MJ20 - 38 Blessings - Quitting Intoxicants (21 of 39)

Last time you saw me,

We looked at blessing number 19 on putting temptations behind us.

With it,

I'm going to talk today,

We continue in our series on enlightened living to the next blessing in the preparation of mind subsection,

That is number 20 on restraint from drinking intoxicants.

The previous blessing concerned turning our back on temptations and unwholesomeness generally.

At that time,

If you remember,

I said that we need to make a special case for alcohol and its intoxicants,

Which are much harder to moderate than temptations more generally,

Because there is a physical dependency involved,

The means that merely trying to reduce intake always risks a slippery slope of relapsing into a physical addiction.

Contrary to the logic I'm trying to introduce today,

The West is generally permissive towards alcohol consumption,

Seeing it as a substance primarily associated with relaxation and celebration.

Most Westerners would balk at any suggestion that alcohol is an agent of mass destruction.

However,

Consider some of the most recent national statistics from the CDC in America that tell us alcoholic consumption contributed annually to 88,

000 deaths in the US alone between 2006 and 2010.

Alcoholism remains the third most common preventable cause of death after smoking and obesity.

14 to 20 million Americans have some history of their lives being disrupted by their relations with alcohol.

An estimated 40% of Americans have been intimately exposed to the effects of alcohol abuse through a family member.

The cost of excessive alcohol use in the US in 2010 was estimated at $249 billion,

Which works out at about $2.

05 per drink.

These costs can be subdivided into $179 billion in lost workplace productivity,

$28 billion in medical expenses,

$25 billion in criminal justice,

And $13 billion in motor vehicle collisions.

Finally,

As many as 12,

000 children born annually to drinking mothers in the US have mental and physical deficiencies as a result of their exposure to alcohol in utero.

We turn a self-satisfied blind eye to the damage alcohol consumption actually brings to modern society.

But perhaps by understanding how deeply alcohol is woven into Western culture,

We can stay a little more savvy.

In the West,

Before the popularity of tea and coffee in the late 18th century,

Alcohol was claimed to be one of the only hygienic drinks available.

Although Judeo-Christian teachings prevalent in the West have never supported drunkenness,

At Proverbs 31 they have portrayed alcohol consumption as a necessary coping mechanism in the face of social hardship,

With the words,

Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish,

And wine unto those that be of heavy hearts.

Let him drink and forget his poverty,

And remember his misery no more.

Furthermore,

Wine has even been incorporated into the most sacred of Christian ceremonies,

The Mass or Eucharist.

Historically speaking,

The escalation in the seriousness of alcohol problems has been accelerated as the distilled liquor products have become more readily available on the market.

Research as early as 1813 established the connection between alcohol consumption and liver disease,

Jaundice,

Wasting,

And mental dysfunction.

Indeed,

Alcohol consumption has not gone completely unopposed in the West.

However,

In Christian circles,

Such opposition has mostly come in the form of temperance rather than abstinence.

It was Methodist values backed by clinical research which led to the American prohibition between 1920 and 1933.

Because of its long history of acceptance in Judeo-Christian culture,

Alcohol remains deeply rooted in the Western definition of respectability.

This is why,

As we pursue our path through the blessings of life,

Whether in a Buddhist context or otherwise,

We need to take special care not to underestimate the danger of intoxicants,

Especially at a time when we are at a turning point in the legalization of the recreational use of cannabis,

Where we have vaping returning to public spaces,

And many people spending lockdown with a cocktail in their hand.

Perhaps more than for the other blessings that we have studied,

Westerners will find that the Buddhist teachings go against the grain of accepted social norms.

Although we might like to hide behind phrases like drinking responsibly,

From the point of view of Buddhists,

Unless you are planning on drinking milk,

There is no such thing as responsible drinking.

We have encountered abstention from intoxicants repeatedly on our journey through the blessings of life,

As our road to ruin in Blessings 6,

7,

13 and 14,

As the fifth precept in Blessing 9,

And as a trade entailing wrong livelihood in Blessing 18.

The Buddha devotes an entire blessing to restraint from drinking intoxicants in Blessing 20,

Not simply because of the damage alcohol does to one's physical health,

But because if one doesn't abstain from alcohol definitively by this point in the blessings of life,

One will have no chance to upgrade oneself in the direction of Blessing 21 on avoiding recklessness in the Dharma,

Or any virtues more subtle than this.

