bodhisatta said:

I briefly saw Thích Nhất Hạnh in person once. But people like him. He visited the great lakes zen center in Milwaukee years ago

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PrimalSoup said:

People he knows one assumes.  I never meet anybody like that.

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kabel said:

bodhisatta said:

I briefly saw Thích Nhất Hạnh in person once. But people like him. He visited the great lakes zen center in Milwaukee years ago

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Why would you think he's completely devoid of ego?

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bodhisatta said:

No, but if you talk about ego loss or enlightenment whatever those may be there is a consensus that these zen masters are the ones that fit the bill.

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This seems to be the true ego loss people that eat psychedelics are trying to get to but the people that they don't even know they're looking up to have some pretty harsh things to say about using psychedelics as a tool for ego loss.

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Then takes the assumption that this phenomenon even exists and that these people have attained it. Im skeptical.

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MrCraggles said:

I'd think that because you still had a sense of yourself; 'I felt' then it wasn't ego death and just tripping your tits off haha. Sounds fun though!

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Using the word 'I' is just a programmed default in language.

It doesn't suggest that ego death wasn't experienced.

'Tripping your tits off' holds little suggestive too.

bodhisatta said:

kabel said:

bodhisatta said:

I briefly saw Thích Nhất Hạnh in person once. But people like him. He visited the great lakes zen center in Milwaukee years ago

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Why would you think he's completely devoid of ego?

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No, but if you talk about ego loss or enlightenment whatever those may be there is a consensus that these zen masters are the ones that fit the bill. This seems to be the true ego loss people that eat psychedelics are trying to get to but the people that they don't even know they're looking up to have some pretty harsh things to say about using psychedelics as a tool for ego loss.

Then takes the assumption that this phenomenon even exists and that these people have attained it. Im skeptical.
But when people talk Ego loss are they trying to get zen like enlightenment, seems that way to me. Doesn't seem like people are seeking a different kind.

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I totally agree with this.  It's people who don't know much about practice that assume everybody is as bad off as they are. 

FWIW though there's another side to this, which is that so called "ego loss" while tripping is not the same as enlightenment, not by a long shot.  At best it's just a taste, because except for certain examples that are even rare in the extant literature, nobody stumbles into enlightenment.  They have to work long and hard at it.  It's not the absence of ordinary ego, it's the presence of extraordinary mind without the clouds of ego in the way.  And you don't get that result just by temporary turning off of habitual mental dross.  You get it by disciplined effort over many years, if not decades.  And some people who do that still never get there.  Of course nobody really wants to hear that, so what you end up with is a lot of spiritual materialism and all the shit that goes along with that stuff.

So what does this have to with TPE then?  I really enjoy shrooms for the various effects they have, and the very interesting things that happen in the environment surrounding me when I trip hard.  What I'm talking about here is impossible things, or at least that are supposed to be impossible.  It requires new physics to explain it, and that's what I've been working on for quite a while now.

But originally I set out to try and eliminate my ego with shrooms.  Found out that doesn't work, you can't get rid of your ego using your ego.  Of course this is a basic Buddhist observation, which is why genuine practice is full of methods to sneak up on ego mind sideways and cut it off at the root.  Just get rid of it, flip your perception 180 degrees and see clearly the obstruction - this motivates you to work on cultivating the undefiled mind of original consciousness, which everybody posesses.  That's an interesting process, but what you get from doing it isn't some kind of superhuman ability of not being an asshole, rather it's just a mind that works better in many ways because it isn't consumed with the games of the ordinary world anymore.

But more than that, why are psychedelics (actually any drugs) considered detrimental in Buddhist practice?  It's because to get to the more ultimate states it takes full concentration applied over extended periods.  And most all drugs are damaging to that full concentration.  I personally found that this wasn't true of psychedelics, but that's just my own experience, and I've spent a lot of time meditating while under the influence.  The thing is you don't want to be dependent on anything other than your normal mental process to maintain your practice.  Otherwise it's obviously not effective.  But if you use the drugs as a tool to gain more skill at ordinary thought there's no harm done IMHO.

tl;dr  Trip or trip not, there is no I. 

Northerner said:

I normally sense my lungs first

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kabel said:

I meditate and it's not a substitute for DMT. If we want get scientific about it, in the Griffiths' recent psilocybin + spiritualism study, the effects were additive, but the drugs were doing the lions share of the work.

You quit Zen but you still do shrooms and DMT, that's telling in itself

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PrimalSoup said:

FWIW though there's another side to this, which is that so called "ego loss" while tripping is not the same as enlightenment, not by a long shot.

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At best it's just a taste, because except for certain examples that are even rare in the extant literature, nobody stumbles into enlightenment.

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They have to work long and hard at it.

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It's not the absence of ordinary ego, it's the presence of extraordinary mind without the clouds of ego in the way.  And you don't get that result just by temporary turning off of habitual mental dross.  You get it by disciplined effort over many years, if not decades.  And some people who do that still never get there.

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But originally I set out to try and eliminate my ego with shrooms.  Found out that doesn't work, you can't get rid of your ego using your ego.  Of course this is a basic Buddhist observation…

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That's an interesting process, but what you get from doing it isn't some kind of superhuman ability of not being an asshole, rather it's just a mind that works better in many ways because it isn't consumed with the games of the ordinary world anymore.

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But more than that, why are psychedelics (actually any drugs) considered detrimental in Buddhist practice?

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It's because to get to the more ultimate states it takes full concentration applied over extended periods.

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The thing is you don't want to be dependent on anything other than your normal mental process to maintain your practice.  Otherwise it's obviously not effective.

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bodhisatta said:

Im not seeking some spiritual enlightenment and im not confusing psychedelics with a eazy zen replacement either. I just don't go because I'm lazy and already happy

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There's nothing special or awakening about DMT other than its a fun time and interesting to see how neuromodulatory molecules effect perception. Especially for me coming from a neurology background.

If you see elves or whatever else bullshit on dmt that's nothing but your preconceptions coming to life as your brain makes sense of the experience. There's no aliens or elves trying to say anything.

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kabel said:

How do you define enlightenment?...

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I don't. 

It seems to me there's a natural impulse when you're searching to think you can follow some sort of road map to whatever it is you imagine that might be, but IME it doesn't work like that.  Definitions and the like are of course never the thing itself, but worse they get right in the way of progress.

I spent a long time beating my head against this stuff to no avail, but it wasn't until I gave that up that anything useful happened.  But I can't define it in any way that would make sense from where I started from. You can't really put it into words, and of course THAT'S been said many times.

IME experiential feedback from nature and reality is useful for guiding one's journey - just surf the rising edge and observe what happens.

There isn't really any more to it.