Noah Levine: A Buddhist Journey Through Addiction, Redemption, and Spiritual Awakening

On this episode, Seano McFarland is in conversation with Noah Levine, a meditation teacher, author, and founder of the Dharma Punk Movement and Refuge Recovery. Levine shares his journey from a troubled childhood and suicidal ideation to sobriety and personal growth. Through the power of meditation and mindfulness, Levine reveals how he overcame trauma and addiction. The discussion also covers the creation of Buddhist Recovery programs, challenges within his community, and the importance of compassion and forgiveness. Additionally, practical meditation tips and resources such as Against the Stream and Refuge Recovery are offered for those interested in starting their journey towards healing and happiness.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody, as is seam a father. Welcome to the
Sino Show. My guest today is Noel Levine, straight up
change agent, badass, meditation teacher, author, founder of the Dharma
Punk movement against the stream, Buddhist Meditation Society, refuge recovery.
The brother started a revolution me sell thousands of people

(00:23):
wake up.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I had fantasies of taking myself out at about five
years old, before I even picked up anything. Pain hurts,
and when you resist it, it hurts more, but if
you soften to it, it just hurts. The Buddha characterized
his path to awakening as going against the stream. I
was like, okay, this is a way for me to

(00:44):
frame that natural rejection energy, rebellion energy that I have
into awakening into service into healing.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Thanks great to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
It's a real blessing to have you here. But we're
gonna start what do you call it an audible. We're
gonna start with little meditation. We'll get right to it.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah, you know, let's just just jump however you want
to be Posture wise, you don't have to sit in
any special way, but let your eyes close, let your
body relax into this posture. Take a moment to release
any unnecessary tension that your body's holding with the jaw,

(01:33):
the brow, the heart soften, the belly soften. Tension is
often resistance to what's happening. So much of meditation mindfulness
this style is turning towards and opening up non resistance

(01:56):
acceptance and an attitude of kindness, friendliness, radical self acceptance,
loving kindness, compassion, towards the joys and the sorrows of
our life, of our existence, life in the body, just

(02:23):
landing with the present time experience of sensation, the breath
coming and going, sounds arising and passing, thoughts arising, passing,

(02:45):
floating through awareness. But let the awareness be bigger than
the contents of the mind, so that the sensations, the emotions,
the thoughts have room to arise, staying pass taking a

(03:15):
moment to turn towards our own heart and mind with forgiveness,
just the intention saying to ourselves, I forgive you as
much as I can in this moment, for any of
the tendencies of the mind to compare or judge, crave, resent,
just sending some forgiveness to our minds, some forgiveness to

(03:40):
our bodies, for all of the aches, aging difficulties of
having this physical body, this body that craves pleasure, that
hates pain, and taking this forgiveness and as an act

(04:06):
of compassion, as an act of love and extending it
to the people in our lives. Anything we're holding on
to the intention of releasing the past and then extending
this open heart, compassionate wise forgiving heart outward in all directions,

(04:32):
all living beings, and when you're ready, allowing your eyes
to open and come back to this as a three
minute inner outer practice.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
No better way to start the show. Man. Thank you, brother,
Oh that's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Of course you weren't always this God reflect that we're
a gay. We got there. It's so man that has
so much love for you. Right now, brother, I felt that.
Thank you, Thank you. Let's start with childhood. You gotta
start there, right.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Yeah, seeing the crime, seeing the crime.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Your father, very famous author, activist.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Poet, Yeah, heuler, Yeah, he would like to think of
himself primarily as a poet, I think, yeah, or thought
of himself.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
And you know you're you got ram Das in the kitchen,
you got Jack Hornfield in the kitchen, you got Wayne
dyer around.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
What was that, like, It's hard to remember. I do
have some you know, snippets of childhood with the songa
songa's that kind of or so song or songa is
that sort of Hindu Buddhist term for fellowship of like
you know, his crew. I remember some of the like
Hindu uh what they're called bondaras. Is this celebration of

(05:58):
nim Culi Baba, who was their guru. And I remember
some of those. You know, my childhood was quite mixed,
and my relationship to my father was quite mixed. In
some ways. He was very kind and very compassionate and wise,
but also he wasn't very present, wasn't very available to

(06:19):
his children. And you know, I've come to you know,
kind of understand that his own stuff. He was actually
much more interested in being the teacher than being the
father wof and so you know, there were some wounds
over there.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Great coach, bad player, something like that.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
Yeah, yeah, I don't even know. He would say he
was a great parenting coach. He was a great death
and dying coach. He was a great meditation teacher. He
had some real wisdom and I feel so grateful that
some of the conditioning from that early childhood was stuff
like like I have a memory of being like four

(06:58):
years old and burning my getting burnt on a heater,
one of those stand up heaters, and my you know,
ass just like burnt against the heater. And I can
remember him teaching me to soften to the pain at
four at four, and so like getting that wisdom of like,
pain hurts, and when you resist it, it hurts more.

(07:18):
When you meet it with anger and tightness, it hurts
even worse. But if you soften to it, it just hurts.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
Right.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
So it's like these seeds of compassion of responding rather
than reacting were implanted early. And feel so grateful that
some of that wisdom conditioning was there in my childhood.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Was he sober when you were young?

Speaker 2 (07:40):
My father was not sober. My father was an ex
junkie heroin addict. He was a hippie, psychedelic cowboy. That
was you know when I was growing up, there doing ketamine,
they're doing LSD, they're doing you know, they're smoking weed.
He's not doing heroin anymore, and he's hardly drinking. He
would have a beer once in a while when I
got sober. He said he never drank a beer again.

(08:03):
He thought, he's like you, you know, came and said,
you're an alcoholic. So I'll, you know, in solidarity with you,
I'll not drink either. He didn't stop smoking weed. I
never drink again.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, you talk a lot about in your great books,
and please my audience, I beg you read any I
mean read Refuge Recovery. I mean, it's it's anything he writes,
it's inspired, and it's a great manual for people. So
please buy any of his books. You talk about growing
up and feeling isolated, not feeling like just knowing something's

(08:40):
different about you, trying to how do you fit in?

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Right?

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Could you walk us through that and kind of starting
when you started using I.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Mean my parents split it when I was about two.
Don't remember that, but by the time I was five,
I was feeling suicidal ideation, Like I had fantasies of
taking myself out at about five years old, before I
even picked up anything. And you know, my father was
this death and dying guy. I'd seen terminally ill, I'd

(09:08):
seen people on their deathbed. I'd been taught that death
isn't the end that we reincarnate. So in my you know,
kind of traumatized and angsty five year old mind. I
was like, I'll get out of this life at five
and start over because dad's not around. Stepdad's abusive, Mom's
an alcoholic. I don't want to be you know, my

(09:30):
older sisters, you know, we're always fighting. I had younger
twin brother and sister. They're getting all that kind of
like not getting the attention, not getting the love, not
getting the presence. I don't want to exist. And I
was getting some abuse from my stepfather, and so I
got like suicidal and I had a knife and I
had a plan and I had a you know, and

(09:53):
that feeling of like just discontent and suffering. And then
when I was around that time, six seven years old,
I was like, well, let me try some of that
alcohol that my mom's drinking. Let me try some of
that weed that my both of my parents are smoking.
And I started smoking cigarettes. My first arrest, I was
like six years old. I was smoking cigarettes in the

(10:15):
field and I lit the field on fire, and the
fire department came and they like you know, eventually were like,
oh yeah, this kid fucking burned the field down, and
they like took me in and like men in uniforms
took me to the station, right, I mean it was
the fire department, not the police department. Yeah, but you know,

