Drug tripping with MSNBC and their list of 11 mind-altering vacations

Hashish in Morocco

Absinthe is a nice drink but its hallucinogenic properties are hugely overrated/largely mythical. Still given the choice would usually rather be in Paris.

I totally avoided doing bhang in India - didn't seem like a smart place to do a drug that will potentially incapacitate you for 12-16 hours. I could probably handle doing mushrooms somewhere semi-safe and familiar (VI sounds pretty innocuous) but in general doing hardcore hallucinogens in a country where I don't speak the language or know my way around seems like asking for trouble. Pot in Amsterdam or absinthe in Paris? sure, no problem.

I enjoyed kif in Morocco.

Ayahuasca, without a doubt

"Cocaine in New York"
"Meth in Bakersfield"
"Glue in Lagos"

Jenkem in Florida

"Heroin in Detroit"
"Crack in Los Angeles"

"Heroin in a basement somewhere"

"Booze in Moscow"

"Sugar in Salt Lake City"

"Speed in Market Weighton"
"M.D. 20/20 in Driffield"
"Poppers in Scunthorpe"

ditch weed in rural minnesota

ayahuasca pwns this, tho

also: thinking about ordering some kava on the internet. anyone done this?

"Ecstasy in India"

Kava really does sound nice.

The trouble with these vacations is that I don't have any desire to go to most of these places, even if I'd like to sample the local drugs. If there aren't any museums nearby and the answer to "What's the nightlife like around here?" is "We mostly try to avoid swarms of deadly insects," I think I can live without the drug experience.

I picked Amsterdam. But not really for the pot.

amsterdam isn't really all that tbf

I love the way people can say 'Ayahuasca, without a doubt' despite its notorious purgative effect on both ends of the digestive tract.

Temezcal and peyote: yes! Mexico? Dear god, no.

Also I think it wld be the height of all folly were I to use ayahuasca.

Temezcal and peyote: yes! Mexico? Dear god, no.

yeah kinda my thoughts exactly. like, I would totally try a bunch of these in the comfort of my home or out in the American desert or the woods or something. In Mexico I would get all freaked out about not being able to drink the water or something.

whipits in the cornfield

http://bigcrow.com/artistsportraits/art/crumb_vangogh.jpg

The buzz: If you've never tried magic mushrooms, here's the gist: The good (sparkly hallucinations and giddiness) usually outweighs the bad (occasional nausea and dizziness).

Giddiness?

Giddiness?

...giddiness?

tallboys @ hooters

I'll go with giddiness. I once laughed for 20 minutes about the tile in the bathroom. That's pretty damn giddy.

so who got paid to go do the 'research' for this article? cause damn.

Maybe I've always done too high a dose of mushrooms but giddiness has never been a thing for me, at all.

Altho I do always see a CNN type news ticker thing at the bottom of my field of vision saying stuff.

It's getting off topic - but I had a bad experience in the summer of legal shrooms (2005), when I took some, went for a lie down, fell asleep (which you'd think would be impossible on shrooms), and woke up to full on unpleasant tripping.

kava sounds great, why isn't that legal?

I thought it was?

plus chewing coca leaves while hiking around in brazil sounds pretty fun.

totally agree about not wanting to be hallucinating/intoxicated in strange country w/ strange language but the effects of chewing coca leaves probably aren't much more intense than a strong espresso

okay, i guess i mean widely available then?

xp

absinthe eats your brain, doggs

"Opium in Cambodia"

tbh ayahuasca sounds pretty fucked up and not all that fun. anyone done it?

lol 'tallboys @ hooters'

I remember in high school newspaper writing a wee sidebar for a big drug themed issue called: 'Kava: get it while it's legal!' Surprisingly, this slid by somehow. I got a letter to the editor about what I'd written but it wasn't about the idea, it just said something like, 'Why did you mention Jethro Tull in that article? They suck!'

Hash in Morocco. Oh yeah, as well as some opium and then a few hours at the hookah. Talk about chillin' the fuck out...

The best thing in that issue was the layout person for the centerfold put a photo of Elmer's glue for the article about the dangers of glue sniffing.

http://www.guildcraftinc.com/images/products/full/262-204%20Elmers%204oz%20Glue.jpg

Also I have never done kava.

'done'

'Dramamine at the junior high dance'

"Synthohol at Deep Space 9"

Went with the 'Dam, but...it could just as easily be my porch, in about two hours?

