As you can see below, I have a talk at Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe on July 10th. I’ve just been asked if I can make it to El Paso on July 15th. Albuquerque is in between. So if anyone wants me to speak in Albuquerque between July 11th and July 14th, I can do it. Let me know if you’re interested!

Also, I have been trying to find gigs in Dallas, Austin and Houston for a while now. But it’s been difficult to get anything worked out. If you’re interested in discussing the possibilities, please write to:

booking@bradwarnershardcorezen.com

Here’s the latest video about my new book in case you haven’t seen it yet:

*   *   *

LIVING ROOM TOUR OF THE NORTHEAST
• 19-June    Toronto    7 p.m.    Snow Lion Bookstore 708a Pape Avenue, Toronto, ON

• 20-June   Ithaca, NY    7 p.m.    Ulysses Philomathic Library 74 E. Main Street, Trumansburg, NY 14886    https://www.facebook.com/events/177703205728097/?ref=14

• 21-June    Pittsburgh    7 p.m.    Black Cat Tattoos 3419 Butler Street 15201 Pittsburgh, PA    https://www.facebook.com/events/167000203473975/?ref=14

• 22-June    Akron    7 p.m.    Arkham Tattoo 788 North Main Street, Akron, OH 44310 https://www.facebook.com/events/471238089631983/

• 22-June    Akron 10 p.m. Zero Defex at Old Haunts Tavern 1527 E. Market St. Akron, OH

• 23-June    Cleveland   6 pm zazen, 7pm talk 1360 W. Miner, Mayfield Hts, OH 44124    https://www.facebook.com/events/554215741287955/?ref=14

• 23-June     Cleveland 10 p.m. Zero Defex at Now That’s Class 11213 Detroit Ave  Cleveland, OH 44102

• 24-June    Pitman, NJ    8 p.m.    519 Grandview Ave, Pitman, NJ 08071    https://www.facebook.com/events/535192329849584/?ref=14

• 25-June    Philadelphia, PA    8 p.m.    1547 E. Berks St., Philadelphia, PA 19125

• 26-June    Newark, Delaware    5:30 p.m.    The Meadow (next to the co-op) 280 East Main Street, Market East Plaza, Newark, DE 19711 https://www.facebook.com/events/138021953061773/

• 27-June    Annapolis, Maryland    7 p.m.    Universalist Unitarian Church of Annapolis 333 Dubois Rd, Annapolis, MD 21401    https://www.facebook.com/events/541018419278312/?ref=14

• 28-June    Asbury Park, NJ    7 p.m. Pure Health Bar & Yoga 701 Cookman Ave Asbury Park, NJ

• 29-June    Long Island, NY 7 p.m.  Clear Mountain Zen Center 519 Hempstead Ave., West Hempstead, NY 11553

UPAYA ZEN CENTER

• 10 July Upaya Zen Center 1404 Cerro Gordo Rd  Santa Fe, NM 87501 http://www.upaya.org/index.php

RETREAT AT MT. BALDY

• Nov 8-11 We will hold another retreat at Mt. Baldy Zen Center. Registration open now!

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Donations to this blog are always gleefully accepted!

Last night I did a Spreecast release party for my new book There Is No God And He Is Always With You (available at bookstores and Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Indie Bound). It was weird. It was fun. I want to do it again but next time I’ll try to work out some of the technical glitches. It’s archived and you can watch it here. I just watched a couple minutes and it looks better now than it did when I was actually doing it!

Broadcasting live from the Hilton Hotel!

