Darren Littlejohn, Author of The 12-Step Buddhist

May 29, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! It’s Friday again today, and this is Dr. Kent. I’m excited to have three authors on the show and one musician, as always. Some great books on the show today. I’m going to speak later on in the show to Steve Knopper. He’s the author of Appetite for Self Destruction, that’s a great book about the crash of the record industry these days. Later on in the show, At Face Value, by Terry Healey, an incredible memoir. At the end of this show is a group called Likeness to Lily, and Susan Oetgen from that group. We’re going to listen some of the music and chat with her. Without further ado, at the beginning of this show I’ve got a fellow on named Darren Littlejohn, and he’s written a book called The 12-Step Buddhist: Enhance Recovery from Any Addition. Welcome to the show, Darren.

Darren Littlejohn: Hi. Thanks very much for having me, pleasure to be here today.

Dr. Kent: So give us all a nutshell of this book.

Darren Littlejohn: This book is about deepening recovery for anyone who is either involved in a 12-step program, or wouldn’t be involved in a 12-step program because they’re afraid of the Judeo-Christian religiosity. It’s for anybody who knows an addict, anybody who treats addicts, anybody who’s suffering from any kind of attachment related (inaudible), and it’s applicable to what Buddha said, “All beings who suffer.” So we’ve combined the 12-steps, which are about attachment gone wild, and Buddhist terminology attachment is one of the root causes of our suffering, but in the addict it’s way out of control. So we try to get sober and get free of our attachment in the extreme form with the 12-steps. This really illuminates the Buddhist path because this is, after all, what the Buddha taught. This is hard to see if you’re, it’s easier to see, I should say, if you’re an addict already. So the two paths have a way of really complimenting each other and illuminating the nooks and crannies where it might otherwise be a little difficult to see.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about, to the non 12-step person, and to the non-Buddhist, give us some introductions into those two different worlds.

Darren Littlejohn: For the non-addict, everybody, of course we go from the Buddhist perspective. So everybody, according to the Buddhist teachings, suffers from not getting what we want and thinking that whatever it is that’s going to make us happy is really what we call I Buddhism the inherent cause of happiness. So in other words, one of my teachers always uses the reference of chocolate cake. And if chocolate cake were the cause of happiness, I would simply back up a truckload to my front porch, have an unlimited supply of chocolate cake, and obviously we know that that’s ridiculous. After your second piece you’re sick. So chocolate causes a temporary happiness. But then if we have too much of it, it becomes the cause of suffering. So for the non-addict, even if you’re not a food addict, we can look at these examples in our own life. Anything that we think is going to make us happy: more money, better job, better house, (inaudible), things along those lines. We start to examine this and see that, hey wait a minute, what I thought was going to make me happy is not really the source of true happiness, any way you look at it. And for the non-Buddhist, those terms are what work best, just looking at the three types of common known Buddhism, which are attachment, aversion, which is, when we don’t get what we’re attached to, we simply turn that around into something we don’t want and have an aversion towards entering. In 12-step terms we get a big resentment over it. So you don’t have to be a Buddhist to really understand attachment, and the fact that what we think we want is not in the long run every enough to make us permanently happy. As a matter of fact, most people don’t even believe that total, absolute happiness is possible. Most people don’t believe that ending suffering is possible. So all beings suffer according to Buddha. That’s the first simple truth. Life is suffering, it’s not a negative, it’s an observation. What it means is basically what I’ve just described. What we think makes us happy in the long run really doesn’t, so there’s something more, maybe something on a spiritual plane. That’s basically what the chapter’s about.

Dr. Kent: And describe for us also, many of us know the 12-step program. I have many family members who have gone through it, but it is deeply Christian most of the time. Talk about what inspired you to, clearly it’s coming from something personal in you. But what inspired you to do the 12-Step Buddhist? It makes a lot of sense, and I know that, for example, Native Americans use some of the 12-step processes with their own religion. Where did you get this idea?

