HARDCORE ZEN

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

2009-11-26T08:12:00.001-08:00

OK. My sister and her kids are due here any minute. So this will very likely be my last post for a while.

So far, so good on the first 20 hrs. or so of having the comments section back. I was intrigued by one of the first ones to appear. An anonymous commenter said:

Brad, good to see you Back.

Still seems like you carry a lot of grudges and revenge about a lot of stuff for someone who is supposed to have been practicing Zen.

I guess you don't seem like someone to respect or look up to. Isn't that kind of the least you would want in any kind of Buddhist teacher?

It's an interesting question. I'm not sure if I "carry a lot of grudges and revenge." I honestly don't think I have any at all. If I seem to it's probably because I'm still poor at communicating what I really think and feel.

But that's not the point I'm interested in. It's the idea that I don't seem like someone to respect or look up to, and of this being what one would want from a Buddhist teacher.

I don't think so.

I mean, I suppose I do respect Tim and Nishijima Roshi. But I can't say I ever looked up to them. At least not in the usual sense. I didn't consider them as role models. Not exactly.

I could see that they had found a way to negotiate this life for themselves that was uniquely their own. They had a rare sort of balance that was often demonstrated in ways that surprised me. I remember seeing Nishijima Roshi get boiling mad at someone who lived in his dojo, and yet he did it in a completely balanced way.

But remember I knew these men personally. I sat with them. I ate lunch with them. I watched bad TV shows with them (well, at least with Tim). They were not known to me as a series of sentences typed on a computer screen or videos on YouTube.

You don't get me in my role as a Buddhist teacher here on this blog or in my books. You get me writing about that role. And that's a whole different thing.

Be that as it may, this question seems to relate to the old saw: "How can I recognize a real teacher?" I've been trying to find a way to answer this one forever. I'm not even trying to claim I am the embodiment of a "real teacher." I can't recognize myself as that. I have no idea if I am or not. I never will. Because it's impossible for anyone to make that judgment about themselves.

But I can say with absolute certainty that my teachers were the real deal. And I seem to have recognized that. But how? It was a feeling more than any line of intellectual reasoning that could be explained. I'll keep working on this and maybe I'll be able to say one of these days.

****

I had a funny dream last night. In it, it seemed that my unconscious mind was trying to explain to my conscious mind how it saw Zen practice. Weird, huh? Anyway, the one thing I recall my unconscious mind saying was, "Sometimes the brain just has to dry out a little." Meaning, I guess, that thoughts were like a contamination in the brain and that doing zazen allowed them to sort of "dry up" and cease to be a problem.

Gotta go now!

SCREEN TIME, MY MAD CHAMBER OF HORRORS and OTHER DELIGHTS

2009-11-25T19:49:00.000-08:00

OK. I've turned commenting back on. For now...

I've been enjoying Gniz's recent lambasting of Genpo Roshi and Big Mind® over on the Reblogging Brad Warner blog. It's good to see this stuff getting a public airing. But I've never felt the need to dig as deeply as Gniz has. The fact that Big Mind® is bullshit is overwhelmingly evident just by watching videos of it.

In any case, the fact that Gniz has chosen to write these pieces means that his blog is no longer really functioning as a place to comment on this one. So I suppose I'd better reinstate the comments section.

Those of you who assume I have done this because I saw a decrease in traffic to this site when I removed the comments are assuming I am a whole lot more together on stuff like that than I really am. The truth is I have no clue how many people look at this thing even though I have a subscription to a service that's supposed to tell me.

I'm going to try to look at the comments and even chime in on occasion. But I make no promises. The fact is, the Internet bores me to tears. I can't stand being on-line any longer than I absolutely have to. And because of my work I absolutely have to be on-line way longer every day than I can stand without adding any more "screen time" to my life.

I should explain "screen time." I stayed in Victoria, BC last week with a guy named Sei-in. Sei-in has three kids. The kids are given a specific allotment of what Sei-in calls "screen time" each week. They can spend this time watching TV or being on the Internet or playing video games or doing other things that involve looking at screens. I think he gives them about 5-6 hours per week (that's per week, kids, not per day). He says their behavior (or behaviour since they're Canadian) has improved markedly since he introduced this system. Time spent in front of screens seems to make the kids jumpier, more nervous, more angry, more prone to get in fights, etc. than time spent with friends or books or in doing real activities rather than virtual ones.

This is a lesson we should all pay attention to.

And it's another reason I don't believe in on-line sanghas.

So... while I will be monitoring the comments more than before, don't expect a whole lot. Even Gniz's site contained anonymous commenters making oblique references to my "mad chamber of horrors" where I perform "experiments labeled as Zen." What this chamber is and what those experiments are is anybody's guess. But what's not a matter of guessing is that weenies like whoever left that comment will have their say in the new comments section.

But so will intelligent people. And I hope those people will feel free to ignore the weirdos or knock them down when they pop up. I myself probably won't bother with that stuff except perhaps to make fun of it as I'm doing now.

ANYWAY, I'm celebrating Thanksgiving with my family in the suburbs of Dallas this week. Next week I'm off to St. Paul and Minneapolis for more speaking gigs. Details are at this link.

The regular zazen at Hill Street Center in Santa Monica is on this coming Saturday even though I will not be there. So go sit if you wanna sit.

Now leave your comments! But be sure not to exceed your allotted "screen time!" I know I will not exceed mine.

My Home Town and Bullshit Sexism in Buddhism

2009-11-19T11:06:00.000-08:00

I'm thinking about reinstating the comments section. But I'm gonna need to consult with Aaron now that he's involved.

Anyway, I've occasionally seen debates crop up over whether or not Brad Warner is really "street" or, in fact, secretly did not grow up in the alleys of the inner city, but (~gasp!~) in a quiet suburb. I think this comes from people who read Noah Levine's PR, confuse it with me and then accuse me of being a fake because I'm not what they imagine Noah is (which isn't what Noah is either). Anyone who really wants to know where I grew up can click on this slightly weird video I found last night, which gives you a quick tour of the whole town. Yes, folks, I grew up not on the mean streets of the city but in the lamest white bread suburb in the universe. Or at least in Ohio.

Trivia buffs: The Strand Theater, which shows up early in the video on the right side of the street (and on the photo I posted), was the site of a planned gig by Black Flag in 1982. Black Flag's van broke down and Zero Defex headlined that night.

And here is an article written by my friend Darrah du Jour about freedom from religion, which I thoroughly enjoyed and thought I'd like to share.

And here is an article that I found very interesting. My host in Vancouver, Kyira Korrigan, pointed this controversy out to me. I had no idea. For millions more links to other stuff about the subject go here.

I have some strong opinions about this. But I've decided that for now this blog is probably not the best place to air them. Maybe in a little while. But not yet. I will only say that bullshit sexism is not Buddhism. If it were I'd drop Buddhism like a hot potato in a second. Yay Ajahn Brahm! You go! Stick it to The Man, I say!

Tonight at 7pm I will be at the University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel (that's in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada), Lot #6 UVic Ring Road. Contact office@zenwest.ca for more info.

More info about my upcoming gigs in Victoria and in Minneapolis/St. Paul is here.

As I mentioned before, the monthly all-day Zazen at Hill Street Center in Santa Monica will proceed as usual this coming Saturday (Nov. 21, 2009) even though I will not be there. Kevin Bortolin, a fellow Dharma heir of Gudo Nishijima, will give the talk.

The info about the day-long retreats at Hill St. Center is at this link.

You can leave comments here.

BC Report & c.

2009-11-18T10:59:00.000-08:00

I did my first talk in Victoria, BC last night. It was very nice. There's a photo of the event to your left. It was Rinzai style Zen in the tradition of Joshu Sasaki Roshi.

A couple days before that I gave a talk at another temple in the Sasaki tradition, Vancouver Zen Centre (they don't know how to spell the word "center" in Canada). That also went swimmingly. The talk was styled as a dialogue between me and Eshin, the head of the centre there. That was a good way to do things, I thought.

On the same day I gave a talk in Vancouver at a place called Yoga For The People. Can you get more hippy-dippy than that for a name? No. You cannot. But it was a very good talk. Got some nice questions.

I also sat at a place called Dharma Lab. The main thing I recall about that was the music from downstairs. I think it was Paula Abdul. No, not her. One of those people. Janet Jackson? I don't know. Who's the one with the butt? I also remember they showed Tank Girl and had a dance party afterward. That was fun.

The only talk I gave in Vancouver that I managed to video tape was the first one, at the Centre for Peace. I'll try and get some of that up on YouTube before the world freezes over, or burns to a crisp, or whatever it's supposed to do.

Which brings me to the one question I can clearly recall from last night. Someone asked whether it was truly "Zen" to worry about global climate change.

Whenever I get asked questions about that latest of the end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scares, I think about my teenage years. When I read books like The Penultimate Truth by Philip K. Dick, or watched films like The Day After (not to be confused with The Day After Tomorrow), or listened to songs like Electric Funeral by Black Sabbath or Missile Destroyed Civilization by MDC, I believed whole-heartedly and without any shred of doubt that these were predictions of an unavoidable future, that before the 80s were over the entire world would be destroyed by nuclear bombs. With Reagan in office I was absolutely certain it was going to happen.

And then it didn't.

So when I see people getting scared shitless of the inevitable global environmental melt-down I have to take it with a grain of sustainably harvested sea salt. BUT just as songs, books and films like the ones I mentioned above played a role in ending the threat of total nuclear annihilation, so too do the works of art warning us of environmental disaster help in educating people about how to divert that. At least I hope so.

In any case, I've noticed that among people who are concerned about the environment there is a culture of worry. It's as if worry itself is seen as a way to do something about the problems we're facing. If you're not dreadfully worried about this stuff, some seem to believe you're totally unconcerned. But I think it's not quite so black and white. There are lots of shades between worried to death and SUV-driving litterbug.

