There is a theme that runs through both Program and Christianity, but is perhaps best expressed in one of the sects of Buddhism.

Buddhism is a peculiar religion -- indeed, at its heart it's not a religion at all. Its aim, as it's generally understood in the West, is to attain nirvana -- the breaking of the continuous cycle of birth and death. Someone who has attained this is known as an arahat (the spelling varies). But there has long been a tradition in Buddhism that there are some enlightened beings who regard this desire for nirvana as selfish. Despite having attained enlightenment, therefore, they choose to return to this life again specifically to enable others to achieve the same enlightenment. They are known as bodhisattvas.

In Soto Zen, the notion of the bodhisattva is taken to its ultimate expression. Every adherent of Soto Zen is regarded as a bodhisattva, and follows the bodhisattva vow: Beings are numberless: I vow to save them. The bodhisattva vows not to attain nirvana herself until all beings have also achieved it.

Oddly, we do much the same in recovery. Step 12 teaches us that we must work with others -- that the only way to retain what we have is to give it unselfishly to others. Indeed, in a fundamental sense, that is recovery. It can only ever work for us if we devote ourselves at the most basic level to assisting others to recover.

So the bodhisattva vow is not some obscure eastern gibberish. It shows us that -- although we arrived in Program specifically to save ourselves -- we cannot attain that unless we work to save others as well. As a great teacher once put it, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."