Would not like to experience "where the fuck am I?" level of intoxication in a place where I could get stabbed/disappeared/etc.

i'm batting .500 on good mushroom experiences. and yeah, giddiness is a thing.

bad experience: mushrooms in amsterdam by myself (travelmates suddenly had a lover's quarrel ~moments~ after I swallowed, waiting for them to follow suit). i got turned away from the rijksmuseum after flubbing a ruse to get in on an age discount for which i didn't qualify. heard a man playing violin in the street and started weeping. got fleeced by a transient with a sign in five languages. ended up on a purple, angular bench (even the fucking benches were fucking with me) where my friends found me.

if anything, the fact that everyone DID speak english was even more unsettling---plus, being a lol college student from america, i was acutely aware of the fact that i was very clearly on a drug holiday, and that that made me loathsome

Paint fumes behind the dumpster.
Mescaline in the passenger seat of the Great Red Shark.

aw + :( + <3 + lol

xp gbx

Anything in Portugal

did not know shit was legal there

i was very clearly on a drug holiday, and that that made me loathsome

Yeah, see...this is the other thing. I got no problems with tourists. None whatsoever. In theory.

But when you start imposing on my way of life where me and the rest of us are just l-i-v-i-n-', we have problems.

Like for instance these two drunk cougars at the bar of the Biltmore about a month ago - I was hanging out with a friend of mine who was in from out of town. They were looking for movie stars and would not shut the hell up about how they hadn't seen any yet, and that LA wasn't all that they thought it would be, and that they couldn't believe that the city wasn't more excited about the national cheer competition their daughters were there for....

I deadpanned the following line: Movie stars are really good at hiding from people they don't want to see.

they didn't get it.

slum tour through my veins

you don't have to go to paris to get absinthe. just had some recently, which i believe was bought off the shelf at a new jersey liquor store. i like absinthe, but definitely true that it is no hallucinogen. it does have particular sort of warm buzz, but that's about it.

I think it's kind of like mezcal or tequila -- mostly it's just hooch, but maybe there's a little extra oddness in it, too.

maybe that's just what you ~think~ when you're on it but really you're trippin mad testacles

Yeah, maybe nothing is true and everything is permissible.

~testacles~

I thought the legal-in-U.S.-liquour-store-forms of absinthe aren't hallucinogenic; the strong stuff is (but only mildly). I have had two different home-brewed absinthes and one was strong as hell and definitely trippy, the other just tasted really foul but no special EFX kicked in.

yes my cousin the twee romantic playwright told me the usa only allows up to a certain wormwood content across the border

i've only had absinthe once, in glasgow, and it got me kicked out of a bar (for putting my head down on the table---a no-no, apparently)

then i made multiple scenes on the way home with comic pratfalls and over-enthusiastic, pretend stumbling

I tried absinthe for the first time at the Edison Bar downtown. I don't know the specifics of what can be sold OTC in the states, but it was crazy sweet and hard to drink. Licorice isn't exactly a good taste for me.

eh its for people who want some bullshit drug mystique w/o things actually getting weird

and according to the nyer article from a while ago the original pre prohibition distillation techniques completely cooked the wormwood out and couldnt have had any claimed extra boozey effects

I voted absinthe in Paris.

Not only am I a foundering member of Ask A Drunk, with a reputation to uphold, but also I appeal to one's common sense, to wit: if I am drinking absinthe in Paris, then clearly I am in Paris, and not vomiting up my guts in some fetid, stinking hole of a country that cannot make a decent cheese.

I thought the legal-in-U.S.-liquour-store-forms of absinthe aren't hallucinogenic; the strong stuff is (but only mildly). I have had two different home-brewed absinthes and one was strong as hell and definitely trippy, the other just tasted really foul but no special EFX kicked in.

― Neotropical pygmy squirrel, Wednesday, April 15, 2009 5:50 PM

I was impressed by a recent American absinthe I had called Lucid. It is the "real deal" concerning wormwood and such and it had a good flavor. I believe the hallucinogenic quality of absinthe is something of a myth, it does however provide you with a drunkenness that is, in a word... different?

This is its site in case you are interested: Lucid brand Absinthe

It also tastes like anise brains.

from that Lucid site:
http://www.drinklucid.com/moments/fdbj2-lrg.jpg

^^ how to be lucid.

jesus hanover christ

how lucid could anyone be if they picked that tie?

also: thinking about ordering some kava on the internet. anyone done this?

Around here you can buy Kava extract in the stores. I used to down a little bottle of it (about 100X the recommended dose) while I was out dancing. It would bring on a relaxed sort of Ecstasy flashback, but that was close enough to my pill-popping days that some flashy lights would probably be enough to bring on a mini-roll.