Worry itself doesn't do a whole lot of good. You do what you can, and when you're done doing what you can you do something else. Constantly wringing your hands about the problem is not a constructive way of addressing it.

It's also important to get yourself together so that you can face these problems with the kind of balance needed to really work on them. This is where practice is beneficial.

And speaking of important problems facing humanity, here's a website I've been enjoying: William Shatner's Toupee.

I'm still on tour with 2 more gigs in Victoria and three more in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Click here to see the full schedule.

You can comment here.

Dharma Wars and Appolgies to Canada

2009-11-16T10:34:00.000-08:00

First off, someone pointed out that Vancouver is in Southwest Canada, not Northwest Canada. True. I was mixing two ideas, one of which was that I'd been trying for ages to set up a Northwest Tour. This would've included Seattle, Portland, Victoria and Vancouver. But only the folks in Victoria, BC, Canada ponied up for plane fare. Thus it became a "Northwest Canada Tour" in my shriveled up, nearly useless mind. By the way, I wish I was Thurston Howell III and could just jet off to different places on my own dime. But I can't. Not enough dimes!

Next up, a lot of people sent me links to this article in Tricycle magazine in which I am quoted, and to this article about that article.

Micahel Headerle, author of the Tricycle piece, called me up many months ago to interview me for his article. I don't really recall the conversation. But he quotes me as saying, “That’s the way you wrote in punk zines, and it was understood within that community that you called a friend a scumbag and everybody would laugh about it” in regard to my comments that Genpo Roshi is a scumbag.

I don't know if that's precisely what I said. But maybe it is. I kinda doubt it though. In any case, in the context of the article it makes it sound like I'm trying to say, "Hey, me and Genpo are buds, so it's cool." Which is not at all what I want anyone to believe. I am not friends with Genpo Roshi. That's for darn sure.

But I do write here and in my books in a style that comes from the way one wrote in punk zines. Within that context it was understood what it meant to call someone a scumbag or suchlike. It was not that one necessarily wished ill or harm upon the sumbag in question or even hated that person. It was that one viewed that person's actions and concluded that they were the actions of a scumbag. One did not hide one's opinions behind well-reasoned arguments. One just said them. Perhaps this is not well understood in Internet Buddhism Land. But I don't really care. Internet Buddhism Land is not a place I wish to be well understood in.

I find a portion later in the piece more interesting. It goes like this:

If someone rejects Buddhism after stumbling across an online debate, “They’re walking away from a fantasy of Buddhism,” he (me, Brad) says. “That’s O.K. They’re not going to find that anyway, so it sort of speeds up the process.” But it is really necessary to drive them away with a stick?

Is it really necessary to drive folks away from Zen with a stick -- in my case through the use of what Headerle calls "outrageous rhetoric?" I have to wonder if Headerle is familiar at all with the history of Zen. Because the entire history of Zen is full of teachers very literally driving students away with sticks. Traditionally, when one wished to enter a Zen monastery that person was told very loudly to, GO AWAY. If they did not go away they were physically chased away from the place, very often by a monk wielding a big stick. Only those who were serious enough about the practice to withstand this treatment got in. Doesn't anyone read those old stories anymore? Maybe you can't find them on the Internet. Go to the library. I guarantee you will find plenty.

The whole "come on in we have puppies and ice cream inside" attitude that seems to have become the norm in some Western Zen organizations is highly un-traditional. I think I am far more approachable than most Zen teachers of the past. Compared to them I am a big ol' softie.

Whatever. As to the notion that the disputes among Buddhists should not be exposed on-line... All's I can say is that's just not gonna happen. It's out there. This kind of stuff did not start on the Internet. But the Internet has amplified it. And until the Internet goes away, the exposure of disputes among Buddhists on the Internet isn't going away either.

It's probably best not to air any more dirty laundry in public than is strictly necessary. But, for my own part, I have no regrets about what I've said regarding Genpo Roshi. It needed saying and nobody else was saying it. At least not that I was aware of at the time. Yeah, I might have bolstered my arguments against the scam that is Big Mind® more if I hadn't used the word scumbag. But what's done is done. What I said served to call attention to a very serious misuse of the Dharma and I'm glad for that. It probably wouldn't have gotten nearly as much coverage had my argument been more well-reasoned.

So there ya go.

Those of you who wish to debate this matter in person should come to Victoria, BC and/or Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota where I'll be giving plenty of talks over the next few weeks. See this link for full details.

You can go here to comment.

OH! And by the way, the monthly all-day Zazen at Hill Street Center in Santa Monica will proceed as usual this coming Saturday (Nov. 21, 2009) even though I will not be there. Kevin Bortolin, a fellow Dharma heir of Gudo Nishijima, will give the talk. He's good. He got lots of "hot chili pepper" recommendations on some website in which university students rate their professors (he teaches at Ventura College). He is, by the accounts of at least three female friends of mine, a "hot guy." Go see him and judge for yourself!

The info about the retreats is in the links section over to your left. Or if you're too lazy to move your eyeballs leftward just click this link.

(Has anyone ever commented how the Internet has made people ridiculously lazy? Like lazy beyond any reasonable definition of laziness?)

NORTHWEST CANADA REPORT

2009-11-14T09:51:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting on a sofa looking out at a lovely view of the city of Vancouver and its surrounding mountains. Low clouds, gray skies, leaves of red and gold. The bay, the buildings, the docks. I gave my first talk last night. It was really cool. Thanks to everyone who attended.

I have another sitting + talk this afternoon and yet another one of those tomorrow. Then it's on to Victoria. The full schedule is available at this link.

Last night was the second attempt at what I foresee as an ongoing series of talks about sex and Buddhism. I did my first at the Against The Stream group in Hollywood (Noah Levine's organization, which is waaaaay more organized than my own disorganization).

It's an interesting topic, and it's the theme of the book I just turned in to New World Library for publication by them in 2010, "Sin, Sex and Zen." I got a lot of really good questions, too. I like answering questions from the audience because I feel like that's where I can get some connection to what people actually want to talk about.

I'm not good at recalling my own talks, which is why I've been video taping most of them lately. The last question was interesting, though. A guy asked how had sex helped my Buddhist practice. It was interesting because until he'd asked that I'd always thought of the flow going in only the opposite direction, how Buddhism had been useful in my own dealings regarding sexuality.

My sex life and my Buddhist life began at more or less the same time. So nearly all of my sexual relationships have been affected by my practice. It's clear that this philosophy and practice have had an impact on how sex has worked out for me. But as for how sex has benefited my practice... that's another question.

I am not celibate. I can see the potential benefits of celibacy. But I can also see a lot of potential problems. And as far as my own life is concerned, the problems of celibacy appear to outweigh its potential benefits. I feel like I, personally, would be less peaceful and more unbalanced as a celibate. Though I could be wrong. I've never tried celibacy. At least not by choice.

As a vegetarian, I do not campaign for people to give up meat because, unless you're really committed to giving up meat, becoming a vegetarian can lead to a lot of cognitive dissonance and general weirdness. Mad craving for meat coupled with a hard attitude of suppressing your desires tends to make a person neurotic and outweighs the general feeling of well-being that many vegetarians -- me included -- get from their dietary choice. I feel like it's the same with celibacy. It can only work for a person who is truly committed to being celibate. And I am not.

So my approach has been to have a sex life, but to approach sex in as careful a manner as I can. It's a powerful thing, the sex drive. This video tells it like it is in a very witty but very true way. I do not in any way try to hold myself out as the most exemplary model of how this ought to be done. But I do think that most of us are not prepared for celibacy, so we had better try and find a way to deal with our own sex drives in the least harmful way possible for us. That's important.

So I suppose sex has been beneficial to my practice in that having a sex life keeps me sane enough to do the practice. I also feel that there is a depth of relationship with other people that only occurs when one crosses that last boundary and has sex with the person. That connection can be very meaningful and you can discover a lot that way.

Finally, I feel there ought to be people who have a Buddhist practice and a sex life who are willing to share what that means to them because Buddhism in the West is mainly non-celibate and these questions arise. I'm probably a lousy example. But I feel like sharing what I have discovered might have some value.

Or not.

Go here to comment.

Interview With DEVO

2009-11-11T13:16:00.000-08:00

The Interview with Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO I recently did for Suicide Girls is now on-line. Go check it out!

And remember to come see the talks I'm doing in Canada and Minnesota. All the info you need is at this link.

You can comment about it here (but it's better to comment on the actual interview page if you can -- I think maybe only SG members are allowed to leave comments).

More Ranting About "Cyber Sanghas"

2009-11-10T14:53:00.000-08:00

My God! Someone else noticed how intensely weird that recent Marmaduke strip was. Thank you Colin for sending this to me!

I'm about to leave for my mini-tour of British Columbia and Minnesota. Click here for details about where I'll be and when. And remember severe punishment awaits anyone who is anywhere near these gigs and fails to show up. I wouldn't risk it if I were you!

I just finished reading Chuck Klosterman's new book Eating The Dinosaur. Towards the end of the book he puts forth an interesting argument. He points out that human beings have been on Earth for around 130,000 years and that the first ever commercial film, The Great Train Robbery, was made in 1903. He says, "For roughly 129,900 years any moving object a human saw was actually real. It was there in front of you. If a man in 1850 saw a train chugging toward his face, it was an actual train." He argues that visceral, real understanding of these manipulated images lags way behind our intellectual understanding of them. "Intellectually we know the difference between a real person and a Facebook profile... but is there any possible way 129,900 years of psychological evolution can be altered within the span of a single century?"

