NEWS: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Why Can't We Accept Good Spiritual Advice Unless It Comes From Superman?

CULTURE: Brad Warner's Hardcore Zen: Why Can't We Accept Good Spiritual Advice Unless It Comes From Superman?

My new book, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate is out now. The nice folks at Borders put an excerpt from the book on-line and you can read it by clicking HERE. I’ll be touring extensively to promote it this year, see below for a link to a list of dates.

I want to talk a little about the book. Not just to promote it (though I won’t deny I’m doing that), but because I wrote it to address a topic I think is really important. And that is, why we can’t seem to accept good spiritual advice unless it comes from Superman. I already ranted in my last column about how Buddhism isn’t spirituality. But here I’m using the word “spiritual” just to refer to that area of life that addresses the deep questions about the nature of things. It’s convenient shorthand. But everything I said last time still stands.

ANYWAY, there’s a long-standing notion that runs through a wide variety of religious traditions that people won’t listen to good spiritual advice unless the source of that advice possesses powers and abilities far beyond those of ordinary men (and women, of course, but I’m quoting the intro to the old Superman TV show, which was very sexist). Thus it is not enough that Jesus said to love your enemies and advised that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. In order for anyone to accept that good stuff, the folks who spread his message thought we also needed to believe that Jesus had magic powers. I mean, why should we bother treating others the way we want to be treated ourselves unless the guy who said we should could change water into wine? D’uh.

This line of thinking runs through all the world’s great and not-so-great spiritual traditions. Buddhists are not any more immune to it than anybody else. There are hordes of stories of Buddha’s miracles and even of his virgin birth. The only real difference with Buddhists is that, by and large, they don’t tend to give a whole lot of importance to whether or not you believe those stories. In fact several major Buddhist lineages discount them entirely. But that doesn’t mean a lot of other Buddhists don’t believe them or even that for plenty of Buddhists those stories aren’t crucial.

The notion that for a spiritual teacher to be believed he or she must appear to be superhuman still carries a lot of weight even today. Of course, nowadays we’re less likely to believe our contemporary spiritual teachers can really do magic tricks -- though lots of people still fall for the sleight of hand of Eastern fakirs and Western faith healers. Sophisticated, worldly urban types tend to expect their miracles to be a bit more subtle than walking on water or turning into fire-spitting whirly-gigs as the Buddha is reported to have done. But we still expect miracles.

Sometimes we like our guys to be Great Ancient Masters reincarnated right in Beverly Hills or possess psychic abilities and beatific vision. And even when we’re not after those sorts of blatant conjuring acts we still look for people who conform to our image of spiritual purity. Those who are spiritually pure shouldn’t be like ordinary people. They need to be perpetually serene and unaffected, liberated from bodily desires and distress. When we find out that they’re people just like the rest of us we’re liable to rebel and turn upon them viciously. The mechanism by which this happens in Zen is well documented in books like Shoes Outside the Door and The Great Failure. Neither Richard Baker, subject of Shoes Outside the Door nor Dainin Katagiri, the subject of The Great Failure, ever claimed to be spiritual Supermen, but that didn’t stop certain of their followers from reacting with anger, distress and even grief when it was revealed they were not.

Of course someone who advocates a meditative practice ought to show signs of that meditative practice having had some good effects on their own lives. That’s perfectly reasonable to expect. What’s not perfectly reasonable to expect is that those good effects should manifest in precisely the manner we imagine they ought to. We can never know what these people would have been like if they hadn’t done their practice. Furthermore it’s not how meditative practice has affected your teacher that’s important. It’s only how meditative practice affects you that matters. And you are the only one who will ever see the full extent of that.

ANYWAY, the reason I wrote Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate was, in part, to try and kill the notion of the spiritual Superman for good and all. The only way I felt I could do that effectively was to character assassinate a specific Eastern spiritual teacher. Since I come from a tradition that believes you don’t find the really important truths by looking outward but by looking inward, it wasn’t good enough for me to do what the authors of the books I mentioned above did and pick out someone else as my target. The teacher whose reputation I was to trash had to be me. Admittedly, I’m not a really good example because so few people actually believe that I am any kind of Great Enlightened Being. Those that do are mostly a couple fries short of a Happy Meal.

Still, since I’ve started becoming more popular I’ve seen people react to me in ways that are a little scary. I’ve only been recognized on the street by random strangers a couple of times. But these days when I walk into a meditation center where they know my work, people’s eyes light up in a freaky way and some even seem to cower when I try to speak to them. To these folks I am no ordinary person. I find that kind of reaction difficult to deal with. Some people are starting to react to me in ways that only make sense if they have begun to project something ethereal upon the image they carry of me in their minds. They expect things of me that they would never expect of each other. And that’s unfair.

I didn’t really want to write this book. It’s hard work exposing your worst side to public scorn and ridicule. This book was physically painful to write. I had at least half dozen other ideas for a third book that would have been a breeze to write and would have been more commercially bankable. But this book screamed at me to get it done until I had no choice but to obey.

