Step Eight
Step Eight
We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Step Nine
We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
MY MOTHER’S HEALTH took a steep decline when she reached her eighties. She was declared legally blind from macular degeneration and was confined to a wheelchair due to a series of strokes. Since she could no longer walk or see, we needed to move her out of her home of fifty years and into an assisted living apartment.
My sister Anne and I and our husbands arrived, vacuum cleaner and boxes of trash bags in hand. A teal-blue globe lamp still hung on a chain from the ceiling in my childhood bedroom, rusty-brown shag carpet covered a beautiful oak floor, and the hallway closet held paper napkins for every possible occasion. An antique dealer surveyed the rooms for saleable goods, loading her black Jeep with treasures.
I was sorting through piles of things in the “recreation room.” My father and uncles had squared off half of the basement, paneling the walls in knotty pine and covering the floor with red and white linoleum tiles. It was our childhood playroom. Over to one side stood the entertainment bar, my father’s favorite hangout.
On a shelf behind the bar, under a stack of loose papers and other miscellaneous junk, I found a small, dark-blue, bound copy of Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. It must have been sitting there all twenty years since my father died, right by where he used to stash his liquor bottles. He probably got it during one of his ten times in treatment. It was dated Thanksgiving, November 28, 1974, with a handwritten note tucked inside, “Hope you’re feeling better, Joe.” Someone from one of his AA groups must have given it to him.
Seeing his name scrawled in his own jagged, hard-to-read handwriting gave my body a jolt. My God, he must have actually read this book. Who would have known? As I thumbed through the volume, a multicolored card tumbled out from between the pages. It was a gold-gilded, Catholic holy card, a memento from his sister Mary’s funeral in 1976.
Mostly, I was relieved when my father died: I don’t have to try to have a relationship with you anymore. I don’t have to hurt anymore that you are destroying yourself and making our lives hell. Over the years, I had done a lot of work in meditation regarding my father. One summer, I participated in a meditation intensive that focused on compassion. We followed an ancient Buddhist protocol of reflecting on our life one stage at a time, developing deeper understanding for the causes and conditions of our path. We started with looking at ourselves as a baby, then a five-year-old, then a ten-year-old, and on through our life span. After looking at ourselves, we meditated on our mother, going through the stages of her life and identifying significant influences. Next, we meditated on our father, considering the host of causes and conditions that shaped him.
While meditating on my father, imagining him as a five-year-old boy, I imagined him as the son of dirt-poor, illiterate, Irish-immigrant parents. Did you feel embarrassed that they couldn’t read, Dad? Did you cringe in the face of their old-world ways? I thought about how his father was alcoholic, violent, and mean. (At least that’s what everyone, except my father, said.) Were you scared of him, like I was of you? I visualized him as the oldest boy in the family, stepping in to protect his mother, enlisting in the military during World War II, serving on the front lines in Northern Africa fighting against Mussolini. Is that why you screamed in the night? Never let us watch war movies on TV?
The meditations didn’t erase the hurts of my childhood. I still don’t think how he acted was okay. His rampages caused great harm to his family and friends. But my heart softened. I could imagine him as once a vulnerable boy, struggling. Barely eighteen, fighting for his life, witnessing his buddies dying in a foxhole in the African desert. I could feel sadness for him, see him as a tortured being—more than the big, mean man whom I loved and hated when I was a girl.
I studied the faded note in his Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: “Hope you’re feeling better, Joe.” Who wrote you this, Dad? Your sponsor? I realized he had friends in the Twelve Step program who hoped for his well-being. A great stream of recovering people had come before us, including AA members who reached out to my father five decades ago. They were the people who came to our home, drank coffee at the red Formica kitchen table, and urged him to go back to Twelve Step meetings.
Hearing them talk, wishing my father could be nice like them, had made me more open to reaching out for help when it was my turn to need it. Now grown-up and standing in the basement of my childhood home, I felt tender toward my father—sad that his demons ruled him, but glad he had tried to recover. Even if his attempts at getting sober were short-lived, they were something. He hadn’t crossed over into a solid sobriety, but I had. Thanks, Dad. I’m trying to be the best of you. Some days are going better than others.