(10:38):
and so yeah, there was a core feeling of isolation
and differentness. And then in school, you know, I went
back and forth between being like class clown and bully
whatever attention. You know. I learned early on that negative
attention was better than no attention. And I got expelled

(11:01):
from elementary school for vandalizing the classroom. They were like,
you can't come back to this elementary school. It was
fourth grade, maybe fifth and I started using. And once
I started using, I was like, oh, there's relief here.
I don't have to kill myself. I can just get
high every day, right at seven years old. By the

(11:22):
time I'm ten, I'm taking LSD. By the time I
think I started doing cocaine first time, I was twelve, right,
you know, I'm eating last. When I was ten, I
was smoking weed, you know, as often as I could
get it. When I was ten, I found in my
mother's closet two grocery bags full of some weird, dried
up substance that wasn't weed. And I asked my sister,

(11:45):
who's two years older than me. I was getting hided.
She's twelve, I'm ten. I said, what's that? That's where
the weed usually is. That's not weed. What is that?
She said? They're called mush mushrooms, magic mushroom, and you
don't smoke them. You eat them and they taste disgusting,
but they get you high as fuck. So at ten
years old, I ate mushrooms. Yeah, a whole bunch of times.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
I was taking like these big, you know, a couple
ounce bags and like nibbling on mushrooms and running around
in the Redwoods where I grew up, just tripping balls.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
And then you know, experimentation, and then you know, I
don't know where the line crosses into addiction, but pretty
young for me. Yeah, And I look at children, I'm like,
you guys aren't getting high, are you. I was getting
high as.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
A child as a child, and nobody knew.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
They knew at some point. I mean when I was ten,
my mom's like, where's my two ounces of mushrooms that
are missing from my I'm selling those for someone, like
they knew.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
Yeah. The fights weren't about your grades, they were about
where the shirts my dad.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
My dad's like somebody stole, you know, two sheets of
LSD out of the freezer, like, let's have it's probably
my sister, I'm eleven, it wasn't me.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, but let's go to let's go to your bottom.
And when you get sober, it's such a great yeah,
and thank god, my god.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
You know, I've got that feeling that I'm sure you
and so many people can relate to, is that like
before drugs and alcohol destroyed my life, they saved my life,
you know, that suicidal feeling, that self destructive urge. Drugs
and alcohol took the edge off. And also, like I
grew up in the late seventies early eighties, I found

(13:37):
punk rock and punk rock and drugs were such a
great outlet and had so much fun and was such
a solution to my trauma, to my suffering, to my confusion.
And then that line gets crossed where it's like not
you know, taking drugs or you know and going too

(13:57):
the punk rock show, but you know, doing crime and
you know, smoking crack in the alley. And that happened
for me pretty young. By the time I'm sixteen, I'm
strung out, I'm shooting heroin, I'm smoking crack. I'm you know,
I had like about a two year crack run from
fifteen to seventeen, and I'm doing felonies and I'm getting
arrested for felonies and putting Juvie over and over, and

(14:22):
at some point I was like, I don't want to live,
like you know, this is suffering. This is no longer
a solution, this isn't you know. I'm getting these temporary
reliefs followed by all of these consequences. I keep getting
locked up. I keep every morning it's a mission to
get high again. So by the time I'm seventeen, I

(14:45):
feel like I don't want to live. I don't want
to die, I don't want to be locked up. I
don't know what to do. I started getting sent to
twelve step rooms when I was thirteen years old because
I got arrested so much. Court ordered go get your
court card signed. I knew about alcoholics anonymous. I knew
it was a bunch of adults talking about God, some

(15:08):
sort of weird religious group. And I was like, I
can't believe they're sending me to church right to get
my card signed in my thirteen year old mind, because
that's all I heard. I knew what I was doing.
I was, I didn't want to be doing it. My
friends are getting killed, my friends are getting sent to
prison on long sentences.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
Because where did.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
You grow up as Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz right,
and is the where year we at now?

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Nineteen eighty eight, eighty seven, eighty.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
And down there?

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Yeah, I mean, Santa Cruz is a beautiful California surf town,
you know, with the waves and the redwoods and the
palm trees and and like every town, you know, the
underbelly of drugs and gangs and violence, and you know,
Santa Cruz has a weird history of like one of
the serial killer capitals in the seventies. There was a

(16:00):
whole bunch of different serial killers in Santa Cruz.

Speaker 3 (16:03):
That's a great distinction.

Speaker 2 (16:06):
And then Lost Boys and this is like the time
of Lost Boys. Half I was. I think I was
either locked up or in New Mexico when Lost Boys
was filmed. But all my punk rock friends were extras
and Lost Boys they filmed that in like eighty six,
and so that's the sort of the scene, all those
punk rock kids that are at the boardwalk. That was
like my crew.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
Oh wow, I love that, man.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
I wasn't there. So my bottom was that last day
it was morning mission, drinking vodka and fruit punch. Then
you know, getting kind of well enough drunk enough to
go and be like, okay, now we got to steal
something to trade for coke or heroin or whatever, real

(16:51):
drugs we're gonna do today, alcohol appetizer. Now we're on
a mission. Broke into a car, tried to get the stereo,
got the stereo, got mid you know, eleven am downtown,
you know, like just in public, broke a window, grabbed
the stereo, got chased, got caught, got arrested, got sent

(17:14):
to JUVI. Once in juvie, I was like, and I
had this that what I learned in the twelve step rooms,
that feeling pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I had that just
I'm on probation, I've got dirty drug tests on promasion,
I have a seven year suspended Youth Authority sentence for

(17:36):
the last felony arrest. I had that feeling of like
I'm going away for a long time and I don't
want to exist. And I, while in the holding cell,
had like a pseudo suicide attempt, started smashing my head
against the concrete wall. Oh, woke up in a padded cell.

(18:01):
Came to kind of I was I was in one
of those brown outs. Is not a full blackout, it
comes back. Woke up in the in the observation cell,
not in a full straight jacket, but in the you know,
in the room where you can't hurt yourself. And I

(18:23):
think too, you know, internally, I had a feeling of
overwhelming I guess Jane dread and like uh and and
and it occurred to me. I think maybe it felt
like the first time it occurred to me, Look what

(18:45):
I did to myself again.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Oh, sh had a moment of clarity where you could
really see it.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
I had a moment of clarity where I was like,
I did this to myself again. I keep doing this
to myself up to that time, and I've been in
that institution a dozen times, Juvie Santa Cruz. Up At
that time, it was blame fucking cops, fucking society system,

(19:11):
fucking hippies, some narc whatever.

Speaker 1 (19:13):
It was always blame, blame, blame, blame, the adic's anthem.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
But that time I was like, man, I look what
I'm doing on myself a little bit of personal responsibility
just that crack in the in the you know, in
the denial and the blame. With that came all of that,
you know, like when we're blaming everyone else, then there's
not as much shame because there's no response on my

(19:39):
you know. But taking some responsibility came that flood of
regret and of that like, oh man, I've stolen from
my everyone, I've hurt everyone, I've you know, just flooded
with that shame, regret, guilt, but also that crack of like,
oh if I got my here and I'm not just

(20:01):
a victim, maybe I can get myself out of here, hope,
a little bit of hope. And two things happened. One
is the h and I. Twelve step people came in
and I knew one of them from the crack park.
Used to do crimes with him. His brother and I
were running buddies. His brother just going to set to

(20:21):
prison for a very long time for a murder. He
got clean. He came in, he was doing service. He said,
you know, come check out the meeting. And I went
to check out the meeting out of hope, out of willingness,
and I heard, you know, young guys talking about we
can stay sober right, and that implanted some inspiration, some hope.

