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61 " To him, Buddhism was not a spiritual practice or a religion. It was simply a practical approach to real life that neither denied the spiritual side of things nor held that spirituality was better or nobler than the material side of life. Whereas "
― Brad Warner , Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
62 " Because a lot of our philosophical stances these days are kind of half-assed. We’re very bold in our proclamations of our own moral rectitude, but then we neglect to even keep our own toilets clean. You see a lot of that kind of thing. I used to see it all the time in my punk-rock days. Those guys were super-concerned with having the right political and philosophical views. But they never seemed to be able to keep their showers free from mold or "
63 " Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don’t match how they really are. Stop for a second and look at this in your life right now. It’s important. "
― Brad Warner , Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
64 " So if you’re interested in what I have to say, keep reading. If you find something, some little thing that resonates and might do some good in your life, great. If you get to the end of this book (or to the middle, or to page 27 second paragraph down) and think the book is crap, leave it on the subway and forget about it. No problem. "
65 " It’s only when people believe that their beliefs are above questioning, that their beliefs alone are beyond all doubt, that they can be as truly horrible as we all know they can be. "
66 " Zen doesn’t ask you to believe in anything you cannot confirm for yourself. It does not ask you to memorize any sacred words. It doesn’t require you to worship any particular thing or revere any particular person. It doesn’t offer any rules to obey. It doesn’t give you any hierarchy of learned men whose profound teachings you must follow to the letter. It doesn’t ask you to conform to any code of dress. It doesn’t ask you to allow anyone else to choose what is right for you and what is wrong. Zen is the complete absence of belief. Zen is the complete lack of authority. Zen tears away every false refuge in which you might hide from the truth and forces you to sit naked before what is real. That’s real refuge. Reality will announce itself to you in utterly unmistakable ways once you learn to listen. Learning to listen to reality, though, ain’t so easy. You’re so used to shouting reality down, drowning it out completely with your own opinions and views, that you might not even be able to recognize reality’s voice anymore. It’s a funny thing, though, because reality is the single most glaringly obvious thing there is. As the woman said in those old Palmolive commercials, “You’re soaking in it!” Yet we’ve forgotten how to recognize it. "
67 " the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Final Solution, “9-11.” We might even be able to rattle off the dates of these awful events—but the lesson, we haven’t yet absorbed. And until we really learn it, kids will keep getting new dates to memorize for history class. "
68 " When you get high on something - including "spiritual bliss" - there is always going to be a low. The comedown is your body / mind returning to balance, or the closest thing to balance that it knows. If you desperately crave bliss while your body / mind needs balance, you are bound to label the changeover as "feeling bad," when in fact it's the best thing that can happen.Zen practice is not about getting high on anything and in so doing, getting high on absolutely everything. We then find that everything we encounter - bliss and nonbliss - possesses a tremendous depth and beauty that we usually miss. "
― Brad Warner , Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything In Between
69 " We always look for meaning outside of what we do. But the real meaning of anything we do, or anything we are, is not something imposed from outside. It’s not an explanation. The meaning is the thing itself. "
― Brad Warner , It Came from Beyond Zen!: More Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master -- Vol. 2 of a Radical But Reverent Paraphrasing of Dogen's Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
70 " You can't live in paradise - but you are living right here. Make this your paradise or make this your hell. The choice is entirely yours. Really. "
71 " Rather than revering supposedly special people for being Buddhas, we should revere the Buddha present in all people, whenever and wherever it manifests. Dōgen talks about learning from anyone, no matter what their station in life, if that person says or does something wise. "
72 " It’s easy to become a Buddha. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t get hung up on life and death. Have compassion for everybody and everything. Show some respect to people who deserve it and kindness to people who need it. Don’t get all caught up in hating stuff or in wanting stuff. Don’t think too much. Don’t worry. That’s what we call being a Buddha. You don’t need anything else. "
73 " Truth doesn’t screw around, and truth doesn’t care about your opinions. It doesn’t care if you believe in it, deny it, or ignore it. It couldn’t care less what religion you are, what country you’re from, what color your skin is, what or who you’ve got between your legs, or how much you’ve got invested in mutual funds. None of the trivial junk that concerns most people most of the time matters even one teensy-weensy bit to the truth. "
74 " When you’re alive there’s nothing but life. When you die there’s nothing but death. So when life comes, be alive. When death comes, die. You don’t need to dodge either one, and you don’t need to long for either one. "
75 " You’re mistaken if you think we move from birth to death. Birth is a single moment that happens at the time of birth. It has its own past and its own future. That’s why we Buddhists say birth isn’t really birth, or appearance isn’t really appearance. Death, too, is a single moment that happens at the time of death. It also has its own past and its own future. That’s why we Buddhists say disappearance isn’t really disappearance, or death isn’t really death. "
76 " When you study Buddhism, you should have a general house cleaning of your mind. You must take everything out of your room and clean it thoroughly. If it is necessary, you may bring everything back in again. You may want many things, so one by one you can bring them back. But if they are not necessary, there is no need to keep them. "
77 " The whole universe in all directions is the Flower of Dharma.* All Buddhas everywhere and all enlightened beings twirl and are twirled by the Flower of Dharma. "
78 " Sincerity in this case is not just honesty. It's something deeper than that. The word is used to indicate a state that is completely open and unaffected. It is us, as we truly are, without any attempt to disguise ourselves, even in the ways we usually disguise ourselves to ourselves. "
― Brad Warner , There Is No God and He Is Always with You: A Search for God in Odd Places
79 " One of the things the brain does is create an image of the self. Like all its images, the image of the self is by necessity incomplete. But it's a model that is usually useful for most of the activities we engage in. The problem is that we believe that these various incomplete and mistaken images our brain has created--including the image of our self--are reality. We think we are perceiving and conceiving of reality when, in fact, reality is beyond our perceptive ability and our powers of conception. At the same time, however, we are living in reality. The fact that we cannot grasp the totality of what we're living in doesn't change this. "
80 " The entire moon and sky can be reflected in a dewdrop on a blade of grass. "