Speaker 1: Before we start, I want to give a big shout
Speaker 1: out to our newest Patreon members Sam M, Rama G,
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Speaker 1: Thanks so much to all of you, and thank you
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Speaker 1: feed dot net slash join. Nobody's gonna do zazen, especially
Speaker 1: me for thirty seven freaking years without wanting something from it.
Speaker 1: But the fact that you want something from it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be all that relevant. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed. Throughout time, great tinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent and creative effort. To make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Brad Warner, and ordained Zen teacher and also
Speaker 1: the author of many books, most of which have hilarious
Speaker 1: titles like There Is No God and He's Always with You, Zen,
Speaker 1: Wrapped in Karma, Dipped in Chocolate, and his two thousand
Speaker 1: and four book Hardcore Is In. He also maintains his
Speaker 1: blog and YouTube channel, Hardcore Zen and as if that's
Speaker 1: not enough. Brad is also a punk rock bass player
Speaker 1: in the band Zero Defects, and has published work in
Speaker 1: the Buddhist magazines Shambala, Son, Buddha Dharma, and Tricycle, as
Speaker 1: well as rock magazines such as Alternative Press, Maximum Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll, and Razor Cake. Hi, Brad, welcome to the show. Hell,
Speaker 1: it's good to have you back. You and I talked,
Speaker 1: it's been probably four years ago. The main difference between well,
Speaker 1: there's lots of differences between now and then, but one
Speaker 1: of them is that in the intervening years, um, I've
Speaker 1: become a much more serious practitioner of Zen. So we've
Speaker 1: got a little bit more in common there. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd always sort of considered myself an all purpose Buddhist maybe,
Speaker 1: but I've gotten very specific and very focused in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years on Zen. So we'll have more
Speaker 1: to talk about there. But let's start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There is a grandfather who's talking to
Speaker 1: his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always a battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness, bravery, and love,
Speaker 1: and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things
Speaker 1: like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops
Speaker 1: and he thinks about it for a second, and he
Speaker 1: looks up at his grandfathers as well. Grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. Well. I think it's an important thing,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a good parable, and it's true,
Speaker 1: it is the one that you you feed that wins.
Speaker 1: And you always have a choice of whether to feed
Speaker 1: your greed and anger and hatred or or feed the
Speaker 1: other parts. You know, the better the kindness and love
Speaker 1: and all of that, and I think that's real crucial.
Speaker 1: The book that we're going to be talking about is
Speaker 1: not the one that I'm writing now. I've decided that
Speaker 1: I wanted to write a book about Buddhist ethics, and
Speaker 1: that plays into it too. There's a really strong ethical
Speaker 1: component to Buddhism, and I've been looking at some there's
Speaker 1: sort of non dual philosophies like advice to Vedanta and
Speaker 1: that and their ethical components there, but they aren't as
Speaker 1: strong as in Buddhism. Buddhism really lays the ethics on heavy,
Speaker 1: you know. Sometimes I think even when I first came
Speaker 1: across it, I was I thought that was a bit heavy.
Speaker 1: But now I realized, I know, this is a really
Speaker 1: good thing to to follow, an ethical system to live
Speaker 1: your life, because it's good. It's good for me, and
Speaker 1: it's good for everybody else that I encounter. So I
Speaker 1: think feeding that good wolf is it's the best thing
Speaker 1: for everybody involved. Yeah, that's a really interesting point. I
Speaker 1: think we could explore that for a while, because when
Speaker 1: I started initially being really into Buddhism, I was really
Speaker 1: drawn towards language that talked about behavior was skillful or
Speaker 1: it was unskillful. You know, there was this sort of
Speaker 1: framing that that I felt moved things away from an
Speaker 1: ethical or moral area, and that appealed to me for
Speaker 1: for quite some time, and than at times as I
Speaker 1: looked at this parable, there's moments where I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe we've got a skillful and an unskillful
Speaker 1: wolf and and you know, well, that's kind of a
Speaker 1: boring parable to have a skillful or unskillful. But more
Speaker 1: and more, maybe this is what happens. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's a part of natural, part of getting older or what.
Speaker 1: But as I've gotten as I've gotten older, I've gotten
Speaker 1: more interested in the ethical or moral ideas and a
Speaker 1: belief that there is some right and wrong that exists,
Speaker 1: or at least that that I can orient around. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Zen Zen is really weird about that, because they'll on
Speaker 1: one hand, tell you there is no right or wrong,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, Dogan is great for this.
Speaker 1: He'll tell you there is no right or wrong, and
Speaker 1: then he'll tell you do the right thing. You know
Speaker 1: that The Shoakumakasa is one of my favorite passages in
Speaker 1: all of Dogan's and it just that's just Japanese for
Speaker 1: don't enact wrong, don't And I made that title of
Speaker 1: my book before a few books ago, called don't be
Speaker 1: a York and I just tried to sort of americanize
Speaker 1: that into don't be a jerk. But there are different
Speaker 1: ways of looking at the world, and there are ways
Speaker 1: of looking at the world in which you can't say
Speaker 1: that there's any right or wrong, and then you know,
Speaker 1: words like skillful or unskillful kind of help get you
Speaker 1: into that. But you can also say that in a
Speaker 1: given situation, when you're face to face with somebody and
Speaker 1: something has to be done, there is the right thing
Speaker 1: to do, and there's probably a thousand not right things
Speaker 1: to do, and trying to find the right thing to
Speaker 1: do is tricky sometimes because we tend to get very
Speaker 1: dominated by our own desires and fears and things, and
Speaker 1: you'll you'll respond based on desire and fear rather than
Speaker 1: on what's actually the proper thing to do in the moment,
Speaker 1: which is why we have the Buddhist precepts. The Buddhist
Speaker 1: precepts are just kind of rules that you can defer
Speaker 1: to if in trouble and you don't know what to
Speaker 1: do you know, you just try to follow the sort
Speaker 1: of the ethical behavior of the ancient Buddhists, you know,
Speaker 1: don't kill, don't lie, don't steal, don't you know there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of them. Yeah, let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that sort of two ways of seeing the world.
