Speaker 1: It's actually quite normal to feed the bad wolf. That's
Speaker 1: actually the norm that our body, and our world and
Speaker 1: our society is based on these sort of greed, hatred,
Speaker 1: delusion tendencies. Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Our guest today is Noah Levine, a
Speaker 1: Buddhist teacher, author, and counselor. He's the author of three books,
Speaker 1: Dharma Punks, Against the Stream, and the Heart of the Revolution.
Speaker 1: He's also the founder of Against the Stream Buddhist meditation
Speaker 1: center that has branches all across America. His new book
Speaker 1: is Refuge Recovery, which provides a Buddhist approach to recovery
Speaker 1: from substance abuse. Let's hear the interview. I know, I
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you happy to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're happy to be here. Also, we're in your Against
Speaker 1: the Stream Meditation Center here in in Los Angeles, so
Speaker 1: it's a pleasure to be here and to meet you.
Speaker 1: Our podcast is based on the old parable of two
Speaker 1: wolves that I know that you know, where there's a
Speaker 1: grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life,
Speaker 1: there's two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which revery sin things like kindness and bravery and love,
Speaker 1: and the others a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: hatred and greed and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks, and he says, grandfather, well, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to just start off by asking you how that
Speaker 1: parable applies to your life and the work you do here. Um, well,
Speaker 1: applies to my life in a lot of ways, and
Speaker 1: on some level, the first half of my life I
Speaker 1: was feeding the you know wolf of addiction and crime
Speaker 1: and violence and kind of selfish behavior, self centered, fear
Speaker 1: based behavior. And when I got into recovery and started
Speaker 1: practicing meditation, that was the kind of beginning of turning
Speaker 1: away from belief and practice of feeding the negative wolf
Speaker 1: and the greed and hatred and delusion and starting to
Speaker 1: feed and train my mind my heart towards kindness and
Speaker 1: compassion and forgiveness and wisdom through mindfulness practice. So personally,
Speaker 1: of course, it's been the huge change in my life
Speaker 1: has been absolutely this parable around what am I feeding,
Speaker 1: what am I practicing, what am I believing in? What
Speaker 1: am I doing? And um in the teachings that I,
Speaker 1: you know, came to settle in a Buddhist terravant and
Speaker 1: Buddhist the Southern school of Buddhism's fitting so well with
Speaker 1: you know, when I started studying and having come from
Speaker 1: a background of rebellion and kind of eighties punk culture,
Speaker 1: and I found that the Buddha said, this path goes
Speaker 1: against greed, against hatred, against delusion, And I feel like
Speaker 1: this fits really well with the parable is he's saying,
Speaker 1: you know, there is all of this norm it's actually
Speaker 1: quite normal to feed the bad wolf, that that's actually
Speaker 1: the norm that our body and our world and our
Speaker 1: society is based on these sort of greed, hatred, delusion tendencies,
Speaker 1: and that in order to awaken we have to go
Speaker 1: against that, we have to turn towards kindness and compassion
Speaker 1: and uh non great generosity and loving kindness and developing
Speaker 1: wisdom by training the mind. So in that way, I
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, what I teach is very much
Speaker 1: about um. I think maybe even in Buddhism there's a
Speaker 1: little bit more like with this parable of feeling like
Speaker 1: the good wolf is actually the runt of the litter.
Speaker 1: That it's not actually that very natural to us, or
Speaker 1: it's not very easy. It's not as simple as making
Speaker 1: a choice that left to our human tendency, our own devices,
Speaker 1: the confused, the ignorant, the bad wolf will always win.
Speaker 1: That that is actually the norm of of what naturally
Speaker 1: gets fed, and it's sort of has a stronger tendency
Speaker 1: in us, and that in order to develop the goodness,
Speaker 1: the good heart, that it takes a quite a bit
Speaker 1: of effort. This against the stream teaching that the Buddha
Speaker 1: saying is that you're not going to just feed the
Speaker 1: good wolf naturally, you're going to have to put a
Speaker 1: ton of effort into training the heart and the mind
Speaker 1: in order to access that goodness. Right, it's there, and
Speaker 1: again where I like the parable, it's there because you know,
Speaker 1: both wolves are there, both sides of us is there.
