Buddhist Recovery Network book review

"5thword.com"

This site appears to be no longer available, which is a tragedy as it was once a treasure trove of information on meditation and recovery. See the two excerpts below by way of example.

Selected excerpts:

From Chapter 14: Change

“The changing nature of reality become clear, perhaps startlingly so, when we meditate. Two insights quickly come to new meditators. First, we become aware through meditative observation that sensations, feelings, thoughts and mind states constantly occur — much of it previously unconscious to us. Second, we become aware that these myriad mind/body processes are transient — they continually arise and pass away, one after the other, in ever-changing succession. Meditation demonstrates unequivocally on a visceral, experiential level that we are not fixed spiritual, mental or physical beings; rather, we are spiritual, mental and physical processes, where each element constantly arises and passes away.”
“Before we began to meditate, we know intellectually that everything changes and is impermanent. Meditation transforms that intellectual knowledge into insight or wisdom through becoming intimate with the experience of change. Change and impermanence are no longer concepts known only intellectually; they are processes that we have experienced.”

From Chapter 21: Actions and consequences

“Recovery is about responsibility -- to ourselves and to others. Some of the things we learn in recovery about responsibility are:
• that we are responsible to others, but (except for children) we are not responsible for others,
• that we are not responsible for the actions of others — that their happiness depends on their own actions, not on what we wish or do for them,
• that we are responsible for our own actions — that our happiness depends on our own actions, not on what others may wish or do for us,
• that we are absolutely responsible for our own experience”

“All our feelings, thoughts, mind states and actions — who we are and what we do — have consequences. These may sometimes be hard to discern, but the pattern is there to see. Recovery helps us learn to change our attitudes and actions; as a result, our consequences change. Meditation teaches us how to do this.”

“We hear in meetings that recovery is about giving up hope of a better past. This wonderful saying reminds us that we cannot change our past, but it also implies we can change our future. What a life-altering concept! Each moment, literally each and every single moment -- including this very moment -- is a new beginning and a new chance to shape our experience.
Everything that happens emerges out of what preceded it. Everything we do now becomes a condition for what is possible later.”