Brad Warner has been a notable figure in Zen in the West since the publication of his first volume, Hardcore Zen, in 2003. His weblog of the same title was a prominent landmark in online Buddhist discourse as Buddhist communities ventured online two decades ago. Warner is a bass guitarist in a punk band, and his teaching mode often has an irreverent outside.

On the cover of his new book, The Other Side of Nothing (New Earth Library, May 2022) the Buddha sports a spiky blue hairdo. This tongue-in-cheek presentation is matched by Warner's laidback writing mode. Only his arroyo to the dharma, if not exactly orthodox, is deeply rooted in texts and tradition (Warner is a dharma heir of Soto Zen priest Nishijima Roshi.)

Warner has also been a song critic of dharma "innovations" such every bit the use of psychedelics equally an aid to practice, and remains skeptical of online teaching. He was vocal about problematic ability differentials in our 2011 interview just still insists that Zen communities cannot part when run by committee. He recently left the eye he founded in Los Angeles, Angel City Zen Middle. I spoke with Brad in early March 2022 about his new book on Buddhist ethics, the importance of following tradition—even the parts that don't always brand sense to modernistic practitioners—and his future as a teacher.

—Philip Ryan

***

Tricycle: In your new volume you tie ethics to nonduality and argue that behaving unethically is hurting ourselves. We may think acting unethically is selfish, simply y'all're saying it's much more than than that: It's nonsensical. Can you lay out that case?

Brad Warner: Information technology'due south funny, I've gone so deeply into the book that I've gone straight through and come out the other side! I've forgotten what I put in and what I left out. At that place was ane thing I kept trying to write for years, I don't know if I decided to put it in or non. It's the concept of enlightened selfishness, that the all-time thing yous tin exercise for yourself is to be decent and kind to others. If yous want a good life, a truly good life for yourself, then your best bet is to be skilful to others, considering there'southward essentially no separation between all of united states. Anything you do to somebody else, you're actually doing to yourself.

When I offset heard the precepts, I heard them equally admonishments. Like, at that place'south a bunch of fun stuff you lot could practice and gain a lot but you better not do that because that wouldn't be good! And so I came to realize that'due south non the instance at all. The precepts are actually telling you how to have a ameliorate life. Just don't do these things, and you'll really savor your life more. Annihilation y'all do to somebody else is harming yourself. Some other way of saying it is that it'southward skillful to be careful.

Tricycle: Westerners sometimes come to the precepts with ideas most the x commandments. They hear the precepts and think, oh, no, that'south not what I want in Buddhism! I'thou hither for the freedom.

BW: In that location are parallels with the 10 commandments. Several of the precepts are the same as the ten commandments, but the mental attitude is different. The precepts are not presented as coming from God who must exist obeyed, and whose opinion is right because He'southward God. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, God appears to them and they say, "Expert thought, oh, Lord," and God says, "Of course, it's a good thought, I thought of it!"

Just when we sympathise that the process of how the precepts came about we see it's unlike. When the Buddha had his original sangha, they basically started out with no rules, then equally things came upwardly, they created rules, and that's the basis for the precepts. It's understood that they're made past people, only all the same they're not arbitrary. They've been honed for a long time.

My teacher used this analogy, and I have mixed feelings about information technology, simply I'll requite it to you anyway. Nosotros're similar cows in the pasture, or sheep. And as long as we're in the fenced-in pasture, everything'southward fine, considering the predators tin't get to us. Simply when y'all go out of the fence, then you're in danger, then things can happen and things can get wrong. You lot're putting yourself at risk. I don't similar to compare people to sheep, or cattle, but maybe the analogy still works.

Tricycle: How is it helpful to empathize "nosotros're all one," when you're in the middle of a disagreement with someone? How practise we apply that?

BW: Ultimately you can't use information technology. By that I mean that yous, every bit an entity autonomously from whoever you are disagreeing with, tin't use that understanding. You lot, as an entity who uses your agreement, has to step aside. This is easier said than done for near of usa. In a conventional way I guess you lot could keep in mind that your opponent is really just an attribute of yourself, metaphysically speaking. That might work. I think information technology can be helpful to do that. Information technology tin can be useful to conceive of things that mode. Merely what I'm actually saying is you accept to let get of yourself completely.

