God-loving Buddhist drunk

A new blog

2011-07-23T14:59:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and readers: I am devoting my energies to a new blog, The Buddha Wasn't A Fat Guy. It takes on (or will) all of the themes I have written about here, but in a context that is more current for me, and allows me to be a bit more open about who I am without any concern about anonymity within AA. I would love for you to read and, I hope, comment on the new blog.

Unlike God-loving Buddhist Drunk, I have obligated myself to write in this new blog every day (or as close to that as I can; one never knows with vacations and such...), so hopefully that will be one advantage to the new one. In any case, thanks so much for reading over the years I have been publishing (very intermittently) here. I really did appreciate it and honored the fact that people I have never met were reading what I wrote.

The address to the new blog is http://buddhawasntafatguy.blogspot.com.

Acceptance

2011-03-27T06:54:00.000-07:00

It is my opinion that there is almost no passage of AA literature more profound (or more Buddhist) than the oft-quoted, and nearly as often misunderstood, part of one of the stories that deals with the thorny concept of acceptance. It begins:

"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation--some fact of my life--unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment." (page 417 in Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition)

American Vipassana master Sharon Salzberg tells the story of a time in her life when her response to any inquiry into how she was doing was, "I couldn't be better," no matter what her external circumstances. Though it seems at first glance to be a rather dismissive statement, when one drills down a bit deeper, it is a very profound and meaningful truth. In fact, we could have just been in a major traffic accident, have multiple broken bones, be in terrible pain, be bleeding profusely, and the fact still would be that we couldn't be better. It is the very desire to have things be other than as they are which is the nature of suffering as the Buddha defined it. Acceptance really is the answer to all my problems. Everything else is desire, aversion, or ignorance, the trifecta of suffering at the core of the Buddha's teachings.

The Big Book goes on to make the statement which has caused so much consternation over the years, "Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God's world by mistake." This has been, for me, a very useful koan, and one to which I have returned frequently. As with most people who read it for the first time, my initial interpretation of this line went something like this: "Everything that happens is O.K. with God." I have come to believe, however, that this is far from the truth of what is being said.

An AA speaker (Sandy B.) once said, "Problems are just events we decide never should have happened". This is one of the most important meanings of the idea that nothing happens in God's world by mistake. When we face the solid reality of an event that has happened or is happening, if it is unpleasant the immediate reaction is to deny its legitimacy, to determine in our own minds that it never should have happened. This judgment has two quite negative effects. The first is to divide us from the reality of the here and now, which, according to the dharma, is the most profound place in which we can dwell. No matter what the reality is, it is the whole truth of this moment. The second deleterious result is that it places us in opposition to that reality, which is the very nature of suffering in the Buddhist cosmology. In fact, regardless of what it contains, this moment "couldn't be better". It is one of the deepest and most disturbing ironies of human existence that the very rejection of the source of our pain is at the core of our suffering. Or, as one sage (Shinzen Young) put it, "Suffering equals pain multiplied by resistance".

This Big Book passage, though, confronts us once again with this concept of "God" that can cause us so much difficulty. If there is a being external to us that is a God, and he is all-powerful, and nothing happens in his world by mistake, then why, oh why would this God create disasters, pain, suffering, abuse, murder, and all other manner of chaos and entirely unnecessary suffering? Well, if one believes in this omniscient idea of God, then this would, indeed, be problematic. But, if one believes in this kind of God, then the only logical response is to fall prostrate at His feet and accept whatever comes as right and just without question. What more often happens, ironically, is that a person has this concept of an all-powerful God, and uses the fact of the injustice of the world to altogether reject the idea of any God at all. This would be amusing if it weren't so tragic, that for so many a belief in an all-powerful God is used to create a lack of belief in any God at all, and to a rejection of the idea that "nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake."

There are, of course, many ways to think of God. I do not believe in a God that is a creator God, or who arbitrarily decides who lives and dies, who suffers and who prospers, who thrives and who shrivels. "The Great Reality [the truth of God] lies deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found" (Big Book, page 55). This is, for me, the truth of God (except for the "He" part; I don't believe God has a gender). As I have stated elsewhere in this blog, God is a convenient concept that, nonetheless, has as many different meanings as there are people. To speak of a God is to share an experience without necessarily sharing a meaning. It is this experience I value, the experience of freedom which comes from accepting the premise that there are things which occur in our lives over which we have no control whatsoever, and seem to have been steered by a power outside of us. We who have had a spiritual awakening which removed our desire to drink, a desire that had been intransigent to any other method of eradication, can attest to this, even if we cannot define or grasp what that entity is with any precision.

The core of acceptance in recovery is contained in the Third Step prayer,

"God, I offer myself to you, to build with me and to do with me as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of your power, your love, and your way of life" (Big Book, page 63). (Those of you who know your Big Book will see that I have replaced the Thees and Thous with more modern language; I find this pseudo-Biblical language off-putting, so I don't use it).

This is what we came here to do, and yet those of us who do not believe in the God of our parents, or the God of Christianity or Islam or Judaism, can be confounded when we come to this part of the work. But if we release ourselves into the great flow of the dharma, if we come to understand that our judgment, our limited grasp of the truth, is not the whole of life, that there is a larger, unfathomable, vast, limitless Reality that is always present within and without us, then taking this step becomes almost laughably easy. Of course I can offer myself to this; of course I can acknowledge that to go against the "will" of the flow of the universe is sheer folly; of course I can wish for my difficulties to be removed, because, after all, the stumbling blocks between me and Nirvana are and always have been of my own making; of course I wish for my life to be a demonstration of the power, the love, and the way of life that is the Buddhadharma. How could it be otherwise?

