Zen is Boring

Bodhisattva · 01-23-2005, 06:53 AM

Let's face it. Zen is boring. You couldn't find a duller, more tedious practice than Zazen. The philosophy is dry and unexciting. It's amazing to me anyone reads this page at all. Don't you people know you could be playing Tetris, right now? That there are a million free porno sites out there? Get a life, why don't you?!

Joshu Sasaki, a Zen teacher from the Rinzai Sect, once said that Buddhist teachers always try to make students long for the Buddha World, but that if the students knew how really dry and tasteless the Buddha World actually was, they'd never want to go. He's right. Look at Zen teachers. Not a one of them has any sense of fashion. They sit around staring at blank walls. Ask them about levitation, they won't tell you. Ask them about life after death, they change the subject. Ask them about miracles and they start spouting nonsense about carrying buckets of water and chopping up fire wood. They go to bed early and wake up early. Zen is a philosophy for nerds.

Boredom is important. Most of your life is dull, tasteless and boring. If you practice Zazen, you learn a lot about boredom. I remember the first time I sat Zazen, I was real excited. I figured I'd be seeing visions of four armed Krishnas descending from the Heavens, or I'd be fading into The Void just like the old Beatles song, or reach Nirvana (whatever that was) or some great wonderful thing. But the clock just ticked away, my legs started aching, and stupid thoughts kept drifting by. Maybe I wasn't doing it right, I thought. But no, year after year it was the same. Boring, boring, boring. After almost 20 years it's still boring as Hell.

People hate their ordinary lives. We want something better. This, our day to day life of drudgery and work, is boring, dull and ordinary, we think. But someday, someday... There's an episode of The Monkees* where Mike Nesmith says that when he was in high school he used to walk out on the school's empty stage with a guitar in his hands thinking "Someday, someday." Then he said that now (now being 1967, at the height of the Monkees fame) he walks out on stage in front of thousands of fans and thinks "Someday, someday." That's the way life is. It's never going to be perfect. Whatever "someday" you imagine, it will never come. ever. No matter what it is. No matter how well you build your fantasy or how carefully you follow all the steps necessary to achieve it. Even if it comes true exactly the way you planned, you'll end up just like Mike Nesmith. Someday, someday... I guarantee you.

Your life will change. That's for sure. But it won't get any better and it won't get any worse. How can you compare now to the past? What do you know about the past? You don't have a clue! You have no idea at all what yesterday was really like, let alone last week or ten years ago. The future? Forget about it...

People long for big thrills. Peak experiences. Some people come to Zen expecting that Enlightenment will be the Ultimate Peak Experience. The Mother of All Peak Experiences. But real enlightenment is the most ordinary of the ordinary. Once I had an amazing vision. I saw myself transported through time and space. Millions, no, billions, trillions, Godzillions of years passed. Not figuratively, but literally. Whizzed by. I found myself at the very rim of time and space, a vast giant being composed of the living minds and bodies of every thing that ever was. It was an incredibly moving experience. Exhilarating. I was high for weeks. Finally I told Nishijima Sensei about it . He said it was nonsense. Just my imagination. I can't tell you how that made me feel. Imagination? This was as real an experience as any I've ever had. I just about cried. Later on that day I was eating a tangerine. I noticed how incredibly lovely a thing it was. So delicate. So amazingly orange. So very tasty. So I told Nishijima about that. That experience, he said, was enlightenment.

You need a teacher like that. The world needs lots more teachers like that. Countless teachers would have interpreted my experience as a merging of my Atman with God, as a portent of great and wonderful things, would have praised my spiritual growth and given me pointers on how to go even further. And I would have been suckered right in to that, let me tell you! Woulda fallen for it hook line and sinker, boy howdy. If a teacher doesn't shatter your illusions he's doing you no favors at all.

Boredom is what you need. Merging with the Mind of God at the Edge of the Universe, that's excitement. That's what we're all into this Zen thing for, right? Eating tangerines? Come on, dude! What could be more boring than eating a tangerine?

Some years ago some psychologists did a study in which they sat some Buddhists monks and some regular folks in a room and wired them up to EEG machines to record their brain activity. They told everyone to relax, then introduced a repetitive stimulus, a loudly ticking clock, into the room. The normal folks' EEG showed that their brains stopped reacting the stimulus after a few seconds. But the Buddhists just kept on mentally registering the tick every time it happened. Psychologists and journalists never quite know how to interpret that finding, though it's often cited. It's a simple matter. Buddhists pay attention to their lives. Ordinary folks figure they have better things to think about.