Accepting our own shadow self, the part of us that acts badly and makes mistakes., builds deeper compassion for others. They are like us; we are like them. The shadow is not something that only “those other people out there” possess. The seeds of hatred and harm are within us all. Personally, it was unsettling, to say the least, to realize that I could feel hatred strong enough to want to kill. Moi? Excuse me?
I felt flashes of pure rage and hatred toward my father when I was a girl, especially when he was violent with my mother or siblings. Had I been bigger, had one of his guns been nearby, I believe I could have picked it up and shot him. It’s ugly, but true. I used drugs and smoked cigarettes to repress the fiery feelings that scared and horrified me about myself. Actually, in its own way, drug use was probably a better choice than acting out violence. But, of course, it carried a terrible price.
Seeds of ill will and darkness are within us, side by side with the seeds of our buddha nature. Particular conditions in our life, as in the lives of others, can cause them to take root. When we sit down to make a list of the people we have harmed, we see that we are just like our fellow humans. We have no ground for feeling uppity or deeming ourselves superior. The more honest we become, the more compassion we are able to feel.
When we make a list of all the people we have harmed, we come face-to-face with the reality that we, too, have amends to make. The founders of the Twelve Step program say we should “ransack [our] memory for the people to whom we have given offense.” And, if “our pencil falters, we can fortify and cheer ourselves by remembering what the A.A. experience in this Step has meant to others.”1 We can keep in mind that our ancestors in the Twelve Step program and in the traditions of spiritual practice were once like us. At the moment we falter, we can call on the many buddhas and spiritual seekers of old for strength or comfort. If we want to run, avoiding direct responsibility for what we have done or what we have failed to do, we are reminded of the promise of Step One that if we call out in our fear, we will “never fail to receive profound help.”2
We can think of how we are the ancestors of others yet to come. Our recovery could become a source of hope, inspiration for a life of happiness and gratitude. Maybe one of these daughters or sons will find a note in our Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions book and know they are not alone. Perhaps they, too, will be amazed to discover the possibility of joy arising from their suffering. The Buddhist saint Shantideva, in the Bodhicharyavatara, described such a realization like this:
AS A BLIND MAN FEELS
WHEN HE FINDS A PEARL IN THE DUST-BIN,
SO AM I AMAZED BY THE MIRACLE
OF AWAKENING
RISING IN MY CONSCIOUSNESS …
IT IS THE FEAST OF JOY
TO WHICH ALL ARE INVITED.3
Early in recovery, I stubbornly held on to a delusion that my addiction hurt no one but myself. I was not my father. Since I was a closet drug user, most people didn’t realize I was in trouble with amphetamines and other medications. I was numbed out, not home inside myself, and dissociated from my body. Most of my lies were from omission, not saying what was on my mind; I was a chameleon changing colors to fit into what I imagined other people wanted me to be. I didn’t realize that being checked out from life affected not only me but many others too. I lived as if no one could see me, and I believed myself. It was familiar. Like home.
In the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, it says Step Eight is “the beginning of the end of isolation.” When we see that our actions have impact on others, many times not in the ways we intended, our bubble of delusion is shattered. Even though making amends is usually uncomfortable, the process shows us that we are not alone. Reality isn’t the world over there, with me being a little bump over on the side, alone, forever doomed. In truth, we are a jewel in the great web of Indra, a part of the great interbeing with all that lives. This awareness, in itself, eases the loneliness and “not belonging” endemic to addicts, alcoholics, and codependent people.
If making a list of all the people we have harmed evokes deep remorse, it can be likened to a wound that stings because it’s starting to heal. The pain of seeing our failings is helpful, motivating us to lay down our defenses and take full responsibility for our deeds. In Step Eight, we admit, first to ourselves and then to another, what we have done or failed to do. We acknowledge the consequences of our acts. In Step Nine, we make direct amends wherever possible. And we seek to change our behavior going forward. Traditional religious language refers to this process as “repenting” and “atoning” for the harm we have caused.
