One Breath at a Time

This posting contains notes taken from the below listed book. This book has allowed me to accept fully all 12 steps of the program, some of which eluded me for 18 months. It is a tremendous resource for those who struggle with the concept of the Higher Power.

One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps
By Kevin Griffen


> The Buddha said that the cause of suffering is desire, and the Twelve Steps try to deal people from desire gone mad: addiction.
> Both (Buddhism & the Twelve Steps) ask you to look at the painful realities of life, to understand them, and to use this understanding as the foundation for developing peace, wisdom, faith, and compassion. Both systems culminate in an “awakening” or “enlightenment.”
> Understanding powerlessness helps me let go in my meditation practice; investigating my mind in meditation helps me do inventory work; listening to the suffering of others in self-help groups develops my heart of compassion.
> In Buddhism the initial, purifying stage of spiritual development is called sila, usually translated as morality or virtue – what one teacher calls “cleaning up your act.” This involves living an ethical life; treating others and ourselves with kindness; and letting go of destructive behaviors.
> Sila is one of the three classic stages of practice. The other two are concentration and wisdom.
> “I don’t have power over what desires I have, but I do have power over what actions I take.”
> Both the 12 Steps and Buddhism teachings point to the ways in which we shape our destiny…and that those habits shape our character into something inflexible.
> Meditation makes it possible to see your thought more clearly, and when you see your thoughts clearly, you can consciously decide how to respond to them.
> Once you think you know it all, you stop learning and growing.
> Eventually, “I decided to let my Higher Power be a mystery that I couldn’t understand.”
> As you work with the steps, your understanding of a Higher Power may change many times.
> Often times the change in understanding is a development process that moves from a more external Higher Power to an inner power.
> Alcoholism is a disease of faith.
> Although Buddhism and the Twelve Steps both require us to develop faith, thankfully neither requires that we swallow a dogma or belief system whole. Both allow us to take on the amount of faith we can handle, little by little. Step Two says we “came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity” not that this power could fix everything in our lives. Restoring us to sanity in this case, means helping us get clean and sober.
> Just being willing to take the advice of a trusted friend, mentor, teacher, or sponsor is a huge movement away from acting out our own ego-drive impulses.
> In Buddhism, the “decision” to commit ourselves to our spiritual growth is called Right intention. This means “making a decision” to try to live a life based on the principles of compassion, awareness, and openness. As with Step Three, we try to keep our purpose in mind in all our activities, bringing our spiritual commitment to bear in all things. Buddha said, “Intention, I tell you, is Karma,” which means that the motivation behind actions determines whether the action is skillful or not.
> “I take refuge in The Buddha”: I commit myself to being mindful, to being conscious in every aspect of my life. I won’t shut out parts of myself; I’ll try to feel the energy in my body; I’ll try to be gentle but firm with myself, to show compassion for my own desire and resolve to stay with my sobriety.
> “I Take Refuge in the Dharma”: I commit myself to looking for the truth of the way things are and fulfilling those insights, to living by the preinciples that I have come to understand: impermanence, karma, suffering, that all things are without an independent self; I will try to practice letting go; I will try to practice skillful living in words and actions; I recognize that life is inherently difficult; I will try to help others who suffer and be gentle with my own pain; I will try to act less self-centered and to find ways to serve other.
> “I Take Refuge in the Sangha”: I commit myself to compassion, loving kindness, generosity, and a moral life; I commit myself to supporting and being supported by the community of the spirit. I will regularly attend gatherings to fulfill this commitment; I will remember to be grateful to all that makes this life and this practice possible, to the bounty of nature, the bounty of this tradition, and the bounty of my own life.
> Nobody’s saying you have to believe anything in particular to get sober. The Steps are suggestions based on other people’s experience. The main idea about God that I thinks important is, “I’m not Him.”
> So, I practice this step for myself, not for God, not for a religion, not even because I think there is a God. None of that matters, what matters is that I need the Higher Power idea to stay sober and to be free from self-centered suffering.
