The Ten Stages of Zen Enlightenment

The way to sudden awakening is abduction by ETs then gurgling on TV: Disclosure Day

The Ten Bulls (created with Dream by WOMBO feat. music by Infraction) : r/AIArtwork

.

The 10 Stages of Zen Enlightenment: A Map to Buddha-Nature

Bongeunsa paintings of ox herding, the Ten Bulls (wiki)

.

Ten to Zen Bulls

(Buddha's Wisdom) 🔍 The ancient [Taoist] Zen map that reveals we've been seeking what we already have: The 10 stages of Zen enlightenment, known as The Ten Ox-Herding Pictures, are Zen Buddhism’s 1,000-year-old roadmap to awakening and self-discovery.

• What does Zen consider "enlightenment"? There are two words used. The first is satori (from Japanese satoru, to know, to see, understand a gestalt) or "sudden realization." Any insight or epiphany might do. But there's another word, kenshō, that means suddenly seeing our "true face," our "nature," our intrinsic "Buddha-nature." Certainly, our "true nature," which is the true nature of all things, has three marks. Penetrating this is necessary to letting go of all clinging.
• None of these accords with what the historical Buddha taught as enlightenment (bodhi, "awakening"), but seeing "emptiness" (suññatā) -- how all things are impersonal -- is necessary for the first stage of awakening called "stream entry."
• The Ten Bulls or the "Ten Ox Herding Pictures" (Chinese shíniú 十牛, Japanese jūgyūzu 十牛図, Korean sipwoo 십우)

Created by 12th-century Chinese Chan Master Kuòān Shīyuǎn, these images explain the stages of enlightenment—from desperate seeking to the realization that the ox we’ve been chasing has been the "Buddha-nature" we already possess and have always possessed.

This isn’t just ancient art. It’s a mirror showing where we truly are on the path to awakening right now.

This video explores The 10 Stages of Zen Enlightenment: A Map to Buddha-Nature, decoding the Zen Buddhist path to awakening through Zen’s most iconic teaching story.

Learn how Kuòān Shīyuǎn’s Ten Ox-Herding Pictures became a timeless visual guide to mindfulness, meditation, and non-duality in Chinese Chan and Zen Buddhism.

DISCOVER

• The 10 ancient Zen stages explained step-by-step
• How 12th century Master Kuòān Shīyuǎn transformed Taoist symbols into Zen training tools
• The mystery behind the final picture—why enlightenment ends in a noisy marketplace
• How the Heart Sutra and Zen Master Dōgen’s teachings appear inside these images
• Why these ancient pictures still describe the modern search for meaning and peace
• [Hasbara propaganda works as 'Disclosure Day' invades globe with $93M worldwide opening
• Box Office: 'Disclosure Day' opening to $44 mil in U.S.
• 'Disclosure Day' nears $100 mil, 'Michael' eyes $950 mil]

Are ETs into Zen? (Disclosure Day)

🙏 Are you somewhere between Picture 1 and Picture 4, searching, struggling, or starting to see glimpses? That's exactly where you need to be. Subscribe to continue the Path to Enlightenment series as we explore Theravāda's Four Stages and Mahāyāna's Bodhisattva Path.

 ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

• 00:00 Intro – “You’ve lost something”
• 01:09 Chp 1 – The finger pointing at the moon
• 03:11 Chp 2 – When you first spot what you’ve lost 
• 07:52 Chp 3 – The years of wrestling your own mind
• 12:06 Chp 4 – The death of everything you think you are
• 17:57 Chp 5 – Why enlightenment [Zen's version of the awakened state] looks like a drunk in the market
• 21:45 Chp 6 – The ox you’re already riding

Ox herding pictures, No. 7 (Ten Bulls)

#buddhism #zen #enlightenment #oxherding #buddhanature #dogen #mindfulness #meditation, #buddhaswisdom #ZenBuddhism #ZenEnlightenment #OxHerding #BuddhaNature #SpiritualAwakening #PathToEnlightenment #ZenMaster

📱 Join community: Instagram: / buddhaswizdom Facebook: / buddhaswizdom ☕ Support the channel: buymeacoffee.com/buddhaswisdom