Speaker 1: There's a view in Buddhism or Zen in particular, but
Speaker 1: I think it applies across the board of seeing that
Speaker 1: the world is whole and perfect and kind of as
Speaker 1: it is, all is well, And there's another way of
Speaker 1: seeing the world that is more the way we tend
Speaker 1: to see the world. You could refer to it is
Speaker 1: more dualistic, or I sometimes hear it referred to. Is
Speaker 1: there's the absolute and the relative, you know, And maybe
Speaker 1: the answer is just when it gets down to practical things,
Speaker 1: there is a right or wrong. But how do you
Speaker 1: balance or keep those two views in mind in a
Speaker 1: way that's useful. It's tricky because if you go if
Speaker 1: you go just by language or an intellectual understanding, you
Speaker 1: get one sort of answer and you get another answer
Speaker 1: if you're if you're actually just in the moment doing things.
Speaker 1: And I think the point is to go for the
Speaker 1: answer that works in the moment doing things. Everybody likes
Speaker 1: to talk about that, you know, absolute truth and relative truth,
Speaker 1: and I've never it's just maybe me, but I've never
Speaker 1: been comfortable about dividing things that way. I feel like
Speaker 1: the absolute truth and the relative truth are ultimately the same.
Speaker 1: So it's not that there's one sort of behavior that
Speaker 1: works in the absolute realm and one sort of behavior
Speaker 1: that works in the In the relative realm, what you
Speaker 1: want to do for the sake of the absolute is
Speaker 1: the same sort of behavior that you want to do
Speaker 1: in the relative context. You want to do right by
Speaker 1: whatever you encounter whoever. I was going to say people,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't necessarily always have to be people, but
Speaker 1: by whoever you encounter, and in whatever situation you find
Speaker 1: yourself in, you want to do the proper thing, and
Speaker 1: that is how the absolute kind of makes its way
Speaker 1: into the world. I think the the absolute is is
Speaker 1: always on the side of doing the proper thing. The
Speaker 1: problem is, the proper thing is often difficult. You know,
Speaker 1: you can't make a blanket set of rules that are
Speaker 1: going to apply to every situation. This is one of
Speaker 1: the things that's acknowledged in the Buddhist precept My teacher
Speaker 1: had this God, I wish I could come up with
Speaker 1: ab off the top of my head. Be it this
Speaker 1: great way of phrasing it where he does this Q
Speaker 1: and A in this book that he wrote about the precepts,
Speaker 1: and he's kind of going on and on about you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of absolute. You know, there's no absolute right
Speaker 1: or wrong and blah blah blah, and he goes on
Speaker 1: for that the paragraph. And then the student says, well,
Speaker 1: then does that mean we should follow the precepts? And
Speaker 1: he said, we should definitely follow the precepts. You know,
Speaker 1: so even though there is no absolute right and wrong,
Speaker 1: and then things are as they should be, always and forever,
Speaker 1: you follow the precepts and that's how you get through this,
Speaker 1: you know, as Prince said, this thing we call life,
Speaker 1: you know, you're trying to do the right thing by
Speaker 1: everyone you encounter. Yeah. I was reading something today earlier
Speaker 1: that was talking about that idea of saying of saying
Speaker 1: everything is perfect. It was a Zen book and it
Speaker 1: said not that everything is perfect in like the way
Speaker 1: we normally think of that. It just meant that everything
Speaker 1: was perfect, as in it was complete and it was
Speaker 1: as it is when we hear perfect, we sort of
Speaker 1: read into ideal ideal of paradise. It's not necessarily what's
Speaker 1: meant there. Yeah, yeah, it's just complete. That's sort of
Speaker 1: the thing that I'm struggling with to try to explain
Speaker 1: in this book that I'm writing now, which I probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't overpromote because it'll be a while before it comes out.
Speaker 1: It's that idea. I was sort of putting some of
Speaker 1: this stuff on my YouTube page and somebody objected to
Speaker 1: the idea of what's the idea I put it forth?
Speaker 1: You should always try to avoid harm or avoid doing
Speaker 1: harm to any living creature or sentient being, as they
Speaker 1: say in Buddhism, And somebody kind of came back with, well,
Speaker 1: if this means that a parent whose child is being
Speaker 1: attacked by a wolf can't can't fight back against the
Speaker 1: wolf because that would be harming them. You know, if
Speaker 1: people get into these weird when when they hear this,
Speaker 1: they go into this like absolute area where you can't
Speaker 1: do anything. And the thing is, if you look at
Speaker 1: Buddhist ethics the way they sort of described on paper,
Speaker 1: you would imagine that Buddhists couldn't do anything, you know,
Speaker 1: like like they would be just stuck not doing anything
Speaker 1: at all for fear they would do harm to to something.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Buddhists get even really weird. There's a
Speaker 1: line that one of my teachers teachers said in a
Speaker 1: lecture that I was looking at, and he said, he's
Speaker 1: holding this stick that the Zen teachers often hold when
Speaker 1: they give a lecture. He said, when they touched my
Speaker 1: stick to the ground, both the stick and the ground
Speaker 1: feel pain, but they don't say So that was what
Speaker 1: he said. And from the Zen point of view, you
Speaker 1: can go, Okay, I get what he's saying. If you
Speaker 1: tried to take that out into sort of um mindset
Speaker 1: that we have, where everything is in a separate individual
Speaker 1: object with its own agency and its own feelings and
Speaker 1: so forth, then you get this idea that, oh my god,
Speaker 1: a Buddhist can't even touch a stick on the ground
Speaker 1: because he's he's going to cause harm to the stick
Speaker 1: in the ground. But that's not that's not the way
Speaker 1: it is. It's actually a much more practical philosophy. But
Speaker 1: it acknowledges this other side in which we say that
Speaker 1: the whole universe is a living entity and everything that
Speaker 1: we do does kind of hurt it, you know, but
Speaker 1: we're at the same time, we're trying to minimize that
Speaker 1: amount of harm that we do because we know that
Speaker 1: that's good for everybody, and we know that that's how
Speaker 1: we eventually make this world a better place. Totally, totally,
Speaker 1: all right, let's change gears a little bit. Your book
Speaker 1: that I've took most of my notes from is called
Speaker 1: Letters to a Dead Friend about zen Uh. There are
Speaker 1: a series of letters you wrote. Most of them happened
Speaker 1: while you were on tour in Europe, and they were
Speaker 1: written to a friend of yours who died at the
Speaker 1: age of forty eight from cancer. Yeah, that's that's basically
Speaker 1: that's a good slummation. It was this interesting book to
Speaker 1: write because I had had this idea for a aisle
Speaker 1: that I had been writing some books and I still
Speaker 1: think are really good. But I was writing these books
Speaker 1: that were sort of deep dives into the philosophy of
Speaker 1: Dogan and trying to explain its relevance to the contemporary
Speaker 1: world and kind of make it accessible to people. And
Speaker 1: I was going and doing these tours in Europe and
Speaker 1: elsewhere and getting questions back from the audiences that indicated
Speaker 1: that a lot of the people I was talking to
Speaker 1: not only I mean they were interested in what I
Speaker 1: had to say, but not only didn't they know who
Speaker 1: Dogan was. They barely knew who Buddha was or what
Speaker 1: Zen was, you know, And I thought, oh, I better
Speaker 1: take a few steps back and put a book out
Speaker 1: that explains a very basic outline of what this philosophy is.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, a friend of mine had cancer and
Speaker 1: died um and it was really devastating because this is
Speaker 1: a guy I knew since we were both in high school,
Speaker 1: and we actually lived in the same house to get
Speaker 1: there for a while, so I knew him pretty well.