I think this is an extremely important point. I will be the first to admit that even I sometimes -- no, make that often -- respond to manipulated fake images, particularly on the Internet, as if they were real things. It is very confusing and disorienting. Which is why I spend as little time on the Internet as I can. And given my current job, I have to be on here a lot more than I really want to be. I'd probably be far more successful if I were on the Internet more. But it gets to me after a while and I need to run away.

I know I've been harping on my antipathy towards so-called "cyber-sanghas" way too much. But that's because what I do here is so often confused with that concept, in both overt and subtle ways. It's also why I refuse to get involved with any cyber-sanghas. The experience is not at all the same as dealing with real human beings face to face. No more so than cyber-sex is the same as real sex.

You can get very lost in the twisty twirly world of Internet communication and easily lose sight of what's real and what's not. These days I often hear people say,"I was talking with my friend..." And I'll ask, "Were you actually talking with that person or were you chatting online?" Often it's the latter. There is an enormous difference between these two activities. Yet many people these days seem to regard them as being essentially the same thing.

I'm keenly aware of this because so much of what I do is in the form of written communication either here on this blog, in my books or thru a million emails I have to write each day. Often when I meet people who only know me through these forms of communication are really surprised when they encounter me in person. I am not at all what they expected.

You don't get the tone of voice I would say these words in. You don't get my facial expression. You don't get the smell of my breath. You don't get the subtle electrical energy that human beings exchange when they're near each other. There are far more missing elements than I can possibly list. All of these things matter a lot. To dismiss them as if they were nothing very important is a terrible thing. The difference is the same as the difference between seeing a real train speeding towards you and seeing film of a train speeding towards a camera.

Whatever.

Anyway, Klosterman also says about an article on the NY Times website, "When the article was posted online, dozens of people hurled childish, ad hominem insults against the writer in the comments section -- a phenomenon that now happens when almost anything interesting is published in public." Yeah! So maybe this blog isn't so unique. Still, I'm gonna keep commenting switched off for now.

OK. Well, I'm off for the Great White North. I'll try and post updates as the tour progresses.

See you in Canada!

You can comment here

ST. PAUL DATES ADDED and (nothing about) JUKAI

2009-11-08T19:53:00.001-08:00

Got some new info about the upcoming tour. As always, the full schedule is over there to your left at the top of the LINKS section at the link titled Brad's Book Tour Dates.

I'll be in St. Paul the following dates:
• December 4, 2009 (Fri) 4:45pm Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105 at JBD Lecture Hall
Buddhism and Sex (lecture)

• December 5, 2009 (Sat) 9am - 1 pm Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105 USA
Half-day Zazen sitting at the Macalester College Chapel with Dharma Talk

• December 6, 2009 (Sun) 10 a.m., Dharma Field, 3118 W 49th St, Minneapolis, MN 55410, (corner of 49th and York)
Dharma talk by Brad Warner, Suggested donation $15.
Zazen: 8:00 a.m., 8:40 a.m., 9:30 a.m.
www.dharmafield.org
contact Bev Forsman, bev.forsman@dharmafield.org

Also, one more date has been added to Vancouver:
• November 15, 2009 (Sun) 1:00pm - 3:00pm Yoga for the People, #201-150 W. Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC
Introduction to Zen Buddhism with Brad Warner

And remember there are further gigs in Vancouver on November 13th and 14th, and in Victoria, BC November 17th, 19th and 22nd. Further info on these and other dates on the tour is on THIS LINK. Look at it. It was a pain in the ass to put together. AND BE THERE!

I have just spent the entire morning and quite a bit of the afternoon attempting to write what I really think of Jukai. I FAILED MISERABLY and just trashed everything that I wrote. This is my second attempt. The first one a few weeks ago ended in a similar tragedy of wasted time and effort. So the Jukai article will have to wait.

And can someone explain the Marmaduke cartoon I have posted? Even the Marmaduke Explained website hasn't touched this one, it's so surreal. Is it supposed to be surreal? I just don't know. It's like a koan...

Go here to comment.

Vanouver? Didn't Even KNOW Her!

2009-11-05T15:55:00.000-08:00

OK. I got the skinny on the Vancouver gigs and here it is:

• November 13, 2009 7 PM, Vancouver, BC, Centre for Peace, 1825 West 16
Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. contact kyira@diydharma.org for more info

• November 14, 2009 1 PM Meditation with Brad Warner, Vancouver, BC, Dharmalab, 202-1814 Pandora St., Vancouver, B.C.
$15-$25 sliding scale but no one will be turned away solely for lack of funds
contact kyira@diydharma.org or 604-505-7547 for more info

And in nearby Victoria, BC:

•November 17, 2009 7pm, Victoria, BC Canada, University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel, Lot #6 UVic Ring Road, Tuesday Zen Open House, Zen meditation and Q&A;, contact office@zenwest.ca for more info
They run a beginner’s group each week. 3x15 minute sits with a talk in the second one (just 15 minutes). Afterward there is tea, introductions, and a period of question and response.

• November 19, 2009 7pm, Victoria, BC Canada, University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel, Lot #6 UVic Ring Road, Public talk, contact office@zenwest.ca for more info
This will be my main talk, your standard issue ask the zen guy questions. Books will be for sale. Fun will be had by all.

More info about Victoria gigs is on this blog.

And here's a clip from the Montreal-based web series Watch Mojo. This was taped when I was up there earlier this year:

Go here to comment

SASSIFIED!

2009-11-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

I thought this cartoon sort of explained what was the problem with the comments section of this blog pretty succinctly. I'm still on the fence about the comments section. I am working on a all new website right now that I intend to take the place of this blog anyhow. I'll still blog over there. But the whole layout and suchlike will be far more sensible. There will probably be some kind of forum for members like what Noah Levine has. So just hold tight and comment in Gniz's Reblogging Brad Warner site for now.

The folks in Victoria, BC have put up this blog about my upcoming talks and stuff there. If you are in the area I expect to see you there. If you are anywhere near Victoria and do not show up for the talks, there will be serious repercussions. You may be reborn in a really nasty place!

And remember I'll be in Vancouver as well on November 13th for sure and probably some other days. Details are coming soon.

Also if you want to know what the sesshin I led in Frankfurt a couple months ago was like read this.

The other day my friend Christine arranged for me to interview Mark Mothersbaugh of DEVO for an upcoming piece that will appear on Suicide Girls. Then my friend Mary Grace arranged for me to attend the final rehearsal for the band's upcoming tour to promote the deluxe remastered versions of their first and third albums. Nice friends!

It just so happened that at the same time I was doing the interview I've been reading Chuck Klosterman's new book Eating The Dinosaur. Klosterman spent much of his career as a journalist doing interviews. Now as a celebrity writer he conducts fewer interviews, but is, himself, interviewed a lot. It's a situation I can relate to now that I'm getting interviewed all the time as well as conducting interviews myself.

Klosterman's book poses some interesting questions about the process of interviewing and being interviewed. These relate very much to Zen practice. Klosterman says that we tend to assume that we all have privileged access to the contents of our own minds. We imagine that we could ask ourselves any question to which we knew the answer and get that answer or even ask ourselves our opinions and feelings about something and get the answer to that. However, the process of interviewing people and being interviewed has led him to question that assumption. There may be questions we cannot answer until someone else asks us.

This is really insightful (and Klosterman is a big fan of KISS). I kind of knew this intuitively but had never seen it spelled out clearly. It explains why I structure my lectures the way I do. I don't really enjoy standing up in front of a group of strangers and telling my life's story. I do that at the beginning of many talks just to warm up the crowd to start asking questions. That's how I find out a lot of things. I've said stuff in Q&A sessions that I truly did not know until they popped out of my mouth.

It also explains the importance of having a sangha and having a teacher. I'm not a real social person. But sangha practice has been part of my Zen life right from the beginning. There are things you can't find out about yourself unless you're seeing them reflected in others.

I recently saw some guy on the internet (see cartoon above) bitching that, "Brad doesn't care about folks who don't have access to a teacher." As if it's my job to minister to everyone out there who is too lazy to go look for a place to practice communally. OK maybe some of the folks who moan like this legitimately don't have access to a teacher. But, y'know, out here in LA LA Land I hear complaints all the time from people who say they just can't deal with driving 20 minutes from Silver Lake out to Santa Monica on a Saturday morning to sit (see details on link to your left, we'll be at the Hill St. Center this Saturday Nov. 7th at 10 AM as usual -- plus it's way nicer in Santa Monica than it is inland so why the fuck can't you get out here just for the beach?) and why can't I run a class out there too, and 10 miles north and 10 miles south... So I take a lot of what I hear along those lines with a big ol' lump of salt.

Anyway, it doesn't matter of it's The Greatest Sangha In The World or The Bestest Zen Teacher Ever. Just get a little sitting group together if you can. Part of communal practice is the fact that you probably won't like everyone in the group, you'll probably have to do a bit of traveling, the teacher may say things you don't like or be not very good, etc. Just do it. As I've said before, I really don't believe Internet-based communities of any kind (not just Zen) are the same as real face-to-face groups. For one thing you do not have the option of just logging out if you get annoyed. That alone makes a huge difference.

Wow. That rambled on far longer than I meant it to. I got work to do!

Finally I want to leave you with my new favorite song in the world:

And remember, you can leave comments at Reblogging Brad Warner

DEATH TO ALL MONSTERS!

2009-10-28T17:25:00.000-07:00

So... what do you wanna know?

I see people are speculating on why I closed the comments section.

There were a lot of reasons. There were definitely good things about it. Some of the regular commenters were friendly, sometimes insightful. I liked reading Jinzang's postings, for example and even some of the trolls were at least entertaining.

It was also the free-est Buddhist themed discussion group on the 'net. A guy I know tried to sign up for one of the other on-line Buddhist groups and got the third degree from the owner before he was even allowed to join, let alone post anything (which would have been censored according to the owner's ideas of what was and wasn't "right speech"). And I was letting anybody post anything they wanted.

