Step 6 and 7, Wash your bowls...

 

June/July summertime 12 & Zen ...and ready for:

Step 6:  Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 

 Step 7:  Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. 

Koan: Once a monk made a request to Joshu. “I have just entered the monastery,” he said, “Please give me instructions, Master.” Joshu said, “Haave you had your breakfast”? “Yes I have,” replied the monk. “Then,” said Joshu, “wash your bowls.” The monk had insight.  Case 7 of The Gateless Barrier by Zenkei Shibayama

Bill K.

 

Getting things rolling with Steps 4 and 5

 Step 4:  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  

Step 5:  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.  

Koan: Case 8 The Gateless Gate:  Master Gettan asked a monk, “Keichū made a hundred carts. If he took off both wheels and removed the axle, what would he make clear about the cart?” The Gateless Gate (GG)

No matter what the conditions, wherever I go, there I am, in bringing “me-ness” to the scene.  As babies, relying completely on others for our care and welfare, we were all perfect babies.  Crying, sleeping, nursing, spitting up, and of course pooping and all - - perfect babies.

I was Billy…a 3 ½ pound perfect preemie. It was touch and go in the beginning as Billy was eating but not pooping.   Eventually, my tiny colon expanded on its own - - the family story said an ecstatic nurse scurried down the hallway carrying a tiny diaper, showing the evidence to all interested parties. 

Baby Billy grew up into Bill, an introvert by nature, who began his drinking career early in his freshman year of college, going from a non-drinker to saying, “Let’s go get drunk” in a matter of a few months. I flunked out in June. Hmmm. My first consequence of drinking. I drank for 25 years. 

I remember one fella, I can picture his face but cannot recall his name, who would always begin his story saying, “When I got into the rooms of AA, all the wheels had fallen off.  We all come here in varying states of functioning. My wheels hadn’t come off; but a few lug nuts were missing and others loose, wheels still turning but wobbly. Gene H. always says “We don’t get here on the tail end of a winning streak.

When Keichū took off both wheels and removed the axle, there was still a cart there, albeit a cart that wasn’t capable of carting goods from here to there.

Notes: (GG) Page 45 – “Everything is the cart! What remains? The wheels and axle are our concepts and ideas.”

I was still Bill K. and my life was unmanageable.  I brought my unmanageability and my concepts and ideas into the rooms of AA.  It’s by working Steps 4 and 5 with my sponsor where I learned how my actions have hurt others. My concepts, based on my selfishness, brought about unhealthy ideas. 

By sharing Step 5 with my sponsor, my mental load felt lighter. My sponsor helped, my wheels were more stable - - I began moving forward, continuing the remaining Steps.

We dismantled ourselves via our past behaviors in our self-centered prideful drinking days. We thought our cart (self) was “hot shit” …until we realized it wasn’t. Our cart needed rebuilding...this is how we move on, learning our truth.

 

Bill K.

Steps 4 and 5: April/May

 

Here is what we'll be sitting with next...

Step 4:  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  

Step 5:  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.  

 

Koan: Case 8 The Gateless Gate:  Master Gettan asked a monk, “Keichū made a hundred carts. If he took off both wheels and removed the axle, what would he make clear about the cart?”

Bill K.

The beginnings to prosperity - - Steps 2 and 3

 

Step 2:  Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step 3:  Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.  

 

So sad, alone, and poor...

Koan: A monk, Seizei, asked Master Sôzan in all earnestness…

Seizei is alone and poor. I beg you, Master, please help me to become prosperous.

San said, Venerable Zei! 

Yes, Master! replied Zei.

San said…

You have already received valuable gifts and still you say you are miserable and poor. *

Case 10, Seizei the Poor, The Gateless Gate, Koun Yamada

* The actual phrase as written said, “You have already drunk three cups of fine Hakka wine* and still you say that you have not yet moistened your lips.”

- - -

Our local Gene H. always begins his share with, “We don’t get here on the tail end of a winning streak.” Isn’t that the truth.  In many ways, in our early sobriety, we can identify with how Seizei is feeling - - poor and alone…and looking for some sense of prosperity. 

Then San says, “Veneraable Zie.” I’m sure Zie isn’t feeling that he deserves such respect. Maybe no one has ever addressed him as venerable. Or perhaps he wonders what San sees in poor me. After all, he is the Master, so he responds with due respect, “Yes, Master.”

“You have already received valuable gifts and still you say you are miserable and poor,” says San.

What if, instead of carrying the thought of how bad things are, he looked about, considering his surroundings?

