Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Did the Buddha Use Drugs?
I KNOW this sounds like a REALLY stupid question, but bear with me for a minute. I had this friend of mine who I talked to who told me that the usage of Salvia Divinorum was the 'key' to enlightenment. I know that shamans use it to see visions and that sort of thing, but he also told me that the Buddha gave his followers a hallucinogen of some kind...and that he refers to it in a Sutra? Tear of something. I can't quite remember, and I spent a great deal of time trying to find it in my IM archive. I have a feeling my friend is a little 'off' to say that, especially because within Buddhism since drugs are a no-no.
0
Comments
DMT and Ayahuasca brew are still intoxicants, but can induce realizations on life, yet it would not bring you to enlightenment, even LSD can induce major realization, but you cannot buy enlightenment at £5 a drop.
The buddha created 5 precepts for us lay people, and many more for the mosaic people, both include to prevent oneself from becoming intoxicated.
Maybe the prince indulged in drugs of his time before fleeing his wealthy and famous life, but surely after that no!
Many people who I have come across before I was a buddhist and was into things like LSD MDMA etc, were actually quite spiritual people, yet they were not buddhists. It is true that when you take something like LSD, your brain functions differently you look at life (non physical sense) in many different ways. This is how the intellectual user would use it whilst enjoying the hallucinations. Yet some people like the pretty colours and that is about it.
Alas, no enlightenment and even more so with salvia, salvia is pretty lame
I think your friend is simply justifying his own use of intoxicants, and grasping at nonexistent straws to do so.
Metta to all sentient beings
Then I lost my train of thought and the popcorn built a light bridge to the chair.
If any drug is going to bring about revelations it would be DMT. I experienced pure ego death whilst in the throes of a trip.
When he runs out of marijuana, I suppose he is "jonesing for enlightenment", because he certainly seems motivated to "practice".
Although this jonesing seems to run rampant with users and non-users.
You don’t need a needle to go ‘’high’’ and at the same time to be addicted to your body producing those molecules.
Soma may have been it! I just remember it being the leaves of some plant...? I know that a Blue Lotus (not the regular ones, but the ones found in Egypt/on the Nile) had hallucinogenic properties (because I was trying to find what the Buddha could've possibly had to give his followers...It just sounded...very improbable to me, and he seemed to have a 'Dharma Bum' approach to it.
ever hear of the story where ram dass gives his guru a large dose of lsd?
fun stuff.
interesting, thank you!
btw if anyone is interested check out, "Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics". It is a hard book to find but it has interviews from contemporary Buddhist monks/scholars on drugs and buddhism. It gives both a positive and negative outlook on drug use.
it is very interesting to research considering most people don't like to talk about this kind of stuff. it's very hush hush and for the right reasons.
I think the Buddha did NOT give people drugs, he stuck to his 5 precepts and recommended them. But I think he would say that if you're going to take drugs, follow the 4 precepts too.
And I think salvia is a dangerous thing to mess around with. The first time I took it my friend pee'd his pants and I felt like I couldn't stand on my two feet or get off the floor and it was horrifying.
Totally don't recommend it.
Life, Suffering, Death.
0.) I think it is most likely that the Buddha did not use drugs, since none are mentioned and one who has attained nirvana probably does not need them.
1.) The Fifth Precept forbids use of alcohol specifically - not any drug. As the Buddha was most likely aware of cannabis and soma use, this seems significant to me.
2.) "Intoxicated" means something like "poisoned", if you look at the root words, and refers mostly to alcohol as well. I feel it is an inappropriate term for those who are under the influence of certain other drugs, which put one in a mental state entirely different from the sick heedlessness of drunkenness.
The fifth precept discourages use of intoxicating substances, not drink, specifically. or uniquely.
But "a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest" as someone famously sang....
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sila/pancasila.html
If so, a drug could produce it. If not, it can’t.
Another question is how some enlightenment-experience relates to enlightenment.
I mean; where is enlightenment when the twenty minutes on the drug are over.
If the chemistry in our brain produces enlightenment; does our liver break enlightenment down?
The attempts to answer those questions would take us off topic.
It would be about the nature of enlightenment.
Damn straight, well that or lsd. But the brews made from DMT by shamens is used a lot even in this day and age. However, it is not the path of the buddha and has no place in buddhism. I had my fun with these kind of drugs, shrooms, DMT, LSD etc, they are the less harmful of all illegal drugs IMO, but they are still intoxicants and violate a precept.
I was once with a friend who had little experience with LSD, I took 6 pure drops ad he had 2. He in fact lost his ego and had a really crazy time. I was worried he wold never return to normal and then he decided to go home and scare his mother at the state he was in. He thought light was the answer to everything and started ripping light bulbs out of their sockets!
i have heard that enlightenment brings the end to the "unconscious" mind. thus the end to prior conditioning. thus pure, clear awareness in the present moment.
it is possible that drugs can prevent an individual's "conditioning" from asserting itself. i would assert that drugs momentarily stop conditioning and magnify the present moment and awareness. but at the same time it can magnify the unconscious mind, which could bring terrible effects. thus with lsd you have good and bad trips all based on the state of mind.
how people take drugs now verse how they took them hundreds and thousands of years ago is quite different. well i am speaking about america, but there are still places where they do rituals and seriously prepare for the drug use. thus setting up the right mind set and environment. again you set up the soil and water the soil for the plants to grow. the subject has a greater change to have a religious or spiritual experience that can benefit his/her spiritual path. this sure as hell beats kids buying lsd for 10 dollars and dancing at a rave.
drug use is dangerous and highly unpredictable. maybe in the future, they may do studies how drugs correlate with spirituality. maybe potentially motivating individuals by giving them an induced satori experience. though i can see how many people will be pissed off by this notion. and i can see how many people will be addicted to the mcdonalds spirituality.
interesting subject nevertheless.
