NEWS: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Prison Break! (Prisonshake?)

CULTURE: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Prison Break! (Prisonshake?)

So I’m back from San Francisco now. While I was up there I got a chance to go with Greg Fain of the San Francisco Zen Center on one of his weekly visits to a group of Buddhist inmates at San Quentin prison. It seems that the prisoners really like my books. In fact I’ve heard this from several people who have contacts in various prisons around the country. Which goes to show you want kind of audience I attract…

I didn’t know what to expect of San Quentin, so I tried not to expect anything. One of the most useful things I’ve learned in my Zen practice is that no matter what you anticipate about a future situation you’re always gonna be wrong. So it’s best not to anticipate anything. I mean you gotta plan when you’re gonna leave and what you’re gonna do and stuff like that. But it doesn’t do a whole lot of good to try and envision the situation in too much detail because whatever you picture is always way off the mark.

Anyway, all I know of prison is what I’ve seen in movies — guys rattling their cups on the steel bars of their cells and spending years trying to dig out of the place with soup spoons and stuff like that.

One of the first things I noticed about the real San Quentin is that it’s in an area that’s impossibly beautiful out on a little peninsula jutting into the San Francisco Bay. This would be some outrageously valuable property if there wasn’t a prison built on it. We got wanded down, hand stamped and let into a double set of heavy barred doors that reminded me of a space station airlock from the movies, then let into the prison courtyard. The courtyard is pretty, with lots of tropical flowers and plants and a little pond with a family of ducks living in it. It really wouldn’t seem out of place in the center of a idyllic little Northern California town.

Then the guys started filing out of the prison itself. I’m getting cotton mouthed as this group of tough looking dudes in matching denim work shirts and jeans comes hulking towards us, with their big ol’ prisoner mustaches and tattoos. As they got closer though, I saw that most of them kind of looked my dad, or at least my dad’s friends. The group consisted mainly of middle-aged guys who seemed pretty mellow. Greg had told me earlier that most of the Buddhist group were guys who’d done something really heinous in their twenties and had been here for a couple decades paying their debt to society.

The Zen group meets in the prison’s makeshift Muslim chapel, which looks kind of like a third grade math classroom. The guys got out some zafus — round sitting cushions for Zazen meditation — and zabutons — square cushions that go under the round ones so your knees aren’t grinding into the floor as you practice. Turns out they’d made the square cushions themselves in the prison shop. They set up a little altar up in front of the room and we got down to business. We sat for half an hour and it was pretty much like any other sitting I’ve participated in. The Baptists next door were getting ready to rock out to some gospel tunes. But the institutional walls were thick enough that the distraction was kept to a minimum. I noticed a few prisoners from other religious denominations wandering by and peering in at us. But everyone was pretty respectful, unlike what you get from passersby at some of the urban Zen centers I’ve practiced at.

The bell rang to end the sitting and we had a little break. I talked to some of the guys then. One of them told me he had read all four volumes of my teacher Gudo Nishijima’s translation of Shobogenzo all the way through. He was getting his college degree there in the slammer (one of the guys I saw Sunday is in this video!). There aren’t even many of Nishijima’s own students who’ve read the whole damned Shobogenzo, so I was duly impressed. Another guy told me he was interested in Buddhism because of out-of-body experiences he’d had as a young man. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that even though I’d tried desperately in my teens to have one of those, I’d never managed and that these days I’d rather stay in my own body anyhow. There wasn’t time for deep philosophizing anyway since it was my turn to talk.

Now what do you say to a bunch of what are probably murderers, rapists and kidnappers — you don’t ask — when they want you to talk about Buddhism? I knew that the whole tough punk rock guy thing I can whip out in front of groups of Zen nerds wasn’t gonna play in this kind of room. So I talked about a poem called Inscription of Faith Mind by an old Chinese Zen Master named Sosan. The poem’s most oft-quoted sound byte is its first line, which goes, “The Buddhist Way is not difficult to follow, just avoid preferences.” Sometimes it’s translated, “avoid picking and choosing.” Pick and choose your preferred version.

At any rate, the theme of the poem is that we don’t need to fight against the circumstances in which we find ourselves. No matter where we find ourselves that’s where we really need to be. In fact, no matter how much trouble we may have seeing it, the place where we are is exactly where we most want to be. That doesn’t mean we should be complacent and accept a bad situation without trying to improve it. In fact it’s one of our duties to improve our situations. In order to do this effectively, though, we have to first understand that we ourselves are not something apart from our circumstances. What we are and where we are, are one and the same.

I told them the story of how I learned about this in a very practical way. I had a kidney stone a few years ago. But because your wiring “down there” isn’t as precise as it is in your upper body I felt all the pain in my ‘nads. It was like someone had smashed my nuts with a ball peen hammer. I went to the hospital but they weren’t sure what the problem was. Since they thought they might have to do surgery for a tortioned testicle they wouldn’t give me any kind of pain killers, not even an Asprin. So as I lay there in horrendous pain I thought, OK Zen Stuff I learned let’s see what you’re good for. I decided to feel all of the pain without trying to escape from it or compare it to what I wanted to feel like. I would have no preferences and just experience exactly what I was experiencing at that moment. When I did that, the entire thing transformed in a way I can’t really describe. Even the concept of “pain” makes no sense unless it’s contrasted with something else. When you drop the preference to be without pain, then it’s hard to even say whether pain exists or not. Pretty freaky.

Which is not to say I could keep this up for the entire 12 hours or so it took before they decided to give me some medicine, or that I was so “Zen” I said no to the pain killers. But, still, when I could do it, the situation became utterly different.

The prison guys seemed to be able to relate to that. I’m sure they have to deal with a whole big bunch of pain in their day-to-day lives. Still, without being in those circumstances they might never have found Zazen. Just like I wouldn’t have found it without some of the pain I had to go through. I left there having a lot more respect for those guys than for some of the whiners who show up at my place sometimes saying that Zazen is too hard on their widdle legs. Oh, boo-hoo-hoo! Go buy one of those stupid Buddha machines and tell your friends how “Zenned out” you got while listening to it if you can’t take the real deal, cry-babies. See ya around.

Sorry. So anyway, I had a great time at San Quentin prison. If anybody out there knows any prisons in So Cal that need a Buddhist teacher, drop me a line!

*****

Don’t forget that 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!

Tickets are now avalaible here! Get yours now!

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.

good read!

just picked up hardcore zen book good stuff " truth rains down on you from above and god forms in a puddle at your feet. You eat god and four hours later...(shit) truth. Take a whiff... how wonderfull truth smells"... i know its not a word for word quote but very good stuff love it...

Why must you hate the Buddha Machine? Is there really so much ground between the experimentalism of FM3 and the psych of Dimentia 13 that you can't get into it?

(Good article otherwise. I just really like my Buddha Machine and my morning zazen, and I'd get miffed at a potshot at either of them. )

OK, OK. They may be good for entertainment (too expen$ive for me to just take a chance). I just hate when stuff like that becomes a substitute for real practice.

Great article. I have to say, your columns have quickly become one of my favorite things about this site (well, y'know, beside the obvious!) Read both of your books as well and enjoyed them both immensely.

And as someone who has also been "blessed" by a visit from the kidney stone fairy, let me just say: I can relate. Nothing quite like a few hours in a crowded ER waiting room feeling like one of your nuts is in a vice to give you a crash course in 'mind over matter'!

I am happy to report that your link for "tortioned testicle" is failing. I don't know why I clicked on that anyway....

have it
read it
love it