The circle was still for a few moments when it was the next person's turn to speak, and, as usual when it was quiet in Thich Nhat Hanh's meditation retreat center known as Plum Village, I looked up to the beautiful parade of bright bulbous clouds so characteristic of Southwestern France. I reflected on what might be useful to share about drugs, the subject of our Dharma discussion that morning. Of those who had already spoken, each person had a different story to tell . . . different substances, different circumstances, different experiences, and different lessons drawn. It was clear that no one was going to have a final word on this subject, nor was there even such a thing as the final word. For some it was a story about giving in to temptation, and suffering a lack of clarity, or worse, lasting confusion and addiction. For others, it was a brief glimpse into a rarefied world of intense sense impressions accompanied by fanciful but useless imagery. For a few others still, it was the very threshold of their journey into the truth of Buddha's teachings, with unforgettable, if fleeting, insights. What was striking was that almost everyone had a significant story to tell, and that each person's facet of the truth of drugs and Dharma was riveting and revealing of so much.

Ever since that morning in the mid-1990s, it was obvious to me that a more truthful story needed to be told about Buddhism and psychedelics. Equally clear to me was that the 'truth' on this subject, just as in all the subjects of our Dharma discussions, would emerge only from hearing a wide spectrum of experiences, investigations, observations, and cherished opinions. Unlike a casual group conversation, Dharma discussion follows a series of primary Buddhist practices: a sustained period of meditation, and a Dharma talk by an accomplished teacher. Meditation concentrates and calms the mind, while Dharma discourses, such as the legendary ones given by Thich Nhat Hanh, never fail to stir the heart and touch the deepest current of truth within. Buddhism in action is nothing if not psychedelic, or mind-opening. So as we went around the circle and shared our stories that morning, there was an almost palpable psychedelic quality to the experience.

Ultimately, Buddhism and psychedelics share a concern with the same problem: the attainment of liberation for the mind. While psychedelics lurk in the personal histories of most first-generation Buddhist teachers in Europe and America, today we find many teachers advising against pursuing a path they once traveled. Few Buddhists make the claim that psychedelic use is a path itself--some maintain that it is a legitimate gateway, and others feel Buddhism and psychedelics don't mix at all. But just as Buddhism itself must be held to the test of personal experience and to the wholesomeness or unwholesomeness of the results, so also must the question of how, or if, psychedelics can be part of a Dharma practice. The place of critical examination and analysis, and the freedom to make these discoveries for oneself is an essential foundation of Buddhism and is found as far back as the Kalama Sutra: "Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration that this monk is our teacher," warned the Buddha to the Kalamas. "Only when you yourselves know--these things are good; these things are not blamable; these things are praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,-- should you abide in them."

Just as social prohibitions on what ideas to let in to your consciousness are anathema to the Middle Path, so also must be such restrictions on what plants to let in. Tibetan Buddhists, for one, have developed over the centuries a wide field of psychopharmacology and have an endless number of psychiatric botanical medicines-- none of which have ever been previously identified or scientifically tested in the West.

Both the terms "psychedelic" and "entheogen" are used to describe the substances referred to in this book. While many Buddhists, being essentially agnostic, might have a problem with the "theo" in enthogen, most would agree that it is the enthogenic use of psychedelics, or using plant materials to trigger primary spiritual experience, that is of interest here. The problems caused by cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and other consciousness-constricting drugs are indisputable and nowhere defended in this book. The notion that all "drugs" are fundamentally alike is at the root of the confusion in our drug laws and the social debate about them. Drugs differ. Uses and occasions differ. Policies and practices also ought to differ appropriately. Drug use will always be with us, and responsible recreational drug users should be treated more or less the same way recreational drinkers are. Abuse of dangerous drugs is less of a legal issue than a medical one.

In the past, awareness about the deepest "occult" or "hidden" parts of our spirit selves was considered the private preserve of shamans, priests, or spiritual masters who had earned their way to it. Religious experience was mediated by these authorized few, and this is a tradition still with us in the form, if not attitude, of many religions. The democratization of psychedelics, however, and of Buddhism to a similar extent, has been very much about the breakdown of this restricted access to the divine. In Buddhism, as in psychedelics, the individual takes responsibility for their relationship to the source of their being, and for access to the highest states of spirit mind.

