Dr. Albert Hofmann is famous because he discovered/invented/synthesized LSD‑‑lysergic acid diethylamide-25–in 1938 in the process of looking for medicinal uses of a fungus found on rye, wheat and other grains. At the time he was an unknown if brilliant chemist working for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in Basel, Switzerland. He was a Swiss scientist in the traditional mold searching for ways to improve human life. He succeeded beyond his wildest expectations in unexpected ways, and his discovery of LSD deeply altered the lives of millions of people and, thereby, the course of human events. LSD has been profoundly misunderstood and demonized by non-cognoscenti, seriously abused by some who could be called cognoscenti, banned for many years in much of the world and called with deep affection “My Problem Child” by Hofmann himself. It strikes terror into the quaking hearts and fearful souls of those authorities who mistake control for order and who quiver with rage or uncertainty at questions (or chemicals) that challenge their certainty about what is what. Still, LSD is alive and well, inspiring, enlightening and helping to heal the psychic and psychological wounds of many people.
When he died in 2008 at his home in Burg im Leimental, Switzerland at the age of 102, he was the head of a large family including eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He was admired, respected and beloved by many people far outside the realms of science and his life as a Swiss professional. He took LSD many times and considered it a profound psychic medicine and thought that its use as a recreational “pleasure drug” was a mistake. Like many others—perhaps including some reading these words—at a certain point he realized he no longer had a use for LSD. Like many others, he turned to and recommended older methods of attaining “extraordinary states of consciousness”‑‑breathing techniques, yoga, fasting, dance, art, meditation. He said, “LSD brings about a reduction of intellectual powers in favor of an emotional experience of the world. It can help to refill our consciousness with this feeling of wholeness and being one with nature.” Which would seem to indicate a key element of any “extraordinary state of consciousness” is nothing more complicated than connecting the heart to the brain.
A good argument could be made that Albert Hofmann might accurately be described as the 20^th century father of reminding humanity that hearts and brains only work properly in unison. LSD was the tool he offered to connect them. This ancient knowledge‑‑heart/brain connection‑‑seemed like the newest, most profound wisdom to ever come down the road of life to those acid trippers of the 1960s and ‘70s who were trying to come to terms with the stultifying, repressive, heartless hypocrisies of the 1950s, the murders of John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the horrors and rationale of Viet Nam, the deceitful disservice to America of such public servants as Richard Nixon, Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger and others whose hearts were ravaged by ambition, greed, hubris and disconnection from the world they so cavalierly manipulated. There was a general sense of things not right in the wealth-driven homogeneity that characterized the capitalist values of America, and many who took LSD were able to see a way to set them right.
And so they did, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, perhaps a dance class, some yoga, a fast or a meditation practice is in order.
Besides inadvertently taking the first LSD ‘trip’ on April 16 1943 after accidentally getting a tiny amount of it on his finger, Hofmann was a serious, socially conscious chemist with a long and distinguished career. As a graduate student, Hofmann revealed the structure of insect chitin. Later he mastered the complex chemical world found within ergot, a cereal fungus with an enormous range of effects on the human nervous system. He called these derivatives of ergot his “children,” and they include drugs that remain in the pharmacopoeia to this day: methergine to prevent obstetrical bleeding, the anti-dementia vasodilator hydergine, dihydergot for migraines, in addition to the problem child, LSD.
Psychedelics were well known by the time Hofmann discovered LSD, but LSD was some 10,000 times more powerful than mescaline. Through the 1940s and 1950s LSD created a revolution in psychiatry. It was used successfully in the treatment of neurosis, psychosis and depression. Some 40,000 people underwent psychedelic therapy, perhaps most notably the actor Cary Grant who received some 60 LSD psychotherapy sessions and said of them, “I have been born again.” Aldous Huxley requested an injection of LSD on his deathbed. And many psychotherapists took the drug along with their patients, a fact not noted nearly enough in the literature or appreciated enough by those unwilling to appreciate the healing and wholeness to be found in expanded and extraordinary consciousness.
In pop culture LSD is associated with Ken Kesey, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, the ‘hippie’ mores of San Francisco’s flower children, Grateful Dead concerts, Woodstock and psychedelic art as, of course, it should be.
But it was Albert Hofmann’s child, and though it was a problem child he never gave up his belief in its goodness and usefulness as “medicine for the soul.” He never believed in it as a pleasure drug for the masses. He said, “As long as people fail to truly understand psychedelics and continue to use them as pleasure drugs, and fail to appreciate the very deep psychic experience they may induce, then their medical use will be held back.” The LSD experience was somewhat familiar to him when he encountered it as an adult; it was very close to an epiphany he had as a child while roaming in the woods near his childhood home. He said, “It happened on a May morning‑‑I have forgotten the year‑‑but I can still point to the exact spot where it occurred, on a forest path on Martinsberg above Baden. As I strolled through the freshly greened woods filled with bird song and lit up by the morning sun, all at once everything appeared in an uncommonly clear light. It shone with the most beautiful radiance, speaking to the heart, as though it wanted to encompass me in its majesty. I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy, oneness and blissful security.” Throughout his long life, pilgrims passed through Switzerland to visit Hofmann, to seek his counsel, and, perhaps, to score some of his stash of the original LSD. He considered it his responsibility to meet as many of these people as possible. He said, “I have tried to help, instructing and advising.”
On Hofmann’s 100^th birthday he was able to see an international symposium convene in Basel to discuss LSD research and a renewed interest in the therapeutic potential of LSD and other psychedelics. A year earlier the British Journal of Psychiatry called for a reappraisal of psychedelics “based upon scientific reasoning and not influenced by social or political pressures.”
Hofmann was active, vibrant and intelligent and involved to the end of his days. If he suffered any ill effects from his hundreds of LSD trips they were not evident. Since he lived to be 102 it would seem the medicinal properties of LSD did him some good. He lived to see his Prodigal Son come home to scientific respectability. What scientist could ask for more?

