Stephen Levine (July 17, 1937 – January 17, 2016) was an American poet, author and teacher best known for his work on death and dying. He is one of a generation of pioneering teachers who, along with
Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfield (born 1945) is an American writer and teacher in the Vipassana movement in American Theravada Buddhism. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India, first as a student of the Thai forest master Ajahn Chah and Mahasi ...
,
Joseph Goldstein and
Sharon Salzberg
Sharon Salzberg (born August 5, 1952) is a ''New York Times'' bestselling author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practices in the West. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts, with Jack Kornfield and Jos ...
, have made the teachings of
Theravada Buddhism
''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...
more widely available to students in the West. Like the writings of his colleague and close friend,
Ram Dass
Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and author. His best-selling 1971 book '' Be Here Now'', which has been d ...
(formerly Richard Alpert), Stephen's work is also flavoured by the devotional practices and teachings (also known as
Bhakti Yoga
Bhakti yoga ( sa, भक्ति योग), also called Bhakti marga (, literally the path of ''Bhakti''), is a spiritual path or spiritual practice within Hinduism focused on loving devotion towards any personal deity.Karen Pechelis (2014), ...
) of the Hindu Guru
Neem Karoli Baba
Neem Karoli Baba () or Neeb Karori Baba () ( – 11 September 1973), known to his followers as Maharaj-ji, was a Hindu guru and a devotee of the Hindu deity Hanuman. He is known outside India for being the spiritual master of a number of Ameri ...
. This aspect of his teaching may be considered one way in which his work differs from that of the more purely
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
oriented teachers named above. Allusions in his teachings to a creator, which he variously terms God, The Beloved, The One and 'Uugghh,' further distinguish his work from that of other contemporary Buddhist writers.
Life and career
![San Francisco Oracle Cover Vol](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/San_Francisco_Oracle_Cover_Vol.1_No.5%2C_January_1967.jpg)
Born in
Albany, New York
Albany ( ) is the capital of the U.S. state of New York, also the seat and largest city of Albany County. Albany is on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River, and about north of New York City ...
, Levine attended the
University of Miami
The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...
. He published his first work, ''A Resonance of Hope,'' in 1959. After working as an editor and writer in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, Levine was one of the founders of the ''
San Francisco Oracle
''The Oracle of the City of San Francisco'', also known as the ''San Francisco Oracle,'' was an underground newspaper published in 12 issues from September 20, 1966, to February 1968 in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of that city. Allen Cohen (p ...
'' in 1966.
Levine had a history of addiction to heroin and other drugs. He outlined his struggles with drugs in his book ''Turning towards the mystery''.
He spent time helping the sick and dying, using meditation as a method of treatment; a program he shared with psychologist
Richard Alpert
Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and author. His best-selling 1971 book '' Be Here Now'', which has been ...
(Ram Dass) and psychiatrist
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.
[Branfman, Fred (June 2, 1997)]
suicide isn't painless.
Salon.com
''Salon'' is an American politically progressive/liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events.
Content and coverage
''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, including re ...
The author of several books about dying, Levine and his wife Ondrea spent one year living as if it were their last.
[Flynn, Rochelle O'Gorman (March 9, 1998). "A Year to Live" By Stephen Levine eview '']Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' Levine's son
Noah
Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5– ...
initially rejected his father's work, then started to teach meditation on his own.
[From street thug to dharma punk.](_blank)
Salon.com
''Salon'' is an American politically progressive/liberal news and opinion website created in 1995. It publishes articles on U.S. politics, culture, and current events.
Content and coverage
''Salon'' covers a variety of topics, including re ...
Levine and his wife Ondrea appeared in the 2007 documentary
Meditate and Destroy that focuses on the life of their son
Noah Levine
Noah Levine (born 1971) is an American Buddhist teacher and author, son of American Buddhist teacher and poet Stephen Levine. As a counselor known for his philosophical alignment with Buddhism and punk ideology, he identifies his Buddhist belie ...
.
