Lately I’ve been coming under fire for my supposed controversial views from a certain Buddhist Master guy who up till now liked to present himself as my pal. He’s making a whole lot of fuss and bother over my supposed transgressions recently. And that’s fine. Whatever people want to make a fuss and bother about is all right by me, so long as they don’t hurt anybody. Oh, wait. He did try to hurt somebody — me — by sending some kind of photographic evidence of my unworthiness to my teacher. I don’t know what pics he sent, but I’m betting dollars to donuts one of them was this photo of me at the launch party for the Suicide Girls print magazine.



Which would have been a bad choice because I showed that photo to the old man myself a good while back. He laughed at it and I got the impression he thought the girls were cute. It’s a joke this is controversial anyway because all I did was get Helen to gather up some of the girls and snap a picture. Otherwise I mostly stood around at the party drinking orange juice and talking to Chris Gore.

ANYWAY, among my supposedly controversial views is one that I find very interesting because, to me, it seems pretty uncontroversial. It’s this. I think things are getting better. I think life is slowly improving on Planet Earth. I never thought this was a particularly troubling outlook. But when I put it in my first book I had to fight hard to keep it from being cut out. My editor seemed afraid it would set off a firestorm. Since then I’ve noticed that whenever I say it, a lot of people find it very hard to deal with.

While working on my movie Cleveland’s Screaming (which will have its world premier Wednesday July 25, 2007 at 7:30 PM at the Egyptian Theater at 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, CA 90028 — how’s that for a stealthy plug?) I had the chance to reconnect with a lot of people from the old hardcore punk scene I’d been a part of in Ohio in the early 1980’s. Back then we’d been committed to changing the world. But the consensus among the people I spoke to seemed to be that we failed, that things were now even worse than they’d been before. I let them say their piece, like a good documentary maker should. But I strongly disagree. I think the punk movement was a tremendous success. In fact, I think we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams and it’s strange to me how few of the people who were in the thing way back when it was getting started can see how much difference we made.

But when I look at the world today I can’t see it any other way. Yes, I am well aware that we have some very big problems facing us that demand our immediate attention, problems which could potentially kill us all. I also tend to agree that the voting public in this country managed to do what I would have thought was impossible and elect a president even dumber and less qualified to lead than even Bonzo Reagan — though I don’t hate Bush at all or repudiate his policies to nearly the extent most people I know do. This alone is a very dangerous opinion to hold in Los Angeles.

But look at it this way. Maybe Bush and his cronies might blow up Iraq or get other folks so riled up they might blow up Los Angeles. And that would be bad. And the war in Iraq is not a nice thing. But in the Eighties Reagan and Brezhnev very nearly succeeded in blowing up the whole God damned world. The fact that we managed to avoid that is a truly amazing thing. And I’d like to think the punk and hardcore movements played a small, but significant role in raising people’s consciousness of the real danger we were facing. I don’t know how many people actually heard 0DFx playing “Drop the A-Bomb on Me!” Maybe a couple hundred, maybe a few thousand when the record came out. But its very obscurity helped make the message even more potent. It wasn’t just some big rock star saying this stuff. Even a bunch of struggling nobodies like us in Akron, Ohio could see where this was heading. And we weren’t the only ones. Struggling nobodies all over the nation and all over the world were saying the very same thing all in their own ways. That groundswell of awareness made a huge difference.

There are other little things that make me think we succeeded. In the movie Mike Duncan, who we always called Mike Mohawk because of his gigantic rainbow colored Mohawk, talks about how people used to drive by and throw shit at him when he walked down the streets of Akron in 1982 with that big ol’ Mohawk standing up like a sail in the wind. He tells the story of going in and applying for unemployment and how big of a joke it was that he kept getting rejected everywhere he interviewed. They’re funny stories. But even as he was telling them there was a sense that younger members of the audience might not really understand what he was saying. I remember about ten years ago when I started seeing retail clerks with Mohawks, multiple piercings and tattoos. I was stunned. These days Mike’s Mohawk might make it hard for him to work at a Fortune 500 investment firm. But the mere fact that he had one wouldn’t have been the absolute bar to employment of any kind it was then. People can accept such things now. That’s an improvement.

In high school, for reasons I’ve yet to fathom, a whole bunch of guys decided I was gay. I wasn’t. I don’t have any problem with anyone who is. But I don’t happen to be. In any case, these guys were constantly harassing me. If I hadn’t been fast on my feet I’m certain I would have been the victim of gay bashing without even having at least been gay. Nowadays I’m told gay couples hold hands in the halls of Wadsworth High and no one even notices. Amazing.

Look. Things aren’t gonna change overnight. But you wouldn’t want them to. When change — even positive change — comes about too fast people react very badly to it. This is why you can’t just walk into some dictatorship, topple the government and say, “OK everybody, you’re a democracy now” and expect it to work right away. Western democracies didn’t just spring into being all at once. Look what the French had to go through to establish theirs and look what we had to go through to establish ours. People generally resist change even if it’s clearly good for them just because we like routine, we like knowing what’s coming up next even if what’s coming up next is bullshit. This same thing can be applied to meditation practice. It’s a very good thing you can’t get Enlightened in an hour or a day. You wouldn’t want to. It’d be too much of a shock to the system.

Still, it’s vitally important to keep moving towards a better world. When change needs to happen it has to be instigated by real people taking real action. This means that even seemingly powerless individuals like a bunch of disaffected suburban kids somewhere in Ohio can make a difference. No matter where you are, you can make it happen. It’s your duty to make it happen.

But just because the big changes you envisioned don’t happen all at once that’s no reason to say you made no difference. As Ian MacKaye of Minor Threat said, “You tell me I make no difference, at least I’m fucking trying. What the fuck have you done?” Again, same deal with meditation. You don’t need to get to Nirvana on your very first retreat. Just keep at it and the change happens over time.

I hope my former Buddhist Master pal gets over his problems, or at least sits a while with them to see if they really matter or not. I think things might improve with time there too.



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.

On Wednesday July 18 at 7PM, he'll be at Still Point Center 4347 Trumbull Ave. (South of Warren Ave. on the corner of Canfield and Trumbull) Detroit, MI 48208 Phone: 313-831-1005

The following Wednesday July 25th, 2007, his movie CLEVELAND'S SCREAMING! will have its world premier at the EGYPTIAN THEATER in Hollywood. So mark your calendars! Get your tickets here

Plus, the very first record by his old hardcore band 0DFx (Zero Defex) has just been released by Get Revenge Records