@@blackbird5634 I agree, I love it because I read a lot of Dogen and while very poetic it is also very dense. Brad put it in a more digestible format. My favorite chapter is “Why Gene Simmons is not a Zen Master Zen Master.”
After a lot of reflection, I've come to realize it's pretty harmful to just outright "preach" Zen. A practitioner should take the lessons they learn from Zen and simply apply it to their lives. Making people's lives better using Zen, not teaching Zen, like a school teacher will teach children the basics of science instead of how to teach science, even if they know much more than the students ever will. It's especially harmful to teach children to teach, because they don't know what they don't know. "Preaching" Zen only makes a lot of Zen practitioners who are confident they're "one with everything" and don't know what they don't know, don't know how to actually cope with stress, don't know how not to misinterpret nonself, stuff like that, and will just blab misleading information and wrong assumptions to everyone. In a way, Zen *is* the practice of coming to terms that you don't know what you don't know, instead of assuming you know everything. Preaching and teaching is all about becoming bigger, establishing more knowledge and power. Zen is kind of the opposite, and that flies over a lot of people's heads.
Thanks for making this video. My mother belongs to Soka Gakkai and they do their share of proselytising. I know they mean well, but to persuade one to follow their way itself makes one resistant to do it. I'm happy with my way, or being on the path to seeking my way, and happy with others finding or being at peace in their own way.
I'm sorry to say, but Soka Gakkai is a dangerous cult. You can look it up online, there are many survivor stories and books and reports explaining why they are a cult.
Great video! I often think about this topic. The practice is too hard for most people. Our Kwan Um retreats start at 4:45am and end at 9:45pm. Most people can’t do it. Not to mention the long chants and bowing practice.
I have to strongly disagree with your premise that offering retreats for free would attract people who aren't serious. Early on in my practice, when I was still a Zen person, I was probably around 20, had already had a kensho but didn't really understand what had happened. I really needed some guidance and had come out of a very abusive home and had no money and no support from family. It was only because Shasta Abbey offered retreats for free, (including the food), that I was able to access the Dharma at the time. In fact; I distinctly remember the day when the monks decided they weren't even going to charge for their books and decided to give away all their books for free, doing more printings as they could raise the money. I clearly remember the day they started bringing in books by the box-load into the guest house and piling them on the coffee table for free for anyone to take as many as they wished. This had a profound impact on me and those books and other free Dharma like tapes from the guest library were what enabled me to have a strong foundation in my early practice. In my experience the idea that "Americans won't take the Dharma seriously if it's free" is a huge misconception, and causes a lot of people to make retreats inaccessible to poorer Americans. The average American does not have hundreds or thousands of dollars lying around to go on retreats with. The Dharma is priceless, but so is the very air we breathe: and yet the air we breathe is free all around us. Something doesn't have to be rare or expensive to be valuable or appreciated. And I think it's largely that attitude of "charging for retreats", which is why Buddhism in America has largely remained an interest of upper middle class people and wealthy people, and not regular working Americans and blue collar people. Ordinary people living check to check cannot afford the rediculous fees that people charge for retreats. And it's one of the reasons why years later I feel very strongly about always being willing to give the Dharma away. I might charge for a book, but I would never charge someone money to learn from me directly.
If you can figure out how to run a retreat for free, let me know! I think it can only be accomplished by an organization that already has a lot of money (and where did they get that money...?)
@@HardcoreZen they did it by having non-profit legal church status, and buying cheap land in a rural area. And all the monks worked jobs until the mortgage was paid off. If you have a community of people, and everyone is living there and contributing to paying down the mortgage: it's fairly straightforward to pay it off. From there, they lived extremely frugally including recycling nails pulled from old wood to reuse for building projects. But yeah if you have a Sangha, it's pretty easy to buy a piece of property in a rural area and pay it off for a retreat center. You just need Sangha to help contribute. Most every Sangha that has the ability to offer retreats for free (including KCC here in Portland, Great Vow Zen monastery, etc.) have all followed the same formula. Be a church, have a community, buy some rural property, fundraise to pay it off. I mean I don't know how much equity you have in your house in LA, but if you sold it i would presume you would likely be able to buy some rural land somewhere.
