Dharma Wheel

dharmagoat wrote:Marijuana seems to enhance the "special effects" one can experience in meditation. Because buddhist meditation generally dismisses such experiences as distracting side-effects, marijuana serves no useful purpose in buddhism. If anything, its effects interfere with proper meditation practice, and these can persist for many years after the last high. I speak from my own experience.

MANY YEARS after the high? Now you REALLY can't be serious.
Guess someone's a light-weight?

Ikkyu wrote:MANY YEARS after the high? Now you REALLY can't be serious.
Guess someone's a light-weight?

Yes, I am a light-weight. My family lived in a commune when I was a boy, and so I grew up within a culture of marijuana use. I gave it up as a teenager mainly because I wanted to rebel. So I became a buddhist.

THC can stick around in your system for a very long time. I leave it to others to mine for the scientific facts. For me, I felt the effects for at least 5 years, but only in meditation.

Ikkyu wrote:

dharmagoat wrote:Oh yes, and if you smoke dope, even to celebrate a friend's success, you will be sent to a hell realm where you will be deprived of your genitalia and have nasty black-skinned, orange-eyed demons thrust red-hot iron rods into your lungs, roasting you from the inside out...

You can't be serious.

Gotcha!

dharmagoat wrote:

Ikkyu wrote:MANY YEARS after the high? Now you REALLY can't be serious.
Guess someone's a light-weight?

Yes, I am a light-weight. My family lived in a commune when I was a boy, and so I grew up within a culture of marijuana use. I gave it up as a teenager mainly because I wanted to rebel. So I became a buddhist.

THC can stick around in your system for a very long time. I leave it to others to mine for the scientific facts. For me, I felt the effects for at least 5 years, but only in meditation.

Now that's an interesting story if I ever heard one. I don't want to go off topic, but whenever I think of teenagers rebelling I think of them smoking pot instead of shunning it. Must've been pretty cool growing up in a commune? I didn't realize those places were still around.

I've heard that THC doesn't last in your bloodstream or fat cells for more than a week. However it supposedly can be stored in your kertain (nails and hair) in small quantities for years. I don't think that by this point it has an active effect on your nervous system, however.

Ikkyu wrote:Now that's an interesting story if I ever heard one. I don't want to go off topic, but whenever I think of teenagers rebelling I think of them smoking pot instead of shunning it. Must've been pretty cool growing up in a commune? I didn't realize those places were still around.

This was in the early to mid 1970s. I am older than I look.

Ikkyu wrote:I've heard that THC doesn't last in your bloodstream or fat cells for more than a week. However it supposedly can be stored in your kertain (nails and hair) in small quantities for years. I don't think that by this point it has an active effect on your nervous system, however.

To be honest I still don't know exactly what was going on. When I first started meditating in my early 20s, I would experience something like a "THC flashback" whenever I meditated intensely. I would have put this down to normal meditative experience if it wasn't for the fact that it slowly faded after I gave up marijuana for good. After about 5 years I began to experience meditation as I do now, as a simple open mindful state, rather than a "zoomy" mindful state.

Ikkyu wrote:
In my opinion, there is no problem with many psychedelics in and of themselves unless a person acts with heedlessness because of them.

Many people take the view that deliberately altering your state of consciousness with some external substance, just because it feels good, is itself, an act of heedlessness.

If you don't practice, herb is fine. If you do, herb is a fetter.

M

BTW, I think a 'kamal'' is a flavored roll-leaf mixed & rolled with marijuana + fine tobacco. (a small hand-rolled blunt)

I think if someone genuinely wants to use marijuana as some sort of medicine, it is not the end of the world. There are a lot of legal medicines/ intoxicants out there that are much worse, that we seem not to worry about so much. In theory, if alcohol doesn't ruin our practice, marijuana might not either. I think the real danger is when people confuse intoxication with successful meditation. That's something that can happen easily, which might be one of the main issues with using marijuana, if you are a practitioner. That said, if I'm not mistaken there are several references to medicinal uses of cannabis in the Chakrasamvara and Mahakala tantras. But given the secrecy and complexity of tantras in general, I'd say it's safe to assume that unless studying those particular things in depth with a teacher, marijuana would only probably hinder our practice.

seeker242 wrote:

Ikkyu wrote:
In my opinion, there is no problem with many psychedelics in and of themselves unless a person acts with heedlessness because of them.

