I just spent two weeks in a meditation center up in the mountains. Everywhere you went there were wooden boards that said:

Listen up!
Great is the matter of birth and death
Lost time will not be found again
Do not waste your life!

In Zen temples they have a chant they do just before they clean the place up, part of which goes, “When this day is gone, your life thereby decreases.”

The day I got back from the retreat center I found myself sitting at a swanky-ass restaurant in Beverley Hills, talking to a couple high-powered movie business execs about a film project some folks I freelance for are trying to get off the ground. These guys had that manic, sun-drenched energy you find in Hollywood types. It was hard to tell if they were on coke or if they’re just super high-strung people. They’re young guys. They’re always young guys. You can’t sustain that kind of energy long before you burn out. They’ll char those bright young lights to a deep brown dead crisp making our movie. They’ve got big ambitions. Big, big, BIG.

Young movie-biz dudes have no hope of ever understanding how they’re wasting their lives. Society will provide them with all kinds of rewards for wasting their own time and ours. They’ll have money, power, sex, cars, everything a person can possibly desire. They’ll never even imagine that instead of owning some tawdry little piece of the world, the whole universe from beginning to end could be theirs — that the whole universe already is theirs. As they drive down Santa Monica Boulevard blasting bad hip-hop hits from their shiny, silver Beamer convertibles with their vanity plates they’ll never know that there are guys trudging through the gutters outside their mansions in tattered shoes who own them and everything they imagine they possess.

Right now I'm sitting where I can hear a spiritual master talking spiritual stuff to a lot of spiritual people. He’s bullshitting them. He hasn’t got a clue in the world. But he lulls them to half-sleep with a honey soaked voice and tells them that half-sleep is the Highest Enlightenment. So it goes.

“Boys be ambitious!” said William S. Clark when he left Japan after spending the last few years of the 19th century educating its children in Western ways. Everybody in Japan knows the phrase by heart. Ambition drives Japanese waste and Hollywood waste.

There’s ambition in Zen centers in the mountains too, and in Zen centers in the cities and suburbs. Not so much ambition for money, though that does exist in some; ambition for spiritual accomplishment, ambition for spiritual fame, ambition for the ubiquitous “spiritual merit” practitioners are primed to pile up. You can see it in the eyes of the young studs who’ve been devoting themselves to the rigors of practice intensives in the hopes of rising up the ladder to positions of power within the organization. You can hear it in the mellifluous tones of the wanna-be Zen Masters who pontificate on the finer points of the dharma to those they consider their spiritual inferiors, hoping that one day when they’re dead, gone and buried their names too will be etched in the list the Great Eternal Masters. It rides the wind in envy-drenched whispers when someone passes by in a coveted brown or orange or ochre robe indicating they’ve received the ultimate promotion the bosses of the sect have on offer. Anyone impressed by the color of a glorified bathrobe deserves whatever they get, if you ask me.

And yet retreat centers in the mountains are still better places to practice not wasting your life than swanky-ass restaurants in Beverly Hills. Most of us need some time away from society before we can see how truly fucked over we’ve been. Sure we know that society is shit. But we still cling to the notion that we ourselves are somehow above it, what with our rebel haircuts and tattoos, and all that metal stuck through our bodily extremities. We aren’t like those saps.

Sorry. But you’re not only like those saps, you’re exactly like them. Not a centimeter of separation. Too bad, huh?

You don’t think so? That’s only because you’ve never really taken a look.

When today is gone you’ll be one day closer to death. So what are you doing right now? Turn off your computer and go outside, for God’s sake. There’s nothing in that shiny little box of delights on your lap that’s going to do you any good at all. Not my bullshit, that’s for sure. (Hey, clever kids! Quote that line in your sarcastic comments!)

Brad Warner 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.

UPCOMING APPEARANCES:

April 23rd at Malaprop’s Book Store in Asheville, North Carolina. Probably 7 PM-ish. Call for details.

April 25 - 27 leading a retreat at Southern Dharma Retreat Center in North Carolina.

April 29th at 7 PM, talk at Warren Wilson College’s Buddhist Studies Group.

May 3rd my band 0DFx will play at Pat’s in the Flats in Cleveland with This Moment in Black History and on May 4th, 0DFx will play at the Kent Stage in Kent, Ohio in commemoration of the 38th anniversary of the infamous shootings by the National Guard

Saturday May 10th at 7 PM at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland, Ohio’s Tremont neighborhood.

On May 17th and 18th leading a 2-day retreat at the Milwaukee Zen Center.

I'll be one of the teachers at this year's Great Sky Zen Sesshin August 9-16. Check out their webpage for details.

The annual Dogen Sangha retreat in Shizuoka, Japan will be September 20-23.

I’d like to offer something to help you
But in the Zen school we don't have a single thing.
- Zen Master Ikkyu (1394 – 1481)

Ikkyu is one of my favorite Zen teachers, even though he was part of the Rinzai lineage, the bitter rivals of the Soto lineage in which I studied. After all, Ikkyu is one of the few Zen Masters to write erotic poetry. As the resident Zen columnist for a porn website, this is something I can relate to.

