| |
or hashish, or marijuana. And these drugs have been used for centuries, from the very beginning of man. It is nothing new.
The reason why they became addicted is because the drugs gave them a glimpse of something... how things should be. They are temporary glimpses, and they are produced by chemicals so they don't go beyond the mind. But mind gets a glimpse, just as the lake reflects the faraway moon. And the experience is so beautiful that not to repeat it again and again becomes impossible.
All the societies have been fighting against drugs but the fight has not been successful. It will never succeed the way the society is. It can succeed only if you give people the right experience of samma samadhi -- `samma samadhi' means right samadhi -- so that they can make a differentiation, a discrimination between what is right and what is wrong. Those who have known their buddha-nature are not addicted to drugs, do not need drugs for their experience. Their experience is not caused by any chemicals; their experience is caused by turning their whole energy in towards the center of their being. That has nothing to do with chemicals. But chemicals can give you an illusion, something very similar.
Hakuin has adopted Buddha's habit. Buddha never spoke about anything without adding the word `right' first, because his understanding was -- and he is correct -- that everything can go wrong if you get caught up with something similar which is illusory. And you cannot make the distinction because you don't know the real. Unless you know the real, how can you expect to make a discrimination between the unreal and the real?
It was a great contribution of Gautam Buddha that he would talk about all the qualities using the word `right' first. Samma means right. Because everything can be taken for granted as right if you don't have any experience of it. Then any illusion, any hallucination... and these hallucinations will drag you through life after life.
A man like Aldous Huxley, one of the most intelligent men of this century, got caught into it. He became addicted to LSD and he preached that what he was experiencing was the same as what Buddha experienced
|
|
|