Intersections with Indigeneity in Psychedelic Buddhism

While Psychedelic Buddhism has loosely existed since the 1950s, the last decade’s renewed interest in psychedelics has spread to mainstream Buddhist communities, leading prominent Buddhist teachers to adopt psychedelic technologies. These new iterations of Psychedelic Buddhism present a novel, syncretic tradition that reconciles the truth claims and practices of Buddhism, Indigenous plant medicine, and the psychedelic underground. Buddhist teachers negotiate relationships with Indigeneity in unprecedented and complicated ways. This paper critically analyzes two approaches to Psychedelic Buddhism by Buddhist teachers Mike Crowley and Spring Washam and explores how these teachers think through, talk about, and engage with the Indigenous communities from which their practices originate. As psychedelics become mainstream and established religions incorporate them into their practice, the Indigenous roots of psychedelics cannot be ignored. Mike Crowley and Spring Washam’s versions of Psychedelic Buddhism are at times extractive, at times collaborative; they at times respect roots and lineages, and at times innovate, eschewing traditional practices.  By analyzing their work through the Indigenous logics of authority found in Indigenous plant medicine communities (as forwarded by Celidwen et al.) and the Buddhist tradition, we can better understand novel syncretic psychedelic traditions and work towards more ethical engagements with Indigeneity in psychedelic religion.

Mike Crowley began practicing Buddhism and experimenting with psychedelics at age 16. He took refuge in 1971 with Lama Radha Chime Rinpoche of the Karma Kagyu lineage in Cardiff, Wales, and was given the title of Lama by Radha Chime in 1988, though he was never ordained as a monk. He founded the American Buddhist community “Amrita Dzong” in 2021; he is a longstanding member of the “Psychedelic Sangha,” the advisory board of the Psychedelic Buddhist community; and he has published both a historical book, Secret Drugs of Buddhism (2019), arguing that Buddhists always used psychedelics, and a didactic text, Psychedelic Buddhism (2023), detailing how Buddhists can use psychedelics. Crowley arrives at his Psychedelic Buddhism through a deep conviction in the historical basis of psychedelics in Buddhist traditions, and he actively proselytizes the syncretism of Buddhism and psychedelics to both Buddhist and underground psychedelic communities.  

Spring Washam is a lay dharma teacher practicing Theravada and Tibetan lineages in the Bay Area of Northern California. She is a co-founder of the East Bay Meditation Center; she is on the Teachers Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and she was authorized by Jack Kornfield to teach in the lineage of the Insight Meditation Society. Since 2008, she has worked closely with Peruvian Shipibo communities who, according to Brebec de Mori, “have developed a robust ayahuasca healing tradition over the last two centuries, if not longer.”¹ She spent a full year in 2014 apprenticing with Shipibo healers in Peru, and she has been leading ayahuasca ceremonies since completing her apprenticeship. In 2015, Washam founded Lotus Vine Journeys, a syncretic retreat space where Buddhist meditation and ayahuasca ceremonies are practiced as complementary modalities. In her words, Lotus Vine Journeys was born out of a desire to give her Buddhist friends the opportunity to engage spirit medicine, growing into a retreat organization offering regular, fourteen-day, silent retreats in Costa Rica.²

In order to assess these novel Psychedelic Buddhisms, it’s important to first understand the logics of authority of these two traditions, Indigenous plant medicine and Buddhism, on their own terms. Regarding Indigenous plant medicine, Yuria Celidwen and her co-authors set forth a reconciliatory approach to psychedelics in their article “Ethical Principles of Traditional Indigenous Medicine to Guide Western Psychedelic Research and Practice” that addresses extractive relationships between Western psychedelic groups—such as clinicians and researchers, for-profit wellness organizations, recreational groups, and so forth—and Indigenous plant medicine communities. Drawing from their diverse Indigenous backgrounds, Celidwen et al. write that an ethical psychedelic practice encourages modalities based on Indigenous wisdoms that reorient practitioners towards positive relationships with the more-than-human world, acknowledges Indigenous sources of practices, promotes inclusive and respectful practice, highlights Indigenous intellectuals and teachers, prioritizes Indigenous sources of authority, and includes Indigenous scholars, knowledge holders, and practitioners in the development and dissemination of psychedelic practices.³ Ethical psychedelic practices—at least those involving plant medicines rather than synthesized psychedelics—require recognizing the Indigenous source, authority,  and responsibility for these practices.  Celidwen et al’s principles are benchmarks for Psychedelic Buddhist to responsibly engage the Indigenous roots of psychedelics.

