Holiday Bonus Re-Issue: Noah Levine- Meditation, Suffering and Mindfulness

only been listening for a year. I picked the episodes because either a I think it's a really great episode or B I think it talks about behavior change, which we're heading into the new year, and that's on a lot of people's mind. Speaking of which, we are going to try something this new year. We're going to try the first one You Feed Group Transformation program. It will be a hundred dollars for a month. They're gonna limit

it to ten people. We will meet online four times that month, will discuss tips and tricks and different ways to ensure that you stay on track behavior wise. You'll be able to ask questions of me, and we'll do some things where you're paired up as a group so that you can get some support outside of the calls as well to make sure you get the new year off to a great start. So if you're interested, just send an email to me Eric at one you feed

dot net. I hope you enjoy these episodes. I listened back to a couple of them, and um, let's just leave it at we are getting better at what we do. In the very first one, I sound very nervous and I was so Anyway, it's still a great interview. Enjoy these, have a happy new year. Thank you for listening, and we will talk to you soon. Bye. It's actually quite normal to feed the bad wolf. That's actually the norm that our body, and our world and our society is

based on these sort of greed, hatred, delusion tendencies. Welcome to the one you feed through were out time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not

just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Welcome to the show. Our guest today is Noah Levine, a Buddhist teacher, author, and counselor. He's the author of three books, Dharma Punk, Against the Stream, and the Heart of the Revolution. He's also the founder of Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation

Center that has branches all across America. His new book is Refuge Recovery, which provides a Buddhist approach to recovery from substance abuse. Let's hear the interview I know, Welcome to the show. Thank you happy to be here. Yeah, we're We're happy to be here. Also, we're in your Against the Stream Meditation Center here in in Los Angeles, so it's a pleasure to be here and to meet you. Our podcast is based on the old parable of two wolves that I know that you know, where there's a

grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there's two wolves inside of us. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf which represents things like hatred and greed and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks, and he says, Grandfather, well, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to just start off by asking you how that

parable applies to your life and the work you do here. Um, well, applies my life in a lot of ways, and on some level, the first half of my life I was feeding the you know, wolf of addiction and crime and violence and kind of selfish behavior, self centered, fear based behavior.

And when I got into recovery and started practicing meditation, that was the kind of beginning of turning away from belief and practice of feeding the negative wolf and the greed and hatred and delusion and starting to feed and train my mind my heart towards kindness and compassion and forgiveness and wisdom through mindfulness practice. So personally, of course, it's been the huge change in my life has been absolutely this parable around what am I feeding, what am

I practicing, What am I believing? And what am I doing?

And um in the teachings that I, you know, came to settle in a Buddhist terravant and Buddhist the Southern school of Buddhism's fitting so well with you know, when I started studying and having come from a background of rebellion and kind of eighties punk culture, and I found that the Buddha said, this path goes against greed, against hatred, against delusion, And I feel like this fits really well with the parable is he's saying, you know, there is

all of this normal. It's actually quite normal to feed the bad wolf. That that's actually the norm, that our body and our world and our society is based on these sort of greed, hatred, delusion tendencies, and that in order to awaken we have to go against that. We have to turn towards kindness and compassion and uh non great generosity and loving kindness and developing wisdom by training the mind. So in that way, I feel like, you know,

what I teach is very much about um. I think maybe even in Buddhism, there's a little bit more like with this parable of feeling like the good wolf is actually the runt of the litter, that it's not actually that very natural to us, or it's not very easy. It's not as simple as making a choice that left to our human tendency, our own devices, the confused, the ignorant, the bad wolf will always win. That that is actually the norm of of what naturally gets fed, and it's

sort of has a stronger tendency in us. And that in order to develop the goodness, the good heart, that it takes a quite a bit of effort. This against the stream teach saying that the Buddha saying is that you're not going to just feed the good wolf naturally. You're going to have to put a ton of effort into training the heart and the mind in order to access that goodness. Right, it's there. And again where I like the parable, it's there because you know, both wolves

