Noah Levine > Quotes

“Waking up is not a selfish pursuit of happiness, it is a revolutionary stance, from the inside out, for the benefit of all beings in existence.”
― noah levine

“It's easy to hate and point out everything that is wrong with the world; it is the hardest and most important work in one's life to free oneself from the bonds of fear and attachment.”
― Noah Levine, Dharma Punx: A Memoir

“Sitting still is a pain in the ass.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“The truth is, going against the internal stream of ignorance is way more rebellious than trying to start some sort of cultural revolution.”
― Noah Levine, Dharma Punx: A Memoir

“The inner revolution will not be televised or sold on the Internet. It must take place within one's own mind and heart.”
― Noah Levine, Dharma Punx: A Memoir

“God has abandoned you. Fear does not serve you. Your heart has betrayed you. Only the music can guide you.”
― Noah Levine

“We are born into a realm of constant change. Everything is decaying. We are continually losing all that we come in contact with. Our tendency to get attached to impermanent experiences causes sorrow, lamentation and grief, because eventually we are separated from everything and everyone we love. Our lack of acceptance and understanding of this fact makes life unsatisfactory.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Like most people who decide to get sober, I was brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. While AA certainly works for others, its core propositions felt irreconcilable with my own experiences. I couldn't, for example, rectify the assertion that "alcoholism is a disease" with the facts of my own life.
The idea that by simply attending an AA meeting, without any consultation, one is expected to take on a blanket diagnosis of "diseased addict" was to me, at best, patronizing. At worst, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it doesn't encourage people to turn toward and heal the actual underlying causes of their abuse of substances.
I drank for thirteen years for REALLY good reasons. Among them were unprocessed grief, parental abandonment, isolation, violent trauma, anxiety and panic, social oppression, a general lack of safety, deep existential discord, and a tremendous diet and lifestyle imbalance. None of which constitute a disease, and all of which manifest as profound internal, mental, emotional and physical discomfort, which I sought to escape by taking external substances.
It is only through one's own efforts to turn toward life on its own terms and to develop a wiser relationship to what's there through mindfulness and compassion that make freedom from addictive patterns possible. My sobriety has been sustained by facing life, processing grief, healing family relationships, accepting radically the fact of social oppression, working with my abandonment conditioning, coming into community, renegotiating trauma, making drastic diet and lifestyle changes, forgiving, and practicing mindfulness, to name just a few. Through these things, I began to relieve the very real pressure that compulsive behaviors are an attempt to resolve.”
― Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction

“Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the confused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were wonce the creation myths of ancient cultures, have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Everything is impermanent. Every physical and mental experience arises and passes. Everything in existence is endlessly arising out of causes and conditions. We all create suffering for ourselves through our resistance, through our desire to have things different than the way they are - that is, our clinging or aversion.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“...I didn't feel like there was anything incompatible with my love of gangster rap and my spiritual aspirations.”
― Noah Levine, Dharma Punx: A Memoir

“Happiness is closer to the experience of acceptance and contentment than it is to pleasure. True happiness exists as the spacious and compassionate heart's willingness to feel whatever is present.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Forgiveness is not just a selfish pursuit of personal satisfaction or righteousness. It actually alleviates the amount of suffering in the world. As each one of us frees ourselves from clinging to resentments that cause suffering, we relieve our friends, family, and community of the burden of our unhappiness. This is not a philosophical proposal; it is a verifiable and practical truth. Through our suffering and lack of forgiveness, we tend to do all kinds of unskillful things that hurt others. We close ourselves off from love, for example, out of fear of further pains or betrayals. This alone—a lack of openness to the love shown to us—is a way that we cause harm to our loved ones. The closed heart lets no one in or out.”
― Noah Levine, The Heart of the Revolution: The Buddha's Radical Teachings on Forgiveness, Compassion, and Kindness

“The greatest satisfaction comes not from chasing pleasure and avoiding pain, but from the radical acceptance of life as it is, without fighting and clinging to passing desires.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“We become attached to each pleasant thought, feeling, taste, smell, and sound. But because everything is impermanent, we’re craving and clinging to fleeting experiences. Pleasure never lasts long enough; we can never sustain enough pleasure to satisfy the cravings. Suffering is the inevitable outcome of clinging to experiences that are unsustainable. Each moment of attachment or clinging creates some level of suffering in our lives as we grieve the loss of pleasure. What we often forget is that we have the power and ability simply to let go, and each moment of letting go is an act of mercy. The subversive act of nonclinging is an internal coup d’état.”
― Noah Levine, The Heart of the Revolution: The Buddha's Radical Teachings on Forgiveness, Compassion, and Kindness

