1. How I Got Fixed

Here's how I met the real Mr. Fix-It, when I was thirty years old and newly sober in a 12 step program. All my life I'd felt broken and had looked for fixes in alcohol, drugs, relationships, geographical cures...you know the list, I'm sure. Mr. Fix-It was an older Korean Zen Master who I'd recently come to study with at his Zen center in Rhode Island. I'd considered myself a Buddhist since discovering Buddhism as a child in comic books and had come to the center soon after my first A.A. meeting. It is suggested in the programs that you return to earlier spiritual traditions as part of a full recovery. So here I was. Fix me! I demanded.

In that weird way our world has of operating, Mr. Fix-It, as I called him in my mind, had been raised as a Christian in Korea and only come to Zen as a young adult. He had been educated at the university in Western philosophy and later served as a chaplain in the Korean army. He really blew away any romantic ideas one might have had about the ancient traditions of the "Mystic and Inscrutable East." This guy had you coming and going!

This is also the "Do-It-Yourself Fixing" chapter of this book and is basically how I finally got fixed for good. You're welcome to use these writings on yourself, thereby saving yourself a lot of aggravation and money trying to figure out Zen, which basically comes down to no more than looking for the glasses that are on the end of your nose the whole time.

The Zen master told me, laughing, that he couldn't fix me because there wasn't anything broken except in my mind. When he asked me to show him my mind for fixing, like one would show a foot or hand or something and I couldn't, everything got fixed by itself in a hurry. He laughed like an idiot when I thanked him and told me to "Keep that mind."

Keep that mind? What mind? Can't lose what you've never had, although I did lose any need to get fixed.

Still don't get it?

Try this one:

2. Where Do You Come From?

was what the old Korean monk had asked me. I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly and asked him to repeat his question. He smiled patiently and repeated, "Where do you come from?"

This was my first interview with a real live Zen master after a lifetime of dreaming about it. I'd finally come to live and study in a Zen Center after a life of looking for peace anywhere but where it apparently was. I'd always seemed to show up just as peace's moving vans were going around the corner and heading for the city limits. I just never seemed to fit anywhere at all.

I'd just entered 12 Step recovery, as well, from a lifetime of trying to drink and drug myself into any kind of Nirvana, any proxy for Heaven. Anywhere seemed better than where I was, had ever been or could ever hope to be. The Zen center was just the latest pit stop. I had no way of knowing at the time that the Zen master would authorize me as a Zen teacher a few years from that moment or that I would write a book about what I had learned as a Zen student and recovering alcoholic.

I had nervously entered the tiny room and bowed deeply, touching my forehead to the floor, resentful of this enforced and formal show of humility in front of an authority I didn't even know or yet acknowledge. I'd always hated authority figures as it was. I had barely sat down cross-legged across from the Zen master when he'd let loose his question like an arrow, puncturing my expectations.

I was sure he'd want to chat and learn about the sort of unique person who had come to study with him and be honored by my request to be his student. He wasn't remotely interested in even learning my name!

"Where do you come from?" he repeated loudly, barking it like a Marine drill sergeant at some new knucklehead trembling in front of him. I wasn't falling for this!

I was confident I was clever enough to answer his trick questions and would be able to impress him with my obvious wisdom. I'd always been able to bullshit my way through anything before. The world I had grown up in was greased with bravado, deceit and double meanings. I'd learned that the hard way by the time I was a teenager. Everything else I could learn the easy way.

I'd survived the pain I'd felt through a combination of chameleon-like adaptation, resentful capitulation or suicidal confrontation. This old guy would be a pushover, for Christ sakes. He barely spoke English! O.K., what's the question? Where do I come from? God? Naaah, too easy. Ahh! I've got it! I'd read a Zen book or two myself.

"My parents," I answered, confident of his approval. "NO!" he shouted, startling me. "That's where your body comes from. Where do you come from?"

This guy is good, I thought and tried again.

"The city," I said, "I just drove up from there." I even pointed south to Providence. This seemed a Zen-like answer and I was proud of myself. I would be enlightened in no time flat at this rate. The Zen master whacked his wooden stick on the tiled floor. WHACK! "NO!" he yelled, even more loudly.

He stuck the stick in my gut and poked it around, like some kind of metaphysical oncologist looking for karma lumps. He frowned and pulled the stick back.

"20%," he said and laid the stick back down in front of him. 20%? What 20%? What the hell was going on here? He sighed and said softly, "You must learn to believe in your true self 100%! Much hard practice is necessary. So I ask you again: where do you come from?"

By this time, I was really shaken. I'd been weighed on the scales of dharma and found wanting. He'd seen right through the front I always erected around people, poked through it actually with that mojo stick of his. I was near tears, gave up, and hung my head saying, "I don't know. I just don't know anymore."

The old monk brightened right up. He had a huge smile. This was unreal. I'd made him happy. He seemed to actually enjoy my misery.