At first, the words repent and atone were off-putting. They raised ghosts of my Catholic past, conjuring images of a fierce, hairy John the Baptist rattling bones and breathing fire. I could feel the claustrophobia of kneeling in a dark confessional, wriggling with guilt, skin itching with shame. But holding the words repent and atone in meditation has unveiled their deeper meanings, like a series of nested Russian dolls revealing delight after delight.
The practice of repenting and atoning, as suggested by Step Eight, has been going on for more than twenty-five hundred years. In the Buddhist view, traits such as greed, anger, and ignorance are realities of human life. They rise endlessly. Not only weak, bad, or addicted people struggle with them. All people struggle with them. (Remember, in the first of Buddha’s Four Pure Insights on the Way Things Are, that suffering, or dukkha, is inescapable.)
Human failings and their consequences, the accumulation of karma in our lifetime, are simply matter-of-fact, nothing unusual or special. The more important question is: What are we going to do about it? We need ways to unburden the negative karma we accumulate. The way to become free is to repent and atone. Make a list and become willing to make amends to all the people we have harmed. Many generations before us bear witness to the importance and value of atoning for injury we have caused. When we make amends for our wrongs, take responsibility for our karma, our burden of shame is lightened.
But first, to become willing, we need to feel remorse. Just the right amount of remorse is called for: not too much and not too little. This is similar to the instructions for how to sit in meditation. We are told to keep our body alert and yet relaxed, not too loose and not too tight. Neither falling asleep nor worrying too much.
If we have too little remorse, denying our responsibility in causing harm, we are being too loose with ourselves. There may be things in our shadow we don’t want to see because the qualities don’t fit with our image of our self. We defend our self from that knowledge with denial or naïveté.
Step Eight invites us to strip off the armor of our denial, to let go of rationalizing, justifying, or blaming others for our actions. To stop nursing thoughts such as, Well, you should have seen what they did. Efforts to protect ourselves from getting hurt are often at the root of actions that cause harm to others. If we hide in “purposeful forgetting,” deny our shadow, and defend our unskillful acts, we stay trapped.4 Inside, we are shameful, alone, and unforgiven.
On the other hand, we don’t want to get mired down in too much remorse. Drowning in regret can be compared to being too tight on the meditation cushion. We exaggerate our faults, taking on responsibility that is not ours. When absorbed in our own guilt and shame, our world shrinks. It gets filled up with Me! Being preoccupied with our faults, continually evaluating our behaviors or ruthlessly criticizing our mistakes eats up our attention. Anxious or depressed feelings dominate our emotional landscape. Too much remorse is not much better than too little. In either case, we are unable to be present in our relationships or in life.
What we need is “just the right amount of remorse to be transformative.”5 If we can feel both sorrow for the hurts we have caused and—at the same time, in the same breath—accept ourselves the way we are, then our remorse inspires change. Just the right amount does not drown us in regret or humiliate us in shame. An underlying kindness and acceptance of ourselves is necessary if we are going to make an honest list of the people we have harmed. If we aren’t afraid of our shadow, we don’t have to wall ourselves off with defenses; we can open our heart. Imagine the possibility of a new way of being in the world.
Being mindful of our remorse helps us find the sweet spot of “just enough.” We can notice when we are blaming others and the sensations related to that mind-set in our body and heart. Oops—feeling “done to.” What’s my part here? If we are spiraling down in shame, withdrawing, or feeding toxic thoughts, we can pull ourselves back. Oops—going down. Need some loving kindness here. Everyone makes mistakes. If there is an imbalance of too much or too little remorse, mindful awareness brings us back to center, the point of “just enough” remorse.
