"The Buddha's teachings are not a philosophy or a religion; they are a call to action and invitation to revolution." Author Noah Levine (Dharma Punx; Against the Stream) came to those teachings through the punk rock scene and internal unrest. Now a Dharma and Vipassana Meditation Teacher, he teaches a Buddhism that is more easily grasped than that expounded by Asian monastics or American academics. In The Heart of the Revolution, he unfolds practices that promise no quick fix, but instead a steady path to spiritual riches. An accessible guide for Gen-X spiritual seekers.
You can feel it in the very sentences - Levine’s earnest drive to share what he’s learned, to bring us along into the open heart of revolution. This is a terrific new take on the old teachings - and I believe him. I want to join.” — Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones
“A passionate and timely appeal to overcome self-centredness through love and compassion, combined with eminently practical meditations to help you do so.” — Stephen Batchelor, author of Confession of a Buddhist Atheist
“The Heart of the Revolution is refreshing, relevant and to the point. A great manual for developing love and compassion in these difficult times.” — Martine Batchelor, Author of Let Go and The Spirit of the Buddha
“It offers a fresh look at mercy, a term not frequently used in Buddhism; includes an extensive commentary on the Metta Sutta; gives the lowdown on personal and romantic love; and explores cosmology and the three personality types according to traditional Buddhist thought.” — Shambhala Sun
The Heart of the Revolution is refreshing, relevant and to the point. A great manual for developing love and compassion in these difficult times.
A passionate and timely appeal to overcome self-centredness through love and compassion, combined with eminently practical meditations to help you do so.
You can feel it in the very sentences - Levine’s earnest drive to share what he’s learned, to bring us along into the open heart of revolution. This is a terrific new take on the old teachings - and I believe him. I want to join.
It offers a fresh look at mercy, a term not frequently used in Buddhism; includes an extensive commentary on the Metta Sutta; gives the lowdown on personal and romantic love; and explores cosmology and the three personality types according to traditional Buddhist thought.
Noted American Buddhist teacher Levine (Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries, 2007, etc.) takes a no-nonsense approach to the basics of the Buddha's teachings in this practical volume geared toward an audience of unfamiliar seekers.
The author encourages the reader to become one of the "1%ers," who seek to live and encounter life in a very different way—both for their own good and for the good of others. A key basis to this lifestyle is to embrace compassion, which the author defines as "the experience of caring about pain and suffering—ours and others'." Levine writes of the difficulties he faced in learning compassion after a youth filled with violence, drug abuse and crime left him struggling with anger. But through the Buddha's teachings of forgiveness and kindness, the author gained inner peace and was able to transform his life. "There is hope for external transformation only if the internal revolution is firmly grounded in loving-kindness," he writes.Levine touches on specific teachings such as karma and tonglen, and provides a step-by-step guide to meditation as further help to the reader. Despite his didactic approach, the author has a tendency to reinforce the stereotype of American Buddhism as a spinoff of hippie culture.Levine's narrative is earthy and gritty, but too often seems to devalue the Buddhist religion and its teachings.
Hard-boiled, sometimes irreverent look at the Buddha.