With respect to Buddhism, Buddhist traditions base religious authority on lineage. To teach, one must be granted permission by a teacher who recognizes one’s realization; furthermore, a teacher may only teach practices received from another recognized teacher or lineage holder. This unbroken transmission is central to Buddhist authority, stretching back across centuries—theoretically back to the historical Buddha. There is little room for change; any philosophical or practical innovation needs to be grounded in the lineage of the tradition to be institutionally legitimate.⁴ Furthermore, all teachings must be grounded in the foundational principle of the tradition, namely the reality of duhkha and the pursuit of its cessation, i.e., the Four Noble Truths. All Buddhist innovations, including psychedelic ones, must, therefore, be rooted in lineages of teachings and must represent the foundational soteriological position of Buddhism.

Turning now to Mike Crowley, his Psychedelic Buddhism promotes practices without publicly recognizing or engaging with the Indigenous communities from whom the psychedelics he promotes are directly extracted. He exclusively uses the language of Western science to present psychedelics in a decontextualized way and largely eschews Indigenous norms and understandings of psychedelic plant medicine. In his book Psychedelic Buddhism, his descriptions of ayahuasca, peyote, and psilocybin reference chemical makeups of these plant medicines and note western communities that use them, only briefly nodding to the Indigenous sources in a brief mention of the Native American Church.⁵ Celidwen and her Indigenous colleagues suggest that psychedelic experience can and should connect experiencers to the more-than-human world, yet Crowley writes: “I would recommend that all Buddhists take at least one psychedelic trip in their life to check in with their tathāgatagarbha, their Buddha-nature, and to gauge their progress in meditation.”⁶ He thus decontextualizes and instrumentalizes; he extracts plant medicines towards exclusively Buddhist ends. Crowley ignores Indigenous authorities in favor of allusions to The Anarchist Cookbook, Alan Watts, and Erowid, which, while fine sources, do not recognize or affirm the Indigenous authority of plant medicines. Thus, in his writing about psychedelic use, Crowley employs a logic of bricolage—taking, cutting, pasting, remixing—rather than a collaborative methodology that engages with and respects Indigenous knowledge holders and Indigenous practices. 

Mike Crowley’s deployment of Buddhist ideas is similarly eclectic but may offer a better model for positive Indigenous relations. For example, his book Secret Drugs of Buddhism rewrites the history of Vajrayana Buddhism to always involve psychedelics. While I largely see this book as a work of eisegesis,⁷ Crowley nonetheless displays an attention to Indigenous Tibetan norms of authority and secrecy, writing in the preface, “Be advised that this book does not divulge anything disclosed in any Vajrayāna initiation under conditions of secrecy. In fact, I have received certain juicy tidbits in this manner and deeply regret that I may not share these with the general reader.”⁸ The footnote to this passage reads, “This does not apply to anyone who has received the appropriate initiations. Thus, should I meet anyone who has had the empowerment of, say, the kaya-maṇḍala of Cakrasaṃvara in the tradition of Luipa, a very interesting conversation might ensue.”⁹ Despite the frustration this subtle evidentiary claim may cause, there is a certain respect for traditional norms that this secrecy conveys. 

Thus, rather than present Psychedelic Buddhism as a novel innovation, Crowley grounds his syncretism in an interpretation of Buddhist history in which Buddhists always deployed psychedelics. In an interview with Spirituality & Health, he was asked, “How would you suggest Buddhists balance the fifth precept [which forbids intoxicants]… and experimenting with psychedelics?” He responded by saying, “Prohibitions placed on psychedelics are the invention of modern teachers and have no basis in Buddhist history. In fact, psychedelics have a very definite place in Buddhist practice.”¹⁰ These historical conclusions should be considered with serious reservations, yet he indeed appeals to the authority of lineage when presenting his Psychedelic Buddhism. That said, in another work, Crowley details esoteric notions of the Buddha’s body, Buddhist cosmology, Tibetan yidams that “you may encounter while tripping,”¹¹ and lengthy descriptions of auspicious symbols in mandalas before expounding the foundational Four Noble Truths, the principles on which all Buddhisms are built. Crowley affirms lineage by arguing that Buddhist teachers before him advocated psychedelics, but his placement of the Four Noble Truths as secondary to more sensational, mystical aspects of Tibetan Buddhism leaves something wanting in his peculiar portrayal of Psychedelic Buddhism.¹²

