The Importance of Community, Retreats & Connecting with Noah Levine

How often have you, at home, thought, “OK. I'm going to sit for 45 minutes…and then 15 minutes in you're like, **** it. I'm going to go do the dishes. I'm going to check my email.” But you know when you’re in community, most of the time, you stay. Even when your mind's like, “Yo. You should split.” And on retreat..Even on retreat sometimes your mind says, “Yo. You should split.” On my first retreat, I went to the teacher and was like, “I'm leaving this is *******. It’s lame.” My mind was making up all of the reasons why I shouldn't stay on the retreat. I was a 19 year old kid like fresh out of juvie and my dad said, “why don't you go to this meditation retreat?” And it was so hard. So I went to the teacher on the second day of the retreat and said, “I think I'm done.” …And they use the Dharma teacher trick on me and said to me, “Well, you leave if you want, but why don’t you listen to the Dharma talk tonight? And then after that, make a decision.” Rumbling and suffering, I was like, “OK. I’ll listen to talk.” And then I listened to the talk and got so inspired. It sounded so good: they're talking about freedom. I want to be free, but they were also saying, ‘Yeah. You can be free. You can end your suffering. But you gotta do it by sitting on this cushion and letting your mind abuse you and learning not to take it so personally.’” I'm so grateful that I had stayed and that I kept coming back to retreat and kept doing this process, because everybody that's been doing this for anytime knows it's just not a quick fix. I feel like there’s a gauge in us. We all start at suffering. Or empty. Some dissatisfaction. Some difficulties. And that every time we meditate, every time we do some renunciation practice, the precepts, engage with community, something slowly shifts, in such slow increments that you don't even notice it until a few years in you look back and you're like it's a bit better than it used to be. I'm still suffering some. I'm still a self-centered human that takes things personal and clings and craves and it is getting better.