Drogas y Dharma en el siglo XXI

El budismo y los psicodelicos comparten una preocupación por el mismo problema: el logro de la liberacion de la mente...

Encontre por causalidad a esta nota  que habla sobre un interesante curso titulado Buddhism and Psychedelics. Una nota interesante que me gustaria compartir con ustedes otro articulo sobre el resurgimiento de los psicodelicos en estos tiempos de profundos cambios...

La imagen superior con la que ilustre este post la encontre en un blog donde hacen una reseña de un libro que aborda la conexion budismo - soma vedico (plantas visionarias) el libro es autoria de By Scott Hajicek-Dobberstein "बुद्धिस्म स्पेअक्स तो अ ले दिस्सिप्ले.Soma Siddhas and Alchemical Enlightenment: Psychedelic mushrooms in Buddhist tradition" pueden leer la contratapa en el blog, una vision no muy diferente a la Terence McKenna en cuanto a uso de psicodelicos por parte de la cultura vedica, aunque difiere en el protagonismo y en cual es el hongo especificamente.

Drogas y Dharma (extracto)

Two great directions in human thought and activity have recently beencoming into sharper focus. Interest in Buddhism has not been greater since it was first introduced to China where it proceeded to grow steadily for 500 years, and the serious and thoughtful use of psychedelics is making a resurgence, perhaps more profoundly than in the Sixties.

Buddhism and psychedelics share a concern with the same problem: the attainment of liberation for the mind. The word psychedelic was first used in a letter from British psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond to the philosopher, Aldous Huxley in 1957. Taking the Greek root psykhe, or "mind" and adding deloun or delos "to make visible or clear," psychedelic becomes 'mind manifesting.' Completing the process is purification of the mind -- the essence of the Buddha's Way.

Recently Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner have released a book about the birth of a psychedelic culture. There can be no doubt that Buddhism, and the world view that makes an understanding of this path possible, has contributed fundamentally to the conditions for such a birth. Most of the teachers and researchers who have become well known in the psychedelic movement are also experienced in the philosophy and practices of Buddhism. Meanwhile, psychedelics lurk in the personal histories of almost all first-generation Buddhist teachers in Europe and America, although today we find many teachers advising against pursuing a path they once traveled. Few Buddhists make the claim that psychedelic use is a path itself -- some maintain that it is a legitimate gateway, and others feel Buddhism and psychedelics don't mix at all.

Just as Buddhism itself must be held to the test of personal experience and to the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of the results, so also must the question of how, or if, psychedelics can be part of a Dharma practice. Psychedelics can be used in a great variety of ways for an enormous array of purposes. The results depend greatly on the experience, intentions, knowledge, skill, and spiritual maturity of the practitioner. The place of critical examination and analysis, and the freedom to make these discoveries for oneself is an essential foundation of Buddhism and is found as far back as the Kalama Sutra wherein Buddha warned people to practice for themselves and not to take his word for it about the benefits. Religious historian Huston Smith also had a warning: that while psychedelic use is all about altered states, Buddhism is all about altered traits, and one does not necessarily lead to the other.

Alan Watts, one of the first prominent westerners to follow the Buddhist path, considered Buddhism and psychedelics to both be part of the same individual philosophical quest. He was not interested in Buddhism to be studied and defined in such a way that one must avoid "mixing up" one's thinking about Buddhism with other interests, such as in quantum theory, Gestalt psychology, aesthetics, or psychedelics. Any useful investigation into human potential will explore the differing views on the intersection of Buddhist practice and psychedelic use.

An awareness of the relatedness between separate objects and opposites is one of the key insights that psychedelic travelers often bring home from their chemical "pilgrimages." Perhaps the popularization of both Zen and psychedelics has shifted the cultural mind from a dominantly conceptual and linear view of reality to a mode of awareness that is more ecological and holistic. While we will always continue to think in linear ways, awareness is growing that this mode of consciousness is relative, a human construct, and not a reflection of "objective reality." This way of seeing is not something people necessarily need psychedelics to experience. It is, in fact, one of the central premises underlying Zen and brings us closer to a perspective that is perhaps equally comfortable being called "dharmic" or "psychedelic."

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Human history can be seen as a series of relationships with plants, relationships made and broken. Plants, drugs, politics, and religions have harshly intermingled -- from the influence of sugar on mercantilism to the influence of coffee on the modern office worker, from the British forcing opium on the Taoist Chinese to credible reports that the CIA used heroin in the ghetto to choke off dissent and dissatisfaction. The lessons to be learned can be raised into consciousness, integrated into social policy, and used to create a more caring, meaningful world, or they can be denied with the results now plainly seen.

The enhanced capacity for extraordinary cognitive experience made possible by the use of plant psychedelics may be as basic a part of our humanness as is our spirituality or our sexuality. The question is how quickly we can develop into a mature community that is able to address these issues with openness and candor. In the past, awareness about the deepest "occult" or "hidden" parts of our spirit selves was considered the private preserve of shamans, priests, or spiritual masters who had earned their way to it. Religious experience was mediated by the seauthorized few, and this is a tradition still with us in the form, if not attitude, of many religions. The democratization of psychedelics, however, and of Buddhism to a similar extent, has been very much about the breakdown of this restricted access to the divine. In Buddhism, as in psychedelics, the individual takes responsibility for their relationship to the source of their being, and for access to the highest states of spirit mind.

El texto en su fuente y en español :)
Nota en ingles
Nota traducida al español por google translate (por eso apesta)