Selfishness

2011-03-19T05:40:00.000-07:00

I casually commented to a friend the other day that, since humans are by nature selfish and self-centered, it is not too surprising that we cannot find a way to take collective action to do what we can to reverse climate change. I thought I was being fairly non-controversial; I have so long considered selfishness to be a basic component of the human condition that I stated it more as a premise than a talking point. My friend, however, took great umbrage at this idea, denied that she, for one was selfish or self-centered, and refused to discuss this further. Hmm....

I guess to me it just makes good sense that, as we are a comparatively weak, slow species, a sort of tunnel vision focused on our own safety has been one of the only reasons we have survived to this point. Put another way, those who were more altruistic in the prehistoric days of human evolution died out and did not pass their genes along, so only the selfish genes survived.

Perhaps the problem really is (as is quite often the case) one of semantics. The word "selfish" has a connotation of judgment to it, and my friend did, indeed, seem to think I was accusing her of something base. I actually believe quite the opposite, that, given the premise that we are by nature selfish, the fact that we often choose altruism and generosity over self-interest is a remarkable and laudable thing. My only contention is that it is in fact a choice and that it goes against our most basic nature. Is there a better term for this than selfishness? "Survivalist" has already been taken, and has a distinctly distasteful meaning for most of us. I am open to suggestions.

It is interesting to note at the Wikipedia page for altruism that several experiments have been done to demonstrate that this quality does have some antecedents in evolution, and that survival of the tribe or larger organism may come before survival of the individual. It may also be argued, though, (and has been) that this is also less than pure altruism, as the individual would not have survived in any case in these circumstances and therefore the survival of the larger entity also has a selfish motive, being a greater good than the death of the individual, though not as highly valued as survival of the individual would have been had that been possible. Or, it could be what is called "inclusive fitness", meaning that what appears to be altruistic behavior toward the group is actually a survival mechanism for the individual (i.e., by guaranteeing the viability of the group, the individual is more likely to survive). On the other hand, neurobiologists have demonstrated that there is a pleasure center in the brain activated by acts of charity for which the individual will receive no other reward. Hmm, I say again. Comments would be most welcome.

Misunderstanding

2011-03-13T16:38:00.000-07:00

I have been reading Douglas Adams' The Salmon of Doubt, which is a posthumous publication of essays and such. There are many worthwhile musings in this book, but one of the most fascinating to me is the idea that we have almost entirely mistaken what human life is about. Though no Buddhist practitioner, Adams' philosophy nestles neatly into the Dharma as taught by the Buddha. As we will see, this correspondence is not all that surprising, as both derive from what Pema Chodron called "a misunderstanding so old that we can no longer see it."

The misunderstanding, it seems to me (and to them) is this: we believe that since this is a very complicated universe and we are at the pinnacle of it, we, too, must be highly complex creatures. Some people in recovery refer to AA as "a simple program for complicated people," reinforcing the same misunderstanding. Adams is very clever in debunking the myth of our complexity, pointing out the flaw in the logic: since we are creative beings and manipulate our world, and have what the bible calls dominion over it, we must be very complex beings to correspond to that world and our place in it. We have fallen for a fallacy that is entirely of our own making, that is, in fact, tautological.

One way of looking at the formation of the human ego is in response to a basic fact of prehistoric need: we are, in comparison to our predators, slow and weak. The only two things we really have going for us is that we have a more highly developed brain and opposable thumbs. This combination made it possible for us to develop tools to defend ourselves, among other things. Our complex brains combined with the constant threat of being such relative wimps in a hostile world led to a state of constant alert. The only way we could defend ourselves and those we considered of value (family or tribe) was to put our safety at the center of our existence. This self-referential adaptation is the source of our egos (more or less). Those who did not develop this defense mechanism were, quite simply, eaten by the saber-tooth and did not survive to pass their genes along to the next generation. Thus did neurosis and egocentrism become an inherent trait in us.

As the world grew more complex due to our tinkering and inventing ever more safety (shelter, weapons, tools, agriculture, animal husbandry, etc.), our sense of dominion expanded accordingly. We also needed to project our thoughts into the future, as most animals cannot, to plan for the next event that might threaten us (food shortages and cold weather, for instance) and recall our past in order to use the lessons learned from that to model our future response to threat. Another characteristic this threat-based thinking bred in us is the constant desire to have more of everything; there is never enough, because we never know when the resources will run out and we will die as a consequence.

The Buddha identified desire, aversion, and ignorance as the sources of our suffering. It should be clear that the first two, desire and aversion, arise directly from our primitive need to always be on top of things, that we must constantly desire what is good and be averse to that which is bad as a survival technique. Ignorance arises from the need for absolute tunnel vision; the prehistoric human who lets his mind drift dies. What should be obvious in all this, though, is how none of this functions in our lives today. From an evolutionary standpoint, these are residual characteristics that have never (or at least not yet) evolved out of our species. This makes sense, of course, as there is no particular evolutionary pressure to have them removed. Their usefulness is at an end, it is true, and has been for millennia, but lack of usefulness is not a predictor for a trait being selected against in evolution; only traits that are deleterious to survival are under any pressure to disappear. Of course, there are some pressures from the negative outcomes of these traits--global warming and other environmental degradation, economic disparity, constant warring, starvation, and disease arise directly from desire, aversion, and ignorance--but the consequent pressure is not on individuals, but on the entire species. So far, there is unfortunately no adaptive advantage to being openhearted or openminded.