are there, both sides of us is there. There is the negative tendency towards causing and experiencing suffering, and there is a positive tendency. There's a potential for enlightenment in all beings, but it's a pretty dormant potential and it's

one that takes quite a bit of effort to bring forth. Yeah, And I think that's that's part of why we started the show, is it's I noticed by nature, my default patterns are there's certainly not to be aware at the very least right, it's to be it's to be in complete,

complete autopilot. I think one of the things that I've loved about your teachings and one of the things that you've really brought to it is is harnessing that spirit of rebellion that a lot of people have and turning that into a spiritual path, which is really I mean, obviously that's probably what you're known for, but you talk about this, this practice is being revolutionary. Can you share

a little bit more about that. Well, I think it's along the lines that we're we're already discussing um that the status quo is to live a life based on thinking that happiness comes from sensual or material pleasure or abundance and um kind of an addiction to pleasant experiences and an aversion or a hatred of unpleasant of pain,

and that's that's the norm. That's the status quo. And a lot of ways, I think that there's no real blame or judgments and that that that's just what our human evolutionary survival instinct dictates, which is, in order to survive, you have to be addicted to pleasure and you have to hate pain. You have to love pleasure and pain, and um, it works for survival, but it doesn't work

for happiness. So my feeling is that the spiritual path, my experience and and understanding is that coming to a meditative spiritual path that includes ethical behavior and generosity forgiveness is one that's going against the status quo, as when we say, I'm uh dissatisfied, I don't want to be a normal human you know, person who's just seeking my happiness and stuff in sensation or even in unreliable relationships

in impermanent people and places and things. And then this becomes a revolutionary stance because first we have to go against the internal forces of clinging and diversion and self centered tendency. And then as we do that more and more we see that also this is what's happening in the world. So it's an internal rebellion against the internal causes of suffering. And then it becomes also an external revolutionary stance to say, I'm not seeking my happiness through materialism,

I'm not seeking my happiness through sense pleasures. I'm seeking my happiness through an internal sense of well being that negotiates and lives in this material world and participates on one level. I mean, of course I choose to participate in the material world. Many say I'm going to become a monastic. I'm going to actually take this commitment to internal happiness to the level where I'm going to completely rebel against the promises of material happiness, and I'm going to,

you know, forsake that all the way. Myself, I've said, well, I want to be in the world. I want to be of service in the world. I want to have a family. I want to you know, live the full I think it was orbit the Greek. I want to have the full catastrophe, the wife, the kids, the full catastrophe, catastrophe sometimes yes, well, and just the practice of of all of the challenges of it. And I guess it's that simple kind of how do we be in the

world but not of it? How do we have our things that we own but not be addicted to them, not be so identified with And that new car is gonna make me happy, or that new home or that new relationship, and having an internal understanding that I'm going to have the stuff, but I'm not going to rely on it for my happiness because I know for sure

that it's unreliable as a source of happiness. Right. One of the things that I think a lot of people misunderstand about Buddhism, and I think it's really even challenging if if you're if you're not clear about it, is that it talks about, you know, the first noble truth being that there's there's suffering in life, and that suffering comes from from our our clinging, and that there's a

way to eliminate that. And I think that, at least for me, for a while, I rebelled against that idea because I thought, well, there's no way to get rid of pain. And I think you do a really good job of making the distinction between pain and suffering, and can you can you break that out a little bit more? Yeah? Absolutely, There's this Buddhist promise that says you can. As you're saying that, the Buddhist promises you can be free from

suffering by ending craving. In order for this promise to be realized, we have to have a distinction between suffering and pain. The end of suffering is not the end of pain. Pain is inevitable. You have a body, you have a nervous system, life is going to hurt. You

have emotions, You're gonna have unpleasant emotions. So the suffering definition is that layer on top of the plant pain or unpleasant experience of life that we have when we meet it with hatred, when we meet it with a version, when we take it too personally, there's all of the suffering that happens, and that that's actually practical. We we can't get rid of pain, but we can change our relationship to pain to where we have compath san for