Contrastingly, Spring Washam’s articulation of Psychedelic Buddhism presents a more robust engagement with Indigeneity. Washam uses Indigenous language and frameworks to engage psychedelics as plant medicines, and she trained in formal Shipibo settings. She employs explicitly Indigenous methodologies in her retreats, transparently acknowledges the sources and authorities for practices, and hires Indigenous facilitators to lead participants in ayahuasca journeys. Her retreat materials speak to the original, contextualized use of ayahuasca as a modality for healing the self, community, and the more-than-human world, aligning with the principles outlined by Celidwen et al.¹³ Washam prioritizes the inclusion of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) in her retreats and leads BIPOC-only retreats. In a soon-to-be-released documentary titled Rising of a New Sun, Washam shares the stories of Black and Indigenous folks “working with Ayahuasca, as well as ancestral healing, dismantling internalized white supremacy, the legacy of colonization in our bodies, gender identity, patriarchy, and sexual orientation.”¹⁴ In rhetoric, practice, and politics, Washam thus meets the majority of criteria for an ethical, reconciliatory approach to psychedelic use, as outlined by Celidwen and her colleagues.

In her presentation of Buddhism, Washam centers the Four Noble Truths in her practice, and she views plant medicine as a tool to alleviate the central problem of duhkha in Buddhism. Furthermore, she was given permission from her teacher Jack Kornfield of the Insight Meditation Society tradition of Vipassana to build her syncretic Psychedelic Buddhism. Years ago, Kornfield was invited by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) to speak about the intersection of meditation and psychedelics.  He had a scheduling conflict; in his stead, he encouraged Washam to give a talk on this intersection, and she has been active in this space ever since. Washam’s Psychedelic Buddhism, therefore, is grounded in her lineage through Kornfield. 

Washam’s reconciles psychedelic use with the fifth Buddhist precept, abstaining from intoxicants, recognizing that psychedelics may constitute a departure from classical Buddhist ethics, but she sees psychedelic practice, like sitting with the ayahuasca vine, to be a personal decision. Interviewed by the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, she stated: 

The fifth precept is very important, and everyone must decide for themselves based on their own intentions and motivations what leads to heedlessness and what leads to healing. I realized right away that this was a powerful medicine, the exact opposite of an intoxicant; for me there is no tension between plant medicine and the fifth precept.¹⁵

Psychedelics, for Washam, are not an affront to the fifth precept: there is no innovative reworking of core ethical principles, but there is likewise no fundamentalist adherence to absolute rules in Buddhism. Washam grounds her Psychedelic Buddhism in the framework of the Four Noble Truths and the authority of her lineage, and she attends to potential conflicts with the Indigenous roots of psychedelics, modeling the principles set out by Celidwen.¹⁶

Celidwen and her colleagues call on Western teachers and groups to focus on Indigenous voices, histories, authority, and material reconciliation to contextualize and ethically ground the use of psychedelic plant medicines in non-Indigenous contexts, eschewing extractive models. Likewise, the Buddhist tradition has its own internal logics of authority to preserve the integrity of its teachings. The Psychedelic Buddhisms of Crowley and Washam offer two models for what a syncretic, psychedelic religion can look like: one in which Indigenous knowledge about plant medicine is ignored and one in which it is reciprocally engaged. Each also offers varied responses to lineage, doctrines, and the fifth precept in Buddhism.  As psychedelics become mainstream, more psychedelic religious syncretisms will undoubtedly emerge, and these two Psychedelic Buddhisms can be seen as foils for thinking through the ways future psychedelic religions can intersect with the Indigenous roots of these practices in positive ways.