What have we said time and again? Buddhists can do whatever they want. However, killing (or violating any of the other precepts) is not keeping in line with what the Buddha taught.
"Pig's Delight" (sukaramaddava): truffles, but in the case of the final meal offering, inadvertently poisonous/toxic mushrooms picked in error thinking them truffles, which pigs love
Rule: A Buddhist monastic is not allowed to eat three kinds of "meat" (slaughtered flesh) -- that of a living being that is seen, heard, or suspected of having been killed for one's sake
Did the Buddha pass away from eating meat or mushrooms or by choice?
The precise contents of the Buddha's final meal are not clear, due to variant scriptural traditions and ambiguity over the translation of certain significant terms like sukara-maddava.
The Theravada tradition generally believes that the Buddha was offered "pig's delight" (sukaramaddava) which could be slaughtered pork or some kind of mushroom/food pigs delight in that was offered by the blacksmith Cunda, while the Mahayana tradition believes that the Buddha consumed a truffle or other mushroom [mistaken to be edible].
These differing translations may reflect the different traditional views on Buddhist vegetarianism and the precepts for monastics (monks and nuns) [265] as well as laypersons.
Modern scholars disagree on this topic, arguing both for pig's delight, pig's flesh, or some kind of plant or mushroom that pigs delight in eating [z].
Whatever the case, none of the sources that mention the last meal attribute the Buddha's sickness to the meal itself [266]. But it is widely thought that he suffered severe illness from being unable to safely digest to toxic food, which he directed Cunda to dig a hole and bury rather than offering to any other monastic present at the meal.
As per the "Great Final Nirvana Discourse" (Mahaparinibbana Sutta), after the meal with Cunda the blacksmith, the Buddha and his monastic companions continued to walk until he was too weak to continue.
They stopped at Kushinagar (near modern Gorakphur, India), where Ānanda was directed by the Buddha to prepare a resting place of folded robes between two sala trees in a delightful grove [267, 268].
After announcing to the Monastic Sangha (spiritual community) that he would soon be passing away, reclining into final nirvana, the Buddha personally ordained one last novice into the Monastic Order. His name was Subhadda [267].
He then repeated his final exhortations to the Sangha, which was that when he was no longer present to guide them, the Dhamma and Vinaya (Doctrine and Discipline, Teaching and Training) was to be their guide.
Then he asked if anyone had any doubts about the Teachings, but nobody did [269]. The Buddha waited, satisfied that anyone who would have like to speak or ask any final question had the opportunity to do so.
His final words are reported to have been: "All formations (saṅkhāras, fabrications) are hurtling towards destruction. Strive for the goal with diligence (appamāda)." In Pali this is, "vayadhammā saṅkhārā appamādena sampādethā" [270, 271].
He then entered the eight jhanas as his final meditation forward and then reversing, as verified by a psychic monk near him, reaching what is known as parinirvana ("final nirvana"). He did not "die," for if he had, he would be reborn as all ordinary being are reborn in accordance with their karma.
Rather than being reborn, "the Five Aggregates of physical and mental phenomena clung to as self that constitute a being cease to occur" [272] just as a fire, having exhausted its substrate of fuel goes out. But what is it that really goes out, a being? No, what goes out completely is ignorance.
The Mahaparinibbana Sutta reports that as his final act, the Buddha performed a final meditation of entering the first four material meditative absorptions (jhanas) consecutively, then the four immaterial absorptions, and finally a meditative dwelling known as "the extinction of feeling and perception" (nirodha-samāpatti), which should not be thought of as a permanent "extinction" since many Buddhist meditation practitioners are able to reach this attainment even now throughout life. It is said that only noble ones (those who have attained the stages of enlightenment) are able to reach it and can do so as often as they like as many times as they like. If it were a permanent extinction, no one would be able to do it a second, third, or thousandth time.
Before returning to the fourth absorption (jhana) right at the moment of passing into final nirvana without remainder [273, 268].