Many people take the view that deliberately altering your state of consciousness with some external substance, just because it feels good, is itself, an act of heedlessness.

Isn't meditation essentially the same thing?

Malcolm wrote:If you don't practice, herb is fine. If you do, herb is a fetter.

M

I really don't understand how it's any more of a "fetter" than going to see a ball game, or taking a swim. People can enjoy themselves. As long as they do not crave and overtly attach to marijuana, or allow it to make them heedless I don't see how it goes against the precepts or clouds the mind with occasional usage.

Ikkyu wrote:I really don't understand how it's any more of a "fetter" than going to see a ball game, or taking a swim. People can enjoy themselves. As long as they do not crave and overtly attach to marijuana, or allow it to make them heedless I don't see how it goes against the precepts or clouds the mind with occasional usage.

As a youngster I was only ever an occasional user, but my meditation was noticeably affected. All I can suggest is that you "suck it and see" (or "not suck it" in your case). It may take a while, but I am sure that you will notice an improvement in your meditation.

Ikkyu wrote:Isn't meditation essentially the same thing?

Meditation is not about getting high.

dharmagoat wrote:

Ikkyu wrote:I really don't understand how it's any more of a "fetter" than going to see a ball game, or taking a swim. People can enjoy themselves. As long as they do not crave and overtly attach to marijuana, or allow it to make them heedless I don't see how it goes against the precepts or clouds the mind with occasional usage.

As a youngster I was only ever an occasional user, but my meditation was noticeably affected. All I can suggest is that you "suck it and see" (or "not suck it" in your case). It may take a while, but I am sure that you will notice an improvement in your meditation.

Perhaps I'm not yet used to the supposed subtleties of meditation. I smoke maybe once a month. Generally speaking, after seven hours I have no noticeable after-effects and my mind seems as clear as it would at any other time. My zazen always seems consistent, as perhaps it should be.

dharmagoat wrote:

Ikkyu wrote:Isn't meditation essentially the same thing?

Meditation is not about getting high.

No, but meditation is about altering one's conscious state in order to achieve a desired end.

P.S. Everything is a "high". Our brains are constantly changing and our experiences are based on electro-chemical stimulation and the work of neurotransmitters like dopamine, norepinephrine, seretonin and others. The use of psychedelics merely changed the actions of these neurotransmitters in more radical and dramatic ways. Enlightenment could very well, in that sense, be a brain state, as everything subjective experience is naturally a brain state.

Ikkyu wrote:No, but meditation is about altering one's conscious state in order to achieve a desired end.

Ikkyu Zenji would throw a fit if he were around to hear you say this.

Fu Ri Shin wrote:

Ikkyu wrote:No, but meditation is about altering one's conscious state in order to achieve a desired end.

Ikkyu Zenji would throw a fit if he were around to hear you say this.

He would throw a fit anyway.

Ikkyu wrote:No, but meditation is about altering one's conscious state in order to achieve a desired end.

No it's not, it's about NOT changing things and remaining in your natural state. The way we experience things now is about altering/changing. If you clean the dust from the mirror you find that the reflective surface was always there.

Ikkyu wrote:He would throw a fit anyway.

Point being, Ikkyu was a devoted Rinzai practitioner and Rinzai/Linji himself constantly railed against the seeking mind (and he was not special in doing so).

gregkavarnos wrote:

Ikkyu wrote:No, but meditation is about altering one's conscious state in order to achieve a desired end.

No it's not, it's about NOT changing things and remaining in your natural state. The way we experience things now is about altering/changing. If you clean the dust from the mirror you find that the reflective surface was always there.

You're logic is flawed. If we are currently NOT in a natural state (e.g. enlightenment) and we wish to get there we must change our current state of mind into an enlightened state of mind. The key word here is CHANGE.