United to Pay $305,000 to Buddhist Pilot Wouldn’t Attend AA Meetings

There’s a phrase in the Big Book that says something to the effect that God is either everything or nothing. Simply put, my higher power is everything (form), so I try to pay attention to everything that comes my way. On other days and moments my higher power is nothing (emptiness). Ah yes, the Heart Sutra, high-functioning alcoholic wikipedia “form is exactly emptiness, emptiness exactly form . In 2017, the Buddhist Recovery Summit was held in Washington State. It was apparent that many people attending had been AA members for years and credited AA with their own recovery; the point being, we do not have to choose between Buddhist groups and AA.

United Airlines to pay $305,000 to a Buddhist pilot who refused to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings

In fact, one of my AA sponsees attends both AA and Refuge Recovery meetings. Because of AA’s Tradition 10 (AA has no opinion on outside issues), he doesn’t talk about Refuge Recovery in AA meetings. Some of these mistakes are mitigated by the efforts of the larger fellowship, the actual experience of recovery by the founders themselves, and the structural openness AA emphasizes. But the program nevertheless routinely risks becoming quasi-religious, institutionalized, and bent upon its own survival at the expense of actually helping people recover. This was the first of two meditation sessions of the Kadampa Buddhism class I attended this week near my house, in Northern Virginia, and I did not reach nirvana.

Similar content being viewed by others

In Buddhism there is a myth about a hell-realm populated by beings whose appetites exceed their capacity for satisfaction. To resolve the lawsuit, United will pay the pilot $305,000 in back pay and damages and reinstate him into its HIMS program while allowing him to attend a non-12-step peer-recovery program. It will also accept religious accommodations in its program in the future. The man, who had been a pilot for 30 years, lost the medical certificate issued by the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA, after his diagnosis. A step to regaining the certification in United’s HIMS occupational substance-abuse-treatment program involves attending AA meetings. For a person suffering from an addiction, the steps can serve as helpful tools in his treatment and rehabilitation.

International Conference of Secular AA

My Zen practice, a koan tradition in the Pacific Zen School, began 10 years later. There was a time when I would say I had two practices, but today my practice is Twelve & Zen, a blend of the two; a symbiotic relationship in which I practice the Twelve Steps and Zen Buddhism fully, without obstacles. Zen and the Twelve Steps have given me a whole new reality, filled with purpose, joy, and gratitude. And I’m aware of quite a few other Buddhists with similar experiences at the Twelve Step meetings I attend.

Why So Many Americans Are Turning to Buddhism

It’s the one word that can sum up the debilitating condition known as addiction. Regardless of the myriad of reasons people may put up to explain their unhealthy obsession, the root cause always lies in an inordinate need – an excessive desire for something they think can make them happy or fill up an empty void in their lives. Refuge Recovery meetings offer recovery from all forms of addiction, including substances, food, sex, technology, gambling, relationships, spending, and more. It is like being a hungry ghost, wandering through life in constant craving and suffering. Recovery is a process of healing the underlying conditions that lead to addiction. It is establishing and maintaining the practice of abstaining from satisfying the cravings for the substances and behaviors that we have become addicted to.

Applying Buddhism in Addiction Recovery

Nonetheless, it’s hard to imagine what recovery might consist of were it not for the fellowship and program of Alcoholics Anonymous. At once, we’re then invited to turn our attention inward and begin to fearlessly examine our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and history. We’re asked to review 12 step programs for addiction recovery and accept the past, to identify our mistakes, and to try and clarify the patterns and habits that fueled our behavior. We’re encouraged to directly or symbolically clean house and make amends, and we’re advised to adopt a far more honest and transparent approach to daily life.

AA’s diagnosis and prescription, at heart, grapples with all this rather nicely. And we who have addiction find ourselves in this realm not because our throats are in fact too small nor our natural appetites too large, but because we’re utterly and beyond all doubt convinced we’re doomed without some external substance. The belief we simply cannot survive without some sort of relief colors reality in such a hue that without more we are literally blind to everything else. Buddhism has been popular in various forms among certain celebrities and tech elites, but the religion’s primary draw for many Americans now appears to be mental health.

Frank always lived in sober-living houses, in a small room of his own with a door. This reminds me of The Gateless Gate, the title of one edition of the Mumonkan book of koans. Just as we have experienced gateless gates opening to us, other doors continued to open for Frank even with his doorknob missing; but elsewhere doorknobs abound! “The biggest block I encounter with people is the view that the Twelve-Step approach is Judeo-Christian in nature,” said Lindsay Shea, a chemical dependency professional from Seattle. The first edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous was printed in 1939.

I’m disappointed, however, to see few magazine articles and opinion pieces by Buddhists who have found long-term recovery in AA. It’s in forums such as magazines where one can carry on (anonymously of course) meaningful dialogues about Buddhism and AA. I yearn to learn more about practicing the Buddhist Way and the Twelve-Step Way together. I was re-reading “Koans for Troubled Times” by Joan Sutherland in Buddhadharma Magazine’s Spring 2008 issue when it dawned on me that Mazu Daoyi (709–788) and Shitou Xiqian (700–790), two famous Chan teachers of old, set an example for us today. She asked us to close our eyes and meditate again, this time while thinking about letting go of resentment toward someone who had harmed us.​ I shifted awkwardly and wondered how the burly guy sitting in front of me wearing a Lift Life T-shirt felt.

Locking up or converting hungry ghosts at best kept the sufferer sober in the most basic sense but ultimately did nothing to resolve the deeper issues that make drinking or using clearly appear as a very good idea. External force and appeals to higher truths rarely reach the psychic depth necessary to support real change. Buddhism teaches that life has suffering what came first, the alcohol, or the alcoholic thinking that comes not from outside us but instead from what’s within. By letting go these internal struggles we overcome pain and find fulfillment. This isn’t (or shouldn’t be) at odds with anything anyone encounters in recovery nor in AA. Indeed, those of us with addiction have no trouble understanding from the very beginning the nature of suffering.

1. Sharing his secret to enlightenment with his followers, the Buddha emphasized eight steps a person should follow and practice if he wishes to attain nirvana.
2. Now, when Saad is stressed about something, the concept of impermanence helps her to imagine that she’s already survived the event she’s dreading.
3. It embraces the scope of ongoing change people in recovery must undertake.
4. Finally, we’re urged to internalize and continue this reflective process on a routine ongoing basis, and to turn our attention to helping others with the same problem come into and remain in recovery.
5. This comparison demonstrates that Buddhist recovery manuals creatively draw on classical Buddhism and Twelve-Step but also differ from them in important ways as they re-imagine a path from addiction to recovery.

Nearly all hospital-based and free-standing programs throughout the US follow a 12-Step model of recovery. Dale Vernor is a writer and researcher in the fields of mental health and substance abuse. After a battle with addiction Dale was able to find sobriety and become the first in his family to earn a Bachelor’s degree. Dale enjoys writing about mental health and addiction so that more people can understand these highly stigmatized issues. When not working you can find Dale at your local basketball court. Several years ago I read an op-ed piece in a North American Buddhist magazine in which the author—never mind that he became sober through Alcoholics Anonymous—decided that AA is no longer a good fit for Buddhists to find sobriety.