it rather than hatred towards it. Likewise, I think that it's important to have a distinction and a definition between craving and desire, because sometimes Buddhism gets mistranslated as desire as the cause of suffering and that there's some way that we're going to end desire. But really the word that the buddhy uses, tan ha, is an insatiable, repetitive thirst or craving that comes in the form of clinging and diversion. And so obviously it's not going to be

possible to get rid of desire. You have a you're alive, You're gonna desire comfort and food and oxygen, oxygen and even um, even connection intimacy and relationships. It's a natural and can be a healthy desire. But I would like to define desire as I want. But I'm okay with or without and craving as I need to have before I can be happy. So I do believe and have seen in my own practice less and less need less

and less craving that causes suffering in my life. It hasn't done that much to make the desire completely go away. Desire continues to arise, but UM not the delusion that I have to satisfy in order to be happy. The theme that has come up a few times, especially recently, is is talking with some people about depression. We had a guest on who has written a book on depression and also on having children with disabilities, and that this

there's an additional layer. So you're talking about the layer of suffering we put on my cling, and I think there's an additional layer of suffering that we can put on where we feel bad about that we're depressed, we feel like there's something wrong with that, We feel bad that something in our life isn't the way it should be, as if life is expected to be a certain way and when ours doesn't meet that then we feel bad about ourselves. And I think you said that the first

noble truth is an antidote to that. Can you explain that more well? I know for myself, I loved to hearing um a normalizing statement that there is suffering in life and that it's not your fault. That part of taking birth is that there's going to be some suffering. There's going to be pain, there's going to be lost, there's going to be sickness, aging, death, We're going to be separated from that which we love. We're going to um not get that which we desire. And this normalizing like,

oh this is it's like this for everybody. It's not my fault. I'm not doing something wrong. This is just the deal we're born into now. Unfortunately, we live in a world where there's all of these messages that say you should be happy, you can have it all, you can have it all, you should be satisfied, and you should be healthy and young forever, which is just a

delusional you know materialists message. UM, so absolutely normalizing it and saying, well, it's not not your fault, but you do have the power to change your relationship to what's happening in order to not suffer so much about it, even if that's deep depression or ongoing anxiety or other mental health or or physical health things. That we have the capacity to develop a heart and mind through mindfulness that um, you know. There's there's three insights that come

from mindfulness practice or Buddhist meditation practice. One is seeing the impermanent nature of all thoughts and feelings, sensations, Everything that arises passes. More we see that, the more we can, the more liberating that is to see, oh, everything changes now. Impermanence is good news when life is painful. Uh, imperman it's not so good news when life is pleasant and you kind of have everything lined up that you want and you say, oh, this too is going to change.

This is also going to pass. The second insight is that we won't find satisfaction in any of these impermanent experiences, and that is also, um somewhat liberating to say, Okay, I can stop looking for my happiness in sense pleasures. I can stop looking for my happiness in mind states of like that my mind is somehow going to make me happy, or that my body is somehow going to be comfortable all of the time. Pain is obvious why it's unsatisfactory. Pleasure is not always so obvious, like, well,

if I get enough pleasure, I'll be satisfied. If I get enough attention, enough money, enough fame, whatever it is. But it's all impermanent, right that that praise arises and it passes, so it's never going to actually be satisfactory. The third insight, which I think points a lot towards your question, which is coming to understand that there's an impersonal nature to life, that it's this is the human condition, that this is just what it's like to have a

brain and a body and a heart. You have emotions, you have sensations, you have this planning remembering uh perception, and that it's not so personal, and that even the depression not so personal, even the anxiety not so personal. It's just the causes and conditions that are arising right now. And then the practice. I think one of the holes that people get stuck in is why what did I

do wrong? Why? Me? And I think Buddhism often asks us to say, don't ask so much why, but ask how can I respond to this in a way that woman am my suffering? Yeah, one of my favorite Buddhist teachings, and I'm sure I'll get it not quite right, and if you know it, maybe you can give it. And it's full thing is the one where the guy shot

