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How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

Brad Warner

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Brad Warner
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 5
Author
Oshō
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Doe
Plums
Take
Bulbs
Many
Screw
Screws
Garden
Masters
Tree
Plum
Light
Bulb

More quotes by Brad Warner

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When I first started watching Godzilla, I was a kid and a big dinosaur freak and was like, Oh my gosh, there's a big dinosaur. So I immediately got into Godzilla. What I like about it are some of the things people often think are negative aspects.
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Real morality is based on a single criterion: right action, appropriate action, in the present moment and present situation.
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The problem is the way we let our desires stand in the way of our enjoyment of what we already have.
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At times, Zen does get into some Buddhist Cosmology. Nishijima Roshi, my main teacher would talk about that and almost every time immediately say that it was only one way of looking at it. Whenever addressing realms of Heaven or Hell, he'd also address that it was just a psychological state.
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The obvious example would be Jesus. Jesus is an object of fascination for me. He's an interesting historical character because we don't know much about him. He seems to be a guy who was in touch with something deeper than most people around him were and someone who was very concerned with trying to communicate that.
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Leaving 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.
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The fact is that there is a contradiction going on but our brains don't like contradiction. So when Moe hits Curly on the head with a sledgehammer and Curly says, ow and Moe says, Serves you right Numbskull, you can say that's because they're separate beings, and that's true.
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Buddha might be the one thing that could settle Godzilla down. He might say, Listen Godzilla, you don't have to do all this. Just chill out a little bit and everything will be fine.
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What attracted me to Zen was my first teacher, Tim McCarthy. He was extremely genuine. It wasn't even really a Zen thing, that sort of came along later.
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So 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.
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the only real time as far as Buddhism is concerned is right now. Right now there is no old age or death because old age and death are descriptions of things as they are now when we compare them to things as they used to be.
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I used to worry when I was a teenager, even into my twenties, after I'd heard something about schizophrenia and how people just suddenly become schizophrenic that I was insane.
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People 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.
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Consider this: 1. Would you ride in a car whose driver was on the consciousness-expanding entheogenic drug LSD? And here's a bonus question: 2. Why does an expanded consciousness include the inability to operate a motor vehicle?
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It's crazy to me how concerned people get with what it looks like and what you can do there. People may as well be talking about JRR Tolkien or Star Trek or something.
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I was very attracted to the way that Zen did not go into the imagination land. And now I've forgotten what your first question was and how we were going to tie this together.
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You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.
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So what I liked about Zen was that it never goes off into the realm of imagination land, or if it does occasionally, the good teachers will openly address it specifically as only imagination. Both of my teachers were very good at that.
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The thinking brain influences the body’s responses and it makes a neat little loop.
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No matter what we predict for our futures, we're always wrong anyway. The only sensible thing to do is to live this life as it is right now. Leave what happens after you die till after you die.
Brad Warner