NEWS: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Available for Parties

CULTURE: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Available for Parties

Before I begin today’s thing I wanted to let everybody know that my new book, Sit Down and Shut Up! comes out in just a few weeks from New World Library. Look for it in fine bookstores everywhere. In conjunction with the book’s release, I’m getting together some personal appearances. On May 17th I’ll be at the Bodhi Tree bookstore in Los Angeles. On June 12th I’ll be at Gateways in Santa Cruz. On June 13th I’ll be at Green Gulch in… wherever that is. Near San Francisco somewhere. On June 14th I’ll be at Books, Inc. in San Francisco. On June 15th I’ll be at the San Francisco Zen Center. I’ll also be in Phoenix either June 2nd or 5th. And I’ll be on the Suicide Girls radio show, but I don’t know when. Sounds like a lot. But I can do more. So I wanted to let you know I am available for speaking engagements. Just write me at brad.warner@mac.com for details.

Here’s a little sample of what you might get to enjoy if you hire me out for your six year old’s birthday party or whatever. There are several more clips on my blog and on You Tube.



I’d like to write a little about what I talked about in that clip, which is the concept of “mundane experience.” I once found a book supposedly about Buddhism that demolished the entire philosophy in its opening sentence. It said, “Buddhism points the way out of the world of the mundane — this world — towards the world of Enlightenment.”

This is not what Buddhism is about at all. Buddhism is not a type of spirituality. Buddha specifically rejected both materialism and spirituality. The rejection of materialism is well understood. But a lot of people are deeply confused about his rejection of spirituality. Some people seem to miss this entirely. Of course, words always have varying definitions. So if you use the word “spirituality” to mean anything other than materialism or to mean something different from secular philosophies, then Buddhism may end up in the “spirituality” category by default. But let me give you my take on the word “spirituality” and try to explain briefly why Buddhism is not spirituality.

Forms of spirituality are always based on the premise that there is this world in which we live every day, which is mundane, ordinary and boring, and then there is another world — the spiritual realm — which is way more kick-ass. The aim of spiritual religions is to get you out of this sucky world and on to that one. Most of the time spiritual religions say you’ll go to the kick-ass place after you die if you just do what their leaders tell you to. But sometimes, spiritual religions promise you that you can go to the spiritual world right now. Methodologies differ. Sometimes it involves special mental gymnastics, breathing techniques and so forth that alter your brain chemistry. Or sometimes you just have to eat some peyote or ‘shrooms and trip out. In either case, the evidence that you’ve achieved a “higher state” is that whenever someone from this world tries to talk to you while you’re in that “higher state” all you can do is giggle at them or drool. By that definition, when I worked for the Summit County Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities I met a lot of people who were in permanently “higher states.” (I remember a couple of the guys on the photos on that website!)

Higher states are bullshit. I’ve been in a few of ‘em and they’re always a big load of crap. Your brain is full of fantasies. If you do the right kind of mental gymnastics or take the right kinds of drugs those fantasies can be made to seem very real and very important. Of course they seem important to you, you made them up! But those things are never reality.

It always amazes me that so-called “higher states” always — and I mean always — involve the loss of skills we have in the supposedly “lower” states. I mean would you want to ride in a car being driven by someone experiencing a “higher state of awareness?” I’d take the bus myself. I once read about some dopes who went to India to experience some kind of heightened awareness meditation deal. According to the writer, they all had to be locked in a room for a week while people came a few times a day to deliver their meals and clean up their messes. And these people who did the retreat were actually proud of that. Forgive me, but I cannot get excited about the insights of people who can’t even fix themselves a sandwich.

In Zen practice you can and do experience some weird shit sometimes. But whenever a student trips out like that it is the job of the teacher to smack it out of him. Not usually literally, but sometimes even that is necessary. Reality is always different from some kind of psychedelic head trip.

But what we call “mundane experience” is the truly important matter. If you’re a healthy person most of your life is what usually gets categorized as “mundane experience.” You get up, you brush your teeth, you make the bed, you do the leftover dishes from last night… Add up the time spent doing stuff that’s “mundane” and compare it with stuff that’s kick-ass and you’ll see that you spend a lot more of your life doing the mundane stuff. People who try to have it any other way always end up going nutso.

But this supposedly “mundane” stuff is the real activity of the Universe. This is what really needs doing. The kick-ass stuff is a diversion that keeps you away from your real duty. Which isn’t to say you should never have any fun. Just don’t get confused into believing that the ideal life is one in which everything is always kick-ass. And especially don’t get confused into thinking the goal of life is to get out of this mundane world into the kick-ass world way off in some higher plane.

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and the forthcoming Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff. 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.

What do you do before attaining to enlightenment? - Chop wood and carry water.

What do you do after attaining to enlightenment? - Chop wood and carry water.

thank you.

I look forward to your comments as much as I do Brad's column!

yes, Thankyou.

I mean, I guess I'm a smart lad in
that I share your outlook on things
Brad. You're just able to put it
into words clearly.

I just rediscovered Laurie Anderson's "Home of the Brave" album, from 1986, I believe. Anyway, the opening line of "Language Is a Virus": "Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only better."

Nails on heads there on the spirituality thing.
I think people assume a lot of 'weird mystical shit' goes on in all religious traditions and its always good to realise that isn't the case.

A lot of people say 'what do you have to do to be buddhist?'
Personally I generally laugh.
I think this is the most important 'spiritual practice' I do.

Nice of you to state that when you do Zen you see some wierd shit, sometimes. Because I've seen some weird shit now and again. But what that wierd shit tends to be is all sorts of obvious stuff that's sitting right in front of your nose that you normally find it impossible to see owing to various mental attachments.

I think you made the point in your video clip where you mentioned washing the dishes, but perhaps one ought explicitly to say that the objective of mindfulness is to break the mental distinction between ordinary and kickass. In those moments when you can quiet down the monkey mind and just see what's in front of you, the most mundane things vibrate with life. Perhpas one craves the kickass experiences not so much because of what they are in of themselves, but because something interesting and new prompts ones monkey mind to pause to see what's going on right then. Or relieves the self with its preoccupation with itself, freeing the attention. If you can get the monkey mind to do that at will, then much of one's reason for seeking unusual "kickass" experiences lapses into irrelevance.

I think something that a lot of people overlook in searching for 'kickass' or high intensity experiences is the freedom that can be found in more meditative activities. When my mind calms down, whatever I'm doing takes on an intensity of it's own. For me, practicing martial arts pulls me out of my monkey mind (to use Doc Lizardo's term), but even house cleaning, dishes or whatever work too. It's not so much about experiencing the stuff that's 100% crazy, it's experiencing 100% of every moment, whatever the activity.