NEWS: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: The Enlightened Beings Club

CULTURE: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: The Enlightened Beings Club

Back in March I wrote an article for this website in which I criticized one of the many scams out there masquerading as Buddhist practice. Last week my publishers found and pointed me to this massively delayed reaction to what I wrote. (My thanks to Waylon of Elephant magazine for writing the piece.)

I find this fascinating on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin. For starters I thought the videos by Genpo Roshi and Ken Wilber were hilarious. The Ken Wilber thing is especially priceless. With production values like a bad mid-morning chat show, Wilber’s sycophantic fawning over “enlightened being” Genpo with its fetid overtones of delighted self congratulation — after all, who but a fellow “enlightened being” could recognize one of his own — the Ken Wilber piece reminded me of one of those Sammy Maudlin sketches from SCTV. How do you say, "Isn't Genpo just about the most wonderful thing you’ve ever seen? He's such a deeply, deeply decent human being, which is harder than being enlightened, by the way" with a straight face?

Is this what Eastern spirituality has been reduced to in these latter days — pricey instant enlightenment schemes (Big Mind™ will cost you $150 a session) and sub par Las Vegas revue nonsense? Here’s my video response:



I count myself lucky that I came across Zen practice at a time when nobody wanted to know. In the early Eighties anything that smacked of "wisdom of the East" was relegated by the masses to the realm of played out hippy bullshit. Now it’s back and bigger than ever. But, as usual, the mainstream ignores real practice in favor of glittering garbage. The current interest in Buddhism is good news for me since I got a book deal out of it and a free subscription to Suicide Girls. But as a minor part of the media’s current fascination with all things mystical and Eastern, I often find myself placed not among fellow practitioners of the Buddhist way but among a crowd of media created spiritual superstars of dubious merit. As such I’ve found it necessary to keep putting out reminders that I really don’t have a clue what most of these whack-jobs are saying. It’s got to be difficult for serious people getting into Buddhism these days to weed the good stuff out from the charlatans in pretty robes. Good luck!

So how can someone recognize real Buddhism from the scams? Before I address that I’ll repeat what I said in that article back in March. The scam artists out there calling themselves Buddhist teachers are the exception, not the rule. Most folks in this business are not out to cheat or brainwash anyone. So in most cases it’s just a matter of finding a teacher whose style suits you. Although I should add that my own current teacher’s style did not suit me at all when I first started seeing him. Yet I saw the truth in what he said and did, so I stayed with him as much as it went against my personal tastes and preferences.

Also, I’ll say that the claim by Genpo’s spokesman that it violates the Buddhist precepts for me to call Genpo on his bullshit doesn’t hold water. Yes there is a Buddhist precept that says not to criticize Buddhist monks and laypeople. But this is being abused by scamsters who think that calling any old nonsense “Buddhism” relieves them of worries that their peers might openly disapprove of it. Sadly there seems to be great reluctance among Buddhists in general to speak out when Buddhism is slandered this way for fear of being accused of breaking the rules.

The scams are so see-through it always amazes me that anyone goes for them at all. But then again people really do send money to anonymous Nigerian bankers who contact them by random e-mails when they think it’ll net them millions of dollars without working for it. The spiritual scams work exactly the same way. They promise something for nothing and guarantee quick results. But spiritual practice is like learning to play a musical instrument. You’re going to suck the first time you pick up a guitar. Even Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix had to go through their suck-y period. It doesn’t work any other way and no technological advance will ever change that.

The Dharma does evolve in the sense that it adapts itself to different cultures and different times. But the essential process does not change because it cannot change. You can’t bend your leg around the back of your head after your very first Yoga class and you can’t get enlightened before lunch time.

When Ken and Genpo claim you can realize your true nature in a couple of hours and then “flash on it” any time you please they’re just conning you so they can pay for better set decorations. It’s a fact that your true nature is present at every moment, that it’s the basis of your very existence. But the conditioning we’ve all laid over top of that is very heavy and cannot be resolved quickly. The language of Buddhism can be corrupted just as easily as anything else. Just because someone uses words like “true nature,” “realization” and “mindfulness” (Ugh! How I hate that word!) means nothing at all when the so-called “true nature” they point to is some dreamy, blissful state to be found in the far off reaches of the cosmic void.

There’s nothing to “flash on” anyway. Enlightenment isn’t some experience you have and then file away with all the other cool shit you’ve done in your life like the memory of a three-way with your sister’s best friend and your analyst. Enlightenment is a full time job. You can’t get through the layers of bullshit you’ve swallowed from society in mere minutes anymore than you can take off the pounds put on by a lifetime of Big Macs and Frosties after a quick jog around the block following which you reward yourself with another Big Mac. This stuff takes work and anyone who tells you it doesn’t is lying.

The good news is that you can get through a million plus years of human conditioning in a decade or so, which is really not so bad when you put it that way. Plus real meditative practice has beneficial effects as soon as you begin. Try some yourself. Here’s Suicide Girl LizaRose showing you how!


Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen column appears monthly on SuicideGirls.com. Click HERE for more posts. Brad is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up!. He maintains a blog about Buddhist stuff and a MySpace page too. 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.

As Brad says in the video, you can order a copy of the new CD by his band Zero Defex (aka 0DFx) from CD Baby. Get yours now!