If you consider self-discipline based on the five precepts,

You will find that each of the five precepts are more or less independent from one another,

Except for the fifth.

If you break any of the first four precepts,

Normally it will not cause any of the other precepts to be broken.

However,

If the fifth precept is ever broken,

It increases the risk of breaking all the other four precepts.

When you drink,

You say more than you mean to,

It brings out your latent promiscuity,

You fail to see the harm in stealing things,

And it exacerbates violence,

Because we lose our sense of shame.

In one metaphor told by the great Abbot of Wat Phra Nga Pha Si Chiron,

Ramon Conteponi,

He referred to abstention from alcohol as the most important single precept,

Because it ensures the reliability of all the other four.

He related how the Buddha compared the first four precepts to the feet of an elephant,

While comparing the fifth precept to its trunk.

The elephant can only stand on its feet,

Because it is able to feed itself with its trunk.

In the same way,

Abstaining from alcohol is the important part of the five precepts.

If you consume substances that make you heedless,

Before you realize it,

You will break the other four precepts.

This is why only when you are able to abstain strictly from intoxicants,

Will you set your self on a foundation of non-recklessness.

For most people,

No matter how bad their life problems are,

If they aren't mixed up in intoxicants,

They have a good chance of turning over a new leaf,

Because age will soon teach a person to curb their excessive behaviours of their youth.

However,

If they're still drinking,

Their behaviour will regress into its old ways.

The fifth precept is thus the most crucial,

And arguably,

This is the reason why it appears as the final item on the precept list.

If you ever hear anyone boasting that they can keep all the precepts except for the final one,

Take their claims with a pinch of salt.

All five of their precepts are probably in jeopardy.

Unfortunately,

Intoxicants don't discriminate,

Only settling for the poor,

The uneducated and the desperate.

They can equally affect someone vital,

Brilliant and filled with potential.

Just an example of how addiction to drugs is even worse than alcohol.

Even if you try to help a friend with a drug addiction,

With sympathy and sentimentality,

Your bleeding heart approach will almost certainly come back to bite you.

And the first you know about it will be when they start to steal from you.

Later on,

You will end up getting emotionally hurt and you'll lose your faith in humanity.

Someone on a PBS documentary was once discussing heroin and they said,

The first time you shoot up,

You might as well just go out there and rent yourself a U-Haul.

Bring it to your place,

Load up all your stuff,

Your house,

Your girlfriend,

Your friends and everything.

You may as well lose all that stuff up front,

Get it over with,

Because guaranteed you will eventually.

You may think you won't,

But no one gets out unscathed.

It's just a matter of time.

And it doesn't have to be heroin.

It could be any class A substance or it could be any one of the gateway drugs that lead down that path.

Friendship and sympathy won't help because the only friend an addict has left that they are loyal to is the drug itself.

When they sober up,

Alcoholics may still feel guilty about stealing from their friends to feed their addiction.

The drug addicts just see their friends as a means to an end and no longer feel anything about stealing,

Including guilt.

The problem with intoxicants is that they worsen the latent weaknesses and unwholesome tendencies that already exist in the mind.

The Buddha taught that the untrained mind is weakened by the habituation to unwholesomeness,

Changing constantly,

Wandering endlessly and being hard to pacify.

When he said the mind is habituated to unwholesomeness,

The Buddha meant the mind will squirm like a fish out of water,

Being so used to negative moods that as soon as you remove the mind from these negative states,

It will struggle to get back to them.

Secondly,

He said the mind is fickle because it will change continuously.

You will tend to change your mind about any decision that you previously made.

Thirdly,

The mind has a tendency to wander and it's hard to keep the mind on any single thing.

And lastly,

The mind is hard to pacify.

Under the influence of alcohol,

All these bad features of the mind will have the chance to manifest themselves to the full.

And just before the teetotalers amongst you start to feel too smug,

Shui pointed out that even if you are habitually as sober as a judge,

It is difficult enough to perceive the true nature of life and the world without delusions.

The Buddha taught that even if we don't smoke,

Drink alcohol or abuse drugs,

We are as good as drunk for most of the time.

