Showing posts with label celtic buddhism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label celtic buddhism. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Halloween, Samhain, Grateful Dead, DMT

.
Irish Samhain Traditions
(Holiday History) From harvest to haunting: How Samhain (like ancient Japanese Buddhist Obon and seasonal Mexican/pan-Latin Dia de los Muertos or "Day of the Dead" celebrations) became Halloween for wandering spirits, fairies, elves, ghosts, ghouls, and goblins.

OBON (お盆) or just Bon (盆) is a fusion of the ancient Japanese belief in ancestral spirits and a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of the ancestors.

We'll be together again: samsara
This syncretic Folk (like the Shinto "kitchen god") Buddhist custom has evolved into a family reunion holiday.

During it people return to visit ancestral family places and clean ancestors' graves because this is when the spirits of ancestors are revisiting household altars [like Mexican ofrendas prepared for the Day of the Dead].

Obon has been celebrated in Japan for more than 500 years and includes the dance Bon Odori. More
What Buddhists can do for the Dead
The Buddha's chief disciple declared "foremost in psychic powers" among the monks Ven. Maha Moggallāna (comparable to the Buddhist nun Ven. Uppalavanna) saves his Brahmin mother from hell by transferring merits to her after she has died: "Mulian Rescues His Mother"
.
Folk Buddhists pray soul out of purgatory (Silver)
The "transfer of merit" (Sanskrit pariṇāmanā [Note 1], Pali pattidāna or pattānumodanā) [3, Note 2] is a customary part of Buddhist spiritual practice where a practitioner's merit (puñña), resulting from wholesome karma (skillful deeds), is transferred to deceased relatives, friends, deities (devas), or to all sentient beings everywhere (as when cultivating the four illimitable Divine Abidings).

Day of the Dead, Mexico, 1995, cemetery prep
Such a "transfer" is a physically enacted deed with its sharing done mentally. The recipient (or another relative stuck in a purgatory such as the realm of hungry ghosts) can receive this merit when they rejoice (feel gratitude, literally becoming the "grateful dead") due to the meritorious acts being done and shared with them on their behalf.

Ah, they remember me! I'm grateful for their help!
This is necessary because in the realm (plane of existence) in which the recipient(s) have been reborn, the opportunity to generate beneficial karma by any other means is extremely limited or altogether absent.

In any case, the person offering, sharing, transferring merit produces more and more merit (wholesome karma). In Buddhism, sharing merit is seen as a far better alternative to mourning. More
The Grateful Dead of the afterlife?

I'd be grateful for help when I pass away
The "grateful dead" in folklore gave 1960s singer and frontman Jerry Garcia the idea to name his band the "Grateful Dead."

According to bassist Phil Lesh, singer Garcia: "In that silvery elf-voice, he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" [27]

The definition found in the Britannica World Language Dictionary is "the soul of a dead person...showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial."

According to Director Alan Trist of Ice Nine, the Grateful Dead's music publishing company, Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wagnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on it while playing a game of Fictionary [28].

In her Jerry Garcia biography Captain Trips, author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the entheogenic psychedelic DMT (also known as "The Spirit Molecule") at the time [29].

DMT: The Spirit Molecule
The motif of the "grateful dead" person appears in folktales from many cultures around the world [30]. Fittingly, the first show under the name Grateful Dead was in San Jose, near San Francisco, on Dec. 4, 1965, at one of Ken Kesey's "Acid Tests" [31, 32, 33].
Scholar Michael Kaler has written that the Dead's participation in those Acid Tests was crucial to the development of their improvisational vocabulary and to their bonding as a band, with the group having set out to foster an intra-band musical telepathy [34].

He says this coincided chronologically with adoption of the same goal by acid rockers Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, and the Velvet Underground [35]. More

DMT: the sacred spirit molecule
Free-base DMT powder and vape extracted from Mimosa tenuiflora root bark (wiki)
  • QUESTION: Does LSD ("acid") release DMT from the pineal gland (agni chakra, third eye, dibba cakhu), or how is it an entheogen (a substance that releases the divine from within) could lead to visions of reality beyond the normal human spectrum?
Logo used by proponents of Cantelmoism
DMT (di-methyl-tryptamine, also known as N,N-dimethyltryptamine or N,N-DMT) is a psychoactive entheogen ("releaser of inner divinity"), psychedelic ("mind-manifesting"), serotonergic hallucinogen ("vision producer"), and investigational wonder drug of the tryptamine family that occurs naturally in many [if not most] plants and animals [2, 3, 4, 1].
Forest ayahuasca (natema): DMT from plants
DMT is used in sacred ayahasuca (aka natema, yagé, caapi, nátema, pindê, patem, shori, mii, miiyagi, uni) ceremonies, abused as a psychedelic drug in urban settings, and prepared by various cultures for ritual shamanic healing purposes as an entheogen [14].

