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.
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.
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| 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
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.
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
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.
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.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and practice these principles in all our affairs.
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| Honey Bee, worker bee |
Koan: Dongshan was sweeping one day when someone said to him, “Work, work, work - - all you do is work.”
Dongshan replied, “I do it for another.”
“Why don’t you get that other to do it for himself?”
“Because he has no hands.”
Work, work, work - - we use this word a lot in AA. “PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics,” (P. 89) thus begins the chapter Working With Others and Step 12. Funny, I just noticed the letters w-o-r-k are used 12 times in this chapter. Could Bill W. have done this on purpose?
So that’s what we do in Step 12 - - we do it for another. The suffering alcoholic “will be curious to learn why his own convictions have not worked and why yours seem to work so well.” P.93
“…any life run on self-will can hardly be a success.” P.60 And also, “RARELY HAVE we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.” P 58
“Why don’t you get that other to do it for himself?” We could change this to, “Why don’t you get this alcoholic to do it for himself?” What? Like work the Steps by himself? This alcoholic is also not equipped, because he has not learned the AA principles.
“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps” - - I would venture to say there are wisdom gates with every step along the way … whatever you call them, realizations, enlightenments, awakenings, they are all pointing in the same direction, and that’s “to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.” P 77
Service to others takes many forms. Sometimes we don’t even realize our service until someone comes up and tells us. I like to sit in the same chair at every meeting I attend…a view seat. On several occasions, people have come up to me and thanked me for this…that when they come into the meeting and see me sitting in the same place, it brings them a sense of continuity and support…all is well…
For most of the year, I bring a small bouquet of flowers to every meeting, except for a few months in the winter when cold and rains put a damper (pun intended) on blooming. The water bottle “vase” is plopped down next to the secretary to give away later, sometimes to the speaker but preferably to a newcomer. Thank you for the flowers, they will tell me, they lasted a week, a reminder of this meeting. Our service work can be subtle.
Responsibility Statement: "I am Responsible. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, I want the hand of A.A. always to be there. And for that: I am responsible."
We could call this our AA Bodhisattva Vow.
Bill K.
December 1, 2022 - Step 12 Koan
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and practice these principles in all our affairs.
Koan: Dongshan was sweeping one day when someone said to him, “Work, work, work - - all you do is work.”
Dongshan replied, “I do it for another.”
“Why don’t you get that other to do it for himself?”
“Because he has no hands.”
Bill K.