The 21 century technology came up with much better but still superficial techniques to induce ‘nirvana’, orgasm or high.
You need few electrodes connected to your brain and a bit of electricity..
You don’t even need to mess up your metabolism with chemical substances.
So what????
Is not whole Buddhism about developing pure qualities in the human being? /without hardware and software of our body/?
I can see the future.
We will all have electrodes implanted and a computer chip. And the real horror is that we want them. This device is programmed to keep us on the eightfold path and will supply our brain with sufficient bliss and ecstasy.
We will smile like Buddha all day.
God help us!
:hair:
drugs are terrible for you body/mind and can be highly addictive. the higher you go the harder you fall.
i don't think the buddha wanted people get caught up in drugs or really anything for that matter. even jhanas can be like drugs in the sense that they create a shit ton of bliss.
my question is: what does buddhism say about the "supposedly" spiritual experience "fabricated" by drug use.
can it be beneficial? or is it just a hinderance? are they not worth peoples time?
for example, i would like people who have terminal illnesses to try these drugs in a safe environment. from some studies that i have read, these people had life changing experiences and felt a closure in their coming up death. though it is a "fabricated" experience, can't drugs be beneficial to those in "certain" circumstances?
or is this talk too radical? are people stuck on the notion that all drugs are bad and they should all be wiped from the planet? i for one see the potential in both aspects. drugs can be helpful and they can be harmful. it all depends on circumstance and variables.
but maybe this is off topic.
Same goes for stealing, running red lights etc etc
If you want enlightenment, sorry it is not sold in bottles in the corner shop, and that should not be the mindset you have if you are a practicing buddhist. Compassion, meditation and the basics such as the 8 fold path, precepts and 4 noble truths are where you should be
- Psychotropic medications for people with mental illnesses are good, I think.
- Apparently people who’ve been through a near-death experience feel a lot more relaxed about dying some day. What’s wrong with treating people with extreme fear of death? What if we can kick them through the tunnel towards the light on a pill?
- Sometimes I think that meditation should be taught at schools. People should learn to deal with their emotions, and parents are often no good teachers or don’t know how to deal with their own emotions in the first place.
Could we use some drugs to speed up the learning process?
No, I think I’ll vote for old-fashioned meditation.
Firstly; it’s not that I have big problems with people taking drugs.
Addiction is a problem. Having fun is, fine.
Secondly I would say that as a rule the way to go is to learn to deal with emotions; not to suppress them or change them into something more pleasant.
Meditation is about facing the problem.
Sun face Buddha. Moon face Buddha.
The anger, the grief, the pain; we learn to stay with them. Our resistance falls down. Inner conflicts dissolve. We grow.
I really don’t think that this process of growing up (mentally and spiritually) can be replaced with a chemical substance.
If one gets attached to Meditation (for escapism), your progress will probably stop. If one have to use chemical aids to the brain, where is your practice going to go?
If your mind abides in things you like or reject, your mind is trapped. If one thinks doing drugs is just for "cultivation" and not because you like the feeling of escapism, thats simply a delusion.
However, right now, if there was a vile of LSD or some DMT in front of me, maybe even 8-10 ecstasy pills, they would be gone! TRAPPED
In fact I think taking drugs result in the opposite of insight, Lets face facts here, drugs can screw your life up, I have old high-school friends who are now dead because of drugs. So the best option is to stay well clear of them IMO.
The only reason people take drugs is because they are unhappy with something about their life and feel the need to find a solution to escape this unhappiness. Hence, unfortunately a lot of people feel drugs are the solution. In the short term this might seem to be the case for a person, however, the majority of the time the drugs them self become the problem and no matter what a persons original problem was the consequence of drug use is worse. Best left alone IMO.
Metta to all sentient beings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_drug_theory
Metta to all sentient beings
My experiences with psilocibe mushrooms gave me a taste of what the human mind is capable of, and opened the "doors of perception." I choose not to regret my past because it has helped shape the person I am today. But, I can make the conscious decision now to live up to the noble, ethical, and virtuous behavior perscribed by the Dharma in a real attempt at unraveling the mysteries of life, death, and suffering.
Nothing outside of ourselves can liberate us. We must do it alone.
Speaking as someone who has only recently scratched the surface of Buddha's teaching and as someone who in the past has taken more drugs than people have had hot dinners as we say in the north of England (including occasionally sampling the harder ones), I don't think there much use really, I've taken a lot of Psychedelics and had some profoundly spiritual experiences but I think they only open the door and eventually even those spiritual experiences gained from drugs become another form of sense gratification in the end, or at least they did for me. Eventually drugs led me into some very dark places that I have only just realised that the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha can liberate me from.
Again if a drug can help you achieve a stable state of mind and promote the eight fold path then in theory it would be helpful. At least if you use drugs try to form a relationship with them that is conducive to your overall goals of your awareness practice.
And note that the precepts generally discourage drugs. But each path is different and many are winding.