DMT has a rapid onset, intense psychedelic effects, and a relatively short duration of action. For those reasons, DMT was known as the "businessman's trip" during the 1960s in the USA, as a user could access the full depth of a psychedelic experience in considerably less time than with other substances such as LSD or magic (psilocybin) mushrooms [15]. More


DMT Movement: for medicinal and spiritual uses

DMT GOD: Prepare in 8 Days
A wealthy biochemist and Yale University graduate named Chris Cantelmo created an online DMT church or cult he called "Cantelmoism" [Can tell more-ism] in the late 2010s [241].

Mr. C had worked in the pharmaceutical industry for decades, including running multiple high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) companies [241]. 

He began his DMT campaign on Reddit and other social media websites after experiencing the "spirit molecule" in 2018 [241].

He rapidly spent his wealth in a fervent attempt to promote DMT and get as many people to try it as possible, forming a union in the process and becoming an online spectacle [241].

Chase Hughes marked for telling truth
Among other claims, Mr. C asserts that DMT cured his mind cancer and that it could cure other diseases [241]. He later explained that he had mind, not brain, cancer and that what it had really cured was his "severe" atheism, which he likened to a mental cancer [241].

Mr. C, they say, had mental health issues, so he had to be put out of his misery by alleged "suicide" (taken out before others could start following him). He was put under pressure, losing his home in November 2019 [241],

Behavior Ops Manual (Chase Hughes)
Why? He dared to promote a natural cure outside the for-profit Big Pharma model. Since Big Pharma had not yet found a way to legally profit from. Anyone who tells the world about the wonders of DMT risks the same fate. So talk to Chase Hughes if this is too hard to believe.

Black market availability
Vape pens or electronic cigarette cartridges filled with liquid DMT were being sold on the black market by 2018 [39, 38, 40] due to there being no licit market. Akasha Song previously manufactured and sold DMT on the Dark Web and is said to have been the largest DMT producer and seller in history [242].

DMT's legal status
International law
Internationally, DMT is illegal to possess without authorization, exemption, or license. However, natural ayahuasca and other DMT brews (natema, yage, etc.) and plant preparations are lawful. More
Why Asians don't really do Halloween

It's a Mexican tradition, and I love it
Mexican Buddhist, why would the living celebrate the Day of the Dead?
Ghost perceived in bedroom found in art: Spirit of the Dead Watching (Paul Gauguin, 1892)
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, October 12, 2026

Irish 1st Westerner to become Buddhist monk

First Western Buddhist monk: Irish U Dhammaloka (Wisdom Quarterly)


Methinks me should be a monk
The Dharma Bum was the first Westerner to be ordained as a Buddhist monk. He chose Theravada Buddhism in Burma (Myanmar), where he was given the name Venerable U Dhammaloka. ("U," pronounced "ooh," is not a name but an honorific title used for monks and mature or men in senior positions in Burma). He was from Dublin, Ireland but -- wandering like a Dharma Bum, he first traveled to California then onto Asia, landing in faraway Mandalay, where he took robe and bowl and made a lot of trouble for the Christian colonial British exploiting India.

Irish documentary about pioneer U Dhammaloka
The Dharma Bum is a feature-length, partially animated documentary film that tells the tantalizing true story of Dubliner Laurence Carroll, who became Venerable U Dhammaloka.
  • Any relation to Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland? Of course not, because "Lewis Carroll" is the nom de plume (pen name) for Irish-connected Oxford don Dodgson, the author of classic literature for little Alice Liddell.
Dharma Bum Temple, San Diego
Laurence Carroll was born in Dublin in 1856 and spent his early life as an alcoholic hobo drifter bumming his way across the United States of America.
 