LSD in fuckin, in fuckin outer space maaaann.

Mushrooms all the way.

French fries with gravy and cheese curds in Montreal.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hvV0JHPYX_I/SFCPSjyQpYI/AAAAAAAAAu0/esrSmYnzv9o/s400/Absinthe+Leonetto+Cappiello+1901.jpg

microbrew in the greater western states

drugs are really bad for you

OMG is that Matthew Fox drinking absynthe out of a coffee mug?

http://www.drinklucid.com/moments/fdbj2-lrg.jpg

Tynan?

There's something tawdry about those fées vertes in that photo, too.

I'm surprised how fearful so many people are about being intoxicated in furrin' countries. It shouldn't require any less planning than it would at home and it might be entertaining - it usually has been for me.

There's something tawdry about those fées vertes in that photo, too.

Yeah my first thought was uggggghhh Suicide Girls.

mw otm u dont automatically die just cause yr in gracious! mexico

otm i cant remember any time that i've been travelling + thought 'hmmm i'd really like to have something but o man i'm not at home! how terrible. better just go to bed....'

figured most ppl on vacation spend a lot of time getting drunk anyhow

when the cute australian girls next door offer u a couple tabs of e and an invite to the moonlight rave yr all o maybe if i was in america

hashish is the only drug listed that improves my social skills, and morocco looks nice on flickr. so, morocco.

I voted Morocco, too, based on my experience there but I am seriously wondering about mushrooms in the BVI. That could be pretty outstanding.

yeah, i voted ayahuasca for pure ~(*.*)~ but i think both morocco and bvi would be more enjoyable and relaxin

msnbc needs expand its drug cannon past all natural hippie shit

feel like if you're gonna tell ppl to go do drugs on vacation, it might be better to stick to stuff that isn't likely to kill you from an OD ('cept EtOH) and that is at least tenuously linked to the indigenous culture (whatever that means).

Uh, isn't the point of the article that the drugs they chose are legal in the places listed? Hence the all natural hippie shit

yeah it is but then they mention hash in morocco (which is illegal)

hash in morocco (which is illegal)

But kind of tolerated. I was in cafe in Ouarzazate and this guy was smoking out of a small water-pipe/hookah kind of thing and a cop he knew came in. He calmly placed the pipe under his table and talked to the cop for a little bit and then the cop took off and he put the pipe back on the table. The place reeked of his kif and the cop mostl probably had seen the pipe right as he walked in but because the smoker was respectful enough to hide it and give the cop a plausible reason for not noticing it, he didn't bother busting the guy.

mw otm u dont automatically die just cause yr in gracious! mexico

Dude I just don't want to be in Mexico like maybe it's just because I've been to border towns (¡PHARMACIA! y...hookers, I get it, I get it) and also I think the rest of it is pretty crappy. I think the odds of me being made a mule or put in a donkey show or getting killed for horsing around with drugs are pretty slim. I just don't want to be in freaking Mexico.

I don't care how much William S. Burroughs liked it.

it does however provide you with a drunkenness that is, in a word... different?

i've always thought gin was underrated in this respect, that balloonhead effect on top of the drunkenness. at least seagrams which is what i usually get in clubs, i don't remember it as much w/ tanq, that's more of a sad swirliness

That is why I just stick to beers.

maybe it's just because I've been to border towns (¡PHARMACIA! y...hookers, I get it, I get it) and also I think the rest of it is pretty crappy.

Abbott, you have every right to not want to go wherever you please but the above statement is akin to someone saying they don't want to go to Yellowstone 'cause they went to Detroit once and thought it was a dump and conflated it with all of America.

I know I know I know that's an unfair shake but also...like I've never been to Detroit and I know I don't think I'd like it there. Sometimes you just have an idea about things.

Part of it is too if I was traveling I'd want to visit somewhere with a different climate and much of Mexico isn't shockingly different than New Mexico. Which is why I chose BVI.

I'm just digging myself into a hole here, aren't I?

So if someone offered to send you here, you'd decline?

lol yeah
mexico is a big place xp

Paris. France. Maintain yer focus on Paris, peeps. Apaches!

I would! You win, Mr. White!

I have done plenty of drugs in Paris, Aimless. I require a little novelty, a little change of scenery.

omg are you serious that this article happened

I hear mescaline is good for changing the scenery, rather automatically.

