Driving Under the Influence (of Shrooms)

Tales from the Trip (Comedy Central)

Phish concert at Alpine Valley Music Theatre, Wisconsin, July 2003, lights by Chris Kuroda

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(Animated) Road-tripping on shrooms with my family (featuring Rosemary "Rosebud" Baker) | Tales from the Trip Pothead culture, marijuana addiction, glassblowing major, Phish as white gypsies reliving the glory of the Grateful Dead, traveling around the country so people can get high and enjoy their long jams.

• What are "magic mushrooms"? Psilocybin

Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys with Sahil

Rosemary "Rosebud" Baker (born March 16, 1985) is an American comedian, actress, and writer. Based in New York City, she is known for her dark humor based on personal and often satirical stories. In 2010, she worked as an actress in independent films, non-union TV projects, and off-Broadway. She later began appearing in a recurring role on the Hulu series Life & Beth. In 2013, she received praise for her performance in the critically acclaimed independent film Turnabout. Baker started her career in stand-up in 2014 by performing at open mics throughout NYC. In 2021, her debut comedy special, Whiskey Fists, premiered on Comedy Central. She became a writer for the HBO Max television series That Damn Michael Che in 2020 and a writer for Saturday Night Live from 2022 to 2025. Her second comedy special, The Mother Lode, was released on Netflix on Feb. 18, 2025. More

The Life of the Buddha (animation)

He was a real historical person?

The life of the Buddha is not told to commemorate Prince Siddhartha Gautama and his adventures, much as it may sound that way. The historical accounts have become an allegory, a way of telling the story of Everyone in what Houston Smith could call "the heroine's journey," which also includes heroes.

Born to luxury, kept safe and pampered, spoiled and loved, the prince comes to realize that there has to be more to it all. What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Where are we going? And most pressing, why do living beings suffer?

Sujata saved Siddhartha from overdoing fasting

On account of needing to answer this final question, he sets off on a journey, a quest in search of the Truth. How could he be a leader of people, the Indo-Scythians (Sakas, Shakyas), if he can offer them no escape from the inevitabilities of birth, aging, sickness, death, and rebirth?

This is samsara. And somewhere is liberation (nirvana, moksha). He must set off to find it and bring it back to his family. And that he does. Only in the process, the size of his "family" grows to include all humans and devas and a goodly number of other beings.

• TEXT: Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Wisdom Quarterly

Koans East and West: Legends, Tales (audio)

Alan Watts (alanwatts.org) via Alan Wattsify (YouTube); Crystal Ike collection (pinterest.com); Crystal Quintero, Dhr. Seven, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Zen's (dhyāna) ensō is a symbol of being free.

A kōan (Chinese 公案 or gōng'àn, Korean 공안 or gong-an, Vietnamese công án) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement that is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and to practice or test a student's progress in Zen.

• Imponderable (acinteyya): "incomprehensible, surpassing thought, unthinkable, beyond rational comprehension, impenetrable, that which transcends the limits of thinking and over which one should not ponder for to do so is likely to drive one mad."

It is not an imponderable nor a stoner thought, though it may sound like one, like:

• "Why do we have fingers, fingertips, and toes -- but no 'toe tips,' yet we 'tiptoe' but don't 'tipfinger?"
• "How many zombies would Rob Zombie rob if Rob Zombie could rob zombies?"

STONER RIDDLES

• What gets wetter the more it dries?
• What will have fewer holes the more holes you tear in it?

"Darby O'Gill and the Little People" (video)

Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly; Robert Smith (video)

Who but children can believe in these aliens?

Darby O'Gill and the Little People is a 1959 Walt Disney Productions feature film starring Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, Sean Connery, and Jimmy O'Dea, in a tale about a wily Irishman and his battle of wits with leprechauns.

Ireland, aerial view (wiki)

The film was directed by Robert Stevenson and its screenplay written by Lawrence Edward Watkin after the books of Herminie Templeton Kavanagh.

