Moving Against The Stream. Book Review for Against the Stream by Noah Levine

Photo attri­bu­tion by mjeshenton 

Every Bud­dhist has some­thing that brought them to prac­tic­ing. It’s either a book, movie or their environment.

When I was in my early twen­ties I read a book by Lama Surya Das titled Awak­en­ing the Bud­dha Within. This was the book that set me on the path, but my path had bumps, pot­holes and other diver­sions. I drank alco­hol, did drugs and other things that I’m not proud of. Lama Das talked about all the dif­fer­ent Bud­dhist tra­di­tions. About Tibet, His Holi­ness the 14th Dalai Lama and about his trav­els through Asia.

I read the book, and have a few times since. The prob­lem with my gen­er­a­tion is we want things explained to us in a way we can under­stand, noth­ing against Awak­en­ing the Bud­dha Within, because with­out that book I would prob­a­bly not be alive today to write this, the book saved my life.

Noah Levine is part of my gen­er­a­tion, he grew up in the eight­ies like I did, he took a dif­fer­ent path than I did through the eight­ies, but I know if it weren’t for Awak­en­ing the Bud­dha Within I would not have sur­vived cer­tain parts of my early twenties.

In Against the Stream Noah has given our gen­er­a­tion a voice. One that Kurt Cobain and numer­ous oth­ers have tried to pro­vide but seem­ingly fell on deaf ears. Our gen­er­a­tion is the one that should cre­ate rev­o­lu­tion, not with weapons or laws passed by bureau­crats, but a rev­o­lu­tion of the heart. A gen­er­a­tion that could trans­form the way we see our­selves, the way we deal with our lives and the things we want for our fam­i­lies and for our communities.

Against the Stream describes Buddha’s teach­ings in a way that I wasn’t expect­ing. It makes it read­able by those of our gen­er­a­tion that want things laid out.

Our gen­er­a­tion was raised on video games, Metal, Punk and MTV. We don’t have the best atten­tion spans. The thought of some of us sit­ting for med­i­ta­tion sounds crazy, but if I can get my eight year old with ADHD to sit for a audio guided med­i­ta­tion with Thich Nhat Hanh any­one can join the revolution.

The rev­o­lu­tion won’t be broad­cast, it will be taught by teach­ers and passed along to stu­dents as it was the first time Sid sat under the Bodhi tree and awoke to freedom.

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