The Man Who Thought It Was Water

In Buddhist traditions, ethics are undergirded by 5 key rules called the Precepts. The first four are things you would expect:

Refrain from killing.
Refrain from stealing.
Refrain from sexual misconduct.
Refrain from lying.

But there's one more precept that strikes a lot of people as out of place or unusual.

5. Refrain from consuming intoxicants.

We find rules about the first four precepts across almost all religious ethical codes. But the fifth precept was a new addition to Buddhism. The first four were common in the Indian religions of the time, but the Buddha's teachings added the fifth.

It's worth noting that Buddhist precepts are different from normal religious commandments. These aren't divinely handed down rules. They're recommendations. You won't go to hell for transgressing against God if you lie. Rather, these are recommendations for living a good life. Your life will be better if you don't kill. Your life will be better if you don't steal, or cheat, or lie. These are all pretty grave crimes, and it's intuitive to advise against them. But putting drinking alcohol and drugs on the same tier strikes a lot of people, including me at one point, as unusual. This is in fact, so unusual, that even the Abhidharma masters, the scholars who wrote the theoretical texts surrounding Buddhist doctrine in the second century, asked themselves: why is this on the list at all?

In contemporary times, that precept can be difficult to keep. We're inundated with opportunities to break it. Every other commercial is for a new disgusting hard seltzer. You can buy delta-8 at the gas station. Opioids come with a prescription, and somebody upstream is paid by the volume. Our media is saturated with characters pouring a drink after a hard day. Weddings, birthdays, and parties are all punctuated with plenty of drinks. The message is clear: alcohol makes you fun, sexy, and you need it for a good time. So pushing back on it like the fifth precept does can leave one feeling a bit isolated. So it's good to investigate why this was ever taught at all.

In the gargantuan text Abhidharma-mahāvibhāṣā-śāstra, ancient Buddhist scholars recorded a parable to teach us about this question. There was once a man who kept the five precepts. He was not a monk, just a normal man who was diligent about practicing virtue. While alone at home, he ate some food left for him, which, being salty, made him thirsty. He drank from a jug which he thought contained water, but accidentally drank alcohol and got drunk.

From there, his inhibitions came tumbling down. His neighbor's chicken wandered into his house. He was in a thieving mood, so he killed it and ate it. Precepts one and two down. His neighbor came looking for the chicken and he had his way with her, violating the third precept. Other neighbors, outraged, hauled him before a judge, where he denied the whole thing, violating the fourth.

A lot of ancient stories aren't exactly subtle, so the message is clear. It's not that alcohol itself was the problem, it's the lack of inhibition that caused an otherwise virtuous man to do a bunch of bad things. Pārśva said, "Drinking liquor is the very greatest obstruction to this discipline — like a gatekeeper who keeps the gate shut." Another master says: the precept of abstaining from liquor guards all the other disciplines together, as a moat and city wall guard everything inside. Sobriety guards us from unwise action, keeping unwise decisions at bay.

There's a common refrain that drunk words are sober thoughts, or that alcohol doesn't make you do anything you don't want to do. I really disagree with this. Your inhibitions are part of who you are. Thoughts are just thoughts; acting on thoughts is what determines your character. The man in the story was virtuous because he had the ability not to act on his dark impulses until that was taken away. It's an almost cartoonishly exaggerated example, but we've all seen someone or been someone who did something they regret because of drugs or alcohol.

What I know, for myself, is that sobriety makes things easier. I end up meditating more (my meditation streak is one day behind my sober streak), I think before acting, and I care more about myself. Nothing has to happen as dramatic as the story. For me it's noticing that I end up more distracted. I'm not present during important moments; either physically or mentally I'm not really there. I have difficulty taking care of myself. I forget to eat or sleep sometimes, and I often go hard at work and burn out, cyclically. Alcohol just let me keep doing that. When I don't have that source of eliminating feeling, I'm forced to deal with that. It's challenging, but that challenge made me grow. Alcohol just let me keep going without ever actually dealing with the responsibility of taking care of myself.

Metta is a Pali word that means, roughly, loving-kindness. It's the desire for everyone to be happy and live well. A lot of meditations use the wording:

"May you be happy.

May you be healthy.

May you live with ease."

For almost all of my life, I applied this principle only outward, never to myself. It's been a difficult but rewarding process to realize that I'm not that special; if everyone deserves metta, I'm part of everyone. How do I help myself live with ease? Resisting that urge to drink. In that way, I can make it as easy as possible to treat myself well, treat other people well, and treat the world well.

I'm not saying nobody should drink. Some people shouldn't. Some people can. But everyone should be careful that they don't give in to thoughtlessness. Whatever our difficulties, we can extend this to our overall lives. The phrase used in the original text of the 5th precept literally translates as"drinks that are a basis for heedlessness." There's a lot more than drugs and alcohol that can promote heedlessness. Social media, money, anger, pride; there are many impulses we can give in to that make us crueler to our fellow humans. Alcohol, for many of us, acts as a force multiplier to those very human impulses. That's why avoiding it makes my life as easy as possible; I make it harder to give in.

For a long time I either did things or took care of myself. I made things harder. Now I realize it must be both/and. Eliminating alcohol, for me, was the biggest enhancement to my ability to be mindful and not give in to my harmful impulses. We've all got that something. We can't get rid of the things that cloud our minds entirely, but we can be aware of them, and once we're aware of them, we can deal with them, and lessen their grip on us. We can recognize when we're being pulled to give in to impulsivity. We can take care of ourselves. We can live with ease.