I'll be on Suicide Girls radio tonight at 1 AM Pacific Time. Listen live on the Internet or later on the podcast. It should be interesting.
This morning I lead Zazen and spoke at the Dharma Punx/Against The Stream place on Melrose in Hollywood. That was fun as usual. Noah was even there, which he wasn't the last time I spoke.
So for my topic I chose to start out talking about a comment I saw in this blog. Yeah, I peeked in again. But I'm not making a habit of it. Why, you ask? Because I saw one comment that said Brad cannot stand criticism and will only be satisfied when every commenter is a sycophantic clone. So I went looking for some of this intelligent criticism and what do I see? A guy telling the world how Brad Warner is not a "real punk" (oh yeah?). He grew up in the "rich suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio" and did not suffer like Noah Levine did.
The rich suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio? Do you guys even read back the things you write before you shoot them off into cyberspace? Cuz Cleveland, Ohio is just rolling in cash, you know. As is Akron, whose suburbs I actually did grow up in (Akron is not the same city as Cleveland, please use Wikipedia for further clarification).
Noah seemed amused. I know I was. This is like the fourth or fifth time I've seen postings warning readers of this blog not to be fooled by phonies like me but to turn to the real deal, Noah Levine instead. I sure hope nobody is putting similar comments on Noah's forums urging people to go to me instead.
Anyhow, the point I was trying to make was that there is no Universal Scale of Suffering by which we can determine who has suffered more and who has suffered less. In fact this is a particularly insidious idea. The idea that some forms of suffering are more worthy of compassion than other forms of suffering is one of those absurd notions that makes people miserable.
I used to suffer from massive headaches on a regular basis. At the time it never occurred to me that they could be caused by stress and depression. After all, here I was in the "rich suburbs of Cleveland" -- actually living in a room at the Kent Zendo, working shit jobs to barely make the absurdly low rent. I'd never had leprosy. I wasn't dealing with a heroin addiction. I had not been abused by my parents. What could I possibly have to stress about? The only real stress was the kind that made for a good TV Movie of the Week. Or at least an Afterschool Special.
So I did not deal with my own stress and depression. And as a result I spread that stress and depression to everyone I met.
Don't judge your feelings by the standards of others.
Anyhow, it was a real good session and I got some good questions. Mainly the topic was about how Zen differed from Vipassana. I don't know much about Vipassana. So I just talked Zen.
Zen is at once the least popular practice in Buddhism in the US today and the most talked about one. Folks are terrified of Zen, and yet fascinated by it at the same time. But, really, it's not that scary. It's not very warm and fuzzy, I'll grant you that. But the scary stuff you've heard is mostly exaggeration.
I'll be there again on June 21st. See ya then!
