The Slow Burn
- Is smoking cigarettes un-Buddhist?
Alex Tzelnic
April 28,
2015
Bernie Flynn, a longtime student of Chögyam Trungpa,
recently told me about the time he and the Rinpoche tried to quit
smoking cigarettes. A few days in, he was driving the Rinpoche to a
meeting. Antsy and in withdrawal, Bernie couldn’t help but notice
his teacher sitting calmly in the passenger seat. Finally, his
nerves on edge, Bernie turned to Trungpa and asked how the whole
quitting thing was going. “It’s easy,” said Trungpa. “Either you
smoke, or you don’t smoke.”
Ah, so simple.
Later that evening, Bernie entered a room to find
the Rinpoche gleefully chain smoking.
Oh, not so simple.
The psychoactive effects of drugs, alcohol included,
don’t exactly jibe with the goals of Buddhist practice. Sure, some
people stumble into the dharma after stumbling through an acid
trip, but the fact that LSD can be a gateway to practice doesn’t
mean it’s allowed beyond the gate of any respectable dharma
institution. And though many Buddhists drink, it’s generally
understood that this should occur in moderation and off the zafu.
Hence, refraining from intoxicants is one of the five basic
Buddhist precepts.
Cigarettes, however, seem to exist in a hazy gray
area, both literally and figuratively. Caffeine, a substance that
might otherwise find itself in similar ambiguous territory, has a
sexy origin story: the Ch’an patriarch Bodhidharma, angry at
himself for dozing off during zazen, rips off his eyelids and
flings them to the ground, from which sprout the first tea leaves.
Thus caffeine has long been accepted by Buddhists the world over as
a mild performance enhancing drug, endorsed by legend. Tobacco,
lacking such an auspicious beginning, has long been tolerated in
Buddhist communities anyway, though the Buddhist stance on smoking
is vague at best.
Thus, the question remains. Either you smoke, or you
don’t smoke, yes, but should you smoke? I found the
answer, like a good koan, to be both elusive and entirely dependent
upon who is answering.
_____
Smoking is not technically prohibited in Buddhism,
but then again, neither is juggling chainsaws or playing Russian
roulette. It would be tedious if all prohibited actions had to be
spelled out (which doesn’t mean people haven't tried. See: the
Vinaya). I pointed this out to Dr. Joel Smith, Associate Professor
of Philosophy at Skidmore College. “Of course [smoking is not
prohibited],” said Smith, “but if you look at the eightfold path
and you have any kind of subtle interpretation about right action
and right effort, it doesn’t take much to argue that [right action
and right effort] should be applied in that kind of
way.”
Smith traveled in Japan with John Daido Loori Roshi,
longtime abbot of the Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York,
when Daido was receiving his confirmation rituals at Eihei-ji many
years ago. He remembered Daido stepping outside the Eihei-ji
buildings to smoke in between ceremonies.
“I asked him about it once,” Smith said, “and he
responded, ‘Zen is not a health trip.’”
While this may be true, it glosses over the fact
that smoking is, at its most basic, a harmful action. Dr. Smith has
been teaching Buddhism and Eastern philosophy for decades, and over
the years he has brought many students to dharma institutions to
hear teachings. A number of them, he said, are turned off by the
fact that they see monks smoking. “This is really where the rubber
hits the road,” said Smith. “You can talk generally about
compassion, but if you can’t apply it to something so basic in
one’s personal life, then what the heck is going on?”
Aside from the issue of alienating the
dharma-curious, the fact that Buddhists smoke raises a deeper issue
for Smith. “If you love life and affirm it and want to do good in
the world and be compassionate to other people, then you want to
make your body and your mind as much of a vehicle for that as
possible for as long as possible.” Smoking cigarettes would seem to
undercut that possibility, limiting the amount of time one has to
be a vehicle for the dharma. So why do Buddhist teachers continue
to allow their addiction to impinge on their responsibilities?
Shouldn’t overcoming their addiction be of the utmost importance,
both as exemplars of the teachings and as vehicles for
them?