But I got sick of handing over a free platform to weenies with axes to grind, usually against me. People can say whatever the hell they want. But I didn't see any reason I had to give them space to do it. So now they have to denounce me on their own damned blogs. Or at least over on Aaron's blog where I don't have to look at it (see below). Plus I started seeing lots of things attributed to me that I hadn't said. They were from the comments section! People get confused sometimes...

I've been motorin' away lately on Nishijima Roshi's translation of Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamikakarika. Lots of folks have asked me about the release date that's been announced on Amazon. I think they have it coming out on November 3rd? Something like that. Well, I'll be amazed if I'm even done with the first round of editing by November 3rd. The publishers have told me it'll be out in Spring.

Lots of things happening in Spring! At least that's the promises I've been hearing. Hardcore Zen is set to come out in German, Polish and Greek editions in Spring. And it's likely I'll be touring in Europe behind those releases. Yay! I'm still waiting to hear word back on where I'll be and when.

My next mainstream book is due out in Autumn of 2010. So far the provisional title is SIN, SEX AND ZEN. New World Library likes the title. So unless I or they come up with something better over the next few months, that title will probably stick. As the title suggests, the book will be about sin and about sex and about Zen. Three topics near and dear to my heart!

I've also started re-working a novel I wrote in the mid-late 90's. At the time it was called DESTROY ALL SPACEMEN. But if I finish it I'm gonna re-title it DEATH TO ALL MONSTERS! (with the exclamation point). It's a novel about an American guy who works in Tokyo for a company that produces Japanese monster films. It turns out one of the movies his company made may or may not contain footage of an actual UFO shot down by the Japanese military near the end of World War II as well as scenes of its living occupant. The film was pulled off of distribution in the 60s and no one's seen a copy since. Our hero, rabid fanboy that he is, just wants to have a peak at the film, which he finds deep in the company vaults. But when he does all hell breaks loose.

The story is a fictionalization of my real life at Tsuburaya Productions. There really is an episode of the giant monster vs. giant superhero TV series Ultra Seven that hasn't been seen since the early 70s. Or at least it wasn't seen between then and circa 1998 when I allowed a copy to be broadcast on the Turner Broadcasting Network in the USA. They showed it at like 4 am one morning as a filler. Management wasn't happy with me about that. The fanboys went nutzo when it came out. So did a lot of very weird "business people" in SE Asia.

The book is also about what life was like in Japan at the time, the people I knew there, the things we did. Nishijima Roshi is even a character. I like the book a lot. But it needs some fixing up before I send it anywhere. I could use someone who's an expert on Japan in WWII if anyone's interested in advising me on a few areas. Particularly the Japanese occupation of Manchuria (so-called "Manchukuo"). Write me at spoozilla@gmail.com.

And speaking of Amazon.com (which we were a while back), could a few of you who actually liked ZEN WRAPPED IN KARMA go over there and put some decent reviews of the thing up? Last I looked the top review was by some weasel who wanted to comment about his uninformed opinions on my marriage. It's interesting that so many people like to natter about the sex stuff in that book. But nobody likes to say anything about the disease and death stuff, which is far more important if you ask me. But who asks me? Nobody! That's who!

OK. Whatever. Come see me in Canada (dates below):

• November 13, 2009 - I will be in Vancouver BC speaking at the local Dharma Punx chapter on November 13th. Details are coming soon. Probably another gig will happen the following day. The gig on the 13th will be a talk and the one on the 14th will likely be several rounds of zazen followed by discussion.

•November 17, 2009 7pm, Victoria, BC Canada, University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel, Lot #6 UVic Ring Road, Tuesday Zen Open House, Zen meditation and Q&A;, contact office@zenwest.ca for more info
They run a beginner’s group each week. 3x15 minute sits with a talk in the second one (just 15 minutes). Afterward there is tea, introductions, and a period of question and response.

• November 19, 2009 7pm, Victoria, BC Canada, University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel, Lot #6 UVic Ring Road, Public talk, contact office@zenwest.ca for more info
This will be my main talk, your standard issue ask the zen guy questions. Books will be for sale. Fun will be had by all.

Want to comment? Go to: rebloggingbradwarner.blogspot.com/

BUDDHIST BEACH VOLLEYBALL

2009-10-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

Next Saturday, Oct. 31st, 2009, Halloween, we'll not be having our usual zazen at Hill Street Center. Instead a bunch of people from the group are participating in a Buddhist Beach Volleyball Tournament on nearby Santa Monica Beach.

Here is the schedule and other details from the website linked above:

9:30 - 9:50am Sitting meditation
9:50 - 10:30am Mindful Beach Clean Up (bring your own bags if you remember and gloves if you want them)
10:30 - 10:50am Twenty minutes of walking meditation in the sand
10:50 - 11:00am Closing and transitioning to traditional fun at the beach!
11:00 - 12:00 Warming up on the Volleyball court and sharing food!
12:00 - 2:00 THE LA BUDDHIST VOLLEYBALL TOURNAMENT!
2:00 - 4:00 practicing nothing to do... no where to go... unless of course you have somewhere to go.

During the tournament, you can play on the team that is keeping score for victory or defeat, cheer on your team or all the teams, or play some relaxed just for fun volleyball in the other courts.

Where: If you can do Google maps the address is: 14782 Pacific Coast Hwy, Los Angeles, CA, United States. If you are using a map, it is at the intersection of Entrada and the PCH, on the north side of Santa Monica. We will meet out near the life guard station #18.

Parking: There is a small lot right at Entrada & PCH. It is $10 for the day. There is some street parking on Entrada and there is a pedestrian pass under the PCH.

The location is not too far from Hill Street Center. If you think you might want to park at HSC and walk, please contact me at spoozilla@gmail.com and I'll see if I can arrange it (no promises!).

Also those of you in British Columbia don't forget the dates I'll be there in November. They're on the post below this one.

Post your comments to:

http://rebloggingbradwarner.blogspot.com/

VICTORIA, VANCOUVER and NEW PLACE TO COMMENT

2009-10-25T13:17:00.000-07:00

• November 13, 2009 - I will be in Vancouver BC speaking at the local Dharma Punx chapter on November 13th. Details are coming soon. Probably another gig will happen the following day. The gig on the 13th will be a talk and the one on the 14th will likely be several rounds of zazen followed by discussion.

•November 17, 2009 7pm, Victoria, BC Canada, University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel, Lot #6 UVic Ring Road, Tuesday Zen Open House, Zen meditation and Q&A, contact office@zenwest.ca for more info
They run a beginner’s group each week. 3x15 minute sits with a talk in the second one (just 15 minutes). Afterwards there is tea, introductions, and a period of question and response. I’ll do a short talk and field questions.

• November 19, 2009 7pm, Victoria, BC Canada, University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel, Lot #6 UVic Ring Road, Public talk, contact office@zenwest.ca for more info
This will be my main talk, your standard issue ask the zen guy questions. Books will be for sale. Fun will be had by all.

And for those of you who wish to comment about this page, Aaron, the infamous troll from the old comments section here known as Gniz, has opened a page. It's here:

http://rebloggingbradwarner.blogspot.com/

I can't think of anyone better to host such a page than one of my comments section's most notorious naysayers! Have fun!!

I'm So Narcissistic I'm In An Article About Narcissism And I'm Narcissistically Posting About It!

2009-10-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Yep! Elizabeth Bromstein up in the wilds of Toronto has quoted me in an article about narcissism for NOW! magazine. The link is here:

When Self Love Sucks

She did this interview with me by telephone the day I was writing the posts about conscientious selfishness. So the quote she used has a bit of that notion in there.

I'll try another way to express this: The reason you don't hurt others as a Buddhist is not because you're trying to be a kind, loving, beautiful, spiritual person who would never hurt anyone. It's because you realize that hurting someone else is exactly the same as hurting yourself. This is a much more powerful and much purer motivation.

A person who throws an empty Starbucks cup out of his SUV thinks that there is a difference between littering his SUV and littering the road. He thinks someone else will clean up his mess. A Buddhist doesn't perceive that difference. And he knows that there is no one else "out there" to clean up his mess. No matter where he throws his mess, he knows he will still be the one who cleans it up.

OK. So lately I've been hacking away at the manuscript for the English translation of Nagarjuna's Fundamental Song of the Middle Way and I've come up with some bits from the commentaries that I kind of like. Here they are:

We tend to make the mistake of dividing the function of seeing into two, and imagining that there is a seer who sees things. But this thing we call the seer is actually just the functioning of the sense center as a sense organ. Någårjuna expresses this by saying that the function of seeing produces one’s own mind. In Buddhist philosophy, consciousness is not an entity in and of itself. Consciousness is produced when the external and internal worlds interact. Therefore the function of seeing is just a simple fact at the present moment and not evidence for the existence of something we can call a “self” which sees. It is impossible, Någårjuna says, for the function of seeing to look at one’s own mind. We can never see our own eyes, the closest we can come is seeing their reflection in a mirror. In the same way, our mind can’t perceive itself. This is one of the reasons we say a Buddhist student must have a teacher. In the final analysis, the functioning of our senses is just as it is. There is no separate entity behind our sense functions that performs them.

Were it not for our ability to consider things, we could not speak of any ability to see, or for that matter any other sensory ability. The sensory abilities we attribute to ourselves are matters of consideration only. We imagine that we are a thing that somehow owns these abilities. But this concept may be an illusion. Furthermore, our own perceptions cannot be perceived by others. We are fooled by our excellent ability to communicate with one another into believing we are actually conveying such experiences. But this is never really the case.

