Relationship between Dai-Gohonzon and Gohonzons in individual households
dere...@netscape.net
individual households?
The Dai-Gohonzon of the High Sanctuary of the Essential Teachings is
the absolute Object of Worship which forms the source and basis for
each household's Gohonzon.
The True Buddha Nichiren Daishonin transferred in its entirety the
entity of the Law of his own enlightenment to Nikko Shonin; from Nikko
Shonin this was passed to Nichimoku Shonin and then to each successive
High Priest. As the recipient of the Lifeblood of this Law, the High
Priest is entrusted with the authority to transcribe the Daishonin's
enlightenment, that is, the Dai-Gohonzon of the High Sanctuary of the
Essential Teachings. These transcriptions are the Gohonzons enshrined
in individual homes.
In the "Bennaku Kanjin Sho," Fifty-sixth High Priest Nichio Shonin
expounds:
"It is precisely through the lifeblood of this Golden Utterance that
the High Priest transcribes the soul of the Law of the founder and
transmits the essence of the Object of Worship. This is called the
'true entrustment to only one person.'" (p. 219)
The transmission of the lifeblood of the Law is the sole factor which
enables the successive High Priests to transcribe the soul of the Law
and the essence of the Dai-Gohonzon of the High Sanctuary of the
Essential Teachings. Consequently, if one believes and accepts the
teaching of the lifeblood of the entity of the Law and worships the
Gohonzon in one's home with belief in the Dai-Gohonzon of the High
Sanctuary, the benefits derived from the transcribed Gohonzon will be
no different from those resulting from the Dai-Gohonzon.
However, if one's faith becomes cut off from the Dai-Gohonzon of the
High Sanctuary and from the teaching of the lifeblood of the entity of
the Law, then no matter how sincerely one chants to the Gohonzon in
one's own home, there will be no benefits. On the contrary, it will
only result in the accumulation of negative karma.
[Refuting the Soka Gakkai's "Counterfeit Object of Worship," c. 1996,
Nichiren Shoshu Temple]
Derek Juhl
marcinmd
>>The Dai-Gohonzon of the High Sanctuary of the Essential Teachings is
the absolute Object of Worship which forms the source and basis for
each household's Gohonzon. <<
Taisekiji's central Gohonzon (They refer to it as "The
Dai-Gohonzon"..which is a misuse of the term) was first created some
two hundred years after the Daishonin's lifetime.
>>The True Buddha Nichiren Daishonin transferred in its entirety the
entity of the Law of his own enlightenment to Nikko Shonin;
Nichiren as "True Buddha" did not enter the dogma of Taisekiji until
after the first generation was dead and in their graves, so they could
not object to it. This idea is really based on corrupt Tendai Shu
metaphysics that stand in stark contrast to what the Daishonin actually
taught in his writings.
>>>It is precisely through the lifeblood of this Golden Utterance that
the High Priest transcribes the soul of the Law of the founder and
transmits the essence of the Object of Worship. This is called the
'true entrustment to only one person.'" (p. 219) <<
Once again, this idea of a Life-blood transfer is pure Tendai Shu and
not found anywhere in the teachings of Nichiren Daishonin.
Few people seem to appreciate the influence of the corrupt Tendai Shu
on Taisekiji. In fact, Taisekiji began to send Priests to Mt. Hiei, the
home of the Medieval Tendai Shu, for training. Taisekiji Priests even
received Tendai Shu esoteric transmissions from them. This was pure
apostasy. These Priests, now totally under the influence of
Esoteric Tendai idea's (that Nichiren had rejected out of hand),
carried them back to Taisekiji and found ways to cram them in between
the lines.
>>The transmission of the lifeblood of the Law is the sole factor which
enables the successive High Priests to transcribe the soul of the Law
and the essence of the Dai-Gohonzon of the High Sanctuary of the
Essential Teachings. Consequently, if one believes and accepts the
teaching of the lifeblood of the entity of the Law and worships the
Gohonzon in one's home with belief in the Dai-Gohonzon of the High
Sanctuary, the benefits derived from the transcribed Gohonzon will be
no different from those resulting from the Dai-Gohonzon. <<
This is Hogwash from start to finish.
>>However, if one's faith becomes cut off from the Dai-Gohonzon of the
High Sanctuary and from the teaching of the lifeblood of the entity of
the Law, then no matter how sincerely one chants to the Gohonzon in
one's own home, there will be no benefits. On the contrary, it will
only result in the accumulation of negative karma. <<
The Priests at Taisekiji have always used the so called "DaiGohonzon"
to scare people and as a way to try to control people who ask too many
hard questions. However, the Dai0Gohonzon is a fake. No one should be
the least bit concerned with offending it or not being "connected" to
it. Any SGI member who has had the courage to stand up to this bullshit
and separate themselves from Taisekiji's false myths and scare tactics
should be commended and encouraged not to be intimidated by these
creeps.
Alias
"marcinmd" <marc...@aol.com> wrote
>
Hogwash from start to finish.
--
Alias
Use the Reply to Sender feature of your news reader program to email me.
Utiliza Responder al Remitente para mandarme un mail.
marcinmd
There is no credible evidence for NST claims. They have no academic
support what so ever anywhere. It isnt even a close call... People have
a right to know.
Questions?
marcinmd
take it's revenge.
After all, Nichiren Shoshu members seem to attribute sentient
qualities to it. They often speak about having "an audience" with it
and they seem to think that it grants them their wishes and desires.
Former NST members are often scared of it, thinking it gets angry at
them for leaving.
Now I have been quite active in telling people some harsh truths about
the "DaiGohonzon". I wonder if this will happened to me:
Knock on my door (there is a bright light shining through all the
cracks)
Hello?
"This is the DaiGohonzon… Let me in."
The what?
"Er… Mail man… Let me in"
I'm not expecting any mail
"Candy Gram"
What? Who is this?
{ Light gets brighter… floor starts to shake a little}
"Land Shark. Let me in, NOW !"
Hey ! … I've already seen that bit… I'm not letting you into my house
Then… The theme music from "2001 and A Space Odyssey" begins to play.
It gets louder and louder… The light shining through the cracks gets
brighter and brighter.. The floor shakes…
I look through the peephole. It really is the DaiGohonzon !
You don't fool me. You're not the Monolith from 2001 A Space Odyssey…
I'd be scared of the Monolith… but I'm not scared of you buster. Youre
just an old log .. Beat it !
" Federal Express ?"
I SAID BEAT IT..
Alias
"marcinmd" <marc...@aol.com> wrote
> Hogwash from start to finish. <<
>
> There is no credible evidence for NST claims.
Hogwash.
They have no academic
> support what so ever anywhere. It isnt even a close call...
Hogwash.
People have
> a right to know.
You're not a good source.
> Questions?
Yeah, but you don't have the balls to answer it:
Where do you get off giving us a sermon on Nichiren Buddhism when you're a
bloody xtian?
Alias
Alias
"marcinmd" <marc...@aol.com> wrote
I am wondering if the "Dai-Gohonzon" will show up at my door one day to
take it's revenge. <<<<<<<<<<
Interesting fantasy. How long have you had this problem, Marc?
Alias
Kurt
"Alias" <a...@maskedandanonymous.eu> wrote:
It's actually looks like it already has... LOL
--
To reply by email, remove the word "space"
Alias
"Kurt" <labo...@spacegmail.com> wrote
> "Alias" <a...@maskedandanonymous.eu> wrote:
>
>> "marcinmd" <marc...@aol.com> wrote
>>
>> I am wondering if the "Dai-Gohonzon" will show up at my door one day to
>> take it's revenge. <<<<<<<<<<
>>
>> Interesting fantasy. How long have you had this problem, Marc?
>>
>> Alias
>>
>>
>
> It's actually looks like it already has... LOL
Xtianity certainly isn't what you would call a copasetic fate.
Alias
dere...@netscape.net
Kurt wrote:
> > I am wondering if the "Dai-Gohonzon" will show up at my door one
day to
> > take it's revenge. <<<<<<<<<<
>
> It actually looks like it already has... LOL
Heh.
A sure way to see Marc back on ARBN is to post the phrase,
"Dai-Gohonzon." Nothing gets him more worked up.
Derek Juhl
dere...@netscape.net
marcinmd wrote:
> The Priests at Taisekiji have always used the so called "DaiGohonzon"
> to scare people and as a way to try to control people who ask too
many
> hard questions. However, the Dai-Gohonzon is a fake. No one should be
> the least bit concerned with offending it or not being "connected" to
> it. Any SGI member who has had the courage to stand up to this
bullshit
> and separate themselves from Taisekiji's false myths and scare
tactics
> should be commended and encouraged not to be intimidated by these
> creeps.
You seem to have completely lost your sense of irony. What you wrote
above could just as easily apply to your religion, Christianity.
Marc Strumpf, ARBN 2/26/04:
"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made;
who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was
incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and made man, and was
crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried,
and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and
ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father. And
he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead,
whose kingdom shall have no end.
"And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who
proceedeth from the Father and the Son, who with, the Father and the
Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.
And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge
one baptism for the remission of sins. And I look for the resurrection
of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen."
Derek Juhl
rudikazooti
of us have been UP for hours, thinking about how his point of view is SO
lame.
"Alias" <a...@maskedandanonymous.eu> escribió en el mensaje
news:1L7he.44434$US....@news.ono.com...
marcinmd
Where do you get off giving us a sermon on Nichiren Buddhism when
you're a
bloody xtian?
Alias <<
Former NST members like me have a right and a duty to warn others to
stay away and to expose the false information NST tells people about
itself..
Alias
"marcinmd" <marc...@aol.com> wrote
Being a "former NST member" does not make you a credible source any more
than the fact that you sell insurance. You are not a scholar. You cannot
read Japanese. You have no qualifications at all. You DO hold a grudge
against NST which is your ONLY motivation.
Now, go post on the Christian boards and leave us Buddhists alone.
Alias
marcinmd
>>A sure way to see Marc back on ARBN is to post the phrase,
Yup.. There are several in fact. Whenever someone tries to intimidate
people with not being "connected" to the so called "DaiGohonzon," I
like to jump in and remind them just how controversial it's
authenticity is, so they have no need to be scared of it or bullied
into staying with NST.
The other thing that gets me worked up is the silly claim that Nikko
was sole heir. I like to jump in and remind people that this claim
has.. absolutely.. no scholarly support because it simply does not hold
up under close scrutiny.
BTW..I have been corresponding with a person who is leaving SGI and was
seriously considering NST. I am making good progress dissuading her.
One of the reasons I can help her stay clear is that when people are
not already emotionally bound to NST, they can examine the facts more
objectively. Objective analysis is the downfall of NST. Their claims
simply don't hold up well when looked at calmly and carefully by a
person not already "Sold."
dere...@netscape.net
marcinmd wrote:
> Yup.. There are several in fact. Whenever someone tries to
intimidate
> people with not being "connected" to the so called "DaiGohonzon," I
> like to jump in and remind them just how controversial it's
> authenticity is, so they have no need to be scared of it or bullied
> into staying with NST.
The same has been said about your savior, Jesus.
> BTW..I have been corresponding with a person who is leaving SGI and
was
> seriously considering NST. I am making good progress dissuading her.
Have you been taking her to your church?
marcinmd
was
> seriously considering NST. I am making good progress dissuading her.
Have you been taking her to your church<<
The main thing is to covey top her just how sleazy Nichiren Shoshu is.
I am able to get one or two people per year to avoid NST... It's a
happy thing for me to help people. That's pleasure enough..
dere...@netscape.net
marcinmd wrote:
> Have you been taking her to your church<<
>
> The main thing is to covey top her just how sleazy Nichiren Shoshu
is.
> I am able to get one or two people per year to avoid NST... It's a
> happy thing for me to help people. That's pleasure enough..
Why did you ignore the first part of my post? Here it is again:
Your arguments against Nichiren Shoshu have been used against your
religion, Christianity, as well.
Doesn't that make you a hypocrite? What does the Bible say about
hypocrites?
Derek Juhl
marcinmd
religion, Christianity, as well.
Doesn't that make you a hypocrite? What does the Bible say about
hypocrites? <<
Er..Any argument can be used at any time against any one. The question
is if you can make it stick
You are free to go to some board that discusses any other religion you
have some criticism of and level any argument that floats your boat.
As a former member of Nichiren Shoshu, I intend to keep warning people
about them and holding them accountable for all the false myths they
like to tell about themselves.... If you have a problem with that, you
can either stop reading this newsgroup or present any evidence you can
muster to defend those claims. Good luck.
PS. Have you come up the Gosho that teaches about your sect's so called
"Dai-Gohoznon" yet? I have asked you many times about this.. Why have
you ignored the question Derek? The metaphysics of the thing are very
complicated. Seems to me that Nichiren would have taught about it and
if not, whose idea's are they? Once again..Good luck to you.
dere...@netscape.net
marcinmd wrote:
> Your arguments against Nichiren Shoshu have been used against your
> religion, Christianity, as well.
>
> Doesn't that make you a hypocrite? What does the Bible say about
> hypocrites? <<
>
> Er..Any argument can be used at any time against any one. The
question
> is if you can make it stick
>
> You are free to go to some board that discusses any other religion
you
> have some criticism of and level any argument that floats your boat.
>
> As a former member of Nichiren Shoshu, I intend to keep warning
people
> about them and holding them accountable for all the false myths they
> like to tell about themselves.... If you have a problem with that,
you
> can either stop reading this newsgroup or present any evidence you
can
> muster to defend those claims. Good luck.
Why are you avoiding the question?
It's okay for you to criticise Nichiren Shoshu, but God forbid you
should answer any questions about Christianity?
> PS. Have you come up the Gosho that teaches about your sect's so
called
> "Dai-Gohoznon" yet? I have asked you many times about this.. Why
have
> you ignored the question Derek? The metaphysics of the thing are very
> complicated. Seems to me that Nichiren would have taught about it and
> if not, whose idea's are they? Once again..Good luck to you.
We've gone over this many times. You continue to ignore the replies,
and instead just run around like a cat with tape stuck to its tail.
I have asked you many times about the Bible's teaching on hypocrisy.
Why have you ignored the question, Marc?
Derek Juhl
marcinmd
I answered it... Which part was unclear to you?
>>It's okay for you to criticise Nichiren Shoshu, <<
Yes it is. My only role here is as a former NST member who wishes to
warn people.
You don't like that, which is understandable. If you had better
evidence for Nichiren Shoshu claims, you could simply convince people
with it. Since your case is so weak, you have to try to make a case
against me personally. Good luck. I hold the stronger hand IMHO.
I asked:
Where does Nichiren teach in the Gosho all the complicated details that
surround the so called "DaiGohonzon" and if he didnt teach about it,
whose idea's are they?
You replied:
>>We've gone over this many times. You continue to ignore the replies,
and instead just run around like a cat with tape stuck to its tail. <<
Really.?? Are you saying that you have printed the title of the Gosho
that teaches about the Daigohonon? What is it?
>>I have asked you many times about the Bible's teaching on hypocrisy.
Why have you ignored the question, Marc? <<
I have asked honest truthful questions and have provided honest and
accurate information about Nichiren Shoshu. The fact that honest and
accurate information embarrasses you, does not in any way make me a
hypocrite.
But even If I were a Hypocrite, I would still continue to warn people
of the foolishness of associating with Nichiren Shoshu. I wish someone
had stopped me from joining... I think "do unto other as you would have
them do unto you" applies here. You are just frustrated because you
cant seem to find a way to stop me from doing that. Perhaps if you had
better arguments...
dere...@netscape.net
marcinmd wrote:
<snip>
If you want to run around in circles like a cat with tape stuck to its
tail, be our guest.
Your posts ARE hypocritical. Your questions/criticisms about Nichiren
Shoshu have been addressed here repeatedly. You ignore the replies and
simply repeat your posts, over and over and over, like a toddler
standing in the middle of the room screaming. Yet, when we ask honest
questions about your religion, Christianity, you refuse to answer them.
dere...@netscape.net
Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I
have learned a great deal from you, and try to share that knowledge
with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the
homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus
18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination ... end of debate. I do
need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of
God's Laws and how to follow them.
1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and
female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend
of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can
you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?
2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in
Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair
price for her?
3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her
period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev.15: 19-24). The problem is how
do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.
4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a
pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev.1:9). The problem is, my neighbors.
They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?
5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2
clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to
kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?
6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an
abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than
homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees'
of abomination?
7. Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have
a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does
my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?
8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair
around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev.
19:27. How should they die?
9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes
me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?
10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two
different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments
made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also
tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go
to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them
(Lev. 24:10-16)? Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private
family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws
(Lev. 20:14)?
I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy
considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.
Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and
unchanging.
Sincerely,
Derek Juhl
[Original author unknown]
marcinmd
its
tail, be our guest. <<
Thank you. I shall continue
>Your posts ARE hypocritical.<<
You are entitled to your opinion. But I just think you cant take the
heat and are fishing around for a handle on me personally rather than
doing the hard work of making cogent arguments on the historical and
doctrinal issues.
>> Your questions/criticisms about Nichiren
Shoshu have been addressed here repeatedly. <<
Yes, very poorly. I want to keep your feet to the fire and demonstrate
to people what a weak case you have.
>>You ignore the replies and
simply repeat your posts, over and over and over, like a toddler
standing in the middle of the room screaming. <<
I have in the past and will in the future engage in any and all debates
on the subject of the doctrine of Nichiren Daishonin or the history of
his sect.
Good luck
Yet, when we ask honest
questions about your religion, Christianity, you refuse to answer them.
<<
I've seen no "honest" questions from you. All I have seen are attempts
to change the subject from the authenticity of Nichiren Shoshu claims.
Sorry, I will not be so easily baited... Perhaps if you had a better
case for your sect's claims you wouldn't need such tactics.
dere...@netscape.net
marcinmd wrote:
> I just think you cant take the heat
We've addressed these points repeatedly with you. Your M.O. is to
ignore the responses and simply repost what we already addressed, or
call the documentation "fake," or use logical fallacies.
What's YOUR excuse for avoiding the questions we have asked you?
Derek Juhl
dere...@netscape.net
marcinmd wrote:
> I've seen no "honest" questions from you.
Here's are some honest questions:
If the claims you make about Nichiren Shoshu have also been made
against your religion, Christianity, isn't it hypocritical of you to
hold such a double standard?
Why do you refuse to answer our questions to you about Christianity?
What does the Bible say about hypocrisy?
dere...@netscape.net
marcinmd wrote:
> I have in the past and will in the future engage in any and all
debates
> on the subject of the doctrine of Nichiren Daishonin or the history
of
> his sect.
> Good luck
Refute this:
"I have some interest in Russian Orthodoxy and also Zen. I have studied
both over the years and I have taken classes in a local Zendo on how to
meditate several times but probably not for at least five or six years,
I am on their mailing list though. I even taught meditation to my
prison class when they asked to learn that sort of thing. More recently
my study of Russian Orthodoxy is what I have been more interested in.
It violates fuju fuse so I have back burnered my HBS activities until I
am finished. I have not converted to Christianity. The similarities
with Buddhism are amazing to me, both being Eastern religions and
really looking at this unhindered has helped me understand the
questions that most concern me. Looking at those Life and Death sorts
of questions thoroughly are more important to me than a moment of
embarrassment on arbn, which can always be fixed by clicking the
unsubscribe button if need be." Marc Strumpf 3/28/03, ARBN
Versus:
"To mix other practices with this Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a grave error.
A lamp will be useless after the sun rises. How can dewdrops be
beneficial once the rain falls? Should one feed a newborn baby with
anything other than its mother's milk? Good medicine works by itself;
there is no need to add other medicine." Nichiren Daishonin, Teaching
for the Latter Day Gosho
"Or we may be the kind of practitioners of the Lotus Sutra whose mouths
are reciting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo one moment, but Namu Amida Butsu the
next. This is like mixing filth with one's rice, or putting sand or
pebbles in it. This is what the Lotus Sutra is warning against when it
says: 'Desiring only to accept and embrace the sutra of the great
vehicle and not accepting a single verse of the other sutras...' The
learned authorities in the world today suppose that there is no harm in
mixing extraneous practices with the practice of the Lotus Sutra, and
I, Nichiren, was once of that opinion myself. But the passage from the
sutra [that I have just quoted] does not permit such a view." Nichiren
Daishonin, Letter to Akimoto Gosho
Derek Juhl
Juanjo
"marcinmd" <marc...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:1115992930....@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Derek wrote:
>
>>>The Dai-Gohonzon of the High Sanctuary of the Essential Teachings is
> the absolute Object of Worship which forms the source and basis for
> each household's Gohonzon. <<
>
The very idea that a single corporal [that means having an actual physical
existence to those of you who are confused] Mandala somehow is the
uber-Mandala from which all blessing flow is a violation of the core tenets
of Buddhism as taught by Sakyamuni Buddha as well as by Nichiren. The
concept objectifies the very idea of the Object of Veneration written about
by Nichiren. It incorporates the Japanese love of Shinto idolatry into
Buddhist practice which in all fairness is not a practice limited to the
Nichiren Shoshu. One of the core teachings of the Buddha is that nothing
has an independent existence from anything else. Nichiren reiterates this
teaching repeatedly exhorting his followers to "seek the Gohonzon inside
themselves" and not through any external source such as the uber-Mandala
pushed by the NST. In fact Nichiren himself bestowed very few Mandalas on
his followers, a tradition carried on by his senior disciples. He certainly
never urged them in the worship of any transubstantiated plank. All of his
references to the Gohonzon or the "Dai Gohonzon" were directed not towards a
specific object squirreled away in the basement at Taiseki-ji but rather
towards the Object of Veneration he describes in the Kanjin Honzon Sho.
This is readily buttressed by the fact that he uses the term Dai Gohonzon or
Dai Mandara on the scroll Mandalas that he did bestow as did his followers.
It is only by twisting those references out of context and reading backwards
that Taiseki-ji comes up with its idea.
This concept has always reminded me of an experience I had in the late 1980s
when visiting the ruins of Tikal in Guatemala. We had taken a tour of the
central complex where several different buildings were discussed in detail
including the Mayan habit of burying one building inside another. In
several places the park had left open some excavations so that one could see
the step for example of the previous structure beneath the existing temple.
While walking around after the tour I chanced upon some Mormons tourists
with their own "guide" who was busy explaining to his group how just such an
excavation was in reality a baptismal pool built by some patriarch of their
mythic legends. He pointed to the steps leading up from the pit as the way
that one would go down into the pool and be baptized. I couldn't help but
to point out that the guide that had conducted our tour had explained
something very different to which his response was very simple, "that is
what the gentiles believe but we know the truth".
The simple fact is that the NST true believers will never waver from their
firm opinion in what "reality" is for them no matter how much evidence of
the error of their beliefs is heaped at their feet. Instead they will claim
that the entire world is biased against them and them proceed to verbally
attack those who have spoken the truth to them.
dere...@netscape.net
Juanjo wrote:
> The simple fact is that the NST true believers will never waver from
their
> firm opinion in what "reality" is for them no matter how much
evidence of
> the error of their beliefs is heaped at their feet. Instead they
will claim
> that the entire world is biased against them and them proceed to
verbally
> attack those who have spoken the truth to them.
