There's a good
A.A. video here. I can really identify with the guy waking up miserable and retching into the toilet.
A.A. has really worked miracles for me, by the way. I know I'm an alcoholic, even though I never lost my job or had any gross external consequences. Internally, I was miserable and appalled at the way alcohol controlled my behavior. Many times I vowed to quit, many times successfully for a period of time, but I was never able to stay stopped. With the help of A.A. message and it members, I was able to finally do it. Achieve stable sobriety.
Cheers!
4 comments:
Cheers to you, Vacuous! I'm glad A.A. has been such a positive thing for you. And congrats for your 2-year anniversary.
I'm kind of fascinated by the twin disciplines of Buddhism and A.A. in your discourse. Some would say they aren't really consonant. A.A. is about will, Buddhism about acceptance. Or is that too simplistic?
Did you get into both at the same time? I have that impression.
I wouldn't say that A.A. is not about acceptance. In fact, it's all about acceptance. The first thing one must accept is that one is an alcoholic! But much of the program is about learning to accept life on life's terms so that one doesn't turn to drink as an antidote. (A highly ineffectual antidote. :) ) In fact, A.A. encourages members to turn to a spiritual path because of the general recognition that it is hard for alcoholics to recover based on their will alone. I tried integrating my understanding of Christianity into my path, but I couldn't do it. Christianity, in essence, doesn't make sense to me. Having come across a book on Buddhism which mentioned that it was a good religion for atheists (more on this later) I decided to give it a try. It turns out that this has been an incredibly fruitful and transformative path. Buddhism has many techniques for self-analysis, often using meditation, and I've had the good fortune to come into contact with teachers who can show me the way. Buddhism is a living, vast profound tradition that has an unbroken lineage back to the Buddha 2600 years ago. Anyway, back to the idea that Buddhism is a good religion for atheists. I mentioned this to the senior monk, Tsultrim, at Kagyu Thubten Choling Monastery in NY, and he chuckled and said that not only does Buddhism not posit a God, but it doesn't posit a self either. It's really a fascinating and deep philosophical system.
That's a scary idea to me, not positing a self. Maybe because I'm all bound up in trying to express my "self." But maybe what I'm trying to express is just part of the ether.
I find the idea a bit scary sometimes too. I asked Tsultrim about this, and he said that when you meditate, you lose your sense of self, and that feels good, doesn't it? I had to agree. Recognizing the emptiness of self, doesn't mean that we don't exist, but that we don't exist the way we think we do, as the Dalai Lama often says. It means that the self that we defend, giving rise to all sorts of negative emotions in the process, is in fact a conceptual construct. There's no reason to get angry at someone if they offend you, if upon closer inspection, the thing that's being offended doesn't actually exist! This is a deep aspect of Buddhist thinking, and it takes a while to appreciate. One can see intellectually that the self is a conceptual construct, just like everything we perceive, but through sustained meditation, this realization makes its way from the head to the heart.
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