u/fenichill

Title: Tripping Toward the Real: Inducing Liminal Sensory Experiences through Psychoactive Substances in Buddhist Contemplative Practice

Author: James Gentry, PhD; Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Stanford University

Abstract: This article analyzes passages found in Tibetan writings from the early Great Perfection tradition that prescribe the cultivation and consumption of psychoactive fungi as an integral part of the Buddhist path. It identifies these passages as the first instances discovered in premodern Buddhist literature in which the use of psychedelics is unambiguously prescribed to hasten progress toward awakening. In so doing, it makes two central arguments: one, that mounting scholarly consensus claiming premodern Buddhists never used psychoactive substances as part of Buddhist contemplative practice is in need of correction; and two, that the early Tibetan Great Perfection tradition and others that integrate medicine and meditation can serve as resources for investigating how premodern Buddhists envisioned the role of psychedelics in developing contemplative experience. The article concludes with suggestions for how this and similarly focused text-historical research in Buddhist studies might contribute to scientific research on the possible relationships between contemplation and psychedelics.

Select quotations:

"This article addresses this gap by presenting textual evidence from the Tibetan Great Perfection Heart Essence tradition (rdzogs chen snying thig) that prescribes the use of datura and other substances in the cultivation of psychoactive fungi to be consumed with the express goal of altering sensory experience to hasten progress along the Buddhist path toward awakening, or buddhahood."

"In the discussion above I have presented what is to my knowledge the first unambiguous evidence yet discovered of the cultivation and use of psychoactive substances among premodern Buddhist practitioners as an integral part of the Buddhist path. We can discern in the passages presented above prescriptions for the synthesis of psychoactive compounds and fungi to be ingested for the purpose of inducing disruptive interventions of habitual sensory engagements. These disruptive interventions are framed according to the normative Buddhist goal of “dispelling the attachments of the sensory faculties,” one of the primary obstacles to the cognitive transformation of “awakening,” or buddhahood."

"As the Treasury specifies, it is especially necessary to induce such altered states of perception during a degenerate age, when the lifespan of beings is short and beings are therefore in need of quicker and easier methods that can help circumvent the prolonged period of Buddhist practice that is more typically prescribed to effect sensory purification and transformation."

"Perhaps it goes without saying that the psychoactive pill recipes in the Treasury and the Only Child commentary directly contravene mounting scholarly consensus that premodern Buddhists never used psychedelics, datura, or any other, as part of the Buddhist contemplative path."

URL: https://academic.oup.com/jaar/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/jaarel/lfag046/8753552?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Edit: PDF of the full article kindly posted in the comments by /u/amritasiddhi : https://tinidrop.com/s/u44q7mzz

Group practice in HCOL city hires postdocs as salaried W2s with health insurance & PTO. Offers them to stay in the practice as staff as 1099s with a 50% fee split, no benefits (insurance, PTO, retirement), part-time office space (roughly 2 days/week total, split in chunks across the week). Another factor is that referrals coming through the practice are pretty much all funneled to new fellows building their caseloads (new cohort each year), so staff are more or less expected to generate their own referrals. Staff are also paid to supervise fellows. I'm not crazy for thinking this is an awful setup, right? Since fellows can take their patients with them if they go to solo PP, besides supervising fellows it's hard to see the incentive to stay in the practice. I'd think 60/40 (or higher) on W2 basis with benefits or 70/30 (or higher) on 1099 basis w/o benefits would be more in line with field standards for HCOL areas. But I want to see what others think.