Friday, October 30, 2026

Halloween, Samhain, Grateful Dead, DMT

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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"
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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.

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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.

Ah, they remember me! I'm grateful for their help!
In any case, the person sharing and transferring merit produces more and more merit (store of skillful karma) by the wholesome act of offering. In Buddhism, sharing merit is seen as a far better alternative to mourning. More
Ghost perceived in bedroom found in art: Spirit of the Dead Watching (Paul Gauguin, 1892)
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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?
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The most disturbing songs ever recorded





Hey, “Daddy” (WARNING: explicit content)
Who went through this horror?

Manhating manhater vs. Girl drummer
(Luvhilal) Beauty Phoebe, worst man hater? - Do any girls listen to Slipknot EDM?

Female "Psycho Killer"
It's always in suburbia, site of every evil: Talking Heads "Psycho Killer" (official video) Is this a Big Pharma commercial? THs present new music video for Psycho Killer, starring Saoirse Ronan, directed by Mike Mills.

Slipknot: "Frail Limb Nursery/Purity"

Does Gen Z know 1990s nu metal?

T.R.U.E. (The Rat Utopia Experiment)
Can you explain "Purity," Corey?

Is it true that nu-metal Slipknot rock-raps?
Most evil lyrics in existence?
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Can a female become a Buddha?


Can a WOMAN become a buddha? One line says never [but as the Dalai Lama jokes in a movie, If she is reborn a male first]. Who wrote it?
The nun foremost in wisdom
(Buddha's Wisdom) Oct. 21, 2026: 🪷 Why BUDDHISM said females can become fully enlightened [but not supremely enlightened to become a] buddha?

Can a woman become a buddha? Buddhism gives two answers, and both sit in its own scriptures. In the old Pāli canon, the Buddha tells the monk Ānanda that a woman can reach full enlightenment (arahantship), full awakening, the end of suffering in this very life.

In the Bahudhātuka Sutta, a female cannot be a fully awakened buddha. This video follows females in Buddhism from the first nuns at Vesālī to the fully-ordained nuns (bhikkhunīs) walking Bangkok, Thailand's streets at dawn. We separate the question into four:
  1. The Buddha's ex-wife became enlightened nun
    Can a woman wake up?
  2. Can she be a buddha?
  3. Can she wear the monastic robe?
  4. Can she walk through the temple door?
Then we go to the sacred texts and to the scholars who compared their versions in Pāli and Chinese languages. Where the evidence is solid, we say so. Where it rests on legend or on passages scholars suspect were ADDED LATER, we say that, too.
  • [See the scholarship of Ayya Tathaloka for details about the "eight added rules" that are shown to NOT have been laid down by the Buddha, as evidence in the Bhikkhuni Vinaya makes clear.]
DISCOVER
The great Buddhist Goddess of Compassion Guanyin (Kwan Yin) Bodhisattva
  • Why [the Buddha's adoptive mother, sister of his biological mother] Mahā Pajāpatī Gotamī asked three times, and the "eight rules" (eight garudhammas) that came with the yes
  • The sermon that says a female cannot be a buddha, and the Chinese version where that passage is missing
  • What the "dragon girl," the Vimalakīrti goddess, and Tārā reveal about different Buddhist answers.
  • The Vimalakīrti goddess who turns Ven. Śāriputra (one of the Buddha's chief male disciples declared "foremost in wisdom" by the Buddha) into a woman, and the female buddhas of Tibet
  • Why Theravada Thailand still forbids monks to ordain females, and the [ten precept or maechi] nuns who walk alms round for requisites anyway
  • The famous chariot image this channel credited to a monk six times. It came from a nun named Vajirā.
#Buddhism #WomenInBuddhism #FemaleBuddha
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Thursday, October 29, 2026

'We Are One' (Ekaterina Sky)


Meditate in pure silence to still the heart
This painting says one quiet thing, and it is the same thing the whole prayer opens with: WE ARE ONE.

I painted it in complete silence, start to finish -- following the Buddha's advice to practice noble silence for the purification of the heart and mind -- no music, no talking, only the prayer already waiting to be sealed beneath a gold disk in the center.

It is a spiral of gold turning inward to a single, silent center. Every line finds its way home to that single point.

