Dharma Wheel

fckw wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 8:32 pm Drugs, whether we like it or not, have always been intimate part of tantric ritual (it seems not of Dzogchen, though). Cannabis, but of course also other drugs. And yes, we're talking both of various "hindu" and buddhist tantric traditions. See here for a long list of sources to study on the subject: http://vajrayana.faithweb.com/rich_text_5.html.

I have looked at these sources and this document is extremely misleading. None of these sources indicate that psychedelics play a role in rituals. Most of the uses datura described in these sources employ datura because it is a poison.

Aryjna wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 7:44 pm

Arupajhana7 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 29, 2018 11:03 pm Alright, I have been heavily outvoted here.

For myself I read dharma books, did a meditation retreat, and then fell away from the dharma when I was young.

Then a few psychedelic experiences caused my desire to pursue the Dharma to surge like a wildfire.
I have talked to many others who have told me they became passionate about the Dharma because of an experience like that.

Ultimately, I believe it was good that I stopped doing them.
I agree with the criticisms people are making about people getting attached to the experiences.

For myself I think it was part of the causes and conditions that brought me into the path.
But maybe I am mistaken.

The fact that in some cases taking drugs may be the trigger for someone to be interested in the dharma doesn't mean much. Others may get the interest after being hit by a car, losing a relative, or any number of things. That does not mean that there is merit in the drug.

Before I attended my first Buddhist teaching, I ate some enchiladas. This gave me the energy to ride my bike over the bridge and to the Dharma center.

Ergo, enchiladas were my chemical gateway to Dharma.

YMMV.

The hippies were rebelling against Western society and searching for alternatives, a new way of life, something more spiritual, you might even say the truth, the Dharma, and many came to India and Nepal. However, what happens and whom you meet when you come to the East is totally up to your karma. You might be looking for something meaningful but what you find is up to karma.

Many of those people were taking drugs, but in some cases drugs could have been the Buddha’s skillful means to help break those people’s concepts. They had such unbelievably fixed minds, fixed ideas—strong, unchangeable beliefs that there was just this one life; no understanding that the mind can exist without the body. Their thinking was unbelievably gross. People like this needed something external to break their concepts and enable them to see things more deeply. Drugs gave them many experiences such as the mind being able to travel without the body, which shocked and surprised them, because it was completely opposite to what was taught and believed in the West.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

fckw wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 8:32 pm Drugs, whether we like it or not, have always been intimate part of tantric ritual (it seems not of Dzogchen, though). Cannabis, but of course also other drugs. And yes, we're talking both of various "hindu" and buddhist tantric traditions. See here for a long list of sources to study on the subject: http://vajrayana.faithweb.com/rich_text_5.html.

Sorry, but I have read some of the books in that list and they did not speak about the use of psychedelics at all.

When you are suffering from jaundice, everything looks yellow.

Actually, one might use Hallucinating Substances to assert everything as mind. But it could be a part of Vipassana, not to space out or bliss out. Nor it is for run away from samsara in different zone. I remembered an example from Tripal Tantra and it was one of the eight examples to assert mind. Those examples were used for meditation.

However, after using any such substance, it would not be easy to work on channels and subtle mind; no clarity in dreams, etc. One re-balances again only after several days.

jmlee369 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 2:18 am

The hippies were rebelling against Western society and searching for alternatives, a new way of life, something more spiritual, you might even say the truth, the Dharma, and many came to India and Nepal. However, what happens and whom you meet when you come to the East is totally up to your karma. You might be looking for something meaningful but what you find is up to karma.

Many of those people were taking drugs, but in some cases drugs could have been the Buddha’s skillful means to help break those people’s concepts. They had such unbelievably fixed minds, fixed ideas—strong, unchangeable beliefs that there was just this one life; no understanding that the mind can exist without the body. Their thinking was unbelievably gross. People like this needed something external to break their concepts and enable them to see things more deeply. Drugs gave them many experiences such as the mind being able to travel without the body, which shocked and surprised them, because it was completely opposite to what was taught and believed in the West.

