Regular users of cannabis will -- often self-consciously -- admit to having a spiritual relationship with the plant. Will Johnson, a teacher of Buddhist dharma since 1972, explains how he is ‘something of an anomaly and outlier when it comes to the use of cannabis.’ In his book “Cannabis in Spiritual Practice: The Ecstasy of Shiva, The Calm of Buddha,” Will applies his understandings with living by The Buddhist’s precepts, as an adult. He believes his positive pathways toward full Embodiment is better achieved when he weaves his dance with Shiva, while enjoying the fruits of Buddha’s Garden. In this episode, Kirk and Trevor conclude Will may be onto something. What if everyone in the world simply took a few deep breathes, passes the chillum, and spontaneously started to dance? What if…
E135 – Shiva Dances within Buddha’s Garden
Research Links
- Institute of Embodiment Training
- Cannabis in Spiritual Practice: The Ecstasy of Shiva, the Calm of Buddha Paperback
Music By
Grateful Dead - Dark StarDesiree Dorion
Marc Clement
(Yes we have a SOCAN membership to use these songs all legal and proper like)
Episode Transcript
Trevor: Kirk. We're back.
Kirk: Hey, how's it going, Trevor?
Trevor: Good. Today. And I'm going to say that maybe I overuse this adjective, but I'm going to do it again. You brought us an interesting guy.
Kirk: Yeah, I love cannabis stories, Trevor. And again, as our listeners will know, I do like the science papers. I do like to read the papers. And as a nurse, I'd critically look at them, but I really go out looking for stories. And this is a story Will Johnson. We got pushed him a couple of months ago, probably maybe a year ago. Newman Communications. It's a company that promotes people that write books and promotes the books. Push us. They push us something once a week. And I usually delete delete delete because it doesn't relate to our premise. Well, Will's came along and, you know, we had a bunch of stories in the bank and we had a bunch on the shelf. I said, you know, send me his book, I'll read his book and I'll consider a story. So we did just that. They sent me his book, and the book is called "Cannabis and Spiritual Practice The Ecstasy of Shiva, The Calm of Buddha." World Religion Trevor. I don't know if you are a student of world religion.
Trevor: No, I've met many people in my travels who have different religions. But have I studied it at all? No.
Kirk: In nursing, in nursing school, we did a whole section on religion and nursing the other. And so I had that background. Michelle and I, when we were younger adults back in the 80s, 84, 85, we traveled the world. I ended up spending some time in India. I spent time in Southeast Asia back when it was a war zone and you couldn't get into Vietnam still. Anyways, long story. So I visited lots of temples, studied it a little bit about Buddha, studied it a little bit about the Hinduism, Hindu religions. I really find the Sikh religion a compelling religion. I really find the Buddhist religion a very compelling religion. And most people understand Buddha. Most of us Westerners understand one of the precepts of Buddhism is do no harm, right? Don't step on that bug, you know, because you may be reincarnated as a bug next time. And so when I read the gentleman's book, it's interesting because and I say this to him is he follows the path of Buddha, but he sort of brings in Shiva to allow him to consume cannabis as part of his spiritual awakening that he practices in Buddhism.
Trevor: And I'm not an expert at all. I learned more from this interview than a bunch of reading. But just for introduction, Shiva is part of the Hindu.
Kirk: Gods.
Trevor: Diaspora.
Kirk: Yes. Yeah, the Hinduism has many gods. And Shiva was a character in in the Hindu religion. And there are plays about him and essentially as Will call them, is pretty much a ganja guy. And again, when you travel, when you travel in these countries, Buddhist countries in Thailand, Thailand's a Buddhist country. I remember it as a Buddhist country. And one night in Bangkok, the song we'll talk about seeing a temple in every corner. And there are temples in every corner and people smoke from chillums, and a chillum isn't a pipe necessarily that, you know, pipe or have a 90 degree turn where you suck on your pipe and it's got a bowl, a chillum and is actually a horizontal clay tube with a bowl on top. And you stuff it in your fingers and you smoke from your hands. So a chillum is a ganja pipe, but it's not a pipe as we westerns know it. So yeah, anybody that's anybody who's done a tour of Thailand will be very acquainted with Buddhist temples and the precepts of Buddhism. There are five of them. And we get into it a little bit in this story. But I think it's important to sort of say it out front. Do no harm. Don't take what isn't given. Refrain from sexual misconduct and don't lie and don't take any intoxicants. So you've got, you know, treat all living things with, you know, don't harm anything, don't steal. So it's almost like five of the Ten Commandments, basically. Right. But there are five precepts. But that last one don't take any intoxicants. Well, this guy's whole premise is cannabis is a sacrament. So how does he do that? Well, he does that by going into Shiva and Shiva being the cannabis, the cannabis crusader. He's able to blend the two religions for his spirituality.
