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Vipassana Meditation and Ayahuasca
Skillful Means for Transcending the Ego and Opening to Spiritual Growth
Published by Park Street Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
• Reveals how the author, a long-time Buddhist practitioner, found ayahuasca to be a remarkable catalyst on his spiritual path, ultimately reinvigorating his own practice
• Explores the ayahuasca ceremony process in depth, detailing the author’s multi-session experience in Peru and “best practices” when taking ayahuasca
• Offers an introduction to Tibetan Buddhist practice, including a guided instruction to four progressive techniques of Shamata Vipassana meditation
Over the last several decades, serious study of Tibetan Buddhism and the use of Ayahuasca as an agent for spiritual growth have both become widespread in the West. Though the two traditions originate in widely different parts of the world, both are effective in working with the ego and creating a genuine spiritual opening.
Uniting these two paths, C. Clinton Sidle takes readers through his own journey as a long-time but sometimes-struggling Buddhist practitioner whose sojourn to Peru for a series of Ayahuasca ceremonies provided an invaluable shift in his own spiritual approach. Sidle reveals how Ayahuasca was a remarkable catalyst in pointing out his self-deception and psycho-emotional obstacles, which ultimately revitalized his practice and authentic presence in his daily life. But, as the author points out, although a skillful means and a useful aid, Ayahuasca is not a complete path on its own.
Introducing the calm mindfulness of Shamata Vipassana meditation as a sustainable developmental path to support and integrate the awakenings catalyzed by Ayahuasca, Sidle emphasizes the complementary nature of both his work in Peru and his longer-term studies in Buddhism. He describes his own challenges with spiritual self-deception and stagnation—not uncommon on the Buddhist path, shares how he integrated the lessons of his Ayahuasca experiences into his Buddhist practice, and offers readers a methodical and guided introduction to four progressive techniques of Shamata Vipassana meditation.
Whether readers are long-term seekers or novices, this book can provide a singular means of aligning and reinvigorating the spiritual path toward an awakened life.
• Explores the ayahuasca ceremony process in depth, detailing the author’s multi-session experience in Peru and “best practices” when taking ayahuasca
• Offers an introduction to Tibetan Buddhist practice, including a guided instruction to four progressive techniques of Shamata Vipassana meditation
Over the last several decades, serious study of Tibetan Buddhism and the use of Ayahuasca as an agent for spiritual growth have both become widespread in the West. Though the two traditions originate in widely different parts of the world, both are effective in working with the ego and creating a genuine spiritual opening.
Uniting these two paths, C. Clinton Sidle takes readers through his own journey as a long-time but sometimes-struggling Buddhist practitioner whose sojourn to Peru for a series of Ayahuasca ceremonies provided an invaluable shift in his own spiritual approach. Sidle reveals how Ayahuasca was a remarkable catalyst in pointing out his self-deception and psycho-emotional obstacles, which ultimately revitalized his practice and authentic presence in his daily life. But, as the author points out, although a skillful means and a useful aid, Ayahuasca is not a complete path on its own.
Introducing the calm mindfulness of Shamata Vipassana meditation as a sustainable developmental path to support and integrate the awakenings catalyzed by Ayahuasca, Sidle emphasizes the complementary nature of both his work in Peru and his longer-term studies in Buddhism. He describes his own challenges with spiritual self-deception and stagnation—not uncommon on the Buddhist path, shares how he integrated the lessons of his Ayahuasca experiences into his Buddhist practice, and offers readers a methodical and guided introduction to four progressive techniques of Shamata Vipassana meditation.
Whether readers are long-term seekers or novices, this book can provide a singular means of aligning and reinvigorating the spiritual path toward an awakened life.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
What Makes You a Buddhist
It is not the appearance that binds you, it’s the attachment to the appearance that binds you.
Tilopa
What does this quote really mean, and how might it apply to you and me? If you and I are anything alike, then I know there is a constant hunger in you that longs for something. Just stop and look for a moment, and you will find it. You may be successful, yet still you strive. You may be wealthy, yet still you seek gain. You may be loved, yet still you wander. You feel it, don’t you? Where does the discontent begin? What do you so long for?