📚 SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

Primary texts:

"Ten Ox-Herding Pictures" by Kuòān Shīyuǎn (Kakuan) - 12th century Chan Buddhism classic "The Platform Sutra" - Teachings of Huìnéng, Sixth Patriarch "The Diamond Sutra" (Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra) "The Heart Sutra" (Prajñāpāramitā Hṛdaya) "Shōbōgenzō" by Dōgen Zenji - 13th century Zen master "The Gateless Gate" (Wúménguān) - Classic Zen kōan collection featuring Zhàozhōu

Modern scholarship:

"Zen and Japanese Culture" by D.T. Suzuki "The Three Pillars of Zen" by Philip Kapleau (commentary on ox-herding) "Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin" translated by Norman Waddell "The Zen Teaching of Rinzai" translated by Irmgard Schloegl Historical Context: Earlier buffalo-herding sets from Chinese Chan tradition Evolution from earlier versions to Kakuan's refined ten-stage cycle Song Dynasty Buddhist art and philosophy

• Buddha's Wisdom, Nov. 2, 2025; Eds., Wisdom Quarterly

The Apocalypse of the Age of Idiocracy

(After the Credits) Idiocracy wasn't a comedy, it was a prophecy!

Apocalypse of Age of Idiocracy, idolatry

(Psyfluence) This video delves into The Apocalypse of the Mind: The Age of Idiocracy and Idolatry, a deep analysis of how contemporary [American] society is caught in an unprecedented intellectual and spiritual crisis.

We reflect on the decline of critical thinking, the glorification of [idiocy and] superficiality, and the worship of false idols—from celebrities to empty ideologies.

This content invites us to question our dominant culture, its values, and how this reality impacts our inner and collective freedom. Through current examples and philosophical reflections, we are invited to awaken and seek an authentic path amid the noise and confusion of the modern age.

Are we ready to challenge our own beliefs and open our minds? Some are. Everyone else can return to consuming corn and cattle, body parts and synthetic plastic contamination.

Why did metalheads survive?

(Retired Frank) The [positive] Psychology of Gen X Metalheads

Bhikkhu Bodhi: Selfless Dependent Origination

(Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies) Dependent Origination and Selflessness in Pali tradition: Bhikkhu Bodhi

• American Theravada scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi
• Bhikkhu Bodhi, did the Buddha say there's NO self?
• Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies

• 

  Tibetan Vajrayana is a Mahayana school

  Nagarjuna: Nāgārjuna (from Sanskrit Nāga + Arjuna, Chinese Lóngshù 龍樹, Tibetan Klu sgrub); circa 150 – c. 250 CE) was a philosopher and Mahāyāna Buddhist monk from South India. He is considered the founder of the Madhyamaka (Middle Way) school [2, 3]. He is widely considered to be the most important Buddhist philosopher after the Buddha himself [4, 3]. Indeed, at least in Tibetan Buddhism, he is called the "second Buddha" [5]. He was a well-known defender of the new Mahāyāna movement. His treatises (śāstras) are the foundational texts of a school of Buddhist philosophy known as the teaching of emptiness (Śūnyatā-vāda) or Middle Way School of Madhyamaka...
• ABOVE: Nagarjuna statue in Elista, Kalmykia, Europe, Russia: Великий учитель Нагарджуна. Буддийский храм «Золотая обитель Будды Шакьямуни». Элиста

Indian monk and teacher Nagarjuna with 84 mahasiddha (wikipedia)

We must still kill every baby in Palestine

Something BIG Is About to Happen to ISRAEL and the U.S.. | American Professor Jeff Sachs

(Family Guy via Glenn Quagmire) When the family became Jewish American supremacists

• Not in our name! (ifnotnowmovement.org)
• Jewish Voice for Peace (jvp.org)
• Israeli Jews against Israel: NKUSA.org

Are you white? - Yes. - Are you (as an Ashkenazi Jew) better than every-

one else? - Yes. - Are you a white supremacist? - No! - No? - Well, yes.