@@HardcoreZen I also know people who do wilderness retreats where the group backpacks out to a remote lake or something and everyone brings their own food and camping gear, and they do a retreat in nature for a few days. If you can hike and have camping gear: you have a retreat!
proselytizers don't want to sell you anything, they want to buy your soul and life effort for a set of words and rituals. thankfully , in the zen school, we have no soul
Granted you may not be buying in the sense of necessarily giving money when it comes to thing like being a jehovah witness or a Later Day Saint but what you certainly giving them is a but in a seat which is a large part of what such people actually want.
Get your point. But aren't the mormons just "spreading the dharma"? Of course there is the church and you will probably have to make payments to it when u join but (as much as i dislike visits by such people) how else spread the dharma? Just for the people who come by themselves? Maybe more would become interested when they get in touch with it. I mean that as a real question, how to spread the dharma? I don't really talk to other people about buddhism being the only buddhist i know in a christian society and don't want to "lure" or indoctrinate anyone but on the other hand i see all the struggling of people in their lives and i always think they would do better if they would grapple (i just looked that word up, hope it fits) a bit with buddhism and meditation.
Hello, totally not zen related but I have a channel that gets f all views but if you have a total of 4000 hours viewed over the past year you will get some money for showing ads. Doesn't matter if the video has a low number of views as long as you passed that threshold any number of views will yield some moolah. For me that might only be £20 a month but I'm pretty sure it would be a substantialler amount for you. Not that I'm trying to ruin your non ads virtue 😂
*knock*
*knock*
"Have you accepted Dogen into you heart?"
u cant go one day round here without someone trying to sell a leather bound copy of the Shobogenzo
@@phil19888 My copy holds up a short leg on my kitchen table, and it has restored balance to my world!🤣🥰
😂
The main problem with selling zen, is that it has a short self life.
Ding!😂
Good one!
HahahaHAHAHA ! That was brilliant! :D
Key takeaway - it’s easier to become Dr. Strange than to be accepted by a Zen master
Thank you for your work Brad. Youre channel and books have been encouraging my practice for years now- peace from Richmond VA
Hardcore Zen is a pretty awesome book. 🤙🏻
It changed my life for the better because it includes a ''how to'' chapter on Zazen. I hadn't found that anywhere else.
@@blackbird5634 I agree, I love it because I read a lot of Dogen and while very poetic it is also very dense. Brad put it in a more digestible format. My favorite chapter is “Why Gene Simmons is not a Zen Master Zen Master.”
With Zen you're really bringing sand to the beach.
The word you are looking for is proselytize :)
After a lot of reflection, I've come to realize it's pretty harmful to just outright "preach" Zen. A practitioner should take the lessons they learn from Zen and simply apply it to their lives. Making people's lives better using Zen, not teaching Zen, like a school teacher will teach children the basics of science instead of how to teach science, even if they know much more than the students ever will. It's especially harmful to teach children to teach, because they don't know what they don't know. "Preaching" Zen only makes a lot of Zen practitioners who are confident they're "one with everything" and don't know what they don't know, don't know how to actually cope with stress, don't know how not to misinterpret nonself, stuff like that, and will just blab misleading information and wrong assumptions to everyone. In a way, Zen *is* the practice of coming to terms that you don't know what you don't know, instead of assuming you know everything. Preaching and teaching is all about becoming bigger, establishing more knowledge and power. Zen is kind of the opposite, and that flies over a lot of people's heads.
Not selling Zen because its a better way to attract people is still selling zen though...
Thanks for making this video. My mother belongs to Soka Gakkai and they do their share of proselytising. I know they mean well, but to persuade one to follow their way itself makes one resistant to do it. I'm happy with my way, or being on the path to seeking my way, and happy with others finding or being at peace in their own way.
I'm sorry to say, but Soka Gakkai is a dangerous cult. You can look it up online, there are many survivor stories and books and reports explaining why they are a cult.
Damn it Doug!
To paraphrase Megadeth, "Zen sells, but who's buying?"
Thank you for the videos, they make a difference to me and I firmly believe they help me live my life as a better version of myself! Thanks again
Great video! I often think about this topic. The practice is too hard for most people. Our Kwan Um retreats start at 4:45am and end at 9:45pm. Most people can’t do it. Not to mention the long chants and bowing practice.
I love the idea of Zen temples telling people to go away so much.