Even though the function of seeing has limitations, we should never hold it in low esteem. This is because the attitude that esteems things as higher or lower can be called a kind of interpretation. So the fact that someone esteems something as lower might suggest that that person is insisting on some kind of personal view. Master Någårjuna points this out because many idealistic philosophers of his day really did hold the sense functions in low esteem, as many Indian idealistic philosophers still do today. The fact that we are seeing something and the fact that something is being seen is the fusion of 1) seeing something and 2) something being seen. In Buddhist philosophy, we do not accept the division of the observer and what is observed. The combination of these two is the back and the face of one single undivided fact at the present moment. Still, the action of seeing is real. We see here that Master Någårjuna’s philosophy does not negate the reality we experience. It is not nihilism.

DHARMA PUNX TOMORROW & DICKIE PETERSON

2009-10-17T16:04:00.000-07:00

I totally forgot to post that I will be speaking at the Dharma Punx/Against The Stream center in Hollywood tomorrow at 11 AM (Sunday October 18, 2009). Tha address is 4300 Melrose (btw Heliotrope and Vermont), Los Angeles, CA 90029. All are welcome, no experience necessary.

I just found out only moments ago that Dickie Peterson, bassist and leader of the legendary heavy metal pioneers BLUE CHEER died on Monday. The official obituary is here. My friend John Battles said there's an obit out there somewhere by the NY Times or someone like that, that references John's own interview with Dickie. That would be worth checking out. John's the consummate Blue Cheer fan and I'm sure it's a great interview.

I first read about Blue Cheer in the dog-eared copy of the 1969 edition of Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia -- it was the most up-to-date book about rock and roll in the Wadsworth High School library circa 1979 or so (that book was like The Bible to me for a couple years). According to the book Blue Cheer's sound on their first album, Vinecbus Eruptum, was so loud it "turned the air into cottage cheese." I knew I had to find that album! But, alas, at the time it was long out of print.

I finally located a copy at a flea market held at the school's football stadium. The record was so badly warped it looked like a giant pepperoni. You could have eaten cereal out of that thing! Yet amazingly it still played. And, indeed, it was the loudest thing I'd ever heard. Even at low volume that record screamed.

That album was a huge influence on my own musical life. I must have listened to it hundreds of times. Or at least it seemed so.

I never knew Dickie or even got to see the band during their recent reformation, which I've heard was even better than their classic year. Such a shame. Now I never will get to see the mighty Blue Cheer in person and I'm sad.

COMMENTS

2009-10-16T19:41:00.000-07:00

I was taking a rare peak into the comments section of this blog the other day. Some commenter said:

"But is [Brad] a Zen teacher? Then he has an obligation to correct ignorant behavior on HIS blog."

Another commenter thought that was so astute, he repeated it. Then someone else summed up my philosophy on this blog very well. He said:

“To my knowledge, this blog has always been just like any other blog, Brad talks about whatever he fancies at the time. Sometimes he talks about Kiss' latest album, sometimes he posts an obituary for someone who affected his life, sometimes he blogs about upcoming book tour dates, and sometimes he even talks about Zen. But he has also made it clear that he believes the net is a totally inappropriate medium for the serious practice of Zen. He has never said that he is trying to establish a community, via the net. He always mentions that he sits zazen on most Saturdays at the Hill Street Center in Santa Monica, and that if you also want to practice, then you are welcome to come along. That is where he teaches, that is where he practices. This blog is NOT his forum for teaching, it is his medium for self-promotion, which as a writer, is absolutely necessary, if he wants to get his name out there. If you want to rant about your own perceptions of who Brad is, go ahead, but wouldn't that time be better spent on the zafu, looking at your own messed up selves, isn't that the whole idea?”

Wow. Someone out there actually gets what I'm doing here. That's so nice.

I've said this before and I'll say it again, I don't keep this blog as a way of teaching Zen. Zen cannot be taught via the Internet or on a blog. Same as you couldn't teach someone how to play basketball via the Internet or on a blog.

Sure you could teach a lot about basketball via the Internet, its history, its major players, statistics, descriptions of playing techniques. You could even put up some helpful videos or give advice to people who emailed questions. But you couldn't really teach basketball that way. You would need to be face-to-face in the same gymnasium. No two ways about it.

People imagine you could teach Zen via the Internet because they imagine that Zen is an intellectual philosophy, they imagine that the words are the philosophy. But they aren't, not anymore than the words in a blog about basketball are the real act of playing basketball.

I don't feel any obligation to correct ignorant behavior on the comments section of this blog. Frankly I just don't care all that much. I'm sorry if that seems callous. But it's true. It's not at all the same as being in a room with someone. Unless you're in a room full of people wearing paper bags over their heads so nobody will recognize them and big plexiglass shields around their bodies so nobody can kick their asses when they say something really hurtful.

I could go in and monitor the comments. But do you know how much time, effort and energy that would take? Shit. I have a life to live. I try to spend as little time each day in front of computers as possible. As a writer and as a guy who books his own speaking gigs I already have to spend a lot of time here. When I'm done at what I absolutely have to do at the computer for the day, believe me, I am done! Plus I deliberately got what has to be the worst Internet connection outside of the Central Congo. It's like the speed of the dial-up you had in 1995 -- with your sister on the other phone refusing to get off. So, no, I'm not gonna spend upwards of 20 minutes per comment to deal with some jack-ass pretending to be my ex-wife or some "Enlightened Being" who feels the need to denounce me.

I'm saying all this because I have now shut down the comments section. If someone wants to establish a forum elsewhere that people can use to comment on what they see here, please do so. I will even post a link to that forum at the end of each article I post. The only rule (for now, at least) would be that you cannot re-post my articles on that forum. And I won't be visiting that forum on anything like a regular basis, if at all.

Interested parties are urged to write me at spoozilla@gmail.com.

KISS SONIC BOOM

2009-10-08T13:43:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I went out to Walmart at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza Mall in Los Angeles and bought the new KISS album, Sonic Boom — their first new CD in 11 years. I brought along Steve from Dharma Zen Center who said that malls are soul-destroying places. It’s true. In the hour or so I spent in the mall it was like I could feel my soul being slowly eroded. And I don’t even believe in souls! What is it about places like that? It’s sad that so many people spend so much of their time in those vacuum packed hell holes. They make me feel physically ill.

But you do what you have to do. KISS has some kind of a special deal with Walmart and the album is available there in an exclusive edition that includes a bonus CD of re-recordings of some of the band’s classic hits plus a six-song DVD of a recent live show in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I couldn’t pass that up.

First off, as every reviewer who has written about the CD has already said, this is a far better record than the previous KISS album, 1998’s Psycho Circus — their so-called reunion record, although it was later revealed that lead guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss had contributed very little to it. Even die-hard KISS fans like me had trouble getting behind that one. Yet in retrospect Psycho Circus isn’t really that bad. It was more a victim of unreasonably high expectations. But Revenge was better…

This new one, though, is amazing. It’s vintage 1978 KISS in 2009. The opening track, Modern Day Delilah rocks as hard as anything the band recorded in their prime. You could have told me Danger Us was an outtake from 1976’s Rock And Roll Over and I would’ve believed it. I’m An Animal is what heavy metal is all about, based on a pulverizing Black Sabbath type riff the likes of which Gene Simmons hasn’t pulled off since Unholy on 1992’s Revenge. Never Enough is one of those fist pumping Paul Stanley anthems, even though the verse melody seems to be subtly lifted from Ozzy’s Flying High Again. Hot And Cold reminds me of The Who and somehow there’s no irony in 60 year-old Gene Simmons telling us “if it’s too loud you’re too old.”

Throughout the record, lead guitarist Tommy Thayer does Ace Frehley better than Ace ever did. Though this fits the album, I was hoping to hear a little of the guitarist’s own personal style rather than his mastery of Ace’s licks. I kept thinking of the stories of the session guitarists who filled in for Ace when he was too wasted to rock in the late Seventies and were told not to play anything Ace couldn’t have done. Sounds like founding members bassist Gene Simmons and rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley told Tommy the same thing. Still, it works and Tommy’s own composition When Lightning Strikes is as fine an example of vintage KISS as any of Paul or Gene's contributions, even if the title seems deliberately reminiscent of Ace's Shock Me.

My only complaint about the album is that it lacks one of the ingredients that always made the old KISS records so special to me, namely that one weird, experimental track they always managed to include. There’s nothing on here to compare to the mad ballad Goin’ Blind from 1974’s Hotter Than Hell, the heavy metal jungle chant Almost Human from 1977’s Love Gun, the weird Ventures-on-Quaaludes instrumental Love Theme From KISS from their debut album or even their mega-hit ballad Beth from 1976’s Destroyer, which is a pretty odd song when you actually listen to it. There are no bizarre covers like their Ramones-style reading of The Dave Clark Five’s Any Way You Want It from Alive II or their heavy metal masacre of Phil Spector’s (via The Ronettes) Then He Kissed Me (re-titled Then She Kissed Me so as not to scare off homophobic metal heads) also from Love Gun.

Oh Gene Simmons’ perverted poetry still sounds like Spinal Tap (“Flip a coin is it heads or tails tonight?” from Yes I Know, “Feel my tower of power” from Hot And Cold). But then again Simmons was doing that long before Christopher Guest and Michael McKean ever came up with the idea of Spinal Tap. And I wonder if the album will stand the test of time or if I’m just over-excited at getting to hear a brand new KISS record after so many years. The latter question is impossible to answer yet. But it sure sounds good right now.

As for the bonuses, the CD of re-recorded KISS Klassics (that’s how it’s spelled on the label) was available in Japan as a stand-alone CD a year ago. I didn’t buy it then because I thought the whole idea was pretty pointless, except to Gene and Paul who would stand to make more money from the new recordings than from reissues of the older versions. It reminded me too much of Joey Molland, the sole-surviving member of Badfinger, who issued a CD of newly recorded versions of his old band’s greatest hits for similar reasons. At least in Molland’s case he probably legitimately needed the money whereas Simmons and Stanley scarcely have that problem.

