Recovery In Motion: RDO Higher Ground Speaker Meeting

This talk was given to the Recovery Dharma Online Higher Ground Speaker Meeting in March of 2022. The primary theme is the role of service in recovery, furthering our own sobriety and enlightenment by aiding the sobriety and enlightenment of others. These ideas are developed further in the book Buddhist Recovery Daily Practice by Sheldon Clark.

Transcript

Thank you everybody,

I am so glad to be here.

This is my first time at this meeting as well,

So it's good to be here to spend time with people,

You know,

In common purpose.

In our case,

Walking the path of clarity and stability that we find in Buddhist recovery.

So,

You know,

I'm in these meetings because I've done a lot of different substances in my life.

My real demons have always been alcohol and marijuana.

I started using when I was 16,

I'm 62 now,

And all but 8 of those years were spent in active addiction.

Smoking every day,

And toward the end,

Drinking.

A lot.

Every day.

And I used to wonder,

You know,

How it is that I fell into this trap.

My addiction wasn't caused by childhood trauma or any serious hardship,

I've been very fortunate in that way.

But my addiction has caused trauma for others.

My first marriage fell apart because of it.

And my second marriage suffered,

You know,

Similar blows,

And those have taken a lot of work to heal.

I've had a lot of blind passions going on,

As we say in the Zen tradition.

You know,

Call it what you want,

An addictive personality,

Deep and aggressive craving,

Whatever that is,

That's me.

And that craving has led me to do some pretty unfortunate things.

You know,

I've done and said things while drunk or stoned that I'm not proud of.

Some of which haunt me to this day,

And I imagine that some of you can probably relate.

But things really came to a head when I was somehow under the impression that it was okay for me to dip into someone else's pot stash.

A good friend of mine,

Actually,

Who had a tiny house on my land.

You know,

I never took much at a time,

Which is maybe what allowed me to think somehow that it was alright.

But I did it a lot of times.

And it was stealing,

Of course,

But I never let myself see it that way.

Until I got caught.

And I lost that friendship.

My wife found out about it,

And I nearly lost my second marriage.

So something obviously had to change.

I was already a practicing Buddhist.

I'd been involved in refuge recovery back in its heyday,

And then I chose to continue on with recovery dharma when that time came.

But addiction,

You know,

For me,

It colors things in an odd and dishonest way.

And that coloration had led me to pick and choose among Buddhist principles and practices.

Those that,

You know,

Didn't fit with my using.

Well,

I often just ignored them,

And I lied to myself that it didn't matter.

So when it all came crashing down,

It was back to the drawing board.

Four Noble Truths.

The Truth of Suffering.

Yeah.

But,

You know,

What I suddenly had to understand was that these things that I enjoyed so much,

Drinking,

Smoking,

They were the vehicles of suffering for myself and others.

They weren't the real heart of it.

Rather,

It was my continued choice to use that was the cause of the suffering.

And I don't know,

Maybe this was a bigger deal for me then than what I can convey here.

But I'm talking about a shift in responsibility,

Subtle maybe,

But important.

You know,

It wasn't just that people didn't like how I was when I was stoned.

They didn't like that I was continuing to choose to be stoned.

It cut that close.

And in the end,

It was that personal,

And I just couldn't see it before.

You know,

And suddenly I understood how I was letting the people around me down.

I mean,

Here was my wife of 12 years saying,

I want my husband back.

And I didn't even know that that was the depth of her feeling.

And I was so ashamed by that.

But then,

You know,

I came back to the third of the Four Noble Truths with its reassurance that the causes of suffering can end.

You know,

For me,

That's the crown jewel in Buddhist teaching,

That there's a way forward.

But you know,

Of course,

That way forward,

That path toward change requires responsibility.

And for me,

Like for most,

If not all of us,

That meant stopping using.

I mean,

It meant renunciation.

I'd finally come to a place where I'd had enough of creating suffering for myself and others.

And I had to engage a process of healing.

I had to learn how to bring patience and compassion to myself as I developed a willingness to,

You know,

Not just let go of my attachment to pot and alcohol,

But to really get clear about what that attachment was about.

And it's this willingness,

I think,

To explore and release that's the real mind of renunciation.

It's not,

You know,

Just stopping is not enough.

For me,

Nothing could move forward until I was willing to make a new life.

So I clearly had to reforge my relationship with several aspects of the Eightfold Path.

Right action.

No more stealing my best friend's pot,

For God's sake.

You know,

But more,

I really had to reevaluate what it meant for my conduct to be upright,

To be honorable and peaceful.

