A gift that grows with time

For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. -A.A. Daily Reflection, June 26

When I heard these words read yesterday, I couldn't stop myself from snickering. For they describe alcohol as exactly opposite to the way I think of it. Maybe when I started out, these words applied. I did have the idea that I couldn't enjoy a party without drinking, and to some extent this was actually true. I've always been incredibly shy and afraid of human interaction, and the alcohol helped to lower my inhibitions. Now, though, when I think of alcohol, I think of anger, resentments, hangovers, puking, incredible physical discomfort, etc. It's kind of amazing to me now that I ever held on to the illusion that alcohol was a positive force in my life.

In Buddhism, we learn that all beings are trapped in samsara. As the lamas explained it, this means that we are all trapped in habit patterns which cause our suffering, and we can't see how to break out of them. The goal of the bodhisattva is to free all beings from the ocean of samsara, so that they can attain happiness. Alcoholism is an extreme example of being trapped in samsara. We alcoholics suffer, not perceiving the way out. Little did I know it when I decided to become a Buddhist, but freeing myself (with lots of help from others) from the cycle of alcoholism is wonderfully consonant with the bodhisattva path. In our center we have a thangka (painted cloth) of the wheel of life depicting sundry beings trapped in the cycle of suffering, the whole world of which is in the grips of the evil deity Mara. If you look closely, you can see a little white thread which emanates from the wheel and gradually ascends out of the picture, with various beings seen progressing along it. This is the bodhisattva path, allowing those who follow it (by helping others follow it) to transcend the cycle of samsara. There is a saying in A.A., "to keep what you have, you've got to give it away," a neat summary of the bodhisattva way.