What all of this leads to is a constant state of alert, a never-ending feeling of need to move in some way, even if there is no need and our energies would be better preserved by staying still. When we look at human economic systems, to take one example, we see that they are predicated on the principle of growth, of constantly moving upward to bigger and better. This is a fine philosophy as far as it goes, but it ignores completely that, in an environment of scarce resources, it is unsustainable. Our most basic instincts panic, though, when we perceive that perhaps we must simply stand still or even retreat from the level of resource depletion we currently enjoy. The most obvious current example is that, even in the face of irrefutable evidence of environmental damage from global warming and the human source of most of it, there is very little movement toward retrenchment. There is also a salient political argument here, but all I wish to point out in this essay is the fact that this is all driven by a set of behaviors and responses that are based in survival techniques that we have not needed for thousands of years.

What, then, is the solution? Where do we find peace in the midst of all this? The poet Mary Oliver has famously written that "you do not have to walk on your knees/for a hundred miles through the desert repenting./You only have to let the soft animal of your body/love what it loves." T.S. Eliot wrote (quoting Julian of Norwich, apparently) "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." The point being that we have made too complex an issue of this very simple thing called a human life. It's just not that complicated. There is very little we require, and it is not all that hard to acquire. All the rest is just neurosis, just desire, aversion, and ignorance. When we sit in silent meditation, this becomes crystal clear (from time to time it does, at least). When we are living in the midst of desire, aversion, and ignorance, we suffer. When we are not, we do not, and Nirvana (if only for a moment) is the result. This is the misunderstanding that Pema Chodron referred to, and that has taken over most of our lives and has molded our world into the place it has become: that life is anything other than this. When we step back, take a deep breath, and see what is, rather than our projection of it, peace ensues, simplicity reigns, and we can finally, finally relax with just what is right here, right now. It doesn't seem like much, but is, in fact, everything.

Doubt

2011-03-06T10:29:00.001-08:00

I have spent the past few months in a paroxysm of doubt, doubt about my place in AA, in life, in recovery, in Buddhism, in spirituality, which about covers everything, doesn't it?

This whole spiral of doubt was precipitated by a visit my wife and I made to Paris in October. I am not a very well-traveled person, and this is the first time I have been in Europe. We made a conscious choice to stay mostly within the confines of Paris, aware as we were that the city itself provides plenty of opportunities to wander and discover without spreading our nets so thin that we really experience nothing at all, a very real possibility in trying to see all of Europe on a single trip (as if that were even possible).

Now, Paris has its allures, of course, and I could probably write a (very unoriginal) blog just on those. I am a nondrinking, vegetarian, caffeine-free man, so many of the gastronomical delights were lost on me (what is this love affair Parisians seem to have with ham, for God's sake?), but otherwise we soaked and bathed and breathed and ate of Paris for three wonderful weeks. But what came out of this trip that is truly relevant to this blog is the feeling of absolute delight that came with discovering something truly new to me, and my capacity to absorb it, comprehend it (if only imperfectly), and absolutely love it. I was entirely there when I was there, and felt engaged in a way I haven't since...well, since my first days in AA.

Since I have returned, I have tried to discover what the nature of that engagement was, and what I must do to have some of that in my daily life. I want to make myself clear here, to make sure I have given you an idea what I am speaking of. All of you know deep in your hearts what I mean, but many, if not most, adults have sublimated this grand desire beneath a mountain of obligations, responsibilities, compromises, acquiescence, and maintenance activities. What I am speaking of is a sense that what I am doing in this moment is absolutely the best thing I could be doing with the brief time I have on this Earth, the absolute conviction that I am where I belong in this universe at this moment in time. This is a taste of the beyond, a glimmer of Nirvana, a glimpse of a real Heaven (not a place of fairies and elves, but a place of beauty and grandeur), of ongoing and everlasting meaningfulness in every activity of every moment of every life. This is not too grandiose an aspiration, is it? Well, perhaps a little....

Understand, though, that I am not delusional enough to think that this dream in its totality is viable, simply that the more we abandon the quest for such a state of being is not only the degree to which we shortchange ourselves, but also the lives of those around us. We all know of people who, by their very presence and way of being, inspire a higher way of thinking and being, and each of us can be one of these, but not if we abandon all hope for anything other than mediocrity.

Thus, the doubt I have been feeling. I think it is dangerous to take anything at all at face value in this life. For instance, we in AA tend to think that all of the principles and values of our fellowship are the best they can possibly be, and that no improvement is possible. But is this truly so? I am not fomenting rebellion in the larger fellowship, but asking this simple question: is it truly in the best interest of AA and ourselves for us to accept as a given the value of what we do? Could we get more out of this program if some things were changed? Could we help more people? Could we attract more people? Do we really understand the difference between attraction and promotion, for instance? And on and on. Everything should be open to question, nothing should be sacrosanct; in fact, we cannot afford for anything to be sacrosanct. And where do I fit into all this?

But this is merely an example; I am not targeting AA in my doubts. After nearly 12 years of recovery, it is admittedly no longer at the center of my life, not even my life in sobriety. Of much more importance to me is the development of my relationship to the spiritual and the larger world (which is, after all, what the 12th Step promises me). So what is my place in that larger world? How can I find more of that bliss I felt in Paris? I have tried a bit of hedonism, but that's really not what Paris was about, anyway. Paris was about immersion, about what the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi (try saying that drunk!) called flow, a state of absorption so absolute that all distractions are temporarily eliminated. This state is desirable in and of itself, certainly, for the utility of the experience in focusing our attention, but what has been discovered by many of those who achieve this state on a regular basis is that it can be synonymous with bliss, and I posit that a sustained experience of it is what we deem "Nirvana" (thus the absorption states of jhana and their accompanying bliss states, though those are ephemeral and, in the end, unsustainable in that form).

So, did I achieve Nirvana in Paris? Well, no, far from it, but I was more at peace (even in the midst of chaos) there then I have been in a long time, and it is that equation I have been seeking since my return. I am not about to quit my job and wander the Earth, nor do I intend to leave AA behind, but I will tell you this: I think it is God's will (however you define that) for us to feel a deep and abiding joy in our lives, and I intend to get me some. Stay tuned.

