Buddha and Drugs

interesting...

The Fifth Precept: 'I undertake the rule of training to refrain from distillled and fermented intoxicants producing heedlessness'. (1)

... All the [first] four precepts depend for their purity, upon constant vigilance and if the mind is overcome by intoxicants, then what harm may not result?

(footnote 1) It is significant that all substances producing a distortion of normal human experience find a place under the Fifth Precept. In India, both ancient and modern, the use of drugs to stimulate 'religious' experiences including visual and auditory hallucinations, has been and is very well known and quite widely practised. The 'insights' claimed by some who in the present day take mescalin, etc, should be tested against the difference which these experiences make to the forces of greed, aversion and delusion in their hearts and conduct. Particulartly if it is claimed that these drugs offer a kind of shortcut to Enlightenment, whether called vipassana or satori, then it must be stressed that no real shortcut of this sort is possible and such experience cannot replace effort spread over years or even over lives.

from Buddhism Explained by Bhikkhu Khantipalo (Buddha Educational Foundation, Singapore, circa 1973)


listening to Kate Bush : The man with the child in his eyes