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    • On Suffering and Desire

      An excerpt from Letters to a Dead Friend About Zen by Brad Warner

      As long as you have a goal that has not yet been met, you suffer. There is dissonance between you as you are right now and you as you think you’ll be once your desire is met. You feel incomplete. It’s like being hungry. You think you need to accumulate or acquire whatever you desire in order to complete yourself.

      But you’re wrong if you think satisfying a desire will complete you. You are complete as you are right now — no matter what you think you lack. It’s not that your life couldn’t improve if you got that thing you want. Maybe it could. And maybe you really do need to acquire whatever that object might be. More than likely, though, if you examine it clearly, you’ll see that you don’t really need that object after all. Still, even when you do need whatever it is, that isn’t the problem.

      The problem is when you allow the idea that fulfilling a desire will make you happy to dominate your experience. The bare fact that you have desires and goals is not a problem in itself. It’s perfectly normal. You couldn’t rid yourself of them if you tried. So there’s no point in trying.

      When practicing zazen, you put your desires aside. Any idea you have about wanting your practice to be anything other than what it actually is, is just another thought. It’s no more worthy of attention than, say, a random thought about pink potato chips or suddenly remembering the name of your second-grade teacher. As you would with any other thought, you put aside the thought that your practice ought to be clearer, calmer, more insightful, or whatever you think it should be.

      Desires are just thoughts that occur in our brains. Some are useful, some aren’t. What messes us up is the way we identify with our desires. We have a desirous thought, and then we attempt to own that thought. And because it is now my desire, I think I must do something to satisfy it.

      Once you learn to stop this process of identifying yourself with your thoughts, you find that desires don’t really have much of a hold on you. They’re just more thoughts your brain generates. Just more brain secretions.

      According to a scientific study I once read, we have around fifty thoughts each minute. I’m not sure how they tabulated that. But I’ve watched my own brain do its thing during meditation long enough to see that the number of thoughts I generate throughout the day must run into the millions.

      Most of these thoughts we simply ignore. We barely notice them at all. They’re subtle and fleeting. Other thoughts are a bit more concrete and stick around a while longer. Yet we still dismiss them.

      Some thoughts appear to be tagged for immediate dismissal by some sort of habit-based mechanism in the brain. These are our supposedly “evil” thoughts, the thoughts we’ve been taught since childhood are not to be allowed. Each one of us has a different set of these. But we all have them. Sometimes if we become aware of such thoughts, we get deeply disturbed by the fact that they even appear in our minds.

      But we shouldn’t, because the mere fact that such “evil” thoughts appear in the mind doesn’t mean anything in and of itself. The brain is just firing away, doing what it needs to do, and some of that random activity is perceived as thought. As long as we don’t act on the kinds of thoughts we know we shouldn’t act on, we’re fine. I mean, it’s probably not a good idea to linger too long on the worst of our thoughts. But it’s not a big deal just to have them.

      Other thoughts, though, are attractive. When they appear in our minds, we begin to play with them, like a little kid playing with a lump of dirt. We manipulate them, we caress them, we pull them apart and put them together in new ways. And these thoughts often turn into desires and goals.

      All we need to do is learn how to allow such thoughts to dissipate and vanish the way we allow most of our other thoughts to dissipate and vanish. Which is easier said than done.

      When we identify with these thoughts, that is, when we imagine that something called “me” is generating these thoughts, that’s when we get into trouble. One of the key ways we define who we are is to state what we desire. For example, I’m Brad Warner and I want to be a bestselling author. What I want is, to a large extent, who I am.

      So we fear that if we were to let go of our desires, we would be letting go of who we are.

      But I’ve found that this really isn’t the case. I’ve discovered, through a long and often very difficult meditative practice, that I am not my desires at all. I can let them go — all of them — and still retain my core being.

      When you do zazen, you sit there and you meet your desires moment by moment. And you don’t do anything at all to satisfy even the easiest ones to satisfy. You’d rather be checking Facebook, but you don’t. You want to scratch, but you don’t. Or at least you put it off for a while. You want this meditation session to be full of peaceful feelings and bliss, but you stick with it even when it’s full of conflict and distractions. You just sit still.

      This usually causes desire to redouble its efforts. Rather than getting more blissful and full of peace, you might get positively enraged. It’s not an easy practice, however simple it seems. It never was. Not for anyone.

      This is one of the reasons why methods that are advertised as quick and easy ways of experiencing spiritual bliss or achieving altered states of awareness are ultimately damaging and a colossal waste of time and effort.

      Achieving spiritual bliss and altered states of awareness are just more ways of giving in to desire. Your desire for bliss or altered states is satiated for a little while, but then it comes back again even stronger, and you have to make even greater efforts to achieve more bliss or states even more altered than the ones you’ve achieved, or else simply suffer for the lack of them. This is how the folks who sell those methods of meditation keep you coming back for more, by the way.

      But bliss will always make you feel like shit after a while.

