kalischild

Baroque

adj.:

1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a style in art and architecture developed in Europe from the early 17th to mid-18th century, emphasizing dramatic, often strained effect and typified by bold, curving forms, elaborate ornamentation, and overall balance of disparate parts.
2. Extravagant, complex, or bizarre, especially in ornamentation.

"The Baroque was a style in art that used exaggerated motion and abundant detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur from sculpture, painting, literature, and music."

Zen

n.

1.A school of Mahayana Buddhism that asserts that enlightenment can be attained through meditation, self-contemplation, and intuition rather than through faith and devotion. Also called Zen Buddhism.

-o-

Baroque Zen rocks. And it will get you laid. And your sexual performance will be legend.

Baroque Zen is a variation of the counterintuitive concept of 'crazy wisdom'; a philosophy in which the stark simplicity of Zen Buddhism is turned on it's head in order to adapt an exclusively Eastern concept to the more ego-driven Western mindset.

Its often questioned whether its truly possible for a person raised from birth within the cultural framework of Western philosophy to truly adapt to the uniquely Eastern philosophy of Buddhism. In our ego-dominated culture, most Westerners will consciously or unconsciously resist the 'emptiness' which lies at the heart of Zen Buddhism. The sensation of emptiness to which Zen Buddhism aspires can actually lead to depression in Westerners not completely prepared for the ego-death inherent in the process.

And who's to say the death of the ego is a good thing?



Baroque Zen is based on the belief that Westerners actually require a certain level of complication in order to achieve complete unselfconsciousness. We exist in a culture where insecurity is the main driving force; in order to attain complete serenity, we need a certain level of self-satisfaction in order to not feel the gnawing teeth of the you suck monster. This achievement of unselfconsciousness is the cultural equivalent of Zen Buddhism's emphasis on austerity and minimalism as a means to achieve emptiness. The basic assertion is that for an American to actually be completely at peace, they have to have an ego, and that their ego must be a happy, well-satisfied one.

To achieve nirvana and enlightenment as an American, you absolutely have to be able to look in the mirror and think only:

Damn Im good.

Buddha could never tell you this because, as you can see, the Buddha did not have good hair.

Buddha wants you to give up. He hates you because by default, you have better hair.

The main stumbling block in the quest to find serenity in America is based on one of Capitalism's integral neuroses; inevitably "desire" become synonymous with those things that we do not have; this becomes the yardstick by which we measure our self-worth:

We say that we want an i-pod, an i-book, and an i-mac;

We want closets bigger than our whole house, full of Armani, machineguns, and mink;

And me?

I want to lick lemony garlic aioli off of Christina Aguilera's ass chakra;

I want a gun that kills people for fifteen minutes, and a big red button next to my bed, that teleports mentally challenged hardbodies back to their own bedroom as soon as Im done defiling them.

And most of all, more than anything, I want the supernatural ability to disintegrate Department of Motor Vehicles employees at will, using only the awesome power of my mind.

But therein lies the problem.

The things we are trained to want are things we dont have, and will not have tomorrow.

It's the constant frustration of our desires that cripples us, and turns us into broken, gray things; exhausted, depressed zombies shuffling from Starbucks to work, to McDonalds to television, to lovers we live with and barely know, and then to sleep. If anything really prevents us from achieving happiness it's that we want has nothing to do with what we need, or even enjoy. Even worse, those few things we do manage to accumulate dont actually enhance who we are. Your five thousand dollar mountain bike doesnt make you a better conversationalist; Your Mac makeup doesnt make you a better lover.
Things have nothing to do with who you are, or how happy you can be.

Your experience, however, defines you completely.

Experience always trumps consumer goods when it comes to fun times.

I mean, if I'm wrapped up in a cuddle puddle of half a dozen E-tarded, bisexual raver bunnies, and Steve Jobs walked into my love den and offered me all the free i-pods on the internet, I'd knock him right back out of the room.

With my penis.

But that isnt to say that we should not want. Want is synonymous with Desire, and Desire is the all powerful god that led forty thousand years worth of our ancestors to fight, kill, and live to eat chocolate while other, less feisty ones, fell into the primordial ooze.

You know the ape with the thighbone in 2001? That guy was our great grandpa to the hundredth power, and you know that old man was down with Baroque Zen. He was partying like it was 1999 thirty-nine thousand, eight hundred and one fucking years ago.

And the monkey that got beat on like a drum?

Well, Im sure that the Buddhist concept of karma was comforting to him as he watched our uber-grandpa do the touchdown shuffle in his viscera.

Desire is integral we need to do more, live more, and hate ourselves less for not having an i-pod, or a Treo 650. We shouldnt be consumed with desire for material possessions, but neither should we attempt to consume our desire for the sake of enlightenment. If some chubby foreigner wearing nothing but an orange toga and a big smile wants to sell me on the theory that the path to enlightenment is based on not wanting what I want, then I feel obligated to express the opinion that the Bodhittsava should go sip green tea with Chairman Mao.

Commies are lame, even if they wear neon togas, and speak only in poetic and misleading metaphors.

