A Buddhist View on Medical Marijuana

This is a snip from an article posted in The Medical Marijuana Review

Buddhists have used cannabis in tandem with meditation practices “as a means to stop the mind and enter into a state of profound stillness, also called Samadhi.” They add: “Various spiritual texts, including the Buddhist Tara Tantra, list cannabis as an important aide [sic] to meditation and spiritual practice.”
One source notes that Buddha himself believed cannabis was a cure for rheumatism.

Brian Ruhe, of the Theravada Buddhist Community of Vancouver, sides with the Dalai Lama on the issue.

“I’m in favor of [medical marijuana] as well. I explain it by saying the idea of medical marijuana is reducing suffering, and reducing suffering is good. In this case it’s reasonable, showing intelligent use for that situation,” he adds.

Ruhe has been a practicing Buddhist for 22 years and spent seven months as a Buddhist monk in Thailand in 1996.

“Medical marijuana is OK because Buddhism is a path of intelligence, discernment and compassion, not just following rules,” he contends.

“The Buddha said his teachings were not internally inconsistent because sometimes he would say one thing to a person, and something else to someone else. This is an example.”

Brian Ruhe, of the Theravada Buddhist Community of Vancouver

Ruhe, also the author of two books on meditation and a teacher of university-level courses on Buddhist philosophy and meditation, emphasizes that the medicinal aspect is key. “You should avoid recreational marijuana, to avoid deluding thoughts.”

Sean Hillman, a Buddhist scholar-practitioner and a University of Toronto doctoral student in Religion, Bioethics and South Asian Studies, says that “it is difficult to establish an authoritative stance” on many issues.

As such, “what people choose to ingest is their private business, not subject to Buddhist religious scrutiny,” Hillman notes.

He spent 13 years as a Buddhist monk, ordained by the Dalai Lama. His research straddles religious studies and medical anthropology, with a strong interest in the interaction between religion and end-of-life decision making.

“Simply, when the pain at hand is addressed without any intoxicating side effects, medication has been administered correctly and pain management is effective,” he states.

“Finding the best delivery method and dosage are the challenges. If there is intolerable pain, it is not yet managed. Going beyond this threshold can lead to side effects, including drowsiness and even respiratory failure. I would ask if it is possible to treat illness by this means without side effects.”

The real challenge, therefore, may not be inherent in the chemistry of the drug. Unwieldy side effects are “obstacles on the various Buddhist paths,” as Hillman puts it.

Ajahn Punnadhammo, a Buddhist monk ordained in Thailand in 1992 who runs the Abbot of Arrow River Forest Hermitage in the Thunder Bay, Ontario, region, says most Buddhists would find medical marijuana acceptable because the use of opiates as painkillers for severe injury or illness has already been around for decades and Buddhists don’t oppose that medicine.

“Recognizing that any of these substances are open to abuse, most Buddhists would accept their proper medical use with due caution,” Punnadhammo adds.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dave Gordon

Dave Gordon is a freelance writer in Toronto. His work can be found in the New York Times, Baltimore Sun, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Toronto Star, National Post and others.

Less Obsessions and Ambitions

If we have ambitions—even if our aim is enlightenment—then there is no meditation, because we are thinking about it, craving it, fantasizing, imagining things. That is not meditation. This is why an important characteristic of shamatha meditation is to let go of any goal and simply sit for the sake of sitting. We breathe in and out, and we just watch that. Nothing else. It doesn’t matter if we get enlightenment or not. It doesn’t matter if our friends get enlightened faster. Who cares? We are just breathing. We just sit straight and watch the breath in and out. Nothing else. We let go of our ambitions. This includes trying to do a perfect shamatha meditation. We should get rid of even that. Just sit.

The beautiful thing about having less obsessions and ambitions—and just sitting straight and watching the breathing—is that nothing will disturb us. Things only disturb us when we have an aim. When we have an aim, we become obsessed. Say our aim is to go somewhere, but somebody parks right in front of our car, blocking us. If something gets in the way of our aim, it becomes a terrible thing. If we don’t have an aim, though, it doesn’t matter.

1 of 4 The Four Noble Truths

What is the Noble Truth of Suffering? Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering: in short the five categories affected by clinging are suffering.

There is this Noble Truth of Suffering: such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

This Noble Truth must be penetrated by fully understanding suffering: such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

This Noble Truth has been penetrated by fully understanding suffering: such was the vision, insight, wisdom, knowing and light that arose in me about things not heard before.