with the arrow? Can you tell that one? I mean, that's that's a lot of what we're talking about here is the um the Buddhi says that, you know that often we human beings are like someone who's been shot by an arrow. So we're in pain, but before having the surgeon removed the arrow, we say, um, who who shot me? And what kind of arrow is this? And what kind of wood is the shaft made out of? And what kind of feathers are on the end of

this arrow? And we're so like in the inquiry that we're sitting there bleeding to death, and that we're actually, you know, all of that questioning and all of that uh is actually creating a second arrow, where now we're creating suffering on top of the pain of having been shot once. Yep. I love that story because it's such a clear representation of that second arrow, that that level of suffering that we we layer over and it's becoming

aware of that stuff. It's so funny. I'm here, we're here in l A. And we're on vacation, and I think we've got we're about halfway through an immediately I'm already starting to get the wait, I gotta go home soon, right, you know, I'm like, the clinging to the pleasure starts to spoil the pleasure itself right in the middle of it. And I look back on my life how often I've done that. I find a beautiful place and I'm immediately thinking about how can I own a house here? How

can I be here all the time? And it's not your fault, right, that's just what the mind does. We take the mind so personal, and this is where the insights into the impersonal or not self can really help, because we're so identified with our thoughts within weal. And then we start judging ourselves like, Okay, I'm here, and now I'm attached to being here. I'm craving to make this a permanent experience and and but I know I

shouldn't be doing that, So now I'm judging myself. Uh. And with a mindful relationship to the mind, you said, oh, yeah, the mind just does that. It starts having a pleasant experience and planning for how can I keep it m. You talk about meeting pain with compassion and kindness? What does that mean in a I mean, I get. I think it's easy to understand what it means in a theoretical sense. What does that mean in a real sense?

How do you do that? One of the first ways that I learned that, and I think it's a practical, practical thing for everybody, is that as you put more attention to your body when you have physical pain, there's a tightening um a a clenching in the body, like the simple examples when you stub your toe, there's a sort of tightening around the pain, and that tightening around

it increases the unpleasant sensation. And I was taught very young to try to soften to pain, and that softening to pain then you know, because again it's there's the pain, and then there's the hatred of the pain. Hate. Hating pain is totally normal survi eval instinct. But learning and practicing softening relaxing into accepting this is just unpleasant sensation, whether it's emotional sensation or mental sensation or physical sensation. Um so softening is a practical way to start developing.

I might say that it was it's a compassionate response or a merciful response to pain of not clinging around it, clenching around it, but actually softening to it. And then so there's a that's the I think, a somatic a body way to start developing compassion. And then there's the you know, all of the aversion and hatred actually arises

in the mind of I hate this. So starting to train the mind to be friendly through loving kindness, meditation practice, starting to train the mind to forgive pain rather than resent it, to say, it's just pain, and I meet this pain with mercy, with compassion, with forgiveness. So a lot of compassion ourselves and towards ourselves towards the experience

of pain itself. Um, it depends, you know, like you have to look at your own relationship when you hurt yourself, when you have pain, whether it's self inflicted, stubbing your toe or grief loss happens, you have to look at do I hate the pain or do I hate myself for being in pain? So sometimes it is compassion towards and forgiveness towards ourselves for being in pain because I blame myself for getting in that relationship that ended, or I did something wrong that made it end or um.

