Hardcore Zen_ Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality - Brad Warner [7]
A year later I saw Terry’s picture in the paper. He was on the run from the law, wanted in conjunction with a bizarre murder in West Virginia.
I GAVE UP on Holy Men after that.
Look at the leaders of all the great death and doom religious cults: al-Qaeda, Aum Shinri Kyo, Heaven’s Gate, the Branch Davidians. They’ve all got the little outfits and that calm, measured way of speaking. Very comforting, very stilling. No wonder so many people loved those guys enough to be willing to give up their lives to serve their deranged apocalyptic visions of a New and Better Tomorrow.
I fell for that scam in college, and plenty of people fall for it every day still. It’s a shame how easily people fall for it. But it’s been going on for thousands of years, so it must be related to some deep desire common throughout humankind. I don’t doubt that the holy rollers of bygone days were just as seedy and corrupt as the Cadillac-collecting, womanizing parasites of our own time. The ancestors of today’s spiritual scam-artists go back a long, long way.
So, when I first encountered real Buddhism, I was amazed to learn that unlike those guys, Buddha never asked his followers to accept what he said just because he said it. He never told anyone there was any kind of reward waiting for them after they died if they believed him or any punishment if they didn’t. He just told people what he had learned through his own experience and invited others to try it out for themselves because maybe they’d find it useful.
He taught a method by which the individual could experience the truth directly. The word Buddha used for this method was dhyana; in Japan we call it zazen, or even just Zen. Dhyana is sometimes translated as meditation, but it’s not what you think it is.
TERRY WAS A PRETTY OBVIOUS SCAM ARTIST,but my own search had begun such a long time before I met him, I wasn’t about to give up on the whole thing so easily. Starting from about third grade I’d been obsessed with the problem of Finding The Truth. As a kid, I came up with (and rejected) all sorts of bizarre theories: What if I was just a brain in a jar somewhere being stimulated electrically to believe there was a real world out there I could interact with? But that theory didn’t get to the heart of the matter. Maybe I was a space alien being raised by human parents—since my way of thinking seemed so far removed from that of my peers or my family. But with no pointy ears, no antennae, and no special powers on account of the yellow sun, I had to relinquish that theory for lack of evidence.
I was a spiritual-minded kid—and I was also impressively bucktoothed. Because of the first trait I tended to be kind of quiet, and because of the second I tended to be ridiculed by the Cool kids at school. I myself was Not Cool and neither were my friends. But they were all real friends. I grew up knowing who I could trust and knowing that most people would do all kinds of rotten, hurtful stuff just to be accepted by society. I didn’t want anything to do with that society, and I have never wanted to join any social institution—religions included.
It’s only with great reluctance that I call myself “a Buddhist” even today—although I’ve been involved with Buddhism for the better part of twenty years now. My definition of Buddhist has nothing at all to do with the social institutions all over the world that call themselves by that name. Zen Buddhism is direct pointing to the truth. It’s cutting through the crap and getting to the ground of things as they really are. It’s getting rid of all pretense and seeing what’s actually here right now.
Pretty much all the rest of what people call “Buddhism”—the temples, the rituals, the funny outfits, and the ceremonies—isn’t the important stuff. It’s just decoration. That