This freethinking, un-Catholic, un-Christian, atheist activist worked the shipping route from San Francisco, California, to Japan.
Irish American Buddhist J. Kerouac
Irish American Zen Buddhist and Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac's literary prestige has been growing since 1969. Several previously unseen works of his have been published posthumously. He is recognized for his spontaneous stream of consciousness style of prose. The themes his work covers are mysticism, religion, Buddhism, childhood, poetry and literature, the San Francisco Bay Area (where Irish Dharma Bum U Dhammaloka and British Buddhist Alan Watts came for inspiration) and the New York City of the 1940s and '50s, and life. Kerouac became an underground celebrity and, with other Beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement, although he was not a hippie and mostly remained uninterested in politics [8]. His legacy has lasted generations, greatly influencing many of the cultural icons of the 1960s, including Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, and the Doors.
How Buddhism came to Britain
In Britain, the earliest Buddhist influences came from the Theravada Buddhist traditions of Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Interest in them was primarily scholarly to begin with; a Western tradition of study grew up that resulted in the foundation of the Pali Text Society in 1881 founded by T. W. Rhys Davids, which undertook the significant task of translating the Pāli language canon of the Theravada tradition into English. The start of interest in Buddhism as a path-of-practice had been pioneered by the founders of the new syncretic religion Theosophy, namely, the Russian Madame Blavatsky and the American Colonel Olcott. In 1880, they became the first Westerner Buddhists in that they asked to receive the Three Refuges (the Going for Guidance to the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha) and the Five Precepts as a formal act of conversion in an ancient ceremony by which one traditionally accepts and becomes a nominal "Buddhist." Burma (now called Myanmar) and Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) were well established Theravada Buddhist countries and colonies of the British Empire. Both colonies were majority Theravada Buddhist. Immigration from the two colonies to the UK would have happened. During the 19th to early 20th centuries, lascar sailors (people from Asia who worked in British ships) came and settled in the UK. Some of the lascars came from the seafaring communities of Burma and Sri Lanka [17]. More

The Dharma Bum found himself on the beach, hungover and homeless, after being kicked off the vessel for drunk and disorderly conduct.

He eventually made his way to Theravada Buddhist Burma, where he was helped by compassionate local Buddhist monks.

After five years as a monastic apprentice, he became the first Western man to ever don the saffron robes of a Theravada Buddhist monk.
Irish Zen Bodhisattva Soshin O'Halloran
Irish-American female Zen Buddhist saint (bodhisattva) in Japan: Soshin O'Halloran
.
Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind
*Maura "Soshin" O'Halloran (May 24, 1955–Oct. 22, 1982) was an Irish Zen Buddhist nun [1]. She is known for her book Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, which was posthumously published by her family.

She is also famous for being one of the "first of few Western women allowed to practice in a traditional Japanese Zen monastery" [2].

BIOGRAPHY
Hojo Takatoki Harakiri-Yagura, Tōshō-ji Temple
Soshin (Maura O'Halloran) was born in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, USA in 1955. Her parents moved her to Ireland when she was four years old [3, 4]. Her father was originally from County Kerry, whereas her mother was a native of Maine [4]. In Ireland, young O'Halloran was educated in Loreto College, Foxrock in Dublin and later attended Trinity College Dublin, where she graduated with a joint degree in mathematical economics/statistics and sociology [3]. Shortly after her graduation, [karma and the pull of past lives being what they are] O'Halloran ventured to Japan, where she studied to become a Zen monastic at Tōshō-ji in Tokyo and at Kannon-ji in Iwate Prefecture [3] ("Kannon" being a name for the Virgin Mary of Buddhism, the Goddess of Compassion Kwan Yin). More

An Irish Girl
Irish Zen Buddhist nun Soshin

The snow begins across the mountains
Covers the rice fields
Down below a woman awakens
Her breath is frozen in the early morning
Out on the freezing streets
With bell and bowl she goes
People come to see the face
People come to feel the light
Of an Irish Girl
Everything in the world is new
Everybody I tell wants to know you
Soshin… Soshin…
She washes noodles by the open window
Wet and soft between her fingers
The air of spring blows on her face
And the moment is eternal
Maura sits in the dark womb-like stillness
She’s thinking ‘How can I die or cease to be?
I am eternal, I am Roshi!’
Everything in the world is new
Everybody I tell wants to know you
Soshin… Soshin…
She may not change a blade of grass
Nor light the flame for souls to see
But in this silent Easter morning
She has found a friend in me

