What did Buddhists know about entheogenic mushrooms in soma to place one atop a stupa?
Royal parasol? UFO symbol? Mushroom?
Teacher of Dr. Ammon Hillman: Dr. Carl Ruck
Mushrooms Demystified (David Arora)
There's altogether too much mycophobia (fear of mushrooms). The majority are harmless.
A minority are psychoactive and make them sought out medicines for the mind.
Sumerian, Akkadian, Jewish, Christian creation myth of an Edenic garden with a fruiting body
Mama, may I? - Liebchen, what is it? - The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil.
National Mushroom Month
I wasn't even interested in shrooms until I found my first patch in a magical fairy ring.
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All through September, National Mushroom Month celebrates the wide variety of mushrooms available. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) also takes advantage of the opportunity to educate people on the versatility culinary mushrooms offer, including many health benefits.
As a result, mushrooms (and mycelia) are gaining more and more appreciation as we learn more about them.
To fully celebrate the heritage of "mushrooms" (the fruiting bodies of fungi), we must first learn about the Mushroom Capital of the World.
Located just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, there is a small town known as Kennett Square.
Surprisingly, this small Pennsylvanian town produces over a million pounds of mushrooms a day. Each year Kennett Square holds the annual Mushroom Festival starting with a parade.
The future is fungal -- edible mycelium for "meat" like textures and nutrition from the ground. Already flavorful and full of umami (savory), with the addition of plant-based heme, there will be vegan burgers for everyone because of the astounding growth rates of mycelia (the root-like system that forms the basis of mushrooms.
Mycelia: These tiny filaments and fibrous projections enervate plant matter and make rich soil.
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Vatican scholar J.M. Allegro
Mycelium runs through the ground in billion-mile-long fibers deriving nutrients from the breakdown of plant and other matter in the soil. Mushrooms are environmental remediators.
Shamans knew their power, witches ("wise ones"), Christian mystics, monks, and priests (including the founder of Christianity, who experimented with many "drugs," according to Ancient Greek classicist Dr. Ammon Hillman).
Witches' brew? Entheogenic potions to see the spirits like shamans are able to do?
A magic power of mushrooms is on our brains as psychedelics, but a stranger power is what cordyceps do to caterpillars: parasitic mind control, guided behavior (Ron Teeguarden).
Amy Winehouse; Sydney Lima, High Society, 7/8/20; Pat Macpherson (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly
The Most Expensive Rehab in the World | High Society
(VICE) Paracelsus in Switzerland is the most expensive rehab in the world, serving a clientele of royalty, politicians, oligarchs, business tycoons, and A-list celebrities.
Forget the £20,000-a-month celebrities spend at The Priory in Surrey, or the £41,700 they shell out for 45 days at the Meadows in Arizona.
A five-week residential rehab here costs a whopping £315,000 -- about ten times the average UK annual salary.
Staying at a lakeside villa in Zurich, Switzerland, with a 24/7 limousine transportation, a personal chef, a butler, and a concierge, clients have access to a five-star hotel spa and a live-in therapist (who sleeps in the spare room). Activities include yoga, massage, martial arts, tennis, weightlifting, and more.
VICE sent writer and model Sydney Lima there to see if it could help her kick her drug, drink, and partying lifestyle. But while she was there, she uncovered a strange, unexpected world.
In the next report from High Society, VICE investigates how deadly synthetic drugs made by Russian DarkNet cartels are spreading through Tbilisi’s world-famous nightlife scene.
ABOUT: VICE is the Definitive Guide to Enlightening Information. From every corner of the planet, its immersive, caustic, ground-breaking, and often bizarre stories have changed the way people think about culture, crime, art, parties, fashion, protest, the internet, and other subjects that don't even have names yet. Browse the growing library and discover corners of the world one never knew existed. Welcome to VICE.
(ARTE.tv Documentary) Since the CIA/ISI's creation called the "Taliban" retook Kabul [thought by Indian historian Dr. Ranajit Pal to be one of the seasonal capitals of the Shakyians/Scythians, collectively called Kapilavastu, where the Buddha grew up] in August 2021, the humanitarian situation has deteriorated considerably.
Afghanistan [ancient Gandhara] remains the world's largest producer of opium (derived from the poppy flower pod), and the country also suffers from high rates of addiction.
