Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

by Brad Warner

life is just action at the present moment. The past is nothing more than memory, and the future is nothing but dreams. At best, past and future are no more than reference material for the eternal now.

We’re far more interested in explanations of reality than we are in reality itself. The solution is to see the problem and take action — now. Start from just where you are, and do something.

We create this thing called “me,” which we believe thinks and feels and experiences. We live in abject terror of the day that thing will come to an end. And when we’re not dreading that, we’re petrified that this “me” might someday find itself in some horrendous situation. We make all sorts of efforts to protect this thing above all else. We buy it gifts. We reward our “self ” for doing good things like sticking with a diet. We show our “self ” off to the world and hope that others envy it. We want it to become rich and famous, to live in a beautiful house with a bodacious wife or a hunky husband (or both maybe, I don’t know). Every minute of every day we look for new reasons to make believe it exists and that it is important.

Truth is not something that will ever be proven by debate anyway.

here and now is always real.

Reality beats fantasy every time.

The truth is very quiet. It doesn’t need to scream and shout to make its presence known and felt. Your thinking mind, on the other hand, is constantly bellowing and screeching. And you listen to all that nattering like a fool.

When you talk to yourself in your mind, who is speaking, and who is that someone speaking to? Why are there two entities? Why do we say “my self ” as if some “me,” other than the self, owns this thing called “self