'The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance. To say that dying without reaching one's aim is to die a dog's death is the frivolous way of sophisticates.'
- Hagakure, Book of the Samurai
'Death makes angels of us all, gives us wings where we had shoulders as smooth as raven's claws.'
- A Feast of Friends, Jim Morrison
Ah! Death..our unseen companion through life, the awareness of whom makes a man enlightened like nothing else, distills the mind and brings complete clarity. Where there is life, there is death. The moment something comes alive, it starts dying. Each of us is half life and half death. The world itself is half life and half death in equal measure. To know that I am living, is also to know that I am dying. Yet, like the pretension that god is only good - and not also evil - is the pretension that makes us not see death. Death is always with us, from the first breath we take. The fear of half of our existence makes us not confront it or accept it. We then go about our lives (or we could say deaths), living in half truth believing that our lives will go on forever. To accept death as half of our lives is a step towards maturity. Most people never reach this maturity till their death. Instead of acknowledging death as an equal part of reality - as equal as life - most people try to live pretending that death does not exist, or that they can elude death. Death is nature as much as life is, because nature is half life and half death. People pursue actions throughout their lives based on their delusion that it is possible to elude death. Hagakure, the Book of the Samurai, says 'Whether people be of high or low birth, rich or poor, old or young, enlightened or confused, they are all alike in that they will one day die. It is not that we don't know that we are going to die, but we grasp at straws. While knowing that we will die someday, we think that all the others will die before us and that we will be the last to go. Death seems a long way oft. Is this not shallow thinking? It is worthless and is only a joke within a dream. It will not do to think in such a way and be negligent. Insofar as death is always at one's door, one should make sufficient effort and act quickly.'
Among the many meaningless actions pursued, the most meaningless action that people indulge in is the amassing of material wealth and power. The deluded ones think that they can escape death with money, which is nothing but one of the human's creations. In order to make more money, they create other things to deceive themselves and others. They create machines and forms on energy that enable them to cover larger areas and amass more wealth at a much faster rate. It does not matter to them that this desire to amass wealth is killing countless living species in the world, hastening the death of all around them. They try to shut out nature through the creation of synthetic compounds in the laboratory that try to mimic nature's healing properties. They ban the natural forms that heal and create chemical combinations that they call medicine, which nobody else can replicate so that they are the only ones who can sell and profit from it. They delude the gullible into thinking like themselves - that through the amassing of wealth, they too can escape death - thus recruiting people to their delusional cause, and enslaving them for the rest of their lives to work for their masters.
No increase in the rate of amassing wealth, or in the amount of wealth possessed, has resulted in any human managing to elude death. Quite often the ones who have amassed wealth beyond their needs through unscrupulous means have found out that the newly acquired wealth has only served to hasten their own death. Much of death today is due to the luxuries that wealth has brought to the persons who have pursued it. They either eat too much (or eat the wrong kind of things) which is only possible because of their wealth, or they drink too much (or drink the wrong kind of things) which is again possible only because of their wealth. They sleep too little in order to not lose time and opportunities to get richer. They forget to sweat, urinate and defecate because they are so caught up with the pursuit of wealth. They think too much about how to acquire wealth, and think too little about nature and who they are in the context of nature. They take harmful dangerous synthetic drugs that they call medicine, because they can afford it, thinking it will make them live forever. In essence, they forget the basics of life - which is to eat and drink healthy, to sleep well, to ensure that all the toxic waste within the body is eliminated regularly, and to understand their nature. The propensity to forgo even these most basic things, in order to accumulate more wealth, results in huge amounts of amassed wealth lying around with nobody left to enjoy it. In many cases, some trickster finally reaps the benefits of the efforts put in to amass wealth. While a poor person uses whatever medicine is available to her - if any at all - the rich have enough money to deliver themselves into the hands of the merchants of synthetic death - the medical industry, the legal and illegal synthetic pharmaceutical industry, alcohol, tobacco and the fossil fuel industry.
Some of the ways in which the rich die these days are: breakdown of body systems through the consumption of synthetic medicine, illegal synthetic drugs, alcohol, unhealthy food; delivering themselves to a physician who doses them with death in the name of medicine; killing themselves in fast vehicles that only they can afford to buy; dying at the hands of someone else who wants to steal their wealth; killing themselves when they find out that all the wealth in the world means nothing if one does not have love; and so on...The poor on the other hand die mostly from: starvation; diseases that have been caused by the destruction of nature by the rich to get richer; at the hands of the rich for trying to challenge them; dying for the rich in trying to make the rich wealthier, either by fighting wars for them or labouring day and night till their own health is irreversibly lost; trying to emulate the rich and become like them; and so on...
I believe that the first half of one's life must be spent learning how to live, and the second half of one's life must be spent learning how to die, so that one's education in this world is complete. Hagakure, the Book of the Samurai, says 'Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. There is a saying of the elders' that goes, "Step from under the eaves and you're a dead man. Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting." This is not a matter of being careful. It is to consider oneself as dead beforehand.' Ganja - as a reality revealer - opens one's eyes to the missing half of the picture. This missing half of the picture consists of the natural world in which we live, and with which we are inseparably bonded. This missing half of the picture consists of the part of the eternal spirit as death and destroyer, and not just as the creator and preserver that we have become accustomed to believe. This missing half of the picture includes the part called death, which is essentially the assimilation of the old, and the giving birth to the new. This missing half of the picture consists of the parts of ourselves that we try and delude ourselves into thinking do not exist.
