Parvati Magazine February 2014 - Sobriety | Page 10

MEDITATION

THE DILEMMA
Of Ecstasy and Sobriety

I

n spiritual development, it is difficult to talk about ‘sobriety’ without talking about its opposite. Ecstatic states have long been a part of religious and spiritual literature and traditions.
The poetry of Rumi is full of images of ecstatic states that speak eloquently of his love for the
Divine. The Whirling Dervish dances that he created are celebrations of an ecstatic joining
of human with the divine. Even attending a performance by the Whirling Dervish Sufis can
give you a taste of this mystical union. The Tantric literature of Hinduism speaks to the joy
possible in the physical consummation of love. In the early 1960s, I remember an Anglican
Church minister speaking in near mystical terms of the union between man and woman being a reflection of the union between man and God. In Buddhist yoga, Tantric meditation
largely centres on the inner study of the veins, channels and drops which, once mastered,
bring about a state of blissful union, exemplified in the yab-yum figures. Thus, within the Buddhist tradition, Tantra is usually practiced at the mental level, less frequently at a physical
level.
Westerners may rebel against images of spikes piercing a living body seemingly without
pain or be repulsed by pictures of people carrying a cross wearing a crown of thorns or being crucified on purpose. Some experiences are scientifically plausible, like lying on a bed
of nails or walking over hot coals, but others are not.
By contrast, we have periods in religious history of ‘anti-ecstasy’ such as the period ushered
in by the Reformation and continued by the Puritan fathers of North America, the Calvinists
and others. Within some Theravadan and Mahayana Buddhist communities there is a complete embargo on alcoholic drink of any kind. But, within contemporary Western Buddhist
traditions, we have every permutation from complete sobriety to drunkenness tolerated
and even enabled by communities.

MEDITATION
There is a Buddhist precept, taken by all serious
practitioners, that goes
like this: “I undertake to
train myself to refrain from
taking intoxicants.” Some
centres add “to the point
of heedlessness” or alter
the vow to refraining from
taking “substances that
cloud the mind.” Psychotropic drugs are usually included in this precept. The
question often comes up,
“Does that mean I cannot have an occasional
glass of wine?” How that
question is answered depends on the centre and
its orientation to the consumption of alcohol but
even when there is acquiescence to participating in a societal ‘norm’,
the idea of drinking to
the point of heedlessness
or drunkenness would be
considered a breaking of
the precept.
So, how does a present
seeker of truth approach
this ecstasy/sobriety dilemma? An initial step, to
my mind, is to contemplate the nature of addiction. A spiritual ‘high’
can be as addictive as

the gloom espoused by
some Buddhists that ‘all is
suffering,’ so nothing can
be done but bear it. If we
are honest with ourselves,
we can determine which
side of this equation we
fall into.
If we are constantly
searching for ways to
be ‘up’, then we may
fall into the first category
and therefore we need
to become more ‘sober’.
That will probably include
becoming more realistic
about the spiritual path.
Or it might mean we
need to check ourselves
to see if we are capable of ‘making a peanut
butter sandwich’ for our
children within moments
of completing our meditation practice. In other
words, is our spirituality
grounded o