I put this question to Dr. Judson Brewer, the
director of research at the Center for Mindfulness. Brewer and his
team at Yale University have developed the Craving to Quit app,
which uses mindfulness to help people kick their addiction. “It’s a
great question and I would want to talk to these folks and get
their story,” said Brewer. “Is it just a habit that’s so much in
the background that you’re not paying attention or is the level of
suffering that it causes so minimal that there’s no drive to change
the behavior?”
I asked Brewer if Buddhist teachers have a moral
imperative not to smoke.
“If I had a gun and I killed myself, that wouldn’t
be that helpful if I were a good teacher. And smoking has obviously
been linked to increased mortality and morbidity, as well as a
number of illnesses, including cancer.”
Indeed, John Daido Loori Roshi died of lung cancer
in 2009 (though he did give up smoking later in life). Like
shooting yourself with a gun, smoking will ultimately aid in your
demise. “It’s not exactly suicide,” said Brewer. “It’s just a
slower burn.”
_____
In 2005 I was one of 33 college students who lived
in a Burmese monastery in Bodhgaya, India, where we studied
Buddhism and lived according to the five basic precepts. Though it
may have gone against our youthful inclinations, we refrained from
taking intoxicants, sex, stealing, lying, and killing.
Cigarettes, however, were not prohibited, and like
many of my fellow students, I took up smoking. We spent countless
afternoons on the roof of our dorm, watching our cigarette smoke
drift away while ruminating over deep questions like, is killing a
malaria-ridden mosquito bad karma or good karma? Since we were
suddenly living a life of previously unimaginable austerity,
smoking didn’t seem like such a big deal. It gave us something to
do, and though we were learning about the emptiness of self,
smoking seemed like the last way we could fill ourselves up, albeit
with smoke. It gave us something to cling to, the last iceberg in a
sea of melting vices.
Maybe the fact that Buddhists smoke is as simple as
that. Maybe Buddhists the world over puff because it is one of the
few remaining ways they can puff themselves up. For a spiritual
tradition so devoted to compassion and helping others, cigarettes
may be the final frontier of autonomy. In a spiritual tradition so
devoted to the eradication of self, cigarettes might be the last
shred of selfishness. Fumo ergo sum.
I smoke, therefore I am.
_____
Google Buddhism and smoking and the resulting hits
are not what I would describe as particularly helpful (unless you
want lurid details about the monks recently arrested for smoking
Crystal Meth in Phnom Penh, Cambodia). However, I did come across
an amusing anecdote from the blog of the Scottish-born Buddhist
teacher Bodhipaksa:
A young monk strolled into the office of the
head monk.
“Say, man. Would it like be okay if I smoke when
I meditate?”
The head monk turned pale and began quivering.
When he recovered, he gave the young man a stern lecture about the
sanctity of meditation. The novice listened thoughtfully and went
away.
A few weeks later, he returned with another
question.
“I’m concerned about my spiritual development. I
notice that I spend a lot of time smoking. I was wondering, do you
think it would be okay if when I am smoking, I practice my
meditation?”
The older man was overjoyed and of course said
yes.
I’m not so sure about the credentials of this pale,
quivering head monk (or, for that matter, the novice), but I found
the anecdote surprisingly informative. Perhaps the point isn’t what
we do, but how we do it. Perhaps, in taking a “thou shalt not”
approach, we miss the moment for the creed.
When I emailed the Bodhgaya alumni to ask for help
researching this topic, one person responded, “Wouldn’t a Buddhist
smoking cigarettes be kind of hypocritical, irresponsible, and
ironic?” It is attitudes like this that reveal the gap between what
people believe about Buddhists and how Buddhists actually behave.
And maybe this is the crux of this issue. Maybe this isn’t about
smoking at all but about the ideals we place on our
teachers.
In his book Sex, Sin, and Zen, author and
Zen teacher Brad Warner writes, “When we project our expectations
about what a divine being ought to be onto real people, what else
can we hope for besides disappointment?” After all, addiction does
not discriminate between enlightened and unenlightened, and
perhaps, in smoking, teachers unwillingly demonstrate that
addiction is not a roadblock to realization. This notion—that an
enlightened person can be an addicted person—might shatter our
preconceptions about realization, but to practice Buddhism and
believe one’s preconceptions will remain neatly intact seems about
as naïve as believing a teacher is a divine being.
