More about alcoholism

Most of us have been unwilling to admit we were real alcoholics. No person likes to think he is bodily and mentally different from his fellows. Therefore, it is not surprising that our drinking careers have been characterized by countless vain attempts to prove we could drink like other people. The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death. -Alcoholics Anonymous ("The Big Book")

I recently visited Oregon, and I attended a great A.A. meeting in Eugene. One of the passages that was read at the beginning of the meeting was the passage above, and it really is a good passage. I had tried to control my drinking many times and many different ways before I eventually joined A.A. I would limit my intake, which would work for a while, but it would always end up escalating. I would change my brand. Maybe only certain brands make me puke, I thought. I never stopped puking though. I would quit drinking altogether, engaging in so-called white-knuckle sobriety. Eventually, the little voice in my head would convince me it was okay to drink again. I tried only drinking on a full stomach. Nope, didn't work. Even when I wasn't puking, the alcohol was distorting my personality and poisoning my emotions. The last night I ever drank, I felt a spike of rage within me. That scared me. I had turned inward. I had become completely self-centered, and I was actually enraged at someone for disturbing my self-absorbtion. I returned to the program after that, and have been sober ever since. As my drinking days recede into the past, and I keep in contact with other alcoholics, I can see more and more clearly how delusional my behavior was. It's always easy for me to admit that someone else is an alcoholic. If I heard someone in the program say, "I'm going to go back out, I think I can drink successfully this time," or "I don't think I need this spirituality stuff anymore," or "I think I don't need to go to meetings anymore," I would have no difficulty identifying their behavior as self-deluding. Yet, when I come up with similar thoughts, it is very hard for me to see the truth. Like the passage above says, I had a very hard time admitting deep down that I am an alcoholic, and that alcohol is more powerful than I am. I have been trained to be self-reliant, and the idea that I am weak in some way, that I can't solve a problem by myself, encounters fierce resistance in my mental landscape. When I first entered the program, I was fed up with alcohol. I was sick and tired of beign at its beck and call, not being able to quit. I didn't have any of the terrible consequence that a lot of alcoholics amass. I never lost my job. I never got a DUI. I never killed anyone. But even people who have amassed these consequences have trouble admitting their alcoholicism. It's the nature of the disease that we are uniformly blind to its presence. In any event, that first time through, I didn't realy admit, deep down, that I was an alcoholic. But after my three week relapse, I was forced to admit it, and it was painful. I couldn't believe that it had layed dormant inside me all those months, just waiting for a weak moment.
The fact that there was this indestructible force inside me which cared nothing about me and which was bent on inducing me to behave in a self-annihilating way, this was incredibly painful for me to realize. But, I have accepted it, and having accepted it, I can deal with it free of delusion. How wonderfully Buddhist!

Contemporary Obtusity

I read a great essay on the Mahablog which talked about a Salon article about Karen Armstrong. Among other things, Armstrong mentions that the idea that scriptures should be taken literally is a modern idea, and that people in the past would have found this idea strangely obtuse. Rather, scriptures need to be read more like poetry, often sitting in your head for a while before the meaning becomes apparent. Clearly the Genesis creation story shouldn't be taken literally, for example. After all, there are many creation stories in the Bible, many contradictory. In any event, both of the links above express a lot more than I can, and a lot more eloquently. They are worth the read.

In related news, I just found a copy of The Threefold Lotus Sutra at a local used book store. It goes into a lot more detail than the two other sutras I've encountered. It's also filled with a lot more poetic whistles and bells. For example, we have the following passage:

After the Buddha finished explaining this, the three-thousand-great-thousandfold world was shaken in the six ways; various kinds of celestial flowers, such as utpala, padma, kumuda, and pundarika, rained down naturally from the sky; and innumerable kinds of celestial perfumes, robes, garlands, and treasures of priceless value also rained and came rolling down from the sky, and they were offered to the Buddha, all the bodhisattvas and sravakas, and the great assembly. The celestial bins and bowls were filled with all sorts of celestial delicaciesl celestial banners, flags, canopies, and playthings were placed everywhere; and celestial music was played in praise of the Buddha.

So, are we to believe that flowers rained from the sky! Of course not! The thing that comes to mind for me here is the pictorial language of music videos. I watched quite a bit of MTV when I was younger, and this sort of image would occur fairly often. When I was watching these videos, I wasn't thinking ,"How unrealistic!" Rather I immediately understood the metaphorical nature of the image. I just need to train myself to do that with scriptures too. It makes reading them a lot easier, rather than having to contort your interpretation to be consistent with an ultra-literal reading. Even in the Diamond-Cutter sutra, there were passages that required mental gymnastics for me to take literally. For example, Shakyamuni Buddha says that he knows the myriad streams of thought of all future Buddhas. This sounds very supernatural, but I don't think Shakyamuni meant it in quite the way my Western TV-conditioned mind immediately supposes. Admittedly, I don't have a deep understanding of the meaning of his statement.

Lastly, an example from the Bible. At some point, a voice from heaven declares of Jesus, "This is my son, in whom I am well pleased." Reading this literally is probably a bad idea. What would a voice from heaven sound like? Would it be thunderous? Would it be melodic? Would it be infinitely subtle? Doesn't it imply the existence of an anthropomorphic God? Rather, I think it should be interpreted as a poetic punctuation mark. Just as the flowers falling from the sky underscored the extreme spiritual importance of what the Buddha had to say, the voice from heaven declaring the merits of Jesus underscores the importance of his life and teaching.

