Sit Down and Shut Up Quotes

“If a tree falls in the forest and it hits a mime, would he make a noise?”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“Faith keeps you going, but doubt keeps you from going off the deep end.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“Real wisdom is the ability to understand the incredible extent to which you bullshit yourself every single moment of every day.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“Buddhas do not make intentional efforts for this to happen,” he says; “it happens when they are activated by the moment of the present.” You get it when you allow the universe to act through you without hindering what it wants with your own petty needs and wishes.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“Effort is far more important than so-called success because effort is a real thing. What we call “success” is just the manifestation of our mind’s ability to categorize things. This is “success.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“At best, past and future are no more than reference material for the eternal now. The only real facts are those at the present moment.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“It’s hard for most of us to admit, but when you start paying attention you’ll notice that you actually enjoy being angry. There’s this wonderful rush of self-righteousness to it. Because, obviously, you can’t be angry about something unless you know you’re right and the other person is wrong. You”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“The trick here is to give up imagining how things are gonna be. Or, at the very least, to give up believing that the way you imagine things are going to be has anything to do with the way they really will be.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“Part of the Zen way is learning to enjoy the fact that you cannot possibly have all the things you desire. In the truest sense none of your desires, no matter what they are, can ever be fulfilled because nothing will ever be the way you imagine it to be.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“Buddhism doesn’t ask us to deny our natural desires. But it does ask us to regulate how we respond to them.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“The practice of zazen can help you gradually clear away the layers of mental noise that prevent you from seeing how the things you’re going through now relate to the stuff you did in the past.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“Buddhist morality includes everything we do. You can never know just how far-reaching the effects of your actions might be.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“Buddhism is a philosophy about just doing things bit by bit until the work is done. Ah, but the work is never really done. That’s the beauty of it. You’ll be doing it all your life, and you will never stop improving at it”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“No matter how unacknowledged your act of compassion, the universe always notices it. And the universe has a very long memory.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“we forget our ideas of self when we stop concentrating exclusively on how we experience the universe and learn how the universe experiences us.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“If the mind of a practitioner often tires and quits, that is like twirling a stick to start a fire and resting before it gets hot.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye

“The word dharma can be a kind of catchall word in Buddhism. Dharma sometimes means the Buddha’s teachings specifically. But here the meaning is much wider. It’s almost like saying “stuff.” Dharmas could be stuff you’re going through — studying for your midterms, getting a divorce, making an egg-salad sandwich. Or it could be the people and things that are going through whatever it is they’re going through. The phrase “all dharmas” means the whole universe.”
― Brad Warner, Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye