Taking drugs? Pot Cafe opens in LA (sutra)

CBS LA; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, A. Wells, S. Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

Is Buddhism about hallucinating, abusing drugs, getting intoxicated? NO way! Wake up.

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“Lowell Farms: A Cannabis Cafe,” WeHo

WEST HOLLYWOOD, California - The first ever cannabis cafe in the nation opens today in West Los Angeles, across from a synagogue.

“Lowell Farms: A Cannabis Cafe” opens at 1201 North La Brea Ave. as a full-service outdoor rooftop restaurant featuring a THC and CBD-based menu, along with a marijuana smoking area.

Abuse of a medicinal plant's CBD, THC

The West Hollywood Business License Commission approved a license for a cannabis consumption area for the Lowell café, which allows smoking, vaping, and intoxicating edibles.

However, there is some controversy. The café is located directly across from the Jewish Kol Ami Congregation synagogue, which has raised concerns with the city.

According to Wehoville, Kol Ami Rabbi Denise Eger sent an email to city council members in which she noted that the synagogue has families with children, and some of its members are in 12-step programs.

[But the city is more interested in the green for green, the tax revenue, the economic prosperity, and the notoriety of being the first Amsterdam-style pot shop and cafe in the nation.] More + VIDEO

SUTRA: Buddhists get high?

I'm freaking out, I can't hang, it's too much!

Can Buddhists get high? They can do whatever they want. Should Buddhists get high? The Buddha warned against it in his wisdom and experience. For he saw the working of karma (actions) and their results (vipaka and phala, resultants and fruits).

To help people along their way to enlightenment -- to security and freedom -- in this very life, he pointed out five trusted modes of conduct, long held and uncontradicted. We call them the Five Precepts.

They are spelled out in the Sigalovada Sutra or "Enlightened Advice for Householders," "A Layperson's Code of Discipline." (Why should we do what's skillful? Because it's good for everybody involved including us.)

1. Undertake the training to abstain from taking the lives of living being (killing, harming) or encouraging others to do so;
2. undertake the training rule to abstain from taking what is not given (stealing, misappropriating) or encouraging others to do so;
3. undertake the training rule to abstain from taking liberties with others (sexual misconduct, sexual intercourse with the ten out-of-bounds persons, sensual abuse, misuse of the senses) or encouraging others to do so;
4. undertake the training rule to abstain from taking the truth in vain (perjury, lying, abusive speech, chatter) or encouraging others to do so;
5. undertake the training rule to abstain from taking intoxicants (drunkenness, delusion, incapacitation) that occasion heedlessness or encouraging others to do so.

Sex, drugs, rock 'n roll...or unskillful karma?

There are two kinds of drugs, opposites by nature. But we speak as if the use of both were the same thing, and we call the consumption of both "getting stoned" [or high, f-d up, blitzed, s-faced]. They are quite different.

One class of drugs is obtunding -- deadening the senses (like being pelted on the head by rocks or stones), hallucinating, loosening morals, occasioning heedlessness, incapacitating, making us out of our minds, leading us to do what we would not otherwise do, namely, violate the other four precepts.
 

My stroke, my drain bramage (Jill Bolte Taylor)

We would never kill/fight, steal or gamble compulsively, cheat/engage in sexual misconduct, lie/omit or gossip, or encourage anyone else to do these things -- unless we were stoned. If you take a substance likely to lead to heedlessness, don't take that substance! For karma's sake.

The other class is sensitizing, mind expanding, insight producing, a category of natural substances called entheogens (what releases the divine within) or "mind-producing" or "soul-creating," which is what "psyche-delic" actually means, widening our consciousness and opening our third eye (pineal gland, ajna chakra). Most of us are not ready for these things, and these substances, too, are susceptible to abuse by some.

But for the most part, people do not use iboga, mushrooms, peyote, harmaline, or ayahuasca recreationally and repeatedly, losing control, falling into addiction. But weed (high THC), beer, alcoholic spirits, amphetamines, and toxins are frequently the subject of abuse, misuse, overuse, and our lives falling apart.

Cigarettes (and now vape pens) are the great "gateway drug." For many so is white sugar, beer, and weed. CBD is more entheogen than hallucinogen in that a marijuana overdose (freak out) is instantly cured by the administration of CBD. High THC strains make this a drug of serious abuse because in combination with a high CBD content, it can be an etheogen. But any medicine (something with a medicinal use) can be abused and become a dependency that negatively impacts life.

Pass drugs = be reborn handless 500 times.

What a great world it would be if everyone gave up alcohol and replaced it with pot, but few do that; most add two misused substances to weaken their minds, damage their bodies, and ruin their futures karmically with the storing up of much demerit. Avoid drugs.

The thought that marijuana is no big deal is a mistake. It can become a big deal and take the place of alcohol, leading us far from enlightenment, freedom, self-control, or realization of the Truth.

If you're a Buddhist, do what you want. You're responsible for it (karmically). And both the world (society, the law, others) and the future (the impersonal working out of deeds-and-results) will show that drugs were not the way at all.

• Dharma Meditation Initiative, Thursday free addiction-recovery meeting nights, North Hollywood
• Buddhist 12 Steps (RecoveryDharma.org)
• Addiction (RefugeRecovery.org)