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Drugs
Kruise
New
I was wondering what your thoughts are on psychedelic drugs being used in Buddhism? Some people have said LSD and stuff is what monks use but I really doubt it. I for one think from what I read that they are actually opposed because they alter the mind?
1
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LSD is like affecting the outermost layer of the onion. Your 'realization' is evaporated when you are no longer under the effects. So it is just a transitory experience.
Drugs cloud the mind.
Altering the mind so it is is clearer does not include drinking, taking drugs or dreaming.
Can I ask how old you are and if you have read any books on Buddhism?
Have some monks used drugs. Probably. But there is no evidence of which I am aware that it is anymore than the fringiest fringe.
I would agree mostly with what everyone has said, but I also think it's possible to jog the mind out of its patterns and possibly open it to new ways of thinking and seeing. I've known a few people who have done LSD or mushrooms and admitted that the way they look at the world, and life, altered from that experience (in a positive way). I wouldn't recommend doing it, and it's illegal mostly everywhere, but if someone wanted to try it once (safely; probably with a sober companion present), I wouldn't oppose that either. I think we can be too anti-drug on principle and discount any positive effects... though we don't have a problem with legal drugs that are beneficial, even with many possible negative side-effects.
Whenever I "come back" from my sitting meditation, I feel high.
If I can get high naturally, totally self-induced, and without ruining my body, why would I try drugs, whose promise of artificial paradises lasts a whiff?
There are people, in fact ancient cultures that take plants or drugs to induce alternate states of consciousness.
LSD is one such drug that can give the user the feeling that they connected to everything. Are they glimpsing reality? Maybe. I doubt monks in a general sense do drugs. Monks have more precepts than I have road rules!
The Peruvian ayahuasca ceremony induces altered states, and I've heard of Buddhists who do the ceremonies to see reality, or subconscious reality. When they recover they remember what they have seen.
It helps them in their path.
On the flip side I have met a 17 year old who had a bad trip on LSD. He is now permanently damaged as a result.
If you could do pure LSD in a lab in minor doses it could help you see what already exists. But you could also see a whole lot of other random hallucinations.
I'd say some religious groups use plants in ceremonies but LSD?
Better to be stoic in your resolve to understand reality without drugs. Then you can have access anytime. Plus it's cheaper
Yes, such experiences can give a useful glimpse of the possibilities.
I would just worry about people overdosing. It'd be like drinking too much alcohol, or rollin' on Ecstasy without hydrating. I don't consider drugs to be inherently bad, though I do consider them seldom skillful and easy pathways toward unwholesome ends. Someone that's never done LSD and doesn't get good information about it could easily take too much!
Speaking as someone who has had more drugs than most people have had hot dinners and is now permanently damaged as a result I would say drugs are pretty useless on the path. The experience of an LSD or Psilocybin trip evaporates just as rapidly as any samsaric phenomenon is fleeting and transitory and doesn't lead to any great insight. If you could buy enlightenment at £5 a pop the world would be full of Buddhas and it isn't. It does have plenty of acid casualties though. 'Nuff said.
In a nutshell? If it's illegal and synthetic, don't bother. We certainly neither condone nor recommend its use on this forum.
What you choose to do in the privacy of your own home, is up to you.
But in my opinion? Mind-altering drugs used for recreational purposes alone, are an idiot's pastime.
My Dad was a pharmacist. He had a saying:
"Drugs Are For Sick People"
Nowadays, we have to reconsider what we classify as a "drug". By a popular mandate, the people of Colorado voted to legalize Marijuana for recrational use. For us old hippies, it's probably the coolest thing since the invention or sliced bred. Because of that mandate, you can't really consider pot a drug - as in "illicite" drug. By law it's no different than alchohol and the laws regulating it are nearly identical. I can walk to my friendly, neighborhood pot shop, buy me an eighth of kind, walk home and enjoy!.
So, here, the question must be more along the lines of "intoxicants", and in the near fture this will spread to other states and even the federal government.
