“You can master tantric yogic poly-orgasmic Wonder Sex but you’re still gonna die alone,” says Brad Warner.
With books titled, Sit Down and Shut Up and Sex, Sin, and Zen, you can already see that Warner is not your typical Buddhist thought leader. Born in Hamilton, Ohio, his interests are as varied as monster movies, punk rock music, soft porn blog sites, and, of course, Zen.
In his latest book, The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being, he breaks down the esoteric concept of nonduality— the realization that everything in the universe forms a single, integrated whole; explaining the ultimate unity of all things, and he encourages harmony among all creatures.
Warner got interested in Buddhism while attending college at Kent State University. He moved to Japan after becoming disillusioned with the punk rock music scene he was a part of as a bassist for the band 0DFx. While in Japan, he met and trained with Gudo Wafu Nishijima, who ordained him as a priest, and named him as his dharma heir in 2000.
In 2003, Warner published his first book, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies & the Truth About Reality, gaining a significant following, as well as his fair share of online trolls. Since then, he’s written nine more books, maintained a blog, a YouTube channel, traveled the world giving lectures on how Buddhism intertwines with sexuality, led workshops, appeared on radio shows and done all of the things you would never associate a Zen Master with. Not to mention… blogging about spirituality for soft porn site, Suicide Girls—further cementing him as an iconoclast in the world of holiness.
He was the star of a documentary about his life, called, “Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen,” produced by Pirooz Kalayeh, that attempted to humanize the way Westerners view Eastern philosophy, and tracked Brad’s daily life, lectures, Zen classes, and interviewed friends and fans.
He’s crossed cultural boundaries, tested the limits of morality, gained fans all over the world, and now SW Newsmagazine invites Brad to debunk myths about Buddhism, and shed light on what makes this outlier tick.
SW News: Were you raised in a religious household in Ohio?
BW: No. My family were some kind of Protestants. But that only meant we weren’t Catholic or Jewish, which were the only other choices in Ohio, where we come from — at least in those days. My parents weren’t atheists. They were just apathetic when it came to religion. They had no interest in it at all. This goes back generations, apparently. Because when my grandfather died, I remember us trying to figure out who to call to do the funeral because nobody knew what religion we actually were.
We moved to Kenya when I was six or seven years old and stayed there until I was 11. That’s where I discovered there were other religions out there. One of my dad’s best friends in Kenya was Indian. I remember seeing Hindu religious paintings in his house and being fascinated by their version of God. I never envisioned God as a blue guy with six arms or a guy with an elephant’s head. That made a deep impression.
When I became a teenager, I started looking for anything I could find out about Eastern religions, which was difficult in rural Ohio in the early 1980s. But I did find the Hare Krishnas. They were interesting, but their version of Hinduism wasn’t what I was looking for. They’re kind of like Christian fundamentalists in that they insist on taking the Hindu scriptures as being literally true. But I already didn’t believe there was an actual flood and Noah’s ark, so how could I believe Krishna actually screwed fifty cowherd girls at the same time? When I was at Kent State University I signed up for a class called Zen Buddhism. I’d been looking for a class about Hinduism, but they didn’t offer any. All I knew about Zen Buddhism is that it was a Japanese version of an Indian religion.
SW News: Have you ever had a personal relationship with God, the way a Christian might?
That’s a tricky question to ask a Buddhist! In my book There is No God and He is Always With You I argued that it’s wrong to call Buddhism atheistic. Buddhists don’t believe in God in the sense of the big man up in the clouds who sends some people to Heaven and others to Hell and all that. But Buddhism does have a lot of other concepts of something that some people might call “God.” Even so, Buddhists rarely try to describe this “something.” In fact, Dogen, the guy who started the form of Buddhism I practice, went so far as to actually refer to God as “something.” He has an essay called, “Inmo,” which is a Chinese word that basically means “something,” or “what.” It’s a word for things you can’t name.
Anyway, in that essay, Dogen says that the supreme truth is bigger than the Universe. The Universe, he says, is just a tiny part of the Supreme Truth. He says that we are tools that this Supreme Truth uses within this Universe. He also says that neither our body nor our mind is our true self.
My first Zen teacher used to say that the Buddha never spoke about God because he was overwhelmed by God. My ordaining Zen teacher said, “God is the Universe. The Universe is God.”
Can one have a personal relationship with God when one is an extension of God? Or when one is, as Dogen says, a tool that God possesses? Maybe.