“One Tibetan monk who is now close with me came (to Dharamsala) in the early ‘80s (and) joined with me. He (had) spent more than 18 years in Chinese prison labor camp. So we used to talk and he told on a few occasions he really faced some danger. So I asked him, ‘What danger? What kind of danger?”—thinking he would tell me of Chinese torture and prison.
“He replied, ‘Many times I was in danger of losing compassion for the Chinese.’
“That’s marvelous, isn’t it?”
HH Dalai Lama

In the past few years dozens of Tibetans have self-immolated in protest of the lack of freedoms, the lack of basic human rights and the repressive, punitive policies imposed on them by the Chinese government. That is, they soaked themselves in gasoline and set themselves on fire to protest their treatment by the Chinese, to draw attention to their situation and to encourage the other nations of the world to persuade China to change their tyrannical policies that are nothing less than the cultural and actual genocide of Tibet.
China has shown no indication that these protests are causing it to consider changing its brutal, totalitarian policies and actions toward Tibet and Tibetans. An editorial in The Global Times, a Beijing newspaper with ties to the Communist Party opined, “China’s Tibetan region has been affected by outrageous political influences under the name of religion. The selfishness and ruthlessness of the Dalai group are carefully packaged by the West (and) the fact is the more self-immolations happen in Tibet, the more comfortable the life of the Dalai group becomes.”
Such a statement takes political/public relations spin to new realms of velocity and, in truth, darkness, even to veteran, jaded observers of the bleak, mind-numbing spin of the world’s political whirlpools. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet more than 50 years ago to save his own life 10 years after the Chinese invaded his sovereign nation. A national uprising against the Chinese precipitated the Dalai Lama’s escape to India and more than 100,000 Tibetans fled their homeland at that time. In the two decades following, hundreds of thousands of Tibetans died in Tibet as a consequence of China’s policies. Any westerner who has visited Tibet (or China), studied the history of Tibet and China, followed the work of the Dalai Lama on behalf of his country and countrymen and who reads that the Chinese government insists that ‘the Dalai group’ becomes more comfortable with each self-immolation of a fellow Tibetan can readily understand that even a Buddhist monk could be in danger of losing compassion for the Chinese.
It is, as HH Dalai Lama observes, marvelous that compassion can and should take precedence over several other possible responses to China’s subjugation of its neighbor, Tibet, one of many obvious reasons why we should not forget Tibet. And it may be the primary reason that those who might wish to forget Tibet will never be able to do so. Though China makes every attempt to sweep Tibet behind a curtain of secrecy, Tibet is not going to go away because, among other reasons, neither Tibet nor Tibetans are going to lose compassion.
And neither should we.
Losar, the Tibetan New Year, is traditionally celebrated with music, chanting, brilliant costumes and pageantry. Last year was different. Lobsang Sangay, the Tibetan prime-minister-in-exile, asked Tibetans throughout the world to refrain from celebration but to somberly observe traditional and spiritual rituals “…for all those who have sacrificed and suffered under the repressive policies of Chinese government” and because of the ‘grim news’ that continues to stream out of Tibet. Instead of celebrating Losar, the entire Tibet government in-exile, including HH Dalai Lama, fasted. Sangay encouraged Tibetans to continue to protest ‘non-violently and legally.’
“We once again fervently urge the Chinese government to give serious consideration to our legitimate demands and appeals we have made so far,” a Tibet government-in-exile statement said. The world knows that while the Chinese government has invaded, conquered, subjugated and brutalized Tibet and its people, China does not and never will represent them, speak for them or force them to lose compassion for all people, including Chinese.
Government officials from the United States, Germany, Britain, Australia, Canada, Poland and the European Union have all spoken out in protest of China’s repression of Tibetans. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have made very clear our serious concerns about China’s record on human rights…We continue to call on China to embrace a different path.”
China’s record on human rights in the past 60 years is among the worst in human history. The U.S. and the other nations mentioned should, in my view, do much more than make very clear their concerns about Tibet, and one hopes they will do more than talk about it. Meanwhile, do not forget Tibet. A country and people whose leader recognizes that it is marvelous to not lose compassion for those who lack compassion have, in addition to the right to live in peace in their own country on their own terms, much to teach the world.
Do not forget Tibet.

