According to D. T. Suzuki, “Zen has no God to worship, no ceremonial rites to observe, no future abode to which the dead are destined.”
However, in There Is No God and He Is Always with You: A Search for God in Odd Places (New World Library, June 24, 2013), Zen monk and bestselling author Brad Warner offers straight talk about why the “Godless religion” of Zen Buddhism has a lot to say about God.
Warner has traveled all over the world speaking to people about Zen practice and deepening his own quest for the true nature of God. “Can the Zen approach provide an answer to this seemingly irresolvable debate? Is there a way to be an atheist and still believe in God? Is there a way to be a true believer and still doubt? And why frame things in terms of God anyway? Is it just an outmoded concept that only fanatics talk about?”
These are the kinds of questions that Warner explores in There Is No God and He Is Always with You. As a Zen monk who was born and raised in the United States but spent a considerable portion of his life in Asia, he has a unique take on the timeless but timely God-or-No-God debate. Warner was initially interested in Zen because he wanted to find God. But because he wasn’t raised in a religious household, he had no received notions about God. He felt he could look at the various ideas of God that people presented him objectively. But none of them really made a lot of sense.
“My favorite answer to the question of whether it’s possible to be a Buddhist and believe in God is, ‘There is no God and he is always with you,’” writes Warner. “I heard this quotation from my first Zen teacher, Tim McCarthy, who learned it from one of his teachers, Sasaki Roshi, a Japanese Zen monk who lives in California. Apparently he was addressing a student of his who believed deeply in God. He wanted her to start seeing God in a different way. So he said this very shocking thing to her, and it worked. I think it expresses the Zen Buddhist approach to the matter of God very succinctly. And not just because it sounds like nonsense.”
Brad Warner is a Zen priest, filmmaker, blogger, and Japanese monster-movie marketer. He’s the author of Hardcore Zen; Sit Down & Shut Up; Sex, Sin & Zen; and most recently, There Is No God and He Is Always with You. The Huffington Post recently named him one of the top Buddhists to follow on Twitter and his writing appears in media ranging from Tricycle and Shambhala Sun to Suicidegirls.com. A documentary about him is forthcoming from Pirooz Kalayeh, the director of Shoplifting from American Apparel. Visit him online at http://hardcorezen.info/.