I broadcast live form the Airport Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. This was a bizarre last minute decision undertaken when my friend Rachael (who you can see in the trailer above and in the Spreecast itself) called and asked if I would go with her to see Amma, the famous “hugging saint” from India, who was doing some darshan out there. Amma is a little Indian woman who many believe to be an incarnation of the goddess Kali. Darshan means something like “personal meeting” with a supposed holy person. I gather that it’s usually sort of like what we call dokusan in Soto Zen and what the Rinzai folks call sanzen. You go in a room and have a one-on-one chat with your master.*

Amma does it differently. She does these gigundous mass darshans live on stage in front of hundreds of on-lookers. The darshans consist of Amma hugging you and whispering something unintelligible in your ear. Way back in 2009 I got hugged by Amma and I wrote an article about it for Suicide Girls. That link should take you there and as far as I know they won’t ask you to pay to see it, nor is there any danger of photos of naked ladies popping up on your screen since it’s in their “safe for work” area.

What can I say about Amma? I keep hearing rumors of bad stuff going on in the Amma world. Apparently she recently predicted a nuclear war and said that no child under the age of 5 will live to adulthood after the year 2012. Which spread panic among her followers, they say. But it just spreads confusion among me. No child under five will live to adulthood after 2012…? Now I’m not good at math. But is she saying that the world will end in 2029? Like, no child who is under five in 2012 will live to be 18 therefore the world ends in 2029. Did I do that math right? Who knows…

There used to be a webpage called Ex-Amma Forum where people who left the embrace of Amma’s organization shared their experiences. But it was deleted from Yahoo under what its creators say are suspicious circumstances. I don’t know much more than that. But all of this is stuff I’ve learned since the last time I went and saw one of her to-do’s at the Hilton. So I provide it to you for your consideration as well.

After skimming through some of the Ex-Amma stuff it’s hard to know if the highly charged emotional accusations there are any more credible than the extreme fawning and gullibility I saw on display last night. I suspect the truth lies somewhere in between. I suspect that those who search for the elusive “real deal,” the saintly guru or master who really is as saintly and pure as her/his press releases claim will find that Amma doesn’t live up to her hype any better than any of the others.

At some point we will collectively learn that absolutely nobody ever has, ever will, or ever could live up to the claims of super spirituality so many folks make so much money on. Until we do, we will have scandal after scandal and people will be shocked — shocked I say! — to discover just how human their saintly saints really are.

That day is coming. But that day was not yesterday at the Hilton. No siree, Bobby! Those folks believe!

Amma seems to encourage her followers to dress in white flowing garments, which, I assume, represent spiritual purity or some such thing. And that’s fine. Sometimes dressing a certain way can encourage you to act accordingly. I remember once when I worked for Tsuburaya Productions, one of Japan’s most famous producers of entertainment for children. I was wearing an Ultraman jacket made exclusively for those who had worked on the then-current program. I was in the back room of a video store  doing, shall we say, research into the recorded sexual behaviors of the native population when I suddenly remembered what I was wearing. I thought maybe I shouldn’t be in that part of the shop in that jacket.

Later, when I got a set of Buddhist robes I recognized the same feeling. When you’re wearing the robes, you feel like you ought to behave a bit better. Because now you represent something. So I get the idea of special clothing. Much as I hate wearing those robes, I know they can be an effective aid to practice.

Amma is sponsored by Reed’s Ginger Beer “platimun level” (that’s what it says!)

But what I saw last night was people really trying hard to fit into a role. It was kind of like being at a comic book convention. Only instead of there being four guys dressed as Jedis, seven women dressed as Storm, fourteen people in Wolverine costumes, five Power Rangers and so on, everyone was dressed like a Jedi. And everyone was trying to talk like a Jedi and give off the proper Jedi-like vibe. I saw so many guys affecting that stereotypical semi-vacant spiritual dude stare with the optional I-know-the-deeper-truth-honey half smile it was getting disgusting.

The main room where Amma was hugging people was filled to capacity. But the organizers had set up a second room with closed circuit TV so late-comers could watch the action too. This did not sit well with folks who believed they deserved to be in the main room. I got caught up in a crowd of people dressed in their flowing white garments and beads with little thingies drawn on their foreheads all losing their shit because they had to get up close to the Holy Mother. I NEED MY SPIRITUALITY, DAMMIT! LET ME THE FUCK IN! I almost got crushed before I could get out of the way.

