Brad Warner > Quotes

“You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away.”
― Brad Warner, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma

“The state of ambiguity - that messy, greasy, mixed-up, confused, and awful situation you're living through right now - is enlightenment itself.”
― Brad Warner

“If a tree falls in the forest and it hits a mime, would he make a noise?”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“Reality's all you've got. But here's the real secret, the real miracle: it's enough.”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“If you want to believe in reincarnation, you have to believe that this life, what you're living through right now, is the afterlife. You're missing out on the afterlife you looked forward to in your last existence by worrying about your next life. This is what happens after you die. Take a look.”
― Brad Warner

“You won’t understand life and death until you’re ready to set aside any hope of understanding life and death and just live your life until you die.”
― Brad Warner, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma

“Consider this:

1. Would you ride in a car whose driver was on the consciousness-expanding "entheogenic" drug LSD?

And here's a bonus question:

2. Why does an "expanded consciousness" include the inability to operate a motor vehicle?”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.”
― Brad Warner

“Faith keeps you going, but doubt keeps you from going off the deep end.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“As for enlightenment, that's just for people who can't face reality.”
― Brad Warner, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma

“How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“This world is better than Utopia because - and follow this point carefully - you can never live in Utopia. Utopia is always somewhere else. That's the very definition of Utopia.”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“Those who hope for purity and righteousness always try and destroy that which disturbs them. They think the disturbance comes from outside themselves. This is a serious problem. Wars, suicide bombings, and all sorts of other nasty things start from the premise that we can destroy "evil" outside ourselves without dealing with the evil within.”
― Brad Warner, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma

“Real wisdom is the ability to understand the incredible extent to which you bullshit yourself every single moment of every day.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“The very idea of higher states of consciousness is absurd. Comparing one state of consciousness to another and saying one is "higher" and the other is "mundane" is like eating a banana and complaining it's not a very good apple.”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“Zen replaces all objects of belief with one single thing: reality itself. We believe only in this universe. We don't believe in the afterlife. We don't believe in the sovereignty of nations. We don't believe in money or power or fame. We don't believe in our idols. We don't believe in our positions or our possessions. We don't believe we can be insulted, or that our honor or the honor of our family, our nation or our faith can be offended. We don't believe in Buddha. We just believe in reality. Just this.”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“We just need to feel we know, or we can’t rest. And yet much of life is unknowable and will remain so. Lots”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“It's a frightening thing to be truly honest with yourself. It means you have no one left to turn to anymore, no-one to blame, and to one to look to for salvation. You have to give up any possibility that there will ever be any refuge for you. You have to accept the reality that you are truly and finally on your own. The best thing you can hope for in life is to meet a teacher who will smash all of your dreams, dash all of your hopes, tear your teddy-bear beliefs out of your arms and fling them over a cliff.”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“The thinking brain influences the body’s responses and it makes a neat little loop.”
― Brad Warner

“If we can all agree that none of us really knows what God actually is, maybe we can stop fighting about what we imagine God to be.”
― Brad Warner, There Is No God and He Is Always with You: A Search for God in Odd Places

“Rather than face what really is, we prefer to retreat and compare what we're living through with the way we think it oughta be. Suffering comes from the comparison between the two.”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“The pain of having your dreams come true appears vividly when you realize that even if your dreams really come true, they never really come true. From birth to death it's just like this”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“Thus a person can be a Buddha one minute and a jackass three minutes later. You don't just become Buddha at the moment of your first enlightenment experience and then stay Buddha forever.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“The lack of fulfillment we feel is natural and normal. That's true enlightenment. It's when we feel fulfilled that we're deluded.

By doing zazen practice, we gradually begin to loosen our grip on the idea that we ought to be fulfilled. We begin to see that our normal condition of feeling that something is missing in our lives is not really such a terrible thing. It's just a feeling. No more and no less. We no longer desperately seek to shove something into that void. We can just let it be just as it is and accept that it's all right...

If we can accept this lack of fulfillment as our natural condition, we can be totally free. We can accept good and bad equally. We can accept loneliness, and we can accept love. We no longer feel that things ought to be different from how they actually are. At the same time we do not complacently accept things that actually do need to be changed. We can understand that it is often our duty to change a situation.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“You can't life in paradise- but you are living right here. Make this your paradise or make this your hell. The choice is entirely yours. Really.”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“Running away is futile. Even if you run very far away from home to a remote mountain monastery, as long as you carry the same attitude you've always had, you'll never truly get away. You'll just end up transferring all the stuff from home onto the other people at the monastery...

Lots of people run away from responsibilities to "find themselves." But not so many of them have a real commitment to the truth. It would be better to find the truth in the life you're living, with the responsibilities you've already accepted. Responsibilities have a way of finding you, even if you run away from them.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between

“In order to deal with the fear of annihilation you have to face annihilation again and again and again. It’s not enough just to understand this intellectually. It’s not enough just to read about this. You need to watch yourself being annihilated right now. If you can manage to sit quietly as you disappear from existence moment by moment, then you can see it’s really nothing to be afraid of. You gotta meditate. Nobody likes to hear that. But it’s true.”
― Brad Warner, There Is No God and He Is Always with You: A Search for God in Odd Places

“Do as well as you possibly can. That's Buddhist morality.”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“You can master tantric yogic poly-orgasmic Wonder Sex but you're still gonna die alone.”
― Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality

“We always believe that there's going to be some high, just around the corner that's going to pull us way, way, way up, where we'll stay forever. If our current romance doesn't do that for us, we'll look for a new one. When the giddy high of the first date wears off, we're ready for another fix.

There's no problem with loving something, we coupling up, with enjoying someone's company, and all the rest. But if you want to enjoy all that stuff to the fullest, the best possible way to do it is to stop looking for the big highs, peak experiences, and sweeping flights of blissful romance. All that stuff just causes its own counterreactions. Watch your own body and mind, and you'll see this for yourself.”
― Brad Warner, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between