I’m now committed.
On Friday my friend Pirooz, director of Shoplifting from American Apparel, signed a lease for an apartment in Los Angeles, California that he and I will move into in June, 2012. On that very same day — perhaps at the exact same moment — I signed a contract with New World Library to publish my next book There Is No God And He Is Your Creator. This could come out as soon as Spring 2013 or might be pushed back to Fall. We’re not sure yet.
In the meanwhile, the audiobook of Hardcore Zen is on sale right now. Just in case you’ve forgotten.
And a new eBook collection called Hardcore Zen Strikes Again will be out any minute now. I think they’re still working out some kinks in formatting. I realized I couldn’t do it myself so the fine folks at Cooperative Press in Cleveland are handling that part. Up till now they’ve only done books about knitting. But Shannon, who runs the company, is a fan of my writing. So this will be their first non-knitting related title.
Hardcore Zen Strikes Again is a collection of essays I wrote for the old Sit Down and Shut Up webpage. Many of the articles I wrote for that page ended up reworked into chapters of Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality. Many did not. Others were so thoroughly reworked you wouldn’t recognize them. It is articles from the latter two categories that I chose for Hardcore Zen Strikes Again. I’ve also included a chapter that was cut out of Hardcore Zen and an article I wrote for a Japanese monster fanzine consisting mainly of things I wrote about my work at Tsuburaya Productions that were also removed from Hardcore Zen. So the book is sort of like the bonus disc for Hardcore Zen. Hence the title. The essays are each accompanied by new introductions and afterwords talking about how my views on things have totally changed now and why the essays are shit.
Not really. But I am not nearly as loud in my writing as I was in 2001. I say pretty much the same stuff, just in a different way.
Those of you without Kindles or iPads or Nooks need not fret. There will be a print version as well. But the print version will be produced in limited quantities. Whether you’ll be able to find it in stores or not is still an open question. Probably you will.
Going to California is a big move for me, and, in some ways a thoroughly stupid one. It’s stupid because I could have saved myself a lot of hassle and just stayed in Los Angeles. But, really, things there at the time had become un-workable and I needed a change. It’s also stupid because I’m now making way less money than I was when I moved away and am going to a place where the rent is more than twice what I’m paying in Akron.
But it’s also a good move because I liked living in California. It’s sunny. It’s warm. It’s L.A., with all the weirdness that means. I’m going to try getting a teaching gig out there or maybe work in the film industry. Pirooz has a company, which is mainly just him right now, called Sangha Films. Years and years before I ever met Pirooz I had the notion that maybe there could be a Buddhist sangha whose livelihood was supported by making movies. Lots of Buddhist sanghas support themselves with commercial endeavors. Some sanghas make tofu, some bake bread, San Francisco Zen Center runs a luxury tourist resort (Tassajara). So why not movies?
I’m hoping to talk Pirooz into moving in this direction with me. But every time I say something about it he just sort of grunts noncommittally. We’ll see. I envision it as sort of a Zen version of Troma Films. Not in terms of the gore and splatter. But in terms of the way Troma is fiercely independent, knows its audience thoroughly, and makes its way in the world by producing movies that will never be big hits but always sell to its loyal core audience. Pirooz wants to make a zombie movie next. I’m trying to convince him to make it a Zen zombie movie. We’ll see…
Every choice a person makes in life affects their future in ways large and small, foreseeable and unforeseeable. Even a smile or a frown can make a huge difference. But some decisions seem more momentous than others. Signing that book contract and committing to a huge move in the same day seem pretty momentous to me. To be honest, I’m scared shitless. Maybe a year from now you’ll find me living in a cardboard box on Venice Beach trying to sell CD-Rs of my audiobook in order to buy burritos. But maybe not.
Sometimes you just gotta make a move.
Won!
…do i get a burrito?
Good luck with the move! Looking forward to the next book. Take care
new place, new impressions. nice 🙂
"Every choice a person makes in life affects their future in ways large and small, foreseeable and unforeseeable."
Lol…yeah, I remember when I believed in free will and choice.
TEXT
Millions of people find a way to live and survive in California. Because there are millions of people, there is a big economy. Don't be put off by finding a "day job." Buddhism may never reach the profit margins that Joel "Prosperity Gospel; ie send me money and God will send you some" Osteen has realized, so many in the Buddha biz will need to find real, mundane, pay-the-rent-jobs. In your free time, write, play music, and teach what you teach. That way, you'll have a real life, as an you approach 50 (soon), you'll be grounded so that the next 20 years will be meaningful and manageable.
Hope Crum can adjust!
Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.
nice man! well, this means we can book you to come up to Sacramento more likely than while your in Ohio.
nice man! well, this means we can book you to come up to Sacramento more likely than while your in Ohio.
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May I offer the cautionary tale of the Joad family?
California ain't the promised land, if that's what you're hoping for (and it's pretty obvious that it is).
nice man! well, this means we can book you to come up to Sacramento more likely than while your in Ohio.
May I offer the cautionary tale of the Joad family?