Especially concerning the everlasting nature of our youth,

We tend to think I'm still young,

I can still go out every night,

I'm still beautiful,

I can still turn the heads of the youngsters.

Secondly,

We tend to think that we will always be free of disease.

Those who are healthy are wont to think that they will stay healthy forever and that abusing their health doesn't matter.

Lastly,

We tend to be unrealistic about the length of our lives.

We tend to think that the likes of us doesn't die so easily.

We tend to think we're still strong and that our time has not yet come.

In fact,

We are fooling ourselves.

The Buddha called all such attitudes drunkenness,

Even though without drinking alcohol,

People still think like this.

If we do drink alcohol as well,

Then these attitudes will be all the harder to dispel.

Intoxicants or to use the Pali word,

Machapanna,

In this blessing refer to anything absorbable by the body that clouds the mind.

In general,

This means alcohol,

Distilled or fermented,

But it also refers to other substances such as tobacco and addictive non-medicinal drugs.

It can mean liquids that are drunk or injected,

Or substances that are inhaled or dried substances that are smoked.

The Pali word,

Sanyammo,

Used in relation to alcohol in this blessing,

Literally means being careful with regard to.

In our context,

However,

Being careful of intoxicating substances doesn't just mean using these substances with care,

Nor circumstances it means total abstention from them.

It's only in exceptional circumstances,

Such as medical use,

That careful use of alcohol might be considered.

Some religions,

Which prohibit alcohol per se,

Will not even allow their followers to use alcohol to clean a wound or preserve a corpse.

However,

Buddhism allows intoxicants to be used for medicinal purposes,

For example where alcohol must be used to extract the active ingredients of some herbal medicines.

This excuse should not,

However,

Be abused by those who put a teaspoonful of medicine in a bottle of alcohol to drink,

Instead of putting a teaspoonful of alcohol in a bottle of medicine.

Similarly,

We know that such drugs as opiates are dangerous,

But they may be used for medicinal purposes.

However,

To use them for non-medicinal purposes would be prohibited in Buddhism.

This is the only reason why the term being careful in the use of is used instead of abstention.

If your sense of discretion is good and your mind is clear,

Then you'll be able to know for yourself what is the appropriate use of these substances.

This is why generally we abstain completely from the use of these substances and only use them with care in the case of medicinal use.

In the Siddhāvāda Sutta,

The Buddha taught that the damage arising from drinking alcohol invisible in this lifetime includes destruction of wealth,

Friendship,

Health,

Reputation,

Honor and intelligence.

He said that it destroys your wealth because of the way it eats into your income from the day you start to drink.

Damage to friendship may start with the idea that you're drinking to be sociable,

But at the end of the night,

As drinking buddies breaking bottles over each other's heads.

Damage to health,

What the CDC refer to as long-term health risks,

Include high blood pressure,

Heart disease,

Stroke,

Liver disease,

Digestive problems,

Liver cancer,

Dementia and depression.

Damage to honor and reputation includes family and job-related problems as well as unemployment.

Damage to intelligence includes learning and memory problems as well as poor school performance.

These are all dangers of alcohol visible in the present lifetime.

You may have noticed that people under the influence slur their speech,

Behave without inhibitions,

Cannot think straight and cannot walk in a straight line,

Or may be reduced to crawling.

Although these disadvantages are still apparent in the present lifetime,

Without putting too fine a point on it,

It would have predicted that the side effects of drink that we consider slightly comical cannot really be considered a laughing matter at all,

Because in lifetimes to come,

They will carry over to become your permanent mode of existence whether you are sober or not.

So having stocked up on all the possible disadvantages coming from the consumption of intoxicants,

We have come to time for a quick story.

You may remember the rich merchant called Anattabindika,

Who was the major supporter of the Buddha and his contemporary.

We had the story previously back in blessing 12 about how Anattabindika bribed his son to go to the temple.

So despite his wealth and privilege,

Anattabindika had to work hard to help dysfunctional members of his own family.

Anattabindika also had problems with another nephew who had squandered 40 million of the family's fortune on his drinking habits,

Leaving him penniless.

The said nephew turned up uninvited at Anattabindika's home asking for some financial help.

The nephew said he would use the money to invest in business,

To set himself up in life.

Anattabindika,

In his characteristically compassionate style,

Was pleasantly surprised to hear his drunken nephew wanted to earn his living.