Those are three big words,

Especially those first two,

And,

You know,

All of us have to find out what they mean for our character to be upright,

For our actions to be honorable.

But you know,

Living into right action doesn't come from nowhere.

I mean,

There's a huge effort involved in getting to a place of right effort.

And there are four parts to the teaching of right effort,

And I really started to dig into it.

And I had to work with each of them,

And I still do.

You know,

First I had to work on cleaning myself up,

Physically,

But also spiritually,

So that I could gradually give rise to fewer unwholesome states of mind,

Such as craving,

Such as theft.

Second,

When unwholesome mind states did continue to arise,

I had to learn how to practice with them skillfully,

To see them,

Try to understand them,

See what it was to let them go.

And then in that opening space,

You know,

I had to learn how to recognize,

Really to sort of reacquaint myself with wholesome states of mind in the first place.

How those feel,

How to appreciate them after literally decades of active addiction.

And last,

I had to learn how to allow myself the gift of building and growing wholesome states of mind when I do have them.

And it seems to me that this is really the heart of it.

I mean,

I don't know how I can really engage and hold on to right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

If my mind isn't clear,

If my thinking isn't upright.

And right mindfulness,

Right concentration,

I mean,

I believe it's the same thing.

If I don't make a good faith effort to keep my heart and mind clear,

If I don't hold that as my intention,

I can't make much headway in meditation.

Now I understand that there is an interdependent relationship,

You know,

Between the parts of the full Eightfold Path,

That each of the folds,

If you will,

Support the others in practice.

But for me,

Effort,

Right effort,

Has been key.

But that much said,

The part of the Eightfold Path I think that really has meant the most to me and which has led me to a broader practice and recovery is right thought.

Right thinking and suffering,

Understanding the need for non-attachment from clinging and aversion,

Establishing a sense of equanimity,

The equal valuation and equal consideration of all things and all people.

Thoughts of love,

The intention of non-harm extended to myself and to all beings.

Right thought.

I talk with people a lot about the idea of bodhicitta,

Which you may have heard of.

This word bodhi comes from the same root as the word buddha,

To be awake.

And citta means heart or heart-mind,

So bodhicitta can be thought of as having a completely opened heart and mind,

An awakened heart and mind,

An awakening heart and mind.

Simply put,

The spirit of bodhicitta is the wish to aid our own spiritual growth in sobriety by having compassion for others and working to help them in their own spiritual development and in their own sobriety.

With the compassion that we find in Buddha's practice and recovery,

I know that I work to create,

With the strength of that,

I work to try to create causes and conditions which are beneficial to the sobriety and awakening of others.

I know this can be a little chancy.

We often have to deal with people whom we've had difficult times with.

People who have hurt us,

People we may not trust.

But over time I've found that I can take heart in the idea of bodhicitta because its energy is a reflection of my own ability to love,

Of each of our own abilities to love,

Even in the face of adversity.

With the idea of bodhicitta we live with an open heart and mind,

Not causing harm,

Benefiting others as we can.

And over time,

Right action,

Right speech,

These are no longer things that I feel like I have to choose to do.

Instead they've become a natural result of my hope to care for others,

The reflection of a life lived in compassion.

There's an 8th century Indian Buddhist monk,

Some of you may have heard of Shantideva.

It's an interesting story.

There in northern India in the 8th century,

He was part of one of the largest Buddhist universities there.

I think it's called Nalanda,

But I don't remember for sure.

And the interesting thing about Shantideva was apparently he was not a particularly good student.

He didn't study much,

He didn't go to class,

The teachers didn't like him much,

And the other students were resentful of him.

And they had a program there at the center where every so often one of the senior students would give a dharma talk to the teachers and to the other students,

An opportunity for them to share their learning,

To share their understanding.

And the other students concocted somehow to get Shantideva up there in the hot seat,

So to speak.

I think their intention was to try to make a fool of him,

To try to shame him,

To maybe get him to leave the university or get him to get his act together.

I'm not sure which.

So Shantideva comes in and he sits down and he says to the assembly,

He says,

Well,

Would you like me to talk about something,

You know,

That we've already been discussing,

Or would you like me to talk about something new?

And everybody says,

Oh,

You know,

Something new by all means.

So Shantideva proceeds to lay out this talk that apparently just like,

You know,

Blew the roof off the joint.

And it's come down since that time as an idea called the Way of the Bodhisattva.

A bodhisattva,

Again,

That bodhi,

Awakened,

And sattva means being.

So a bodhisattva is an awakened being.

And this is part of what Shantideva said.