The Eightfold Noble Path—Right View, Right Intention (WISDOM), Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood (ETHICAL CONDUCT), Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration (MENTAL DEVELOPMENT)

Right livelihood is the 3^rd of the three moral or ethical principles of the eightfold noble path of Buddhism. The other two are right speech and right action. The principle is that one earns one’s living legally, peacefully and in a manner that brings no harm to others. At first glance this seems sane, obvious and not that difficult. The Buddha specifically pointed out that dealing in weapons, living beings (including raising animals for slaughter, the slave trade and prostitution), working in meat production and butchery and selling intoxicants and poisons like alcohol and drugs brings harm to others. He also said that any means of livelihood that violated right speech and right action is to be avoided.
The means of livelihood is a major component of each of our lives. For most people, the work we do takes up more time and energy than anything else and has an enormous impact on our lives and, since all things and people are connected, on the lives of our families, friends, communities and the world at large. If we are sitting each morning as a means of developing compassion and understanding in ourselves and building atomic bombs or tending bar in the afternoons, we are going to have some conflicts within ourselves. Those conflicts create suffering for ourselves, defeat our practice, and, in turn, inflict suffering on the world.
Thich Nhat Hanh has written: “Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion, or erode them. We should be awake to the consequences, far and near, of the way we earn our living.”
And it is not just the effect of our own means of livelihood on our inner selves and, consequently, the compassion, understanding and suffering that we (literally) project on the world. Each of us is affected by the individual members of our families, the people around us, our communities and the world. All of them, in turn, are affected by their means of livelihood. I like Thich Nhat Hanh’s perspective on Right Livelihood—vocation can nourish or erode.
Since everything is connected, including the people of a modern civilization, absolute purity in Right Livelihood is probably impossible. Even if we don’t build atomic bombs, some well-intentioned teacher taught the bomb maker nuclear physics; a farmer grew the food he eats; a carpenter built the house he lives in; a mechanic fixes the automobile he drives to work; a ski instructor gives him lessons on the hill—-and all of them are paid with the money the bomb maker earns making bombs. Since atomic bombs (so far) are only made by nations and not individuals, the money that pays the bomb maker comes from the taxes of ordinary citizens—you and me.
While building atomic bombs is an extreme example of the Buddha’s warning against bringing harm to others, it illustrates the interconnectedness of all things, including Right Livelihood. It shows that our personal spiritual efforts and accomplishments are entwined with the secular world at every level and that principles are living organisms that guide us in life; they are not written in stone; they are not pure in the Fundamentalist sense that, it seems to me, justifies and in truth inspires much of the violence and suffering in the world.
I’ll end with a perspective (with which I don’t necessarily agree, but which I hope will inspire some thought and discussion) from a Chinese Chan (Zen) master of the 20^th century named Hsu Yun, about a man struggling to determine what is Right Livelihood?:

