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Psychedelics (long)
Simplify
Veteran
First I must apologize for bringing up an emotionally charged subject. I hope that we can discuss this topic skillfully and respectfully. The reason I bring up the subject is that from both my reading and experience, I have found that psychedelics may offer extraordinary insight into the true nature of what it means to be a human being. That said, a moment, a day - even a year of insight can be wasted if it is forgotten, the lesson ignored and your life unchanged.
My Own Experience
About 15 years ago I was 14. With the feeling of nothing to lose, me and my friends took a psychedelic together. My friends had what might be the stereotypical experience - heightened sensations, visual distortions and hallucinations, laughter, a sense of adventure etc.
Me, I saw my world stripped of all sorts of delusion. Yes, it was just a moment in time, but what struck me most was a distance that had grown between me and my mother, something common to teenagers. I realized the effect this had on her, and vowed to not ignore her so much. The result was a better, kinder relationship.
Since then I have been fascinated with psychedelics. I have done them a few times, but have spent many hours reading about them and reading about people's experiences.
One week ago I drank a mushroom tea. One hour later, I saw my life stripped of fear and desire. Can you imagine the tragedy I observed? The tragedy of living a live that is in total distraction, total delusion because of a mind that is constantly, randomly (without regard to reality) manipulated by fear and desire? This was not reading about fear and desire in some book, not even listening to a great teacher describe the effects of fear and desire - this was direct observation. Not only did I observe the tragedy, but I saw, directly, the solution: Awareness.
Awareness. Just see it. See what is. I knew that to end the tragedy, the catastrophe, I must simply become aware moment to moment, each moment of my life. Simple but not easy. It took me two days after that experience to find a Shambalah group and start meditating every day.
Now I don't care if I ever take a psychedelic again. What is important is reality, what is reality? Can I do my job each day without avoiding what's difficult, running to what's easy? Can I wash the dishes and keep my house clean? Can I simply be without the endless distraction of fear and desire? I believe (hope, guess) that meditation may be the key to a stable mind free of those distractions.
The Research
Research of psychedelics in humans ended in the 60's. Before then, this research was not done with proper controls, so any positive or negative psychological effects were for the most part anecdotal.
In 2006, the first modern study of the positive effects of psychedelics was published.
You can read the press release here: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press_releases/2006/07_11_06.html
You can read the paper here: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/GriffithsPsilocybin.pdf
You can read the 14 month follow up here: http://www.csp.org/psilocybin/Hopkins-CSP-Psilocybin2008.pdf
You can watch the lead author discuss the paper in layman's terms here: http://tedxmidatlantic.com/live/#RolandGriffiths
So what were the results?
* Most (67%) of the participants said the experience was either the single most or among the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives.
* Most (71%) of the participants said the experience was either the single most or among the top five most spiritually important experiences of their lives.
* Two months later there was a small but significant positive change in the participants behavior and attitude as rated both by the participant and the participants friends, family and colleagues.
* 14 Months later a follow up showed persisting positive changes, as well as similar views of the meaningfulness of the experience to the participants.
Denile of the Experience by Buddhists
The denile of the experience by Buddhists takes several forms.
Denile as part of our cultural/societal denile. Reefer madness anyone? Drugs are bad, mmmmkay? LSD destroys your chromosomes, right? Damages your brain right? Makes you psychotic right? Makes you kill people (often in horrible graphic ways such as dismemberment) right?
Denile as part of the 5th precept. This one could be tricky to discuss - what exactly did the Buddha mean when he said intoxicant? What teachings are there and what do they mean? Does it have any relevance if this entire class of drug was not available to the Buddha? (I'm nearly entirely ignorant on this one.)
Denile that a drug experience is a valid experience, because it involved a drug. I have trouble with this one - the brain is chemistry, all experience changes this chemistry, whether it is psychedelic or not.
Perhaps you have even more ways of denying the experience?
This denile does an injustice to the many people who have these experiences. It pushes them away from Buddhism, because they feel judged. It prevents Buddhists from helping these people incorporate the experience into their lives.
Well I'm starting to lose my essay structure and its becoming a bit of a ramble. But make sure you understand, I don't recommend that you use psychedelics! They are dangerous, and unlike cars there is no one certified to teach you how to use them.
My Own Experience
About 15 years ago I was 14. With the feeling of nothing to lose, me and my friends took a psychedelic together. My friends had what might be the stereotypical experience - heightened sensations, visual distortions and hallucinations, laughter, a sense of adventure etc.
Me, I saw my world stripped of all sorts of delusion. Yes, it was just a moment in time, but what struck me most was a distance that had grown between me and my mother, something common to teenagers. I realized the effect this had on her, and vowed to not ignore her so much. The result was a better, kinder relationship.