Speaker 1: By the time he got the cancer diagnosis. I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen him regularly for a few years, but we've been,
Speaker 1: you know, communicating online like people do, and so we
Speaker 1: were pretty close. And I visited him a couple of
Speaker 1: times during his last illnesses and kind of saw what
Speaker 1: was going on. And after he died, you know, I
Speaker 1: had this idea of I wish I had talked to
Speaker 1: him about this Zen stuff. I mean, he knew he
Speaker 1: was around the entire time from the start of my
Speaker 1: entry into the practice. You know, it would have been
Speaker 1: a couple of years after we met each other in
Speaker 1: high school, and then when we were living together in
Speaker 1: that punk rock house, I was sitting zazen, you know,
Speaker 1: every morning and every night in my in my little room,
Speaker 1: which was you know, down the hall from his room.
Speaker 1: I didn't talk much about Zen to him. I'm not
Speaker 1: one of these people who kind of fancies himself as
Speaker 1: into Zen, you know, and and wants to kind of
Speaker 1: tell the world and where the broken stocks and whatever
Speaker 1: you do to kind of try to indicate that you're
Speaker 1: into some sort of Eastern spirituality. So we never really
Speaker 1: had a conversation about it. But he was a guy
Speaker 1: who was interested in those kind of things. And when
Speaker 1: I visited him, when he knew, you know, his prognosis,
Speaker 1: he got it very late in the disease, so he
Speaker 1: never had a good prognosis. We were always hoping that
Speaker 1: that something would, you know, something would happen and pull through.
Speaker 1: But it didn't happen, and so everybody was aware that
Speaker 1: that that this is what was going to happen to
Speaker 1: him and he wasn't going to last very long. But
Speaker 1: I decided when I was with him, and the two
Speaker 1: times I went up to visit him during his illness
Speaker 1: that I didn't want to be one of those people
Speaker 1: who tries to sell a dying person on their religion,
Speaker 1: because I think that's obnoxious, you know, that's I don't
Speaker 1: I don't like that, you know when people do that.
Speaker 1: So I thought, oh, I'm just gonna let him move
Speaker 1: the conversation wherever it wants to go. And in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I had some regrets of thinking that, well, maybe I
Speaker 1: could have pushed things a little bit, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: he was a little bit too shy to go into
Speaker 1: some of these areas, and maybe I should have, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of moved the conversation in that way, because we
Speaker 1: never did get into the depths that we could have
Speaker 1: gotten into because we were spent like a week together
Speaker 1: two different times. So this book was sort of a
Speaker 1: way to kind of rectify it. It's sort of a
Speaker 1: way to say all the things that I felt like
Speaker 1: I should have said to him, explaining this practice, explaining
Speaker 1: what it has to do with everything. And I had
Speaker 1: this funny question when I gave a lecture about this
Speaker 1: in in London right after the book had come out,
Speaker 1: when somebody said, of course, you're not a person who
Speaker 1: believes that your dead friend can actually read these letters,
Speaker 1: And I said, wow, not exactly. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't put it absolutely outside of the realm of
Speaker 1: possibilities that he might be able to read the letters
Speaker 1: in some sort of way, although not as you know,
Speaker 1: a guy sitting up in heaven with a harp and
Speaker 1: and looking at the book, but there might be a
Speaker 1: way that that what he was receives what I'm trying
Speaker 1: to give him. So in that sense, I took it
Speaker 1: really seriously, like I'm actually trying to say this to
Speaker 1: my dead friend. But I'm also right. I also know
Speaker 1: I'm writing a book, you know, and I know that
Speaker 1: most of the people who are reading it are not him,
Speaker 1: and and so I tried to make sure I wasn't
Speaker 1: saying anything in the book that I wouldn't actually say
Speaker 1: to him. You know. I tried to put my mind
Speaker 1: in the mindset that, Okay, he can read this. You know,
Speaker 1: whether I absolutely believe that or not is kind of
Speaker 1: not relevant to me really, But I thought, for the
Speaker 1: sake of the book, I have to write it as
Speaker 1: if he can read it, and so it makes it
Speaker 1: very sort of intimate. So I'm telling him, uh, this,
Speaker 1: this friend of mine what what I would have said
Speaker 1: to him, And then the audience gets to look in
Speaker 1: on it if they're interested, and see what I have
Speaker 1: to say to to my friend who die. It about Zen.