But sometimes it's just changing your relationship to that pain. When I stubbed my toe, I'll send forgiveness and compassion to the toe because I have this instinct that says I hate my toe because it hurts. And oh, that's the wrong response. The correct response is caring about that pain. Caring about the toe. It feels a little bit hard

to teach us more of an experience. It's talking about compassion and a lot of these spiritual principles is a little bit like talking about swimming, where you actually have to get in the water. You can't learn to swim until you get in the water. And I feel like it's like that too with meditation. Once you start meditating, start softening in the body, and start developing a positive mind state towards pain, eventually we have the experience of like, oh,

this is compassion towards my own pain. We seem to be wired in a way that many of us we have empathy for other people's pain. We have compassion. We can care about our loved ones, we can care about others, and it is a very similar it's just making ourselves one of our loved ones. Turning ourselves into one of the people that we really care about, not just our partners or our children, or are you know, of actually

placing ourselves. I think that a Western definition of compassion is some thing like putting yourself in someone else's shoes, so it's much more like empathy towards someone else, but that a Buddhist definition of compassion is more like putting yourself in your own shoes, caring about yourself, loving yourself, caring about your pain the way that you would care about a loved one's pain. One of the things I've

heard you talk about is doubt in spiritual practice. You talk about how the Buddha right before his enlightenment, you know, Mara came to visit him and tempted him with lust and and riches and all these different things, and that that one of the most powerful ones that were tempted by his doubt, and how that plays a role in

our spiritual practice. Can you talk more about that. It's one of the um classic hindrances, one of the five hindrances that has spoken about in Buddhism, five things that make meditation make awakening difficult, and it's the it's considered the most debilitating because the other four are craving for pleasure, aversion to pain, restlessness and uh sloth and torpor sleepiness. But you can deal with craving and a version and still practice. You can deal with restlessness and sloth and

still practice. But if doubt is strong and you believe it, it will stop you from practicing. And so that's when it's the uh it's considered you know, as as Mara is attacking the Buddha on the eve of his enlightenment.

First he tries, you know, craving first, he tries a version first, he tries you know, restlessness, and none of that works, and he says, okay, well, here's my most powerful tool against humanity, and that is doubt and this sort of uh low self esteem, this self doubt that says I don't know if I can do this, or I can't do this, um questioning our own ability. And then sometimes doubt is personal I can't and then sometimes it is this is impossible. It's like philosophical doubt where

people say, well, it couldn't be possibly. I think what you were talking about, ah, that you went through a phase of well, this couldn't be possible to not have any pain, right, you know this, So I doubt this whole Buddhist stuff because if they're saying, you're, you know, freedom from suffering means freedom from pain, then that can't

be possible. Now, I think that personally is a healthy skepticism, right. Uh, But when you believe it's not possible to be happy and to have a life that's free from suffering, then you won't even try. And so that's one of the reasons that's so debilitating as a as a hindrance. Now, I am totally convinced that Mara is not anything but

our own minds. And I think that it's very important in telling that, you know, Mara with the Buddha as he's struggling for enlightenment, but Mara continues with the Buddha all the way after his enlightenment until, you know, until his deathbed, and so that this doubt, these hindrances aren't something that go away craving aversion, Uh, you know, it's

going to continue to arise. Now. What happens for the Buddha is that he has a perfect relationship to the doubt and to the lust and to the fear and to the anger. All of those natural human emotions continue to arise for him, but he every time is relating to them. He's saying, I see you, Mara, I see the craving or the lust or the doubt. And I'm not taking it personal. I know that this is just part of what a mind does, and I'm not taking

the bait. Yeah. And then you have an analogy where the person who gets into the water at first, it may take an awful lot of effort swimming to even just not keep floating down. You're trying to go against the stream and you're putting a lot of effort in and you're not really you're not going down the stream, but you're not exactly making progress up the stream. And and it was I think it was a it was a talk about not being discouraged by that. Yeah. Sometimes

our practices not even stopping the backslide. It's just slowing it down. It's slowing down the tendont the you know, the the current of selfishness. It's not getting rid of it. We're not actually making progress towards generosity yet, but we're just becoming less selfish. We're still selfish. And I can I know how discouraging that can be can be like, well, I'm meditating, but it's not working. I still feel totally uneasy or whatever. Ah, The meditative path is absolutely a

