Quotes from 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.

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.

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.

The real goal of Zen is to find a way of life that's easy and undramatic. Strong attachments lead to upset and drama.

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.

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.

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.

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

If a tree falls in the forest and it hits a mime, would he make a noise?

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Real wisdom is the ability to understand the incredible extent to which you bullshit yourself every single moment of every day.

As for enlightenment, that's just for people who can't face reality.

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

This world is better than Utopia because - and follow this point carefully - you can never live in Utopia . Utopia is always somewhere else. That's the very definition of Utopia.

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.