Speaker 1: It's a long explanation of the book. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: want to dive in and talk about a couple of
Speaker 1: things in the book there that you said, and and
Speaker 1: the first I'm just going to read just a short
Speaker 1: little section here because I really love what you say here.
Speaker 1: You say, we're like icebergs. What we know is only
Speaker 1: the little bit that shows above the water. The rest
Speaker 1: of us goes on forever below, unseen, unknowable. We can't
Speaker 1: understand it. We can only try to accord with it.
Speaker 1: And I'd like you to just elaborate a little bit
Speaker 1: more on what does accord with these deep, unseen, unknowable
Speaker 1: parts of ourselves? What does that mean? It's interesting you
Speaker 1: should bring that up, because you know, certain parts of
Speaker 1: that book are really real. And that part actually I
Speaker 1: copied from a diary that I was writing right after
Speaker 1: this front, right right after I got the news that
Speaker 1: he died. You know, the day described in the early
Speaker 1: part of the book, what I I went to this
Speaker 1: pizza shop in Hamburg in Germany, and uh and was
Speaker 1: sitting there writing in this diary, and that was one
Speaker 1: of the things I wrote, was about the icebergs. And
Speaker 1: then I just basically copied it into the book and
Speaker 1: didn't change it very much. But I think that's my
Speaker 1: feeling about life. Our conscious mind is able to access
Speaker 1: a certain certain aspects about our self. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you're if you practice Buddhism like I know you do,
Speaker 1: the word self is a loaded word in Buddhism, but
Speaker 1: there is a there is a sense of personal self.
Speaker 1: And the personal self is something we I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: we know very well, but we don't actually know it
Speaker 1: very well. But it's among the things that we know.
Speaker 1: It's the thing that we know best, you know. It's
Speaker 1: it's sort of a limited trajectory of a life history
Speaker 1: and likes and dislikes and things like that that all
Speaker 1: come together and we form a picture of ourselves which
Speaker 1: is about as accurate as the pictures that we form
Speaker 1: of anybody else. You know. Is one thing that struck
Speaker 1: me during practice one day, like you know, a wallop
Speaker 1: on the head, was that I know myself about as
Speaker 1: well as I know. You know, a close friend, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know that much about you know,
Speaker 1: even my closest friends, you know, and but we do
Speaker 1: know that, and we know that aspect. But then there's
Speaker 1: this other business that just goes on. Like I use
Speaker 1: the metaphor of the iceberg, that's that's huge underneath and
Speaker 1: that that probably is much more meaningful than any of
Speaker 1: that personal stuff. That personal stuff is just sort of
Speaker 1: weird little reflections of what's going on underneath. And to
Speaker 1: accord with that is difficult because the you know, the
Speaker 1: personal self has its own agenda, you know, as things
Speaker 1: it wants to do and you know, places it wants
Speaker 1: to go, and you know, stuff it wants to accomplish
Speaker 1: and all that, but it might not be in accord
Speaker 1: with that bigger sort of push that's going on. And
Speaker 1: that push that's going on is what brought your personal
Speaker 1: self into existence in the first place. This is me
Speaker 1: being all weird. And Zenny, I suppose you know the
Speaker 1: reason you're here, of the reason you manifest on this
Speaker 1: earth is this thing that you are is for a
Speaker 1: bunch of reasons that are not accessible to the conscious mind.
Speaker 1: But you can sort of accord with them. You can
Speaker 1: sort of try to feel where this is going and
Speaker 1: and try to do what's best to make that happen.
Speaker 1: And it's something I've been working on all my life.
Speaker 1: And I feel like I've gone wrong in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. But one of the Buddhist precepts is don't
Speaker 1: speak or don't dwell on past mistakes. Try not to
Speaker 1: dwell on my past mistakes. But you know, I've made
Speaker 1: a lot of mistakes. And as I make those mistakes,
Speaker 1: I learned from those mistakes and I try to move
Speaker 1: things back on track. And and that's, you know, what
Speaker 1: I've always been trying to do, at least consciously, even
Speaker 1: if I screw up a lot of the times. And
Speaker 1: that's how I accord with it. But it's always a
Speaker 1: little bit. It's going on at a level that the
Speaker 1: conscious mind doesn't have access to. So it's not like
Speaker 1: you can go, Okay, I need to, you know, buy prius.
Speaker 1: I don't know why people that's how they want to do,
Speaker 1: but maybe it involves buying a prius, but I think
Speaker 1: it's much more nebulous and harder to understand than that.
Speaker 1: It's more like a push towards and and end. And
Speaker 1: somehow I got pushed towards this Buddhist end. And I
Speaker 1: often wonder why, you know, why me? Why why Buddhism,
Speaker 1: you know, of all things. Even after thirty seven years,
Speaker 1: because I figured it out today is at least thirty
Speaker 1: seven years of Buddhist practice, I still don't feel like
Speaker 1: much of a Buddhist. And I still don't know why
Speaker 1: this is the thing that I chose to kind of
Speaker 1: go for. But I think it's something that that needed
Speaker 1: to be done in the world. And whatever forces are
Speaker 1: out there that understand these things saw that need and
Speaker 1: popped me into existence and said, here you go, that's
Speaker 1: your job. And I went, what, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: You mentioned old teacher of yours. I don't know if
Speaker 1: i'll get his name right, Nisha Jimam Nishijima roshi Um
Speaker 1: your teacher. And while you were in Japan and people
Speaker 1: would ask him what Buddha was, and he would say,
Speaker 1: I think Buddha was a kind of genius. And you
Speaker 1: go on to say, I think that's the best way
Speaker 1: to understand Buddha. That means he was sort of like
Speaker 1: a spiritual Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking. I think that's
Speaker 1: a great, great explanation, say a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what that means to us. Yeah, I just I really
Speaker 1: liked it when he said that. I if I remember right,
Speaker 1: the conversation was with a guy who was I think
Speaker 1: he was a devout Catholic or he raised a devout Catholic,
Speaker 1: and he really wanted to understand what Buddha was cosmically.