Darren Littlejohn: I started in the 12-steps in 1984, and I had a sobriety period of ten years. During that period I moved through the various (inaudible), and metaphysical Christianity, the science of mind, all of these types of positive thinking, and could really very much have Judeo-Christian Creator God monarcheistic based philosophies, which were really well suited to 12-step recovery. Then I got into mediation pretty seriously, after a few years in recovery. I found myself in a spot, after a few years of sitting, staring at a blank wall, I was practicing Zen Buddhism, I found myself in a spot where what I saw really wasn’t improving. What I was looking at, as I followed that path and noticed my body, labeled my thoughts, after years and years of that with therapy and 12-step recovery, and education and psychology and so forth. I found myself in a really dark, depressed place, and I didn’t want to look anymore, it wasn’t looking too good. I couldn’t really get past that block. The concept of praying to something that was going to fix me, or putting responsibility for my life outside of myself. Even though I was willing to surrender and willing to follow the steps and principles, I never really felt that that task really amounted to much, I terms of un-enduring happiness. So after all this week, after ten years of sobriety, all kinds of zen mediataion therapy and everything else, I found myself in a place that was dark enough for me, that I made the choice to go back and try the various substances of my addiction again. So when I came back, because that doesn’t work, because the disease is incurable, the disease doesn’t go away with abstinence It actually continues and sort of deepens. So when I came back in 1997 I had to re-examine everything that I’d ever thought about before, and I got very much a good vibe again in 12-step recovery and zen Buddhism, and psychotherapy, but it wasn’t I found the teachings in Tibetan Buddhim. Which really explained a lot, and it went into a lot of detail of various types of methods and visualizations and practices that went hand in hand with the 12-steps. So that inspired me to continue my spiritual path and to really stay involved in both the 12-steps and in Buddhism. But I found that the problem I had is that in the 12-step program most people settle for just as much spirituality as is necessary to get sober through the day. Most people aren’t capable of a real, super deep seekers are looking with a real spiritual (inaudible). Some are, maybe not to a degree, but the people who are super into it are few and far between. And those are the people who really stand out and become sort of legendary in the 12-step treatment community. In the Buddhist community I found that I was sort of an addict… when an addict speaks, particularly from the disclosure that we use in 12-step rooms, we basically tell anybody anything, we air those feelings, whether or not its appropriate, until you learn better. But we really learn how to kind of be raw and truthful, and after many years of that, it’s pretty hard to tone down. So, finding myself being in the Buddhist groups, sharing, or having relationships or communications with teachers and so forth, it’s really kind of awkward. Then I thought it was a bit odd that I would be so honest. “Wow, that’s such a wise thing.” I’d say, “Oh, that’s not wise, I heard it in a meeting.” So I really had to learn instead of doing one or the other, instead of graduating from the 12-steps and finding a better, spiritual path, which leads to more disease and relapse, at least it did in my case, and in the case of many others. Instead of choosing this or that, I had to learn how to do both and find the similarities. What we talk about in 12-step meetings is (inaudible) the difference is. I found so many profound similarities between the 12-steps and Buddhism that I started blogging about it and eventually got a lot of feedback, people really enjoyed the writing. I decided to put those thoughts together, and came up with a lot of methods for the book after I started working on it. I found that there is actually a lot more than I even, I really think I just scratched the surface in the book, to be honest with you. Even though there’s a ton of chapters, and most people are finding it to be pretty dense work to get through it. I feel like there’s actually a lot more to be said on the topic.

Dr. Ken: Well, it’s so fascinating. Let’s talk about the issue of Buddhism. It’s a very accepting religion. I had a fellow on the show about a year ago who wrote one of the Dummies guides on Buddhism, and he sort of explained a lot of it. It’s a fascinating and very accepting religion, whereas Christianity isn’t necessarily all that much. Talk to that a bit.