You may sense this hunger, but most of the time you ignore it. Yet every day you bury yourself in it. You get the kids out the door, you put your time in at work, you fight with your colleagues, and then you rush home to do the laundry before watching your favorite show. But then you worry about the things that break, the neighbors who gossip, and your loved ones who nag, so you escape to go shopping or to the movies to avoid the squeeze. All the while, you build fantasies for a life of greater success, more fulfilling work, early retirement, nicer cars, and better friends.
You may never grow weary of this gnawing feeling, however, because you always have hope. Even if you get fed up with it all, you can always pack up the Airstream, move on, and start over again. Yet you are drawn on by thoughts of when everything will be just right, when you will have the garden and the grandchildren at your home in the country or can escape to a peaceful spot in the forest. You just know that someday it will all turn out and you will reap the quiet wisdom of your golden years.
So you are always preparing for things to get better. But when you do get your ideal home you soon find things wrong with it, or when your perfect semiretirement situation finally works out, you become bored by the lack of excitement. To fill the void, you drink or turn to shopping, cleaning, golfing, fishing, gambling, or whatever addictive behavior it takes to fill the nagging sense of emptiness. You are so caught up in preparing and running after things that you forget to live fully. Then you look back on that time nostalgically, even though you were so wrapped up in doing that you missed it.
For most of us, this endless planning, doing, fixing, upgrading is what we call life. We have many more glamorous words for this drive to do whatever we are compelled to do—yearning, questing, searching, craving, striving, seeking, or thirsting. It is as gross as our drive to find God in our life, as mundane as needing to clean the house, and as subtle as a simple restless energy.
I call it our hungry spirit. It is a pervasive energy that is constantly longing for success, freedom, love, or whatever it is we require to find our place in the world. All our worldly concerns are subordinate to it and a means to its end. It helps us find and make meaning and drives us to achieve and do something with our lives. It is the seed of creation and the heart of our very evolutionary urge—it is our life force, our life energy. Every act, every word, every thought reflects it in some way.
What exactly is this hungry spirit really looking for? Aristotle said it is happiness: “It is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” And so we occupy ourselves with it more than with any other single endeavor in our lives. That’s why we buy new iPods, iPads, and iPhones for convenience, as well as Viagra, breast implants, and liposuction for confidence. It is also why we constantly seek new jobs, boyfriends, girlfriends, and experiences—like sweat lodges in Sedona and bungee jumping off the Royal Gorge Bridge.
The trouble is that we are never, ever satisfied. This incessant searching and doing often feels empty, because it is empty.
Why?
The things we pursue appear real, but they are not real. Like a mirage that vanishes as we approach, the satisfaction of reaching a goal quickly dissolves as we reach it. So we continuously replace the old ones with new ones. We go from wanting a new dresser to wanting a new house, from a new job to making more money, and from coffee in the morning to wind up to wine in the evening to wind down. We become swept up in the mindless pursuit of a rainbow’s end. But as Lily Tomlin once said, “The problem with winning the rat race is that you are still a rat.”2
The reason is that all our pursuits are just a simple display, an illusion.
To understand this, we need to look deeper. First, consider that all form, including our homes, our gardens, our flesh and bones, and even our thoughts, feelings, and emotions, is made up of something else. It is a combination of at least two or more things coming together. They are compounded or fabricated. For instance, hydrogen and oxygen make water, water and leaves make tea, and tea and bourbon make a hot toddy. Likewise, an insult and pride make anger, loss and attachment make grief, and competition and low self-esteem make jealousy.
The final product, whatever it is—a physical thing, a thought, or an emotion—does not arise except through its relationship to certain conditions or its component parts. It exists only through interdependence. Like our reflection in a mirror, it appears only because we are in front of it. If it were independent, it would appear regardless of whether we were there or not.
