"He will say samma samadhi. Samadhi can go wrong, people can mistake similar experiences for samadhi and get lost.

"That's what happened to Aldous Huxley when he took LSD. He was a man of tremendous knowledge, particularly of the East, and most of the saints of the East he knew well. He immediately said that, 'The experience of LSD is samadhi, the same experience that Patanjali has described, the ultimate phenomenon.'

"This gives a clear illustration that Buddha was right not to use simply the word samadhi. It is dangerous. You can find something else and think it is samadhi; there are similar phenomena. There are people who have become addicted to opium, or hashish, or marijuana. And these drugs have been used for centuries, from the very beginning of man. It is nothing new.

"The reason why they became addicted is because the drugs gave them a glimpse of something…how things should be. They are temporary glimpses, and they are produced by chemicals so they don't go beyond the mind. But mind gets a glimpse, just as the lake reflects the faraway moon. And the experience is so beautiful that not to repeat it again and again becomes impossible.

"All the societies have been fighting against drugs but the fight has not been successful. It will never succeed the way the society is. It can succeed only if you give people the right experience of samma samadhi – 'samma samadhi' means right samadhi – so that they can make a differentiation, a discrimination between what is right and what is wrong. Those who have known their buddha-nature are not addicted to drugs, do not need drugs for their experience. Their experience is not caused by any chemicals; their experience is caused by turning their whole energy in towards the center of their being. That has nothing to do with chemicals. But chemicals can give you an illusion, something very similar.

"Hakuin has adopted Buddha's habit. Buddha never spoke about anything without adding the word right first, because his understanding was – and he is correct – that everything can go wrong if you get caught up with something similar which is illusory. And you cannot make the distinction because you don't know the real."