Read

July/August 2005 Living Now
An Interview with Noah Levine

by Connie Hill

Noah Levine is the author of Dharma Punx and the son of Stephen Levine, noted author of the bestselling books Healing into Life and Death; A Year to Live and Who Dies?. 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 serving those of his generation who have a hard time relating to the teachings of baby-boomers like Ram Das or Jack Kornfield.

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.

Connie: 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.

Noah: 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.

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

Noah: For sure. A big part of practice is to forgive oneself for anything we are holding on to 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.

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

Noah: 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.

Connie: 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.

Noah: 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.

Connie: 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?

Noah: 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 survivor’s 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.

Connie: Thank you, Noah.

Noah Levine will be at New Renaissance on Wednesday, July 20 for a talk titled Path of Engaged Forgiveness & Compassion. Call 503-224-4929 go to www.newrenbooks.com for more info.

Connie Hill works at New Renaissance Bookshop and is a local astrologer. She can be reached at 971-244-0567 ext. 2 or gmnite@yahoo.com.