Warner’s own teacher, Gudo Nishijima, was himself a
heavy smoker. But, said Warner, it wasn’t a problem. “He told me
once that he just happened to notice one day that smoking was a bad
habit, so he stopped doing it.”
“I tend to think Buddhist teachers are like artisans
who take on apprentices,” said Warner. “If we take that viewpoint,
it’s not such a big deal whether the teacher smokes or not. But a
teacher who smokes should know that their behavior is going to be
imitated. If the teacher cares about that, then maybe they should
not smoke.”
So should Buddhists be required to refrain from
smoking?
“I don’t think Buddhism should be in the business of
requiring people to do or not do things. That seems to go against
everything Buddhism is about. If you demand people follow the
Buddhist rules, that demanding itself is counter to the Buddhist
philosophical approach. The precepts are not
requirements.”
Randall Ryotan Eiger, sensei at the Village Zendo in
Manhattan, who studied with Daido for eight years, was himself a
smoker for 20 years, and as a freelance speechwriter in the 80s and
90s worked for a major tobacco company. His Buddhist smoking
credentials run deep, so I asked him the same question. Should
Buddhists refrain from smoking?
“To be a Buddhist means to take refuge in the three
treasures of Buddha, dharma, and sangha,” said Ryotan. “I don’t
believe one needs to be a non-smoker, or any particular kind of
person, in order to take refuge.”
Indeed, such stringent requirements would create a
culture of exclusion, leaving out those with addictions who might
otherwise benefit immensely from the dharma. As Dr. Brewer pointed
out, his app has exposed many people to the dharma “through their
own doorway of suffering, which is smoking.”
As for Buddhist teachers, Ryotan disagreed with the
idea that they have a “moral imperative” not to smoke.
“One sign of the moral confusion in our
market-driven society is that people have the tendency to elevate
consumer and lifestyle choices into matters of high moral drama,
leading to overblown talk of ‘moral imperatives.’ Tortuous analysis
of one’s thoughts and actions produces a facsimile of moral
seriousness that is pleasing to the ego, but it is no substitute
for the wisdom and compassion that arise from the awakened
heart.”
He continued, “Is smoking inherently unhealthy,
unwise, and maybe a little selfish? The answer is ‘yes.’ Are
smokers inherently unable to realize their buddhanature and save
all beings? The answer is ‘obviously not.’”
_____
Zen is not a health trip. Depending on your view of
smoking, this response is either frustratingly reductive or
refreshingly concise. For some, like Dr. Smith, smoking remains one
of the largest thorns in Buddhism’s side. “Smoking involves in a
personal, immediate way the core Buddhist issues of suffering,
craving, death, compassion, and awakening,” said Smith. “What
matters is how well one deals with those issues concretely, in
smoking and other concrete immediate situations. Smoking isn’t
the only place where we can engage these issues—they come up
elsewhere, obviously—but it’s one of the ways, and we must engage
them there.”
For others, the fact that some Buddhists smoke is as
mundane as the fact that some Buddhists eat meat. But even Brad
Warner understands the reservations one might have about teachers
who smoke. “As a learner, I would steer clear of teachers who have
such obvious bad habits on the grounds that if they can’t even get
it together to stop smoking, how can I believe they can guide me to
get past my own bad habits?” And yet, Warner’s own teacher smoked,
and perhaps that is why he and other teachers are unwilling to take
a stance against cigarettes.
Nirvana means
“extinguishing the flame.” When faced with the issue of human
suffering, the burning ember of a lit cigarette might not seem like
the highest priority. There is a more pressing conflagration at
hand. Either you smoke, or you don’t smoke, yes, but in the end, we
are all part of the slow burn anyhow. And maybe in the end, to
borrow a phrase from the smoker Charles Bukowski, what matters most
is not whether or not you smoke, but how well you walk through the
fire.