Speaker 1: There is the negative tendency towards causing and experiencing suffering,
Speaker 1: and there is a positive tendency. There's a potential for
Speaker 1: enlightenment in all beings, but it's a pretty dormant potential,
Speaker 1: and it's one that takes quite a bit of effort
Speaker 1: to bring forth. Yeah, and I think that's as part
Speaker 1: of why we started this show is it's I noticed
Speaker 1: by nature my default patterns are there's certainly not to
Speaker 1: be aware at the very least, right, it's to be
Speaker 1: it's to be in complete, complete autopilot. I think one
Speaker 1: of the things that I've loved about your teachings and
Speaker 1: one of the things that you've really brought to it
Speaker 1: is is harnessing that spirit of rebellion that a lot
Speaker 1: of people have and turning that into a spiritual path,
Speaker 1: which is really I mean, obviously that's probably what you're
Speaker 1: known for, but you talk about this this practice is
Speaker 1: being revolutionary. Can you share a little bit more about that. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it's along the lines of what we're already discussing. Um,
Speaker 1: that the status quo is to live a life based
Speaker 1: on thinking that happiness comes from sensual or material pleasure
Speaker 1: or abundance and um, kind of an addiction to pleasant
Speaker 1: experiences and an aversion or a hatred of unpleasant of pain,
Speaker 1: and that's that's the norm, that's the status quo. And
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, I think that there's no real
Speaker 1: blame or judgment and that that that's just what our
Speaker 1: human evolutionary survival instinct dictates, which is, in order to survive,
Speaker 1: you have to be addicted to pleasure and you have
Speaker 1: to hate pain. You have to love pleasure and hate pain,
Speaker 1: and um, it works for survival, but it doesn't work
Speaker 1: for happiness. So my feeling is that the spiritual path,
Speaker 1: my experience and and understanding is that coming to a
Speaker 1: meditative spiritual path that includes ethical behavior and generosity forgiveness
Speaker 1: is one that's going against the status quo. As when
Speaker 1: we say I'm dissatisfied, I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: normal human you know, person who's just seeking my happiness
Speaker 1: and stuff in sensation, or even in unreliable relationships, in
Speaker 1: impermanent people and places and things. And then this becomes
Speaker 1: a revolutionary stance because first we have to go against
Speaker 1: the internal forces of clinging and diversion and self centered tendency.
Speaker 1: And then as we do that, more and more we
Speaker 1: see that also this is what's happening in the world.
Speaker 1: So it's an internal rebellion against the internal causes of suffering.
Speaker 1: And then it becomes also an external revolutionary stance to say,
Speaker 1: I'm not seeking my happiness through materialism. I'm not seeking
Speaker 1: my happiness through sense pleasures. I'm seeking my happiness through
Speaker 1: an internal sense of well being that negotiates and lives
Speaker 1: in this material world and participates on one level. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, I choose to participate in the material world.
Speaker 1: Many say I'm going to become a monastic. I'm going
Speaker 1: to actually take this commitment to internal happiness to the
Speaker 1: level where I'm going to completely rebel against the promises
Speaker 1: of material happiness, and I'm going to, you know, forsake
Speaker 1: that all the way. Myself, I've said, well, i want
Speaker 1: to be in the world, I want to be of
Speaker 1: service in the world. I want to have a family.
Speaker 1: I want to you know, live the full I think
Speaker 1: it was or the Greek I want to have the
Speaker 1: full catastrophe, the wife, the kids, the full catastrophe, catastrophe
Speaker 1: sometimes yes, well, and just the practice of of all
Speaker 1: of the challenges of it. And I guess it's that
Speaker 1: simple kind of how do we be in the world
Speaker 1: but not of it? How do we have our things
Speaker 1: that we own but not be addicted to them, not
Speaker 1: be so identified with and that new car is gonna
Speaker 1: make me happy, or that new home or that new relationship,
Speaker 1: and having an internal understanding that I'm going to have
Speaker 1: the stuff but I'm not going to rely on it
Speaker 1: for my happiness because I know for sure that it's
Speaker 1: unreliable as a source of happiness. Right. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I think a lot of people misunderstand about Buddhism,
Speaker 1: and I think it's really even challenging if if you're
Speaker 1: if you're not clear about it, is that it talks about,
Speaker 1: you know, the first noble truth being that there's there's
Speaker 1: suffering in life, and that suffering comes from from our
Speaker 1: our clinging, and that there's a way to eliminate that.
Speaker 1: And I think that at least for me, For a while,
Speaker 1: I rebelled against that idea because I thought, well, there's
Speaker 1: no way to get rid of pain, and I think
Speaker 1: you do a really good job of making the distinction
Speaker 1: between pain and suffering, and can you can you break
Speaker 1: that out a little bit more? Yeah? Absolutely, there's this
Speaker 1: Buddhist promise that says you can. As you're saying that,
Speaker 1: the Buddhist promises you can be free from suffering by
Speaker 1: ending craving. In order for this promise to be realized,
Speaker 1: we have to have a distinction between suffering and pain.
Speaker 1: The end of suffering is not the end of pain.
