"The goal, cannot be stressed too often, is not religious experiences: it is the religious life. And with respect to the latter, psychedelic theophanies can abhort a quest as readily as, perhaps more readily than, they further it."
-- Huston Smith Forgotten Truth
RF: There is a story about a Buddhist master who was asked if you could use drugs to attain enlightenment. He said, "I sure hope so." And when Zen Master Soeng Sahn was asked what he thought about using drugs to help in the quest for self knowledge he said: "Yes, there there are special medicines, which, if taken with the proper attitude, can facilitate self-realization." Then he added: "But if you have the proper attitude, you can take anything - take a walk, or a bath. "
Could you say more about sadhana? What is the right attitude? What are those qualities of mind and action that are basic to the Buddhist path?
JK: Okay, I am thinking if there is some linking question that comes in between these two. There is really. I will mention it briefly and then I will go into the development of sadhana.
First of all, I have the utmost respect for the power of psychedelics. They are enormously powerful. They have inspired and opened and awakened possibilities in a lot of people in really deep ways. They have provided transformative experiences. In taking a tempered view of them it does not mean that I do not have a lot of respect for them, and for the work that researchers like Stan Grof and others have done.
My sense from my own Buddhist practice and from the tradition as a teacher for many years is that people underestimate the depth of change that is required to transform oneself in a spiritual practice. It requires a very great perspective called "a long enduring mind" by one Zen master - which means it can be days, weeks, months, years, and lifetimes. The propensities or conditioned habits which we have are so powerfully and deeply ingrained that even enormously compelling visions do not change them very much. Therefore, the system of liberation taught by the Buddha, and other great masters, draws on several different aspects or elements of life to help empower such a deep transformation. The Buddha said at one point, "Not good deeds, nor good karma, nor merit, nor rapture, nor visions, nor concentration, nor insight. None of these are the reasons I teach; but the sure heart's release, this and this alone." The possibility of human liberation is the center of his teachings. The liberation from greed, hatred, delusion, and the liberation from the sense of separateness and selfishness. This is a very compelling possibility for humans and it is quite profound.
To come to this level of illumination, first one has to discover the power of those forces in the heart and mind that bind us. In the beginning it may sound like the forces of greed, hatred, and delusion are a little dislike of this and wanting of that, and not being so clear about things, being confused, or not seeing so deeply. But when you have undertaken a deep spiritual practice of whatever kind, and I will include psychedelic experiences as part of that, you begin to realize that what is meant is Greed with a capital "G," the most primal kinds of grasping; and Hatred meaning Hitler and Attila the Hun in the mind; and Delusion meaning the deepest dark night. The forces are tremendously powerful.
...
Even among the relatively conscious explorers of contemporary psychedelics, addiction and attachment has sometimes been a problem. Even more critical is the overly positive message about both the spiritual and the casual use of these drugs that has been adopted by quite a few people who could not handle them well at all. As many of us who have used psychedelics have discovered, it is not an easy path. What matters from the point of view of this precept is to make their use non-habitual (which means occasional). If one uses these substances, whether it is a glass of wine, a joint of marijuana, LSD, or mushrooms, this precept says to make that a conscious and careful part of your life. Without these precepts, if one even begins the journey, they will get lost or go off the track. You can not complete the journey until you get the basics right. This is really a very simple message...
-Jack Kornfield from Zig Zag Zen: Psychedelics and Buddhism
A response in Hardcore Zen:
Recently, I was deeply disappointed to find a putrid little book called Zig Zag Zen taking up a big hunk of shelf space allotted to Buddhism in the local Supermarket `n' Bookstore. As Zig Zag Zen postulates in its first chapter, the boneheaded notion that getting bombed out of your gourd is the way to find reality is a pretty easy conclusion to jump to. But that notion is as sensible as thinking you can take off the weight gained from twenty years of shoveling nothing but Oreos, Pringles, and Big Macs down your gullet by swallowing a few miracle diet pills.
-Brad Warner
My own thoughts on Buddhism and Psychedelics are similar to the quote above all of this, and can maybe be better summed up by Robert Aitken: "The things of this world are not drugs in themselves. They become drugs by our use of them." What this means, essentially, is that anything can be a drug and anything can be an opportunity for openness and seeing clearly. Psychedelics can be great catalysts for such opening, but they can also be drugs. Most likely most importantly, though, is that psychedelics are not necessarily different from taking a walk (though of course they seem wildly different because of our discrimination, our judgment, so so seem so, so special and unique, when a walk can be just the same, with the right mind). In other words, if everything is approached with care and as an opportunity for clarity and insight, then there is no need for any "drug" to experience such a thing. That's the meaning of practice, and that's where "drugs" can be a hindrance, an obstacle: we can't do drugs all the time (or, we can, but then we're just doing drugs all the time, escaping, rather than freeing); we have to return, and be, ordinary reality, and it has to be in and as ordinary reality where we find the non-ordinary, which is also completely ordinary. I view psychedelics as just another part of the larger experience leading to open, spontaneous mind, a thing that can point, a thing that can reveal (neurosis and fears and etc) and so helpful in the pointing, but like the zen thing goes, just a finger, not the moon, and thus, only a very minor part of larger practice.
No comments:
Post a Comment