Since then I have been fascinated with psychedelics. I have done them a few times, but have spent many hours reading about them and reading about people's experiences.
One week ago I drank a mushroom tea. One hour later, I saw my life stripped of fear and desire. Can you imagine the tragedy I observed? The tragedy of living a live that is in total distraction, total delusion because of a mind that is constantly, randomly (without regard to reality) manipulated by fear and desire? This was not reading about fear and desire in some book, not even listening to a great teacher describe the effects of fear and desire - this was direct observation. Not only did I observe the tragedy, but I saw, directly, the solution: Awareness.
Awareness. Just see it. See what is. I knew that to end the tragedy, the catastrophe, I must simply become aware moment to moment, each moment of my life. Simple but not easy. It took me two days after that experience to find a Shambalah group and start meditating every day.
Now I don't care if I ever take a psychedelic again. What is important is reality, what is reality? Can I do my job each day without avoiding what's difficult, running to what's easy? Can I wash the dishes and keep my house clean? Can I simply be without the endless distraction of fear and desire? I believe (hope, guess) that meditation may be the key to a stable mind free of those distractions.
The Research
Research of psychedelics in humans ended in the 60's. Before then, this research was not done with proper controls, so any positive or negative psychological effects were for the most part anecdotal.
In 2006, the first modern study of the positive effects of psychedelics was published.
You can read the press release here: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press_releases/2006/07_11_06.html
You can read the paper here: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2006/GriffithsPsilocybin.pdf
You can read the 14 month follow up here: http://www.csp.org/psilocybin/Hopkins-CSP-Psilocybin2008.pdf
You can watch the lead author discuss the paper in layman's terms here: http://tedxmidatlantic.com/live/#RolandGriffiths
So what were the results?
* Most (67%) of the participants said the experience was either the single most or among the top five most meaningful experiences of their lives.
* Most (71%) of the participants said the experience was either the single most or among the top five most spiritually important experiences of their lives.
* Two months later there was a small but significant positive change in the participants behavior and attitude as rated both by the participant and the participants friends, family and colleagues.
* 14 Months later a follow up showed persisting positive changes, as well as similar views of the meaningfulness of the experience to the participants.
Denile of the Experience by Buddhists
The denile of the experience by Buddhists takes several forms.
Denile as part of our cultural/societal denile. Reefer madness anyone? Drugs are bad, mmmmkay? LSD destroys your chromosomes, right? Damages your brain right? Makes you psychotic right? Makes you kill people (often in horrible graphic ways such as dismemberment) right?
Denile as part of the 5th precept. This one could be tricky to discuss - what exactly did the Buddha mean when he said intoxicant? What teachings are there and what do they mean? Does it have any relevance if this entire class of drug was not available to the Buddha? (I'm nearly entirely ignorant on this one.)
Denile that a drug experience is a valid experience, because it involved a drug. I have trouble with this one - the brain is chemistry, all experience changes this chemistry, whether it is psychedelic or not.
Perhaps you have even more ways of denying the experience?
This denile does an injustice to the many people who have these experiences. It pushes them away from Buddhism, because they feel judged. It prevents Buddhists from helping these people incorporate the experience into their lives.
Well I'm starting to lose my essay structure and its becoming a bit of a ramble. But make sure you understand, I don't recommend that you use psychedelics! They are dangerous, and unlike cars there is no one certified to teach you how to use them.
0
Comments
Throughout history, drugs have been used to produce what some people call “religious experience,” and I am not going to deny that these can be useful for some people, at times. Often what these drugs do is to show you there isn’t just one way of looking at this world. Perspective can be a very magical tool, which extricates us from a real lack of imagination about what is possible, or frees us from a real dumbing down of life into practical drudgery.
But, what I know of the psychotropics (having experimented just a little many years ago), is that they merely give you a glimpse of what is possible. This may seemingly be a profound glimpse, but nevertheless it is still simply a glimpse.
The reason that your profound experience cannot be sustained in any real sense, and cannot be built upon, is because it doesn’t belong to you. You have no real understanding of what you have found, and that makes it difficult for you to build upon it.
The thing is that, you may end up after years of Buddhism rediscovering the same thing you saw one day with the use of drugs, but this time it will be you that has changed and not just your chemistry.
S9
Is that something that is happening, or something that you're afraid will happen to you?
Let me offer my own experience. I haven't taken drugs, but I have had "mystical" experiences. At the time, and for several years afterwards, I thought they were the most significant experiences of my life. Now I don't believe they had any significance at all.