The [Holy Muslim] Taliban is trying to rid the [formerly Buddhist] country of heroin addicts, with particularly brutal methods.
Kabul: Rehab Hell | ARTE.tv Documentary
🗓 Available until the 6/30/25.
ABOUT: ARTE.tv Documentary is here to tell the world more about what’s going on in the worlds of culture, news, and current affairs with powerful, refreshing, and entertaining docs subtitled in English for its international fans.
Discover a whole world on ARTE.tv. Subscribe to YouTube channel. #documentary #kabul #opium
Except for his bald head, there isn’t much monkish about [Buddhist author] Noah Levine [son of famous Buddhist author Stephen Levine and student of more famous Buddhist Jack Kornfield].
His body is covered with tattoos, his speech is spiked with profanities, and his style (T-shirts devoted to his favorite bands, lots of black) is a throwback to his days as a hardcore punk rocker in Los Angeles.
So it looked a bit unusual to a newcomer when, on a recent evening, Levine, 37 [in 2009], sat cross-legged at a Buddhist center in Hollywood [on Melrose Ave.] to lead several dozen people in a guided meditation.
“Now bring your awareness to your breath,” began the Buddha in the Bad Brains T-shirt, who happens to be one of the most influential Buddhist teachers in America.
The American Buddhist punk reforming drug rehab - Noah Levine (The Daily Beast)
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Levine is the founder of the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, which has centers in East Hollywood and west in Santa Monica and more than 20 affiliated groups nationwide. He and his students practice a unique fusion of Buddhism infused with punk rock’s anti-establishment ethos. They call themselves Dharma Punx.
Punk ethos of Rage Against the Machine
Dharma Punx don’t wear robes and they don’t bow to statues of the Buddha. Anyone can form a group -- as long as s/he checks with Levine first -- and there isn’t the emphasis on hierarchy found in many forms of Buddhism (no Zen masters or Tibetan lamas). The idea, Levine said, is to make Buddhist teachings accessible to punks -- and to reconnect Buddhism with what he sees as its radical roots.
“I don’t feel like this is bringing a punk rock corruption into Buddhism,” Levine said. “I think that that anti-establishment ethic is a part of [the] Buddha’s teachings.”
Both punk rock and Buddhism, according to Levine, began as a rebellion against the status quo.
“The first noble truth of Buddhism is that there is suffering [dukkha, disappointment, lack of fulfillment, unsatisfactoriness] in life, that there is an unsatisfactory quality to living in a world where everything is constantly changing, and to living in a world where there is so much greed and hatred and delusion,” he said.
“Punk rock’s foundation is dissatisfaction, acknowledging greed, hatred, and delusion and rebelling against sexism, racism, political corruption, and war.”
By bringing punk and Buddhism together, Levine has reached a mostly untapped demographic.
“I’ve been to other Buddhist centers where I felt out of place, but I’ve found a home here,” said [Against the Stream meditation instructor] Gary Sanders [(Jacklope.tumblr.com, Facebook) now teaching in Portland, Oregon], 37, who drives from Castaic to East Hollywood to attend Levine’s meditation sessions. “Noah’s taken an approach that makes it palatable to our scene.”
The movement gets its name from Levine’s 2003 book Dharma Punx, which chronicles his involvement in the Santa Cruz punk rock scene, his recovery from addiction to crack, heroin, and alcohol, and his turn to [his culturally Jewish father's] Buddhism.
Levine, whose father is noted Buddhist writer Stephen Levine, first tried meditating in 1988 while locked up at a juvenile hall in Santa Cruz (for trying to steal a car radio to score some drugs). At the time, he was a homeless 17-year-old dropout, an angry kid who had spent his whole life rebelling.
At a young age he had found an outlet for his anger in the punk scene -- in the fury of the music and the anarchy of the mosh pit -- but when he slid into addiction, he traded his mohawk, Doc Martens, and leather jacket for a crack pipe.
Sitting in a padded detox cell, Levine at first felt suicidal. When he started meditating, he found a kind of peace. “My early life’s external rebellion had only led to more suffering,” he wrote.
Continuing to meditate, he got sober with the help of a 12-step program. He attended his first meditation retreat in 1991 -- with Jack Kornfield, an influential America Theravada Buddhist teacher who trained as a monk in Thailand and Burma [with friends who were to become very influential American Buddhist teachers in their own right, e.g., Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg].