> Balancing Wisdom and Faith means keeping an open mind and an open heart. Not closing ourselves off from the unknown, from possibilities yet unexplored; and not seeking quick fixes or supernatural solutions to our problems. Life is a mystery; the mind an enigma; the possibilities of spiritual growth endless, if only we are willing to explore. As human beings we have amazing abilities to think, to feel, and to experience wonder. Step Three sets us firmly on the path of freedom, connecting us to the great mysteries of life and the heart. Our job is to keep opening to the mystery, with joy, gratitude, and bright attention.
> For the alcoholic, there is no substitute for the moral inventory: you can’t meditate you’re your way around it…But once you’ve worked Step Four on your disease, you can also use the tools of inventory for further spiritual development.
> This was, slowly, painfully, the beginning of compassion developing in me. Looking at my own behavior from the standpoint of how it affected others instead of how it affected me meant putting myself in their place and trying to understand their suffering. The fact that this suffering was caused by me made it more difficult to acknowledge, but once I did, something broke open.
> In this new view, I saw not only the suffering that I has caused in others, but the suffering in me that triggered my behavior. When the Buddha says we should “understand” the First Noble Truth, this is what he means: opening to our own pain and that of others.
> The Buddha says that recognizing our mistakes and admitting them is how we develop our spiritual lives.
> By taking this physical posture and staying still, free from distractions, we are opening ourselves to what is. When we sit with our minds, stuff comes up; you don’t have to do anything, it comes unbidden. Once you’ve set your intentions to grow on the spiritual path, you have no choice but to deal with the things that come up in this process. In this way, meditation is a gateway to the inventory process.
> Step Five: The spirit of this Step may be what, for me, really separates Buddhism from the recovery movement. It is when I begin to reveal myself, both through formal inventory and through informal group sharing, that the healing begins for me. Even today, when I am agitated, sad, angry, anxious, or experiencing any difficult emotion, sharing at a group level is one of the most important ways I can return to balance.
> This is the first revelation of Step Five: When you expose your hidden secrets and shames to your sponsor, you learn that you aren’t alone. Your failings are common. Your shame, unnecessary.
> Step Six brings us to the central issue of sobriety and all spiritual growth: letting go. This is how the Buddha said we would find happiness; he talked about many kinds of attachment and the necessity of letting go of each of them: freedom from attachment.
> What gives us the courage to take this step is our sensitivity to our own pain, which develops as we work through the Steps. At each Step and level of honesty we see and feel more – in our minds, in our hearts, in our emotions. As this ability to feel becomes more refined with the increasing clarity of sobriety, it becomes more painful to hold onto the self-destructive aspects of ourselves.
> Willingness comes before any growth.
> When any experience of body, heart, or mind keeps repeating in consciousness, it is a signal that this visitor is asking for a deeper and fuller attention.
> This tendency to view ourselves as inherently flawed can make the phrase “defects of character” a difficult one. It suggest something personal, something which is mine. In Buddhist thinking, however, the self is a construction, a collection of processes and experiences that have no center and are inherently empty of all substance. Although we may have tendencies and habits of mind, we don’t have a hard and fast character. Who we are is much more fluid that that, more dynamic. Beneath the hindrances, beneath the thoughts, feelings and sensations, is pure awareness: Buddha Nature, Buddha Mind. If we are anything at all we are this luminous presence. And this nature cannot be defective
> Step Six asks us to be ready to have our defects of character removed. The deeper our attention to ourselves, to the process of mind and body, the clearer we become about these so-called “defects of character.” This clarity itself is the foundation for letting go. It’s in being willing to examine closely how are mind creates suffering and clings to the creation of ego that we prepare ourselves to let go in Step Seven.
> While it’s valuable to make a formal ritual out of this step, showing our commitment and intention to let go of our negative qualities, what Step Seven really requires is an outgoing process. Certainly we may have moments of great insight or giving up that can be transformative; some of the most inspiring enlightening stories, both ancient and contemporary, involve just such moments. But, most of the time, the removal of our shortcomings, and any real letting go, happens over time, a gradual chipping away that finally reveals a purified heart.
> So, Step Seven helps us to see our habitual reactions and try to let go, or at least, not indulge them. Bringing awareness to these behaviors is the first step in change.
> If we expect our shortcomings, particularly our addictions, to be removed, we have to be willing to make major changes.
> There is a continuous process of letting go.
