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81 " What you get when you try to understand the meaning of life intellectually is just one tiny slice of life. Even if you understand that tiny slice very thoroughly, you still won't really have understood the fullness of life. "
― Brad Warner , There Is No God and He Is Always with You: A Search for God in Odd Places
82 " Water, foam, and flame are mind. Flowers in the spring and the moon in the autumn are also mind. Each moment is mind. And yet mind can never be destroyed. That’s why everything that’s real is mind, and the Buddhas along with other Buddhas are mind. "
― 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
83 " When you study a speck of dust thoroughly and completely, you study the entire universe. "
― Brad Warner , Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master
84 " Deferring to authority is nothing more than a cowardly shirking of personal responsibility. The more power you grant an authority figure the worse you can behave in his name. That’s why people who take God as their ultimate authority are always capable of the worst humanity has to offer. "
― Brad Warner , Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
85 " The downfall is that we humans think about a lot of stuff that’s not actually real. We crave certainty in areas where there can never be any. That’s when we start in with believing the crazy stuff. "
86 " There is no ultimate arbiter of right or wrong. In the whole vast universe, there is nobody who knows what you should do in any given situation any better than you do — not your mom and dad, not your best friend Alice, not the president or the pope, and certainly not God. "
87 " When you’re so committed to the future, it’s real easy to let your life right now turn to shit. "
88 " Sutras are spread throughout fields and cities and written on rocks and trees. Dirt preaches sutras and so does plain old empty space. "
89 " Religions say that spirit/mind is real while matter is negligible. Materialistic philosophies, such as classical science, say that mind is just an illusion caused by the interactions of material objects and processes. Contemporary physics is starting to dimly comprehend that this distinction is false, but it will probably take a long time before this view becomes widely accepted. This is much more than just a dry philosophical debate. People get killed over this stuff. "
90 " Even as bad as it often gets, we are further along than Dogen could probably have envisioned in his day. I don’t know how long it will take to finally get there, but, like Dogen, I believe it is possible. "
91 " At every moment, no matter what we’re doing, we need to understand that not being a jerk is how someone becomes enlightened. This state has always belonged to us. Cause and effect makes us act. By not being a jerk now, you create the cause of not being a jerk in the future. Our action is not predestined, nor does it spontaneously occur. "
92 " It’s just that sometimes we try to make whatever we’re doing into whatever we imagine its ideal state to be. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail. But in real action we transcend any notion of an idealized state. Even if we carry that idealized idea in our heads, it doesn’t matter. We just do what we do. "
93 " If we can find a way as a society to integrate these two opposing outlooks, we’ll no longer have to fight about them. Right now we deal with the contradictions between science and religion by allowing them to operate in completely separate arenas. The Buddhist outlook allows us to fully integrate them. I don’t think this integration will happen for a few hundred years, at least. By then Buddhism will probably no longer be called “Buddhism” and won’t have much connection to ancient Indian cosmology and mythology. But I think future historians will see the connection between Buddhism and a more fully integrated and realistic view of life. "
94 " it’s still absurd from a Buddhist standpoint to say the mountain on which the old man / wild fox met Hyakujo is the same one that existed millions of years ago. Yet there is still some kind of continuity from the past to the present, and we all know that. "
95 " The life of a Zen master is eating cornflakes and doing the dishes. From the distant past up till today, that’s what the masters have all taught. "
96 " You see that what you call “self” is the manifestation of everything. You reflect and refract the universe around you in a unique way, and that unique way is commonly called “self.” But it does not belong to anyone — certainly not to you! "
97 " Dogen takes the basic premise of Buddhism to its ultimate conclusion. And he does so fearlessly. He doesn’t accept any doctrine without question. He is the ultimate skeptic — he’s skeptical even of himself, his own senses, and his own conclusions. That kind of attitude would paralyze most people. Yet Dogen manages to take that skepticism and turn it into something that’s freeing rather than paralyzing. It’s also a very contemporary attitude. As a society we are only now getting close to where Dogen was eight hundred years ago. "
98 " To really know for absolute certain that you could never blame anyone else for anything is difficult. "
99 " even our mistakes are part of the perfection of the universe. "
100 " At best, past and future are no more than reference material for the eternal now. The only real facts are those at the present moment. "
― Brad Warner , Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye