The Buddha Takes Refuge in Me

When we say, “I take refuge in the Buddha,” we should also understand that “The Buddha takes refuge in me,” because without the second part the first part is not complete. The Buddha needs us for awakening, understanding, and love to be real things and not just concepts. They must be real things and have real effects on life. Whenever I say, “I take refuge in the Buddha,” I hear “Buddha takes refuge in me.”

Being Peace

Thich Nhat Han

 If I have a concept of a Higher Power as something abstract and perfect as a crystalline pure energy, which God is, I am hard pressed to find comfort in it. I know that mine is not a “he” or a “she” but I am also acutely aware that mine is not an “it”. But because my relationship with the Heart of Compassion isn’t described by gender doesn’t take away that personal relationship that lifted my obsession to drink. God transcends gender and is equally called Our Father as well as Our Mother in some religious traditions. I take refuge in the Heart of Compassion because that describes my relationship with the sublime but doesn’t exclude the source of my salvation from calling Her or Him... or by names equally descriptive such as; Wonderful, Counselor, the Prince of Peace, Jeshua Elohim, Mother of God, or, if preferred; Tathagata, Maitreya, Kuan-Yin, Earth Mother, Gaia, Mut (Egyptian Sky), Isis and so on. In other words, a whole pantheon of the descriptions of attributes of what we call God.

Whatever I call God, it is all useless unless it is the living spirit that compels me from within. It is the holiest of communions and the words of the Carpenter apply here: “Whoso eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, dwells in me and I in him…” I call God the Heart of Compassion because I need the Spirit of Compassion to dwell in me. I need that spirit because I don't normally see it there. It is a myth... a lie... that compassion is always something others have but I lack. I invite within that spirit when I call it thus. It  becomes the bread of life then that sustains me instead of an abstract concept I can never understand.

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Honesty/Recovery

 Today, around 8pm, will be the anniversary of my first 24 hr day of sobriety  fourteen years ago: September 15th 1998. I look back at the experience that brought about this dramatic new direction and am marveled that I was able to make it through that day at all… sober or not. In retrospect, I had no intention whatsoever to quit drinking as I awoke that day. I lay in bed thinking about the events of the days proceeding that morning of despair. There was no sleeping it off or avoiding the truth… I was driven by self-pity and a self-centered obsession that I had no power over. The honesty of recognizing this condition turned out to be the most essential ingredient to the first step out of the morass I found myself in. I had admitted several times before that day that I was an alcoholic but I had not admitted it honestly to my innermost self.

The truth was that I could put away the drink for a day or two… maybe even a month or so… but always, the obsession came back. That morning was different because this admission was escorted by despair. There is no honesty like the honesty of despair… when the facts of life surround and smother… like the struggle is one that overcomes all instinct to survive and complete surrender is the only acceptable response. It is on this altar of honesty that the power of what most of us refer to as “God” is first revealed and the corruption of compassion is atoned. It was on this holy ground that I kicked off my sandals and discovered a Power Within that I could be honest with and about. It was the first three steps of recovery taken without reservation: recognition and surrender to something I would come to believe. It all began that day.
 
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Endings/Beginnings

Dr. Carl Jung, one of the three founders of modern depth psychology, had a profound conviction… paraphrased, this is what he had to say about it: “Any person who has reached forty years of age, and who still has no means of comprehending who he is, where he is, and where he is next going, cannot avoid becoming neurotic --- to some degree or another. This is true whether his youthful drives for sex, material security, and a place in society have been satisfied, or not satisfied.” 
Bill W.
The Best of Bill
Fear