long process and a gradual unfolding. And so I like to quote you've probably heard my quote before, the Dali Lama saying, uh, commit to your practice and check in on your progress once every decade or so. And it feels like it's you know, in this parable of the wolf, you know, start feeding the good wolf. It it's it's a runt. It's not very power full. It's it might take five years for it to just have the same strength as the bad wolf, and another five years before

it's stronger than the bad wolf. You know, it's not a quick fix. It's not something that just all of a sudden goodness comes forward. It actually takes quite a long time. And my experience and it's different for each person to develop wisdom. You don't have that one weird trick to instantly make your good wolf giant and strong. I don't know. Yeah, we should try to some steroids,

you know, the good wolf on stairs. Well, and I think that this is personally very I feel very critical because there's You'll find a lot of people out there who will sell you a bag of you know, a bill of goods that say, oh, yeah, here's the five easy steps to inner peace or two you know, the goodness. And for me, yeah, it's our culture. It's this very sort of quick fix culture, and I don't leave it

at all. I think that all spiritual transformation takes long term effort based transfer, you know, practice that for it to really be reliable, it's something that we're going to have to work out for a long time. Yeah. I think that's one of the very first things that when I'm exploring any new thinking or around that sort of stuff. As if anybody's telling me it's going to be easy really with anything, I'm gonna be like, I don't think so. It's not been my experience with really anything in life.

It's been worthwhile that it's been, it's just it's just

not the way it works. I like UM. Houston Smith was one of the you know, um writers and teachers, and one of the reasons that he was such a scholar on world religions is because he took ten years and he practiced Buddhism for ten years, and then he took Native American practice, and he practiced Native American for ten years, and then he came back to Christianity and the kind of you know, God of Abraham, you know, theistic traditions, and he really studied and practiced them for

ten years and maybe something else, maybe Islam. I mean he really, you know, he said, well, I don't want to just read the books about this, I want to experience it. And I know it's going to take a decade for me to get a real taste of the experience in these different traditions. And I always honor that, and I think that that's such a good idea. We're so quick to you know, read a book and choose, you know, or just choose what our parents were doing

or whatever. Without actually, you know, people all the times say well I can't meditate. I tried it, I can't do it. I was like, well, you know, try it every day for two years and tell me if you can do it or not, because it's going to take you a couple of years to get really good at it. And you'll see that, you'll see the changes, you'll see the transformation. Sometimes there's that initial pink cloud, as they say, where you get some big aha moments. Sometimes it's just

trudging away and the process takes place gradually. That was certainly me with meditation. I like I said, I expected some thing to happen. I'd hear people say I meditate and I feel so peaceful, And I was like, I meditate and I feel awful, right Like, I can't say I don't want to sit here. I can't. And I when I think, the best analogy that I heard was somebody just compared it to mental hygiene. It's like brushing your teeth. You're not brushing your teeth expecting an experience.

You're doing it because you know it's good for your teeth. There's a teaching when the Buddhas says, um, it's as though we were wandering lost in a on a forest and we came upon an ancient city, and then our work was to excavate, to uncover, to refurbish this ancient city. And um, I feel like it's like that that when

we start practicing, we're starting this excavation. And first thing, while we're excavating, often as we come upon the trash heap, we come upon all of that stuff that's burying our heart, that's covering it, and it's the skeletons, and that's the resentments, and it's the fears. It's all of that survival instinct

stuff that has been causing suffering for us. And that that's first what we see until we get a little bit lower and we start to see more of the love and more of the kindness and more of the compassion and generosity. But you have to keep digging for it because what's on the surface is what has been causing the difficulties. So of course in meditation first, that's what you see. So you've got a new book coming out, I think you said in two weeks, can you tell

us a little bit about it. The new book is called Refuge Recovery. It comes out June tenth, and it is about recovery from addiction. It is using the core Buddhist teachings of the four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path as a path, as a program, as a treatment

for all forms of addiction. And it starts with looking at the suffering of addiction and looking at the first truth and and a there's a detailed inventory process in let's look at all of the ways that we've suffered, and some of them are about addiction, and some of them are just about life, about human suffering. But this is the getting of the path. And then let's do a detailed inventory about the second noble truth, which is the cause of suffering, the cause of addiction, which is

