Don't Be a Jerk Quotes

“We just need to feel we know, or we can’t rest. And yet much of life is unknowable and will remain so. Lots”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Thus a person can be a Buddha one minute and a jackass three minutes later. You don't just become Buddha at the moment of your first enlightenment experience and then stay Buddha forever.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Our actions are part of who we are. It's not that we are inert things who do stuff. Rather, the stuff we do and who we are are inextricably woven together.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Not-being-a-jerk means this and that are done, and now you gotta do the other thing. It’s an ongoing process. Haku”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“We live forever by practicing the Buddha Way right now. If we wind up being reborn after we pass from this life, that’s fine. If not, that’s okay too.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“The entire moon and sky can be reflected in a dewdrop on a blade of grass.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Because a lot of our philosophical stances these days are kind of half-assed. We’re very bold in our proclamations of our own moral rectitude, but then we neglect to even keep our own toilets clean. You see a lot of that kind of thing. I used to see it all the time in my punk-rock days. Those guys were super-concerned with having the right political and philosophical views. But they never seemed to be able to keep their showers free from mold or”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“To him, Buddhism was not a spiritual practice or a religion. It was simply a practical approach to real life that neither denied the spiritual side of things nor held that spirituality was better or nobler than the material side of life. Whereas”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Reality exists as it is. The words we use to explain our understanding of it are always pale reflections of the truth we are attempting to convey and of our own understanding of that truth.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Even if the whole universe is nothing but a bunch of jerks doing all kinds of jerk-type things, there is still liberation in simply not being a jerk.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“The Chinese character used to indicate it is 行 (gyō). In common usage this just means “to go.” The Sanskrit word is samskara. I’m using the English word formations because that’s the most commonly used translation. My first teacher’s teacher used the word impulses instead. The fourth skandha is generally understood to be the impulses toward action that precede action itself, as well as those actions. So our actions are part of who we are. It’s not that we are inert things who do stuff. Rather, the stuff we do and who we are are inextricably woven together.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“In conclusion, polishing a stone really does transform it into a mirror. If stones couldn’t become mirrors, regular people couldn’t become Buddhas. If we hate stones for being hunks of dirt, you might as well hate people for being hunks of dirt. If people have minds, stones must also have minds. Who can notice that there are mirrors in which stones are reflected? Who can notice that there are mirrors in which mirrors are reflected?”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“We always tend to think we can become happier by getting what we want, even if that means we have to make someone else suffer.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Zazen is not meditation or concentration. Zazen is the peaceful and joyful gate to the dharma. The whole universe opens up to you. If you do it this way you’ll be like a geek at a comic book convention or like Luke Skywalker when he hit the thermal exhaust port. Then the dharma will manifest before you and darkness and distraction will vanish like the Death Star blowing up.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“You become a monk because you think there's no better choice for you. No other reason could make any sense.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“The historical reason we chant the Buddhist sutras is to honor our earliest ancestors in the practice. The first Buddhists didn't trust the written word to be a good carrier of their teachings. So for the first two hundred years or so, the Buddha's teachings were not written down; they were memorized. In order to do this, the monks gathered and recited Buddha's words. We still do that today, even though it's all also available in written form now. This is because we've found that chanting the words together helps us remember them better than just reading them by ourselves.

These activities also have a deeper purpose in helping to build a feeling of community. When people do activities together they feel more kinship with each other. When we chant we do other things like hit a wooden fish to keep time, burn incense, bow, and so forth. This active stuff, with all its movements and coordination, helps bond the group.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Buddhism started not when Shakyamuni had his great revelation by himself. Lots of people had done that before. It began when he made his first efforts to transform that into a communal practice. Buddhism, then, is not something you do by yourself.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“To me Zen is a communal practice of individual deep inquiry.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“No religion, philosophy, or practice will ever mean precisely the same thing even to two people who sit side by side in the same temple for decades, reciting the same verses together and espousing the same doctrines when asked what they believe. Even when two such people might say, for example, "Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God," if we probed a bit more deeply we would surely find that the two have different ideas about who Jesus was, who or what God is, what it means to be his "only begotten Son," and so forth.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“At every moment of every day, no matter how I feel about the situation, whether it is mind-blowingly thrilling or completely brain-numbing, I am the totality of the universe experiencing the fullness of itself. Even if I don't notice it.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“If it doesn't sound like "don't be a jerk" it's not Buddhist teaching.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Once we meet a good teacher we should throw away everything else and just get on with it.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“In his earlier writings Dōgen is adamant that Zen practice and realization is available to anyone, regardless of whether they are monastics or laypeople, male or female, old or young, clever or stupid. He was extremely progressive in his attitude toward women, which in Japan is woefully behind the egalitarian ideals of the West, even today. Yet in his later writings Dōgen seems to have changed his mind and started to believe that only temple-bound monks — male and female, so at least he didn't change his mind about that part — could possibly attain the Buddhist truth.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“These days we tend to put far more faith in concrete recordings, whether written or electronically preserved in audio and video, than we do in what someone remembers somebody having told them. The early Buddhists saw it differently. They thought the oral tradition was more likely to preserve the true essence and intention of what their master had said than if his exact words had been preserved on paper.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“We're very bold in our proclamations of our own moral rectitude, but then we neglect to even keep our own toilets clean.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“Dōgen's big question when he was a young monk was this: If Buddhism teaches that we're all perfect just as we are — and it does teach that — then why do we have to undergo training? A whole lot of Shōbōgenzō is Dōgen's attempt to answer that question.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“In some ways contemporary Zen centers resemble halfway houses for people who are seeking ways to get by in the world without falling to pieces.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“One of the problems for contemporary Western people is that Buddha’s attitude toward rebirth is entirely different from ours. We want to live forever. Buddha and his followers did not. To him and to the audience he spoke to, rebirth was not a good thing.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“We are both individuals and expressions of the universe. These are not mutually exclusive.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master

“You do not become a Buddha by having some magical, mystical experience that confers Buddhahood on you, after which you can just slack off for the rest of your life. Buddhahood is something fragile and precious that must be cared for and maintained. It’s not automatic, and it’s not easy.”
― Brad Warner, Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master