Speaker 1: So I think what he wanted was an answer like,
Speaker 1: you know, the savior of mankind or something that would
Speaker 1: be more religious answer. I think it is what this
Speaker 1: I don't know for sure, but it seemed like in
Speaker 1: the conversation that's what he was reaching for. And Nishimuroshi
Speaker 1: came out with I think he was a sort of genius.
Speaker 1: You know. I love that because it sort of puts
Speaker 1: him back on the level because you can kind of say, well,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ways you can take that. You know,
Speaker 1: Stephen Hawking or or Albert Einstein. We understand that they
Speaker 1: don't possess magical power wers or or they aren't celestial beings.
Speaker 1: Uh in that sense, maybe we're all celestial beings, but
Speaker 1: you know, we could really need to go there. But
Speaker 1: they're people like us. But you also understand that if
Speaker 1: you wanted to argue about the rules of general and
Speaker 1: special relativity with Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking, you probably
Speaker 1: you're probably not going to get You're probably not going
Speaker 1: to get very far. You know, you have to defer
Speaker 1: to a person like that when it comes to their
Speaker 1: area of expertise, you know, and same with with the Buddha.
Speaker 1: The same with the great masters in Buddhism as well,
Speaker 1: is you understand that they're human beings and you don't
Speaker 1: try to kind of idealize them too much. But you
Speaker 1: have to understand that that if the Buddhists said something
Speaker 1: about ethics, for example, it's probably not going to make
Speaker 1: much sense to argue your point about ethics against Buddha's
Speaker 1: point about ethics. So so that's why I get funny
Speaker 1: reactions from the sort of audience that I have for
Speaker 1: my books. I think because it's a sort of you know,
Speaker 1: it's a snarky, punk rock audience, and they're going, well,
Speaker 1: why are you always quoting these old ancient masters, because
Speaker 1: you know, aren't you going to say something for yourself
Speaker 1: or you know. I'll get that kind of response sometimes
Speaker 1: and I think, well, now, these these ancient masters are
Speaker 1: revered for a reason. You know, they're not. They're not
Speaker 1: just arbitrarily set up there on a on a pedestal.
Speaker 1: It's because they said and did things that were recognized
Speaker 1: by their contemporaries as important and worth preserving even after
Speaker 1: they died. Sorry, that's Ziggy, my dog. He's he's barking
Speaker 1: at my girlfriend's mom in the backyard. But that's what
Speaker 1: I mean when I say that he was a genius.
Speaker 1: I'm you know, I don't know if n stem Roshi
Speaker 1: meant exactly that, but I think he did. He wasn't.
Speaker 1: He wasn't really he didn't like all the sort of
Speaker 1: supernatural stuff that sent tends to surround Buddhism sometimes, especially
Speaker 1: being a Japanese person, where that stuff, you know, kind
Speaker 1: and can get overwhelming depending on which sort of Buddhist
Speaker 1: temple you go to. So so talking about him in
Speaker 1: terms of being a human genius was I think his
Speaker 1: way of kind of bringing that down to a more
Speaker 1: realistic sort of view. And so in your mind, given
Speaker 1: that when we talk about the three treasures of the
Speaker 1: three Jewels, right, there's different words we could use. I
Speaker 1: I pay homage to I venerate I, you know, will
Speaker 1: say the Buddha, the Dharma and the sanga. Right, And
Speaker 1: so you know when we say Buddha in that sense,
Speaker 1: what do you think we're saying there? You know, is
Speaker 1: that not a phrase you even like? And if it's
Speaker 1: one that you don't like, or if it's one that
Speaker 1: you do use, what's that translation in your mind mean?
Speaker 1: Because where I get hung up is I'll go, well, okay,
Speaker 1: the Buddha, historical figure who is really wise, gave us
Speaker 1: all these teachings. But isn't that sort of the dharma? No? Well, okay,
Speaker 1: you know those two get confused in my mind. They
Speaker 1: should I think probably, you know, the Buddha and the
Speaker 1: Dharma and the Songa even are kind of a single thing,
Speaker 1: you know, the song of being the group of practitioners,
Speaker 1: and the Dharma being the teachings, and the Buddha being
Speaker 1: the person. But of course, if you if you get
Speaker 1: into Mahayana Buddhism, if you want to get into the
Speaker 1: sort of philosophical intellectual history of the thing, they transformed
Speaker 1: the meaning of Buddha from being the historical person to
Speaker 1: a sort of ideal that is believed to be a
Speaker 1: real thing, you know, not just an idea that pervades
Speaker 1: the whole universe kind of a living spirit, if you will,
Speaker 1: of rightness. We revere that, and we honor that in
Speaker 1: the sense that it manifests in everybody, you know, not
Speaker 1: just the historical figure you studies end. So you know
Speaker 1: that Zen tends to almost downplay to the annoyance of
Speaker 1: a lot of other sects of Buddhism, the historical figure
Speaker 1: of Buddha. The Zen teachers often quote the Buddha, but
Speaker 1: if you actually look at what their quotes are from there,
Speaker 1: from Mahayana sutras, which were written long after the Buddha died,
Speaker 1: and you don't get a whole lot of quotations from
Speaker 1: the actual historical Buddha when you listen to his end
Speaker 1: teacher talk about Buddha. So it's not it's not exactly
Speaker 1: the sense of revering that guy. Although although he was
Speaker 1: a special person, you know, you have to kind of
Speaker 1: acknowledge that he said something into motion that was very,
Speaker 1: very important and it shouldn't be kind of looked down upon.