“…he cannot earn his living through ‘cheating.’ (Uh, Oh. That lets out used cars, aluminum siding, politics and TV evangelism.) The more he thinks about it, the shorter his list gets.
“And so he and the rest of us are all left wondering just what does Right Livelihood mean?
“Most religious commentators avoid answering such questions. And nobody can query a book.
“What is necessary, here, is common sense. Religious professionals who earn their living from the donations of working members of their congregations can afford to be angelically employed. Having no family responsibilities to anchor them to earthly reality, they can afford to float above such defilements. (And while we are on the subject, it is shocking to see how easily The Pure accept ‘dirty’ money. A whore can go from the crib to the pew and if her trick receipt is put in the collection box, it is welcomed. This, of course, is true of any religion. None is fussy about a donation’s provenance.)
“Therefore, the solution we apply to the problem of Right Livelihood is simple: A Buddhist may earn his living in any way that is honest and legal. He may sell guns… but not to someone he reasonably suspects is insane or who intends to use the gun for a criminal purpose. He may be a vegetarian and a cowboy… a shoemaker, a butcher, a soldier, a bartender, and, lest there be any doubt, he may even be the man who throws the switch on someone legally condemned to die. If he doesn’t approve of capital punishment, he doesn’t have to take the job.”

“Enlightenment comes from practice, thus enlightenment is limitless; practice comes from enlightenment, thus practice has no beginning.”

Dogen Zenji

Sitting is the foundation of Buddhist practice and what we bring to our daily sitting is our own enlightenment, even if we do not feel or think of ourselves as particularly enlightened. What we build on that foundation is both limitless and entirely dependant on what we bring to each of our daily sittings. Since the only thing possible to bring to sitting is what is right here, right now, in the present moment of sitting, and since no two moments are the same, the foundation of our daily practice is constantly shifting.

Among other things this suggests that what we normally mean by the word ‘foundation’ is something both very different and much less substantial, while at the same time being much the same and just as durable, as the foundation of a solid house. One way of approaching this apparent contradiction is by substituting the word ‘foundation’ for the word ‘form’ in the Heart Sutra, chanted by Buddhists throughout the world. That is, “Foundation is emptiness, emptiness is also foundation.” What we bring to each sitting is our own foundation, our own form, our own emptiness in the present moment.

We bring the present moment to the present sitting and no two moments and no two sittings are the same, and today’s sitting practice is not built on yesterday’s in the same sense that the breath you are taking at this moment is not built on the one before it and is a completely different one than the next one to come. Each breath, each sitting, each moment in life is unique, limitless and without beginning. Our practice is determined by the commitment we bring to the awareness of each moment and there is no beginning to that limitless practice.

In a commentary on the Heart Sutra, Thich Nhat Hahn explains, “In Buddhist meditation we do not struggle for the kind of enlightenment that will happen five or ten years from now. We practice so that each moment of our life becomes real life. And, therefore, when we meditate, we sit for sitting; we don’t sit for something else. If we sit for twenty minutes, those twenty minutes should bring us joy, life. If we practice walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive. The same kind of mindfulness can be practiced when we eat breakfast, or when we hold a child in our arms. Hugging is a Western custom, but we from the East would like to contribute the practice of conscious breathing to it. When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, breathe in and out three times and your happiness will be multiplied by at least tenfold. And when you look at someone, really look at them with mindfulness, and practice conscious breathing.”

This commentary of Thich Nhat Hahn’s gently but without hesitation suggests that what we bring to sitting, daily practice, to every act and thought of our lives is total mindfulness in the present moment. Past and future do not exist. There may (or may not) be more to enlightenment than total mindfulness in the present moment but that is surely its essence.

At the end of that same commentary Thich Nhat Hahn concludes, “Understanding is the fruit of meditation. Understanding is the basis of everything.

“Each breath we take, each step we make, each smile we realize is a positive contribution to peace, a necessary step in the direction of peace for the world. In the light of interbeing, peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world.”

Think of that….“peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world.”

That’s what we bring to sitting.

