Buddhism and Drugs

explain...

 

You are the ruler of the kingdom of your own mind and your edicts are inviolate. It appears what has arisen came unbidden but all that you see has appeared because you looked for it. We will fiercely deny this point for a while because the victim is so attractive in it's call for sympathy. But this is only to depreciate the power of mind. When you finally accept your own virtue then you may share your good intent with the contentment of all hearts.

 

a mind enlightened by ANY path, has NO NEED of recreational substances.

they're just another material distraction.

 

A mind enlightened is simply one that can see what is height and depth, and breadth. An unenlightened mind has no more need than an enlightened one, unless it be for more light.

 

Depends on what kind of Buddhist you are. For the main part, drugs are considered bad as they are ties to the world. Remember the Four Noble Truths? Well, craving and desire are considered to be what causes suffering. So craving drugs of any sort would fall into these lines. Of course, there are many different forms of Buddhism.
Tantric Buddhism would say do as many drugs as possible, and feel as much worldly pleasure as you can. Many would say "take the middle way", as Buddha did. That is to find the middle ground between Asceticism and worldly pleasures. I guess a little weed wouldn't hurt.

 

Can you do drugs without attachment? Do you need them? Or are they merely an accessory that you can put down and pick up?

I've read in books about opening Chakra's that halucinigens can be a tool for opening the third eye. But that can be a double edged sword. You can use this tool and be completely unprepaired for what you see. What you see even in the everyday world is colored by your experiences and internal self. Sometimes halucinigens can be a mirror showing you your inner turmoil that you need to untie before you can achieve enlightenment. But you can do the same thing with intense deep meditation. You can be surrounded by people trapped in their own hell realms and see their hell and get sucked into it.

Drugs to me can be a tool like a hammer. With that hammer you can build a shrine or a gallows. You can use it with a chisel and create a sulpture or you can beat it against someones head and take a life. And it is all the same to the hammer.

Peace Out,
Rev J

 

Buddhism really has no "rules" so to speak.
It's not really an argument of Can I take drugs and be a buddhist, or can't I?
But rather Can I take drugs or will it be detrimental to what I'm trying to reach?

 

I'd like to know if there is anyone that thinks that drugs are perfectly compatible with buddhism, and DONT use drugs themselves.

I am a marijuana, and occasional hallucinogen user... However, I still believe that these things really don't work for me as far as my religion is concerned. They are just more things I cling to. In a perfect world, I wouldn't want to take these things... But I accept my imperfections right now, in hopes that I will someday gain the discipline taken not to cling to drugs.

 

Also,

I feel a little comforted by the fact that... I could be doing a lot worse, and not even TRYING to follow the tenents of compassion, and meditation, which many people have never even thought to do in their lives.

 

There is no try there is only do or not do. Granted we have to live in the world and make certain compromises. You cannot eat without killing. Nirvana is accepting Samsara. Struggle is the anticedent of enlightenment.

Peace Out,
Rev J

 

This is a very interesting quote.

 

A mind enlightened by ANY path must include the path of hallucinogenic substances, since it is a path. There are more uses for these tools than just for recreation.

 

I believe a lot depends on what drugs you are on and the state of mind you are in.
Smoking weed or tripping on shrooms is ok as far as I am concerned

 

Like I said earlier they can be a tool and should be viewed as such. You can get a taste of enlightenment with them or without them. The problem ensues when the tool becomes a wheelchair. Usually the term crutch is used in this saying but you can still throw down the crutch and hobble off which is kind of hard with a wheelchair.

The thing is that it isn't always a tool. You have to be very clear what the intent is when you take it. That is why it is wise to avoid using any absolute terms like Allways.

It seems like in our modern times we want everything fast from our meals to enlightenment. It is not a race. And the taste of enlightenment that one can get from drugs is fleeting. Ram Das talks about this in "Be Here Now" the fact that when he was on psychadelics he fealt enlightened but as the drugs were wearing off he could feel that enlightenment slipping away. When he finally met his guru he gave him what could only be described as a large dose of LSD and all that happened was that his guru "Twinkled".