Much as I love Mexico I'm not really gonna rep for her today because

u dont automatically die just cause yr in gracious! mexico

― ice cr?m, Thursday, April 16, 2009 3:13 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

probably-monied white tourist trippin in the interior these days is actually a pretty tasty-looking kidnap victim. but then you're safer in the interior than you are in the PHARMACIA border towns that i love so much.

ty v v much for "gracious! mexico" tho

hoos is mexican btw

much of the country is more or less still a kidnap free zone fyi

u can thank jj for gracious! mexico btw can i get my o*m*g privilages back plz

hoos is gracious! mexican

hoos will kidnap u if u do drugs near him

only been to far southern mexico (chiapas region) but i loved it

what are omg privileges?

its basically the ability to type omg on ilx

OMG

k, mine still works

mine was the only revoked omg license as far as i know - i got all my lols btw imos etc tooken - but they held onto omg for longer

goodness!

yeah basically i became nedbot

kava is gross and totally not worth it

i had some consumer grade tea of it and i could see where it was going, wd try uncut

awesome history channel doc from last year, paean to Richard Evans Schultes, patron saint of getting wasted all respectful like

okay wait i have had a yogi tea called "kava stress relief" tho perhaps the amount in the tea is negligible

The author of a Los Angeles Times stated "...a psychedelid trip as an earth shaking experience." In reply Schultes said, "That's funny, Bill, all I saw was colors."
- schultes' wiki

ok this is an in to ask a question i've been real curious about...what is the uh average atheist's take on (their) intense drug experiences? is it considered akin to a rollercoaster, where it's like you're on, you feel however you feel, the chemicals acted on the flesh and then you're off and that's that? do you or don't you feel the need to actively rationalize it at all? don't remember coming across a testimonial that doesn't draw on some muddle of quasi-/mysticism, but i trust there are new refreshing answers to be had? don't remember if schultes was religous btw.

there is nothing inherently religious about hallucinogens

don't remember saying inherently but ok. so it just doesn't occur to you?

There is a great possibility to have a spiritual experience, however. I just remember writing down 'deep thoughts' that occurred to me and later finding them trite, self-evident or incomprehensible.

I've had my share of spiritual experiences but they've never really involved hallucinogens. I've just never had an "I SAW GOD" or "I am in another dimension!" sort of experience, I feel like on trips I've always maintained an awareness that I'm just a biological organism processing sensory input, perhaps differently than I normally would, but my concept of reality has never really been shattered or anything.

I know avowed atheists who have done plenty and never interpreted their trips in a religious context... I think the bigger realization that's basic to all major hallucinogenice trips is that your perceptions are fluid, and that the way you normally perceive the world is not necessarily accurate, or inflexible. This conclusion doesn't really require a spiritual component - as you note, there are perfectly acceptable/rational explanations for the sensations you experience.

I am curious about drugs like DMT and ayahuasca where there seems to be a very specific, common hallucinatory experience (ie, seeing "machine elves" or talking to snake gods or whatever) and I am especially fascinated with how those drugs work, but I've never tried them. I'm sorta past the point in my life of trying drugs for their own sake.

drugs will rot youre brain

Mye brain?

much of the country is more or less still a kidnap free zone fyi

― ice cr?m, Thursday, April 16, 2009 6:34 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

def

yeah my bro was there all of last summer, was totally okay

yeah but he wasnt doing drugs

machine elves of the forth dimension are some of my favorite people

This conclusion doesn't really require a spiritual component - as you note, there are perfectly acceptable/rational explanations for the sensations you experience

this might be circular and/or leading and def. annoying but: so do you actually interrogate it beyond the 'perception is fluid' conclusion (which is a perfectly acceptable answer, just trying to get further inside your 'framework' if possible) or do you sort of move on at that (which, tbh, most people invariably do rather quickly, regardless of the initial faith they had in their specific 'revelations'). is there a drive to incorporate these other-perceptions into the stream of hard-science or are they in a kind of limbo, to your mind (because it just doesn't matter much, we don't have the proper tools 'yet', etc.).

drugs are def cosmic - never felt god tho

thought that said dogs are def cosmic

dogs too def

last time i was on acid i spent several hours playing w/ dogs it was really rad, convinced myself that i was going to get a dog and spend my whole life being a dog trainer and then i came down and dogs were still rad but i was less into them

my dawgs are cosmic

do you actually interrogate it beyond the 'perception is fluid' conclusion

well sure but I just get into philosophy 101/zen buddhism sorta excercises - who am "I"/what is doing the perceiving, etc. And things break down at that point because the inevitable conclusion (to me) seems obviously to be that there is no "I" in a literal sense; the division of the world into an internal subject and external objects is arbitrary; to recognize this is to "live in the moment". My favorite description of it is Buckminster Fuller's truism "I seem to be a verb". the "I" is just a way of perceiving things, a set of methods, a knot of interpretations.