Well, that's what I get, I guess

2011-03-06T10:12:00.001-08:00

That's what I get, I guess, for not posting here for a little over a year. Someone else hacked into my account and was posting rather bizarre pseudo-Buddhist crap for almost that entire time. Very strange. I know it is futile to ask why someone might do this (just because they can and it's fun, I suppose) since they could just as easily start their own blog and post these things. Of course, they couldn't use the supercool name "God-loving Buddhist drunk", and I guess I can understand their envy. ;-}

Death in the family

2009-12-23T05:09:00.000-08:00

My cousin died two days ago. While the official cause of death is still a bit hazy, what is quite certain is that alcoholism played a huge part. He was 52 years old. (For the sake of clarity, I should say that he officially died today, but his brain died two days ago).

Why do some of us get sober and others do not? In his case, it certainly wasn't for lack of loving family surrounding him and wanting him to be there always, without the barrier that alcohol places between us and those who love us. It also wasn't for lack of wanting to be sober; I think perhaps he wanted nothing more than that, except perhaps to be happy, which I don't think he ever was in his adult life.

Death really isn't much of a surprise to us alcoholics when we get to a certain point. Most of us have already been thorough the other two possibilities: institutions and jails. My cousin was no exception. Why death should come to him, though, and not to any of the rest of us is still a mystery to me; we can attribute it to God or fate or chance or karma, still, it feels an awful lot like a random roll of the dice.

And again I fall back on acceptance. Acceptance is not, of course, acquiescence. I am not one of those who can sit back and simply say that this was God's will or an inevitable consequence. Rather, I think of acceptance as a corollary to the dharma principle of equanimity. When all is said and done, it is our ability to release our convictions, our beliefs, our anger, our questioning, and our grief into the vastness of That Which Is which can bring us true and lasting peace. It has been my experience that this is a position of strength and not of weakness, and that from a place of acceptance I can act with courage and conviction without the obscuration of my ego getting in the way. Of course, this is not a state I achieve with any purity for any period of time, otherwise I would be enlightened, wouldn't I? But to the degree that I can place myself in acceptance of what is, I am at peace in any situation. The Buddha's most basic teaching is that circumstances do not determine what I experiecne, my reactions to circumstances do.

One of the saddest parts of my cousin's death is that his sons are still convinced that to one degree or another their father chose alcohol over them. As gently as I could, I tried to speak from my own experience, and let them know that I didn't believe this was so, but to little avail. I don't blame them; we are abandoners and absconders, we are irresponsible and seem uncaring. We are baffling, perplexing, infuriating and heartbreaking. But we are also in the clutches of a disease, a disease which ends up leaving us without choice. There was much talk of will power and spiritual decisions, and I held my peace; it certainly wasn't for me to convince anyone, especially not in that situation. But I felt such a pang in my heart that their father could never assure them that he didn't choose to leave them alone, and that they must now live with a convinction that if he had just loved them enough he might have stayed. What a comfort it might be for them to realize how very stark and impersonal our alcoholism is, how it levels vast fields of love and hope and happiness before it as if they didn't even exist, how much he could have held them in love and still been incapable of being the father they needed and wanted.

This experience also reinforces my convinction that we who are sober are not doing nearly enough to reach out to the alcoholic who still suffers. Worldwide, there are two million alcoholics in Alcoholics Anonymous, and that number has not grown in at least a decade. There are 6.7 billion people in the world, and estimates of the rate of alcoholism are conservatively 5%. Thus, there are likely at least 300 million alcoholics in the world. Two million is a mere scratch of the surface. Granted, many of those 300 million recover in ways other than AA, and many know of AA and have rejected it. But of the others, have we really done all we can to reach them? I'm not saying I could have saved my cousin. He knew I was sober in AA, and also knew (I hope) that he could ask me about it. I probably could have done more, but the larger question is, what can we all do, collectively and individually to make sure this message is out there? I have been in service to AA the whole time I have been sober, and I have seen a great deal of sqabbling over petty details and not enough emphasis on our primary purpose, which is to reach out to the still-suffering alcoholic. I hope and pray we can do better.

As for my cousin, I don't pretend to know what comes after this life, but I know that he is happier than he was here, even if he is nowhere at all. He died too soon, but his was a death of degrees, and happened over his entire 52 years. How merciful that his struggle is over. May we all be free of suffering. May we all be able to care for ourselves with ease and comfort. May we be happy. May we be free. May we know the end of the endless death of anxiety and uncertainty and come to rest in the conviction of our knowing of the Truth.

Discipline

2009-12-08T11:40:00.000-08:00

I have come to believe that discipline is the most important aspect of spiritual practice, whether it be through AA, the dharma, some other means, or a combination of them. The whole idea of discipline can cause us to recoil, though, especially us alcoholics, because it implies something imposed from the outside (personally, I think of Coach Capello and his incessant insistence on exercises that were incredibly dull). But the discipline I am thinking of is imposed from within, and arises from wisdom.

What, us, wise? One of the most damaging aspects of the way we tend to speak and think in AA is the idea that we are so basically flawed that it is dangerous for us to ever think for ourselves or believe in our ability to devise a way of living that is skillful. How often have we heard in meetings some version of this statement: "I am as crazy now as the day I came into the program"? But the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is precisely designed, I believe, to give us access to the basic wisdom that is in us all, and that has been obscured by our decades of alcoholism. And I should make clear that I do not think of alcoholism as merely the abuse of alcohol, but of the other characteristics which comprise any addicted character: greed, selfishness, self-centeredness, dissatisfaction, and substitution for true peace that which can never replace it. We have all known alcoholics who were no longer drinking, yet exhibited these characteristics, probably even more so than when they were drinking. Indeed, as we can perceive from studying this list a bit, this could describe most of the people we know, at least the unhappy ones, whether they substitute shopping or sex or alcohol or drugs or television or meditation for the underlying sense of peace which is available to us all if we have the will to look for it. This search is wisdom and is at the base of all our seeking, whether we know it or not.