The participants in the study were carefully screened. All of them engaged in some sort of spiritual activity. All of them were told by the primary monitor that the experience would increase personal insight. While the monitor avoided any mention of mystical experience, this reference to "personal insight" probably gave the participants expectations that were based on their spiritual beliefs and practices. When the drug created perceptions and experiences that were outside the ordinary, their beliefs gave them a framework for interpreting them. I have to wonder what their interpretations would have been like if they had used a different framework for interpretation. My interpretation of my experiences changed when the practice of Buddhism gave me a new framework for interpreting them. How would the experiences be interpreted by someone who use a completely non-religious, non-spiritual framework for interpretation?
I had a friend who took some LSD with completely non-spiritual expectations. He took the drug while he was doing laundry. He sat back in a chair and put his feet on the dryer...and became convinced that he would die if he took his feet off the dryer. So he spent the entire trip becoming increasingly cramped and uncomfortable because he was afraid to move his feet.
As a result of the screening, all of the participants were low on neuroticism on the Five Factor scale. This isn't neuroticism in the Freudian sense; it basically measures dissatisfaction with one's environment. Reformers tend to be high in neuroticism. It motivates them to try to change things. People with low neuroticism tend to trust their environment. The Buddha would probably have scored high in neuroticism prior to enlightenment. When someone says that "all things are marked by duhkha", it seems to indicate a high level of dissatisfaction with perceived reality. How would the results change if you screened out the people who were low in neuroticism and kept the people with high scores?
All in all, I think this is really about how social conditioning, personality, and expectations form frameworks for interpreting experience. As such, it doesn't tell us anything new, and it doesn't give us further insight into issues of interpretation. Further experiments with different types of people might give us some insight, if such experiments could be done ethically. (The screening seemed to be intended to weed out people prone to "bad trips". Changing the screening criteria might increase the risk of bad trips.)
In your case, you seem to have gotten a genuine insight from your mushroom tea experience. However, you also seem to have been primed to interpret the experience in certain ways. If you already had this framework in place, I'm inclined to believe that you would have had the insight eventually, without the drug. So I'm not sure that the drug was really necessary. From my own experience, I know that the intensity of mystical experiences creates a belief that they are important. It's difficult to experience something like that without being left with an impression of tremendous significance. However, I also know from my own experience that this impression of significance may evaporate with time and new understanding.
Even in our daily life, without any drugs or people outside of us framing our experience, every experience we take part in is framed (a paradigm) by what we presently hold to be true. I don’t believe that there is any way around this, do you?
Even when we sit down to meditate, what is possible can easily be framed by our expectations, even though we may not be aware of them, as they are not in the forefront of our minds. Why even sit, if you do not expect something?
And so it goes in this life of the mind, one dream bleeds into the next dream, in this chain of dreams, which we call our daily life.
S9
You summed it all up right there. Why do something dangerous, with unreliable results, when you can do it the right way and achieve something you can be certain of? You wouldn't have to ask if you knew it was the right way to go. I am not condemning you or anybody else, nor am I passing any judgment on psychedelics. I am simply telling you the truth. If you embrace the eightfold path in earnest, you will almost certainly have all the mystical experiences you need. Be patient.
I agree with you in this, that one of the biggest myths out there today is that enlightenment or liberation, when it is discovered, will be a little bit like the 4th of July, or all bells and whistles. That of course is just what the brain-mind would want, something amazing in a very showy and stimulating way, if not something ego enhancing.
With meditation, right from the beginning, it is all about cutting through this mental noise and looking for something far, more subtle or on the other side of thoughts.
S9
Palzang
QFT. These posts summed it up brilliantly.
Subjectivity9 - I agree with what you are saying.
RenGalskap- I agree about interpretation of experience, and I also agree with Subjectivity that this problem pervades all of life. I would go even further and say that this is one of the basic problems with being human, perhaps most tragically played out in the realm of politics. TheFound's post about his uncertainty about war portrays an honest attempt of an individual to find truth in a complex matter where knowledge is incomplete. Like him, when I try to find truth, perhaps any truth I end up seing both sides and comming to the conclusion that I simply don't know.
That said, if you go to www.shroomery.org (a psychedelic drug forum) and search for the phrase "ego death", it returns 9,920 comments people made that include the phrase. This refers to an experience where a person's self is no longer observed, the concept of self disolves, and the universe becomes one. Scientists who have studied this call it 'oceanic boundlessness'.
Even at lower doses where such complete anhileation of the ego does not occur, I have experienced my ego lessened to the point that I stop thinking from my own point of view. This is another common experience with psychedelics, seeing things from others point of view. I bleieve this occurs because durring the experience the ego is weakened. I believe my own recent experience was the result of a weakend ego - it's usual fear desire responses were dramaticly changed and my vision became more clear.
AriettaDolente - I completely agree with you but with one caveat: I believe the only reason I feel compeled to become more aware through meditation and follow a Buddhist (or Buddhist inspired) path is because durring the experience I directly percieved the importance of awareness, my total lack of it, and the cause of my lack of awareness (fear desire ego).