• Rabbis for Ceasefire
• IDF veterans admit it: breakingthesilence.org.il
• ‎شرش | Shoresh | שר”ש‎ (@shoresh_us) • IG
• American Veterans for Peace
• Code Pink: Women for Peace
• Amnesty International
• I. Rony; Shauna Schwartz, Pfc. Sandoval, Sheldon S., Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Science discovers the meaning of life

All life comes down to matter, says Materialism

A Mystery as Old as Humanity: For centuries, we’ve asked the same impossible question: What is life—and what gives it meaning? Now, scientists think they’re closer than ever to answering it. But their explanation isn’t philosophical or spiritual—it’s something far more concrete, hidden deep within the structure of matter itself.

• What if Buddhism's fundamental unit of materiality in this universe, the rupa kalapa, or "form particle," explains the "meaning of life"? What if all we are is just material, arising in the cosmos, turning, and passing away into nothingness, having emerged from there in the first place?
• Preposterous. The Buddha rejected this wrong view (miccha-ditthi) in very strong terms. It leads to a very pernicious view that denies a great deal about our lives. There are two extreme views the Buddha rejected and avoided; they are the annihilationist view on the one hand and the eternalist view on the other. Instead, he taught Dependent Origination as an explanation for all things.
• The idea that we (the self, soul, ego, personality, living being) are only material in nature is flawed and leads to the annihilationist wrong view that says that when we die, everything stops. There is no further becoming. Karma has no force to produce further becoming, rebirth, rearising in another state, manifesting the results of previous deeds.
• There is a similar extreme on the other end, that of the eternalists who proclaim that the self/soul (atta or atman) continues in essence unchanged forever, individuated, fated to receive the result of all previous deeds (karma). This, too, is a wrong view.
• How could they both be wrong? Wouldn't one being wrong necessitate the other being right? No. Both views are at odds with reality, and enlightenment (bodhi) is knowing-and-seeing things as they truly are thereby being liberated from the endless Round of Rebirth (samsara).
• What does the Middle Way say is the case? One must first understand that "middle" does not mean a compromise between both views, a mean or average of the two. Indeed, what we are or at least what we identify with, has a material component, but there is also a psychological component. This is nama-rupa, "name and form." This can be said of all things, not just us.
• More importantly, what is "us"? What are "we"? What is the self or soul or the being? The Buddha said when people speak of self, they are referring to the Five Aggregates clung to as self. These are form; feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness(es).
• What, ultimately speaking, is "form" (rupa)? Science does not know, but well-instructed mystics (noble ones, knowers, seers, those endowed with the divine eye or dibba cakkhu) know. They do not know it by rote. Anyone can come to know that. They know it by direct perception. They are well instructed not to memorize a list but rather to engage in a practice (Satipatthana) to directly see, penetrate, and understand what is there in material form. Unfortunately, what is there is described in ancient and archaic terms. When modern people hear these words, they -- thinking they know what they mean -- dismiss them out of hand.
• Those who listen, who give ear and attention to comprehend what the Buddha meant by these ancient terms is then instruction on the PRACTICE to be able to see them directly. See what? The Four Elements. We "know" there aren't four elements. There are many more. This is not what "elements" (dhatu) means in Buddhism. The elements are not, roughly speaking, material. They are qualities, characteristics, descriptions of matter. Those many descriptions are put into four categories, and these categories are the "elements."
• The PRACTICE of Four Elements Meditation is the way to know-and-see them. This is not science to SHOW others. This is Buddhist psychology (Abhidhamma) to see for oneself. For it is only by knowing-and-seeing for ourselves that we can become free. No one has ever gained freedom, enlightenment, spiritual liberation simply by reading -- just as no one has ever learned physics by flipping to the back pages of a text for the answers to equations. The answers are back there so that, after doing the PRACTICE of calculating, we can see if our results comport and accord with what others have confirmed are the answers. It is essential to come see for oneself. That is the Path of Freedom (Vimuttimagga), the Path of Purification (Vissudhimagga).

