The volume of trading on the New York Stock Exchange dropped to one-sixth of its usual rate while the golfer Tiger Woods was holding his press event the other day. It appears that his treatment for sexual addiction is based on the well-trodden path of the 12-step program—the staple diet of recovering alcoholics.
In addition to this program, Woods—embracing his mother—promised to return to her Buddhist teaching from which he had “drifted away.” Amusingly, when questioned, the revered Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama confessed ignorance of the impossibly public tale of Tiger and his matrimonial difficulties.
So what is it that Tiger Woods is embracing in his effort to get back into everyone’s good books? For one thing, the 12-step program, patterned after that of Alcoholics Anonymous:
We admitted we were powerless over sexual addiction—our lives had become unmanageable.
Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to sex addicts, and to practice these principles in all our activities.
Then, concerning Buddhism, the Dalai Lama said: ”Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline—that’s important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.”
Buddhism teaches nothing about God. It is a philosophy founded on the core belief that life involves physical suffering (pain, disease, old age, and death) and emotional suffering (loneliness, fear, anger, etc.). This we can meet with acceptance, leading to understanding. Suffering also comes through our inner cravings and desire for other people’s acceptance. These lead away from happiness. But suffering can be overcome and happiness restored. We can achieve restoration by following the Buddha’s eight-fold path: focusing our attention, being fully aware, and refraining from intemperate action (including sexual misconduct). The end result of our conforming to the rigorous discipline of the teaching, and following the Middle Way between the extremes of self-indulgence and self-denial, is that we may attain wisdom with compassion.
WODEN SAYS: “O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! “
In today’s world our sexual way of life has become more open, and much more tortured. When Tiger confesses, the NYSE almost grinds to a halt—imagine that! Yes, it really happened. So entrenched is our guilt, so all-pervasive our voyeurism, that it takes the detachment of the Buddhist leader for someone not to know (and, presumably, not to want to know) about Tiger’s tangled troubles.
Can any sex addict trust in God and confess himself or herself out of it? Or is it better to meditate, take the Middle Way, and train to be wise and compassionate? Well, of course, one method or another may help a lot of troubled people, the 12-step program providing a starting point, and Buddhist meditation providing a lasting philosophical solution.
My viewpoint is somewhat different. It sees sex addicts like actors on a stage, playing roles they have freely chosen for themselves, seeking to understand the nature and the pain of addiction. The Buddhist is right that life involves suffering, but we chose to suffer and to cause other people suffering. We are actors, remember, and as actors we are not guilty of sin, even though we may have embraced what the whole world decries as evil.
The Spirit Masters are very clear about this. When we have truly realized that we have chosen the negative pathway, and have now learned our lesson from it, then we are quite free to choose a different path if we wish. Overwhelmingly powerful sexuality is a tough choice to have made. But we need only do one thing—go within ourselves and listen to the eternal soul speaking through our intuition. And the soul, which shares in the divine nature, will tell us whether we can be free at last and take the road to recovery, or must plough on, tortured and beguiled by the sirens on the rocks of life, until, finally, true understanding leads us to that wisdom which is our ultimate goal.
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on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 1:28 am and is filed under Commentaries.
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The 12-step program and Buddhism
The volume of trading on the New York Stock Exchange dropped to one-sixth of its usual rate while the golfer Tiger Woods was holding his press event the other day. It appears that his treatment for sexual addiction is based on the well-trodden path of the 12-step program—the staple diet of recovering alcoholics.
In addition to this program, Woods—embracing his mother—promised to return to her Buddhist teaching from which he had “drifted away.” Amusingly, when questioned, the revered Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama confessed ignorance of the impossibly public tale of Tiger and his matrimonial difficulties.
So what is it that Tiger Woods is embracing in his effort to get back into everyone’s good books? For one thing, the 12-step program, patterned after that of Alcoholics Anonymous:
Then, concerning Buddhism, the Dalai Lama said: ”Whether you call it Buddhism or another religion, self-discipline—that’s important. Self-discipline with awareness of consequences.”
Buddhism teaches nothing about God. It is a philosophy founded on the core belief that life involves physical suffering (pain, disease, old age, and death) and emotional suffering (loneliness, fear, anger, etc.). This we can meet with acceptance, leading to understanding. Suffering also comes through our inner cravings and desire for other people’s acceptance. These lead away from happiness. But suffering can be overcome and happiness restored. We can achieve restoration by following the Buddha’s eight-fold path: focusing our attention, being fully aware, and refraining from intemperate action (including sexual misconduct). The end result of our conforming to the rigorous discipline of the teaching, and following the Middle Way between the extremes of self-indulgence and self-denial, is that we may attain wisdom with compassion.
WODEN SAYS: “O, what a fall was there, my countrymen! “
In today’s world our sexual way of life has become more open, and much more tortured. When Tiger confesses, the NYSE almost grinds to a halt—imagine that! Yes, it really happened. So entrenched is our guilt, so all-pervasive our voyeurism, that it takes the detachment of the Buddhist leader for someone not to know (and, presumably, not to want to know) about Tiger’s tangled troubles.
Can any sex addict trust in God and confess himself or herself out of it? Or is it better to meditate, take the Middle Way, and train to be wise and compassionate? Well, of course, one method or another may help a lot of troubled people, the 12-step program providing a starting point, and Buddhist meditation providing a lasting philosophical solution.
My viewpoint is somewhat different. It sees sex addicts like actors on a stage, playing roles they have freely chosen for themselves, seeking to understand the nature and the pain of addiction. The Buddhist is right that life involves suffering, but we chose to suffer and to cause other people suffering. We are actors, remember, and as actors we are not guilty of sin, even though we may have embraced what the whole world decries as evil.
The Spirit Masters are very clear about this. When we have truly realized that we have chosen the negative pathway, and have now learned our lesson from it, then we are quite free to choose a different path if we wish. Overwhelmingly powerful sexuality is a tough choice to have made. But we need only do one thing—go within ourselves and listen to the eternal soul speaking through our intuition. And the soul, which shares in the divine nature, will tell us whether we can be free at last and take the road to recovery, or must plough on, tortured and beguiled by the sirens on the rocks of life, until, finally, true understanding leads us to that wisdom which is our ultimate goal.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 1:28 am and is filed under Commentaries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.