Trevor: I think that's a good place as any to get into Will and his spiritual practices. So let's hear from Will.
Kirk: All right, sir. I guess I want to start by saying I spent time with your book. I spent some time with your meditations and your audio tracks because of this time I spent with your book, I also refreshed my own knowledge of world religions and got back to my understanding how cannabis was brought into world religions. So I guess the summarize, I've come away thinking you present a Buddhist way of living within a Hindu framework and in the process you've woven in cannabis. Now is it a sacrament? And I guess the other question is why did two religions, why Buddha and Hinduism to to bring in cannabis?
Will Johnson Okay. Interesting question. Now just to give a bit of a background, when cannabis first came into my life, this has been 1966 in university. I'm an older guy now. It was God's medicine. Clearly. From, just from the get go. From the first time I experienced how it affected me, it felt I had a sudden new perspective on what it was to be a human being and what religion was. I realized religion was about going inside, into the mind, into the body, into experience, and just sort of perusing that domain. Now, over the years I got, I was very drawn to Buddhist practices. I was very drawn to sitting meditation. And as I've often said, I never formally affiliated myself. I've had wonderful teachers The Passion of Zen, Vajrayana, never formally affiliated myself with any teacher tradition. Frankly, I didn't like them. They were too tight. At one point, I decided, I better just become a really good Buddhist boy and quit with things like cannabis, some of the other and theologians that I was opening through. But now I think I'd better become a good Buddhist boy. I did that for 13 years, waking up one morning to realize I was not happy any longer and then said, Hey there something about this herb that opens me and awakens me. Now my background is in Buddhism, and then, look, I'm an outlier in the Buddhist world because I never formally affiliated with any lineage of tradition focusing on the denominator common to all of them, which is a sitting posture. But with some of the early writings that I did, I got invited into the Buddhist world as a teacher. Why? Because these really good hearted people are often really tight and really held and really frozen, and that posture just destroys a lot of people. So, you know, here I come as someone who is an enjoyer and acknowledger. As a sacrament for these kinds of awakenings that for me that's what the Buddhist dharma was wanting for humans and yet so much of the rigidity and the form was squelching that or causing people horrific pain. But yeah, Shiva was here is this Hindu guy, you know, it's all about the body. And if I can digress just for one moment, what's going on right now? Buddhist, Dharma, oh look at all the Asian religions are flooding over here under Western shores. Right? In terms of Buddhism, this is only the third major migration in the whole history of, you know, Buddhism of changes. And every time it's migrated into a new territory, it changes, it changes. And here it's coming over to the west. I look on what are the major homegrown, explosive spiritual cultural events that have occurred in my lifetime? One is that everybody is moving. Well, cannabis is, you know, wonderfully helpful for people on the dance floor. Just letting go. And as I said, the other is the advent and availability of these kinds of substances was never so widespread throughout a culture. So my vision is okay, the prohibition has squelched protocols for how to use these substances. And, you know, we want to do that. The other thing to mention, a lot of the practices coming over from Asia are very mentally oriented. It's about concentrating, focusing the attention, narrowing it down. Cannabis didn't work very well for that. Right. But for these practices that are about awakening the body, letting go, liberating the breath, for many people, it can work very well indeed. So those are kind of Hinduism, Buddhism thrown together.
Kirk: There's a whole lot of stuff in there. Maybe. Maybe let's take it back for some of the audience who may not understand Buddhism. You refer to it as static. Go a little deeper into that. Maybe explain the five precepts of Buddhism, because as we get further into the conversation, a Buddhist would refrain from using cannabis.
Will Johnson Absolutely.
Kirk: So maybe we maybe let's before we get into that and how you define it, let's go into what is Buddhism and how is it changed by coming to the Western culture.