Source: Scientists think they’ve finally found the meaning of life (MSN)

Megadeth's Dave on real witchcraft

(Sean Ryan Clips) Sinner Dave Mustaine confesses, rushes back to Abrahamic Christianity

Dave Mustaine (formerly of Metallica then his revenge creation Megadeth) has bad mojo. No one in the metal community really likes him, certainly not his bandmates. Maybe there's a reason -- a bad childhood, trauma, scars, bad choices, and a spooky vibe. He did once make one good album though and at least one truly great song, strangely appropriate in the end:

Trap-rap-metal cover of "Sicko Mode" by MaryJaneDaniel

(Our Last Night) Pop punk metal screamo cover of "This is Halloween"

(WackenTV) Will Mustaine reform and play Wacken? (Macabre) "Zodiac"

Rap music, prison pipeline, nitrous oxide

(Black Stories Untold) How America uses rap hip-hop to DESTROY Black lives in the West

WARNING: Violent, vulgar, obscene, crass gangsterism promoting drugs and prison pipeline!

Inside Los Angeles’s Nitrous Epidemic

(No Jumper) Jan. 12, 2025: Vlogs. Come along while we discover the roots of the nitrous epidemic in the megalopolis that is Los Angeles, the City of Lost Angels. Full uncensored video available only at Patreon.com/nojumper.

(Lyrics) "No Tears" by gangsta rapper Scarface

Promote music with No Jumper (nojumper.com/pages/promo). Check out online store: nojumper.com. No Jumper Patreon: nojumper. Check out new Spotify playlist: open.spotify.com/playlist/5te... Follow on Snapchat (4874336901), Spotify (open.spotify.com/show/4z4yCTj...), iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/n...), social media (4874336901) / nojumper / nojumper / nojumper / nojumper. Join the Discord: discord. Follow Adam22: adam22 / adam22 / adam22 adam22bro on Snapchat.

• Ice Cube/N.W.A "Straight Outta Compton"; 21 Savage "Redrum"; Black Stories Untold (Ice Cube exposes rap music industry); No Jumper, 1/12/25; Cypress Hill, "Insane in the Brain"; Eminem (industry plant?); Scarface "No Tears"; Pfc. Sandoval; Seth Auberon, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Clingy love is doomed to disappoint

Mystic Knights "I'm Afraid"

"Peace of mind, peace of mind, hard to keep, hard to find" sings Danny Elfman

How to gain peace of mind, Dalai Lama?

The 14th Dalai Lama explains how one might gain peace of mind

Science: We're living in 'Ghost Time'

MIT: “Aliens are simulating our reality”

MIT Scientist: “Aliens are simulating our reality”

(Jesse Michels) 11-22-24: In today's episode of American Alchemy, Jesse Michels sits down with MIT Professor Riz Virk to explore the provocative idea that our reality might be a simulation, blending cutting-edge physics, ancient mysticism, and gaming theory.

They dive into topics like quantum mechanics, free will, and the Mandela Effect, offering a fresh perspective on the nature of existence. Riz Virk's book The Simulated Multiverse: tinyurl.com/rizvirkamazon.

Timestamps

• 00:00 - Introduction
• 03:32 - Are We Living in a Simulation?
• 07:10 - The Physics of Simulation Theory
• 12:08 - Evidence from Fine-Tuned Constants
• 18:14 - The Mandela Effect and Changing Realities
• 20:40 - Information Theory
• 30:42 - The Role of the Mind
• 35:57 - Free Will
• 37:17 - Time
• 39:50 - Parapsychology
• 48:32 - Donald Hoffman's Theory
• 50:38 - Breaking Out of the Simulation
• 01:07:33 - Reality is Maya
• 01:12:00 - UFOs
• 01:18:40 - How to Play the Game
• 01:22:54 - NPCs
• 01:27:04 - Outro

ABOUT: AMERICAN ALCHEMY is an original series hosted by Jesse Michels that explores the frontier of science and tech. Each week brings exclusive interviews with some of the leading thinkers of our time. #podcast #simulation #aliens #uap #technology #quantum #physics #timetravel #computercode

Join new WHOP (group calls with Jesse) ➤ whop.com/jessemichels. Support American Alchemy by becoming a YouTube member: @jessemichels. WHOP ➤ Get access to exclusive behind the scenes episodes: whop.com/jessemichels. SPOTIFY ➤ tinyurl.com/jessemichelsspotify. DISCORD ➤ discord INSTAGRAM (personal) ➤ jessemichels. INSTAGRAM (show) ➤ jessemichelsofficial. TWITTER ➤ alchemyamerican. EMAIL/BOOKINGS ➤ usa.alchemy@gmail.com.