I love this little couplet because it expresses the Zen attitude very precisely. We really would like to help you. But we have nothing to offer. Zen is very much a D.I.Y. philosophy. It’s up to each individual to work out his or her own way. Even so, there are standards and there are training centers. As you’d probably expect, though, each of these centers teaches Zen in its own unique way. I get about 2 or 3 e-mails each week asking me where the writer can go to study Zen, in spite of my having a notice in my F.A.Q. saying I don’t really know. So I figured this month I’d write about the few of the places I do know about and my own subjective impressions of each. But before I go on, I should mention that, whenever someone asked him this question, my main teacher Gudo Nishijima always said, “Everybody should study Zen only with me!”

KENT ZENDO
Kent, Ohio
This is where I first trained in Zen a bazillion years ago. Tim McCarthy, the resident teacher, has been one of my best friends for over 25 years. These days Tim usually teaches at Kent State University rather than at the zendo itself, so it’s best to check the website for the location and schedule. Be sure to stay for the “green stuff” (Indian food) after the sittings.

SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER
San Francisco, California
This is the largest and most well-established Zen Center in the United States, founded in the early Sixties by Shunryu Suzuki, author of Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind. The upside of this is that it is a very stable organization. They have a large and thoroughly trained staff of Zen teachers, regular practice periods, retreat centers, big bells and statues, and you can even get a delicious monk-cooked meal for a small donation on Friday nights. The downside is that the bigness of the organization can make a person feel a bit lost. Even so, I would never hesitate to recommend SFZC or any of its affiliate temples or retreat centers to anyone seeking to experience authentic Zen practice and training in the USA. The Berkeley Zen Center is in the same lineage and is also very nice but a lot smaller and more intimate.

TASSAJARA
Carmel Valley, California
Though Tassajara is one of SFZC’s retreat centers I’m giving it its own paragraph because it’s such a unique place. Located deep in the mountains of Northern California, inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t really want to be there, Tassajara is truly a retreat center. You can go there as a full-blown Zen student and live life pretty much as Dogen’s monks did 800 years ago, or as a work practice student in which you work and follow a light Zen practice schedule in exchange for room and board, or even just hang out in the hot springs as a paying guest with the option of doing some Zazen or not. I’ll be spending two weeks up there in early April and another two weeks in July as a work practice student, not to teach or anything, but just cuz I like the place a whole lot.

MILWAUKEE ZEN CENTER
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
If I were just thirty years older I’d probably ask Rev. Tonen O’Connor, who runs this place, to marry me. As it is she is one of my best and most valued friends in the Zen business. Her Zen center is located in a gigantic old house near the shores of Lake Michigan and offers all any cheese-head could ask for in terms of Zen training. I’ve only been there once and it’s still one of my favorite places in the world.

CEDAR RAPIDS ZEN CENTER
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
I’ve never actually been here. But their resident teacher Rev. Zuiko Redding is one of the most truly awesome people in Zen. She gave me the belt I wear on my robes today, she made it herself in fact. I was so touched I almost cried. I helped her chase wasps out of her room at the Great Sky Sesshin (see below) last year.

GREAT SKY SESSHIN
Hokyoji Monastery, Southern Minnesota
This one isn’t a full-time Zen center, but an annual retreat open to anyone who wants to sign up, though the space is limited. Tonen from Milwaukee Zen Center runs this and Zuiko from Cedar Rapids is one of the regular teachers. It’s seven days of late Summer Zazen (Aug. 9-16) from 5 AM to 9 PM in the wilds of Minnesota. There are six, count ‘em 6, teachers so you get a wide range of practice styles. They were even nutty enough to invite me to teach there last year and I’ll be there again this year. Go to Great Sky this year instead of Burning Man if you’d rather experience some real practice instead of just pretending to be all spiritual until the ‘shrooms wear off. (You know I just said that to piss you off, so why are you in such a hurry to post that nasty comment?)

CLOUDS IN WATER ZEN CENTER
St. Paul, Minnesota
This is one of several Zen centers in the Twin Cities area founded by Dainin Katagiri Roshi, author of Returning To Silence and Each Moment Is The Universe, and one of Shunryu Suzuki’s assistants at SFZC back in the day. Although it’s located in a disused warehouse in St. Paul, once you step inside it feels like a real Zen temple. I got invited here a couple years back when they were looking for a new “guiding teacher” after having given their former leader the boot. It was a really nice place.

