Zen is the original recovery program

The ego in Zen is equivalent to our addictive diseases in recovery. Instead of alcohol or drugs, we are addicted to self and suffering of that self. You can see that putting down the addictive substance or behavior is only the beginning of our recovery if we are at all serious about going all the way to health. The "self" is seen as the final and ultimate addiction and all our dysfunctions stem from our belief in its permanence. We now have to de-tox from false self and put down our self-centered thinking, a day at a time and moment to moment in Zen practice.

There is no logical answer to a koan. If 2+2=4 in "real" life, then 2+2 in a Zen context could = "that cloud in the sky" or "this water is cool" or "7" or "who the hell made up this ridiculous question and who's asking and answering it?" You can't answer a koan by thinking about it or approaching it with the so-called rational mind, the mind that is addicted to yes/no, good/bad, and definitive, polar answers. It's that kind of diseased thinking that got us into trouble in the first place. Koans are about harmonizing the two warring sides of our natures and re-discovering that third realm outside of this and that.

Here's the big secret about koans: they're just like your alcoholism or addiction. They are just like your life. As Ikkyu says, your life is a koan demanding an answer every moment and in every situation. Koan practice restores our intuitive, from the gut responses to life.

Our life is one huge koan. We, as addicts, are riddles we can't answer, codes we can't crack. Usually, it is we ourselves who crack (or crack up) trying to figure out things like "Who am I?" "Why am I alive?" and "Why am I so unhappy?"

Recovering is itself a koan in which we cure our diseases by paradoxically accepting them, giving up any attempt to struggle with them. In 12 step programs, surrender equals victory. This the basic method of koan practice.

Zen teaches that it is our "stinking thinking", to use a recovery cliché, that got us into trouble in the first place. The student is assigned a koan and instructed to meditate on it, not attempting to study it, but rather to plant it like a seed in the soil of the mind.

The student might forget about it, but the psyche still chews away at it on an unconscious spiritual level until suddenly and unexpectedly the answer blossoms, no, erupts as an answer! A cosmic a-ha! slapping the forehead moment and another gate to awakening passed through!

The koans are often thrown at students in private interviews with the Zen master. The student is given no time to think it over and must respond immediately from the depths of being, often without words, since once again, it's words and concepts that keep us asleep and smug in our certitude.

A Glass of Water?

An example from my own experience:

The Zen master pointed to a glass of water on the floor between us. "What is this?" he asked.

"A glass of water," I answered smugly, sure I was being very "Zen."

"Wrong!" he yelled, startling me.

After a few more times, in different sessions, I finally gave up, despairing of ever answering "correctly." I reached for the glass and drank the water when he asked the question. If the water's gone, so is the question, I thought. Let him yell all he wants. Instead, to my surprise, he smiled and nodded. I had passed the koan!

Same thing with his wrist watch. Instead of saying it was a "watch", I looked at its face and told him the time. Lesson: actions speak louder than words. These koans, though, proved to be relatively easy ones, preparing me to enter narrower and more difficult gates, at least to my still compulsively thinking mind.

The Fist of Truth

A very famous koan concerns a monk who asked a Zen master to demonstrate the depth of his wisdom. The teacher simply held up a fist silently. The monk said the teacher was shallow and left to search for another teacher. He asked the next teacher the same question and again, this teacher held up his fist!

This time, however, the student was pleased, and said, "You dharma is deep. I will study with you."

How did the student know which was the correct teacher. Quick!!!! Answer now without words or I will hit you with my Zen stick!!! Too late. Whack, whack, whack!

I'll break an ancient rule and let you in on the secret: the correct answer is to quickly hold up your own fist when asked this koan. Try it and you'll understand. Koans are show, don't tell propositions, and as Zen demonstrates, actions always speak louder than words.

Hanging from a Cliff

One of the most popular chapters in my first book, The Zen of Recovery, concerns a particular koan, "Hanging from a Cliff: How to Let Go." Get ready to actually answer this koan. Your life and death question to immediately answer is this:

You are hanging by your teeth from the branch of a tree over a cliff with a thousand foot drop. Your hands and feet are tied. A person comes up to you and points a gun, saying, "Teach me recovery (dharma) or I'll shoot you."