Second, this interdependence is subject to constant change. In fact, it is probably safe to say that change is the only constant in life. Think of it—if anything shifts in relation to another thing and everything is interdependent, then even the slightest change in one thing changes all. As our physicists argue, this is why, in theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in New York can have an effect on the weather in Tokyo. Likewise, the advent of adolescence can turn a cute, cuddly baby into a miserable teenager, sudden praise from the boss can turn loathing into joy, and the self-immolation of a fruit peddler in Tunisia can turn a legacy of tyranny into a movement of hope with ripple effects around the world.
Nothing in life exists in an independent, permanent state. Nothing. Everything from vast empires to tiny apple seeds is made of interdependent and constantly changing parts that wax, wane, and eventually fade away.
In essence, then, life is made up of a constant flux of transitory experiences. They are empty in the sense that they are not permanent or inherently existing in and of themselves and are experienced mostly as a concept, a label, or an interpretation of the mind.
Third, the problem is that we cling to these experiences as if they really are permanent and do exist. This clinging is our hungry spirit speaking—that incessant urge that drives us on—and it is the seed to all of our emotions. When something happens, or when certain causes or conditions arise, they evoke an emotional response. Emotion is an inherent bias that tells us what we like and dislike. Love, greed, anger, joy, sadness, pride, and jealousy are all different forms of like and dislike, or attachment and rejection. Even indifference, as in not caring, is a reaction, an emotion.
This emotional clinging further distorts and separates us from our experience. Like watching a torch swirled in a circle and seeing it look like a ring of fire, we are fooled, and we solidify the ring as if it were truly real. And so, for instance, we rush to anger when we feel criticized and hold a grudge whether the criticism was intended or not, or we spin a flirtation into a sexual fantasy and even visions of matrimony then hold on to the regret of a lost opportunity when we fail to even reach out.
As a result, we become the victim of a small mind, a stream of chatter that reinforces an image we already have of ourselves and our world—of wishing, craving, choosing, defending, and deciding right or wrong—and whenever that chatter stops, it is a relief, like the silence that comes after the constant drone of a jackhammer in the background stops. We become tightly spun in a cocoon made of our projections, imaginations, hopes, and fears that makes possibilities much smaller than they truly are. We live behind bars of fear and convention, and we become stuck. We are in a box—and we don’t even know that we are in a box.
What Makes You a Buddhist
It is not the appearance that binds you, it’s the attachment to the appearance that binds you.
Tilopa
What does this quote really mean, and how might it apply to you and me? If you and I are anything alike, then I know there is a constant hunger in you that longs for something. Just stop and look for a moment, and you will find it. You may be successful, yet still you strive. You may be wealthy, yet still you seek gain. You may be loved, yet still you wander. You feel it, don’t you? Where does the discontent begin? What do you so long for?
You may sense this hunger, but most of the time you ignore it. Yet every day you bury yourself in it. You get the kids out the door, you put your time in at work, you fight with your colleagues, and then you rush home to do the laundry before watching your favorite show. But then you worry about the things that break, the neighbors who gossip, and your loved ones who nag, so you escape to go shopping or to the movies to avoid the squeeze. All the while, you build fantasies for a life of greater success, more fulfilling work, early retirement, nicer cars, and better friends.
You may never grow weary of this gnawing feeling, however, because you always have hope. Even if you get fed up with it all, you can always pack up the Airstream, move on, and start over again. Yet you are drawn on by thoughts of when everything will be just right, when you will have the garden and the grandchildren at your home in the country or can escape to a peaceful spot in the forest. You just know that someday it will all turn out and you will reap the quiet wisdom of your golden years.
So you are always preparing for things to get better. But when you do get your ideal home you soon find things wrong with it, or when your perfect semiretirement situation finally works out, you become bored by the lack of excitement. To fill the void, you drink or turn to shopping, cleaning, golfing, fishing, gambling, or whatever addictive behavior it takes to fill the nagging sense of emptiness. You are so caught up in preparing and running after things that you forget to live fully. Then you look back on that time nostalgically, even though you were so wrapped up in doing that you missed it.