> As we work Step Seven, we confront the need to let go of negative thought patterns; letting go of ideas of who we are. At every stage of our practice we face challenges. It’s only through opening with humility to our pain, and being, that we can continue to grow on the path of freedom.
> One of the hardest things to let go of is our own self-image.
> Each of our identities will change, and when they do we are faced with the pain of losing what we thought was “I.” Step Seven teaches us to hold lightly, and to let go gracefully. As we watch our identity change over time, we start to take pleasure in discovering how different aspects of our personality and character appear and disappear. We become more comfortable with not having to answer the question? “Who am I?”
> It’s because we’ve hit bottom, seen the suffering our addiction caused, and couldn’t bear to continue to destroy ourselves in that way. In a “moment of clarity,” of seeing clearly, we let go.
> And this is why Buddhism emphasizes mindfulness. We don’t let go because there is some rule or commandment that says we must; we let go because we see how our clinging is causing us pain.
> And this is why Buddhism emphasizes mindfulness. We don’t let go because there is some rule or commandment that says we must; we let go because we see how our clinging is causing the pain.
> Sobriety is finding a new way of living that involves engagement where there was withdrawal; generosity where there was self-centeredness; community where there was isolation; joy where there was bitterness; trust where there was cynicism.
> Freedom, in the Buddhist sense, comes from not being allowed to o anything we want, but by being less and less dependent on outside supports – supports for the ego or supports for the body. We learn to stop looking outside ourselves for happiness, for affirmation, for comfort. As we reach out for these supports less, we begin to let go more.
> Ultimately, it is our mental state, not our physical one, which we are trying to purify through spiritual practice.
> Spiritual practices are not spirituality; rituals and forms don’t free the heart; ideals and models of perfection can’t awaken us. As we adopt a form of practice, we must watch carefully that it’s working the way we intended.
> The 3 P’s: This was one of those typical Twelve Step aphorisms he’d told me about: Because of your perfectionism, you keep putting off doing anything, which leads to procrastination; after a while, you can’t function: Paralysis. The Three P’s.
> With Step Eight, once again we are challenged to be willing, to see the strength of our Right Intention. This emphasis on willingness and intention in the Steps points to the stubborn, willful nature of typical addicts and alcoholics. Our self-centeredness and pride often make it difficult for us to see that our way isn’t always the best way to approach life and its problems.
> Even if we never make any of the amends, writing this list and looking at it with discerning eyes help us to understand ourselves and our lives. It can also be a gauge of our willingness, as over time we work our way down the list to people we might have thought we could never make amends to.
> While we can never completely resolve our past – some degree of regret almost inevitably follows us as we age – the more that we can face our past karma, the less we are likely to be attacked by painful memories in meditation.
> My Spiritual growth isn’t contingent upon some transcendent meditative experience, but rather my ability to recognize that the person I’m sitting across the breakfast table from is a precious gift in my life; she is my lover, my teacher, my friend,.
> We still need to use these tools – mindfulness, compassion, and wisdom – in our lives with others. While deeply developing our meditation practice is a rich and meaningful experience, perhaps the truest expression of Buddhist wisdom is found in our relationships, when we act for the benefit of others.
> Step Eight reminds us that our spiritual life isn’t all internal or solitary, that we must be sensitive to others, to see how we might hurt them in subtle ways, and be ready to make amends.
> As we make our amends list, opening deeply to the pain we’ve caused ourselves and others, the heart begins to soften. The willingness to face pain – internally and externally – awakens love and compassion.
> We tap into Buddha’s First Noble Truth, the truth of life’s pain, but we do it not from a place of fear or distaste, but from a place of caring or kindness. Tears may come as we open the heart charka, that part of us, physical, emotional, and spiritual, from which love comes and goes.
> When, through this process of opening, we touch again the truth of our heart’s deepest craving for love, something bursts forth, and often it flows in a river of tears. What joy!
> Here culminates one of the central themes of the Steps: admitting our failings and beginning to take responsibility for them. As this process unfolds, beginning with step one and deepening throughout the inventory, something happens to us, a gradual but radical shift from shame, guilt, and denial, to openness, acceptance, and honesty. Revealing ourselves to ourselves and others through the steps frees us from having to protect or hide parts of ourselves from the world. Once we discover the lightness of opening in this way, we can become almost playful about our failings.
