Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma
September 19th, 2009 by admin | Filed under Celebrity Divorces.
From Publishers Weekly
Zen monk and punk rocker Warner offers a “big snarly ball of confessional vomit” in his third book, following Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up. The snarly ball is his own suffering, fodder for the Zen cushion: his mother’s and grandmother’s deaths, the dissolution of his marriage and lots of day-job insecurity when the Japanese monster-movie company he works for downsizes and gets sold. As ever, Warner is unafraid to smash idols, including his own celebrity status as a Zen master. “Not only am I not that thing, but no one is,” he writes, and that means everybody from the Dalai Lama to fellow students of his Japanese teacher who disliked his being picked as the teacher’s successor. Warner is honest— [Read More...]
Buy Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma at Amazon
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(edited because Amazon apparently doesn’t like my potty mouth)
When I read Warner’s first book, I was impressed (I gave it a 4 on Amazon before I deleted my old reviews). It skillfully wove together anecdotes about working in monster movies and being a teenage punk rocker with insights into Soto-shu Buddhism, often in a very funny and even poignant way. The author’s obsession with celebrity was evident, as was a certain disquieting lionization of his teacher, but neither were overpowering. Sit Down and Shut Up, his second book, was not nearly as interesting, but still not bad as such; the whole punk connection to the Shobogenzo just seemed a bit forced and not wholly relevant, and the understanding of Buddhism seems a bit shallow at times.
Reading this, though, was simply disappointing. Yeah, there’s a punk version of Hotei on the front (a recycled idea from the previous volume) and some talk about how spiritually perfect people don’t exist, but it’s not really about Buddhism in any meaningful way. It’s about how Brad Warner had an excruciatingly bad year and how he dealt with it.
I’m sympathetic to some extent; I had an awful, awful 2004 (the same year I read Hardcore Zen, incidentally). We all have our ways of dealing; that being said, I’m not sure a confessional account of that year is the best way to handle it. And when you use that account as an attack on everyone who made you unhappy that year, then I’m reasonably sure it’s not.
Reading this, you get the sense that Warner didn’t really do anything he regrets this year. No, it was somebody else. He was dogged and good to everyone and unreasonable people treated him like trash because they couldn’t handle just how real he is. A couple of his teacher’s other students even had the nerve to say that he was putting some bad teachings out there, so he passive-aggressively snipes at them, calling them insulting nicknames. His wife who he couldn’t praise enough in earlier volumes is a cold-hearted emasculating ice queen. He hung out with famous metal musicians, and they’re better Buddhists than all those eggheads who read books about Buddhism and don’t drink. He slept with his students and works in porn, but if you can’t see that this is 100% the Zen thing to do, you’re just one of those closed minded Buddhists that expect everyone to live up to some ideal of spiritual perfection. Etc etc.
Supposedly the book’s message is that there are no spiritual Super-teachers above reproach. This isn’t exactly news to most people, in or out of Buddhism, but I suppose it’s not a bad message. However, when you spend a lot of energy defending yourself, as Warner does, it sort of undercuts the idea. A book where Warner talks about something truly reprehensible that he did, and the way he approached that, would have been a lot more interesting and relevant to this point. Instead we’re treated to some peccadilloes that he nonetheless feels angrily defiant about. When he vows to be an a****** for the rest of his life, and phrases it as being a heroic stance, it felt almost laughable. It’s not horribly gripping reading or poignant searching, just one guy saying “forget this whole Zen expectation thing”. Which is fine, but it’s a theme I’ve seen done better by David Chadwick and Janwillem van de Wetering. If you don’t want expectations, perhaps wearing formal monks robes and calling yourself a monk isn’t for you. To some extent, I feel that taking the “monk” mantle as you lead a lay lifestyle is a little silly on its face, but that’s neither here nor there.
When all is said and done, this book does have its strong points. Warner is good at crafting a paragraph, often to describe things that are difficult to write about, such as one’s mother dying. He’s also good at breaking down a complex concept for the uneducated layman, though I sometimes question the grasp he himself has of certain Buddhist ideas. But this is, beneath all its pretensions as a punk-rock approach to spirituality or an iconoclastic deconstruction of our ideas of our teachers, simply an exercise in self-justification and self-promotion. As such I can’t really recommend it as autobiography or Buddhist literature. There are too many superior examples of each and of both to spend the time any money required for this book.
i have read all three of brad’s books. “zen wrapped…” is much different than the first two. it is an autobiography with small zen messages sporadically dispersed throughout the book. don’t buy this expecting it to be a lecture about zen in america.
when i read brad’s first book, i thought “this guy is not zen. he is an egomaniacal pretender.” after having read all three of his books i am still not convinced that my original impression was wrong. part of me still thinks brad says what he says not because he is a zen priest, but because for some psychological reason he is extremely anti-establishment. i am sure in his personal life he owns a mac and hates bill gates. having said all of this, i think there are great messages in each of his books, this one included. we are all human, even the “enlightened” ones. we all make mistakes and do dumb $h1t sometimes. its ok, just try not to do too much of it and dont hurt others while doing it.
overall i liked this book and if brad writes a fourth (which i am quite certain he will) i will purchase and read it too. i dont agree with everything he says and i think he tries way too hard not to be part of the established zen order (whatever that is, right brad?), but there is still enough of a very good message in his books to keep going down this path with him.
Warner presents his book as radical “confessional vomit,” full of “scandalous stuff,” that will show him as he really is, warts and all, in all his disturbing ugliness, and demolish the myth of the perfect Zen teacher (he takes for granted throughout the book that people out there think he is one such faultless sensei…). However (but not surprisingly), what image of Warner do we have at the end? Well, that of a somewhat nerdy and pretty decent guy, who, among other things, is deeply committed to Zen and discipline, loves his grandma even though she was mean to his dad, had some alcohol and pot on the 4th of July (but does not recommend it, and will never do it again, which is not hard because he does not like it anyway), and endures his wife’s coldness and sexual indifference to him for months (she even humiliates him by telling him she no longer sees him “as a man”) before having sex with another woman (but only after she actually initiates the act). Oh, and disturbingly… he only wears one layer of underwear under his Zen robes. Man, you certainly wouldn’t want to run into this guy in a dark alley… However, there is one aspect of the book that may be construed as truly mean-spirited (and un-zenlike, even by Warner’s definitions of Zen): the true villains of the book are his wife Yuka, who comes across as a cold, workaholic woman who cheats on her husband and then gives him the silent treatment, and Zeppo and Gummo, the two power thirsty Zen teachers who hate Warner. Warner knows that those people, including his wife, will read the book, which then becomes his very public special revenge against them. Ch-ching!