On Meditation and Voice Acting

Few voice actors have as decorated a résumé as Edoardo Ballerini. With early live roles on The Sopranos and Law & Order, the Italian-American actor eventually made his way into the world of audiobook publishing in 2007, when he recorded his first book, Machiavelli’s The Prince, as a favor for a friend who was starting a new studio. Since then, Ballerini has won multiple awards for his silky narration skills, including the Audio Publishers Association’s Best Male Narrator Audie Award in 2013. 

In an unexpected twist of fate, Ballerini’s career path has more recently found him as a frequent narrator of Buddhist titles, including works by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Dalai Lama. As a longtime meditator, Ballerini finds honor, appreciation, and a newfound sense of responsibility with this development in his career, knowing that some things in life you can’t predict. “It just found its own natural course,” Ballerini says, “which I think is one of the best ways for things to happen in life.”

Ballerini recently sat down with Tricycle’s executive editor, Philip Ryan, to talk about his journey from prime-time mobster to dharmic orator. 

First of all, Edoardo, your New York Times interview mentions a meditation practice. Can you talk a bit about that? Sure, I actually started my meditation practice in high school. During my senior year, spring semester, we were allowed to have an elective. And after reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which we were all doing back then, I thought “meditation, that would be cool.” And so I approached the teacher who’d assigned that book, and I said, “Do you think we could have meditation be the senior spring elective?” And somehow we convinced the school to agree to it, so a handful of us would meet early mornings before classes, and that’s where it got started. 

Then I came back to it many years later, when I was living in Los Angeles, and a friend of mine from college invited me to join him for a sit. And then I went on a silent retreat up in Santa Barbara, and it was there that I actually encountered the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, because I had stopped in a bookstore on my way up, thinking it’d be nice to have something to read during the three or four days of silence, and so I grabbed Peace Is Every Step off a display table. I didn’t know anything about Thich Nhat Hanh. I’d never heard of this book, and I took it up with me, and it was the only book I had for three or four days. And I can say, without exaggeration, that it changed the course of my life. There was me before reading that book and that silent retreat, and there was me afterward. And I made a lot of changes to my life. I moved back to New York, and I continued my meditation practice. And it was at the same time that I got into narration, narrating audiobooks. And what was fascinating to me was I discovered this parallel between the two. 

There was me before reading that book and that silent retreat, and there was me afterward.

So in meditation, as we know, you’re sitting quietly, you’re very still, you’re focused on the breath. And then I found myself in a recording booth sitting very still, focused on the breath, concentrating on one thing. And I thought, these two are quite intertwined, meditation and narration. And then a couple of years later, what was extraordinary was I was asked to record Peace Is Every Step by Thich Nhat Hanh, and it was one of the great honors of my life. That started a whole series of recordings of Buddhist books. And so it kind of came to me.

How did that recording come about? You were asked to do it? I was asked to do it by HarperAudio, which is a division of HarperCollins. And I don’t think they knew anything about my background with meditation and having studied Buddhism. They just thought my voice would be a good fit for it. And I didn’t even tell them, “This is the book that changed my life. This is wonderful.” It just worked out very nicely. And from there, I recorded about ten or twelve of Thay’s books, and then several by other great teachers including Jack Kornfield, Gil Fronsdal, and then, of course, the Dalai Lama. So it just found its own natural course, which I think is one of the best ways for things to happen in life.

Is your preparation different for reading a Thich Nhat Hanh book versus something like War and Peace? They are certainly different. And what I feel when I’m recording books by Thich Nhat Hanh or the Dalai Lama is, I guess I’ll use the word “responsibility.” I feel this extraordinary responsibility to make sure that the text and the ideas are front and center and that I’m not layering on top of it anything that isn’t there. You mentioned War and Peace. Yes, there are all these great characters, and there are these scenes of battle. And of course you have to bring that to life.

I feel this extraordinary responsibility to make sure that the text and the ideas are front and center and that I’m not layering on top of it anything that isn’t there.

If anything, with the Buddhist texts, I try to sit back and let the words flow through me as easily as possible. So in a sense, I’m sort of doing less. It seems to work that way, because the text itself really has its own course, and so I just try to follow it as if I’m floating downstream with it.

Do you have issues with intrusive thoughts while you’re narrating? You have to keep your mental space, I would imagine, very orderly. Monkey mind, right? Yeah, it’s very much the case. And again, another fascinating parallel between meditation and narration, just as when we’re sitting and trying to empty our mind of thoughts, and then something comes in and we think, “Ah, here comes a thought. I’ll just be with that thought, let it go, and come back to the breath.” A similar thing happens in narration. Let’s say it’s a work of fiction, if I find myself not quite fully understanding who’s who and what’s happening, and I’ve lost the plot, as they might say in England, then I realize that I have to come back, and that’s when I have to stop and pause and come back. So it’s a similar process.