 Fourteen years ago on this date the slightest clue that my life would be altered in every way had not presented itself. But my life was turned upside down… inside out… that particular Monday. It really doesn’t matter the details of exactly what happened to me that day but what I can see is that an essential element was added to how I perceived the world around me. I sometimes imagine what it would be like, in an alternative universe, if another George kept on doing what he was doing that day. Instead, I was brought to my knees by a self-imposed crisis of a magnitude that is hard to express. I ordered my last drink at Mel’s… September 14th, 1998… one last drink and, Pow! Right in the kisser… I was God-smacked. I left that drink on the bar and walked away. Demoralized and out of answers I went home… curled up in the fetal position on grey sheets and gave up all hope. Nothing about my life has been the same since that day. I have new routines now. I drink daily from the cup of life when I sit a few minutes with the Heart of Compassion. It was the Heart of Compassion that lifted the obsession to drink; it was the Heart of Compassion that led me to the doors of AA; and it is the Heart of Compassion that opens my own heart to the suffering of others. What I do today isn’t mine to take credit for but the spirit that dwells in all of us does the heavy lifting.


Our dentist, Dr. Jim Rolf, DDS has a mission in Afghanistan in which he trains dental technicians and dentists for work in a sorely neglected medical necessity there. His property, where his clinic is on in shipping containers, is being sold out from under him. He hasn't given up and his calls for financing falls of deaf ears... partially because of all the scams attached to charities of this sort in hopeless places and partially out of apathy. He hasn't given up because he admits he is not doing this work of his own power. He is inspired by the Heart of Compassion's call whether or not he succeeds or fails.


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FORGIVENESS

In Tibet we say: “Negative action has one good quality: it can be purified.” So there is always hope. Even murderers and the most hardened criminals can change and overcome the conditioning that led them to their crimes. Our present condition, if we use it skillfully and with wisdom, can be an inspiration to free ourselves from the bondage of suffering.

GLIMPSE AFTER GLIMPSE
Sogyal Rinpoche

 I suppose that after I first came around I was mildly disturbed there were so many petty criminals, and even hardened ones, in the Fellowship freely admitting their crimes and misdemeanors. I say “after” because, when I first came in the rooms, I didn’t care who was there. I was desperate and that desperation was the greatest gift I could’ve had if I was to start this journey. The truth was, once I’d shaken off my obsessions like water off a duck’s back, these preconceived notions that a leopard could not change its spots (from my own personal experience) arose. Besides, I felt that even if a murderer could change, why then ought he/she be forgiven the crime? But then I looked at my own misadventures in the Fourth Step and realized that it was this inability to forgive myself for my sins that was the source of so much of my own suffering. The act of forgiving others, the willingness to change and the action of retribution was the magic that worked so well for me. A radical change took place and I understood that at last I could forgive and move on. This was the source of humility and a check on my pride lest I get foolish and judge others wrongly again.

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Saved from What?

Killing the Buddha Instead of Ourselves

How can you possibly expect to help others unless you yourself are in touch with your own defects? I know that for myself I don’t even give credence to people outside of recovery who pontificate about our diseases. Give me  someone who’s been there, done what I’ve done and is brave enough to admit they’re still far from perfect. I’ll run as fast as I can from the pure and saintly beings who want to save me. Save me from what? Or more insidiously, for what? To me, the only difference between a halo and a noose is the distance of twelve inches.
Mel Ash
The Zen of Recovery

 Help comes from diversity. Isolated and left to my own devices I found that my problem was more profound than I ever imagined. If I had no problem with drugs and alcohol I wouldn’t have even tried to seek a solution. Pounding on a pulpit and threatening me with Hell-fire didn’t work because I was already in a Hell of my own making. The curious thing was that I had fooled myself into thinking my excesses were the right path for me. I couldn’t imagine that depression, confusion, bewilderment and alcohol abuse weren’t an essential component of my creative drive. Anyone not so afflicted had nothing to say to me. This contempt wasn’t helpful either and, ironically, it became the fulcrum that wedged me into sobriety. I had no idea that there was anyone else who felt the same way as I did. I was astounded at finding the diversity in Alcoholics Anonymous. I thought I would sit around in meetings bemoaning my past… pounding my chest in mea culpas… and immersing myself in self-pity and regret.


I found instead a fellowship of hope, faith and true encouragement by others who had experienced the same despair I had felt. I found joy and laughter that lifted and inspired me to continue in spite of my shortcomings. No longer burdened with guilt and shame I took the steps of recovery that relieved me from even the vestiges of the obsession to use and drink.


