'd donkey that has explosives strapped to its body like a suicide bomber."

I don't feel defensive in the least. On the contrary, I'm delighted he's fighting back.

"You're on the wrong side of history," I tell him cheerfully. "Like the reactionary traditionalists who think two people of the same gender shouldn't be allowed to marry."

"So what do we have here?" Suzuki snorts. He's getting emotional! "A staunch advocate for the rights of the ego! Good for you, you brazen rebel. The ego has been the victim of so much appalling oppression over the centuries. I am glad someone is finally defending its honor."

"I'm not defending the honor of all the arrogant assholes who have mangled history with their megalomaniacal cruelty," I say, as serene and amused as a meditator in a mountaintop sanctuary. "I'm proposing a crucified and resurrected ego, a gorgeous and lyrical and empathetic ego that's a gift to humanity."

"I'm guessing," Suzuki sneers, "that someone with your views must have a rather deep attachment to the phantasm we Zen Buddhists refer to as 'individuality.' Am I right?"

"I'm more aligned with Gurdjieff's position," I reply. "Which is that while it is possible to create an electric, luminous individuality, most people just don't want to work that hard."

"And am I right to assume you regard that electric, luminous individuality as permanent and immortal? Going to live forever, are you, my young friend?"

"Yes, I am, thank you. And so you are, too."

"No, thanks," he scoffs. "My laughable hallucination of unique selfness has a future appointment with the worm-rich dirt. Good riddance."

"I'll bet you a trillion nirvanas that you and I meet again at the end of time."

"You don't have a trillion nirvanas."

"Are you sure about that?"

Suzuki shouts, "Immortality sucks!", grabs my face with his hands, and smacks his skull into mine, propelling me out of sleep.