I cannot stress enough the difference between this kind of experience and reading a book describing this logically. Words totally fail, and that may be the greatest obstacle in these kinds of discussions.
dogs bollocks - It may be impossible to discuss the first part of your statement without some agreed upon critera for judging the validity of an experience - whether I'm hacking my mind with drugs or meditation
For the second part of your statement, I feel you misunderstand me. I am not after something to cherish - neither a psychedelic experience nor a teacher nor a book that contains insight. I am not even after insight! I am after awareness, motivated by insight (or perhaps motivated by delusion you decide
Cognitive research indicates that the brain has some sort of mechanism for identifying intentional agents; i.e. sentient beings who act intentionally. "I" am one such agent, and all the remaining agents are "other". Some research also indicates that the ego is associated with specific areas in the brain. So even without the testimony you cite, I would assume that there are drugs capable of suppressing the action of this mechanism or these areas, and either temporarily weakening or completely suppressing the ego. Furthermore, I've experienced what seemed to be the suppression of certain parts of cognitive functioning. So I honestly have no trouble believing you.
It seems to me that the research you linked to demonstrates only that psilocybin can be administered to a carefully screened group of test subjects under carefully controlled conditions without harm. It doesn't demonstrate a link between psilocybin and spirituality. Neither do 9,000 references to "ego death". What all this demonstrates is that psilocybin affects the brain powerfully, and some areas more than others. That's not exactly news. What you make of the experience is an entirely different matter. All the drug does is suppress part of the brain. Everything else comes from the activity of the parts that explain what is going on as it is happening. The mind doesn't know that part of its normal functioning is being suppressed, so it creates union with God or ego death as an explanation. Whether this is spiritual or not is up to you. It's a value judgment, not an inherent aspect of the experience.
It also seems to me that you're insecure about the fact that you've taken psilocybin, and you're trying to use this research report as a shield. Maybe there is reason for your insecurity; maybe you'll be attacked for taking psilocybin or your Buddhist cred will be questioned. If so, the report won't shield you. Research, even research that uses a questionnaire in which "oceanic boundlessness" is a category, can't make anything spiritual. And these are your decisions and your value judgments. Science doesn't absolve you of responsibility.
I don't care whether you've taken psilocybin or not. You are aware that you can't get what you want from an experience. You know that it comes only with self-discipline and practice. If you feel threatened or impeded by other people's opinions, I sincerely hope that this knowledge will help you overcome the impediment and keep you on the path.
this is a kaleidoscope.. this world of ours.... Buddha Gotama*,
I'm sure was aware of the many different angles....the different blends.
Think of what you are saying ...it's just a different BLEND of the same colors...
it is not special, just rare or FRESH...
but the truth remains the same it's universal i ....perhaps...believe...:crazy:
Ah how I wish I could communicate more clearly. To be clear, the only experiences that I have had that are close to spiritual have been contemplating the existence of the universe and contemplating the existence of consciousness, while sober ( actually I was about six years old so I don't know if that counts as sober
I suppose the study is in many ways irrelevant to the discussion, and simply becomes a distraction. One of the reasons I included it is for the same reason that you dismiss it - it shows that what happens during the experience is not simply random or chaotic, but depends on your mindset, your environment and the dose of the drug. This is an attribute if one intends to use the drug with skill.
I brought up ego death because it seems to have direct relevance for Buddhists. Here is perhaps my core question/statement, and everything else seems to have been quite a distraction: Buddhist read about ego dissolution in books, why not obtain a better description from a drug?
Please, simply take what I wrote about my own experience at face value. There's nothing about spirituality, god or science in there.
Ok I'm gonna try out a word I don't really understand here, but think you'll get what I mean...
Is there nothing of samsara that points to non samsara?
Why not from meditation? A drug deludes you into thinking you're experiencing something (i.e. it is altering the chemical in your brain), whether you're prepared or not, and with no ability to gain any true insight or benefit from it. Meditation leads to a clear mind (i.e. you're truly stripping all of the processes away and experiencing true nature, with a clear mind, not a drugged mind), that experiences these things as it's ready, and with the clarity and framework to benefit from it.
It's not very helpful if you have to access this state with a drug.
Life is like jumping into the water where there are leaches (or ignorance) all about. These leaches will no doubt soon attach them selves to you (because that is their nature/the nature of mind) and suck out your very lifeblood, (AKA suffering).
Now you might very well take a drug, like LSD, and spend the whole day (life) noticing how pretty these leaches were, and even spend many hours being amused by them; but when you finally came down to a natural state and started once again to live practically and in a more healthy fashion, you would still need to peel these little leaches (ignorance) off of you, one by one.
S9
I don't dismiss the study. I think the study authors are claiming that the study is more significant than it actually is.
