Why do so many pot smokers like Eastern religions?
- Thread starter John J. Bannan
- Start date
It' the other way around.
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Feeling Bias May Hike Blacks’ Breast Cancer Risk
Women who reported more racial wrongs likelier to get disease, study says:
July 5, 2007
NEW YORK - Black women who feel they’ve been victims of racial discrimination are more likely than their peers to develop breast cancer, a large study suggests.
The study, which followed 59,000 African-American women for six years, found that those who reported more incidents of racial discrimination had a higher risk of breast cancer.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19617921/
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Feeling Bias May Hike Blacks’ Breast Cancer Risk
Women who reported more racial wrongs likelier to get disease, study says:
July 5, 2007
NEW YORK - Black women who feel they’ve been victims of racial discrimination are more likely than their peers to develop breast cancer, a large study suggests.
The study, which followed 59,000 African-American women for six years, found that those who reported more incidents of racial discrimination had a higher risk of breast cancer.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19617921/
Haha, Young Guns. Funny scene, you Mexican greaser!
I think pot/drug users tend to look towards Eastern religions because they're more carefree. Most other religions are authoritarian telling people what to do, and we all know how drug-users are looked down on by society. Just live your life, take the middle road, can't get any better than that.
- N
Eastern Religions such as Buddhism? I think when you are a pot smoker you are all about 'peace'... you know anti-war, loving everyone, living in harmony, do unto others, karma, etc... same fundamentals of religions such as Buddhism.
Well actually those are the same fundamentals of most religions, I think Buddhism is just a much more 'peaceful' religion that say... Christianity. I dunno... I'm stoned
Well actually those are the same fundamentals of most religions, I think Buddhism is just a much more 'peaceful' religion that say... Christianity. I dunno... I'm stoned
Agree with the weird nickname above; Pot smokers are all about peace, so are Eastern Religions, and so are Rastafari; if this makes no sense, it is because I ate a "special" cookie a few hours ago.
Well Rastafarians are basically just Christians that believe Christ has already came back a second time in the body of Haile Selassie.... they just smoke a whole lotta pot... for spritual reason obviously
and also because the bible quotes a few times about a plant. that they take into account as being weed and smoking it. they hold those bible words to back the weed smoking part of the religion.
a few of my friends are rastas, good times.
peace.
Smoke and mirrors
Quite simply, the strongest factor is a coincidence of circumstances. Part of it can be things like the incense, but the music is affecting in a different way than Western music. At one point, Chinese music theory held the octave to contain five notes. This produces very interesting results absent from the dominant traditions in Western music. In India, I believe, they have notes we can't even explain in Western musical terminology.
What happens is that the period of someone's pot use will intersect with an occasion of Eastern stimulation. Much as the altered perception is fascinated by the sound of Eastern music, it also receives philosophical and cultural generalities with hope. The thing is that the way the kind green makes you feel, and the nature of the introspection it triggers, makes Eastern ideas--partially for their perspective, partially for their form, which might be vastly different from a Western philosophy that asserts the same basic notion--seem much different than Western ideas. They feel at once nobler in goal, more pure in perspective, and just downright friendly. There is something smooth and inviting about the ideas, where many people find Western philosophy sharply cut and worryingly barbed.
Inevitably, it seems, the stoner will start to look more deeply into these ideas. In most cases, it leads to a generally superficial affinity. In others, there is definitely a transformation of perspective with the stoner.
And then, it turns out, one finds their fascination echoed in other stoners. At various stages of gestation and emergence, there is still a common thread of cultural alternatives connecting stoners. Dynamically, this will lead to some strengthening of understanding, but tends to put greater flesh on a subcultural skeleton that is unique and evolving. At some point, they will make something of whatever information they have. For some it means elephant tapestries and ... oh, hell, what's that fracking incense called? Even among vastly diverse individuals, there is kind of familiarity akin to what comes from being among "one's own kind". (I get jumpy if circumstance brings me within a Christian church, for instance. I don't mind the pomp and ceremony, but I feel much safer among people who don't actually believe in it. Thus, the less Christian an event, such as a wedding, the less jumpy I feel. Of course, then there's usually friends and family, or, worse yet, family of friends to deal with. That makes me even more nervous than a roomful of Christians. Unless, of course, the Christians are Pentecostal snake-handlers, or crazy enough to be polygamists, or something. But I digress ....)
It's the same with indigenous American cultures. ("The other Indians; our Indians--the ones without dots ...." Really, that's just a little joke about Americans, the modern ones, that is.) For some reason, largely peyote, I would think, indigenous tribal culture is popular among stoners. I can't say how superficial this is. I don't pay enough attention when I'm around it. Nonetheless, the connection is cultural alternatives.