If you really take a look at your ordinary boring life, you'll discover something truly wonderful. Our regular old pointless lives are incredibly joyful -- amazingly, astoundingly, relentlessly, mercilessly joyful. You don't need to do a damned thing to experience such joy either. People think they need big experiences, interesting experiences. And it's true that gigantic, traumatic experiences sometimes bring people, for a fleeting moment, into a kind of enlightened state. That's why such experiences are so desired. But it wears off fast and you're right back out there looking for the next thrill. You don't need to take drugs, blow up buildings, win the Indy 500 or walk on the moon. You don't need to go hang-gliding over the Himalayas, you don't need to screw your luscious and oh-so-willing secretary or party all night with the beautiful people. You don't need visions of merging with the totality of the Universe. Just be what you are, where you are. Clean the toilet. Walk the dog. Do your work. That's the most magical thing there is. If you really want to merge with God, that's the way to do it. This moment. You sitting there with your hand in your underwear and potato chip crumbs on your chin, scrolling down your computer screen thinking "This guy's out of his mind." This very moment is Enlightenment. This moment has never come before and once it's gone, it's gone forever. You are this moment. This moment is you. This very moment is you merging with the total Universe, with God Himself.

The life you're living right now has joys even God will never know.

-Brad Warner

**Canuck Wisdom** · 01-23-2005, 07:13 AM

Nothing in that article surprised me, but it felt good to read just now for me, thanks. Keep up whatever it is you do Bodhi.

atantricchic · 01-23-2005, 08:28 AM

Heavy Bookmark.

Geeno · 01-23-2005, 09:33 AM

satisfying

Seeds&Stems · 01-23-2005, 01:28 PM

But I can still do drugs and win the indy 500 right? I loves me some drugs and indy 500.

Governor · 01-23-2005, 01:51 PM

'Enlightenment is in the moment'?

Sure.

Why so many words?

Ego Tripping · 01-23-2005, 01:56 PM

I love, love, love reading things that say exactly what I've been thinking recently. This happens a lot to me. This post told me nothing new at all, an in fact, it almost seems as if this guy plagarized my own words, thoughts and ideas about Life. But this is comforting to me because it seems to mean that I'm on the correct Path, assuming there is an incorrect path. It's just quite uncanny that someone can say something to much like your own thoughts.

I often would say to myself that if Time was an illusion and only the Moment resides, then no parts of your life are more or less 'holy' or significant than others. That means even those nights where you had the most beautiful and magnificant dreams and experiences are just as 'holy' as that shit you took after that big sushi dinner. If one moment is important, then they all are just as equally important.

And this post you just read of mine? You just touched God yet again.

snapshot · 01-23-2005, 05:16 PM

I thought that post was shit.

Thanks though.

Bodhisattva · 01-24-2005, 07:04 PM

I talked with Gene Simmons from KISS again this Monday. I met him once before two years ago when he came to Tokyo. We got together because he's interested in producing a KISS animated series and wanted to talk to Tsuburaya Productions (the company I work for) about the idea.

The first time I met him Gene Simmons impressed me as a very realistic person. A lot of artists are like that. They have the ability to see things more clearly than most people you meet. Of course, Gene has a lot of illusions as well. But even here he seems surprisingly realistic. He has a vague awareness that his illusions are no more than that-his own illusions. And that's rare too. He's no Zen master by any means, but there's a bit more than just breathing fire, vomiting blood and offending feminists.

Any time you practice any kind of art in a very concentrated way, you learn about reality. Sports can work the same way. The problem with artists and sports people is that they usually can't extend the balance they find in their art into the rest of their lives. This is why so many rock stars turn to drugs to try and extend the high they get from being on stage. Gene Simmons doesn't do drugs, but he uses sex and "business" in much the same way other rock stars use chemicals. The average rock star or sports sensation doesn't realize that that "high" is just the simple thrill of being fully present, and that it's not really all that hard to learn to do this all the time.

Anyhow, Gene (see, we're on a first name basis, me and Gene) offered us tickets to see KISS's show at the Budokan and I jumped at the chance. It was my fourth time to see KISS. The first was on their first post make-up tour with Vinnie Vincent on guitar, the other three times have been on their seemingly endless "final tour" which has hit Japan about once every two years.

