brad_warner

Hi there. I promised some footnotes so here goes...

SCAM BUDDHISM
There is really very little scam Buddhism out there. I write about the few scams that do exist because I don't see anyone else doing so. But that doesn't mean that if you go to your local Buddhist temple or center you're likely to get taken in by a bunch of con artists. The scams are so incredibly easy to spot you could hardly miss them. A little bit of common sense can help out a whole lot.

MORALITY
You often hear people say that Buddhism isn't concerned with morality, just enlightenment. This is absolute bullshit. Enlightenment is utterly useless. Morality is the only thing that really matters. But Buddhism does not offer a neat and tidy code of what you should and should not do. Morality is when you follow the rule of the universe. Immorality is when you do not. The rule of the universe is crystal clear to every single human being in every situation. The problem is we are very good at shouting it down with our thoughts and emotions. The practice of zazen helps you learn how not to do that.

MEDITATION MACHINES
If you have an idea of some goal you want to accomplish in your meditation, a machine may help you achieve that goal. And if you achieve that goal, you will completely and utterly miss the entire point of meditating in the first place. Zazen helps you see clearly exactly what you are right now. When you introduce any kind of goal into the practice, the very goal itself is the product of your current messed-up psychological state. No matter how beautiful your imagined state of bliss, enlightenment, kensho, satori, awakening, beatific vision or whatever seems to be, it's just another illusion coughed up by an overactive imagination, and therefore absolutely worthless.

PORN
When I was a teenager, pictures of naked girls were a very rare and much sought after commodity among me and my group of friends. We actually had a dealer who could procure copies of Hustler, Oui and Penthouse for a substantial mark-up over the newstand price. These days we live in a completely different world. Whether the ubiquitous nature of porn these days is "good" or "bad" is not nearly as important as the real fact that it is a feature of the world we live in now. We need to learn how to keep our footing in the world we live in, not in some misty eyed nostalgic portrait of a past that never really existed. The question of whether reality can be found in endless computer searches or not, whether we're searching for porn or for enlightenment, is important.