Having traveled and taught, the Buddha took his last meal, a sincere offering from a blacksmith named Cunda. But having eaten it, he fell violently ill. Not wishing that Cunda have remorse or misgivings about his offering, the Buddha instructed his personal attendant Ānanda to tell Cunda something.
The meal offering eaten at his place had nothing to do with his passing. Moreover, such an offering was an extraordinary source of merit because it was provided as a last meal for a buddha [262] tantamount to an offering of food to a bodhisatta before his attainment of supreme awakening (buddhahood, arahantship, great-enlightenment).
Bhikkhu Mettanando and Oskar von Hinüber argue that the Buddha passed away due to mesenteric infarction, a symptom of old age, rather than mushroom food poisoning [263, 264]. More
Rolling Loud is an international hip hop music festival that has been held in North America, Asia, South America, Europe, and Australia.
Established in 2015, it is "one of the biggest festivals in the world" according to Complex, while Billboard called it "the be-all of hip-hop festivals" [2, 3].
In 2019, an estimated 210,000 people attended the event in Miami [4].
HISTORY
The festival was founded in 2015 by Matt Zingler and Tariq Cherif, who met in elementary school in Hollywood, Florida [2, 5].
Once in high school, the pair began organizing and promoting parties which "leaned heavily on a mix of Southern and Midwestern rap" [2]. They moved on to professional live music events in 2010, beginning with an after-party headlined by Rick Ross [2].
By the summer of 2013, they were hosting monthly events in Miami featuring up-and-coming artists like Travis Scott and Kendrick Lamar [6].
The pair also promoted artists from Florida's burgeoning SoundCloud rap scene under the brand name Dope Entertainment before noticing the need for a genre-specific music festival [7, 8].
The first Rolling Loud took place in Miami in February 2015 and featured artists such as... More
Hedonism? See the Buddhist story below about an ancient party just like EDC, Coachella, Burning Man, Woodstock. It's time to blast off to Vegas for the Electric Daisy Carnival rave and music festival. Since it unceremoniously got driven out of Los Angeles, it has found a home in Lost Wages, Nevada, near the Sphere where Gwen Stefani's No Doubt reunion shows are taking place. Oh, the traffic! But never mind that. It's time to party because it's the 30th anniversary of the event.
(Insomniac) #EDCLV2026. #insomniac. The official EDCLV2026 trailer has arrived! 💫 The event is May 15+16+17 as a worldwide community reunites Under the Electric Sky for the 30th anniversary of the event with three nights of celebrating life, love, art, and music.❤️🌈🎡 This is life, this is love, this is EVERYTHING!⚡️ The experience of a lifetime awaits…
Hedonism leads to happiness? A true story from ancient Buddhist texts: The Big Festival
1. YOUTH: Near the capital of the land there were small towns. The youths were born there as privileged Brahmins. One's family claimed important descendants from a town full of Brahmins, a very conservative place.
His father was from the most prominent family. Being high caste and from the town's most respected lineage, his dad acted like a petty king. So he grew up rich and honored, knowing very little about unhappiness or the real world.
He was educated like a [Boston] Brahmin, an education that included being taught about a life beyond this world.
There was another Brahmin family in a neighboring town. On the day he was born, in the other town, another son was also born. When they grew up they became friends and were soon inseparable. Whatever they did, play or study, pleasure or work, they were always together. They didn't quarrel or hold grudges against each other even though their dispositions were very different. One was a pioneer type, daring and enterprising, the other liked to cultivate what he had already gained. One was an only child, the other had three brothers and three sisters.
Their friendship meant a lot and filled their daily life, and they liked the other sex, light-hearted and indulging at their youthful age. Each was the leader of a group of friends with lot of high spirited play and sports. When they went swimming, their companions rode horses and others rode around like kings, playboys, enamored by the intoxications of youth, health, riches, and a good life.
In the capital, there was a giant annual celebration full of popular entertainment and amusement, the "Big Festival" on the hill. Of course, the friends all went to enjoy it. They reserved places to watch all the entertainments. When there was something funny, they laughed, when there was something fascinating, they got excited. They enjoyed it all so much that they went back for a second day to watch more performances.
