Dharma Punx by Noah Levine
Posted on August 26, 2003
I just finished reading Dharma Punx by Noah Levine. My first thought is I probably shouldn’t review it right away, because there is a lot of stuff going on in the book that bears further reflection. On the other hand, it would probably be useful to give some impressions, while it still fresh in my mind.
Noah Levine is a punk rocker turned spiritual teacher, and Dharma Punx is his autobiography. Actually, to call it a biography seems a bit of an overstatement. Based on the information in the book, I’m guessing he is in his mid-30′s, so maybe it’s just better to call it his story.
The book starts out with his youth – his parents divorced, his father living with a new wife in New Mexico, his mother in California, and he is being shuttled between the two homes. He starts rebelling, by becoming a hard-core skate punk. He and his friends start drinking, smoking pot, and attending punk shows. Gradually, he and his friends start getting into harder drugs and become junkies. Stealing stereos and other items to support their habits, they are in and out of juvenile detention. Then, he finds himself in a padded cell, agonizing through withdrawl symptoms, and he realized he has hit rock bottom. With the help of a twelve step program and some breathing exercises, he begins the long, slow, and rocky road to recovery.
After his release, he has some relapses, but quickly realizes that he doesn’t want to go down that road again. Still bearing the punk ethos, he gets into Straight Edge – a group of hardcore punkers that refrain from alcohol and drugs. It doesn’t keep him out of trouble though. He keeps getting into fights and decides to make his mark on the world with grafitti. Narrowly escaping jail time for vandalism, he grows a bit disenchanted with Straight Edge and their holier-than-thou attitudes, and decides to keep with the twelve step program while cultivating his growing spirituality.
That’s the meat of the book. The depths of despair and recovery from addiction. Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that. That’s only about half of the book. His father is a meditation instructor and an author of many books on meditation and spirituality. His father, Stephen Levine, hooks him up with people in California to help him explore the spirituality aspect of the twelve step program. Most of the rest of the book is about his trials and tribulations with spirituality, primarily Buddhism, and coming to terms with himself in the process. His desire led him to abstain from many things, although not quite to the point of being an ascetic. He went to Asia to learn more about Buddhism and Sufism, which seemed to be a jarring experience the first time out, but one he later repeated when he was more spiritualy experienced.
One of the most interesting (and saddening) parts of the book is the story of Toby. Noah and Toby had been best friend since little league (where they were the only skate punks). They did everything together. Drinking, stagediving, shooting up, steling, going to jail – everything. However, when Noah is in the padded cell and finally realizes that he hit the bottom, Toby is still doing much of the same stuff as they did before. He goes through some of the motions of recovery, keeps getting into situations that cause him to relapse. Toby is like a mirror image of Noah’s life. Up to a point, they were on the same path, but when they came to a fork in the path, Noah took one path and Toby took another. They still got together every now and then, but they realized that their lives were just different. In one of the later chapters, Noah remarks that Toby was, “the only witness to see me both shoot dope and teach meditation.”
Dharma Punx is a story about recovery and a spiritual journey. If you saw Noah Levine, you probably wouldn’t think he was a Buddhist, much less a spiritual teacher. His background as a hard core punk would certainly seem an odd path for someone who once considered becoming a Buddhist priest. His path still goes on (and will probably span some more books), and it gives me a greater awareness of my own path.
The heat is on
Posted on August 23, 2003
My PC has been acting strange over the past month or two. Generally, when I come home from work, I turn on the AC and the PC. However, the PC seems to be having a problem with the heat. I turn it on and it lets out one long beep. I browsed the Internet, and that’s my motherboard’s reaction to a memory problem. I have plenty of memory, but it is possible that one of the DDR sticks is slightly faulty. After 20 minutes of running the AC, I can turn on the PC and have no problem. However, over the past few weeks, if I have the PC running for a few hours, the system gets hot and then starts to hang/stall. The solution to that is to turn off the PC for a while. No biggie, but annoying nonetheless. Before too long, I’ll have to look at getting more memory, or more likely, some memory heatsinks with a fan (cheaper than new memory). At any rate, I’m getting some more reading done.
The Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy
Posted on August 17, 2003
The Teeth of the Tiger is Tom Clancy’s latest novel, and is an off-shoot of the Jack Ryan series. Jack Ryan is retired from the presidency, but one of the final acts of his administration was to setup a small non-governmental organization that will do things the government can’t. It’s free from oversight and recieves no money from the government. “The Campus” is headed by a former senator who decides to take a chance on some new recruits, Jack Ryan Jr., and his cousins, Brian and Dominic Caruso.
We don’t actually see former President Ryan, but hear about him through his son, nephews, and their new boss, Gerald Hendley. While the story is solid on it’s own, it references some of the other novels in the series, such as Patriot Games and Executive Orders. The book takes place in a post September 11th world. Some of the backstory that is given is that Jack Ryan Sr. is retired from the Presidency and writing his biography (one for publication, and another for publication after he is dead). Robby Jackson became the nation’s first African American President, but the current President is Edward Kealty, from Executive Orders and Debt of Honor (I would love to see more of that story, preferably in a novel of it’s own). As one of the last acts of his presidency, Jack Ryan had a talk Senator Gerald Hendley, who setup Hendley Associates, a small brokerage house, and off-the-books intelligence service. Where Rainbow goes into action when something has already occured (as it did in Rainbow Six) the businessmen of Hendley Associates are more inclined to preventing things from happening in the first place. While this might seem like the role of government, if these kinds of duties are done correctly, no one would ever knew they were done, and of course you can’t fund an agency that appears to be doing nothing. So, Hendley Associates, with no governmental oversight or governmental funds, does the things the government can’t.
Dominic Caruso comes via the FBI, where he just solved a major kidnapping case, while his brother, Captain Brian Caruso comes via the Marine Corps, where he just finished a tour with Force Recon in Afghanistan. Jack Ryan Jr. is more or less fresh out of college and hasn’t decided what he wants to do with is life, or how he wants to make his mark on the world. Fate, or at least a story, has delivered them all to “The Campus.”
Overall, the story is pretty good. It’s not as thoroughly exciting as Sum of all Fears or Debt of Honor, but in it’s own way it’s a bit more cerebral (for lack of a better word), in that it tackles the pros and cons of some of the actions that are taken. We see some of the characters weigh their consciences on the actions they must take. It’s not simply a matter of following orders, but doing the right thing. The end of the book ensures that there will be more stories from “The Campus” in the future, and I guess the Jack Ryan series will have a spinoff.
BLACKOUT!
Posted on August 15, 2003
The eastern United States is crippled by the largest ever blackout in US History. My thought is BFD. However, it is not without some funny stuff. Over at CNN there is an article that has suggestions from everyday Iraqis on how to handle the blackout. Pretty funny, and practical, too.