Speaker 1: And the dharma is is that thing. But then of
Speaker 1: course you get into Mayana Buddhism again and the word
Speaker 1: dharma becomes a kind of catch all term. I was
Speaker 1: just trying to explain it in a piece of writing
Speaker 1: I was doing yesterday, and I realized, well, the way
Speaker 1: that the word dharma is being used in this particular
Speaker 1: sentence means anything and everything. You know, this cup that
Speaker 1: I'm holding, well, your audience can't see this cup I'm
Speaker 1: holding is dharma, you know. Literally, that would be included
Speaker 1: in in all dharmas. In some versions, even aspects of
Speaker 1: the physical world are are dharmas. The one I always
Speaker 1: had trouble with if we want to go there is
Speaker 1: sana because I, like I said, I never really fancied
Speaker 1: myself a Buddhist, and I would be with these Buddhist groups,
Speaker 1: and I know that this is an important part of
Speaker 1: the practice, but I'd be kind of like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to know these these jokers, you know, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them weren't really friends of mine or anything.
Speaker 1: Even among the groups I practiced with, I'd be kind
Speaker 1: of like, I don't hang around with that guy, you know,
Speaker 1: except when we're doing something Buddhist e together. But then
Speaker 1: that should be honored too, because these are the people,
Speaker 1: you know, like it or not. These are the people
Speaker 1: who are taking this stuff seriously. And whether you agree
Speaker 1: with them or whether you kind of mix with them otherwise,
Speaker 1: this is who's working on this stuff. It's always a
Speaker 1: little hard for me. You know. There's this trendy phrase,
Speaker 1: the Mahasanga, and moha means great, and they're talking about
Speaker 1: the greater group of Buddhists throughout the world, and usually
Speaker 1: they're referring in America to American Buddhists, and I look
Speaker 1: at American Buddhism and I go, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: there's some stuff in there that I kind of go, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine if you want to do that, but I
Speaker 1: don't think that's what I'm working on. They get very
Speaker 1: political and stuff sometimes, and usually it's all for a
Speaker 1: good cause. You know, I haven't seen many Buddhists supporting
Speaker 1: causes that I think are bad. But I also think,
Speaker 1: you know, there's there's something deeper we're working on here,
Speaker 1: and if you if you kind of channel it into
Speaker 1: a political cause, you get lost in the politics of it.
Speaker 1: And I'd rather bring it back down to what it is,
Speaker 1: that it's core the reason we're trying to do the
Speaker 1: right thing, rather than the you know, the specific laws
Speaker 1: you're trying to get enacted or movements you're trying to
Speaker 1: support and stuff. There's always a core to that that's
Speaker 1: more basic and important than the specifics, and you can
Speaker 1: get lost. I'm sorry, I shouldn't go there though. That
Speaker 1: opens the whole care that we're not gonna have time for.
Speaker 1: But good because because I actually made a decision, you know,
Speaker 1: after the pandemic and everything started going wonky with everybody,
Speaker 1: that I'm just really going to stay away from that,
Speaker 1: like I haven't been getting it. I've been trying to
Speaker 1: stay away from it before, but dipping my toes in
Speaker 1: here and there, and then I thought, no, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stay absolutely out of that, you know, just work on
Speaker 1: something much more, I think, much more basic than that.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about something that I think is pretty basic
Speaker 1: and yet universal and pretty important. And it's one of
Speaker 1: the most challenging I think aspects of a serious Buddhist practice.
Speaker 1: Um and it's not self, although it can't avoid the self,
Speaker 1: but it's really the discussion around desire and goals. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of saying, you know, particularly in Zen, that
Speaker 1: you know, we don't practice meditation or zazen. We don't
Speaker 1: do it for any reason. We don't do it for
Speaker 1: any goal. There's no goal. What we want to do
Speaker 1: is abandon our goals, right, and and then of course
Speaker 1: you get yourself into an infinite loop that goes well,
Speaker 1: isn't wanting to be free of desires? Another type of desire?
Speaker 1: And but I want to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: why are we even trying to not have a goal
Speaker 1: in our spiritual practice. Well, it's a good question, because
Speaker 1: you're you're right, you can get into this endless loop
Speaker 1: of the goal of having no goal is also a goal.
Speaker 1: That the way my first teacher, Tim McCarthy saw that
Speaker 1: for me is he said, well, yes, semantically, the goal
Speaker 1: of having no goal is is also a goal. But
Speaker 1: when you're actually working on having no goal, it's very
Speaker 1: different from working on having a goal. You know, the
Speaker 1: actual practice of it is a whole different way of
Speaker 1: working and things. And probably the main reason for not
Speaker 1: having a goal is because everything in our society tends
Speaker 1: to be very goal oriented. I just started looking at
Speaker 1: Alan Watson. I usually used to avoid even mentioning him
Speaker 1: because you know, he's very pop culture and stuff, but
Speaker 1: he said some great things. And there's this little video
Speaker 1: you can find on on YouTube that's done by Trey
Speaker 1: Parker and Matt Stone, the South Park Guys. They animated
Speaker 1: to a speech that Alan Watts gave in the sixties
Speaker 1: or something about having goals, you know, and it's it's
Speaker 1: about in the first grade, your goal is to get
Speaker 1: into second grade and you're you know, and then your
Speaker 1: your goal is to get into junior high school, and
Speaker 1: then your goal is to get in high school, and
Speaker 1: then your goal is to to you know, maybe get
Speaker 1: into a university or college, and then your goal is
Speaker 1: to get a job, and then you know, you you
Speaker 1: live your whole life with all always something out there
Speaker 1: that's the thing you're going for, and each time you
Speaker 1: get it, you know, you might have a moment of elation,
Speaker 1: like yeah, I did that, but but pretty soon that
Speaker 1: just becomes another part of the ordinary life, and then
Speaker 1: you have to go for the next goal. So everything
Speaker 1: is is goal oriented, and the idea of zaza and
Speaker 1: meditation is to do this without any goal. But of
Speaker 1: course nobody's gonna do zazen, especially you know, like me
Speaker 1: for thirty seven freaking years without wanting something from it.
