97+ Brad Warner Quotes On Culture, Education And Religion

Brad Warner is an American author, Zen teacher, punk rock bassist, and filmmaker. He is best known for his books on Buddhism and punk rock, such as Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality. He is also the founder of the Zen group, the Empty Mind Zen School. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Brad Warner on leadership, culture, education.

Top 10 Brad Warner Quotes

1. Disappointment is just the action of your brain readjusting itself to reality after discovering things are not the way you thought they were.
2. How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!
3. You can always improve your situation. But you do so by facing it, not by running away.
4. Compassion is the ability to see what needs doing right now and the willingness to do it right now.
5. 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.
6. Your role is to do and say the things that need to be done and said from your unique perspective.
7. 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.
8. The real goal of Zen is to find a way of life that's easy and undramatic. Strong attachments lead to upset and drama.
9. Buddha might be the one thing that could settle Godzilla down. He might say, "Listen Godzilla, you don't have to do all this. Just chill out a little bit and everything will be fine".
10. The problem is the way we let our desires stand in the way of our enjoyment of what we already have.

Brad Warner Short Quotes

• Just know that your expectations are only thoughts in your head, and keep on doing what you do.
• Do what you do as well as you possibly can. That's Buddhist morality.
• Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don't match how they really are.
• Morality is a personal matter.
• As for enlightenment, that's just for people who can't face reality.
• Reality's all you've got. But here's the real secret, the real miracle: it's enough.
• If a tree falls in the forest and it hits a mime, would he make a noise?
• Faith keeps you going, but doubt keeps you from going off the deep end.
• The thinking brain influences the body’s responses and it makes a neat little loop.

Brad Warner Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

If you want to believe in reincarnation, you have to believe that this life, what you're living through right now, is the afterlife. You're missing out on the afterlife you looked forward to in your last existence by worrying about your next life. This is what happens after you die. Take a look. — 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

They really make sex into such a horrible thing and how terrible anything related to sex is, but isn't that why we're all here? We wouldn't be here at all if two people in our past hadn't been horny for each other, that's how it works. So we can't continue unless people keep being horny for each other, that's just the way it is. — 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

Everything you have, whether it's money or stuff, is an obligation. It is as much your duty to care for and nurture any object you own as it would be if that object were your child. All possessions come with responsibilities. More possessions equals greater responsibility. — Brad Warner

I thought that deserved a book and feel like the door needs to be open so people can say, "Ok, here we go, let's deal with this" because we're not dealing with it. I'm waiting for somebody to write another book but it hasn't happened yet, though I guess mine's only been out for a year and a half. — Brad Warner

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

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

You can't live in paradise—but you are living right here. Make this your paradise or make this your hell. The choice is entirely yours. Really. — 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

You know that for sure because Godzilla was killed by an ordinary missile. He spends most of that film dodging them but then the Army finally gets a bead on him and they shoot a missile at him and he blows up and dies, and that's not what Godzilla is. Godzilla is supposed to be a thing that you can't possibly kill, no matter how hard you try. — Brad Warner

Well it's always been an interesting area for me. In referencing something I just reread from Dogen it says, "Enlightenment doesn't break the person anymore than the reflection breaks the water" and Suzuki in his commentary is saying you don't lose your personality once you acquire some sort of Buddhist understanding. — Brad Warner

I mean, I can do that all day long. I can tell you the Vulcan's are not actually devoid of emotion. That they work hard to suppress their emotions. And of course, there actually are no real Vulcan's, though I know the ins and outs of them as fictional characters. — Brad Warner

It's crazy to me how concerned people get with what it looks like and what you can do there. People may as well be talking about JRR Tolkien or Star Trek or something. — Brad Warner

Godzilla also represents the fear of nuclear annihilation, which was something that was big in my mind at the time. It was something that the people of this forthcoming generation haven't had to live with, but people around my age grew up with the idea that we could all be blown up at any minute. That's also what got me into hardcore music. — 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