Oh, shite. I forgot about the Beatles. There you go, then. Not sure what else I can come up with without smoke and mirrors.
With without. With without. With without.
Really, can I get away with that? It's not like "that that", is it? Or is it?
Anyway, smoke is no problem. Now, there must be a mirror in here ....
:m:
Quite simply, the strongest factor is a coincidence of circumstances. Part of it can be things like the incense, but the music is affecting in a different way than Western music. At one point, Chinese music theory held the octave to contain five notes. This produces very interesting results absent from the dominant traditions in Western music. In India, I believe, they have notes we can't even explain in Western musical terminology.
What happens is that the period of someone's pot use will intersect with an occasion of Eastern stimulation. Much as the altered perception is fascinated by the sound of Eastern music, it also receives philosophical and cultural generalities with hope. The thing is that the way the kind green makes you feel, and the nature of the introspection it triggers, makes Eastern ideas--partially for their perspective, partially for their form, which might be vastly different from a Western philosophy that asserts the same basic notion--seem much different than Western ideas. They feel at once nobler in goal, more pure in perspective, and just downright friendly. There is something smooth and inviting about the ideas, where many people find Western philosophy sharply cut and worryingly barbed.
Inevitably, it seems, the stoner will start to look more deeply into these ideas. In most cases, it leads to a generally superficial affinity. In others, there is definitely a transformation of perspective with the stoner.
And then, it turns out, one finds their fascination echoed in other stoners. At various stages of gestation and emergence, there is still a common thread of cultural alternatives connecting stoners. Dynamically, this will lead to some strengthening of understanding, but tends to put greater flesh on a subcultural skeleton that is unique and evolving. At some point, they will make something of whatever information they have. For some it means elephant tapestries and ... oh, hell, what's that fracking incense called? Even among vastly diverse individuals, there is kind of familiarity akin to what comes from being among "one's own kind". (I get jumpy if circumstance brings me within a Christian church, for instance. I don't mind the pomp and ceremony, but I feel much safer among people who don't actually believe in it. Thus, the less Christian an event, such as a wedding, the less jumpy I feel. Of course, then there's usually friends and family, or, worse yet, family of friends to deal with. That makes me even more nervous than a roomful of Christians. Unless, of course, the Christians are Pentecostal snake-handlers, or crazy enough to be polygamists, or something. But I digress ....)
It's the same with indigenous American cultures. ("The other Indians; our Indians--the ones without dots ...." Really, that's just a little joke about Americans, the modern ones, that is.) For some reason, largely peyote, I would think, indigenous tribal culture is popular among stoners. I can't say how superficial this is. I don't pay enough attention when I'm around it. Nonetheless, the connection is cultural alternatives.
Oh, shite. I forgot about the Beatles. There you go, then. Not sure what else I can come up with without smoke and mirrors.
With without. With without. With without.
Really, can I get away with that? It's not like "that that", is it? Or is it?
Anyway, smoke is no problem. Now, there must be a mirror in here ....
:m:
John J. Bannan
Registered Senior Member
From a stoner herself.
Nag Champa?
Well I was thinking about his last night... not the incense but the initial question of the thread. I think that 'stoners' having an affinitiy with 'Eastern' type religions may have something to do with the hippie movement of the 60's. Big time stoners who were all about free love and anti- what is the word I am searching for??? Anti-Conformist? These were kids that were raised in the 40's and 50's no doubt with a pretty formal Christian upbringing, as that was the norm back then. Anyhoo... after the hippie explosion, they started doing all the glorious dope they had and started searching for alternative philosophies, religions, way of life, etc. since apparently the way the were brought up wasn't working for the them or the nation as they saw it. They hated the war, the ideology and hypocrisy of Christianity thus venturing off to find alternative meanings of their existance, leading them smack dab to Buddhism, Taoism, Confusionism, Hinduism, you name it. And I can see what draws people to those religions, there isn't that "I am better than you or holier than thou' type of attitude. Okay I'm getting off the subject.
Peace
John J. Bannan
Registered Senior Member
Sorry. From the stoner himself, then.
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
There were actually (and still are) quite a few Christian hippies:
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Peyote use among native Americans was more common in what is now Mexico than what is now the United States.
The reason the Indians were overrun is that the Europeans had a head start on civilization and all the technology that comes with it. Most of North America was still in the Mesolithic Era, hunter-gatherers. Agriculture had only recently been invented and it was hampered by the lack of easily domesticated animals. It's pretty hard to start right in with the bison as your only native type of cattle. The largest domesticated animal in North America was the turkey. The Aztecs and Incas had invented civilization but it hadn't quite spread across the Rio Grande yet.