And this story is a good illustration of the three strikes rule for helping extended family in Buddhism that we've already seen in blessing number 17.

Anattabindika agreed to give his nephew 1000 and taught him a few tricks of the trade.

The nephew thanked Anattabindika and wasted no time in going out with his friends and spending all the money on booze.

Later he came back to Anattabindika saying that he had lost all his money in business due to lack of experience and asked for money again.

Anattabindika pretended he didn't know what was going on,

But this time gave his nephew only 500,

Again telling him to invest it wisely.

The shameless nephew spent all 500 on alcohol again.

And for a third time the nephew returned to ask for more.

Anattabindika gave him two pieces of coarse cloth instead of money,

Knowing the nephew would have to expend more effort to sell it.

The nephew did sell the cloth,

But again he spent all his proceeds on alcohol.

He came back to Anattabindika for a fourth time with an outstretched palm.

And this time Anattabindika had his nephew thrown out on the street.

The nephew was now destitute and couch-served with everyone he could think of until eventually the nephew died in poverty.

Anattabindika felt a pang of shame that he had himself to blame for his nephew's death.

Was there something more that he could have done?

He sought the advice of the Buddha telling him the whole story.

And the Buddha said that it was not only this lifetime that the nephew had been beyond help.

In a previous lifetime when the nephew had been given a wish-fulfilling cup,

It still couldn't help to satiate his appetite.

So it is no surprise that with Anattabindika's limited means,

He couldn't be helped in the present lifetime.

In conclusion,

Even if drinkers start out with advantages in life,

They will eventually destroy the luck they already have.

Even though Anattabindika's nephew had had the chance to help himself with free handouts from a millionaire,

As a drunk he didn't lift a finger to help himself.

In other words,

He was beyond help.

Therefore,

Before helping someone,

It's necessary to see whether they are going to use the money you give them to buy alcohol.

Sometimes more money will destroy rather than help a beneficiary mixed up with the demons of alcohol.

This is why it's important to remain level-handed when seeking to help others in society.

So to return to our subject matter for today,

We continue by looking at some of the benefits of not drinking alcohol or taking intoxicants.

The Buddha taught that if we avoid drinking alcohol,

It will pave the way for the higher blessings ahead on the path,

With advantages such as omniscience of events in the past,

Present and future,

Mindfulness in all situations,

A reliable conscience,

Non-recklessness,

Freedom from enemies,

Respect from others,

Happiness,

Appreciation of others' virtues,

Gratitude to others,

Generosity,

Pure precepts,

Wisdom,

Worldly and spiritual wealth,

The ability to be a true refuge to oneself,

And overcoming the subtle devaluments in the mind to attain nirvana.

The practical options open in the West for people to quit alcohol include mutual self-help groups and inpatient or outpatient rehabilitation therapies.

Sometimes in the past I've been asked to give a talk on meditation for rehab counsellors or else for addicts in recovery.

Most commonly these folks are involved in a 12-step recovery process at one level or another.

And before going any further I would like to reaffirm the value of this system and recognise the dedication of the millions of people around the world who have made significant breakthroughs as a result of publications like Living Sober or The Big Book.

In many countries to attend such a group is a legal requirement for probation from drink or drug-related misdemeanors.

The large uptake is justified by the AA's own statistics which maintain that clients who can quit drugs and alcohol for five years or more relapse less than 15% of the time.

Independent research for the National Institute on Drug Abuse put the relapse rate slightly higher at 40-60%.

Nonetheless this is still a lot better than Charlie Sheen's recent rant about a 5% success rate.

It still offers some room for improvement.

Since the AA and other addiction self-help groups are often quasi-religious in nature,

Often the rehab stakeholders seem to look to Buddhism and meditation to offer them something to make the process easier.

The main difficulty of course is the physical dependency addicts are dealing with.

Most relapse from sobriety programs is because they have only had a physical purge but they lack the psychological tools to reshape their attitudes and needs.

Mindfulness and meditation could provide the psychological tools users of intoxicants need but according to Segal,

William and Teasdale in their 2002 book entitled Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy,

Clinicians cannot teach mindfulness to clients effectively without first learning to practice it for themselves.

The theoretical touchstone for addiction recovery is the 6 stages of change model from James Brochusker and Carlo Di Clemente,

Although they date back to 1986,

They are still widely used in recovery programs today.