Speaker 1: Pain is inevitable. You have a body, you have a
Speaker 1: nervous system. Life is going to hurt, you have emotions,
Speaker 1: are gonna have unpleasant emotions. So the suffering definition is
Speaker 1: that layer on top of the pain or unpleasant experience
Speaker 1: of life that we have when we meet it with hatred,
Speaker 1: when we meet it with a version, when we take
Speaker 1: it too personally, there's all of the suffering that happens,
Speaker 1: and that that's actually practical. We we can't get rid
Speaker 1: of pain, but we can change our relationship to pain
Speaker 1: to where we have compassion for it rather than hatred.
Speaker 1: Towards it. Likewise, I think that it's important to have
Speaker 1: a distinction and a definition between craving and desire, because
Speaker 1: sometimes Buddhism gets mistranslated as desire as the cause of suffering,
Speaker 1: and that there's some way that we're going to end desire.
Speaker 1: But really, the word that the buddhy uses tan haa,
Speaker 1: is an insatiable, repetitive thirst or craving that comes in
Speaker 1: the form of clinging and diversion. And so obviously it's
Speaker 1: not going to be possible to get rid of desire.
Speaker 1: You have a you're alive, You're gonna desire comfort and
Speaker 1: food and oxygen, oxygen and even um even connection, intimacy
Speaker 1: and relationships. It's a natural and can be a healthy desire.
Speaker 1: But I would like to define desire as I want,
Speaker 1: but I'm okay with or without and craving as I
Speaker 1: need to have before I can be happy. So I
Speaker 1: do believe and have seen in my own practice less
Speaker 1: and less need less and less craving that causes suffering
Speaker 1: in my life. It hasn't done that much to make
Speaker 1: the desire completely go away. Desire continues to arise, but
Speaker 1: um not the delusion that I have to satisfy in
Speaker 1: order to be happy. The theme that has come up
Speaker 1: a few times, especially recently, is is talking with some
Speaker 1: people about to pression. We had a guest on has
Speaker 1: written a book on depression and also on having children
Speaker 1: with disabilities, and that this there's an additional layer. So
Speaker 1: you're talking about the layer of suffering we put on
Speaker 1: my cling, and I think there's an additional layer of
Speaker 1: suffering that we can put on where we feel bad
Speaker 1: about that, we're depressed, we feel like there's something wrong
Speaker 1: with that, we feel bad that something in our life
Speaker 1: isn't the way it should be, as if life is
Speaker 1: expected to be a certain way and when ours doesn't
Speaker 1: meet that, then we feel bad about ourselves. And I
Speaker 1: think you said that the first noble truth is an
Speaker 1: antidote to that. Can you explain that more well? I
Speaker 1: know for myself, I love the hearing um a normalizing
Speaker 1: statement that there is suffering in life and that it's
Speaker 1: not your fault. That part of taking birth is that
Speaker 1: there's going to be some suffering. There's going to be pain,
Speaker 1: there's going to be loss, there's going to be sickness, aging, death.
Speaker 1: We're going to be separated from that which we love
Speaker 1: where going to um not get that which we desire,
Speaker 1: and this normalizing like oh this is it's like this
Speaker 1: for everybody. It's not my fault. I'm not doing something wrong.
Speaker 1: This is just the deal we're born into now. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we live in a world where there's all of these
Speaker 1: messages that say you should be happy, you can have
Speaker 1: it all, and you should be satisfied and you should
Speaker 1: be healthy and young forever, which is just a delusional
Speaker 1: you know materialists message. UM so absolutely normalizing it and saying, well,
Speaker 1: it's not not your fault, but you do have the
Speaker 1: power to change your relationship to what's happening in order
Speaker 1: to not suffer so much about it, even if that's
Speaker 1: deep depression or ongoing anxiety or other mental health or
Speaker 1: or physical health things that we have the capacity to
Speaker 1: develop a heart and mind through mindfulness that you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's three insights that come from mindfulness practice or
Speaker 1: Buddhist meditation practice. One is seeing the impermanent nature of
Speaker 1: all thoughts and feelings, sensations, everything that arises passes. More
Speaker 1: we see that, the more we can, the more liberating
Speaker 1: that is to see, oh, everything changes now. Impermanence is good.