After a while people chilled out enough and I could join Rachael who was waiting in the main room for her hug. I didn’t get in line quick enough to get a hugging ticket myself — no hugs without a ticket! People queue up for hours to be the first to get squeezed by this incarnation of the Hindu religion’s most feared goddess. I was impressed that Amma stayed up way past midnight hugging away. Apparently she never even takes bathroom breaks. That can’t be too healthy.

Just like in 2009 it was obvious that Amma’s charities and suchlike were raking in gobs of cash selling all manner of things from Amma-blessed rotten bananas to iPods pre-loaded with Amma’s favorite Hindu chants. It all goes to save the children and build hospitals. So they say. So they say.

*My Facebook friend Vinod Khare corrected me on this point: “The closest translation of the contemporary Hindi word darshan would be ‘sighting’. As in ‘to see’. In Hinduism, the mere sight of a deity or holy person is supposed to bring merits to the devotee. When Hindus congregate at one of their great (or little) temples, darshan – the sight of the idol – is what they desire. One on one dialog is usually not implied. In case of idols it is impossible and in case of living gods, it usually requires payments of large sums of money. ‘Satsang’, meaning the company of good or holy people is the word often used for such meetings.”

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LIVING ROOM TOUR OF THE NORTHEAST
• 19-June    Toronto    7 p.m.    Snow Lion Bookstore 708a Pape Avenue, Toronto, ON

• 20-June   Ithaca, NY    7 p.m.    Ulysses Philomathic Library 74 E. Main Street, Trumansburg, NY 14886    https://www.facebook.com/events/177703205728097/?ref=14

• 21-June    Pittsburgh    7 p.m.    Black Cat Tattoos 3419 Butler Street 15201 Pittsburgh, PA    https://www.facebook.com/events/167000203473975/?ref=14

• 22-June    Akron    7 p.m.    Arkham Tattoo 788 North Main Street, Akron, OH 44310

• 22-June    Akron 10 p.m. Zero Defex at Old Haunts Tavern 1527 E. Market St. Akron, OH

• 23-June    Cleveland   6 pm zazen, 7pm talk 1360 W. Miner, Mayfield Hts, OH 44124    https://www.facebook.com/events/554215741287955/?ref=14

• 23-June     Cleveland 10 p.m. Zero Defex at Now That’s Class 11213 Detroit Ave  Cleveland, OH 44102

• 24-June    Pitman, NJ    8 p.m.    519 Grandview Ave, Pitman, NJ 08071    https://www.facebook.com/events/535192329849584/?ref=14

• 25-June    Philadelphia, PA    8 p.m.    TBA

• 26-June    Newark, Delaware    5:30 p.m.    The Meadow (next to the co-op) 280 East Main Street, Market East Plaza, Newark, DE 19711

• 27-June    Annapolis, Maryland    7 p.m.    Universalist Unitarian Church of Annapolis 333 Dubois Rd, Annapolis, MD 21401    https://www.facebook.com/events/541018419278312/?ref=14

• 28-June    Asbury Park, NJ    7 p.m. Pure Health Bar & Yoga 701 Cookman Ave Asbury Park, NJ

• 29-June    Long Island, NY 7 p.m.  Clear Mountain Zen Center 519 Hempstead Ave., West Hempstead, NY 11553

UPAYA ZEN CENTER

• 10 July Upaya Zen Center 1404 Cerro Gordo Rd  Santa Fe, NM 87501 http://www.upaya.org/index.php

RETREAT AT MT. BALDY

• Nov 8-11 We will hold another retreat at Mt. Baldy Zen Center. Details to follow soon.