All that said, I've long maintained that being a Buddhist and having a beer, or a shot or a bong hit are fine. There's no evil inherent in any of them. Now, becoming dependant is another thing. I also maintain that practice is best approached "straight".
I also maintain that the guru's advice and instruction is important. My guru has never insstructed me to not use alchohol, or pot. I guess he thinks that, as an adult, I can make my own decisions about such things. In the absence of instrction, I'm left to my own devices. He's also instructed that precepts prohibiting the se of intoxicants are vows to be taken. No vows, no restriction. Once again, I get to decide for myself and to fail or succeed on that basis.
I was meaning just trying it out, but yes, there's always a risk of abuse and addiction.
Awareness/mindfulness/or an awakening** is** the intrinsic value of facing each nano moment for what it is.
Recreational drugs are an avoidance of facing what is.
Drugs and Buddhism are not historically linked at all, Indiginous peoples and their shamans often used plants in their rituals but it was not a big party scene on the weekends, they were used during ceremonies that might occur once a year or even longer.
The way drugs are used in general are to avoid and experience false relief from anxiety.
I also believe 'drugs' are neutral and only good or bad in context. To a young person or a new seeker of Buddhism, forget about using drugs to spice it up
. It's spicy enough already!
The Fifth Precept is pointed out by many to be a proscription against the use of drugs or anything that makes one 'heedless'. Lay Buddhists often use the first five Precepts as part of their vows of commitment to the Buddhist path.
If using drugs is part of your hopes and expectations for a religious path, there are paths out there that use them. I think most people who start off with the hopes of drug use will end up in rehab or a psych ward.
May I post a link to an article with a less traditional slant?
Take it with a grain of salt of course:
http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v06n1/06133spi.html
Thanks guys! I don't like drugs, weed was what cause my anxiety in the first place from what I remember but people say oh I get high and then meditate but personally I feel like meditation for a clear mind would be hard to do with a clouded one! (Extra cloudy I guess :P)
You're correct, the fifth precept clearly discourages the use of drugs and alcohol for the sole purpose of intoxication because it leads to carelessness.
As for my thoughts on it, it's common for people (especially younger people) to experiment with drugs, particularly those that produce what are (or at least feel like) spiritual experiences. I did it myself. But I also found that those experiences were ultimately fabricated, only lasting as long as the drugs did; and the wisdom I thought I gained was ephemeral. I've since found that ecstasy isn't the goal. In my opinion, alcohol and drugs can't cause true wisdom to arise, and are most likely a spiritual dead-end.
Weed was/is used by Chinese monks as it helped in meditations so realistically weed is aloud in the Buddhist society but it also depends on your view on drugs.
@Rj1998
Oh give us a break!
Justifying your actions by saying that someone else in a Buddhist robe might have done so, simply describes wishful thinking.
But
please provide your sources anyway.
@Rj1998, could you provide reference as to where it is 'aloud' in Buddhist society? This is probably going to be a cultural or social thing, and nothing to do with Buddhism at all....
The use of drugs is discouraged in the pansil. It is considered so important that even lay peoples are recommended not to take drugs.
But it is not forbidden of course. Just discouraged.
For most monks and nuns it is forbidden.
I say most because there are strange things under the sun but I have never heard of a temple or sect that allows drugs.
A drug experience is just a drug experience.
It's like having a cup of jasmine tea or a double espresso, a cigarette or a beer or a salmon and cream cheese bagel - they are all just experiences of one sort or another - it's not the path to enlightenment, it's an experience that one might regard as being enlightening as it is new or never-before-experienced, nothing more or less. But its the emphasis and meaning you attach to the experience that emotionally binds you to it and ay make you defensive.
So please go and enjoy your trip! It's your decision after all to do these things.
But please remember to set the sat nav for home when you have finished your mini consciousness voyage, as waking up in unknown territory can be rather alarming at times!
I'm done going down the rabbit hole. Now I am living in the hobbit hole