So that's Godzilla, he's ultimately going to get you regardless of what you do. Maybe the people who made the American Godzilla film were scared of that. They didn't want him to represent that, to represent something we couldn't deal with because, "We're American's, we can deal with anything". — Brad Warner

Buddha was a responsible guy and believed in his monks being responsible, their responsibility would no longer be to their practice or to the sangha, but to their child because that's the only honest way to do it. You can't have it both ways. So anytime a monk would have sex, there was always that possibility and it was a very big deal. — Brad Warner

When I first started watching Godzilla, I was a kid and a big dinosaur freak and was like, "Oh my gosh, there's a big dinosaur." So I immediately got into Godzilla. What I like about it are some of the things people often think are negative aspects. — Brad Warner

I think it's part of my personality, to find sex really interesting. Not just in the puerile way of, "Oh I want to go and have some sex". It's fascinating, there's an entire realm of human activity that's important and literally vital to our survival and yet we've vilified it. That's one of the reasons that religious station is so fascinating to me. — Brad Warner

I was very attracted to the way that Zen did not go into the imagination land. And now I've forgotten what your first question was and how we were going to tie this together. — Brad Warner

So he [Shoko Asahara] was insane but managed to convince a couple thousand people that he was enlightened. Western culture, which Japan is now definitely a part of, doesn't have an understanding of what Enlightenment is. — Brad Warner

Sanity and enlightenment...I've been reading a new book Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries, and it contains a commentary on Genjo Koan by Shunryu Suzuki, the author who wrote Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. He doesn't mention sanity at all but I think that one possible definition of enlightenment would be a kind of profound sanity, where being insane is no longer an option. — Brad Warner

A lot of seriously insane people have managed to acquire huge followings based on the idea that their insanity is a kind of enlightenment. An obvious example would be Charles Manson or Shoko Asahara who is the person responsible for the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. — Brad Warner

I never really got around to discussing that specific topic which I think it crucially important to understand. If you were a monk in Buddhist time and you had sex, there was a good chance a child would be conceived. — Brad Warner

It's sort of another innovation, probably a good innovation, of Western culture to separate the ideas between science and philosophy, but it's important to remember they weren't always separate realms of inquiry. — Brad Warner

I mean Godzilla is eternally pissed off at everything but of course he's gonna be because every time he pops out of the water for a look around somebody is firing a missile at him. Buddha would probably have to act as a mediator between the people and Godzilla. — Brad Warner

If he'd [Jesus] been a little more concerned for his own safety and well being he may have toned things down a little bit and probably at best he'd be remembered as a Rabbi who said some cool things but that nobody really reads anymore. There's tons of them. — Brad Warner

The thing with the question of oneness or non-oneness is that you can literally discuss it forever. You can go into the philosophy section of any library and you'll see people have been discussing it forever and will continue to do so. — Brad Warner

I'm not sure that Eastern culture does either, but I've never lived in India etc so I couldn't tell you. I can say we definitely don't. So people will sometimes come in contact with something strange and think, "Oh, it must be like this" and have a lot of fantasies about it, and somebody who sort of looks like our fantasy version of what enlightenment is can be very convincing in seeming like they've got something and then play that role. — Brad Warner

So I'm skeptical and cynical about the whole thing and it's only if something seems to be genuine that I would pursue it. That's why I've stuck with Zen for so long and not gone on to some other path with it. — Brad Warner

At times, Zen does get into some Buddhist Cosmology. Nishijima Roshi, my main teacher would talk about that and almost every time immediately say that it was only one way of looking at it. Whenever addressing realms of Heaven or Hell, he'd also address that it was just a psychological state. — 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

I think real enlightenment is total sanity, a kind of acceptance of what actually is. It does involve a kind of different way of looking at things. As I've done this Zen practice for years and years, I've acquired what I realize is an almost upside down view of life compared to what most people think, which is just what I used to think it was too. It's not really an insane view, at least I hope it's not. — Brad Warner