Produced by Jesse Michels and Bryan Felber. Written by Jesse Michels. Editing and animation by Bryan Felber. Additional animation by Ross @FlatPackFX. Featuring Jesse Michels and Prof. Rizwan Virk. Cinematography by Isaac Rodriguez. Additional cinematography by Mario Kidd. Appearances from Jacques Vallée Garry Nolan Rob Rinehart Brian Muraresku Graham Hancock Paul Schatzkin. Special thanks to Roger Penrose The PEAR Lab Philip K. Dick The Simulated Multiverse and The Simulation Hypothesis by Rizwan Virk are available in print, eBook, and audiobook now. Original music: open.spotify.com/artist/6LlLR... 

🔒Remove personal information from the web at joindeleteme.com/JESSE20 and use code JESSE20 for 20% off 🙌 DeleteMe international plans: international.joindeleteme.com.

Day of Dead: Buddhist hungry ghost stories

How to do the Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos): "Sugar Skull/La Catrina Makeup Tutorial"

Ancient Buddhist ghost stories from the Petavatthu (Tales of Hungry Ghosts)

(FOOLESJOURNEY) This collection of ancient South Asian ghost (peta, preta) stories combines several passages from an early Buddhist text called the Peta-vatthu – meaning “Ghost Stories," or more specifically, "Tales of Hungry Ghosts." It was likely written after 300 BCE, and is deeply rooted in ancient (especially pre-Buddhist, Vedic, Hindu) concepts of disembodied souls (subtle body beings) trapped between hellish and human planes, in the realm of hungry ghosts, doomed to experience torture and consequences of greedy, hateful, and deluded behavior in life, creating what are more simply referred to as “hungry ghosts.”

FURTHER READING

• Petavatthu – suttafriends.org/peta-vatthu Pv 1.5
• Outside the Walls – suttafriends.org/sutta/pv1-5 Pv 2.10
• Uttara’s Mother – suttafriends.org/sutta/pv2-10 Pv 4.6
• The Ghost Princes – suttafriends.org/sutta/pv4-6 Pv 2.8
• The Ghost Chullaseṭṭi – suttafriends.org/sutta/pv2-8 Pv 4.16
• Hit by 60,000 Hammers – suttafriends.org/sutta/pv4-16

Sugar skull/La Catrina makeup tutorial

(Jhanay Mendez) Products used: white Snazaroo face paint mixed with MAC face and body foundation, C2 black Snazaroo face paint, Marc Jacobs black eyeliner, Naked palette tease/blackout, Colourpop matte liquid lipstick in Love Bug E.L.F. translucent powder, Covergirl rocket mascara, Ardell lashes in natural. Oct. 21, 2016: Instagram: @jhanaymendez

• Watch my other Halloween video: Diamond skull Halloween makeup tutorial

#ghoststory #ghost #ghosts #buddhism #ancienthistory #ancientindia #ancientbharat #bharat #nepal #southasian #history #ancientworld #ancientstory #preta #ancientreligion #buddha #merits #culture #custom #haunting #india #ancienttexts #scarystory #scary #scarystories

• FoolesJourney, Dec. 12, 2023: Crystal Quintero, CC Liu, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Kamala vs. Donala, who's prettier?

 

Kamala Harris’ best shoe moments through the years, photos – footwear news (ossin.org)

Fake: False teeth, false speech, wig, diseased skin covered in orange bronzer, adult diapers...

The vanity of narcissism: Bald Trump wearing wig piece blown off by wind. Oops.

HOT: Trump as a woman, sportier hairdo and sunglasses, a little hair dye but less bronzer.

Old chip off two odd blocks: undoctored photos of Trump's parents's bad skin and wild hair

Pres. B.S. Obama sizes up Pres. Trump, roll call vote gets lit, and more DNC Night 2 highlights

Stephen, I kiss better than Camela, have blacker lips, the best lips, there aren't any better lips.

.

