On January 11th of this year, I offered a short reflection on A.A.’s Step Four. I focused on the disposition of fearlessness mentioned in the step. If you are not familiar with Step Four, it reads:
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
How might we understand a fearless disposition? What does being fearless during the inventory process mean?
Two descriptions come to mind, and two because of their distinct yet complementary perspectives. The first portrays the person in recovery as a “spiritual warrior” who dons great armor and rides the great vehicle as they set out on the great path. This description is one interpretation of the Sanskrit term Mahāsattva, which we can translate as “great being” and indicates the presence of great courage.
What are the great armor and the great vehicle donned and ridden in recovery? “The sense that [you] matter; that [you] are respected, cared for, secure within a loving reality, and therefore ultimately protected,” to repurpose a line from Zen teacher Zoketsu Norman Fischer. This is the second perspective, a gift that co-arises between and includes its giver and its receiver. The spiritual warrior is not self-made nor self-sufficient; they emerge from the generosity, kindness, compassion, and insight—in a word, from the support—of others, whether known or unknown to them, visible or invisible, near or far. As we often hear, recovery is not something that we do alone. We do it together.
A fearless disposition is essential in the process of taking a searching or on-the-spot moral inventory because, as I wrote in January, “The process of investigation, whether done solo, with a sponsor or other spiritual friend, is painful—period.” Why? Taking the backward step and shining the light within requires looking everywhere, including the very back, very dark corners. It can feel, as I imagine it did for Siddhartha Gautama more than 2,500 years ago, as though hundreds of arrows are flying at great speed in your direction. Who would not recoil at the mere thought or live possibility of illuminating one—let alone all—of their closet’s skeletons? Yet no arrow struck Siddhartha; they all were transformed into flower petals and fell to the ground in their own time.
I mention this because flower petals were absent from my January reflection, which means liberation was absent. The inventory process is painful; at the same time, it is liberating.
In this post, I want to reflect on the liberating aspect of the inventory process. It is present not just in Steps Four and Five. It is also present in Step Ten, which reads:
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
The connection between the continued taking of an inventory and liberation is no accident, by the way. Although we hear, see, and use the words “enlightenment” and “liberation” in talking and writing about Buddhism, which suggests something attained once and finally, we also use the word “awakening,” a verb that signifies an ongoing process that has no end. Recovery, any old timer will tell you, is no different.
Pithy sayings fill recovery spaces. “One day at a time,” “First things first,” and “Meeting makers make it” are a few that I hear often. Then there is the pair “We are only as sick as our sickest secrets” and “Our secrets keep us sick.” I hear these often, too, and more importantly, they have been confirmed through my experience.
Secrets are one reason the inventory process begets feelings of lightness and a little bounce in your step upon completion. We can admit and amend wrongdoings with greater ease and honesty when we see them in sunlight, especially through eyes infused with compassion and wisdom.
Acting in this way is often called “Keeping our side of the street clean,” which means tending to feelings of guilt, regret, remorse, and shame that grow from trying to keep hidden from others and ourselves an immediate recognition that we were unkind in our speech or unwise in our deeds. An unwillingness to do this causes such feelings to grow and dominate our awareness, becoming suffocating, if not paralyzing. Hence, Step Ten’s directive is promptly to admit our wrongs, which sustains our well-being. Some people feel euphoric after the deep cleaning in Steps Four and Five, too. Both forms of cleaning and many other activities are part of the ongoing process of liberation from self-destructive behaviors.
In addition, we tend to need clarification on what is and is not up to us. The Recovery Dharma program frames this distinction using the terms “intent” and “impact” and elaborates on the distinction in this way:
Our intention may be to not harm, but sometimes the impact is that someone feels hurt. Many of us have experienced this in our addictions. Without intending to, and often without being aware of it, we’ve created harm in other people's lives. The way we choose to practice compassion in recovery is by being accountable when our actions hurt someone, and by acknowledging this hut without blame or shame, defensiveness, or justification. This includes when we offend someone by inadvertently using unwise speech or actions in regards to their social identity, such as race or gender. In these moments, it is important to recognize the difference between intent and impact, and having a deep appreciation and compassion for the interconnectedness among us all.
All that is up to us, from one point of view, is our actions. Their consequences, however, are not and are ultimately unknowable, for they are bound up with myriad things outside ourselves and ripple indefinitely far into the future.
I am reminded of a story about a boy, a horse, and a Zen master, which goes something like this:
There is a boy who lives in a village. For the boy’s eighteenth birthday, the boy receives a horse. Everyone in the village says, “How wonderful for the boy! The boy received a horse!” The Zen master says, “We'll see.”
A year goes by, and the boy goes out riding his horse. He falls off and breaks his leg. Everyone in the village says, “Oh no! How terrible for the boy! He fell and broke his leg.” The Zen master says, “We'll see.”
Six months go by, and the boy's country goes to war. All the young men are called to fight. The young boy, however, cannot go to war; his leg is all messed up. Everyone in the village says, “How wonderful for the boy! He doesn't have to go to war!” The Zen master says, “We'll see.”
Do you see the significance of this story here?
First, through a simple series of events, we see the difficulty of stating the impact of an unnamed person’s action—giving the boy a horse. In the beginning, the judgment is, “How wonderful!” In the middle, it is, “How terrible!” At the end, it is once again, “How wonderful!” Only the end is not the end, save arbitrarily. What will happen now that the boy does not have to head off to war? Who can say?
Second, the story also reveals another point of view. Here, we are no longer looking for the unnamed gift giver and assessing the impact of their action. Instead, we are looking at the Zen master, who demonstrates that only our responses are up to us.