I've read research that indicates that there is a process in the mind responsible for tracking what is self and what is other. This process is ego. This process isn't necessary for life support, and there are many activities that humans engage in every day that don't need this process. So it's possible for this process to shut down, and possible that shutting down is a normal occurrence.
I've read other research that indicates that this process occurs in specific areas of the brain. That means we can put a person in one of those cutting edge brain scan thingies (I've forgotten the name) and see whether or not the areas of the brain involved with ego shut down or not. Some researcher has done that, and the ego parts of the brain do indeed reduce their activity when they're not needed.
Furthermore, long before there were any scientific studies of ego, Buddhist teachers were pointing out that the ego process isn't necessary for every human activity, and have been pointing out that it does stop or slow down its functioning.
"Ego death" is an unfortunate term, but there is clearly something along the lines of ego-sleep or ego-idle. It's not surprising that it can be induced by a drug. We know that some drugs can inhibit specific areas of the brain. You ask why not take a drug to induce ego-idle. From your description and the descriptions in the follow up study you linked to, it appears that the primary difference between normal everyday ego-idle and drug induced ego-idle is emotional intensity. So when you ask "why not obtain a better description from a drug?", it appears to me that you are interpreting emotional intensity as a better description. It is true that we remember emotionally intense experiences better than neutral ones, but it seems to me that what is being remembered are the thoughts directly connected to the emotions. It's not clear to me that these are the most valuable parts of the experience. I'm not sure that the drug results in a better description of ego-idle.*
When you ask me why I don't take a drug to get a better description, you are valorizing experience (another poster called it "cherishing"). You are asking my why I don't add this experience or this description to my store of knowledge. Buddhism is about subtracting, not adding. The Buddha taught that duhkha is caused by beliefs and actions. We bring duhkha to an end by stopping these beliefs and actions. We never stop having experiences, and one experience isn't intrinsically more valuable than another. If there is an experience that is valuable, it is the experience of practicing Buddhism day after day, moment by moment, with all the boredom and repeated suffering and the embarrassment of making the same mistakes over and over. Short, emotionally intense experiences are entertaining, and they may even trigger a breakthrough if they follow a long period of practice. But in and of themselves, they don't offer much.
A significant part of your first, long post was devoted to the research report. A point that the authors of the report highlighted and that you emphasized was that a majority of the participants rated the drug experience as one of the five most important spiritual experiences of their life. I agree that there was nothing about spirituality or science in your description of your experience, and I agree that the report was probably a distraction. But you did go through a lot of trouble to create a connection in your readers' minds between the report and your experience. If you think that referring to the report is making it harder to communicate, we can stop referring to the report. :-)
* Is there a drug that causes eric-idle?
i've tried cannabis occasionally and a few times had amazingly insightful experiences with it, particularly when combined with fish oil.
when i've been on a 'visionary' trip i tried to write down all of my insights so that i could review them later with my sober mind. and yes, some of the information appears close to nonsensical, but some is incredibly useful and has given me months' worth of material to work on with my everyday self. other, more powerful, insights were so arresting that there was no need to write them down, and the doors they have opened still remain open, thank vishnu.
i also realised as you did that when on a trip i was getting a special preview into reality, and that when i came back to 'normalcy' i would have to work hard on reflection, training and meditation if i wanted to make those realities truly mine. i certainly wish that i had had a timothy leary or a robert anton wilson standing by to council me about this stuff, but even so i've been able to develop a rudimentary 'road guide' necessary to help navigate these realities on my own.
furthermore, these trips also helped me realise that i could in effect create the framework of own religion... as well as helping me to perceive commonalities in all religious systems, allowing me to drink from their fountains without prejudice and without fear of 'falling in'. the fact is i had already had these realisations many years before on a rationalistic level, but the trips brought in the psychological component that was missing in order to make my aim a reality.
other than cannabis i have little experience with psychoactives and a more than healthy fear of their abuse, but it gives me a level of confidence that mankind under proper settings has been successfully and beneficially using psychoactives for tens of thousands of years or more. dunno what to say about the ridiculous age we live in now when it comes to the ban on hemp, but that's another story...
How come nobody answered this question ? ? ?
Palzang
Absolutely everything in Samsara points to Nirvana.
(((EVERYTHING)))
It is so obvious, that when you finally see this, you may laugh out loud. Many great masters have done just that.
: ^ )
But in the beginning, we do not realize what we are looking at; our minds are clouded and we cannot see the sun.
Buddhism is an excellent way of brushing these clouds away.
Be glad of heart. Just beginning to question, like you are, is your guarantee of success. It is the first sign that you are beginning to wake up.
