Ep106 - Buddhist Scholar Stephen Batchelor on Cannabis as a Secular Sacrament
"I don’t take cannabis in social situations. I only take it by myself in a quiet, reflective space...Sometimes it leads me down blind alleys, but often it clarifies and heightens my reflections. I see it as a power plant."
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Many people who use substances say that they create a deeper connection with “god,” “nature” or their own “spiritual” selves. Yet most organized religions are averse to plant medicines including psilocybin, ayahuasca, peyote and cannabis. Christians call these entheogens (plants that when ingested produce higher states of consciousness) false gods and warn against them for a host of reasons, primarily because they don’t want adherents straying from the flock.
Buddhists use different words but similarly proscribe intoxicants that lead users into states of “mindlessness” or “carelessness.” But as an intermittent traveler in spiritual circles I can assure you substance use among Western spiritual teachers is far more widespread than openly admitted. So many of them use psychedelics and cannabis, but maintain a well-guarded “conspiracy of silence,” as this week’s guest, Stephen Batchelor, puts it.
Batchelor is an esteemed teacher, writer, artist, and Buddhist scholar, who is best known for his secular approach to Buddhism and his openness to using entheogens to deepen his own contemplative practices. At 18, he went to India, where he was ordained as a Buddhist monk in 1974. He traveled, first to Germany and then South Korea, where he left the Tibetan tradition to train in Zen Buddhism. But in 1985 he disrobed, married and moved to France, where he and his wife still live in a small village near Bordeaux. His work has centered around developing a more modern, universalist approach to Buddhism, one that integrates the truths of tradition with the needs of our time.
“The bulk of Buddhist teachers set out on this path through psychedelics and cannabis in the 1960s and 70s,” Batchelor, 68, told me. “But Buddhism, for many reasons, is too trapped in its own history. It appears user friendly but scratch the surface and you’ll hit a bedrock of moralism. It’s heavily committed to certain dogmas that it won’t or can’t release.”
If you are interested in Batchelor's secular approach to this religion, I recommend Buddhism Without Beliefs, Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, and his most recent, The Art of Solitude, which was written before COVID but helped me mightily during the darker days of lockdown and forced isolation. It’s my honor to have Stephen as a guest and my pleasure to share the conversation with you.