Hardcore Zen, Punk Zen, and Zen
Golly, I feel old sometimes.
I became a buddhist in 1966. It turns out my new favorite Zen Master — boy, he’s gonna flinch if he reads that — is a guy who was about four years old at the time. His name is Brad Warner, and he’s rockin’ the Zen world.
Literally. Brad is a hardcore punk rock bass player, who recorded with hardcore bands like 0DFX (Zero Defex) and started a psychedelic band Dementia 13, and I’m telling you right here and now that my knowledge of punk rock is entirely derived from reading Brad’s books and a couple of Wikipedia articles: when punkers were listening to the Dead Kennedys, I was listening to Styx and Kansas.
I also like Glenn Miller. Sue me.
Brad then moved to Japan, where after a year of teaching English, managed to wangle a job working for Tsuburya Productions, which made Ultraman; he acted in bit parts in a number of Ultraman movies and did promotion in English for the company. He also married. While he was there, he also started to study Zen with Gudo Nishijima, a teacher in the Soto lineage, and as he tells it in his first book Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality, Nishijima-sensei decided to confer Transmission, making him an official certified Zen Master and Nishijima’s Dharma heir. He then moved back to the US, lost his job, got divorced, and began writing for the general public with Hardcore Zen, followed by becoming a columnist for the Suicide Girls website, largely a repository of pictures of young hipster girls with lots of tattoos and few clothes.
Brad has been controversial more or less from the start. (Not every Zen Master writes for a porn site.) First of all, he doesn’t look the part.
This guy looks like a Zen Master.
Joshu Sasaki Roshi. Zen Master.
This guy looks like a Zen Master.
Gudo Nishijima Roshi. Zen Master.
And then there’s Brad.
Brad Warner Roshi. Zen Master?
In 1968, Alan Watts wrote an essay “Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen“, where he noted that Zen in America even then had two apparent factions: the Beats, like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Gary Snyder, who were iconoclasts rebelling against, well, pretty much everything; and the Squares, who were trying to follow the traditions imported from Japan and be very proper in everything. Those two traditions or factions continue to this day, and Warner, as you might imagine, is not a favorite among the current generation of Squares.
When I found Brad’s first book, Hardcore Zen, I really had never heard of him or the controversies, but reading the book made me an instant fan: here was a Zen Master who was writing to be clearly understood. He’s also funny, in a wryly self-deprecating way. It would be easy to suspect that Brad is really just a hipster Zen guy — and presumably Nishijima-sensei had a momentary lapse — but his second book Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen’s Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye takes its Zen a little more seriously. Brad probably wouldn’t want to admit it, but he’s a serious student of Buddhism and especially of Dogen, the founder of the Soto School.
The third book, Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma, is very much autobiographical, as his first book was. He writes about coming back to the US, and being a Zen teacher here while the Tsuguraya Company was collapsing, he was divorcing, and he was finding himself in the internal politics of American Buddhism.
What, you thought Buddhism wouldn’t have politics? Oh, you have no idea. Especially now that Zen in America is old enough to have developed an Establishment.
The biggest shock to the Square Zen Establishment was probably Brad’s most recent book, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between, largely drawn from his Suicide Girls columns. Sex and Zen have a very strange relationship in America. There’s a tendency for Americans to think “Priest. He’s supposed to be celibate, right? Above all that sex stuff.” Then if some eeek sex happens, they tend to get offended and shocked.
Now, this is very un-Japanese. Buddhist monks and priests aren’t actually expected to be celibate — the Precepts just say to avoid misusing sex, and even then the Precepts are basically suggestions: there is no special punishment for violating them, they just are hints that, if followed, lead to less unsettling, disappointing drama in life. There’s really no concept of “sin” in Buddhism, so nothing, not even sex, can be “sinful”. But there are a lot of Baptists in black robes in American Zen, and so every so often there’s a furor over a “sex scandal”. In fact, there’s a current furor about Sasaki-roshi (pictured above), who at 105 years old is now at the center of a controversy himself.