I'm an Aryan albino

(The Daily Show) Aug. 21, 2024: The Daily Show is in Chicago for the DNC. Jordan Klepper recaps the second night, from an electric roll call featuring Lil Jon to headliners Barack and Mike Obama delivering soaring rhetoric while also hitting below the belt. Plus, Desi Lydic has notes for the delegation from Illinois, and Ronny Chieng reveals the insults Democrats have coming next for Trump. #DailyShow #DNC #Obama

I'm a gay man, a transsexual, and Mrs. Obama

Michael "Michelle" Obama was born a man, and Joan Rivers got disappeared for saying so out loud even though people in Washington and Hollywood knew it. They were just smart enough not to say so, as this would make Pres. B.S. Obama the first homosexual to hold the office, which it would almost certainly not. But just as France had a prime minister married to a man named Michel, so we in the U.S. had it to.

Bernie: "You're ugly, boo!" - DJ: "Why you! I'm gonna kick your old a...off this stage!"

.

Kamala Devi as a Black kid

Thank you, CIA, which makes all things possible. After Mike's amazing oratory at the DNC, the New York Times thought it was a good idea to post an article all about what s/he was wearing, a weird outfit to mask Mike's massive shoulders and height, emphasizing his long wig and big teeth, guiding casual viewers away from the obvious and in-your-face fact that one is looking at a man in a man's body pretending to be demure, diminutive, and even girly. Hormone treatments are amazing on the human body, showing how flexible our phenotypical features can become regardless of our genotype. But why would the NYT be sexist and insensitive with so powerful a person? Why promote gender stereotypes. His/her speech was the amazing thing, now what s/he wore when reading it.

• Yes, but what does Kamala Devi look like without makeup?
• Aargh, Trump without makeup, orange coloring and wig? Yikes!
• AOC Ridiculed for adopting bizarre new (Southern? Puerto Rican New Yorker street hoodlum? Bartender jive?) accent

Joan Rivers' most SAVAGE and MESSY reads💀 (Fashion Police)

I'll promise anything to get into the Oval Henhouse, like this clothing. Obey me, Sheep, obey.

(Offensive Tea) Summer 2024: #joanrivers #fashionpolice #stantwitter R.I.P. to this absolute reading LEGEND [who is rumored to be alive and fine after being exiled for spilling the beans on Mike, aka Michelle, Obama who was born a man. Joan and [uber-mannish] Wendy were carrying television in the 2000s. Bring them back. 👑✨ ☆ MERCH: ☆ offensive-teas-store.creator...

• Eds., Wisdom Quarterly COMMENTARY; Jordan Klepper, The Daily Show, 8/21/24; Offensive Tea, July 2024

How to keep cool without alcohol: Ü Relax

I'm an artist, and I do art for art's sake in L.A. Kava Bar & Botanical Lounge (the Valley)

I want to feel less inhibited without all my hangups, at least on the weekends, and I need help.

Alcohol is liquid ignorance.

The world’s most effective calming tonic experience provides a new kind of cool with delicious, ready-to-mix drinks that kick stress to the curb.

Try Ü Relax with plant-based ingredients, scientist-backed formula for quick, convenient, and delicious drinks.

Hours of calm in one small packet

Anti-vax comedy tee-shirt

These brews provide up to four hours of continuous calm in one small packet. They are powerful anti-stress blends.

Forget about worries and let go of whatever is bothering. Tasters are just one sip away from a calmer, less-stressed state of mind.

What's in it?

Sit back and unwind with Ü Relax. Take a moment, anytime, anywhere. Ü Relax delivers a great-tasting medley of the potent and powerful properties of these three plants [nootropics] for a happier, worry-free experience:

• Kava
• Ashwagandha
• Lemon Balm
• with L-Theanine.

Ingredients to feel good about

The Alcohol Freedom Formula

All Ü Relax tonics are made with ingredients found in nature and backed by science. Each stress-reducing property comes together for a super-functional formula that tastes amazing and mellows one out quickly.

We all get stressed... The knots in the stomach, the tight pain in the chest, the thoughts racing through the mind—that’s stress.

