Step Two: Part Two
Step Two: Part Two
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
Last week I shared some thoughts on the first three words of Step Two: Came to believe. You can read that post here. This week I want to look at the step’s mention of a Power greater than oneself.
Once more, Step Two reads:
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
A Power greater than ourselves. This phrase, along with its companion in Step Three, “God as we understood him,” is a consistent roadblock in recovery. The questions that immediately arise are not so much, “What is a Higher Power?” or “Who (or: what) is God?”—questions with an almost objectionable philosophical slant to them. Rather, they are, “What is your Higher Power?” or “Who (or: what) is God as you understand him (or: her, them)?”
Yet reframing the questions in this way—a clearly personal way—does little, all on its own, to make engaging with them easier. There is still a pressure, an urgency even, to form a clear understanding of what this Power greater than oneself is. For following an admission of powerless and unmanageability, or “hitting bottom,” this Power is what helps us stand and walk again. This Higher Power will, as we read at the step’s end, restore us to sanity.
How much that Power greater than oneself does this—really, how much someone believes their Higher Power does this or interprets the unfolding of their life as the will of their Higher Power—is a personal matter. I hear shares and stories from some where everything, “all the glory,” that familiar phrase from Judeo-Christian scriptures and services, is given to God as he is understood by them. Others present a more collaborative relationship with their Higher Power. Just as there is no one bottom for the powerless person to hit, there is no one Higher Power for those with unmanageable lives.
Where (or: how) does a Buddhist fit themselves into this picture? Sometimes Buddhists talk about the “Triple Treasure,” the “Three Treasures,” or the “Three Jewels” of Buddhism: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. “Buddha” here refers not just to the historical figure Siddhartha Gautama, otherwise called “Shakyamuni Buddha” and many other names. It refers also to the innate capacity that each being has for awakening or their already awakened state, depending on the tradition in question.
“Dharma” has different meanings in different contexts. Sometimes you can tell which meaning is intended by noticing whether the word is capitalized. “Dharma” with a capital “D” often means “Truth” or “the Teachings.” We say, for example, that the Buddha taught the Dharma and that the Buddha’s first teachings included the Four Noble Truths. “Dharma” with a lowercase “d”, however, can mean some part of phenomenal existence; in the plural—“dharmas”—it can refer to any part or the whole of phenomenal existence. The smell of lavender, say, or sounds of thunder and flashes of lightening, images that appear on your phone’s screen, or the words on a page of that novel you are reading and the meanings accompanying them. Your own sensations and thoughts too are included here—everything is! It is not the case that all writers follow this convention but some do, or they clarify in other ways which meaning is intended in a particular passage. Speakers will sometimes specify on the spot if the context does not offer enough guidance.
The word “Sangha” too has a few different meanings. Traditionally, it meant a community of monastics that lived and practiced together. But “Sangha” can also refer to a community of spiritual practitioners generally, including householders or lay practitioners, and even those who do not consider themselves Buddhists. You need not be a Buddhist to be part of a Sangha. Then there is the all-embracing meaning, which includes the trees and squirrels, oceans and sky, dogs and cats, the stars and everything else. All things are part of the Sangha in this broad, inclusive sense. For nothing is separate from anything; all things are what and how they are owing to all those relations present at any moment.
The final thing to say is that these Three Treasures are that in which followers of the Buddha’s teachings, and those simply inspired by his example, can take refuge. I will return to this in a discussion of Step Three. For the moment, it is enough to say that taking refuge is more than just taking shelter or finding safety from that which is dangerous and harmful. As I understand it, when we take refuge, we turn and fly back to our true selves.
For this person recovering from a period of severe substance abuse, the Three Treasures are the Power greater than myself—and I readily admit that the fit between these two things could appear poor. Still, entertain the possibility for moment.
There is immediate agreement between the language of Step Two and the Treasure of Sangha. One thing I learned early in recovery was the importance of community, that I cannot rely all and only on this skin bag. It has little to do with my supposed limitations. After all, I can, as Alan Watts reminds us, both extend my index finger and cause earthquakes. But Sangha, whether the Sangha at my home temple, my Recovery Dharma Sangha on Sunday evenings, or the woods and their wildlife where my partner, cats, and I live, all of it supports me in times both pleasant and painful, filled with joy and with sorrow. And as a member a Sangha, I can offer that same support to others. The latter is important. For supporting others—and being of service generally—is essential to cultivating gratitude, which in turn nurtures humility, that sense of being “right-sized.”
You can also feel a comfortable fit between Step Two and the Treasure of Dharma. Although the two meanings of Dharma outlined above are distinguishable in thought, in actuality they are inseparable. Every way in which the universe manifests moment after moment is an opportunity to experience the teachings in our everyday lives, confirm their truth, and at the same time continue the inquiry and investigation central to Buddhism. I tried to shape the world according to my image during that period of self-destructive behavior, letting the ego dictate what and how things should be. When I took refuge in the Dharma, though, I reoriented my life in such a way that allowed the universe to come forward and illuminate who and what I am. As I often say, I got out of my own way.
It is with the Treasure of Buddha that, if only on the surface, there seems an incongruity with Step Two. For the Step suggests that this Power, whatever it is, needs be something other than me, outside of me, different from me. Yet part of what it is that I take refuge in is part of me—that potent potentiality because of which “I am totally free, liberated,” as Taizan Maezumi Roshi would say. Sometimes we call this our “buddha nature.” I could move from here to draw distinctions between the ego or small self, on the one hand, and the big self, on the other; I could marshal vast teachings on emptiness to explain away the separation of inside and outside. Perhaps this would bring the Step’s mention of a Higher Power and the Three Treasures into greater agreement—assuming that you feel some disagreement between them in the first place. But I will not. As I wrote last week, the Steps offer a framework or an outline. You need to fill in the details; these are mine.
The beauty of the Three Treasures, from one perspective, is their inclusion of everything. If a restoration to sanity is the desired outcome—an awakened, harmonious, and peaceful way of living with and moving through the world—there is comfort found in the confidence that everything is supporting you in this effort. And you are supporting all beings in their efforts as well, necessarily. There is comfort found in the fact that we are doing this together, one day at a time.