The thinking brain influences the body’s responses and it makes a neat little loop.
BRAD WARNERThe thinking brain influences the body’s responses and it makes a neat little loop.
BRAD WARNERDo what you do as well as you possibly can. That’s Buddhist morality.
BRAD WARNERI remember writing the post but not what I said specifically, so I’ll either repeat myself or say something completely different and baffle everybody.
BRAD WARNERReality’s all you’ve got. But here’s the real secret, the real miracle: it’s enough.
BRAD WARNERSo I’m skeptical and cynical about the whole thing and it’s only if something seems to be genuine that I would pursue it. That’s why I’ve stuck with Zen for so long and not gone on to some other path with it.
BRAD WARNERYou 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 WARNERYou can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away.
BRAD WARNERI mean, I can do that all day long. I can tell you the Vulcan’s are not actually devoid of emotion. That they work hard to suppress their emotions. And of course, there actually are no real Vulcan’s, though I know the ins and outs of them as fictional characters.
BRAD WARNERTruly 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 WARNERZen 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 WARNERSo 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 WARNERMuch 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 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.
BRAD WARNERPeople imagine enlightenment will make them incredibly powerful. And it does. It makes you the most powerful being in all the universe- but usually no one else notices.
BRAD WARNERSuffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don’t match how they really are.
BRAD WARNERThe 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