"Very good. You say you don't know. 100% answer! Keep this 'don't know' mind all the time. OK? That is your true self, the mind that exists before thinking and making good and bad and this and that. 'Don't know' just reflects this world as it is, not like clever mind wants it to be. Try to not know so much. Go straight, everything no problem. OK? Just try."

I nodded my head, bowed to the floor, gratefully this time, and backed out of the room according to tradition. There's a reason for this tradition of backing out, I'd just learned. Never turn your back on a Zen master. Face to face, you haven't got a chance. With your back turned, who knows what might happen? This guy was the real thing. Finally.

All my life, I'd been sagely told by my elders and betters that "I didn't know shit." They implied forcefully as well that I should somehow know this shit. God knows I tried. I really did. It never felt right, though, whether the shit consisted of knowledge, beliefs or opinions. I just ended up feeling full of shit. You know the feeling, I'm sure. Then when you finally know this shit, they tell you you're full of it! I mean, no wonder most of us ended up having to read crazy books like this one, sitting in endless 12 step meetings and God knows what else! All I've got to say is, what a world, what a world!

Now here was this guy from Korea telling me not to know shit basically. To him, the fact that someone didn't know shit was a big plus! Better yet, he was offering me a method of not knowing shit.
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3. A Direct Pointing at Reality

People throw the "Z" word around as freely as they invoke the 12 Steps, but what is Zen really, apart from its history, wordy philosophies and exotic rituals? What makes it, like 12 step recovery, so damned human and such a comfortable fit for people who've always felt ill at ease in their own skins?

Zen, according to founder Bodhidharma, an Indian monk who went to China as a Buddhist missionary, is a "direct pointing at reality, a teaching outside of words and scriptures."

Like recovery, Zen is simply a way of paying attention, a way of being in the world, of being mindful of what really is, not what we might wish. It is our wishing, according to Zen, that causes our suffering and addictions. Through meditation and clear attention, without preconceived ideas about what we experience, we can re-learn this lost art of being fully present in our lives and recover our natural serenity.

Zen can lead to a glad acceptance of our condition and with that acceptance and surrender can come the power, paradoxically to alter and re-direct our karma, addictive and otherwise.

If Zen is a direct pointing at reality, like wiping a dusty mirror and seeing ourselves accurately reflected for the first time, then recovery is a direct immersion in reality, a drowning in our previously unmanageable lives.

Both paths use words and teachings as suggestions and don't require us to believe a damned thing except that they both work and that we at least try. That's all that's required of us: just try!

Beyond words lies sobriety and beyond ritual lies enlightenment. At that point, both Zen and recovery cease having names and become one. You already know how very simple recovery can be: the touch of a stranger's hand at your first meeting, the kind offer of a coffee, the rides freely given, but what about Zen?

Despite all the talk of nirvana, desire and Buddha, Zen has as its goals three things: great doubt, great compassion and great love. The Great Doubt is about our condition, our path and even Zen itself. In no way are we required to accept the teaching without testing it for ourselves. Would you buy a used car without driving it? Buddha said to test his teaching as one would test gold given in payment for a debt. This is Zen's guarantee. While faith is not a requirement, effort surely is.

The doubt should lead to a Great Compassion for all beings who doubt and suffer as we do, and compassion inexorably blossoms into Great Love, the only redemption we can really taste, touch and feel.

And to what does this Great Love lead? Nirvana? Heaven? A good re-birth? No, not at all, because like in recovery, it is in the simplest language that we are the most eloquent and it is in the most everyday of actions that we become as gods. Just this becomes enough. Just this moment, just this life, no more and no less. It is there we find our answers.

The Zen master I studied with was a lot like old timers in A.A., with shaved head, loud voice and incessant, crazed demands. At the time, I couldn't tell the difference. Still can't. Here's a story that explains far better than convoluted explanations what Zen's really about and also what I believe represents the best of what happens in recovery. It is, in the best sense, a direct pointing at reality.

Not long after I sobered up in A.A. and began attending the Zen center, my father-in-law lay dying at home from lung cancer. He had been the first grown man I'd let get close to me. He was a big man. He'd been a championship boxer and had also seen the worst of the slaughter in the Pacific during World War 2 as a Marine. He had the biggest heart in the entire world and now mine was breaking as I watched him waste away. I wanted to give him one of my lungs. Both. Anything. Please God, save this being from suffering. He's put up with me all through my drinking, always believing in me. How I wanted to believe in a miracle.

When I'd first met him, he'd kissed me noisily and hugged me until I thought my ribs would snap. I had stiffened right up to his shocked surprise. I'd never until now been good at expressing love or affection. I'd always suspected people who were.

My own folks had been emotionally and physically abusive and regarded touching and emotion as embarrassing. I had learned well, like most children of alcoholics: if you don't open yourself, nothing can get in. Armor. Protect. Barricade. Put on a mask.

I thought big, loud men like my father-in-law were supposed to hurt you, or at the very least, not care for you too much. I'd always associated being physical with getting hurt. I'd learned that at home as a child.