In my book Sit down Downwardly and Close Up I told the story of how I was having an argument with my then-wife. I can't remember what we were arguing well-nigh. But there came a point where she said something and I thought of the perfect "winning" response. There's an episode of Seinfeld in which George comes up with a killer comeback to something one of his co-workers said. Simply he thinks of it too belatedly. So he keeps trying to get the co-worker to say the same thing again. In this example, I thought of the killer response right and so. How ofttimes does that happen? Simply I as well saw that, in winning the argument, I'd end up creating a lot of resentment and bad feeling. So I close upwards, and said nothing. I dropped my desire to be a winner and accepted that proverb zippo was the better way. The argument just kind of fizzled out then and we both felt a lot meliorate. That kind of thing is actually difficult, merely it'southward incredibly worthwhile, I think.

Tricycle: Do you lot think ideals are cardinal to us? Are they something that nosotros rediscover as we look at the precepts or are they something that comes from the outside that we need to debate in our chaotic natures?

BW: I think information technology's a chip of both. I call up we accept a natural desire to exist ethical. We can overcome that if nosotros retrieve there'southward something to exist gained by overcoming it. But when I examine myself, information technology seems like every fourth dimension that I deed unethically in order to gain something, I don't actually gain anything. Every bit far every bit whether it has to exist imposed, I don't know. I think everything has that aspect to it, external and internal. It'southward like the question of why yous need a instructor. This comes up in Buddhism a lot. Dogen always emphasizes this need to have a teacher.

I've been studying the Advaita Vedanta tradition lately. I got on a kick a couple of years ago to await into it, and they have the same idea of the guru. They frame information technology differently, but it's still an outside thing and they really have terminology for information technology. There'due south the guru that'south inside and the guru that'due south outside, merely in their way of framing things they're one and the same. I don't see that exact way of explaining information technology in Zen but I do feel similar information technology'southward a like idea. I needed to have an external teacher to awaken the internal teacher that was already in that location.

Buddhist ideals are based on an intuitive sense that is difficult to come past. This is i of the reasons nosotros meditate. Zazen or whatsoever meditation you cull is usually expert for immigration away all the other stuff, all the thoughts and things. Thought comes in and muddles things upward, and it's not that you have to effort to stop thinking. What's more than useful is to learn to stop believing your own thoughts, because you don't actually have all that much control over your own thoughts.

I think Sam Harris said this, that I can no more predict my side by side thought than I tin can predict your next thought. We imagine that we take control over what's going on in our heads, merely we don't. Perchance nosotros have a tiny scrap of control, but not very much. The best strategy, I recollect, is simply to learn to let go. It's merely more racket, you lot know, it's like there'due south people arguing adjacent door and you can listen in on the argument or you can ignore it. If it's a really loud statement, information technology's difficult to ignore. A meditation practice volition help you go to the point where the thoughts, fifty-fifty though they're notwithstanding happening, are less distracting. They're just groundwork noise.

Tricycle: I was struck by your affiliate on confession. How important for maintaining our upstanding behavior are other people, or what we think that other people think of us?

BW: It is of import considering we're congenital that way. It'due south probably something to do with being a primate. Your instinct is to alive in a social group and expect at the other members of the grouping for clues on how to behave and what's acceptable and what's not. We do seem to need that. I didn't ready out to write almost confession, but when I decided to write virtually the precepts, that was a big function of how the precepts in Buddhism developed. In that location was a organisation of confessing your wrongdoings to the group which has largely disappeared. Just in the early days of Buddhism, that was a big deal. It'due south developed into a formula:

All my aboriginal twisted karma
From the get-go, this greed, hatred and ignorance
built-in from body spoken communication and mind
I at present fully avow

It's a full general acquittance that yous've washed something, but you don't have to say specifically what you did. This saves you some embarrassment and I think information technology'south probably fine if you lot keep those things private. But it was useful for me, sometimes, to talk to my teachers nigh specific things I'd done 1-on-ane and say, hither'due south what's going on. And my teachers were always similar, "Oh, don't worry about information technology." Information technology'due south funny that "Don't worry about it" tin have a whole different meaning when it'south coming in a dissimilar context.