It happens to all of us, but instead of letting it bring us down, we’re kindly kicking stress and anxiousness out the door. We believe we deserve to feel good and smile, no matter what life throws at us. More

Why can Paddy McGee drink and drink like his dad?

But why not drink alcohol? What's the big deal? Everyone's doing it! (Everyone isn't)

Those sound like Yoda's words stating the Buddha's sentiments. Maybe they both said it?

.

The Buddha spoke of human virtue in terms of Five Precepts. It is the kind of karma that leads to (re)birth on the human plane. There are many more human worlds not of this familiar one. Just to be human, in the past and in the future, it is because one kept this minimum of conduct, behavior, action. The Five Precepts are restraints, refraining from:

1. killing
2. stealing
3. sexual misconduct
4. false speech (bearing false witness)
5. intoxicants (that occasion heedlessness).

Whoever goes to a shrink ought
to have his head examined.

What are the worst of these? The answer would seem to be the first, killing. Actually, that is not the worst. The Buddha spoke of No. 4 as being worse than that -- insofar as it was observed that someone who lies, deceives, misleads might do any of the others since such a person has no shame about lying about it (as to evade consequences).

We maintain, while those two things may be true, there is one worse, and that is No. 5, using dope (getting wasted, sauced, trashed, inebriated, intoxicated). Why? Of all the things we would not do, what wouldn't we do when stoned -- when out of our mind, out of our reason, out of sorts, out of our heads? They all become possible.

So the (otherwise) good person suddenly, when drunk, lies, cheats (sleeps with another person's partner), steals, and even kills in a fit of anger or, more likely, in a reckless disregard for consequences, such as driving under the influence, or operating a gun or heavy machinery or a horse and carriage or a laser or blacking out and becoming possessed and doing who knows what?

In fact, in the Sigalovada Sutra, the Buddha spells out the misery that accompanies one who gets drunk. Of course, this would apply to any intoxicant (meth, weed, pharmaceuticals, fairy dust, venom, soma, yerba deliria or delirium-inducing-herb like Jimson weed, whatever). But it's usually alcohol, whether beer or spirits. What heedlessness, shamelessness, recklessness, negligence, carelessness might it occasion?

Whatever one would scrupulously not do (sober) becomes a wide-open possibility when s-faced, stoned, wasted, out of one's gourd. One is straight but drunk or stoned suddenly one is open to anything. One is a preserver of life and would risk one's own life to save another, but drunk or stoned does such stupid things that someone gets killed. Do the courts hold one responsible for killing-while-drunk? Yes. Judges look down on it and sentence one to many years in prison.

We may not feel responsible because what we did, we did when we were not in our right mind. But think about it -- as you're telling the other prisoners that you don't belong in prison with them -- what were we when we got drunk or stoned? We did that sober.

And in doing that, we take all the responsibility of what we end up doing inebriated. Fair/not fair? What does it really matter what the court says, what the judge says, what the jury says, what the society says, or what we say? What matter is what karma says. We will hold ourselves to account for all we do under the influence of

• greed (passion, liking)
• hatred (aversion, disliking)
• delusion (foolishness, ignorance, stupidity, wrong views)

We're sticking to toxic soft drinks full of sugar,
aspartame, carbonation, saltpeter, and caffeine.

That being the case, why would we make it worse? Why would we drink, fall into the habit of drinking (by repeatedly choosing to or allowing someone else to choose that we drink), think nothing of drinking (until something very bad happens)?

Maybe we'll say it's because we needed to relax. Well, if that were true, if that were the case, why not use Ü Relax or some similar mood-enhancing but not intoxicating-to-the-point-of-heedlessness substance?

Above all, the Buddha said, let us be lamps/islands (dipa) unto ourselves and work out our salvations/liberations with diligence (mindfulness). There is no time to waste. We might say, above all, to pull a cultural reference from the 1980s (rap song), "Check yourself before you wreck yourself." Or maybe it would be better to say, "Know thyself" and, as Howard Stern's father always used to say to him, "Don't be stupid, you dummy" (which means, "Don't be a wiseass, Dumbass.")

• CalmingCo.com; Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Dhr. Seven, Moon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Public Service Campaign and COMMENTARY