NEWS: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: How the Death of My Grandma Turned Me Into a Total Asshole

CULTURE: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: How the Death of My Grandma Turned Me Into a Total Asshole

A buncha stuff has happened since I wrote my last Suicide Girls article two weeks ago. When I wrote that piece I was in Ohio, which is where I was born and mostly raised except for three years in Africa. I went to Ohio because I had some speaking engagements and gigs playing bass for the mighty 0Dfx (aka Zero Defex) and also because my grandma had been in the hospital and I wanted to visit with her. The gigs all went super. But not so much grandma. As it turns out she not only died, but she did so right before my very eyes. I've never seen a person die before. It's a pretty life-changing thing to witness.



The doctors hadn't given grandma a very good prognosis when they sent her home from the hospital. But when I arrived she seemed OK. Not great. But certainly not a week away from dying. Grandma lived in southern Ohio near Cincinnati, whereas my gigs were up in northern Ohio in Akron and Cleveland. So my plan was to visit her for a few days, go up north, do my stuff , go back down to Cincy, visit some more and then head home to Los Angeles. But right when my Akron/Cleveland stuff was over I got a call saying grandma's condition had suddenly worsened and I'd better haul ass down south to see her. So I did. By the time I got there, she was in a very bad way. She died at 4:55 in the morning, the day after I got back down to where she lived.



I'd only just gone to bed about an hour before the hospice nurse woke us all up to say we might want to come into grandma's room because she could go at any time. We all sat with her. She was in and out of consciousness, but couldn't talk or move very much. I chanted the Heart Sutra for her because she liked hearing that when I chanted it after grandpa died. We talked to her, held her hand, all that stuff. And then there was a moment when she just gave up the struggle and slipped away.



I already gave my schpiel on death here earlier this year after my mom died. So I'm going to pass on that. I'll just say that even though grandma's dead, there really isn't anywhere she could go but here. I'll miss her even so.



Two major deaths of important women in your life in the same year is bound to have an effect on you. It's made me a total asshole. What I mean by that is that I just don't give a shit anymore. I'm gonna pretty much say and do whatever the fuck I want from now on.



Of course there are limits, obviously. I'm not gonna go out and rape, pillage and plunder. I'm not gonna be like a drugged out hedonist or nothin'. But I'm not gonna pull punches with people anymore. I'm gonna say what needs saying and do what needs done, and if people don't like it, tough titty for them.



Still, I am a Buddhist. So I'm turning into an asshole with 25 years of Zen practice already under my belt. This may make me a slightly different type of asshole from an asshole who hasn't done that stuff.



One of the things that I think gets lost in the way Zen is presented these days is that the whole idea of Zen in the beginning was to answer the question: How can we live a truly happy life? These days in America Zen stuff always gets all caught up in religious ideas of righteousness and holy-ocity. Fuck that shit. What Buddha wanted to find wasn't something holy, he just wanted to live a life that wasn't a fucking drag all the time.



In India in Buddha's day, just like in ours, there were two basic ideas about how you can live a happy life. One camp said eat, drink, fuck, curse, and do whatever the hell you please because the only real thing in this universe is matter. There's no God, there's no Eternal Reward, all that shit is bupkiss, so do whatever makes you feel good right now. The other camp said that the material world was an illusion, that the spirit was the only true reality, so you should mortify the body in order to experience spiritual bliss and make a better place for yourself in the life hereafter.



Buddha tried both of these approaches, but he wasn't satisfied with either one. The eat, drink and bed down with Mary approach seemed to hold out the promise of pleasure and plenty, but it never really delivered. You got fat, got hung-over and Mary gave you the clap. So he checked out the spiritual stuff and found that you could get pretty blissed out with those practices, but that whenever you weren't getting some kind of spiritual high you felt like total shit because you hadn't taken care of your basic bodily needs. So he founded what he called the Middle Way.



The Middle Way was not some kind of spiritual path designed to make us all holy with shiny pink haloes on our noggins. It was a way to live a life that wasn't a piece of shit. It was a way to find happiness and stability in an unhappy and unstable world. That's really all any of us are looking for, when it comes down to it. The stability of the Middle Way comes in our practice of zazen, which is the actual physical/mental practice of stability and happiness. A bit of zazen in the morning and a bit in the evening radiates throughout the rest of the day and makes everything better. That's all there is to it.



Morality is an important aspect of the practice because we are all interconnected. I can't be happy if I make the people around me miserable under the mistaken impression that they are not intimately connected with me. So I need to behave morally towards everyone I encounter. I don't think a lot of the Buddhists in America these days really get that, though. They imagine Buddhist morality has some kind of supposedly "higher purpose," that we're moral in order to satisfy some ideal, or to avoid the wrath of a vengeful Buddha -- or at least avoid the wrath of vengeful Buddhists who'll get on your case if you don't act like they think you ought to.



