Book review: Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate (B. Warner)
In a blog post on Vividness titled “Buddhist ethics is a fraud”, in which the Tantra Buddhist and MIT artificial intelligence expert David Chapman sets forth his theory on how modern Buddhism became a “collection of self-aggrandizing strategies for gaining social status within the left side of the Western cultural divide”, Brad Warner’s book is mentioned with zest. And since “Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate” is a title that one can’t simply ignore, I decided to give it a try even though I expected to find only sandalwood-scented material for bald monks at best.
But Warner’s account of his life, mingled with Zen Buddhist remarks, torn down the unrealistic expectations I had about what’s it like to be a Buddhist. This was the first time I read Eastern philosophy grounded to real life issues. And if this book has taught me something, it’s that so-called Zen masters are mostly bogus (no news here), and that true masters aren’t endowed with spoon-bending mind powers. Far from it, they can have real-world jobs (or, say, play drums in a punk-rock band, write op-eds for “Suicide Girls”, and produce cheesy Japanese monsters movies), and be as susceptible to failures as you and me.
And boy, how susceptible they are. In Brad’s words: “you may be thinking that if a Zen master isn’t able to withstand a bit of pressure he’s not a very good Zen master. […] But Zen is a philosophy for the real world. And in the real world even Zen masters sometimes aren’t that strong.” I loved to read this and other confessions, like how sometimes his lower back hurts while sitting zazen, and all he thinks during the meditation retreat is stand up and run away flailing his arms in the air; or how he sometimes gorged on vegan dumplings; or how he couldn’t help falling in love for one of his students. His account of his fallibility despite practicing Zen Buddhism for 25 years is refreshingly human.
“When I say that Buddhism worked, I don’t mean that it was a magic solution to my problems. Nor do I mean that any miracles happened or that I was able to erase all doubt and fear from my mind through some kind of special power. What I mean is that Buddhism, especially Dogen’s Buddhism, provided the most truly realistic and practical way of dealing with life. It isn’t spirituality, but it isn’t materialism either.”
Particularly, Brad won my devoted sympathy with his lashing out toward the McEnlightenment movement, which promises a shorter route to cosmic understanding through psychedelic drugs. I’ve been a firm believer that spiritual growth is the process rather than the end, and taking the shortcut will negate at least half the benefits. It’s just like cardio. Running isn’t about increasing your aerobic capacity only – the prolonged activity frees up headspace, trains your focus, strengthens several muscles in your body, and cheers you up. If there was such a thing as “Instant VO2max Increase Through Quantum Therapy or Magic Mushrooms”, it would be worse than cheating. It would be plain stupid.
“Try riding a bus drive by someone opening their doors of perception with LSD. […] I just wonder why “opening the doors of perception” seems to include inability to operate a motor vehicle. Shouldn’t a true opening of the doors of perception make you a more competent driver? After all, you’re supposedly perceiving everything more clearly, right? […] I won’t deny that drugs can sometimes seem to open up areas of the consciousness we don’t normally open and that they can do so very quickly. But they are a very bad way to do this. Whenever you use a drug to achieve some desired effect it’s like tuning a piano with a sledgehammer. If your aim is good maybe – maybe – you’ll get the one string you’re aiming at in tune”.
So becoming enlightened to endure hardships, whatever “enlightenment” may be, is not the goal one should have in mind when practicing zazen. Like Brad says, “zazen is not based on achieving some goal created by thought. It aims to free us from everything that thought has constructed. This is a far more vital concern.” And more:
“The best way of life is to live the way you want to. But living the life you really want to live is not the same as living the life you think you want to live. If you don’t know the difference, you very well might be better off living the life everybody else thinks you should. […] Before you can live the life you truly want to live, you need to find out what you truly want. That takes patience. You need to look straight into your own mind and weed out your real desires from the false ones you’ve created out of thought. I only know of one way to do that, and you should have figured out by now what that is. Yep. You got it. Lots of zazen.”
Being a Buddhist, it seems, isn’t the same as being prepared to every hindrance life throws at you. Reading about Brad’s ups and downs, you learn that Zen masters are everything but prepared, just like all laymen including you and I. The difference, according to Brad, is that zazen makes you recover faster when something throws you off the beaten path. It’s easier to decouple your mind from the funneled vision that blocks your reasoning. Decoupling is akin to thinking about your thinking. It’s about getting a god’s-eye view of the situation. Curiously, this is the base of ACT: acceptance-commitment therapy. Put it bluntly, ACT is about dealing with your feelings face-to-face, not sweeping them under the rug. All sensations and thoughts, however good or bad they might be, are just part of you. Let them come, acknowledge them, and let them go. Well, if this is not a direct influence of Buddhism, then I don’t know what it is.
Brad’s style of writing, plus a plethora of good life advice and the sheer moral maturity he demonstrates throughout this short biography made me want to read all his other books. Maybe I’ll even create a new tag on Goodreads called “new-agers-will-hate-it”.