The 6 stages of change comprise pre-contemplation,

Contemplation,

Determination,

Action,

Maintenance and termination.

The first pre-contemplative stage indicates that recovery from intoxicant use almost always begins with impaired self-awareness that results in a denial-based failure to recognize a need for recovery.

This state of unmindfulness is when a person ignores cautions from those who are closest to them about the adverse effects of their addictive habits.

In the second contemplative stage,

An individual accepts the possibility that they could have an alcohol or drug related problem.

It may be the first time some people feel the need to reduce their drug and alcohol use or the first time they've contemplated stopping altogether.

Stage 3 preparation is when a person no longer needs to be convinced of their destructive use of substances or alcohol.

But even though a person has accepted the existence of a problem,

They may still harbor ambivalence about seeking help.

Friends,

Spiritual mentors,

Therapists,

Educators,

Support groups,

Online forums,

Chat rooms and life coaches are invaluable at this stage.

In choosing the fourth stage action,

A recovering person feels self-confident and believes that they can affect their lives positively by choosing the most appropriate treatment option for themselves.

Depending on a person's needs,

They may decide to enroll in an outpatient treatment program,

Join a sober living community,

Enter a rehabilitation facility or undergo a day treatment program.

Then comes maintenance,

Which means a person reaches a behavioral milestone.

As of this moment,

Intentional change endures more reliably,

With urges being less hard to resist.

Nonetheless,

Individuals must continually prove that they can resist temptation from all the people,

Places and things that trigger them to use.

Although it isn't easy,

Maintaining sobriety is possible,

Especially with the help of some trustworthy people in their community,

Families or other supporters like peers.

This stage is still not completely safe from relapse,

However.

The maintenance stage involves developing an effective strategy to prevent relapses and devise a plan for recovery in case relapses occur.

Many people learn and eventually master a few practical coping skills to help reduce the likelihood of relapsing.

The maintenance stage also stresses the fact that sobriety does not happen by itself.

It is the person's responsibility to safeguard their abstinence for a lifetime against relapse with impeccable vigilance.

The last phase of recovery from alcoholism or substance use disorder is called termination.

Here all the stages come together.

All the attachments a person has had to substances,

Alcohol or both,

Get severed and dissolve.

Mood-altering substances can no longer enslave a person at this level of recovery.

Not even a tiny secretive desire lingers to haunt them into using again.

At this stage,

A person is abstinent and apathetic about old drinking habits or drug taking.

Unfortunately,

Substance use disorders are a serious problem that only a handful of people can fully overcome.

It is understandable why very few health-promoting programmes mention the sixth stage,

Let alone present it as a desirable aim for recovery.

So self-changers and many clinicians consider maintenance an ideal point to recognise successful change in behaviours for people in recovery.

Let us see what Buddhists can add to the stages of change,

Having realised the harm brought by consuming alcohol if you decide to kick the drink habit,

Prepare yourself for a struggle.

It's not so easy to change an addiction and you are liable to experience withdrawal symptoms.

However,

For those who aspire to sobriety,

A few Buddhist life hacks that might be useful include appreciating the danger of alcohol,

Having the intention of giving it up,

Avoiding contact with alcohol-related paraphernalia and drinking buddies,

And bolstering your conscience.

The first thing you have to do is to recognise the danger of alcohol.

Secondly,

Only when you fully appreciate the dangers of the intoxicants will you achieve the escape velocity you need to quit.

The third thing is to avoid contact with any alcohol-related paraphernalia,

Such as collections of old bottles,

So chuck out any souvenirs from your house,

Whether it be those expensive bottles you've been saving,

Beer mats,

Highball tumblers or corkscrews.

You also need to avoid places where you used to go to drink or smoke.

Fourthly,

You need to recollect your own sense of self-respect by thinking of the things that will bolster your conscience.

According to our vice abbot in Thailand,

The Venerable Dhammachiro,

We may need to engage with conscience on three levels.

The first level is that of patience,

Where we must not give in to the temptation and the urges which cause us to want to relapse.

If this is not enough,

We may need a second layer of protection in the form of respect for those around us.

For example,

Left alone we might give in to our urges,

But when we think of our family and our children,

It will help us to stay strong out of respect for them.

