Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
TRIP: So if I were to ask you what Zen is, and we'll start off with
that, because you're a little bit Zen, you'd say it's a trick question.
How so?
BRIAN EZZELL: Well Zen is, as I've said in one posting, Zen is
not Zen. To try to explain it, it's almost better off to be silent,
because Zen, if you get down to the root of it, it's a direct pointing
to that which is. And if you used words to try to explain it, then
you find yourself always missing the mark, you never hit it directly
on, because there is no word for what Zen really is. Bodhidharma,
who was the first patriarch of Zen, maybe there's some different
groups of Zen who might think of somebody else, but
Bodhidharma is pretty much the one who's considered to be the
first patriarch of Zen. He didn't believe in reading a lot of
scripture, or to do a lot of talking, and using a lot of words. Zen
was always a direct transfer of the mind, if you will, almost on a
telepathic level, which I thought was really… you don't hear that in
other religions in some ways, you just don't hear about a direct
transfer of this. All that a teacher can really do is you can't talk
about it; you can't say well that's it right there, and go for it. You
have to go through life and keep bouncing around until it happens.
And it helps when you have a teacher who can kind of help you out
with that.
John was not what you call, he was not a… he didn't go around
saying that he was the Zen master, he said, "I'm just me". And he
was always something different for everybody, but he was always
just himself. But he never pointed to his spirituality or to God. He
never said this is what you need to go towards, he just said, "Just
be you, speak your Truth". And of course in the beginning you
don't really know what that is, you just have to continue to work at
it, so to speak, until you finally practically just give up [Laughs].
And then you find out that just being is simply enough.
WIZARD: Yes.
TRIP: Let me ask you about a little point of confusion for me. On
your website, and I'm going to go to your website a lot because
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