*   *   *

If you’d rather donate to me than to Amma, click here! It goes to a good cause, I guarantee!

http://www.spreecast.com/events/there-is-no-god-release-party

Also, today (June 10, 2013) at 6pm Pacific Time I will be on The Dark Mark Show podcast. It’s at http://gocastnetwork.com/

LIVING ROOM TOUR OF THE NORTHEAST
• 19-June    Toronto    7 p.m.    Snow Lion Bookstore 708a Pape Avenue, Toronto, ON

• 20-June   Ithaca, NY    7 p.m.    Ulysses Philomathic Library 74 E. Main Street, Trumansburg, NY 14886    https://www.facebook.com/events/177703205728097/?ref=14

• 21-June    Pittsburgh    7 p.m.    Black Cat Tattoos 3419 Butler Street 15201 Pittsburgh, PA    https://www.facebook.com/events/167000203473975/?ref=14

• 22-June    Akron    7 p.m.    Arkham Tattoo 788 North Main Street, Akron, OH 44310

• 22-June    Akron 10 p.m. Zero Defex at Old Haunts Tavern 1527 E. Market St. Akron, OH

• 23-June    Cleveland   6 pm zazen, 7pm talk 1360 W. Miner, Mayfield Hts, OH 44124    https://www.facebook.com/events/554215741287955/?ref=14

• 23-June     Cleveland 10 p.m. Zero Defex at Now That’s Class 11213 Detroit Ave  Cleveland, OH 44102

• 24-June    Pitman, NJ    8 p.m.    519 Grandview Ave, Pitman, NJ 08071    https://www.facebook.com/events/535192329849584/?ref=14

• 25-June    Philadelphia, PA    8 p.m.    TBA

• 26-June    Newark, Delaware    5:30 p.m.    The Meadow (next to the co-op) 280 East Main Street, Market East Plaza, Newark, DE 19711

• 27-June    Annapolis, Maryland    7 p.m.    Universalist Unitarian Church of Annapolis 333 Dubois Rd, Annapolis, MD 21401    https://www.facebook.com/events/541018419278312/?ref=14

• 28-June    Asbury Park, NJ    7 p.m. Pure Health Bar & Yoga 701 Cookman Ave Asbury Park, NJ

• 29-June    Long Island, NY Clear Mountain Zen Center 519 Hempstead Ave., West Hempstead, NY 11553

UPAYA ZEN CENTER

• 10 July Upaya Zen Center 1404 Cerro Gordo Rd  Santa Fe, NM 87501 http://www.upaya.org/index.php

RETREAT AT MT. BALDY

• Nov 8-11 We will hold another retreat at Mt. Baldy Zen Center. Details to follow soon.

All of these events are open to the public. I will be traveling alone, surviving on donations and book sales. So please come out if I’m in your area!

See you there!

*   *   *

My group Dogen Sangha Los Angeles is trying to raise funds to incorporate itself. You can donate here.

And I’m trying to raise personal funds to support myself too. You can donate to the tour in advance if you like right here!

Second, I’m sure people noticed that the site was offline for most of the day yesterday, and I apologize for that. It seems that a piece of add-on software for WordPress went wild, causing our CPU usage to spike, causing our ISP to basically shut the site off until we could sort out what the issue was, which wasn’t really possible until around midnight last night.

In any event, the probably-offending software is now disabled, and things should (::knock on wood::) be back to normal, or at least normal-esque.

As long as I’m here, I want to mention that I’m aware that the site’s SSL certificate has expired, and I’m hoping to be able to address that within the next few weeks. In the meantime, https will still function correctly, aside from the warning.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Hardcore Zen programming. I hope not to be making a habit of this.

And if you need more blather from me, you can now watch and listen to the Spreecast of my talk at Hill Street Center last week. Just click on that link and you’ll have access to the whole 45 minutes. It felt like a pretty good talk.

We have launched a campaign to fund the starting of a real-live Zen space for Dogen Sangha Los Angeles. As the page says, “We hope one day to have our own dedicated center where we will host zazen seven days a week, a place that will serve as a social and cultural center for the DSLA community. We would like to be able to hire an Executive Director to run day-to-day operations. We have plans for community and prison outreach, expanded video, audio and print content… and so on and so on.”