I'm glad to see that one person has a down to earth perspective of how consumerized we've gotten..lately.....at least this article cuts thru the bullshit.. so we can get where we need to be.. which is where ever you are... and not some neatly packaged product...it is merely discovered.... consistently..

Hahaha. That's the most insistent sock monkey ever...

Man, I am soooo sick of all this instant results crap our society seems to be all wet for these days. Take this pill to loose weight, use this Botox to look pretty, go under the knife to be more beautiful now, use these steroids to be stronger now, get a bigger penis, bigger boobs, more money, more friends, a new house, all right now with NO EFFORT!!!

Yeah, it's gonna come crashing down soon.

Oh wait....

I come away from this column with the same question that I always have when I read your columns, Brad, which is, how is it that you distinguish between the real dharma and the false dharma? I don't mean "you" in the generic sense, I mean "you, Brad", since you claim to know.

You must be familiar with the Northern School/Southern School debate that occurred in Buddhist China, and you are aware that all surviving Zen and Ch'an schools descend from the Northern school of sudden enlightenment, rather than taking the gradualist approach of Southern China, Indian Mahayana, and Tibet. I don't think it's a stretch to say that sudden enlightenment is the ubiquitous refrain of Ch'an and Zen scriptures and writings for the last thousand years. Grabbing a proximate example at random:

"Enlightenment is not a matter of far or near, but if you are confused, mountains and rivers will block your way." - Sekito Kisan

Or you may have heard of "The Platform Sutra"? Hui Neng just picked up the guitar and started to play, and that's kind of the whole point. Right?

You're welcome to disagree with that perspective, but it's hard for me to see where you get the balls to wave that all away, discounting the teachings of every ancestor in the lineage. Maybe dismissing the core of Zen for the last thousand years plays well to an audience that knows nothing about Buddhist doctrine, but for those of us who have more of a context for what you're saying, it's a tough sell. Which gets me back to my question ... why should we believe you?

I do not disagree about Big Mind McDharma ... it's getting harder and harder to take Ken Wilber seriously, and it was never that easy. My point is that when you set yourself up as arbiter of what constitutes the "real dharma", you are no different from any other of the self-appointed custodians of the true dharma throughout history. It's autocratic, arbitrary, hostile, and misguided, and has nothing to do with the Mahayana that I know.

I know I'd be a whole hell of a lot more impressed with the instant enlightenment/success/wealth/harem folk if I saw a few more people running around with wind powers and the ability to generate glowing qi-force weapons and armor.

Ironically, even your own implied definition of enlightenment sounds wrong when I read it, although I suspect you didn't intend it that way.

But this kind of dialog is kind of frustrating. Kenpo Roshi's claims are extraordinary, but your response to them is pretty cavalier. Many claims made by the Buddha are also extraordinary, but here we are practicing Buddhism. So making a mockery of debate doesn't seem like the right answer.

Er, WADO, enlightenment means a lot of things, but the ability to make cool weapons isn't one of them. They say that when the Buddha reached enlightenment, all of the weapons of Mara's army turned to flowers as they reached him. As a Buddha, you do not need weapons, because no-one can appear to you as harmful - as Master Patanjali says in the Yoga Sutras, in the presence of a person who has mastered ahinsa, all violence ceases.

Now that the miracle of effexor + wellbutrin + neurontin is here as the antidepressant of choice, it's becoming easier and easier to hit the "enlightenment" bullseye, as any kind of "awakening" moment gets amped times ten, as if you were always about to catch your first "e" wave. Of course that sort of enlightenment is temporary, but in our American pose of the blase tourist at a street fair, we don't believe it til we see it. The more people who at least get a "taste" the better... they at least get a whiff of the good stuff so maybe they get the courage to make the long trek.

I'm not defending no snake oil salesmen, but in my heart of hearts there's a bit of the huckster, a W.C. Fields meets the shaman-beggar king, so i say, let it be. Who knows how much time we have left? What did the great Lou Reed once say? "Don't settle for walking?"

And that's the thing too--maybe-- for certain punk rock buddhists who've already taken a half-step towards judgment of someone else's trip, the minute you tell someone their "enlightenment" is wrong you presume your own is "right" at which point, it is, alas, right no longer. the drop back towards duality is steep so take no step there but rather see all the scammers as little dime store Buddhas on a merry hustle!

Agreed.

Will the Dharma grant you a sense of humor?

No, but you will get super sweet powers. Like flight, sprouting random lotuses everywhere, growing chakra wheels on your body and turning weapons into flowers.

As much as I agree with the rest of this, I'd take "mindfulness" over "spirituality".


Rather than argue that Big Mind isn't Buddhism, why not grant it it's own little island-cult school? It's biggest (only) visible supporter is someone who claims not to be a Buddhist.

Claiming he can lead you to the goal of enlightenment makes it suspect as Buddhism, but that goal does not even exist in Soto. To non-Soto people it could make some sense that if there's a goal there might be a faster way to get there. These people are pretty annoying to listen to tho.

[I just checked Wilbur's wiki, NICE EDIT.]

I wasn't looking at it literally.

Bruce Lambson the Executive Director at the Big Mind Big Heart / Kanzeon Zen Center said:

Is this for real? That is some anger issues this dude has. I love the hierarchical argument. "Roshi is the authority, how dare someone who is not even a Sensei question him?" It's so sad that this is what passes as the Dharma in America.

I have enjoyed several of Wilbur's books. However, his ego seems to grow and grow each time. C'est la vie!