> Cleaning up our lives in this way is critical to the Buddhist path. The first thing the Buddha taught people was generosity. But how are we going to be generous if our work and financial life are in disarray? And, in practical terms, how are we going to be able to go on retreat if we can’t afford to take the time off from work? The Buddha said Noble Friends and Noble Conversation were the whole of the holy life. But how are we going to have successful relationships if our histories are scarred and unresolved? In these very real ways, our practice requires a clean slate. Even more, we discover when we sit down to meditate the need to be free of excessive guilt and worries.
> This might be the first lesson we learn about amends: you can’t take it back; you can’t fix what you broke. So, ultimately, the amends process isn’t for the others, but for the self. Even if you pay back the money you owed, you don’t totally repair the damage you’ve done to someone’s life.
> Even as I struggled with all these complicated feelings about the amends, relief poured over me. Sure, I was learning about more and more messy layers of my psyche, but I was also cleaning things up. I felt freshness, a new freedom and sense of lightness. Unburdened of guilt, relieved of shame, I felt the possibility of a new life ahead.
> If a life is a story, then living amends moves the narrative toward growth and healing and away from destruction and pain. Our past actions come to be seen as mistakes on the way to recovery.
> Of course living amends means than making your family happy. It means bringing the lessons of our spiritual growth into the daily activities of our lives. The way we lived as alcoholics and addicts caused indiscriminate harm. There’s no way to track down every person who might have stepped in our path and been hurt over those years. So, with living amends we try to somehow balance that harm with healing. Our meditation practice and the teachings on loving kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy can be the underpinning for those amends.
> Ultimately, Step Nine is about forgiveness. Forgiving others, being forgiven, and forgiving ourselves.
> Forgiveness is something we do in our own hearts to relieve ourselves of the pain of resentment. It’s not saying that the person is off the hook for any harm they have caused. In fact, we aren’t capable of letting someone off the hook – the Law of Karma is responsible for that. If we can be very clear about this distinction, it helps as we enter into the delicate work of forgiveness. We forgive others so that we can heal ourselves. For no other reason.
> When I really look at the results of not forgiving, what I see is my own pain. The anger, resentment, pride, or fear I feel only hurts me. Maybe we need a new word for forgiveness so that we don’t think it means we’re losing something or letting the object of our resentment off scot-free. Perhaps we should call it “fortaking” not “forgiving.”
> Ultimately I found that all amends are amends to ourselves, since while hurting others we hurt ourselves in the process.
> The main point is to not let a new set of mistakes build up so that we find ourselves back where we started at Step Four, with a whole list of people we have harmed and actions we must correct. Or, worse, that we don’t wind up back at Step Four, but instead back with a drink, a drug, or whatever destructive substance or activity got us here.
> With Step Ten, I try to catch things as they come up, so that I’m just making amends for one thing at a time. Step Ten implies a moment-to-moment attention to our behavior, keeping the Precepts and watching the places our mind is taking us – and being careful that we aren’t headed for trouble.
> Step Ten is what I try to do in meditation: be continuously aware of what is appearing in my mind and body, and promptly let go of the attachments and aversions that form around those experiences.
> If I want to maintain my spiritual condition I have to get go of I, me, mine, moment-to-moment. It’s like a constant Tenth Step. But when I do that, I feel this spaciousness, a feeling of pure awareness.
> Practice doesn’t just mean the time we spend sitting on a cushion. Practice is life. Life is practice. Many times it’s possible to see that there is already natural growth happening, we just have to appreciate it. Other times we’ll see that some work needs to be done, that some struggle in our lives is pointing to a place that needs work. The investigation of our spiritual condition on a regular basis is our guide.
> In fact, the Buddha even included joy as one of the Factors of Enlightenment – the qualities we need to develop to be free. So, sitting around being serious, meditating, and flossing all day isn’t the whole spiritual path.
> And, just as I need the discipline of formal spiritual practices, sometimes I also need the wild release of music or sports or sex or ice cream to remember the richness and beauty of life. Each of us needs to find a way to bliss, this path of rapture, if we are going to have balance in our lives.
