Lost Cannabis of the Silk Road: Stans

Field of dreams...greens (hemp)

(Strain Hunters) The Lost Cannabis of the Silk Road, Kyrgyzstan Expedition | Strain Hunters, Episode 1.

• What does Buddhism have to do with Central Asia?
• Buddhism in Kyrgyzstan
• The historical Buddha and this iteration of "Buddhism" (the timeless, rediscovered Dharma) was born in ancient Gandhara (the three seasonal capitals collectively referred to as "Kapilavastu" (Pali Kapilavatthu and Kapilapura) not Nepal, but modern Afghanistan -- Bamiyan, Kabul, Mes Aynak -- and Pakistan and Bihar, India, near Himalayan foothill regions of the Hindu Kush and Kashmir)
• Though born here, modern scholars imagine a Silk Road transmission of Buddhism
• The wandering ascetic (shramana) Siddhartha awakened in Bodh Gaya ("Enlightenment Grove"), Bihar (Vihar), but at that time there was no "India." That came into being when many disparate kingdoms and republics were untied under Buddhist Emperor Ashoka. Prior to the many mahajanapadas or "familial territories" (lit. "greater territorial clan footholds").
• Soon after awakening (mahabodhi or "great enlightenment"), the Buddha (the "Awakened One") returned to his hometown in Central Asia, Kapilavastu (quite likely Bamiyan, according to Indian historian Dr. Ranajit Pal) and gained many Scythian/Shakyian/Saka followers, many who took up a life of wandering asceticism and followed him back to Bihar (Vihar'), so named because there were at one time so many viharas (Buddhist temples, monasteries and nunneries, and chaityas) across the land.
• Technically speaking, "Buddhism" was born in Rajgir, India, where the great former-Brahmin Buddhist monk Maha Kassapa called together the First Buddhist Council to standardize and create a formal "religion" or "Eastern philosophy"
• The Kharosthi (Gandhari) language texts (Gandhāran Buddhist texts) are the world's oldest known Buddhist texts.

The only three connections of cannabis (ganja, marijuana, herb, flower, pot, weed) to Buddhism that we are aware of are indirect and not very connected to enlightenment, but some users of this plant treat them as if they are connected.

The first is possible but unlikely. Potheads are convinced -- either through wishful thinking, speculation, or some handed down mythology that got stretched to enhance cannabis' glorious reputation -- that when the wandering ascetic Siddhartha (the Bodhisatta or Future Buddha) was engaged in severe asceticism, he took less and less food until he was down to just one cannabis seed a day. This would have been a healthy choice because hemp is so incredibly nutritious, though not likely psychoactive.

• Hempseeds are extraordinary because they are one of a very few plant sources of balanced Omega 3, 6, and 9 fatty acids plus a great source of protein.
• To emphasize how dedicated struggling Siddhartha was to attaining Buddhahood, his austerities (tapas), penances, and asceticism are spoken of in the extreme to make a point. He ate a bowlful of grain (most often said to have been rice or sesame maybe mustard seed). Then regarding that as too indulgent, he took only a handful...until he took only a single grain a day. That didn't work to gain him calm, insight, or enlightenment, and he gave all of these practices up for the Middle Way that avoids extremes of hedonism and asceticism. He realized that jhana practice was the way to awakening/liberation, serving as the foundation of insight (vipassana, lit. "clear seeing").

Rules, rules, rules

Fat Happy addict Homer (olioart.com)

The second is a curious omission in the Monastic Disciplinary Code (Vinaya and Pāṭimokkha and Pratimokṣa), such as one freely available translation by American Theravada monk Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu (abbot of Metta Forest Monastery, San Diego), which states and explains (with a backstory) all the rules Buddhist monks and nuns vow to live by.

There are major rules, lesser rules (which might be described as "minor"), and many more miscellaneous rules of etiquette. Which is which is not completely obvious.

When Ananda was told by the Buddha that after his passing into final nirvana, the monastic order (sangha), could democratically vote to alter or abandon the "minor rules" but not the others. Ananda did not have the presence of mind to clarify by asking which were which, so the historically-based Theravada tradition chose to keep them all. But Buddhist Councils debate, argue, and attempt to define or redefine them, even on occasion voting to modify or better explain them. For instance, maybe in the past monastics walked or were driven, but today a rule might be relaxed to allow them to drive.

Among arguably "minor" rules is a rule that monastics can smoke [such as tobacco], but what exactly they would have been smoking in those days is not thoroughly specified. They can smoke something. So a monk or nun might smoke hemp leaf, THC-containing weed, or herbs and flowers and grass and think that no violation (of the rules they live by as laid down by the historical Buddha) is taking place.

(It may well be that cannabis was not very powerful back then so that it made little difference). Smoking weed would be taking a risk because one of the biggest rules incumbent on all Buddhists is the Fifth Precept to "abstain from intoxicants that occasion heedlessness," namely beer and liquor.