Lastly,

If this doesn't work,

We might be thrown back into our sense of gratitude by thinking about significant others or spiritual mentors who we might disappoint by our actions after all they have done for us.

The fifth thing you need to do is to avoid associating with drink-related buddies anymore.

You may even designate a responsible sponsor to help remind you of your commitment to sobriety.

If you were a smoker,

You might want to avoid people who you used to smoke with.

We'll also mention that in recent years there has been a move to incorporate Buddhist practice with a variant of the 12-step program by such authors as Beverly and Thomas Pien who wrote the 2002 book Mindful Recovery and Noah Levine who wrote the 2014 book Refuge Recovery.

In brief,

Mindful Recovery is based on the premise that the abuse of drugs or alcohol is a kind of forgetfulness attempts users with short-term pleasure but in the long-term adds to their suffering and pain because the next morning they feel terrible and the difficulties from which they sought to escape only become worse,

Losing their capacity to appreciate and enjoy the many wonderful aspects of being alive.

Meanwhile,

Mindfulness is the opposite of this process because it teaches the recovering person to walk in the direction of healing and awareness and leave behind the destruction and forgetfulness of addiction.

As for Noah Levine,

He adapts the Four Noble Truths to rehab seeing dependence on intoxicants as a form of suffering and he even offers an eight-fold path as an eight-step holistic alternative to the usual 12-step version.

In our own Dhammakaya temple and its branches since 2004,

We have been strictly teetotal for our congregations.

Back in the day,

And you can see me here as part of huge ceremonies we organised in Salford and in the south of Thailand in those days,

We collected up everyone's residual alcohol,

Poured it down the drain in a big public ceremony and smashed up the bottles in a sack.

As for cigarettes,

We put these on the bonfire.

At the time,

Many Thai restaurants owned by our supporters went BYO or banned alcohol from their premises despite the loss of profit under the premises of truly caring about the karmic retribution in the future of their clients while trying to establish a more family-friendly atmosphere in their place of work.

The restaurant owners were particularly worried because according to Buddhism there is a special place in hell for the retailers and manufacturers of alcohol and intoxicants that is even worse than for the consumer.

In conclusion,

As meditators we should be particularly gifted in shaking ourselves free of intoxicants because mindfulness is one of the best ways of facing the truth about ourselves.

Instead of the severe imposition of rehab where recovery strategies are purely secular,

Mindfulness allows clients to learn an urge-surfing approach instead of struggling for and against violent feelings encountered.

Mindfulness allows them to leverage acceptance of the feelings in the mind or sitting with our uncomfortable feelings in order to transform them.

From the clinician's side,

Mindfulness also allows for deep listening to know which state of awareness they are dealing with for clients in rehab.

So for today I will finish off with a quick story from the time the Buddha sourced from the Sūra Pāṇacārthaka about how alcohol managed to reduce a monk with mental powers to a monastic liability.

Once upon a time the Buddha was passing through an area called Paddhavātika.

On the way he met with some travellers coming in the opposite direction.

After concern for the Buddha,

They wanted him not to go any further towards Ambatitta because at a hermitage there,

There was a Naga serpent which had great powers and was highly dangerous.

Because the serpent was of false view,

It would certainly harm the Buddha.

The Buddha ignored their advice however,

Even though they pleaded with him three times not to go.

Monastic communities set up camp in the forest not far from the hermitage of Ambatitta and they selected the Buddha's attendant,

A monk called Sakatathera,

Who was not yet enlightened but who was endowed with miraculous mental powers to be the one to deal with the serpent.

The elder entered the lair of the serpent and prepared a podium of grass,

Covered it with a mat and sat there cross-legged for meditation.

The fierce serpent saw the monk meditating and was annoyed by the imposition.

The serpent was provoked to breathe smoke over the monk but the monk was ready for the confrontation and deflected the smoke so that it blew back on the serpent.

When the serpent saw the smoke had no effect on the monk,

It changed to breathing fire over the monk instead.

Normally anyone touched by the flames would immediately be reduced to cinders except for those with exceptional mental powers.

The monk used his powers again to deflect the fire back at the serpent until the serpent couldn't bear the heat any longer.

The serpent fell so exhausted that it turned back into a normal snake.