You're not in a position to lecture us about "truth," after you made up
that story about the alleged "merger talks" between Nichiren Shoshu and
Nichiren Shu.
Derek Juhl
Yelps
Shoshu priests. The Dai-Gohonzon is a symbol---not a corporeal entity that
shoots space alines power juice into all the other Gohonzons. THAT is not
the real Nichiren Shoshu teachings, based on Nikko, Nichikan or Nichiko or
other good priests. It is YOU and a bunch of Pinhead people who see things
that way.
The Dai Gohonzon makes perfect sense as the Gohonzon to be inshrined in the
High Sanctuary as visualized by Sun Lotus. To think Nichiren and Nikko would
not consider this is absurd--the main real world goal was to establish the
High Sanctuary in actuality, just as Dengyo wanted in his time.
People who think the Dai Gohonzons is better or different in some
metaphysical way are pinheads, including those who criticizer Nichiren
Shoshu with THAT objection. One needs to understand what REAL Nichiren
Shoshu is and not be confused by superstitious people. It is just as
superstitious to think that THAT idea is really what people like Nichikan or
Nichiko were saying. It's like hearing a story about a little kid being
told a tale about Daddy Buddha will come and fly you to heaven and then
blaming the storyteller and taking it literal as though the Storyteller
actual believes that.
It's an expedient. Had Sun Lotus NOT inscribed a Dai-Gohonzon himself he
would have instructed Nikko to do so, or be very guilty of not planning
ahead.
Having a Dai Gohonzon for all mankind, symbolizes that unity of a future
time of Kosen Rufu, where everyone chants together, . It is illogical to
think Sun Lotus would neglect to plan ahead. He know Dengyo's High
Sanctuary was not established until after Dengyo death. Whateber
abberational ideas come out of the superstitious, whether bad priests or
pibhead laypeople, has no real bearing on the Symbolic meaning of the Dai
Gohonzon. However that Symbol is not owned and any correct Nichiren Shoshu
priest or layperson would know that.
dc
"Juanjo" <jonp...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:OpMje.8349$w21...@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
Juanjo
what Nichiren actually writes and does during his own like, not to mention
Nikko and all the senior disciples. Of course Dave also believes that the
Historical Buddha and Nichiren achieved enlightenment through ingestion of
hallucinogenic substances. So one has to consider the simple fact that his
perspective is a bit screwy.
"Yelps" <cos...@yelpsastound.com> wrote in message
news:2LudnYSusZ7...@adelphia.com...
Yelps
> How like Dave to post his assumptions as though they were fact and ignore
> what Nichiren actually writes and does during his own like, not to mention
> Nikko and all the senior disciples. Of course Dave also believes that the
> Historical Buddha and Nichiren achieved enlightenment through ingestion of
> hallucinogenic substances. So one has to consider the simple fact that
> his perspective is a bit screwy.
>
Reality might be screwy, but what I say is true. Religions comes from
Visionary Plant experience. But don't take my word for it. Find out for
yourself.
dc
dere...@netscape.net
Juanjo wrote:
> Of course Dave also believes that the Historical Buddha and Nichiren
achieved
> enlightenment through ingestion of hallucinogenic substances. So one
has to
> consider the simple fact that his perspective is a bit screwy.
Hey! We agree on something. :)
Derek Juhl
Yelps
<dere...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:1116917374.1...@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
Poor guys they can't figure anything out.
ugH!
dc
Juanjo
>
> "Juanjo" <jonp...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:ZYzke.6981$uR4....@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>> How like Dave to post his assumptions as though they were fact and ignore
>> what Nichiren actually writes and does during his own like, not to
>> mention Nikko and all the senior disciples. Of course Dave also believes
>> that the Historical Buddha and Nichiren achieved enlightenment through
>> ingestion of hallucinogenic substances. So one has to consider the
>> simple fact that his perspective is a bit screwy.
>>
>
>
>
>
> Reality might be screwy, but what I say is true. Religions comes from
> Visionary Plant experience. But don't take my word for it. Find out for
> yourself.
>
> dc
>
Translation: Dave thinks that the way to enlightenment is through the
ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs.
Juanjo
Oh I don't know. We seem to have you figured out pretty well. But rejoice
Dave as you have done something few people have been able to do, get Derek
and I to agree on something.
Yelps
I think the way to enlightenment is to not be a pinhead, Mr. Pinhead.
dc
Yelps
You haven't figured out a thing. A bunch of whining little pinheads,
babbling about something you know nothing about. OF course you and Derek
agree, you are both two peas in a pinhead.
dc
marcinmd
>Reality might be screwy, but what I say is true. Religions comes from
Visionary Plant experience<<
Okay..That's a keeper..
Prosicution rests your honor...
Alias
Sorry, but "prosicution" is not in my dictionary but what could one expect
from an uneducated fool like you ... and, guess what, you're not in a court
of law and you are not *prosecuting* David Cole who doesn't speak for anyone
but his own confused self.
Soooooooooooo, you were saying, boobie?
Alias
Juanjo
Dave has been munching on those peyote buttons again. It explains a lot
actually.
Kurt
"Prosicution," the arguments of an aged, dry-cured, spiced Italian ham.
--
To reply by email, remove the word "space"
Yelps
It is beyond amazing@!---- the Pinhead consciousness that exists on this
planet.
Pinhead Theories on Religious Experiences and Visions of the founders of the
Religions:
1. Its all Divine Being(s) and exclusivity of dogma.
2. It's all Aliens and ancient astronauts
3. It's all Psychosis
4. It's all Liars
Real causes of actual Religious Experiences in order of importance, depth
and ergonomics
1. Visionary Plant use
2. Severe fasting and austerities
3. Near death experiences
Preparatory practices for Visionary Plant use:
1. Meditative Yoga-Chanting Daimoku works great. Silent meditation.
Centering, Focusing. Technique of Stopping the Mind.
2. temporary, moderate fasting
3. temporary sexual abstinence
4. Abstinance of any intoxicants or drugs such as Alcohol, Opiates, Cocaine,
Amphetamines, Marijuana, Nicotine etc.
5. proper setting and set
6. Practical Study.
dc
Yelps
by Huston Smith
Zig. Buddhism stemmed from a vision, a vision that was literally
world-transforming, for when the Buddha came to his senses (as we rightly
say) after his enlightenment under the Bo-tree, the world that greeted him
was very different from the one that he had left. During that night that was
to portend so much for the historical future--the Buddhist sangha is the
oldest humanly devised institution that is still intact--the Buddha's
meditation had deepened until, as the morning star glittered in the
transparent sky, his mind pierced the bubble of the universe and shattered
it to naught; only, wonder of wonders, to find it restored with the
effulgence of true being. "Wonder of wonders," he is reported to have
exclaimed, speaking now from what his Third Eye had disclosed to him, "all
things intrinsically are Buddha-nature. There is a Buddha in every grain of
sand ".
Zag. Twenty-five hundred years later people are still having their Third
Eyes opened, only now often through microscopic ingestions of a small class
of entheogenic plants and chemicals. This difference may not be quite as
different as it sounds, for medical anthropologists have discovered that
brain changes that result from taking entheogens are very much like those
that are produced by physical exhaustion from prolonged fasting and other
ordeals of the sort the Buddha undertook before he assumed his seat under
the Bodhi Tree. This being the case, it may be one of the great paradoxes of
history that one of its greatest religions was launched (chemically
speaking) by a state of mind that is virtually indistinguishable from ones
that are produced by fudging the fifth of the Five Precepts in the Eightfold
Path that the Buddha prescribed as leading to enlightenment, the one that
proscribes the taking of intoxicants.
Zen. Be that as it may, there is a saying that Zen is slippery and slick,
like picking up an egg with a pair of silver chopsticks, and the saying
certainly holds when it comes to the presiding issue of this book, the
relation between Zen and entheogens. Aspects of this issue extend back to
the times when Zen took shape. There has been a long standing debate as to
whether enlightenment arrives suddenly or gradually, and the issue split Zen
into its two major schools, with Rinzai Zen championing the former view, and
Soto Zen the later. Satori--a thumping foretaste of Nirvana--is important in
Rinzai, whereas Soto settles for passing glimpses of it called kenshos. Both
schools require rigorous training, but in Rinzai the rigor reaches samarai
proportions, with sleep deprivation a major factor. This fits in with the
anthropologists' discovery that ordeals bring on chemical brain states that
accompany major epiphanies.
The book in hand. A major virtue of this particular collection of essays and
art is that it rigorously abstains from drawing conclusions regarding the
never-never land it leads the reader into. Readers will not find here any
attempt to turn the slippery Zen egg into putty that chopsticks could handle
with ease. Instead, the book lays before the reader the major issues that
must be taken into account in any serious reflection on this problem.
Entheogens have entered Buddhism to stay; there can be no turning back from
the point that has been reached. Nor can the issue any longer be swept under
the rug. The facts that bear on the matter are contained in these pages, as
are the leading theories that try to make sense of the facts. Compelling
visionary art and vivid accounts of personal encounters lace the facts and
theories together in ways that make for a gripping experience. This book
will be a landmark for years to come.
Berkeley, 2001
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
news:4JKdnQNBdfY...@adelphia.com...
Yelps
of the Law! Whether it be a yaksha, or a pakshasa, or a hungry spirit, or a
putana, or a kritya, or a vetada, or a skanda 8, or an umaraka, or an
apasmaraka, or a yaksha kritya, or a human kritya, or a fever, a one day, a
two day, a three day, or a four day, or up to a seven day or a constant
fever, whether it be in a man's form, in a woman's form, in young boy's
form, in young girl's form, though it be only in a dream, it will never
trouble them!"
Then in the presence of the Buddha they spoke in verse form, saying:
If there are those who fail to heed our spells
and trouble and disrupt the preachers of the Law,
their heads will split into seven pieces
like the branches of the arjaka tree.
Their crime will be like that of one who kills father and mother,
or one who presses out oil,
or cheats others with measures and scales,
or, like Devadatta, disrupts the Order of monks.
Anyone who commits a crime against these teachers of the Law
will bring on himself guilt such as this!"
LS C26
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
news:4JKdnQNBdfY...@adelphia.com...
>
Yelps
July 15, 2003 04:33 AM
I have been studing psychedelics for a few months now-but at a distance.
The problem is I am one of these people who fretts about the consequences of
my actions-with regard to everything.
I reckon psychedelics hold the key to a transformation of this type of
outlook but the very problem which i seek to address is what is keeping me
from solving it.
I am not in it for the buzz/rush/etc but to develop a deeper understanding
of myself and nature. For this reason I find myself wary of any synthesised
psychedelics. I would like to hear what you would recommend I try first
bearing in mind I would prefer to wade in from the shallow end than dive
into the deep
Garry
Posts: 1 | From: Ireland | Registered: Jul 2003 | IP: Logged |
sidecross
Member
Member # 155
posted July 15, 2003 04:57 PM
Quite simply a revelation will be out of reach with apprehension. You can
not let go and hold on at the same time.
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daniel
Administrator
Member # 3
posted July 15, 2003 10:51 PM
You can begin with lower doses of the various organic or semi-organic
compounds. I personally have enjoyed lower-dose mushrooms, and minimally
effective ayahuasca doses.
Fear vs. curiosity is often the issue for people. I think you will be happy
if curiosity wins out.
Also, life is short - don't put off doing something and then miss the
chance, out of over-repressive prudence.
Posts: 478 | Registered: Aug 2002 | IP: Logged |
Nicole
Member
Member # 347
Rate Member posted July 16, 2003 04:19 AM
I think that perhaps you are more adventurous than you realize.
If you only wanted to develop a better understanding of yourself and nature,
I might recommend meditation or hiking. I think part of the thrill of
experimenting with psychoactive substances IS the risk involved. Not the
risk of death as the Just-Say-NO-ers might have you believe, but the
psychological and emotional risks. The risk of experiencing something
transformative or earth-shattering in a matter of a few hours. The risk of
the unknown. It's exciting and thrilling and frightening simultaneously, and
I think that's why certain people are drawn to it. Yes, the experience may
be spiritual (drugs have been used for religious purposes for thousands of
years), but there are quieter ways of achieving insight.
You didn't mention what drugs you were familiar with. I didn't know if I
should assume that you've experimented with certain susbtances, like
marijuana?
I've never taken psilocybin mushrooms, but from what I've read about them
that may be the experience you're looking for. A low dose, as Daniel
suggested.
I have some of the same fears that you do, but the main reason I haven't
done these substances is because I can't FIND them. In time, in time. I
think I may get to experience my first psilocybin trip within the next few
weeks.
If you weren't so opposed to synthetic substances, I might suggest MDMA
(Ecstasy). For myself, it was a gentle and mildly psychedelic introduction
to the world of entheogens. I've always enjoyed it, and I've never had a
"bad trip." However, it is imperative to know your source. "Ecstasy" is only
sometimes MDMA, and it's difficult to know what you're getting. (Even the
E-Z testers are not very reliable.) I'm not sure this is the experience
you're looking for anyway, though.
Posts: 66 | From: Florida | Registered: Jun 2003 | IP: Logged |
sire_012
Member
Member # 248
Rate Member posted July 16, 2003 04:45 AM
nicole:
quote:
If you weren't so opposed to synthetic substances, I might suggest MDMA
(Ecstasy). For myself, it was a gentle and mildly psychedelic introduction
to the world of entheogens. I've always enjoyed it, and I've never had a
"bad trip."
i see where you're coming from with this nicole but i would really
discourage anyone from starting their journey with MDMA. MDMA appears to be
a beneficial ally because it can allow a user to approach some aspects of
their conciousness with a kind of carressing nature that isn't always found
in some of the more analytical, introspective entheogens like LSD. but while
it is perhaps more psychologically easy on a person, i think MDMA also tends
to be a bit 'greedier' than other compounds, meaning it seems to ask quite a
bit more from the user in regards to physical/sertonic effect, recurrance of
use, and it seems to attract a different 'cult' of followers in general than
some other compounds. if someone is looking for a deeply introspective
experience and takes MDMA, they may not be ready for the seratonin dip
possible depression which comes a day or two after the experience. that
depression could be enough to undue the previous days work or worse, scare
them off from approaching their psyche again for a while.
also it seems to be closer to alcohol than to an entheogen (IMHO) as it is
more of an ego-enhancing experience than ego annhilating. not that there are
not benefits that can be had from alcohol or ego-enhancing experiences, i
just feel that they may be a bit misleading if someone is looking for an
entheogen to explore.
in tihkal shulgin mentions that he thinks 4-HO-Dipt would be a good
introduction to psychedelics for new explorers due to its fairly benevelant
nature and relatively short duration of effect. also, 4-HO-Dipt is not
scheduled. perhaps you should look into this.
i think daniels advice is worth applying to whatever you choose to pursue...
start small and work into your own shoe size.
Posts: 83 | Registered: Feb 2003 | IP: Logged |
Nicole
Member
Member # 347
Rate Member posted July 16, 2003 05:51 AM
sire:
I definitely see what you're saying. I don't find MDMA to be a very good
philosophical tool, but I have had experiences that could be termed
"religious." (Whatever that means anyway.) It is a gentle drug, and I think
it might lessen the fear that comes with entering into the world of
psychoactive chemicals. I suppose I recommend it because I've had incredibly
wonderful experiences with it, and it led to my current interest in the
field of ethneogens. It was simply my own path, but I do understand that it
might not work for everyone.
Personally, I've never suffered the depression that afflicts some users. One
can also try preventative measures like taking 5-HTP or an SSRI like Prozac.
(I recommend doing research on when to take these, how much, etc.)
Yes, it may attract a different "cult" of followers. I imagine I'm probably
the only person here that's involved in techno/club culture, and that's how
I was introduced to Ecstasy. The "scene" does have destructive elements that
I eventually learned were destructive (e.g. cocaine), but I think MDMA can
be beneficial if used responsibly.
There's a lot of talk about "the ego" in circles like ours, but I have not
come to any definitive conclusions regarding the subject. Is it really
desirable to annihilate the ego? Wasn't there a quote in Daniel's book about
how John Lennon suffered from a period of creative inactivity after he was
told he should destroy his ego? I hear the term thrown around a lot, but
I've never experienced it and there's very rarely involved discussions about
what it actually *means*. Admittedly, I feel in the dark about a lot of it.
Furthermore, I'm not sure something "ego-enhancing" is always Bad. What
exactly does "ego-enhancing" mean? Although I realize it's difficult to
encapsulate some of these concepts into the boundaries of language, it's
also difficult for me to know how to discuss it when I'm unclear on the
meaning. Could you clarify some of this?
Posts: 66 | From: Florida | Registered: Jun 2003 | IP: Logged |
Nicole
Member
Member # 347
Rate Member posted July 16, 2003 05:52 AM
Um...correction: that should be "entheogens."
Posts: 66 | From: Florida | Registered: Jun 2003 | IP: Logged |
Woodpecker
Member
Member # 145
Member Rated:
posted July 16, 2003 06:25 AM
Don't forget about the ethnogens! Very powerful drugs, capable of generating
entire ethnicities; nevertheless, they have yet to be invented....
Posts: 150 | Registered: Dec 2002 | IP: Logged |
sire_012
Member
Member # 248
Rate Member posted July 16, 2003 06:34 AM
nicole:
quote:
Is it really desirable to annihilate the ego?
to give it vocabulary - or at least the term i infer with its use - an ego-
annhilating experience would be a transpersonal experience... pre-natal,
post-terrestrial, samahdi, becoming objects or other people, etc. it is an
interesting question and not one i'm sure i know the answer to whether or
not you can ever have a truly ego-annhilating experience. i feel like i've
had them, but then that feeling is always processed through my present
filter of understanding myself as an other to the rest of the world. perhaps
the only true ego annhilating experiences one could have would be those
where they can't even recall them because they were totally seperated from
their present processing capabilities. with this discussion i think you
eventually lead downt the meditative path of What are You? and this can get
furry indeed. anybody have some help on this?
quote:
Wasn't there a quote in Daniel's book about how John Lennon suffered from a
period of creative inactivity after he was told he should destroy his ego?
annhilating the ego of probably the most powerful man in the world at the
time would make one hell of a boom me thinks. but not to digress it seems
very common for heads to blast their ego and then not put it back together.
i think that is the reason for many 'jaded' people and many burn outs, and
the sad stories of folks who at one time used psychedelics and later moved
onto heroin, etc. if you choose to look through the microscope you best be
willing to accept and work with what you find. but because it happens to
some doesn't make it a bad thing. i think it is extremely valuable to pop
the gaskets off, but that is with the qualifier that it takes *a lot* of
discipline to put it back together again.
quote:
Furthermore, I'm not sure something "ego-enhancing" is always Bad. What
exactly does "ego-enhancing" mean?
i don't think its bad at all either, but i also think there is plenty of
opportunity to enhance your ego and - at least for some folks - i think the
transpersonal experience is a major catalyst in why they eat entheogens. in
my mind "ego-enhancing" is something that helps caste the ego, that massages
the ego. again this can be very beneficial, but also in my opinion, requires
the same amount of work as annihilating the ego but in the other
direction... if you rub that ego too much you tend to get a bit weird and
self-blinded and risk becoming a mockery of yourself. for an example of this
take a step into most bars, television studios, radio stations, or other
places where western culture is manufactured. for what its worth the best
solution i can come to is to meditate to find your path, develop your path,
re-design it, pull in some opposing 'selves' to keep it in check, annhilate
that ego and rebuild. this is kind of a reworking of the sufi saying "if you
write stoned edit sober, if you write sober edit stoned." the ego seems to
be a great tool for enacting positive change in the world, but it is only
that a tool. annhilating can raise one's awareness to the impermanence of it
and perhaps help you master it a bit more.
peace
Posts: 83 | Registered: Feb 2003 | IP: Logged |
sidecross
Member
Member # 155
posted July 16, 2003 07:27 AM
The ego has been shown to be useful in determining which and whose orifice
to place dinner.
Posts: 201 | Registered: Dec 2002 | IP: Logged |
Woodpecker
Member
Member # 145
Member Rated:
posted July 16, 2003 07:32 AM
quote:
to give it vocabulary - or at least the term i infer with its use - an ego-
annhilating experience would be a transpersonal experience... pre-natal,
post-terrestrial, samahdi, becoming objects or other people, etc. it is an
interesting question and not one i'm sure i know the answer to whether or
not you can ever have a truly ego-annhilating experience. i feel like i've
had them, but then that feeling is always processed through my present
filter of understanding myself as an other to the rest of the world. perhaps
the only true ego annhilating experiences one could have would be those
where they can't even recall them because they were totally seperated from
their present processing capabilities. with this discussion i think you
eventually lead downt the meditative path of What are You? and this can get
furry indeed. anybody have some help on this?
for what its worth the best solution i can come to is to meditate to find
your path, develop your path, re-design it, pull in some opposing 'selves'
to keep it in check, annhilate that ego and rebuild. this is kind of a
reworking of the sufi saying "if you write stoned edit sober, if you write
sober edit stoned." the ego seems to be a great tool for enacting positive
change in the world, but it is only that a tool. annhilating can raise one's
awareness to the impermanence of it and perhaps help you master it a bit
more.
Interesting musings, Nicole and Sire; thanks for feeding the fire of
illumination today.
I don't have theories, but an anecdote.
In my wild youth (which officially ended about a minute and a half ago, when
I swore off nibbling on the couscous I made for dinner later) I inhaled
ether on several occasions, and, by Sire's tentative definition above, truly
annihilated my ego a few times. What I remember is coming down from these
fantastic heights, trying again and again, after each separate sniff, to
recollect where I had just come down from. An image that did stick with me
on one occasion was that the universe was made up of four complementary
personalities, similar to the concept of the four elements, but they all
kind of looked the same, besides being different sizes. The third
personality "possessed" me for a while, melding its consciousness with mine.
This was done for two purposes: one, to expand my mind, which seemed at the
time to encompass one eighth of the universe; and, two, to get a laugh out
of the other personalities, who found Number Three's brief descent into
humanity absolutely hilarious.
Well, that took me out of my stuffy old self for a while.
The spirit world seems infinitely protean. Every time you look into it from
a new perspective, the data is going to line up a bit differently.
As certain as I was at the time about the validity of the experience I just
described, I wouldn't want to build a religion around it.
Much of what Sire's wisely saying about the ego applies to the soul, too.
The soul needs to grow, change, develop, breathe. I suppose it's the ego's
work and art to make this happen.
[ July 16, 2003, 07:34 AM: Message edited by: Woodpecker ]
Posts: 150 | Registered: Dec 2002 | IP: Logged |
Nicole
Member
Member # 347
Rate Member posted July 16, 2003 10:06 AM
sire:
I've been trying to find time to respond all afternoon, but they've actually
been expecting me to WORK in my office. The nerve!
Hmmm.I'm a bit skeptical about phrases like "pre-natal" and
"post-terrestrial." But as for experiences that make one feel like they're
merging with objects: why is this desirable? Is it really desirable for me
to feel like I became a windowpane, or a floorboard? I just have
reservations about the usefulness of such insights. They are fascinating, to
be sure, but I'm not sure if it's preferable to "regular" reality.
"ti feel like i've had them, but then that feeling is always processed
through my present filter of understanding myself as an other to the rest of
the world."
That's my perspective on the matter, too, and precisely why I find it
difficult to understand the concept of "annihilating the ego."