An awareness of the relatedness between separate objects and opposites is one of the key insights that psychedelic travelers often bring home from their chemical "pilgrimages." Perhaps the popularization of both Zen and psychedelics has shifted the cultural mind from a dominantly conceptual and linear view of reality to a mode of awareness that is more ecological and holistic. While we will always continue to think in linear ways, awareness is growing that this mode of consciousness is relative, a human construct, and not a reflection of "objective reality."

This way of seeing is not something people necessarily need psychedelics to experience. It is, in fact, one of the central premises underlying Zen. This emerging worldview brings us closer to a perspective that is perhaps equally comfortable being called "dharmic" or "psychedelic."

Putting aside the well-founded arguments for and against psychedelic use, there is an essentially Buddhist response to the long entrenched, ongoing, and devastating war on drugs: great compassion. Draconian drug laws ensnare millions of otherwise law-abiding people in an ever growing spiral of wasteful and counterproductive strategies whose foundation is punishment. It has resulted in an incarceration rate so unimaginable that almost one in four of every person behind bars in the entire world is locked up in the United States. At this very moment, American jails and prisons hold tens of thousands of people--vastly disproportionate numbers of them black--whose only crime is possession of the marijuana plant. Prisons become classrooms for more advanced crime, drugs are readily available to everyone from school children on up, criminals outspend and outsmart police, and no one feels safer.

The drug war leads to cynicism and apathy and, of course, blights thousands of lives. Profits from the illegal drug trade fuel organized crime and enhance the power of the cartels to corrupt police, judges, and government officials. The newest casualties in the failed war on drugs are our personal liberties. A society that actively banishes personal exploration with all psychedelic plants will need to closely monitor its citizens. All our communications, transactions, and expressions are under increasing surveillance by a growing and expensive bureaucracy of control and repression. None of this is conducive to the peaceful and free contemplation of strategies for our personal liberation and fulfillment. In reality, this ceases to be a war on drugs, but rather becomes a war on consciousness, war on free exercise of that most precious of gifts bestowed on a human being.

Human history can be seen as a series of relationships with plants, relationships made and broken. Plants, drugs, politics, and religions have harshly intermingled--from the influence of sugar on mercantilism to the influence of coffee on the modern office worker, from the British forcing opium on the Taoist Chinese to credible reports that the CIA used heroin in the ghetto to choke off dissent and dissatisfaction. The lessons to be learned can be raised into consciousness, integrated into social policy, and used to create a more caring, meaningful world, or they can be denied with the results now plainly seen.

The enhanced capacity for extraordinary cognitive experience made possible by the use of plant psychedelics may be as basic a part of our humanness as is our spirituality or our sexuality. The question is how quickly we develop into a mature community able to address these issues.

While psychedelic use is all about altered states, Buddhism is all about altered traits, and one does not necessarily lead to the other. One Theravadin monk likened the mind on psychedelics to an image of a tree whose branches are overladen with low-hanging, very ripened, and heavy fruit. The danger is that the heavy fruit--too full and rich to be digested by the tree all at once--will weigh down the branches and cause them to snap.

On the other hand, Alan Watts, one of the first prominent westerners to follow the Buddhist path, considered Buddhism and psychedelics to both be part of an individual philosophical quest. He was not interested in Buddhism to be studied and defined in such a way that one must avoid "mixing up" one's thinking about Buddhism with other interests, such as in quantum theory, Gestalt psychology, aesthetics, or psychedelics.

Freeing us from the binds of language, American visionary artist Alex Grey has brought a graphical and colorful component to this inquiry by sharing with us the creative imaginings and yearnings of many artists from around the world. Both in text, and in images, the vision bringing forth this book (and the Fall 1996 issue of Tricycle magazine on the same subject) is that Dharma discussion of years ago, and a sheer delight in truthful self-discovery. Zig Zag Zen is a celebration of where Buddhism and psychedelics have informed each other, as well as penetrating criticism of where such a confluence may lead us astray. In the tradition of inquiry set in motion by the Buddha, we let a thousand flowers blossom--even if some of them are psychedelic. Only in the open-minded and courageous effort to see the truth in every voice do we recognize the deepest reflection of what is relatively real.