STILL POINT ZEN BUDDHIST ABBEY
Detroit, Michigan
This is the most punk rock Zen center I’ve ever visited. It’s located in an area of Detroit once so seedy they had to repair bullet holes in the walls when they moved in. The neighborhood has improved since then, but it’s still a little sketchy. Even so, I love this place. They’re part of the Korean Zen tradition, so in addition to zazen practice these guys do a massive 108 full prostrations every single morning. These are optional to newcomers. But if you choose to join in, you’ll get a cardio work-out along with your zazen. Ask Koho Vince Anila, who runs the joint, about Johnny Sokko’s Flying Robot and you’ll have a friend for life. They also have an affiliated center in Ann Arbor, home of Iggy and the MC5!

SITTING FROG ZEN SANGHA
Phoenix, Arizona
I’ve never been here either, but Rev. Dogo Barry Graham, its founder, has been a penpal (e-mail pal?) for several years and we hung out when I visited the Arizona Zen Buddhist Society a while back. Barry maintains a very cool blog too. He tells really good dirty jokes.

ATLANTA SOTO ZEN CENTER
Atlanta, Georgia
This place is soooo cute you could just die! They’re located in a down-on-its-luck industrial park on the edge of Atlanta where you’d never imagine a Zen center could possibly exist. But it’s there! They offer regular sittings as well as monk training in the tradition of Soyu Matsuoka Roshi, one of the lesser-known pioneers of Soto style Zen Buddhism in America. When I visited, Taiun Michael Elliston, who runs the place, also took me out to Soul Vegetarian, to eat the best vegetarian soul food in the world, so the center gets extra points for that!

NASHVILLE ZEN CENTER
Nashville, Tennessee
When I led a retreat at their retreat center way out in the backwoods of Tennessee I was sure somebody was gonna take a shot a the "feller in the dress" (me in robes) or at least try and make me squeal like a pig. But I made it through just fine. In reality they're lovely and sincere people and the countryside around Nashville only looks like the woods in Deliverance. I'm just full of big city Northern prejudice and so are you if you think real Zen practice can't be found pretty much everywhere if you just look for it.

Also last, but not least, if you’re in Southern California you can come sit with me just about every Saturday morning at the Hill Street Center. All the links are contained in the little italicized statement below.

Brad Warner 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.

Humans have sex. Lots of it.

We give it many names; intercourse, coitus, "making love," fucking, boinking, and so on. According to the Kinsey Institute, 54% of men think about doin' the nasty everyday or several times a day, while only 19% of women give nookie the same amount of thought.

But why do we make whoopee? University of Texas researchers spent five years on a study to answer that very question, and discovered over 200 reasons for the No-Pants Dance.

Some others on the bottom of the list include "I wanted to punish myself," "I wanted to get a job," and, I shit you not, "I wanted to feel closer to God."

Speaking of conservative Christians, "I wanted to have a child" also ranked poorly.. Because they don't have sex. Jesus rides a stork and drops the baby in the cabbage patch. That's how it goes, right?

The top ten reasons for sex (men and women) are as follows:

Now all we need is a study titled "Why They Don't Call the Next Morning."

"Why Humans Have Sex"

thefreak wonders why "Couldn't Pay for the Pizza" didn't make the list.

Case of the Mondays, indeed. According to a new survey, American workers are more miserable at their jobs now than they have been at any time during the past 20 years.

Less than half of American workers now report themselves happy at work, “with little to suggest a significant reversal in attitudes anytime soon,” according to a study by The Conference Board.

Younger workers are especially grumbly; 61 percent of them are basically just dragging themselves to the office, according to the survey (which, admittedly, didn’t put it in quite those words).

Unsurprisingly, residents of the Mid-Atlantic states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania are the most pissed off at work, though the survey doesn’t comment about whether this is because their jobs are worse or just because they’re more aggro in general.

According to the press release,

That sounds pretty high-minded. Sometimes I think I’d settle for (1) decent coffee in the break room; (2) a seat near a window; (3) a volume knob for the compulsive belly-laugher in the next room. But I guess emotional and intellectual attachment would be nice, too.

I have always argued that drinking alcohol makes you more awesome, cooler, more fun, a better person, etc. What I didn't know is that hitting the bottle is a good way to pad your wallet. Or so says a study by the Reason Foundation, a libertarian leaning think tank of people who have apparently never gone bar-hopping in LA and paid $8 for an MGD.

But seriously, they had some scientific findings and stuff.

Sounds good so far, but that's not all. This study also contained some pretty awesome policy recommendations as well.

Now, I don't really know what "social capital" is. And I don't care. Anything that helps enable my alcoholism and drunken college keg parties is just fine by me. Of course, the educational establishment is always there to harsh my mellow.

Psh. Fuck Harvard. Let's hit the sauce.

A new study has found that women with breast implants are 73 percent more likely to commit suicide than other women.

The data was meant to track correlations between implants and increased risk of cancer. The good news: Implants aren’t linked to a higher cancer rate. The bad news: Women with breast implants aren't happy campers compared to other women.

It's not just implants, though. Face lifts, tummy tucks, butt lifts... other forms of plastic surgery are also linked to elevated suicide rates among women.

The study followed approximately 40,000 women who had plastic surgery over a 15-year period.


Does she look happy?