Nick Nolte, Acting the Wiser

How do you distance yourself from the craziness outside and the craziness in your head?

You have to learn some techniques. First of all, you’ve got to be able to observe what your mind’s doing and not get into identification with every thought. Then you begin to see how scrappy the mind is. It will just come up with one thought after another, after another, after another, after another, forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And I don’t believe that you can kill the mind, or go into the cave and de-brain yourself. I think you have to observe yourself. You have to find a way to see inside, and then it’s a matter of meditation, and then it’s a matter of either asking the right questions, or finding the right answers. We ask questions of ourselves to which there are no answers.

Like what?

Living in the "now, now, now"

"Where’s God?" You’re gonna kill yourself with that. You’ll never be able to answer that. And there’s just a multitude like that. We also set ourselves up for disappointment by futuristic faking, and we set ourselves up for disappointment by digging into the past. If you’re living in the past, you’re dead. If you’re living in the future, you don’t exist. It’s all going to come as this moment, now. The future will come as now. And I know there’s a lot of people that are like, "Now, now, now, now, now. Just let it be." But there really aren’t any problems on that level. On that level, it’s just about the breath. It’s just about this moment. And if you can go moment by moment, then your problems really don’t become an issue until the right time. You have to practice, practice, practice, practice. Looking inside takes practice because we’re directed to look outside.

So, it’s really going against the grain to look inside, then to find the heart, then to allow yourself to feel, and then allow yourself to be vulnerable to your feelings. And then, to make judgments off of your feelings: "This really doesn’t feel comfortable for me. Even though it is the Governor’s Ball, I think I should just get the hell out of here, rather than spend a miserable night and then question my behavior for the next year." Little things like that. [Laughter]

What kind of spiritual inspiration keeps you on track?

"Chicks and fun" & spiritual ritual

Well, I was always a Krishnamurti guy for years and year and years. And for chicks and fun and just spiritual fun, I’ll go down and hang out with Hare Krishnas. You remember those guys in the airport? Well, they’re really quite fun. I mean, they have a lot of ritualistic stuff, but just their dancing and their singing and that, it’s quite good. But I don’t have to become a Krishna. I supposed they would like that, but if you’re really into ritual, then go to Catholic Mass. I really think you can get this material from many, many, many sources. Because the same thing has been said by many, many, many people for thousands of years.

You’re into healthy eating—has that affected your spiritual journey?

Oh, absolutely there’s a relationship, a real symbiotic relationship with plants. I don’t think we recognize it, but we’re in a symbiotic relationship with every plant there is. I’ve always had my own garden that I eat from. It’s a much more intimate relationship to your food. And you can eat raw, or you can cook, but to go to the garden, to pick the spinach, to pick the peas… Kohlrabi has been my favorite for the last four or five years. It’s a Middle Eastern vegetable, and it grows above the ground in a ball, and it tastes a little bit like cabbage, a little bit like broccoli, but very faint traces of it, and it’s very crispy, very juicy, and you kind of want them very tender. You can cook them or put them raw into the salad. And it’s not like watercress. It’s as crunchy as that, but it has this wonderful, mild flavor that just cuts through. And then there’s Mexican squash that grows as a kind of a heart shape, and it grows off of vines.

Do your find gardening itself kind of a meditative, nourishing practice?

Blissing out in his garden

It definitely is. This garden is so evolved. Everything is raised high now, so you don’t ever bend over. The black raspberries [are] about to come in. There’s just row after row after row of black raspberries, and invariably I’ll find somebody laying on their back in the raspberry patch. Purple juice all around their face. I can see how you don’t want to get a bear’s berry patch, because he’ll really give you hell if you come in when they’re grazing. [Laughter] This little canyon I live in, I’m able to grow just about anything. Vidalia onion from Georgia is supposed to have tremendous heat, but I can grow that. Not as big as they do in Georgia, but it’s the same effect.