Not this guy. He taught me how to accept freely given love without shame and how, in turn, to give it away proudly. Today, I sometimes embarrass my grown sons with my own constant hugs and kisses. It's not entirely my loving touch that they feel, but their grandfather's as well, defying death and reaching though my hands to guide them in the ways of love.

My father-in-law lives still in the ease with which I am able to hold the world to myself these days, no longer keeping it at arm's length in fear and pain.

I had driven to the Zen center this evening in great anguish. It was that or a 12 step meeting, but I knew that I could remain quiet in meditation at the center. I sure didn't feel like talking or sharing tonight.

To me, Zen and meetings had become indistinguishable. All I knew was that for the first time in my life, I was doing things that were good for me.

My father-in-law was approaching death and we attended to him around the clock with the guidance of the bodhisattvas of Hospice. His disease had progressed to the point that he didn't recognize us most of the time. I had a cot beside his bed and would take care of him through the night, watching this once giant of a man disappear before my grieving eyes. The only thing I had to be grateful for was that I was sober and able to care for him as he had cared of me. I came tonight to the Zen center to meditate, but secretly I was hoping for a miracle.

I was late for the sitting and walked in just when the evening dharma talk was about to begin. To my surprise, I saw the Zen master. I thought he was out of town.

He motioned for me to sit beside him and told me to give the talk and that he would, as usual, comment and take questions from the group of twenty or so students and newcomers. I tried to beg off, saying I wasn't prepared and wasn't feeling all that well and thought I'd rather listen anyway.

"Talk!" he said in his usual brusque manner, motioning toward the waiting group of students and friends sitting expectedly on the floor in front of us. I tried to start, mealy-mouthing some kind of automatic generic brand "Zen." I started to choke up, sobbing, and couldn't continue. I'd held back my tears for so long now trying to be brave for my father-in-law that I felt like a dam about to burst all over the temple floor.

I started talking about my father-in-law and how much I loved him and owed him and how much I wanted to show him that and how desperate I was to give him something, anything, that it wasn't fair now that I was sober and all. I couldn't hold it back anymore and began crying for real now, in front of the group and my Zen master.

He looked at me compassionately.

"What can I do? What can I give him?" I asked desperately.

"Just this," he answered softly, placing a finger on my tear-stained cheek, "Just this." A single tear clung to his finger.

"Just this."

He reached over from his cushion and hugged me for the first time in his strong arms. I laid my head on his shoulder and let my tears wet his grey monk's robe, his hand gently patting my shaking back.

I'd always been stand-offish around the Zen Master. He, too, was a powerfully built, older and authoritative man, but I had suddenly learned that my father-in-law's arms were waiting for me everywhere.

I was holding my father-in-law in my arms as he died not long after. I cried like a baby. I'm crying now as I write this, tears falling on my typing fingers, crying for my father-in-law, my grandmother from Iowa, for my dead brother-in-law, for my dead sister, for all my dead friends and family and teachers, for people known and unknown who never entered recovery and died alone, crying for you, for me, that we must live and die, no matter how recovered or enlightened we become.

When all you've got to give are the tears of your breaking heart, give them and don't hold back or your heart will break for sure, drowning in a sea of sorrow.

When your tears are liquid love, you've given all you've got to give. Let it rain. Let it rain.

If you're looking for a miracle, look no further than this. Just this. It's a direct pointing at reality.

4. On the Mysterious Art of Being Where You're At

I became a spiritual specialist during my drinking and drugging days, hauling around carloads of books on Eastern religion and holding forth drunkenly on the subject to whoever would put up with it, but never, ever, Buddha forbid, actually meditating or doing it.

When I finally entered recovery and began work of my 11th step ("sought conscious contact with a higher power through prayer and meditation"), I narrowed my attention to Zen. I liked its paradoxical nature and its insistence on self-reliance. It seemed a lot like recovery and in fact, insisted I would recover nothing less than my full human nature, the self I was before addictions and attachments screwed me up.

But no matter how many times I read that the answer is right here and now and not in the books that were telling me it wasn't in these books, I just couldn't get it. I struggled in meetings and I struggled in meditation halls.

If I could understand these teachings, then I felt I could be comfortable anywhere, instead of feeling like a fish out of water, like an alcoholic without a drink. I desperately wanted to learn how to swim in this new ocean of sanity and sobriety and not die gasping for breath on a beach of my own making or return to living in the hated past or fear-filled future.

I just couldn't "get it". Old timers in the 12 step programs kept telling me to just "let go". But how? They told me to "live a day at a time". But I didn't even know how to live! And I was having a helluva time just getting through a single day. Even the fact that I was reading Zen books in a 12 step program that called the higher power "God" and told me to pray on my knees made me feel odd and eccentric. It was Catch-22. I still didn't know shit and doubted I ever would.

Even when I'd become a real Zen teacher and gotten years of recovery under my belt, I still didn't get it much of the time. I was still insisting that I was different and could never learn to be one among many. Does this sound familiar to you?

