Nothing Extra: Notes On the Zen Life

by Barry Graham

"You might as well take your socks off...because they'll be knocked off anyway by the writing of Dogo Barry Graham. Little diamonds of Zen blasted into your mushy brain to pry your eyelids open."
—Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

We live with so much pain and sadness, so much uncertainty and fear—but, if we understand the truth about reality, it doesn’t have to be a problem. Zen practice isn’t about improving yourself, or otherwise changing yourself—or, least of all, finding yourself. It’s about no longer identifying with the self, the personality, your story of who you think you are. It’s about stripping such delusions away, meeting life as it is without adding anything extra, and awakening to your enlightened nature. And that’s what this short book—with some chapters only a couple sentences long—does.

Although Zen has been described as “a special transmission outside the scriptures, and not dependent on words,” it has produced more written words than any other Buddhist tradition, more than most people can hope to read in a lifetime. The Buddha Dharma has been buried under words, ideas, beliefs and dogma. This book is an antidote.

In these notes, personal stories, and answers to Zen students’ questions, Zen master Dogo Barry Graham shatters myths about mindfulness and self-discovery, and gets to the essence of the enlightened life. He discusses love and sex, attachment and freedom, with references ranging through Moby-Dick, Stephen King’s horror novel Pet Sematary, Albert Camus, Descartes, Anais Nin and the TV series The Wire. He warns against the worship of teachers that has led to exploitation of spiritual seekers in modern Zen centers, and he shows that your place of meditation is wherever you find yourself, whether cloistered in a temple or commuting to work on a city bus. Your enlightenment, your Buddha-nature, is a practical matter, to be addressed and resolved here and now.

“A white trash Buddhist monk…an uncompromising vision, but also full of tenderness and compassion, that makes him one of the most touching and interesting authors of his generation.” —Premiere

93 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 17, 2016

About the author

Barry Graham is what Foucault called an Author Function.

More than a dozen books.

Published in magazines including Harper's, Salon, Narratively, PANK, Northwords Now, Flaunt, Parabola, The Big Click and Nerve.

Reviews

[Mark Robison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but not nearly as good as his book “Kill Your Self.” To me, it felt like he was trying too hard to be Zen in his writing, which caused some entries to feel stilted. He also feels like he’s trying really hard to challenge the reader instead of letting the thwacks to the head come naturally. Still, this is a good bedside book because the entries are short enough that they don’t require much investment but are profound enough to feel like you’ve accomplished something by reading a nugget. This excerpt captures the book’s overall message: “Whether your job involves healing sick people, doing data entry, working on a construction site, cleaning, cooking, whatever, you can bring an attitude of service to it. You can either make your work and your life an ego trip, something that’s about you, a story with you as its protagonist, or you can make a practice of doing what’s helpful, of taking care of whatever needs taken care of.”

[Mumeido Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading this - together with Dogo's "Kill Your Self" it joins a VERY small group of Zen books that, by the skilful use of words, gets as close as is possible to expressing the not-expressible, in my opinion. Practice, and read these books. Deep bows.

[Letta Raven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Helpful

I have found myself picking this up in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. It's soothing to know that I do not need all the answers and comforting to know that peacefulness is possible.