Dive-bar dharma

To attract a new generation of Buddhists, two teachers are replacing the old hippie trappings with a tattooed aesthetic and references to Jay-Z.

By Whitney Joiner

Read more: Stress, Anxiety, Buddhism, Meditation, Life

Feb. 20, 2008 | Sitting cross-legged on a meditation cushion on the floor of a Bowery yoga studio, 29-year-old Ethan Nichtern -- a community organizer, writer and Buddhist teacher -- looked around at the roomful of 20- and 30-somethings.

"Remember the Road Runner versus Wile E. Coyote cartoons? In New York we often feel like a drugged-out version of Road Runner -- running all over the place, but not getting anything done, right?"

The room nodded. What New Yorker doesn't feel like Road Runner?

"We're constantly looking three or five years ahead, waiting for that moment when you finally achieve what you set out to achieve, and it's like everything in between is just commuting," he continued. "Then it arrives, and it's kind of depleted, so you move on to the next goal." More nodding, and hands went up to describe moments of glory (the grad school acceptance letter, the coveted job, the relationship you fantasized about for ages) that eventually faded: a lesson in the classic Buddhist teaching of impermanence.

"As usual," Nichtern announced at the end of the evening, "we'll continue this conversation at the bar downstairs."

Dharma in dive bars: As the founder of the Interdependence (ID) Project, an East Village-based Buddhism meets activism nonprofit, Nichtern is used to translating the 2,600-year-old spiritual tradition of Buddhism -- sometimes still perceived in the U.S. as a throwback to the cultural exoticism of the '70s counterculture -- to the 21st century.

He's not the only one. Thirty-six-year-old Noah Levine, author of "Against the Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries" and the memoir "Dharma Punx," which spawned a 1,000-member contemplative community with the same name, is also trying to give the tradition a cultural face-lift.

Nichtern and Levine, both "dharma brats" -- a term used for children of the first generation of American Buddhists -- are working to inaugurate a more contemporary and secular tradition than has previously been available, making Buddhism less about co-opting Asian cultures and more about the practical benefits of meditation and its teachings of mindfulness and compassion. These days, people aren't necessarily as interested in the mysterious Asian trappings that attracted spiritual seekers in the '60s and '70s. By tossing aside the rituals, chants and bowing that might make Buddhism seem impenetrable or alien, peppering their talks with pop-culture references to explain Buddhist concepts, encouraging political activism, emphasizing the practice of meditation and teaching in a way that Levine describes as "peer based" -- "It's not like, 'I'm the teacher, so I have all the answers and you don't have any,'" he says -- they're both attempting to distance Buddhism from its lingering hippie ethos.

They aren't the only Buddhist teachers under 40, but the casual friends and colleagues are the first to start their own independent communities based on meditation. And while attracting younger practitioners isn't necessarily a life mission for either Levine or Nichtern, their teaching styles definitely resonate with a younger generation. Between them, they're reaching people -- most of them 35 or under -- who might never walk into a traditional Buddhist center.

It might be just what American Buddhism needs. Ever since Buddhism gained a foothold during the late '60s and early '70s, when Asian teachers emigrated to America, the American face of the tradition hasn't really changed. It's just grown older. Most members of the 230 or so American Buddhist centers are over 48 years old, according to a 2001 Baylor University survey quoted in a recent article in the pan-Buddhist magazine Shambhala Sun. (Numbers are sketchy for "convert" Buddhists, ranging anywhere from 100,000 to 800,000.)

"I'm really interested in getting Buddhism out of the 'Eastern religion' section of the bookstore," says Nichtern, whose book "One City: A Declaration of Interdependence" -- which he calls "Buddhist philosophy meets 'An Inconvenient Truth' meets a pop culturally interested urban survival guide" -- was just released by Wisdom Publications. "Buddhism is about a practice of meditation, so that an individual can develop more mental sanity and awareness of the world around her. And it's about interdependence -- which is saying that nothing on any level of our experience is happening in a vacuum. Which of those two things are either Asian or religious?"

"A lot of people think of meditation in the same stratosphere as psychedelics," he continues. "It still has somewhat of a tie-dye sheen to it in the collective consciousness. That's definitely keeping some people away. But the main thing keeping people away is that it's hard to look at yourself and your place in the world. Meditation practice is hard. And we don't make it any easier by making it culturally exotic or inaccessible. What people like Noah and I are trying to do is to say, this is not about 'Free Tibet.'"

"It's not about feel-good, peace, love and granola," says Levine. "It's about an inner revolution."

When I first learned to meditate five years ago, at 24, it didn't matter to me that I didn't see many young practitioners at the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York. I mean, I wasn't going to become a Buddhist or anything crazy like that. I'd just read a lot about meditation, and it seemed like a new way to deal with my insanely busy mind and lifelong battle with anxiety.

I was surprised I'd even walked into the center in the first place. I liked reading about meditation, but actually go into a center? I assumed there'd be some kind of shared language or way of behaving that would automatically render me a foreigner. Wouldn't everyone immediately notice I wasn't a Buddhist? (Plus, Buddhism seemed so lame anyway: I was a diehard atheist and rolled my eyes at people who embraced Asian spirituality because they thought it made them seem deep or cool.) But my then roommate and her boyfriend at the time were both practitioners, and kept suggesting I go. "It's no big deal," she would say. "You don't have to do anything. You just sit on a cushion and breathe."

She was right: It wasn't a big deal. Around 100 people were at that Tuesday night dharma talk -- half of them raised their hand when the teacher asked who was new -- and suddenly my paranoia seemed ridiculous. I didn't understand why some people bowed at the door, and I certainly didn't understand the intimidating shrine on the right side of the room, covered with tapestries and photos and bowls and incense. But sitting still for half an hour was something I never thought my restless brain would be able to do, and when the teacher, a middle-aged man, spoke, it just made sense.

Next page: "I've heard, '[Noah] doesn't look like a teacher should look! He swears! Oh my God!'"