The question of entheogenic drugs more generally is the question of
ecstatic visions. Divine madness. Makyō
Makyō: the Path of Illusions; Path of Dreams. A feeling of great
numinosity.
Ma, hemp-spirit, Mara, the devil in the phenomenal world. Makyō are
visions that appear at certain stages of the meditation path.
A deep dream of participation in the Buddha Dharma.
—Robert Aitken
The Surangama Sutra lists fifty types of makyō, ten for each of the five
aggregates of form, receptiveness, conception, discrimination, and
consciousness. The Buddha states that these visions are harmless, even
excellent progressive stages, unless the practitioner believes that they
signify complete attainment.
In this clear and penetrating state of your mind when it looks
within, its light appears in all its purity and at midnight you will
suddenly see in your dark room all sorts of apparitions as clearly
as in broad daylight, with all the other objects usually there. This
is the mind, in its subtlety, refining its clear perceptions which
enables you to see distinctly in the dark. This temporary
achievement does not mean you are a saint. If you do not regard it
as such, it is an excellent progressive stage, but if you do you will
give way to demons.
—Surangama Sutra
To poison poison, the Peacock Path. The way of transmutation.
The blue color of the peacock is the blue of Shiva, the blackness of
Vajrapani: the color of the poison-drinker.
In jungles of poisonous plants strut the peacocks . . .
— Dharmaraksita: Wheel of Sharp Weapons: A Mahayana
Training of the Mind
The Boddhisattva of Makyō, the Poison Buddha, The Bodhisattva of
Illusions: the buddha with 108,000 names who teaches and saves with
illusion. Whose very name poisons preconceptions, who leaves us in a
soup of dreams.
We know this path in our imaginations, or is it our memories? A path
that includes ecstasy and ecstatic visions, the God of Ecstasy, Shiva, or
maybe Dionysus: the Bodhisattva who gave us his very blood as a
medicine for crippling inhibitions, that the true soul emerge.
Dionysus, by nature unrecognized, but surely present in the pantheon: a
young god with the rank of bodhisattva.
Iconography: sometimes rides a panther, sometimes an ass.
Androgynous. Usually with long hair. associated with the thyrsus and
tambourine, wears a garland of ivy leaves (a cure for drunkenness). God
of music, poetry, song, and the theater. Dharani may include eating wild
mushrooms, and raw flesh (emblamatic of the food web and
interdependence).
Associated with springtime, and an ecstatic state of consciousness often
mistaken for madness, but more appropriately named Great Joy.
Enthusiastic exuberance.
Wrathful aspect: hawk eating a ground squirrel; cat playing with a
mouse, waiting, letting it revive and run in order to catch it again. Two
schoolgirls catching fireflies, pulling the abdomens off and sticking
them onto their arms and the backs of their hands, dancing and
laughing, their jewelry aglow with green light.
Let a thousand schools flourish, the way of Buddhism is assimilation,
not rejection. The Divine Madness school of Buddhism, watched over by
the Bodhisattva Dionysus, who uses enthusiasm and ecstatic visions as
devices . . .
And thus Bodhisattvas are likened to peacocks:
They live on delusions - those poisonous plants.
Transforming them into the essence of Practice,
They thrive in the jungle of everyday life.
Whatever is presented they always accept,
While destroying the poison of clinging desire.
—Dharmaraksita