Y'all understand that what you did in the past was not what y'all should have done. And and then you make an effort non to do that once again. The sixth precept is unremarkably given equally "Don't criticize the faults of monks and Buddhist laypeople," just the version I learned was "No speaking of past mistakes," which means not only the mistakes of others, just your ain mistakes. You don't need to dwell on your mistakes, but you need to see that you did them, and brand an effort not to do them whatsoever more once you realize they're wrong. Home on by mistakes is just a fashion to inflate your ego. Y'all inflate your ego through negative things as much as past positive things. I've noticed that I'g much more than inclined to inflate my ego with negative stuff. Because I'm so bad. I'g and so wrong. I did that terrible thing. It'due south me me me, so it reinforces that sense of cocky. And I find myself doing that much more the other version of being egotistical, which is, I'm the greatest thing in the world. That one doesn't work as well for me.

Tricycle: You've been a consequent critic of drug employ over the years, back when people were talking a lot virtually psychedelics, which is still going on. Simply in this book, you talk virtually how it'due south important not to use meditation itself as an intoxicant. Do you mean that y'all can become fond to it?

BW: I meditate twice a day every day, pelting or polish, so y'all could think I'chiliad fond to information technology. And I feel weird if I don't do it. But no, I think the problem where meditation becomes like a drug happens more often to people who don't accept a instructor. You lot tin can get very indulgent in your own fantasies. If your fantasies happen to match what you might read in sure meditation literature, then you can get really suckered into it. It'south good to have somebody outside to residuum that out. And it might be necessary to accept this cosmetic at some point in practice. Everyone is going to  see these situations where it's exactly what y'all wanted. When you get exactly what yous wanted out of meditation, sometimes that'south a good thing, just often, that'due south not a skillful thing.

It can be very seductive. It's like your ain virtual reality that you've created, which is better than any virtual reality somebody else could create, because you tailor-fabricated it to yourself. I come across a lot of people go wrong that way. Yous can look at cult leaders, for example, equally evil manipulative people, just often, I think they're just equally seduced past it as everyone else. They get so into the affair, that they start to believe their ain fantasies, and then start to propagate their own fantasies. And information technology can go crazy.

Tricycle: You recently left Affections City Zen Center, which you lot helped constitute. Can you lot talk most that, and what's adjacent for yous in terms of existence a instructor?

BW: I don't want to say too much about that. I just felt like information technology wasn't working. It still exists, the Angel City Zen Center, and God anoint them on what they're doing. But it wasn't working. I felt like a mascot instead of a instructor. I felt like Scooby Doo: His name is on the prove, simply nobody really listens to what Scooby Doo has to say. He'southward just there to be funny. And that'due south the fashion I felt.

In the whole Zen heart system there's a sense in which keeping the customs happy is the important thing. But my instructor said something which would probably rankle all Americans who hear it. He said, a Zen Buddhist sangha can never be a republic. He was really firm almost that. I've institute that if you lot want to accept a Zen center in America, people will insist on it being a commonwealth. And I'1000 maxim, it can't be a commonwealth, because non everybody understands everything equally. And if you let everybody brand the decisions, it gets wonky. I don't want besides many people to hate me for proverb that, but I read Shoes Outside the Door and I tin sympathize why the San Francisco Zen Center now has iii abbots instead of 1. But at the aforementioned time, you're diffusing things a lot when you exercise information technology that way.

I'll continue to do what I exercise. I take a YouTube channel, and that's been really interesting, because I think something is coming through there. Merely I also recall in that location'south an amusement factor. And I don't really mind it, considering it's YouTube and information technology's all about entertainment. So I'm providing what I promise to exist a better sort of amusement, but it'due south still entertainment, it's still trying to put on a bear witness.