All this talk of ego reminds me of Salinger's FRANNY AND ZOOEY. His best
book, I think, and I get something different out of it every time. I've
found it insightful, juvenile, complex, simplistic, and brilliant depending
on the time I'm reading it.
[Franny complains at the beginning:
"All I know is I'm losing my mind.[.]I'm just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own
and everybody else's. I'm sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do
something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It's disgusting -
it is, it is . I don't care what anybody says."]
I do see the value in realizing that you are inseparable from the rest of
the universe (which I think can be realized on MDMA), but I'm not sure I
understand the concept of annihilating the ego. Or the usefulness of such an
insight. The concept comes up in so much of my research, but I very rarely
see it questioned.
Posts: 66 | From: Florida | Registered: Jun 2003 | IP: Logged |
Proteus
Member
Member # 188
Member Rated:
posted July 16, 2003 12:30 PM
i notice that Woodpecker distinguishes soul from ego and that Nicole
questions what, exactly the ego is. And then there's the general question of
whether or not annhilating the ego is possible or desirable.
For what it's worth, here's my theory: The "self" is composed of several
phenomena: the senses--including the mind--the ego, and consciousness
(wherever that comes from). i don't really distinguish these phenomena from
soul or spirit--as Woodpecker seems to do. For that matter, i'm increasingly
less capable of making a meaningful distinction between body and
mind/soul/spirit.
Anyway, my intuition is that each of us mirrors in miniature the Conscious
Universe. i'm currently working under the assumption that the Totality (that
would be the all-inclusive term for all beings and phenomena in all
dimensions) is itself Conscious. It knows Itself. And that which Knows
Itself is Ego--though at this Cosmic level there is no meaningful
distinction between Self and other because the Totality comprises all
others. My first ayahuasca experience--and others since--indicate to me that
it's probably more accurate to say that the Totality knows Itselves and that
Its Ego comprises all egos. Thus, the Totality has a body and senses--it's
faculties being all phenomena and beings; it has an Ego--It knows Itselves;
and it has Consciousness--a Mind that receives and organizes sense
impressions and construes them in meaningful ways.
Relatively self-aware beings such as ourselves are constructed in a way
similar to the Totality. There's a mind which, by its nature, functions to
record, narrate, analyze, generalize, and theorize about the phenomenal data
it perceives and there is an ego that knows itself to be an observer of all
this stuff--and which then forms opinions, generalizations, analyses, and
theories about this "stuff."
As the Abidharma--a very interesting and ancient book on "psychology"--puts
it, each "self" comprises 6 skandas or "piles." We'd call the first 5 of
these skandas the sensorium: vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell. Eastern
tradition, however, asserts that mind is the 6th sense. Mind, by its nature,
organizes the data it receives from the other five senses, making them
meaningful. In this view, sight isn't light bounced off a flower, refracted
through the iris, focused on the rods and cones at the back of the eyeball,
& converted into electro-chemical impulses that fire into the organic brain.
Rather, sight is the ability to transform such physical phenomena into
meaning: "Ooh! Look at that glorious Dahlia!"
Mind, however rudimentary, is a concommitant of being and functions to make
distinctions among phenomena--including the fundamental one between "I" and
"Thou." It is the function of consciousness that takes raw perception and
names and sorts it, analyzing it for patterns, storing it in memory, and
assigning it various discriminative values (e.g. good, bad, sexy, stinky,
etc.).
From this, i reason that the ego is either a by-product of the 6th sense
(i.e. the mind) or, like the mind, a concommitant of consciousness. The ego
apparently functions through the mind's discriminatory faculties to generate
an awareness of awareness--and to create relatively coherent narratives out
of the raw data of experience which it thereafter refers to as "myself." The
ego, then, is the function of consciousness capable of accesssing the
information in the storehouse of memory and of building a (unique) personna
from this raw material--through narrative. Ego organizes the raw phenomenal
data that the mind is constantly processing into the story of "my life." Ego
is the function that highlights some experiences and represses others so it
can create nice little stories like "this is what happened to me," or
"here's what i'm like & what i'm not like," or "i'm too fat." Ego is so
involved in the "construction" of Reality, that it frequently stops looking
at it. When we say someone is ego-centric, we're referring to their tendency
to be so focussed on "their" construction of Reality that they can't
appreciate or even entertain someone else's. Is this a bad thing? That's
probably the wrong question. Ego can't help but create stories about
phenomena because that is its nature. In fact, i'd go further and say that
ego is naturally prone to becoming so attached to these stories that it will
do anything--including using force or the most obvious kinds of denial--to
eliminate competing narratives about Reality. It takes a good deal of
training to temporarily suspend the ego's tendency to cling to its own
stories so that one can entertain the narrative-constructs of others.
Shortly after infancy, ego begins to mediate our experiences--sometimes to
an astonishing extent. That is, we don't really experience phenomena
directly, we experience them through thought formations the ego generates
and through language, the medium in which ego works. Most egos don't see
purple, they see an idea they have about purple. They don't meet a person,
they meet their ideas about what that person must be like based on such
visible facts as hair-style, body-type, gender, class association, etc.
(Such mediated perceptions can be altered by experience, but that's another
story.)
As i understand it, the reason that Eastern philosophy teaches that the
products of the ego are delusive is because they see these narrative
constructs as just that--artistic/literary constructs, which have logical
consistency and coherence because they pick and choose among phenomena in
such a way that consistency and coherence are highlighted. As such, these
narratives cannot help but be incomplete, rhetorically interested, and
language-distorted representations of the Totality-as-it-is. In addition,
the ego's resistance to other narratives and its obsessive-compulsive
relationship to its own constructions tends to insulate us from THIS (i.e.
the Totality). We can see only a little way beyond that which we have
language and thought-constructs for. We can't evolve spiritually unless we
can crack the nutshell of the ego's construction of the universe and "see"
things without mediation on a routine basis. Daily meditation or some other
form of spiritual practice is a baseline teaching in these traditions
because the ego never ceases its work. Even the Buddha continued to sit in
meditation after his "englightenment." i think he did so because his ego was
hard at work packaging the story of his experience under the Bodhi Tree the
minute he rose from his seat and began to preach the Eightfold Path and
expound upon the Fourfold Truth.
But back to the question that prompted all this blather. i'd say that the
ego cannot be annhilated or enhanced because it is as inherent to
consciousness as heat is to flame. By definition, if you're conscious, you
have an ego. What's really at issue is whether or not we can or should
annhilate our assumptions about the solidity/validity of our ego-constructs.
Quite obviously, we can choose to call our ego-constructs into serious
question through various well-established spiritual practices like
meditation, prayer, and psychedelics. Or we can fortify our ego-produced
delusions about the nature of "ourselves" and "reality" by avoiding anything
that might call our assumptions and constructs into question. In a former
life, i found that several beers a night, television, and pumping nonstop
noise and activity into the background of my life were powerful allies in
fortifying my assumption that my ego-constructs were unshakeable Reality.
Garry T--if you've managed to wade through all this junk and gotten this
far--i'd like to affirm what others on this list have said. The only answers
to your questions and the only solutions to the problems you have identified
are those that you yourself discover--through whatever means you choose.
Psychedelics are powerful tools, but they are not panaceas. An 8 oz. cup of
ayahuasca taken reverently won't automatically make you less fretful or
wiser. Aya is a superb teacher, but the student has to do the actual work to
advance to the next "grade." As Halfglass put it so well a few weeks back,
"psychedelics go to work on who you are." i think they do that because they
quickly and reliably distance the individual from his or her ego-constructs
for a while. Therefore, they make it relatively easy to see how artificial
they are and how self-deluding we tend to be. But no substance, synthetic or
organic, can take you from this revelation to a stable mind, a generous and
compassionate heart, and a useful productive life. Damn shame too! 'Cause
cultivating those qualities will take courage, patience, a strong will, and
hard work for the rest of our lives.
Posts: 68 | From: OH | Registered: Jan 2003 | IP: Logged |
hiosoy
Junior Member
Member # 368
Rate Member posted July 16, 2003 10:04 PM
Hey Proteus, That was one of the best and most comprehensive definitions of
the ego I've ever read. You seemed to cover all areas, but where do you
think this fits in with events like astral projection, or stories of people
on psychedelics forgetting themselves and actually being a leopard walking
through a forest or whatever vision they happen to be having. These are
phenomena that involve your consious going to other worlds where you
previously have no strong conception of what they could be like. By your
statement of if you're consious, you have an ego, going to the astral plane
or something like that would blow away your ego's "unshakeable reality."
Then with the stories of people on ayahuasca being a panther or some animal
walking through the forest, but feeling like that panther, having that
panther's inate urges and conception of the world, would do the same to your
ego. Or other even more out there stories of feeling like a water molecule
being sucked up through the ground and going through the process of
photosynthesis. Unless that is exactly how you can throw your ego for a loop
and realign yourself with this reality and the undeniable proof of other
realities outside your own ego's too. Sorry if I missed something or
confused anyone, I should probably have re-read your post again but it's
late, I'm tired and my eyes are bitching at me to go to bed.
Posts: 25 | From: Vancouver, BC | Registered: Jul 2003 | IP: Logged |
daniel
Administrator
Member # 3
posted July 17, 2003 05:45 AM
Proteus, quite a rundown.
Some thoughts of mine:
The Ego is a structure or container - and the form of that structure is
constantly changing. Do Australian aboriginals have individualized Egos in
the same way that we do? Do we have Egos in the same way that Parisians did
in the Court of Louis XIVth or in the fin-de-siecle? Is the potential
upcoming "transformation" also a shift in the Ego structure to a form that
is somehow both individual and collective (telepathic, perhaps)?
Also the modern conception of the Ego is based on Freud and the notion of
the Id, Ego, Superego, with repressed psychic material residing in the
Unconscious. Both Gebser and Steiner believe that there is no such thing as
the Unconscious - just different levels or strata of consciousness. What
resides in the "Unconscious" is the former forms of consciousness which have
been pushed away by the current "mental-rational" structure.
Schuon writes that the Sufis see the world as a play of "cosmic receptacles"
and "Divine unveilings." You couldn't have an unveiling without a
receptacle, shaped in some way to appreciate it. Hence the need for embodied
and limited beings such as ourselves.
The Ego also seems like the psychic vehicle of one's karmic obstructions
(the body is the physical vehicle of same). I often feel the limitations of
the "Daniel Pinchbeck" mechanisms, though I understand (I think) why it is
necessary to experience them.
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
news:4JKdnQNBdfY...@adelphia.com...
>
Yelps
intoxicating plant called soma in the Rig Veda should be identified with the
red-capped psychoactive mushroom, Amanita muscaria. This mushroom, which
contains the powerful hallucinogen, muscimol, can cause euphoria, elevated
mood, auditory and visual hallucinations, as well as feelings of increased
strength and stamina. Amanita muscaria (called fly-agaric in English) is
perhaps the most widely depicted mushroom in children's books, often
stylized as a red-capped mushroom with white polka dots. Wasson's arguments
revolved around certain poetic and elliptical statements in the Rig Veda
which seem to indicate that this magical plant lacked roots, branches,
flowers, seeds, or leaves, a fitting description of a mushroom (5). The god
Soma was associated with the color red, the god of fire (Agni), and the
bellowing bull (6). The plant soma is like a "red bull" (RV IX.97.13), but
with a "dress of sheep" (RV IX. 70.7). It "creeps like a serpent out of its
old skin" (RV IX.86.44).
In nature, this mushroom begins fruiting as a white "egg" enclosed in the
membranous material of the universal veil; the stalk pushes up as it grows,
and the distinctive orange-to-red cap appears from behind the veil. White
flecks of the veil remain on the cap in patches like the "hide of a bull" in
a "dress of sheep", or like a "serpent creeping out of its old skin". Soma
is the bolt (vajra) of Indra (RV III.43.7;IV.18.13; IX. 77.1) and the
mainstay or pillar of the sky (RV IX.2.5;IX.72.7).
[2] In the Vedas, soma was also an intoxicating liquid, pounded or pressed
out of the plant using special pressing stones (RV IX.11.5-6;IX.109.17-18),
filtered through wool, and presumably mixed with other ingredients. In
folklore thoughout Eurasia, it was found high in the mountains and was
associated with a magical bird, serpents and eggs; its sudden appearance
after a storm, led to an association with thunder and lightning, since many
early peoples believed that mushrooms appeared where lightning hit the
ground (7). Curiously, the presence of urine in the myths Wasson examined
was taken as one of the "markers" of the Amanita cult. Unlike many other
hallucinogens, the active ingredients in Amanita muscaria pass unmetabolized
through the kidneys of the ingester. As a result, that person's urine is as
potent as the mushroom itself, a circumstance which led to the recyling of
urine in those cultures which used Amanita for magico-religious purposes,
and perhaps to the sanctity of urine in Indo-Iranian tradition (8).
In nature, this mushroom grows only in a mychorrizal relationship with
certain trees: aspen, beech, birch, fir, larch, oak, pine and several
others. It has thus far resisted attempts to grow it in a laboratory.
Besides humans, two other animals, the deer and the raven, are known to
relish this mushroom. The raven's love of Amanita muscaria was noted in
antiquity: in ancient Egypt the Amanita muscaria mushroom was called
"Raven's bread" (9).
Wasson's identification of soma with the Amanita muscaria mushroom has not
won universal acceptance. It was embraced by some, including the orientalist
Harold Bailey, the linguist Roman Jakobson, and the mycologist Roger Heim,
but others (including Wasson's co-author, the Sanskritist Wendy Doniger
O'Flaherty) were not convinced. The latter remarked years later:
My own work, however, was leading me toward another sort of hypothesis
entirely: it did not really matter what Soma was, since it was lost so early
in history; what actually played so important a part in Vedic civilization
was the idea of Soma. Indeed, my more recent collaborations with Brian K.
Smith on the subject of substitutions in the Vedic sacrifice have inclined
me in the direction of Smith's hypothesis that there may never have been an
original Soma plant at all, and that all of Soma's "substitutes" (including,
perhaps, the fly-agaric mushroom) were surrogates for a mythical plant that
never existed save in the minds of the priests. (10)
Wasson was challenged most recently by another collaborative work, Haoma and
Harmaline, The Botanical Identity of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen
"Soma" and its Legacy in Religion, Language, and Middle Eastern Folklore, by
David S. Flattery and Martin Schwartz, Near Eastern Studies (volume 21) (Los
Angeles, 1989). The authors described their study as a "vindication of
Jones's original proposition" (of 1794) (11) and argued that it was not a
mushroom which was the Indian soma and the Iranian haoma but the plant
Peganum harmala, especially the seeds, containing the hallucinogen
harmaline. The work of Flattery and Schwartz is a fascinating, scholarly
study which, without a doubt, has raised the level of ethnobotanical
research. Nonetheless, it is doubtful that either author actually
experimented with Peganum harmala. Had they done so, they would have
concluded that by itself Peganum harmala could not have merited the
encomiums lavished on soma/haoma in the Vedas (12). It is, however,
noteworthy that to this day, Peganum harmala is used as a "potentiator" for
psychoactive mushrooms. It is quite likely that ancient Iranians had also
discovered this quality of Peganum harmala, and that their haoma
preparations exploited it.
[3] Wasson's greatest contribution, in our view, was not his identification
of soma with the Amanita muscaria mushroom. Rather, it was the attention he
drew to the role of fungi in humankind's earliest history. In Wasson's view,
religion had its birth in the awe-inspiring effects of first accidental then
deliberate ingestion of these hallucinogens. Why was it that certain trees
were revered by our early ancestors? Wasson suggested that in many cases the
trees were sacred because of the hallucinogenic mushrooms that grew at their
bases, or the fungi which grew on their trunks (13). Such trunk fungi, known
as polyphores, were used since remote antiquity for their medicinal
qualities and as tinder ("spunk", "punk", Arm. abet') (14).
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
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Yelps
By
Mike Crowley
(A copy of the handout at SOMA meeting 3/15/01)
The AryansAbout 3,500 years ago, a migratory, cattle-herding people crossed
over the high passes from what is now Afghanistan and discovered the rich
plains of the Indian subcontinent. They came from the same stock as most of
the present-day Europeans and originated, it is thought, on the steppes
between the Caucasus Mountains and the Caspian Sea. Their name for
themselves was Arya, which means "noble" or "hospitable". We know little of
them before this point in their history but when they reached India they
began to write. They wrote down their sacred songs, about the Gods and
about soma: the celestial chink which conferred immortality upon the Gods
and by means of which mere mortals become Gods.
They were not alone in India, however. An advanced indigenous culture,
possibly related to that of Sumeria in Mesopotamia, flourished in the Indus
Valley, producing the magnificent cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro (c.
2,800 BCE to c. 1,500 BCE). It has been remarked that these cities not only
resemble Sumer's Ur and Babylon but that they seem to have taken the
Sumerian cities as models and improved upon them. The people who inhabited
these cities are thought to have been Dravidian. That is, members of an
ethnic group now found mostly in the southern parts of the Indian
sub-continent and Sri Lanka, the members -of which have very dark
complexions and speak one of a number of related languages including Tamil,
Telugu and Malayalam.The most ancient texts of the Hindu religion are the
four books known as the Vedas and among these the collection of hymns known
as the Rig Veda is said to be the earliest. This could make it the world's
oldest religious text still in regular use. It is believed to have existed
for many centuries as an unwritten oral tradition and thus it is difficult
to date precisely but estimates of its age range from 2,500 to 1,500 B.C.E.
It was during this period that the Aryan, cattle-herding invaders conquered
and settled Northern India bringing with them their religion, their
mythology and their culture.The drugMuch of the Rig Veda (and all of the
Soma Veda) is concerned with the ritual consumption of a psychoactive drug
called soma. Despite its extensive hymns of praise to this drug (all of the
114 verses of the 9th chapter and several verses elsewhere), the Rigveda
alludes to it only obliquely with much use of word-play and elaborate poetic
tropes. Though the texts provide no explicit descriptions, certain elements
of the methods of preparation and use of soma may be inferred.
Unfortunately, the most vital detail the identity of the drug - is the
most obscure.What is apparent is that soma was a plant and that its
consumption produced an ecstatic mental state but this information hardly
narrows the field of candidates as there are thousands of psychoactive
plants with psychedelic, intoxicant, narcotic or deliriant effects. The
Vedas also indicate that the plant was found on mountain-sides and gathered
by moonlight and that it was consumed in the form of a liquid which was
expressed from the plant and then mixed with milk and/or butter. It seems to
have been used only as part of a fire-ritual. A golden liquid was expressed
from the plant material with "soma-stones", filtered through wool and
collected in a large bowl or "vat". In the course of this ritual a portion
of the soma potion was used as a libation and was "sacrificed" to the
flames. The remainder of the soma-liquid was apportioned among the
celebrants who received it in individual bowls.Occasionally in the Vedas,
and frequently in post-Vedic literature such as the story of the "churning
of the ocean", the soma-liquid is known as amrita. This is especially so in
the literature of Buddhism where the name soma is almost unknown. Soma is
also the name of a god, considered by Hindus to be the divine
personification both of the soma-drug and of the moon. The moon was thought
to be the receptacle of soma from which it is consumed (presumably over a
monthly period) by the gods and ancestors.Compared to the Brahmanic rituals
of later eras this fire-ritual was a very simple affair which has more in
common with shamanic practices than the elaborate structures of organized
religion. There are three main gods invoked in the Rigveda: Agni (god of
fire), Soma (moon-god and personification of the soma drug), and Indra
(sky-god and king of the gods). As the Rigveda states that (a) Indra enjoys
the effects of soma and that (b) he who consumes the soma potion becomes
god-like, perhaps it would not be straining the symbolism too far to say
that in these three gods we have the three basic elements of the ritual,
Agni (the sacrificial flames), Soma (the sacrificial offering) and Indra
(the celebrant, rendered "divine" by the consumption of soma).That the
ritual is of Aryan origin rather than an indigenous Indian one is attested
to by the existence of the similar haoma fire ritual in ancient Persia and
in the Zoroastrian (Parsi) religion. The Indian fire-ritual was, in later
times, taken up by Tantric Buddhists and, as a part of Vajrayana Buddhism,
was carried into Tibet, Mongolia, China and even as far as Japan where it is
known as goma.Readers familiar with Hindu mythology will know the popular
legend of "the churning of the ocean". This tale explains how soma came into
being and versions of it are to be found in the Vishnu Purana, the
Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The three sources differ in their details but,
briefly, the story is as follows: The gods had been defeated by the asuras
and appealed to Vishnu for advice. He counselled them that they should unite
with their enemies and together they should churn the ocean which, at that
time, was composed of milk. First they scattered various herbs in the ocean,
then, taking Mt. Mandara as a churning-stick they wound the naga-king Vasuki
around it as a churning-rope. The gods and asuras took opposite ends of the
great serpent and heaved back and forth. Many wonderful treasures then came
forth from the ocean, the first of which being amrita (in Hindu texts this
is often used as a synonym for soma). All versions of the story also feature
a virulent poison (variously called kalakuta, khalakuta or visha), in some
it is said that it is another product of churning the ocean, others say that
the strain on Vasuki caused him to vomit it up. However, Shiva saves the day
by drinking the poison and retaining it in his throat, which turns blue as a
result. Thus Shiva acquires the epithet Nilakanta ("blue-throat"). [Dowson,
p. 167]
The mysterySomehow, no one knows quite why, the soma-drug mysteriously fell
into disuse subsequent to the Vedic period. Instead, the brahmin priests
concentrated on the punctilious observation of ritual performance of the
fire-ritual. Punctilious, that is, in every respect except the magical
ingredient alluded to repeatedly in the Vedas. For some reason, soma became
merely a philosophical concept rather than a living reality. The word was
often used to mean any burnt offering - that which was fed to the flames of
the ritual fire and, by extension, soma also meant the contents of the
material world, which are all eventually consumed, as if by fire. Yet again,
the word soma was used to mean a "life-force" which was thought to sustain
all plant-life.
For centuries the actual identity of the physical soma plant sung of in the
Vedas held little interest for Sanskrit scholars. Even the Brahmin pandits
who sang these Vedic texts showed scant interest in the topic. Those who did
feel inclined to comment on the subject suggested non-psychoactive plants
(such as rhubarb) or averred that soma was simply alcohol. In recent years,
as western scholars have realized the widespread (one might almost say
ubiquitous) use of psychoactive drugs in the spiritual practices of
traditional cultures, the identity of soma has become the subject of lively
debate. Among others plants, it has been suggested that it was the mushroom
Amanita muscaria (sometimes called the Fly Agaric mushroom) [Wasson et al.],
or Peganum harmala (Syrian Rue) [Flattery and Schwartz] or a species of
Stropharia mushroom [McKenna, p. 166].
So why did the original soma disappear from the fire ritual? Wasson suggests
that as the Aryans migrated south into the Indus Valley, they left behind
the prime habitats for Amanita muscaria. This mushroom grows in woodland,
forming a symbiotic or "mycorrhizal" relationship with a tree such as birch
or pine and birch trees are seldom, if ever, seen on the hot Indian plains.
Those birch groves which are to be found in India are at fairly high
elevations. This high country was, at least in the initial period of Aryan
occupation, controlled predominantly by Dravidian hill-tribes.
