Lzh Dg Bi Pm Pc 36Drinking Alcohol
Pāli / Sanskrit:Surāpāna
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SUTRA ON DRINKING ALCOHOL (SURĀPĀNA)
Background
The Sutra on Drinking Alcohol (Surāpāna) belongs to the Vinaya Piṭaka of the Pāli Canon, one of the oldest Buddhist documents preserving the teachings of the Buddha Gotama. The Vinaya Piṭaka is not a dry set of laws, but an expression of the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion, developed gradually in order to protect the community of monks and nuns and maintain the spirit of practice.
This sutra was recorded in the context of the Buddha’s disciples encountering difficulties in practice, or the Buddhist community giving rise to issues that required regulation. Drinking alcohol was long considered carefully by the Buddha, because it directly affects clarity of mind, the core of the Buddhist path of practice.
Main Content
In the Theravāda tradition, this sutra is usually related to the Buddha’s prohibition on drinking intoxicants (surā, meraya). This is not a prohibition arising from harsh restriction or insult, but from a profound principle concerning the nature of practice.
The main reason the Buddha prohibited drinking alcohol is that alcohol causes loss of clarity (moha) and obscures wisdom (paññā). This is precisely what obstructs the development of insight, the capacity to know rightly the nature of suffering, the cause of suffering, and the path leading to the cessation of suffering. Alcohol weakens self-control and mindfulness (sati), two factors indispensable in practice.
When intoxication has influence, a person very easily falls into wrong actions: lying, insulting others, or performing actions harmful to others or to oneself. This is completely contrary to the Five Precepts, the foundation of Buddhist ethics, beginning with refraining from wrongful actions.
In the context of monks and nuns, the Buddha particularly emphasized that those who have gone forth have committed the full strength of their mental energy to practice. Drinking alcohol becomes a direct obstacle to the goal of escaping the cycle of saṃsāra and attaining nirvana.
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