Darren Littlejohn: I have kind of a saying I made up here, don’t throw the Buddha out with the bathwater. You can look into the deep teachings of Jesus through the Sermon on the Mount, for example, and you can see, for example, teachings on karma if you just take the principle of we reap what we sow. If you really take that principle and you look at karma and you look at Buddhism you can see that we’re talking about the same thing. However, people hear what they want to hear, people take the message and turn it into whatever they want. So I don’t discount the teachings of Christ on any level. As a matter of fact, many Buddhists feel that Jesus was a Bodisapha, or a very highly developed practitioner, maybe a Buddha, the completely awakened one. So there’s really no discounting of the teachings, but the way people behave is a little bit flighty there. There’s some room for improvement in a lot of it. And even Jesus said, “Don’t cast your pearls before swine,” and what I think he meant by that was if people aren’t really ready for the truth, try to give them what they can handle. Give them the teachings that they can deal with. You can even see there’s some Buddhism in the very beginning of what was recorded orally, and later written down, from what Buddha taught, was one type of system. That later evolved into other types of systems, which were much more advanced, much faster paths, and not everybody’s ready for that kind of thing. Some of us, for example, I would say, we just need to keep our mouths shut and not cause any harm to anybody else, and that’s enough of a spiritual practice. For others of us, we can get involved with other types of practice, which actually start to utilize some of the energy that we have, and to work with the breath and visualizations and so forth, and actually instead of repressing anger completely and shutting it off, you really start to kind of use the energy to try to assimilate that, and integrate that into our daily life. So Buddhism to me is really more of a mind science, and a massive system of methods, which are available to help transform the sufferer into one who is completely awakened and free from all suffering, just like the Buddha. Within that framework, there are fundamentalists in Buddhism. There are fundamentalists in Christianity. So I think that if you really use the teachings of Jesus, you’re not so far off from the teachings of Buddha. I wouldn’t say that they’re completely the same, and there are philosophers out there who talk about the similarities and differences, but who are the people that you want to associate with, and how are they living their lives? That becomes a different conversation. This is the same in the 12-step community, for example, we have a saying, stick with the winners. So when a newcomer walks in there, just coming off the street and detoxing from crack or oxycotin, or something really bad, and we tell them here’s what you do, find those people who have what you want in recovery, and go ahead and stick with them. And that really works to a high degree for many people. However, depending on the group that you’re involved in, and that location in the country that you’re at, and the individual who happens to be the one that who touches you or that you connect with, you might get involved with some really sick people. There are sick people in the 12-step community, that’s why we’re all there. We say, it’s a good thing we’re not all sick on the same day, luckily. But again, within the 12-step community you will also find fundamentalists who are really kind of fascist and militant about their value system. I’ll give you an example of that. In the AA literature it says we realize, we know, and we have been told, when it comes to prayer and meditation and things like that, the world’s diverse and full, go find them. We’re going to talk about matters medical, (inaudible) and religious. I went to a meeting not too long ago, on Thanksgiving, and there was a guy slamming his hand on the table saying, “This is the only book I read, and the only book I’ll ever need.” And I was just wondering if you read the part in that book that said go read other books. So we don’t want to throw the Buddha out with the bathwater, we don’t want to throw the teachings of Jesus or Buddha or the 12-steps out, because some people, out of their own fear, stick to a rigid viewpoint, to the point where they feel that they’ve got to impose those belief systems on others. The 12-steps is supposed to be free and open for us to have a higher power of our own conception, but many, many people feel that it’s very Judeo-Christian oriented, and that if you don’t come along with the group thing, that you’re not welcome, and they don’t feel comfortable. And that’s what I like about the audience that I’m trying to address with my book, The 12-Step Buddhist.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been a fascinating discussion. I could keep talking with you all day, but I have to get to my next guest. I’d love to have you on again and talk more about this. It’s so deep. The book is called The 12-Step Buddhist: Enhance Recovery from Any Addiction. There’s a lot more specifics that I wanted to get into and we didn’t have time for, but there’s some real plans in this thing, and it’s a useful book for a lot of people. Where can we find out more online?

Darren Littlejohn: At the12stepbuddhist.com. I’ve got podcasts, daily tips, some blogs, all kinds of resources and other information on there. And you can order a signed copy of the book right from the website.

Dr. Kent: Well thank you so much for chatting with us.

Darren Littlejohn: Thanks for having me, I’d love to talk to you again sometime.

Dr. Kent: The 12-Step Buddhist: Enhance Recovery from Any Addiction, by Darren Littlejohn. It’s got a foreword by Robert Thurman. Go out and pick that up, it’s a gorgeous book, and some pretty amazing content for all of us. Most of us know someone going through the recovery process, pick up a copy of this book and go to the12stepbuddhist.com also, or Google Darren Littlejohn. My next guest on the show is going to be a very exciting one again. This is a good show today, and Steve Knopper is the author of Appetite for Self Destruction, and we’re going to talk about the record industry and how it’s having trouble here in the digital age. So come on back to that.

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