This raises an intriguing possibility regarding the legend of the "Churning
of the Ocean". Does it, then, represent a mythologised treatment of a
political reality? Was war between Aryan and Dravidian resolved by
cooperation in the trade of the Amanita muscaria mushroom?
A suggested solution
In 1957, an article in Life magazine featured a lengthy article on a New
York banker and amateur mycologist called R. Gordon Wasson. This article
revealed that Wasson and his wife Valentina had been introduced to a cult
using psychedelic mushrooms in Oaxaca, Mexico by a Mazatec curandera called
Maria Sabina. Although the use of psychoactive mushrooms was reported by
Father Sahagun in the 16th century, the existence of such a cult was
previously unsuspected. Sahagun's account had been disregarded by modern
scholars until the Wassons' account. Their discovery spurred the Wassons to
inquire into the possibility of other mushroom-based religious cults in
other parts of the world, culminating in his seminal work "SOMA: The Divine
Mushroom of Immortality" in 1966. This work was the first to identify soma
with the Amanita muscaria mushroom. Wasson presented several arguments
[Wasson et al. I for Amanita muscaria being the soma-plant, the chief of
which are:
*Soma is clearly a plant yet no leaves, roots or branches are mentioned in
the Vedas.
*Vedic synonyms for soma include terms which suggest a mushroom.
*The Rig Veda describes the soma-plant as "tawny".
*The Rig Veda mentions urine in connection with soma.
Addressing each of these points in turn:
*Soma is clearly a plant yet no leaves, roots or branches are mentioned in
the Vedas.
This is, on the face of it, a fairly weak argument. Yet, given the Vedas'
extensive use of poetic trope, if soma were a plant one would expect it to
be addressed as "many-leaved", "slender-branched", "stout- stemmed" or
something of that nature.
*Vedic synonyms for soma include terms which suggest a mushroom.
The term aja ekapad ("not-born, one-foot") suggests a mushroom which,
springing up mysteriously without visible seed, could be said to be
"not-born". Likewise, if thought of anthropomorphically, its stipe (stem)
could be conceived of as "one-foot". Conversely, as the word aja
("not-born") is the same as aja meaning "goat", the term aja ekapad could be
translated as "one-legged goat". Surprising as it may seem, this is the
conventional translation even though it makes far less sense than Wasson's
suggestion.
*The Rig Veda describes the soma-plant as "tawny".
The Sanskrit color-word in question is hari. This rather vague term is
asserted by Wasson to encompass a range of colors from bright red to
tawny-brown. While these are not colors normally associated with vascular
plants they quite accurately describe the colors of A. muscaria both when
fresh (bright red) and dried (tawny-brown). Wassons critics have suggested
that hari might have indicated a much wider range of colors, however,
including green.
*The Rig Veda mentions urine in connection with soma.
The significance of this last point is obscure and relies on a peculiar
property of Amanita muscaria: the urine of someone who has eaten this
mushroom is itself intoxicating. Wasson saw this as a crucial and specific
indicator of this mushroom. His assertions regarding Vedic references to
urine and soma were considered unconvincing by many of his critics who said
that simply soma + urine is not enough to suggest A. muscaria. What they
required was soma + urine + drinking, and it is to this subject of urine-
drinking in connection with soma that we now turn.
Urine drinking
Among the various Siberian peoples who use Amanita muscaria as a cultural
norm, there exists a curious practice whereby the urine of one who has
consumed the mushroom is drunk by another who consequently becomes
inebriated. The urine of this person may then be drunk by another and so on,
the procedure being repeated up to five or six times. The reason for this
practice is that A. muscaria contains ibotenic acid which, when the carboxyl
radical is removed from the molecule, yields the psychoactive molecule
muscimole [Ott, p. 327]. The metabolic process of decarboxylation which
effects this transformation within the user's liver is very inefficient. In
fact, it is so inefficient that approximately 85% of the lbotenic acid
ingested (more than enough to inebriate further users) passes through the
body unchanged and is excreted in the urine [Ott, p. 328]. To put it
another way, the urine contains more than five times as much of the drug as
the body can assimilate.
This unsavory yet economical practice is well-documented among certain
Siberian tribes where A. muscaria is widely used in both shamanic and
ludibund contexts [von Bibra, p. 75]. Of all known traditions of drug use
this practice of recycling the urine is unique to A. muscaria consumption
and should be considered a highly significant indicator of this mushroom.
The Rig Veda contains one passage in which urine and soma are mentioned
together. Wasson seized upon this to support his hypothesis:
Acting in concert, those charged with the office, richly gifted, do full
homage to Soma. The swollen men piss the flowing (soma). [O'Flaherty, p.
123]
Vedic urine, Buddhist soma
While many of Wasson's arguments seemed persuasive, some scholars expressed
reservations, particularly in regard to urine-drinking. In particular,
though the phrase "the swollen men piss the flowing" may refer to soma, it
is not mentioned explicitly. Further-more, it merely refers to urination,
not urine-drinking. If we were to consider modern, literary accounts of
beer-drinking we would undoubtedly find many references to urination. We
might even, in the British literature, find many references to embarking on
a drinking bout as "going on the piss". The connection between beer and
urination, is therefore valid and incontrovertible yet who would be so
foolish as to infer that this represents a tradition of urine-quaffing among
British beer-drinkers?
If, therefore, we could find references to actual urine-drinking in the
context of soma-use then Wasson's hypothesis would gain considerably in
credibility. It is just such evidence which I will present below, although
the word soma is not used explicitly, rather the Tibetan translation of its
synonym, amrita.
The vajrayana ("thunderbolt-" or "diamond-vehicle") movement of Buddhism
developed as an outgrowth of Mahayana Buddhism. While accepting the
mahayana's radical philosophy of voidness the vajrayana rejected its
timescale. According to the mahayana, one attains enlightenment by
accumulating good karma, especially in regard to the "two wings of
enlightenment" - compassion and wisdom. This process of accumulation is not
easily achieved as it is believed to take many thousands, even millions, of
lifetimes. By contrast, the vajrayana's claim that it offered enlightenment
in this very lifetime was an attractive alternative. It took a pragmatic
approach to practice, adopting anything that worked, especially delighting
in shock tactics and the deliberate shattering of cultural taboos. Its
teachers were often charismatic yogins who lived in cemeteries and smeared
their near-naked bodies with ashes from funeral pyres, though we also read
of gurus who were craftsmen, housewives, scholars, courtesans and kings.
A large number of tantras (arcane and obscurely symbolic scriptures, all of
which are completely unknown to other Buddhist sects) are revered by the
Vajrayana yet the essential points of its teachings were transmitted, in
conditions of great secrecy, in an oral lineage from teacher to student.
The tantras use scandalous images and terminology as symbols to convey the
most sublime philosophy. Even their name is an impertinent pun on the word
sutra, the name given to the Buddha's lectures. Whereas the word sutra
literally means "thread", tantra means "weave" thus implying a further
dimension to its teachings.
It has recently become apparent that Amanita muscaria was in use among at
least some of the siddhas (adepts) of Vajrayana Buddhism in mediaeval India
[Hajicek-Dobberstein]. During this period (approximately 500 - 1000 CE),
Buddhism was introduced to Tibet, becoming its state religion, with
Vajrayana as the prevalent form. During the subsequent decline of Buddhism
in India, most of Sanskrit originals of the Buddhist literature were lost.
But as countless texts were brought from India and translated from Sanskrit
into Tibetan, Tibet has preserved much of the Indian Buddhist tradition,
even those parts which no longer have any use or meaning. It is not
surprising, therefore, that we should find evidence of lost Indian
traditions in Tibetan sources.
Despite Buddhism's numerous exhortations to sobriety and its general
repudiation of the use of drugs, one occasionally finds references to
psychoactive substances as a means to enlightenment:
You can obtain Buddhahood: by taking a medicine pill which will make you
immortal like the sun and moon.... [Stewart, p. 53]
This is a rare reference to the little-known Vajrayana tradition of rasayana
(Skt: "alchemy"). Perhaps one of the most closely-guarded secrets of the
Tibetan lamas, very little on this subject has been made available to
Western scholars.
It is worth note that the enlightenment resulting from medicines is here
equated to immortality. This accords both with the literal meaning of amrita
("deathlessness") and with the legendary properties of soma. This appears to
be either a symbol for, or equivalent to, enlightenment as it has also been
stated that the intention of this tradition was
...the ingestion of drugs to strengthen the yogin and procure the siddhi for
him, as well as bringing him to the final goal. [Walter, p. 319]
There are two separate lineages of rasayana preserved in Tibet, one being
founded by Guru Rinpoche also known as Padmasambhava) and the other by his
contemporary, Vimalamitra. A few works on the subject, purportedly by Guru
Rinpoche and Vimalamitra themselves, survive. If these attributions are
correct then these writings would date from the 8th century CE. Neither of
these two masters was Tibetan but they had a profound effect on Tibetan
Buddhism. So much so, in fact, that Guru Rinpoche is still revered there as
a second Buddha.
Vajrapani drinks urine
A curious legend which tells of the origins of both amrita and of the
wrathful aspect of the Bodhisattva Vajrapani is told in "Buddhism in Tibet"
[Schlagintweit, pp. 114-117]. The legend is drawn from the Dri Med Zhel
Phreng (Tibetan: "The Immaculate Crystal Garland") a Tibetan work which,
presumably, is itself a translation of a Sanskrit original. Here is
Schlagintweit's translation:
The legend about Chakdor
Once upon a time the Buddhas all met together on the top of Mount Meru, to
deliberate upon the means of procuring the water of life, Dutsi, which lies
concealed at the bottom of the deep ocean. In their benevolence, they
intended, as soon as they obtained the water of life, to distribute it
amongst the human race as a powerful antidote against the strong poison
Hala, which the evil demons, at this period, had been using with such
mischievous effect against mankind.
In order to procure the antidote they determined to chum the ocean with the
mountain Meru, and so cause the water of life to rise to the surface of the
sea. This they did, and delivered the water of life to Vajrapani, with
orders to secure it safely until a future meeting, when they would impart it
to living beings. But the monster Rahu, a Lhamayin, happened to hear of this
precious discovery, and having carefully watched Vajrapani's movements,
seized an opportunity, in the absence of the latter, to drink the water of
life; not satisfied with this act, he even voided his water deliberately
into the vessel. He then hurried away as fast as possible, and had already
proceeded a great distance, when Vajrapani came home, and having perceived
the theft, instantly set out in pursuit of the culprit.
In the course of his flight Rahu had passed the sun and moon, whom he
menaced with vengeance, should they venture to betray him to Vajrapani. His
searches proving fruitless, Vajrapani betook himself to the sun, and asked
him about Rahu. But the sun replied evasively, saying that he had certainly
seen somebody passing a long time ago, but had paid no particular attention
as to who it was. The moon, on the other hand, returned a candid answer,
only requesting that Vajrapani would not repeat it before Rahu. Upon this
information Rahu was shortly afterwards overtaken, when he got such a
terrible blow from Vajrapani's scepter [i.e. vajra] that, besides receiving
many wounds, his body was split in two parts, the lower part of the body
with the legs being entirely blown off.
The Buddhas once more held a meeting, in which they deliberated upon the
best means of disposing of Rahu's urine. To pour it out would have been most
dangerous to human beings, as it contained a large quantity of the poison
Hala hala; they therefore determined that Vajrapani should drink it, in just
punishment for the carelessness through which the water of life was lost.
Accordingly he was forced to do so, when his fair, yellow complexion was
changed by the effects of this potion into a dark one. Vajrapani conceived,
from his transfiguration, a most violent rage against all evil demons, and
in particular against Rahu, who, notwithstanding his deadly wounds, was
prevented from dying by the water of life. This powerful water, however,
dropped from his wounds and fell all over the world, numerous medicinal
herbs springing up on the spots where it touched the soil.
A severe punishment was also inflicted upon Rahu by the Buddhas themselves;
they made a horrible monster of him, replaced his legs by the tall of a
dragon, formed nine different heads from his broken one, the principal
wounds were made into an enormous throat, and the lesser ones into so many
eyes. Rahu, who had ever distinguished himself from his fellow-beings by his
wickedness - in their earliest youth even the other gods had to suffer from
his malignity - became, after this transformation, more dreadful than he was
before.
His rage was turned especially towards the sun and the moon, who had
betrayed him. He is constantly trying to devour them, particularly the moon,
who displayed the most hostile disposition towards him. He overshadows them
whilst trying to devour them, and thus causes eclipses; but owing to
Vajrapani's unceasing vigilance, he cannot succeed in destroying them.
The water of life
The "water of life, Dutsi" of Schlagintweit's translation is obviously the
Tibetan bDud.rTsi phonetically rendered. This is the standard term used in
Tibetan to translate the Sanskrit amrita. Thus,
bDud.rTsi (piyusha, amrita sudha) 1. the food of the gods, nectar, the
potion that confers immortality... [Das]
Also, the equivalence of amrita and soma is well understood:
ANRITA... The water of life. The term was known to the Vedas, and seems to
have been applied to various things offered in sacrifice, but more
especially to the Soma juice. [Dowson, p. 12]
An objection may be made that amrita (or, more precisely, bDud.rTsi) as
understood by Tibetan Buddhism is not the same as the amrita of the Hindus,
that it means simply medicine and is used purely as a symbol for
enlightenment. This was certainly the case during the earliest phase of
Buddhism. For instance, the celebrated conversation between the Hellenistic
king "Milinda" and the monk Nagasena relates a parable in which the Buddha
is alleged to have established shops of various kinds including a flower
shop, a perfume shop, a fruit shop, a medicine shop, a herb shop, an
"ambrosia" (i.e. amrita) shop, a jewellery shop and a general store. Each of
these in turn is then described and interpreted symbolically. Here is the
description of "The Ambrosia-shop of the Buddha":
"Reverend Nagasena, what is the Ambrosia-shop of the Exalted One, the
Buddha?"
An Ambrosia, great king, has been proclaimed by the Exalted One, and with
this Ambrosia that Exalted One sprinkles the world of men and the World of
the Gods; and sprinkled with this Ambrosia, both gods and men have obtained
deliverance from Birth, Old Age, Disease, Death, and from sorrow,
lamentation, suffering, dejection, and despair. What is this Ambrosia? It is
Meditation on the Body.
Moreover, great king, this has been said by the Exalted One, god over gods:
"Ambrosia, 0 monks, do they enjoy who enjoy Meditation on the Body."
This, great king, is what is meant by the Ambrosia-shop of the Buddha.
Afflicted with disease he saw mankind, and opened an Ambrosia-shop. "With
Kamma, monks, come, buy and eat Ambrosia. [Burlingame, p. 237]
Thus we clearly see that, at least for Nagasena, the only connection between
ambrosia (amrita) and Buddhism was a symbolic one. The Buddhism of his
period had no use for the actual substance, there were no initiation rituals
and no yogic circles in which a substance called amrita was imbibed. This
came much later, in the Vajrayana, Buddhism's tantric phase. On the other
hand, it seems, from Nagasena's parable, that there actually were "ambrosia
shops", places where something called "ambrosia" could be bought and,
perhaps also, consumed.
Undoubtedly, the striking parallels between "The legend about Chakdor" and
the Hindu legend of the origin of soma show that the Buddhist amrita and the
Hindu soma were at one time understood to be identical. Moreover, the
principal property of amrita is, to this day, perceived by Buddhists as
being a species of inebriation, however symbolically this inebriation may be
interpreted. Why else would beer (Tibetan chhang, "barley beer") be used by
yogins as a symbolic substitute for amrita [Ardussi]? Conversely, why else
would the term bDud.rTsi be used as a poetic synonym for beer?
Initiations
The late Chogyam Trungpa, a celebrated apologist for Tibetan Buddhism,
explained the function which amrita plays in the initiation process:
amrita... is used in conferring the second abhisheka, the secret abhisheka.
This transmission dissolves the student's mind into the mind of the teacher
of the lineage. In general, amrita is the principle of intoxicating extreme
beliefs, belief in ego, and dissolving the boundary between confusion and
sanity so that coemergence can be realized. [Trungpa, p. 236]
This passage underscores the fact that amrita, despite the innocuous
composition of the modern formulation which goes by this name, is understood
primarily as an inebriant. Moreover, the allusions to ego-loss and the
"dissolving the boundary between confusion and sanity" imply that amrita was
originally a powerfully psychedelic substance and was used as such in the
context of Buddhist initiations.
The potion which is called amrita in modern Tibetan Buddhist initiations is
a weak infusion of various medicinal and marginally psychoactive herbs.
Curiously, it is usually colored with saffron. Considering the high price of
saffron, one wonders why it is used. Could it be that it is there merely to
give the amrita the appearance of urine?
Yakshas, nagas and asuras
"The Legend About Chakdor" assumes that we are familiar with the rivalry
between the gods (devas) and the asuras. The Sanskrit word asura has several
degrees of meaning ranging from an autochthonous demon to a semi-divine,
god-like being. It is this latter meaning which is most frequently implied
in Buddhist texts. They are believed to be jealous enemies of the devas
(Hindu gods which are recognized in the Buddhist cosmology) and may be
considered as functionally equivalent to the Titans who, in Greek myth,
oppose the Olympian gods. The asuras may well be remnants of a pre-Aryan
class of deities. In this instance, as the status of Rahu seems to be
demonic rather than semi-divine one might suppose that this legend preserves
elements from an early period when the local, non-Aryan deities posed more
of a threat. One (Hindu) account of the origin of the word asura is that the
first wine (sura) was one of the products of churning the ocean. The gods
(sura) partook of it but the anti-gods refused it, thus they are a-sura
(literally, "no- wine").[Danielou, p. 140] If we assume that the asuras
indeed represent the indigenous gods of India, then this myth may reflect
the differing drug-preferences of the invading Aryans and the indigenous
(Dravidian) peoples.
The definitive exposition of the Mahayana Buddhist philosophy, the sutra
called the "Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Verses", contains the earliest
reference to Vajrapani. He is described as a yaksha who protects those pious
householders who follow the bodhisattva path. The yakshas are classed along
with the asuras in Mndu legends as malign spirits and, like the asuras, are
thought to represent a vestige of the earlier, Dravidian, religion.
Incidentally, nagas are often considered to be another of the classes of
asura. Thus, "The Legend About Chakdor" contains references to three classes
of autochthonous entities: Vajrapani is a yaksha (albeit one who has
converted to Buddhism), Rahu is an asura and his legs are replaced with the
tail of a naga. All three are considered to be enemies of the gods and,
curiously, all three are associated with soma.
The connection of asuras, yakshas and nagas to soma/amrita is not
immediately obvious but it is of considerable antiquity. For instance,
although the Rig Veda refers to soma as a god, it/he is also said to be an
asura:
Soma, the generous asura, knows the world. [O'Flaherty, p. 123]
Furthermore, asuras are frequently associated with amrita in folklore and
legend. Take, for example, this passage from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali:
Perfections proceed from birth or from drugs or from spells or from
self-castigation or from concentration. [Woods, p. 347]
This passage is fascinating in itself but, in the context of the
asura/amrita connection, the traditional commentary by Vyasa is even more
so:
He describes the perfection which proceeds from drugs. A human being, when
for some cause or other he reaches the mansions of the demons (asura), and
when he makes use of elixirs of life brought to him by the lovely damsels of
the demons, attains to agelessness and to deathlessness and to other
perfections. Or (this perfection may be had) by the use of an elixir-of-life
in this very world. So for instance the sage Mandavya, who dwelt on the
Vindhyas and who made use of potions. [Woods, p. 347]
This ancient connection between amrita and the world of the asuras was so
widely understood that even in 17th-century Tibet it could be taken for
granted:
Also, there was a farmer who took Tara as his meditation deity. When he dug
in the earth and cried "Phu! Phu!" the gate of Patala itself opened.
Entering the place of the Nagas, he drank the amrita he found there. Thus,
he became like a rainbow body. [Taranatha, p. 37]
A similar example of the stereotypical correlation of yakshas to amrita
occurs in the following. This is especially relevant to Vajrapani, given his
yaksha origins.
Again, there was a sadhaka who practiced the sadhana of Tara. He sat beside
the roots of a bimba tree and repeated mantras. On one occasion, in the
early morning, he saw a narrow lane in front of him which had not been there
previously. He entered this and followed along the way. By nightfall, he
found himself in the midst of a delightful forest and here he saw a golden
house. When he entered it, he encountered the Yakshini Kali, who was the
servant of the Yaksha Natakubera. She was adorned with every kind of
ornament and her body was of an indefinite color. She addressed him, "O
sadhaka, since you have come here, you must eat of the elixir," and she
placed in his hands a vessel filled with nectar. He remained for one month,
drinking the elixir, and thereafter his body became free of death and
rebirth. [Taranatha, p. 38]
Rahu's Urine
At last we turn to the oddest, and yet most crucial, element of the
Vajrapani myth: he drinks Rahu's urine and, as a result becomes terrifying,
blue and adorned with snakes. Here we have our sought-for connection between
soma (albeit under the synonym bDud.rTsi) and urine-drinking.
Despite the fact that urine-drinking is an integral part of Siberian Amanita
muscaria consumption we should not take this practice, in itself, to
indicate the use of A. muscaria without further substantiating factors.
After all, many people in modern India drink their own urine purely for
health reasons. However, it should be clearly understood that, of all known
drugs in use worldwide, only A. muscaria has the practice of urine drinking
associated with it as a cultural norm. This practice has its basis in the
fact that, due to the highly inefficient conversion of ibotenic acid into
muscimole within the body, the urine of one who has ingested A. muscaria is
almost as potent a drug as the mushroom itself. Moreover, ibotenic acid is
found only in the A. muscaria mushroom and in a very similar species called
A. pantherina. Among psychoactive mushrooms, this property is unique to A.
muscaria. Thus, if one were to drink the urine of someone who has just
ingested, say, a mushroom which contains psilocybin, its drug effect would
not be passed on to the urine-drinker.
It should be borne in mind that, while psychoactive plants which share this
property of passing useable amounts of its drug into the user's urine are
relatively rare, they do exist. Amanita muscaria is not unique in this
regard. There are, for instance, several species of cactus which contain
mescaline. However, despite the fact that about 80% of ingested mescaline
is excreted with the urine, there have been no reports of urine- drinking
associated with the peyote (Anhalonium lewinii) cults of North America nor
with the San Pedro (Trichocereus pachanoi) cult of Peru. This is somewhat
surprising as urine, even someone else's, is probably a lot more palatable
than the intensely bitter peyote cactus. There are, of course, no Old World
plants which contain mescaline.
So, given the context in which Vajrapani drinks the urine of one has just
drunk a powerfully inebriating potion, we should strongly suspect that
Amanita muscaria is implicated. In the light of Wasson's contention that
soma was A. muscaria, the urine-drinking element of "The Legend About
Chakdor" assumes considerable significance.
Vajrayana and Tibet
Until recently all research into the sacramental use of Amanita muscaria in
India focused on Hinduism, in particular Vedic Hinduism. A recent paper
[Hajicek-Dobberstein] argued persuasively that a tradition of its use also
existed among the siddhas (yogic adepts) of Vajrayana Buddhism.
