  The $J/\psi$ absorption cross section by nucleon is studied using a gauged
SU(4) hadronic Lagrangian but with empirical particle masses, which has been
used previously to study the $J/\psi$ absorption cross section by pion and rho
meson. Including both two-body and three-body final states, we find that with a
cutoff parameter of 1 GeV at interaction vertices involving charm hadrons, the
$J/\psi-N$ absorption is at most 5 mb and is consistent with that extracted
from $J/\psi$ production from both photo-nuclear and proton-nucleus reactions.
