Against the Stream Quotes

“Sitting still is a pain in the ass.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“We are born into a realm of constant change. Everything is decaying. We are continually losing all that we come in contact with. Our tendency to get attached to impermanent experiences causes sorrow, lamentation and grief, because eventually we are separated from everything and everyone we love. Our lack of acceptance and understanding of this fact makes life unsatisfactory.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Religion, which was obviously created to give meaning and purpose to people, has become part of the oppression. This is true in both Eastern and Western religious traditions. The Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad were all revolutionaries who critiqued and attempted to dismantle the corrupt societal traditions of their time. Yet their teachings, like most things in human society, have been distorted and co-opted by the confused and power-hungry patriarchal tradition. What were wonce the creation myths of ancient cultures, have become doctrines of oppression. More blood has been spilled and more people oppressed in the name of religion than for any other reason in history.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Everything is impermanent. Every physical and mental experience arises and passes. Everything in existence is endlessly arising out of causes and conditions. We all create suffering for ourselves through our resistance, through our desire to have things different than the way they are - that is, our clinging or aversion.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Happiness is closer to the experience of acceptance and contentment than it is to pleasure. True happiness exists as the spacious and compassionate heart's willingness to feel whatever is present.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“The greatest satisfaction comes not from chasing pleasure and avoiding pain, but from the radical acceptance of life as it is, without fighting and clinging to passing desires.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“We must not confuse letting go of past injuries with feeling an obligation to let the injurers back into our life. The freedom of forgiveness often includes a firm boundary and loving distance from those who have harmed us. As my father likes to say, "We can let them back into our hearts without ever letting them back into our house.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Spiritual revolutionaries must be committed not to what is easiest, but to what is most beneficial to themselves and the world.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Everything is unfolding based on causes and conditions. Our happiness or suffering is dependent on how we relate to the present moment. If we cling now, we suffer later. If we let go and respond with compassion or friendliness, we create happiness and well-being for the future.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“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.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“With mindfulness we have the choice of responding with compassion to the pain of craving, anger, fear and confusion. Without mindfulness we are stuck in the reactive pattern and identification that will inevitably create more suffering and confusion.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Renunciation is not about pushing something away, it is about letting go. It's facing the fact that certain things cause us pain, and they cause other people pain. Renunciation is a commitment to let go of things that create suffering. It is the intention to stop hurting ourselves and others.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“When we pay attention to life, it is easy to recognize that every action has a consequence: when we cling, we suffer; when we act selfishly or violently, we cause suffering for ourselves or others. This is the teaching of karma: positive actions have positive outcomes; negative actions have negative outcomes.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“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.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“The path of the spiritual revolutionary is a long-term and gradual journey toward awakening. If you are looking for a quick fix or easy salvation, turn back now, plug back into the matrix, and enjoy your delusional existence. This is a path for rebels, malcontents, and truth seekers. 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, counterinstinctual action. You have at your disposal”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“The Buddha isn’t a god or deity to be worshipped. He was a rebel and an overthrower, the destroyer of ignorance, the great physician who discovered the path to freedom from suffering. The Buddha left a legacy of truth for us to experience for ourselves. The practices and principles of his teachings lead to the direct experience of liberation. This is not a faith-based philosophy, but an experiential one. 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.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“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.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“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.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“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.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Those who understand the way it is, rather than the way they wish it were, are on the path to freedom.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“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.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Pain and suffering are two completely difference experiences. Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is self-created.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“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.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Wise and careful action, from a foundation of sober awareness, is the way of the revolutionary.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“A good basic guideline for our speech is to reflect on whether what we are saying is both true and useful. There may be times when we are honest in what we say, but our words are too brutal or harsh. And there may be other times when we are deliberately being kind with the words we choose, but what we are saying is not totally true.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Experience each moment as if it were the first sensation of its kind ever. Bring childlike interest and curiosity to your present-time experience.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“True happiness exists as the spacious and compassionate heart's willingness to feel whatever is present.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“Rather than reacting with our usual attachment or aversion, taking everything personally and feeling the need to do something about it, we relax into the experience, seeing it clearly and letting it be as it is.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“If we cling now, we suffer later. If”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries

“True happiness exists as the spacious and compassionate heart’s willingness to feel whatever is present.”
― Noah Levine, Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries