NEWS: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Fire!!!!

CULTURE: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Fire!!!!

I’m up in Northern California this week doing book signings and talks in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Petaluma (if you Petaluma wrong it’ll bite you, so be careful). My trip to the North started off like this:

Bwaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!!!!!!!!!! What the fuck! I bolted out of bed to the loudest noise I have ever heard in my life. It sounded like the most obnoxious feedback in the world. At first I thought some piece of audio equipment in the house had gone nutso. So I’m looking all over the place trying to figure out what on God’s green Earth could make such an vile noise. Yuka, my wife, was awake too. Not even she could sleep through that.

Finally we figured out the noise was coming from outside the apartment too. When I opened the door I could smell smoke. The apartment is built around a central courtyard and I could see the neighbors running around trying to figure out what was happening. Something was on fire. That was for sure, and it had set off the alarm throughout the building. But none of us could figure out what or where the Hell was smoking. None of the apartments were spouting flames. I looked at my watch. It was just before five in the morning.

I called 911 and they put me on hold! I got one of those recorded messages like you get when you’re calling the DMV or something. “Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line. Calls will be taken in the order they are received.” Jesus H. Christ! I could be getting raped by Cossacks or something and they’re putting me on hold? With Muzak® too? After a couple minutes and operator came on and I told her my building was on fire. She said they were sending the fire guys and that I should wait in the front of the building.

Meanwhile Yuka had also called and she got through a lot faster. Do they take calls from women in distress before they take them from men?

Everybody in the building was standing out front. The dog owners all had their dogs. I didn’t see any of the cats I knew lived in the building, though. Where were they? And the guy down the hall with all the fish hadn’t brought them out. I guess fish are pretty much s.o.l. when there’s a fire. I brought out my computer because it had my new book on it.

It took the fire department a good long while to show up. But they finally arrived with two big, shiny fire trucks. They stretched out the ladder on one of them up to the roof of the apartment, four stories high. It was pretty impressive. I kept waiting to see if one of them was gonna race up there. But nobody ever did. What a rip off!

Anyway, as it turns out the fire was in the dumpster in the underground garage. Apparently the fire itself was already out by the time the fire department showed up, having been doused by the sprinkler system in the garage. But that didn’t stop it setting off the alarm.

They gave us the all clear to go back inside and we all started filing in. I heard a couple of the women in the building saying how hot the fire guys all were. I hadn’t noticed. A friend of mine has a fetish for firemen. Maybe this is something Suicide Girls should look into for the Suicide Boys site.

Anyway, I survived and I’m up in Santa Cruz now. Last night I did a talk at a bookstore called Gateways. That was fun. Then we went out to a vegetarian restaurant called the Satur’n Café (that’s how they spell it). It’s like a malt shop but with no meat. Pretty interesting.

I’ve done more radio interviews than I can count (well I could count ‘em, but I’m lazy). Did a book signing at the Virgin Megastore, which was weird, but fun. Got another couple gigs to do before I can go home, including a talk at San Quentin prison. Me and Johnny Cash, I guess. We’ll see if all this effort helps sell a few books or not.

Tonight (which is last night for you since I’m writing this on Friday) I’ll be at the San Francisco Zen Center. I’m pretty psyched about that because to my mind, San Francisco is the place where Buddhism really got its start in America. There had been some Buddhist books published over here in the early 20th century and you’d had the beat poets and their fascination with their own take on Zen (which was totally wrong, but that's another story). A few temples for the Asian communities had been established. But it wasn’t until Shunryu Suzuki washed up on our shores in the early Sixties that Zen as a practice really began to be established here.

There are a million other books where you can read about Suzuki’s story, the most notable is Crooked Cucumber, his biography by David Chadwick. So I’ll just give the briefest outline in the world here. Basically, Suzuki was sent to the US with the idea that he’d be a minister to the Japanese community living in San Francisco. But when hippies and beatniks began turning up at his doorstep wanting to know about meditation, instead of turning them away politely, he decided to try and teach them.

This is pretty unusual because in Japan, Zen temples tend to be training centers. You usually can’t just walk into one and start doing Zazen. So Suzuki’s policy of letting whoever showed up join the practice caused some consternation among the Japanese community who’d set him up in San Francisco to begin with. But he ignored them and kept on going with the Zazen classes and talks.

Pretty soon the San Francisco Zen Center began to grow exponentially. When the numbers got too much for Suzuki to handle himself, he invited two other teachers over from Japan to help out. One of these teachers was Dainin Katagiri and the other was Kobun Chino. Later on Kobun went on to be the teacher of my first Zen teacher, Tim McCarthy. So I’ve always felt a strong connection to the San Francisco Zen Center, although I’ve only visited it once before.

I’m pretty honored they asked me to talk. So I guess I better go figure out what I’m gonna say. I’ll let you know how it went next week.

In the meantime, take care and don’t get caught on fire!

Here's the remaining dates of the tour:

TONIGHT Saturday June 16th 7 PM I'll be at COPPERFIELD'S BOOKS 140 Kentucky St., Petaluma, CA 94952
Sunday June 17th I'm at San Quentin Prison (this isn't open to the public, but all inmates reading this are invited!)

AND on Wednesday July 25th, 2007, my movie CLEVELAND'S SCREAMING! will have its world premier at the EGYPTIAN THEATER in Hollywood. So mark your calendars!

Plus, the very first record by my old hardcore band 0DFx (Zero Defex) has just been released by Get Revenge Records. This 7 inch vinyl record contains our 1983 demo tape full of thrashin’ Minor Threat/Negative approach style hardcore with a drop of psychedelia thrown in for good measure. Supplies are dwindling. Get yours today!

Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and 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.

Computers are impermanent.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Forever!
OK, not quite...

And yay! Suzuki was the mutt's nuts.
I place a picture of a fly on page 69 of my books in reverence to this day!!!

WTF? What about the fucking cats???? Maybe it was the girls who found the firemen hot who left their cats behind in hopes of begging a fireman to save their poor helpless kitty. That's no way to treat an animal, as a boy magnet!

You should get renters insurance and definitely backup your story to 1 or 2 flash drives. easier to carry and if the fire actually toasts your computer, then you can get a new one. Of course, that's kind of wasteful I suppose. Anyway, glad you made it out alive.

Still reading your first book. Enjoying and learning, ever so slowly (as time permits). Look forward to reading more of your efforts.

all my zen center peeps really enjoyed your shtick