Brad Warner's latest Zen memoir

Brad Warner, Zen monk and author.

Photo: Svetlana Dekic

Sweating through a week-long retreat, Zen monk Brad Warner fantasized about cutting his ankle tendon with a hoe just to have an excuse to leave. But he sticks with it and writes about the experience in his new book Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, which he hopes will destroy “once and forever any myths about what Zen masters [are] or should be.” Coming after Hardcore Zen and Sit Down and Shut Up, Warner’s latest stream-of-consciousness Zen memoir is the tale of a year in which he lost his mother, grandmother, wife and job. He writes of getting stoned, botching several solemn ceremonies and having an affair with a younger student. Yet the former bass player with ’80s punk rock band Zero Defex recounts his story with such blunt humility that you somehow end up trusting him, even when he writes, “You’re just like me, an asshole. Seriously. A complete asshole. You have no idea what you are or what you are supposed to be doing.”

Warner rather offhandedly proceeds to tell you what, according to Zen teachings, you should be doing. Wise words. But before things get too heavy, man, Warner is back to describing what a mess his life was in 2007. You hear about an agonizing cross-country road trip with his dying mom, his struggles with his crazy bosses at a Japanese monster film company, a week of crazy love-making with a much younger woman at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and the time he showed up for a Zen retreat in an Invasion of the Saucer Men T-shirt.

In the end, Warner, who blogs for softcore porn site Suicide Girls and has been called a “porno Buddhist,” repackages the dharma in a way any non-conformist could love. At the same time, underneath the bad boy persona, there’s a sincere message. “Enlightenment has to be practiced,” he writes. It’s “not a cool experience you have. It’s not like that acid trip you took at Burning Man.” In this wild trip of a book, Warner literally and metaphorically lifts his monk’s robes to show the real man underneath. By so doing, he shows that any real man—or woman—could be a monk.

A glimpse beneath the robes