I haven’t ever done anything like this before. But I hope to get a center going in Los Angeles and one going in Akron, Ohio. Pretty soon they’ll be like McDonalds or Starbucks, with a center on every corner!

My Living Room Tour is shaping up. But there are still a few open days. So check out the page about it and if you want to get in on the action write to Pirooz at pk@ilikenirvana.com

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Donations to the Dogen Sangha fundraiser don’t go to me or to this blog. So if you’d like to help me personally or the blog you can still donate at the usual donation spot! Thanks!

Pirooz and I calculated it out and in the best case scenario this tour will cost me $1000 out of pocket. That’s if we sell a fair number of books each talk, if people come through with donations, if nothing goes wrong with the car, if none of the gigs end up getting cancelled, if none of the gigs turn out to be some dude and one of his buddies in the garage with a bong… And about half a dozen other ifs. Chances are greater this tour will cost me closer to $2000-$3000. Will it make back that much in extra book sales? No one knows.

My publishers are not covering this cost. I have no organization paying my living and travel expenses and buying me three houses and a fleet of Harley-Davidsons. I gotta pay for this out of my savings from the “real job” I quit back in 2009. But I really believe in this book and I want it to do well.

The idea of these gigs is as guerrilla (gorilla?) promotion for the book, bypassing traditional venues and taking it right to the people, speaking in living rooms and other such spaces to small groups of people who are specifically interested in the book rather than trying to win over anonymous crowds at the usual new age bookstores and occasionally hostile Zen centers I generally end up speaking at.

I know this is the best book I have ever written. And I’m sorry if this sounds cocky or whatever, but it’s also a tremendously important book. Nobody is writing about this stuff and they should be. Because people need to hear it. Which is the case with all of my books.

The dates we have set up are as follows. I’ll have the actual addresses and times and other such specifics soon and will make them public as soon as I do.

• June 19 TORONTO, ON

• June 21 PITTSBURGH, PA

• June 22 AKRON, OH

• June 23 CLEVELAND, OH

• June 24 PITTMAN, NJ

• June 27 ANNAPOLIS, MD

• June 28 ASBURY PARK, NJ

You will notice that there are no gigs on June 20, 25, 26 and 29. People are talking to us about those date, but nobody’s come through with anything concrete. If you have any good ideas please let Pirooz know by writing to pk@ilikenirvana.com

We’re especially keen on playing NYC on June 29th.

Here is a PDF of the press release for the book. And here’s the same thing in MS WORD format.

Now just try to ponder this in context. Is Thich Nhat Hanh offering to come to anyone’s living room? Is Deepak Chopra telling his fans he’s going to hang out at their houses? Is Ken Wilber gonna give a talk in your buddy’s garage? What about Ekhart Tolle? Genpo Roshi? Is the Dalai Lama gonna pay you a visit with all his secret service men in tow?

I didn’t think so.

See you soon!

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Thanks for your donations they really help!

One of my top FAQs (that’s Frequently Asked Questions, grandpa!) is “Why should we meditate?” It’s a good, honest question. And lots of meditation teachers have good answers. A lot of times they’ll quote scientific surveys involving brain scans of meditating monks and things like that. Sometimes they’ll drag out that big doorstop of a book Zen and the Brain and show you some graphs in there. But I’ve never read that book. It’s too smart for me. Nor can I understand most of those graphs and charts — even though I’ve had my brain scanned at least three different times as part of those kinds of studies.

I meditate because I can feel for myself the huge difference it makes in my life. I wouldn’t waste an hour or more every day on some activity that wasn’t worthwhile. And I certainly wouldn’t have kept it up for close to thirty years if it didn’t seem to be doing anything for me!