Speaker 1: News when life is painful. Uh, imperman is not so
Speaker 1: good news when life is pleasant and you kind of
Speaker 1: have everything lined up that you want and you say, oh,
Speaker 1: this two is going to change. This is also going
Speaker 1: to pass. The second insight is that we won't find
Speaker 1: satisfaction in any of these impermanent experiences, and that is
Speaker 1: also um somewhat liberating to say, Okay, I can stop
Speaker 1: looking for my happiness in sense pleasures. I can stop
Speaker 1: looking for my happiness in mind states of like that
Speaker 1: my mind is somehow going to make me happy, or
Speaker 1: that my body is somehow going to be comfortable all
Speaker 1: of the time. Pain is obvious why it's unsatisfactory. Pleasure
Speaker 1: is not always so obvious, like well, if I get
Speaker 1: enough pleasure, I'll be satisfied. If I get enough attention,
Speaker 1: enough money, enough fame, whatever it is. But it's all
Speaker 1: in permanent right that that praise arises and it passes,
Speaker 1: so it's never going to actually be satisfactory. The third insight,
Speaker 1: which I think points a lot towards your question, which
Speaker 1: is coming to understand that there's an impersonal nature to life,
Speaker 1: that it's this is the human condition, that this is
Speaker 1: just what it's like to have a brain and a
Speaker 1: body and a heart. You have emotions, you have sensations,
Speaker 1: you have this planning remembering uh perception, and that it's
Speaker 1: not so personal, and that even the depression not so personal,
Speaker 1: even the anxiety not so personal. It's just the causes
Speaker 1: and conditions that are arising right now. And then the practice.
Speaker 1: I think one of the holes that people get stuck
Speaker 1: in is why what did I do wrong? Why? Me?
Speaker 1: And I think Buddhism often asked us to say, don't
Speaker 1: ask so much why, but ask how can I respond
Speaker 1: to this in a way that woman am my suffering? Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite Buddhist teachings and I'm sure I'll
Speaker 1: get it not quite right, and if you know it,
Speaker 1: maybe you can give it and it's full thing is
Speaker 1: the one where the guy shot with the arrow? Can
Speaker 1: you tell that one? I mean, that's that's a lot
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about here is the um. The
Speaker 1: Buddhis says that you know that often we human beings
Speaker 1: are like someone who's been shot by an arrow. So
Speaker 1: we're in pain. But before having the surgeon removed the arrow,
Speaker 1: we say, um, who who shot me? And what kind
Speaker 1: of arrow is this? And what kind of wood is
Speaker 1: the shaft made out of? And what kind of feathers
Speaker 1: are on the end of this arrow? And we're so
Speaker 1: like in the Inquiry that we're sitting there bleeding to
Speaker 1: death and that we're actually, you know, all of that
Speaker 1: questioning and all of that uh is actually creating a
Speaker 1: second arrow, where now we're creating suffering on top of
Speaker 1: the pain of having been shot once. Yeah. I love
Speaker 1: that story because it's such a clear representation of that
Speaker 1: second arrow, that that level of suffering that we we
Speaker 1: layer over and it's becoming aware of that stuff. It's
Speaker 1: so funny. I'm here, we're here in l A and
Speaker 1: we're on vacation, and I think we've got we're about
Speaker 1: halfway through an immediately I'm already starting to get the wait,
Speaker 1: I gotta go home soon, right, you know? I'm like,
Speaker 1: the clinging to the pleasure starts to spoil the pleasure
Speaker 1: itself right in the middle of it. And I look
Speaker 1: back on my life how often I've done that. I
Speaker 1: find a beautiful place and I'm immediately thinking about how
Speaker 1: can I own a house here? How can I be
Speaker 1: here all the time? And it's not your fault, right,
Speaker 1: that's just what the mind does. We take the mind
Speaker 1: so personal, and this is where the insights into the
Speaker 1: impersonal or not self can really help, because we're so
Speaker 1: identified with our thoughts within goal. And then we start
Speaker 1: judging ourselves like, Okay, I'm here and now I'm attached
Speaker 1: to being here, I'm craving to make this a permanent
Speaker 1: experience and and but I know I shouldn't be doing that,
Speaker 1: So now I'm judging myself. Uh. And with a mindful
Speaker 1: relationship to the mind, you say, oh, yeah, the mind
Speaker 1: just does that. It starts having a pleasant experience and
Speaker 1: planning for how can I keep it? M You talk
Speaker 1: about meeting pain with compassion and kindness? What does that
Speaker 1: mean in a I mean, I get I think it's
Speaker 1: easy to understand what it means in a theoretical sense.
Speaker 1: What does that mean in a real sense? How do
Speaker 1: you do that? One of the first ways that I
Speaker 1: learned that, and I think it's a practical, practical thing
Speaker 1: for everybody, is that as you put more attention to
Speaker 1: your body when you have physical pain, there's a tightening um,
Speaker 1: a clenching in the body, like a simple examples, when
Speaker 1: you stub your toe, there's a sort of tightening around
Speaker 1: the pain, and that tightening around it increases the unpleasant sensation.
Speaker 1: And I was taught very young to try to soften
Speaker 1: to pain, and that softening to pain then, you know,
Speaker 1: because again it's there's the pain, and then there's the
Speaker 1: hatred of the pain. Hate. Hating pain is totally normal
Speaker 1: survival instinct. But learning and practicing softening relaxing into accepting
Speaker 1: this is just unpleasant sensation, whether it's emotional sensation or
Speaker 1: mental sensation or physical sensation. Um, so softening is a
Speaker 1: practical way to start developing I might say that it
Speaker 1: was it's a compassionate response or a merciful response to
Speaker 1: pain of not clinging around it, clinching around it, but
Speaker 1: actually softening to it. And then so there's that's the
Speaker 1: I think, a somatic, a body way to start developing compassion.