> We don’t have to be afraid of joy. Like dukkha, it’s a natural part of life. The Buddha’s teaching is often put in negative terms – “letting go of suffering” – but doesn’t this just mean finding happiness? Isn’t that the whole point of letting go of suffering? There are many pleasures in life: the pleasure of food and friends; the pleasure of insight and concentration; the pleasure of nature and the senses. Learning to enjoy these pleasures without becoming attached – addicted – is what both Buddhism and the twelve steps allow.
> Step Eleven leads us directly into the fullness of spiritual life; it shows a direct line between our spiritual practices and our connection with ultimate truth. Once we’ve weathered the storms of inventory and amends, this Step leads us to a safe harbor where we can begin to live the promises of peace and serenity. While Step Ten helps us maintain our sobriety through inventory, Step Eleven may be even more important in our spiritual maintenance.
Translation of The Lord’s Prayer:
~ “Our Father who art in Heaven….” This is addressing my highest self, the place in me that is wise, patient, peaceful, loving, and compassionate – Heaven. So, I’m beginning the prayer by calling on my best qualities.
~ “Hallowed be thy name…..” I’m just showing appreciation for my higher self here, reminding myself what is important and what I value…..similar language in Buddhist chants: “Homage to Him, the Holy One, the Pure One, the Fully Enlightened One.”
~ “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” I imagine my highest wisdom coming down into the nitty-gritty details of my life, down to earth, with the Kingdom of Heaven – that is, the place of purity and wisdom in me – becoming manifest through, word, and deed. “Thy will”, refers to Right Intention, acting from the desire to be of service to all beings.
~ “Give us this day our daily bread…..” This is an appreciation of interdependence, recognizing that the whole universe is supporting my existence: the atmosphere for air, the earth for food and water, and everything else that allows me to live in this moment. It’s a recognition of powerlessness.
~ “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us….” Obviously this echoes the Golden Rule, treating others as we would like to be treated. The recognition of our own imperfection is vital to accepting the imperfection of others.
~ “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” In practical terms, we need to avoid situations and people that might trigger relapse; you don’t hang out in bars if you don’t have business there, and you don’t drop by your drug dealer’s house for a social call. In Buddhist terms, this is the aspect of Right Effort called prevention, where we try to keep negative thoughts or emotions from even appearing. The Buddha, knowing the tendencies of the mind to veer into desire and aversion, encouraged quite strong effort to counter these destructive habits.

> Prayer isn’t just words; it’s a state of mind, of sinking into the truth, into the meaning. To believe that just repeating some stock phrases will bring results is magical thinking.
> What this tells me is that it’s okay, when the heart yearns for some outside support, to pray to “God.” God is not a being but more like praying to the universe or the dharma.
> At those moments when I feel totally in tune with the universe, the heart open and flowing, there’s no need to externalize God. My prayer is my being itself.
> To me, my spiritual life is meant to be a support, not an intellectual exercise, so “God as I understand him” can, and should, be whatever I need it to be at any given time. I don’t have to answer to some logic or some rule-making body, just respond to what my heart is calling for in this moment.
> If it’s true that resentment “destroys more alcoholics than anything,” as the Big Nook says, then metta, or loving kindness, may be the most important practice for addicts and alcoholics. Metta is a complex practice because even as we try to arouse this sublime emotion, we must face those aspects of ourselves that are less than sublime. Before we can even begin to practice loving kindness, we typically work with forgiveness, as I described in Steps Eight and Nine. On the other hand, just in practicing mindfulness deeply, metta can spontaneously arise, without any formal practice.
> For addicts and alcoholics, I think it’s probably most important that we practice metta in our daily lives. Developing a loving and compassionate heart, learning to react with kindness rather than judgment or anger is critical both to our sobriety as well as to our serenity. My tendency to react negatively to others was brought home to me on an early retreat.
> Making a habit of bringing loving kindness and compassion to mind in daily life can shift our entire outlook. And this is a practice – a real practice. It requires first noticing when our thoughts are angry or judgmental toward someone (Right Mindfulness); then consciously shifting our focus to the other person and how we might view them and their behavior differently (Right Effort).
> One of the places it’s most useful to practice metta is in the twelve step meetings. Here we often find ourselves reacting to the sharing of others. For getting that they, like us, are there because they need support, we might find ourselves thinking.
> I think we have to be very careful how we go about determining what God’s will is.
