webbykevin
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2010
- Messages
- 1,720
The main difference between Buddhism and christianity is jesus was the son of a carpenter and buddha was the son of a prince 

Drug use depletes essence (jing), but not the soul.
You can offset the depletion by going into a psychedelic experience in good shape (nutrition, physical fitness, having had enough sleep, good mood, etc.), and doing proper after care. If your body is missing anything or you dose too high, you will deplete your body's stores and beyond. (Think down to the bone, to the core of the bone, and to the core of the core.) It's an eastern concept, and one that I strongly believe it.
Essence is limited to this life, but it relates to your life span.
Not sure about this one. I would say that *healthy*, yet difficult and intense psychedelic experiences are akin to a strong spiritual workout, that you come out stronger for having done so. I never feel long-term depletion on the back of breakthrough psychedelic experiences, I feel reinforced, reinvigorated, and recharged, like I am expanding my spiritual boundaries. Of course you should take care of your physical vessel prior to embarking on a deep trip, but if you've done that, you're in a good position to make significant spiritual gains.
Many people advocate meditation over psychedelics as a path to expanding one's spirituality, that psychedelic use is decadent, or a shortcut. I would say that they are merely two different approaches to the same goal. I would say the differences are primarily in duration and intensity. Meditation is like going for a 3 mile walk every day, psychedelics are like a weekly two-hour total body weight lifting session. Both will improve your physical fitness, both have positives and negatives, but both work towards the same thing. And, ideally, as part of a fitness plan, you would do both. There's no reason to avoid either method, and the two methods combine synergistically, each enhancing the effects of the other.
So no, psychedelics, if done properly, do not deplete your essence, so to speak. They invigorate it, and are a useful tool for both expanding the mind and energizing the spirit.
The Truth of Dukkha is that all conditional phenomena and experiences are not ultimately satisfying;
The Truth of the Origin of Dukkha is that craving for and clinging to what is pleasurable and aversion to what is not pleasurable result in becoming, rebirth, dissatisfaction, and redeath;
The Truth of the Cessation of Dukkha is that putting an end to this craving and clinging also means that rebirth, dissatisfaction, and redeath can no longer arise;
The Truth of the Path Of Liberation from Dukkha is that by following the Noble Eightfold Path—namely, behaving decently, cultivating discipline, and practicing mindfulness and meditation—an end can be put to craving, to clinging, to becoming, to rebirth, to dissatisfaction, and to redeath.