Levine liked Kornfield’s message -- and he went on to study with him -- but he said he felt a little out of place.
“I was the only 20-year-old there and certainly the only punk rocker,” he writes. “Looking around, I didn’t see anyone even close to my age. This was my father’s scene, not mine.”
(BlankTV) Early L.A. hardcore punk from Venice Beach, Suicidal Tendencies "Institutionalized"
After 10 years of studying Buddhism, Levine was certified to teach by Kornfield. But he wanted to create a new scene -- for people like himself, the kind who liked to rock out to bands like Suicidal Tendencies and slam-dance in mosh pits.
So he began leading meditation groups in Santa Cruz and San Francisco and in 2003 launched a Dharma Punx group on New York City’s Lower East Side. He moved to Los Angeles three and a half years ago and founded Against the Stream last year.
Though he draws inspiration from many strains of Buddhism (including Thai, Sri Lankan, and Burmese Theravada), he said, he has tried to tear down the hierarchical difference between teacher and student that is common in those forms.
“I tend to present the teachings as a peer, as, ‘We are all in this together seeking happiness,’ ” he said. “We are all the students. Can we take the wisdom and the compassion of the Buddha’s teachings and roots and leave behind some of the other things that I see as corruptions -- the dogma, the power, the patriarchy, and superstition?”
Levine lives in Highland Park with his wife, Amy, and his infant daughter, Hazel. He earns a living as a psychologist [drug recovery counselor] but travels frequently to lead meditation workshops and retreats around the world.
He founded and sits on the board of the Mind Body Awareness Project, an Oakland-based nonprofit that teaches meditation to at-risk youths in juvenile halls, clinics, high schools, and group homes.
His twice-weekly meditation sessions at Against the Stream [which are very LGBTQ-inclusive] are among the best-attended in Los Angeles, and they attract a diverse crowd not limited to punk rockers. More
Kayakers on clean stretch of the L.A. River (Alissa Walker/flickr.com/Creative Commons)
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Alice Walton
L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti will announce today the Los Angeles River is receiving $1 billion to rehab 11 miles of it [where it is not paved but is allowed to percolate into the ground].
Rehabbing the river from downtown to Elysian Park is seen as the first step toward rehabilitating the entire 51-mile stretch of the river. The Army Corps of Engineers will recommend a $1 billion proposal to revitalize 11 miles along theLos Angeles River, which gives Mayor Eric Garcetti one of his first major political wins, reports the Los Angeles Times:
It was never a sewer, just flood control. A $1-billion proposal to restore an 11-mile stretch of the L.A. River received support from US Army Corps of Engineers this week (Jae C. Hong).
Mayor thanks president for "listening" on L.A. River project
With new backing from the federal government, city officials celebrated a step forward Thursday for a $1-billion plan to revitalize a strip of the Los Angeles River.
After originally pushing for a cheaper $453-million plan, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced this week that it now supports a more robust, $1-billion proposal that would widen the river and restore habitat along an 11-mile stretch north of downtown through Elysian Park.
Speaking in a grassy park beside the river, Army Corps Col. Kimberly Colloton said the decision not only recognized "the importance of the river to Angelenos, but it validates its place as a waterway of national significance." More
Last Tuesday Noah Levine paid us a visit at Dharma Punx to announce that Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society is adding an outpatient drug and alcohol recovery center. Anyone interested in getting off or successfully staying off drugs using a Buddhist oriented path to recovery can contact Levine or the center to sign up.
Why resort to a REHAB center that promotes theism when a better alternative exists?
Buddhism is non-theistic, but former Western Buddhist monk Stephen Batchelor (who married a former Buddhist nun), author of Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, is a popular speaker at ATS influencing its outlook on resorting to a better "higher power" than the one one endlessly promoted at ordinary 12-Step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous.
Kevin Griffin, author of A Burning Desire: Dharma, God, and the Path of Recovery, will be hosting a daylong meditation and recovery workshop this month (see below). His approach incorporates Buddhism and the Noble Eightfold Path
Author, punk, and Against the Stream co-founder Noah Levine has an inner-meditator who comes out for all to see. It's the punk ethic: going against the way of the world like the Buddha. That meansrecovery fromaddictions. Meditate and destroy inner-obstacles (WQ).
For the second year in a row, USC (University of Southern California) Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences is partnering with the Los Angeles Times for a public opinion poll about the state of California.