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Lama Zopa seems to have a lack of understanding of the history of European occult and mystical interests.

haha wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 3:24 pm Actually, one might use Hallucinating Substances to assert everything as mind. But it could be a part of Vipassana, not to space out or bliss out. Nor it is for run away from samsara in different zone. I remembered an example from Tripal Tantra and it was one of the eight examples to assert mind. Those examples were used for meditation.

The explanation of the inseparability of samsara and nirvana through the 32 examples in triple tantra does not recommend actually taking datura. It is used as an example only.

DGA wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 1:27 am Before I attended my first Buddhist teaching, I ate some enchiladas. This gave me the energy to ride my bike over the bridge and to the Dharma center.

Ergo, enchiladas were my chemical gateway to Dharma.

YMMV.

Reaearch indicates high doses of psilocybin show similar brain scan results to meditation. The research also indicates that highly experienced meditators who had never done psychedelics prior to the research reported many similarities in their psilocybin experience to their peak experiences in long retreats.

https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/john ... editators/

Is there similar research on enchiladas?

Arupajhana7 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 6:11 pm

DGA wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 1:27 am Before I attended my first Buddhist teaching, I ate some enchiladas. This gave me the energy to ride my bike over the bridge and to the Dharma center.

Ergo, enchiladas were my chemical gateway to Dharma.

YMMV.

Reaearch indicates high doses of psilocybin show similar brain scan results to meditation. The research also indicates that highly experienced meditators who had never done psychedelics prior to the research reported many similarities in their psilocybin experience to their peak experiences in long retreats.

https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/john ... editators/

Is there similar research on enchiladas?

I don't know about enchiladas, but there is ongoing research into the positive mental effects of quesadillas.

PS The article you linked to shows nothing conclusive, there were only 20 subjects in the experiment. That means the findings range from "completely irrelevant" to "not worth taking seriously at all".

Grigoris wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 6:34 pm PS The article you linked to shows nothing conclusive, there were only 20 subjects in the experiment. That means the findings range from "completely irrelevant" to "not worth taking seriously at all".

These people were also not 'serious meditators' by any stretch of the imagination.

I think Richard Davidson said something relevant about this in a talk with Mingyur Rinpoche a while back. The question was about replicating the sort of brain activity seen in advanced meditators by using techniques like biofeedback, and he said something along the lines of not jumping to conclusions about these results, since we know nowhere near enough about the brain to conclude that similar brain activity measurements(the topic in question was gamma wave activity) result in similar subjective experiences.

LolCat wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 8:46 pm I think Richard Davidson said something relevant about this in a talk with Mingyur Rinpoche a while back. The question was about replicating the sort of brain activity seen in advanced meditators by using techniques like biofeedback, and he said something along the lines of not jumping to conclusions about these results, since we know nowhere near enough about the brain to conclude that similar brain activity measurements(the topic in question was gamma wave activity) result in similar subjective experiences.

We also don't know if there is just brain activity involved. It is definitely part of the puzzle, but it is not the whole puzzle.

There is enough research overall on using LSD, ibogaine, and psilolcybin for alcoholism, PTSD and whatnot that it's reasonable to give the idea a fair shake, the same way you would with any new treatment involving the use of a controlled substance. There's not much of an evidence base there yet, but there's enough to be hopeful for future therapies, without seeing it as a panacea (which is what i'm seeing in this thread in places).

However, it never ceases to amaze me when people toss studies out there like they indicate something special about substances. Substances don't do anything by themselves. The effects of any and all elicit drugs are replicating chemicals that already exists in our physiologies, all substances do is provide a link to something that creates intense effects that cannot normally be replicated without the substances, they don't have unique properties that do not already exist in our physiology.

Certainly, therapeutic use of chemicals has nothing to do with their usefulness in Dharma practice, so in terms of these studies, it is like saying "look people use suboxone to get off heroin, so it must be good for Dharma" to talk about studies like this as if they point to some overall positive effect from the substances, they do not, and the studies (thin as they are) do not prove anything like an overall positive effect to the substances, even the most poorly designed studies do not generally make that claim.