(20:45):
And then the other thing that happened was my father
took the opportunity during a phone call. He didn't actually
come visit me because he was probably busy teaching, but
he took a phone call and he gave me some
basic meditation instructions not that different than what we started with,
present time awareness of the breath and body release, Soften,

(21:10):
ignore your mind, keep coming back to the breath, ignore
your mind, keep coming back to the breath. And that
simple present time awareness mindfulness technique that I actually took
back to my cell and started applying gave me, you know,
I had a little bit of hope. And then I said, oh, okay,
this is a technique. This is something that I can

(21:32):
do because the twelve step thing of like pray and
God will remove it from you. I'm too skeptical, I'm
too rational, I'm too you know, I'm too punk for
that shit. But this which is weird hippie whatever, but
it's also a practical, applicable tool that's not asking for
some mystical belief. It's just what are you paying attention to?

(21:55):
Ignore your mind, come back to your breath, ignore, you know, disengage.
And I saw that revelation like I didn't know I
didn't have to obey my mind. I meant the first
half of my life obeying doing what my mind told
me to, and it said take drugs and commit crimes,
you know. So I did that. And then in meditation,
I realized my mind can be saying, hey, take drugs,

(22:17):
and I can say, thanks for sharing. I'll come back
to the breath. I'm not gonna take I'm not gonna
get hooked into that thought. Not that I could do
that in the beginning very well, but just that it
just made sense to me.

Speaker 3 (22:30):
What do you think.

Speaker 1 (22:30):
I'm sure your dad has probably told you that a
thousand times or a version. What you just heard it.
It was that thing I think I heard heart. You
were ready to hear it that day.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
I think I heard it in a different way that day.
But also I grew up around it. But my dad
wasn't pushy. He wasn't like, you need to learn this
and this is He was a little hands off. He
was a little like, you find your own way with things.
This is what we do. But I'm not trying to
make you a Buddha. All right, you get to figure

(23:02):
it out.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
Did he not come visit you because he knew you
weren't ready?

Speaker 2 (23:07):
I was ready, right, that's the turning point. I was ready,
but at the time I didn't know if I was ready.
And I would like to think that, but I don't
think it's true. I think that he didn't come visit
me because he wasn't that interested in parenting. Showing up
for you, Yeah, because he didn't. Because he didn't show up. Then.
He didn't show up when I got my shit together.
He didn't show up when I got married, he didn't

(23:27):
show up. When I graduated from grad school, he didn't
show up. He was somebody who didn't show up. I
saw my father if he was in town teaching, that's
when I saw my father. Or I went to visit
him at his home in New Mexico, that's when I
saw him. He never went out of his way to
come and connect. It just wasn't in his wheelhouse.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Let's just I'm gonna come back. I just want to
tap into that real quick. Yeah, you talk so much.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
About forgiveness and I.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
What do you tell what do you teach parents like
that who didn't show up for that? And you've got
these all these people coming into you with resentments. What
do you teach them about letting go of the past
around the parents and things they did?

Speaker 2 (24:11):
You know, just what we did, just release it. But
the releasing the forgiveness is also feeling the pain, like
tending to that's a wound, that's a traumat, trauma, that's
feel it. Mindfulness helps us feel what's present, and then
the mind wants to repeat it over and over, which
help has us re experiencing it. So that phrase I

(24:33):
forgive you as much as I can in this moment
starts to loosen that grasp, that clinging, that repetitive identification
with it. And so there's this For me. I did
forgiveness meditation probably every day for ten years before I
really got some relief. Because in the beginning, you do

(24:53):
the forgiveness meditation and your mind says.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
No, I still hate us, no, fuck you, right, and then.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
It's that kind of war of attrition. I guess that
sort of process that happens.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
There has to be some willingness. Of course, always about
the willingness.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
And patience and perseverance, right right, because a lot of
people like I'm willing what will fix it. It's like,
here's a technique that if you do for a decade,
it will change it, and maybe alone be a year
or two. But it's not a quick fix because you're
creating neuropathways and you're training this mind of these neuropathways

(25:30):
that are very habituated towards clinging and judging and comparing
and resenting. So now you've got to create a new
pathway that's not a naturally well trodden mind habit of forgiveness.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
That was at seventeen.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
You got to you.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Since I re left, I was in juvie, started meditating,
started going to meetings. I was sent to a group home.
When I was in the group home about four months
three four months later, they said, go visit your family.
I went and visiting my family. I started drinking. I
knew I was. I was sort of like a fuck,
I do I know? I'm a drug adict. Am I
an alcoholic. I'm seventeen. Alcohol's pregame. I'll call something you

(26:15):
do in the morning, I'll call something that you do
at night, you know, to come down. I wasn't like
I wasn't a big like let's just go get drunk.
I was like let's get drunk and do crimes and
do drugs. So I had some questions about my alcoholism
at seventeen years old. So I tried some control drinking.
I don't know if i'd heard this in the book

(26:36):
or not, but there's that place in the twelve step
where it says, if you don't, if you're not completely
convinced that you're a real alcoholic, try some controlled drinking.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
It might be worth a bad case of the jitters.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
It might be worth the bad cases of the jenner.
So I was doing that. I did it twice and
ended up not being able to stop once I started.
I'd never tried to stop drinking king before. Before I
was like, Okay, now I'm gonna try to stop. I'm
gonna have three beers and see if I can, you know,

(27:09):
if I can just catch a nice buzz. And then
once I had the alcohol in my system, I was like, oooh,
boom boom boom boom boom, passed till I'm passed out.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
But this time you were honest yourself and realized so fuck.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
I got yeah, because I was also listening, You're listening,
and that was it. Got sober, stayed sober? What year.
This is sometime in August in nineteen eighty eight. I
got locked up in May, I drank in August. Wasn't
keeping track of the date I got locked up on
May tenth in nineteen eighty eight. That was my sobriety
date because I was locked up and pretending that I

(27:39):
wasn't relapsing in August, but really it was sometime in August.
So later I had to revise my sobriety date from
May to August. And I actually celebrate September first because
I wasn't paying attention to the dates in August that
I was drinking. September first, September first is when I celebrate.
So thirty six this year or thirty seven nineteen eighty eight, yeah,

(28:00):
whatever that is, Yeah, however long ago that way.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yes, So I'm class of eighty seven seven, Yeah, yeah,
And I just love that it's very rare you find
people young. So were you eighteen? I was seventeen, Yeah, seventeen,
I was twenty that are still on the on the beam,
on the path. So I love that we're still here. Yeah,
It fucking awesome.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Yes, so, but a whole bunch of factors that kept us, yeah,
coming back and you know, kept us in it. And
there's so many millions of people that didn't stay, and
it's so interesting to look at the factors of those
who's those of us who've stayed and like, oh, how
did that? How did you stay? I was you were
twenty two? We were young, Yeah, super young. I was

(28:40):
very young, But twenty two is very young.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
Too, very young, very young.