As we have already noted, a potion called amrita is, even to this day, an
essential part of Vajrayana initiations and in the Vajrayana's central
ritual, the ganachakra. In both contexts, its function is to remove the
belief in the personal ego and to dissolve the boundary between the guru and
the student undergoing the initiation. It would seem obvious from this
description that a profoundly psychedelic substance is implied here. The
modern concoction is mainly symbolic, however, and consists of a few herbal
pills dissolved in water or alcohol. This may be because the
initiation-lineages of the present day are exclusively monastic; even though
the initiations may be given to lay-practitioners they were originally
intended for monks and nuns. Very few texts have survived which relate to
the tantric initiation of lay-practitioners and it is quite likely that
these would have differed profoundly from the restrained rituals of monastic
communities.
Thanks to the Tibetans' exaggerated respect for Buddhism's Indian origins,
that which has been preserved has been preserved very faithfully. The
arguments put forward in monastic debate, for instance, are those which were
propounded in India, as long ago as the 1st century C.E. The hollowness of
the stalk of the banana plant is a common simile used by Tibetan lamas to
explain the concept of "emptiness". Most Tibetans before the recent diaspora
had never seen a banana plant, nevertheless the example was used because it
was the one which had worked for the great teachers of the distant past in
the holy land of India. It is this tendency to preserve even that which is
incomprehensible which makes Tibetan Buddhism something of a museum. Thus in
the Tibetan Buddhist traditions we may view, "through a glass, darkly", some
of the practices of ancient India. Let us see if we cannot piece together
some clues from the surviving histories.
Tibet's most illustrious yogin was Milarepa (Tib. Mi.La.Ras.Pa: "Mila the
cotton-clad"). A hermit of the 11th century C.E., he lived in remote caves
in the Himalayas and was renowned for his mastery of the "inner heat" (Tib:
gTum.Mo; Skt: Chandali). His guru was Marpa, a famous translator and
patriarch of the Tibetan Kagyud lineage. Marpa had traveled to India and had
studied with many of the great yogins of his day including Maitripa and
Kukkuripa who was said to have lived on an island in a lake of poison. His
main teacher, however, was the great Indian scholar and yogin Naropa who
conferred upon him the initiation of Hevajra and taught him the celebrated
"Six Yogas".
Here is a passage from Milarepa's biography:
Then Gambopa brewed the tea and brought it to the Jetsun [i.e. Milarepa,
saying, "Please accept this offering, this symbol of my veneration for you".
Milarepa accepted it with delight. He said to Rechungpa, "We should offer
this monk some tea in return. Now go and collect a little from every Repa
here." Accordingly, Rechungpa [did so and] prepared the tea. Milarepa
continued, "Now we need some seasoning." Saying this, he made water in the
pot, making the tea extraordinarily delicious. [Chang, p. 475]
Having thus consumed Milarepa's urine Rechungpa was then given an initiation
by him into the practice of the (red) goddess Vajravarahi ("Thunderbolt
sow") in the "mandala painted in cinnabar" (a red mineral). Although he had
received other initiations from other gurus, Rechungpa considered this one
the most profound and meaningful of all. Although there is no explicit
mention of Amanita muscaria in this passage, it would provide a rationale
for an otherwise inexplicable action. I find it difficult to believe that a
guru's urine, no matter how enlightened the guru, would render tea
"extraordinarily delicious". Could it be that the tea was used as a form of
amrita, the dank which is an essential part of all Vajrayana initiations.
This possibility seems more likely when we consider other initiations in
which urine was explicitly substituted for amrita.
Let us consider the case of Kyungpo Naljor (Tib. K'yung.Po rNal.'Byor,
"Garuda yogin"), another yogin of pivotal importance in the dissemination of
the tantric siddha schools in Tibet. He was a Tibetan master roughly
contemporaneous with Milarepa, who brought teachings back from India and
founded the Shangpa Kagyud lineage. His guru was Niguma, the sister (and
also, some say, the consort) of Naropa, thus his lineage is related to, but
not identical with, that of Marpa and Milarepa. Like Rechungpa, his
initiation was conferred after drinking urine:
The siddha Kyungpo Naljor realized the nature of empowerment when the dakini
Niguma poured a skullcup of secret water and pointed a finger at his heart.
The siddha Orgyenpa realized the nature of empowerment when a yogini in the
form of a courtesan gave him a bowl of soup.
There is also the story that the terton Guru Chowang placed a piece of
excrement on the top of the head of the Nepalese man, Baro Vihardhara, and
poured urine into his mouth. Through this, Baro remained in undefiled
coemergent wisdom for seven days and was liberated...
Dampa Gom-mon, who transmitted the Pacifying Practice, gave Chupa Dartson a
cup of tea and a large bag of tsampa [roast barley flour], saying "This is a
substitute for the empowerment ritual," whereby Chupa Dartson received the
blessings and attained realization equal to that of his master.
Countless such stories abound... [Rangdrol, p. 38]
Each of these initiations entails drinking some kind of liquid. This is only
to be expected, as the use of a potion called amrita is central to most
Vajrayana initiations. Indeed, many lamas insist that without the ingestion
of some kind of substance an initiation is not complete, the three essential
components of an initiation being
1) the substance to be eaten or, more usually, drunk,
2) the visualization of the deity, and
3) the mantra of that deity.
Given the powerful effects which amrita is expected to elicit within the
context of these initiations (see Initiations above), it is only reasonable
to assume that, originally, these liquids contained a psychedelic substance.
It is especially worthy of note that the "secret water" referred to by
Rangdrol is glossed by his commentator as "urine" and, in the case of Baro
Vihardhara it is explicitly stated that the initiatory liquid is urine. Guru
Chowang may have placed "a piece of excrement on his head" (presumably
substituting it for the vajra used in the normal version of the ritual) but
it was urine (representing amrita) which he poured into his mouth.
Again, as in the case of Milarepa, Amanita muscaria is not explicitly
mentioned in any of these descriptions but the conferral of initiation after
drinking the guru's urine is so suggestive of its use that this theme
demands further investigation.
Etymology
As we have seen, the "Dutsi" of "The legend about Chakdor" is a phonetic
rendition of the Tibetan bDud.rTsi, the term which translates the Sanskrit
amrita, an alternative term for soma. The Tibetan vocabulary which was used
to translate Buddhist texts from Sanskrit was highly standardized. So much
so, in fact, that the Tibetan translators even went as far as to invent
linguistic devices for features of Sanskrit grammar (such as the "dual
number") which were not present in Tibetan. Thus we can be certain that
wherever we encounter bDud.rTsi in a Tibetan translation the original
Sanskrit would have been amrita.
If we were to select a Tibetan word which would most accurately translate
the Sanskrit amrita ("no death", "immortality") into Tibetan we should
probably choose the word 'Chi.Med ("death-less"). This word is frequently
found as a personal name for both men and women but it is seldom used in
Buddhist texts as the translation of amrita, and then only as a component of
proper names. Instead, the word which is invariably used to translate the
Sanskrit amrita into Tibetan is bDud.rTsi. This breaks down into two
syllables, the second of which (rTsi) is simply the common word for "juice".
The first syllable (bDud) is more problematic. If taken literally, this
means "demon" and it is the word which normally translates the Sanskrit word
mara ("evil").
As a personal name, Mara is the name of the demon who tempted Shakyamuni
Buddha immediately prior to his enlightenment. Thus, the words mara and bDud
are frequently used to mean an obstacle to enlightenment. As names for a
drink which confers eternal life, "demon juice" and "obstacle juice" are
hardly, on the face of it, obvious choices. How may we account for its
etymology?
It is possible that the early Tibetan translators attempted to preserve the
linguistic connection between the words mara and amrita as these words share
a common root: ?mi, meaning "die", "death". These translators, however,
tended to follow the contemporary Indian Buddhist usage and attempted rather
more hermeneutic interpretations of Sanskrit technical terms. So, while it
is possible that the early Tibetan translators used the term bDud.rTsi for
etymological reasons, I think it most unlikely as it would be an exception
to their standard practices.
Then again, one might consider bDud to be a corruption of 'Dud (meaning "to
press" or "to collect"), both words having an identical pronunciation. Thus
bDud.rTsi would mean "expressed juice" or "collected juice".
This etymology, although not borne out by the use of 'Dud in other word
formations, would seem rather apposite as the Sanskrit word soma itself
derives from the root ?su meaning "press" or "extract", reflecting the Vedic
practices of expressing the juice of the soma plant.
In the light of The Legend About Chakdor, however, we cannot ignore the
serious possibility that the term "demon juice" may allude to the episode
when Vajrapani drank second-hand bDud.rTsi. In other words, it may be a
polite way of saying "asura's urine".
Some Reservations
Despite the evidence presented above that the soma which is spoken of in the
Rig Veda and the amrita of the Vairayana Buddhists was a decoction of the
Amanita muscaria mushroom there is evidence that, in other contexts, other
psychoactive plants may also have qualified for the title of soma. Many
Vajrayana rituals call for the "five amritas". Could these have been five
separate constituents of a psychoactive concoction?
In passing it may be worth mentioning that the Tibetan word for Cannabis and
its drug products is So.Ma.Ra.Dza. This appears to be a direct borrowing
from the Sanskrit soma-raja (Eng.: "King soma", "Royal soma"). The term
soma-raja is glossed as "king soma, the moon" in Monier-Williams' Sanskrit
dictionary although the Rig Veda, in its hymns of praise to the drug, refers
to it frequently as "King soma" (8.48.8, 8.79.8 etc.) [O'Flaherty, pp. 121,
135, et passim.]. It would thus appear that either Cannabis was used as a
soma-substitute or that the identification of soma with psychoactive plants
in general was once recognized in India and that this tradition is preserved
in Tibet.
One plant-derived drug which has not yet been suggested as a candidate for
soma is camphor. Admittedly, camphor is a mild stimulant rather than an
psychedelic but its consumption as a drug is explicitly mentioned several
times in the Hevajra Tantra. This complex and arcane Buddhist work, like
most tantras, concerns itself with the ecstatic, yogic and magical means to
enlightenment. Thus:
These (i.e. the female participants in the rite) the yogin should honor with
deep embraces and kisses. Then he should drink camphor and sprinkle the
mandala with it. He should cause them to drink it and he should quickly gain
siddhi. [Snellgrove, p. 113]
We must beware of making too much of any of the statements concerning
camphor in the tantras for it was standard practice in these texts to employ
an elaborate system of word-substitutions which could be interpreted only by
the initiated. Thus, when the text appears to be speaking of a debauched
sexual practice it is probably describing some ratified philosophical
matter. Conversely, what might appear on the surface to be a purely
philosophical discourse may well be instructions for achieving enlightenment
through advanced sexual yoga. As a case in point, "camphor", in the secret
tantric language, means semen while "semen" itself corresponds to bodhicitta
("the thought of enlightenment"). Yet again, camphor, semen and bodhicitta
all correspond to the moon- (or male-) energy which is psychically
manipulated in tantric yoga. This may be noteworthy in light of the
mythological identification of soma with the moon. The very fact that
camphor- consumption is mentioned at all should be considered sufficient
cause for further investigation of drug use in the Vajrayana.
We have seen that Amanita muscaria is not the only plant-derived inebriant
which is imperfectly metabolized by the liver and could thus be recycled by
urine-drinking. It is conceivable that some plants present in the Indian
subcontinent and which would have been available to the Aryan invaders could
contain such intoxicants. However, only one plant is known to have a
tradition of urine-drinking associated with it and that plant is A.
muscaria.
David Flattery [Flattery and Schwartz] makes an interesting and original
point when he argues that both the Vedic culture (in India) and the related
Avestan culture (in Iran) made use of substitutes for a sacred potion.
Flattery interprets this as indicating that the knowledge of original plant
which was symbolically represented by soma (and, in Iran, haoma) had been
lost long before the Aryans entered India. This very intriguing possibility
has been largely ignored by other researchers
Conclusion
We have seen that amrita is a synonym for soma and that a Buddhist legend,
"The Legend About Chakdor", tells of the origin of amrita. That this legend
is from a Tibetan source, and uses the Tibetan translation of amrita: Dutsi,
need not detain us. The story is sufficiently similar to the Puranic legend
of the origin of soma to assure us that both legends concern the same
substance. The importance of the Buddhist version is that it provides the
sought-for link between soma (in this case called Dutsi) use and
urine-drinking, thus lending weight to the contention that the soma plant
was the Amanita muscaria mushroom.
It is also possible that "The legend about Chakdor" is the source of the
word bDud.rTsi, the Tibetan translation of amrita as the literal meaning of
bDud.rTsi ("demon juice") may be a euphemism for "asuras (i.e. Rahu's)
urine".
The consumption of a potion called amrita is central to Vajrayana Buddhist
rituals, even today. This modern amrita is mostly colored water but, within
the context of an initiation, it is imagined to be a potent psychoactive
drug. This suggests that the modern version is merely a nominal
acknowledgement of an original, truly potent, potion. There are several
instances in the Tibetan tradition of initiations where urine was used in
place of amrita and, while no explicit mention is made of A. muscaria in
connection with these initiations, urine-drinking is highly suggestive of
its use, particularly in light of the accumulating evidence of A. muscaria
use by the Vajrayana siddhas.
Wasson and other authors have suggested that original religion of the
Indo-European people was a cult centered on the Amanita muscaria mushroom.
This is a highly contentious area and I do not believe that the arguments
which I present here lend weight to either side of that debate. I do,
however, consider it now beyond doubt that A. muscaria was used
sacramentally in India and also that this mushroom was known as soma.
Whether it was the only drug to be used thus in Indian religions or whether
other drugs were also called soma are matters for further research.
Notes
abhisheka Literally "sprinkling" (cf. the above passage on "The Ambrosia
shop of the Buddha"), it is the Sanskrit word used for a tantric initiation.
The Tibetan word is "dBang" (pronounced "wang").
ambrosia Skt. amrita.
amrita Sanskrit for " elixir of immortality", it literally means
"deathlessness". Thishas obvious parallels in "ambrosia" the name of the
classical Greek "food of the gods" which means "no death".
asuras A race of anti-gods, comparable to the Titans in classical Greek
mythology.
beer Tibetan chhang ("barley beer").
bimba tree Probably Momordica monadelpha
dutsi A phonetic rendering of the Tibetan bDud.rTsi, equivalent to Skt.,
amrita, soma, Eng. "ambrosia".
eating ambrosia Considering that this ambrosia has been described as
something which maybe "sprinkled" we must suspect the accuracy of this
translation.
empowerment A more literal translation of the Tibetan word dBang meaning
"initiation".
goma This appears to be Japanese pronunciation of "homa".
hala hala (Sanskrit) Presumably a corrupt form of kalakuta or khalakuta, the
equivalent terms in the Mndu myth. Like these terms neither its precise
meaning nor its etymology is understood.
haoma The Iranian equivalent of soma. The word is cognate with Skt. homa,
"fire ritual", "sacrifice".
herbal pills T. J. Tsarong gives the composition only of bDud.rTsi.Ril.dKar
("the white nectar pill"), which is used medicinally, but not of
bDud.rTsi.Ril.dMar ("the red nectar pill") which is used by yogins and for
initiations. The "white nectar pill" contains "Ash of a fossilized stone
(Bya.rDo), Hedychium spicatum, black salt, Hippophae rhamnoides, Piper
longum".
hevajra Tantra The "Hevajra Tantra" is a complex and arcane Buddhist work
which concerns itself with the ecstatic, yogic and magical means to
enlightenment.
homa Skt., "fire ritual", "sacrifice".
jetsun A Tibetan honorific, in this case referring to Milarepa
Kyungpo Naljor Tib. K'yung.Po rNal.'Byor ("Garuda yogin")
Ihamayin The Tibetan word Lha.Ma.Yin (literally "Not a god") is a
translation of the Sanskrit asura.
Mandavya I have, as yet, been unable to find any other reference to "the
sage Mandavya, who dwelt on the Vindhyas". The Vindhyas are a range of
mountains in the South of India inhabited by Dravidian people. In the
Indian tradition mountains are considered to be repositories of medicinal
herbs.
Milarepa Tib. Mi.La.Ras.Pa ("Mila the cotton-clad")
naga-king Nagas are snake-spirits. They have the power to change their
shape, their females (nagini) often assuming the guise of beautiful women.
Although they inhabit the subterranean land of "Patala", they are connected
with the water element and have the power to bring rain.
Natakubera The wealth deity Kubera (also written Kuvera, Sanskrit for
"deformed") is considered the lord of the yakshas and is thus called
yaksharaja. The name Natakubera literally means "the bent and misshapen
one".
pacifying practice Tib. gCod
Patala The underworld realm of the asuras. Due to their common "anti-god"
alignment, it is also said to house the yakshas and the nagas. Patala should
not be confused with either:
(a) Potala, the "pure land" of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, or
(b) the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. This palace was the seat of the
Dalai Lamas from the 16th to the 20th centuries. It was built by the "Great
Fifth" Dalai Lama who named it after the realm of Avalokiteshvara.
piyusha The words piyusha, amrita, sudha are modern Hindi synonyms for soma.
Das gives them in the Devanagari alphabet
Perfection of Wisdom Ashtasahasrika Prajñaparamita Sutra (Skt., "The
Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Verses"), a seminal Mahayana text, probably
composed in the 1st century C.E.
sadhaka One who practices a sadhana.
sadhana A tantric system of meditation, often involving the visualization of
a deity while reciting a mantra appropriate to that deity.
secret water A note on "secret water" explains "Probably she poured urine in
the skull cup for him to drink."
siddha (Skt) "accomplished", "adept". One who has achieved enlightenment by
following the Vajrayana path. See siddhi.
siddhi (Skt) "accomplishment". In the Vayrayana tradition there is only one
accomplishment worth considering and that is enlightenment. See siddha.
soma-raja M. Monier-Williams, ("A Sanskrit-English Dictionary", Motilal
Banarsidass, New Delhi 1993) interprets the closely-related words
soma-rajika and soma-raji as being the plant Vernonia anthelminthica.
tail of a dragon Actually the tail of a naga or giant, supernatural snake.
three essentials The three essentials components of an initiation are (1)
the substance to be eaten or drunk, (2) the visualization of the deity and
(3) the mantra of that deity.
Vajrapani Skt. Vajrapani, "Thunderbolt-holder", becomes, in Tibetan, P'yag.Na.rDo.rJe,
"Thunderbolt-in-hand". This is frequently abbreviated to P'yag.rDor
(pronounced Chak-dor).
vajrayana Skt., "diamond/thunderbolt vehicle", also known as the
Guhyamantrayana, "secret mantra vehicle".
Vyasa Skt., "author"
world of the asuras see Patala
yaksha Originally a class of gigantic, goblin-like, chthonic demons in
Indian popular culture, sometimes said to bring disease. In Buddhist
literature, converted Yakshas are frequently cited as protectors of
Buddhism.
yakshini Kali Yakshini is the feminine form of yaksha. I think we may
confidently assume that the yakshini in question is the Hindu goddess Kali
in Buddhist guise. That she is said to be a mere yakshini and a servant of
Kuvera (Kubera) is an example of the mutual denigration of deities which
typified the inter- religious rivalry between Hindus and Buddhists.
References
Ardussi, J. A. Brewing and Drinking the Beer of Enlightenment in Tibetan
Buddhism: the Doha Tradition in Tibet, Journal of the American Oriental
Society (97.2) 1977
Burlingame, E. W., (trans.) Buddhist Parables, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi
1991
Chang, Ganna C. C., (trans.) The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa,
Shambhala, Boulder 1977
Danielou, A. The Myths and Gods of India, Healing Arts Press, Rochester,
VT, 1991
Das, S. Chandra Tibetan-English Dictionary, Rinsen Book Company, Kyoto
1983
Dowson, J. A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology, Routledge and Kegan
Paul, Ltd., London 1968
Flattery, D. S. and Schwartz, M. Haoma and Harmaline: The Botanical
Identification of the Indo-Iranian Sacred Hallucinogen 'Soma' and its
Legacy in Religion, Language and Middle Eastern Folklore, University of
Califomia, Near Eastem Studies #21, Berkeley 1989
Hajicek-Dobberstein, S. Soma siddhas and alchemical enlightenment:
psychedelic mushrooms in Buddhist tradition, Joumal of Ethnophannacology
48 (1995) 99-118, Elsevier, The Hague
McKenna, T., cited in Raetsch, The Dictionary of Sacred and Magical Plants,
Prism Press, C. Bridport, Dorset, UK 1992
Monier-Williams,M. A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, Motilal Banarsidass, New
Delhi 1993
O'Flaherty, W.D., (trans.) The Rig Veda, Penguin Books Ltd., London 1981
Ott, J. Pharmacotheon - Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and
Histories, Jonathan Ott Books, Natural Products Co., Kennewick, WA, 1993
Rangdrol, Tsele Natsok Empowerment and the Path of Liberation, Rangjung
Yeshe Publications, Hong Kong, 1993
Schiagintweit, E. Buddhism in Tibet, Susil Gupta, London 1968 (facsimile
reprint of the 1863 edition)
Snellgrove, D., (trans. and ed.) The Hevajra Tantra - a critical study,
Oxford University Press, London 1959 (Ill.v.60-61)
Stafford, P. Psychedelics Encyclopedia Revised Edition, J. P. Torcher Inc.,
Los Angeles, 1983
Stewart, J. M. The Life of Gampopa, The Incomparable Dharma Lord of Tibet,
Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, N. Y., USA, 1995
Taranatha The Golden Rosary of Tara (trans. and notes by J. Reynolds),
Shang-Shung Edizioni, Arcidosso, Italy 1985
Trungpa, C. Sacred Outlook: The Vajrayogini Shrine and Practice (in The
Silk Route and the Diamond Path, D. E. Klimburg-Salter, editor), UCLA Art
Council, Los Angeles, 1982
von Bibra, Baron Ernst Plant Intoxicants, Healing Arts Press, Rochester,
VT, 1995
Walter, M.L Preliminary Results from a study of two Rasayana systems in
Indo-Tibetan Esoterism published in Tibetan Studies in Honour of Hugh
Richardson (M. Aris, ed.), Aris & Phillips Ltd., Wanninster, England 1980
Woods, J. H. The Yoga System of Patañjali, quoted in G. W. Briggs, Goraknath
and the Kanphata Yogis, Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi 1989
Wasson, R. G., Kramrisch, S., Ott, J., and Ruck R. G. Persophone's Quest:
Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, Yale University Press, New Haven
and London 1986
[Growing Mushrooms] [Urine] [Morel Mycorrhizae]
© 2001-2005 by SOMA email: webm...@SOMAmushrooms.org (Last modified
May 07, 2005)
How many Foragers have visited SOMA since August, 2000?
142655
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
news:z7udnadvDZU...@adelphia.com...
Juanjo
> news:MpCse.6769$VK4....@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net...
>>
>> "marcinmd" <marc...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> news:1119017350.9...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>> Dave wrote:
>>>>Reality might be screwy, but what I say is true. Religions comes from
>>> Visionary Plant experience<<
>>>
>>> Okay..That's a keeper..
>>>
>>> Prosicution rests your honor...
>>>
>>
>> Dave has been munching on those peyote buttons again. It explains a lot
>> actually.
>>
>
> It is beyond amazing@!---- the Pinhead consciousness that exists on this
> planet.
>
> Pinhead Theories on Religious Experiences and Visions of the founders of
> the Religions:
>
>
> 1. Its all Divine Being(s) and exclusivity of dogma.