I guess what attracted me about the philosophy aspect was that it was realistic. It didn't go off into the realm of imagination land, which I find a lot of religious teachings, actually almost every religious teaching does. I keep meaning to write this up as a blog post, but lately, while driving in my car I've been listening to a religious station that comes on out of Cleveland from the Moody Bible Institute. — Brad Warner

I think a lot of people trying to follow Buddhism these days are getting confused about sex and they don't understand what's going on. They've been exposed to a contemporary Christian idea that sex itself is evil and bad, which I'm not so sure was Jesus' idea. For me, the Buddhist approach isn't that sex itself is evil or bad but that sex is neutral. It's the way you do it that can problematic. — Brad Warner

So what I liked about Zen was that it never goes off into the realm of imagination land, or if it does occasionally, the good teachers will openly address it specifically as only imagination. Both of my teachers were very good at that. — Brad Warner

Since then, my approach to all things spiritual is rather cynical you could say. When somebody present something to me as spiritual, my first instinct is to be cynical and think, "oh yeah, one of those again." You see so much of it see in "spiritual culture" and people get very excited about it. It's all very "hoo haw." — Brad Warner

The fact is that there is a contradiction going on but our brains don't like contradiction. So when Moe hits Curly on the head with a sledgehammer and Curly says, "ow" and Moe says, "Serves you right Numbskull", you can say that's because they're separate beings, and that's true. — Brad Warner

The obvious example would be Jesus. Jesus is an object of fascination for me. He's an interesting historical character because we don't know much about him. He seems to be a guy who was in touch with something deeper than most people around him were and someone who was very concerned with trying to communicate that. — Brad Warner

I really thought Reagan was going to push the button and blow us all up. It was scary. So when they did the 1998 American Godzilla film, Hollywood didn't understand what Godzilla was. — 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

So it's a dangerous thing and conversely, the other thing I mentioned in that post was that people see guys who are kind of in touch with that and become famous for it and then think maybe they can get in on it. Maybe they're not quite as cynical as that and there's some sincerity about them, but they don't really get it so they just imitate what they've seen from people who've done it before and of course you can make big money that way. — 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

What attracted me to Zen was my first teacher, Tim McCarthy. He was extremely genuine. It wasn't even really a Zen thing, that sort of came along later. — Brad Warner

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

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

So I was first exposed to this guy Tim McCarthy, and he's talking about Zen, but deeper than that he was a genuine person. I thought maybe he's someone I can trust and follow this thing he's talking about all the time. — Brad Warner

For a very long time science and philosophy were considered part of the same continuum and it was only within the last few hundred years they've been considered different areas of inquiry, and now we're starting to go back to the idea that maybe they aren't two separate realms of inquiry. — 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

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

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

In the Japanese movie's they're throwing everything they have at him, every missile, but he keeps coming, he can't be stopped and that represents death. There's nothing you can do to stop it, to keep yourself from dying. You can try every trick in the book and it still won't prevent it. — Brad Warner

Much of the hatred and fear of sexuality found in religions stems from the idea that sex is a thing of the body and that the body must be denied so that the spirit may be elevated. In Buddhism there is no notion that the body is made of inferior matter while the spirit flies free within. — Brad Warner

I think the understanding of oneness and interconnectivity of the whole Universe is something we have innately, something we're born with. We are however very skillful at ignoring and pretending we don't have or know it. — Brad Warner

There's also an aspect which I tried to express yesterday by saying the same "something" that looks out through Curlys eyes is also the same exact thing which looks out of Moe's eyes, and that's harder for people to grasp. So the thing is, you have to find a way to ultimately embrace both sides or else you can't function. If you only embrace the side of pure oneness then you end up sort of spacing out and sitting under a blanket. — Brad Warner

One of the things I regret about not putting in that book or I think it's there but I didn't really elaborate on it, is contraception. I came across someone who articulated very clearly that one of the things which makes our approach to Buddhist practice in regards to sex different these days than it was in Buddhist times, is the simple existence of reliable contraception, which is a no brainer but I missed really addressing it in the book. — Brad Warner

