Against The Stream Noah Levine

I was thinking of riffing a little bit on Memorial Day, where I mostly just want to talk shit about nationalism and the kind of ignorance of our culture. I think Memorial Day is about death. It's about memorializing, remembering dead soldiers. I'm gonna definitely go beyond the sort of nationalist, soldier, army, death or human death and impermanence. I'm going to talk a little bit about war tonight since that's what this sort of American holiday really is about.

Tonight I’m going to talk about the aspect of our practice of Buddhism that is about creating a positive change in the world: service, generosity, engagement.

How are you using your life’s energy to create change? What compassionate actions are you taking? How are you helping others? What kind of service are you involved in?

There's a question about how do we ideally practice intimacy, sexuality, romance in the Dharma. Where there's all this emphasis on non attachment. How do we have love and non attachment?

How do we have sex and not cling is the topic tonight. We're going to talk about sex tonight, and I'll share some Buddhist perspectives.

Tonight we're going to talk about appreciation, appreciative joy, empathy, attunement and gratitude. May you be successful at freeing yourself from suffering. May you be successful at finding true happiness, true well being Not just material and sensual pleasures, but may you have some real healing, some real awakening. May your path lead to freedom. This is a practice of having that sort of attitude and encouragement and training our heart to feel it.

I think a simplified way to think about equanimity is “keeping your cool”. Similar to the loving kindness teaching “being at ease” no matter what's happening, not just when life is easy, but also when life is quite difficult. Maintaining a sense of equanimity, ease, cool, well being, understanding and accepting that pain is unavoidable. That we will all experience pain in our lives and try to meet that with compassion.

I'm going to talk about, and we'll meditate on, compassion tonight. Compassion is one of the qualities that is so rare for humans to have… true compassion for ourselves, for our own pain… true compassion for others, including not just our loved ones. There are certain people who are easier to have compassion for than others, but the practice is to actually have compassion for all living beings.