There is a guy I've been talking to locally nearly starting some other sort of sitting group. But I want it to be less of a Zen center and more of a speakeasy where non merely is it not advertised, y'all take to know the secret lawmaking discussion to fifty-fifty arrive. In one case yous establish something where having butts in seats is a necessary function for keeping information technology going, and so you run into a lot of tendency to compromise. And I don't desire to compromise the things that shouldn't be compromised, merely I want to be able to compromise the things that should be. So it's similar that Alcoholics Anonymous prayer: Lord, let me know which things should be compromised and which shouldn't, and how to tell the difference.

Tricycle: In the book y'all say that we're punching ourselves in the face when we act unethically, because we're all one. But at this cultural moment it feels like other people are punching us in the face up, too. Maybe it'southward ever been this way. How are you seeing things these days?

BW: I don't know how much of that is new. Is annihilation new? One of the weird things that's happening with with social media is nosotros're being exposed to the inner thoughts of a lot of people and nosotros're seeing things that would normally go unexpressed, 1 of the commencement things I got involved with on the cyberspace came out in the belatedly '90s or early 2000s on the Cleveland punk scene. They had a forum called the bathroom wall where the idea was that you're writing graffiti on the bathroom wall. And ever since then, that's the way I think of all these technologies. Twitter is like this large electronic bathroom wall where people think they're in their stall and nobody tin can meet them and they write terrible things on the wall.

In the by, 1,000 or x,000 years ago, you had to actually say the matter right in front end of the person so you might become punched in the oral cavity. Only now everybody'south inner thoughts are all out in the open. I think nosotros're confused past that. We haven't figured that out yet.

Tricycle: Someone said, probably on Twitter, that our brains weren't congenital to procedure all the world'due south emergencies at one time. Then nosotros're exposed to an unfiltered stream of other people's anger, greed, and delusion, with horrible news from effectually the world mixed in with pictures of dogs and cats.

BW: I always go for the dog and cat pictures. I'thou former plenty that I've lived through several crises where the world was most to terminate, and so I'm less inclined to believe the next world-ending thing. Peradventure one twenty-four hour period I'll be wrong, but I won't know it because we'll all exist gone! Maybe this is merely a step in our evolution, that opening up of everybody'due south inner thoughts? And and so we have to figure that out. People ask me all the time, accept I seen this or that in the news. And you know, what am I gonna do about information technology? The bottom line is you can't do much. Possibly anytime we'll establish contact with other planets. And so we'll first getting news from Regizvan-11 or something. Oh, my God, there's a war on Regizvan-11! It's 25 low-cal years away, simply I'm so concerned about it. It's natural to be concerned and to have empathy with your boyfriend human beings. But you also have to pace back and say, there'southward nil I can practise about information technology. I don't want to be ignorant of it, or be dismissive or flippant about it, but there'southward only and then much I can exercise to stop global climate modify.

Tricycle: You lot talk near letting go of your collections, specially your record collection, in the book. What collections have you held onto?

BW: Not much! I kept all my Buddhist books, because I demand them for reference when I'yard writing. And I kept some of the actually special records that were meaningful to me. And at present I've bought a bunch more than since, so, oh well, only information technology felt expert to unburden myself from some of that.

I worked for a company that fabricated Japanese monster films for a long time and I had a pretty good collection of memorabilia. I called upwards a friend of mine who'southward even more of a collector than me, and I said, but come up down and I'll exit and yous can hang out in my flat for notwithstanding long you want, and only take anything you lot want. And he came down with a pickup truck and he filled information technology upward.

I did ask for a couple of things dorsum, only mostly, it felt great. It was one of the biggest highs I've ever had, which made me experience like perhaps this isn't and so practiced. Merely I was so happy to be able to say, ok, it'due south gone. Occasionally I retrieve something that I used to take and I think, ah, but then that feeling goes abroad. It'southward simply like one of the things you learn when you're meditating. The biggest feeling that you lot accept volition somewhen just fizzle out after a while and yous don't actually have to do anything about information technology. You only say, Yep, I call back that I had that. Ok.

Tricycle: The neighbors next door volition stop arguing, eventually,

BW: Yep, eventually, they'll have to become to bed.

♦

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