is there a drive to incorporate these other-perceptions into the stream of hard-science or are they in a kind of limbo, to your mind

These concepts are kinda always with me - I had these sort of realizations/fixations before I took hallucinogens (as well as during and after), or before I had any heavy duty experience with buddhism and meditation, for that matter.

but yeah the best times I've had on hallucinogens did not involve this kind of philosophizing - the best times were always with friends goofing on shit and getting temporarily obsessed with random things or playing music or whatever

machine elves of the forth dimension are some of my favorite people

― ice cr?m, Thursday, April 16, 2009 3:22 PM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark

oh word

is there a drive to incorporate these other-perceptions into the stream of hard-science or are they in a kind of limbo, to your mind

also what kind of "other-perceptions" are we talking about here...? I've never had any hallucinations that couldn't be ascribed to dilated pupils or other weird tricks of vision. Also neuroscience is so pathetically underdeveloped that yeah its easy to dismiss stuff as just "my mind playing tricks on me"/actual mechanics (like which neuron is misfiring where) don't matter.

machine elves of the forth dimension are the most disgusting savages in all the world imo

gracious! the fourth dimension

xp no not really talking about seeing stuff, which i rarely have and which are about the least mystical portions of my personal experience. anyway, more interesting: do you/how do you square buddhism et al w/ atheism? ice cream? hoos? don't want to be presumptous don't know how anyone really self-identifies... i suppose that wouldd answer my question as well as any drug talk

the best times were always with friends goofing on shit and getting temporarily obsessed with random things or playing music or whatever

i feel this way about shrooms but always felt sorta cheated (by myself) if acid trips turned out that way. HANG UPS WHO NEEDS EM'

not too difficult to square atheism w/buddhism, afaik

like squaring a belief in god w/gravity, imo, it still works

I square Buddhism/Zen/Taoism with atheism by thinking of them as philosophy not religion. For many people they all have religious aspects tacked on, but the religious take on any of them isn't a necessary part of them as far as I can see. Also for all the hallucinogens I've taken I don't think I've ever had a mystical experience in the sense of wanting to attribute it to something outside of "science", or thinking about god at all really.

well from my pov and i think this is fundamentally true of the religion in general buddhism is non theistic - it is an atheistic religion - tho there is a good argument to be made that some forms as practiced are pretty theistic - theres a lot of variation in the buddhist world

was it mystical when i went skateboarding the first time on mushrooms, i'd say so

^^^yeah what ice cr?m said

i've always seen buddhist even taoist-atheism as sort of a technicality, doesn't the practice/journey involve a kind of...unscientific intentionality that belies the nominally 'non-deist' designation? (granted, the intentionality is paradoxically overcome when you reach the state you've strived for, or unstrived for amirite). i guess at first i wanted answers from people who got no use for any of this hoo-hah lol, lack of imagination i suppose. but this is interesting

i've always seen buddhist even taoist-atheism as sort of a technicality, doesn't the practice/journey involve a kind of...unscientific intentionality that belies the nominally 'non-deist' designation?

not that I'm aware of. you don't need to meditate on the names of god or something to be a buddhist.

thats a pretty subtle reading def - as far as the theistic qualities of the practice that are in yr description later overcome - i think the big question there is belief - is buddhism asking u to believe in theistic ideas or is it saying these are v powerful archetypes how can we use them - in one practice i know of you are addressing a deity and saying "the idea of a deity as an external being has deceived me and led me astray so now my only hope is you" - that imo pretty much typifies the tantric buddist attitude toward theism - that of course is just one corner of the buddhist world (the best one :P)

I want to insert the usual caveat that there are many different practices/beliefs/cultures we're talking about here, plus I'm some ignorant bookworm from Walsall. But thinking specifically about meditation I can envisage an unmystical discipline which is as much about exploring or slipping past the obvious given constraints of neurology, ego, culturation etc. A set of exercises to get closer to comprehending what exists rather than contacting something outside of it. That's a perversion I think of Buddhism as it's mostly been historically practised but not contradictory to Buddhism in essence. Taoism I think is even easier to read outside of deism because the Tao Te Ching itself is as much a part of a Chinese legalistic, bureaucratic tradition as it is tied to religious belief.

This conclusion doesn't really require a spiritual component - as you note, there are perfectly acceptable/rational explanations for the sensations you experience

Speaking as one of those non-deist folks, experiencing the world through a hallucinogenic filter only furthered my atheistic POV. If anything I believed I could perceive the actual non-linearity, Maxwell equations, and atomic structure that built up reality.