Baroque Zen is (at its core) the act and the art of creating a moveable feast. It is based on the solipsistic principle that reality is entirely defined by our perception of it; therefore, true happiness can best be achieved, not by destruction of the ego in the Eastern fashion, but by the reconstruction of reality according to our desires. A manifest destiny of the psyche; Just write I get it if I want it on a blackboard ten thousand times. If Ontology and Solipsism are in any way valid philosophies, then it is perfectly reasonable to assert that "reality" can be reconstructed just as easily as the ego can be deconstructed; they are in fact, the exact same process, just turned on it's head. Suddenly, the Zen Buddhist ideal of wearing a bed sheet, having no ego, and spending all your time sitting in a rice-paper house staring at a rock just doesn't compare to the slightly more Baroque serenity gained by riding motorcycles really fast, standing on top of very tall objects and looking down, or just spending a quiet evening doing rails of powdered toad-skin bufotoxin off of the thighs of your spanking-new Russian mail-order brides.

You are an American; you have been force-fed stimulus since you first took a breath. Cutting that off cold-turkey and surviving more than a week is as unrealistic as quitting smoking, drinking, smack and fucking, and doing it on the Friday night of a four-day weekend; and believe me, Ive tried. As a spoon-fed stimulus junkie, you must constantly be shifting from one perfect moment to the next in order to maintain your feeling of serenity, the perfection of each moment must determined solely by how totally cool you managed to be . Youve got to first accept that there is a guy named Ray who works in a Wal-Mart in Topeka, Kansas and you simply must distance yourself from his plane of hideous banality. Baroque Zen begins in the morning with breakfast in bed, and it ends in the same place, but by the time you get back to bed, youve done a dozen remarkable things, and youre bringing home identical twins. This kind of Zen involves hopping effortlessly, and without thought from sheer elegance to wanton debauchery. It is nothing as shallow as the mere satisfaction of your base, animalistic desires, it's entirely determined by how stylishly you satisfy them.

Your desires, not the twins.

Well okay, the twins, too.

Just ask Nikki Sixx; N-to-the-sixth is the Baroque Zen master. Hed do the twins and then watch Sesame Street while drinking a fifth of Jack. Dont ask how I know this, just accept that I know the right people.



You can manifest any reality you want outside yourself, in the same way that Zen Buddhists insist you can manifest nothingness inside yourself.

And before you start thinking this is meant as satire, or just an ugly and sick episode of Buddha-bashing, let me assure you; I'm dead serious.

And I think you should try it.

I think you should try it today.

I think you should start right now.

And this is what you need to do:

1. Stop bitching. Immediately. All you're doing is doubling up on the negativity in your life. No one wants to hear it, and its boring. I bet Ray bitches a lot about his job as assistant manager of the sporting good department. Ask yourself how what you do is any different.

2. Smile a lot. At everyone.

3. Open doors for strangers. Say please, and thank you. Be more patient than you should.

4. Drive it like you stole it. Fuck it like its going out of style.

5. Make a list of ten things you can do that make you feel good. They cannot involve buying anything unless it involves food, alcohol, flowers, sex toys, or bath products. This list is your homework assignment. Your homework assignment must be completed by four A.M. tomorrow morning. Make sure that at least one item on your list involves going somewhere beautiful. Make sure one of them involves doing something beautiful. The price of failure is another wasted day.

6. Give someone head, and a single red rose. Kiss them on the cheek and leave.

7. Never treat anyone working customer service rudely. They're already fucked, why would you want to make it worse?

8. Talk to a homeless person, but don't give them any money, or food. Anyone who doesnt work has a lot of time to think. They often have a great deal of wisdom. Conversely, with all that time to think, they might think about working at Wal-Mart.

9. Get no more than an hour of sleep per night, for a week. Go to work anyway.

10. Flirt with everyone.

11. Make sure everything goes up to eleven.

Baroque Zen is based on the premise that in order to achieve inner peace, the last thing we should do is attempt to destroy desire. As Westerners, we must avoid austerity, tranquility, and peace at all costs. We simply arent suited for it. We are trained to be warlike, demanding, privileged. So use your privilege to experience a higher level of passion and intensity; demand more; wage war on the mundane. Use your God-given American super-powers for good, not evil. If God had wanted you to hear the sound of one hand clapping, Shed slap you upside the head. If God wanted you to be calm and tranquil, youd have been born in the Shou-Lin temple. You are a member of the most absurd, privileged culture the world has ever seen; so dont waste it. Do everything to the extreme, raise the bar. Raise expectations. Failure is the sole province of the Rays of the world, those who do not try.

Baroque Zen, like its Asian counterpart, is based on the 'now'; but in twentieth-century America, if you sit still for long enough to listen to a stone grow, you'll already have been mugged, left for dead, and probably arrested for loitering as you lay there bleeding to death amongst the pigeons. Sitting still is death, and the destruction of your ego is a passive form of suicide, an internal Jonestown. Burn with the fierceness of the knowledge that you are the only you that there will ever be, and make of yourself an entity that strangers will fantasize about when they masturbate. Be elegant and profane. In short, be glorious, and make the world around you the frame for the work of art you wish to become.

Refuse normalcy, fast food, and mortgage payments.

When the clock strikes five today, declare war on the threat of another wasted day.

Zen Buddhism believes that if you act without thought or expectation, your arrow will strike the target.

Baroque Zen believes that if you act with passion and desire, you'll get laid a lot, make the world a better place, and have excitement, adventure, and really wild things.

If you see Buddha by the side of the road, hit the gas.

Buddhas enlightened, he wont care.