One of the most basic tenets of dharma is the idea that all persons are seeking the end of suffering. Indeed, we could expand that further: every object and being is also seeking such peace. It is one of the perversities of human nature that we seem to have an innate understanding of what can bring us this peace, but we seek other means as more immediately (if fleetingly) gratifying. This is not to say that any of these pursuits is inherently wrong, mind you. Each of them, in the right person, can be quite useful and a source of joy. Even alcohol is, for most people, a source of relaxation and comfort. But when we make of these a compulsive seeking of the end of suffering, they become addictive because they can never bring us to such a state, except perhaps in memory or in short spurts, which causes us to seek to recreate these states over and over again, with the vain hope that they will become permanent through some alchemy in which we have a faith that is not supported by any available evidence.

Thus, wisdom and discipline. Of course, discipline comes first. As we who have worked through the Twelve Steps know, we are so confused when we get to the program that our wisdom has been thoroughly obscured, and we have lost all faith in our ability to exercise it even if we had access to it. Thus, someone else's wisdom or, more accurately, the wisdom of the program substitutes for our own as we work through the Steps. As we clear away the crap that obscures our access to what I term the sunlight of the Spirit, we become more able to trust our own inherent wisdom, and to use it to guide other parts of our lives; in other words, we have a spiritual awakening and learn to practice these principles in all our affairs, which is the essence of the Twelfth Step. But this requires further discipline, and a discipline which must dominate our lives for as long as we live. Fortunately, once we have access to some modicum of wisdom, it brings us such joy that we want nothing more than to open ourselves even further to this light, and the discipline itself can become joyful. Of course, we still have the impulse to return to easier, softer ways to achieve this, but find that only through the discipline of a spiritual practice can we come ever closer to the peace that we may call God, or nirvana.

Getting back on the horse

2009-10-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

Two-and-a-half years since I have updated this blog! Where does the time go? On September 9 of this year, I was 10 years sober. My coin has a big X in the middle of it. Even I can't quite believe it. When they said, "one day at a time" when I first came in, I thought they were lunatics, as if THAT was the way one got all that time. I know that won't make much sense to those who have never struggled with addiction, but the rest of you know what I mean. There had to be some trick, right, something other than not drinking for 365 days in order to get a year, and (stick with me now, you math-challenged ones) 3650 days to get 10. And yet, that is indeed what happened. One day just turned into the next into the next and because I worked the steps assiduously and with all my heart, because I expanded my spiritual life on a daily basis (to the best of my ability), because I continued to work with others, I just kept staying sober.

It has been nine years or so since I even had any desire to drink. One of the most entertaining things is to find myself going by the beer or wine aisles and thinking, "well, that's a bizarre-looking bottle, I wonder what that tastes like?" without having any desire to find out. Well...that's not quite true. I want to find out what it tastes like, but I don't have any desire to know what it's like to drink it. I also am no longer particularly perturbed about drinking or using dreams. Last night my son and and I were smoking dope together in my dream, something we never did in real life. I woke up laughing, because it was so absurd. As of this moment, a drink or a drug is about as far from likely in my life as becoming a transvestite. Well, probably less likely; I always thought that dresses were pretty and would probably feel pretty nice. I no longer even feel the need to make alcohol unwelcome in my thoughts; it just has no place, and it gets bored and leaves when I pay no attention. It's pretty cool.

Very little else has changed in 2-1/2 years, actually. My son now lives in Portland and has a way-cool girlfriend. I have now been married 29 years and am still in love with my wife. I work in the same place doing the same thing. We are coping with all of the usual flu stuff plus the H1N1 flu fun. It's going to be an entertaining flu season. All is well in Reid-land!

Happiness, unhappiness, and joy

2007-02-01T06:04:00.000-08:00

I have recently been ill--nothing serious, just a particularly bad version of the common cold--and during this time of illness, I became very unhappy. This prompted me to think about this thing we call happiness. How could it be so ephemeral that a mere cold can make it go away, if only temporarily? What is the nature of happiness and how does it come to be in my life?

Fear sometimes grips me when I am living in unhappiness, the fear that this state of sadness will remain with me forever. I think this fear is a flashback to my years of drunkenness, of that time when it was fairly reasonable to believe that my unhappiness would simply go on and on. And that prompts another fear which accompanies me on any descent into darkness: my fear that the present sadness will deepen into depression, which will in turn lead me to thoughts of suicide. This also is not such a remote fear, as this was often where my mind went when in the midst of my disease. Amazingly, though, it took me several days to realize that the fear of drinking has been entirely absent from my list of fears, and this has been so for many years. How easy it is for me to forget what a gift I have been given!

In my sobriety, I make a distinction between happiness and joy. When I was drinking and believed there was no Power greater than me, I felt no joy. I would occasionally be happy, but I was never joyful. To me, joy is the assurance that there is a net, so to speak, that if I fall off this seemingly slender thread of sanity there is a Power that will keep me from falling to my death in a pit of despair. Today I know this to be true, and even in my darkest moods, I feel safe and protected.

Now I am mostly recovered from my illness, and although a tinge of the unhappiness lingers, underlying it is this feeling of pure joy. I know that God is present in my life, and I treasure the presence of other sober alcoholics around me. I am also in a loving and caring relationship with my wife. My sponsor and those I sponsor are always there for me, as are my many sober friends. Do I always call them when I am blue? Well, no, but I am working on it. So many of the habits of mind from my drinking years are still with me, and this feeling of the need to be entirely self-sufficient is one of the most prominent and problematic. But the knowing that these people are here to support and sustain me is very important, even if I don't directly access them. I truly do have joy in my life, and am doing everything I can to keep it there.