Will Johnson Okay, good. You know, good question. Mostly what I observe is that the orientation towards sitting practice, which is kind of the, you know, what Buddhism does sit down and, you know, you start meditating.
Kirk: What we call the lotus position, I guess, is what you are saying.
Will Johnson You can sit in a chair, a kneeling bench. Yeah. You know, whatever, but sitting down. But what is happened and I don't know how or why it happened. The orientation coming over from Asia has people, we think of sitting meditation, is sitting down and not moving a single muscle fiber. And I talk about this as the stone garden statue of the Buddha posture. Well, it's still, it's a pandemic. And all of the retreat centers, you know, Buddhist schools, we sit down and we get very frozen, very, very still. You know what that does? It creates a great deal of tension and pain and holding in the body. It stops breath in its tracks. And I view it are also as fuel for the already out of control parade of random and unbidden thoughts in the mind. So, you know, coming over here, one of the things that's got to happen is that the teachings have got to become more, literally more, user friendly. That so many people, so many Westerners, yeah, you know, we're drawn to this teaching in this wisdom tradition. It's very, very cool. And I resonate with it. I get what they're talking about. There's something beyond just the I think I'm this guy named Will poured into a body, right. But it's also the orientation of sitting frozen still negates any of that from happening. We want to be able to awaken bodies. Too many people go into these retreats and they get crushed by the incident pain. I often say I get a lot of very passionate Zen refugees that come to me that know there's something about the teaching, but the way it's presented just isn't working. And then, of course, I make the further radical leap in saying, Hey, gang, what's the what's going on in our culture that we want to include in our practices? Well, that's the advent and availability of things like cannabis. So let's learn how to use it. Very small amounts, not large amounts like we're using in psychotherapy because we're going to be doing a practice. In terms of cannabis and sitting, small amounts, and then there are these I call them somatic koans, little riddles. You can call them physiological hacks. And I encourage people, hey, you enjoy getting high on cannabis, play with some of these little physiological hacks and watch what happens for most people to get yeah, this is good.
Kirk: Okay. So what you're saying, though, is the five precepts of Buddhism tends to be negative. You talk about this later in your book. It tends to be negative. You refrain from having harming living things, refrain from taking what is not given, refrain from sexual misconduct, refrain from lying. But it also talks about refrain from intoxicants. And I guess this is sort of where you blend in Shiva, whereas so maybe explain a little bit about that. It's sort of the fifth premise that you've sort of walked away and blended the two.
Will Johnson Yeah. So it's interesting mostly how the five ethical precepts and look, these ethical precepts are very important. If you're going to go on one of these Inner Awakening Journeys, you know, you can't be stealing things and be yeah, you're getting involved with your best friend's partner sexually or lying. You know, you want to follow these very, very, very good precepts. The first one that says don't kill anything. I would rather, they are all, don't do this, don't do that. I'd rather put them in a context of what do I want to do. So I can say honor, honor the life force. In all things in all people, right? Honor life. There is an awakening. You know, one of the things that cannabis does because it awakens body sensations. It helps people come to wow a more dynamically felt radiant life. So honor. Honor life. Then I'm forgetting, you know, where they where they go instead of don't lie. It's just, you know, be truthful, you know, be truthful in what you're doing. No sex. Be clean with your sexuality. Look, every single one of us, no one gets a pass. We're born into a world but one of the first events that happens to kids wow we have all these energies awakening in our body. You got to figure them out, right? You don't say, it's I'm not going to do that. Okay? When we get to the last one, the dharma says No intoxicants. My understanding is that originally that referred to alcohol. There are some books out that talk about pre Buddhist uses of plants and herbs for this kind of awakening. But so obviously here comes Shiva. And for Shiva, cannabis was an integral component of his practice. It was I take cannabis, and the energy started awakening and the body starts moving. I think I mentioned in that book my wife, Coco, lived for something like 15 or 16 years as a young woman in India and spent a lot of time up in the up in the Himalayas. The foothills of the Himalayas were a lot of Shiva oriented Sadhus Babas, you know, they don't have anything. They got a little begging bowl. And not infrequently she would wake up in the morning and some of them had sought refuge under covered porch. They were always very respectful to her. She brought them tea and they would welcome her to join in in their yoga and meditation practices that always begun by what they called invoking Shiva, which was taking a pipe. But chillum.
