Noah Levine teaches Against the (Dharma)?

Seth Auberon and Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

He's a Dharma punk and not dumb, so how does he know so little about the Buddha?

In a devastating blow to Buddhist history, author and "Against the Stream" founder Noah Levine turned the Buddha's life into an unrecognizable mishmash of revisionist thought, doubt and outlandish speculation. At one point he had Siddhartha tying stones to his privates, all the while laughing and engendering laughter from an eager American audience. The constant refrain was, "We just don't know. These things weren't written down. There was a lot of mythologizing..." Therefore we can throw anything into the story we like and it'll be just as true/doubtful as all the rest of it? Levine's heart was obviously in the right place.

(LINK) BBC documentary: "The Life of the Buddha"

   

Maybe its less Buddhism than recovery and punk

But one would have to guess -- based solely on his bumbling through the life story -- that he only recently became acquainted with Buddhism as a sacred tradition of the East. The Buddha's life, certainly much informed by mythological elements prevalent in ancient India, is retold to inspire our own path: We live luxuriously, we suffer, we assume that the only antidote to suffering is hedonism, then one day occurs to us that this has never worked. So we try something else. We go on a quest. We question convention. We go have a look for ourselves. And inasmuch as we question or reject society, we look inward for answers: What is true? What can I know to be true? How can I bring suffering to an end, not just for myself, but for all beings who suffer?

• See Noah Levine continue Wednesdays live in Hollywood

Siddhartha did not set off on this quest only once; he (reappearing in various transient forms, not as the same being but not altogether another) spent many lives developing the perfections. These enabled him to become a master physician for what ails living beings, a superlative teacher able to communicate that subtle and profound discovery of what's been going wrong in our own search for a way out, a samma-sam-buddha or "right and fully awakened one." Levine is not alone in sowing doubt and, possibly inadvertently, ridiculing the "less important" Buddhist teachings, such as its venerable history and origins.
  
Former Buddhist monk and continuing British iconoclast Stephen Batchelor, author of Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, seems to have profoundly influenced Levine's view of not only Buddhist history but its theology (yes, it has one in spite of being a non-theistic tradition) and cosmology as well. There's more than a little of fellow punk and Zen Master Brad Warner in Levine's approach as well.
   

(ABC News) Stephen Batchelor talks about his confessions with ABC

To hear Levine tell it, Buddhism doesn't know its zafu from its zabuton and is ass-backwards on everything but its core insight (vipassana) teachings. With teachers like Jack Kornfield and his own father, Buddhist author Stephen Levine, that comes as a surprise. One would imagine his time in prison gave him time to reflect, grow hungry for answers, and then satisfy that hunger through books, monastics, and comparative religion professors.

 

Is Levine opinionated? It would not seem so, for when local meditator Sherry asked him to define "atheist," he suddenly had no personal opinion and turned the question on her like a reticent therapist.

  

Wisdom Quarterly would retell the story of the Buddha's life just for Levine's benefit. But any child with a picture book and even Keanu Reeves can get the highlights right.
  

   
It is difficult to see how one can have a sense of the Buddha's teaching, the Dharma, without a basic understanding of what the historical Buddha went through to arrive at the breakthrough that gave rise to the dispensation and the mythological elements that got added.

• FULL INTERVIEW: Stephen Batchelor's Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist

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Epicurus and Buddhism.

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"-Epicurus.

James: This is the quote that introduced me to the ancient philosopher Epicurus who has since become one of my favorites. So I began to study Epicurus and found that he had much in common with Buddhism and its non-theistic nature.

What I was most interested in was that he believed and taught "that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space." This sounds very similar to the pivotal Buddhist belief of interdependence or dependent co-arising, which says that nothing exists separate from anything else. All is interconnected in a web of cause and effect.

This includes sharing the belief that something can not come from nothing and therefore the Universe must be endless yet because of his belief in a shifting, interconnected web of atoms that same Universe can not be unchanging. It was his belief that the Universe is eternal but only in the sense that it goes through cycles of birth and death along the way. Yet another shade of thinking, which can be found in Buddhist philosophy. As well as a theory that can be found is still found in modern day science via the cyclic theory of the Universe.