Speaker 1 (28:44):
You're going a, yeah, you're liking you have a lot
of willingness checking out. But it's like, huh, you got
some questions.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
I kind of hate it. Yeah, I'm going I've got
some willingness. I have the delusion that if I can
at the stuff, there's a material the unconsciously I believe
there's a material solution if I stay out of jail
and I get car, motorcycle, leather jacket, boots, record collection,

(29:14):
you know, adolescent desire system. Yeah, I don't need a
you know, fancy car. I need a lowrider. You know,
I need a sixties shit back bucket. That the mind
is saying, then you'll be happy. And what I'm hearing
in the twelve Step rooms about like God will restore
you to sanity and you're powerless and all of this
Judeo Christian theistic perspective on the human doesn't. I don't

(29:40):
get it. I don't believe it. Two years kind of
dry drunk, meditating a little bit, praying a little bit,
going to meetings, being of service a little bit, get
a sponsor, don't really call them that. Kind of like
early adolescent fistfighting in meeting. It's more about like trying

(30:01):
to get laid and trying to be cool than surrendering,
rendering or having a spiritual practice. But two years in
I get into some legal trouble for graffiti, but I'm
also stealing, and I'm gang affiliated, and i'm you know,
solber horse chief, yes, and so by the time. But
at nineteen, I kind of hit a emotional bottom, spiritual

(30:26):
you know bottom, and I'm like, okay, this material I've
got the car on the motorcycle and the girlfriend and
I'm miserable. Didn't work. The only thing that's ever given
me any real relief is this meditation practice. And I've
seen the people in the twelve step world talk about
the happy, joyous freedom they found from working the twelve steps.

(30:49):
Maybe I'll try it now at nineteen, probably around nineteen ninety,
and I signed up for a meditation retreat. I was
like this, I feel like this is my best bet.
I'm going to go on this meditation retreat with Jack Cornfield,
asked my dad. I was like, I want to do
this more seriously. He's I go on this retreat with Cornfield.
It's like, okay, I'll go three days silent meditation retreat.

(31:10):
Oh fuck, difficult shit. Wanted to leave, stayed, wanted to leave, stayed,
felt a sense of accomplishment that I stayed, and felt
a deeper sense of hope. Here's a path that I
can walk in the twelve I did the twelve steps, thoroughly,
did the third you know, third step prayer. My sponsor said.

(31:35):
I was like, I don't believe in this shit, and
he's like, well, just say it. You willing? I was,
I'm willing. He's like, well, just let's do the third
step prayer three times a day for ninety days, just
really get it in there. I was like, okay, I'll
do that, and then when we you know, and then
throw a fourth step, throw a fifth step. Did that,
and when we got to six and seven, he said,
let's do the seventh step prayer three times a day

(31:57):
for ninety days. Wow, it was thirty days anyways for
a period, And so I just did it. You know,
I took all of the actions and through eighth and
ninth step and made all of the amends, and you know,
gradually knocked on the doors of the houses that I'd
robbed or neighborhoods that I'd broken into, cars and made

(32:18):
amends to some drug dealers, Like did it thoroughly in
that sort of And there's this big shift in you know,
nineteen twenty years old to like I'm going to get enlightened.
I want to have a spiritual awakening. This is the
only place where I've ever found any real solution, any
real hope. This meditation practice twelve step to the best

(32:40):
of my ability ability, but I never came to believe.
I never came to a place where I could really
assign the transformation that was happening in my life to
an external higher power. I felt like, I'm taking these actions,
and prayer gives me some relief, and meditation gives me
some relief. And honesty and service and all of these

(33:02):
actions give me some reliefs. The actions that I'm taking
that I feel like are creating some change in my life,
not a mystical, magical external source. And I've just maybe
I've just always had that sort of skeptical, rational kind
of mentality. So I never really came to believe, but

(33:27):
I did the steps, and I you know, and I
love the twelve Step fellowship, and you know, thirty something
years later, I still go, never stopped going. I like
Buddhism better. Buddhism makes more sense to me than Monotheism,
even open minded, you know, Judeo Christian twelve step model,

(33:48):
so open minded. I appreciate that it tries to make room,
but it really only it makes room for all kinds
of theists who don't care what you believe as long
as you come to a belief kind of thing. And
so for a nontheist like me, there's always that feeling
of like, oh man, I never really came to believe.

(34:08):
Never really this sort of higher power God language never
resonating for me, But spiritual practice resonates kindness and love
and compassion and forgiveness and transformation healing, the outcome of
these steps being a spiritual awakening. The outcome of this

(34:29):
meditation process be a spiritual awakening that kind of just
hooked me, and you know, and I heard where they said,
you know, be quick to see where other kind of
religious and spiritual people are right, and we know only
a little. I heard all of that stuff, and I
was like, okay, well, I'm going to keep participating in
this world, but I got to find something that makes

(34:50):
a deeper sense, you know, to me. And eventually, you know,
I studied Hinduism, I studied Sufism, and I at some
point I read the Bible and the Koran and you know,
the Tour of the Old Testament, because I was like,
I got to figure out what all of these you know,
monotheists believe. I know, I don't believe it, but I'm
not sure what it is. So I did some study,

(35:12):
and you know, kind of so I had some not
so much contempt prior to investigation, a little bit of
contempt post.

Speaker 4 (35:20):
I love that man, and Buddhism just was what made
you know, it was kind of resonates just my heart practice.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
And so I've been at that for thirty plus.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Walk the audience through when you first came out here
and what you started out here and how that all
came about because you were doing all kinds of interesting
jobs up until that.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
So my employment. In my twenties, I worked in the
medical field. I became an EMT. I worked in hospitals
er tech emergency room tech UH where I was a
nursing assistant for a while. I did this sort of
I knew I wanted to be of service. I learned

(36:07):
that from recovery. I learned that from Buddhism. I want
to use my life to help others.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
I did.

Speaker 2 (36:16):
Community outreach. I worked at an HIV testing clinic. I
worked at a you know kind of harm reduction giving
needles to active addicts. I was like, I just want
to help. How can I help? And you know some
and but meditation. I was going on retreats every year,

(36:37):
two three retreats every year, meditating every day. I took
a vow of celibacy in my twenties, spent two years
not masturbating, not being having any sexual active, any intentional
sexual activity. I was doing a sort of pseudo monastic householder,
like I'm going to be a monk, like you know
these monks that I'm studying with, but I'm gonna still

(36:58):
listen to punk rock and drive the lowriders.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
Yeah, yeah, that's what I love about you.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
No.

Speaker 2 (37:05):
Yeah, And then at some point people, my friends started noticing, Okay,
you're changing, You're still I think the reality for me
in that first decade is that I was changing, but
my ego was also very identified with being spiritual and
that kind of I was straight edge, which you know
that punk rock straight edge vegan. I was sugar free,

(37:27):
I was caffeine free. I was celibate, and I was
pretty sure that I was better than everyone else in
the room because I was more disciplined than everyone else
in the room, and that ego trip that became. But
some of them were like, you know, you're kind of
a dick, but we want to learn meditation too. You know,
at least you're not violent anymore. At least you're not

(37:48):
you know, crazy like that. Now you're just self centered.
So people started asking me about meditation. And then about
ten years in my teachers said, uh, Cornfield said, I
want to train, you want to put you through this
training thing. My father said, yes, you should start teaching.
You should try to do this book. So, you know,

(38:10):
about ten years into my practice and my recovery, I
started kind of edging into this teacher role, partially because
my friends were asking me about it curseonally because my
teachers were encouraging me to do it. And when I
started teaching, there was some level of a conscious decision
of like, Okay, recovery has been my path to meditation,

(38:33):
am I going to do like a recovery meditation teacher thing?
And I decided, Oh, I don't want to exclude anybody
in my community and my generation and anybody in the
world that's not an addict. I don't want to be
say like, oh, you know, you can't come meditate because
you're not an alcoholic. I want to include everyone. So
when I started teaching, it was like, all are welcome,

(38:57):
whether in recovery or not in recovery.

Speaker 1 (38:59):
You're very nurse with your welcomes.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
Yeah try to. I really love that about what you
guys do there.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
Yeah, try to.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
You know, like you greet them with such kindness from
the gate.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Well, it's the Buddhist first noble truth. All beings are
suffering straight up. We can have this thing as recovering addicts,
like where we have special suffering. I'm a this is
because I'm an alcoholic or I'm an addict, And it's like, yes,
there's some truth of that, but also everyone has suffering,
and there's a cause of suffering, and there's a path
to end suffering, whether it's become addiction or it's just

(39:31):
your own neurotic, self centered, normal human suffering. So all
of that sort of led me to teaching and the
books that became successful and the people. You know, more
and more people started coming, and then more people came
and said, you know, we want a Buddhist recovery program.