Kirk: Right, right.
Will Johnson And all of a sudden, body starts awakening. Remember, these are body awakening, breath liberating practices that are not. I'm going to concentrate my mind narrow, narrow it down right from that perspective, from a Shiva perspective, not to use this sacrament, this herb cannabis that awakens these energies on which you ride and explore the practices would be anethical. the Shiva followers they're ganja smokers.
Kirk: Yeah.
Will Johnson Because they you know, they use that to enter into their practices you know, and I say that, you know, it's kind of interesting, this book how why did it why did I write this book? Well, this has been true for me. You know, after I became a good Buddhist boy for 13 years and realized it wasn't happy, I started saying, yeah, this works for me to have. And then the body starts moving, it awakens and then even sitting. My boys. My sons called me out on this. It was what I call an upside down intervention. Dad, sit down. We have to talk to you. They are teenagers and younger at that point. We see how you do your practices. We also know you've been invited into the Buddhist world. You're very respectful to that world. You're going into a world where the fifth precept is no cannabis, no mind.
Kirk: No intoxicant.
Will Johnson ya no intoxicants. And you know what's wonderful about these practices that I teach Kirk, I've got my pureland students. There are people that would never go anywhere near cannabis. But then I've got my ganja shaga students and the same practices work for both those groups. But my sons said, Look, Dad, we know what you do and we know why you do what you do. You're a writer. You need to read a book because there aren't any out there because of all the prohibitions. No protocols. Write a book of how small amounts of cannabis could be used within the context of sitting meditation practices that are about awakening. This felt shimmer throughout the body and then letting go, softening, relaxing that opens the breath. And then they ended the intervention with. And they are if you don't do this, you're going to die a coward. So go do. so ya go hey thank you guys, you're my kids. I raised good kids.
Kirk: Nothing like your kids attacking you at that level eh. So that's a good segway into you living in Costa Rica. You have you have the Institute of Embodiment training. So an obvious question, is cannabis legal in Costa Rica? So you have your compound, you have your training center. Is cannabis legal there?
Will Johnson Cannabis is not completely legal in Costa Rica. The president recently put in a Bill that, you know, look, everybody, all the tourists are coming down here. You know, half of them are using it anyway. You know, let's make this even, you know, more friendly place. And that Bill was defeated by some of the more traditional parties. Look, this is nothing new. We have the traditional religiosity that views these kinds of things in a very negative light. And then we have those of us, look, I'm a child of the 60s. Right.
Kirk: Right, right.
Will Johnson And like I say, the first time in my dorm room at university, I feel it's happening. This is good.
Kirk: Yeah. For me. For me, It was on a beach in Victoria, British Columbia. As Yeah, around 19, around 1976, I think is when I had my. Wow, that ocean is a pretty color. So expect to the audience. So what is the Institute of Embodiment Training. What are you offering people and how, I guess you're blending meditation into this and you talk a little bit about somatic training is all that. So maybe because we do live in very divisive times and it seems like you're, you're offering people tools and how to, how to get through these divisive times. I don't know how without bringing it in.
Will Johnson Yeah. You know thank you for that. And if what became very apparent to me very early on and was really, really aided by welcoming cannabis into my life, that there's kind of two you know, I'm going to be very over simple here. But there's two primary ways in which I can function in the world. One, the quality of consciousness that passes as normal in the world. I call it disembodied. We're kind of we're all up here, we're lost in thought. We're up in our heads. We have a self image. And to maintain that and it's like a ticker tape parade of thoughts that are going on, going on, going on. For that to continue unimpeded, I have to put kind of a suffocating blanket over the feeling presence of my body. And look, we all know one of the things that cannabis does, I feel this shimmer, this vibratory buzz, this percolation through the whole body and functioning from a condition that is lost in thought or functioning from a condition that is started to awaken. In felt presence. It's radically different. Now some of my initial training was in the field of Stomatic. I was able in the early 1970s, mid 1970s, to study with one of the great 20th century stomatic teachers, Ida Roth. And even though people know of Rothing, oh it's this deep form of hands-on work that helps you feel better. That's not what she wanted this work to be. She saw it as if you could play with the body and is though you're not bracing yourself, you know, against gravity, but you're standing in such a way that you can start letting go and playing with this upright vertical axis, just like skyscrapers. And okay Skyscrapers move incidentally as well. So it's not static, right, that huge energies would awaken as they spread through the body. They will result in an evolutionary transformation of consciousness. And a look. I remember a couple of guys, Jesuit brothers, former Jesuits, they were like acolytes to Ida in those days. And they said, you know, working with these principles, playing with upright balancing, being in our body, body awakens, breath liberates. We feel that we have had more direct experience of what we think is Christ consciousness than anything we experienced in the Jesuit order. And again, you mention. And, you know, this word static, the mind when we're lost in thought, if you look at someone, the ribcage is not moving. Breath is not breathing. It's a very static place. When body awakens and breath liberates, what be what happens? We become literally ex static.
