“Wine has been called the ‘greatest of medicines’, but in fact all sickness springs from it. It is claimed you forget your sorrows in drink, but from what I can see, men in their cups will in fact weep to recall their past unhappiness. As for the next world-having lost the wisdom you were born with, reduced all your good karma to ashes, built up a store of wickedness and broken all the Buddhist precepts you are destined for hell. Remember that Buddha teaches those that lift the wine glass either to their own lips or others’ will spend five hundred lifetimes without hands.”
Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?
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