Carl Sagan's marijuana essay to thread: http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2008/12/carl-sagans-thoughts-about-marijuana.html

read something by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse that basically said that a lot of the theistic stuff in buddhism is window dressing, of sorts, meant to serve as means of entry for ppl to whom buddhism would otherwise appear inaccessible.

also this guy seems to be missing the point? http://www.slate.com/id/2078486/

but anyway: drugs!

The trouble is, decades of research have shown meditation's effects to be highly unreliable, as James Austin, a neurologist and Zen Buddhist, points out in Zen and Brain. Yes, it can reduce stress, but, as it turns out, no more so than simply sitting still does.

lolololol fucking classic!

dzongsar rinpoche is great and i agree w/what he said but i suspect he may also be simplifying things for scientific western minds there

xp to noodle: in the west theres def a tendency to over equate meditation and buddhism - a lot of buddhist dont even meditate - i am considering ritual practice and meditation two diff things here tho - and i think as buddhism adapts to the west meditation will prob play a larger role than in asia as our speedy modern culture needs to just slow down a little before we can even begin to really dig into buddhist teachings

dzongsar rinpoche is great and i agree w/what he said but i suspect he may also be simplifying things for scientific western minds there

...ie another port of entry

altho to be fair a lot of that guy's issues with Buddhism remind me of Jodorowsky's criticisms of same

x-post

But thinking specifically about meditation I can envisage an unmystical discipline which is as much about exploring or slipping past the obvious given constraints of neurology, ego, culturation etc

this is fair, i may be (slightly)conflating what i'll call 'belief in intuitive progress' w/ spiritual practice, and attributing more existential passivity into 'Atheism' than is strictly called for.

is buddhism asking u to believe in theistic ideas

i feel this is also fair somehow; belief in self(or SELF) and/or The Nature of Things may not be on the same plane as belief in god except on a semantic level(and fwiw I vacillate between the two, one of the few things i know about my own sense of the spiritual; i've just never conceived of my myriad notions existing outside of some 'intended order' for various reasons). i won't pretend to be convinced but i won't belabor the point.

fwiw elvis' conception makes the most rhetorical sense as far as the strawman answers I was expecting (that's a dig at me not elvis)

uh dude buddhism doesn't ask u to believe in ~self~

was gonna say...

It shows you how to realize the lack thereof.

not explaining myself right, belief in being?

You say tomato, I say...

if by being you mean that somehow it emphasizes a belief in ~your~ being that is separate from mine, then no

but i'm just an armchair buddhist, so~~

1/2 a mild in the queens ftw

I know I'm late to the party here, but just briefly: my Soto Zen practice in particular (which is all I can speak for) is about recognizing that underneath the tangle of worry and frustration we call our ego you find.....nothing. You find the cushion you're sitting on, the keyboard under your fingers, the lights of the city at night. When you let the noise dissipate, you find that there's nothing but *all of this*, and every part in the intricate machinery of *all of this* is intrinsically (non-mystically! perhaps somewhat banally! but definitely!) connected to every other part. None of it lasts, and every moment we spend paying attention to our deluded egos is a unique and ineffable moment of the real universe that we miss out on.

real talk

waiting for jho to pwn u, tho, with some finer point of tantric wildman of the dharma shit

to answer you gbx no the opposite of sperate-self is what i meant by SELF but why would you not know that :). it's almost quitting time here, i'm fraying

tantric wildman of the dharma

still basically my favorite thing ever btw

xxp hoos that sounds like taoism (to me, literally in armchair). hau wrong am i?

Well iirc over the centuries Chinese Buddhism absorbed a lot of the local color of Taoism. When Dogen founded the Soto school he tried to take a "back-to-basics" approach that focuses solely on meditation, so he pruned a lot of the emphasis on naturalism and other Taoist elements, but the understanding of the universe is somewhat similar. I'd argue that Dogen was definitely a materialist who didn't mess with mysticism per se.

What I'm getting at is that Dogen would probably frown upon me even trying to describe and talk about more metaphysical aspects because inevitably you sound more mystical than you necessarily intend when you're like ~~~The UNIVERSE is~~~~connected~~~~.

My teacher would say "Let's sit on it, shall we?" We can talk about it all day, or we can practice experiencing it.

