We’ve come to realize that our stories don’t have to continue like this. The life of Siddhartha, and the lives of the countless people we meet in recovery who have found an end to the suffering of addiction, prove to us that there is another way.

We, too, can look back upon our own lives and see clearly the path that brought us here. We can examine our own actions and intentions and come to understand how we shape our own future. And we can gain insight into the nature of our own suffering and follow a path that leads to less harm and less suffering.

This is a path of practice. While the Buddha can be an ideal that inspires us, he won’t do the work for us. The Buddha wasn’t a God. There’s nothing miraculous about the path we follow. We believe, and experience has shown us, that good results come when we put the necessary effort into our own recovery. This is a program of empowerment: we take responsibility for our own actions and intentions. The Sangha is here to help us along the way.

None of us is expected to become an ascetic. We don’t have to become monks or nuns, and we don’t have to meditate for hours each day. We don’t have to become Buddhists. But we have found that the path outlined in the Four Noble Truths can lead us to liberation from both the suffering of addiction and the suffering that comes from simply being human, and we trust in the potential in all of us to find freedom from this suffering.