It was so embarrassed about not being able to conquer the monk that it started to lose some of its arrogance.

Before it had been so arrogant that it wouldn't listen to reasoning but now it was more ready to listen.

The monk gave the serpent a preaching and established it in the three refuges and the five precepts thereby rendering it harmless.

Towards the monk returned triumphant to the monastic community.

The Buddha remained at Padatwattika for a few days longer and then continued towards the city of Kosampi with his community.

The tale of Sakata Thera's heroic deeds went before him and grateful citizens of Kosampi lined up at the roadside to greet the Buddha,

Sakata and the other monks.

Having received the Buddha,

Many of the faithful went to visit the heroic Sakata Thera who had overcome the mighty serpent by his mental powers.

They wanted to show him their gratitude by offering him a special delicacy.

They pledged to offer anything he asked of them.

Sakata just smiled and didn't take them up on the offer.

Unfortunately there was a group of renegade monks known as the group of six or Chhapak Yer who were renowned for breaking the monastic rules.

They were always finding new ways to break the regulations meaning the Buddha was constantly having to lay down new monastic rules.

The group of six thought to themselves,

We are monks like Sakata but we don't have magical powers like him.

Let's play a trick on Sakata and have some fun.

They persuaded the citizens of that town to offer white liquor to Sakata,

Something which he had never tasted before.

They praised the offering of alcohol to Sakata saying it would be a special merit for those citizens.

They said it would be an even more special merit to offer this rare substance to such an exceptional person as Sakata Thera,

Especially when white alcohol is the most delicious drink you can find.

Faithful asked,

Is that so?

You've never heard that before.

Well now you've heard it from us said the group of six.

Well the citizens believed what the monks told them and were excited at the opportunity.

They got their alcohol ready and waited for the opportunity to offer it to Sakata.

Sakata ordained early in life and had never learned about the dangers of alcohol.

The next morning Sakata went on alms round as usual and when he opened the lid of his bowl the faithful were quick to fill his bowl with the best white alcohol they could find.

The devotees were so proud to have found a special substance to offer to the heroic monk who had overcome the serpent.

Sakata didn't pay any interest to the contents of his bowl.

He had no idea what the substance was.

He accepted alms from all comers.

He was certain that the alms givers would be responsible in the gifts they gave.

If it wasn't proper they would never offer it.

Having finished his alms round he sat down to eat the food from his bowl and he had no idea that the alcohol had soaked into all his food.

After lunch Sakata's graceful deportment was reduced to dizzy staggering.

He had a strange warm feeling in the stomach and collapsed at the city gate lying there semi-conscious and mumbling incomprehensible nonsense.

Once the Buddha had finished his alms round he returned through the city gate seeing Sakata lying on the ground.

The Buddha had two monks help Sakata back to the temple.

When they reached the temple the monks laid Sakata down with his head pointing towards the Buddha out of respect for him.

However as soon as they let go of him he wriggled turning himself around so that his feet pointed at the Buddha which is the height of bad manners in Buddhist culture.

The Buddha said nothing but he asked a rhetorical question.

Does Sakata still have respect towards the Buddha or not?

The monks replied no he has no remaining respect sir.

The Buddha continued.

Oh monks who was the monk so powerful that he could subdue the serpent at Ambatitta?

The monks replied it was Sakata.

But how about now could Sakata even overcome a water snake?

Not anymore the monks agreed.

Now you can appreciate that alcohol apart from destroying one's wealth,

Reputation,

Health and chance of spiritual attainment can render powerless those who formerly had so much mental power that they could subdue a powerful serpent.

Therefore I do say that the taste of alcohol is the kiss of death.

It is so harmful that it can render a mighty monk useless.

The Buddha reprimanded Sakata for his recklessness and soon after laid down a rule prohibiting monks from drinking alcohol except as a constituent of medicine a rule which continues to stand to this day.

So this session I have introduced to you blessing 20 on abstaining from intoxicants.

For my next session we'll complete the sixth group of blessings with blessing number 21 on non-recklessness in the Dharma.

Hopefully as a result of today's session you will understand that although drinking in moderation is thought acceptable in Western society it is not compatible with Dharma practice but complete abstinence from intoxicants is necessary for our mind to reach towards enlightenment.

So for today this is me Pranay Nicholas signing off for now.

So long folks and stay safe.