>
> 2. It's all Aliens and ancient astronauts
>
> 3. It's all Psychosis
>
> 4. It's all Liars
>
> Real causes of actual Religious Experiences in order of importance, depth
> and ergonomics
>
> 1. Visionary Plant use
> 2. Severe fasting and austerities
> 3. Near death experiences
>
Yep, like I said, those peyote buttons are really kicking in for ole Dave.
Yelps
You are such a hopeless Pinhead.
Brian Rahilly
birdsn...@worldya.net wrote on 17/6/05 7:54 PM:
And what, pray tell, is the result of doing all these?
B
Alias
Sorry, but I don't think so. I think Dave's insanity is natural. He wouldn't
even know what a peyote button looked like, much less know how to find some.
Alias
Alias
"Brian Rahilly" <brah...@videotron.ca> wrote in message
news:BED94F51.2D6A6%brah...@videotron.ca...
You start thinking that everyone but you is a pinhead.
Alias
Reginald Carpenter
Although the article/ handout is/ was way off-topic from the above
subject & really belongs on its own thread, I still must give you your
"propers", Dave.
IMHO - that is/ was the best posting that you've ever produced in all of
your years on Arbn about the facts re. the soma/ amrita elixir, beside
your own divine opinions, of course.
: - )
The key part/ revelation of it for me was in regard to the story about
the urine of "Rahu":
this is original, Indian Buddhism for sure.
But, I must say that a couple of important things were omitted or maybe
just NOT known & presented in the article: 1) the name of (skt) "Ketu,"
the lower part of the body of (skt) "Rahu," was NOT given, and 2) it is
in the lower part, NOT the upper part, of the body where urine comes
from to be disposed of. Duh! LOL.
Therefore, in consideration of the fact that the severed body of the
Indian god "Rahu" continued to live & function as two parts, the proper
name for this Buddhist god/ entity is (skt) "Rahu/ Ketu" as it is known
& continues to be used in Indian astrology, of course.
Although I would like to say how the god "Rahu" or "Rahu/ Ketu" is/ was
actually represented or symbolized in so called NSB - Nichiren Shu
Buddhism & Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism by the Daishonin/ True Buddha, I
will enjoy deferring that task to you, to try to educate & enlighten all
of the so called "pinheads", or "blockheads" as my dearly departed
step-mother would have called them, on Arbn about that! LOL.
WorldPeace! } : < { 0
<<< Stone Eagle >>>
Airborne in Cyberspace*
Yelps
What you would call personal "Buddhahood."
dc
Yelps
actually represented or symbolized in so called NSB - Nichiren Shu
Buddhism & Nichiren Shoshu Buddhism by the Daishonin/ True Buddha, I
will enjoy deferring that task to you, to try to educate & enlighten all
of the so called "pinheads", or "blockheads" as my dearly departed
step-mother would have called them, on Arbn about that! LOL.
WorldPeace! } : < { 0>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I will elaborate later cause I am running out the door.
There is a sequence of accretion of myths and how they formed that is
directly related to the Soma/Amrita experience in practical terms, and this
is all symbolically expressed in the ancient cosmologies....but I will try
to explain later. In general Rahu and Ketu represent gain and loss
respectively and are associated with ancient astronomy. The severing of
Rahu Ketu is a projection of cosmological and steller events as perceived by
people equating their own life with the sky which they become fuised to,
during their own visionary plant experience.
dc
<<< Stone Eagle >>>
Airborne in Cyberspace*
"Reginald Carpenter" <chiefst...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:6738-42B...@storefull-3132.bay.webtv.net...
Brian Rahilly
birdsn...@worldya.net wrote on 18/6/05 1:54 PM:
No, what you would call it. But then again, what would be the contrary,
public Buddhahood?
Is this your personal experience? How is it evident?
B
Brian Rahilly
aka@[notme]maskedandanonymous.eu wrote on 18/6/05 6:21 AM:
LOL
B
Juanjo
refutes exactly what you claim. Buddhahood does not arise from the
ingestion of hallucinogenic substances. The fact that you have so impaired
your own mental faculties that you mistake the damage done through the usage
of illegal hallucinogenic drugs to your mental processes for enlightenment
does not make that twisted nonsense reality. You simply seek to justify
your own drug impairment.
Juanjo
You shouldn't have asked him that. Now Dave is going to tell us about the
time he dropped acid and went to the Ceremony in the Air and sat with
Nichiren and grooved on the vibes.
Yelps
There is more truth to this then you might want to realize.
dc
>
Yelps
Again, the total Pinhead comprehension.
Dullness on the face of the mirror.
dc
Brian Rahilly
brah...@videotron.ca wrote on 18/6/05 5:30 PM:
Could you answer the above dc and not get hung up on Juango's posting.
Thanks
B
Yelps
Pinheads desecrating the "Ceremony in the Air" No he can't come in and
groove.
But you Pinheads actually think a "Ceremony in the Air" is a real Divine
event? Or do you just see it as ONLY a metaphor? Either way you miss what
is real. It is neither a "Divine Event," --as in Godly Beings
worshipfulness.---or just metaphor. And clearly you have no clue as to the
origins of all of your "Divine" characters inscribed upon the Gohonzon, and
where their respective stories come from. You also have no clue as to the
state of mind of the authors of the Lotus Sutra and the meaning behind it.
Sun Lotus was experienced. No one can tell to what degree, nor can anyone
be sure what he had ingested or whether it was from the effect of a severe
illness that caused him to "hallucinate." From the childhood stories when
he "fell into a swoon," as a young boy and hallucinated
People tend to have an artificial understanding of what real Visionary
experience is. This is because of the way these experiences have been
relayed to future generations, down through the ages. People just accept
pinhead ideas---which are like empty shells of what real "Buddhism," is.
These real buddhists were the radicals of their day. They had genuine
"Religious Experiences", because they were in fact using Visionary Plants.
This was EXACTLY WHY, Gautama left for the forest. In town it was illegal
for anyone to use Soma/Amrita recipes unless authorized by the High Priest
of the Vedic ---who at that time, essentially ruled the government. To get
the good stuff one had to go into the forest and hang out with the "forest
dwelling monks." Here they prepared for the experiences with forms of
self-mortification. Some of them understood and some of them did not.
There were also a range of Visionary experiences they had had, this ranged
from the transient to the true, but even just a transient glimpse would keep
people seeking to see more. The common thread in all of this and in fact,
in all ancient religion, is the quest for the Elixer of Immortality.
Simply put, the myths, surrounded the fantastic beings in the Lotus Sutra,
in Hinduism, in Egyptian and Sumerian religions, in the greek Mysteries, as
well as the original sources of ancient Native American religons, all
revolve around this quest for Immortality and the fabled Elixer. Naturally
the smart, rich kids of those times---would hear the stories of
Enlightenment, Buddhahood, Bodhi, (The word "bud-dha" is also found in
Egyptian as the god, Godhood and they would seek out the origin of these
stories and end up meditating in the forest.
Gordon Wasson more carefully reanalyzed the meanings in the Vedas and in the
stories surrounding Gautama, he became curious and he found the true meaning
of some key words that had been glossed over in translation---He has shown
and it is incredibly obvious, that Gautama himself died of an overdose,
possibly intentional, of a recipe that had too many of a strange kind of
Mushroom. (Talk to Gracie--she'll know), Just ask Alice. I think she'll
know.
The nature of the Dish served up to Gautama just before he had his big
Experience under the Bodhi tree also contained apparently a certain kind of
fig....some mushrooms, rice and milk. Yes you guessed it the Bodhi Tree
itself has entheogenic properties---the Peepal(Pipal) tree or Ficus
religiosa----asvattha tree--the same tree as in the Bible--The Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil, as numerous Rabbi Scholars suggest. Some of
these recipes were pretty complicated and had numerous ingredients. Lotus,
Figs, Mushrooms of two distinct types chemically, Claviceps Purpurea,
Amaranth, Nutmegs, Morning Glories, a number of kinds of grasses and
Perrenials, Sage family, and hundreds of other psychoactive plants were
discovered by anicent peoples, today that number is into the many thousands
of known psychoactive plants.
Alchemy and Meditation went hand in hand since the earliest historical and
prehistorical times.
"The song for the slaughter of the sacramental goat at the February
Anthesteria [Spring comes earlier in Greece], which preceded the Great
Dionysia, was the tragodia. "It is an odd fact that the ancients seem to
have called certain wild forms of fruits and cereals by names connecting
them with the goat. The reason for this is not clear, but the fact is
well-established. The Latins called the wild fig caprificus ['goat-fig'];
Pausanias expressly tells us that the Messenians gave to the wild fig tree
the name tragos, goat. from Patriarchy and the Drug Wars----
________________________________
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil
From Encyclopedia of Knowledge:
"In the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and
Evil was the tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden from which God forbade
Adam and Eve to eat. The other tree in the middle of the garden was the Tree
of Life. Nothing is said in Genesis about whether or not they were permitted
to eat from the tree of life, but since the Bible says "Of every tree of the
garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die.", we know they were allowed. When Adam and Eve ate the
forbidden fruit from the tree, after being tempted by a serpent, they became
knowledgeable of their sin, and were punished by God by being banished from
the garden and forced to survive through agriculture "by the sweat of
[their] brow". Being banished from Eden meant they would lose access to the
tree of life and therefore were condemned to die. "The man has now become
like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out
his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
(NIV) 11th century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible with Targum Hebrew Bible
refers to the common portions of the Jewish and Christian canons. ... This
article is about Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible. ... This
article is about the Biblical location. ... The term God is used to
designate a Supreme Being, however, there are countless definitions of God.
... God creates Adam, by Michelangelo. ... The Tree-of-Life is a fictional
plant (the ancestor of yams, with similar appearance and taste) in Larry
Nivens Known Space universe, for which all Hominids have an in-built genetic
craving. ... In the Bible, the forbidden fruit is the fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil eaten by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. ...
Sin has always been a term most usually used in a religious context, and
today describes any lack of conformity to the will of God; especially, any
willful disregard for the norms revealed by God is a sin."...
Depictions of story
The Tree of Knowledge is commonly portrayed in art and literature as an
apple tree, or fig tree for lack of a more specific description. Some trace
this to a Latin pun between malus (apple) and malum (evil). Therefore,
"Apple of Evil". Species Malus domestica Malus sieversii Apple is the fruit
(pome) of the genus Malus belonging to the family Rosaceae, and is one of
the most widely cultivated tree fruits. ...
The type of tree
Rabbi Meir says: "The fruit of (the Tree of Knowledge of Good-and-Evil) was
a grape..."; Rabbi Nechemia says: "It was a fig..."; Rabbi Yehuda says: "It
was wheat..." Talmud, Brachot 40a The first page of the Talmud, in the
standard Vilna edition. ...
There are other opinions besides those, but it was certainly not an apple.
The reason it may have been a fig is that they use fig leaves to cover
themself after eating it, either because the leaves were nearby, or because
God creates the cure before the illness, and the same tree that caused the
problem is also used to remedy it. Some commentators hold that it might have
been a grape, and that Eve actually made, and drank, wine. Species About
800, including: Ficus altissima Ficus americana Ficus aurea Ficus
benghalensis - Indian Banyan Ficus benjamina - Weeping Fig Ficus broadwayi
Ficus carica - Common Fig Ficus citrifolia Ficus drupacea Ficus elastica
Ficus godeffroyi Ficus grenadensis Ficus hartii Ficus lyrata Ficus
macbrideii Ficus macrophylla - Moreton Bay Fig Ficus microcarpa - Chinese
Banyan Ficus... Species Vitis acerifolia Vitis aestivalis Vitis amurensis
Vitis arizonica Vitis x bourquina Vitis californica Vitis x champinii Vitis
cinerea Vitis x doaniana Vitis girdiana Vitis labrusca Vitis x labruscana
Vitis monticola Vitis mustangensis Vitis x novae-angliae Vitis palmata Vitis
riparia Vitis rotundifolia Vitis rupestris Vitis shuttleworthii Vitis
tiliifolia Vitis... A glass of red wine This article is about the beverage.
...
Ethno-botanists have proposed the iboga plant (Tabernanthe iboga) as the
Tree of Knowledge. The grounded up bark contains a dissociative substance,
ibogaine, which has been traditionally used in Bwiti religious ceremony in
Central Africa. Binomial name Tabernanthe iboga Iboga (Tabernanthe iboga) is
the species of plant from which ibogaine is derived. ... Dissociative drugs
are a class of psychedelic drugs characterized by intense feelings of
depersonalization, derealization, and analgesia. ... Ibogaine is a
psychoactive indole alkaloid derived from the rootbark of an African plant,
Tabernanthe iboga. ... Bwiti is a religious initiation ceremony performed by
the Mitsogo people of Gabon and the Fang people of Gabon and Cameroon. ...
Related information
According to a Christian legend, the Tree of Knowledge was the source of
wood for the True Cross. According to Christian tradition, the True Cross is
the cross upon which Jesus was crucified. ...
Other interpretations
Vedic (Hindu) tradition (Rig Veda samhita 1.164.20-22, Mundaka Upanishad
3.1.1 and Svetasvatara Upanisad 3.20, 4.6-7) speaks of two birds perched on
the branch of a tree. One bird eats the fruit of tree while the other merely
watches its companion. The adjective Vedic may refer to The Vedas, the
oldest preserved Indo-Aryan texts. ... This article is about the Hindu
religion; for other meanings of the word, see Hindu (disambiguation). ...
The Rig Veda ?????? (Sanskrit ?c praise + veda knowledge) is the earliest of
the four Hindu religious scriptures known as the Vedas. ... The Samhita
(Sanskrit: joined or collected) is the basic text of each of the Vedas,
comprising collections of hymns and ritual texts. ... The Upanishads
(???????, Upanisad) are part of the Hindu Shruti scriptures which primarily
discuss meditation and philosophy and are seen as religious instructions by
most schools of Hinduism. ...
The tree stands for the body. With regard to living things, a body is the
integral physical material of an individual, and contrasts with soul,
personality and behavior. ...
The first bird represents a Jiva, or individual self, or Soul. She has a
female nature, being a sakti, energy of God. In Hinduism and Jainism, a jiva
is the immortal essence of a living being, subject to maya. ... The soul
according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the ethereal
substance - spirit (Hebrew:rooah or nefesh) - particular to a unique living
being. ... Female is the BLEEEEP of an organism, or a part of an organism,
which produces egg cells. ... The term God is used to designate a Supreme
Being, however, there are countless definitions of God. ...
The fruit signifies sensual pleasure (kama).
When the jiva becomes distracted by the fruits, she momentarily forgets her
Lord and Lover and tries to enjoy the fruit independently of Him. This
separating forgetfulness is her maha-maya, or enthrallment, spiritual death,
and constitutes the Fall_(religion) of the jiva into the saha world of
material birth, death, disease and Old_age. The word Maya or maya can refer
to: The Maya - a Native American people of southern Mexico and northern
Central America the modern Maya people the pre-Columbian Maya civilization
the Maya language Maya - a concept in Hindu/Vedic philosophy a state of
misperception of reality the inherent force of... In Christian theology,
Spiritual Death, sometimes also referred to as the Second Death, is defined
as a spiritual separation from God, usually brought on by sin. ... The fall
refers to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, as recorded
in the biblical book of Genesis, and the consequences of that expulsion. ...
Birth is the process in mammals by which a fetus is expelled from the body
of its mother. ... Death is either the cessation of life in a living
organism or the state of the organism after that event. ... A disease is any
abnormal condition of the body or mind that causes discomfort, dysfunction,
or distress to the person affected or those in contact with the person. ...
Old age consists of ages nearing the average lifespan of human beings, and
thus the end of the human life cycle. ...
The second bird is Atman, or Paramatman, an aspect of God who accompanies
every living being in the heart while she remains in the material world. He
is the support of all beings and is beyond sensual pleasure. (Redirected
from ) This is a disambiguation page for the term atman (or atma). ... In
Hindu theology, Paramatman is Absolute Atman or Supreme Soul. ... The term
God is used to designate a Supreme Being, however, there are countless
definitions of God. ...
Jiva has come to be called Eve (from Chava, "life") and Atman is Adam in the
Hebrew tradition. EVE stands for Extensible VAX Editor, a flexible text
editor that is part of the VMS operating system. ... This article is about
the biblical Adam and Eve. ... The word Hebrew can variously mean: The
Hebrew language or Hebrew languages The ancient Hebrew people, or their
descendants the Jews The New Testament book Hebrews The term Hebrew is
sometimes used by certain Christian groups to distinguish the Jews in
ancient times (before the birth of Jesus) from Jews...
Differences from the Biblical story:
Atman (Adam) who can never be subject to sensual pleasure also eats the
fruit of the tree of knowledge.
In Buddhism bodhi-vrksa is called the tree of knowledge. Buddha attained
enlightenment under the bodhi tree. But the pipal (pippala), also called
asvattha tree or Sacred Fig (Ficus religiosa), was known as the bodhi tree
even before. While bodhi tree stands for enlightenment that supersedes all
sensual pleasure, the Biblical tree (body) affords worldly pleasure. Statues
of Buddha such as this, the Tian Tan Buddha statue in Hong Kong, remind
followers to practice right living. ... Bodhi (Pali and Sanskrit. ...
Binomial name Ficus religiosa L. The Sacred Fig Ficus religiosa, also known
as Bo or Peepul, is a species of banyan fig native to India, southwest China
and Indochina east to Vietnam. ..."
Thus in the "Latter Day," the level of extreme pinheadism is monumental.
People forget and are afraid to remember.
dc
Yelps
Egyptian as the god, Godhood and they would seek out the origin of these
stories and end up meditating in the forest.
correction:
..............Godhood etc. (The word "bud-dha" is also found in
Egyptian as the god, P-tah. and they would seek out the origin of these
stories and end up meditating in the forest.
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
news:ZN-dnUl9Zt7...@adelphia.com...
Mark P.
<birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote:
>Again, the total Pinhead comprehension.
>
So tell us Dave, what drugs did Nichiren take?
Mark Porter
"I spread this teaching because I too heard thus"
Try the new refined search feature on 175 Gosho at
http://hokkeko.us
Alias
"Mark P." <del...@delete.perltng.com> wrote
> On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 21:22:49 -0700, "Yelps"
> <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Again, the total Pinhead comprehension.
>>
>
> So tell us Dave, what drugs did Nichiren take?
>
>
> Mark Porter
Please don't get him started.
Alias
Mark P.
<aka@[notme]maskedandanonymous.eu> wrote:
>Please don't get him started.
>
LOL, but there must have been such a selection of drugs on
Sado, dontcha think? And, before Sado all his protectors were Samurai,
who we know were all real drug addicts weren't they? LOL!
Dave, go to your room and do some more drugs! They're really helping
you to understand Ichinen Sanzen!
Yelps
"Mark P." <del...@delete.perltng.com> wrote in message
news:42b61729....@newsgroups.comcast.net...
Sun Lotus would be my guess. He had a major visionary experience sitting at
a Pond. Amanita Panteria, Psilocybe family, Salvia Divinorum. any number
of Yakusoyu.
He also admits to having to eat grasses (DMT) and Sages (Salvinorum A) when
he was starving.
As a child, maybe a spate of accidental ergotamine poisoning, of which there
were outbreaks in 13th Century Japan.
But then when a vegan guy wears robes made of marihuana who knows? Shijo
Kingo was an Aryuvedic alchemist.
Sun Lotus himself says the Daimoku itself is Amrita. Now he wasn't a dummy.
He knew Amrita referred to an Ancient Elixer of Immortality. He also knew
it wasn't just a fairy tale and even his own name refers to the Entheogenic
kind of Lotus Flower.
Sane people just do not have powerful religious visions without major
chemical changes in the brain.
The Ongi Kuden reads:
"This passage clarifies the three truths of Emptiness [ku], provisional
existence [ke] and the Middle Way [chu], as well as the three studies of
precepts, meditation and wisdom. It refers to the 'highly effective
medicine, meeting all the requirements of color, fragrance and flavor.'
'Grinds' indicates the truth of Emptiness. 'Sift' indicates the truth of
provisional existence. 'Blend' indicates the Middle Way. 'Giving' means to
confer. 'Children' are the practitioners of the Lotus Sutra. 'Take' means to
accept and hold. Concerning this, the sutra states, "This is a highly
effective medicine, meeting all the requirements of color, fragrance and
flavor" (LS p. 228) 'Highly effective' means that this is the highly
effective medicine of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo that includes the ten thousand
practices, good acts and various paramitas. 'Color,' 'fragrant,' etc. means
that 'of all that has color and fragrance, there is none that is not the
Middle Way' and indicates the Buddhahood of grasses and trees. (Gosho Zenshu
p. 755)"
"1. To Indra have the Soma drops, exceeding rich in sweets, been poured,
Shed in the seat of sacrifice.
2 As mother kine low to their calves, to Indra have the sages called,
Called him to drink the Soma juice.
3 In the stream's wave wise Soma dwells, distilling rapture, in his seat,
Resting upon a wiId-cow's hide.
4 Far-sighted Soma, Sage and Seer, is worshipped in the central point
Of heaven, the straining-cloth of wool.
5 In close embraces Indu holds Soma when
poured within the jars.
And on the. purifying sieve.
6 Indu sends forth a voice on high to regions of the sea of air,
Shaking the vase that drops with meath.
7 The Tree whose praises never fail yields heavenly milk among our hymns,
Urging men's generations on.
8 The Wise One, with the Sage's stream, the Soma urged to speed, flows on
To the dear places of the sky.
9 O Pavamana, bring us wealth bright with a thousand splendours. Yea.
O Indu, give us ready help."
Rig Veda HYMN XII. Soma Pavamana
In regards to Shakyamuni in his birth Legends, there is the story that when
he was born they poured Amrita all over him. This tradition is found in all
the Nichiren Sects. And they had a ritual verse called the Kambutsuge, that
speaks of this story. Also part of the Nichiren tradition all along, is
the use of an Amrita substitute as an offering of Amrita to the Gohonzon.
"The physician quickly gathers fine medicinal herbs, grinding, sifting and
mixing them together He addresses his children, saying, "This highly
beneficial medicine is perfect in fragrance, color and flavor Take it, and
you will quickly be relieved of your sufferings and be free from all
distress."
Some of the children, those whose senses have not yet been utterly deranged
by the poison, take the medicine and are cured instantly. But in others, the
poison has begun to work so deeply that they have "lost their true mind" and
refuse the medicine in spite of their pain."
dc
Alias
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote
But then when a vegan guy wears robes made of marihuana who knows? <<<
Um, Hemp doesn't get you high unless it's cultivated for that. There are
thousands of acres of hemp growing in Kansas but even if you smoked all of
it, you would not get high.
Alias
Juanjo
See what I mean? Now it's Nichiren dropped acid and became enlightened as
to his true nature.
Juanjo
"Alias" <aka@[notme]maskedandanonymous.eu> wrote in message
news:8Lwte.51859$US.2...@news.ono.com...
universe.
Yelps
Pinheads spewing denseness
dc
Yelps
Yeah and in Japan in the 13th century they knew all the techniques of
squashing those female plants.
PINHEADS!!!
dc
Cody
Um, the female plants have all the THC. The male plants are the ones to be
pulled. Hemp was grown back then to make paper and clothes, not to get high.