The film's title is a slight modification of one of the two Kavanagh books, Darby O'Gill and the Good People. This book and her other book, The Ashes of Old Wishes and Other Darby O'Gill Tales, were the sources for this beloved Irish fairy tale movie. More 

• VIDEO: When demons, aliens, angels visit your bedroom

Ballet, imperialism: "The Nutcracker" (video)

Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly; Wiki; LBB; Gary St. Martin

Girls believe fairytales (Marina Aleksandrova).

Not much good can be said for imperialism*, but it can lead to cosmopolitan art -- a combining of cultures at the crossroads of capitals.

It is not just Washington D.C., New York, or Los Angeles, but there were many capitals that dragged booty from imperial conquests to pile up and show the world how profitable war can be when corporations join governments to produce "fascism," the marriage of business and military power.

Russian genius Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky created world famous classical music to accompany a libretto adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, which premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia in December 18 of 1892. It has been selling out houses and keeping entire ballet companies financially afloat ever since.

• *What is imperialism? It's a national policy or practice of increasing power an wealth by forcibly taking control of other countries, usually a rich nation getting richer by enslaving and impoverishing  people in poorer countries.
• What is fascism? 14 defining characteristics (rense.com)
• VIDEO: The dancing prodigy who turned down Harvard
• VIDEO: 15 y.o. Arizona girl wows the ballet world

(David Wilcox/LBB) Long Beach Ballet's "The Nutcracker" 2013 production at the Terrace Theater, Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center.

 

What makes this ballet so popular? It feeds little girls' heads full of fairytales, pagan-Christmas (the empire's new child-friendly Saturnalia revelries) and keeps the sexist assumptions about gender alive and well. The men go off to war, the women stay at home to tend the family and protect the family's store of booty, and all serve a king (or czar) without question. Imperial conquests lead to riches and eventual downfall.

 

The housing in space ("heaven") is full of mansions, palaces, castles (Sanskrit vimanas) like this Theravada Buddhist temple in Thailand (Dawson_christopher/flickr.com).

 

I used to believe in fairytales (z3.ifrm.com).

It all began with...then came the ancient Greeks, the Romans (of Italy), the Vikings, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, British, Russians, Germans, finally spreading from Europe to Europeans landing in America to create their most successful colony/colonizer.

Meanwhile, the Japanese and the Chinese before them (and even the Tibetans conquering the Himalayan region from Mongolia to Bangladesh) had their turns. The infected-mentality continues, an China is far from finished.

But long ago, in space, it began with this satellite civilization, this out-of-the-way colony that became important for its strange earthling life forms. We remember in mythology and celebrate it in the form of "Star Wars," "Star Trek," and futuristic tales repeating age-old archetypal storylines that "feel" right.

The Making of the Nutcracker
(Gary St. Martin) The documentary follows City Ballet of San Diego, now in its 17th season, for its annual Nutcracker performance from Day 1 of rehearsal through ten performances at Spreckles Theatre. The company is directed by Steven and Elizabeth Wistrich, former dancers with the Boston Ballet and the Stuttgart Ballet. Filmed in five locations.

Imperial war is cool: Let's get that booty.

Other empires fall away, but this one is still rising. And every night (use military-grade night-vision goggles to see for yourself) various species and races, varieties and cultures vie to protect what's going on down here. Strange but true, just ask John Lear, Stewart Swerdlow, Andrew Basiago, Al Bielek, or most of the guests who pass through the radio studios of Coast to Coast.

Down with imperial fascists! (FEMEN)

The complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s and is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season, especially in North America (Jennifer Fisher, Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003).

Russia created it.

Major American ballet companies now generate about 40 percent of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker (Lauren Gallagher, "S.F. Ballet presents the classiest ‘Nutcracker’ of all," SF Examiner; Daniel J. Watkin, "Coming Next Year: 'Nutcracker' Competition," New York Times, Nov. 2009). More

(Gary St. Martin) Balanchine Masterworks, March 4-6 2016 at Spreckles Theater, Long Beach.