Still, it’s not half bad. The remakes of Deuce and Black Diamond rock harder than the tinny sounding versions on their first record (though that tinny sound was massively fixed up on the late 90’s remastered CD). Detroit Rock City and the two other selections from Destroyer lack Bob Ezrin’s masterful production work, but manage to sound OK anyhow. Yet while Tommy Thayer is terrific at mimicking Ace Frehley’s guitar style, he’s less convincing when he takes on Bruce Kulick’s solo from Forever or even Vinnie Vincent’s break in Lick It Up. The biggest disappointment, though, is the new version of Christine Sixteen. Yeah, I know, it was kinda creepy even in 1977 to hear a 28-year old Gene Simmons salivate over a high school girl. He must have been mortified to go through that leering spoken-word section in the middle of the song (“I don’t usually say things like this to girls your age, but when I saw you coming out of school that day I knew I got to have you”) again at age 59 with a 16-year old daughter of his own back home and it shows. But who cares? It’s just a song, dammit. Stay in character! Overall, though, I like having these new versions. Still, I’m glad I didn’t waste my money on the stand-alone Japanese CD.

The DVD on the other hand is a superb document to the power and glory that still is a KISS concert even without two of the band’s original members. Truth be told, Tommy Thayer and Eric Singer play those songs more convincingly than Ace Frehley and Peter Criss probably could these days anyway. A version of KISS that’s half KISS tribute band actually kind of makes sense. I hope I can still rock out like Gene and Paul when I’m 60! Especially since the audience seems just on the verge of rioting the entire time. It’s fun to hear the band launch into impromptu versions of Guantanamera and Una Paloma Blanca. Weird little jokey bits like this are one of my favorite parts of any KISS concert (I saw them do a few Baatles numbers in Japan once as well as bits of Stairway to Heaven) and they’re usually edited out when the shows turn up on official video releases. I just wish they’d included the whole concert instead of only six songs. But the rumor mill has it that the band plans to release a set of DVDs from their recent Alive 35 tours. I guess I’ll have to wait or else buy a bunch of high priced bootlegs of those shows next time I get to Tokyo.

Overall this is as tremendous a package as any KISS fan could hope for and I’m glad to have it! Rock and roll all night, baby!

CONSCIENTIOUS SELFISHNESS Part 2

2009-10-07T10:01:00.001-07:00

I thought I ought to write a little more about this idea of conscientious selfishness because I think yesterday’s post just muddled the issue. Sorry about that. This is the danger of blogging. I tend to feel that blog postings should be more immediate, unfiltered and un-fussed-over than regular articles. Maybe this idea is one I should have saved for a more well thought-out piece (of which this one you’re reading is also not).

As I said yesterday I think the term I’ve come up with, “conscientious selfishness,” sucks dead donkey’s bollocks. It’s awful. It really doesn’t get at what I’m trying to describe. But it’s a provisional attempt to move the discussion of what Buddhist compassion is into a new area.

I’m not talking about the common garden variety of selfishness where a person tries to get everything for themselves while screwing the other guy. I’m using the word “selfishness” to indicate that what we’re talking about when we use the word compassion in a Buddhist sense isn’t a kind of sacrifice.

Nishijima Roshi used to say that the balanced state in Zazen allows a person to do exactly what they want. Most of us don’t really understand what we actually want. We imagine that we want to get all we can without any regard for anyone else. But that’s not true. We are intimately connected at the very deepest level with everyone and everything we come in contact with. At this level, what we want for ourselves and what we want for others is absolutely identical.

This is what I was trying to get at with my incredibly clumsy metaphor about sex yesterday (sorry again). I’m gonna try once more and hope for the best.

I wasn’t picturing some slob of a guy carelessly banging his wife until he was satisfied and then shuffling off to watch the game on TV. I was picturing times when both (or all) partners involved in the act of sex completely lose any sense of self and other. In those moments each one can do exactly what gives her or him the most pleasure while simultaneously and instinctively doing what pleases her or his partner(s) the most. At these times there isn’t any conscious attempt to please anyone other than her or himself because the very idea of self and other(s) has vanished.

Last night I went and saw Robyn Hitchcock at Spaceland, a club in Los Angeles and I clearly saw real compassion in action. I’m certain that Robyn Hitchcock doesn’t sit around writing songs because he wants to perform some kind of self-sacrificing altruistic act. He doesn’t perform in public for the sake of saving all beings. And yet that’s exactly what he accomplishes for me and for a lot of us who are his fans. But for him, these actions are purely natural, he’s doing exactly what he wants to do in precisely the way he wants to do it. In that sense his actions are utterly selfish, almost narcissistic. Yet somehow this seemingly self-absorbed activity, which he does only because it feels good to him, has helped me and a lot of other people more than he can ever know.

That’s the type of compassion I think Dogen was referring to when he likened it to a hand reaching for a pillow in the night. Real compassion is entirely unlike the idea of compassion.

On the other hand, Joshu Sasaki Roshi said, “Zen is not the way of saints. But sometimes it’s useful to imitate their behavior.” There are times when it’s hard to see what we really want. In those situations it may have some value to imagine what an idealized compassionate person would do and to take that action. Which I know contradicts what I said yesterday. But I think you have to be just as careful with this as you have to be when taking what seems to be the purely selfish course. In fact it may often be even more dangerous to act out of an idea of compassion than to simply do what you want.

If you come across a butterfly struggling to get out of its cocoon, you might imagine what an idealized compassionate person would do and then kindly help the butterfly out by reaching over and opening the cocoon for her. In doing so you’d be condemning that butterfly to a quick death. That struggle to emerge from the cocoon is how butterflies strengthen their wings. Without that struggle they never develop the ability to fly.

So you’ve got to be really, really careful when imitating the acts of your idealized compassionate person. In this case the seemingly “selfish” act of ignoring the butterfly’s struggle would be the most truly compassionate course. This is often the way when dealing with other people. Too much help offered in an inappropriate manner can be incredibly damaging.

This is where Zazen practice can help. By learning to be very, very quiet it sometimes becomes easier to see what you — and by extension everyone and everything in the universe — truly want to do.

CONSCIENTIOUS SELFISHNESS

2009-10-06T15:50:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about compassion lately. People keep asking me about it because Buddhist teachers are supposed to talk about compassion all the time. But I hate talking about things I'm supposed to talk about. Whenever some idea starts wending its way through a culture it very quickly turns into a cliche and dies. Compassion died a long while ago.

Which isn't to say that compassion itself is dead or cliche. It's just that once a word gets sent through the ringer of approved pop culture opinion a couple of times all the life is wrung out of it and we're stuck trying to find new ways of expressing the same notion.

In my search for a better way to talk about Buddhist compassion, especially as Dogen describes it, I've come up with the cumbersome and pretentious phrase, "conscientious selfishness." It sucks. I hate it.

But I think it might be a better way to look at that something we've been calling compassion. It seems to me that the way most people approach this idea of compassion is to create an image in their minds of the ideal compassionate person, who usually looks an awful lot like themselves. Then they ask, "What would a compassionate person do?" and make their efforts to mold themselves into the image they've created.

A lot of the time this activity manifests in an attitude of, "I hate doing this, but I'm doing it for your sake!" Anyone who has ever been the recipient of action taken with that kind of an attitude knows how miserable it feels.

But I don't think that's what Dogen was on about when he wrote about compassion. He said that compassionate action was "like a hand reaching back to adjust a pillow during the night." It's a very interesting image that I've written about probably 243,572 times.

A hand reaching back to adjust a pillow sounds kind of like selfish action. It's not what we usually imagine our idealized compassionate spiritual superbeing doing. He's supposed to save the whales, and feed the children, and shelter the homeless. What would he be doing adjusting his pillow just to make sure he slept OK?

But taking care of yourself is where compassion begins. The seemingly "selfish" action of doing zazen every morning and night doesn't seem very heroic. But the effects of regular zazen practice help everyone that practitioner comes in contact with.

In a way it's like sex. I don't know if you've noticed this, but pay attention the next time you're getting hot and heavy with your special someone. The very hottest things your lover can do while you're getting it on are usually the things he or she does to get him/herself off without any specific regard for you.

When you're getting intimate with someone you love, you care deeply about that person. So your selfish actions in that context are always taken with a caring attitude toward the one you're with. And yet it's far more erotic when your lover forgets about you and focuses on him or herself. This is a kind of compassion.

I'm gonna save the rest of this particular tangent for my forthcoming book about Zen and sex (available from New World Library in 2010). But I think this is very valid.

All truly compassionate action comes from this kind of attitude, when you care deeply for others and yet do what feels best for you.

Anyhow, what felt best for me last weekend was a trip out to Vasquez Rocks where the famous battle between Captain Kirk and the Gorn took place. Here are the photos to prove it!

USE YOUR ILLUSIONS

2009-10-01T13:43:00.001-07:00

I know I promised an article about jukai, the precepts ceremony. But someone wrote in with this question and I’d like to try and answer it:

How does one reinvigorate one's practice after losing the illusions that brought one to practice in the first place? That's where I'm at now. I originally practiced hoping to get to "some place better than this one," or at least to be able to "have it all figured out"; I now despair of either one and so I ask myself, "Why sit?" I'm slowly finding my way back to practice, and sitting with sanghas is helping, but when it comes to sitting at home, I continue not to do it for one of many months in a row. I figure that this--getting the ass on the cushion day after day--is your area of expertise, so I ask: what's the motivation when the old motivations are gone?

