Brad Warner was born in Ohio in 1964. In 1983 he met Zen teacher Tim McCarthy and began his study of Zen while he was still the bass player of the hardcore punk band Zero Defex, whose big hit was the eighteen-second masterpiece “Drop the A-Bomb on Me!” In the 1980s he released five albums of psychedelic rock under the band name Dimentia 13 (that’s the way he spelled it), though Dimentia 13 was often a one-man band with Brad playing all the instruments. In 1993 he moved to Japan, where he landed a job with Tsuburaya Productions, the company founded by Eiji Tsuburaya, the man who created Godzilla. The following year Brad met Gudo Nishijima Roshi, who ordained him as a Zen monk and made him his dharma heir in 2000. He has written several books and just released a new one titled “The Other Side of Nothing: The Zen Ethics of Time, Space, and Being” (https://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Nothing-Ethics-Space/dp/1608688046)