[Samyutta Nikaya LVI, 11]

The First Noble Truth with its three aspects is: "There is suffering, dukkha. Dukkha should be understood. Dukkha has been understood."

This is a very skilful teaching because it is expressed in a simple formula which is easy to remember, and it also applies to everything that you can possibly experience or do or think concerning the past, the present or the future.

Suffering or dukkha is the common bond we all share. Everybody everywhere suffers. Human beings suffered in the past, in ancient India; they suffer in modern Britain; and in the future, human beings will also suffer. What do we have in common with Queen Elizabeth? - we suffer. With a tramp in Charing Cross, what do we have in common? - suffering. It includes all levels from the most privileged human beings to the most desperate and underprivileged ones, and all ranges in between. Everybody everywhere suffers. It is a bond we have with each other, something we all understand.

When we talk about our human suffering, it brings out our compassionate tendencies. But when we talk about our opinions, about what I think and what you think about politics and religion, then we can get into wars. I remember seeing a film in London about ten years ago. It tried to portray Russian people as human beings by showing Russian women with babies and Russian men taking their children out for picnics. At the time, this presentation of the Russian people was unusual because most of the propaganda of the West made them out to be titanic monsters or cold-hearted, reptilian people - and so you never thought of them as human beings. If you want to kill people, you have to make them out to be that way; you cannot very well kill somebody if you realise they suffer the way you do. You have to think that they are cold-hearted, immoral, worthless and bad, and that it is better to get rid of them. You have to think that they are evil and that it is good to get rid of evil. With this attitude, you might feel justified in bombing and machine-gunning them. If you keep in mind our common bond of suffering, that makes you quite incapable of doing those things.

The First Noble Truth is not a dismal metaphysical statement saying that everything is suffering. Notice that there is a difference between a metaphysical doctrine in which you are making a statement about The Absolute and a Noble Truth which is a reflection. A Noble Truth is a truth to reflect upon; it is not an absolute; it is not The Absolute. This is where Western people get very confused because they interpret this Noble Truth as a kind of metaphysical truth of Buddhism - but it was never meant to be that.

You can see that the First Noble Truth is not an absolute statement because of the Fourth Noble Truth, which is the way of non-suffering. You cannot have absolute suffering and then have a way out of it, can you? That doesn’t make sense. Yet some people will pick up on the First Noble Truth and say that the Buddha taught that everything is suffering.

The Pali word, dukkha, means "incapable of satisfying" or "not able to bear or withstand anything": always changing, incapable of truly fulfilling us or making us happy. The sensual world is like that, a vibration in nature. It would, in fact, be terrible if we did find satisfaction in the sensory world because then we wouldn’t search beyond it; we’d just be bound to it. However, as we awaken to this dukkha, we begin to find the way out so that we are no longer constantly trapped in sensory consciousness.

Stephen Hawking: One of Buddhism’s Three Poisons threatens us all.

There was an interesting report in the Washington post today, physicist Stephen Hawking has identified humanity’s aggression as one of the greatest threats to humanity itself. Quoth Hawking: “The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.” (Likewise, he said about empathy that it’s the quality he “would most like to magnify is empathy. It brings us together in a peaceful, loving state.”)

Aggression is all too familiar to us all, of course, but it has an especially notable place in Buddhist thought. Sometimes rendered simply as “anger,” or “hate,” aggression is referred to as one of Buddhism’s “Three Poisons,” along with passion (alternatively rendered as greed, or desire), and ignorance (or, delusion).

I thought this was a very poignant observation made by Hawking. I have to admit I never thought he would make a reference to Buddhism. Of course in retrospect it does make sense!

Namaste!

Ev~

Happy Losar!

Today is the first day of Losar, the Tibetan New Year. In Tibetan astrology, this is the year of the Wood Sheep.

The Dharma Is Nothing If Not Counterintuitive

here’s an old story about a frog. He’s lived all his life in a well, and one day another frog appears at its rim. They get to talking, and the strange frog tells the older one that he’s come from somewhere called the ocean.

“I never heard of that. I guess it’s about a quarter the size of my well?”

“No. More than that,” answers the other.

“OK—a half?”

“Much bigger,” the strange frog laughs.

“The same size, then?”

“No, even bigger,” says the foreign frog.

“Alright. This, I got to see,” says the oldster as he clambers out the well and sets out for the ocean.

It’s a hard road, but at last he arrives.

Unfortunately, when he sees the ocean, the shock is so great that it blows his mind and his head explodes.

