Is Recovery Dharma Secular?

In this article we’ll consider whether Recovery Dharma is a secular recovery program. Spoiler alert: Most people say yes, it is, and I disagree.

Before diving into that, I want to point out that I don’t intend to disparage the program by revealing that it isn’t secular. I simply mean to clear up some terminological confusion. Like many people, I find Recovery Dharma to be a congenial and helpful alternative to AA. The second edition of the Recovery Dharma book is as clever interpretation of Buddhist principles with a view to addiction and recovery, and its inquiries are helping a friend I’m working with through his early sobriety. I originally turned to Recovery Dharma as an adjunct to my mindfulness practice, and though the guided meditations are something of a mixed bag, having time set aside in the meeting in which to do a second daily formal meditation practice has been useful to me.

For all of that, I don’t believe that Recovery Dharma is a secular program. I’ve confronted this idea many times in Secular AA, whose members assure me that Recovery Dharma is secular because it is non-theistic. The idea also shows up implicitly in the fact that Recovery Dharma appears in secular meeting listings such as the popular Worldwide Secular Meetings.

To be fair, not everyone splits hairs as finely as I’m doing in this article. I’m sure this is an innocent claim based on their sense that Recovery Dharma is a non-theistic program. In that respect, it differs sharply from traditional AA, where a Power Greater than Ourselves – aka God (both “as we understand Him” and the unqualified version) appears in about half the steps explicitly. So it appears “secular” in contrast to AA, whose program derives from the evangelical Christian Oxford Group.

There’s a simple definitional problem here, however. “Secular” does not mean “non-theistic”, it means “non-religious” or “separate from religion.” According to The Oxford Advanced Dictionary for Learners of English, secular means “not connected with spiritual or religious matters,” and secularism means “the belief that religion should not be involved in the organization of society, education, etc.”

Every definition I’ve seen of Buddhism, in contrast, begins with something like “An Asian religion” or “A religion that originated in India” or the like. It’s considered the world’s fourth-largest religion (after Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism). Moreover, even if some extraordinary claims like the paradoxical concept of rebirth without an eternal soul does not come up in Recovery Dharma, its organizational tagline at RecoveryDharma.org tells us that it is “Using Buddhist Practices and Principles to Recover from Addiction.” Moreover, most meetings feature core principles of the religion as readings: the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Three Jewels, etc.

In AA, the claim is that they’re not allied with any “sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution”, but there is some implicit adoption of many characteristically Christian ideas (prayer, confession, etc.). In Recovery Dharma, in contrast, the affiliation with a major religion is quite explicit. Ironically, however, because this is not the religion of our parents, it may appear to us to be “secular”, but strictly speaking, it is not.