Here I am, not only living as a monk in Master Sôzan’s monastery, but also have the opportunity to talk with him in person. I have a place to sleep, we all work in the garden, the food is well prepared, tasty. I have my daily work practice. We meditate. I’m learning from the practice leaders how to be a good monk. Master Sôzan gives us evening talks. These are my friends. We are all practicing the Way together.

We admitted in Step 1 that we’re powerless over alcohol and our lives are unmanageable. Steps 2 and 3, with the guidance of our sponsor, offer us infinite personal space for reflection in order to come to believe in and work with a higher power of our understanding. We, as sponsors, are like Master Sôzan. We don't talk down to others because we know how they feel. We were once newcomers. There's a respect for each other and the institution of AA.

For some, it’s about picking up their old religion and running with it - - for others it’s about rejecting their old religion and not knowing what to do next. Here’s the good news! By our mere existence there’s something we are already tapped into, but we’re not aware of it yet. My view, it’s not a thing - - going beyond words and thought, “self-nature that is no nature.” The Big Book offers all sorts of suggestions for all…and whatever you choose, you will discover a higher power or God that’s always been here for you.

The riches are waiting for us before we walked into that first meeting, beginning with the gratitude we have for Bill and Bob who started the AA movement 88 years ago. Meetings with coffee and cookies, all of us with the same affliction, finding a solution to our problem, finding our sponsor, helping one another, laughing and crying through it all, and establishing friends for life. By giving more and taking less, we become a part of what is good in the world. 

I didn’t feel immense gratitude at the time I was first doing Steps 2 and 3; but I did have the feeling that I was heading in the right direction.  It's by looking back that I realize the gifts began on my first day sober. Today I will say AA is the most valuable gift I have ever received. 

Bill K.

 

 

Steps 2 and 3 Koan for FEB/MARCH

 Step 2:  Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

 

Step 3:  Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.  

 

Koan: A monk, Seizei, asked Master Sôzan in all earnestness…

Seizei is alone and poor. I beg you, Master, please help me to become prosperous.

San said, Venerable Zei! 

Yes, Master! replied Zei.

San said…

You have already drunk three cups of fine Hakka wine and still you say that you have not yet moistened your lips.

Case 10, Seizei the Poor, The Gateless Gate, Koun Yamada

A Bug Takes Step One

Step 1:  We admitted we were powerless over alcohol* -- that our lives had become unmanageable. 

 

Koan: 

A bug on a branch

Swept away down the river

Still singing her song

ISSA (1763-1826) Translated by Cliff Edwards

in a collection entitled Lovers Have So Little Time.

We don’t know anything about this bug, only that she’s on a branch, but how on the branch? Is it easy to hold onto, like a secure place in the fork of a branch? Or is she holding on for dear life because after all, she was being swept away down the river. I doesn’t sound like a serenely-flowing tranquil river.

I have heard it in all of our stories before we hit our ultimate bottom – we’re bugs holding on for deal life, rapids thrashing us about, maybe even dangling by one arm as we’re being swept down the river of alcoholism… singing our song, too…a song all about me and the troubles I’ve brought to myself and others…a song called My Selfish Alcoholic Blues…Let’s sing along: 

Ohhh my blues

NUTTEN but bad news

WHY I can’t refuse

DRINKING all this booze

 

My PAINS so bad

Even the DOGS’ are deserting

My PAINS so bad

ALL MY HURTS are hurting 

But wait, I see a fork in the river up ahead! Some of us, by circumstance, intervention, luck, or unexplained phenomena, find that our branch has somehow come aground in a protected pool by the shore, and even fewer of us make the choice to scurry ashore where there’s food and cover and other friendly bugs.

They tell me I must leave the river life; that the river will only take me to worse times, even death; that the river has too much power over me, that my life is unmanageable under these conditions.

On land with my new bug friends, they say I need to learn a new song - - a song of recovery, unity and service. I think I’ll give this song a chance. Would you care to join in and sing with me? (Sung to the tune of John Denver's Almost Heaven) 

Almost heaven

In these meetings

Hear the speaker

Cookies and strong coffee

Life is good here

Reaping all the perks

Reading in my Big Book

Seeing how it works

 

Take me home

Bill and Bob

To the place

Where my job

Is to-trust-God

Helping others

Take me home

In sobriety

 

Hey, sounds pretty good.  Let’s sing our song again, tomorrow.

Bill K.

 

 

 

 

January Koan and Step One

Step 1:  We admitted we were powerless over alcohol* -- that our lives had become unmanageable. 

 

Koan: 

A bug on a branch

Swept away down the river

Still singing her song

 

ISSA (1763-1826) Translated by Cliff Edwards

in a collection entitled Lovers Have So Little Time.