I am comforted by imagining generations of people repenting and atoning for their wrongs. I am merely one of multitudes. Tenshin-roshi Reb Anderson says:
Bodhisattvas continually see and admit their own delusions and nonvirtuous deeds. Less enlightened people confess less often. The most unenlightened and dangerous people are those who think they never do any nonvirtuous deeds at all. The greatest darkness of the human mind is to believe that you never do anything wrong or hurtful or stupid … Confession of wrong-doing is an act of awakening.6
There is great freedom in joining the stream of humanness, knowing we are like all others, both good and bad. We admit we are just an ordinary person, doing our best, which is sometimes great and other times not so hot. We can relax about it.
Some years ago my husband Jim and I went to a Zen retreat (sesshin) at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center with visiting teacher Tenshin-roshi Reb Anderson from San Francisco. He talked about the strong tradition of repentance and atoning in Buddhism. In the early days, Buddha had very few rituals (unlike most religions now), no bowing, chanting, or wearing ankle-length black robes. The only ritual he adhered to was inviting his disciples “to come forth,” to have an authentic encounter with him. Tell the truth about your struggles, failings, or hindrances to practice.
Tenshin-roshi invited us to come up and confess our struggles and failings. He sat, dignified and erect, wrapped in steel-blue robes, seated in the lotus position. On the carved cedar mantle behind him, incense burned. Orange gladioli and yellow mums in a Ceylon porcelain vase framed an image of Buddha. A large rectangular cushion (zabuton) had been placed in front of Tenshin-roshi, gracing the polished oak floor of the Zen center. It held a smaller round black cushion stuffed with barley seeds, called a zafu.
He looked out at us all with piercing, vibrant eyes and said, “So come forth.”
Any participant could come up to the front of the room, sit in front of Tenshin-roshi, and ask a question or talk about his or her struggles. We were invited to confess our shortcomings while held in the loving attention of the community of participants. I found the rigorous honesty of people who came forth to be quite moving. The stories varied, but the human struggles within them echoed each other.
A seventysomething man approached the empty cushion.
After bowing first to Tenshin-roshi and then to the group, he sat down. He confessed his disillusionment and fury with the current Congress and administration of the United States.
“When I read the morning newspaper, see story after story of lies, corruption, and war, I get angry. Our government is responsible. We are all responsible. Our leaders don’t admit the mess we’re in. It’s like they live on a different planet. I am so pissed off I can hardly stand it. What can I do with this feeling of hate?”
Tenshin-roshi nodded.
“Of course. Part of what makes the current situation in the world so scary is that there are deluded people who also have great power. It’s important to understand the nature of power, which is to corrupt. If you can understand the nature of power as a corrupting force, does your feeling shift? Do you want to have any compassion?”
“Yeah, I’d like to be able to have compassion. I just don’t at the moment.”
Smiling, Tenshin-roshi said, “Well, that’s a good start.”
The exchange reminded me of the counsel given in the Twelve Step program when we are told that a “desire to desire” to make amends is good enough. Even a desire to desire opens the heart. The grace of loving kindness can get in when the soft spot in our heart is undefended. We can experience compassion and joy.
These ideas are all great in theory, but sometimes when we offer our amends, it doesn’t go all that well. The other person may not be forgiving. They may stay angry, hurt, or determined to blame.
THE CLASS SESSION WAS DUE TO START in little over an hour. My colleague and I were co-facilitating and had agreed to meet early that morning to finish our preparations. I had already been waiting for forty-five minutes. No colleague. When I called my voice mail, there was no message. I was getting steamed.
I was counting on her, this time of all times. Over the past few days, there had been another medical emergency with my elderly, dying mother. The situation required all my attention, leaving no time to prepare for the class.
When I’d called my colleague the day before, she said, “Don’t worry about a thing. An e-mail with all the materials for the class will be waiting for you tonight when you get home. I am happy to carry the load. It’s the least I can do.”
Indeed, when I checked my e-mail late that evening, there was a note from her. The attached document was four pages of stream-of-consciousness, random thoughts about the topic for the session. There was nothing close to a class plan.
When she finally walked in, I was cold. “You’re late! People will be coming soon and we aren’t ready. What happened?”
