{"id":3233,"date":"2016-02-29T10:23:18","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T16:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/?p=3233"},"modified":"2016-03-01T15:02:53","modified_gmt":"2016-03-01T21:02:53","slug":"review-of-brad-warners-latest-dont-be-a-jerk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wildfoxzen\/2016\/02\/review-of-brad-warners-latest-dont-be-a-jerk.html","title":{"rendered":"Review of Brad Warner’s Latest, “Don’t Be A Jerk”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Brad Warner has done a lot of good for Zen in the West. Most practitioners I talk with who are under 40-years-old found their way to Zen through Warner\u2019s books, especially\u00a0Hardcore Zen<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Warner has\u00a0cultivated an image of being an irreverent iconoclastic, while ironically embracing orthodox Soto Zen, for example, by exhibiting reverence for D\u014dgen\u2019s teaching, advocating no-goal zazen, and finding kensho and koan introspection\u00a0either insignificant or not a part of Soto practice.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, since his first and best-selling Hardcore Zen <\/em>(2003), Warner has turned a good share of his attention to writing about sex, porn, god, rebirth, vegetarianism and other attention-getting topics.<\/p>\n

In his new book, Don\u2019t Be A Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from D\u014dgen, Japan\u2019s Greatest Zen Master (A Radical but Reverent Paraphrasing of D\u014dgen\u2019s Treasury of the True Dharma<\/a> Eye)<\/em>, Warner returns to the root of his Zen, his teacher Nishijima Roshi\u2019s perspective on D\u014dgen\u2019s teaching.<\/p>\n

It is a welcome development.<\/p>\n

In twenty-six chapters and 300 pages, Warner offers his paraphrases of twenty fascicles of D\u014dgen\u2019s\u00a0Shobogenzo,\u00a0<\/em>along with analysis of several translations, parsing the original words of D\u014dgen, and his own commentary. It is an impressive effort, both to present D\u014dgen in a contemporary, punkish voice and because of the manner in which Warner works \u2013 with diligence, integrity, and caution.<\/p>\n

And, like other such efforts (i.e., in this regard, a student recently mentioned the rewrites of Shakespeare in modern English), it risks simplifying and missing the richness of the \u201coriginal\u201d (translated) text.<\/p>\n

Yet one of the most frequently asked questions to those of us who teach with D\u014dgen\u2019s works is \u201cWhy is D\u014dgen so fricking difficult?\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner\u2019s Don\u2019t Be A Jerk<\/em> is an effort to address that question by providing an alternate, modern (irreverent) reading, and careful analysis that offers the reader the opportunity to see for ourselves.<\/p>\n

An example? In\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s fascicle, \u201cNot Doing Evil,\u201d he wrotes, of course, about not doing evil, a tricky concept for those imbued with in the Islamic-Judeo-Christian heritage. So Warner substitutes \u201cjerk\u201d for \u201cevil\u201d and we get,\u00a0\u201cEven if the whole universe is nothing but a bunch of jerks doing all kinds of jerk-type things, there is still liberation in simply not being a jerk.\u201d<\/p>\n

It gets the point across.<\/p>\n

But if something is so difficult to understand, why study D\u014dgen at all?<\/p>\n

In Warner\u2019s last chapter, \u201cD\u014dgen\u2019s Zen\u00a0in the Twenty-first Century,\u201d he writes, \u201cTo me Zen is a communal practice of individual deep inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n

That says it well. For those of us who are engaged in Zen practice as inquiry, D\u014dgen provides deliciously subtle material to work on and off the cushion. To me it seems especially important in our times to openheartedly entangle ourselves with the ancient teaching, so that we\u2019re not just practicing our contemporary pathology and calling that \u201cZen.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to complement what Warner says about Zen and inquiry by adding that it is also the individual practice of individual insight. And the communal practice of communal insight. And the individual practice of communal insight.<\/p>\n

\u201cCommunal insight\u201d is especially important for the way we work together in koan introspection. In the\u00a0Vine of Obstacles: Online Support for Zen Training<\/a>, for instance, we take up insight together, meeting teacher-and-student, face-to-face, even if we\u2019re thousands of miles apart.\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s teaching works as well for this as any of the koans in the traditional Harada-Yasutani curriculum.<\/p>\n

For example, in \u201cBuddha Nature\u201d D\u014dgen said,\u00a0\u201cAm I no-buddha-nature when buddha-nature begins aspiring for enlightenment? We immediately ask this, we immediately say it. We immediately make the columns ask it, we immediately ask the columns. We immediately make the buddha nature ask it.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Instead of just reading this passage and reflecting on it with the frontal lobe, we take it up as a koan, and apply ourselves to it through traditional koan-introspection processes. In this case, the student is invited to \u201cMake the columns ask, ask the columns\u201d \u2013 to show it, not talk about. This way of working embodies the teaching in a way that I am convinced D\u014dgen would wholeheartedly affirm. That\u2019s my opinion.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And speaking of opinions, a word of caution:<\/p>\n

When reading Warner (or D\u014dgen or anybody), it is important to sort the shit from the Shinola<\/a>. In other words, Warner has a platform here to express his views on the meaning of Zen, koan, zazen, rebirth, and\u00a0D\u014dgen\u2019s teaching. He often does that in entertaining ways. However, as Warner himself says, Zen is about inquiry, not belief, so because Warner (or\u00a0D\u014dgen or anybody) thinks this or that, the important work is to see it for ourselves in relationship and to \u201c\u2026put such a unitive awareness into practice in the midst of the revaluated world\u201d (D\u014dgen, \u201cNegotiating the Way\u201d).<\/p>\n

Congratulations and thank you, Brad Warner, for a fine Dogen dharma offering.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Brad Warner has done a lot of good for Zen in the West. Most practitioners I talk with who are under 40-years-old found their way to Zen through Warner\u2019s books, especially\u00a0Hardcore Zen. Warner has\u00a0cultivated an image of being an irreverent iconoclastic, while ironically embracing orthodox Soto Zen, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nReview of Brad Warner's Latest, "Don't Be A Jerk"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"                Brad Warner has done a lot of good for Zen in the West. 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