Bartending-while-Buddhist on Cinco de Mayo

B. R. Oliver (tricycle.org, Trike Daily, May 5, 2016); edited and expanded by Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Crystal Quintero, Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Study: Greedy booze brands are breaking advertising bans and codes (B&T/bandt.com.au)

Green vomit margarita with Mexican character.

Ah, May 5th, Cinco de Mayo, the day every Anglo-American under 30 crowds into a Mexican restaurant to vaguely celebrate something with Corona, Dos Equis, and toxic shots of tequila.

Meanwhile, actual Mexicans are working, serving sloppy gringos, and mopping up their neon green margarita vomit.

My first serving job 20 years ago was in a Tex-Mex restaurant, considerably heavier on the Tex than Mex.

I'd never celebrated Cinco de Mayo, nor had I ever even heard of it. I had enough trouble pretending to be Irish on St. Patrick’s Day.

So when the “holiday” rolled around and the restaurant went to DEFCON 1, I was confused: Every staff member from managers to busboys were either working, on call, sobbing hysterically in the walk-in cooler, or chain-smoking out by the dumpster, wishing they had heroin.

Bad karma leads to remorse and crying.

I worked a double that day, and it was an agave-soaked nightmare. I didn’t end up crying, but I did sniffle several times.

After a 13-hour shift, I dragged my dead ass home so I could consume alcohol by any means necessary.

When I got there, my roommate’s girlfriend was passed out halfway across the threshold of our apartment. My roommate almost made it to bed, but he fell short by a few scant feet and lay curled up and fully clothed on the floor.

This was the final stage of Cinco de Mayo honky drunkenness. I no longer fear Cinco de Mayo, and crap like that has tapered off since I started working in nicer restaurants -- places where patrons can usually pronounce “coq au vin” and don’t turn quesadilla into “kess-a-dilla.”

Look, guys! I'm a Chicana. Shooters for Independence, anyone?! Say hobla S-pan-Noel?

Cultural appropriation? Don’t let the woke scolds poop on Cinco de Mayo (reason.com)
Tacos, tequila, and gaudy sombreros are not the path to white supremacy. Or are they?

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I’m a Buddhist, and that means I’m committed to ending my own suffering (at least on paper). But as a bartender, my vocation seems singularly dedicated to furthering suffering, delusion, and madness (here and in the hereafter, if there is one).

Granted, it furthers suffering after a great night of delightfully lowered inhibitions, all-around sexy revelry, and vegan tacos from a sketchy truck at 3:00 am, but still.

Daddy, does it taste good? - Shut up! Do as I say.

Alcohol can certainly be used unstupidly — enhancing a meal or a finely crafted mixed drink. But alcohol also creates addiction, ruins livers, lives, and evenings, destroys friendships, romances, and generates a ton more drama and work for paramedics, cops, ER personnel, and bouncers.

So I’ve started to question the consequences of being a Buddhist bartender, not only the job itself, but the lifestyle that surrounds it.

First and foremost, I worry that being a bartender is wrong livelihood. It sure isn’t right livelihood. There are a lot of things in the Pali canon and all the Commentaries that seem open to my interpretation.

But the Buddha was very clear in the Vanijja Sutra (AN 4.79) when he listed five types of trade Buddhists avoid doing business in:

1. weapons
2. human beings (prostitutes, slaves)
3. meat
4. intoxicants
5. poisons.

The prettier the poison, the more intoxicating?

There are an awful lot of pretty-poison intoxicants lined up on the shelf behind me when a guest sits down at the bar. And pouring them one is at the tippy-top of my very short job description.

Bartenders are forbidden from serving people after they are visibly drunk, but we all do it. It’s a crime,  it’s a liability, it’s a bad decision motivated by greed for money, but we all do it. It’s business-as-usual in bartending.

I don’t get people plastered and watch them stagger around the restaurant pissing in corners, but I do gently nudge them away from sobriety -- until they’re drunk, deprived of sense, and their wallet is empty.

The Buddha in the Vanijja Sutra (AN 5:177) declares trade in intoxicants to be one of five kinds of wrong livelihood to stay away from:

"Meditators, a lay follower avoids engaging in five kinds of business. What five? Trade in weapons, human beings, meat (flesh), trade in intoxicants, and poisons. These are the five kinds of business lay followers should avoid." - Vanijja Sutta: Business (wrong livelihood, 11/19/05, via the Wayback Machine)

Past lives, future lives, and my karma

(The Oprah Winfrey Show) Dr. Brian Weiss, M.D. on the patient who made him believe in past lives

Pretty poisons intoxicate fools (Pixonomy).

I don’t believe in rebirth -- which the Buddha taught as a certainty that anyone can confirm in this very life.

They can confirm that we are reborn or reincarnate by meditating, past life regression, getting a psychic reading, or studying a growing body of objective scientific research (like that of Dr. Eben Alexander MD, Dr. Raymond Moody MD, and many others).

So I’m not worried I’ll be reborn as a hungry ghost, a person with a propensity to drink too much, a congenitally insane person, a wretched being in hell (naraka), a brutal animal in the wilderness, or a banana slug licking salt in the garden just for getting a lot of people sh*tfaced over the years.

If the Buddha knows better than I do...new job.

But come to think of it, do I really know? I understand where the Buddha was coming from. Everyone is responsible for his/her own enlightenment and liberation. No one can do it for us. It's our karma, and it will be our karmic results (called vipaka and phala). But selling people intoxicants to help them escape reality isn’t helpful or skillful. More

Don't sext and drink says Ryan Reynolds

Drinking and Sexting is a bad idea and so is Aviation and Mint.