This facet of my alcoholic and addicted ego-centric character arose again when my first son, Aren, was born in 1986. His grandparents, my in-laws, wanted to baptize him in their Greek Orthodox faith. I was absolutely opposed and had already planned a similar Zen Buddhist ceremony for my new son.

I went to see the Zen master, who I liked to call "Mr. Fix-It", to get him to fix my in-laws. In was certain he would agree with me. After all, he was a Zen priest from the "old school." He'd probably be proud of me, in fact, for being such a devout Buddhist!

After I'd outlined my dilemma to him, he appeared angry.

"Don't make different, O.K.?" he said sternly.

"When you're at the Zen center, meditate, When you're in your in-law's church, pray. When you're hungry, eat. When tired, sleep. O.K? O.K.? Very easy."

"Wherever you are, just be there. Where else can you be? Don't be somewhere else in your head, making different, calling this good and that bad. Make correct relationships, O.K.? Just do it. No problem. Baptize your son. Make in-laws happy."

Then he looked slyly at me and said softly, "Then your in-laws say, 'Oh, your Zen master. He is a wise and good man. We will go to the Buddhist baptism as well to thank him. Maybe Zen is a good religion, too.'"

"See?" he said, "No problem. Everybody happy."

I took his advice and everybody was indeed happy. I still try to take his advice today whenever I'm feeling like a fish out of water. Usually it's my old stinking thinking and alcoholic karma telling me to feel badly or special or that things should somehow be different that they are. Usually I want things my way and we both know where that got me (and you)!

Well. The world just doesn't work that way.

Today, when I'm desperate, I pray to Jesus. When I need peace, I meditate like Buddha. When I feel like drinking, I go to a meeting. When I'm hungry, I eat.

And when I need love, I play with my Buddhist/Christian sons. And when I'm tired, I sleep the sleep of the righteous, smiling until dawn.

No problem. Wherever I am, I try to be there 100%, paying attention to what is. Right now, I'm here typing this sentence and just about to end it with his period.

5. Mr. Fix-It, Zen Master, Does Stand up or Why East is East and West is West

All during my drinking and drugging years, I kept up my efforts at Buddhist meditation, falling off my cushion drunk and intoning my favorite mantra: "Why me? Why me? Why me?" There is a 12 step saying that I will paraphrase at this point: he who has himself as a student has a fool for a teacher. Such it was and such it is again these days, but at least it's only myself that I'm fooling, I hope. If not, then stop reading right now. Who am I fooling? Go ahead and read. You're going to anyway. You're as foolish as I am!

Speaking of fooling around, I have a story to interject here about Mr. Fix-It, Zen Master, and how he wasn't always inscrutable and serious and stern. In fact, he rarely was, now that I think of it. He always seemed to be smiling and answering our "serious" questions with nearly mocking laughter. Anyway, I'm going to tell you a joke he once told in front of a large audience when they had open mike night at the Zen center. If they ever book Zen masters for stand-up comedy in the Catskills, I want to be Mr. Fix-It's agent and you'll know why shortly.

I'm going to tell you this joke because I wish I'd known it whenever I got in arguments about which religion is the "true" one or when people debate the million-dollar dream match of Jesus versus Buddha and who would win in what round. You hear a lot of this stuff around 12 step halls and over coffee, things like "my higher power can beat up your higher power," etc. I hope this story can help give some perspective in these religious wars and speed the day that higher powers are considered menu items. Buddha said just as every physical disease has its particular cure, so too do our spiritual diseases require specific remedies. For some, it might be Jesus or Mohammed, for others Buddha or Kali. In the 12 steps, it is often a debate over the style of the founders: Bill W.'s way or Dr. Bob's, my way or the highway. There is no hierarchy of higher powers. These things are often a matter of taste and style. There are no one size fits all redemptions, no off the rack messiahs.

You'll find this useful if you're an aficionado of esoteric or ridiculous spiritual humor, as I know you must be, having read this far. Remember this story and pass it along when you hear debates over higher powers and 11th step work.

Mr. Fix-It said that you always see statues of Buddha where he's sitting cross-legged on the floor with his right hand dangling over his knee, his forefinger pointing at the ground, his eyes staring straight ahead. The statues you see of Jesus, he said, whenever he's not on the cross, portray Him with his arms outstretched toward the viewer, palms open and facing up. Mr. Fix-It said he knew why the statues always looked this way.

It seems a long time ago, Jesus and Buddha were partners in the spiritual biz. Buddha, as is usually the case with Buddhists, preferred to sit round coming up with the product in his head, letting the more voluble Jesus go out and sell the stuff. Buddha, again always the typical Buddhist, didn't pay much attention to the material world and mundane things like finances, so he let Jesus do the books as well.

One day, while Jesus was out of the "shop", Buddha decided he should at least take a look at the bottom line and see how they were doing. What he found didn't please him. It was the old "form is emptiness" routine. Well, Buddha hadn't been re-born yesterday! When Jesus came back, Buddha looked dead at him and told Him the books came up short. He pointed his finger at the floor and tapped it impatiently, saying, "Where's the money?" as though he were showing Jesus where to dump his hard earned cash.