Kirk: It's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting.
Will Johnson Yeah.
Kirk: Yeah, Well, no, I get the like. And I'm listening to you and I get it, but I don't see static. You know, I see people flip and I see people lost in five seconds using their machine and swiping right, swiping left. And so I think what's happening is I think there's chaos.
Will Johnson Well, listen, listen, all they're doing is feeding this, you know, the quality of consciousness. It's normal. It's right up here. But very high center of gravity right up here in our heads where we're looking at our devices. We're thinking, you know, thoughts are going through. Here's the thing. If you were, you know, just take someone who's scrolling through their device, if you were asked they asked them to observe. How are you breathing right now?
Kirk: Yeah. Yeah.
Will Johnson You hardly are.
Kirk: Yeah.
Will Johnson They're not even sniffing. And now you know what I teach in terms of the Dharma world. Now, this is interesting as well, Kirk. You know, the Buddha outlines the whole thing about breathing first. In one of the earliest texts of Buddhism called the Sutta Piṭaka Sutta first level, where we got to become aware that we're breathing, we're not even aware that we're breathing. You know, we're just holding the breath. That's the quality of consciousness, of lost in thought, ensconced in mind. Okay. Then we start becoming aware that we're breathing. And it's a wonderful practice that people are after hours or days or weeks start realizing, a breath become smoother and more regular. And then you get this really lovely condition of mind that's called mindful awareness. Most Buddhist schools that's so good, begin and end their practices there. That's not where the Buddhist instructions end. The culminating statement just a few sentences later is, now as you breathe in, breath in through your whole body, breath out through your whole body. He doesn't even mention the word awareness. It's no longer a mental awareness. It's a faculty of the mind. Apply awareness. Remain aware. No, it's just figure out it's a somatic practice. Okay. Yeah. You're thinking, how would you breathe through the whole body? How could you feel this breath moving through the whole body? Much like a wave moves through a body of water. And as it does so, it's delayed sensations and brings them alive. For some of us, that's a natural practice that it can be supported by cannabis.
Kirk: See? See if you've explained it, explain meditation in a sense. Right? So Buddhism, as a Westerner who knows a little bit about Buddhism, I also I always think, well, Buddhist, it's karma. Don't harm life and meditate. How does Shiva, is Shiva into meditation as well? or is Shiva more about movement of body than than this?
Will Johnson Well, Shiva's meditation is not sitting like a stone garden statue.
Kirk: Right.
Will Johnson Shiva. You know, the legends down to this day, Shiva would ingest cannabis. He and his wife would drink it mostly form of bhang. He would stand up. He'd start feeling the body coming alive. You know the way we do. And suddenly the energies, the awakened energies in the body would start moving him spontaneously. And the legends down to this day is out of these spontaneous movements Shiva brings the form. The forms of dance and yoga to the planet. But there's, look at Shiva, I'm pretty sure was a real guy onto whom a lot of mythic dazzles was later superimposed. So he's a god of the heavens. Otherwise, look. Look. Between you and me, the ancient bards wouldn't have concocted a character like Shiva, who was the original pothead. And he and as he and his homeboys would behave, kind of rowdy at times. No, that would not be the model for, a great a great Hindu god. Shiva's meditations are motile. Remember I said one of the great things that's happened in our time, the rave movement. Look, it starts early in the 20s and you get these images of people dancing in jazz clubs and then, Hey, look, I'm a child of the 60s. The music was very important to awaken me and get my body starting to move. Then through the work with Ida Roth and with cannabis, it started awakening in a very, very big way. So yes, I talk about meditation, but not the traditional orientation that's coming over from Asia that is so held, that is so tight that concentrating a breath, No, I want people to come alive. You know, we're sitting to actually awaken and it has to be this awakening through the body. Why do I say that? What so asleep in the body? We've got these little pinprick blips of sensation. You start feeling them when you. You know, when you have a toke, right? But ordinarily, I'm off in my head, and I don't feel any of that. So we want to reawaken, you know, re-embrace. We're invite to come back to felt life, the literally sensation of the presence of the body and Ah and then breath changes. And as that physiology, that so alters the physiology of the body. Suddenly what we conventionally call mind. You know what this is? It's radically different. You know, sniffing your lost and you're lost in thought. You become more regular. Mindful awareness. Breathing through the whole body. We have the awakening.
