The Law - In Praise of the First Amendment

The Dharmayana is a spiritual path that respects and follows the law.

I live in Philadelphia and am a citizen of the United States, so I will speak from that perspective.

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The Declaration of Independence speaks of the inalienable rights with which the Creator has endowed humanity and the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights reads:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

The Native American Church has led the way in protecting our rights to use the gifts of nature in religious ceremony. The work of this church has led to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which reaffirms and protects the natural right of church members to use peyote as sacrament.

Santo Daime, a syncretic church combining indigenous and Christian beliefs with ayahuasca, has also reaffirmed this right via a federal court ruling in Church of the Holy Light of the Queen v. Mukasey.

The Uniao de Vegetal, a spiritual path uniting similar practices, has seen the natural rights of its members protected in a ruling given by the Supreme Court of the United States in Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal.

The sacramental religious use of sacred plants precedes the foundation of the United States, precedes the invention of writing itself and the establishment of governments as we know them today. It is an inalienable right, sacred, inherent to being human, enshrined and protected by the Constitution of this land and its people.

It is in accord with this right that practitioners of the Dharmayana go to the ancient teachings of the Buddha and to the sacred gifts of our great-grandmother, the earth.