--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "suziezuzie" <msilver1951@> > wrote: > <snip> > > I would be > > really curious to know how many people on this list drink > > two 6oz. glasses of wine each day and can claim that they > > feel no difference in the experience of deep meditation. > > If you drink right before you meditate, of course > you're going to feel a difference. But alcohol gets > metabolized by the system fairly quickly, so if you > have a shot or two of something before you go to > bed, say, at least in my experience, it doesn't > affect meditation the next morning. Sometimes I > have a drink before bed, sometimes I don't, and I've > never noticed any difference. > > FWIW, a former boyfriend of mine who was a TMer > would have profound witnessing experiences if he so > much as drank a glass of beer. That's never > happened to me!
This (profound witnessing after having a drink or two) is far from uncommon. It is *all over* the literature of Tibet and India and Japan, an integral part of many of the stories about enlightened teachers there. The Sixth Dalai Lama used to drink everyone under the table and *then* stand up and create spontaneous poetry in Sanskrit that still hasn't been rivaled by any other Tibetan spiritual poet. The Zen Master poets Ikkyu and Bankei were famous for creating their best and most spir- itual poems and teachings while drunk. Hell, have you ever read any of Chogyam Trungpa's books? He wrote most of them *while* drunk. Go figure. Repeat after me: DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFERENT FOLKS! The whole problem is that people are trying to come up with some "rule" or "law" that says "Booze is bad for you...if you are spiritual you have nothing to do with it" Well, I'm sorry, but life is just not that simple, or simple-minded. It's the same thing with TM. Some here like it, and think it's a great technique of meditation that has taken them to some of the highest experiences they've ever had. Others think of it as a beginner's technique that got them started with meditation, but that it pales in comparison with other techniques they learned later on. BOTH sets of people would be RIGHT. For them. Any "shades of gray" in between would be RIGHT. For them. There are no panaceas or solutions or rules that work for everyone. Get over it. > Very different with pot, again in my experience > (many years ago). But there again, look into it and you will find whole spiritual traditions in India that smoke hashish as a sacrament, and in *huge* quantities. Different strokes for different folks. I jumped into this whole tempest in a shot glass because a couple of people got stupid behind the subject. One tried to declare alcohol a poison, as if there were no other point of view on the subject, and the other tried to say that the fact that he didn't drink made him somehow "better" than those who do. That's just elitism. It has nothing to do with fact, or with health, or with spiritual devel- opment. There are MANY stories out there in the world of spirituality about the use of alcohol, some of them within Shankara's own tradition. For me, the bottom line is simple. If you don't like to drink, don't drink. That's your right, and your choice. But when you start claiming that having made that choice makes you "better" than some other human being on this planet, IMO you've turned into something a great deal more offensive than a drunk.