He was also dedicated to over-coming pain and fear, which is not unlike the dedication that we Buddhists seek to over-come what we would call suffering in general. He taught that curbing desires are important if one wants to avoid that pain and fear, which is another teaching shared in Buddhism. This included going into the detail as to how desires cause suffering such as mentioning indulging too much on foods because it leads to pain that one might not be able to afford such delicacies in the future. The idea of short term happiness doesn't bring long term happiness.

He did believe that some pleasure is important, which has led some to believe he was a hedonist but he was more of a believer in the middle path of moderation. True he was no Buddhist monk following every precept. However, most argue that his ultimate definition of pleasure was actually tranquility, which is more akin to the Buddhist definition of enlightenment. This is because tranquility is defined as a state, which is free from stress and emotion; an untroubled state free from disturbances; a peaceful state. Enlightenment being (using a very basic definition) a nirvanic state of being freed from desire (emotions) and suffering (stress).

Epicureanism was often seen in ancient Greece as being a godless philosophy but while Epicurus denied being godless he also believed that if there were any gods that they most likely were ambivilant at best toward human beings. Thus they would not pursue punishing or rewarding us in this or any other life. In other words the idea being that a belief in a god or gods isn't important to man's day to day actions. In comparison Buddhists also usually do not concern themselves with a god as it is seen as irrelevant to realizing that the human condition is repleat with suffering and that praying to a god does not end our suffering. When we are honest with ourselves we realize that we are the only ones who can end our suffering.

Some Buddhists believe that there are gods living in a god realm but that they are like the gods of Epicureanism where they do not have power over human beings. These gods in Buddhism are subject to the same suffering as we human beings. According to these Buddhists being a god is a distraction where one is more concerned with pleasure and self adoration than certainly concerning oneself with human beings, meditation and over-coming the cycle of suffering. The problem is that even for these gods their pleasures and good karma run out eventually.

Epicureanism certainly does not mesh with Buddhism completely but Epicurus did teach many similar ideas. I wanted to do this post because I enjoy discovering how western and eastern philosophy and thought can be connected. We focus too often on how different we are and sometimes I wonder if that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The connections and shared ideals are there if we really want to see them and embrace each others cultures.

~Peace to all beings~

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Non-Theism, Buddhism and God.

Nontheism (a.k.a. non-theism) is defined as the Oxford English Dictionary as: "... not having or involving a belief in God, especially as a being who reveals himself to humanity." The author Pema Chödrön, when writing about Buddhism, states:

"The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. ... Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there's some hand to hold. ... Non-theism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves. ... Nontheism is finally realizing there is no babysitter you can count on."

James: I am of the belief that any sense of a "god" is merely an impersonal force that is made up of all things living and not living, which makes up what we define as the "Universe" experiencing itself in myriad and changing forms. Buddha reportedly said that the Universe is, "So large that is has no exterior, and so small that it has no interior."

I personally believe that sometimes a belief in a Creator God can be more of a hindrance and impediment than not. This is because the belief in this "God" often becomes the center of a person's life instead of the center being life itself. It means another attachment, which leads to obsession that says that one's life is basically meaningless without someone to give you purpose. This kind of obsession and subservience can lead some believers into living their life in a constant state of fear, guilt, shame, anger and resentment. Buddhists experience the same emotions but don't see it as punishment of who they are but rather a choice, which leads to a logical effect.

It means that you're in a constant state of worry because life doesn't just unfold as it will but instead is dependent upon the confusing whims and actions of this "God." It gives one a feeling that we have control over our lives but when our prayers don't work (because there is no "God" in my view) then we assume that we must be bad people for that can be the only reason that "God" would not answer our prayers. In Buddhism as there is no "God" or "Satan" then suffering and happiness just happen as a natural state of cause and effect. There is no mystery anymore and no fear as to why bad things happen to good people except to say that such is this existence.

---End of Transmission---

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