This is a tough one. Illusions are inexhaustible, they say, yet we’re supposed to vow to end them all. Illusions about practice are the worst. What this questioner doesn’t say here, but what I’ve heard from her before is that a lot of her disillusionment stems from seeing her teachers as less than perfect. What she wants, like all of us, is perfection. What she’s seeing from her teachers isn’t perfection. So I’d like to address that question first.

In the old days we didn’t know a whole lot about famous people like kings or poets or great spiritual masters. All we would know about a Zen teacher would be that she lives in a temple up in the mountains. We might hear glorious stories from her students or scandalous rumors from those who had left her monastery. But even this information was scarce and what we did hear didn’t amount to a whole lot.

So we invented their lives in our minds. We imagined what they might be like. But the only way to know what was true was to go to the monastery, sit out on the porch for seven days in the snow and sleet until they let you in, work your way up to the point where you could actually have personal contact with the master and then you’d find out what she was like.

By the time you got through all of that you’d have developed a personal relationship. So when you saw the teacher pick her nose, or smelled the fart she silently let out as she sat on the cushion next to you, you’d already be well familiar with a whole lot of other things about her. You’d already know if she was a good teacher or not, and so whatever faults you discovered would be part of a much larger and richer picture of her.

It’s the same as with any friendship. Bob helped you move out of your house, he was there when your dog died, he sat through your daughter’s awful performance as Tevya in a second grade version of Fiddler on the Roof. So what if he doesn’t trim his nose hairs? And that rake he borrowed seven years ago but never gave back? Big deal.

But nowadays it’s harder for famous people to hide the things they want to hide. In the early sixties it was possible for John Lennon’s marriage to be kept secret from the public. By the end of the sixties no one could keep that kind of thing under wraps anymore. We know Richard Baker, Chogyam Trungpa and Dainin Katagiri were evil! We've read it in books!!! And that Brad Warner! Oh. My. God.

What you know about any given celebrity — spiritual masters and rock stars alike — is mostly bullshit. It’s all how their image has been manipulated — by themselves, by others, by you. It would be possible to construct a biography of Hitler that was 100% factual and made him look like a saint. And you could construct an equally true biography of Gandhi that made him look like the worst louse that ever walked the earth. You’d just have to carefully choose which facts you included and which you left out.

I spent a lot of one-on-one time with my teachers and that’s how I got to know their character — not through books or blog postings or videos on YouTube. Those tell you next to nothing about a person’s true character. No matter how many of them you read or watch. Whatever picture you have in your mind of people you see on your computer screen is false. Absolutely fictitious. You don’t have a clue.

My first Zen teacher used to eat a couple cloves of raw garlic every day. It was something he did for his health. Who knows where he got the idea? But whenever I spoke to him I could smell it oozing from his pores. It wasn’t an unpleasant odor. But to this day I still associate the scent of raw garlic with Zen. You can’t smell a teacher through a computer screen or the pages of a book. A celebrity teacher can’t eat popcorn with you and watch reruns of The Prisoner on a little black and white TV with a 6 inch screen. A teacher in a book doesn’t lean on your shoulder after falling asleep on the Bullet Train home from Shizuoka. The reasons why you can’t learn Zen from books and the Internet are too many to count. You can get introduced to it from books and the Internet. But it's no place to study.

What our questioner today has seen has convinced her that there is nothing to this Zen shit, that even after 20+ years of practice its teachers are still not perfect people. So why bother?

And it seems to go even beyond that for her. She despairs that she will never find the answers she seeks – even if she understands those answers won’t make her a perfect person.

I’ll tell you a story about that. One day, at a retreat in Tokei-in, I was talking to Nishijima Roshi. I can’t remember the whole conversation. But I remember I was coming from a place like our questioner. I’d been sitting every day for at least ten years and yet I had no answers. I was about to give it up completely. And I told Nishijima, “I want to know the source of the Universe!”

I don’t recall what words he used. But he told me something like, “You will.”

So I got back on my cushion and sat some more. And several years later his promise came true.

But what really happened at that moment when he said those words to me? An elderly Japanese man told a 30-something American idiot that he could — even with his own idiotic American mind full of punk rock, science fiction movies, Penthouse centerfolds and all the rest – understand the source of everything. And that American idiot believed the old man.

Why did he believe the old man? I’m not sure. I guess it had to do with trust. I knew the old man wouldn’t steer me wrong. By then I knew full well he was no saint. I saw the old man’s students bickering with each other. I saw the old man himself do things I didn’t entirely approve of. I heard him express opinions I could not agree with. I was there when he burped and when he farted. I knew he sometimes – gasp! — fell asleep on his cushion during early morning zazen.

But I trusted him. I knew that whatever else he did, he always told me the truth. And that’s what counted. I knew him more than as a teacher. I knew him as a friend.

Whatever I can be to people on these pages and in my books and suchlike, I can’t be that kind of friend to everyone who reads what I write. I won’t pretend to even try. I hope people enjoy my work, that it motivates them and makes them laugh. But that's about it.

As far as sitting after having lost your illusions about what sitting will do, there is only one solution. Just sit. That’s all. Use your illusions. Sit with them.

For what it’s worth, I can assure you that if you do this long enough and with sincerity the answers you seek will become abundantly clear.

TRANSMISSION and HAYATA

2009-09-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Man! I woke up at ten o'clock this morning. I don't think I've woken up that late since I was like 25. I used to be a late sleeper when I was a rock musician. You have to be when you get back at 4 AM from a gig. But these days even on the rare occasions I actually do get back from a gig at 4 AM I still wake up by seven. This is one of the many reasons I can't do those kinds of gigs anymore. I guess I must be really jet-lagged from all that travel!

Anyway, this girl named Sarah was minding my apartment while I was away (after the magnificent Teresa Hurray got done with her turn there, during which she completely overhauled the place and made it much more livable). Sarah's a big Beatle geek. And I have two copies of the Beatles Anthology book. One was given to me by the folks at Chronicle Books when I was working on the book about Eiji Tsuburaya I did for them. So I decided to give one of those copies to Sarah.

But inside the book were two very interesting photos that I've posted here today and that I wanted to write about. The first one is there on top. It shows, from left to right, Peter Rocca, Nishijima Roshi, me and Taijun Saito. It is the only photo I have taken on the day of my Dharma Transmission ceremony.

Peter also received the Dharma that day. In the first draft of Hardcore Zen I mentioned this. But my editor thought that if I included Peter he would become a character in the book and would draw the reader into another story that wasn't really the one we were trying to tell. So Peter ended up on the cutting room floor and I've always felt bad about that. But here now is the evidence! Sorry Peter!

Taijun was Nishijima Roshi's jisha (assistant) at the time. She had coached me on how to wear my kesa (Buddhist robe) for hours and hours and yet it still kept falling off. Here she is adjusting it for the umpteenth time that evening. Before she fell in with Nishijima Roshi, Taijun had trained in a temple where they take these kinds of things very seriously. The photo was taken by Yuka, who always liked taking photos of me when I was looking especially stupid.

The other photo must have been taken around the same time. It shows me with actor Susumu Kurobe. Kurobe played Hayata, the guy who transforms into Ultraman in the original 1966 TV series. In order to transform into the towering 120 foot tall superhero, Hayata always raised a thing called the Beta Capsule into the air. There'd be a blinding flash of light and Ultraman would appear.

In one famous episode, Hayata accidentally raised a spoon into the air (he'd been having lunch when disaster struck in the form of a marauding monster). This episode actually caused a huge stir at the network. Apparently they couldn't abide by the idea of the hero of the show making a mistake. But Tsuburaya Productions rallied around director Akio Jissoji and insisted the scene stay in the show.

ANYWAY I was out to dinner with Kurobe-san and prevailed upon him to recreate that scene with me in front of the restaurant. Cool, huh?

The reason I was having dinner with Kurobe-san that night was somehow related to a legal case we were pursuing in Southeast Asia at the time. A film producer in one of those countries had appeared on our doorstep sometime in the mid-1990's with what he claimed was a "contract" entitling him to all overseas sales rights to Ultraman.

The document itself (we never called it a contract at the office) was highly dubious. It got the names of the shows wrong, it contained no mention of any sort of remuneration, parts of the document seemed to have been typed in at different times like someone had fed it thru a typewriter after it had been initially created trying to add new lines in but make them look like they'd been there from the beginning. Furthermore, the "contract" was supposed to have been signed in 1974, yet the man who possessed it had taken 21 years to claim the rights it had allegedly given him.

In short, he had a very weak case. But he somehow convinced the president of our company to sign a letter of apology for having violated these rights. He was making a big pest of himself and implied that he would go away happily if only we just apologized in a friendly and gentlemanly fashion.

Amazingly, the president of our company gave him the letter of apology he demanded. From then on the Southeast Asian movie producer used this letter of apology as evidence that the dubious "contract" was, in fact, legitimate. He was able to drag the case through the courts for ages.

The moral of the story is, if someone has a very weak -- or, as in this case, pretty much non-existent -- case against you, never apologize for something you didn't do, especially on paper. It will haunt you forever. They're still fighting this in the courts, though thankfully I no longer have to work on it.

It was such a slimy thing to do, demanding the letter of apology when he knew full well he had no case at all without it. I'm still amazed that it worked. Only someone truly naive would sign such a thing. But, my God, what kind of lousy, amoral sleezebag asks for a letter of apology when he knows full well he only intends to use that against the person he gets the apology from? It's truly sad. (Oh sorry, commenters! I know I'm only supposed to give beautiful Buddha blessings to everyone in the world... Feh!)

I've written up this story about three dozen times on behalf of the company when I worked for them and it always made me mad. Now it just seems sad. At least I know that if I'm ever asked for a letter of apology over something I didn't do I ain't signing it! And let that be a word of advise to all of you. Don't say you never learned nothin' from this blog!