A wealthy Japanese merchant of the 15^th century once invited a number of Zen Buddhist abbots and famous priests to a feast of vegetarian dishes. One of the famous priests arrived dressed in a shabby robe and tattered straw hat. This priest was taken for a common beggar and was sent around to the back of the merchant’s palatial home, given a coin and ordered to leave immediately. The priest left.
Sometime later the same merchant put on another lavish feast for the same invitation list. This time the priest who had been turned away because of his shabby clothes showed up dressed in fancy vestments. When the meal was served the priest removed the vestments, carefully folded them and set them before the tray of food.
“What are you doing?” the host asked.
“This food belongs to the robes, not to me,” the priest replied as he was leaving.
This anecdote is well known in Japan, a characteristic tale of Zen literature. It is filled with practical wisdom, as was the priest. More than 500 years later, both are worthy of study and contemplation. The life of this man is interesting, instructive and inspirational.
The priest’s name was Ikkyu Sojun. He lived from 1394 until 1481. He was a Zen master, an artist and poet of the highest order, an eccentric, radical, uncompromising, unconventional and combative man who saw through, mocked and fought sham and hypocrisy wherever he found it. Indeed, Ikkyu was born to hypocrisy and sham, and his life was marked by the machinations that inevitably prop them up. His mother was the favorite lady-in-waiting at the court of the emperor of Japan, Go-Komatsu, who was his father. The jealous empress forced Ikkyu and his mother out of the palace and at birth the son of the emperor of Japan was registered as a commoner. His early life was humble.
At the age of five, he was sent to a Zen temple in Kyoto. This was a practical, not a religious, decision. There he would receive a solid and first rate education. More important, he would be assured of protection from the jealous empress, scheming court officials and suspicious generals. In medieval Japan, even the bastard son of the emperor—with the right circumstances and supporters—could claim the throne. To those ambitious for power, even a child is threatening.At the temple Ikkyu’s brilliance, precociousness, and wit were immediately recognized by both teachers and fellow students. And he was mischievous.
Another anecdote has it that one of the other acolytes accidentally broke the favorite tea bowl of the temple’s abbot while cleaning his quarters. He was terrified of the abbot’s fury and pleaded with the resourceful Ikkyu to get him out of the jam. “Leave it to me,” Ikkyu reassured him. When the abbot returned to the temple he was met by Ikkyu.
“Master,” Ikkyu said softly, “you have taught us that everything that is born must die, that whatever possesses material form will eventually perish.”
“Yes,” the abbot replied. “Those are the inescapable realities of life.”
“Master, I have bad news for you,” Ikkyu said sadly. “It was time for your favorite tea bowl to die.”
Though he grew up to become a Zen master, his behavior was always unconventional and erratic and he shunned the traditional role of the monk. He never settled down, spending his life roaming the Kyoto area, writing verse, creating brilliant calligraphy and paintings, practicing monastic Zen in the mountains by day and carousing Zen in the city by night. A self-descriptive verse reads:
“A crazy cloud, out in the open,
Blown about madly, as wild as they come!
Who knows where this cloud will gather, where
the wind will settle?”
Ikkyu concealed nothing of himself, thus allowing him to fully live his life without pretense, sham or hypocrisy. Even his sex life he celebrated openly, both in practice and verse, making him unique among stone-faced Zen priests who were masters of masked emotions:
“A sex-loving monk, you object!
Hot-blooded and passionate, totally aroused.
But then lust can exhaust all passion,
Turning base metal into pure gold.”
Late in life Ikkyu fell in love with a young woman, the blind minstrel Lady Mori. Their romance is one of the most celebrated in Japanese history, and Ikkyu composed this poem for their daughter:
“Even among beauties she is a precious pearl,
A little princess in this sorry world.
She is the inevitable result of true love,
And a Zen master is no match for her!”
Ikkyu, who knew the difference between a man and the robes a man wears, was thus eulogized by his first biographer, Bokusai:
“Ikkyu did not distinguish between high and low in society, and he enjoyed mingling with artisans, merchants, and children. Youngsters followed him about, and birds came to eat out of his hands. Whatever possessions he received he passed on to others. He was strict and demanding but treated all without favoritism. Ikkyu laughed heartily when he was happy and shouted mightily when angry.”
May we all live so heartily and mightily!