Cody
Yelps
"Cody" <aka@[notme]maskedandanonymous.ua> wrote in message
news:pyQue.52994$US.3...@news.ono.com...
Duh! Pinhead.
dc
Yelps
By ANGELA JEFFS
Even as a child, Yasunao Nakayama knew of the importance of hemp, called
"suna" in Japanese but most commonly known as "asa." His grandfather grew a
plot of the stuff, for use in ritual Shinto ceremonies.
Yasunao Nakayama, the first person in Japan licensed to grow industrial
hemp, calls the plant central to Japanese culture from the earliest times.
Growing up in Hamaoka, Shizuoka Prefecture, Yasunao also became familiar
with the problems of having a nuclear power station operating in close
proximity. "Animals miscarried. There were strange mutant fish. It was a big
issue in local politics."
While at junior high school, he continues, he had a vision of a field of
hemp. "The plants were gentle, giving off a good energy. I nearly died, but
came back, vowing to make hemp my lifework."
Meeting in Tokyo en route from Shizuoka to Oshima Island, where he lives
with his parents, he carries a bag made from hemp fiber, with a very
familiar logo of a leaf. His "tabi" (five-toed socks) look like cotton but
are also made from the annual herb Cannabis sativa. "I ate hemp seeds for
lunch. You can eat them whole or grind them, as with sesame. They're very
nutritious."
Yasunao is the first person in Japan to be granted a license to grow what is
called industrial hemp. "There are some 100 farming families that have grown
it traditionally for centuries, including the Miki family in Shikoku, who
supply the Imperial family. Licensing, however, is new. I applied through my
prefectural office, who applied to the appropriate ministry. The plot is
only small, around 4 tsubo, but adequate to my needs. It's symbolic as well
as practical."
Native to Asia and extensively cultivated in other parts of the world, the
plant is largely grown for the fibers to be extracted from its stems, and
the drugs hashish and marijuana. In Japan, it is legal to be in possession
of stems and seeds, but illegal to be found with leaves and flowers. Hence
the need for a growing license.
"Hemp tends to get stronger in its effect when it goes wild," Yasunao
explains. "The plants that grow freely as weeds in Hokkaido are very
different to the hemp I grow."
The purpose of his plot is for research. The word must have gone out,
because soon after he gained his license in the 1990s he was busted for
possession. "After I explained to the police the significance of hemp in
Shinto rites and ancient Japanese culture, they let me go."
The plant, he believes, has spiritual as well as practical properties.
Regarded as a purifying agent, a baby's umbilical cord used to be tied off
with hemp before being cut. During the Bon festival for the dead, the plant
was burned in tribute to ancestors. While during the war, because hemp grew
quickly, and had associations with Shinto and therefore the divinity of the
Imperial cause, it was used for making military uniforms and parachutes.
"You will find that the hemp leaf traditionally used in designs for obi
sashes and baby clothes," he says. "Also the rope pattern used to decorate
pottery by Japan's prehistoric Jomon people is hemp-based. It's no accident
that the fiber is used to craft the twisted rope (yokuzuna) worn by sumo's
top champion yokozuna. It signifies its importance."
Archaeologists -- pushing back the boundaries of history since the death of
the Showa emperor -- have found considerable quantities of hemp seeds on
Jomon sites, he adds. "Hemp was always central to Japanese culture."
His book on the subject, titled "Makoto no Hanashi" ("Story of Truth"), was
published in October last year by Hyogensha -- a strange but fascinating
meld of historical fact and New Age fiction, now in its second printing.
There are shadows of a new nationalism, even though he insists that the
subject -- hemp -- is universal. "The Celts had a tradition of using the
plant. You can find it throughout ancient cultures all over the world."
At the same time he postulates that hemp's importance in Shintoism means
that Japan led the way, as the source of all wisdom. "Japan was a hemp
culture."
Many Japanese of his age, born postwar but torn between embracing and
rejecting Western values, seek to raise their country above the shame of
surrender and occupation. They are outgoing, cosmopolitan and believe
themselves open to the world, and yet they seek with a certain desperation
to re-create Japan's spiritual heart in order to regain their cultural pride
and personal self-esteem.
Yasunao has established what he calls "a Jomon energy center" on Oshima. Its
aim is to investigate the history and properties of hemp and discover how
ancient people used it. "We need that kind of wisdom today." There's a
similar interest in many countries, he says: Germany, Switzerland, the
Netherlands, Canada.
He seeks to research and promote not only the many commercial properties of
the plant -- clothing, oil, building materials, medicines -- but the cosmic
relationship of human beings to its powers. "Hemp makes us find ourselves. I
see the possibilities of a one-nation-on-Earth future."
There is a new global consciousness, he decares. Last year he visited the
United States (to talk hemp, naturally). This year he drove from the north
to the south of Japan in a car fueled with hemp oil. "Check out my home page
in English: www.hemp.co.jp .
"The Korean written language, Hangul, which has its origins in Japanese, is
hemp connected," he continues with growing enthusiasm. "Hemp is globally
connected. We talk about the Silk Road. I talk about the Hemp Road."
E-mail: joh...@d6.dion.ne.jp and mobile: (090) 3044-0325
The Japan Times: Nov. 9, 2002
(C) All rights reserved
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
news:F_adnY9ez82...@adelphia.com...
Yelps
Hemp since the Jomon
Cannabis has grown in Japan since the Neolithic Jomon period (10,000 to 300
BC). The term "Jomon" itself means "pattern of ropes", which were certainly
made of cannabis hemp. These ancient people lived a civilized, comfortable
existence, and used cannabis for weaving clothing and basket making, as well
as using the seeds as a food source. What isn't clear however, is when and
how the seeds arrived in Japan.
Some scholars insist that cannabis was abundant in Japan before contact with
China or Korea. However, impartial analysis suggests that, like much of its
culture, cannabis was almost certainly imported and adapted from China.
Seeds from Korea
The Japanese staple of wet-field rice made its way from China to Japan
around 300 BC. The seed stock first went to Korea, then was brought by
traders across the narrow but rough channel to Japan's southern island of
Kyushu, which is the closest point to the Asian mainland. It is likely that
cannabis seeds made the same voyage before or around the same time.
In support of this theory, a cave painting found in coastal Kyushuu depicts
tall stalks and cannabis leaves. It too is from the Jomon period, and is one
of the earliest Japanese artworks in existence.
Ancient pot graffiti: Korean traders bringing cannabis to Japan.
The richly coloured painting depicts several somewhat strangely dressed
people in baggy short-pants and tall curved hats. Horses and ocean waves are
also clearly rendered.
The picture apparently depicts Korean traders bringing a plant by boat.
Along the stem of the plant are small pairs of budding leaves or branches.
The plants themselves are tall and at the top bear large, distinctive,
seven-fingered cannabis leaves.
Surrounding the top of this cannabis plant figure is a sun-like aura,
suggesting the continuing connection between the sun and cannabis in Shinto.
This is strikingly similar to the hieroglyphic carvings from Mediterranean
cultures, which show a similar sun/cannabis motif.
Feudal hempen cultivation
During the fuedal era of Japan (c. 14th-15th Century) hemp fibre cultivation
was encouraged by the fuedal lords (Daimyo), cannabis cultivation was
encouraged by the feudal lords (Daimyo), wanting hempen-ware's high resale
value from the wealthy city merchants, who favoured cannabis hemp for making
fine clothing.
Japanese merchants dealt in coins which had square holes in the centre, and
were carried on strings of hemp. The Japanese five yen coin still has a hole
in it, left over from this practice.
Cannabis was a major crop and the primary source of clothing fibre until the
17th century, when cotton was introduced. Cotton began to replace cannabis
as a fibre crop because of high yields by heavy fertilizer use and the
development of mass processing methods.
Yet sturdy cannabis hemp continued to be used for a variety of specialized
purposes, including long-line eel fishing lines and packaging ropes to name
a couple.
-|-
The Emperor's Hemp Clothes
When Emperor Hirohito passed on in 1989, a coronation was held for his heir.
The Emperor himself is regarded as a direct descendant of the gods and acts
as a sort of high priest in the pagan Shinto belief.
Since Hirohito's son was becoming the "living entity of God", there had to
be a special Shinto ritual. In Shinto, cannabis is the symbol of purity, so
the new Emperor had to wear cannabis hemp garments, which had become
unavailable over the course of his father's long rule.
A group of Shinto farmers in Tokushima-ken had thought ahead and planted a
symbolic yet subversive crop, and presented the Emperor with his new clothes
made of pure local hemp They are still producing this crop for the exclusive
use of the Imperial family.
-|-
Cannabis in Shinto & Zen
Purity and fertility are paramount shinto concepts, and cannabis is an
essential symbol of both.
In the long journey from India to China, the teachings of the Buddha were
considerably altered. The Japanese further adapted and intertwined Buddhism
with their traditional mythological religion of Shinto.
Shinto is the ancient "way of the gods", a ritualistic expression of
profound respect for the kami (the intrinsic god-like spirit) in nature.
Plants, animals, rocks and trees all possess a sort of spirit or reverence
which can be terrifying or peaceful. Purity and fertility are paramount
Shinto concepts, and cannabis is an essential symbol of both.
Geisha relaxing and smoking a bowl between (or with) their customers.
The Cannabis Goddess
Shinto creation stories tell of the Japanese islands rising from volcanoes
and hot springs. A Goddess and God figure descended to people the country
with their direct descendants.
This first pair then begat the founding goddess-figure, Amaterasu Omi Kami
(Sun Goddess). She is enshrined at the holiest of places, the Ise Shrine
(Ise Jinja).
At that shrine on the Ise peninsula, the special prayer given for the
founding Goddess of Japan is called "taima", which literally means
"cannabis". Cannabis, salt and rice are the sacred staples that are used as
part of all the rites at the shrine.
In fact, cannabis, mulberry fibre, and cloth and paper made from them are
offered to the gods at all Shinto shrines, along with salt, sake and rice.
In olden times, wandering pilgrims were obliged to leave an offering of
cannabis leaves and rice to the pathside phallic-fertility statues of the
Sahe no Kami (protective deities) before embarking on a journey.
Hempen Purity
At Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, certain objects are symbolically
made from hemp. For example, the thick bell-ropes must be hempen, as is the
noren, a short curtain which acts as a symbolic purification "veil", meant
to cause evil spirits to flee from the body as the head brushes lightly
beneath it.
In another old tradition, rooms of worship were purified by burning cannabis
leaves by the entrance. This would invite the spirits of the departed,
purify the room and encourage people to dance.
The element of purity is stressed again as undyed hemp fabric was an
important part for the household of the new bride. This undyed hemp came to
symbolize the "womanly virtues" of faithfulness, chastity and obedience.
Like the undyed cloth, an old saying goes, the woman must allow herself to
be dyed any color her husband chooses.
-|-
Hemp Seed for Food
While soy and rice have long been Japan's nutritional staples, cannabis seed
was also an important part of the diet, used mostly as addition to
vegetables or else as gruel.
When the armies of the fuedal age went to war, they subsisted on balls of
ground cannabis seed and brown rice gluten to keep them strong.
In contemporary Japan, ground cannabis seed remains in the diet in Shichimi
(seven spices) used for flavoring Udon noodles. Unsterilized cannabis seed
bird food is readily available as well.
-|-
The Gods' Harvest Party
Another Shinto tale tells that every October, all the dieties from around
Japan gather at a sacred site in rural Shimane prefecture, at Japan's
largest shrine called Iizumo Taisha.
Shimane is far out of the way of any urban center, and besides being "Home
of the Gods", it was home to bounteous cannabis harvests up until about 50
years ago. During this month, the rest of the nation is left unprotected
from calamity while the gods hold a harvest festival and match-making
celebration.
Zen Hemp Haiku
Zen, the meditative, Taoist influenced branch of Buddhism, was also
influenced by cannabis, in the forms of marijuana and hemp. Samurai and
scholars who followed Zen's subtle tenets express cannabis' inspiration in
arts like Haiku (short poems).
In the following Haikus, the feeling of cannabis is clear. The wandering Zen
poet Issa Kobayashi writes:
The cannabis around my hut
also has suffered
From summer thinness.
Just when I hear
The sundown bell,
The flower of this weed.
Basho the Haiku Master writes:
The cannabis- How wonderful it is!
The summer drawing room.
Trees and stones, just as they are.
Ah, how glorious!
The young leaves, the green leaves,
Glittering in the sunshine!
And one more, author unknown:
When all things are hushed,
suddenly a bird's song
arouses a deep sense of stillness.
When all the flowers are departed,
suddenly a single flower is seen,
and we feel the infinity of life.
(All haikus quoted from Drake)
-|-
The Hempen Arts
A common pattern in fabric is the traditional "asa no ha" (cannabis leaf),
where the seven blades of the leaf intersect to form a mandala-like pattern.
This pattern is often seen in curtains, quilts and kimono (seen on
background)
This pattern is also commonly seen in paintings depicting the "floating
world" of Geisha. These colourful art prints often depict the subject's
kimono with this geometric leaf pattern, as well as relaxing and smoking a
long slender pipe while between customers (opposite page). Another
interesting artifact from that world is a hair comb, detailed with cannabis
and what are likely Japanese maple leaves (below).
A widely celebrated painting from 1929, Shimizu's Taima Shukaku (Hemp
Harvest), depicts farmers cutting down thick, dense hemp fields, surrounded
by a vibrant valley. This painting was a finalist for a kind of national
"painting of the year" award from the government.
Wood-cut prints from a 1979 artistic agriculture grow book show the same
dense fields. One caption explains how one must walk through the fields to
"ventilate" the plants. Other captions include a three-step water-retting
technique, and a means of bleaching with potash and lime.
-|-
Archery & Sumo Wrestling
The bowstring used by Zen Archers is specifically made of cannabis, which
reflects a connection with the meditative practice of Zen as well as
verifying hemp's toughness as a fibre.
Sumo wrestling involves an elaborate pre-bout ceremony called dohyo-iri, in
which the reigning champion carries a giant hempen rope around his ample
girth to purify the ring and exorcise the evil spirits. This purification
ritual continues even to this day, with the approximately 30 pound hempen
belt being worn by Hawaiian-born sumo champion, Akebono.
Leaping Ninjas!
A well-known folk story tells of a technique used by elite ninja assassins
to improve their jumping skills.
The learning ninja plants a batch of cannabis when he begins training, and
endeavors to leap over it every day. At first this is no challenge, but the
plants grow quickly, and so must the diligent ninja's jumping ability. By
the end of the season, the warrior can alledgedly clear the full grown stand
of cannabis. This certainly attests as much for the plant's vitality as to
the ninja's leaping ability.
US Cannabis Suppression in Japan
Cannabis cultivation came to a legal halt in Japan during the post WWII
allied-forces occupation. Allied troops lived in Japan and helped to rebuild
and reshape the nation which had been battered by the destruction and
poverty of wartime. The foreign troops were certainly surprised at the
abundance of cannabis, growing both wild and cultivated.
When American General Douglas MacArthur and his colleagues rewrote the
Japanese constitution in 1948, they were sure to include the Taima
Torishimari Ho, the Cannabis Control Act.
Western companies seized upon this new, tightly controlled post-war market,
and offered new synthetic products to replace the traditional. The cannabis
plant was almost completely eradicated, and thousands of years of growth and
breeding were greatly diminished under an avalanche of post-war change.
Hemp for Victory
Ironically, it was the Japanese Imperial Army's invasion of the Philippines
a few years earlier that had acted as catalyst for the US "Hemp for Victory"
campaign to replace the Manila-hemp used by the armed forces.
Japan had also relied on domestic and Southeast Asian cannabis crops to make
their uniforms, helmet linings and other war accessories for their
Imperialist campaigns, until WWII.
Loss of memories
Despite the intentions of the centralized government and the Cannabis
Control Act, cannabis was still cultivated and growing wild in cities,
especially along railways, until the mid-50's. As was the case in many other
countries, most farmers had no idea that this outlawed plant "cannabis" was
the familiar crop they still used for everything from bird seed to fine
woven cloths.
Most Japanese believe that marijuana is a narcotic, and do not realize that
it is the same plant as cannabis hemp, which was once as much a part of
Japanese culture as rice. In a mere half century, MacArthur's Cannabis
Control Act managed to almost totally wipe away the memories of cannabis
culture, which had endured for several thousand years after its beginnings
in the Jomon Period.
The Japanese term for cannabis, asa, still has a familiar sound to the
Japanese people, most of whom just assume that it has just been replaced by
new, better fibres. Fortunately, much information survives in art, books and
stories. Wild cannabis also continues to grow in abundance, now a weed in
areas where it was once a valued crop.
Government permits
Like other governments, the Japanese parliament continues to be hesitant and
under-informed about the benefits of extensive cannabis cultivation. Yet the
current legal status still allows cannabis to be grown, with a permit.
However, the permit application process is lengthy, frustrating and futile,
as the government rarely issues permits. It has been so long that most civil
servants respond simply with a blank look.
Cheeba Cheeba on Hokkaido Island.
Hemp Stores
Hempen household accessories like washcloths and curtains continue to be
sold in Japan, made from Chinese and Korean hemp. More recently, new hemp
products from western manufacturers are taking off. Given Japan's enthusiasm
for traditional, rugged North American fashion, this will be a burgeoning
industry should the restrictions relax.
There are now several stores carrying cannabis hemp products, including the
Earth Shop and Cheeba Cheeba run by expatriate American Neil Hartman on the
island of Hokkaido.
In Kyoto, a traditional hemp shop called Asakoji has continued to serve
patrons since the 1600's, surviving wars and prohibition. Perhaps more
importantly, the store emphasizes the age-old connection of spirituality,
art and agriculture, a vital example of cannabis in Japan. Their hemp noren
sign boasts in Japanese "We only know about cannabis, but we know every
detail."
Cheeba Cheeba: owned by expatriate American Neil Hartmann
At Taimdo (cannabis shrine) in Tokyo, a hemp shop sells mostly imported hemp
goods and is a centre for activism and research. Citizens are increasingly
using political means, as well as spiritual, to restore cannabis cultivation
in their homeland by distribution of information and products.
Changing the Laws
For two decades following the passage of the Cannabis Control Act, the law
seemed to exist only on the books. Many farmers still grew hemp and the law
was not enforced.
Earth Shop on Hokkaido Island.
Outside pressures built up, and in 1967 the Cannabis Control Act was
enforced for the first time, when 20 stalks were seized from a farmer's
collective in the Shinshu, Nagano region. The ensuing legal proceedings
sparked the cannabis liberation movement in Japan.
Symposiums in the 70's
In the early 1970s, the first modern cannabis symposium was held at Kyoto
University and a court challenge was filed to argue that the ban was
unconstitutional. The cannabis movement became a struggle not only against
cannabis laws, but also against the pressing thumb of US influence,
symbolized in the continuing occupation of Okinawa by US military forces.
Cannabis conferences are now attended by a diverse group of lawyers,
doctors, students, and farmers who are lobbying the government and
encouraging research.
In Iwate prefecture, an association of hemp farmers promotes a festival in
which they invite the public to join in the harvest.
Earth Shop: also owned by Neil Hartmann.
Tests and Research
Research and test cultivation of low-THC hemp has been going on at many
Japanese universities for several years.
In Tochigi prefecture, a group has recently begun producing and marketing
rugged, refined paper made from pure, domestic cannabis hemp. This handsome
paper is available in limited supply and is being used for printing cards
and book-covers.
Shinshu University in Nagano is also cultivating, and various projects are
underway in Iwate and Fukui prefectures and on Hokkaido, showing cannabis'
potential in many latitudes and climates.
Earth Shop Manager, Haruko
Blitzing, Challenging, Building Houses
Shizuoka lawyer Hidehiro Marui has been representing marijuana arrestees for
much of his 20 year career, and also owns a coveted permit to cultivate
cannabis for personal research. He and his colleagues are blitzing the mass
media, publishing research and dissertations in popular magazines to
encourage public education about cannabis and its potential products.
Cannabis' potential as a building material is especially intriguing to this
group, who plan to construct hempen houses throughout Japan, reducing their
massive importation of wood as well as showing a useful application of hemp.
Before 2000, Marui's group plans to challenge the Cannabis Control Act and
test its constitutionality. This could have a resounding impact on this
island nation, and will certainly call the Japanese people to debate at many
levels.
-|-
Pot Prices in Japan
Pot is more expensive in Japan than North America, but so is everything
else, with a cup of coffee going for as much as $7cdn.
Police always quote a "street price" of 6000 yen ($65cdn) for a gram of
marijuana, but the actual price is usually about half that. An ounce sold to
a friend goes for $600 to $900cdn.
On the northern island of Hokkaido marijuana grows wild, so it is very rare
that anyone spends money to get it. People there are very friendly and will
often give big bags full to their friends. Since it is wild the quality is
not world class, but it is free.
-|-
Marijuana Smokers in today's Japan
While smoking marijuana is not as wide-spread in Japan as it is in Canada,
Japanese cannabis culture is certainly alive and well.
The most popular drugs in fast-paced Japanese society are nicotine, alcohol
and caffeine, followed by amphetamines. In 1995, there were almost 20,000
arrests for speed, compared to about 1,500 for pot.
In the big cities, it isn't hard to find buds or hash in small quantities.
It is nonchalantly viewed as a trendy western drug by many casual urban
users. Something you do a couple times before you "get serious" with your
life. The chunks of hash are primarily sold by Iranians in the parks or
train stations, but the police are rounding up many of these people and
deporting them for visa violations and minor infractions, in actions that
often seem racially motivated.
The commercial product comes mostly from the Phillipines and Thailand,
smuggled in by boats, the packages tied to off-shore buoys and passed off to
the locals. It also comes in from Hawaii, brought in by smugglers posing as
tourists.
-|-
Ross Rebagliati: Hempen Hero
The 1998 Winter Olympic games are over and done, but their effect is still
being felt in Japan and around the world. After snowboarding for ten years,
hosting my own TV program on snowboarding, and learning to speak fluent
Japanese, I was given the honour of having the best possible seat for the
first ever Olympic Snowboard Halfpipe competition.
The competition began on February 8, with minimal presence from Japanese
media, who are known for only covering events with Japanese competitors.
Since there were no Japanese snowboarders, their media turnout was rather
weak for Ross Rebagliati's gold medal performance.
That all changed on February 9 however, when it was announced that
Rebagliati would lose his medal due to a pot-positive pee test. The Japanese
media had finally found something they could cover, and for the next two
days the papers were filled with articles concerning the decision. Debates
were held on TV with panels ranging from professors to actors. One of the
most common wrap-up comments heard from reporters was something to the
effect of "loose morals in other countries can lead to problems like this."
The overall opinion of the Japanese media? Marijuana is bad and Rebagliati
should have his medal taken away. Even after his medal was reinstated, TV
shows rambled on endlessly about how the Olympic Committee had made a big
mistake and the medal should definitely be taken away. Many argued that
Rebagliati should face charges in a Japanese court.
It is unfortunate that such uninformed people should be in a position to
create and influence public opinion, but in Japan it is very difficult to
voice an opinion that goes against the laws.