(39:53):
And I was like, well, there isn't one. There's the
twelve Steps, and there's Buddhism, and we can integrate them,
but there's no such thing as a Buddhist recovery program.
It doesn't exist yet. And so then at some point
and I saw, oh, half of the people in the
room are hoping that this will either augment their twelve

(40:16):
step program or replace it. And there was a good
chunk of people who were like, no, twelve Steps for me,
Buddhism is the only thing that makes sense. So at
some point that gave birth to what is now refuge recovery.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
How long it was that the book.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Came out ten years ago this year came out in fourteen.
But here in Los Angeles we had two meditation centers,
and I'd been training meditation teachers and you know, hundreds
of people were coming through and half of them are
in recovery. So we started, probably in around two thousand
and seven or two thousand and eight, Buddhist recovery meetings

(40:56):
here in Santa Monica over in Hollywood, at the two
meditation centers that I had. So there was a sort
of pilot program for a couple of years while I
was writing the book, and then the book came out
in twenty ten, and it went from you know, there's
five of these meetings here in Los Angeles to people
starting them all over the world, all over the country.

(41:18):
By four years in there was almost eight hundred meetings.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
So by you know, by fourteen fifteen, we were looking
at like eight hundred meetings, you know, nationally, and there's
meetings in Thailand, there's meetings in Europe, and there's meetings
all over within four or five years.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Were you staying right size during that time? Were you like, Oh,
this is amazing or were you like, oh, fuck it?
What I fucking did? You took a lot of hit
for screening this movement.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Yes, although you were like, huh, I did and I didn't.
I mostly got praise, and all of the haters I
didn't get much of it to me. And even on
the online stuff, there wasn't a lot of critical stuff
in that time. There wasn't a lot of bad reviews.

Speaker 4 (42:04):
There wasn't.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
I'm sure people were upset about it, you know, the
old school twelve steps is the only way I'm sure
that people, but I didn't hear a lot about it.
I mostly got praise. I don't know if I stayed
I'm sure I got a little bit inflated. I have
a tendency, like I was talking about, Like you know,
even before, when I was just a you know, young
celibate guy, I had a tendency towards arrogance anyways. So

(42:28):
I don't know if I became that much more arrogant.

Speaker 1 (42:32):
Or not.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
But I have that sort of I think like every
not everyone, but a lot of us, that's kind of
pretty sure that I'm always right kind of attitude. So
I don't know if the success fueled that that much
or not, but probably some, if anything.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
I actually would hope what.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
I hope is true is that because at that point
I was twenty years sober, and I was meditating every day,
and I was continuing to go on retreats, and I'm
living my life in this philosophy and practice that says,
don't take any of it personal. The ego is not
who you are. There's not even a permanent self here

(43:15):
in this human experience. And also, you didn't make any
of this shit up. This is just twenty six hundred
year old teachings that you're implementing in your life that
you're sharing with others. What I would like to hope
is mostly true is like I saw some of my

(43:35):
friends become rock stars or really successful artists or something
where the whole world was telling them, You've created something
amazing your music, your acting, your art, whatever it is,
and that kind of ego picking up on that, I
felt the whole time like the world was saying, you've,
you know, translated something that already existed. We like the

(43:58):
way that you share with us these ancient teachings that
you know. For me, it wasn't like you created. I
didn't create anything. I translated. And I brought together punk
rock and Buddhism, and I brought together recovery and Buddhism.
But I didn't make up recovery. I didn't make up Buddhism.
I didn't make up punk rock. I didn't you know,

(44:18):
none of that was to me. These are just the
things that like changed my life. I don't want to
share them with you, But I didn't make any of
it up.

Speaker 3 (44:26):
Mmmm, that's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
One of the reflections that I had about the kind
of inflation staying right sized is I think part of
what happened for me was that I actually didn't see
the kind of power that I had. What I still

(44:49):
thought I was a punk rock kid that's just part
of the fellowship, and had that sort of in punk
rock there's no rock stars. Were all just part of
this recovery. There's no leaders, We're all just part of this.
But I was actually had, you know, stepped into this
role as a spiritual teacher and had hundreds thousands of

(45:11):
people looking to me for guidance and not only you know,
for what I was teaching about how I was, you know,
walking the walk. And I think I was in some
denial about the level of power and projection and responsibility
that I had in that because I felt committed to

(45:32):
authenticity and you know, keeping it real and you know,
not changing One of the accusations that I got later
was that I didn't have the appropriate what's the word,
the appropriate kind of behavior as a spiritual teacher. And

(45:57):
you know that, like spiritual teachers are supposed to be meek, quiet,
and you know all of this stuff. And from my
sense was like my defensive sense was like, oh, we're
supposed to be fake, right, I just want to be
honest and authentic and real. But I really saw that,
like later, after some shit went down, I saw like, oh,

(46:18):
I wasn't really seeing myself clearly, so others were seeing me.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
I'm gonna do my Mike Wallace sixty minutes and I quote,
this is one of.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
This is.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
The path of the spiritual revolution. Revolutionary is a long
term and gradual journey toward awakening. If you were looking
for a quick fix or an easy salvation, turn back now,
plug back into the matrix and enjoy your delusional existence.
This is a path for rebels, mal contents, and truth seekers.

(46:59):
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
counter instinctual action which you will have at your disposal.
That's fuck, let's talk about that man that is so money.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, that's that's how I made
sense of doing spiritual practice. I you know, with somebody
my whole life that was going against the norm, rebelling
against society and the system and ignorance and greed and
hatred and delusion. And when I heard that the Buddha

(47:42):
characterized his path to awakening as going against the stream,
as an act of rebelling against the human tendency to
take everything personal and cling and resent and hate, I
was like, Okay, this is a way for me to
frame that natural rejection energy, rebellion energy that I have

(48:04):
into awakening, into service into healing. So I you know,
and I wrote, I heard the buddhas set against the stream.
So then I was like, okay, let me teach this
path as a path of rebellion because it's part of
what he's saying, which was different than my hippie teachers

(48:26):
that were saying kind of like you gotta just kinda
let go and go with the flow.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Yeah. No, no, you're you're in My philosophy is we're
gonna deal with this head on. We're gonna take the
ban and we're gonna take the violence. We're gonna take
the trauma, we're gonna take the sexual acting, and we're gonaket.
We're gonna look at it head on.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Let's turn towards it.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
We're gonna go straight towards it because there's no shortcuts.
Here's no shortcuts. That you're looking for a shortcut. And
I and then you speak to that, And that's why
I think you have the phone because people needed to
hear that. Yeah, they really needed to hear that. I'm
gonna do one other quote that I just love while well, hey,

(49:09):
let me get Oh that's so good, that's so good. Okay,
now let me do it. We must not confuse letting
go of past injuries with feeling an obligation to let
the injuries back into our life. The freedom of forgiveness
often includes a firm boundary and loving distance from those
who've harmed us. As my father likes to say, we

(49:31):
can let them back into our hearts without ever letting
in back into our house.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
Let's talk about that.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
I feel like that's such an important understanding because so
often people conflate forgiveness with reconciliation. If I forgive you,
I gotta hang out with you again rather than forgiveness
is an emotional state of heart and mind, and it
doesn't necessarily I mean that there's a reconciliation or a reconnection,

