Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate: A Trip Through Death, Sex, Divorce, and Spiritual Celebrity in Search of the True Dharma Book

2007 was not a good year for Brad Warner: his mom passed away, his dream-job went bust, a lot of people he'd studied Zen with suddenly hated him and his marriage fell apart. His third book, "Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate" is a memoir about how he experienced that year and how his Zen practice helped him go through it.

It is not Warner's best book, but that doesn't mean that it's not worth reading. I think that it was very important, and probably also quite cathartic for him to write this, to put his flaws out there, because the pressure of being a "religious authority figure" was probably starting to get to him in a bad way. But more importantly, for his readers, this is a very good reminder that slipping off course, losing your focus and making mistakes is not the end. You can fuck up, acknowledge your mess, clean it up, carry on and become a better person because you have learned from it.

One of the first things he mentions in this book is crucially important to all students of Buddhism: your teachers are human beings, which means they are flawed and occasionally, even if they try their very best, they fuck up. Warner doesn't use this as an excuse to justify some of the not-100% exemplary behavior he describes in the book: it's a real warning to help students tell the real teachers from the phony holier-than-thou ones. It's a warning against projecting unrealistic expectations on a teacher, and surrendering your power to that kind of person.

"Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate" is not really a teaching book like "Sit Down and Shut Up". The autobiographical parts are much longer, often painfully confessional. Warner sneaks some teachings and reminders in there, but mostly, he vents. He talks about how difficult it is do deal with a parent dying, with a marriage coming to a frustrating and sad end. He talks about the fact that while his Zen practice helped him cope better than he would have had of he hadn't had twenty years of zazen under his belt, it was still brutal and unpleasant. Zen practice makes it impossible for you to deny that you are responsible for the effects of your actions, so you tend to handle rough patches much more lucidly than when you are in a confused and unfocused state of mind, but loosing your mom to a degenerative disease is still a tragedy.

There are great moments of insight in this book, and while it is nowhere near as tight as his previous works, I still enjoyed reading "Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate" because while it is important to try our best every day, we also can't beat ourselves up if we slip and make a mess from time to time. What matters is not that we never makes mistakes, but rather how we deal with them, and this book is really about fucking up, cleaning up and moving forward.

One of the final chapters ("In Which I Vow to be an Asshole Forever") wraps up that shitty year of Warner's life with his realization that when something truly needs to be said or done, you should just do it and not give a fuck. You should behave morally towards everyone, but you shouldn't be afraid of others' judgement. Be careful but don't be timid, because things end. Jobs, marriages, lives. So the bottom line here is: sit zazen and live right here, right now.

For Brad Warner fans and people who'd like to know what it's like having real-world problems while trying to hold the Buddhist precepts.