For sentient beings,

Poor and despotate,

May I become a treasure ever plentiful and lie before them closely in their reach,

A varied source of all they might need.

May I be a guardian for those without protection,

A guide for those who journey on the road.

For those who wish to cross the water,

May I be a boat,

A raft,

A bridge.

May I be an aisle for those who yearn for landfall,

A lamp for those who long for light.

For those who need a resting place,

A bed.

For all in need of help,

May I be their friend.

May I be the wishing jewel,

The vase of plenty,

A word of power and supreme healing.

May I be the tree of miracles and for every being,

The abundant cow.

Like the earth and the pervading elements,

Enduring as the sky itself endures,

For boundless multitudes of living beings,

May I be their ground and sustenance.

And thus for everything that lives as far as are the limits of the sky,

May I provide their livelihood and nourishment until they pass beyond the bonds of suffering.

Building our own sobriety and efforts toward awakening by serving the sobriety and awakening of others.

This is my hope.

This is my vow in the Zen practice.

You know,

But I mean,

Let's face it,

It's easier to feel compassion in some situations than in others.

Easier for some people than for others.

And this is where the challenge comes,

Because effort to be right,

Or effort to be wise,

We can't pick and choose.

The spirit of bodhicitta is a spirit of equanimity,

Compassion,

Love,

Support.

When we say we want to bring these things to everyone,

We have to mean it.

So something that's helped me sort of sort all that out,

And I'll end with this,

Is a deliberate practice of patience.

Life is complicated.

I mean,

That's a given.

People do things we don't like.

Situations don't always turn out the way we want them to.

Sometimes we're just not sure what's going on.

And this can lead us into reactive patterns of feelings,

Irritation,

Anger,

Jealousy,

Sadness,

Disappointment.

I mean,

I have over the years,

And I continue to suffer from these things.

But sometimes we just have to accept that things may just be real,

And that we may or may not be able to change them.

And this is where the Buddhist teachings on patience offer several important practices,

One of which is forbearance,

Gentle forbearance.

Forbearance is something I think about a lot,

And it's to bring a sense of tolerance toward the actions of others.

Now,

This is different than accepting someone's behavior.

I think toleration,

To be tolerant,

Is a misunderstood concept.

It's not accepting someone's behavior.

To tolerate something isn't to just allow it to happen.

So a case in point in my own life,

I have a son who's now 25,

And his mother and I separated when he was three or four.

She was emotionally abusive.

She had a lot of tragedy in her own life and her own childhood,

But it manifested in her treatment of me and,

Truthfully,

In her treatment of our son,

And that continued for him long after she and I separated.

And you know,

I used to just suffer so much burning anger and resentment.

And this feeling of,

You know,

Why doesn't she just stop?

Why doesn't she just treat me better?

And I finally realized that's not going to happen.

No matter how much I want it to,

It's just not going to happen.

I learned that this is just what I got.

This is just what I,

You know,

Was going to receive when I was in her presence.

So,

You know,

I set some boundaries,

And eventually I sort of severed that relationship,

But I practiced tolerance in my relationship with her.

And what I mean by that is that it was more about me modifying my response to what she was doing,

Being mindful of my own response,

Making choices about my own response.

I mean,

In general,

I may not like what another person says or does,

You know,

And I may choose to disassociate myself from them,

And I did from my son's mother.

But that doesn't mean I need to harbor suffering thoughts about it,

Like resentment,

Like sadness or anger.

So in my understanding of tolerance,

Again,

It's not to accept what something is happening,

Not to accept what someone is doing or what's happening around you,

But to create in your own mind,

In your own heart,

Responses that don't hurt so much.

So to sort of sum up,

You know,

I have nothing but admiration for the work anyone does in taking steps to get themselves out of active addiction.

Stopping using,

You know,

The biggest step of all.

But also the soul-searching,

The time,

The work that we've all done to understand ourselves,

To effect real change in ourselves,

And Buddhism offers us strong tools for this work.

But while I honor anyone's practices which lead to their sobriety,

I also believe that the natural extension of these practices is to support others in their own path towards sobriety and awakening.

I believe that our work in sobriety is not only for ourselves.

We must,

Or I know I must,

Also support the well-being of others,

Not just by getting sober,

But by developing a commitment to non-harm,

To bettering the lives of those with whom we're in relationship,

As well as others within the community around us,

Recovery or otherwise.

For me,

Our sobriety is more than a thing.

For me,

Sobriety is an action.

Think of it as recovery in motion.

Thank you.

Thank you so very much,

Sheldon.

That was beautiful.