Brad Warner · 207 pages
Rating: (4.9K votes)
“Reality's all you've got. But here's the real secret, the real miracle: it's enough.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“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, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“How many Zen masters does it take to screw in a light bulb? The plum tree in the garden!”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“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.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“The very idea of higher states of consciousness is absurd. Comparing one state of consciousness to another and saying one is "higher" and the other is "mundane" is like eating a banana and complaining it's not a very good apple.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Zen replaces all objects of belief with one single thing: reality itself. We believe only in this universe. We don't believe in the afterlife. We don't believe in the sovereignty of nations. We don't believe in money or power or fame. We don't believe in our idols. We don't believe in our positions or our possessions. We don't believe we can be insulted, or that our honor or the honor of our family, our nation or our faith can be offended. We don't believe in Buddha. We just believe in reality. Just this.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“The pain of having your dreams come true appears vividly when you realize that even if your dreams really come true, they never really come true. From birth to death it's just like this”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“It's a frightening thing to be truly honest with yourself. It means you have no one left to turn to anymore, no-one to blame, and to one to look to for salvation. You have to give up any possibility that there will ever be any refuge for you. You have to accept the reality that you are truly and finally on your own. The best thing you can hope for in life is to meet a teacher who will smash all of your dreams, dash all of your hopes, tear your teddy-bear beliefs out of your arms and fling them over a cliff.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Rather than face what really is, we prefer to retreat and compare what we're living through with the way we think it oughta be. Suffering comes from the comparison between the two.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“You can master tantric yogic poly-orgasmic Wonder Sex but you're still gonna die alone.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“You can't life 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, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“But don't get too hung up on the future. The future's out of your control. Enjoy what's happening right now. Do what is appropriate, what is right, in the present moment and let the future be the future.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Do as well as you possibly can. That's Buddhist morality.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“The first noble truth, suffering, represents idealism. When you look at things from an idealistic viewpoint everything sucks, as the Descendents said in the song called “Everything Sucks” (from the album Everything Sucks). Nothing can possibly live up to the ideals and fantasies you’ve created. So we suffer because things are not the way we think they ought to be. Rather than face what really is, we prefer to retreat and compare what we’re living through with the way we think it oughta be. Suffering comes from the comparison between the two.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Zen does not ask you to believe in anything you cannot confirm for yourself. It does not ask you to memorize any sacred words. It does not require you to worship any particular thing or revere any particular person. It does not offer any rules to obey. It does not give you any hierarchy of learned men whose profound teachings you must follow to the letter. It does not ask you to conform any code of dress. It does not ask you to allow anyone else to choose what is right for you and what is wrong. Zen is complete absence of belief. Zen is the complete lack of authority. Zen tears away every false refuge in which you might hide from the truth and forces you to sit naked before what is real. That's real refuge.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Nothing can be separated from everything else.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“He had the saffron robes, the shaved head, and that mellow spiritual way of talking that let you know here was a guy who had truly achieved a rare state of inner with-it-ness.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Maybe your lot right now could be improved. I know mine could. And working to make things better is great. But we don’t just work to make things better and leave it at that, do we? We live in the idealized world inside our heads. And that keeps us from ever really enjoying what we have right now, from enjoying the work that we’re doing to create our better tomorrow. It’s as if we’re afraid to really commit to this moment because a better one might come along later. This approach is totally ridiculous and completely absurd.*”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Same deal here. It's not "you" and "the universe." It's "universeyou.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Practicing zazen is like gradually (or maybe not so gradually) getting your sight back.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“You've won all creation. It's yours to do with it as you please- and you discover what pleases you most is doing the right thing for all creation in moment after moment.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“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, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“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.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“You can get hooked on afterlife ideas just like a drug. The reason to avoid ideas about life after death isn't because they couldn't possibly be true. Maybe they could. How would I know? It's because ideas like that promote a kind of dreamy fantasy state that distracts us from seeing what our life is right now.
"The question doesn't fit the case."
Look at your life as it is right now and live it, right now.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Suffering occurs when your ideas about how things ought to be don’t match how they really are. Stop for a second and look at this in your life right now. It’s important.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“When you’re so committed to the future, it’s real easy to let your life right now turn to shit.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Zen is the complete absence of belief. Zen is the complete lack of authority.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“...you look out at the clear blue sky and for an instant you see that you are everything. You want to say something, but none of the words you have will stick at all; nothing will come except for a wide, wide smile that crosses all of space at time---and the moment is utterly forgotten”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“This is always and inevitably the case. No one gets away with murder. No one gets away with anything. You can't escape the consequences of your immoral acts any more than someone who drops a big-ass amp directly on his foot can escape having broken toe-bones. Your life and the life of everyone else in the universe are one seamless whole. To cause another living being pain isn't evil-it's just stupid. Because that being is you.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
“Zen is the complete absence of belief. Zen is the complete lack of authority. Zen tears away every false refuge in which you might hide from the truth and forces you to sit naked before what is real. That’s real refuge.”
― Brad Warner, quote from Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth about Reality
Brad Warner
Born place: in Hamilton, Ohio, The United States
Born date March 5, 1964
See more on GoodReads
“But yeah, Ann [Trason] insisted, running was romantic; and no, of course her friends didn't get it because they'd never broken through. For them, running was a miserable two miles motivated solely by size 6 jeans: get on the scale, get depressed, get your headphones on, and get it over with. But you can't muscle through a five-hour run that way; you have to relax into it, like easing your body into a hot bath, until it no longer resists the shock and begins to enjoy it.”
― Christopher McDougall, quote from Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
“See, my special gift is that I'm a mediator. I help guide the tortured souls of the newly dead to their afterlife destinations-wherever that happens to be-generally by cleaning up whatever messes they left behind when the croaked.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Reunion
“All the desks in this room are bolted down, Sutton. Just so you know." Uh, okay.”
― Sara Shepard, quote from The Lying Game
“I want to own this woman, body and soul. I want her”
― E.L. James, quote from Grey
“I am a dreamer. I know so little of real life that I just can't help re-living such moments as these in my dreams, for such moments are something I have very rarely experienced. I am going to dream about you the whole night, the whole week, the whole year. I feel I know you so well that I couldn't have known you better if we'd been friends for twenty years. You won't fail me, will you? Only two minutes, and you've made me happy forever. Yes, happy. Who knows, perhaps you've reconciled me with myself, resolved all my doubts.
When I woke up it seemed to me that some snatch of a tune I had known for a long time, I had heard somewhere before but had forgotten, a melody of great sweetness, was coming back to me now. It seemed to me that it had been trying to emerge from my soul all my life, and only now-
If and when you fall in love, may you be happy with her. I don't need to wish her anything, for she'll be happy with you. May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from White Nights
If Beale Street Coul...
Looking for Me
Nightmarish Sacrific...
Just One Damned Thin...
Kissing Under the Mi...
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.