Jesus, always the martyr, got a pained and innocent look in his eyes and pulled out his empty pockets, reaching his hands toward Buddha on the floor, empty palms up, as if he were pleading with him. "Why me?" he said, His eyes filling with tears.

Soon after this misunderstanding, they split the business up, as usually happens in partnerships. Jesus took the Western markets and Buddha the Eastern. The statues we see today commemorate that historic split. The partners were that much richer and the world that much poorer, as a result.

So remember this story the next time you find yourself involved in ridiculous discussions about religion. As an alcoholic and addict, you already chose your own poison. As a recovering person, you have the very great freedom to choose your own medicine! And remember to thank Mr. Fix-It for this teaching. Who else is going to tell you this stuff? Now you know!

6. Getting Fixed for Real

This story is meant only for those cases that are really in dire need of some serious fixing. If you took care of your fixing business in previous sections, then you can skip this one and continue on your enlightened way. If not, read on.

This is a story that a friend of mine at the Zen center told me and while you might find it hard to swallow, I don't, having been an apprentice to Mr. Fix-It for a little while.

My friend was in his forties and a former helicopter mechanic who used to be flown into heavy combat areas in Vietnam in fix damaged helicopters on the ground in order to get the wounded out. Later on, he made Formica displays for K-Mart. I tell you all this to let you know what kind of normal Joe he was. He decided at this point in his life to look for some answers and had ended up at the Zen Center like a lot of other people looking to get fixed for good. He was even considering becoming a monk.

One day, as he was walking down the long hallway in the Zen Center, he saw that Mr. Fix-It was approaching him from the other end. As they got closer, my friend had one of those weird and sudden and uncivilized impulses that our brains just love to torment and shock us with. You've had similar weird and inappropriate "thoughts" at the wrong times as well, so don't go acting all shocked on me when you hear about this. Other books refuse to even admit that this sort of stuff actually goes on out there, but we know differently, don't we, you and I? That's why you're still reading and I'm still writing about these thoughts.

You know, like say you're in a crowded theater and it's all you can do from yelling fire or maybe you think suddenly and out of nowhere about copping a feel from the bride or groom in the reception line as you go to kiss their cheek or you get a nearly overwhelming urge to jump off your balcony in a skyscraper hotel or you're just about to get a promotion you've worked years for and you suddenly want to drop your pants in front of your boss. Or maybe after years of 12 step recovery and no desire to pick up, your brain suddenly decides it would like you to have a drink. You have your own endless, perplexing and embarrassing list, I'm sure.

These so-called thoughts are simply the diseased products of your very jealous brain that's always trying to let you know who's really the boss around here. Just when you think you've got it all under control, WHAM!, the little green brain lets loose with a doozey that leaves you reeling and wondering if something needs fixed up there. Not to worry.

Most of us are able to get the proverbial grip and not jump or cop a feel or yell fire or drink and the brain gets tired of fighting and retreats with its weird, random attack, plotting its revenge on you for another day. It's constant war, as you well know, and is one of the reasons my friend and I ended up at the Zen Center.

Anyway, to get back to our story already in progress, my friend saw the Zen master approaching him, smiling in recognition. All of a sudden, out of nowhere and for no reason, my friend's brain says to him that wouldn't he really like to hit the Zen master? My friend didn't know this was only his brain's way of idly passing the time in its bony cage and mistakenly thought that yes, it was he, himself, who had this idea that he would really like to smack the Zen master as they passed each other in the hallway. He was, of course, mortified at this thought and fought it back. It disappeared as quickly as it came, coward that the brain is, and he promptly forgot about it just as fast. (The brain loves to cover its own tracks.) He said nothing about this crazed impulse, staying silent. Just as he was about to bow in greeting to his beloved and kindly old Zen master, WHAM!, Mr.Fix-It lashed out and slapped him a good one, right across the chops! My friend straightened up, his face stinging from the hit he'd received and looked at the Zen master in surprise.

Mr. Fix-It pointed at him, smiled and said, "You should have hit me!" and kept right on walking.

I can't really tell you what this is supposed to mean, but it's a really good story and a true one, as well. I think you understand, even if your brain refuses. That's the story of how Mr. Fix-It, Zen master, fixed my friend, the spiritually wounded helicopter mechanic and got him out of his personal combat area in the nick of time. There are as many ways to get fixed as there are people apparently. Mr. Fix-It, Zen master, has one waiting for you.

7. Learning Our Real Names

A couple of years after the baptism of my son, I was slated to become an official Zen teacher in the Korean-American tradition of Mr. Fix-It, Zen master.

This took place at a big and solemn ceremony with lots of incense and chanting. It was a lot like being an extra in an Indiana Jones movie being shot on location in some exotic temple. It was a long way from standing in line to sell my blood for beer money or from running up a mountain to escape a beating from my parents. It seemed like a vindication and fulfillment of everything I'd ever wanted in my life. It was almost as good as getting that first year's sobriety medallion in A.A.

