Sacraments
Every time the Buddhist teachings have migrated to a new territory, they’ve changed their approach to practice through incorporating into the body of teachings the cultural/spiritual realities of the new territory. The gentle Chinese monks arrive on the shores of Japan where they encounter the samurai, and the fierceness of zen is born. The teachers from India climb the Himalayas onto the Tibetan plateau where they encounter the animistic and shamanistic culture of the indigenous Bon-po people, and suddenly images of bodhisattvas, wrathful and peaceful deities enter the Buddhist teachings.
The dharma is moving into the West. If it’s truly to take root here, just as it did in Japan and Tibet, there is no way that a uniquely Western form of dharma, different from the forms of practice coming over from Asia, won’t be born and develop. I look back on my life and acknowledge two homegrown, explosively spiritual events that have occurred in the culture into which I was born and which are destined to make their way in to the teachings.
The first is the Rave movement. Our children are moving in ways that I never did when I was their age. Sitting like a stone garden statue of the Buddha needs to give way to a subtle dance of the spontaneous motions of upright balancing.
In this way The Awakening presents an orientation toward sitting practice that is not only immeasurably more user-friendly but takes you far deeper and far more rapidly into the mystery realms of human being.
The second explosive event of spiritual awakening that’s occurred during my lifetime is the advent and availability of entheogenic substances— cannabis, psilocybin, MDMA, mescaline, LSD—that have given untold numbers of people a direct glimpse of their awakened divinity beyond conventional mind. While these substances do not work well for the mind oriented, still body approach toward sitting meditation coming over from Asia, they work extremely well for many people as catalytic support for exploring the body awakening, breath liberating practices of The Awakening.
Inviting spontaneous, natural motions into your sitting posture is for everyone. Your first task in exploring this fifth koan is to determine if you’re someone for whom the inclusion of entheogens supports your exploration of The Awakening or not. Do you want to explore the koans as a Pureland student (following traditional dharma’s injunction against using any kind of mind-altering substances) or as a Ganjasangha student (welcoming cannabis as an ally in your practice). The practices are powerful in themselves without entheogens, so, if you decide to incorporate them, know that you can only use small amounts of the above named substances with which to sit in meditation and explore the koans.
In most jurisdictions, the use of these substances continues to be illegal. I am not suggesting that you break the law and experiment with them, but nor can I remain mute and not acknowledge that, for many people (myself very much included), they work very well indeed for helping explore the koans of The Awakening. This is simply fact. It’s on you to decide whether you want to violate the laws of wherever you live and experiment with them.