We Are One

What is gold good for? It is good for sacred art!
If this work speaks to viewers, I would be delighted to share more details. Inquire at Cohart. A photograph can show the composition, but it cannot do what the gold does in a room.

Gold is alive. It changes as one moves, as light moves, as day moves. The painting will look different from where one stands and from where the person beside one stands, and that difference is the whole message: two true views of one thing.

Cymatics reveal the waves producing form
Many are expressions of the One, the way countless waves are all actually the one same Sea.

My deepest hope is simple: that before thought arises, the body exhales, then, underneath that beauty, there is a kind of remembering (sati, smrti).

Our Earth is not "scenery" we pass by. She is a living being [Mother Earth, Mat Zemlya, Mother Nature, Goddess Tierra] we belong to.

Ekaterina Sky is an artist working in watercolor and sustainable 24K gold leaf on archival paper. She calls her practice "impact art," work where the painting and its effect on the living world are inseparable. The paintings are the center. The murals, the conversations, the stages, the trees and the book all extend outward from them. Here's a map of that reach: beyond-the-studio
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We Are One is now available to view on Cohart or to acquire by inquiry. This is a painting with a public history: It was exhibited at Coral Gables Museum during Art Basel 2024, and it carries that provenance into whatever room it next enters. It is one of a kind, watercolor, with 24K sustainable goldleaf, the universal prayer sealed beneath the gold, and a chip to hear it aloud. It also comes with a certificate of authenticity and Earth-conscious packaging.
And I would love to know, Where have you felt that oneness most clearly? Reply and tell me.

With love,

P.S. See We Are One @ekaterina.sky.art

We are all one, but this is hard to understand
(Ven. Thannisaro) Many Westerners, when new to Buddhism, are struck by the uncanny familiarity of what seem to be its central concepts: nondualism, oneness, interconnectedness, (Thich Nhat Hanh's) interbeing, interdependence, wholeness, transcendence of a selfish ego. But what they may not realize is that these concepts sound familiar because they are familiar. To a large extent, they come not from the Buddha's Teachings (Dharma) but from the gate of Western psychology, through which the Buddha's words have been filtered for us for decades. They draw less from the root sources of the Buddha's Dharma than from their own hidden roots in Western culture: the thought of the German Romantics. The German Romantics may be dead and almost forgotten, but their ideas are still very much alive. Their thought has survived because they were the first to tackle the problem of how it feels to grow up in a modern society. Their analysis of the problem, together with their proposed solution, still rings true. More
SUTRA: A Cosmology of Oneness
Lokayatika Sutta (SN 12.48 PTS: S ii 77 CDB i 584) translated from Pali by Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu; edited by Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

What is the true nature of existence?
The Buddha was once staying in Savatthi when a Brahmin cosmologist [1] went to see him. When he arrived, he exchanged courteous greetings, and after an exchange of friendly greetings and courtesies, he sat respectfully to one side. Sitting there, he said to the Buddha:

"Now, then, Master Gotama, does everything [2] exist?"

"'Everything exists' is the first form of cosmology, Brahmin."

"Then, Master Gotama, does everything not exist?"

"'Everything does not exist' is the second form of cosmology, Brahmin."

"Then is everything a Oneness?"

"'Everything is a Oneness' is the third form of cosmology, Brahmin."

"Then is everything manifold?"

