Common Ground18 December 2004
December 2004
Say Yes to Meditation
by Mona Ausubel
Noah Levine was 7 when he first smoked pot. He was drinking at 8, doing acid at 11, speed at 13, and heroin at 16. Deep in the Santa Cruz drug and punk scenes, Levine got arrested for numerous infractions. During one of his stints in Juvenile Hall his father encouraged him to meditate. Noah recalls sitting in his cell, closing his eyes and counting his breaths. As he did so, he remembers feeling his fear slip away. Afterwards, through a twelve-step program and study with Buddhist teachers — including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Norman Fischer, and Thich Nhat Hanh — Levine began to steer his life away from drugs and violence.
But this is not the picture of a monk on a mountaintop. “I see spiritual practice as a form of rebellion,” insists Levine. As he writes in his recent book Dharma Punx, “To some extent, the whole punk movement is based on the Buddha’s first noble truth: the truth of suffering and the dissatisfactory nature of the material world.” For Noah, being in the mosh pit and sitting zazen are not so different. “It’s the same energy, the same willingness to do whatever you need to survive, but it’s turning it inward,” he says. “With meditation, my rebellion turned into an inner revolution.”
Now 32 and living in New York, Levine continues to take his work into the justice system through his nonprofit, The Mind Body Awareness Project. He finds that the inmates respond to the fact that he is painted with tattoos. “They can tell that I am from the same world, not some white do-gooder trying to save them.” He pitches the idea of meditation to them as an act of courage. “It’s easy to sit back and laugh, but it’s hard to sit still and pay attention — to face the realities of the heart and mind.” He notes that some inmates walk away, but many stay and take refuge in the practice, finding that it’s the first time their heads have been clear in a long time.
Noah also works with the wider public, leading weekly workshops and retreats. Although he is now a practicing psychotherapist, he still goes to punk shows. “What this is all about, what I’m really doing, is teaching in the community. Trying to introduce Buddhism to people in their teens, 20s, and 30s who think it is just an Asian mystical thing, a hippie peace and love ethic. I’m saying ‘No, these are practical, applicable tools for our world.’ We’re taking meditation out of the white middle class and onto the streets.”
