So I pared the contents of my storage space down to ten of what the US Postal Service calls "large" Priority Mail boxes. They're really not very large, if you ask me. The dimensions are 12 inches x 12 inches x 5 1/2 inches. Those of you reading in countries where they use the metric system, please do your own conversions. You can't even get record albums in them because the dimensions are just a hair too small.

I was able to do this because of the cooperation of my good friend Catie Braly. I gave her the authority to tell me to get rid of my stuff. I voluntarily submitted to her. And I paid her for this service. I told her that I'd split whatever I made from selling my stuff and give her half. She probably would have done it for free. But I would've felt shitty about that, especially since she's trying to get money together for her upcoming wedding.

Our arrangement resembled what happens when one hires a personal fitness trainer, a martial arts instructor, or when one works with a Zen teacher. You willingly submit to authority in order to do something that you find yourself unable to do alone.

In my case, I had a strong attachments to what was in that storage unit. It wasn't a lot of stuff compared to what most American males my age own. But it was stuff I'd spent years acquiring through long travels and through personal connections. There were things in that storage unit that certain nerdy people would just about kill for. Some of the items I managed to get my hands on while I worked at Tsuburaya Productions were made available exclusively to employees of the company. They trade for handsome amounts of cash among Japanese collectors.

Now I had to get rid of it and there was really no way to sell it to the people who would actually pay what it was worth. Imagine you have a vintage Mercedes in mint condition, it runs great and there's not even a speck of rust anywhere on it. But you're in a land where nobody drives cars or even knows what one is. So you have no choice but to donate it to an elementary school where they're going to gut it and put it out in the playground for the kids to climb all over. You can tell yourself "at least the kids are going to enjoy playing on it" all you want. Even so, you're still gonna feel kind of bad about it.

But, as anyone who's gotten rid of stuff can tell you, it also feels good to dump your junk even if it's good junk. If I didn't know I would feel better once this stuff was gone, I wouldn't have enlisted Catie's help to get rid of it.

I asked Catie to be ruthless and she was. Whenever I said, "I want to keep this," she would ask why. When I gave my reasons, she'd ask why again. With her help I was able to get rid of a lot of things I probably would otherwise have kept. We established a safe word "watermelon" which could be used if I really couldn't let go of some particular thing. I only remember using it once. That was when I found an old issue of Freakbeat magazine containing an interview with me during the days when I was making the Dimentia 13 albums.

In Zen training, you have to accept a certain amount of authority. I know I've been outspoken in the past about questioning authority. And I stand by what I said. But I feel that the real problem is belief in authority. When you hire a personal trainer, or ask a friend to help you get rid of stuff, you don't usually end up believing that your personal trainer or your friend is some kind of almost divine being who knows all and sees all. You view your trainer or your friend as an equal to whom you have provisionally granted a limited degree of power over you, usually in exchange for something.

Zen teaching relationships can also work the same way. You acknowledge that your teacher has some basis for being able to teach you. He's had training and experience. Perhaps he exhibits some kind of personal charm or charisma that attracted you to him in the first place. That's all fine.

But there is always a mutual exchange going on. Your Zen teacher is also learning from you. He isn't learning the same things as you're learning from him, or learning what he learns in quite the same way. But it's not a one way street. It's not some kind of mystical download from on high.

Continue reading here:
Hardcore Zen