For most of us, this endless planning, doing, fixing, upgrading is what we call life. We have many more glamorous words for this drive to do whatever we are compelled to do—yearning, questing, searching, craving, striving, seeking, or thirsting. It is as gross as our drive to find God in our life, as mundane as needing to clean the house, and as subtle as a simple restless energy.
I call it our hungry spirit. It is a pervasive energy that is constantly longing for success, freedom, love, or whatever it is we require to find our place in the world. All our worldly concerns are subordinate to it and a means to its end. It helps us find and make meaning and drives us to achieve and do something with our lives. It is the seed of creation and the heart of our very evolutionary urge—it is our life force, our life energy. Every act, every word, every thought reflects it in some way.
What exactly is this hungry spirit really looking for? Aristotle said it is happiness: “It is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” And so we occupy ourselves with it more than with any other single endeavor in our lives. That’s why we buy new iPods, iPads, and iPhones for convenience, as well as Viagra, breast implants, and liposuction for confidence. It is also why we constantly seek new jobs, boyfriends, girlfriends, and experiences—like sweat lodges in Sedona and bungee jumping off the Royal Gorge Bridge.
The trouble is that we are never, ever satisfied. This incessant searching and doing often feels empty, because it is empty.
Why?
The things we pursue appear real, but they are not real. Like a mirage that vanishes as we approach, the satisfaction of reaching a goal quickly dissolves as we reach it. So we continuously replace the old ones with new ones. We go from wanting a new dresser to wanting a new house, from a new job to making more money, and from coffee in the morning to wind up to wine in the evening to wind down. We become swept up in the mindless pursuit of a rainbow’s end. But as Lily Tomlin once said, “The problem with winning the rat race is that you are still a rat.”2
The reason is that all our pursuits are just a simple display, an illusion.
To understand this, we need to look deeper. First, consider that all form, including our homes, our gardens, our flesh and bones, and even our thoughts, feelings, and emotions, is made up of something else. It is a combination of at least two or more things coming together. They are compounded or fabricated. For instance, hydrogen and oxygen make water, water and leaves make tea, and tea and bourbon make a hot toddy. Likewise, an insult and pride make anger, loss and attachment make grief, and competition and low self-esteem make jealousy.
The final product, whatever it is—a physical thing, a thought, or an emotion—does not arise except through its relationship to certain conditions or its component parts. It exists only through interdependence. Like our reflection in a mirror, it appears only because we are in front of it. If it were independent, it would appear regardless of whether we were there or not.
Second, this interdependence is subject to constant change. In fact, it is probably safe to say that change is the only constant in life. Think of it—if anything shifts in relation to another thing and everything is interdependent, then even the slightest change in one thing changes all. As our physicists argue, this is why, in theory, a butterfly flapping its wings in New York can have an effect on the weather in Tokyo. Likewise, the advent of adolescence can turn a cute, cuddly baby into a miserable teenager, sudden praise from the boss can turn loathing into joy, and the self-immolation of a fruit peddler in Tunisia can turn a legacy of tyranny into a movement of hope with ripple effects around the world.
Nothing in life exists in an independent, permanent state. Nothing. Everything from vast empires to tiny apple seeds is made of interdependent and constantly changing parts that wax, wane, and eventually fade away.
In essence, then, life is made up of a constant flux of transitory experiences. They are empty in the sense that they are not permanent or inherently existing in and of themselves and are experienced mostly as a concept, a label, or an interpretation of the mind.
Third, the problem is that we cling to these experiences as if they really are permanent and do exist. This clinging is our hungry spirit speaking—that incessant urge that drives us on—and it is the seed to all of our emotions. When something happens, or when certain causes or conditions arise, they evoke an emotional response. Emotion is an inherent bias that tells us what we like and dislike. Love, greed, anger, joy, sadness, pride, and jealousy are all different forms of like and dislike, or attachment and rejection. Even indifference, as in not caring, is a reaction, an emotion.