Speaker 1: But the fact that you want something from it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be all that relevant, you know, you sit
Speaker 1: on your cushion, you know, wanting whatever that thing is
Speaker 1: you want, and as that want comes up in your mind,
Speaker 1: if you're working on this seriously, you put it aside
Speaker 1: and going, okay, that's here's where I am now, you know,
Speaker 1: And and I want to be better, but here's where
Speaker 1: I am now, and just keep facing this as it
Speaker 1: is and not worrying about the goal. The other problem
Speaker 1: with goals is, especially when they're spiritual goals, is they
Speaker 1: tend to just move you in the wrong way. There's
Speaker 1: this one passage of Dogan's that I was working on
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks ago, where Dogan says something like,
Speaker 1: no one ever had realization and thought, oh, this is realization.
Speaker 1: It's just exactly as expected it to be, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh So, any sort of expectations you have about this,
Speaker 1: you know, realization, which is a normal, the standard goal
Speaker 1: of a lot of meditators and zen practitioners. Any sort
Speaker 1: of idea you have about it is a false idea anyway.
Speaker 1: So there's no real sense in setting your sights on
Speaker 1: that thing that you just made up out of out
Speaker 1: of the same sort of confused problematic consciousness that that
Speaker 1: you're sort of working to overcome anyway, So you just
Speaker 1: set aside all goals and just try to see things
Speaker 1: as they are. The irony of it is is that
Speaker 1: things as they are is quite different from what you
Speaker 1: imagine them to be. And once you start to catch
Speaker 1: glimpses of that and notice how wrong you've been. In
Speaker 1: my own case, I can tell you that that when
Speaker 1: that first started happening years ago in my practice, it
Speaker 1: was sort of scary because I realized that every idea
Speaker 1: I had about who I was and the life I
Speaker 1: was living and what the world was it was completely wrong,
Speaker 1: you know, And and at first there's nothing. You don't
Speaker 1: have anything to put in its place. You know. It's
Speaker 1: not as if you get a download of the right
Speaker 1: idea and go, oh yeah, it's like this, you know.
Speaker 1: That's what sort of religions are good at. You know.
Speaker 1: They come up with a different sort of framework for
Speaker 1: you to to to follow and say, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the will of col Ob or I don't know,
Speaker 1: I just made that up, or it's Mormonism or something. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter, you know, whatever whatever it is, you know,
Speaker 1: you you have that idea, but but in this end
Speaker 1: form you're just putting aside any ideas that you have,
Speaker 1: and you kind of you can kind of feel like
Speaker 1: you're just a drift, like there's nothing it's not. You know,
Speaker 1: if I can't believe in my own body and mind,
Speaker 1: then what the hell can I believe in? And this
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons the practice is also all
Speaker 1: about relaxation. You know, it's fun to pooh pooh people
Speaker 1: who talk about meditation as a relaxation thing, but it
Speaker 1: really is. And part of the reason that that relaxation
Speaker 1: is part of it is you have to be very
Speaker 1: relaxed when it comes up to your mind that you
Speaker 1: don't even know who and what you are. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to be like, Okay, I don't know who
Speaker 1: and what I am. Now what am I going to
Speaker 1: do about that? And and what it turns out is,
Speaker 1: you know, spoiler alert, that who and what you are
Speaker 1: is actually a good thing. You know, there's nothing scary
Speaker 1: about it. In fact, it's like a foundation. It's like
Speaker 1: a solid, solid foundation that you find at the bottom
Speaker 1: of all this when you thought that you were in
Speaker 1: free fall and then you realize, no, I'm standing on
Speaker 1: the most solid ground possible, and it just seems like
Speaker 1: free fall because everything I thought about it before was wrong.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that makes any sense, totally, totally. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You said a couple of things in the book that
Speaker 1: I thought really really summarized this well. You you said
Speaker 1: that practices for getting you into your true experience. It's
Speaker 1: for learning how not to be chasing after something other
Speaker 1: than where you are right now. And then the other
Speaker 1: thing that you said, and I love this whole sort
Speaker 1: of couple of sentences, is you said, what we're trying
Speaker 1: to do in Zazen practices to get into a real experience,
Speaker 1: unadorned as it is, and see it for what it is.
Speaker 1: What happens when you do that is surprising for me.
Speaker 1: When I finally started to understand what my own life
Speaker 1: really was, I discovered that my ordinary, mundane life was
Speaker 1: much subtler and more beautiful and important than I ever
Speaker 1: could have imagined. And and I think that's that's such
Speaker 1: a great way of saying that the problem with goals,
Speaker 1: by their very nature is they are somewhere else, some
Speaker 1: other time. They always draw our eyes up and away
Speaker 1: towards someplace else, something else, instead of right here. And
Speaker 1: the amazing thing about right here is that if we
Speaker 1: actually sort of touch it, it's very different than what
Speaker 1: we think of. We think of right here, right now
Speaker 1: is generally kind of boring. But when you when you
Speaker 1: actually touch it in a deeper way, it's, as you said,
Speaker 1: it's it's something much more than that. And you just say,
Speaker 1: you know, when we try to acquire things that are
Speaker 1: far away from this, we miss out on what is
Speaker 1: very near. We miss out on our real lives here
Speaker 1: and now. And that's the saddest thing that can possibly happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so, And it's something that I personally always
Speaker 1: have to remind myself because I'm just like anybody else.
Speaker 1: I can get I can get seduced by, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea that there's something better, especially, you know, you
Speaker 1: look at a time like we're going through now, everything
Speaker 1: seems to be wonky and you just want it to
Speaker 1: be over and resolved and things to get back to
Speaker 1: some sort of semblance of normalcy. And it's hard to
Speaker 1: see that as being this is exactly where I needed
Speaker 1: to be. You know, this is especially difficult in in
Speaker 1: these times, even for me. After all the practice I've done,
Speaker 1: I've gone there enough to know that that's true, you know,
Speaker 1: and and I've read enough teachers who themselves have gone
Speaker 1: through very difficult times and and they say that's true too.