She burst into tears. “I called and left a message a little while ago. Didn’t you check? I couldn’t get going this morning, so I stayed home to have a second cup of coffee. Then there was construction on the freeway. Besides, I sent you an e-mail yesterday with all the stuff.”
“We’re nowhere near ready for the class. I couldn’t follow what you sent. I was counting on you.”
She cried louder, looked down, and collapsed in a heap on the floor. She then gave a big sigh, putting the back of her hand to her forehead.
I blew up, yelling, “What are you doing? You’ve got to be kidding me. You’re the one who was late! We don’t have time for this; we need to get organized.”
Somehow we managed to talk about the plan and teach a respectable class, but it was tough. I was very angry, and my colleague wouldn’t look at me. I’m sure the participants could sense the tension.
After the session was over, I told her I was sorry I had gotten so angry and wished I could have handled it better. I said I was anxious and exhausted after being with my mother and had been relying on her to have everything ready. Nonetheless, I shouldn’t have yelled at her. I asked her to forgive me if I had hurt her, as appeared to be the case.
She said, “Thank you for the apology.” Then she got out the door as fast as she could. Not a peep about her part, nothing about her own responsibility in the matter.
Over the following weeks, she called several mutual acquaintances, telling them how touchy and difficult to work with I was. One of our mutual friends told me about these conversations a few months later. I got mad all over again.
While meditating, I eventually saw there was hurt beneath my angry feelings. I had counted on her to carry the ball and she hadn’t. I apologized and she didn’t accept the amends. And then she spoke ill of me to others. Even so, I had gotten angry to cover the hurt and let myself run with it. No matter what, I was completely responsible for how I behaved with her.
At my invitation, we met for coffee. I went over the incident again, telling her how much I had been depending on her. I apologized again for blowing up. I told her I was hurt to learn that she talked with others, saying disparaging things. I wished she would have come to me directly if she was still upset.
My colleague listened politely, saying she appreciated my apology. But she took no responsibility for her part in what happened, holding to the view that she was innocent, I was mean, and she had been “done to.” I was disappointed in her response, but content with my efforts to make amends. Despite how it had gone between us, I could be at peace.
ONCE WE HAVE ATONED for our wrongs—even if the other person is not inclined to forgive us, even if this person is not willing to own his or her part in the difficulty—we need to let go. Accept that there is nothing more to do. We can experience the relief of having no secrets, making no excuses, and holding no pretenses. We can feel the satisfaction that we have done Step Nine and made direct amends to such people wherever possible.” Here we experience the freedom of taking care of our emotional business.
We don’t have to feel the weight of old guilt or live with the fear of running into someone we have harmed. We don’t have the worry: Jeez, I hope I don’t ever see so-and-so because I won’t be able to look her in the eye. I’m so humiliated when I think of how I acted. I want to run the other way. Nor do we have the burden of procrastination weighing us down: I’ve had this person’s name on my amends list for the last five years, and I’m still getting ready. We simply take care of what we can “as fast and as far as may be possible.”7
Buddha referred to this inner satisfaction as the “bliss of blamelessness.”8 Certainly, most of us will err again, despite our good intentions. But there is happiness in taking full responsibility. Not blaming others. Not absorbing blame from others. Being free from shame. Tenshin-roshi Reb Anderson says, “Admitting who you are, you are purified. Being purified, you can now go home to awakening.”9
Another type of amends involves speaking up and saying the things we have never dared to say. Some people raised in alcoholic or addictive families have learned it isn’t safe to speak up about their feelings and needs. They have been dismissed, demeaned, or even abused. And yet indirectness or withholding can be hurtful too. We can continue to hide our feelings, carrying the belief that we are “unsafe” into relationships where it is not true.
MY CLIENT AMY DIDN’T WANT TO HURT HER DAD. He had been through so much grief with her mother’s drinking before they divorced. Instead of telling him she felt stung by his criticisms—angry and hurt—she tried to just act pleasant, make like everything was fine. For years.
