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The real goal of Zen is to find a way of life that's easy and undramatic. Strong attachments lead to upset and drama.

Brad Warner

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Brad Warner
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: March 5
Author
Oshō
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Life
Drama
Lead
Goal
Easy
Strong
Find
Attachments
Real
Attachment
Way
Upset

More quotes by Brad Warner

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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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It's interesting to see what's going on with physics these days because they're starting to come out with stuff that sounds remarkably like Buddhism and even more specifically like the ancient Hindu Vedas. Physics isn't necessarily saying the exact same thing but I think eventually it will merge.
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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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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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Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don't match how they really are.
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Since then, my approach to all things spiritual is rather cynical you could say. When somebody present something to me as spiritual, my first instinct is to be cynical and think, oh yeah, one of those again. You see so much of it see in spiritual culture and people get very excited about it. It's all very hoo haw.
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People will come and give you sandwiches every six hours but you're really of no use. A lot of people get excited about guys like that but I can't get too excited about it because I think he's sorta useless. He's just sitting there in India under a blanket looking beautiful, so what.
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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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It may look like we're doing nothing when we sit zazen. But actually we are exposing ourselves to ourselves.
Brad Warner
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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.
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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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I mean, I can do that all day long. I can tell you the Vulcan's are not actually devoid of emotion. That they work hard to suppress their emotions. And of course, there actually are no real Vulcan's, though I know the ins and outs of them as fictional characters.
Brad Warner
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The truth comes when you can see that your self-image is just a convenient reference point and nothing more, and that you as you had imagined yourself do not exist.
Brad Warner
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Those who hope for purity and righteousness always try and destroy that which disturbs them. They think the disturbance comes from outside themselves. This is a serious problem. Wars, suicide bombings, and all sorts of other nasty things start from the premise that we can destroy 'evil' outside ourselves without dealing with the evil within.
Brad Warner
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Everything you have, whether it's money or stuff, is an obligation. It is as much your duty to care for and nurture any object you own as it would be if that object were your child. All possessions come with responsibilities. More possessions equals greater responsibility.
Brad Warner
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Zazen isn't about blissing out or going into an alpha brain-wave trance. It's about facing who and what you really are, in every single goddamn moment. And you aren't bliss, I'll tell you that right now. You're a mess. We all are.
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Morality is a personal matter.
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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.
Brad Warner
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If a tree falls in the forest and it hits a mime, would he make a noise?
Brad Warner
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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.
Brad Warner