Sometimes Zen Buddhists Are Fucking Morons

Today Brad Warner (a Zen teacher of some notoriety) wrote in his blog:

I saw a thing about the Second Amendment lately where someone was trying to say we had to be true to what the Founding Fathers intended. Why? That's the religious view of scripture right there. The Founding Fathers were not infallible. Their intentions may have been completely wrong. Or, more pointedly, their intentions may have been right but right for their time, not ours.

Statements like this are human idiocy at its worst and lowest and most idiotic.

You don't fuck with the Bill of Rights. And if you don't understand that, then you deserve to be enslaved. Literally. But you won't be. Why? Because most people have more sense than Brad Warner and realize that fundamental human rights are not a matter of "what is right for the times."

It really is a shame, in the literal sense that it is something that Americans should be ashamed of, that we had to wait almost another century after the first 10 Amendments before the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments were finally added to the Constitution to abolish the evil of slavery.

But as shameful as that is, it is even more shameful when any American today insists on looking at the Bill of Rights through the shit-colored lenses of moral relativism.

It is true that those who wrote the Bill of Rights were human beings, and, therefore, far from perfect. But they knew what the fuck they were talking about when they wrote the second amendment. These were people who had fought for their freedom (our freedom), arms in hand. And for that matter, those later Amendments that finally abolished slavery did not come about as a result of nonviolent protests and community dialoguing sessions, either.

Today of all days it is a time to celebrate the rights that are guaranteed in our Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and those other Amendments, especially the ones numbered 13, 14, and 15. Enshrined in the 14th Amendment are some sacred words now commonly referred to as "the equal protection clause":

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Those words provided the solid basis for Judge Vaughn Walker's historic ruling striking down California's ban on gay marriage.

Right and wrong do not change over time. It is true that at any given time, our understanding of right and wrong is woefully limited. But when the clouds part and we are able to catch a glimpse, what we see is true, and that truth is not some cultural construct to be revisited, re-evaluated and deconstructed later on.

In the interests of full disclosure I am, among other things, something of a Zen Buddhist myself. In fact, the particular Zen tradition that I am part of traces itself back to the great 16th century Korean Zen Master, Sosan Taesa (aka Cheongheo Hyujeong) -- who is most famous for organizing a guerilla army composed of Buddhist monks to defend Korea against the invasion by Japan in 1592.

The last fucking thing that American Buddhism needs is morons applying new-agey bullshit relativistic "reasoning" masquerading as Dharma, to basic issues of fundamental rights and freedoms.

Otherwise, I do not have any strong feelings about that subject.