(50:03):
and that often sometimes the healthiest thing to do is
to have a really good boundary, make the amends, do
the forgiveness, and move on.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Keep it moving, keep it.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Moving, because you know, and you know, one of the
tricky things about that that I think I write about
later in that chapter is, you know, often we think
about that like I have to have boundaries with you
because you hurt me. And often that's true. Sometimes we
have to have boundaries with ourselves because I will misbehave

(50:35):
if I re enter this relationship. I need to stay
away from you, even if you want to connect, and
I you know, I need to stay with me because
I don't have the skill yet to not harm you.
And when I harm you, I harm myself. So out
of self love and compassion for you, keep it moving.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Keep it moving, right, which is hard.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
You know. Sometimes people feel like, well, you know, part
of the amends is they want to reconnect, but do
you really have the skill to not hurt them again?
And that humility, be.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
Like, not yet, you're not there yet.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
I want to make the amends, but also I'll probably
re offend in that situation, right, so I need to
have a personal boundary with myself take you know, ask
offer the forgiveness, ask for the forgiveness, and have a boundary.
Even with family. Sometimes family is the hardest one. Always,
it's always the hardest one. Of people are like, well,

(51:33):
they're my family, so I have to deal with them.
Sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's not true. You don't have to. Yeah,
you can really change the relationship to family.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Doctor Paul wrote The Acceptance the Great Acceptance Prayer. He
would always say, the toughest place to work the programs
in your own home. The love I have for the
newcomer just barked and stole from me all day long. Yeah,
but my wife asked me to take out the garbage.
What the fuck's the prom here?

Speaker 3 (52:00):
Right? Sure, so let's move in this direction.

Speaker 1 (52:05):
You've got the three different centers, right, the meditation centers?
Is that three?

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Currently?

Speaker 1 (52:12):
No? No? Back then, back then.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
We had two centers in Los Angeles, Hollywood, in Santa Monica.
We had a center in San Francisco. We had affiliated
centers in New York City, Seattle, Nashville, Boston. And then
there was also all of these kind of groups. I
trained all of these teachers. Then all of these teachers
also teaching that don't necessarily have their own center, but

(52:36):
all of those six or seven places had their own
brick and mortar places.

Speaker 1 (52:41):
You've got a treatment center, opened a.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Treatment center in fifteen or fourteen.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
You've got a detox.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Detox, sober living outpatient.

Speaker 1 (52:51):
Right, a lot going on, a lot of healing, helping
with lots, lots of people, lots of people, and then
one day it changes.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
It's all changed in two thousand and eighteen, seventeen eighteen.
You want me to tell the story?

Speaker 3 (53:04):
Yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, we have to tell a story. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
Man. In twenty eighteen, a woman that I was dating,
been dating for a couple months, a lot of particular
backstories with her. A friend of mine dated her. I'd
had been given a little warning of like careful, I
ignored that warning. I'd been divorced. I'd been married for
ten almost ten years. I got divorced in fifteen. And

(53:32):
so this is like in seventeen, first couple of years
out of out of my marriage. Back on the market,
and that was part of what I was talking about before,
like back on the market and not seeing that I'm famous.
I didn't really I sort of knew it, but I
didn't really embody that. I was a little bit of
denial about it, and that you know, people you know,

(53:54):
were attracted to the role and the power. But I
always I had a very very strong ethics about no students,
not dating students, not anything in my world. So I
started dating online this particular woman somebody set me up
with actually, and after a couple months we were dating.
One night, we're together, slept together. The next day, she

(54:17):
started texting me, I want to talk to you about consent.
And I was surprised and confused and a little bit angry,
a little bit kind of like, what do you mean consent?
And we had it back and forth, and I tried
to she wouldn't pick up the phone. She texted a
little bit. She asked me to go see her therapist,

(54:39):
and I said, you know, we've been dating for a
couple months. We're not even in a committed relationship, we're
just dating. I don't want to go see your therapist, Like,
let's talk. Looking back I regret. I wish I would
have followed through on some of her requests, because what
she did was she went to the police and said
he sexually assaulted me. And then a few months later,

(55:00):
uh with the police, no charges, didn't do anything. But
since you know, nothing happened there her one of her
met she was also a Buddhist in the Zen world,
and her teacher sent out a letter public letter to
my organizations a refuge and against a stream my teachers organizations,

(55:21):
Spirit Rock and all of these different orgs that said
I raped her. And there was this public, public accusation
of rape, and which was confusing and painful and devastating
for everything that I had created, even though it was

(55:43):
absolutely not true. You know, from my perspective, and our
communication seemed good. She never told me what happened, but
from her accusation something during our last intercourse, and we'd
slept together many times, she said, you know, you didn't
ask whatever it was. I never even got the whole story.

(56:05):
It just went from I want to talk to you
about consent to Noah's a rapist, right without any context
of this was a relationship we were in.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
What year are we at now?

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Seventeen eighteen. So that accusation and some internal politics within
my organization power and you know, just became the kind
of devastating. The treatment center closed, the meditation centers closed,
and I was sort of left out there with maybe

(56:42):
i'd say three quarters of my community walked away, about
a quarter of my students and community, and less than
a quarter of my friends and colleagues stuck around. And
a lot of them even said to me, we know
this isn't true about you, but you're just bad for
business now, including my own teachers, including Jack Cornfield at

(57:03):
one point said to me, like, I know this isn't
really true, but you're just too bad for business. We
got to throw you under the bus. Wow, because it's
twenty eighteen and me too and Weinstein, and you know,
an accusation like that anytime, hopefully, but particularly then at
the kind of height of the Me Too movement, it

(57:24):
was just devastating. Nobody wanted to give me much support.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
And how are you taking care of yourself during these times?

Speaker 2 (57:32):
Meditation meetings, psychotherapy service. You know, also that's sort of
like I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing,
and you know, when on retreats, and I you know,
weekly therapy and up to the forgiveness game, you know,
the compassion game, and that balance of sitting with the

(57:55):
feelings of pain and betrayal and loss, a deep investigation
of into like what was my part how you know,
what was the harm not only in this relationship, but
these people around me that I thought were my friends
that didn't support me? Uh, what was my part in
creating those relationships where I didn't get any support, where

(58:19):
they were really quick to walk away from me?

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (58:22):
No, tell listeners, why what's our part? It is probably
the most important thing about waken Up.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Yeah, well, I feel like it's the most important part
because it's the only thing we can do anything about
right right, And we have to see that part clearly
of like, oh, like I was part of some of
the reflections I was talking about earlier in the podcast
of like I could see the arrogance or the denial
or that, you know, ways that I wasn't seeing myself clearly. So,

(58:51):
you know, one of my closest friends said, you know,
you were you were pushy with me. You pushed me
into you know, being a teacher or opening a meditation center,
and you know, and I could see my defensive mind
saying like, well, you said you wanted to do that,
so I showed you how to do it, and yes,
I did sort of push you into the San Francisco center.