Envy

2006-10-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

One of the most fascinating parts of being on a spiritual path is the sudden realization that there are aspects of my personality I was totally unaware of, that are quite suddenly revealed to me in stark relief. After I become aware of these characteristics, it's as if they were there all along and I was simply blind to their presence; I have the urge to smack myself on the forehead and say, "What a dunce!" I have come to believe, though, that this is simply the universe's way of giving me what I can handle at any particular time. As long as I keep my mind and heart open to new realizations about myself, I will continue to discover new and interesting things my entire life (and perhaps beyond, who knows?).

My most recent discovery is my propensity for envy. I knew that I sometimes coveted what others had (usually not material so much as spiritual or personal). But until a few short weeks ago, I had not realized how thoroughly envy permeated my life. Now that I am aware of it, I can see that in nearly every circumstance I tend to compare myself to others, and subtly weigh whether what they have or do is better, worse, or about the same as what I have or do. I then pass judgment on them and myself based on this evaluation.

Of course, this has not been a conscious choice; I am not this self-centered by intention. But it is now clear that this kind of thinking has to some degree or another run my life. Whenever a person is chosen for an AA position, for instance, I wonder if I could do that job, if there is a reason I would never be chosen for it, if they are up to the job...and on and on. At work, I have the tendency to compare the amount of work I am doing with how much it seems like others are doing, and evaluate all of us accordingly. When I hear of people talking about going to a party or out to dinner, I wonder why I wasn't invited, or why I can't have the kind of relationships these people seem to have. In the rooms of AA, I have heard this called, "comparing my insides with other people's outsides". It also gives my power away; if I am relying on your reinforcement to feel OK about myself, I will always come up wanting. To the degree that I do this, I am also removing God's influence from my life, because I am making your judgment and my comparison of myself to others my Higher Power.

What this is, though, is a form of bondage, and now that I can see the chains, I don't want them any more; they are too heavy, and hurt both me and others. What the Buddha taught is that the antidote to envy is mudita, or sympathetic joy. The basic premise in all of Buddhism is that we are intertwined and the idea of separation between us is illusory. Therefore, when any one of us is harmed, we are all harmed, and when any one of us is given gifts (safety, happiness, wholeness, happy events), then all of us benefit. On a more individual basis, what I have begun to discover is that the simple act of refusing to give in to that initial impulse to envy is enormously freeing, that I can merely make the choice not to compare, but to listen with a full and open heart to whatever is being said, or see whatever is being done without judgment. I compare it to popping soap bubblesÂthe envy arises, I poke it with awareness, and it dissipates.

This is the road to joy, which I believe to be the root aspiration of both the Buddhist and the recovery spiritual paths. When I drop the story line of envy, when I can simply be in the moment without judgment or comparison, I feel a spark of freedom. Ultimately, this freedom, this joy, is what I want more of, and is why I am willing to continue to strive, to "trudge this road of happy destiny".

Community

2006-10-20T17:11:00.000-07:00

What is this yearning I feel, for a deeper connection to something larger than me? It makes me wonder if the deep-seated need for community is not rooted in our natures, an innate desire. Perhaps it derives from the prehistoric need for protection from predators and other dangers; to me, it feels that primal.

I just finished the book The Secret Life of Bees, and the sadness I felt was profound. The women (and some men) in this book have such a sense of community, of safety in their numbers. Frankly, I was (and am) envious. (Fiction has often done this to me: The Color Purple comes to mind, as does Jayber Crow, or nearly any other work by Wendell Berry; there are many others I have forgotten). Why should this warm envelopment in love be available to some and not to others? What is amiss in my life that such a community has never embraced me? Is this, perhaps, something which only happens in books?

Oh, I know, this sounds like self-pity (and there's a component of that, I confess), but I am more curious than irritated‚ why should this be so? Is community something to be expected, or merely an outgrowth of exceptional circumstances?

In Buddhism, the community is the sangha, a group of like-minded persons following the path of the dharma. It is one of the three jewels of Buddhist practice (the others being the Buddha and the dharma). Yet, my observation is that in Western society it is very difficult to bring together such a group with any consistency or true community to it. Our lives are too disparate, too far-flung, just flat-out too busy. In AA, the community is the home group, but this seems to face the same challenges as the sangha. We come together briefly for our mutual benefit, then flee back to our homes, our televisions, our I-Pods, and our computers.

I know what my sponsor would say: "If you want a community around you, build one. Be available and loving to those who make up your world and share your life." Or something like that. Easier said than done. It seems to me that our society is made up primarily of pseudo-communities; things like MySapce, blogs, chat rooms, church groups, even AA meetings. Though they certainly have value of themselves, they are no substitute for true community.

Of course, as I admitted above, this desire for community is (at least in part) envy, but there are many things I envy (youth, beauty, musical skills, intelligence, math aptitude, facility for languages among them). But I recognize that these are either entirely out of reach or merely choices I can make, to devote my time and energy to their acquisition. But this thing with community is a craving in me, and one I feel I have no tools to bring about.

But when I remember to truly seek God's will for me, I recall the words on acceptance in the stories in the back of the Big Book, "My serenity is inversely proportional to my expectations." I must "do whatever is in front of me to be done, and...leave the results up to Him; however it turns out, that's God's will for me." And the Buddha taught that the very source of suffering is craving; it is not circumstances which cause me to suffer, but my desire to have them be other than as they are, what Sylvia Boorstein calls "an unappeasable need." So, my sponsor, as usual, is right. I don't need to know how to build this thing I want—this intimacy, the camaraderie, this love—I merely need to love others and give of myself. The result will be God's will and will speak for itself.