Jataka Tales (Buddhist Birth Stories)

Buddhist Birth-Stories by Rhys Davids

The Jatakas represent pre-Aesop Fables. In fact, many of those fables are based on original Buddhist works (Ref: Rhys Davids, "Origin of Aesop's Fables," p. xxix, Buddhist Birth-Stories: Jataka Tales, Srishti Publishers, New Delhi, 1998). For an online link to these stories, click below.

INTRODUCTION

There is a tale known as the Hero's Tasks, which exists among the most widely-scattered peoples. Comparative mythologists have explained it as a myth of the spring rains and the moon. But it does not fit into any of the theories of folktales prepared for its reception. Benfey held that although the impulse to invent folktales is a feature of general human nature, yet the existing folktales of Europe and Asia as a matter of fact originated in India.

That may not be true. Andrew Lang has compared various forms of it found among unrelated peoples. A similar tale is found among the Algonquin Indians, the Samoans, and Zulus, besides Europeans. It also exists in an Indian shape in the present selection of birth-stories from the Jataka (No. 220).

CONTENTS

Cambridge University Press

THE LITTLE GILDMASTER (CULLAKASETTHI-JATAKA 1 , 4)

• A young man picks up a dead mouse which he sells, and works up his capital till he becomes rich.

THE KING AND THE STICK-GATHERER (KATTHAHARI-JATAKA, 7) 16

• A king refuses to recognise his son by a chance amour; the mother throws the child into the air, praying that, if he be not the king's son, he may be killed by his fall. The child rests in mid-air, and the king recognizes him as his son.

KING MAHADEVA'S GREY HAIRS (MAKHADEVA-JATAKA, 9)

• A king, finding a grey hair in his head, renounces his throne to prepare as a hermit for death. He is re-born as a king and again becomes a hermit.

THE COLD HALF OF THE MONTH (MALUTA-JATAKA, 17)

• A tiger and a lion dispute whether it is the dark or the light half of the month which is cold.

THE FEAST FOR THE DEAD (MATAKABHATTA-JATAKA, 18)

• A goat, which was to be sacrificed by a brahmin, shews signs of great joy and of great sorrow. It explains the reason for each emotion.

THE MONKEYS AND THE OCRS (NALAPANl-JATAKA, 20)

• Thirsty monkeys come to a pool haunted by an ogre. Their leader miraculously blows knots out of canes, with which they safely slake their thirst.

THE GUILTY DOGS (KUKKURA-JA.TAKA, 22)

• Carriage-straps having been jn&.ved by palace dogs, a king orders all other dogs to be killed. The leader of a pack of dogs reveals the truth by causing an emetic to be applied to the royal dogs.

THE DISCONTENTED OX (MUNIKA-JATAKA, 30)

• A young ox, seeing a lazy pig being fattened, is discontented with his hard fare. Another ox explains that the pig is being fattened to be eaten, and the discontented ox accepts his position.

THE PEACOCK'S WOOING (NACCA-JATAKA, 32)

• The daughter of the Golden Mallard, king of birds, chooses the peacock for her husband. In dancing for joy the peacock exposes himself and is rejected.

THE FOWLER AND THE QUAILS (SAMMODAMANA-JATAKA, 33)

• Quails caught in a net rise up in a body with the net and escape several times. After a time they quarrel and are caught.

THE OLDEST OF THE ANIMALS (TITTIRA-JATAKA, 37)

• A partridge, a monkey, and an elephant decide to obey the eldest of them. To prove seniority each gives his earliest recollection.

THE CRANE AND THE CRAB (BAKA-JATAKA, 38)

• A crane, pretending that he was taking them to a big lake, devours all the fish of a pond. A wise crab nips the bird's head off.

• More Birth-Stories>>
• Also see BuddhistLinks.org