I have to strongly disagree with your premise that offering retreats for free would attract people who aren't serious. Early on in my practice, when I was still a Zen person, I was probably around 20, had already had a kensho but didn't really understand what had happened. I really needed some guidance and had come out of a very abusive home and had no money and no support from family. It was only because Shasta Abbey offered retreats for free, (including the food), that I was able to access the Dharma at the time. In fact; I distinctly remember the day when the monks decided they weren't even going to charge for their books and decided to give away all their books for free, doing more printings as they could raise the money. I clearly remember the day they started bringing in books by the box-load into the guest house and piling them on the coffee table for free for anyone to take as many as they wished. This had a profound impact on me and those books and other free Dharma like tapes from the guest library were what enabled me to have a strong foundation in my early practice.
In my experience the idea that "Americans won't take the Dharma seriously if it's free" is a huge misconception, and causes a lot of people to make retreats inaccessible to poorer Americans. The average American does not have hundreds or thousands of dollars lying around to go on retreats with. The Dharma is priceless, but so is the very air we breathe: and yet the air we breathe is free all around us. Something doesn't have to be rare or expensive to be valuable or appreciated. And I think it's largely that attitude of "charging for retreats", which is why Buddhism in America has largely remained an interest of upper middle class people and wealthy people, and not regular working Americans and blue collar people. Ordinary people living check to check cannot afford the rediculous fees that people charge for retreats. And it's one of the reasons why years later I feel very strongly about always being willing to give the Dharma away. I might charge for a book, but I would never charge someone money to learn from me directly.
If you can figure out how to run a retreat for free, let me know! I think it can only be accomplished by an organization that already has a lot of money (and where did they get that money...?)
@@HardcoreZen they did it by having non-profit legal church status, and buying cheap land in a rural area. And all the monks worked jobs until the mortgage was paid off. If you have a community of people, and everyone is living there and contributing to paying down the mortgage: it's fairly straightforward to pay it off. From there, they lived extremely frugally including recycling nails pulled from old wood to reuse for building projects. But yeah if you have a Sangha, it's pretty easy to buy a piece of property in a rural area and pay it off for a retreat center. You just need Sangha to help contribute. Most every Sangha that has the ability to offer retreats for free (including KCC here in Portland, Great Vow Zen monastery, etc.) have all followed the same formula. Be a church, have a community, buy some rural property, fundraise to pay it off.
I mean I don't know how much equity you have in your house in LA, but if you sold it i would presume you would likely be able to buy some rural land somewhere.
@@HardcoreZen I also know people who do wilderness retreats where the group backpacks out to a remote lake or something and everyone brings their own food and camping gear, and they do a retreat in nature for a few days. If you can hike and have camping gear: you have a retreat!
I try to support you by buying all of your books. How much of the list price goes to you?
Now I want to know what specific compromises you were making, and what compromises the big Zen centres were making.
proselytizers don't want to sell you anything, they want to buy your soul and life effort for a set of words and rituals. thankfully , in the zen school, we have no soul
Was that Karen Carpenter? I think my favorite Carpenters song is Goodbye to Love, mainly for the guitar solo.
Granted you may not be buying in the sense of necessarily giving money when it comes to thing like being a jehovah witness or a Later Day Saint but what you certainly giving them is a but in a seat which is a large part of what such people actually want.
Get your point. But aren't the mormons just "spreading the dharma"? Of course there is the church and you will probably have to make payments to it when u join but (as much as i dislike visits by such people) how else spread the dharma? Just for the people who come by themselves? Maybe more would become interested when they get in touch with it. I mean that as a real question, how to spread the dharma? I don't really talk to other people about buddhism being the only buddhist i know in a christian society and don't want to "lure" or indoctrinate anyone but on the other hand i see all the struggling of people in their lives and i always think they would do better if they would grapple (i just looked that word up, hope it fits) a bit with buddhism and meditation.
Hello, totally not zen related but I have a channel that gets f all views but if you have a total of 4000 hours viewed over the past year you will get some money for showing ads. Doesn't matter if the video has a low number of views as long as you passed that threshold any number of views will yield some moolah.
For me that might only be £20 a month but I'm pretty sure it would be a substantialler amount for you.
Not that I'm trying to ruin your non ads virtue 😂