I'm sorry. You guys wanted some "dharma" didn't you? OK. I was gonna write a piece about jukai, the precepts ceremony. I performed a jukai ceremony last week and one the week before that. I don't do them very often. Lots of Buddhist teachers do them constantly. I was gonna try and write out my own personal philosophy about jukai and why I so rarely do it. But I'll save that for next time when I'm not all jet-lagged and full of nostalgia. OK?

See ya soon!

I HAVE NOT RESIGNED AS PRESIDENT OF DOGEN SANGHA

2009-09-26T07:25:00.000-07:00

As I’m certain most readers of this blog are aware, Mr. James Cohen (aka Jundo), President of Treeleaf Zendo, has recently uploaded a number of comments to this blog regarding my status as president of Dogen Sangha International. These comments appear in the post below this one entitled “Bye Bye Tokio.” There are only two people who can erase any of these comments, me and Mr. Cohen. I have chosen to allow them to stay up permanently. If you check and they have been removed, this is the work of Mr. Cohen. I am keeping this material in the form of a PDF file in case the original versions are altered later.

First of all, allow me to assure everyone that I have not resigned as president of Dogen Sangha International. In fact, just the opposite has happened. On Friday September 25, 2009 at around 11:00 AM Japan Time I made a personal promise to Nishijima Roshi that I would remain president of Dogen Sangha International (DSI) at least until Nishijima Roshi’s death. Putting aside, for a moment, exactly what it means to be president of DSI, I intend to honor my promise to my teacher.

I must say that I was quite shocked to see Mr. Cohen’s comments on my blog. The emails between me and Nishijima Roshi that he posted appeared to me to be quite clearly sent to Mr. Cohen in error. Remember that Nishijima Roshi is now 90 years old. Even I have sometimes forgotten that an email from someone else was appended to one I was sending to a different person. And I was far less than 75 years old when I first began using email technology!

Furthermore, even if Mr. Cohen would have us believe that he did not know these emails were sent to him in error, I believe they were absolutely unambiguously and unquestionably private emails that were never intended for public consumption. I believe there can be no doubt at all about this fact.

This extreme breach of privacy is the most utterly inappropriate thing I have ever seen carried out in the name of Buddhism.

I have no idea why the president of one Buddhist organization would feel it necessary to make public such private correspondence concerning the president of another Buddhist organization. I can think of no reasonable cause to do so. This seems to me to be a highly unethical and immoral act.

Mr. Cohen is not a member of Dogen Sangha International and has no authority to make public statements on behalf of the organization. He certainly has no authorization at all to make public statements on my behalf.

For the record, the private email from me to Nishijima Roshi that Mr. Cohen made public was part of a much larger discussion between myself and Nishijima Roshi that Mr. Cohen was not privy to, and which I do not find any compelling reason to explain here.

Furthermore, I have not spoken to or communicated with Mr. Cohen except in a few very brief emails for the past two years. I chose to break off my relationship with him at that time because it became clear that every interaction between us always went very badly. There are times in life when the only thing you can do with certain relationships is put a stop to them. Sometimes, if the people involved stay away from each other for a while, they can resume some sort of relationship later on. In my own life I’ve recently been able to reconnect with an ex-girlfriend with whom I’ve had a rather stormy relationship for the past 15 or so years. We’re friends again now and it’s nice. But we would not be friends now if we had not stayed away from each other completely for several years.

In that case, she and I were once very close. We went through a lot together including an attack on the streets of Akron by a pair of men who seemed intent on killing me for no apparent reason (they appeared to be high on some kind of drug -- drugs suck). In the case of Mr. Cohen and myself, we were never anywhere near that close. I can clearly recall meeting him only three times. Once at a Nepalese restaurant in Tokyo called Mt. Fishtail, once at an Indian restaurant in Tokyo called Raj Mahal and once at an overnight trip to Tokei-in Temple in Shizuoka. I suspect we must have met a handful of times other than this, but I do not clearly remember those meetings. It is entirely possible he came to some of Nishijima Roshi’s talks at Tokyo University. But I do not recall seeing him there. As far as I can recall he was not one of regulars who came every week. Be aware that my memory is pretty dodgy. But this is my honest recollection. In any case, we were never friends.

When Mr. Cohen left Dogen Sangha International in 2007, I sensed that the time was right to end the relationship between us. As I said, it never seemed to go very well and once he was no longer part of the organization I could see no compelling reason to keep up what I found to be an utterly fruitless relationship with him.

And, yes folks, I did once send Mr. Cohen an email that said, "Go fuck yourself." But this was not a hastily scrawled missive sent in anger. In fact I first wrote him what I believed to be a very reasonable email stating why I no longer wished to carry on our relationship. But then I reflected on the fact that I'd sent him what I believed to be very reasonable emails before and they never seemed to work. I thought that one very rude statement might convey what I wanted to say far more effectively. So I scrapped my longer email and just sent one sentence. I reasoned that most people who received an email saying "Go fuck yourself" would sense that the person who sent that email no longer wished to carry on communicating with them.

Personally I’d prefer to cease all communications with Mr. Cohen for a period of five years. If, sometime in September of 2014, it seems that we might be able to have a reasonable conversation with each other, I’d be willing to do so. I think it will take at least that long for the current series of emails to become mere “water under the bridge” for me (you are only seeing the very tip of the iceberg here, there must be a couple dozen emails from Mr. Cohen similar to the ones he posted on this blog sitting in my inbox).

The thing that worries me most about this situation is the effect it is having on the health and well-being of Nishijima Roshi. I firmly believe there is only one person who can put an end to all of this, and I believe that person is Mr. Cohen. All he needs to do, I think, is to keep “Noble Silence” on the various issues that seem to be bothering him. I really hope he chooses to do so for Nishijima Roshi’s sake. Nishijima Roshi is a very old man and when I visited him last week I could see the visible toll all of this was taking on him. It was the cause of the only argument I have ever had with Nishijima Roshi in the many years I have known him.

This post is not intended as the beginning of a discussion with Mr. Cohen or anyone else on this matter. It is my final word on the subject. I am going to be quite stubborn over the next few weeks about this. Even if the comments section of every article I put up is filled with nothing but hundreds of postings about the supposed “Jundo vs. Brad War,” I will steadfastly ignore them. I’ve just traveled all the way around the world and had a lot of really interesting adventures I’d rather talk about.

But there is one last thing I would like to add. I have noticed a few comments over the past weeks from someone who identifies him/herself as “another DS guy on the outs.” I have no idea who this person might be. I would very much appreciate it if he or she would send a brief email to me at brad.warner@mac.com so we can discuss whatever the issues he/she has with Dogen Sangha and see if some solution can be worked out.

BYE BYE TOKIO!

2009-09-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

My World Domination Tour 2009 is officially done (though it looks like I'll have some Canadian dates to announce in November). The retreat at Tokei-in temple in Shizuoka, Japan ended yesterday. It was real and it was fun and it was real fun. We had 14 people at the beginning and ended with 16. This is a reverse of the usual order of things, in which someone always runs away from the retreat before it's done. We actually gained in numbers this time! How about that?

About my only complaint was that it was yet again another sausage fest. The ratio would have been a bit better but for the fact that two of the women who signed up had to cancel out before the retreat began due to personal matters. Even so, the ratio would have been still way too man heavy.

It's not always like this. The retreat I led at Southern Dharma Retreat Center earlier this year had more women than men, and the one I led near Munich was even-steven with five of each. But the general trend tends to be more male dominated. I've mentioned this before and I still don't have a good reason for it. Such is life, I suppose.

This trip has been a great opportunity to meet a lot of the other Dogen Sangha people. I spent a couple nights with Mike Leutchford, met Jeremy Pearson, had lunch with Richard Morrisey, got shown around London by Rachelle Allen, sat sesshins with Michele Proulx, Gabrielle Linnebach and Gerhard Wolfram, saw all of Finland with Markus Laitenen, made some really nice connections with Jurgen Seggelke, Gustav Ericsson, Nicole de Merkline and Kevin Bortolin, and even had some very friendly contact with Mike Cross. I'm starting to think this Dogen Sangha thing just might work after all.

In mere hours I'll be winging my way back to the USA where I'll stay for at least a couple of days (sorry, I couldn't resist). Well until I go to Canada anyway.

And, HEY MEXICO, my dad's moving to your country (he says) and wants me to come visit in December. So if anyone down South of the Border wants me to come speak there, shoot me an email (spoozilla@gmail.com). But don't actually shoot me, OK?

All right. I gotta go. I promise a real Zen article some time after I get back.

Rock on, world!

日本に帰りました！

2009-09-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

Yep, that's right cats and kittens, I'm back in Japan! And boy are my arms tired.

The flight I was on was full of junior high students so I got bumped up to business class. Classy!

Actually I've always had complete contempt for people who ride first or business class*. It just seems to wasteful and elitist. Yet there I was, up front with all the wasteful elitists. They even close off the doors between the two classes so those of us in business don't have to be bothered by seeing the suffering of the riff-raff in back of the plane. I did an interview in Montreal once where I was asked, "They say the Dalai Lama does meditation when he flies on planes. Do you do that?"

To which I answered, "The Dalai Lama probably flies first class. There's room to do meditation in those seats. I'm always in coach!"

But no, I did not do zazen in my giant wasteful seat. Couldn't have if I'd tried! The "full bed" function on those is better than you get in cattle car class, but not all that great. It's sorta tilted forward so you're always just about to slide out.

Anyway, that'll probably be my last chance to fly business class unless I get another plane full of pre-teens someday.

My European Tour of 2009 is now over. But it looks like there may be another in 2010. I'll keep you posted as news develops.

*Oh stop getting your panties in a twist! I don't really hate those people. It's just a reaction I have that goes way back. It's hard to get rid of these things.