California ain't the promised land, if that's what you're hoping for (and it's pretty obvious that it is).
I lived in Los Angeles for five years. So I know what California is and isn't.
WTF, did Seagal say something on point????
Looking forward to your next book. Good luck to you! (There's no such thing as "luck" in my mind. It's just something I say to try and make the other person feel good.)
May the force be with you!
Troma films, eh?
????????
We're going by ILIKENIRVANA now.
http://ilikenirvana.com/
ilikenirvana.com
PhilBob,
Sam Harris is a pretty convincing speaker, isn't he? I plan to watch that entire video soon. But I watched about a minute of it & it seems pretty clear where he's going.
The problem is it's all up in the head. This is what trips up people like Harris. They are far too clever for their own good. They can convince themselves of anything they choose to because their brains are so sharp and efficient.
I actually LIKE Sam Harris' stuff. So don't get me wrong here. Among his crowd of self-satisfied über atheists, he's definitely the best. Richard Dawkins has nothing on Sam Harris.
The best koan I know of that addresses the issue is the one about the guy who stubs his toe and says, "I had heard that the body is an illusion, where does this pain come from?"
It's a slightly different angle on the same problem. "I had heard (from Sam Harris) that freedom of choice is an illusion. Where does this freedom of choice come from?"
Nishijima Roshi always said that determinism and free will are both true. It depends on which angle you look at things from.
Thoughts may be conditioned. But that doesn't negate freedom of action. This is something you see through actual experience, though. Not through thinking.
Sunshine! Always good. I just wanted to ask you how you felt about living in Southern Spain. I have been thinking of going there lately myself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ttSMefBdAM
What's happening to Crum?
Re:Harrs & "free will": Reminds me of when the mice offered to replace Arthur Dent's brain with a computer. "I'd notice it," Dent said. "You'd be programmed not to," one of the mice replied.
It's that way with"free will."
A reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? For real?
Nice.
I'm just glad that Brad didn't name his new book "God Is The Most Obvious Thing."
If he formats the title on the cover similar to this
THERE IS NO GOD
and he is your creator
he might sell a few more copies to people who don't already buy his books. There are people on both sides of that argument who will at least pick up the book in the store to see which side he is on.
(I tried to do BIG and small text for the two halves of the title but blogger doesn't accept those HTML tags. I think you get the idea.)
THERE AIN'T NO GOD
But we should pray to Him
Good for you! That's good stuff!!
Good stuff! That takes guts. Good for you!!
LA, Akron, can you possibly find another town ready to fall off the map to relocate to? Guess you could've moved to whats left of Detroit.
Well, good luck. Takes balls to take the leap -again- at almost 50, with no prospects other than another non-lucrative book deal, and pipe dreams of another career in the film industry.
But what the hell.
Go for it.
Whatever it looks like to you, it still looks courageous from this vantage point. Cheers to you.
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Some noodlings on free will –
Well before watching that very good Sam Harris talk (a couple of months ago when an anonymous linked it – thanks for linking it again, PhilBob) I'd come to the conclusion that free will makes no sense. Not if you believe 1) in cause and effect and 2) in no self/soul/spirit apart from the physical material and processes of the body.
If you do believe that an immaterial soul inhabits your body and directs your brain cells, limbs, organs etc to do stuff, then you can believe that you have a will that is free. For that's what a free will must be; an agent apart from the material stuff of the Universe that operates outside the law of cause and effect (the law that determines every other observable event) and freely decides what's going to happen next. Perhaps every one of us does have a soul, a self independent from the body that directs the brain to make thoughts and move limbs. But that idea makes no sense to me.
So I’m left with: No soul. No free will. Most likely.
That’s where thinking about it gets me. And I’m perfectly happy with thinking as a method for deciding what makes sense. But rejecting free will as an explanation of the way things really are doesn’t affect the way I feel about my life. I don’t feel like a robot. I feel as though ‘I’ am the author of what ‘I’ do. I feel responsible my actions. So I understand there to be two truths about free will: 1) The ‘real’ situation and 2) My experience.
Gudo’s attempt to resolve these incompatible truths is to say that from the perspective of time regarded as a process (past – present – future) cause and effect is absolute. No free will. But, he says, from the perspective of the instantaneous present moment there is no past – present – future and so no process of cause and effect. And so, in this instantaneous moment there is room for free action. As I see it, Gudo’s ‘two views’ explanantion misses the point. It doesn’t at all address the issue of the freely acting agent; the separate, independent of the body self/soul that is still required to move the body around if the idea of ‘free will’ is to have any meaning. What is it? Where does it come from? By including an acting agent in his present moment ‘action’ scenario Gudo still assumes an actor and the operation of cause and effect. In fact, that’s what he’s trying to account for! Still, I have a suspicion that Gudo may be trying to say something a little different from what I think he’s saying. But I’ve yet to find someone who can nail it for me.
