ABSTRACT
Buddhist yogic adepts have tended to be either monks and nuns or cave-dwelling hermits dissevered from worldly ties and thus able to concentrate night and day on their spiritual development; yet there have always been a fair number of laymen who have succeeded in combining the life of ordinary householders, with the demands of yogic cultivation and of whole-hearted dedication to that task. According to Chinese tradition, the yogic adept should strive to maintain both ritual purity and actual purity of body, speech and mind, and to extend this to the household shrine. Yogic practice does demand avoidance of excess in all things. Many Buddhists, monks and nuns especially, follow strict dietary rules, but these vary with climate and cultural environment. Buddhists accept that to imbibe intoxicants, including alcohol, is to transgress one of the some precepts which serious followers of the Way are expected to abide by for their own sakes, though no one orders them to do so.