Last week, I offered a Dharma talk on the spirit of zazen (seated meditation) practice. In the middle of that talk, I spoke about narratives and stories, and how we uncritically assume that we control the narrative and are the story’s star—all of this, I said, even though the world continually shows us otherwise.
You might suppose that the boy is the star in the above story. But is he? Is it the horse? The unnamed person out of sight? Or is there no one occupying this much-desired role? Is anyone ever “the star” and what does it even mean to hold such a title?
However, recognizing that we are often (perhaps never) in control or the star does not mean we disappear from the story. It means that we take our place somewhere amid all the goings-on. Some things still affect us in this position. Yet, in most things, we are a bystander—we are the Zen master. And what else can we say as we watch the world unfold before us other than, “We’ll see?” A few short expressions come to mind, none as long or tortured as what we often say.
There is a philosophical point here, too. Sometimes, talk of “action” suggests that the action comes from nowhere, is uncaused, or is otherwise unconnected to the before and after of a particular instant. It may also carry with it a need to impose upon the world a specific shape, which may succeed only in part or not at all.
If we view things not through the lens of action but the lens of response, such assumptions are absent, usually anyway. A response is always a response to something. It openly acknowledges its own before and after, which co-arise in intimate connection with a specific context. Furthermore, the spirit of a response is, in part, to work within that context. It occupies a cooperative role, is less concerned with the success or failure of an external goal, and is more concerned with a harmonious relationship among many parts.
The message here is this: by checking on our condition every so often, we maintain a sense of ease and spaciousness, afford ourselves the opportunity to remember what is up to us and continue to reinforce a cooperative way of moving with the world.
As I close, I want to say some things about Step Ten as a “practice of equanimity.” Similar to “enlightenment” or “liberation,” there is a tendency to understand “equanimity” as a static state. Hence, we hear the expression, “They dwelled in equanimity,” implying that equanimity is a container that we can step into or out of, and whether we are within that container can become a fixation, even an unwholesome obsession. Yet equanimity as a practice, an ongoing activity without end similar to awakening, avoids these pitfalls and aligns with the original spirit of the Brahmavihārā (Heavenly Abode).
“Equanimity” is one translation of the Sanskrit term Upeksha (Palī: Upekkhā), upa meaning “over” and iksh meaning “to look.” Thus, it suggests the absence of a self-centered orientation to the host of characters and the various circumstances, events, and situations that comprise our relationships with others, including our past and future selves.
The word is also related to the compound Tatra-Majjhattatā, which means “remaining here and there in the middle,” often shortened to “Equipoise” or “Mental Balance.” The entry in my trusty Buddhist Dictionary reads:
Tatra-Majjhattatā is called the “keeping in the middle of all things.” It has as characteristics that it effects the balance of consciousness and mental factors; as nature (function; rasa), that it prevents excessiveness and deficiency, or that it puts an end to partiality; as manifestation, that it keeps the proper middle.
Yet, we need to be careful here. To say that equanimity is called “keeping in the middle of all things” does not mean that the middle is an exact middle between two equidistant extremes. It is not an “arithmetical middle.” Nor should the middle referred to be understood as the same from situation to situation. The middle is always relative to us, meaning we, as we are, and the exquisitely specific situation in which we find ourselves at a particular time. (These two things are inseparable, necessarily, by the way.) Therefore, this middle constantly changes and, at the same time, is the middle—what is appropriate or skillful for that moment.
So far, the practice of equanimity includes non-attachment, non-discrimination, and even-mindedness. The presence of these qualities does not mean, however, that equanimity is without care, genuine concern, or warmth for those with whom we are in a relationship. On the contrary, such attitudes and feelings are integral to an orientation that requires embracing others and their points of view as though they were our own.
The orientation sketched here sits at the center of Step Ten and is visible if we look behind the distinction between “intent and impact” mentioned above. The flexibility required to be in touch with our motivations preceding action and that action’s short or long-term impact, whether intended, a foreseen possibility, or neither, on someone else—many someones affected in different ways, even—is precisely the activity of “keeping in the middle of all things.” We can also describe it as placing the lens of “I-me-mine” in its proper place and looking “up” or “over” a situation with compassionate impartiality. We explore our feelings and needs together with the feelings and needs of others from “up there” without a predetermined preference for any of them.
The effect of this flexibility is not continual residence in a state of bliss, ease, or repose. There may be very little of these things for long periods; my experience attests to this. The ease is found in less resistance when adjusting to the changing circumstances in which our lives unfold, buoyed by a willingness to keep our side of the street clean and sustain our well-being.
When we can dance together with life in this fluid way, we are less likely to run from feelings that nag our attention, hide our secrets in dark corners, and cling only to those perspectives that serve some small part of ourselves. We are more open to multiple points of view and can respond to what arises because we see clearly. We are the “I” at the center of a chant titled Liberation From All Obstructions.
I vow to affirm what is: If there’s cost, I choose to pay. If there’s need, I choose to give. If there’s pain, I choose to feel. If there’s sorrow, I choose to grieve. When burning, I choose heat. When calm, I choose peace. When starving, I choose hunger. When happy, I choose joy. Whom I encounter, I choose to meet. What I shoulder, I choose to bear. When it’s my birth, I choose to live. When it’s my death, I choose to die. Where this takes me, I choose to go. Being with what is, I respond to what is.
That last line echoes the vow mentioned at the outset: being with what is, responding to what is, is nothing other than the manifestation of a vow to affirm what is. It is another way of expressing the familiar, “Living life on life’s terms.”
Although we vow to do this, sometimes we stray too close to, perhaps even looking over, the path’s edge. Step Ten assists in the maintaining of so-called “emotional sobriety” and keeps us on the beam.
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Great read! Thank you for this teaching. In my experience, I learned that not all the arrows turn into petals. Some of them aim right at you. It is painful but ok once through it.