“Monasticism? Didn’t Even KNOW Him!” or “Does Monastic Practice Teach Discipline of Obedience?”
Dogen wrote a piece for Shobogenzo called Shukke Kudoku or “In Praise of Home Leaving.” It’s probably the best example of what has become one of the most problematic aspects of Dogen’s writings for Western lay Buddhist followers of the Soto tradition. This is the chapter in which he most emphatically states that the only […]
Bring Me My Robe Back Please Holokai Brown
I’ll be leading a Zen Meditation class every Wednesday evening at 7:15 pm at Yogavidala 4640 Franklin Avenue LA 90027 corner of Vermont & Franklin in Los Feliz (behind 7-11). Starts tomorrow! Be there! A couple days ago I returned to Los Angeles from my month-long stay at Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery. While I was […]
Interview on The Beer O’Clock
Here’s the transcript of an interview I did for a radio show in Montreal called The Beer O’Clock in July, 2005. The interviewer was Thibault du Chene. It’s been a few years. But I still like this interview. Thibault: So tonight our guest is Brad Warner. Brad Warner is a punk rocker, Monster Movie maker and […]
Dogen For Punks
(The following is a modified version of a speech I gave at the Dogen Tanslators Forum in San Francisco on November 5, 2010. It ran on Elephant Journal a while ago but not on this blog until now.) This summer at Tassajara Zen monastery I met Kazuaki Tanahashi, the translator of a number of books […]
What Would That Guy Have Been Like Without the Meditation?
In the previous installment I wrote about spiritual teachers who went bad and asked, “If all that monastic training didn’t even teach him it’s wrong to screw somebody else’s wife, which is something most people without such monastic training know, then what good is it?” Often when someone starts talking this way I think, “Yeah, […]