S9
There are vast pros and cons for psychedelics, but at the end of the day it boils down to the fact that they are drugs. You can attain peace of mind and reach enlightenment without such a thing, using drugs is an attachment, a weakness. Although psychedelics are not considered physically addictive. I spent many days on LSD, many interesting days, but I am glad to have moved away from it now and on the path according to the dharma
There comes a time, I believe, in everyone’s life, when they feel that life, as they are presently living it, simply isn’t enough, or isn’t satisfying. When this happens, it is only sensible to look for some kind of solution, don’t you think? So next we see them more frantically running around, and trying/trying stuff. This is a way of self medicating or healing our life.
I think that people who use LSD are looking for a QUICK fix. I did it.
I think also we expect a drastic change of some sort. (I think too, when we are young, it seems like what is missing is excitement.)
What most of us finally come to realize is, “Anything that appears to come is the same something that will eventually appear to go.”
What we are actually looking for is, something that never comes, and consequently never goes, but at the same time is wholly satisfying. It must be something that is entirely intrinsic to who or whatever we are, or it will just be one more passing pleasure. In other words, is cannot be owned as in something separate from ourselves, but more than likely will end up being something rediscovered.
S9
Having said that:
i) It's never about coming up, its about how you come down. I.e. what you download is the important thing.
ii) I've become totally convinced that experiences of at least equal if not more profundity and power can be achieved by habitual, consistent, persistent meditation.
I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I personally thought that LSD, etc. were party drugs.
I am fully aware that they have been used well, to facilitate a journey in the spiritual.
But, although they may give you a glimpse beyond what you have habitually thought was available too you, they are not a savior, and will not do it for you.
(So, I am thinking that, believing that they will do it for you; is similar to wanting a quick fix, as in fix your life, fix you, etc.)
S9
All meaningful realizations happen in a deep state of meditation where the meditator has shut down all his or her physical sense consciousnesses. Proper meditation is purely a mental event.
Taking drugs and seeing through some conceptual fabrications such as meaningless resentments towards people or other such gross conceptualizations is a fruit of good karma, as opposed to others who freak out and become distressed. However, seeing through conceptuality is a thing we should be able to do even outside of meditation through our serious contemplation of various topics such as the meaningless of the 8 worldly concerns renunciation etc, and is a far cry away from what can happen in meditation.
i have a level of fear and physical pain that is my current meditation barrier, and in fact weed only made the physical pain more intense. but in terms of the fear, distractions and ruminating thoughts that typically visit my meditation, weed had a fairly remarkable effect-
that is, as soon as i concentrated on those distractions and sought to release them, they would quickly disintegrate like quick-thawing icicles. it was like magic. i also got a small glimpse into what would be possible if i was to work my way through the present barrier of fear and pain, and it was wonderful. but it was also clear to me that i needed to do this through regular, ordinary practice, not with psychoactives involved.
What I found to be the case with grass is that, it gives people patience and makes things seem more interesting.
(Some people find that it calms them down, and helps them with anxiety.)
I have a friend who made it through University for a Masters, with a 4.0 average, because he stayed stoned. He was a person with a very high intelligence, who had trouble putting up with any lack of stimulation. After a while, this lack of stimulation would wear him down.
But after many years of smoking it, he just stopped one day, didn’t need it anymore. He said, “Like a teacher, it had taught him what he needed to know in that area of patience, and enjoyment of the moment.” He simply out grew it.
He is a very advanced mystic, today.
I tried grass again after advancing on the path, myself, just to see its effect. Strange thing was, instead of making me high, or adding qualityto my moment, it brought me down to a lesser experience. So, I guess that I too, had out grown it. : ^ )
S9
A deluded human such as myself, reading a book - this is samsara right?
But the book may still point to something that is not samsara? Something beyond samsara?
And reading a book, isn't that 'just another experience'. What about going to a sangha, chanting, meditating - how can they escape being experiences?
I believe there is a catch 22 here that is a real obstacle. If you don't experience what I experience, how could you possibly know anything about that experience? Even if you've used psychedelics, it's unlikely that you've experienced what I've experienced. For example, shamans use psychedelics to go to the astral plane and contact spirits. Now even though I've used psychedelics, I've never gone to the astral plane or encountered spirits. I guess I could dismiss the shamans simply because I haven't experienced what they have, but personally that general approach to life seems to just close doors and shut down possibilities.
What if my experience is that a psychedelic stops conceptualization?
And then, what if that psychedelic experience causes a great motivation to change oneself, to become more aware, obviously knowing that one can't take a psychedelic 24 hours a day this leads to the only thing he has encountered that bears any resemblance to this experience - meditation? Not seeking experience, in fact the exact opposite, having had an experience realizing that the seeking of experience causes all sorts problems?
I guess this here naturally raises the question of whether seeking to not seek can be free of seeking (and I'm sure someone smarter than me, thousands of years ago wrote an entire book about this subject and I'm just too lazy to read it).
