Home › Magazine › Fall 1996 › The Roundtable: Help or Hindrance

The Roundtable: Help or Hindrance

with Ram Dass, Joan Halifax, Robert Aitken, Richard Baker

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Whether or not psychedelics have any usefulness to someone on a Buddhist path was the subject of four recent interviews, conducted by Allan Hunt Badiner and combined into the following roundtable discussion.

Robert Aitken Roshi of Hawaii is one of America's most senior and respected Zen masters.

Richard Baker Roshi leads a thriving Zen Buddhist community in Colorado with informal branches throughout Europe.

Ram Dass is writing a new book about the impact of practice on aging, and is a serious student of both Buddhism and psychedelics.

Joan Halifax is a senior Buddhist teacher with Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, and the director of Upaya in New Mexico.

Tricycle: Psychedelics is a huge category. We are focusing mostly on materials that are derived from plants, that when ingested in appropriate doses and in appropriate conditions may contribute to an expanded state of consciousness. Can use of psychedelics of this kind lead to enlightenment?

Halifax: In the earlier days, we defined psychedelic as "mind manifesting." The way it was seen, particularly by LSD researcher Stan Grof and others, is that domains of the mind are evoked when certain substances are taken. Different plant teachers are like keys that unlock different doors within the mind. For example, mescaline produces a different kind of vision than psilocybin does, or yagé, and so on.

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