Tricycle | Awake in the World

As I was taught, the fifth precept includes being intoxicated by one's own ideas—not just the ingestion of intoxicants.

 Just recall what it feels like to be completely intoxicated with one's own ideas, views, opinions, etc., including the bodily and emotional sensations, the mental ideas of being right, others being wrong—not a far place from being drunk, except that this is the drunkenness of self-absorption, self-belief, self-separation. I've certainly have had these experiences when I’m caught up in what I think ought to be. More »