So I smoke a little weed more for pain management than enlightenment. For me it works better than the painkillers and muscle relaxants that I would be given. I go to the chiropracter on a regular basis. These two things help prevent me from hobbling around like an old man. Occaisionally I'll have a quasi-mystical thought that will stick with me when the pot wears off. They're fun but not necessary. I can get to the same place by meditating. As long as you can get away from attachment to what you are doing then you should be fine.

Peace Out,
Rev J

 

Even the act of laughter, eating, the very ground beneath your toes alters the chemical makeup of the brain.

I was always under the impression that nirvana was never a permanent state of being, nor it is described as such. The act of living changes our state of being. No I do not believe you should smoke and meditate because it will only pull you from the void.

But only death will create a state of being which is not altered by our choices. No more tea leaves for me I guess.

 

welcome to the age of enlightment my good friends

 

Personally, I've done a lot of drugs, and they caused me more harm than good, so I can not, in good faith, recommend their use from personal experience. However, I am very aware of the fact that "Your mileage may vary," and I certainly will not judge or condemn anyone for doing the same thing that I have done so many times.

In fact, it may be possible, that had I just done LSD just a very few times, maybe even just once, I would have gotten more benefit than harm. It did, in fact, open my mind in many ways, but the "big picture" of my drug history is not pretty.

Things I've learned from two great teachers come to mind here. The first is Lama Ole Nydahl, to who's story I very much relate. (He went to Nepal to buy hashish, but somehow met the 16th Karmapa while he was there, who recognized him as a tulku, taught him the buddhadharma, and sent him back to Europe as a Lama, and a very changed man.) His statement was (to the best of my memory), that "drugs do not relive suffering, they only consolidate it." I find this to be the absolute truth. I always thought that the dope that I was shooting instantly relieved both my physical and mental pain, but it always came back later, with compound junk interest.

The second Teacher that I think of is Geshe Lama Sopa. At a talk, someone asked him why he didn't teach the "5th Precept," to abstain from intoxicants. He said that the 4 Precepts were more important, but that the 5th was really a "guard," to keep us from violating the other four. He then went on to tell the story of a monk who met a woman, who was leading a goat, and carrying a bottle. She ordered him to choose between killing the goat, having sex with her, or drinking what was in the bottle. Remembering his precepts, he drank the contents of the bottle, and got so drunk he then killed the goat, and had sex with the woman. (Had it been me, I probably would have killed the woman and had sex with the goat! )

I hope all of this is of benefit (or at least entertainment!) to someone.

 

Sometimes I have a hope that if i go out and smoke a joint, I could go far on meditation. All I get when I try this is a great fear, like if Satan would come any moment to bring my soul to hell, If my hand or foot is dead, if police will break the door and get me to jail, if some spider wil come and bite me if I don't pay attention to this, if I go far on meditation my mind will wander forever and I won't never be able to turn back or get crazy. This is not all bad, because I can see it through the dhamma, see the dellusion on it, and build up knowledge about my mind. But it messes the meditation of calmness. Instead of getting a calm mind, I get a storm of never-ending mental activity. Well, with this I can even see the stress of not achieving a calm mind. When is happens, I can really understand what it means to say that the mind is like a monkey jumping and running and crazyn all around, and the stress that it is to have no control of it.

I get numb all the day, and if I smoke a big one, it still for days. The shadows of a bad trip lasts for a long time, and it's a great suffering. One more thing that I saw. Sometimes, when it's a big one, I feel that hunger and walk around the kitchen looking for something nice to eat, and I go eating anyting I see, the whole day, with no peace, untill my belly hurts.

For all of this I can say that, for me at least, a joint is really full of stress and suffering, and this is so much stronger then the happiness it gives to me. It's not how I looked marijuana some time ago, when it looked like pure peace and happiness. Never tried other drugs, so I can't talk about them.

Drugs or wathever, it's all suffering. I think that the point is paying attention on the desire of getting stone, the impermanence of the trip, the desire again, going out to the guys to buy more and the fear of police, and stuff like this.

 

Frankly, I don't understand the need to NECROPOST this particular thread.

All it is accomplishing is nothing. No one is learning anything from it outside of stating why Buddhism SHOULD allow drugs when the precepts for establishing mindfulness eliminates the use of ANY intoxicants.

For the sake of not beating an already dead, rotted and decayed corpse, I'm closing this thread ...

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