Grief

2006-09-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

My son is moving away from home next weekend. He is the only child we have, and very dear to us. Recently I have been quite "restless, irritable, and discontented", and didn't have any very clear idea why this should be. But this morning I realized I am feeling grief for the passing of the relationship my son and I have had.

Which is not to say it's not time. He is 24 years old, through college and a post-graduate certificate course, has job skills, and is just plain ready. He had good friends where he is moving, and is looking forward to beginning this phase of this life. And I am ready to begin a life with my wife, just the two of us. I am also ready to have the extra room to make into an office, to move our bedroom to the back of the house to avoid the street noise and the morning light. And all that. Of course, this also adds a component of guilt to the whole thing, since while I am sad he is leaving, I am eager for him to be gone. What a bad father I must be.

I recognize too that, as grief goes, this is a fairly minor one. He's only moving 150 miles away, and he's always been pretty good about keeping in touch when he was away. And, for heaven sakes, it's not like he's dead or something. I have noticed, though, that these relative comparisons really aren't very helpful. The pain I am feeling is the only pain I have at the moment, and there's nothing relative about it. That others may be feeling more grief than I am now is entirely irrelevant to the fact that I really don't want to be feeling this, and it hurts more than I want it to. What I need to strive for is acceptance.

The funny thing about acceptance is that, as far as I can tell, I need to know what it is I am accepting, what it is I am asking God to relieve me from before I get any measure of release from the pain. Which means that to the degree I am in denial, I am that much further away from feeling any better. I can ask to have revealed to me what is causing me pain, but until that revelation comes, I am pretty much stuck with what I am feeling. I have come to believe that this is as it should be, that I will be given the insight when it is time for me to have it, and until then, sitting with my undefined pain is precisely what I am supposed to be doing. Of course, this may sound self-serving to those who don't believe in the song of the universe which is always in perfect harmony, which is more or less my idea of God. I may be out of tune, but the universe is always just as it should be. "It is a lawful cosmos," as Buddhist teacher Joseph Goldstein likes to say.

So, this entry is the beginning, I hope, of my healing from this particular pain. Not that this sort of grief goes away entirely (does any grief leave us altogether?). But writing about it, acknowledging it, praying about it, talking to others about it, making it part of my meditation, all of this can help to find accommodation for it in my soul. It does not make me smaller to invite the grief in to share my house, it makes me larger and more able to find the room.

Cynicism

2006-09-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

Before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, one thing upon which I most prided myself was my cynicism. I believed I could see through your motives without even trying, and that everyone was, like me, out for their own personal gain. For every example to the contrary I had a quick response: for the mother who sacrificed her own life to save her child, I would say, "Yes, because she didn't want to be thought of as a lousy mother who let her child die", and for those who gave of their time and energy because of their religious beliefs, "A purely selfish desire for salvation. If they didn't believe there was a heaven and a God who could send them there or elsewhere, they wouldn't lift a finger."

Now, the most interesting thing to me about my former cynicism is that I always thought of myself as being intellectually rigorous and entirely honest. It was those who fooled themselves into believing that they actually had some sort of selflessness who were being dishonest and mushy in their thinking. I have come to understand that--at least for me--cynicism may be the most blatant form of intellectual dishonesty there is. To assert that my conclusions on the world are entirely correct while being entirely unwilling to examine all of the available evidence which might refute them is the height of ignorance and is guaranteed to keep me ignorant.

Nor were my motives at all pure; while I may have seemed to myself to be courageous in my upright stand against what I saw as hypocrisy, I was really acting out of fear. I was constantly afraid of the uncertainty in the world, and needed this artificial certainty to feel safe. Indeed, if I had been certain of my opinions, I would have had no need to defend them so vociferously against those who challenged them. Which is not to say that I have been cured of my fear of uncertainty, but that the tools I have been given through AA and my study of the dharma allow me to recognize my fear for what it is and work toward coming to accept it as a part of my life. When our monsters become our familiars, they cease to have the power over us they once had.

A wonderful book to look at concerning this topic of the fear of uncertainty and how it rules our lives is Pema Chodron's Comfortable With Uncertainty.

May you all be well and at peace.

The illusion of control

2006-08-29T19:33:00.000-07:00

Another of my defects of character, and one which leads almost inevitably to anger is the illusion of control, the idea that I can find permanent safety if I simply organize things well enough. Of course, you must also be organized by me, because the humans in my life are the most unpredictable (and therefore dangerous) elements. Unfortunately, of all the parts of my life in need of ordering, you humans seem to be the most intransigent to my ideas of how I think you should be molded. Damned ungrateful of you, if you ask me.

Not surprisingly, the Big Book of AA has an appropriate quote regarding this tendency: "Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well?" (pg. 61) [A little side note: it amuses me to observe in myself the fact that I want so badly to manage the grammar of the above quote, which I find awkward.]

This illusion of control is one aspect of what the Buddha meant by suffering. It is worthwhile to recall that, although there are thousands of teachings in the Buddhist canon, the Buddha himself said that he taught only two things: suffering and the end of suffering. The most succinct definition of suffering I have ever read is Sylvia Boorstein's: "Suffering is unappeasable need." We want to cling to that which gives us pleasure while keeping that which gives us pain always at a distance. These needs are unappeasable because they are impossible; pleasure leaves us and pain finds us, always. This is not a nihilistic philosophy, but a realistic one; the Buddha was not teaching a way of living so much as a way of looking at what is. One of the most common misconceptions in those who are unfamiliar with Buddhism is that the Buddha meant that one must suffer in order to be spiritually whole. What he truly taught is that we will suffer, whether we like it or not, and the key is how one relates to suffering.

