Meditate & Destroy

Noah Levine is a punk rocker. He loves the Ramones, the Clash, Sex Pistols, Minor Threat, Black Flag, GBH and Agnostic Front to name but a few. He’s covered in tattoos and loves nothing more than to go to punk shows. Big fucking deal you might say. So what? Well, here’s what – Noah is also a Buddhist teacher.

Levine teaches meditation retreats and workshops across the US, including groups inside juvenile halls and prisons. He is the co-founder of the not for profit organization, Mind Body Awareness Project which serves incarcerated youths and if that isn’t enough, Levine has also written a book that appears to have sent a few ripples through the punk scene. The book in question being, Dharma Punx.

Taking around a period of two years to write, Dharma Punx is a memoir – the Noah story thus far. It’s filled with all the hallmarks of a great story: drugs, drinking, (punk) rock n roll, sex, violence, recovery, rebellion, faith and hope… a little something for everyone perhaps? (ha!)

What inspired/motivated you to write Dharma Punx?

I had a lot of different motivations. One intention or motivation certainly was to out of my own experience of having done so much spiritual practice over the years and feeling really alone in it – there was no other young people, there was certainly no punk rockers in the Buddhist scene – and kind of wanting to destigmatize and take some of this ‘meditation if for hippies’ stigma off of spiritual practice and say like ‘this is how I’ve integrated my punk ethic with my spiritual practice’. Another reason was making spiritualism and Buddhist practice more available to the punks and my subculture of my generation. Then another intention was to inspire people that have been in recovery to take the meditation aspect more seriously since that has been a real important part.

What’s something you’d like people to get from your book?

I liked people to get inspired, to start practicing spiritual principals in life, to use there life’s energy or for people to be inspired about our life’s energy in positive ways to bring about positive change, both personally and culturally.

How is it having your life out there in the public spotlight, being open to public scrutiny?

It’s been interesting. There’s definitely been a little loss of privacy from how personal I got in my book. For the most part I feel really good about it from the feedback I’ve got from it from people appreciating the humanness of having it out there. I’m happy to share my story and play that role if it’s useful to people.

Do you get strangers coming up to you that feel they know you through what they’ve read about you in your book?

Yeah that certainly happens and that can be a little weird sometimes. The people know my whole life story but I don’t really know theirs so it’s not quite an even playing field.

What’s the feedback been like from the Buddhist community in regards to your work and book?

It’s been really only positive thus far where people have been really appreciative of a new perspective, a new story of how my generation or our generation is incorporating Buddhist practice principles into modern life.

What’s the feedback from the punk community been like?

It’s been a little bit more mixed but I’ve had mostly positive feedback. It’s been really fun for me because a lot of people from bands that I have grown up listening to have read the book and then written to me and said ‘this book has really inspired me or changed my life or given me hope to change my life’. That’s been really really fun for actually notorious people in the punk scene, people that I grew up listening to really appreciating it. There’s also been so adversarial mixed feelings about people…the punk scene in general is always adversarial to anything religious and so people that feel that Buddhist practice or spiritual practice is to related to religion has had opinions or feelings of it not being punk rock enough. It’s been about ninety-five percent positive with a few negative feedback here and there which is to be expected so I assume.

Can you tell me about your Mind Body Awareness Project?

Since I started mediating when I was locked up in juvenile hall about eight or nine years later after I’d been practicing and had a really large transformation myself I thought ‘well what’s the best way for me to share this with others?’ One of the ways that made sense was to teach meditation classes in institutions, juvenile halls, jails and prisons. I just started doing it, showing up and volunteering teaching mediation classes. Eventually other people heard about what I was doing and wanted to get involved. It seemed like the best thing to do was to start a foundation a non-profit organisation around it so that I could train other people and that we could write grants to support this work happening. That’s what we did and we call it The Mind Body Awareness Project. There’s about ten people that are involved going into institutions and now we’ve actually expanded with going into high schools and working with all kinds of populations of young people and teaching this basic meditative techniques.

What’s it like going back to places like juvenile hall and seeing kids in a position that you once were?

It’s quite interesting. Sometimes it’s very difficult and I go in and there’s a lot of suffering, it can also be quite challenging. The population sometimes doesn’t hear what you have to say. It’s always wonderful to be able to go in and be able to walk out. Often I’m going into a prison, jail or juvenile hall and it’s amazing to be in there and have the keys to leave whenever I want. It’s really beautiful it’s really incredible to get to go in and out of these places. One of my teachers, I was complaining about how tired I feel sometimes when I come out, how drained I feel when I come out from teaching in the prisons it’s a lot of energy and a lot of work there’s a lot of suffering to be faced with on a regular basis. My teacher said ‘when are you going stop putting yourself back in prison? You got out fifteen years ago. When are you going to stop putting yourself back in?’ I understand that perspective but I feel very committed to serving that population because that is my population. If I can help one out of a hundred I’m really happy.

What’s one of the best direct results you’ve seen from writing your book?

There’s been a lot of instances that have been really wonderful, everything from a kid telling me that he was really having a hard time with drugs and booze and kind of had some eastern information and thought ‘I wonder why I am suffering so much?’ ‘I wonder why my karma is so bad?’ and he went into a book store to look for books on Buddhism and Dharma Punx feel off the shelf and he saw it and he’s like I’m a punker and I’m looking into Buddhism, maybe I have to read this book. Reading the book he realised it wasn’t necessary that his karma was so bad but that after reading my story he realised that a big part of the problem was that he was a drug addict and alcoholic. He went to twelve step meeting and got sober. That was almost about a year ago when the book first came out and he’s been sober ever since and I’m still in contact with him. Stuff like that is quite inspiring.

What the most fulfilling thing about your work?

Both being able to introduce people to these practices and see people apply them in their lives and seeing them change – that’s incredibly fulfilling. Just a sense of getting out of my own way my own self-centredness through focusing on service and how I can help others rather than me.

Please check out: www.dharmapunx.com