The study you cite is so poorly constructed as to be laughable.

Arupajhana7 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 6:11 pm

DGA wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 1:27 am Before I attended my first Buddhist teaching, I ate some enchiladas. This gave me the energy to ride my bike over the bridge and to the Dharma center.

Ergo, enchiladas were my chemical gateway to Dharma.

YMMV.

Reaearch indicates high doses of psilocybin show similar brain scan results to meditation. The research also indicates that highly experienced meditators who had never done psychedelics prior to the research reported many similarities in their psilocybin experience to their peak experiences in long retreats.

https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/john ... editators/

Is there similar research on enchiladas?

Malcolm wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 10:36 pm The study you cite is so poorly constructed as to be laughable.

Arupajhana7 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 6:11 pm

DGA wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 1:27 am Before I attended my first Buddhist teaching, I ate some enchiladas. This gave me the energy to ride my bike over the bridge and to the Dharma center.

Ergo, enchiladas were my chemical gateway to Dharma.

YMMV.

Reaearch indicates high doses of psilocybin show similar brain scan results to meditation. The research also indicates that highly experienced meditators who had never done psychedelics prior to the research reported many similarities in their psilocybin experience to their peak experiences in long retreats.

https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/john ... editators/

Is there similar research on enchiladas?

I couldn't even get to the study text without joining..

A lot of studies in this vein are hard to take seriously in some ways, one i'm thinking of recently compared subjective reporting of one dose of LSD vs. long term treatment with Naltrexone for (I think) alcoholics. Firstly, there was not strategy for comparing such disparate things, and the results were entirely based on subjective reporting. A lot of studies on the therapeutic use of psychedelics I've looked at fall into that category, there is enough there to say "hmmm interesting" but not to make any conclusions at all.

Also I will say, being in this field for a short time I've noticed that:

"Brain scans" can be bullshit

I've seen some studies based on "brain scans" that make these deeply flawed assumptions, and just gloss over them because hey, cool brain pictures.

Here's a link to a review of the data of the big meta study on LSD and alcoholism, continuing I think from one done in the 60's, which as far as I know is the only study of any real size on the subject:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK99377/

Arupajhana7 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 6:11 pm

DGA wrote: ↑Fri Aug 31, 2018 1:27 am Before I attended my first Buddhist teaching, I ate some enchiladas. This gave me the energy to ride my bike over the bridge and to the Dharma center.

Ergo, enchiladas were my chemical gateway to Dharma.

YMMV.

Reaearch indicates high doses of psilocybin show similar brain scan results to meditation. The research also indicates that highly experienced meditators who had never done psychedelics prior to the research reported many similarities in their psilocybin experience to their peak experiences in long retreats.

https://www.psymposia.com/magazine/john ... editators/

Is there similar research on enchiladas?

That's interesting, because I few years ago I volunteered to be a test subject for that very study as part of my dissertation research. I wanted to find out first hand what scientists were thinking about (and assuming) when they wrote about "meditation" and "mindfulness" and its impact on the brain.

When I did the initial screening, I was asked what kind of meditation I did: this kind, that kind, whatever. They categories they were using didn't really seem to make much sense, and many different forms of meditation practice were left out. They seemed to take my word for it that I'd spent some 15-20 years doing Dharma.

I didn't make it to the study because I'd had too many concussions.

Anyway, I bring all this up because I agree with Malcolm that this is not a well-constructed study. It may justify further research, though, which is good. More knowledge is good.

Some more evidence that psychoactive substances are/were part of Buddhist tantra: https://erowid.org/spirit/traditions/bu ... cle1.shtml

Regarding the argument that this forum is not about the discussion of "hindu tantra": ha ha, nice try.

fckw wrote: ↑Sat Sep 01, 2018 8:07 am Some more evidence that psychoactive substances are/were part of Buddhist tantra: https://erowid.org/spirit/traditions/bu ... cle1.shtml

Regarding the argument that this forum is not about the discussion of "hindu tantra": ha ha, nice try.

You cannot provide 'more' evidence, when you have provided 0 evidence so far.

Using Erowid as evidence...