And yet it’s very hard to quantify exactly why I do it. All I really know is that I feel lousy when I skip my morning zazen. It’s had tremendous impact on my life, too, I’m sure. But I can’t hop over to the Mirror Universe in which I never learned to sit zazen and watch Evil Brad putting his ex-girlfriends in the agony booth or whatever I would have done if I’d signed up for something other than a class in Zen meditation back in college. So I don’t honestly know what’s different. Though I feel very strongly that many aspects of my life have been vastly improved.

I’ve also come to feel that meditation is necessary. Like I say in the video above, it seems to me that lots of folks these days think of mediation as an interesting activity they might like to try one of these days. They think it’s optional. But I have come to believe that it isn’t optional at all. It’s as necessary as good diet and regular exercise.

When people ask how to get a regular practice going I often compare doing zazen to brushing your teeth. When you’re a kid your parents force you to brush your teeth. You kick and scream but they make you do it anyway. Somewhere around junior high school age, like 11-13 years old, you suddenly notice members of the opposite sex or you start to notice members of your own sex in a different way. Then it dawns on you that brushing your teeth makes sense. Maybe later, after a few harrowing trips to the dentist, you discover other reasons it’s a good idea. After a while it becomes a routine. You forget why you do it. But you do it every day.

I think that in the future — maybe 50 years from now, maybe 200 if we’re pretty slow — people will look back on our culture where very few people meditated the way we look back on cultures where very few people brushed their teeth. They’ll wonder how we could have neglected something that is so obviously necessary for a decent life. They’ll marvel at the fact that the knowledge was there, that the teachers were available, that the activity itself was so simple and obviously good for you, and yet so few people took the initiative to do it. They’ll wonder what life must have been like with all those non-meditators running around psychologically stinking up the place.

Interestingly enough, it was the Buddhists who introduced the habit of tooth brushing to Asia. In the Middle Ages in China brushing one’s teeth was thought of as something monks did as part of their weird rituals. Eventually people outside the monasteries noticed how beneficial it was and started doing it themselves and the habit spread.

Maybe people will eventually start to notice the good that meditation does too.

*   *   *

If you want to try some meditation yourself, come tonight at 8:30pm to Yogavidala 4640 Franklin Ave  Los Angeles, CA 90027, corner of Franklin and Vermont, behind the 7-11.

Or come to Hill Street Center, 237 Hill Street, Santa Monica, CA 90405 from 10 am till Noon this and every Saturday.

We also do a Zen morning service every Sunday at 10am at Against The Stream 4300 Melrose Ave, LA, CA 90029.

*   *   *

Your donations to the continuation and betterment of this blog are always appreciated!

(By the way, there aren’t enough toes on that Deinonychus. They had three toes – two to stand on and one to rip down lemons from lemon trees!)

Previously on this blog, I put up a video promoting my forthcoming book There Is No God And He Is Always With You. In this video I said something like, “I don’t think most people who consider themselves spiritual believe in an anthropomorphic creator God who is basically a giant white man on a throne in the sky.” Or that’s what I would have said if I’d sat down and written out my answer rather than speaking it off-the-cuff to an interviewer. I’m not sure if it came across like that or not.

At any rate, my using the words “most people” opened me up to being challenged by folks who like to quote statistics. Both on this blog and on Facebook people chimed in saying that 46% of Americans believe in that sort of God. I did a little research and discovered that this statistic comes from an article published on Huffington Post in June 2012 titled 46% of Americans Believe in Creationism According to Latest Gallup Poll. The question these Americans were asked was this:

Which of the following statements comes closest to your views on the origin and development of human beings?
1) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process,
2) Human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process,
3) God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.

According to Huffington Post, “Respondents were categorized as believing in theistic evolution (option 1), evolution (option 2) and creationism (option 3) depending on their answer choice. Forty six percent Americans believed in creationism, 32 percent believed in theistic evolution and 15 percent believed in evolution without any divine intervention.” And the article goes on from there. You can read it for yourself if you like. There’s lots of graphs and charts and stuff to look at too.

