short review of Brad Warner's "It Came From Beyond Zen"

If some enterprising publisher of a popular line of introductory texts wants to put out a "Dogen for Dummies" I nominate Brad Warner as the author of choice.  Of course, that book would have to compete with this one and its companion volume, "Don't be a Jerk," so perhaps it won't happen.

That's a shame, too, because in this second volume of his deep dive on Dogen, "It Came From Beyond Zen," Brad has written a fine introductory text for those of us who want to know more about the monk who started Soto Zen Buddhism, but don't or can't wade through the mostly scholarly tomes devoted to the subject. 

My bias will be stated right up front here: I believe Brad Warner is one of the best voices writing about Zen Buddhism today and I wish he were better known than he is.  I've practiced in this particular subgroup of the larger Zen world for not quite two decades.  I've attended one week-long group sitting with Brad in Atlanta more than ten years ago, so I've met him but I don't know him and he wouldn't remember me at all.

Brad is maybe less well known than other more flashy or controversial Zen teachers because he isn't flashy or controversial.  My impression, limited though it is, is that he's largely as he appears in his books: nerdish and knowledgeable, and very relatable.  His silly jokes and punk rock references mask a serious intellect.  This is after all a man who has been sitting Zazen for decades.  His knowledge of Japanese (he lived and worked there for years) gives him an insider's track when trying to explain Dogen, whose writing is nearly incomprehensible at times.

"It Came From Beyond Zen" continues Brad's paraphrase of Dogen's writings.  It's not a translation, though Brad references several standard ones throughout, but more a paraphrase, taking medieval Chinese and Japanese and recasting it in contemporary American English and we are all richer for Brad's hard work.  in the past I've banged my head against two different translations of Dogen, leaving me more puzzled than enlightened, and I gave up after maybe a week of trying to understand the Nishijama/Cross version.  It was obvious that Dogen was important, but it was impossible to grasp what he was saying.

Not so with this text.  Brad has done most of the heavy lifting for us.  Don't think this is a fun or fast read; it's not.  But Brad's prose gives us a sense of what Dogen might say if he popped up today and spoke colloquial English.  We'd still think he was weird, but we'd probably get the gist, or at least enough to want more.

If you are a Zen practitioner, if you know who Dogen is but not what he said, if you just want to read a damned fine bit of scholarship written in an unscholarly style, buy this book.