Here's John Corbaley's Dharma talk from Sunday. Enjoy, and thanks, John!
I have this love/hate thing with Brad Warner. Does everyone know who Brad Warner is? He gave a presentation here about a year ago. He had just written a new book, and his stop in Kansas City was, I think, part of a promotional tour.
He’s so cool. He writes a very popular blog on Buddhism. He’s an actor in independent films. He has kind of a messed up personal life. He’s in a punk rock band. At the same time, He received “inka”-- Dharma transmission from Nishijima Roshi. He wears strange glasses. We know you can never trust somebody who wears strange glasses.
His books are always provocatively titled: “Hardcore Zen,” “Sex, Sin, and Zen,” “Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate.” When I read his books, I always get the feeling that there’s no THERE there. He spends alot of time being very hip and cool and provocative in the way that only Zen can be. Always challenging your assumptions, always looking to put you ever so slightly off balance.
But sometimes, all that challenging, and all that bombast sometimes just makes me tired...In the end it can end up leaving you a little troubled. Which is, I am sure, exactly his intent. If you’ve ever read one of his books, you can see what I mean. There’s a lot of entertainment and not so much teaching. A lot of declaring that Zen Buddhism is not this, it’s not that; but when it comes to explaining what it really is, what you usually get left with is a paper thin, less than complete or satisfying answer.
And then there’s the whole “Dharma Transmission” thing. I mean, what is that, really?You know the story. It comes from the Flower Sermon. One of the Buddha’s disciples, mahakasyapa was looking at him one day, and the Buddha looked at a lotus flower, looked up at him, and ZAP, the tradition of “silent” transmission was, born, and the entire tradition of Zen was born.
The Buddha is quoted as saying, “I have the right Dharma Eye Treasury, the wondrous mind of nirvana, the reality beyond appearance. The Dharma-door of mind to mind transmission has been entrusted to Kāśyapa.”
There was, of course, the small detail that the Flower Sermon sutra does not exist in the Pali canon, the oldest existing texts of buddhist teaching, and that there was about a thousand years of history between the Buddha’s time and the actual arise of the popular practice of Ch-an in China, which was to become Zen in Japan.
There are other times, though, when Brad Warner gets right to the point and it totally resonates with me. He was being interviewed for Tricycle magazine recently and was talking about his life and his work, and he made some comments that I could really identify with. He was talking about his work at the Hill Street Zen Center in Santa Monica, where he led a sitting group and gave periodic talks. He says this about it:
"I was naive at first [about giving talks about my books] but I quickly realized that most of the people I was talking to were never going to do Zen practice. Essentially, when I’m giving a lecture, I just view it as entertainment for the audience. I try to put on a show that will have something of value within it, rather than seeing the audience as potential practitioners, because most of them, realistically, are not."
Here is where I found a real connection with Brad Warner. As part of my work at the St. Luke’s Brain Fitness Center, I give presentations to the public every week, with audiences ranging from 10 people to 500. When I give these talks about the elements of brain fitness and what people can do keep their brains fit and healthy, I get a similar feeling to what Brad was saying. Most of the the people are there to be entertained.
I’ve even heard it referred to with the label: “Edutainment.” They think that attending a talk on brain fitness constitutes the extent of what they need to do, not exercising more, changing their diets, going back to college, learning to play a new sport or learn a foreign language. They’re certainly not going to start meditating. All they’re going to do is come to my talk. These folks are there and they are reading the menu. They have no intention of eating the meal.
So in this way, I totally get what Brad Warner is referring to, in the quote above, and what he says about his audiences. In his Tricycle interview, he also says something about teaching which I found very close to my thoughts, especially as I set down to write a ‘dharma talk.’ When you do this, you really develop very quickly an acute appreciation for what Janet does here every week.
She is able to crank out a dharma teaching that is apt and funny and personal and natural. And she does it every week. It never ceases to amaze me at how she does it. Anyway, Brad Warner says,
"I know Zen teachers who will give a dharma talk once a month and that’s all they’ll do. That’s as much dharma as they’ve got in them, and I think those people are intelligent. There’s only so much that can be said.”
That’s definitely how I feel most of the time. Hacking away for hours with stacks of books all around me. I’m not saying this to try to impress anybody. What I’m trying to say is that, for me, at least, this is hard. I absolutely don’t know how Janet does it.
Anyway, that’s why I have this love hate thing with Brad Warner. There are times he will say something I totally get, agree with and resonate with. And there are other times, I just think oh please. In this way, Brad Warner can push my buttons, for good or ill. I have to look beyond the punk persona, the attitude, the glasses.
I am reminded about the story of Santideva, the monk who wrote the Bodhicaryvatara, the way of the Bodhisattva, one of the most important works of early Mahayana movement. It was said that because he kept to himself, the other monks didn’t really think that much of him. It seemed to them that Santideva simply lazed around doing nothing, in their chiding words, “just eating, sleeping, and defecating.”
In his introduction to a translation of the Bodhicaryvatara, Paul Williams relates the story. The monks decided to humiliate Santideva by asking him to give a recitation before the entire monastery, the great Nalanda University. They erected a seat for him in the monastery square. A seat so high he couldn’t possibly reach it. One story has him levitate to the top of the seat, another has him magically lowering the seat with a magic hand.
Santideva then asks the gathered monks if they want to hear something old or something new. They ask for something new. So from memory, he recites the whole of the Bodhicaryvatara, at one point ascending in the air and disappearing, with only his voice remaining to recite the remainder of the work. Santideva, who for all his learning appeared to be an ordinary monk and yet in his humility, wisdom and compassionate warmth to those who knew him showed an inner development which maybe some guessed but few understood. And my understanding of Brad Warner grows with time, too. We have a lot in common. That’s what I mean when I say I have a love--hate thing with him.
References:
“Interview: Sex, Sin, and Zen: Tricycle discusses Buddhist blogging, power, and the generation gap with Zen teacher Brad Warner” pp. 42-45, Tricycle, winter, 2011.
Williams, Paul, Introduction, The Bodhicaryavatara, pp. vii-xxvi, Oxford University Press, 1995.
---John Corbaley M.S., M.A.
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