All of this is just an accident of history. Homo sapiens arrived in Asia Minor in 70,000BCE, and it took them 60,000 years to invent the first civilization in Mesopotamia. H. sapiens didn't arrive in the New World until about 15,000BCE, with only things they could carry on a long journey, separated from their community, undoubtedly having lost ground both culturally and technologically. Yet it only took them 13,000 years to invent civilization in Mexico and Peru. Not too bad. Still, our civilization had an 8,000 year head start on theirs so when the two came in contact there was no contest. The Europeans' Iron Age weapons and organization defeated the Aztecs' and Incas' Bronze Age weapons and organization as easily as they defeated the Stone Age weapons and organization of the Sioux and Apache.
This is no cause for anyone to feel superior, it was just an accident of history. Unless you're Chinese, Indian, Semitic or Cushitic (basically Ethiopian or Coptic), your people did not invent civilization. You're just the descendant of conquered and assimilated barbarians, no different from the North American Indians. So settle down, Beavis.
Am I the only person here who knows how to use Wikipedia? Ras Tafari was one of Emperor Haile Selassie's many titles. Another one--that and the fact that he was the king of the only independent African nation in the 1930s--cause some Jamaicans still in the Colonial Era to believe that he was the new prophet. Their other prophet is Marcus Garvey. It is an afrocentric faith that has won the hearts of black people all over the world, helped by its ritual use of ganja and its identification with Jamaica's other major cultural export, reggae music. I have never been able to engage a Rastafarian in conversation about his faith, but that illustrates my own opinion that it is a religion more of this world than the supernatural. Rastafarians seem to genuinely care more about peace and brotherhood on earth--with no animosity toward white people--than about scripture and the hereafter.
Despite its roots in the bible, Rastafarianism is more like your definition of an "eastern" religion. It seems to have nothing of Abraham's vengeful, intolerant, violent deity or the racism and bellicosity that characterizes the three main branches of Abrahamism. The fact that Rastafarians consider marijuana to be a staple of every household reinforces your hypothesis.
BTW, what exactly is an "eastern" religion? Judaism, Christianity and Islam all arose in Asia. Protestantism, which the Pope distinguishes from "true" Christianity, is European. Unless you count that and the Mormons, yet another offshoot of Abrahamism, Rastafarianism is the only modern religion to come out of "the West."
Oh crap, I forgot about that one. L. Ron Hubbard was a novelist who created the universe of Thetans and all that far-fetched stuff as a science fiction story. Hubbard also invented a self-help system called "Dianetics." At some point he got the brilliant idea that both he and his system could be much more successful (and much more lucrative) if it could qualify for non-profit status. (For American tax purposes in case any foreign folks are following this.) The best kind of non-profit organization is a church, they get the benefit of the Freedom of Religion thingie in the Constitution and are held to lower standards than the Sierra Club or Alcoholics Anonymous.
Let's see. How to start a religion? How to start a religion? Bingo! He already had one! The science fiction stuff he wrote would make a perfect scenario for the supernatural component of a religion. So he joined his sci fi story to his Dianetics system, named it Scientology, and a new religion was born.
I am not kidding. Our income tax laws are that easy to abuse.
wasnt jesus a hippy anyway?
peace.
peace.
Easter morning:
"Hey dude, that was some trip. Got any more of those crunchy brownis left from the Last supper? Anyone seen my sandles?"
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Jesus was a Capricorn, he ate organic foods.
He believed in love and peace, and never wore no shoes.
Long hair, beard and sandals, and a freaky bunch of friends.
Reckon if he came back, they'd just nail him up again.
-- Kris Kristofferson, "Jesus Was a Capricorn," 1971
The Native Americans lost their lands to many people but the worst was the American Government for signing treaties with them which the American government never held up to, only lying to the Native Americans because they had no EDUCATION to understand what they were doing. They were conned actually then genocide happened.
The native americans way of life was fundamentally not as convinent as the european ways on almost every level. They didn't have raw economic, military, or industrial capacity. They had a spiritual way of life that still involved vengence, sacrifices and torture, which even a liberal could agree is wrong. They could not function as a sovereign body because they were too busy competing amongst themselves half the time. Europeans definetly don't have clean hands in this issue, but the native americans simply didn't have their shit together!
Sorry, I know i'm a little off topic, but it bugs me to hear hyper-liberal rants about how the native americans were peaceful people, were one with the land, where the rivers flowed with chocolate and gumdrops grew on trees in fields of flowers before the evil europeans came over. The simple fact of the matter is the native american way of life was no contest to a european peoples who had the combined knowledge and experience of millenia of contact with peoples of other continents and the wildly diverse nations on them. In America, nobody's hands were ever totally clean. Nobody was pure evil or pure good.
Nobody on this thread so far as I can tell has earned the title of racist for placing at least some of the blame of the native american's loss of land on the native americans themselves.