"'Everything is manifold' is the fourth form of cosmology, Brahmin. Avoiding these two extremes, the Tathagata [the Buddha] teaches the Dhamma [the Liberating Doctrine, in this case Dependent Origination] down the middle:
  1. From ignorance as a requisite condition come formations;
  2. from formations as a requisite condition comes consciousness;
  3. from consciousness as a requisite condition comes name-and-form;
  4. from name-and-form as a requisite condition come the six sense bases;
  5. from the six sense bases as a requisite condition comes contact;
  6. from contact as a requisite condition comes feeling;
  7. from feeling as a requisite condition comes craving [3];
  8. from craving as a requisite condition comes clinging;
  9. from clinging as a requisite condition comes becoming;
  10. from becoming as a requisite condition comes rebirth;
  11. from rebirth as a requisite condition comes aging and death, disappointment, sorrow, lamentation, pain, and despair.
  12. Such is the origination of this entire mass of disappointment and suffering.
  1. "Now from the remainderless fading and cessation of ignorance comes the cessation of formations;
  2. from the cessation of formations comes the cessation of consciousness;
  3. from the cessation of consciousness comes the cessation of name-and-form;
  4. from the cessation of name-and-form comes the cessation of the six sense bases;
  5. from the cessation of the six sense bases comes the cessation of contact;
  6. from the cessation of contact comes the cessation of feeling;
  7. from the cessation of feeling comes the cessation of craving;
  8. from the cessation of craving comes the cessation of clinging;
  9. from the cessation of clinging comes the cessation of becoming;
  10. from the cessation of becoming comes the cessation of rebirth;
  11. from the cessation of rebirth comes the cessation [the end] of aging and death, disappointment, sorrow, lamentation, pain, and despair.
  12. Such is the cessation of this entire mass of disappointment and suffering."
Final liberation is possible here and now!
"Magnificent, Master Gotama, magnificent! It is just as if a man were to set upright what had been overturned, to reveal what was hidden, to show the way to one who was lost, or to carry a lamp into the dark so that those with eyes could see forms, in that very way has Master Gotama — through many lines of reasoning — made the Dhamma clear to me.

"I go for guidance to Master Gotama, to the Dhamma (Teaching), and to the Sangha of monastics. May Master Gotama remember me as a lay follower who has gone to him for guidance from this day forward as long as life lasts."

NOTE 1. The cosmological (lokayata) schools of thought reasoned from what they saw as the basic principles of the physical universe in formulating their teachings on how life should be lived. In modern times, they correspond to those who base their philosophies on principles drawn from the physical sciences, such as evolutionary biology or quantum physics. Although the cosmologists of proto-India at the Buddha's time differed on first principles, they tended to be unanimous in using their first principles — whatever they were — to argue for hedonism (sensual enjoyment as the highest meaning and) as the best approach to life.

NOTE 2. "Everything" may also be translated as "The All." Concerning this term, SN 35.23 says, "What is The All? Simply the eye and forms [the thing that sees and the seen], ear and sounds, nose and fragrances, tongue and flavors, body and tactile sensations, intellect and ideas [mind and mind-objects]. This is termed "The All." Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another,' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for this assertion, would be unable to explain and furthermore would be put to grief. Why is this? It is because it lies beyond [our] range." For more on this topic, see The Mind Like Fire Unbound, Chapter 1.

Is that right? Is that why? I never knew that!
NOTE 3: This link in the causal chain of Dependent Origination, often translated "desire" (tanha, "grasping," lit. "thirst") is where the Buddha found an opportunity to unravel the trap of samsara, the Wheel of Endless Becoming (Rebirth). But in translation it has led to a great misunderstanding that the Buddha was against all desires. This misreading does not occur in the Pali (Magadhi), Sanskrit, Prakrit, and other ancient Eastern languages that distinguish between positive desires (goalsetting, ardor, intent, motivation, etc.) and the endless sensual craving (grasping, obsession, addiction) being referred to here. Any pleasant experience might become the object of craving and obsession, but even in minor degrees, it perpetuates the chain. How could it ever, even temporarily, be stopped?  Not by an act of willpower or moralizing, but rather by directly seeing things as they really are (insight, knowing-and-seeing). This is achieved by anus-sati (contemplation, recollection) and sati (mindfulness, memory, bare attention). One need not will it because reality is such that when we are free, even temporarily, of the "perversions" (vipallasas), that is, the inverted views of seeing the impermanent as permanent, the disappointing as able to someday fulfill, or the impersonal as self (personal, real, independently existing, able to exist independent of an entity's constituent-factors that compose it, such as the "eternal self" that is, in fact, composed of the Five Aggregates clung to as self and not an independent phenomenon independent of those impermanent, disappointing, and impersonal constituents), or the repulsive as beautiful. The wandering ascetic Siddhartha (Siddhattha) did not make reality this way; he awakened to the truth, was thereby able to let go [of craving and clinging], and was freed from samsara, becoming the Buddha, the "Awakened One," a samma-sam-buddha or "supremely awakened complete Buddha able to effectively teach others and establish the Dhamma and Sangha in a world that has lost them.

"LET US LOVE " by Ekaterina Sky | COHART
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