Mr. Fix-It, as he gave me my new Buddhist name and rice paper certificate, asked me what my new name meant.

The name he gave me, Jeong Mu, meant "Clear Emptiness" in Korean, but I knew the Zen master, like A.A. Old timers, had a trick up his sleeve, setting a trap for the cheeky newcomer who thought he knew it all.

This was one of his usual koans or trick questions. Asked in public like this, it usually provided everyone with lots of laughter at your befuddled embarrassment and expense.

I was used to being humiliated from my drinking days when I used to take off my clothes at the wrong times and places and also later from saying ridiculous things in 12 step meetings. I had no shame left. This was going to be easy, I thought.

I played along. I already had my Zen certificate in my hand, the only diploma that had ever meant a damned thing to me except for my A.A. Chip. It was a real graduation and rite of passage for me. My whole life had been an unknowing classroom full of pop quizzes about the nature of the suffering that had led right up to this very moment.

In response to his question about the meaning of my new name, I gave an answer I regarded as very deep and full of inscrutable Zen wisdom.

Mr. Fix-It slammed his stick on the table in front of him, making me jump about three feet in the air, the first example of involuntary levitation at a Zen center despite the rumors you may have heard otherwise about these mysterious but otherwise quite mundane places.

"What color is that wall?" he demanded, pointing behind him.

"White," I answered meekly.

"Very good answer this time," he said smiling. "Keep that attitude, O.K.? Wall is white. Your name just means what it means. Nothing else. Try not to know so much! Next!"

I sat back down on my cushion in the crowded temple, shaking. His tone of voice seemed to say that I didn't know shit about Zen. What sort of teacher could I be if couldn't answer a stupid question, if I didn't even know my own name?

This was, in fact, no different from what my sponsor in the program and 12 step old timers kept telling me, in effect, that I didn't know shit and never would.

Then I got it!

I wasn't supposed to know shit. All I had to do was to report back what I experienced without trying to put my own spin on it. Become a translator for the real teacher: the everyday world.

Whenever I tried to do otherwise, I re-entered my disease of "I, me, mine" and would ultimately re-activate my addictions.

I stared at the wall as the ceremony continued.

It was white then and it's white now.

Then I realized I'd already learned my real name.

Wanna hear it?

"Hi, I'm Mel and I'm an alcoholic."

What could be easier?

8. Mr. Fix-It, Zen Master, Strikes Again, Leaving a Mark Much Like That of Zorro

One of the things that happens to you when you become a Zen teacher in Mr. Fix-It's tradition is that you get a big scar on your left arm, a traditional ordeal when taking formal vows. A monk lights a paper coil of incense on your left forearm and you grin and bear it as you smell your mortal flesh charring and cooking like Vedic BBQ on the Ganges. A similar ritual takes place at the beginning of every episode of the '70s TV show "Kung Fu."

While this might sound bizarre and masochistic, it is an ancient custom and one that I gladly submitted to. Nobody had bothered to ask me if I had wanted to submit to a Biblical circumcision when I was an infant under the knife and I had never volunteered for the scars received when falling down drunk, so it was nice to at least be asked about being burnt for Buddha.

I could spare a little skin on my forearms these days, just leave the rest alone, thank you. That's Buddhism for you, I always say, it generally stays out of your pants. It's one of the reasons I like it so much. While it may take away harmful pieces of your mind, it leaves everything else generally intact.

While the incense was smoking and bubbling away merrily on our extended arms, Mr.Fix-It was giving a loud and distracting talk about the reasons for this quaint custom, probably making it all up right on the spot in order to take our minds off our pain and the obvious mental newsreel images of Buddhist monks dousing themselves with gasoline and self-immolating in protest. While I still had a lot of grievances with the world, my protest days were pretty much behind me, so it came as a relief when I didn't see any gasoline cans sitting hungrily around the temple. I mean, enough is enough already, right?

Anyway, Mr. Fix- It said we should visualize the burning as the start of a great spiritual fire that would burn up all the vast and dry fields of our bad karma. Sounded good to me and I gritted my teeth in pride. The next thing he said didn't sound so good, though.

He said what if we Buddhists were wrong, after all, and the Christians right? What if there really is a God up there? Not to worry, said Mr. Fix-It. God has to be a nice forgiving guy in order to get a big-time job being God and He would understand. He would at look at our forearms after we died and were being judged.

"Ahhhh," God would say, "A Buddhist teacher. Very nice."

Mr. Fix-It said that God would assign places in Heaven based on how big our scars were. That's the kind of good sport God is! feelings. Good game. High five. Everyone to the showers!

This was supposed to make us feel better about the burning, I suppose, and go for Olympic records in the scar event. You see, you could tell ending monk to snuff it out whenever you'd had enough. You didn't even really need to get a scar if it came down to it, although you'd probably wind up with a Buddhist name that meant something like "Chicken of Dharma" or something. Jesus had been weighing heavily on my mind during the ceremony, some old Catholic time-release capsule of guilt finally finding the right secretions of doubt in my mind to do its dirty work.

