Oh my God! I made the cover of SCENE magazine in Cleveland. Click here for the on-line version of the story. SCENE is the local NE Ohio free weekly rock'n'roll paper like LA Weekly out here or The Reader in Chicago or The Observer in Dallas or whatever you got in your town. I read every issue when I was a teenager, hating it sometimes but often being surprised how good it could be. The legendary Crocus Behemoth, leader of Pere Ubu, was once a columnist. So that's cool. And they did a story about Dimentia 13 in 1991. Not the cover, though...
Also, Deborah Harper interviewed me for the Psych Journey podcast. Click here
and scroll down a bit to listen for yourself. She was very nice and asked some real good questions.
I did a talk in Ventura yesterday that went very well. Much better than I could have hoped for. My books all sold out! That's the first time that's ever happened. I'm starting to wonder if this new book will actually turn out to be popular...
I hit on something during the talk that I'd never thought of before it popped out of my mouth. This occasionally happens and it's very interesting when it does. My new book is, in part, about a lot of times when I stopped following the Buddhist precepts. And yet I always came back. And the reason was because when I stopped following the precepts things only ever became worse.
A lot of people present the precepts as a way to become holy or "pure." They're seen as ways to be more austere and clean, a straight arrow, like a Fifties guy with a crew-cut and a bow tie, less fun. But lately I've come to believe that what Buddha really wanted was to show us a way to live a life that is as fun as it possibly can be. All the ways society tells us fun is to be had are, in fact, wrong.
I'd never thought of it that way before. I'll probably expand on that theme for my next Suicide Girls piece, which is due up on March 16th.
Also, in other good news, I just received the only review of Zen Wrapped in Karma that really matters. This came in an e-mail from Nishijima Roshi, "By the way, thank you very much for your kindness to send me your valuable book Zen Wrapped In Karma Dipped In Chocolate. Reading it I feel very happy that your Buddhist thoughts are almost completely the same as mine fortunately. Therefore utilizing Dogen Sangha International, we can spread the True Buddhism, that is, the Buddhism as Realism, throughout the world. Therefore reading your book I have become very encouraged."
Yay!
