Parallels between A.A. and Buddhism

I've been trying to really integrate my Buddhist beliefs into the A.A. program. Superficially, it's difficult, mainly because there's no creator deity in Buddhism, and the A.A. literature has the concept of God throughout it. I'm learning that it can be done, though. I'm leading someone through the steps right now, and as I do so, I plan on redoing the steps myself. Already, with step 3, I'm making progress, I think. Step 3 says that we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. After searching on the internet for a Buddhist interpretation of this step, I came across an article which mentioned that the Buddhist concept of taking refuge is probably the clearest parallel to the third step. A Buddhist practitioner takes refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma (sacred teachings), and the Sangha (community of spiritually enlightened beings). This essentially means that one places one's trust in them. While I had paid lip service to taking refuge before, having drawn this tight connection with the third step, I feel like I actually get it at a much deeper level now. In connection with this is the A.A. phrase "Let go and let God." A Buddhist view on this might be simply "Let go." We need to get our egos, and sense of self, out of the way. In a Buddhist interpretation, once could say that there are billions of enlightened beings out there doing their best to help all sentient beings. My contribution based on ignorance is not helping. However, if I let go of my sense of self, I can actually gain access to the primordial wisdom that comes with the path to Buddhahood. This is not essentially different from saying "God's will be done." The essential point is to remove one's ego and self-cherishing from the picture.

I attend a Big Book (the A.A. manual) study on Thursdays, and this past Thursday we were reading the following passage (p.62).

Selfishness--self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate...So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid.

Note the emphasis on entirely getting rid of self!

Here is a parallel excerpt from The Torch of the Definitive Meaning by Jamgon Kongtrul.

The root of suffering in this world is the accumulation of negative karma. The root of negative karma is the disturbing emotions. The root of the disturbing emotions is the ignorance that cherishes a self.

Again we see the same point: the root of our suffering is the ignorance that cherishes a self. Note also that the Big Book says that our troubles arise out of ourselves. That's karma! It's uncanny how deep the parallels run when one looks at it in the right way!