(I was talking with a friend in Hiroshima last night; the Sasaki-roshi controversy has now been noticed in Buddhist circles there. Her response, roughly translated, is “Are you guys nuts?” The horny concupiscent priest has been a running joke in Japan for a thousand years, and is considered about as scandalous as Americans would find a Catholic priest who plays golf four times a week and cheats on his scores.)
Brad may be too Japanese now for American Zen; when he pointed out that perhaps people should calm down and ask what really happened and who had been hurt by it, he was called everything from a fake Buddhist to a closet pederast.
Reading Sex, Sin, and Zen is probably a disappointment for the black-robe Baptists and the people looking for a sexual carte blanche both: Brad consistently takes an open, compassionate view of sex, and how the Precept of not misusing sex applies. The book includes an extended interview with Nina Hartley, the porn star and sex advocate, who it turns out was raised in a Zen temple from the age of ten and is shown to have a pretty deep understanding of Buddhism. It also includes discussions of homosexuality and Buddhism, BDSM and Buddhism, pornography and Buddhism … you get the idea. His take I think can be summarized as: no, sex isn’t sinful; yes, if your mind becomes fixated on sex, in whatever form, that is harmful to your peace of mind.
Overall, I recommend Brad’s books. You won’t necessarily learn a lot about the traditions and underlying philosophy of Zen and Buddhism except by osmosis, although he does manage to mention the Four Noble Truths. (If you want to learn that, look for my upcoming book, Undecorated Buddha, he said shamelessly.) You will learn a lot about how one Zen Master thinks, and it will be in an amusing, and even Enlightening way.
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Related at PJ Lifestyle:
Thanks again Charlie, your writings never disappoint! All of this is completely new to me and I find it very, very interesting. I look forward to your book as well. And no… I’m not at all surprised that any group has politics within.
But seriously… Kansas? I do, however heartily endorse Glenn Miller.
It’s all so….. organizational. Partly why I left.
Ya know, anybody can write about Zen. I am deeply amused that his credentials seem to be that he divorced and wrote for a porn site. Ur, yea. I know I am impressed. Amusingly enough, I did actually practice Zen doing those unpleasant things like actually sitting zazen. I did actually hang out with Zen masters. They did divorce and they did write well. If only the guys I studied with had written at porn sites, I would have never become a Christian.
Wow, imagine if you’d have actually read the article, Rick. he’s got Transmission from Nishijima-roshi.
How embarassing. Didn’t read every line of your article. On the other hand, which did you think was most important, his Dharma transmission or the fact he was divorced and cool? The world is filled with people who write well despite the fact that their live’s are a mess. Studied under Genpo Roshi many years ago and I vividly remember him saying that while people trying to do good were common, enlightened men were like jewels. After spending some time studying and much zazen, I came to the conclusion, enlightened men are a dime a dozen and people trying to do good were very rare indeed.
The fact that he has Transmission, and yeah, you should be embarrassed. When you get around to reading the article, you might have something interesting to say about it.
Then Mister Warner – God love him, he’s unique – is a rare bird indeed. I can tell you from my own experiences with the Punk world (the real deal, back when it was actually happening, not the tired, “off the rack” styled ones of today), that they are amongst the most un-Zen-like people you could possibly imagine. Ever. Superficial, self-gratifying, live-for-the-moment sensationalists. Nothing more.
Yes, how cynical, but I know them all too well. No Zen to be found here. Move along, please.
“No zen here.”
Wow, a koan.
Yes. “Great Doubt” indeed.
So, is PJMedia’s strategy to decry the unraveling of Western civilization while at the same time hedging its bets and giving Buddhism equal time, as it were?
Is it your strategy to continue to assume that everyone writing here has exactly the same opinion and gets marching orders from a Ministry of Information?
Sorry, Charlie, I hadn’t considered the possibility that PJMedia doesn’t hire editors who shape the ideological content of the web page.
No, you hadn’t considered the possibility that “shaping” doesn’t mean “dictating”.
> No, you hadn’t considered the possibility that “shaping” doesn’t mean “dictating”.
That explanation might work if Buddhism were more mainstream. It just seems like more of an editorial miscalculation to me — going after that all-important Buddhist conservative demographic, perhaps?