Which would be similar to this question - is there any good conceptualizing about not conceptualizing?
Not an intellectual understanding. The only thing I can say is that your shield, your defenses, your resistance dissolves. Immediately after it dissolves, life becomes more real, both the beauty and goodness of the things you had taken for granted and also the tragedy of being unaware.
Now say you had come to period where you had stopped daily meditation, that is, you had forgotten why you had started meditating. This is when I would push that button, not to escape from anything but actually the complete opposite, to be confronted with what you had been trying to escape, to remember.
And it turns out, for me, it is very difficult to press that button, because it is so comfortable in a way to be lazy, to be ignorant, to not face the facts of what is.
Aha, OK, I hear you. How can we ever know that our experience is like others' experiences, right? How do you know that what we perceive as "red", for example, is the way others perceive "red"? I guess we can never know for sure (unless you happen upon a wormhole that lets you inside somebody else's head, like in the movie "Being John Malkovich"!). But I think we have to assume that sentient beings are all pretty much the same. We have the same basic aspirations and desires, though externally we may pursue those in very different ways.
It's true that when you're hearing teachings, reading Dharma books, chanting, practicing, meditating, you're still in samsara. Can't avoid that, that's where we are. But like you say, the book or the practice or the meditation can point beyond samsara. It's also possible that mystical experiences, like shamans may experience, can also do that. We can become aware of mind states beyond the narrow confines where our minds usually dwell. That's very true.
When the Buddha first attained enlightenment, he felt that, while it was wonderful what he had discovered, there was no way to communicate this to others who hadn't made the same discovery. But then the ascetics who had been his companions during the period when he had tried asceticism came to him, knowing that something wonderful had happened, and implored him to teach them so that they too might attain the same state. He was moved by their appeals, and he felt he had to at least try to teach them, so he gave what we now call the first turning of the Wheel of Dharma, or the Four Noble Truths, which was a brilliant summation of the path he himself had walked and the discovery he had made about the nature and cause of suffering. By phrasing the teaching in a way that an ordinary sentient being could understand, he could give them an intimation of the truth even though he couldn't give them the experience. And from there, of course, he gave many more teachings that more fully developed the Way that is now practiced and that has resulted in the liberation of countless beings. So even though we are sentient beings caught in the endless cycle of samsara, we can get an intimation of something beyond from the teachings and practices of the Dharma and thus we can find our way out using these guides.
Does that help? I hope I was on the right wavelength there.
Palzang
A fullblown realization doesn't rely even on a mental image, it is direct contact with the chosen object using bare awareness. It can only happen when there is perfect concentration.
Now the goal of buddhism quite early on is to maintain a concentrated state of realization throughout the day using sophisticated mental images produced by initial realizations. This requires a lot of hard work and analysis. A person might use drugs to begin to do this or to begin to gain conviction in the possibility for it, but they must eventually be dispensed with and replaced by intense study so that a person can sustain enough critical analysis to produce the constant change of bad habits into merit. This merit produces the good qualities in a person that allows for fullblown realization, permanent cessation of negativity.
How much of this meditation related stuff (as opposed to the Buddhist mythology, history non meditation related stuff) is ineffable? In my search for trying to understand what it's all about I am finding two obstacles: 1. The topic is extraordinarily complex, the amount of information to be understood seems to be on par with say an undergraduate degree in engineering. 2. Much of what is written is not obviously intuitive, (another way of saying I just don't understand it I guess).
Palzang
interesting...
i've found that weed, particularly in combination with fish oil, reveals all kinds of details and realities that exist all around us, but that due to our long-time societal training we tend to reflexively ignore them below the conscious level. or another way of proposing it is that weed lowers the traditional 'water level' between our conscious and unconscious. during this period we have a fascinating chance to look at the normally-submerged 'lifeforms' of our buried mind and examine them... with all the potential fruits that that activity can entail.
i understand about your friend and i've indeed heard of people 'outgrowing' weed. i guess that will be fine if it happens to me, particularly since all the same insights that can be made with a psychotropic can be made in other ways, such as via meditation.
i would also like to meet an advanced mystic one day when i'm able to share in the experience of their beautifully still and open mind. not when i'm a brain-eating psychic zombie so much, but when i'm a more pain-free and self-actualised person.
Palzang have you ever read Krishnamurti?
Although he never seemed to identify himself as a buddhist, he seemed to get it in the same way, except he was very critical of any type of 'process' which is time dependent. He thought that time dependency was one of the bigger traps, and he often said something along the lines of, "why give people another problem (having to meditate everyday, study difficult subjects, etc)?"
He never gave a method, I don't think he even suggested meditation, he simply said that one had to look with great focus and intent at themselves, and to ask the right questions.