You are sworn as a bodhisattva to save all beings from suffering by teaching dharma, as a recovering person to carry the message to those who still suffer (12th step). You are required to act. What in the world can you do?

If you speak, you release your bite on the branch and fall a thousand feet to your death. If you don't speak, you will be shot and killed. In either case, your death is certain.

In the original chapter, I included this commentary on the koan by ancient C'han Zen master Ta Hui:

"Hanging from a cliff, let go-
And agree to accept the experience.
After annihilation, come back to life-
I cannot deceive you."

What does this mean? First of all, crucial to our understanding as recovering people, is Ta Hui's assertion that we don't have to accept experience but only agree to accept it, a subtle and crucial difference, much like our own 12 step "came to believe." We are not asked for everything at once. First agreement, then acceptance. First, come to. Then believe.

Like recovering from our addictive "deaths", we let go of everything we once held true and dear: let go with our teeth, our minds and hearts, accepting the world as it truly is, plunging into an unknown we fear worse than death. Some of us are lucky enough to fall into chairs at a 12 step meeting. Other land on cushions in a Zen center. Either way, we must let go and have the faith that the plunge is necessary, that redemption is possible.

And as we know, we returned to life in 12 step meetings. Different, yes; mourning the loss of something, of course, but we returned to life. As Beat writer William S. Burroughs says, if you confront death in this lifetime and lose the fear of death, you have in some ways, become immortal.

The answer?

Again, I break ancient Zen rules by telling you this, but I think you already understand. Do this:

Stand. Put your arms behind your back, feet placed as if they're bound. Chin up, pretend your teeth are clenching a branch for dear life. Now fall to the ground (carefully!) and play dead for a moment. You can do this! Melodrama is second nature to us alcoholics and addicts.

Now jump to your feet, brush yourself off, smile and bow from the waist deeply. Go about your normal business. Our disease is the tree, the gun our lives and the fall is recovery.

You have passed through the gate of life and death, just like the gate that was actually a door swinging open to your first 12 step meeting.

A Leap of Faith

Zen students pass though many of these gates, as koans are called, on their way to being recognized as Zen teachers themselves. The main thing to remember about the koan is that one must make an intuitive leap above the wall of logic, responding to the question from a space cleared of expectations, preconceptions and results. This process is often immensely frustrating to the student. The process of surrendering the mind, like giving up addictions in recovery, is to attain an answer of wholeness, the best teaching of all.

But the answer is really secondary and merely a means to an end, a training process really. Soon, koan-style thinking can become second nature (first and original?) and you will, as Bill W. claims in the Big Book, "know intuitively what to do in any situation." We begin to respond to life naturally and with elegance and ease, as plants seek sunshine without anguish about the meaning of sunshine, or animals seek affection without torturing themselves about self-image and worthiness. We are restored to what we really are, not what we have become under the weight of words, ideas and emotional propaganda.

Repeated koan practice is sort of like working the 12 steps over and over again until they are part of our very beings and behaviors. I think you know where all this is leading and you're right. See? You're already becoming more intuitive and Zen-like!

12 Step Koans

Here are a baker's dozen of the first Western recovery koans for you to work on. They're the same ones used in my retreats and workshops and have been tested and answered by people just like you. You can either do them yourself or have another person in recovery ask you, playing Zen master and student, or sponsor and "pigeon." They would also make good topics for a discussion of Zen recovery.

I haven't included the answers because it would be "cheating", but the rule of thumb is that if you truly, in your gut, believe in your answer 100%, then it's probably "correct', although correct and incorrect are slippery terms in Zen, as you know by now.

Unlike in school, where you needed a "right" answer to a question even if you didn't understand it, the answer to a koan must be believed and understood entirely by you alone to be considered "correct." It's not about pleasing the teacher or Zen master or about getting the "right" answer or about scores or grades, just as your recovery is not about pleasing your sponsor or people in the meeting. It's about you!