And yet I still have my doubts. In spite of what the Gallup Polls tell us, I suspect that real belief in that kind of God is on the decrease. It appears to me that the desire to believe in such nonsense still exists. But I’m not sure if all those 46% of Americans honestly believe what they say they believe.

Here’s why I suspect this. People are afraid that if they believe in evolution there will be nothing for them to do after they die, that they’ll never be reunited with lost loved ones, that life has no meaning and that there’s no reason to behave morally because nothing really matters. If I felt like I had only those two choices, I’d side with the anti-evolutionists too. Seriously. I absolutely would. I think any sensible person would, especially in light of the idea that moral action only makes sense if there is a creator God sitting up in the sky keeping a list of all of our naughty and nice actions.

And yet all of us are faced every single day with the products of science. We have laptops and X-Boxes and Blu Ray players, all of which are based on the principles of science. We know science works. Our airplanes don’t fall out of the sky. Our satellite radios work so that we can hear right wing pundits denounce science on them. And many of us fear our own knowledge and want to try to turn things back. But we can’t. We may not want to believe in science. But we have to. It clearly works.

I find it interesting that the debate in America seems to hinge on just two options. Whenever I see a debate about Creationism vs. Evolution both sides seem to want to bring it down to just two options. Either you teach evolution in schools or you teach the Bible. As if the Christian Bible contains the only religious creation story. If I was on a school board I’d say, “Sure. Teach Biblical Creation if you want. But if you do that, you have to teach the Vedic creation story, and the many often contradictory Buddhist creation stories, and the Shinto creation story, and every African creation story, and the Mayan creation story…” You get the idea. There is essentially just one scientific creation story (though there are a lot of minor variants to it) and countless religious ones.

But this whole debate bores the shit out of me. Honestly. It is so ridiculous that the only reason I ever pay attention to it is for a quick laugh.

And yet I understand why it’s scary to a lot of folks. There are people in high places in the US and elsewhere who profess some really idiotic beliefs when it comes to God. But we all know what politicians are like. They’ll say whatever they think is going to get them the most votes. Even if it’s not what they really believe. They’ll do this on any subject. Why would they be different when it comes to the matter of God?

At any rate, the foregoing debate wasn’t at all the point I was trying to make in that video. I’m sorry if it comes across that way. I was really just trying to express my deep disappointment at the shallowness of the debate itself.

To give you an example, I was kind of excited when I saw Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Because I thought it was going to be a scientific look at why human beings believe in God. I thought he’d go into the evolution of religious thought or the neurological research into how and why human beings started creating religions in the first place. I though it might talk about why religion was apparently selected by evolution as a useful trait in human beings. It seems to have been strongly favored by evolution. All societies have some kind of religion. Why? Evolution only selects what helps an organism survive and reproduce. How does religion do that? That is interesting to me.

I think there is a book about that stuff. But The God Delusion isn’t it. It’s just a long essay about why it’s dumb to believe in a Big Boss Man in the Sky kind of God. And I already knew that. So do most of the religious people I’ve encountered in my life, including those who consider themselves Born Again Christians. In Ohio! That shit is played out.

The other neo-atheist books I’ve picked up are similarly shallow and kind of boring. Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great is, unfortunately, not that great. Sam Harris’ The End of Faith was better, but still pretty shallow if you ask me. And these are the three most important books in the movement! I was totally let down!

All of these books seem to dwell on the simple either-or type of choice that the folks who wrote the Gallup Polls came up with. If I’d been given that poll I’d have to answer “none of the above” and thus my point of view wouldn’t be represented. Because there’s no room for a more nuanced idea.

Note the three toes.