Thoughts

When one is in an intense state of hatred, even a very close friend appears somehow annoying. If one harbors hateful thoughts, it ruins one's health. Even if one has wonderful possessions, in the moment of anger one feels like throwing them or breaking them. So there is no guarantee that wealth alone can give one the joy or fulfillment that one seeks.-the Dalai Lama

Miscellaneous Remarks

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust

We humans always want a solid base to stand on. Some idea that we consider bedrock, completely unshakable. For example, the idea that if I meditate, things will go a certain way, or that if I pray to a deity, life will work out a certain way, or that if I'm a good person, nothing bad will happen to me, etc etc, are all ideas which might serve as a solid base. And yet they are all delusions. Part of the difficulty of life is acceptance of the fact that nothing is truly unshakable. There is no idea that cannot be overturned. Once we realize this, we need not cling to our ideas so tenaciously, and thus not suffer so much when we need to let them go. It seems to me that people tend to become angriest and even violent when they see a genuine threat to their core beliefs. Giving up their core beliefs, they unconsciously feel, would be more painful than violently lashing out against the threat. I think this is why there was so much violence associated with the civil rights movement. This is why ordinary people became distorted with fierce rage. The very foundations of their personalities were being assaulted. I, too, am guilty of this. When I first moved to my present location in the midst of the Bible belt, I became angry and resentful at the omnipresence of evangelical culture. I perceived the local culture as a threat to my worldview. In the end, I got over it. Why should I become angry at people for having opinions differing from my own? The answer's pretty simple in my case: insecurity. Not having enough belief in myself to allow others to disagree with me. Thinking about it now, I'm rather astonished about how worked up I was.

Two Dads

I once brought home a comic book
Casper the Friendly Ghost
When my Dad found out about that book
He exploded in rage, tore it in two
I stood in the hall tearful, afraid

I was playing with my brothers
I was lying on the carpet
Suddenly my other Dad was there
Face contorted in rage
And I was dragged by my foot to witness
where I had forgotten to flush the toilet

Oh let me be free of these resentments
Let these two men not be the sum
Of these ancient incidents.

Coming Home, by Jane Blue

howling winds
unexpected rains
dash water horizontal
the way I remember this valley
in my turbulent youth

and a man has been howling
downtown on the mall
for two days

I've come home
in the ignonimy of winter
at 3 a.m. on the bus
and sick, in such a fever

clouds roiled over the river
full moon behind gauze
like the eyes of a she-wolf
protecting her young
that glittered from a night cave
behind the rending
the dancing, the boiling
the steaming clouds
with rays streaking out
like claws, shining

and there was the snarl
of thunder

I thought all this was behind me
now this wild man, warning
as though he's just whirled out
of the desert, dervish
manic, shrieking gibberish, blind
to me but eyes wide open
to something more real

claps his hands over his ears

the voices, the pain
that will not stop

Containing the Paradox (Pema Chodron)

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, and energizes us. We feel connected. But if that's all that's happening, we get arrogant and start to llok down on others. We make ourselves a big deal and want life to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

On the other hand, wretchedness--life's painful aspect--softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is an important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling grief, you can look right into somebody's eyes because you feel you haven't got anything to lose--you're just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all be so depressed and hopeless that we wouldn't have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.

Atisha said, "Whichever of the two occurs, be patient." Whether it is glorious or wretched, delightful or hateful, be patient. Patience means allowing things to unfold at their own speed rather than jumping in with your habitual response to either pain or pleasure. The real happiness that underlies both gloriousness and wretchedness often gets short-circuited by our jumping too fast into the same habitual pattern.

Patience is not learned in safety. Is is not learned when everything is harmonious and going well. When everything is smooth sailing, who needs patience? If you stay in your room with the door locked and the curtains drawn, everything may seem harmonious, but the minute anything doesn't go your way, you blow up. There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is to just try to seek harmony and smooth everything out. Patience implies willingness to be alive rather than seek harmony.

1914 was different

I found the following letter in a book I found in a neighbor's basement. It is dated February 11, 1914. The return address is

Harriman City Schools
Arthur A. Strock, Superintendent
Harriman, - Tennessee

It is addressed to

Miss Lula Karr,
City.

It reads as follows:

The next meeting of teachers will be held Saturday, February 21st, at 10 o'clock. All teachers are expected to be present.

The work for that time will take up the Renaissance and the Reformation as two parallel forces acting upon education and influencing its ideals.

The Renaissance movement will be considered purely from its literary aspect as a motive for the remaking of education as noticed in (1) the Italian contribution to education, (2) the German organization of school systems, and (3) the influence of the English public schools upon our educational methods.

The information will be considered from the moral and religious aspect in the bearing upon religious instruction and training as an integral part of education, especially in Germany.

Arthur A. Strock, Supt.

Two Aspirations

May all beings be free of suffering, and the causes of suffering, which are delusions.

May all beings have happiness, and the cause of happiness, which is total awareness of the present moment.