Brad Warner Quotes

36 Sourced Quotes

Zazen isn't about blissing out or going into an alpha brain-wave trance. It's about facing who and what you really are, in every single goddamn moment. And you aren't bliss, I'll tell you that right now. You're a mess. We all are.

Brad Warner
Compassion is the ability to see what needs doing right now and the willingness to do it right now.

Brad Warner
Buddhism is all about finding your own way, not imitating the ways of others or even the ways of Buddha himself.

Brad Warner
No matter what we predict for our futures, we're always wrong anyway. The only sensible thing to do is to live this life as it is right now. Leave what happens after you die till after you die.

Brad Warner
Leaving home' to me means adopting the attitude that the pursuit of the truth is more vital than the pursuit of what society — your home — tells you is important.

Brad Warner
Your role is to do and say the things that need to be done and said from your unique perspective.

Brad Warner
Buddhists have a long-standing tradition of believing that at some level we always know what the best course of action is in any given situation. We just have to be quiet enough to let that course of action present itself to us. And we need the confidence to act when life shows us what we need to do.

Brad Warner
The truth comes when you can see that your self-image is just a convenient reference point and nothing more, and that you as you had imagined yourself do not exist.

Brad Warner
Buddhism doesn't promise to fulfill our desires. Instead it says, 'You feel unfulfilled? That's okay. That's normal. Everybody feels unfulfilled. You will always feel unfulfilled. There is no problem with feeling unfulfilled. In fact, if you learn to see it the right way, that very lack of fulfillment is the greatest thing you can ever experience.' This is the realistic outlook.

Brad Warner
The trick to not thinking is not adding energy to the equation in an effort to forcibly stop thinking from happening. It's more a matter of subtracting energy from the equation in order not to barf the thoughts up and start chewing them over again.

Brad Warner
True nonattachment is understanding that you are fundamentally attached to everything and, through that understanding, dropping your attachment to the view that you are detached from that which you encounter. At the same time, real nonattachment means not clinging to things or people. It means dropping the idea that if you don't have this or if you can't get that, your life will be a catastrophe.

Brad Warner
It may look like we're doing nothing when we sit zazen. But actually we are exposing ourselves to ourselves.

Brad Warner
The only real time as far as Buddhism is concerned is right now. Right now there is no old age or death because old age and death are descriptions of things as they are now when we compare them to things as they used to be.

Brad Warner
Zen practice is about not getting high on anything and in so doing getting high on absolutely everything. We then find that everything we encounter - bliss or nonbliss - possesses a tremendous depth and beauty that we usually miss.

Brad Warner
The problem is the way we let our desires stand in the way of our enjoyment of what we already have.

Brad Warner
Do what you do as well as you possibly can. That's Buddhist morality.

Brad Warner
Real morality is based on a single criterion: right action, appropriate action, in the present moment and present situation.

Brad Warner
Those who hope for purity and righteousness always try and destroy that which disturbs them. They think the disturbance comes from outside themselves. This is a serious problem. Wars, suicide bombings, and all sorts of other nasty things start from the premise that we can destroy 'evil' outside ourselves without dealing with the evil within.

Brad Warner
You can't function in society if you don't involve yourself in the fictions society accepts about time. But you do so with the understanding that you're playing a game.

Brad Warner
Faith keeps you going, but doubt keeps you from going off the deep end.

Brad Warner
You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away.

Brad Warner
Reality's all you've got. But here's the real secret, the real miracle: it's enough.

Brad Warner
You won't understand life and death until you're ready to set aside any hope of understanding life and death and just live your life until you die.

Brad Warner
People imagine enlightenment will make them incredibly powerful. And it does. It makes you the most powerful being in all the universe- but usually no one else notices.

Brad Warner
Consider this: 1. Would you ride in a car whose driver was on the consciousness-expanding "entheogenic" drug LSD? And here's a bonus question: 2. Why does an "expanded consciousness" include the inability to operate a motor vehicle?

Brad Warner
We always imagine that there's got to be somewhere else better than where we are right now; this is the Great Somewhere Else we all carry around in our heads. We believe Somewhere Else is out there for us if only we could find it. But there's no Somewhere Else. Everything is right here...Make this your paradise or make this your hell. The choice is entirely yours. Really.

Brad Warner
True mindfulness is the awareness that everything you encounter
is a vigorous expression of the same living universe as you.

Brad Warner
Disappointment is just the action of your brain readjusting itself to reality after discovering things are not the way you thought they were.

Brad Warner
How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!

Brad Warner
The state of ambiguity - that messy, greasy, mixed-up, confused, and awful situation you're living through right now - is enlightenment itself.

Brad Warner