I relaxed immediately after Mr. Fix-It's speech and let the incense burn me a good one. I had all my bases covered now, that was for sure. I just hoped Buddha would be as nice about everything as God was if the Christians turned out to be involved in a two-thousand year truancy instead. I had a lot of really nice Christian friends and really didn't want to see them re-born as snakes or, God forbid, as Zen Buddhists should Buddha turn out to have a warped sense of humor.

My scar hasn't gotten any smaller through the years. It hasn't gotten any bigger either. I still seem to have lots of bad karma hanging around and some days when it gets painful enough that I revert to my childhood fear and training, I go outside and wave my forearm at the heavens, yelling as if there were actually someone up there listening, "See? See? O.K.? O.K.? Big enough?"

I don't know how, but things seem to lighten up a bit after I do this as though choked fields are being cleared with a cleansing flame.

9. Mr. Fix-It Explains the End of the World

After we new Zen teachers had received our new names and gotten burned, Mr. Fix-It gathered the small group of us for a private talk and instructions. I figured we were going to hear the really inside info, top-secret Buddha stuff, the real skinny on everything. Boy, did we ever! Here's a small bit of what he told us. We got both the good news and the bad.

"The world is like a ripe fruit right now," he said. "Like ripe fruit, it appears bright and delicious, and people see no problem, but ripe is near to rotten and we are near that time when the fruit falls from the tree.

"This world is like a rotten fruit and all seems hopeless. But hold on. Inside the fruit are seeds and the fruit must burst open and die to release its seeds. It is the nature of things.

"Everything right now is upside down," said the Zen master, holding his cupped palms around an imaginary globe the size of a basketball in front of his gray robes. "Very soon..."

He rotated the invisible globe in the air, reversing the poles. Smiling, he released the clear space in front of him and rests his hands in his lap. "See? Those now on the bottom will be on top. And vice versa!"

"Those who hold onto hope will be the seeds when this rotten world burst open and rights itself. They must remember what it is to be human and teach others in the dark times. As dharma teachers, you are the seeds of a new world." Then he laughed like hell. As usual. To Mr. Fix-It, life and death, heaven and hell and even the end of the world were subjects for great hilarity.

Will we be granted a second chance? Or have we had our evolutionary fifteen minutes of fame in the universe, a new form of consciousness to rise after us and try the experiment again? Perhaps that essential quality we believe makes us human, the soul, is not the exclusive franchise of the carbon-based two-armed form of life.

Sadly enough, it appears to more and more of us that Mr. Fix-It is right. The slow apocalypse he spoke of depends upon the erosion not only of the quality of life, but of the very quality that makes us human: our souls.

In this new Dark Age, it is our souls that are under attack, bought and sold freely. We feel less and want more. We hurt more and heal less. We die daily to ourselves and each other and still believe the good life to be ours. Despite the billions alive, there appear to be fewer and fewer real human beings. There is definitely a lot less soul and a lot more sold. But as Mr. Fix-It instructed us, we must keep hope alive. Survive. A new world is waiting to be grown. And we must be its seeds.

And if I heard the Zen master correctly, laughter and a sense of humor must be the water that gives life to those seeds. He seemed to imply that by lightening up, we ourselves become sources of light in a dark time. Believe me, sometimes these tears of bleak despair I cry become tears of uncontrollable laughter. Is there any difference? Either way, we water the possible future.

• The Last Word on Everything from Mr. Fix-It, Unitarian Minister

Even the Zen center couldn't hold me in my journey anywhere. To me, recovery had come to mean the whole nine yards, the whole enchilada. Putting down drinking and self-destructive behavior was only the first step in what I saw (and see) as a lifelong journey of awakening from all the addictions from which we suffer.

Finally even, the Zen center couldn't hold me in my journey to what I saw as ultimate freedom, what I regard as the purpose of this form of life: to explore all possibilities and attempt to fulfill them all.

The answers I found at the Zen center, good and healing as they were, were still "answers." The late great Beat writer Lew Welch said that many of the early Zen students he'd met in '50's and '60's San Francisco had shaved the outside of their heads in imitation of Buddhist monks, but left the inside intact: new style of dress and language, same old style of belief and habit. I wanted to go all the way and shave the inside of my skull, getting rid of any overgrowth of limiting belief and definition, to destroy all conditioning and blocks to enlightenment and complete healing. (My second book is titled Shaving the Inside of Your Skull and explores the road beyond recovery and Zen.)

I wasn't really too interested in exotic names (although I am proud of mine: Jeong Mu) or new wardrobes (I still wear cool Zen robes when teaching!). I simply sought an end to slavery to anything, even if it promised freedom as the new and improved detention area. I wanted freedom even from the word "free." I just wanted to be me, whoever that turned out to be, and to have me be O.K.