It's ultimately about finding and believing in your true self and building faith in your personal path. One time, I apparently answered a koan "correctly", action and word-wise. But I was told by the Zen master that although my answer was right, I was still wrong! Huh? Why? Because the teacher detected a wavering, a tentativeness and a lack of 100% belief in myself and answer. So you see that, in this great work, attitude trumps knowledge and belief in truth defeats by-the-book correctness. Your attainment and recovery are judged by the depths of your being and not by shallow words and adherence to dogma.

Even some Catholics are getting in on the action with koans like these:

Jesus' mother was a virgin. How can this be?

Nobody can return to life once dead. Jesus rose from the dead. Show me Jesus.

Write to me with your answers or show me if you attend one of my classes. Better yet, invent your own, use them on each other after meetings and spring them on me unawares if you ever see me!

Your instructions: ask yourself the koan, use it as a focus for meditation, and repeat it into your mind like a mantra. Don't try to answer the next one until you feel 100% about the first. Here they are. Get busy. My Zen stick is raised over your head! So is your best teacher: your addictive disease.

• Alcoholics drink. Addicts use.
  You say you are an alcoholic/addict and yet you don't drink or use!
  Show me how this can be without using words.
  

• You were born an alcoholic/addict and you will die one since we are always recovering. You will never be fully "cured."
  What is it that you are recovering?
  Recover it now!

• To keep your sobriety, you must give it away as part of our 12th step.
  Give it to me.
  Now take it back.

• The only difference between "spirits" and "spirit" is an "s."
  Where does this "s" really exist?
  

• When you were drunk or high, you had no "mind."
  When you attain Zen enlightenment, you have no "mind."
  Show me the mind that is neither enlightened nor drunk and high.

• "We admitted we were powerless and that our lives had become unmanageable" is the first step.
  To admit you are powerless is itself a form of power.
  Enter complete powerlessness.

• Even though you might have thirty years of uninterrupted recovery, you say you are recovered only for today.
  Where did all that time go?
  
  Does it have any real existence?
  
  Put thirty years recovery into one second right now!

• Bill W. refused fame and fortune and insisted on anonymity for people in recovery.
  Tell me your real name.
  
  Then tell me mine.

• To recover, we must "turn our lives over to a higher power."
  Right now, where you sitting, show me your higher power.

• When we used, we had no conscious anything.
  In recovery, we must maintain conscious contact with a higher power.
  Prove to me you are "conscious."

• Is the power "higher" or "deeper"?
  Make higher and deeper the same thing.
  

• The term "impending doom" describes our active situations accurately.
  If you are here to read this, the doom never happened.
  That's a "yet" for you.
  Where did the doom go? Show.
  

• You are at a bar and a drink or drug or self-destructive behavior is placed in front of you.
  The bartender points a gun at you and says, "Consume or die!"
  How do you comply and still keep your recovery and life?

Footnote to Zen Recovery Koans:

Not Running, Not Staying:
How to Be Here Now

Is there a way not to run away from our lives or bad situations? Is there a way not to stay as well? Is there ever really a solution to the "damned if you do and damned if you don't" quandaries we always find ourselves in? How can we learn the art of acceptance, unconfused and separate from the self-mutilation of resignation? Is there an athletics of being that can train us for this?

This is what I was looking for in my youthful Buddhist studies and what I eventually found in Zen and the 12 Steps, a paradoxical middle way of surrender. Even today, though, it's hard for me to understand this "day at a time" business or the micro-management Zen technique of living "moment to moment, instant to instant."

No matter how many well-meaning gurus, sponsors and friends told me to "Be Here Now", I just didn't get it. I always wanted to be

anywhere else, despite my best intentions and efforts.

I guess I didn't stop my vain effort at long distance running until I heard this koan-like story from my beloved Unitarian minister, the late Tom Ahlburn:

You are being chased by hungry tigers, running for your life. They chase you to the edge of a small cliff. Having no choice, you jump, grabbing a small tree halfway down, breaking your fall. Just as you are about to let go and reach the safety of the ground, you see more hungry tigers below you, waiting!

Hungry tigers above, hungry tigers below. If you crawl back up, you get eaten. If you drop, you get eaten. What to do? Suddenly, you see a bunch of wild grapes growing near you. Reaching out, you pluck one and put it in your mouth.

Ahhhhhh!
Delicious!

You already understand.
Mel Ash/Jeong Mu