SW News: In Hardcore Zen, you write, “Truth doesn’t screw around, and truth doesn’t care about your opinions.”
What is your definition of ‘truth’?
I try not to define it. It’s sort of like what that judge once said about pornography. He said he couldn’t define it, but he knew it when he saw it. The Truth of the Universe is that which cannot be denied.
SW News: You once said, “Zen is the ultimate punk rock.”
How do you compare the punk rock music scene, which commonly rebels against authority, to Buddhism?
Well, Buddhists and punk rockers both like to shave their heads and dress in black. The hardcore punk scene I first encountered in Akron, Ohio when I was 18 was dedicated to ethical behavior. This is not true of all the punk rock scenes out there, and even in Akron, that dedication to ethics eventually fell apart as more and more people started to get involved. The early core members of the Akron hardcore scene were hoping to build a better world. But we were dumb kids, so we had no idea how to go about spreading this message. And some people were kind of half-assed about ethics anyway.
When I came across Zen a couple of years later I thought, “This is what I was looking for in punk rock!” The punks questioned authority and society. The Buddhists did that too, but they also questioned themselves. They weren’t content to just criticize society. They wanted to see how they themselves had created the very thing they were rebelling against.
SW News: In Sex, Sin, and Zen, you write, “When you get high on something—including “spiritual bliss”—there is always going to be a low.”
Do Buddhists ever use drugs in their meditation practice?
No. But, then again, I can’t help it if some of the people who call themselves Buddhists use drugs in their practice. I just can’t call that “Buddhism.” The Buddha was very clear from the beginning that intoxicants have no place in Buddhist practice. It’s enshrined in the third Buddhist Precept. Anyone who wants to use drugs as Buddhist practice has to do a lot of mental gymnastics to justify it. I’ve never heard a convincing argument for drugs as Buddhist practice.
SW News: How does the Buddhist community deal with the influence porn has on society?
I don’t know. I think most Buddhists don’t deal with it at all. It’s just one of the many vices people indulge in, but nothing particularly special.
The early Buddhists were strictly celibate. Even masturbation was forbidden for Buddhist monks and nuns. That was during the time when the movement was very small and all Buddhists were monks or nuns. But, after Buddhism began to move out into the larger society, the rule of celibacy was only applied to monks and nuns. In fact, in Japan they dropped the celibacy rule even for monks and nuns.
So, porn is not a major concern among Buddhists, except in terms of it being against the rules for monks and nuns to look at sexy pictures or read sexy stories. I’ve never really heard anyone say much about Buddhism and porn. When I started writing for the Suicide Girls website, which some people call softcore porn, my teacher took a look at the site and said it was very beautiful, and that truth is always beautiful.
SW News: In the documentary, “Brad Warner’s Hardcore Zen,” you reference a precept about “not misusing sex.” Can you elaborate on that? What does that mean to you, personally?
The Buddhist precept that says “Don’t misuse sex” was invented when Buddhism moved out into the wider world, beyond just monks and nuns. They couldn’t ask everyone to be celibate! So, instead, the precept became “Don’t misuse sex.” It’s deliberately vague. You have to decide for yourself what it means. There are no specific restrictions on what you can or cannot do.
To me, I suppose, first of all it means to be faithful in a relationship. Some people look at the precept as being equivalent to the commandment not to commit adultery. But I think it goes beyond that. Sex is tricky. It involves a deep level of intimacy. Some people try to avoid that and just enjoy the pleasures of sex without any commitment. But as soon as you have two — or more — people involved, it gets very intimate. You have to be very careful. Otherwise you can cause a lot of suffering. So, I suppose the bottom line for me is that you have to be very careful when it comes to sex.
SW News: What is the most poignant thing you’ve learned in all the years you’ve been practicing Zazen?
It’s hard to say. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that my thoughts are just thoughts. Maybe that doesn’t sound like much. It’s difficult for me to express how monumental that understanding was for me. I realized I didn’t have to believe my own thoughts. I learned that I could even ignore them completely. Before I understood that, I was a slave to my own thoughts. Now I can disregard most of them.
After reading Brad’s answers, you can decide for yourself whether you believe nirvana truly exists. But, as Warner says, “Reality’s all you’ve got. But here’s the real secret, the real miracle: it’s enough.”
The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being is available on Amazon.
Main image: Author Brad Warner, Courtesy of Svetlana Dekic, photographer
Coming soon! Don’t miss our upcoming story about the inspiring Buddhist monks on their Walk For Peace, all across America—promoting healing, unity and compassion!
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