As a seeker, this question about a process is kind of unresolved to me, even though my bias is to favor the buddhist process approach (which if anyone is curious I found this link to be the best overview http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/index.html). Kind of like thesis and antithesis, stuck in cognitive dissonance without any synthesis.
This may seem like a silly statement to you on first hearing it. But, very often we have to give ourselves permission to enjoy life, to improve our situation, or even to like our selves.
When we cannot do this spontaneously for our selves, than we will take some grass, partake in a ritual, or even go to a guru and ask for this permission to do so.
We will tell our selves that either grass, or the ritual, or even the guru is doing it for us. This is exactly how the placebo effect works/acts. But, when we do these things, what actually takes place is that we give our selves permission to be worthy, to be healed, or any number of things. Intension is a powerful tool.
We do not really think that we deserve to be happy, or at least we secretly fear that we do not.
Now, I am not saying that therefore we should skip the step of either grass, or ritual, or even the guru, not yet. But, I do say that, we should keep our eyes wide open, so that when the time is right, we will move into the driver’s seat and realize that what we are gaining is actually only within our own capacities to give to our selves, and that these are simply being revealed, or not obstructed any longer.
In the end, every man is his own savior; because we are at some level, exactly what we are looking for.
Chew on that, ; ^ )
S9
I have, though it was a long time ago. I like his way of looking at things. Funny you should mention time dependency as the video teaching we had tonight at the temple (an old teaching by Jetsunma) talked about just that, among other things. She also talked about the Buddhist view of rebirth, compassion, emptiness, and other basic concepts. I'd highly recommend it. You can watch it (and many other teachings) here. Free. As many times as you want. We also do a live webcast of a new teaching (well, usually videos, so not new new) every Thursday at 6:30 Eastern time and Sunday at 2:00 PM (also Eastern time, coincidentally). I think this particular teaching would be a good one for people to watch who are confused about this important basic concepts. Please excuse the poor image and sound quality - it's from '92 before we had fancy sound and video equipment. Also please excuse the misspelling of the title of the talk! It's done on the fly...
I also have an anti-authoritarian outlook, 5B, believe it or not. Just because someone is a lama or whatever doesn't mean I automatically believe them. They have to earn the trust.
Palzang
I just watched that video last week, and its what probably inspired me to write what I did
I should have been more clear with the word meditation. The video actually seems to mirror my uncertainty about any kind of process - Krishnamurti is very critical of a time dependent process, about following some method or process. Chogyam does not seem to answer this criticism, however Chogyam's books and life's work was all about creating a process for people to follow.
The whole conversation between the two seems quite odd - Krishnamurthi begins by talking at great length for nearly 30 minutes, and Chogyam is simply silent, and his first answer is just a single sentence.
Not when it comes to Buddhist cosmology
It's good that you're not relying on credentials, but you're still putting them in a position of authority, just now you're claiming it's on the basis of personal trust. You don't verify their assertions, because you can't.
anyway, wonderful reply thrown into my gut. thanks for that. since that reply i've been making my semi-annual big push at accepting myself for who i am, but it's hard work as usual. one little insight i had this past week is to embrace my limitations and recognise in them the actual gifts that they are and what they reveal about the nature of life and existence.
ahem.
Palzang
I don't just blindly accept everything that they teach. That is not how it works. You listen to the teachings with an open mind. Then it is up to the student to process the teachings and accomplish them. You don't just swallow it and say, OK, that must be the way things are. If you do that, you're just stupid.
Palzang
Everything happens at the exact right time. I understand this. : ^ )
Here is a little trick your might want to try, from time to time. I have used this to some advantage.
Pretend in your mind that Gigantes is not you at/all.
(Actually he is not, you will come to see this, but that is beside the point.)
See Gigantes rather as a very young child, who you have been sent (maybe from another dimension) to watch over, and to help, and to love. This might give you some perspective on this little animal, Gigantes, who is doing the best that he can.
Ego sometimes gets too big for his birches, and insists on being perfect or overly judgmental. But, if this little kid is not you, than you can give him a break. You might in this way start to see the good and likeable things about this kid.
Yes, often what may appear like a failing at first sight, over time reveals itself to be a blessing.
I have a friend who couldn’t work well. Work wasn’t stimulating enough for him. He just kept quitting every job. This forced him to use his intelligence in a new way, and now he is a near millionaire in the market, (Wall Street). You just never know!
Most of the people who end up getting enlightened were people who were pushed really hard, by who they were naturally, to do this. You know that wasn’t comfortable at first, because most times we start off with fighting our selves. Tao says "Go with the flow." "Who you are, is your destiny."
I’m always glad to hear from you. However, it is not a good idea to make me into a “should,” my friend. Should is just another word for suffering. Find a way to make everything a "want to," and life will be way lighter.
Life is a dance,
S9
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