Brad Warner Quotes About Enlightenment

Quotes about: Enlightenment

• 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

  Powerful, People, Enlightenment

  Brad Warner (2015). “Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality”, p.98, Simon and Schuster

• The state of ambiguity - that messy, greasy, mixed-up, confused, and awful situation you're living through right now - is enlightenment itself.

  Brad Warner

  Confused, Enlightenment, Awful

  Brad Warner (2010). “Sit Down and Shut Up: Punk Rock Commentaries on Buddha, God, Truth, Sex, Death, and Dogen's Treasury of the Right Dharma Eye”, p.28, New World Library

• As for enlightenment, that's just for people who can't face reality.

  Brad Warner

  Reality, People, Enlightenment

  Brad Warner (2010). “Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma”, p.224, New World Library

• I think real enlightenment is total sanity, a kind of acceptance of what actually is. It does involve a kind of different way of looking at things. As I've done this Zen practice for years and years, I've acquired what I realize is an almost upside down view of life compared to what most people think, which is just what I used to think it was too. It's not really an insane view, at least I hope it's not.

  Brad Warner

  Real, Acceptance, Thinking

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

• If you come across an insane person who's talking gibberish, you can't make any sense of it at all and that would be one way that enlightenment is different. If you read Dogen, a lot of his stuff is very strange and is coming from a different place than what we're used to, but at the same time, it's not senseless ramblings and that's part of what attracted me to Dogen. I didn't get it, but it was sane. It's not some guy raving about UFO's or Moses living in his bathtub, it's was actually something sane that I just didn't get, if that makes sense?

  Brad Warner

  Talking, Insane Person, Guy

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

• Well it's always been an interesting area for me. In referencing something I just reread from Dogen it says, "Enlightenment doesn't break the person anymore than the reflection breaks the water" and Suzuki in his commentary is saying you don't lose your personality once you acquire some sort of Buddhist understanding.

  Brad Warner

  Buddhist, Reflection, Water

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

• Sanity and enlightenment...I've been reading a new book Dogen's Genjo Koan: Three Commentaries, and it contains a commentary on Genjo Koan by Shunryu Suzuki, the author who wrote Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. He doesn't mention sanity at all but I think that one possible definition of enlightenment would be a kind of profound sanity, where being insane is no longer an option.

  Brad Warner

  Book, Reading, Thinking

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

• There's also something that is often mistaken for enlightenment which is a kind of insanity. Often, people will have some kind of weird experience which is quite abnormal and think, "Oh my God, that's it, I understand everything" because they start seeing things in a very weird way and think that's how enlightened people see things as well.

  Brad Warner

  Thinking, People, Insanity

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

• A lot of seriously insane people have managed to acquire huge followings based on the idea that their insanity is a kind of enlightenment. An obvious example would be Charles Manson or Shoko Asahara who is the person responsible for the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.

  Brad Warner

  Ideas, People, Insanity

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

• So he [Shoko Asahara] was insane but managed to convince a couple thousand people that he was enlightened. Western culture, which Japan is now definitely a part of, doesn't have an understanding of what Enlightenment is.

  Brad Warner

  Couple, Japan, People

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

• I'm not sure that Eastern culture does either, but I've never lived in India etc so I couldn't tell you. I can say we definitely don't. So people will sometimes come in contact with something strange and think, "Oh, it must be like this" and have a lot of fantasies about it, and somebody who sort of looks like our fantasy version of what enlightenment is can be very convincing in seeming like they've got something and then play that role.

  Brad Warner

  Thinking, Play, People

  Source: theindiespiritualist.com

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