For many years, Stephen and Ondrea lived in near seclusion in the mountains of
Northern New Mexico
Northern New Mexico in cultural terms usually refers to the area of heavy-Spanish settlement in the north-central part of New Mexico. However, New Mexico state government also uses the term to mean the northwest and north central, but to exclude ...
. Ondrea still lives in Northern New Mexico.
Stephen Levine died at his home after a long illness on January 17, 2016 at the age of 78.
Teaching
Although drawing upon the teachings of a variety of wisdom traditions, including
Native American,
Sufism
Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, r ...
and mystical interpretations of Christianity, Stephen's writing was most significantly informed by the teaching of the
Theravada
''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...
branch of Buddhism.
Grief Work
One of the most significant aspects of Stephen's work, and one for which he was perhaps best known, was his pioneering approach to working with the experience of grief. Over 34 years, Stephen and his wife Ondrea counselled concentration camp survivors and their children, Vietnam War veterans as well as victims of sexual abuse. Although Stephen acknowledged that personal experience of grief is perhaps at its most intense when a loved one dies, he also drew our attention to grief's more subtle incarnations. "Our ordinary, everyday grief" accumulates as a response to the "burdens of disappointments and disillusionment, the loss of trust and confidence that follows the increasingly less satisfactory arch of our lives." In order to avoid feeling this grief we "armour our hearts," which leads to a gradual deadening of our experience of the world When a loved one dies, or indeed when our own death approaches, the intensity of the loss often renders our defenses ineffective and we are swept up by a deluge of griefs, both old and new.
Levine's 1982 book ''Who Dies? An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying,'' co-written with his wife Ondrea, has been described a "central resource" of the "conscious dying movement", and a "one of the key
New Age
New Age is a range of spiritual or religious practices and beliefs which rapidly grew in Western society during the early 1970s. Its highly eclectic and unsystematic structure makes a precise definition difficult. Although many scholars conside ...
texts on dying".
Teachers
In the acknowledgements section of ''Who Dies'', Stephen paid tribute to a number of spiritual teachers whose work he acknowledged to have influenced his writing. As well as crediting "years of Buddhist practice and teaching," he cited the writings of
Nisargadatta Maharaj
Nisargadatta Maharaj (born Maruti Shivrampant Kambli; 17 April 1897 – 8 September 1981) was an Indian guru of nondualism, belonging to the Inchagiri Sampradaya, a lineage of teachers from the Navnath Sampradaya and Lingayat Shaivism.
...
, an Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher of
Advaita
''Advaita Vedanta'' (; sa, अद्वैत वेदान्त, ) is a Hindu sādhanā, a path of spiritual discipline and experience, and the oldest extant tradition of the orthodox Hindu school Vedānta. The term ''Advaita'' (lit ...
(
Nondualism
Nondualism, also called nonduality and nondual awareness, is a fuzzy concept originating in Indian philosophy and religion for which many definitions can be found, including: nondual awareness, the nonduality of seer and seen or nondiffer ...
), as well as
Neem Karoli Baba
Neem Karoli Baba () or Neeb Karori Baba () ( – 11 September 1973), known to his followers as Maharaj-ji, was a Hindu guru and a devotee of the Hindu deity Hanuman. He is known outside India for being the spiritual master of a number of Ameri ...
and
Ramana Maharshi
Ramana Maharshi (; 30 December 1879 – 14 April 1950) was an Indian Hindu sage and ''jivanmukta'' (liberated being). He was born Venkataraman Iyer, but is mostly known by the name Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi.
He was born in Tiruchuli, Ta ...
.
References
External links
Stephen and Ondrea's New Website – Videos, Writings and More...via stephenandondrealevine.blogspot.com
via personaltransformation.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levine, Stephen (Author)
1937 births
2016 deaths
American male poets
American Theravada Buddhists
Theravada Buddhist spiritual teachers
Writers from Albany, New York
American non-fiction writers
Jewish American writers
University of Miami alumni
Grief
American male non-fiction writers
21st-century American Jews