(59:15):
The guy up there didn't want to open a center.
He just wanted to teach the class. But I had
given him this class where there was one hundred and
fifty people coming, and then you know, I'd opened these
other centers and he had sustained it. But that group,
there's this huge group that said like, we want a
meditation center. He didn't want to do it, and I
kind of pushed him into it. So that was one
of the things I was like, Oh, I pushed you

(59:36):
into it. Another guy at the time had said, you know,
you're the you know, master at ethical manipulation. Oh wow,
you're really good at getting to do people to do
stuff that they don't want to do, but that's good
for them. And so I had sort of taken that
self view of like, yeah, sometimes I'm probably a little

(59:56):
bit pushy, but not for my gain, like for stuff
that's good for you. Now, I could see in that
kind of my part there was some delusion in that
view of like, yeah, it was good for him, and
he got a good salary and all that, but also
it was good for me and my brand to have
all of these meditation centers, and I was benefiting from it.
And so I got to see my part was It

(01:00:18):
wasn't altruistic. There was a part of self and self,
you know, a grind, a grandizement or whatever that was
in that. And I got to see some of those
pieces and I got to make amends to all of
the you know, So what I did, I did a
new kind of inventory. I went to all of the

(01:00:40):
people that I, you know, felt harmed by and saw
my part and made amends for my part some you know,
and this is like hundreds of thousands of dollars for
my nonprofits walks away, my mailing list walks away. You know,
it's like almost half a million dollars. And my mind
was stolen, you know, out of these accounts of these
organizations that I had built. The thing about building nonprofit

(01:01:04):
organizations is that you don't own it. It belongs to
the nonprofit. And when the nonprofit kicks you out, they
take the money. So because I had put everything twenty
years into building these nonprofit organizations and then they were
just like, we'll keep this money, you go away.

Speaker 3 (01:01:21):
Wow yeah wow.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
So making those amends, seeing my part making amends, doing
the forgiveness practice, and then just carrying on im like
I'll just show up. I had this feeling through that
period of like, you know, I had like almost like
a musician or something like I had some successful albums
and I was playing stadiums and it was fun. And

(01:01:45):
then I got a really bad review and no more stadiums,
and I'm back to the clubs, and you know, three
quarters of the audience said, you know, we hate you
now and we think you're a bad person, even though
you know, without ever really investigating it, just like we
heard this gossip. So you're out. And I was like, okay,

(01:02:06):
well I'll play clubs. I'll show up to my weekly
here in the West Side Venice. I've been teaching this
Monday night class for.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Twenty years, right, that's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
And it used to be one hundred and fifty people
standing room only, and now like you know, thirty people
show up in person and fifty people show up on
zoom sell eighty people. Yeah great, but it's not what
it used to be. But I'm a dharma teacher. I'm
here to use my life to be of service, whether
it's big or it's small. I'll show up. I'll show up.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
But I after everything. You know, when you had to
close everything down, how many jobs were lost?

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
You know, dozens all it lots dozens.

Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
Yeah, people lost your jobs.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
Any thirty people people?

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Job is gone, driver, psychiatrist. I mean it's gotta be Yeah,
you put a lot of people to work.

Speaker 2 (01:02:59):
There's a lot of people where there. Yeah, And it
was great. We're getting people to meditate and we've got
some great success stories. There's still some people in the
community that went through there eight years ago, you know,
and are still sober. And it's great.

Speaker 1 (01:03:13):
And so you know, no rest, No, nothing was ever
putt in. It's nothing, just nothing. I was never charged
with any anything. No, And you're great. You know your
teachers turned against you. I was thinking, wow, And I
know he was such a big part of your life.
I'm sure he taught you about forgiveness, and now here

(01:03:34):
you're happening to use the practice he gave you to
forgive him.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Yeah. And the big question that people kept asking me of,
like how are all these Buddhists not being more kind
of compassionate and forgiving and supportive. Right, you know, like
where's the forgiveness, where's the inclusion? Because I went to
them and said, you know, what can we do to
have some sort of you know, uh what what is

(01:03:58):
that term of? Like storative justice? I was like, I
want to speak with this woman. I want to speak
with anybody that feels harmed by me. Can we create
a process? You know, I want to make take full
responsibility for anything that I've actually done, but I'm also
going to stay strong. At one point, some of my
teachers were like, just fall on the sword, tell everyone

(01:04:18):
that you are a sex addict and that's why this happened.
And I was like, I can't because that's not true
for me. Yeah, you know, that's sort of the old
like go to rehab and then then it'll go away.
And I was like, if it was true for me,
I would I wish that work. Not that I don't
wish that we're true, but I was like, I just
have to show up and tell the truth. And what's

(01:04:39):
true is that maybe I was unskillful in some way,
but there was no communication about that. I don't know,
and so I can't fall on a sword. I can't
lie about what happened.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
So during this time when you're you know, your reputation,
people aren't returning your calls. Money's gone.

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
Oh I'm not calling them, you know, way too arrogant
to call.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
You're not scared they're not calling me. You have faith
that it's all going to shake out, and these are
great lessons for you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:08):
You know, all my money went away, but I you know,
been teaching and practicing and believing that money is not
a refuge right, and that there's no material solution. So
you know, what nobody can take away is our wisdom
or our compassion or our loving heart. And I didn't

(01:05:29):
lose any of that. If anything, this whole process helped
me become more accepting and more loving and more generous
and more compassionate. And so in that way, this whole
dilemma benefited me personally. It didn't benefit my community. It
didn't benefit you know, there are stories about people that
relapsed and you know because of the gossip, you know,

(01:05:52):
the false narrative that they were told. That's tragic.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
But for me, I was kind of like, I'll be okay, now,
could you go into more detail about you know, you went,
you went through all this nothing what you learned about
you didn't know you're kind of a rock star. And
students were there anything with students? Did anything happen there?

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
Not? Really? Right, no, And even like they did this
whole investigation of like, has anybody else had any you know,
harm from Noah? And they got ten entries, you know,
ten people, and part of the problem was that then
they spread there's ten accusations against know, and it sounded
like there's ten sexual assaults accusations, but the reality of

(01:06:38):
those were I think seven or eight of them were
just character complaints. I think Noah's like this or like that,
or you know, he offended me in a dharma talk
he said something you know, offensive or you know, it
was all really sort of just some character assassination. There
were two women that I had dated, neither of them

(01:06:59):
who were students, who both said everything was consensual, but
he was a little passionate or aggressive or you know
for me, he you know, both of them said, you know,
he honored all of my boundaries, but I didn't love it,
so you know, that was the consent, you know. And
there was zero students, not one, you know, I've been

(01:07:20):
teaching for twenty years thousands of students. Not one came
and said like, hey, he was inappropriate sexually or anything
like that with me. Because I hadn't been right off, well,
there was nothing to be said, right yeah, you know,
you know, since I was a kid, through all of

(01:07:41):
the stuff, the suicidal feelings, through everything, I had this sense,
I'm gonna be okay, no matter what, right, I'm gonna
be okay to matter. I always had that sense, and
some of it was I'll be okay. I'll just kill
myself and that'll be okay too, But I always had
this sort of probably a little bit defensive feeling of

(01:08:03):
like I'll be okay no matter what. So when all
of that shit went down, I had that core feeling
of I'll be okay whatever happens, money, no money, I'll
be okay. I don't need the stuff. That's not my
source of happiness.

Speaker 1 (01:08:20):
You right, Why we're 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 Usooooo,
let's talk about that.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
One of the wonderful things about mindfulness is that Eventually,
after you practice for some time, you start to get
some awareness of what's happening in your mind and where
it's coming from, you know, and is this coming from inflation?
You can kind of that pause where you can kind
of one of the teachings in Buddhism is right speech?

(01:09:00):
Is it true? Is it useful? Is it appropriately timed?
Is it coming from a place of kindness? So you
start investigating what you're saying, how you're presenting yourself of like,
is this true? Is this the appropriate time? Is it useful?
And even if it seems true, where's it coming from?
What's my intention in showing up in the conversation like this?

(01:09:20):
Is it to kind of self aggrandize, make myself look better?
Or is it that self centeredness of inferiority, of like
I don't know anything. Getting that discernment and being able
to actually choose where we're speaking from, where we're acting from,
it's a little bit of an advanced practice. You can't

(01:09:41):
just do that, but meditation leads to that ability and
that skill.

