Things appear in many different ways when we are under the influence of alcohol
or mind-changing substances. When drunk on alcohol, a single object may
replicate and many things may appear as one. The ground may appear to shake,
and it may seem that we are falling into a crevasse. Or it may feel like the house
and its pillars are falling upon us. When people are completely drunk, they may
sing and dance—even at their father’s funeral, making rude noises and engaging
in unseemly behavior. They cannot distinguish between good and bad, beneficial
and harmful, clean and unclean. In short, when the drug controls them, they act
like a beast within a human body. Such intoxication produces all kinds of
senseless, unpleasant, dangerous, and shameful behavior. This is not the fault of
the person; rather it is the drug that opens the door for it.
In the above verse, intoxication is a metaphor for delusion. So long as mind is
deluded, the vision of the outer world and the vision of the beings that it contains
are all—and only—delusion. The difference between intoxication and delusion is
that the first is the insanity of a short-term drug experience, whereas the second is
the insanity of our original ignorance.
According to the quality of suffering stemming from the variety of feelings
dominant in the upper or lower places of rebirth, we are classified as an
embodiment of one or another of the six classes of beings.
1.6 HOW THIS BODY EMERGES FROM THE KARMICALLY CONDITIONED MIND, AND HOW WE MAY
ANTICIPATE THE NEXT LIFE
If we examine this body composed of the four great elements (earth, water, fire,
and air), we will see that it is generated by mind. Its primary cause is the
consciousness that has no origin, and its necessary condition is our father’s semen
and our mother’s blood. According to each individual’s karma, consciousness
enters into an appropriate womb and that consciousness adheres to that womb.
Slowly, through ignorance, a sense of self that creates the four aggregates of form,
feeling, perception, and instincts is generated, and within nine or ten months, the
sense-fields are formed. Birth is nothing other than the gross manifestation of an
innate sense of “I” and “mine.” We feel all alone, naked, and empty-handed. At
that time we do not even have a name. When we feel cold, thirsty, or hungry, the
only thing we can do is cry.
Then gradually we begin to recognize our mother, father, uncle, brother, sister,
and other family members, which starts the conception of a grouping of “us”
versus “them.” Later we develop a gross sense of clean and unclean, good and bad,
friend and foe, and we are no longer that nameless naked one. We assume
permanence to be a reality and accumulate many material things, calling them
“my” house, “my” wealth, “my” ancestor, “my” father and mother, “my” enemy,
“my” country, “my” friend, and so forth, and desire, hatred, and ignorance emerge
like boiling water. A deep strong clinging to the five aggregates compounded as an
ego develops like an immovable nail. From then on, even if we have piles of food
at hand, we still feel hunger; even if we have oceans of liquids to drink, we still
feel thirst; even if we possess mountains of wealth, we still want to amass more;