During the two days before the medal was returned, I spoke to many of the
Japanese staff involved in the snowboard competitions. Not once did anyone
question why marijuana was even being tested for. The only thing anyone ever
said was "mottainai" (what a waste) or "Taima suttei baka da ne" (he's a
fool for smoking marijuana). The most common comment was "snowboard ga image
warukunaru ne" (now snowboarding will have a bad image). Again and again I
was reminded how far Japan has to go towards proper marijuana education.
Yet all in all what happened was not only good for Japan but for the
hemp/marijuana movement world wide. Thanks to Ross Rebagliati, the movement
to legalize cannabis got a big boost and some great press. He proved to
Japan and to the world that you can smoke marijuana and still win a Gold
Medal and be a hero for your country.
- By Neil Hartmann, Earth Shop, Hokkaido
-|-
Miasa-muras town brochure. Residents there are eager to grow legal cannabis.
Homesteading Hempsters
In the mountains and countryside, the situation is somewhat better as the
skills of growing are still practiced. Unfortunately, it's hard to meet
growers and smokers out in the countryside (that's why they live there).
Several people I met there had moved from the big cities to homestead and
grow in the rural areas.
Due to the scarcity of equipment and the high cost of electricity, most
crops are outdoors in clearings on steep hillsides in the dense forests. The
genetics come from various seeds brought back from vacations to Thailand,
Jamaica, Amsterdam or BC, and then worked into the Japanese soil.
Some growers in villages use small greenhouses alongside their house, hoping
no one stops by to see what's growing.
Expansive wild and semi-cultivated crops of cannabis grow in the vast
rolling hills on the cold northern island of Hokkaido. Young city folk often
try to harvest the rugged fibre for personal smoking use, with little
success and often legal problems. The police know this trick and station
roadblocks during harvest season, often catching people with their trunk
full of plants.
-|-
The government's gold medal crops
In February of this year, the Nagano region of Japan hosted the Winter
Olympic Games. Yet despite all the media frenzy around Canadian pot-puffing
gold-medal snowboarder Ross Rebagliati, the local hempen heritage received
no exposure.
The best example of local Japanese cannabis culture is the town of
Miasa-mura (beautiful hemp town), located in Nagano-prefecture, amongst the
foothills of Japan's Northern Alps.
When asked how much cannabis used to grow in this region, one farmer
responded by asking "Do you see these rice fields?" He pointed to the vast
checkerboard of rice fields he'd been cutting and bundling. "Before the war,
we didn't grow rice here, we grew cannabis."
Miasa-mura's town brochure even features a distinctive cannabis leaf. The
town educates visitors with a hemp and flax museum and spinning equipment on
display.
Many residents are anxious to resume legal hemp cultivation, and are
frustrated by the long and always unsuccessful application process.
The Nagano government administers the growth of one or two closely monitored
hemp fields, of exactly one thousand plants each. They are grown at
different locations in rotating country villages. The local authorities
count the plants at the beginning, middle and end of the growing season, to
ensure that none have been taken.
The hemp fibre isn't used at all, but the seeds are harvested to maintain a
fresh seed stock in the town coffers. The hemp crop is then completely
burned in the field. Although a waste, at least Japan's acclimatized strains
aren't extinct, as has happened in many other countries.
The feds' private stash
The federal government also continues to maintain its own private stash of
cannabis seed and plants for posterity and experimentation.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government's Medicinal Plant Garden has maintained a
seed stock and bred varieties of "asa" for research since 1946, when
cannabis hemp was in short supply due to the war. Given the Japanese knack
for detail and research, their large, secure complex in suburban Tokyo is
likely a valuable cache of information and genetics.
While the original intent of the compound seems to have been to advance the
medicinal use of cannabis, this motive has been lost under a cloud of
paranoia, even though the use of seeds for health and medicine is common
information.
The director, Torao Shimizu, maintains that the plants are just to teach
people what cannabis looks like, so they can destroy it should it be found
growing in their area.
-|-
International Cannabis Culture
In these rural areas, cannabis culture grooves on with an international
twist. It is wonderful to pass a bong around in a foreign land, knowing that
you are among folks with the same understanding of the plant as you. This is
especially true in Japan, which is so often seen as a crowded, neon, worker
hive. It feels great to meet people living a life like yours in so many
ways: same tunes, same thoughts, same ganja.
One friend told me about Bob Marley's visit to Japan about two years before
he died. Bob's entourage hadn't brought any weed with them to Japan, so Bob
was excited to meet this friend who was able to provide Bob with buds from
his apartment closet grow system. Bob stayed at his apartment for a couple
of days and gave him a percussive gourd as a gift.
-|-
Japanese strains of hemp
According to a 1912 US Department of Agriculture comparison study, Japanese
strains of hemp were taller and bigger than European and Chinese strains.
"...Japanese Hemp is beginning to be cultivated, particularly in California,
where it reaches a height of 15 feet. Russian and Italian seed have been
experimented with, but the former produces a short stalk, while the latter
only grows to a medium height."
The USDA continued experimenting with Japanese strains with remarkable
success. A strain from Tochigi-prefecture grown in Virginia even broke the
USDA height record.
Since definitive research on Japan's crop volume was destroyed in WW2 fire
storms it is difficult to arrive at a clear estimate of how well these
strains grew in their native soils.
-|-
Japanese Pot Cops
Japanese police still work hard at catching pot people, especially
importers. Police literature quotes from a book called "What is Marijuana":
"Marijuana abuse causes disorder of time concepts, confusing past, present
and future. Addicts sometimes see what can not be seen, or sometimes see
themselves as beautiful ladies, birds or animals. Sometimes they fall into a
state of lethargy."
Japan's anti-pot establishment also targets famous people to publicly
defame. In 1995, one of Japan's most popular rock singers, Tsuyoshi
Nagabuchi, was caught with under 2 grams of grass. He was jailed, fined
millions, had his concerts canceled and had to publicly apologize.
Remember that the Japanese jailed Paul McCartney for two ounces in the early
seventies, and it was only with great diplomatic pressure that he was
released.
Japanese have also been at the other end of the rope, as the Phillipines
hanged a Japanese convicted of smuggling several ounces of pot in the early
1990's.
-|-
the kanji for cannabis means `big hemp.`
Cannabis in the Japanese Language
In Japan's beautiful and bewildering language, cannabis is expressed by an
ideogram character, adapted from Chinese, and pronounced "asa". This
character is read "ma" in Chinese and represents two plants hanging upside
down from the rafters of a drying shed. Note that only marijuana plants
would be hung to dry in thus fashion, as cannabis grown for fibre is
field-retted after harvest.
Since the decline of cannabis cultivation, "asa" has become a sort-of
catch-all term for replacement crops such as jute, sisal, flax linen, as
well as cannabis, making it a bit confusing. However in any dictionary or
other languge resource, it is unmistakable that the asa character means
cannabis.
A character which refers to cannabis more specifically is "taima". "Tai" (or
"Dai") means "tall" or "big", while "ma" is the original Chinese reading of
the "asa" character. This is the "official" word for the plant used in the
law that prohibits its cultivation.
There is an amazing piece of linguistic proof that the ancient japanese were
very aware of cannabis' enlightening uses. The japanese character for "to
rub" consists of "cannabis" and "hand". Of course, you rub cannabis only to
get hashish.
Cannabis culture also lives on through family names such as Asada or Asahara
(hemp field) and given names like Asako (little hemp child) or Mamiko (hemp
flower).
the kanji for `to rub` is made of `cannabis` and `hand`.
Other Cannabis Culture terms used in Japan
marifana - Common slang adaptation of the Mexican/American word for
cannabis.
choko - A modern Japanese slang for weed. Similar to ganja, which is also
used.
kusa - "Grass" as in "You got any grass?"
dozo - This is the way to say "here, take this" as you pass the joint.
happa - "Leaf" A common term used the same way as "weed".
maku - The verb "to roll." Try "happu o maku" for "roll up some weed."
happachu / happaboke - "Weed junkie", used a bit lightheartedly sometimes,
as the suffix also refers to harder drugs.
-|-
Social Stigma & Good Bud
To be caught smoking weed in Japan is a very big deal. Their justice system
is efficient and precise at measuring out your sentence, no matter how much
influence you may have in another country. There are many foreigners
languishing in Japanese jails who were caught bringing in a stash to get
them by while they were living and working in Japan.
It is a social stigma to be caught and many Japanese parents fret that if
their child goes overseas to visit or study they will become either pregnant
or start smoking pot and then not be a proper worker/citizen. Marijuana is
considered by many to be as bad as any other drug, and smokers are referred
to as "happachuu" (leaf addict) the same as a junkie.
For several years, Japan has had a working holiday visa arrangement with
Canada, Australia and New Zealand, so it has given many young Japanese a
chance to explore the world and try many new things, and then take their new
foreign habits back home to share with their friends. To many young Japanese
who feel stifled by the rigors of their society, Vancouver is known for
snowboarding, good music and good bud.
Emerging from the Shadows
With total dependence on foreign oil, crowded cities, toxic-patches of
oceans, hazardous nuclear reactors, aging population, exessive golf courses
and little farmland, Japan will quickly have to look for new options to
carry itself into the next generation.
Japan is starting to realize this and has begun to take steps towards
meaningful alternatives such as recycling and reducing consumption,
especially with wood products.
With Japan's traditional skill at arts of the land and soul, combined with
their modern prowess in manufacturing and mass-marketing, it will be
exciting to see what impact the resurgence of the cannabis plant will have
upon the nation's economy and culture.
As Japan realizes its role as a global leader, Shinto's sacred herb can help
reconnect them with their past, and guide them towards a clean and
sustainable future.
Endnotes:
. A longer and more complete version of this article, including a thorough
bibliography citing all sources, can be found online at:
http://www.olywa.net
. Writer/Researcher Dave Olson invites feedback. He can be reached at:
Giggling Piglet Co-op, 2103 Harrison NW, Suite 2756 Olympia, WA 98502;
uncl...@olywa.net.
. Please contact for permission before quoting or publishing any part of
this research.
. Thanks to Joe Wein of Kanto region, Japan who has an excellent collection
of articles and resources about hemp in Japan available at:
http://www2.gol.com/users/joewein/hempjpn.html
. Thanks also to Hidehiro Marui, author of What is the Ganja and Asa and
Human Culture. Marui's Japanese web page is at:
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~is2h-mri/
. Regards and thanks for research, editorial help and encouragment to: John
Roulac, Dave West, Rob Clarke, Lauralee Elliott, Charles Lance Tomala, Bob
Olson, Eiji Masuda, Gyr Walker, David Moore and mostly Misa Nakanishi.
. Special thanks & dedications to Steve Gruett, Gakujin Inoue, Poli Kondo,
and Hiro. They are Japanese hempsters, farmers and artists in the Shinshu
area with whom I lived and learned the old ways of Japan in Autumn 1994.
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
news:F_adnY9ez82...@adelphia.com...
Brian Rahilly
birdsn...@worldya.net wrote on 24/6/05 11:56 AM:
Read your other posting on the history of Hemp in Japan. Interesting,
there's no mention of it being used to get stoned.
B
Yelps
DUH!!!
Japan had so much Hemp burning they thought being "stoned" was the usual
state of consciousness. Pot smoke kept the evil spiritis away.
C'mon people stop being total pinheads.
dc
Cody
Um, as Kansas shows, one has to cultivate pot to get any THC. When you let
it grow wild, the male plants take all the THC away from the female plants.
Hemp growing 101. One does not need drugs to chant the Daimoku. Quote me
one Gosho that says differently.
"Sin semilla" means "without seeds". How does one get that? One pulls the
male plants out so that the female plant, instead of making seeds, makes
THC.
Soooooooo, you could burn as many fields of hemp that you like and you will
NOT get stoned.
Cody
Brian Rahilly
birdsn...@worldya.net wrote on 24/6/05 1:51 PM:
LOL.
B
Yelps
You dork!
Sinsemilla and Industrial Hemp are the products of modern times, requiring
scientific breeding, gene splicing and sterilization----
--none of which existed in 13th Century Japan.
UGH! PINHEAD!
Sinsemilla is specially breeding only female plants,
Industrial Hemp is sterilized. Even Male plants have THC but much lower
levels.
Futhermore, Pot Smoking in old Japan AND China is well documented. It was
used routinely by Buddhists, Taoists and Shinto--- alike, to both smoke and
use ritually as a very thick incense. Psilocybe mushrooms, a number of
entheogenic Puffballs and at least two types from the Amanita family were
also in use for ritual.
Of course India as well---where all these eastern religions really came
from---was deeply rooted in visionay plant use. Infact, these
visions---were simply profound experiences brought about from the use of
entheogenic plants combined with meditation trechniques.
Jogyo Bosatsu is really the Japanese name of the character int he Lotus
Sutra---Head of the Bodhisattvas of the Earth, was also the head sage first
appearing in the stories in the Vedas, who obtained the Soma from Taishaku
(Indra) and distributed it to the monks.
That's why we still thank Taishaku in the silent prayers!
Get a grip on reality boys.
PINHEADS!!!
dc
rudikazooti
Get a grip? On what - a box of pills? Mother's little helper not any help
really.
And "natural" helpers frankly are not necessary either.
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> escribió en el mensaje
news:XYydnWEnp-_...@adelphia.com...
Yelps
"rudikazooti" <slic...@thanks.com> wrote in message
news:vC8ve.46574$dr....@news.ono.com...
> Back when you worked at the psycho ward you must have been affected.
> Get a grip? On what - a box of pills? Mother's little helper not any help
> really.
> And "natural" helpers frankly are not necessary
> either.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
You poor pinhead. I'm not takng about "mothers little helpers." You must be
drunk.again.
dc
rudikazooti
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> escribió en el mensaje
news:Q4idnegzNON...@adelphia.com...
Brian Rahilly
slic...@thanks.com wrote on 25/6/05 4:30 AM:
Looks like dc has blown it. He's only a shadow of his former self.
Sad.
B
Yelps
>I quit drinking June the 5th for good. DICKHEAD.
Well then good thing. I hope you stick to that---but there will be some
pinheadism---alcoholic fallout--you will have to clean out. Stop listening
to Nikken supporters and dump that Nikken bitch.---if you really care about
protecting Nichiren Shoshu. Stop blaming the Gakkai, they aren't perfect by
any stretch of the imagination, but they aren't altering warning articles,
excommunicating millions and tearing down High Sanctuaries.
Yelps
> in article vC8ve.46574$dr....@news.ono.com, rudikazooti at
> slic...@thanks.com wrote on 25/6/05 4:30 AM:
>
>
> Looks like dc has blown it. He's only a shadow of his former self.
> Sad.
>
> B
2 years or so ago, I asked you in a couple of e-mails to have Martin
Bradley translate a couple of the warning articles---you ignored me. For a
guy who in the past pretended to care about proper translations you slovenly
accept Nikken's altering of warning articles. Although I couldn't believe
it when I first saw it, I had to find out for myself, so I did it myself and
had it confirmed by unbiased, unaffiliated, Japanese translators, to double
check my own work.
It was my own assumptions that the schism must be the Gakkai's fault, that I
for years leaned towards blaming them. I was wrong. You Pinheads, refuse
to see what is right in front of your face.
dc
rudikazooti
Ikeda and never will. And I have personally met him. Maybe if SGI had come
off talking about something else I would have never left in 98. You see it
is not about me liking Nikken. It's more like I am sick and tired of hearing
about this asshole Ikeda. He is no saint. That's obvious.
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> escribió en el mensaje
news:662dnd3sm8A...@adelphia.com...
>
> "rudikazooti" <slic...@thanks.com> wrote in message
> news:V1bve.53189$US.4...@news.ono.com...
>>I quit drinking June the 5th for good. DICKHEAD.
>
> Well then good thing. I hope you stick to that---but there will be some
> pinheadism---alcoholic fallout--you will have to clean out. Stop listening
> to Nikken supporters and dump that Nikken bitch.---if you really care
> about protecting Nichiren Shoshu. Stop blaming the Gakkai, they aren't
> perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they aren't altering
> warning articles, excommunicating millions and tearing down High
> Sanctuaries.
>
>
Yelps
> Well not that I need your permission, but is it OK that I never DID like
> Ikeda and never will. And I have personally met him. Maybe if SGI had come
> off talking about something else I would have never left in 98. You see it
> is not about me liking Nikken. It's more like I am sick and tired of
> hearing about this asshole Ikeda. He is no saint. That's obvious.
He may not be a "saint," but he is doing more real things then Nikken would
or could ever do.
Read Ikeda's recent books. His ideas are sound. He is not into an outmoded
way of thinking. He is realistic and has accomplished much.
rudikazooti
enlightened action. Do your own practice, study, and do Shakabuku. Forget
about personalities, organizations, and get out there and do your own part
on this planet. Both of these guys are over the hill and ready for the grave
anyway. Next!
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> escribió en el mensaje
news:9dGdnbdAQPQ...@adelphia.com...
Yelps
> Who cares about either guy really. Pray for both of their happiness and
> enlightened action. Do your own practice, study, and do Shakabuku. Forget
> about personalities, organizations, and get out there and do your own part
> on this planet. Both of these guys are over the hill and ready for the
> grave anyway. Next!
The difference, is that the SGI is a viable instrument for the promotion of
World Peace, doing real-world things. Regardless what anyone says about
personal practice, without an actual unified movement in the real world, it
will all just be a pipe dream.
rudikazooti
pipe dream. About the only movements the SGI can manage right now are group
bowel movements.
"Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> escribió en el mensaje
news:gZSdnXFp26D...@adelphia.com...
Cody
>
> "rudikazooti" <slic...@thanks.com> wrote in message
> news:diNve.53399$US.5...@news.ono.com...
>> Who cares about either guy really. Pray for both of their happiness and
>> enlightened action. Do your own practice, study, and do Shakabuku. Forget
>> about personalities, organizations, and get out there and do your own
>> part on this planet. Both of these guys are over the hill and ready for
>> the grave anyway. Next!
>
> The difference, is that the SGI is a viable instrument for the promotion
> of World Peace, doing real-world things. Regardless what anyone says
> about personal practice, without an actual unified movement in the real
> world, it will all just be a pipe dream.
>
> dc
We have someone in Valencia who will be receiving their Gohonzon soon. How
many do you, Mr Hot Shot SGI sychophant, have? When was the last time YOU
did anything but bitch and moan about your uninformed perception of Nichiren
Shoshu?
We do have unity. That's the *last* thing SGI has.
Cody
Yelps
> Viable instrument? For whom? Kofi Annan and the corrupt UN? That sir, IS a
> pipe dream. About the only movements the SGI can manage right now are
> group bowel movements.
The philosophy of Buddhism is about fixing what is broken. If the UN is
broken ---then fix it.
Same is true of governments. Fix them. That is the real job of
"bodhisattvas," is to fix the real world and overcome the 4 sufferings for
all. That would be true Buddhist compassion.
Cody
>
> "rudikazooti" <slic...@thanks.com> wrote in message
> news:tFOve.47205$dr....@news.ono.com...
>> Viable instrument? For whom? Kofi Annan and the corrupt UN? That sir, IS
>> a pipe dream. About the only movements the SGI can manage right now are
>> group bowel movements.
>
>
> The philosophy of Buddhism is about fixing what is broken. If the UN is
> broken ---then fix it.
> Same is true of governments. Fix them. That is the real job of
> "bodhisattvas," is to fix the real world and overcome the 4 sufferings for
> all. That would be true Buddhist compassion.
>
>
> dc
That's why we do shakubuku. You cannot legislate world peace. It is not our
job, as a religion, to fix the UN or any other org. Treating the symptoms
doesn't cure the disease. Shakubuku cures the disease. What are YOU doing
besides bitching and moaning about how you are surrounded by pinheads that
don't understand your greatness?
Cody
Yelps
>
> "Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
> news:gZSdnXFp26D...@adelphia.com...
>>
>> "rudikazooti" <slic...@thanks.com> wrote in message
>> news:diNve.53399$US.5...@news.ono.com...
>>> Who cares about either guy really. Pray for both of their happiness and
>>> enlightened action. Do your own practice, study, and do Shakabuku.
>>> Forget about personalities, organizations, and get out there and do your
>>> own part on this planet. Both of these guys are over the hill and ready
>>> for the grave anyway. Next!
>>
>> The difference, is that the SGI is a viable instrument for the promotion
>> of World Peace, doing real-world things. Regardless what anyone says
>> about personal practice, without an actual unified movement in the real
>> world, it will all just be a pipe dream.
>>
>> dc
>
> We have someone in Valencia who will be receiving their Gohonzon soon. How
> many do you, Mr Hot Shot SGI sychophant, have? When was the last time YOU
> did anything but bitch and moan about your uninformed perception of
> Nichiren Shoshu?
>
> We do have unity. That's the *last* thing SGI has.
>
> Cody
I have no misperception of real Nichiren Shoshu, nor do I have any
misperception of the Nikken Ghoul Sect and his minions of pinheads.
Yelps
>
> "Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
> news:rY-dnYswjKK...@adelphia.com...
>>
>> "rudikazooti" <slic...@thanks.com> wrote in message
>> news:tFOve.47205$dr....@news.ono.com...
>>> Viable instrument? For whom? Kofi Annan and the corrupt UN? That sir, IS
>>> a pipe dream. About the only movements the SGI can manage right now are
>>> group bowel movements.
>>
>>
>> The philosophy of Buddhism is about fixing what is broken. If the UN is
>> broken ---then fix it.
>> Same is true of governments. Fix them. That is the real job of
>> "bodhisattvas," is to fix the real world and overcome the 4 sufferings
>> for all. That would be true Buddhist compassion.
>>
>>
>> dc
>
> That's why we do shakubuku. You cannot legislate world peace. It is not
> our job, as a religion, to fix the UN or any other org. Treating the
> symptoms doesn't cure the disease. Shakubuku cures the disease. What are
> YOU doing besides bitching and moaning about how you are surrounded by
> pinheads that don't understand your greatness?
>
> Cody
You know nothing about it Cody you've been numb so long.
Cody
>
> "Cody" <aka@[notme]maskedandanonymous.ua> wrote in message
> news:9XOve.47209$dr.1...@news.ono.com...
>>
>> "Yelps" <birdsn...@worldya.net> wrote in message
>> news:rY-dnYswjKK...@adelphia.com...
>>>
>>> "rudikazooti" <slic...@thanks.com> wrote in message
>>> news:tFOve.47205$dr....@news.ono.com...
>>>> Viable instrument? For whom? Kofi Annan and the corrupt UN? That sir,
>>>> IS a pipe dream. About the only movements the SGI can manage right now
>>>> are group bowel movements.
>>>
>>>
>>> The philosophy of Buddhism is about fixing what is broken. If the UN is
>>> broken ---then fix it.
>>> Same is true of governments. Fix them. That is the real job of
>>> "bodhisattvas," is to fix the real world and overcome the 4 sufferings
>>> for all. That would be true Buddhist compassion.
>>>
>>>
>>> dc
>>
>> That's why we do shakubuku. You cannot legislate world peace. It is not
>> our job, as a religion, to fix the UN or any other org. Treating the
>> symptoms doesn't cure the disease. Shakubuku cures the disease. What are
>> YOU doing besides bitching and moaning about how you are surrounded by
>> pinheads that don't understand your greatness?
>>
>> Cody
>
>
> You know nothing about it Cody you've been numb so long.
>
>
> dc
No answer other than a lying insult. Why am I not surprised?
Cody