> But what I find is that I don’t have all the information, and that if I wait, I’ll be better informed. In fact, what often happens is that some circumstances that make the decision for me. Problem solved.
> The Buddha has a very specific teaching on this question, called Clear Comprehension.
> The four components of Clear Comprehension are:
~ Question my purpose.
~ Question my means.
~ Question my alignment with the teachings.
~ Question the results.
> It takes time to ask these four questions. In that time, hopefully, passions are cooled and rash acts and words are avoided.
> In every spiritual tradition, withdrawal from the world – retreat – has an important place.
> This time of inner solitude opens us to the deeper reality of our lives, of our minds, and of our bodies. Forsaking the distractions of daily life, facing squarely our demons, and finally touching the place of stillness and wisdom inside, we come to know life in a new way, in a way that inspires and invigorates.
> Retreat acts as the foundation for all of our spiritual development.
> We can find the wisdom in these traditional prayers if we are ready to make them our own.
> The commitment to “carry the message” is expressed in Buddhism by the Bodhisattva Vow to forestall personal enlightenment until you have helped all beings achieve liberation.
> Vows place compassion as the central theme of the spiritual journey.
> He saw that having this awakening for himself wasn’t enough, that for it to have meaning it had to be shared. It’s this same understanding that has inspired Twelve Step practitioners to show up for one another all these years.
> I’m glad that the Twelve Step spiritual awakening appears in Step Twelve, not Step One. It comes out of a process, the difficult inner and outer work of the first eleven Steps. When my sponsor reads the Steps aloud in a meeting, he emphasizes the word the when he says, as the result of these Steps.” I think this is to remind us of two things: one, that the Steps don’t promise anything except spiritual awakening – not material, romantic, or emotional salvation; and that this awakening is in some sense inevitable, it is the result of working the first eleven Steps. We may not realize the ways we’ve changed, and it may not take the form you expected or wanted, but it’s real, and if you examine yourself and your life objectively, you can see it.
> One of Kabir’s poems, translated by Robert Bly, says this perfectly. It uses the term bhakti, the Hindu word for spiritual devotion. In the poem, devotion is expressed for “him” – God, I suppose, but to me it’s really about devotion to our spiritual path, whatever it is, and specifically to being awake in this moment, engaging fully in life:
~ The bhakti path winds in a delicate way. On this path there is no asking and no not asking. The ego simply disappears the moment you touch him. The joy of looking for him is so immense that you just dive in, and coast around like a fish in the water. If anyone needs a head, the lover leaps up to offer his. Kabir’s poems touch on the secrets of this bhakti.
> We could understand the poem to mean that we give away our ego – our “head,” offering it up to God or the spirit. The poem expresses the deepest devotion: the willingness to give your life for another. The Metta Sutta, the Buddha’s discourse on loving kindness, talks about this love like this:
~ Even as a mother, Protects with her life, Her child, her only child. So with a boundless heart, Should one cherish all living beings.
> When I began to follow this principle in sobriety, my life began to change. I showed up for work even though I didn’t feel like it; I went back to school even though I was afraid; I kept my commitments at meetings even when I was tired or bored or had something else I’d rather do. The consistency of showing up allowed things to really get better in my life. I gained respect, experience, and security at work; I wound up with an advanced degree that opened up my career; and my sobriety became firmly established as I became part of the sober community. Most of all, my life started to feel integrated, not scattered and unfocused as it had before.
> Recovery from alcoholism or addiction is much like this process. In a sense, we have abused ourselves, and in order to recover our hearts – our compassion, our conscience – we must continually show up for ourselves until we begin to heal.
> When Step Twelve says we should “practice these principles in all our affairs,” it sends us off into the world with the ultimate task: Don’t just do this stuff at special times, do it all the time. How can we manage this? The Buddhist teaching on the Eightfold Path is a great guide.
> This is the ultimate lesson of daily mindfulness, noticing the habitual tendencies of mind, and replacing them with conscious thoughts and actions based on our best intention – “practicing these principles in all our affairs.”
> I dedicate the merit of my work on this book to the awakening of all beings; may all beings be free from alcoholism and drug addiction and from the harm that addiction causes; may all beings be happy, joyous, and free from suffering.