Is LSD Incompatible With The 5th Precept?

I just received my first confirmed block and, since the conversation cannot continue in that setting, I'll transplant it over here.

Let's consider Precept #5 - I was not (yet) blocked by ewk, but borrowing his wiki entry will suffice I think.

1. No Abuse of Drugs.

Questions that come to mind:

1. What would a Zen Master consider a drug and how does that relate to...
2. What would a Zen Master consider abuse?

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Question 1 - What does a Zen master consider a drug?

People like this are just playing with the mass of ignorance of conditioned consciousness; so they say there is no cause and effect, no consequences, and no person and no Buddha, that drinking alcohol and eating meat do not hinder enlightenment, that theft and lechery do not inhibit wisdom. Followers like this are indeed insects on the body of a lion, consuming the lion's flesh.

So Wine and meat can be drugs.

In the four stages of meditation and eight absorptions, even saints and such dwell in absorption for as long as eighty thousand eons - they depend upon and cling to what they practice, intoxicated by the wine of pure things.

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the two vehicles see this and call it knowledge of what can be known, and they also call it subtle affliction; so they cut it off, and when it has been removed completely, this is called "returning the aware essence to the empty cave." It is also called intoxication by the wine of trance, and it is called the delusion of liberation.

Meditation, calmness, quietude, and purity can be drugs.

Joshu asked two newly arrived monks, "Have you been here before?

One monk said, "No, I haven't."

Joshu said, "Go and have some tea."

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See also- Huangbo sitting in the tearoom, Yunmen picking tea, Xuedou will drink tea with discerning company

However the ubiquitous literal drug, caffeine - and the other stimulants in tea, apparently need not be a drug

Or at least not when Joshu, Yunmen, Huangbo, and Xuedou drink it. I would submit that tea COULD become a drug IF it were abused, which leads to...

And my blocker seems to think sugar isn't a drug. Perhaps that, and all the above, depends on...

Question 2 - What is abuse?

The chief law-inspector in Hung-chou asked, "Is it correct to eat meat and drink wine?"

The Patriarch replied, "If you eat meat and drink wine, that is your happiness. If you don't, it is your blessing."

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Joshu asked Nansen, "What is the Way?" Nansen answered, "Your ordinary mind, that is the Way." Joshu said, "Does it go in any par­ticular direction?’’ Nansen replied, "The more you seek after it, the more it runs away."

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Q: But is the Buddha the ordinary mind or the En lightened mind?

A: Where on earth do you keep your 'ordinary mind' and your 'Enlightened mind'?

You people go on misunderstanding; you hold to concepts such as 'ordinary' and 'Enlightened', directing your thoughts outwards where they gallop about like horses! All this amounts to beclouding your own minds!

Abuse is USING - or NOT using - any substance OR idea to an apotheotic end. Even the idea of "ordinary mind" or "enlightened mind" can be abused and, so abused, become a drug.

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Now let's talk about...

LSD

My referring to the experience of taking LSD as providing a "vivid clarity" was seen as an "evasion and a misunderstanding of what defintions [sic] of 'intoxicants' in a medical and legal context entail."

However, "vivid clarity" is not hyperbolic neo-spiritual mumbo jumbo. LSD has an outsized effect on the parts of your brain responsible for sensory input This translates, practically, into a temporary, literal expansion of your overall sensory experience - and the sensation can be summed up, in only my opinion, quite well as a "vivid clarity."

LSD "enables brain regions that wouldn’t usually talk with one another to suddenly enter into garrulous conversation..

Once again speaking only from my experience, this temporary internal neural fluidity, although at times distressing - and though siren-calling a new potential source of apotheotic yearning - can nonetheless afford a novel internal view of otherwise inscrutable personal behaviors and ways of thinking.

These internal and external perceptive shifts seem to have clinical potential for psychiatric use. See also

Aside from being a lot of fun, I found LSD to be eye-opening in terms of learning more about:

1. My sensory capacities and how little of those capacities I actually use in daily life
2. The internal functioning of my mind - especially as it related to certain habit-driven behaviors.

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Final Question - Is LSD compatible with Precept #5

It depends.

Huxley became obsessed - mistaking yet another means for yet another imagined end - and he died with a megadose in his veins. Sounds like abuse.

People beating alcoholism or anxiety or coming to terms with PTSD sounds a lot like medicine.

Other people just likinh how it feels and taking it now and again, in a safe and responsible setting sounds like Joshu's tea.

What do we all think?

Submitted June 14, 2022 at 09:47AM by Gasdark https://ift.tt/v8lryOt