Speaker 1: And then there's the you know, all of the version
Speaker 1: and hatred actually arises in the mind of I hate this.
Speaker 1: So starting to train the mind to be friendly through
Speaker 1: loving kindness, meditation practice, starting to train the mind to
Speaker 1: forgive pain rather than resent it, to say, it's just pain,
Speaker 1: and I meet this pain with mercy, with compassion, with forgiveness,
Speaker 1: so a lot of compassion towards ourselves towards the experience
Speaker 1: of pain itself. Um. It depends, you know, like you
Speaker 1: have to look at your own relationship when you hurt yourself.
Speaker 1: When you have pain, whether it's self inflicted, stubbing your
Speaker 1: toe or grief loss happens, you have to look at
Speaker 1: do I hate the pain or do I hate myself
Speaker 1: for being in pain. So sometimes it is compassion towards
Speaker 1: and forgiveness towards ourselves for being in pain because I
Speaker 1: blame myself for getting in that relationship that ended, or
Speaker 1: I did something wrong that made it end, or um.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it's just changing your relationship ship to that pain.
Speaker 1: When I stub my toe, I'll send forgiveness and compassion
Speaker 1: to the toe because I have this instinct that says
Speaker 1: I hate my toe because it hurts. And oh, that's
Speaker 1: the wrong response. The correct response is caring about that pain.
Speaker 1: Caring about the toe. It feels a little bit hard
Speaker 1: to teach. It's more of an experience. It's talking about
Speaker 1: compassion and a lot of these spiritual principles is a
Speaker 1: little bit like talking about swimming, where you actually have
Speaker 1: to get in the water. You can't learn to swim
Speaker 1: until you get in the water. And I feel like
Speaker 1: it's like that too with meditation. Once you start meditating,
Speaker 1: start softening in the body, and start developing a positive
Speaker 1: mind state towards pain, eventually we have the experience of like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is compassion towards my own pain. We seem to
Speaker 1: be wired in a way that many of us we
Speaker 1: have empathy for other people's pain, we have compassion. We
Speaker 1: can care about our loved ones, we can care about others,
Speaker 1: and it is a very similar. It's just making ourselves
Speaker 1: one of our loved ones, turning ourselves into one of
Speaker 1: the people that we really care about, not just our
Speaker 1: partners or our children, or are you know of actually
Speaker 1: placing ourselves. I think that a Western definition of compassion
Speaker 1: is something like putting yourself in someone else's shoes, so
Speaker 1: it's much more like empathy towards someone else, but that
Speaker 1: a Buddhist definition of compassion is more like putting yourself
Speaker 1: in your own shoes, caring about yourself, loving yourself, caring
Speaker 1: about your pain the way that you would care about
Speaker 1: a loved one's pain. One of the things I've heard
Speaker 1: you talk about is doubt in spiritual practice. You talk
Speaker 1: about how the Buddha right before his enlightenment, you know,
Speaker 1: Mara came to visit him and tempted him with lust
Speaker 1: and riches and all these different things, and that one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful ones that we're tempted by his
Speaker 1: doubt and how that plays to role in our spiritual practice.
Speaker 1: Can you talk more about that. It's one of the
Speaker 1: um classic hindrances, one of the five hindrances that is
Speaker 1: spoken about in Buddhism, five things that make meditation make
Speaker 1: awakening difficult, and it's the it's considered the most debilitating
Speaker 1: because the other four are craving for pleasure, a version
Speaker 1: to pain, restlessness and UH, sloth and torpor sleepiness. But
Speaker 1: you can deal with craving and a version and still practice.
Speaker 1: You can deal with restlessness and sloth and still practice.
Speaker 1: But if doubt is strong and you believe it, it
Speaker 1: will stop you from practicing. And so that's one. It's
Speaker 1: the UH. It's considered you know, as as Mara is
Speaker 1: attacking the Buddha on the eve of his enlightenment, first
Speaker 1: he tries you know, craving first, he tries a version first,
Speaker 1: he tries you know, restlessness and none of that works,
Speaker 1: and he says, okay, well, here's my most powerful tool
Speaker 1: against humanity, and that is doubt and this sort of uh,
Speaker 1: low self esteem, this self doubt that says I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can do this or I can't do this, um,
Speaker 1: questioning our own ability. And then sometimes doubt is personal
Speaker 1: I can't and then sometimes it is this is impossible.