But another aspect of Buddhist morality is that you have to do your part. You're not here just for yourself. You're here for everyone and everything you encounter. Your role is to do and say the things that need doing and saying from your unique perspective. God is too far removed from the Universe to see himself clearly without splitting himself into a bazillion eyes and ears that watch over all aspects of himself. Whatever perspective you have is the most valuable thing in the universe. You need to be fully yourself. At the same time, you need to completely forget any idea you have about yourself. Or, if you can't forget it, at least just ignore it, secure in the knowledge that whatever you think you are isn't what you really are.



Doing and saying what needs doing an saying has to be handled carefully. But being careful and being timid are two very different things. The folks who confuse Buddhist morality with the religious variety think Buddhism is about being timid. This is because they are all a bunch of fuck heads. It's a fine line sometimes between being careful and being timid, so watch it. But erring on either side is equally as bad.



Watching my grandma die, I felt like we all have a limited time in this place to do what needs doing. Even if I get a good 86 years like she did, that still won't be enough to get it all done. So I'd better get my ass in gear and at least do a few of the things I was put here to do before I bite the big one.



If I seem like an asshole for that, sorry. If you don't like it, bite me.



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.

Haha this rang a very true chord with me. I read alot of eastern philosophy (as well as books by Warner and other Zen teachers) but I am still an asshole. Not the go out and mock people while starting fights asshole but the "I am going to get something done my way quickly correctly and without regard to others emotions". Everyone is responsible for their own emotions, myself included. I do not get mad or upset when someone does anything wrong to me, because its my choice to do so and i do not want to give them the illusion they can effect me. This isn't a "im going to bottle up my emotions" sort of not care, but i truly do not give a fuck about anything so if one of my friends says shit about me i truly don't care. Consequently, I live my life the same way, not afraid to cut through the emotional BS and get right to the point to save everyone time and energy (not necesarily emotional happiness). People have always wondered how I can claim to be peaceful and happy if this is my way of life, and I am glad someone else was able to explain. Emotions are just your brains way of telling you what you desire, and what you desire isn't necesarily what you need. You have to go beyond the emotion and see where the source of the desire is, and then try to objectively think what is the best course of action to better the situation, not what will pacify the most people.

Right on! Sorry about your grandmother.

What's up with that version of the Heart Sutra? It's a lot shorter than the Sanskrit and Tibetan versions I've seen, which aren't exacly long. Seems to hit the same high points, though.

good read brotha

Thanks Brad...

Gates for your Grandma.

Bodhi Svaha...

Very nice.

My grandma died the week before last, too. Cancer. Also in the hospice.

I rang my nana last week, just for the hell of it. She complained about poor health for the entirety of the phone call, didn't ask me anything about what's going on in my life and never gave me a single opportunity to contribute to the conversation. I don't care, she's still my nana. She's 87 and I just don't want to think "Fuck, I should've rung her" when it's too late. Even if it is an exasperating exercise.

Great article, Brad. I couldn't agree more.

Sorry to hear about your grandmother.

My condolences... hope grandma's new journey is a delightful one!

Disaster=Opportunity

This will make you a better Buddhist, but more importantly a better human.

RIP Grandma

Also: I appreciate that you can be candid with such an anonymous community.

So Good.

Really good. It really resonated with me.

I remember when my grandmother died. She was the only grandparent that lived past my birth and it really freaked me out. I didn't eat for three days and ended up passing out on my friend's evil mom.

So I say go ahead and be an asshole. What's the point of being able to see it like it is, if you're not going to tell it like it is? Besides, it's better than passing out on someone's evil mom.

thanks, great article.

*condolences*

Another great article, thank you for your contribution. How unfortunate to hear about your Grandmother. I have lost 3 out of 4 (4 out of 5 include my step-grandfather) and for me the worst part for me probably wasn't so much the actual passing of their lives, but rather this sense that a certain part of my life (younger bliss?) has forever been closed.

On another note,I do think that this line probably has to be about the most succinct way of describing Buddhism: " It was a way to live a life that wasn’t a piece of shit."

My condolences! My grandmother died last year; cancer. Some months previously, a good friend wanted to kill himself. Fortunately, he has not succeeded. Meanwhile, I live more consciously. Or as in a song of Agnostic Front says: "Life, don't talk about it. I live it!"

gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha

Gate means gone. Gone from suffering to the liberation of suffering. Gone from forgetfulness to mindfulness. Gone from duality into non-duality. Gate gate means gone, gone. Paragate means gone all the way to the other shore. So this mantra is said in a very strong way. Gone, gone, gone all the way over. In Parasamgate sammeans everyone, the sangha, the entire community of beings. Everyone gone over to the other shore. Bodhi is the light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. You see it and the vision of reality liberates you. And svaha is a cry of joy or excitement, like "Welcome!" or "Hallelujah!" "Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svaha !"

Thich Nhat Hanh

shibumi says, "nuff said"...oh, or was that stan lee?