But with the heightening of their expectations, their joyous mood failed. They still went back for a third day, since they had reserved it -- a new program of entertainments. They did not sleep well that night, however, as impressions of the previous partying haunted their minds.
While laying awake with insomnia, one thought: "What's the use of all this for us? Is there here that's really worthwhile? What's the benefit? Before long, all these glamorous people and actors will be old and decrepit. They will leave life and continue wandering on through existence (samsara), driven by sensuality and other insatiable cravings. And it's the same with us. These people can't even help themselves to solve the problems of their existence. How, then, can they help us? We're just wasting our time here instead of getting any closer to liberation!"
The other friend also had a restless night full of similar thoughts. He reflected how these dramatic performances had something to do with the reality of rebirth, but the joking and frolicking overlaying everything, pretending that there was only this life to worry about, was an artificial suppression, repressing the truth, all full of vain illusions.
On the morning of the third day, they went to their reserved spots at the festival, and one asked the other, "What's the matter with you? You're not your merry self like before. What are you depressed about?"
The other friend replied, "Tell me, what's the use of all these pleasures, all this candy for the eye and ear? It's worthless and useless! I'd rather be on a spiritual quest, searching for a way out, release, freedom, total liberation. The devastating law of impermanence, it all sucks. There has to be a way to liberation from all these fleeting illusions with their temporary allure haunting us and yet leaving us empty. That's what's been going through my head and making me think. Hey, but what you,? You look anything but cheerful!"
His friend replied, "I've been feeling the same as you. Why stay any longer for this BS vanity show? We should seek a way to something that's not BS!"
When he heard his friend had been thinking the same thing with the same wish, he happily said, "That's wild that we've been thinking the same thing! We've wasted our time and our lives long enough with all these worthless things. If one really wants a path to freedom, one has to leave home and all these possessions that possess us. We should go forth on a quest like pilgrims, free ourselves from the bondage of worldly crap and all this sensuality, rise above it like birds in the sky."
They agreed, and the two friends decided to ditch it all and become spiritual nomads, leading a life of simplicity away from it all, wanderers, on the road, surviving like ascetics.
They wandered around India searching for a guru, a spiritual teacher, or some teaching to guide them. When they had told their friends about their decision, most of those young men were so impressed that they joined them on their spiritual quest. All of them left home, took off their Brahmin threads, cut off their long hair, and put on the earth-colored garments of wanderers. Discarding the marks and signs of their privileged caste, they gave up the class system and entered among the classless ascetics. That's how the journey began.
In their travels, they met many wandering ascetics and temple priests who had the reputation of being exceptionally wise. They talked about God and the world, heaven and hell, the meaning of life and the way to salvation. But with their keen and critical minds trained as skeptics, they soon realized how empty all of those assertions were and how learned but ignorant these philosophers were. None of them could answer their probing questions. But the two friends were able to reply when questioned. How did the meet the Buddha?
This is where it gets personal and a little unbelievable. Following a lifelong wish to visit India and see the Buddhist circuit, I thought it was odd that no one much talked about the second most important place in Buddhist history. Sure, there's Bamiyan, Afghanistan, but people don't know that's the real Kapilavastu unless they read Dr. Ranajit Pal's book Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander. What with an inviting title like that, who's read or even heard of such a thing? The most important place is arguably "Enlightenment Grove" (Bodh Gaya).
But surely the second most desirable place to see and stand on is Vulture's Peak in the royal ringed city of Rajagaha (modern Rajgir), capital of Magadha, a legendary place of a ring of seven hills around an ancient royal city. On pilgrimage there, with its hot spring baths and lightly forested rolling hills, it was hard to believe I had made it. This was it with a commanding view of the area and not a vulture in sight. There have never been vultures here, as the place name is based on rocks that in the shadows look like vultures. Do they? If you squint your eyes, maybe.
