Hardcore Zen_ Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality - Brad Warner [75]
When I got back home I sent Nishijima another e-mail telling him about the tangerine and thanking him for setting me straight. The next day I got his reply: “Eating a tangerine is real enlightenment.” It was something he really didn’t need to say. Still, I was glad he did.
I FEEL SORRY FOR KEN WILBER and other folk like him. I really do. Maybe I shouldn’t—since Ken’s far richer and way more famous than I’ll ever be. But either he never had a teacher who told him the truth, or if he did he missed it and chose to dwell in his own fantasies instead. At the same time, I understand his situation. I could easily have gone down that same road: Had Nishijima confirmed my experience of Oneness With God as “real enlightenment,” I would’ve been sucked right in. I could’ve stayed that way for years, I’m sure, possibly forever. Or I could have followed my initial feeling upon reading Nishijima’s e-mail and rejected what he said. I could have decided Nishijima was obviously less enlightened than I believed him to be, and less enlightened than I clearly now was. It would’ve been no trouble at all to find another teacher who’d have confirmed my experience. Or I could’ve dispensed with teachers altogether and just decided to start building up my own cult of personal hero-worshipers, all striving to have the same supercool experience I had had.
But I couldn’t really do any of those things because I knew better and I had to be honest with myself about it. It’s a frightening thing to be truly honest with yourself. It means you have no one left to turn to anymore, no one to blame, and to one to look to for salvation. You have to give up any possibility that there will ever be any refuge for you. You have to accept the reality that you are truly and finally on your own. The best thing you can hope for in life is to meet a teacher who will smash all of your dreams, dash all of your hopes, tear your teddy-bear beliefs out of your arms and fling them over a cliff.
WHY IS IT that we prefer fantasies to what our life really is? If some great “enlightened being” tells us what his life is like, why shouldn’t we aspire to that instead? What’s the difference between Wilber telling us that he floats forever free in the sea of “no up and no down,” and me telling you about my experience by Sengawa River or my assertion that there really is no “self”?
If you really want to know the answers to these questions, you have to examine your own life very closely and with complete honesty. And you have to find out for yourself.
People are very much alike. Our brains are all similar in a very deep way. What appeals to one person will pretty much appeal at some level to just about anyone else. Certain fantasies are universal and very compelling—like the Coca-Cola® of our minds, flavors that tap something so basic it’s hard to find anyone who doesn’t like them at least a little.
These basic human fantasies have been with us since our species first arose. Stories that tap into these fantasies have tremendous power to appeal to huge numbers of people. But the truth is more powerful. Always.
So the question becomes this: How do we know what is true and what is fantasy?
And the answer: Take a look at where you are, at who you are, right here and right now. That’s it. That’s the truth.
HARDCORE ZEN
You ain’t no punk, you punk.
You wanna talk about the real junk?
“GARBAGEMAN” BY THE CRAMPS FROM THE ALBUM BAD MUSIC FOR BAD PEOPLE
ZEN IS A PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION. That means it isn’t just a philosophy you read about and think about. It’s a philosophy you do. You can’t possibly truly understand Zen Buddhism without practicing zazen.
It’s not enough to read about