Lately it has occurred to me that this beloved story told by the 19th-century master Patrul Rinpoche could apply to many of us in our encounter with Buddhism. Just like that frog, we have a bad case of the disease of conceit. We are so confident in the opinions that we bring with us to our encounter with the dharma that we neglect how it radically differs from our preconceptions. We are the frog before it leaves the well.

Sadly, many of us believe that we are already in possession of all there is worth knowing about Buddhism. Such a conceit has a number of causes, but chief among them is the conviction that Buddhism and our own pre-existing assumptions are identical. This belief is particularly pernicious because it blocks any genuine encounter with the dharma. We can represent this belief in the form of a syllogism: My opinions are compassionate. Buddhism is compassionate. Therefore Buddhism must be identical with my opinions.

We exhibit a similar lack of self-awareness when we assert that our version of Buddhism is free of dogma. What do we really mean when we say this? It might be rephrased: Buddhism should be free of dogma (that I don’t like). However, Buddhism must conform to contemporary opinions and the received wisdom of Enlightenment thought and scientificity (because they are not dogmas, and I like them).

A common example of unconcern with examining our prior assumptions is evident when we declare that “Buddhism is just common sense,” when that’s precisely what it’s not. Dharma is nothing if not counterintuitive. After all, our perception and “intuition” indicate that we possess a permanent, singular, and autonomous identity, ensuring our entanglement in the cycle of birth and death.

It’s such assumptions—whether religious, political, or cultural—that have to be temporarily suspended if we’re to uncover the nature of reality.

The pride behind holding beliefs unquestioningly is one of the six stains to be avoided when receiving the teachings. As Patrul Rinpoche himself pointed out, it is very difficult to recognize the stains for what they are. Yet, unless we can dissolve them, our receipt of spiritual teachings will at best be profitless, and at worst, poisonous.

What’s required is a sense of humility, which will render us open to the teaching. The traditional analogy that illustrates this positive approach to the dharma is that of a vessel placed right side up so that it can be filled with water. This receptivity is not to be confused with credulity, nor a hurried reach for certainty when the teachings get difficult. It is rather a readiness to attend to the words and meaning of the teaching, and to persist in critical reflection until it is digested and becomes a part of our thinking.

Regrettably, there are many examples of our casual habit of assuming, without evidence, that two-and-a-half millennia of Buddhist teachings are identical with modern opinions. You see its effect in the dismay expressed by some when they discover, for instance, traditional Asian Buddhist views on ethical issues regarding matters of life and death. What often results is a determined effort to excise the offending teaching, sometimes in the name of a “higher compassion,” or to rejig it to complement notions that are currently fashionable.

One could well guess that our disregard for the actual teaching is one reason why many Asian Buddhists have come to regard Western Buddhists as ultimately unserious. In fact, this might sometimes lead the more cynical Asian teachers to steer clear of anything that might challenge their putative disciples or provoke their displeasure. Some might even be tempted to alter the teachings themselves.

Naturally, such evasiveness accomplishes little for the survival of the dharma. What is the use of a dharma, after all, that doesn’t challenge our assumptions?

We might yet espouse a view of the dharma that is capable of undermining our pride. Patrul Rinpoche offers the Four Metaphors given in sutra:

Noble one, think of yourself as someone who is sick,
Of the dharma as the remedy,
Of your spiritual teacher as a skillful doctor,
And of diligent practice as the way to recovery.

As for the teacher, there are enough genuine ones. And if we go and find one, things could start to get interesting for us frogs right about now.

Namaste!

Ev~

Credits:
Lama Jampa Thaye is a scholar, author, and meditation teacher from the UK.
Illustration by James Thacher

Dharma, Dharma, Dharma

Being civil often has an element of acting. However, in the hinayana tradition, you are behaving rather than acting. Acting is trying to manifest yourself for the sake of display, whereas behaving is how you feel. Acting is the way you dance, and behaving is the way you sneeze or hiccup. You know if you are being genuine. You are the first person who knows. When you are acting, you are concerned with other people’s possible reactions; but when you are behaving, you are just behaving. It’s like sitting on the toilet seat and doing your duty: nobody is watching. It’s your private concern, so there is a quality of genuineness. In the hinayana, you behave decently because the dharma is actually a part of you. That is the meaning of taming yourself. . . .Becoming a dharmic person means that in your everyday life from morning to morning, around the clock, you are not trying to kid anybody.

Namaste!

Ev~