Energy Drinks & Zazen: The secret formula or impending doom?

[woodcarver]

That sounds wonderful, thank you

[vonkrankenhaus]

Is the function of zazen to develop sensitivity?

 

If so, energy drinks, tea, and coffee will all be "detrimental" if used regularly or habitually.

 

Stimulants open up blood vessels (esp in the brain), increase blood flow. This added blood flow gives a felling of "awakeness" or "alertness".

 

But the body's homeostasis functions take this dramatic expansion influence of the stimulant and counter-act it - causing the vessels to contract more, in an attempt to balance. This contraction causes a condition of less blood flow.

 

Which means the body will still be compensating for a while after the stimulant use is stopped. This is "withdrawal" that an addict of stimulants goes through upon stopping - dull, heavy head, less aware, less alert, less awake.

 

That is not sensitivity. Nor is it freedom.

 

However - go up in altitude in some high mountains, the Andes, Himalayas - then you see slightly different physiological issues regarding the traditional use of stimulants, which may be useful tools of adjustment at altitude. The same stuff happens, but it is mitigated somewhat by the environment in that circumstance.

 

Seems clear that "energy drinks" may have been concocted with the assistance of biochemists in an attempt to make as many people as possible dullminded, because that is the general result we see in ordinary people. The energy drink drinkers and those knuckle-dragging office workers slogging over to Starbucks for another "fix".

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[woodcarver]

I thought I was trying to be dull minded!

[Daeluin]

Ultimately, if a "drug" can be used as a tool, we can also learn to produce the effect of the tool on our own.

Tools we develop dependency to can become crutches; tools we transcend use of are launchpads.

 

We all come to develop our own way of finding balance in ourselves.

Some of us are more introverted, some more extroverted, etc.

An altering substance (including food, air, qi) may change this balance.

If we study this change, we may learn to product the effect on our own.

[z00se]

Sports and energy drinks are huge in Australia.

 

I have heard a few ppl say they were put in hospital due to excessive drinking of them, and a guy in my brothers class just died of cancer and before he went he said he felt it was probably because of all the sports drinks he had. Other than that he looked pretty fit. 28 years old.

 

I guess it depends what u are trying to cultivate....

Edited December 19, 2014 by z00se