Speaker 1: You know, I think about Ishima Roshi, and you know
Speaker 1: he was practicing zaza and during the Second World War,
Speaker 1: you know in Japan. Um. You know, these are heavy times,
Speaker 1: and people have gone through them and gone Okay, this
Speaker 1: is absolute reality as it needs to be, and there's
Speaker 1: a kind of deep beauty to it that transcends any
Speaker 1: ideas you might have about how it ought to be
Speaker 1: or how you want it to be. Like I say,
Speaker 1: it's a tough sell, especially right now as they say
Speaker 1: to say that, because I think we all agree that
Speaker 1: this is not where we want to be. But in
Speaker 1: the in another sense, this is this is part of
Speaker 1: a process that is is an endless process that's been
Speaker 1: going on for a very long time, and we're just
Speaker 1: trying to kind of accord with it, just to get
Speaker 1: back to the thing I said several minutes ago, trying
Speaker 1: to find our own place in it and our own
Speaker 1: right action within the situation that we are forced into.
Speaker 1: I have found Zen training to be very useful for
Speaker 1: me during quarantine, because every time my brain goes I
Speaker 1: need to be somewhere else. Some zen voice pops up
Speaker 1: inside me and goes, no, it's right here, and I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta I gotta pay attention. Um. The thing that
Speaker 1: you go on to say, which I think I want
Speaker 1: to take this this point just a little bit further,
Speaker 1: is the thing that has always sort of been a
Speaker 1: challenge to me as I look at this basic Buddhist
Speaker 1: idea of hey, it's you always wanting things to be
Speaker 1: different than they are. That's your problem. If you could
Speaker 1: stop doing that, you'd feel better, right, which it makes
Speaker 1: intuitive sense. At the same time, I see this desire
Speaker 1: just pouring out of us as human beings, you know,
Speaker 1: and the thought that I'm trying to eliminate that feels like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to squash something that's essential. And you really
Speaker 1: make a nice point that, you know, desire seeking is
Speaker 1: sort of build into our nature, and if we try
Speaker 1: and battle it out and eliminate that, we're just going
Speaker 1: to fail. So how do we work with the fact
Speaker 1: that desire is not going to go away just because
Speaker 1: we think it's not a useful tool. It's a difficult one.
Speaker 1: One of the things that Jima Roshi used to like
Speaker 1: to tell in his lectures is in Japan you get
Speaker 1: the same sort of basic Buddhism as you get anywhere
Speaker 1: else now because they kind of follow a Western model.
Speaker 1: And the idea is that the first noble truth is
Speaker 1: is all life is suffering, and the second one is
Speaker 1: suffering is caused by desire, and the third one is
Speaker 1: that you cut off suffering by cutting off desire. And
Speaker 1: he said that that that never worked for him, because
Speaker 1: you can't cut off desire. You're always going to be
Speaker 1: desiring something. You know, at the most basic level, you
Speaker 1: desire to breathe there, you know, and eat, you know,
Speaker 1: and and sleep and do things like that. You can't
Speaker 1: you can't just evade all desire. So you you kind
Speaker 1: of have to put desire into its its place. It
Speaker 1: comes up and you notice it and you go, well,
Speaker 1: you know that desire is a desire for something that
Speaker 1: makes sense, you know, like like I'm hungry and I
Speaker 1: want to eat, and you do that. And the way
Speaker 1: desire goes wrong is when when it becomes greed, I think,
Speaker 1: and maybe that's you know, the real key to it.
Speaker 1: Maybe the problem isn't so much desire as as a
Speaker 1: kind of greed for wanting things to be different from
Speaker 1: how they actually are. Wanting things to be. You always
Speaker 1: want things to be better, but you kind of even
Speaker 1: put that aside and just allow things to be as
Speaker 1: they are. And I mean, it's a tricky one because
Speaker 1: desire can mean a whole lot of things. Not every
Speaker 1: desire is bad. Desire for world peace is not a
Speaker 1: bad thing. The desire for a less polluted atmosphere is
Speaker 1: not a bad thing, you know. The desire for an
Speaker 1: end to the pandemic is not a bad thing, you know,
Speaker 1: And I'm glad there's a lot of people working on
Speaker 1: those projects at the same time. You know, you you
Speaker 1: want to eliminate a tendency to desire more than what
Speaker 1: is actually necessary. But that you know, you can fine
Speaker 1: tune that in lots of ways. You know, the early
Speaker 1: Buddhists would have one robe and one begging bowl and
Speaker 1: trust the universe to provide for them. And ironically, you
Speaker 1: don't you don't hear a lot of stories where that fails.
Speaker 1: You know, they always seem to to get by. It's
Speaker 1: a very difficult thing, and I don't know too many.
Speaker 1: I might know a couple of contemporary Buddhists. You try that,
Speaker 1: but neither of my teachers ever went that far with it,
Speaker 1: but you do try to kind of limit it to uh,
Speaker 1: what's manageable. And for myself, you know, especially in light
Speaker 1: of recent events, I've really cut down on a lot
Speaker 1: of things and realized there's so much, there's so much
Speaker 1: that I don't actually need. I think there's maybe an
Speaker 1: interesting consciousness developing during during all these shutdowns that if
Speaker 1: we can accord with it and and find our way
Speaker 1: into it, might actually end up really improving the world.
Speaker 1: And of course there's all the negative things, which of
Speaker 1: course the news is doing a great job of covering,
Speaker 1: but they're not doing such a great job of covering
Speaker 1: the positive sort of things that are happening to people
Speaker 1: as they are forced to, you know, limit their movements
Speaker 1: and limit what they can get, you know, yep, yep, totally.
Speaker 1: Well that's the news for you, all right. Well, Brad,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: You and I are going to talk for a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes in the post show conversation about a statement
Speaker 1: you make, which is that what most people call spirituality
Speaker 1: is bull You and I are going to talk about
Speaker 1: that in the post show conversation listeners. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get access to the post show conversation and
Speaker 1: other things and the joy of supporting the show, you
Speaker 1: can go to One you Feed dot net slash joint.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much Brad for coming on. It's been a
Speaker 1: pleasure to talk with you again. Thank you for having me.
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