Our guide as Buddhists to drug use is
the Fifth Precept, the Precept of Not Giving or Taking Drugs. At this
temple we add the phrase, “…that dull the mind,” and so we say,
“I take up the way of not giving or taking drugs that dull the
mind,” and vow also to keep the mind clear at all times. I think
these are useful clarifications that pose the question: Is your mind
clear, or has the drug interfered with your naturally clear
consciousness?
In my own life,
I’ve gone through many phases of drug use. I won’t go into the
sordid details, because I don’t want to unintentionally glorify
drug use, but with that said, between the ages of eighteen and
twenty-one, I took most recreational drugs that came my way.
Understand, though, that this wasn’t part of an addictive pattern.
It seems to me that people most often do drugs for three reasons:
first, to gain social acceptance; second, to fulfill emotional needs;
and third, to discover meaning as part of a spiritual search. This
last was true for me. I took drugs because I was looking for
something genuine in the world, and when I finally discovered Zen
practice, I stopped doing drugs so intensely.
I’ve often heard
zazen compared to drug experiences, and in some ways this is
understandable, but in others it’s completely mistaken. People
compare the two, I think, because of the separation between their
everyday lives and their zazen. They regard zazen as something out of
the ordinary, and their experiences of samadhi or kensho as “altered”
states of consciousness. Yet zazen is not an altered state of
consciousness. It is pure, unaltered consciousness itself.
There is a
relationship here, though, in that we must be careful not to cling to
any experience at all. In this respect, any experience or state that
we cling to may be regarded as a drug. Television can be a powerful
drug, as can video games, Internet pornography, trashy novels, or
whatever we do to escape reality. Even peak experiences during zazen
can be a terrible obstacle to practice, because we often look to
re-create those experiences.
One may see
meditation vs. drug use as being analogous to the Zen concepts of
joriki and tariki. Joriki is self-power or
self-reliance, and this is the type of energy cultivated by Zen
practice and meditation. There are no crutches in zazen. Nobody can
do this practice for us. We sit upright, under our own power.
Tariki is
other-power, reliance on external spiritual power. Most often this
term is used in reference to religious sects that pray to external
powers—deities and such—in the hope that those powers will favor
the petitioner. However, tariki is perfectly reflective of drug
usage. Rather than cultivating wisdom through long and difficult
spiritual practice, one instead seeks an emotional state or insight
through the drug.
I would like to be
clear that these insights and states are not necessarily false
or delusive. I say this to avoid the dichotomy often seen in public
discourse and government policy. There’s no doubt that drugs can be
extremely harmful, even deadly, but it’s also true that drugs
sometimes help people to overcome psychological blockages and become
more insightful and open.
Still, these
experiences come at a price. There’s a catch to using drugs, and
it’s that whatever other effects they cause, drugs most often
encourage continued reliance on the drug, and that reliance is often
in proportion to the degree of positive emotions or insights that the
drug provides.
So you get caught
in this cycle. You want happiness and turn to the drug to provide it,
but once that state fades, you turn again and again to the drug to
recreate it.
This is clinging to
a state of mind. You feel dukkha, lack, that life is out of
joint, and you take a drug and experience of sense of well-being.
Then the feeling fades, and you find that your sense of lack has
actually become more acute.
And the more you
cling to this state, the worse your suffering becomes, because
clinging causes suffering. And the more you suffer, the more you want
to escape. This is the downward spiral of addiction.
I have a friend who
calls using drugs getting twisted. This is an interesting
expression and very descriptive of drug effects. You take the drug
and it twists your mind, and because you’re in a different state,
sometimes you can see things about your life that you didn’t see
before, or you can temporarily escape whatever state you were in. But
when the drug wears off, you don’t return to the same place; you’re
somewhere different than where you started, and with continued drug
use it becomes difficult to see how off-center you’ve become.
Bodhidharma said,
“Self-nature is subtle and mysterious. In the realm of the
intrinsically pure Dharma, not giving rise to delusions is called the
Precept of Not Giving or Taking Drugs.”
In any case, after
discovering Zen, I cooled off and stopped taking psychedelic drugs. I
actually cooled off all the way a couple years later when Lindsey (my ex-wife) and
I went to Hawaii to train with Robert Aitken there. The entire time
we lived with Aitken Roshi, I took no drugs whatsoever, including
alcohol and coffee. I took nothing stronger than black tea for about
a year and a half. This was also instructive. There’s no doubt that
it helped to drive me into my practice, and I’d come there to
practice, and that’s what I did.
However, I also
learned that complete abstinence didn’t altogether suit me. It made
me rigid, uptight, and inflexible, and kept me separate from people,
kept me from connecting with them.
Zen also has the
archetype depicted in the tenth ox-herding picture: entering the
marketplace with helping hands. The picture shows the spiritual
traveler with a wine gourd over one shoulder, ready to share it with
whoever comes along, completely open.
So when I came back
to Denver, I gave up abstinence too. Since then, I drink alcohol
socially, though even that tends to slowly escalate. I’ve also
smoked marijuana a few times—maybe a couple of times a year—which
is something I continue to examine. It seems that I do it to feel
close to old friends, but every time I do I conclude that I really
shouldn’t again. Until the next time.
Dogen said: “Drugs
are not brought in yet. Don’t let them invade. That is the great
light.” Our minds are naturally bright. We are naturally full and
complete and aware. How do you honor that great light while remaining
open to the people around you?
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