There was something very deep that could only be got to by digging around in my own guts. In doing so I discovered that even the tawdriest portions of my life are not all ugliness and horror. In fact, much to my surprise I found very little of that. There’s a kind of beauty to the truth that transcends whether or not you find that truth to be pleasant or objectionable. Plus there’s some jokes in the book too.

I wanted to write a book that told the truth about teachers in Eastern spiritual traditions. Because there are still a lot of illusions out there about those of us in this game. The public has been conditioned by the media to believe that teachers in Eastern traditions aren’t like our garden-variety preachers, priests, imams and rabbis. Yogis, Gurus and Zen Masters, we’re told, have this special something called “Enlightenment” that makes them transcend the world of ordinary humans. You can make very good money exploiting that twaddle. There’s even one so-called “Roshi” (i.e. Zen Master) who sells gullible rich people five days in his godlike presence for $50,000 on the grounds that by being in proximity to him they just might get some of this Enlightenment thing for themselves. It won’t happen, so you might as well give the money to me instead!

But just because no spiritual teacher is Superman doesn’t mean you can’t learn a lot through the practice of meditation. I happen to believe zazen is the only way humanity has to get out of the mess it’s in. If I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t bother shouting about it.

In this media saturated age where every person’s sleeziest action is captured on digital video and put up on YouTube for all to see two hours later, there is nowhere left for spiritual Supermen to hide the pulleys and wires that enable them to do their magic tricks. It has become urgent that we kill the idea of the spiritual Superman and start looking at how we can accept good spiritual advice even from people who burp and fart and -- oh my god! -- fuck just like we do. If we can’t do that there won’t be any way we can accept good spiritual advice from anybody.


Brad Warner is the author of Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up! and his latest Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. 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.

To see where Brad will be speaking next take a look here!

Buy the new CD by his band Zero Defex at CD Baby now!

A lot of really good points here. It does seem that any spiritual or religious entity/movement (or scam) has some kind of ringleader or "Great & Powerful Oz" figure at it's forefront...

We always want someone else to take responsibility for us. We'd like to think that the person we're being taught by is better, smarter or more evolved/enlightened than we are, or else we may not learn anything, or that what we're learning is somehow less valid or less valuable. But an interesting way to look at it is: how cool is it that in the whole Universe, we--as smrt monkeys--can learn the techniques to completely free ourselves from suffering* from someone who is still actively suffering? Slaves setting masters free. Doctors healed by patients. Children raising good parents. Every instance is true. The Dharma is one helluva sound mechanism that way, with lots of built-in fail-safes. The Dharma pervades everything; all of reality. Every square nanometer. The only time we're let down by someone is never do to them; only to our fixed and pre-conceived notions of reality. In that way, it's always our fault when we get shit-stained carpets by someone's feet of clay.

Flawed crystals still make perfect spectral rainbows, because the flaw is not in the crystal, but in the eyes that behold it.

Never hold someone up to a standard you couldn't live up to yourself...

[*="the eightfold path"]

I think Brad put it best when he pointed out that just because someone may be getting results from their practice doesn't mean that they're going to conform to your expectations of what a successful practitioner may be. For my own part, studying Dharma pretty much blew my old life to pieces. It would be difficult for the old me to relate to the new me. And the old me is the me we are inhabiting when we look for a teacher, because (one hopes) the teacher at least knows something we don't, and can show it to us.

religion, for a lot of people, is a search for something beyond physicality. displays of the "supernatural" lend themselves to the idea that there's something to be found, and the the performer of such tricks has found it.

Maybe liberation from spiritual advice entirely is a good thing.

I've never really let this get me down.

I've gotten good "spiritual" advice from the homeless, and from "stupid" people. Gold's where you find it, which is a concept that I would hope/think is in line with zazen.

I was totally into your argument, but then I realized you didn't have any super powers. Sorry.

great article oh wise one...i mean oh wise ass.

thomas jefferson (a not so superman for sure) edited a version of the bible taking it down to the meat and taters of the teachings of Jesus by removing the supernatural aspects from the Gospels, and it seems theres a small but growing movement of Christian folks doing the same now, removing the supernatural elements and its blends in a lot with Zen Buddhist teachings...I am interested on seeing if the book on Jesus you wrote of in your blog comes to fruition, seeing one religious tradition respectfully through the eyes of another is a pretty good method....

i think that worthy "spiritual" advice is always going to be universal...

So what would Superman be like if he practiced zazen?

He'd never get off his super-ass and leave the Zendo of Solitude...

good solid argument that many teachers could take something from, and that is they aren't gods, but drop their drawers like the rest of us to go to the bathroom, it's not always the one that can quote all the sutras and chants who can give the answer, but the one who practices beginners mind and sits, coming back to the breath who may find the answers to where the puzzle pieces fit.

Thanks for the nice comments!

Jean-Baptiste Clamence...

Hi Brad

Just quick note to thank you for a couple things. Your book Hardcore Zen inspired me to start meditating. I've actually finally found a small meditation group in my home city so I can actually do formal training.

Secondly, I've finally gotten some of my own writing accepted by suicidegirls. I'm writing a dating column for shy guys, called Dan Brodribb's Geek Love.

Anyway, hope things are well and I look forward to reading whatever you decide to write about next.