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On the Front Lines

An Interview with Michele McDonald-Smith

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Michele McDonald-Smith has been a senior teacher at the Insight Meditation Society and guiding teacher at Vipassana Hawaii since 1982. She also has a sandplay therapy practice in Hawaii. This interview was conducted by Allan Hunt Badiner in May 1996.

Tricycle: Do you find yourself having to address the issue of psychedelic use in your teaching?

McDonald-Smith: Yes. The drug issue is right on the front lines. As a meditation teacher, it takes a lot of reflection to present something that’s helpful and relevant in the face of how many choices young people have around drugs. From my experience, no matter what kind of deep opening one might have on a drug, it isn’t going to develop one’s ability to have those experiences naturally. Other people might say that drugs are a doorway, but I don’t see them as developing anything. They don’t develop equanimity, they don’t develop concentration, they don’t develop any of the factors of enlightenment.

Tricycle: What do you see drugs as doing?

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