The real goal of Zen is to find a way of life that’s easy and undramatic. Strong attachments lead to upset and drama.
BRAD WARNERLeaving home’ to me means adopting the attitude that the pursuit of the truth is more vital than the pursuit of what society – your home – tells you is important.
More Brad Warner Quotes
-
-
Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don’t match how they really are.
BRAD WARNER -
So I was first exposed to this guy Tim McCarthy, and he’s talking about Zen, but deeper than that he was a genuine person. I thought maybe he’s someone I can trust and follow this thing he’s talking about all the time.
BRAD WARNER -
The thinking brain influences the body’s responses and it makes a neat little loop.
BRAD WARNER -
As for enlightenment, that’s just for people who can’t face reality.
BRAD WARNER -
What attracted me to Zen was my first teacher, Tim McCarthy. He was extremely genuine. It wasn’t even really a Zen thing, that sort of came along later.
BRAD WARNER -
I guess that all figures into my approach because once I start hearing the imagination land stuff (that’s my new phrase now I guess) I tend to tune out or start laughing at it like, “Haha, you guys really believe there is a heaven.”
BRAD WARNER -
Zen practice is about not getting high on anything and in so doing getting high on absolutely everything. We then find that everything we encounter – bliss or nonbliss – possesses a tremendous depth and beauty that we usually miss.
BRAD WARNER -
The state of ambiguity – that messy, greasy, mixed-up, confused, and awful situation you’re living through right now – is enlightenment itself.
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 -
I was very attracted to the way that Zen did not go into the imagination land. And now I’ve forgotten what your first question was and how we were going to tie this together.
BRAD WARNER -
Truly compassionate action arises spontaneously without thought and is carried out in real action with no anticipation of reward and, indeed, no concept of a doer of that action.
BRAD WARNER -
The trick to not thinking is not adding energy to the equation in an effort to forcibly stop thinking from happening. It’s more a matter of subtracting energy from the equation in order not to barf the thoughts up and start chewing them over again.
BRAD WARNER -
We always imagine that there’s got to be somewhere else better than where we are right now; this is the Great Somewhere Else we all carry around in our heads.
BRAD WARNER -
Buddha might be the one thing that could settle Godzilla down. He might say, “Listen Godzilla, you don’t have to do all this. Just chill out a little bit and everything will be fine”.
BRAD WARNER -
Much of the hatred and fear of sexuality found in religions stems from the idea that sex is a thing of the body and that the body must be denied so that the spirit may be elevated. In Buddhism there is no notion that the body is made of inferior matter while the spirit flies free within.
BRAD WARNER