So much of it remains unchanged with a large Jain and Hindu presence. But I found two Japanese Buddhist complexes to accommodate they annual rush of in-season Buddhist pilgrims. There was even a beautiful monastery/rest house nearby, a great place to meditate under a mosquito net. It was hard to sleep as the night wore on in this rural place because of pounding music. My fellow tourists in another room? Not likely; the place was nearly empty. It happened again on the second and third night when I left my room to explore the ruckus and stumbled on the Hilltop Festival! It's still going on as an ancient annual event. I had no interest in paying to go in or see what passes for "entertainments" in modern India, blaring loudspeaker bhangramusic, drums, parades, kathak dancing girls, alcohol, bhang (ganja)...who knows? I didn't go in. I just marveled at the bouncers who night after night kept this assembly going late into the night. For all of India's development and its leaping into modernity, there are things here that are unchanged since the time of the Buddha: ox drawn carts, mud huts, barefoot sadhus, rice harvests, women in saris working the fields, undeveloped rural villages, water buffaloes roaming around, cows treated like royalty, a thousand forms of Hindu worship...and this festival! So much of India has not changed since the British stumbled in and brought the world's largest rail system.
Now at the Royal Ringed City there was an annual event called the Hilltop Festival. Entrance was purchased for the young friends who sat together to witness all the festivities. When there was something funny, they laughed; when the spectacle was exciting, they got excited. And they paid fees for more shows. They enjoyed the fest that day and a second day, but on the third day their understanding started to awaken. They could no longer laugh or get excited, nor did they feel inclined to pay for more like they had on the first two days. Each had the same thought: "What is there to look at here? Within 100 years, everyone here will be dead. What we should do is become spiritual seekers looking for enlightenment." More: The Life of Sariputta by Ven. Nyanaponika Thera
The Buddha's future chief disciples at the Big Hill Fest by Hellmuth Hecker, edited by Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Wisdom Quarterly
EDC is an electronic dance music (EDM) festival organized by promoter and distributor Insomniac.
The annual flagship event, EDC Las Vegas, is held in May at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and is the largest electronic dance music festival in North America with over 500,000 visitors in 2024 [2].
The event features electronic dance producers and DJs and incorporates a variety of electronic music, including house, techno, drum 'n bass, and dubstep [3].
In addition to the music, event goers experience 3D superstructures, colorful glow-in-the-dark environments, and LED-lit flora and fauna [4]. There are also interactive art installations throughout EDC, free-roaming carnival performers, and carnival rides for the inner-kids [4]. More
FREE. Open to the public. Twice a year, Rhythms of the Village and Oh Happy Day Vegan Cafe sponsor a giant community festival of live music, healing arts, crafts, Aztec dancers, entertainers, and good old fashioned fun. Post Eaton Fire, it is now held on the much larger Muir High School campus on Lincoln Ave. It has grown exponentially. Come try vegan and other food trucks, free spiritual healing modalities, and see Baba Onochie and Ameca plus Vegan John. Keeping the community alive!
(2b.alwaysloved, May 5, 2026) Indigenous, aboriginal, copper-colored people of Turtle Island who are called "American" Indians are misclassified as "African" American Blacks.
Health and wellness at Spring Fest
They are actually the original inhabitants of the Americas and the Caribbean who built civilizations here long before Eurasians, Africans, and Europeans came to Turtle Island. They had kings and queens. Native Americans of Eurasian [Siberian, etc.] descent are not indigenous to the Americas or the Caribbean but rather are descendants of slaves from China, Japan, the Philippines, India, Southwest Asia, who arrived on Spanish and Portuguese Manila Galleons. They also came from Europe, including the UK, and married the indigenous American Indians misclassified as African American Blacks, who were taught in church schools how to be Indians and signed on Indian Rolls for $5 to take over the lands and identity of the indigenous American Indians misclassified as African American Blacks.
References: 1828 Webster's dictionary and the New Oxford American English Dictionary definition of "American." The Library of Congress. The U.S. Census records (Rev 7:9,10). (Posted on Instagram, edited for clarity by Wisdom Quarterly).
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