Many Zen teachers (not Mr. Fix-It!) and much of Zen's formal structure seemed to be the same old wolf in sheep's clothing: control, allegiance, orthodoxy, spiritual smugness: it's a long list and the same one you'll find everywhere, no matter how benign and well-intentioned. It seems to be a law of nature that all attempts to free us from strait-jackets of belief degenerate into belief itself, fossilized and unquestioned. It has to be said in all fairness that this critique applies to the 12 step programs as well, despite their proven utility and inherent goodness. Both paths led me to freedom and I walk them still in gratitude and love, but I only poke to prod.

Or it could just be that I'm a willful alcoholic and addict with a built-in problem with authority and structure, a revel with no cause but me and my wants. No matter how "recovered" we become, we're still stuck with much of our active personalities, hoping only to redirect our behavior. In any event, imagine my horror to discover I had become a Zen teacher and was now supposed to tell other people how to live and what to believe. Talk about contradictions. No different I suppose in many ways from becoming a 12 step sponsor for the first time.

I was moving beyond the need to believe or justify anything at all and becoming comfortable with open ended questions, what I call "creative certainty as a way of life" in my other writings. It appeared I was becoming more Zen-like in spite of myself. If you say you're a Zen Buddhist, then you probably aren't since Zen is a tool and technique to free us from definitions and words that condition our minds and limit our possibilities.

True self, Zen claims, is found beyond words and teachings. In refusing to say you're anything at all, you leave the door open to unlimited potential and begin to glimpse your original nature outside the walls of this and that. It would seem necessary eventually to "renounce" Zen in order to understand it fully. Buddha himself said his teaching of liberation was like a raft you use to cross a river. When you reach the other side, leave the raft for someone else to use. Don't stay there worshipping it. Get on with your new, liberated life on the other side of the river.

(The preceding paragraph is what you commonly hear referred to in the media and popular culture as a "Zen-like" statement, usually a code-word for ridiculous or incomprehensible. I've become quite good at writing them. I'm still an "official" teacher in Mr. Fix-It's school, as well, thereby completing the paradox and adding to the confusion. My, how Zen!)

Therefore, I feel quite comfortable talking about Zen with people who say they aren't Zen Buddhists, even followers of Jesus. Because if the statement about not being a Zen Buddhist if you say you are holds true, then its opposite must be true as well. The more you deny your belief in Zen, the more I am convinced of your high dharmic attainments. You can't fool me!

By this standard, the majority of world's population becomes self-confessed Zen Buddhists as they claim allegiance elsewhere, making me feel right at home and among friends. I live in a world of Zen masters and never knew it til now! Of course one would leave a Zen center where people claim Zen Buddhism, thereby proving their shallow understanding of how things really work! A whole world of wisdom is cleverly hiding everywhere, denying vehemently that this is so. What a wonderful game!

I finally got the answer I'd been looking for my entire life, the final piece of the puzzle. It came from the late and revered Tom Ahlburn, first minister at the First Unitarian Universalist (U.U.) Church of Providence, where I'd landed as part of my self-imposed dharma training and spiritual restlessness. My home 12 step meeting was also located at the church.

I refer to Tom as the second Mr.Fix-It in my life, a man full of humor, common sense, true holiness and deep insight. Raised as a Southern Baptist, Tom had embraced Tibetan Buddhism and now led a wildly diverse and colorful congregation of Unitarians, which included many disaffected Buddhists as well as unapologetic atheists, witches, secular Jews, liberal Christians, Sufis, gays and lesbians and many 12 steppers.

I wrote most of The Zen of Recovery while attending Tom's church and he was a great help in its completion, lending spiritual strength and advice. The church was home to many 12 step groups and Tom always included 12 step wisdom in his sermons. Many, many recovering people had joined the church apparently searching for the same thing I had found: the 11th step in action, free of dogma and ego.

To me, Tom become my Zen master, mentor, friend, gU.rU., and final teacher in the ways of the spirit. I owe him much. I miss him more. (Tom's writings and wisdom can be found throughout this website and in my writings.)

I'd come full circle to the church of my boyhood heroes, Thoreau, Whitman and Emerson, a truly Western church that offered a non-sectarian niche for my now Eastern mind. I ended up at this church much like a wino finally ends up in de-tox, because these people had the cheek to brag about having no set of beliefs at all! They gather in what looks to be a church. They sing hymns. They put money in those little wooden boxes with the long handles. They even have church school and church dinners. Little old ladies in the front pews, even!

Yet not one of them agrees with any other person in the church about anything! They don't require that you do either. If you did, you would probably get booted out. The only thing holding this crew together is their agreement on your personal right to disagree, They seemed quite happy just asking unanswerable questions and getting pissed off if someone ever dared to actually believe an answer was necessary or what they were looking for. Their minister, Tom, even tells them from his high and mighty pulpit that they'd better behave themselves because no one else will have them. This was surely where I belonged!

During the course of one of his many "sermons" about the "meaning of life," a source of great mirth among his flock, Tom ended up by shrugging and saying, " Things are the way they are because things are the way they are. That would be my guess. What's yours?"

It was that simple and obvious.

I wouldn't hazard a guess after that, would you?

May all beings get fixed!

Mel Ash/Jeong Mu