Quick Take
- Narration: Brad Warner reading his own work is the only configuration this audiobook should exist in, his dry, self-aware delivery matches the book’s refusal to take itself entirely seriously even while addressing serious questions.
- Themes: Zen Buddhism and the concept of God, experiential faith versus doctrinal belief, the limits of language about the ineffable
- Mood: Intellectually provocative and oddly warm, like a long conversation with someone who has thought about this more than most
- Verdict: A book that will frustrate anyone wanting clean answers but reward anyone willing to sit with productive uncertainty about what God might actually mean.
I have been aware of Brad Warner for years without reading him, he occupies a specific corner of the Western Zen literature landscape that can seem, from a distance, unnecessarily provocative. The punk rock Zen teacher who wrote Hardcore Zen. The guy with the deliberately unsettling title about God. I finally listened to this one on a quiet Tuesday evening, prepared to be either annoyed or impressed, and ended up spending most of the following week thinking about a book I had expected to dismiss.
The title is the argument. There Is No God and He Is Always with You is not trying to be clever with the paradox, or rather, it is, but the cleverness is in service of something philosophically substantive. Warner’s thesis is that the concept of God in Western religion and the concept of reality in Zen Buddhism are not as opposed as they appear. The zazen practice, seated meditation, the foundation of Soto Zen, leads the practitioner to an encounter with something that functions exactly the way the word God is supposed to function, while looking nothing like any God that conventional religious frameworks offer.
Our Take on There Is No God and He Is Always with You
Warner’s credibility on this topic comes from an unusual biography. He was drawn to Buddhism specifically because he was looking for God and found Western religion inadequate to the search. He has spent three decades practicing Zen seriously while also working in the entertainment industry, playing bass in punk bands, writing publicly and sometimes provocatively about his experiences. He is not a pure academic, and he is not a guru. He is a practitioner who has thought very hard about a specific question and arrived at a position that he knows will unsettle almost everyone.
The position is roughly this: God is not a being who created the universe and intervenes in human affairs. God is the ground of being itself, the fact that anything exists at all, experienced directly in moments of genuine presence. This is not an original theological position; it has antecedents in Meister Eckhart, Paul Tillich, and various mystical traditions within both Western and Eastern thought. What Warner brings to it is a refusal to present the idea in the sanitized, spiritual-but-not-religious language that makes such arguments palatable to secular audiences without saying anything. He names what he is talking about with some precision, including the ways in which zazen can be understood as a practice for encountering what he chooses to call God.
Why Listen to This Audiobook
Warner narrating his own work is essential. His prose style is conversational, self-deprecating, and frequently funny in a way that deflates the pomposity that attaches to spiritual subject matter. The delivery is dry and unassuming, he sounds like someone who has spent years trying to explain something genuinely difficult without resorting to language that makes it sound like something easier than it is. One reviewer described it as an authentic voice, and that is accurate. You believe him because he does not sound like he is selling anything.
The seven-hour runtime is well-suited to the material. Warner does not overstay the argument. The book moves through the theological history he is drawing on, returns repeatedly to the personal practice that grounds his claims, and ends without the kind of triumphant resolution that would be dishonest to the subject. He knows that zazen does not solve the problem of God. He thinks it gives you a different relationship to the problem, which is not nothing.
What to Watch For in This Book
Readers who are already familiar with Warner’s writing, he has a dedicated following among Western Zen practitioners, may find this book covers terrain that his earlier work and blog have established. One reviewer noted that it is interesting but more of the same for regular readers. This is a fair observation. If you have not read Warner before, this is a good starting point; if you have read everything, the novelty factor is reduced.
The book also has a specific audience problem: it is too spiritual for committed atheists and too philosophically unorthodox for traditional religious believers. Warner is writing for people who exist in the genuine middle, who find pure materialism insufficient but cannot accept supernatural theism, who are drawn to practice but uncertain about what the practice is ultimately for. If that describes you, this book will feel like it was written directly at your situation. If it does not, you may find it talks past you.
Who Should Listen to There Is No God and He Is Always with You
Listeners with genuine interest in Zen Buddhism who have also grappled seriously with questions about God and ultimate reality will find this one of the more honest and original treatments of the intersection between those questions available in audio. Brad Warner is a genuine practitioner writing from experience rather than theory, and that makes his argument about what zazen teaches you about the ground of being more credible than a purely philosophical treatment would be.
Committed atheists who want their position reinforced, and religious believers who want their theology confirmed, should look elsewhere. This book is designed to complicate, not to comfort. That is its particular value.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need any background in Zen Buddhism to follow Brad Warner’s argument in this book?
A modest familiarity helps but is not required. Warner explains the practice of zazen and the basic structure of Soto Zen as he goes, and his writing style is accessible rather than technical. Listeners who have no prior exposure to Buddhism will spend slightly more time orienting to terminology, but the core argument is framed in terms general enough to follow without specialist knowledge.
Is this book more for people interested in Buddhism or more for people interested in theology?
Both, with the caveat that Warner is writing from within a Buddhist practice framework and using that framework to interrogate the Western concept of God rather than the other way around. Readers approaching from a theological background will find it more challenging than those approaching from a Zen perspective, but both groups will encounter genuinely unfamiliar ideas.
Does Warner’s self-narration add to or distract from the listening experience?
It adds considerably. His prose style depends on a dry, self-aware delivery that would be difficult to translate accurately through a professional narrator unfamiliar with his voice and register. The humor, the deliberately un-guru-like tone, and the authentic uncertainty that permeates the book all benefit from being read by the person who felt them.
How does this book compare to other Western Zen writers like Shunryu Suzuki or Pema Chodron?
Warner occupies a different register than either. Suzuki Roshi in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind is quieter and more aphoristic. Chodron is warmer and more therapeutic. Warner is more provocative and more explicitly engaged with Western intellectual frameworks, he is arguing with Western theology rather than offering an alternative to it, which gives his writing a distinct edge and a more contentious energy.
