Had a few monks over after work on Friday to drink some beer, smoke a little herb and play bocce ball. (All three of these are legal recreations, here in Colorado.) Last year in my back yard I put in a dedicated bocce ball court, for just such upbeat sacramental occasions.
(In our sangha, bud is sometimes used as one of the sacraments, while beer and bocce are still recognized as “secondary” supports” to a joyful, e.g., enlightened lifestyle. )
Some of the monks,of course, following a higher, more disciplined– or a least more stringent–path, imbibed neither bud nor beer, though their bocce performance seemed neither enhanced nor depressed by their abstinence.
In a pause in the festivities, we talked briefly about our own personal daily routine of either imbibing or refraining from such substances. I mentioned that in a book of existentialist philosophy I came across an excerpt from Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception that, to my mind, neatly explained, finally, why we do sometimes imbibe.
Alcohol, as we know, clearly does not make us smarter, and weed tends to slow us down and make us a little silly. So why do we do it? Why are we so attracted? Huxley’s insight, inspired by his experience with mescaline, helps explain. ( I myself do smoke weed on occasion, but generally not. Why not? See my book, The Potless Pot High: How to Get High, Clear and Spunky without Weed.)
Here’s the excerpt from Huxley:

      “. . .the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at at each moment capable of remembering all that ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge by shutting out most of what we should perceive or remember at any moment, leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically ‘useful.’ According to this theory each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of brain and nervous system. What comes out on the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will allow us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet. To formulate and express the content of this reduced awareness, man has invented . . .languages.”
(Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception, quoted in Colin Wilson’s Beyond the Outsider, p. 151.)

In a nutshell, we imbibe in order to “turn off” the insistent inner mechanisms that would keep us focused on the daily grind of mere survival. We shut down our brains and nervous systems a bit with these substances in order to get a peek into the Big Mind ever-operating here, to hear the Music of the Spheres ever playing here, to refresh our memories of what the hell we’re doing here anyway, other than merely surviving.
As we all can attest, weed and alcohol are not the most efficient ways, especially over the long haul, to stay tuned to the Big Mind. These substances do tend, in fact, to inhibit survival routines. But they are handy, quick and familiar.
Likewise, bocce ball, and other games, tend to put our survival gears in neutral for a bit, allowing us to relax, laugh, feel connected with our Bigger, Funner Self. Experiencing such connection, we feel at home.
And we all yearn to go home. Thus do we occassionally imbibe beer and bud, with our buds, on a friday after work. Yes?

Please let me know your thoughts on this:
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