It’s just that I’ve been reading PJMedia, about five years now, and I’m trying to remember when a similar series of puff pieces for Christianity or Judaism, both of which are far more relevant to Western civilization and the subject of its preservation… a position which otherwise seems like a subtext of PJMedia’s offerings.
A subtext, granted. PJMedia on the whole seems quite secular in its perspective, for the most part, a position that more and more reflects the character of our society.
It might be nice to see, you know, something unusual. Like, I dunno, a series on the ideas underlying Christianity or Judaism and how much our society still depends on that bedrock.
RT- I respectfully disagree. Do you read Andrew Klavan? Even Roger L. Simon had a piece on Judaism over the high holy days. There are plenty of writers on PJ Media that cover Christianity and Judaism. Even more so on PJTV.
Fair enough, Sally.
> RT know this is not the foundational exegesis you were looking for…
I should have added that, while I see PJMedia as primarily a secular voice, for the most part it does not seem hostile to Christianity.
I should be more grateful.
RT know this is not the foundational exegesis you were looking for, but in today’s PJ Lifestyles
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/01/15/the-surprising-answer-to-the-age-old-question-would-jesus-pack-heat/
Let’s see — there’s a piece today on why you can’t have moral values without believing in God. It’s wrong, but it’s there. There are Dave Swindle’s regular pieces on traditional sexual roles, which he ties to his Christian beliefs. As Sally has noted, there are regular pieces on Judaism. There’s Paula Bolyard’s piece on real polynamy. There’s a piece on the Society of St Pius X. There’s a piece on Kabalah. There’s a piece on Tolkein and his quite traditional Catholicism, and how it informs his mythic vision. There’s a piece by Barry Rubin on Biblical lessons on foreign policy and statism. There’s a piece on “Believing in Christmas from Santa to Christ”. There’s pretty much everything Myra Adams writes, eg, “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” piece.
You can’t blame the editors if you’re not paying attention.
That was only going back about three weeks, by the way. If I’d have gone back far enough to hit the High Holy Days, I’d have had things like Roger’s piece on why he was fasting for Yom Kippur for the first time in many years.
You are correct, sir. Mea culpa.
But I do stand by one statement I made earlier: it does seem to me that taken as a whole, PJMedia has a secular bent. Or maybe I’m just noticing the inherent disconnect between right-wing libertarianism and social conservatism. I think it’s probably hard writing from two perspectives. Eventually, one side prevails, after which, reporting on the other sounds more like reporting, “Huh! Check this out,” than a heartfelt “Amen!”
As Jesus said, a man can’t serve two masters. I have trouble squaring this circle in my own world-view.
Capitalism, economic liberalism, economic freedom, whatever you want to call it, is a proven wealth-bringer. It also brings with it the seeds of its own destruction. When the struggle is no longer necessary, the culture has the means to indulge in nihilism and the Democratic Party is there to codify that indulgence into law. It was the late, seldom-lamented straight-laced culture of religious conservatism, plus a modicum of freedom, that led us to this wealth, and this wealth is what has led us here to the brink of ruin. Wealth certainly has its uses. We just forgot that it isn’t what we’re here for.
For what does it profit a man if he gains the world but loses his soul? We lost our national soul at the altar of cosmic fairness, sensual pleasure, institutionalized indolence, and video games. And we’ll lose the wealth that brought us here, too, just give it more time.
I don’t see Buddhism as any help at all, sorry. What we need is redemption.
Well, yeah, PJ is pretty secular. In the office we’ve got (I think) more Jews than anything, a couple of Christians — one fairly orthodox and one a little esoterically inclined — that I know about, and writing we’ve got a crypto-Jewish Buddhist (and Roger’s a crypto-Buddhist Jew for that matter), a number of Catholics, and at least one Muslim.
It’s a news service; of course it’s secular.
Brad actually has a piece on “Why I hate being a Buddhist” that may help a bit:
Well, so far we’ve learned that Buddhism is about rock star personalities, condescension, how people look, sex, divorce, mocking people and using ‘American’ and ‘baptist’ as pejoratives. It seems like Mr. Martin belongs to the Piers Morgan branch of tabloid Buddhism. As Peggy Lee once musically asked, Is that all there is?
Don’t forget the part about insulting morons. Or read *last* weeks piece.