Amy and her dad met for lunch one summer afternoon; he called and invited her. Sitting at a table outside under the patio umbrella, munching on fresh lettuce and tomato salad, Amy got a surprise. Her father brought up how she seemed distant, hadn’t called much, hadn’t dropped by for a visit, and seemed preoccupied and in a hurry when they did talk.
“Is anything bothering you, Amy? Are you mad at me about something?”
“No, no, nothing, Dad.”
“Are you sure? If you are upset with me, I really want you to tell me.”
“I want to have a good relationship with you, Amy. You are so very important to me. I really have the feeling something’s on your mind. I can take it; just tell me.”
“Weeell, there was that time last fall when you criticized me for letting Sophie stay at Mom’s for the weekend. And that cranky e-mail you sent me when I moved, telling me you were annoyed because I didn’t have a new phone yet. I knew you weren’t happy with me. I always know. Sometimes I think you expect me to be perfect.”
Her father said he hadn’t meant to be critical. He thought he was just commenting. He confessed that his (now) wife had given him similar feedback, saying almost those exact words, “I feel like you expect me to be perfect.” He hadn’t been aware of this habit in himself until now.
“I’ll try to watch it, Amy. But I need you to tell me if I’ve hurt you, not just become distant. I love you.”
AS AMY TOLD ME about their lunchtime conversation, she realized she had hurt her father by trying not to hurt him, by keeping her feelings to herself. It shocked her. She was equally surprised at how well her father took her feedback. He wasn’t as fragile as she thought he was. In fact, he wasn’t the least bit brittle. Although their conversation had been intense, it brought them closer.
Sometimes being “nice” isn’t very nice. Our feelings of anger or hurt leak anyway. Maybe our jokes have an edge, we withdraw from the relationship, or we speak ill of the other person behind his or her back. By acting in codependent ways, we can do harm, both to ourselves and our relationships. In this case, making amends involves being more emotionally honest with a person we love.
Still other times, making amends can be a comforting experience. In Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, it says, “The generous response of most people to such … sincerity will often astonish us. Even our severest and most justified critics will frequently meet us more than halfway.”10
Before being with my husband, Jim, I knew very little of the joy of being forgiven. I kept striving to be “good,” constantly anxious because it was impossible. In my family growing up, people didn’t talk out their problems. They cut off relationships, didn’t speak for years. Consequently, making a mistake was scary. The world seemed threatening and unsafe.
But with Jim, when I ask for his forgiveness after being difficult in some way, he never fails to give it. He smiles his shy smile and says, “It’s in the past.” He actually means it. After these thirty years of our life together, I am much more relaxed about my mistakes. Jim says it took the first fifteen years for me to trust he wouldn’t get angry and abandon me. Now, the fear held in the very cells of my body has nearly gone.
Through the grace of others’ forgiveness, perhaps we can, at last, abandon perfectionism. In the words of Tenshin-roshi Reb Anderson:
WHEN I ADMIT THAT I AM JUST AS I AM,
I ALLOW MYSELF TO BE SO …
BUDDHA’S COMPASSION EMBRACES ME
JUST AS I AM RIGHT HERE AND NOW,
WITH THE PURITY OF COMPLETE FORGIVENESS.11
In Buddhism, at the end of our meditation period each morning—at home or in a practice center—we are advised to chant the following prayer of atonement:
ALL MY ANCIENT TWISTED KARMA
FROM BEGINNINGLESS GREED,
HATE, AND DELUSION,
BORN THROUGH BODY, SPEECH, AND MIND,
I NOW FULLY AVOW.12
(Say three times, bowing with each recitation.)
This daily mindfulness practice keeps us from being seduced back into our delusions of denial or exaggerated fault. We stay aware of the endless nature of the human struggle. We join the great stream of many, through thousands of years, atoning for their failings, lightening the burden of their accumulated karma. Although this prayer was at first a bit forbidding, I now cherish this time-tested practice of repentance. I have experienced relief and freedom from shame, moments of touching the bliss of blamelessness—surprisingly, right in the middle of the muck.