Speaker 1: It's like philosophical doubt where people say, well, it couldn't
Speaker 1: be possibly. I think what you were talking about, ah,
Speaker 1: that you went through a phase of well, this couldn't
Speaker 1: be possible to not have any pain, right, you know this?
Speaker 1: So I doubt this whole Buddhist stuff because if they're saying,
Speaker 1: you're you know, freedom from suffering means freedom from pain,
Speaker 1: then that can't be possible. Now I think that personally
Speaker 1: is a healthy skepticism, right, Uh. But when you believe
Speaker 1: it's not possible to be happy and to have a
Speaker 1: life that's free from suffering, then you won't even try.
Speaker 1: And so that's one of the reasons it's so debilitating
Speaker 1: as a as a hindrance. Now I am totally evinced
Speaker 1: that Mara is not anything but our own minds and
Speaker 1: I think that it's very important in telling that, you know,
Speaker 1: Marath the Buddha as he's struggling for enlightenment, but Mara
Speaker 1: continues with the Buddha all the way after his enlightenment
Speaker 1: until you know, until his deathbed, and so that this doubt,
Speaker 1: these hindrances aren't something that go away. Craving aversion, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to continue to arise. Now. What
Speaker 1: happens for the Buddha is that he has a perfect
Speaker 1: relationship to the doubt and to the lust, and to
Speaker 1: the fear and to the anger. All of those natural
Speaker 1: human emotions continue to arise for him, but he every
Speaker 1: time is relating to them. He's saying, I see you, Mara,
Speaker 1: I see the craving or the lust or the doubt,
Speaker 1: and I'm not taking it personal. I know that this
Speaker 1: is just part of what a mind does, and I'm
Speaker 1: not taking the bait. Yeah. And then you have an
Speaker 1: analogy where the person who gets into the water at first,
Speaker 1: it may take an awful lot of effort swimming to
Speaker 1: even just not keep floating down. You're trying to go
Speaker 1: against the stream, and you're putting a lot of effort
Speaker 1: in and you're not really you're not going down the stream,
Speaker 1: but you're not exactly making progress up the stream. And
Speaker 1: and it was I think it was a it was
Speaker 1: a talk about not being discouraged by that. Yeah, sometimes
Speaker 1: our practices not even stopping the backslide. It's just slowing
Speaker 1: it down. It's slowing down the tendant, the you know,
Speaker 1: the the current of selfishness. It's not getting rid of it.
Speaker 1: We're not actually making progress towards generosity yet, but we're
Speaker 1: just becoming less selfish. We're still selfish. And I can
Speaker 1: I know how discouraging that can be. Can be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm meditating, but it's not working. I still feel totally
Speaker 1: uneasy or whatever. Ah. The meditative path is absolutely a
Speaker 1: long process and a gradual unfolding. And so I like
Speaker 1: to quote you've probably heard my quote before, the Dali
Speaker 1: Lama saying, uh, commit to your practice and check in
Speaker 1: on your progress once every decade or so. And it
Speaker 1: feels like it's, you know, in this parable of the wolf,
Speaker 1: you know, start feeding the good wolf. It it's it's
Speaker 1: a runt. It's not very powerful. It's it might take
Speaker 1: five years for it to just have the same strength
Speaker 1: as the bad wolf. And another five years before it's
Speaker 1: stronger than the bad wolf. You know, it's not a
Speaker 1: quick fix. It's not something that just all of a
Speaker 1: sudden goodness comes forward. It actually takes quite a long
Speaker 1: time and my experience and it's different for each person
Speaker 1: to develop wisdom. You don't have that one weird trick
Speaker 1: to instantly make your good wolf giant and strong. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, we should try to some steroids, you know,
Speaker 1: the good wolf on stairs well. And I think that
Speaker 1: this is personally very I feel very critical because there's
Speaker 1: you'll find a lot of people out there who will
Speaker 1: sell you a bag of you know, a bill of
Speaker 1: goods that say, oh, yeah, here's the five easy steps
Speaker 1: to inner peace or two you know, the goodness. And
Speaker 1: for me, yeah, it's our culture. It's this very sort
Speaker 1: of quick fix culture. And I don't believe it at all.
Speaker 1: I think that all spiritual transformation takes long term effort
Speaker 1: based transfer, you know, practice that that for it to
Speaker 1: really be reliable. It's something that we're going to have
Speaker 1: to work out for a long time. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the very first things that when I'm
Speaker 1: exploring any new thinking or around that sort of stuff,
Speaker 1: as if anybody's telling me it's going to be easy
Speaker 1: really with anything, I'm gonna be like, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: It's not been my experience with really anything in life.