When I first encountered Zen Buddhism I heard it was a “religion without God.” This is one of the longest standing, most often quoted shorthand descriptions of Zen. I’d had enough of religion by that point in my life. It was obvious to me by the time I was 8 years old that the Big Boss in the Sky version of God was stupid. And yet I could not deny that there were aspects of my real experience that could be called “spiritual.” Zen practice allowed me a way to connect with that. I came to the conclusion that there might be an intelligent way to talk about God.

And that’s what I’m trying to do in this forthcoming book.

Wish me luck!

*   *   *

We’re still working on that Living Room Tour! See this article for details. Contact Pirooz if you want to get involved.

*   *   *

Donations to support the blog are gleefully accepted!

Here is the first of a number of short videos I made to promote the forthcoming release of my book There Is No God and He Is Always With You.

Enjoy!

This is without any doubt my best book yet. But I feel like the promotion isn’t gonna amount to very much. Which makes me sad. Because I’d hate to see a book as good as this one sink without a trace. And that’s what I think is going to happen if I don’t grab hold and do it all myself.

So I’m trying to come up with novel ways of letting folks know it’s out there. My roommate Pirooz Kalayeh has been pretty helpful. He has set up an Internet-based book launch party on the website spreecast. The party will happen on June 11th at 7:00 pm Pacific Time. You can watch it live or watch it when it’s over by clicking on this link. More on the party soon.

What I want to talk about here is another one of Pirooz’s ideas, a “living room book tour.” PK’s parents live in upstate New York. We plan to fly out there on or about June 17th, borrow their car and spend 8 – 10 days (until June 25 or 27) on the road going from town to town holding book related events in the living rooms, garages, treehouses or other such spaces of willing victims.

Check out the map Pirooz drew (above). We figure we can hit the following cities:

• Montreal, QC

• New York, NY

• Cleveland, OH

• Akron, OH

• Philadelphia, PA

• Baltimore, MD

• Washington, D.C.

• Newark, DL

• Princeton, Trenton, Patterson or some other city in New Jersey

If you’d like to be involved in this, please send an email Pirooz at pk@ilikenirvana.com

You should email Pirooz even if you have already emailed me and even if we’ve already emailed about me coming to your town (I lose track of stuff really quickly and efficiently). Or even if you live in a different town but think it is near enough to one of these so that it would make sense to go there.

At these events, I will talk about and/or read from the book. I’ll have books for sale. I’ll have other merch for sale. I’ll sign whatever you want to have signed (books, boobs, whatever, bring it & I’ll sign it). There’s no minimum number of people who have to show up, but I would like to reach as many folks as possible. We’re hoping most of the friendly folk who host these events will also let us sleep on their couches, thus saving us from having to shell out for hotel rooms. I am way too old for this kind of punk rock thing. But you do what you gotta do.

We will video record these events and post excerpts on the web for all to see.

We won’t charge a speaking fee for these events, though we will be paying for all of this out of our own not-very-deep pockets. Neither my publishers nor any other organization will be kicking in so much as a penny for airfare, gas money, food money or anything else. So we will happily take any donations people who come to these events feel like handing over to us to help us not go broke.

This is probably the dumbest scheme I have ever said yes to doing. But I really want this book to make some kind of impact and I’m going to have to do it all guerrilla or more like gorilla style.

So write Pirooz an email and he’ll try and schedule this so it works out.

We’d also like to do another one of these in California perhaps even earlier than the East Coast one, so CA folks, email Pirooz about that one. We could hit LA, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Bakersfield, Santa Cruz maybe Sacramento too. Again, even if you’ve already emailed me, please email Pirooz too. He won’t lose your emails the way I have.

If this goes well and we don’t end up hog tied in someone’s basement begging for hand lotion or just flat broke, maybe I can do others in other areas like a Midwest one including St. Louis, Cedar Rapids and so on, or a Northwest one including Portland, Seattle and do forth or a Southern one taking in Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte and other cities. The possibilities are endless.

Thanks!

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Please feel free to donate now if you want to get a head start!