Kirk: Right, and another question was I was going to ask you about strains and cannabis. If you find that certain strains or different cultivars of cannabis affect the meditative state.
Will Johnson Interesting. Everybody’s different. There is a wonderful woman. What is her name? Tammy Pettigrew. Young, Very much of a cannabis advocate. For her people, they really prefer Indica. I prefer a hybrid sativa dominant. You know, I want to get like some energy to get going, but I don't want to just to be total sativa. That's just my bias and everybody needs to find what works for them. You know, I go into the legal shops now and I'm stunned. You know, there is these nice young, earnest people and you look at them, they're probably pretty buzz. You know, so much more about the different strains and strands and of this than I do. You know, go and I say, yeah, well I like to do daytime yoga and meditation practices, real daytime. I know exactly what you need. And bingo, they give it to you.
Kirk: All right, So. So here now, you don't have to answer this question if you don't want to because you are in a jurisdiction where cannabis is not legal. In your Institute, you must access cannabis as part of your meditation. So how are you accessing your cannabis?
Will Johnson Pretty much the same two ways that everybody does in countries where it's not legal. There is, you know, a cannabis black market. And I like to grow auto-flowering plants because they are simpler and. It's really interesting. Many, many years ago, there was a cannabis advocate. I think it was a Costa Rican guy. I think he was a lawyer who taunted the police to arrest him. He was growing plants on his balcony. And out of that trial, there came a you know, an understanding if you don't grow any more than six plants, the police probably aren't going to aren't going to hassle you. Is that a law? No, it's not. But, you know, hey, come on. We all we all have to make you know, we have to. It's a risk reward.
Kirk: Yeah, right. Yeah. It's sort of like Vancover...
Will Johnson In my life, you know, so long ago. Look at. I never thought I was going to live to see the day that suddenly widespread, this wonderful, wonderful herb. It was so many positive applications medically, spiritually, creatively. That people would wake up and realize, let's legalize it and let's help people learn how to use it.
Kirk: So do you do find then if you if you got some auto-flowers, do you find then that specific plants, cultivars, help you for daytime meditation versus nighttime meditation?
Will Johnson Sure. Find that sort of standard stuff. Sativa are usually, you know, more wake and bake. Let's wake up in the morning. As I said, I prefer my wife and I prefer a sativa dominant hybrid. So you get you know, you get some of the energy, but also this lovely awakening through the body. You know, if you're going to go to sleep at night, you don't want to you know, you don't want to have a cup of coffee.
Kirk: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I find it the same way. I find cannabis. I tend to like a sativa and I like, I don't like to sit around, like, sit around listening to Pink Floyd. That's just not my idea of a good high. I like to get out, walk my dog. Take. Go for a bike. Go. Go for a bike ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Will Johnson But again, it's this awakening through the body. You know, I use , look one. I'm a musician. I play improvisational music all my life.
Kirk: I see. I see the guitar in the back.
Will Johnson And see the guitar back behind me. Well, I wouldn't even consider picking up my guitar without first invoking Shiva. The writing that I do, it's creative. It's just is different. Certainly, the editing I would never do without cannabis. Because you get into every single word and I can hear the musicality. I do. We've got a long, narrow pool so I can swim. I can work out.
Kirk: Nice.
Will Johnson Just wonderful. It's wonderful what we're doing. Playing, playing with my wife, dancing. These are the things that this. It's all about coming alive. You know this.
Kirk: So let's go back to your Institute of Embodiment training. You have a little. You have a compound. How large is it? Like.