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The Towers of Grief

Today I set aside a few minutes for the firefighters, police officers, first responders all, whose lives were given, as well as the civilians, whose lives were taken, on that day of infamy eleven years ago. The grief that day was tangible as though a thickness in the atmosphere shrouded all our affairs.

I got out of bed early that morning… it was one of my days off as a cab driver. I turned on the TV... the first reports came over my set. I watched in detached fascination and horror as various pictures of the airliner crashing into the first tower were revealed. I remember it at first as just another tragedy broadcast in the morning news before the shock settled in… some terrible accident far away and remote… images on the screen... before it hit me what actually happened. The first images of people fleeing the building were aired and suddenly I was appalled.

The second tower was another story… I realized then it was a terrorist attack… the odds of two airliners sequentially hitting the towers was too coincidental to be anything else. By then the first responders had shown up. I saw them rushing towards the tragedy to assist those who were escaping. This fact alone awed me… and the first tower collapsed… through the dust firefighters, police officers and first responders still busied themselves with the remaining building and I prayed it wouldn’t collapse too. When it came down I realized that the men and women who serve and protect us every day earned my respect no matter how badly or oppressively they do their normal routines. When duty called their training kicked in that day.

Thirdly I let myself grieve with the millions who watched helplessly as I did… people jumping to sure death from the buildings… people helping each other on the ground… people doing the best they could under horrible circumstances. A candle-light vigil was held that evening at the courthouse. I brought my candle and I stood in silence but that silence was sorely disrespected when someone took to a megaphone asking people to come to express themselves. It was then that conspiracies and political agendas were first hatched. I walked away… I’d paid my respects and I’d learned something so very valuable I have to pass it on … there is no room in the Heart of Compassion to exploit normal passions. Grief is not to be… is not to be… politicized.

Most importantly, I saw another spirit more powerful working as I drove the cab for about a week afterwards. First of all… there were no calls for the usual parties. The fares were most courteous and kind. The grief expressed itself in an amazing respect for each other… fares and driver alike. I even had an Iranian and two Arabs as a fare who expressed their sorrow… it was a heartfelt communion I will never forget. We were stunned for a week or so and the world was “One” that day.

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What is the Message We Carry

TRADITION FIVE

“Each group has but one primary purpose ---
To carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers.”

“Shoemaker, stick to thy last!”… better do one thing supremely well than many badly. That is the central theme of this Tradition. Around it our Society gathers in unity. The very life of our Fellowship requires the preservation of this principle.



TWELVE STEPS AND
TWELVE TRADITIONS
(p. 150)

What is the message an AA group is carrying to the alcoholic who still suffers? Is it an evangelistic insistence that we must concede our will to a cultish lock-step convention of acquiring a sponsor, working the Steps and staying so damned busy we don’t have time to look at ourselves after we have done the inventory steps? Are we also so damned busy we don’t have time to stop and ask a newcomer how he/she is doing and to actually listen to what is being said? Is the message also an insistence that we all become reformers and believe in a certain way a certain God... or even the gender of God? Is the purpose of the group to indoctrinate the proper application of the Big Book? Is the Big Book little more than a bludgeon to beat up and judge our fellow alcoholics? I think not. Isn’t our first compelling motivation supposed to be understanding and love for those who suffer?

I get so very tired of hearing a monotone delivery in groups that always follows the same pitch: personal details thrown in but usually tied in neatly with how stupid they were and how wise their sponsor or the "group conscience" is. Rarely do they admit that they possess a basic intelligence or compassion common to all of us… drinkers or not… drunks or not… alcoholics or not. To do so would have to involve taking responsibility for our lives before we stopped drinking. It was this longing for compassion and sobriety that led me to the rooms. I didn’t come to AA to acquire another dogma. I came to be relieved of my suffering. I was a sick man who saw the need wanted to get well… I was not a stupid, evil man trying to reform myself. Today I reserve the right to think for myself because I have the innate ability... the God given... if you will, to do so.

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