Mexican Buddhist Lent: Ash Wednesday

Glam Buddhist David Bowie "Ashes to Ashes" (official video)

Holy [Hindu style) ashes on Ash Wednesday

Happy Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent for most Christians. Wisdom Quarterly's Mexican Buddhist Crystal Q. is torn between celebrating abstinence, the Five Eight or Ten Precepts, Ten Commandments, and reverting to simplicity. Since ancient Indian times, ashes from the pyre have been used by wandering ascetics as a way of getting clean. (Ashes are absorbent, and when collected from a funerary pyre, they are a strong reminder of this body's mortality). Buddhist David Bowie perhaps quoted the Anglican prayer book best when he sang, "Ashes to ashes, funk to funky, we know Major Tom's a junkie" (David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes").

The tilma of Juan Diego: Our Lady of Guadalupe

Madonna and Child? Kwan Yin

Why would a Mexican be Buddhist? One strong reason in the past was the arrival of Buddhist missionaries from Afghanistan and China before the arrival of Christianity. See American researcher Edward P. Vining and his published findings in An Inglorious Columbus: Or Evidence that Hwui Shan and a Party of Buddhist Monks from Afghanistan Discovered America in the Fifth Century, A.D.) Of course, in modern times Mexican Americans would love Buddhism for its many qualities and perhaps recognizing in the Buddhist Goddess of Compassion Guan Yin a great deal of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

So it's time for a field trip to church (Catholic mass) to see these smearing of cremation ashes across foreheads in Los Angeles. Ananda is eager to see what this is all about. CC took us to the giant Buddhist temple east of Los Angeles in the very Asian San Gabriel Valley, where we enjoyed the Aztec dancers dancing for the Chinese Mahayana Humanist Buddhist crowd. So this explosion/clash of Mexican and European church tradition ought to be a Roman spectacular.

(Neo Dharmism) Study Christianity, Hinduism, find one shocking difference

In India, cremation ashes are called phool ("flowers"). They are collected from the pyre in a rite-of-passage called asthi sanchayana then dispersed. This signifies redemption of the dead in waters (like those of the "holy" Ganges or Jordan River) considered to be sacred and a closure for the living (Hinduism, Note 28).

American Pope's first Lent

Kendrick Lamar's Lefty Gunplay, Grammy Award winning LA Latino

Dr. Dre made mad money signing Eminem, so Kendrick adopted Lefty Gunplay (F. Scott Holladay)

Viking berserkers got high first?

(HP) Christianity erased the truth, but the evidence remains: Viking "berserkers" were said to fight in a trance of unstoppable fury. Some historians believe this rage may have been triggered by psychoactive plants like henbane or hallucinogenic mushrooms. Seeds found in a Viking grave in Denmark suggest these substances were known and possibly used. Christians systematically destroyed much of the old pagan knowledge. This video explores the evidence behind one of Viking history’s strangest questions. More

• What Ash Wednesday means | Beginning of Lent explained #ashwednesday #lent
• Eds., Wisdom Quarterly; History Profiles, Feb. 13, 2026