      When people come to meditation because they want bliss, they generally want mind-blowing and spectacular experiences. And those really do sometimes happen to people who meditate. But they’re actually kind of a problem. This is because they can’t last forever; they cannot be permanent.

      Brad Warner is the author of Letters to a Dead Friend about Zen and numerous other titles including It Came from Beyond Zen, Don’t Be a Jerk, and Hardcore Zen. A Soto Zen teacher, he is also a punk bassist, filmmaker, and popular blogger who leads workshops and retreats around the world. He lives in Los Angeles where he is the founder and lead teacher of the Angel City Zen Center. Visit him online at www.hardcorezen.info.

      Excerpted from the book Letters to a Dead Friend About Zen. Copyright ©2019 by Brad Warner. Printed with permission from New World Library.

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    • Double Vision: Supporting Our Troops in the Afterlife
      memories

      I’m a long-time high school teacher and, sadly, one of my former students was a soldier killed in the war in Iraq some months ago. I am psychically sensitive and have had encounters with spirits on a few occasions throughout my life. This young man came to me not long after he was killed, and he still shows up now and then. I sense his presence and his emotional turmoil but I don’t know what he wants from me. I feel he’s not at peace and would like any advice you may have on how to help him move on. Thanks for your wonderful work!

       – L.

      Astrea:

      Day after day I’m visited by all the young people (not just Americans) who have died fighting this war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of them are barely 18 years old and volunteered for service because they strongly believed that their country was doing the right thing. Many were just citizens of these war-torn countries.

      The warriors among them believed they were doing something to make all people safer from attack by enemies in the future. Now that they’re in another dimension, they’re shocked and upset that their deaths seem to mean nothing.

      Many of them don’t seem to know where they are. Because they died so young and so suddenly, they’re lost and confused. The worst for me is how they beg me to contact their loved ones and ask them not to forget about them.

      Many of them feel that no one cares for them at all. Time and time again, I hear Don’t forget me, and Tell everyone that I love them. Every time the news comes on, I’m bombarded with their sweet faces and voices.

      What can we do to help? They tell me to pray for peace in my own way every day. They say to pray that their families are safe, cared for and protected. They ask to be sent on into the light that they see but can’t quite reach, so I pray for that too.

      I was at a loss for more until a few weeks ago. Then a young soldier from Tennessee who was killed sometime last year came to me and asked me to write letters to living soldiers. She told me that they need remembering too.

      We can be against all war but still reach out to our brave warriors. My mother told me that during World War II, she and her friends each wrote 10 letters a week addressed to any U.S. soldier.

      Due to terrorist concerns, the government won’t deliver mail unless it’s properly addressed to a real person, but we can always ask around for names or contact a military chaplain or the Red Cross. I imagine receiving mail addressed to them personally would mean more anyway.

      The young woman who died serving this country assures me that the love and support of the people at home means so much to them. She says this will even help the spirits waiting to cross into the light. We need not comment on the war to connect with the young people all over the world who are caught up in it.

      Readers, please join me in writing to young soldiers. Just one letter can make a tremendous difference. For those who died in service to their countries, and for those serving in the military now, I offer up a sincere prayer for peace.

      *****

      Susyn:

      When someone special touches our lives, it’s only natural to want to acknowledge and connect with them. This is the case with the young man you mentioned, and I believe he’s coming to you for some very important reasons.

      Besides wanting to acknowledge that you taught him so much more than you probably realize, he does have important information he wants you to pass on to the students you are teaching now. He knows you have a great influence over these young minds. Your ability to exemplify and teach them about honor, integrity and honesty make you the best person to pass his message on.

      He says he willingly chose to serve his country but feels he was misled or betrayed by the powers that be, and he is highly concerned that young people his age might follow in his footsteps. He simply asks that you continue to encourage your students to do more research and soul-searching before making such a decision without all the facts, like he did.

      He also admits to being somewhat of a pain in your class, and he wants to apologize for that. He says you were instrumental in teaching him that you would give him your attention without his usual antics, so that behavior wasn’t really productive.

      Now that you have gotten the message, he will get ready to move into the light and on to his next tour of duty as he jokingly calls it. Here is a ritual you can use to help him move to the next level:

      Gather three purple candles, three purple gemstones, and wear the color purple, as it represents the spiritual realms and will create an ideal atmosphere for this transition.

      Light the candles and call him in by name. Once you feel his presence, you can formulate a request to the universe to open a spiritual portal and allow him to pass through. Filling in the blanks with his name, your words might go something like this:

      _______ and I request that a spiritual portal be opened. _______ is ready now to move into the light and continue on his path. All his work here is done, and we ask for a smooth and speedy transition. I bless you and send you into the light, _______, and will spread your message here on earth.

      You shouldn’t have any more visits after that, but if you do, they will be from a more centered, balanced, spiritual aspect of him.

      Thanks for your letter and your concerns. We all struggle with what the war is doing to our friends, family and children. In your own special way, you can counteract some of the tragedy of the war, which will bring great peace not only to your student but to countless others as well.

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