Yesterday, for my Anthropology class, I read a short excerpt from Mark Plotkin‘s book Medicine Quest, meant as a brief introduction to entheogen use in indigenous cultures. In it, the author gives a small introduction to Ayahuasca and documents a trip he took in the Amazon. I was happy that this was assigned reading – that information like this is getting out to people other than us crazies who pursue it on our own – but the professor’s lecture on entheogens today reversed my mood into depression. At times she just annoyed me, attributing Aldous Huxley quotes to Allan Watts, mispronouncing Ayahuasca, etc. But at other times, her misrepresentation of facts (and including opiates in the same lecture) was insulting.

People should be required, at the bare minimum, to at least read a well-informed book on the subject before they’re allowed to lecture on it. It makes me shutter to think that today’s lecture may have been someone’s first introduction to entheogens.

On the other hand, I never thought I’d be given a college lecture with photos provided by Erowid.

For American Indians, the important explanations of the world are spiritual ones. In their view, there is a deeper reality than the here-and-now. The real essence or wisdom occurs when one finally gives up trying to explain events in terms of "logic" and "reality". Many confusing aspects of existence can better be explained by actions of a multiplicity of spirits. Instead of a concept of a single god, there is an awareness of "that which we do not understand." In Lakota religion, for example, the term Wakan Tanka is often translated as "god." But a more proper translation, according to the medicine people who taught me, is "The Great Mystery." While rationality can explain much, there are limits to human capabilities of understanding. The English language is structured to account for cause and effect. For example, English speakers say, "It is raining," with the implication that there is a cause "it" that leads to rain. Many Indian languages, on the other hand, merely note what is most accurately translated as "raining" as an observable fact. Such an approach brings a freedom to stop worrying about causes of things, and merely to relax and accept that our human insights can go only so far. By not taking ourselves too seriously, or over inflating human importance, we can get beyond the logical world. The emphasis of American Indian religions, then, is on the spiritual nature of all things. To understand the physical world, one must appreciate the underlying spiritual essence. Then one can begin to see that the physical is only a faint shadow, a partial reflection, of a supernatural and extrarational world. By the Indian view, everything that exists is spiritual. Every object -- plants, rocks, water, air, the moon, animals, humans, the earth itself -- has a spirit. The spirit of one thing (including a human) is not superior to the spirit of any other. Such a view promotes a sophisticated ecological awareness of the place that humans have in the larger environment. The function of religion is not to try to condemn or to change what exists, but to accept the realities of the world and to appreciate their contributions to life. Everything that exists has a purpose.

• Walter L. Williams

When we look at life and death from a broader perspective, then dyhing is just like changing our clothes! When this body becomes old and useless, we die and take on a new body, which is fresh, healthy and full of engery! This need not be so bad!

• the Dalai Lama

Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way. Gandalf: End? No, it doesn't end here. Death is just another path . . . one which we must all take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all change to silver glans... Gandalf: ...And then you see it. Pippin: What, Gandalf? See what? Gandalf: White shores . . . and beyond. A far green country, under a swift sunrise. Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad. Gandalf: [Softly:] No... No it isn't.

• The Lord of the Rings

Check out Lynn White’s 1967 essay The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis. In it, she blames the shift from Paganism to Christianity for our current state of affairs, but, interestingly, states that Christianity will also be our solution. She also draws an distinction between science and technology, which I had never really thought about before.

Tonight I went to a showing of Alone Across Australia, a film about Jon Muir (no, not that one) and Seraphine, his dog, who walked across the continent of Australia. Seraphine was killed by a dingo somewhere around day 110, but Jon made it in 128 days. 4 months later he walked to the North Pole.

It was sort of a Les Stroud meets Karl Bushby thing. I highly recommend it.

I went to the Darfur march today. It started off with a few speakers at Westlake – including a 6th grader and a few highschool students – and then we marched down to the Federal Building and had a “die-in”. When we reached the Federal Building, the police had the entrance tied off with caution tape. I guess one sit-in a week is all they want.

There were only a hundred or so people during the speeches, but that number seemed to grow after we started marching.

Pictures here.