that repetitive craving for sense pleasures. Everyone has. Suffering. Addicts have an intense level of suffering. Everyone has craving. Addicts have an intense experience more intense experience of craving. And we can't say, but I would say most of the time that craving for that becomes alcoholism or addiction is fueled by deep wounds, some kind of deep trauma, pain insecurity, loss, uh, not the kind of proper sort of attachment to our

parents or connection with our parents. So in the second truth of refuge recovery, I ask people to really look at, what are the underlying condition that made us so reckless that we drank over and over and over until we were alcoholic. What are some of the underlying conditions that led us to doing drugs and recklessly doing drugs to the point where we became physically addicted. And then it follows along with you know, the third truth of refuge

recovery is that recovery is possible. And looking at where we've been going for refuge and are we are we at the point now where we're willing to take refuge in a recovery process and a spiritual practice and in a community of addicts to help support us. The eight Full Path is the eight Full Path where we learned meditation, and we learned forgiveness, and we learned kindness and compassion and ethics. And I have big hopes for refuge recovery. We've been doing it in Los Angeles for over five

years where we have refuge recovery meetings. This is an alternative to the Twelve Steps, yet there's still to some degree a I won't use the word religious, but there is a teaching from a religious background. I'm wondering what people would run into the same concerns they have with the Twelve Steps wheally go I don't believe in God. I think that what will run into mostly is people's

idea about Buddhism as a religion and their misconceptions. And people think that that you worship the Buddha or you know, they see people bowing and offering incense to they think that the Buddhism is just a sort of replacement God or something like that. But original Buddhism is much more about psychology, and I don't think that there's much to believe.

The only thing that's really asked in Buddhism is believe in the potential for your own freedom and that this is something that you can do based on your own effort. And that's again where that question about doubt. Um, if we don't believe that we have the potential for happiness, that that's really all we're asking being asked to believe. The rest is um see for yourself that it's a verified faith, that it's an experiential process, that what that

one has through doing the practices. I was given some encouragement as I was doing this to make it completely secular. Take it and not so. Don't say Buddhist recovery, say mindful recovery or something like that. I'm happy that there's a lot of mindfulness secularization happening. I think it's good for the world. I myself, I think there's also some problems with the secularization of mindfulness, and I myself am

I'm a Buddhist. I there's a whole package here that I would feel out of integrity to steal all of the Buddhist principles and pretend like they weren't Buddhism, to package it in a secular way, I would feel out of integrity myself. Um, because I love Buddhism and and it saved my life, and it's a it's a path that I think is really compatible with the atheist the

a and also the theist. You know, So for people who have no belief in any kind of God or higher power, Buddhism is very practical for them because it's not asking you to believe much. And for those who have a God higher power relationship, it's also not telling you not to believe that. It's saying, try these practices, maybe they'll get you closer to your concept of your higher power. So we'll see. It's a it's a big experiment.

I'm very excited. We've had great success here and people, you know, a lot of the people that come are new and looking for recovery. But then I get a lot of people who are ten twenty years sober and are saying, I'm looking for an advanced process to my recovery. The twelve steps told me to meditate, but they didn't really tell me how, and so then they come to Buddhism to learn how to meditate. Well, I'm certainly a recovering person. I'm excited to be excited to read it.

And and UH, I might hit one of the meetings if there's time while I'm out here. Maybe you'll start one in Columbus very well, might we have it? There is a there is a twelve strip group in Columbus, UH that has meditation as part of it. It's called the Meditating Peacocks, and I think they start and end with fifteen minutes and meditation. It's held in one of the Buddhist centers there. And so all right, well, thank

you very much. No, it's a pleasure to pleasure to be here and talk with you, and thanks for all the work you're doing. And look forward to reading the new book. My pleasure. Thank you. You can learn more about this podcast and no Levine at one you feed dot net slash Noah