Letters to a Dead Friend about Zen

Brad Warner writes his first letter about Zen to his friend Marky at a sleepy pizza parlor in rainy Hamburg, Germany, the night he's learned that Marky has died. A childhood friend who became the drummer of Brad's first punk band in Wadsworth, Ohio, Marky died at age 48. Overcome with sadness, Brad is about to speak to a group of Zen students and it's the last thing he wants to do. So he begins writing his friend about his life as a Zen teacher and all the things he wished he had hold told his friend before he died. He feels compelled to reexamine the practice he's devoted his life to and explain why it provided him a lifeline in facing a difficult world. In wide-ranging letters, he explores grief, attachment, the afterlife, suicide, religion vs. philosophy, what different schools of Buddhism agree and disagree on, and what intuition really is. Throughout, Warner's distinctive voice brings humor and real-life experience to the sometimes stuffy world of Zen, as he renews his unrelenting search for truth at the expense of orthodoxy. "I'm not interested in Buddhism," Warner tells Marky. "I'm interested in what is true."