OK. Before we start I gotta plug my speaking gig on May 17th (Thursday) out in West Hollywood at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore first. I’ll be there at 7:30 PM talkin’ and signin’ my new book. So be there or be square!

And I’ll be on the Suicide Girls Radio Show a couple days later on May 20th. So listen up, motherhumpers!

*****

So I'm in Tokyo now basically having big arguments with the people I work for (What? You thought writinng for Suicide Girls and talking about Zen paid the bills?). OK. I'm over-dramatizing a bit. But yesterday I had this huge, long, painful meeting with my two bosses that consisted mainly of me saying stuff they didn't understand and them responding by saying stuff I didn't understand back. Language and cultural barriers are a huge factor, of course. Japanese is not my first language and, though one of my bosses speaks pretty good English, it's not his first language either. I lived in Japan for 11 years and understand the culture probably about as well as any foreigner can. But it is an enormously different culture. The Japanese style of business and the US style are basically incompatible. Trying to find ways to compromise is the biggest part of my work.

ANYWAY I was looking over the notes I took at the meeting and one of them was "explain why stuff is good." This was evidently the most intelligable translation I could make of what they were saying to me. Even now, not 24 hours later, I'm not entirely certain what they were saying that caused me to write that. But I do know the basic thrust was that they did not understand why the things that were entirely 100% obvious to me were good things to do were actually good things to do.

ANYWAY, I'm also staying at my Zen teacher's eensy-weensy government subsidized apartment. So after having this Hell meeting I came back totally drained and spilled my guts to him all about it.

Now you'd think a old Zen Master would tell me to leave the struggles of the secular world and follow the Buddhist path, wandering around like David Carradine in Kung Fu dispensing cosmic wisdom and kicking ass when necessary. But Nishijima Sensei isn't that kind of guy. He basically told me to keep on struggling with my company. "Try making your own job," he said. "And if it is successful, that is good. If it is not, you can resign."

A lot of people imagine it'd be wonderful to escape from their every day lives and run off to some kind of spiritual world where everything is okey-dokey all day long. This is how cults work, by promising a life free from trouble in exchange for believing stupid stuff and blindly obeying. But the truth is that there's no cult, no church, no monastery in the world is any less succeptible to politics and basic human bull crap than any company or any other organization. The dreams we all have of there being some ideal place we could escape from all such troubles are all just empty fantasies. Sad, but true. I dreamed this dream myself for a very long time and still find myself lapsing into it. But it ain't gonna happen. Not to me. Not to you. Not to anyone anywhere in the world at any time or in any place.

In Los Angeles, where I live right now (until it all burns up anyway), people are always hopping from job to job trying to find something better. The culture in SoCal seems to say that as soon as things get rough you run away. And, of course, there are times when you have to split an uncool scene (groovy hippy talk, man) — battering husbands, Bobbiting wives and that sort of thing are good examples. In fact, I tend to suspect my own current situation just may be one of those too. But if you do split — he says to himself as much as anyone else reading this — just watch you don't do so with the expectation that everything's gonna get solved for good and all.

Our day to day real human struggles are important. I hate 'em just as much as anyone else. Maybe more so right now since I gotta spend the rest of this week trying to explain why stuff is good to people who don't seem to be very interested in understanding. But it's what I gotta do. And even if I run away from this particular struggle now, it's gonna come back and bite me in the ass in another form later on. I wish it wasn't this way as much as you do. But facts is facts. Watch your own life closely and you'll see this is always the case. Don't get me wrong. You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not running away.

The brilliant thing is that doing what you do is how you realize your life and realize the universe. Your struggles are your self. Weird, but true.

ANYWAY, right now I have no idea how this is gonna play out. But for now I've decided to follow Nishijima Sensei's advice and fight the good fight without worrying too much about whether I'll win or lose.

I'll let you know next week how it went.

*******

HERE'S SOME MORE INFO ABOUT PLACES I'LL BE SPEAKING:

I'll be in the June issue of LA YOGA magazine.

An excerpt from my new book SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP! will appear in WHOLE LIFE TIMES magazine in June as well. WHOLE LIFE TIMES is an LA based mag. But they're also affiliated with CONSCIOUS CHOICE magazine in Chicago and Seattle, and with COMMON GROUND magazine in San Francisco. So I think the excerpt will appear in those magazines as well.

On May 23rd I'll be a guest on a radio show called THE GOOD LIFE with host JESSE DYLAN at 10:15 Pacific Time/1:15 Eastern. That's on Sirius Sattelite Radio.

On Saturday June 2nd, 2007 at 7 PM I'll be in Phoenix at the ARIZONA ZEN BUDDHIST SOCIETY.

AND I'll be all over the San Francisco Bay Area the following week. Here's what's lined up so far:

Tuesday June 12th at the VIRGIN MEGASTORE in San Francisco
Thursday June 14th, 7PM at GATEWAYS in Santa Cruz
Friday June 15th After Dinner Talk at the SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER
Saturday June 16th 7 PM at COPPERFIELD'S BOOKS 140 Kentucky St., Petaluma, CA 94952
Sunday June 17th 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. This will be followed by a second 7 inch of an earlier demo tape and later on by a double CD set with a million bonus trax. 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.