“The body breathes by itself. The mind thinks by itself. Awareness simply observes the process without getting lost in the content.”
― Noah Levine, Dharma Punx: A Memoir

“While we are in recovery we need to be able to strike a balance between not allowing our ego to do all the talking and not letting our low self-esteem to only present what is wrong with us.”
― Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction

“Everything is unfolding based on causes and conditions. Our happiness or suffering is dependent on how we relate to the present moment. If we cling now, we suffer later. If we let go and respond with compassion or friendliness, we create happiness and well-being for the future.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Finally we are being told the truth: life isn’t always easy and pleasant. We already know this to be true, but somehow we tend to go through life thinking that there is something wrong with us when we experience sadness, grief, and physical and emotional pain. The first truth points out that this is just the way it is. There is nothing wrong with you: you have just been born into a realm where pain is a given.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Spiritual revolutionaries must be committed not to what is easiest, but to what is most beneficial to themselves and the world.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“We must not confuse letting go of past injuries with feeling an obligation to let the injurers back into our life. The freedom of forgiveness often includes a firm boundary and loving distance from those who have harmed us. As my father likes to say, "We can let them back into our hearts without ever letting them back into our house.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“We must do away with any shred of denial, minimization, justification, or rationalization. To recover, we must completely and totally understand and accept the truth that addiction creates suffering.”
― Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction

“When we really keep in the forefront of our thoughts that our intention in this life is to recover and be free, then being of service, practicing meditation, and doing what we need to do to get free becomes the only rational decision. This takes discipline, effort, and a deep commitment. It takes a form of rebellion, both inwardly and outwardly, because we not only subvert our own conditioning, we also walk a path that is totally countercultural. The status quo in our world is to be attached to pleasure and to avoid all unpleasant experiences. Our path leads upstream, against the normal human confusions and sufferings.”
― Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction

“We all know that rainbows are temporary optical illusions based on the factors of sunlight, moisture, and heat. The environment creates each rainbow like the mind creates a self. Both creations are relatively real, in that we can genuinely experience them temporarily; but just as the factors that created the illusion (whether rainbow or self) arose, so will they also pass. There is no permanent self; there is no permanent rainbow. It is not true to say that there is no self at all or that everything is empty or illusory, but it is true that everything is constantly changing and that there is no solid, permanent, unchanging self within the process that is life. Everything and everyone is an unfolding process.”
― Noah Levine, The Heart of the Revolution: The Buddha's Radical Teachings on Forgiveness, Compassion, and Kindness

“We would all say that deep down, all we want is to be happy. Yet we don’t have a realistic understanding of what happiness really is. Happiness is closer to the experience of acceptance and contentment than it is to pleasure.”
― Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction

“When we pay attention to life, it is easy to recognize that every action has a consequence: when we cling, we suffer; when we act selfishly or violently, we cause suffering for ourselves or others. This is the teaching of karma: positive actions have positive outcomes; negative actions have negative outcomes.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“With mindfulness we have the choice of responding with compassion to the pain of craving, anger, fear and confusion. Without mindfulness we are stuck in the reactive pattern and identification that will inevitably create more suffering and confusion.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Renunciation is not about pushing something away, it is about letting go. It's facing the fact that certain things cause us pain, and they cause other people pain. Renunciation is a commitment to let go of things that create suffering. It is the intention to stop hurting ourselves and others.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“The cause of our suffering has always been our reaction to the thoughts, feelings, cravings, and circumstances of our lives. The cause of our addictions has always been the indulgence in the behaviors or substances.”
― Noah Levine, Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction

“The path of the spiritual revolutionary is a long-term and gradual journey toward awakening. If you are looking for a quick fix or easy salvation, turn back now, plug back into the matrix, and enjoy your delusional existence. This is a path for rebels, malcontents, and truth seekers. The wisdom and compassion of the Buddha is available to us all, but the journey to freedom is arduous. It will take a steadfast commitment to truth and, at times, counterinstinctual action. You have at your disposal”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries