BUDDHISM AND ENTHEOGENS: ESTABLISHING A
CONTEXT
The father of ethnomycology Gordon Wasson has proposed the most reasonable suggestion of species for the famed soma of the Vedic traditions with the mushroom Amanita muscaria. Though the debate as to what exact plant was used or substituted will no doubt rage on, the most important aspect of Wasson’s work lies in the expressed possibility of an entheogenic plant ritual at the foundation of the world’s earliest revealed religions, though opponents seem a bit overzealous and indeed personal in their attacks on this theory. Focusing on the movements of various cults across the ancient lands reveals a vast network of influence from India to Greece with common themes emerging in support of Wasson’s theories. Indo-European nomads brought specific doctrines, such as the soma or haoma, that were absorbed by and merged with local indigenous traditions of shamanism and animism. The result was an often tenuous syncretism, such as is found in the Rig Veda and Avesta, which became entwined in the local cosmologies and practices until doctrinal evaluations formalized these into elitist legalism and obsession with elaborate ritual.
This period, after the Upanishads, coincides with the revision and assimilation of the various competing pantheons into an Aryan framework adjusting their status as the godly Brahmans. The relatively simple rites of the hearth then became the homa or agnihotra ritual that spread all through Asia. According to Wasson, the soma cult seems to have diminished with the migrations of the Aryans towards the Indus Valley. While this theory, and the “political reality” affecting such movements, may indeed be a chief cause of the “cultural amnesia” as to what was the original soma plant, another alternative could be that the cult went underground to evade various suppressions and persecutions at the hands of that old familiar state-caste based orthodoxy. It is clear that these fire rituals, entheogenic plants, and complex philosophies became firmly established in the context of metallurgy. The mastery of fire and the shaman have long been poetically and mythically intertwined. The obvious metaphors of the metallurgical refining process from gross ore to useful metal would give all such endeavors a spiritual dimension. The pressures of agricultural or cattle herding-based authorities link metals with security, survival and religion and would further contribute to the mystery of “smithing.” As the technology became more widespread the specific fire rituals evolved an intentional esoteric complexity to perhaps satiate the need for an esoteric doctrine in which to contextualize the entheogenic rites (Eliade 1962). The diffusion of fire rites, metallurgical/shamans/smiths and cremation rites that arise in the twilight of Copper/Bronze Age enshrine and link these associations with the purification of ores, potentially poisonous or dangerous medicines, and impurities in the deceased on the funeral pyre.
Some Indian scholars, in the course of the deep study of their own traditions such as the RigVeda, have suggested that the soma itself was the metal electrum, which is a gold and silver alloy. Alchemy of a metallic and plant nature is intimately linked with the various Vedic and Tantric spiritual sciences that spread amongst various cults (Kalyanaraman 2004; Kazanas 2002; Jaggi 1973). A type of soma was used in the incessant fire mentioned in the Khila Sukta of the Rig Veda, which Dr. Kalyanaraman links to a metallurgical process that was of, as its inclusion in the Rig Veda attests, religious devotion. The theory of Wasson can be combined with this alchemical symbolism to give the ritual considerations many dimensions from which to draw. The actual smelting and combining of metals and incessant fires has obvious implications to a mystic. The clay, earthenware pot of the Mahavira vessel filled with Putika plants and water over a fire begins to take on alchemical metaphors of the elements. The fragrance of the fire—the way the gods enjoy their sacrifice—wafts like incense in the perpetual prayer in the fire of the Soma sacrifice. The inner homa is an offering of all the impediments and obstacles to the peace of enlightenment.
The Buddha himself is implicated (though this is contested) with both mushrooms and metal-smiths. As Wasson notes, the Pali canon of Buddhist texts records the last meal of the Buddha as a mushroom served to him by the metal-worker Cunda. Wasson’s deductions follow many years of academic debate as to whether the final substance was pork or a fungus as the Pali and other South Asian canons maintain. As to the noted objections that the mushroom account does not appear in the (to paraphrase Kornfield’s comments) “mainstream” canonical literature this must be understood as a clear example of enforced orthodoxy. The Buddhist convocations mirror the Christian-Roman hybridization under Constantine and the subsequent councils to define doctrine. The suspected vegetarianism of Buddha would suggest some deeper esoteric symbolism (Wasson et al. 1986). But the early Pali Canon (D.ii.7) links Kassapa Buddha, the last of the Buddhas that proceed the historical Buddha, with soma in various legends that involve quaffing a beverage the moment before enlightenment . Just like Shakyamuni, Kassapa takes a bit of milk/rice gruel before his enlightenment, which is served to Kassapa by his wife and an attendant, named Soma.
The so-called “silence” of the Buddha, a religious and social reformer, has always been linked with certain early Buddhist sects with an esoteric doctrine. This foundation of esoteric Buddhism, allegedly entrusted to Kashyapa, then seems to have taken a radically different course from the prevailing, basically “mirror-polishing” exoteric teaching. If this esoteric Buddhism was a purified Hinduism—one without class distinctions, animal-sacrifice and “distilled rituals”—then the esoteric doctrine begins to take shape. The acknowledged master of expounding this Buddhist silence is the legendary Nagarjuna who is still famed in India today as an alchemist and wizard and personifies the erotico-mystical side of Tantric Buddhism, and whose writings feature debates between Hindus and Buddhist, as well as transmutational alchemy (White 1996).
Though his existence and authorship of certain texts are problematic to some academics, the significance of the clear associations connected with Nagarjuna betrays an esoteric hermeneutics. The secrets of myth and folklore are in a sense more “true” in their capturing of the prevailing spirits of sympathy these traditions were connected with in constantly linking Nagarjuna to occult arts. So popular legend concerning the wizard and alchemist adept of plants and herbs does give added dimension to his numerous writings on subjects as broad as philosophy and Tantra. His allusions to the “amrita” or ambrosia or nectar, as it is translated, would then follow the deliberate semantic shift that the Buddha himself established as a precedent in rejecting the caste system. This subtle shift from soma to amrita may also indicate a growing sense of sophistication in understanding what is still today advanced neurochemistry. Indian medical systems connect the amrita, the “nectar of immortality” with the third eye and pineal gland. As other scholars have already connected the amrita with the soma and Nagarjuna there is no need to repeat this (Crowley 2005). What is important is to note the link of philosophical and ontological orientation back through esoteric Buddhism as reformed Hinduism that was based on the soma-agnihotra-homa ritual and metallurgy.
Nagarjuna, like Cunda who served Buddha’s meal, was said to be an alchemist who knew the secrets of the amrita and thus of immortality. Yet a further link is the legendary be-heading of Nagarjuna from a bow of Kusa Grass in the popular folklore. As Kramrish demonstrates in the paper subtitled “The Secret of the Cut-Off Heads,” this symbolism is intimately connected with the soma and Mahavira vessel, the descriptions of which match the pot or cup of elixir in Nagarjuna’s hand in popular iconography (Wasson et al. 1986). With the numerous connections of esoteric teachings, symbolism, folklore and literal and symbolic allusions it is hard to ignore all of the evidence (Crowley 2005). There are many of these legendary adepts that define these interrelated influences of immortality plants, such as the Tantric South Indian Siddhar Bogar or Bhogar (third century CE), born of goldsmiths, of whom it is said that he brought the siddha science into China. He was said to have come from China and joined the Saivite lineage of the Nathas. As Needham’s research shows, there would have already been a thriving indigenous tradition ready to receive it. Indeed, Bogar in some accounts is said to have been Chinese himself, as some also say of his guru Kālāngi Nāthar. This lineage describes a system of healing and attaining power from “kaya kalpa herbs” (literally “kaya=body kalpa=immortal”) in a poem that mixes alchemical, botanical macrobiotics, and magic together:
With
great care and patience I made the (kaya kalpa) tablet and then swallowed it:
Not
waiting for fools and skeptics who would not appreciate its hidden meaning and
importance.
Steadily
I lived in the land of the parangis (foreigners) For twelve thousand years, my
fellow!
I lived for a long time and fed
on the vital ojas
With the ojas vindhu I received
the name, Bhogar:
The body developed the golden
color of the pill:
Now I am living in a world of
gold (Ramaiah 1979).
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