• The way the rules are classified is by way of seriousness and their consequences. As regards the most serious, there are FOUR "defeat offenses" (parajikas). This is a little odd because these four are the Five Precepts with one exception. The only one left out is the fifth, consuming intoxicants, getting high, taking a substance that occasions heedlessness (which mean breaking other rules through neglect, indifference, lack of mindfulness, or the ignorance that comes from being high a.k.a. tripping balls). Isn't it odd that getting intoxicated does not rise to a "defeat" offense but all the others do? Because of intoxication, one is likely to commit any of the other offenses, including the defeat offenses of sex, stealing, killing, or lying [about attainments] that immediately and irrevocably lead one to lose one's ordination as a monk or nun for this lifetime.

What is the drug?

The Path of Purification

The third is related but tangential. There is the existence of an entheogenic elixir (an amrita or Greek ambrosia) called soma (an Indo-Aryan combination of natural "drugs" such as divine cannabis, of some extraordinary strain, Asian blue lotus or Egyptian blue lotus, fermented mare's milk or kumis, and other variants, perhaps psychoactive mushrooms or other DMT-containing ingredients, plus additives to process, enhance, or preserve it).

• Texts describe the preparation of soma by means of extracting juice from a plant, the identity of which is now unknown and debated among scholars. The ancient Historical Vedic religion's soma and Zoroastrianism's haoma (Avestan, name of the drink and plant) are not exactly the same [7].
• There has been much speculation about the most likely original botanical.
• Some accounts, such as those from practitioners of yogic Ayurveda, Siddha medicine, and Somayajna, identify the plant as "Somalata" (Cynanchum acidum) [8].
• Some researchers have proposed candidates including:
• Amanita muscaria (Fly agaric shamanic mushroom),
• Psilocybin (magic mushrooms),
• Peganum harmala (the alkaloid harmaline), and
• Ephedra gerardiana.
• [Into this or as a later substitute, it is believed cannabis was steeped in mare's milk kumis, perhaps a "poor man's soma."]
• So legendary is soma in the West that The Doors of Perception author Aldous Huxley used it as a central ingredient in his novel Brave New World, suggesting that the word refers to a psychoactive, entheogenic, psychedelic substance similar to mescaline, derived from cacti like peyote and San Pedro. But these might only be substitutes for the real thing because the character Linda tries mescal (the psychedelic protoalkaloid mescaline) and peyotl (peyote) and longs to get back to the World State and real soma.
• The society described in Brave New World keeps its citizens peaceful by various methods, including the constant consumption of the soothing, happiness-producing drug "soma."
• Botanical identity of soma–haoma

Zoroastrians use a soma to this day, identified as the plant ephedra, whose effects mirror the descriptions found in the Rig Veda [a pre-Hindu Brahminical text of great importance to Hindus].

The old Vedic religion was the belief system of some of the Vedic Indo-Aryan tribes, the Aryas (Aryans) [14][15], who migrated into the Indus River Valley region of the Indian subcontinent [16].

• [To be clear, the word Aryan, "noble," came to designate "enlightened" in Buddhist usage rather than being any kind of reference to race, ethnicity, or "Iranian" usage from which it originally derived.]
• The Buddha was a self-proclaimed Aryan [his mother, Maha Maya Gautami, being Iranian (from Sistan-Baluchistan, according to Dr. Ranajit Pal in his most remarkable book Non-Jonesian Indology), a descendant of the "Solar Race" (The Story of the Lineage or translation of the Nidanakatha in Buddhist Birth Stories by T.W. Rhys Davids).

Sakka, King of the Devas

The Indo-Aryans were speakers of a branch of the Indo-European language family, which originated in the Sintashta culture and further developed into the Andronovo culture, which in turn developed out of the Kurgan culture of the Central Asian steppes [17].

The Vedic beliefs and practices of the pre-classical era were closely related to the hypothesized Proto-Indo-European religion [18, Note 1] and show relations with rituals from the Andronovo culture, from which the Indo-Aryan people descended [14].

Sakka in Christianity: St. Michael

According to Anthony, the Old Indic religion probably emerged among Indo-European immigrants in the contact zone between the Zeravshan River (present-day Uzbekistan) and (present-day) Iran [19].

It was "a syncretic mixture of old Central Asian and new Indo-European elements" [19], which borrowed "distinctive religious beliefs and practices" [11] from the Bactria–Margiana culture (BMAC) [11].

This syncretic influence is supported by at least 383 non-Indo-European words that were borrowed from this culture, including the god Indra [Sakka] and the ritual drink Soma [12]. According to Anthony:

"Many of the qualities of Indo-Iranian god of might and victory Verethraghna were transferred to the adopted god Indra [Sakka of the Sakas], who became the central deity of the developing Old Indic culture.

Indra was the subject of 250 hymns, a quarter of the Rig Veda. He was associated more than any other deity with Soma, a stimulant drug (perhaps derived from ephedra) probably borrowed from the BMAC religion. His rise to prominence was a peculiar trait of the Old Indic speakers [20]." More: Soma (drink)

• Strain Hunters; Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly Wiki edit