Adapted from the expanded edition of Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, Wisdom Publications, with permission (Lion’s Roar)
Ven. U Dhammaloka: First Westerner to ordain as a Buddhist monk
I'm glad I became a Buddhist and did so much to spread freethinking against the British Empire.
.
The Dharma Bum (documentary)
(Belfast Buddhist, 4/1/16) Venerable Dhammaloka was ordained in Theravada Buddhist Burma (Myanmar) prior to 1900, making him one of the very earliest attested Western Buddhist monks. He was a celebrity preacher, vigorous polemicist, free thinker, and prolific editor in Burma and Singapore between 1900 and his conviction for sedition and appeal in 1910–1911. Drawing on Western atheist writings, he publicly challenged the role of imperial Christian missionaries and by implication the British Empire. His Irish name was Laurence Carroll or Larry O'Rourke or Willam Colvin from Cork and Munster.

UK-occupied Northern Ireland
They gave him the new Buddhist name U Dhammaloka,** and that is just the beginning of the story!
  • [**In Burmese U (pronounced "oo") is an honorific that signifies "sir," Dhamma is the Pali spelling of "Dharma," loka means "world." Interestingly, aloka means "light" or "bright whiteness" -- so his name, if pronounced with a long a, signifies suggests "Dharma Light or even White Dharma."]
U Dhammaloka was erased from history. His existence lay dormant for over 100 years. Why? The reasons are explored in the film.

Teach those Brits not to mess with the Celts
This Irishman caused quite a stir in his life, as he singlehandedly took on the might of the Christian British Empire in colonial Burma.
In the film we discover why he was under constant police surveillance and ultimately had to fake his own death as he transformed himself from an alcoholic bum to the original Dharma Bum. More
The Legend of the 6th Century Irish monk who may have sailed so America (grunge.com)
.
Happy St. Paddy's Day?
Wisdom Quarterly Wikipedia edit
The Patrician Roman Patriarch Patty?
As we celebrate Saint Paddy's Day today, one has to wonder why British Protestant Patrick gets so much credit from the Imperial Catholic Church.
Saint Patrick (Gaelic Pádraig, Latin Patricius, "father of the people") was a 5th-century Romano-British anti-pagan, Christian missionary, and patriarch named bishop of Ireland by an outside entity.

Known as the "Apostle of Ireland," he is the primary patron saint of Ireland, the other patron saints being Brigid of Kildare and Columba. Patrick was never formally canonized [2], having lived before the current laws of the Catholic Church on these matters.
We may have been better off as pagans.
Nevertheless, he is venerated as a "saint" in the Catholic Church, which also venerates the Buddha as a Catholic saint (St. Josaphat), the Lutheran Church, the Church of Ireland (part of the Anglican Communion), and in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where he is regarded as equal-to-the-apostles and Enlightener of Ireland [3, 4].

He was a slave in Ireland for years, escaped back to England then seems to have returned to extract his revenge as a patriarch to impose Roman church law on the Emerald Isle.

Patrick is credited with forcing Christianity on Ireland, converting a pagan society in the process, despite evidence of an earlier Christian presence [7].

We defend Catholicism b/c the British don't like it
In Patrick's autobiography, Confessio, when he was 16, he was captured at home in Britain by Irish pirates and taken as a slave to Ireland. He writes that he lived here for six years herding animals before escaping and returning to his England.

After becoming a cleric, he returned to spread Christianity in northern and western Ireland. In later life, he served as a bishop, but little is known about where he worked.

By the 7th century, he had already become the "patron saint of Ireland." His feast day is observed on March 17th, the date of his death not his birth. It is celebrated in Ireland and among the worldwide Irish diaspora as a cultural holiday celebrating all things Irish.

It is hardly as a religious observance nowadays, but in the dioceses of Ireland, it is both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation, even if pagans mourn the genocide he wrought upon the island.

Good John Riley's flag of the Mexican regiment
The Irish are so much like the Mexicans in this regard, taken over and thoroughly saturated by the Holy Roman Empire, as if the Church liberated the people when it enslaved them and still tries to rule every aspect of their lives and exact tribute for Rome.

So much is this connection felt that there are Los Patricios ("The Patricks" not Patricians), who were US mercenaries ordered to fight Mexico, but when they understood the fight, led by John Riley, they took the side of Mexico and fought against the US, as anyone who champions the underdog might well have done. More
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)