The poll finds Californians would rather release prisoners than pay for more prisons or have their taxes misappropriated, reversing a trend promising to get "tough on crime" that has bankrupted the state without making it any safer. In fact, politicians, the private prison industry, and the prison guard's union have been enriched at staggering taxpayer expense. Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics, and Evan Halper, Sacramento Bureau Chief from the Los Angeles Times, discuss how the public feels about what to do about the current prison system. Visit USC Dornsife Web site for more info: dornsife.usc.edu/poll
[Anonymous], a problem drinker, Los Angeles (Wisdom Quarterly)
Kimberly Cole and Marina (HotforWords) explain "Like a G6" lyrics by Far East Movement
I drink. It makes me sick. Yet I drink. Old Zen stories talk about drinking... even though the historical Buddha gives as the fifth of the Five Precepts:
"I undertake the training rule to abstain from alcohol and drugs that occasion heedlessness."
Dev lip-syncing her sampled hit G6 with FM on Sandra Bullock's "Lopez Tonight" (TBS).
He lived in the Good Ol' Days. He wasn't going to know what it was like. Could he see this future? I'm stressed. I got to take the edge off. It makes me a better driver. It makes me a better lover. It makes me a better person. No one else agrees. But I know it does.
And it might even make me a better hip-hop artist like the Mexican-Portuguese rapper Dev, the Jewish and Caucasian-Indian Cataracs, or the Japanese-Chinese-Korean-Filipino Far East Movement.
Could the alcoholic old Zen masters have been wrong? Could the Buddha have been right?
WHO: Alcohol kills 2.5 million a year (DNAIndia.com/ANI, Feb. 12, 2011) A World Health Organization (WHO) report, profiling 193 countries on alcohol controls, has concluded that alcohol approximately kills 2.5 million people in a year.
The report also indicated that young people were especially vulnerable to its harms, reports English.news.cn.
"One third of deaths (from alcohol) are among young people," said Shekhar Saxena, director of the WHO's Mental Health and Substance Abuse department. He added that alcohol is responsible for 9% of all deaths that occurred to people aged between 15 and 29.
"Alcohol is also a causal factor in 60 types of diseases and injuries," said the WHO expert. Saxena added that alcohol consumption might lead to liver cirrhosis, epilepsy, poisonings, and mental disturbance, which very often cause road accident or violent behavior.
Top News
Great Escape: Empty Hand Zen Center Are you plugged into the world? Never seem to get a moment to yourself? The Empty Hand Zen Center offers free Wednesday evening adult classes on the awareness of self. Meaning: unplugging your body and your mind from the stressors of your life. “We are sitting in silence and in stillness, but it is body practice,” said owner Susan Ji-on Postal. It is looking at body awareness, not mental manipulation, so “it is cultivation of awareness that is very physical.”
Alcohol Kills More Than AIDS Deaths caused by alcohol are far more than than deaths from AIDS, tuberculosis, or violence. WHO revealed that alcohol causes four percent of deaths worldwide.
Alcohol kills more than AIDS, TB, or violence (Reuters) Alcohol causes nearly 4 percent of deaths worldwide, more than AIDS, tuberculosis or violence, the World Health Organization warned on Friday. Rising incomes have triggered more drinking in heavily populated ...
Guys like girls who have been dumped Men have always been drawn to a damsel in distress. A recent study may shed new light on why. Researchers from Penn State University found that guys are more attracted to women who have been broken up with than to those who ended their last relationship. Interestingly, women want the exact opposite: a man who has initiated the split, not one who has been dumped by his previous girlfriend.
LOS ANGELES – A slew of Lindsay Lohan's recent drug tests were clean, but her fingernails definitely are not. The day after the actress was sentenced to serve 90 days in jail began with news outlets focused on the four-letter expletive painted on Lohan's middle fingers, which she prominently displayed during Tuesday's court hearing. Wednesday ended with the release of a court filing that detailed what's in Lohan's medicine cabinet — a mix of legally prescribed antidepressants, a powerful painkiller and heartburn medication. Neither Lohan's manicure nor her medicines figured in her upcoming return to jail, but both revelations are hints of the intense scrutiny facing the starlet in the coming months. More>>
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All through September, National Mushroom Month celebrates the wide variety of mushrooms available. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) also takes advantage of the opportunity to educate people on the versatility culinary mushrooms offer, including many health benefits.
