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An Interview with Noah Levine by Connie Hill

Noah Levine is the author of Dharma Punx and the son of Stephen Levine. He teaches Buddhist meditation classes and has a private practice as a psychotherapist. Noah is working on his second book, which is practice oriented and shares practical uses of meditation. Noah is dedicated to serve those of his generation who have a hard time relating to the teachings of baby-boomers like Ram Das or Jack Kornfield. I talked with Noah in May 2005.

Connie: You actually got started on your spiritual path when your father phoned you while you were in jail and said start meditating.

Noah: Yes. I was at a point in my life where in my own internal hopelessness I had tried everything else. I had rejected the spiritual stuff and come to a place of suicide-ality and hopelessness and was looking at spending a long time in prison. It was out of that pain that I was able to see meditation as a tool that I might want to use. 

C: Later in your book you talked about your father sending you his book One Year to Live and you taking that idea on as a practice for a year.

N: Yes, it was a wonderful and intense practice for me. It put a fire under my spiritual search. I got to see what I know and what I believe and to see that time to practice is precious and to not put anything off or leave anything unsaid or undone. A lot of forgiveness and a lot of exploration.

C: I noticed the word forgiveness often in that chapter, forgiving others, but also forgiving yourself.

N: For sure. A big part of practice is to forgive oneself for anything we are holding onto from the past. To learn from it and allow the healing to bring awareness and compassion to our pain in that process. I had to accept the fruits of practice and know that I was not going to be able to do it perfectly or be completely nonattached and to just be where I was at that time.

C: You did a lot of traveling that year. What were the highlights?

N: The year was dedicated to practice. One of the reasons I did so much traveling was that I can get so complacent in community and surrounded by the comfort of family and friends. Another reason that I decided to travel for most of that year was to face being alone and being no one and being out on the road by myself. This felt like an important practice at the time. There were so many levels of learning and healing and facing loneliness, facing the human condition. The whole year I was in and out of retreat. I’d do a retreat at a meditation center or ashram and then go and relax on a beach or travel to provide balance.

C: I loved the part where you took off and went with your mom, your sister and a friend to Costa Rica. After staying in places where your Mom wasn’t comfortable moving to a place on the other side of the country where she was comfortable. You said you gained a new acceptance of your mother.  

N: During that trip I clearly saw how we always wait for our parents to accept us rather than taking on the work of accepting our parents. You know that there is this one way street, they are the parents so they have to be the ones doing the work, rather than taking the responsibility as the child and saying this is my work too, to accept you as you are.

C: In your book I noticed that a lot of your friends have died from either overdosing or committing suicide. That’s a pretty painful. How did you deal with it?

N: I dealt with it the best I could at the time. Sometimes I dealt with it with anger and sometimes I was able to feel the grief of the loss.  After many years of practice after one of my best friends died, I  began to see that I had a bit of survivors guilt. Why them and not me? We weren’t so different. Why did I get to survive and have this life? I had committed to spiritual practice and few of them had and it was really spiritual practice that had saved my life. But, why did I get this grace of being willing to do spiritual practice? Finally, I just had to realize that “Why” is not the correct question. I needed to do as much acceptance as possible, feel the sadness of the loss, let the grief come through naturally rather than judge it. It inspired me to be of more service and become more committed to my practice. It’s one of the reasons I’ve committed to working with young people and trying to serve my generation out of a desire to help alleviate suffering.

C: How does your work differ from your dad’s?

N: Well, he has really focused on serving the death and dying needs over the past 30 years. That’s not my focus, although the teachings are not that different. At this point I tend to stick pretty closely to the teachings of Buddhism and my dad certainly is influenced by Buddha Dharma, but he is definitely more eclectic in his teachings and practices than I am.

C: When you come to the store in July your topic is the Path of Engaged Forgiveness and Compassion. What can a person expect?

N: We will do a guided meditation on forgiveness and meet ourselves with kindness and compassion. We may start with how we have all hurt other people.  We’ll look at the necessity for actively taking responsibility for the times when we have been unskillful or unconscious or our pain has been too great and it has spilled out on those around us through annoyance or violence. We’ll start with that place of taking responsibility and see that all harm comes from our pain or confusion. We’ll gain understanding and compassion out of our own personal responsibility. Then we can extend that understanding to those who have harmed us and begin to see forgiveness as possible. The key is separating the actor from the action.  We so often keep people locked in their actions from the past. The key to forgiveness is seeing the pain and suffering from which the harm came and then to have forgiveness for the actor not necessarily the action.

We can apply this exercise to ourselves as well, seeing how often we judge ourselves and do or say things that are harmful us. We can gain a true understanding that we’ve been doing the best we could.

C: Thank you, Noah.

Connie Hill works at New Renaissance Bookshop and is a local astrologer. She can be reached at 503-542-4330 ext. 1287 or gmnite@yahoo.com.