Dharma Punx By Noah Levine

 

Noah Levine’s 2003 memoir, Dharma Punx, celebrates the authors two favorite subjects – Tibetan Buddhism and punk rock. After some youthful drugs, larceny, and general mayhem leading to a jail stint, Levine works to balance his attachment to punk with the spiritual teachings of his parents. In the most positive light, the story charts the author’s evolution from self-destructive, antisocial street kid to sober, self-reflective net contributor to society. A less flattering summary would be a self-righteous hippie-hating hoodlum’s journeys out of a blip of darkness to fulfill his destiny as self-righteous hippie-hating nepo baby Buddhist. Readers’ choice!

Like many religions, Buddhism’s life-affirming precepts are often underpinned by dense, esoteric symbolism, complex liturgy in obscure languages and hundreds of years of internal debate amongst exalted masters. Levine excels at creating an engaging backstory which allows him to gently introduce Buddhist principles as a legitimate outlet of spiritual exploration for otherwise uninitiated Westerns. After some drugs, larceny, and general mayhem leading to a jail stint, Levine works to balance his attachment to punk with the spiritual teachings of his parents. If you retain nothing else of this whole Higher Power thing, he urges, don’t forget that suffering is caused by the two avenues of thought which take you away from the present; regret for the past and fear of the future.

Besides sharing the regenerative power of meditation Levine is a devotee of the punk subculture. He praises the raw intensity of the music and the belligerent fury of the mosh pit, attempting, throughout, to elevate his favorite genre of music to another means of touching the sublime. I’m skeptical.

One June afternoon in the late nineties Boston, despite the intermittent weather, I spent a day exploring Boston with a fellow tourist. All went off uneventfully until we reached Harvard Yard at which point I experienced a new and unsettling sensation – a stranger circling, glaring and clearly itching for a fight. Ignorant as to what offense may have triggered my stalking, I looked around, incredulous, and then back to her.

Me?

Yes, me, her growl confirmed.

 I weighed my options.

Though not alone, Allison, for all her beneficial qualities, is more of the “Can be relied upon to bring an appropriate housing-warming gift to the party and never forget your birthday” kind of friend, not the “I’d be stoked to kick some ass in a street fight when you get jumped” variety. My inventory of the situation revealed a key asset: my umbrella. Mustering as much menace as a completely inexperienced fighter in a floor-length floral skirt is able, I snarled back and flicked my wrist, drawing attention to the potential club. The threat, a menacing but slight woman, faded into the crowd.

Later, as I described the curious interaction to a local, his eyes became round with distress. My ignorance was the liability. Of course she had picked a fight! The sweatshirt I had borrowed from him, a scroll of graffiti I hadn’t bothered to read, and wouldn’t for the life of me understood anyhow, advertised the band 25 Ta Life, a hardcore band out of NYC. Harvard Yard was the territory of punks, sworn enemies of the hardcore set. Obviously, in retrospect, this would have been useful information in advance of releasing me into a city with one of the divisive music scenes in America sporting the functional equivalent of gang paraphernalia.

I learned a lot from this interaction. Foremost, while what you don’t know might not kill you, away from home it can very easily put you on the precipice of getting your face smashed in. The second, and equally enduring, is to reserve a special kind of side-eye for people who take their musical affiliation too seriously.  

This is all a very long-winded way of saying that, despite Levine’s best philosophical gymnastics, I do not agree with his hypothesis on the potential duality of Buddhism and punk, or punx, if you prefer. For all his worldliness, it is unlikely the Dali Lama is slam dancing his way to Elightenment. In principle and tempo, the religion of Compassion and a movement with the known side-effect of beatdowns on strangers for fashion faux pas are not remotely equivalent, at least not in my book.

 

 

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