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
Let's give practical exercises like you talk so much about.
I love it like a beginner's mind. What can somebody
that's got three days of sobriety, or the house wife
who's struggling with her kid's addiction, or any what are
practical just to yeah, he started, what's a good starter kiit?

Speaker 4 (01:10:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
I mean I feel like the starter kit is a
little bit like what I You know, where I started,
And it's where the Buddhist starts his meditation instructions, which
he says, sit down and basically ignore your mind and
pay attention to your breath. And every time your attention
goes back into thinking about the future or the past, disengage.
Bring your awareness out of the content of that thought.

(01:10:30):
Come back to the breath. Now, it's important the context here.
People so often think like, oh, I have to stop thinking.
There's nowhere that it's saying, stop your mind, good luck,
stop paying attention to your mind, stop obeying your mind,
start developing that. And the more you meditate, the more
you start to see, Man, my mind's not very trustworthy.

Speaker 1 (01:10:50):
It's giving me.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
Really bad advice a lot of the time. And I
need to be a little bit more skeptical about my
own views and my own opinions and my own habitual
reaction to tendencies. So the first piece is disengage, come
back to the breath, come back to the body, come
back to the present, get out of the story, get

(01:11:11):
out of the memory, the resentment, come back to here.
And then the tools around replacing start replacing those resentful
you know, tendencies of mind with I forgive you as
much as I can start implanting, start planting the seeds
of wisdom, even if you don't feel it yet. I
forgive you, Please forgive me. I forgive myself. So some

(01:11:34):
of it's learning to ignore the mind. And then it
begins training the mind. And the mind's not going to
train itself. And you can read all of the great
meditation books, but you have to sit down and do
it right and actually, you know, develop both that concentration,
which is the ignoring your mind, and the replacing and

(01:11:58):
then ultimately mindfulness. And this isn't the beginner, but I
think it's important even for the beginners to see the map.
Where can this take me? You can't do it yet,
but where it can take you is you can learn
to ignore, you can learn to replace, and then you
can learn to observe that everything's in permanent arising and passing,

(01:12:19):
rising and passing, and that there's some choice on what
thoughts we interact with and really identify with. The Buddhist said,
you know this comes from the Buddhist teaching where he said,
when it's an unwholesome thought, don't engage, replace it with
something wholesome. When it's you know, coming from greed or

(01:12:42):
hatred or delusion, you know, shortcomings, defects, whatever it is.
Just you know, notice that those they'll happen. You know,
you can't stop them from happening, but you don't have
to identify with them, don't have to engage with them,
and you can start to replace them with I forgive you,
or loving kindness or compassion ultimately meditation. Will you know

(01:13:03):
that you start by ignoring, then replacing, and then observing,
and you start to see it's all in permanent, it's
all arising and passing, and it's all really very impersonal.
The mind has a mind of its own. It's not me,
my mind. It's just what the human mind does. It thinks,
it remembers, it compares, it judges, it resents. It's just

(01:13:24):
what the human brain does. And you start to not
take it so personal, not self impersonal, and that humility
of this insight of like, and my views and opinions
aren't that reliable. I have them, you have them, everyone
has them, but don't get too attached to them, because
they're just not that reliable as a source of information.

(01:13:46):
It's my own mind such a weird thing, all of us.
We can look back at our lives and be like,
I was so often wrong about what I thought. I
was so convinced I was right, and I was so
often wrong. But then in the press, isn't we still
have that experience of being convinced that we're right, rather
than having that humility of like, these are my views

(01:14:08):
and opinions, could be true, could not be true.

Speaker 3 (01:14:11):
I don't know when are you happiest?

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
I find that a weird question and a hard question
to answer. For me, happiness is about contentment with whatever is,
and I believe that actually happiness can exist in the
midst of pain. The truth is, I'm probably happiness when
I'm not in pain, But I have to you know,

(01:14:37):
happiness has to include difficulties, has to include pain, not
a happiness that's only dependent on pleasure. And you know,
the right kind of attention and all of that. My
goal is to kind of have a consistent happiness. The
short answer is, I'm probably happiest when I'm like having pleasure.

(01:14:57):
That's the easiest, but also the lowest four of happiness.
To be having sense pleasures or material things, probably when
I'm happiest, but it feels like the lowest form. It
feels like such a higher form of happiness. When I'm
in the midst of difficulty and I'm not taking it
that personal and I'm responding with the appropriate compassion or

(01:15:19):
non attachment or whatever's called for, That's when I really
feel like, Oh, I had this experience on retreat a
couple weeks ago. I was on a ten day retreat
and I was having this very you know, on retreat,
I have some very high experiences of happiness sometimes, and
it was all about my mind, you know, feeling some
resentment and I was replacing it with forgiveness. And then

(01:15:41):
there was this shift from forgiveness to appreciation to the
people that I had felt harmed by because it gave
me this opportunity to become more compassionate. It wasn't pleasant,
but it was a real heart opening form of happiness
to be like, these wounds are opportunities for freedom, and

(01:16:03):
I want to get free more than I want anything else.

Speaker 1 (01:16:06):
Straight out, I'm happiest when I'm in the ocean, when
I'm with my son and I'm with another brother that
I understand his pain and we got out and I'm
celebrating with you. That's what I'm my happiness when I'm
connecting with a guy who's been through it and I
relate to his pain. His loneliness is awkwardness who's standing

(01:16:26):
up for something and can have the fucking low ride
and the cigarettes and fucking teach them fucking spits some
truth and have people go, what the fuck's this guy? Yeah,
I'm not in a fancy rope. I don't have beats.
This is my get down. That's not my happiness. So
you just got a couple of minutes. I want to
end with, well, how can people find you? For sure?

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
The two main organizations is against the stream. Website is
against the stream dot com. They can find us. I
do my Monday class on Zoom every week. People can
tune in from wherever. There's huge podcasts, you know, backlog
of all of those Monday night guided meditations and dharmatos
and then Refuge for people in recovery interested in recovery

(01:17:12):
Refuge Recovery dot org. There's hundreds of zoom meetings every week.
There's in person meetings depending on where you live. We
didn't even get into how the whole split and loss
was that my refuge recovery community was split into and
it went from eight hundred meetings to two separate organizations.
So now we're sort of rebuilding that. But Refuge is

(01:17:33):
alive and well, and there's meetings on online and in person,
and I do meditation retreats every year for both Refuge
Recovery and Against the Stream, So people, you know, those
are those sources Refuge dot org and Against the Stream
dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:17:50):
And the beginner what bookshold they read of yours?

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Maybe it depends. If you're in recovery, read Refuge Recovery
or if you need recovery. If you're in interested in Buddhism,
read Against the Stream then part of the Revolution. If
you have a friend or you're not so interested in Buddhism,
read Dharma Punks because that might get you interested. That's
my memoir where I talk about some of the stories

(01:18:15):
we've talked about and how you know, meditation and recovery
changed my life.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
Right on man don't stop being you, brother.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
I'm gonna try not to.

Speaker 3 (01:18:25):
I don't want you to do.

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
I don't think I could if I try, well, I
hope not.

Speaker 1 (01:18:28):
Okay, I really appreciate being on the show.

Speaker 2 (01:18:31):
Man my pleasure. Well, thank you for all the work
you do. So it's an honor to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
That's so thank you, brother, and we we'll keep it going.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
Huh's doing all right?

Speaker 3 (01:18:39):
All right? Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
The Sinal Show is a production of iHeart Podcasts, hosted
by me Cina McFarlane, produced by pod People in twenty eighth.
Av Our lead producer is Keith carlak Our, executive producer
is Lindsay Hoffman. Marketing lead is Ashley Weaver. Thank you
so much for listening. We'll see you next week.