^^^ Feeling this

~~~The UNIVERSE is~~~~connected~~~~

as you point out, this is alternately the most banal and the most profound observation one can make

universal connectedness and egolessness while super important teachings in buddhism are respectively id say prebuddhist and entry level - which is not to demean them at all - but from a philosophical perspective they are considered incomplete to all schools save theravada - emptiness and for some schools buddha nature would be the missing elements - not to sound all know it ally cause obv from a practical perspective its all up to you

really feeling what i think tremendiod was saying which is that theistic attitudes need not be associated w/any sort of particular gods or religious beliefs but operate all the time in mundane situations - wall street types believed the market was real and on their side - children believe their parents will protect them - buddhists believe meditation will save them from their depraved minds and so on

how long have all of you posted on teh internet

I didn't mean to spell 'the' wrong btw

l o l

really feeling what i think tremendiod was saying which is that theistic attitudes need not be associated w/any sort of particular gods or religious beliefs but operate all the time in mundane situations - wall street types believed the market was real and on their side - children believe their parents will protect them - buddhists believe meditation will save them from their depraved minds and so on

― I can dance, shake tambourines, tell jokes... (ice cr?m), Thursday, April 16, 2009 7:06 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

i can get with that

emptiness and for some schools buddha nature would be the missing elements

i mean i would argue that emptiness and buddha nature are contained within egolessness & interconnection. they're necessary extensions, no doubt, but i think that no-self, interbeing, emptiness and buddha-nature are all hinged points (there's nothing inherent in you or anything else, there's just buddha-nature and the interconnection thereof).

But then again they're distinct points with lessons of their own and maybe to blur them together does a disservice?

yall do too many drugs i think

u guys ever heard of NIETZSCHE sup

hey max have you ever thought about what it would be like to BE a dog

go marinate on that for a min

;]

~~~slow buddhner~~~

guys lets do a joint

in HAITI

j/k i always feel these conversations, deep thoughts 4 lyfe yall, i marinate on this shit every time i have a "panic attack"

i don't talk about this stuff usually I.R.L. because ppl think it's craaaaaaaaaaaaazy

Yeah I don't really talk about it all that much at all, IRL or otherwise, so I'm a little surprised at myself itt.

i mean i would argue that emptiness and buddha nature are contained within egolessness & interconnection. they're necessary extensions, no doubt, but i think that no-self, interbeing, emptiness and buddha-nature are all hinged points (there's nothing inherent in you or anything else, there's just buddha-nature and the interconnection thereof).

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, April 16, 2009 8:41 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is prob in some sense true but practically there is a school of buddhism that teaches egolessness w/o emptiness/luminosity - so unless youre some sort of spiritual genius it def needs to be said - repeatedly

I am feeling this thread

hey yall

its always worth pointing out that interconnectedness is a relative buddhist teaching and not at all the pith - buddhists are not at all walking around going we are all one maaaan dont u see - this is a misconception - of course from a tantric perspective u are kind of saying fuck it a relative pov can actually be quite lovely and deep

gbx ive met dzongsar rinpoche but i dont really know him - a few good friends of mine are close students of his tho - and one of my oldest friends is his gf of many years

!!!

that is dope!

ok this is an in to ask a question i've been real curious about...what is the uh average atheist's take on (their) intense drug experiences? is it considered akin to a rollercoaster, where it's like you're on, you feel however you feel, the chemicals acted on the flesh and then you're off and that's that? do you or don't you feel the need to actively rationalize it at all? don't remember coming across a testimonial that doesn't draw on some muddle of quasi-/mysticism, but i trust there are new refreshing answers to be had? don't remember if schultes was religous btw.

I've never done any real psychedelics, just weed, but I don't believe in a "spirit" that is not reducible to tangible physical phenomena, and I doubt acid/shrooms would make me have any experience that would change my perspective w.r.t. to that. I do have "deep thoughts" about the universe when high tho

i would like to find someone to study with, but man if it doesn't say something about me ~~~cosmically~~~ that i can't get up at 7.30 on a sunday and walk 5 blocks to the zen center :(

dzonsar rinpoche my teacher sakyong mipham rinpoche dizgar rinpoche and a few others are really on the forefront of this super westernized relatively young pointedly non theistic manifestation of tibetian dharma

how do you feel about that?