Will Johnson No, it's not large and I don't, you know, the Institute for Embodiment Training, it a very glamorous phrase. It's more just a concept out in the world. The people that I interact with, now the majority of the teaching that I do at this point is through Zoom. You know, when Covid hit, we have we have a little meditation cottage. I like working individually with people who are ready to make this jump. Right now is a really wonderful young guy from Montana is down here. I've put people in to seven day retreats. They're doing a lot of sitting practice. He's definitely a Ganja Sangha practitioner. Just started yesterday. So we invoke Shiva together and I can give instructions on, you know, what I call this somatic koans. We're playing with this as a dance of upright balancing. We're inviting the sensations of the body to awaken. We're getting what the Buddha is saying, not just be aware of breath, but to awaken it. Feel it through the whole body. It's really, really powerful. But most of the most of the teaching I do at this point is on Zoom. I have an online Sangha that we meet once a month. I do a lot of individual sessions. Kind of like this, but in a less informative, and a more we're going to jump right into the practice. And I'm an older guy and I love what I do.
Kirk: You’ve got ten years on me about. Will, you've got about a minute and a half. Is there any questions? I did not ask you that you would like to get across to our audience.
Will Johnson You know, I'm thinking of that. Not really. I mean, this has been a good, you know, a good chat with you. Look, I'm a you know, some people will look upon me in the Buddhist world as a heretic. Well, you know, some heresy is generally where the good energy is at. I love the Buddhist dharma. It needs to be reformed. There needs to be a reformation as it comes over here to the Western world. Look, when the Dharma went to Japan, I had this vision of gentle Chinese monks. They go to Japan, there's the samurai is and becomes fierce. It goes on to the Tibetan plateau. Shamanistic. humanistic, wrathful and peaceful deities. It's coming over here. Everything has to move. No more stone garden statues. And because it's all about awakening the body and liberating the breath, cannabis for many people can be very, very helpful and supportive.
Kirk: So, Trevor, what did you think of Will..
Trevor: I think he summed it up well about calling himself a Buddhist heretic. So.
Kirk: He walks the path but.
Trevor: And I like this, but you got to remember, heresy is where the good energy is. So.
Kirk: Yeah, yeah. I thought like that one. I didn't I didn't go any deeper in that one. I thought that was a good little quote, but I didn't go any deeper. I liked I liked how what he did is in his book and I did go through his book and his book will be I'll sort of connect it to our Web page. But I think the whole premise is you want to go by his book, but I'll link you to his web page. But I like what he's done. And it's so North American and it's so now. We live in such divisive times. So what Will's done is he's taken those five Buddhist precepts and is made the positive precepts. Right? So he says the five are now in his interpretation. And again, so North American of us to, you know, interpret things, honor life, number one, be generous and always with others, be clean in your sexuality. So does that mean wearing condoms? I don't know. I think what that means is it's not just saying don't covet that neighbor's wife is being be clean in your sex, in your sexuality.
Trevor: Fair enough.
Kirk: And it gets yeah. And mean what you say. Say what you mean. Speak with truth. So be kind I think is what he's saying there and then what he says here and this is you know Buddha says don't take intoxicants. Well he has reframe that to say put into your body only what feeds and nourishes your body. This is from his book, so I quote avoid whatever toxicants you whatever alters the natural conditions of your brain or body, drugs, alcohol, any addictive substance, or by extension any addictive behaviors whatsoever. Alcohol is all its in all its many forms is a preferred intoxicants of Western Buddhists. Much of it is preferred intoxicant of Western culture in general. Cannabis however, even for those Buddhists who enjoy their occasional or even regular alcoholic beverage, it's still generally considered incompatible with dharma practices. Many Western Buddhists enjoy an alcoholic drink, far fewer enjoy cannabis. Again, it sort of shows you how cannabis is in in even that diaspora of our society looks at cannabis as bad. And he's basically saying that buddha, and he mentions this in the discussion. Buddha is about relaxing the body and calming the mind. Right. Focus on your breath. In out. Good air, bad air. Right. Whereas the path as Shiva illuminates the mind through awakening and liberating the potent energies of the body. So Shiva expects you to move, to dance, to enjoy life with the help of cannabis and with help of sacrament, Buddha sits while Shiva dances. And he brings that into his book about blending the two.