Daniel Dennett’s take on the ‘problem’ of free will makes some sense to me (I’ve read nothing. I’ve seen a few videos. I may well have misunderstood him). Dennett says that what we call “free will” is that experienced phenomenon which is the result of the purely physical, entirely caused, processes of our brain/body. It’s no more than that, but that will do just fine. We don’t have to decide whether we have a ‘separate’ soul/self; what we call the self, or free will, is a description of an aspect of our experience, not a description of an 'ultimately true' situation. We have created, or imagined (as with “consciousness”) the illusion of a self-existent thing. We ascribe characteristics to this fiction and are then surprised when it contradicts other fictions. We forget that it didn’t really exist in the first place. We just made it up and gave it name.
Very well said, Malcolm, and for what its worth, I couldn't agree more…
Our will, Buddhism says, is conditioned by our previous karma (bearing in mind that the Buddhist teaching on karma is that it is solely a law related to human volition). So there is no such things as 'free will' when we think with our karma-conditioned minds and act accordingly.
Buddhist practice presents us with another sort of will which has different implications for our 'karmic mind'… different, but not seperate or removed (this is what the 'wild fox' koan is about).
That there is a strong element of uncertainty/ non-determinate freedom in physical/explicit/observable reality can be demonstrated in how bookies make lots of money from people who think they have it all sussed: Although we like to think we have it all sewed up regarding the physical laws of the universe, we're not really very good at making our millions by betting on the horsies even though the favourites may seem like the obvious choice, statistically speaking.
Regards,
Harry.
Hi Harry,
I think all you've said there is that we appear to be conditioned by the past and we can't predict the future. Well, I agree. Is there something I'm missing? What is this "other sort of will"?
(Thanks, John. Always nice to be agreed with :))
So, in relation to 'free will', it gives rise to the question 'free from from what?'
Remember that Master Nishijima's explanation observes that, in the present moment of realised-time, the past and the future are only thoughts in our heads and actually exist nowhere else wheresoever. We are actually already free from the illusion that we exist in a linear progression from past through present to future (otherwise we'd be stuck and couldn't exist as we do) but we don't generally realise this fact.
Regards,
Harry.
108,
It's the will to sit upright and not automatically give in to our mental/emotional conditioning, or the arising karmic results of previous volitional actions. It is to be free of the unreal narratives we create in our head about a linear past-present-future time continuity etc etc etc.
Regards,
Harry.
Hi Brad,
do you breath slowly and deeply (abdominally) during zazen?
I don't mean if you do so by intention but if you check while sitting for half an hour, do you do so?
Thank you,
Dany
@Brad: "Thoughts may be conditioned. But that doesn't negate freedom of action. This is something you see through actual experience, though. Not through thinking."
Sorry but isn't that a bit too simple way to see it? You also see through experience that the sun moves around the earth right? Does that make it true? The point here is that OF COURSE you feel like "you" are making decisions but that doesn't mean that's the way things are. It just makes things look that way to us and it's good that it does! But to close the case with this is far too easy I think…it's not that just your thoughts are in your brain, it's also your other "experience" of the world. I don't want to imply with this that there is no real world but we're always living in a representation of it…
H,
You're describing being free from a way of thinking and I understand what your saying. But that’s not what I’m taliking about.
You ask “free from what?” I’d answer “free of prior determination. Free from cause and effect.”
I think we're defining the problem differently, and so we're not commenting on the same thing. Which is fine.
Enjoy your move! If such a thing is possible, as experience tells me it is always something shaky….
On point of 'free will vs. determinism' I think Alan Watts addresses it quite nicely and on point here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsNyLvzhJJo
As they say in A.A., "Let go and let God".
The so called problem of free will is the result of trying to see a first person issue through a third person lens.
Alan Watts is cool.
The reverb and the f***ing string quartet…not so much.
"free of prior determination. Free from cause and effect"
Malcom,
Are you talking solely about 'cause and effect' as a physical law as would a scientist who seperates mind from matter?
Well, science is far from cracking all the secrets yet and, 'below' the ordered (but not particularly predictable) laws of physics there seems to be an… unorder… that is a bit whacky and that doesn't quite add up as we might hope.
I appreciate the irony in that, an in the idea that at least two 'truths' may be seen to be operant at the same time and throughout each other.
Regards,
Harry.
Moving is always stressful. Wishing you and your new room mate the best of success in LA. And hope Crum adjusts to his new life as an alley cat.
Malcom,
Are you talking solely about 'cause and effect' as a physical law as would a scientist who seperates mind from matter?
I'm no scientist, Harry. I'm talking about cause and effect as would an ordinary, rational person.
Not being a scientist, I don't presume to understand the implications of what's being discovered about goings-on at the quantum level.
(My noodlings didn't stop at "Cause and effect is true. There is no free will.")
Oh, Mr. Warner, you are going to get so much bad karma from dissing the Dalai Lama in your ebook that I shudder to think of it.
Erm…okay. Well, for the purposes of discussion, what is cause and effect, or what exactly can we say is being caused into effect (so we know what we're talking about)?
Regards,
Harry.