A KISS show is an amazing thing. There's lights and fire and explosions and noise. Gene Simmons flies up onto the lighting rig and sings God of Thunder a hundred feet above the crowd. Paul Stanley sails out over the audience and does Love Gun on a platform right in the middle of the floor seats. Peter Criss's drums levitate. If Ace Frehley wouldn't have flaked out this time we would've seen his rocket launcher guitar too I'm sure (Tommy Thayer did a terrific job in his place, though, but no rocket launcher). All those lights and noise are exciting, but not for the reason most people think. What all that banging and flashing does is it forces you to stay with the moment. And that's what people really want most out of life, to be right where they are, right here and right now. It's the most exciting thing there is. This is precisely why the things we consider "exciting" in life are so enjoyable, because we're really there and not drifting off somewhere else in our brains.

I was talking to Nishijima Sensei once about this kind of thing. It wasn't KISS we were discussing. I think we were talking about video games with all their bright lights and noise. "Those kinds of things are very dangerous," he said. Most of the time if you hear a "religious" person tell you that video games or rock concerts are dangerous it's because they're afraid those things will turn us all into devil worshipers or something. But Nishijima's not that kind of guy so I knew that wasn't what he meant. The problem is not really noise and bright lights in and of themselves. Not really. They're just the symptoms.

The danger is that stuff like that encourages the belief that we can only be happy when we're having some kind of big peak experience. We tend to structure our life around these big experiences and miss out on everything that comes between. The big concert is what matters, the walk to the concert hall just sort of disappears into a haze of thought. We think of our lives as a series of big experiences with a lot of unimportant stuff in between. It's like there's a graph we've made with the big moments as the peaks and all the dull ones down at the bottom. That stuff doesn't really matter -- the peaks are what's really important. Zen practitioners are famous for running after the wonderful peak experience of Enlightenment and looking at the rest of their lives as a lot of drudgery just to get there.

That's just sad. It's a really miserable thing to miss out on the vast majority of your life and focus on a few little incidents here and there. What's more, that kind of thinking can lead you to do all kinds of dangerous and hurtful things to yourself and others just to achieve the thrill of being in the moment.

People will go to almost any length just to experience the sensation of being in the here and now. Gamblers will risk their life's savings for the thrill of experiencing that extremely present moment when they don't know if the dice are going to come up with their number or not. Daredevils risk their very lives just for the thrill of being in the here and now, that little moment of not knowing if the parachute might not open on time. The reason some people are so fixated with sex is because the one time when they're really right there in life is when they're boinking (or being boinked).

The fact that we feel like we need such incredibly huge stimulation so often just to feel alive is a symptom of how dull and un-alive we are as a culture. We think we must always be entertained, that we have to have the TV or the internet there at all times to stimulate us. We've become far too accustomed to escaping reality whenever and wherever possible. The noise all around us is a reflection of the constant noise inside our ever busy brains. Anything to keep from having to experience what's really here. The danger is that when the noise outside dies down too far we can't just live with it, we've got to go out and create some more excitement, like a war for example.

The practice of zazen is a practice that allows you to learn how to make every single moment of your life as thrilling as a KISS concert or a parachute jump or a night of having a greased hot Yahoo bottle shoved up your rectum - whatever turns you on. You gradually learn to appreciate every little thing without making distinctions between the stuff that's dreary and unimportant and the stuff that's real exciting. What happens then is amazing. The "middle way" often talked about by Buddhists tends to sound dull. But it's not at all. Walking the middle way you learn how to return to the way you were when you were a child. "Wow! Look there's a bug!" "Gosh! Look at this big booger!" The sky is sooooo blue, the grass is soooo green, those stains on the tub are soooo -- what the hell color is that anyway?

Zen isn't about learning how to be dispassionate, about aspiring to some grand ideal of complete detachment from the world like some dipshits claim (hello, Mr. Wilber). It's not about shutting yourself off from life, turning into some silly little Zen robot who doesn't care about anything at all. Zen is about having fun all the time. You become happier and better able to enjoy everything. Your life becomes a hell of a lot more fun when scraping wax out of your ears is just as thrilling as having breakfast in one of Tokyo's swankiest hotels with a rich rock and roll star you've idolized since you were 12. You learn that you don't need to do anything special at all to have a good time. All your time is a good time.

That's the real benefit of Zen practice.

-Brad Warner