Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Examples: Monday, today, last week, Mar 26, 3/26/04
Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.

I Am So Over This Buddhism S*it!

DaltheJigsawDaltheJigsaw Mountain View Veteran
edited August 2011 in Buddhism Today
Brad is at Tassajara Zen Monastery where there's no Internet access. Here is one last oldie but goodie written for SuicideGirls to tide you over till he gets back.

So I’m sitting cross-legged in the meditation hall at the San Francisco Zen Center a couple days ago. Incense wafts through the air, bells are rung, ancient chants are intoned, and then profound silence descends. The assembled monks embark on their meditative journeys to the centers of their minds. All at once a thought bubbles up to the surface of my consciousness, like an arrow piercing the cold emptiness of the pre-dawn air.

I am soooo over this shit.

God how I fucking hate it. After 25 years of doing this stupid crap, stick a fork in me I am done. When I was a youngster the mere idea of sitting in a temple with a group of dedicated monks all pursuing the sacred Dharma gave me an iron-hard boner you could have sliced pound cake with. How I longed for that serenity, that peace. How I fantasized of ascending to the heights of Supreme, Unsurpassed, Perfect Enlightenment. How I dreamed of the day I might be in the very spot I’m in right now, living the life of a wandering monk, flitting here and there from temple to temple absorbing the words of the wise and dispensing my own wisdom to those new to the Way, spending my days deepening my practice.

But god-dammit I’d rather be at Amoeba Records right now. It's just up Haight Street. I could be there in 20 minutes. I think that new Om record must be out by now, the one they recorded live in Jerusalem. Maybe even that new Robyn Hitchcock boxed set. But noooooo. I not only signed up for this shit, I signed up to do a five-day long zazen intensive at the Berkeley Zen Center right afterwards, followed immediately by two weeks cloistered at Tassajara monastery deep in the mountains of Carmel Valley - where there are no record stores at all. Fuck. What in God's name was I thinking?

One of the greatest things about Zen practice is that it's incredibly portable. You don't need anything special. You don't need a temple or monastery. You don't need to memorize any chants or read any books. You don't need a congregation. Zen goes anywhere you go. You can do your sitting on a rolled up towel in your dorm room, which is how I started.

But human beings like to do things together. We're social creatures. And so a monastic tradition also developed within Buddhism. A lotta folks think that if you're not hip to the monastery thang you ain't no Buddhist. They're wrong. Shakyamuni himself did not come to his understanding as a member of any religious order, and there is a laundry list as long as your arm of other great teachers who either shunned monastic life, or came to monastic life after establishing the Way on their own, or who did a bit of the monastic stuff when it was necessary but largely stayed away from it. The non-monastic tradition in Buddhism is just as vital as the monastic one.

But the pull towards making Buddhism a social thing, and only a social thing, is strong. In America, we seem dead set on turning Buddhism into a string of socially agreed upon cliches and buzzwords.

http://hardcorezen.blogspot.com/2011/08/i-am-so-over-this-buddhism-shit.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&m=1

Comments

  • lol thanks for the article. oh brad.
  • DaltheJigsawDaltheJigsaw Mountain View Veteran
    lol thanks for the article. oh brad.
    :) Welcome!
  • This is one person's view. If there are those who "turn Buddhism into a string of socially agreed upon cliches and buzzwords", I don't know any. This guy's hanging out with the wrong crowd. He speaks for himself only, when he says, "the pull towards making Buddhism a social thing, and only a social thing, is strong", not many of the rest of us. :grumble:
  • DaltheJigsawDaltheJigsaw Mountain View Veteran
    This is one person's view. If there are those who "turn Buddhism into a string of socially agreed upon cliches and buzzwords", I don't know any. This guy's hanging out with the wrong crowd. He speaks for himself only, when he says, "the pull towards making Buddhism a social thing, and only a social thing, is strong", not many of the rest of us. :grumble:
    I do agree!
    One's persons opinion.
    But some of the things, did ring true.
    I am sure they did for many individuals who are not into Religious "things."
  • genkakugenkaku Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
    Brad is very good at putting things in a way that allow others to get cranky as a wet cat or, alternatively, lol-ing as if they were on hip to what he was saying.

    I like his reminders of what is serious.
  • This is one person's view. If there are those who "turn Buddhism into a string of socially agreed upon cliches and buzzwords", I don't know any. This guy's hanging out with the wrong crowd. He speaks for himself only, when he says, "the pull towards making Buddhism a social thing, and only a social thing, is strong", not many of the rest of us. :grumble:
    I agree...
  • zenffzenff Veteran
    edited August 2011
    I don’t know.

    When you’re over something you don’t have to kick and shout at it. You just do something else.

    And it’s kind of part of the Zen-tradition to pick on the Zen-tradition, isn’t it?
  • Although Buddhism is not a social thing for me (I am surrounded by Christians) I too enjoyed the article. Thanks :)
  • BhanteLuckyBhanteLucky Alternative lifestyle person in the South Island of New Zealand New Zealand Veteran
    Nice edgy article!
    Isn't SuicideGirls a porn site?
  • B5CB5C Veteran
    Nice edgy article!
    Isn't SuicideGirls a porn site?

    No it's a pin-up site.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin-up_girl
  • Amazing grace!
  • Nice edgy article!
    Isn't SuicideGirls a porn site?

    No it's a pin-up site.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin-up_girl
    I suppose it depends on how strictly or loosely one wants to use the word "porn".

  • Kinda strange to hear this. In the tradition within which I practice (Tibetan) the emphasis is on getting the hell away from your fellow monks or dharma center friends and practice as a hermit. Though there are group retreats the great yogis have always gone solo. In fact there's a real division between monks who stay put and do rituals and those who do retreats. Retreatants generally practice for either 3 years, three months, three days, or 7 years. If anyone ever saw the movie "The Unmistaken Child, about the search for the tulku (rebirth) of Konchog Rinpoche, he did two 7 year retreats. He moved to a more remote location after the first 7 years because too many locals were curious about what he was doing.

    Anyway, do it together or do it alone---the main thing is to practice; that requires the kind of meditational stability (up to 4 hours in Shamatha with unwavering vividness of the meditation object) that is as difficult to obtain as it is for someone to achive concert level proficiency on the violin.
  • seeker242seeker242 Zen Florida, USA Veteran


    I am soooo over this shit.

    God how I fucking hate it.

    But god-dammit I’d rather be at Amoeba Records right now. It's just up Haight Street. I could be there in 20 minutes.

    Fuck. What in God's name was I thinking?

    The Perfect Way knows no difficulties
    Except that it refuses to make preferences;
    Only when freed from hate and love,
    It reveals itself fully and without disguise

    To set up what you like against what you dislike--
    This is the disease of the mind:
    When the deep meaning [of the Way] is not understood
    Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose.

    Apparently Brad still has some learning to do! :)



  • Ahhh, I love Brad. I think I have a crush on him. But really I don't expect anyone to agree with him as much as I love what he says. He most likely knows taht others have different experiences and that part of sharing this is admitting that he is not all wonderfully zen all the time, and that honesty is what I really like.
  • I think one of the things I dig most about Brad is his blunt honesty.
Sign In or Register to comment.