This emotional clinging further distorts and separates us from our experience. Like watching a torch swirled in a circle and seeing it look like a ring of fire, we are fooled, and we solidify the ring as if it were truly real. And so, for instance, we rush to anger when we feel criticized and hold a grudge whether the criticism was intended or not, or we spin a flirtation into a sexual fantasy and even visions of matrimony then hold on to the regret of a lost opportunity when we fail to even reach out.
As a result, we become the victim of a small mind, a stream of chatter that reinforces an image we already have of ourselves and our world—of wishing, craving, choosing, defending, and deciding right or wrong—and whenever that chatter stops, it is a relief, like the silence that comes after the constant drone of a jackhammer in the background stops. We become tightly spun in a cocoon made of our projections, imaginations, hopes, and fears that makes possibilities much smaller than they truly are. We live behind bars of fear and convention, and we become stuck. We are in a box—and we don’t even know that we are in a box.
Product Details
- Publisher: Park Street Press (January 14, 2025)
- Length: 272 pages
- ISBN13: 9798888500446
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Raves and Reviews
“The use of psychedelics is integral to Vajrayana Buddhism, as the drug called ‘amrita’ plays an essential role in all initiation and ganachakra ceremonies, though often in very diluted form. This book not only explores the use of such substances within Vajrayana practice, it also introduces Buddhist meditation to those who may only be familiar with Ayahuasca. This is an excellent volume for anyone with experience of only one of these traditions.”
– Lama Mike Crowley, founder of Amrita Dzong, member of the advisory board of the national Psychedelic
“At the beginning of this century, we face a meta-crisis that is stimulating a renaissance of the human spirit. In Vipassana Meditation and Ayahuasca, Clint Sidle reveals one of the most significant encounters of our time: the meeting of the sophisticated Buddhist psychospiritual technology of the bodhisattva with the jungle dharma of the grandmother master plant teacher Ayahuasca. In sharing his exploration of these two spiritual paths, he reveals their mutually reinforcing benefits for deeper psychological integration, contemplative realization, and human maturation. Whether you are a practitioner of the Buddha Dharma or this plant medicine, you will find this informative integration of great value.”
– John Churchill, doctor of contemplative psychology, dharma teacher, and traditional Chinese medicine
“This is a much-needed contribution to the global spiritual literature, highlighting two distinct but mutually reinforcing traditions that have been separated by time and distance for thousands of years.”
– Alonso Del Rio, Peruvian shaman and musician and founder of Ayahuasca Ayllu
“Vipassana Meditation and Ayahuasca is a unique and captivating book that weaves together Clint Sidle’s Buddhist training and practice with his skillful use of the visionary plant medicine Ayahuasca. Deeply grounded in his many years of spiritual inquiry, the author takes us along for the ride as he reveals the promises and pitfalls of living an awakened life. This guide has many practical suggestions for anyone seeking a more authentic way of living as well as for the experienced practitioner in need of a spiritual tune-up!”
– John Orr, former Theravada Buddhist Monk and teacher at the Deep Spring Center in Ann Arbor
“In today’s world, where the spiritual quest has become more challenging than ever with the rapidly expanding offerings of self-exploration, there is a dearth of books that explore the connections and synergies between Indigenous shamanic practices and the contemplative traditions of the East. I am delighted that Clint Sidle’s Vipassana Meditation and Ayahuasca fills this gap, and I hope that it becomes the cause for other works on this topic to appear.”
– Lama Oleg, director of Rangjung Yeshe of Russia and Colombia
“An uplifting and enlightening read! Adding to the conversation about whether temporary, ceremonial-based visionary states can create lasting personal change, Clint Sidle weaves the wisdom teachings of Tibetan Buddhism with his experience with the Shipibo Ayahuasca tradition of South America to show their mutually reinforcing benefits for becoming a more integrated human being. Drawing on a lifetime of spiritual practice, exploration, and study, Clint motivates us to consider stepping into the life that awaits us. Deftly weaving insights gained from his Ayahuasca journeys and his deep grounding in Tibetan Buddhism, he inspires and guides the reader on the path of self-discovery and wisdom.”
– Rafael Leon Lopez, practitioner of traditional Amazonian plant medicine at Máma Abuela’s
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