Diane Eshin Rizzetto
Editor’s Note: The Buddhist precepts are a set of ethical guidelines that are worded in in different ways depending on the school and lineage. One of the precepts is to refrain from using intoxicants. Diane Eshin Rizzetto, of the Bay Zen Center in Oakland, California, uses this wording: “I take up the way of cultivating a clear mind.” She says that this precept extends beyond just avoiding drugs and alcohol.
I take up the way of cultivating a clear mind. –Zen Precept
I’ve heard it said that 90 percent of getting along well in life is in showing up for it. I’d add to that: showing up fully in each moment. Being present in body and clear in mind. This precept, sometimes worded as Not Taking Drugs, Not Indulging in Intoxicants, or Not Clouding the Truth, encourages us to take an honest look at the ways we don’t show up by clouding our experience through the use of intoxicating substances and addictive behaviors.
We may acknowledge at some level that all the moments of our lives are teachers, but we don’t always want to meet the teacher, so sometimes we seek to control or regulate our experience in a variety of ways. If we have any hope of being free from the habituals swings of our reactions, if we have any wish to live more openly and freely, if we seek, as writer Barbara Kingsolver says, “to look life in the eye and love it back,” then we need to take a look at what’s clouding our view. This is what any teacher offers us—a clear view of our clouding. But in order to even recognize the teacher, we need to be awake. This is, first of all, what this precept is about—being awake and present for our teachers.
One way to think of the mind’s innate clarity is by comparing it to rich, unworked soil—full of possibilities and nutrients, teeming with millions of insects, microorganisms, bacteria, and enzymes standing ready in full potential to interact and bring forth whatever seeds are planted there. Much like a gardener carefully cares for the soil by not adding pollutants and toxic substances, we can cultivate a mind that is rich, open, and ready. This precept is not about changing our mind, it’s about inquiring into the ways we get lost in obscuring or clouding it.
Originally, this precept focused on the use of alcohol, but later it was expanded to include the use of other substances like marijuana, tranquilizers, hallucinogens, and so forth. Today, we can think of more subtle ways we turn from being present by using and abusing not only mind-altering drugs, but also caffeine, cigarettes, food, and activities like exercise, TV watching, going online, work, or anything that can turn us from the immediate experience of our minds and bodies.
Settling down to a good movie on TV can be very relaxing if we aren’t, for example, trying to avoid the bills on our desk or our disappointment over losing a job promotion. Ice cream is a tasty treat when we’re not eating a quart of it in an effort to sweeten the pain of a breakup with our partner. This precept is about looking at the ways we use whatever substance to alter or escape our experience.
A good way to begin exploring this precept is to pick one substance or activity that you regularly engage in with some attachment (in other words, you’d have some reaction if you couldn’t do it), and begin observing yourself internally while using or engaging in that activity. Be open to whatever you experience. Allow it. Get to know it intimately. What does your body really feel like when it has a craving? Notice what you’re thinking or avoiding thinking about. You can begin working with this precept by getting to know your escape.