But it is also important to remember the second half of what the Buddha taught, which is the end of suffering. How can one reach the end of suffering if suffering is inevitable? Isn't this antithetical? The answer is in the full and open acceptance of the reality of existence, an honest examination of what the nature of our suffering is, which leads in turn to the realization that our suffering and its sources are illusory, and the further realization that what we call "I" is also an illusion. If there is no "I", then there is no one who suffers, therefore there is no suffering. This is what the Buddha called nirvana.

I hasten to add that this non-self realization is one which comes at the very end of a long path, a path which most of us have just barely begun. I am nowhere near such a realization, but I have come to understand the possibility of it as something of an intellectual exercise, and as a goal to which I can aspire. For me, this is the Second Step's promise of restoration to sanity. (For a wonderful discussion of this idea of aspiration as a guiding force in leading a Buddhist life, see Sharon Salzberg's book Faith).

This idea of suffering and the end of suffering is, to me, identical to the concept of powerlessness in the First Step. I am powerless over alcohol and everything else in my life, and my life is most certainly unmanageable. This idea that I can "manage" my life is the illusion of control from which I suffer so much.

In the third edition of the Big Book, on page 449 (in the fourth edition on page 417) are some of the most oft-quoted words in AA: "Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today." This, and the words that follow are one of the most eloquent descriptions of how this urge to control causes me to suffer, leads me to create suffering in the lives of others, and puts me at risk of the misery which leads to relapse into active addiction.

Anger

2006-08-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

That which I call demons and the story metaphorically calls tigers in the previous posts is what we in recovery refer to as character defects. Anger seems to be the defect of character from which I suffer most. It has been my observation that anger is always fear in some form or another, even if at the moment I feel it I cannot identify the fear involved.

One of my major fears, now that I am at a point of my recovery where the most frequent experiences of discomfort in sobriety have passed, is that some action of mine or another person, place, thing, or institution will come along to put me out of balance and that I will then suffer that acute discomfort I felt when I was first getting sober. Being a good Buddhist, though, I recognize (intellectually, anyway) that of course things will come along that will make me uncomfortable. Some of them might even make me feel truly awful, such as the death of a loved one or a serious illness. When my balance is threatened, I feel a surge of anger and find it almost beyond my abilities to keep my tongue or pen in check.

This happened to me just yesterday, at an AA event, no less. One of my fellow recovering alcoholics (I want to describe him as "blowhard" and "pompous," my impulse being to set up the expectation in a reader and myself that he was at fault and I am blameless) expressed an opinion I was sure was incorrect, so I interrupted him to let him know that he was proceeding down an errant path. He didn't appreciate the interruption and made sure to let me know about it later; this made me angry (the method, not his message), and I had to walk away to avoid a confrontation.

One of the problems with anger is that it is so unworkable. It is a hot coal I can't hold for long enough in my calm observation to find where it can be taken apart and examined. For me, this is why the recognition of anger as fear is so helpful. If my anger is fear and the other person's is also, I can feel compassion for us both, and with this compassionately held fear, come to an understanding of what my part is in the confrontation.

Which is not to say that the other person in nearly any confrontation does not also have a large part (perhaps the larger part) in the creation of the situation which induces anger. However, as the book Alcoholics Anonymous says (pg. 66), "to conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got". What I must do is find it in my heart to forgive their part, to pray that their anger and its sources to be eased, and then to identify what in me caused this situation to be a problem for us both. When I find what my part was, then I can make amends to the person I offended and pray that the character defect which caused the flare-up be removed. At that point, I must turn the situation over to God and let it be. To bring something up in my mind over and over again is only to cause myself harm. In fact, the root meaning of the word resentment is "to feel again." No solution is to be found in this action; it must be let go. As the old saying goes, "resentment is like swallowing poison and expecting the other person to die."

Why this insistence on letting go of the problem once it has been addressed to the best of our ability? Because, to quote once again from Alcoholics Anonymous (pg. 66): "It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while....For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit."

Searching For Tigers

2006-08-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

Joseph Goldstein, one of the pre-eminent dharma teachers in the US, once told this story: a group of Buddhist monks in the Thai forest tradition were asked to go for an extended meditation in the forest. One of the primary reasons they were asked to do this was to confront their fears; they had good reason to fear being out in the forest because in those days wild animals roamed the forest, always hungry for whatever was available, not hesitating to eat humans when the opportunity arose. One day the monks were walking meditatively through the forest when, sure enough, a tiger leapt out from behind a tree and began to maul one of them. Seeing there was nothing they could do to help their fellow monk, the other hid behind trees and yelled encouragement to him, telling him to remain mindful so that the present suffering might lead him to enlightenment. The story goes that he was indeed able to remain in the present moment, even as he was being eaten alive, and achieved Nirvana. Joseph ends the story by saying, "Now, of course, we shouldn't go searching for tigers...."

I respectfully disagree. At least for those of us in recovery, searching for tigers is precisely what we should be doing. Why? Because until we come face to face with our demons and recognize them for what they are, we will never recover, we will never move past that which stands between us and the sunlight of the spirit. The 4th, 5th, 8th, and 9th Steps deal specifically with these "tigers", and when we balk at doing so, we have the experience of remaining restless, irritable, and discontented.

I hope to expand more on this theme in the future.

Hello and welcome.

2006-08-19T07:28:00.000-07:00

This is a new experience for me, not having been an active member of the "blogosphere" up to this point. However, I recognize the power of blogs to affect the world, and hope to add a bit of my own knowledge to the topic of recovery. I look forward to this experience and hope some others will join me on the journey. Major topics: Buddhism and recovery, Buddhism and alcoholism, Buddhism and AA, the nature of spirituality; is AA a Christian program?