Speaker 1: It's been worthwhile that it's been. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: not the way it works. I like, Um Houston Smith
Speaker 1: is one of the you know, um writers and teachers,
Speaker 1: and uh. One of the reasons that he was such
Speaker 1: a scholar on world religions is because he took ten
Speaker 1: years and he practiced Buddhism for ten years, and then
Speaker 1: he took Native American practice, and he practiced Native American
Speaker 1: for ten years, and then he came back to Christianity
Speaker 1: and the kind of you know, God of Abrahamic you know,
Speaker 1: theistic traditions, and he really studied and practiced them for
Speaker 1: ten years and maybe something else, maybe Islam. I mean
Speaker 1: he really you know, he said, well, I don't want
Speaker 1: to just read the books about this, I want to
Speaker 1: experience it. And I know it's going to take a
Speaker 1: decade for me to get a real taste of the
Speaker 1: experience in these different traditions. And I always honor that,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's such a good idea. We're
Speaker 1: so quick to you know, read a book and choose
Speaker 1: you know, or just choose what our parents were doing
Speaker 1: or whatever. Without Actually, you know, people all times that well,
Speaker 1: I can't meditate. I tried it, I can't do it.
Speaker 1: I was like, well, you know, try it every day
Speaker 1: for two years and tell me if you can do
Speaker 1: it or not, because it's going to take you a
Speaker 1: couple of years to get really good at it, and
Speaker 1: you'll see that. You'll see the changes, you'll see the transformation.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's that initial pink cloud, as they say, where
Speaker 1: you get some big aha moments. Sometimes it's just trudging
Speaker 1: away and the process takes place gradually. That was certainly
Speaker 1: me with meditation. I, like I said, I expected something
Speaker 1: to happen. I'd hear people say I meditate and I
Speaker 1: feel so peaceful, and I was like, I meditate and
Speaker 1: I feel awful, right like, I can't say I don't
Speaker 1: want to sit here. I can't and I when I
Speaker 1: I think the best analogy that I heard was somebody
Speaker 1: just compared it to mental hygiene. It's like brushing your teeth.
Speaker 1: You're not brushing your teeth expecting an experience. You're doing
Speaker 1: it because you know it's good for your teeth. There's
Speaker 1: a teaching when the Buddhas says, um, it's as though
Speaker 1: we were wandering lost in a on a forest and
Speaker 1: we came upon an ancient city, and then our work
Speaker 1: was to excavate, to uncover, to refurbish this ancient city.
Speaker 1: And um, I feel like it's like that that when
Speaker 1: we start practicing, we're starting this excavator Shan. And first thing,
Speaker 1: while we're excavating, often as we come upon the trash heap,
Speaker 1: we come upon all of that stuff that's burying our heart,
Speaker 1: that's covering it. And it's the skeletons, and that's the resentments,
Speaker 1: and it's the fears, it's all of that survival instinct
Speaker 1: stuff that has been causing suffering for us. And that
Speaker 1: that's first what we see until we get a little
Speaker 1: bit lower and we start to see more of the
Speaker 1: love and more of the kindness and more of the
Speaker 1: compassion and generosity. But you have to keep digging for
Speaker 1: it because what's on the surface is what has been
Speaker 1: causing the difficulties. So of course in meditation, first that's
Speaker 1: what you see. So you've got a new book coming out,
Speaker 1: I think you said in two weeks can you tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit about it. The new book is
Speaker 1: called Refuge Recovery. It comes out June tenth, and it
Speaker 1: is about recovery from addiction. It is using the core
Speaker 1: Buddhist teachings of the four Noble Truths and the Eightfold
Speaker 1: Path as a path, as a program, as a tree
Speaker 1: eatment for all forms of addiction. And it starts with
Speaker 1: looking at the suffering of addiction and looking at the
Speaker 1: first truth and and a there's a detailed inventory process
Speaker 1: in let's look at all of the ways that we
Speaker 1: have suffered, and some of them are about addiction, and
Speaker 1: some of them are just about life, about human suffering.
Speaker 1: But this is the beginning of the path. And then
Speaker 1: let's do a detailed inventory about the second Noble Truth,
Speaker 1: which is the cause of suffering, the cause of addiction,
Speaker 1: which is that repetitive craving for sense pleasures. Everyone has suffering.
Speaker 1: Addicts have an intense level of suffering. Everyone has craving.
Speaker 1: Addicts have an intense experience more intense experience of craving.
Speaker 1: And we can't say a but I would say most
Speaker 1: of the time that craving for that becomes alcoholism or
Speaker 1: addiction is fueled by deep wounds, some kind of deep trauma,
Speaker 1: pain insecurity loss, uh, not the kind of proper sort
Speaker 1: of attachment to our parents or connection with our parents.
