The Zen Way of Recovery: An Illuminated Path Out of the Darkness of Addiction by Laura Burges

Author:Laura Burges [Burges, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2023-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

What abilities, skills, and strengths have you discovered in recovery?

What talents, interests, and activities do you want to develop further now that you have the gift of recovery?

12

Crossing Over

THE SIX PARAMITAS

Check your ordinary thoughts of greed, hatred, and ignorance, and return to your original pure mind.

—Yamada Roshi

as we find our way through the world as recovering people, we can ask ourselves, “Will my words and actions lead to greater happiness and freedom or to further suffering for myself and others?” We may have once believed that freedom meant doing whatever we wanted, without a thought for the consequences. But the principles of recovery teach us that, to experience true freedom, we need to cultivate an ethical life so we aren’t undermined and distracted by guilt, shame, and remorse. We learn to take the needs and feelings of others into our hearts and imagine how they see things so that we can be agents of peace in the world.

Buddhist precepts teach us what not to do: not to kill, not to take what is not given, not to lie, not to misuse sexuality, not to intoxicate the mind or body of self or others—all the things we had to make amends for if we wanted to have some peace. You might say, as you survey past behavior, that addiction is the opposite of the precepts.

The Six Perfections, or Paramitas, are teachings that tell us what we can do to promote freedom and peace. These are qualities that we can study, focus on, and cultivate, actions we can take that help us drop our ordinary thoughts of greed, hatred, and ignorance and return to our original pure mind. In Sanskrit, paramita means “perfection,” or “crossing over to the other shore,” the shore of peace, of nonfear, of liberation.

I’ve learned to distrust perfectionism because I’ve found that it leads to procrastination, self-doubt, and paralyzing self judgment. But the Six Perfections awaken in us a kind of natural wholesomeness, a commonsense path to greater ease and joy. Please don’t worry too much about the word perfection; we don’t have to wait around to become perfect. We can cross over to the other shore in every moment. As Thich Nhat Hanh puts it in The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching, “We can look at our anger, depression, and suffering, breathe deeply and smile.”

These are the Six Paramitas:

Dana—generosity

Shila—ethical behavior

Ksanti—patience

Virya—effort

Dhyana—meditation

Prajna—wisdom

The paramitas are inseparable from one another, a continuum of life-affirming qualities. When you are practicing one of them, you are practicing all of them. And though Prajna Paramita (wisdom) is listed last, in Mahayana Buddhism it is described as the Mother of all Buddhas, the ground from which all practice flows. We cultivate these qualities without expecting anything in return. As Pema Chödrön puts it in When Things Fall Apart, “When we are training in the art of peace, we are not given any promises that, because of our noble intentions, everything will be okay. In fact, there are no promises of fruition at all.

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