Trevor: Yeah, I really like that part because I know I have not been on any meditation retreats, but I've talked to people who have and from their stories, I related to him saying, Well, you know, when you go on these retreats and you, you know, sit still like a stone Buddha statue, it's painful. And that's what people who have done this have told me it hurts. Where, you know, you can move. And you know, Shiva, who is associated with dance, but also with yoga, it's about moving. And yeah, no, I think someone who will probably do neither of them. Probably I will probably never sit at a Buddhist retreat for hours or days on end. And I will probably not go to a dancing yoga retreat. But if I had to pick one, I'm thinking the moving one sounds more pleasant. And I'm not saying, you know, pleasant is the road to enlightenment. You know, usually you see the road to alignment is a little harder. But, you know, if I have to pick between not moving and moving. Moving sounds good.
Kirk: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. When he started talking about that, reminding myself of, you know, we picture the Buddha in the lotus position and he said no, no you can't. You can do it. Sitting down in prepping for his prepping for his interview. I did go through some of his Intentions. He calls them Intentions. And he's got about 45 minutes of audio that you can download from the Internet and sit and, you know, follow his precepts as you meditate. I guess I went through it a little bit. It was quite nice, calming. But again, I'm as you know, as I sit here, I can't stay still. So it's very difficult for me to stay still. It's part of my being to move. So I like the fact I like the fact that he blends in Shiva and says, you know, go ahead and feel free to move. And as you know, if you ever see me on the dance floor, pretty much. I just dance like nobody's watching except Shiva and Buddha I guess. So, yeah, it was it was it was a good conversation. And, you know, I think I think what our listeners are going to recognize is, is that the next few episodes that we're prepping for right now all have to do with calming the mind and the body. I don't know if you know, I don't know if you noticed that as I was researching.
Trevor: No, no, I did. I didn't think about that until you mention it now. But yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, It is there. It's a nice theme for next two of three.
Kirk: It's a good it's a good theme for what we're living in right now in the middle of November 2024, in this in this world of wars and fascinating things happening down south of us. So if you're looking for some peace of mind and activity for your for your body. Will Johnson "Cannabis and Spiritual Practice: The Ecstasy of Shiva and the Calm a Buddha." So I guess this is probably the second book that we have reviewed in our in our podcast.
Trevor: Yeah. And it's nice when we get into religion and spirituality, not my expertise, but I know it's something that fascinates you and I know it fascinates a lot of the listeners. So no, I really enjoyed this.
Kirk: Yeah, yeah. Thanks. I also.
Trevor: So another good one will see everybody next time. I'm Trevor Shewfelt, I'm the pharmacist. And you are?
Kirk: I am Kirk Nyquist. I'm the Registered Nurse. And we are Reefer Medness - The Podcast found at ReeferMed.ca. And again, our listeners will know that we have our web pages, searchable. Papers. Pictures. Research. It's all in there. The transcripts. It's all in there. Check out our web page. Tell a friend if you like what we're doing and yeah, tune in.
Trevor: All right. We'll see everybody next time.
Rene: Thanks, guys. That was another really interesting episode. It's Rene here back at the studio to wrap things up. One of the things that we do is we ask our guests if there's a song they'd like to close the episode off with. And Mr. Johnson was emailed by Kirk to provide his request, and I wanted to read the email that he sent Kirk back. I guess they got into a conversation about music and he writes, "Yes. My first Grateful Dead show was in 1969 at the Fillmore East. No one on the East Coast knew much about them at that time, so they opened for Country Joe and the Fish, an opening first set. And I'm going, Hey, these guys are really good. By the end of the first set, there must have been. 5 or 10 women standing and dancing. Well, I've never seen anything like that before. I hope they come out for a second set, which they do, and launch into an hour of Dark Star, 30 people standing and moving even some guys. Then St. Stephen. Remember the soft, slow part of St Steven? Lady finger dipped in moonlight at the end of the slow section. They punched back into the hook and Kirk, they lifted every single person in the Fillmore East up out of our seats, moving and actually screaming. I became a dancer that night." So that's a really interesting story. And it's it fits into what Mr. Johnson was talking about getting up and using movement as part of the exercises. So to wrap things up, then, what we're going to do is we're going to honor Mr. Johnson's request and we're going to play Dark Star by the Grateful Dead live from February 13th to 14th in 1970 at the Fillmore East.