Speaker 1: So in the second truth of refuge recovery, I asked
Speaker 1: people to really look at what are the underlying conditions
Speaker 1: that made us so reckless that we drank over and
Speaker 1: over and over until we were alcoholic. What are some
Speaker 1: of the underlying conditions that led us to doing drugs
Speaker 1: and recklessly doing drugs to the point where we became
Speaker 1: physically addicted. And then it follows along with you know,
Speaker 1: the third truth of refuge recovery is that recovery is possible.
Speaker 1: And looking at where we've been going for refuge and
Speaker 1: are we are we at the point now where we're
Speaker 1: willing to take refuge in a recovery process and a
Speaker 1: spiritual practice and in a community of addicts to help
Speaker 1: support us. The eight Full Path is the eight Full
Speaker 1: path where we learned meditation, and we learn forgiveness, and
Speaker 1: we learned kindness and compassion and ethics. And I have
Speaker 1: big hopes for refuge recovery. We've been doing it in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles for over five years, where we have refuge
Speaker 1: recovery meetings. This is an alternative to the Twelve Steps,
Speaker 1: yet there's still to some degree a I won't use
Speaker 1: the word religious, but there is a teaching from a
Speaker 1: religious background. I'm wondering what people would run into the
Speaker 1: same concerns they have with the Twelve Steps, where the
Speaker 1: go I don't believe in God. I think that what
Speaker 1: will run into mostly is people's idea about Buddhism as
Speaker 1: a religion and their misconceptions. And people think that that
Speaker 1: we worship the Buddha or you know, they see people
Speaker 1: bowing and offering incense to they think that the Buddhism
Speaker 1: is just a sort of replacement God or something like that.
Speaker 1: But original Buddhism is much more about psychology, and I
Speaker 1: don't think that there's much to believe. The only thing
Speaker 1: that's really asked in Buddhism is believe in the potential
Speaker 1: for your own freedom and that this is something that
Speaker 1: you can do based on your own effort. And that's
Speaker 1: again where that question about doubt. Um, if we don't
Speaker 1: believe that we have the potential for happiness, that that's
Speaker 1: really all we're asking being asked to believe. The rest
Speaker 1: is um see for yourself that it's a verified faith
Speaker 1: that it's an experiential process, that what that one has
Speaker 1: through doing the practices. I was given some encouragement as
Speaker 1: I was doing this to make it completely secular. Take
Speaker 1: it and not don't say Buddhist recovery, say mindful recovery
Speaker 1: or something like that. I'm happy that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of mindfulness secularization happening. I think it's good for the world.
Speaker 1: I myself, I think there's also some problems with the
Speaker 1: secularization of mindfulness. And I myself am I'm a Buddhist.
Speaker 1: I Uh, there's a whole package here that I would
Speaker 1: feel out of integrity to steal all of the Buddhist
Speaker 1: principles and pretend like they weren't Buddhism, to package it
Speaker 1: in a secular way. I would feel out of integrity myself. Um,
Speaker 1: because I love Buddhism and and it saved my life,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a path that I think is
Speaker 1: really compatible with the atheist the a and also the theist.
Speaker 1: You know, So for people who have no belief in
Speaker 1: any kind of God or higher power, Buddhism is very
Speaker 1: practical for them because it's not asking you to believe much.
Speaker 1: And for those who have a God higher power relationship,
Speaker 1: it's also not telling you not to believe that. It's saying,
Speaker 1: try these practices. Maybe I'll get you closer to your
Speaker 1: concept of your higher power. So we'll see. It's a
Speaker 1: it's a big experiment. I'm very excited. We've had great
Speaker 1: success here and people. You know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: people that come are new and looking for recovery. But
Speaker 1: then I get a lot of people who are ten
Speaker 1: twenty years sober and are saying, I'm looking for an
Speaker 1: advanced process to my recovery. The Twelve Steps told me
Speaker 1: to meditate, but they didn't really tell me how, and
Speaker 1: so then they come to Buddhism to learn how to meditate. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm certainly a recovering person. I'm excited, too excited to
Speaker 1: read it. And and uh, I might hit one of
Speaker 1: the meetings if there's time while I'm out here. Maybe
Speaker 1: you'll start one in Columbus very well? Might we have it?
Speaker 1: There is a there is a twelve strip group in Columbus,
Speaker 1: UH that has meditation as part of it. It's called
Speaker 1: the Meditating Peacocks. And I think they start and end
Speaker 1: with fifteen minutes of meditation. It's held in one of
Speaker 1: the Buddhist centers there and so all right, well, thank
Speaker 1: you very much. No it's a pleasure to pleasure to
Speaker 1: be here and talk with you, and thanks for all
Speaker 1: the work you're doing and look forward to reading the
Speaker 1: new book, My Pleasure. Thank you. You can learn more
Speaker 1: about this podcast and Noah Levine at one you feed,
Speaker 1: dot net, slash Noah