Quotes from Noah Levine

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

The body breathes by itself. The mind thinks by itself. Awareness simply observes the process without getting lost in the content.

The cause of our suffering has always been our reaction to the thoughts, feelings, cravings, and circumstances of our lives. The cause of our addictions has always been the indulgence in the behaviors or substances.

The Dalai Lama is rumored to have said that being able to have sex without any attachment would take the level of attainment of being able to eat either chocolate cake or dog shit without any preference between the two.

It's easy to hate and point out everything that is wrong with the world; it is the hardest and most important work in one's life to free oneself from the bonds of fear and attachment.

The practice of celibacy alone was opening me up to a deeper sense of the way the mind-body connection works. I saw over and over that my mind and body could be filled with desire and that no matter how intense the craving was it would always pass. I didn't have to satisfy every desire that arose in my mind. I began to understand impermanence through direct experience rather than just intellectual theory.

To recover we must understand and accept impermanence. We must replace the reactive survival instinct of clinging, grasping, and attachment with the wise response of nonclinging, nonattachment, and compassion. In a world where everything is constantly being pulled beyond our grasp, clinging and grasping always result in the rope burns and unnecessary suffering that accompanies it.

We would all say that deep down, all we want is to be happy. Yet we don't have a realistic understanding of what happiness really is. Happiness is closer to the experience of acceptance and contentment than it is to pleasure.

When we commit to waking up and revolting against the ignorance and oppression of classism, racism, sexism, and all forms of greed, hatred, and delusion in the world, the first step we must take in that revolt is a personal dedication to purify our actions from these things that cause harm.

We could search the whole world and never find another being more worthy of our love than ourselves.

We commit to the daily disciplined practices of meditation, yoga, exercise, wise actions, kindness, forgiveness, generosity, compassion, appreciation, and moment-to-moment mindfulness of feelings, emotions, thoughts, and sensations. We are developing the skillful means of knowing how to apply the appropriate meditation or action to the given circumstance.

The truth is, the experience of forgiveness is a momentary release. We don't and can't forgive forever. Instead, we forgive only for the present moment. This is both good news and bad. The good part is that you can stop judging yourself for your inability to completely and absolutely let go of resentments once and for all. We forgive in one moment and get resentful again in the next. It is not a failure to forgive; it is just a failure to understand impermanence.

Difficult personalities are a mirror for the places where we get stuck in judgment, fear, and confusion.

Recovery is also the ability to inhabit the conditions of the present reality, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

Active addiction is a kind of hell. It is like being a hungry ghost, wandering through life in constant craving and suffering. Refuge Recovery, the Buddhist-inspired approach to treating addiction, offers a plan to end the suffering of addiction.

Those who understand the way it is, rather than the way they wish it were, are on the path to freedom.

The point of the spiritual revolution is not to become a good Buddhist, but to become a wise and compassionate human being, to awaken from our life of complacency and ignorance and to be a buddha.

Pain and suffering are two completely difference experiences. Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is self-created.

We come to understand the law of casuality - that is, we see that all beings are experiencing what they're experiencing based on their own actions and not by what we wish for them - and therefore we relax in a deep understanding and acceptance of the way things are.

An action from a confused and suffering being in the past doesn't represent what that being is forever; it is only an expression of that being's suffering. And if we cling to resentment over past hurts, we simply increase our own suffering.

The most important thing to remember is that we must live in the present, and if in the present moment we are still holding on to old wounds and betrayals, it is in this moment that forgiveness is called for.

our survival instinct, which influences the body and mind, is really just the unrealistic expectation that life is always pleasurable and never painful. Our bodies naturally crave pleasure, which we think equals happiness, safety, and survival. We hate pain, which we think equals unhappiness and death.

The more I practiced kindness and humility, the more the world seemed to appear friendly and manageable.

It is not a lack of morality or any deep character flaw that creates addiction; it is almost always just a lot of pain and a lack of tolerance or compassion for this pain that get us stuck in the repetitive and habitual patterns of drinking, drugging, overeating, or whatever actions our addictions take. In some cases the underlying causes are not as clear, but the suffering that addiction creates is always obvious and undeniable.