(srsly!)

cuz i feel sometimes bringing my super-westernized non-theistic garbage to the table is loathsome and missing-the-point, and yet i have lived in mountain towns and seen the most disgusting savages in the world totally misunderstand what i feel like, a total amateur, have understood to be pretty fundamental buddhist stuff

well u should prob get down w/shabhala cause we like to stay up late and drink - but i must admit dzonsar rinpoches sangha has the most ridiculously high percentage of hotties ive seen pretty much anywhere in any situation - i mean were pretty nice but im not sure what his deal is - its nuts

(ie - they are on some XXXotic tip with eastern mysticism, and fail to see how it might be practical to a guy that likes hockey or something)

xp !!! ok i'll get on that

can't get up at 7.30 on a sunday and walk 5 blocks to the zen center :(

― i like to fart and i am crazy (gbx), Friday, April 17, 2009 12:55 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i feel u on this tbh but i mean it's not just about the weekly group sitting and dharma talk, its also about your private practice at home. i own an inflatable zafu!

yeah i know :(

anyone is going to have crude beliefs - the dharma is supposed to make u more subtle - also we take anyone - its like i heard khandro rinpoche say once "some of the worst people i know are buddhists

i mean, not :( that you own an inflatable zafu, you know

xp that's kinda what i like about buddhism. 'well u know, it takes all kinds'

real shit

gbx i know yr a super busy doctor in training but sometime u should visit shambhala mountain center - w/yr passion for the natural world u would love it there - completely magical haunting beautiful place

i konw it's not an exclusively western thing, but there is something reprehensible about how---for some---buddhism here is equated with a) some kind of ascetic, rarefied lifestyle devoid of material indulgences or b) the worst kind of 'anything goes' hedonism.

i blame yoga, and i blame drugs, in that order. even though i like both very much.

xp where is it?

oh, colorado!

colorado rockies front range 8000ft

buddhism has def gone on all sorts of perverted tangents in the west - its important to understand the misunderstandings but not be too judgmental - the whole thing is so foreign its going to take a little time to transplant the whole deal properly - i mean i grew up in a community which was in some ways the worst of the worst - it was also the most brilliant and devoted - but we are soo much better than we used to be - and thats just 40 years in - got to be patient just keep working

Yeah I imagine I'm not gonna be around to see what Buddhism looks like once the Dharma really plants its feet in the West, but I'm mad curious.

i would like to speculate on that - there will be a large group of people who are not particularly devoted mediators who enjoy the open kind no big deal vibe of buddhism - theyll form the basis of the community - the foundational practice will be zazen or something basically like it - there will be tibetan style tantric practices for the hardcore but with a much smaller cannon than in tibet cause basically people dont have the time to transmit the 80k dharmas - there will be because of the power of mass media celebrity teachers w/communities too large for them to relate to each student personally - theyll have other teachers under them who can have more personal relationships w/students - itll be pretty orderly and corporate - but therell always be the crazy wisdom gurus roaming the fringes for those who require strong juice

and canada will become a predominately buddhist country

actually prob somewhere in northern europe will be the first western buddhist country - theyre way out in front as far a dropping their old religious order - theyre going to want something to fill the void

that's quite a vision

i try u know - i could also see the whole thing collapsing in the event of a global catastrophe - buddhism encourages and requires peace

It definitely encourages but I don't think requires peace per se. Definitely its more likely to flourish and be whole-heartedly practiced in non-shitty scenarios (cf Burma), but I might argue that times of adversity are when practice is most useful.

To be fair I'm saying "times of adversity" which are different from total catastrophic social failure, and I tend to think the late 21st/early 22nd century are gonna be pretty messy as far as that goes. Who knows if sitting on your ass or chanting the Sandokai would be sufficient solace for that kind of world?

btw i am hoarding Kava, Pot,Magic mushrooms, Temezcal, Coca leaves, Hashish, Bhang, Peyote, Cobra wine, Ayahuasca and absinthe for when the apocalypse happens so

grain of salt

movin to tejas

Don't get excited, those are names he has given to his numerous bags of Mexican crap-weed.

kenan knows my true nature :(

I know your town, brah. I know it well. :)

btw it only now occurs to me that the title of this thread should have been Trippin Bawls w/MSNBC

~testicles~

you know that gif of obama brushing his shoulders off? you know the guy in the background who stands up and points at o like "this dude right here look at this dude"

thats me right now

lol

enjoyed the buddhist discussion guys wish i had something to contribute but i know very little

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

guys lets do a joint

― i like to fart and i am crazy (gbx), Friday, April 17, 2009 12:44 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

in HAITI

― i like to fart and i am crazy (gbx), Friday, April 17, 2009 12:44 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark

^^^^ <3 this dude

i would argue that emptiness and buddha nature are contained within egolessness & interconnection. they're necessary extensions, no doubt, but i think that no-self, interbeing, emptiness and buddha-nature are all hinged points (there's nothing inherent in you or anything else, there's just buddha-nature and the interconnection thereof).

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, April 16, 2009 8:41 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

changed my mind on this btw

Pfft. Stoner.

lol