No Attainment, Nothing to Attain: A Buddhist Reflection on Psychedelics

The religious or spiritual value of contemplative practices and psychedelic use is not inherent in the experiences themselves but depends on how they transform consciousness. Drawing on a nonreductive, nondualist Buddhist account, the author argues that changes in subjective experience are only provisional goals; the ultimate aim is cultivating liberating and compassionate relations. Recent neuroscientific studies combining first-person and third-person methods challenge individualist conceptions of autonomy, highlight the importance of group practice, and show that mindfulness techniques stripped of their dharmic context are inadequate.

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Abstract

The religious or spiritual value of contemplative practices and the use of psychedelics is not intrinsic to experiences obtained through them and is instead relational—a function of how they alter consciousness. In support of that claim, I first present a nonreductive, nondualist Buddhist account of consciousness that calls critically into question the merits of both physicalist and phenomenalist reductionism in exploring the meditative and psychedelic alterations of consciousness. I then make a Buddhist case for seeing that changes in subjective experience are at best provisional goals of these alterations, and not their ultimate aim: elaborating increasingly liberating and compassionately virtuosic relations. I turn finally to recent neuroscientific studies of psychedelics and meditation that combine first-person and third-person methodologies to draw some challenging inferences regarding the dynamics of contemplative practice, the reality of interpersonal realization, the merits of group practice, the liabilities of individualist conceptions of liberal autonomy, and the inadequacy of meditative techniques like mindfulness practice stripped of dharmic content and context.