It's interesting to see what's going on with physics these days because they're starting to come out with stuff that sounds remarkably like Buddhism and even more specifically like the ancient Hindu Vedas. Physics isn't necessarily saying the exact same thing but I think eventually it will merge. — Brad Warner

Sometimes people pick up pet worries that they'll entertain themselves with and that was my big one. So as far as thinking about what that means, one of the definitions of insanity is that you lose your ability to communicate to anybody because your frames of reference have become so different from the rest of the world that you can't communicate anymore. — Brad Warner

Now however, we have contraception and it's mostly reliable so you can have sex without that happening. So then you start vilifying the act of sex itself. I don't think Buddhism has ever done that necessarily, or at least I'm not aware of Buddhism taking the stance that Christianity often has which says that sex itself is a kind of evil act, which is a really weird idea. — Brad Warner

As you're implying, there's a new technology that can look even deeper into that brick and we can start getting into a level where it breaks down so that the brick isn't even there, but obviously it is because Moe can hit Curly on the head with it. It's quite bizarre and all relative. — Brad Warner

I used to worry when I was a teenager, even into my twenties, after I'd heard something about schizophrenia and how people just suddenly become schizophrenic that I was insane. — Brad Warner

I guess that all figures into my approach because once I start hearing the imagination land stuff (that's my new phrase now I guess) I tend to tune out or start laughing at it like, "Haha, you guys really believe there is a heaven." — 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

we ourselves are not something apart from our circumstances. What we are and where we are are one and the same. — Brad Warner

People will come and give you sandwiches every six hours but you're really of no use. A lot of people get excited about guys like that but I can't get too excited about it because I think he's sorta useless. He's just sitting there in India under a blanket looking beautiful, so what. — Brad Warner

I was living in Japan at the time, Shoko Asahara was an important figure and you could say his name and people would immediately know who you were talking about but since being back in America I've realized most people don't know who he is, which I find odd because he was far worse than Charles Manson. He killed many more people than Manson and was actually trying to kill thousands but wasn't careful enough in his process. — Brad Warner

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

I remember writing the post but not what I said specifically, so I'll either repeat myself or say something completely different and baffle everybody. — Brad Warner

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

But people do the same thing with the Bible. They memorize all the fictional characters, the parameters and the rules of the game and think it's important, but I can't get excited about that myself. — Brad Warner

There's also something that is often mistaken for enlightenment which is a kind of insanity. Often, people will have some kind of weird experience which is quite abnormal and think, "Oh my God, that's it, I understand everything" because they start seeing things in a very weird way and think that's how enlightened people see things as well. — Brad Warner

Jesus was probably a guy who thought, "This thing that I've discovered can save the world and everybody is miserable without it." So he was probably a very kind and giving person and thought he had to give it to people, even if it killed him. He had to make sure they got the message, and he paid the ultimate price as they say due to his insistence. — Brad Warner

Truly compassionate action arises spontaneously without thought and is carried out in real action with no anticipation of reward and, indeed, no concept of a doer of that action. — Brad Warner

I mean somebody could write another book and say Brad's idea about Buddhism and sex is wrong, and here's mine, and that would be great. Just the fact that it would exist would be good because nobody is saying it, it's like they're trying to pretend it's not there. — Brad Warner

So with science, it's original idea was to ignore the spiritual or nebulous side of reality and to strictly work on concrete things. Say there's a brick which we cut it in half and then see there's two half's of a brick. If we keep cutting we can then see there's particles and so on and so forth. — Brad Warner

Life Lessons by Brad Warner

1. Brad Warner's work emphasizes the importance of cultivating a mindful, compassionate attitude towards life. He encourages readers to be open to new experiences and to be willing to challenge their own beliefs.
2. Warner's work also emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and personal growth, encouraging readers to look inward and strive to become the best versions of themselves.
3. Finally, Warner's work emphasizes the importance of living in the present moment, and of being mindful of the impact of our actions on the world around us.