“Drugs can bring about meaningful
experiences, but the one who takes a drug has not made causes for
such effects. He has just temporarily altered nature, like injecting
a monkey with hormones that send him shooting up a tree to pick
coconuts. Such experiences my be true but not good or good but not
true, whereas the Dharma is always both good and true.” —
Achaan Chah, A Still Forest Pool
* * * * *
“Between the stimulus and the
response there is a space and in that
space lies our freedom.” —
Bob Stahl, PhD, from his GoogleTechTalks video
presentation on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu5irWStNvA
* * * * *
“During the late 1970s and early
1980s, (Robin) Williams had an addiction to cocaine; he has stated
that he has since quit. Williams was a close friend of and frequent
partier alongside John Belushi. He says the death of his friend and
the birth of his son prompted him to quit drugs: ‘Was it a wake-up
call? Oh yeah, on a huge level. The grand jury helped too.’” —
from the Wikipedia entry on Robin
Williams, at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Williams
* * * * *
“Though one were to conquer a million
men in battle, that man who conquers himself is the greater victor.”
— The
Dhammapada, verse
103
* *
* * *
“The way of the vow: SAJJA
“The Pali word ‘sacca’ (usually
spelt sajja and pronounced sat-cha)
means a solemn declaration about the active fulfillment of a
truth.
“According to Luangpor Charoen,
(Abbot of Thamkrabok Monastery), the physical detox is only 5% of the
Thamkrabok treatment. You must do the remaining 95% of the work in
your mind and through your action.
“If you want to enter the drug-detox
area and start with the purification of your body, you will have to
go through the ceremony of SAJJA. The Sajja is a very essential
element here in Thamkrabok. It might be the most serious and the most
important thing you have done so far in your life.
“The Sajja looks like a vow. But it
is far more than just a promise ‘to be a good guy’ or ‘a good
girl’ from now on, having nothing to do anymore with consuming or
promoting alcohol or other drugs.
“Sajja
is a sacred act that, if you believe in it, will connect you with
your will power and with something ‘beyond’. Something that is
far more existential than the fight against the drugs! It connects
you with a teaching. This teaching is not given in the form of
intellectual lectures. But it will be there for you in any moment you
really want it strongly enough and when you are ready for it.”
— from
the website
for Wat Thamkrabok,
a legendary drug treatment center and Buddhist monastery in Thailand