It is interesting to note that Siva, the god of ganja, is associated strongly with Kashi, the city of death and spiritual liberation. Kashi is where millions of people go every year to either die or to be cremated after death. It is believed that if one dies in Kashi, the soul is liberated from the cycles of birth and death, and recieves moksha to become united with the eternal spirit. It is said that as a soul leaves a body in Kashi, Siva whispers in the ears of the dying man 'aham brahmasmi; tat vam asi' - I am; thou art that - thus cutting the last bond between the body and the soul, much like the umbilical cord is cut when a child is separated from the mother to start life on its own. The Doms - a community considered untouchable and outcast in Indian society - perform the key function of cremating the dead at Kashi, and smashing the skull to let the soul escape from the dead body. The Doms are among the chief ganja-consuming communities in India. Siva, the destroyer of delusion, lives in the cremation grounds, having let the deluded ones run rampant over the rest of the world. He smokes his ganja and meditates in bliss, because he knows that all these humans - like little children who do not want to ever grow up - will eventually have to finally come to face their destiny, which is to meet him in his form as death, destroyer of the flesh and delusion.
- Hagakure, Book of the Samurai
'Death makes angels of us all, gives us wings where we had shoulders as smooth as raven's claws.'
- A Feast of Friends, Jim Morrison
Ah! Death..our unseen companion through life, the awareness of whom makes a man enlightened like nothing else, distills the mind and brings complete clarity. Where there is life, there is death. The moment something comes alive, it starts dying. Each of us is half life and half death. The world itself is half life and half death in equal measure. To know that I am living, is also to know that I am dying. Yet, like the pretension that god is only good - and not also evil - is the pretension that makes us not see death. Death is always with us, from the first breath we take. The fear of half of our existence makes us not confront it or accept it. We then go about our lives (or we could say deaths), living in half truth believing that our lives will go on forever. To accept death as half of our lives is a step towards maturity. Most people never reach this maturity till their death. Instead of acknowledging death as an equal part of reality - as equal as life - most people try to live pretending that death does not exist, or that they can elude death. Death is nature as much as life is, because nature is half life and half death. People pursue actions throughout their lives based on their delusion that it is possible to elude death. Hagakure, the Book of the Samurai, says 'Whether people be of high or low birth, rich or poor, old or young, enlightened or confused, they are all alike in that they will one day die. It is not that we don't know that we are going to die, but we grasp at straws. While knowing that we will die someday, we think that all the others will die before us and that we will be the last to go. Death seems a long way oft. Is this not shallow thinking? It is worthless and is only a joke within a dream. It will not do to think in such a way and be negligent. Insofar as death is always at one's door, one should make sufficient effort and act quickly.'
Among the many meaningless actions pursued, the most meaningless action that people indulge in is the amassing of material wealth and power. The deluded ones think that they can escape death with money, which is nothing but one of the human's creations. In order to make more money, they create other things to deceive themselves and others. They create machines and forms on energy that enable them to cover larger areas and amass more wealth at a much faster rate. It does not matter to them that this desire to amass wealth is killing countless living species in the world, hastening the death of all around them. They try to shut out nature through the creation of synthetic compounds in the laboratory that try to mimic nature's healing properties. They ban the natural forms that heal and create chemical combinations that they call medicine, which nobody else can replicate so that they are the only ones who can sell and profit from it. They delude the gullible into thinking like themselves - that through the amassing of wealth, they too can escape death - thus recruiting people to their delusional cause, and enslaving them for the rest of their lives to work for their masters.
No increase in the rate of amassing wealth, or in the amount of wealth possessed, has resulted in any human managing to elude death. Quite often the ones who have amassed wealth beyond their needs through unscrupulous means have found out that the newly acquired wealth has only served to hasten their own death. Much of death today is due to the luxuries that wealth has brought to the persons who have pursued it. They either eat too much (or eat the wrong kind of things) which is only possible because of their wealth, or they drink too much (or drink the wrong kind of things) which is again possible only because of their wealth. They sleep too little in order to not lose time and opportunities to get richer. They forget to sweat, urinate and defecate because they are so caught up with the pursuit of wealth. They think too much about how to acquire wealth, and think too little about nature and who they are in the context of nature. They take harmful dangerous synthetic drugs that they call medicine, because they can afford it, thinking it will make them live forever. In essence, they forget the basics of life - which is to eat and drink healthy, to sleep well, to ensure that all the toxic waste within the body is eliminated regularly, and to understand their nature. The propensity to forgo even these most basic things, in order to accumulate more wealth, results in huge amounts of amassed wealth lying around with nobody left to enjoy it. In many cases, some trickster finally reaps the benefits of the efforts put in to amass wealth. While a poor person uses whatever medicine is available to her - if any at all - the rich have enough money to deliver themselves into the hands of the merchants of synthetic death - the medical industry, the legal and illegal synthetic pharmaceutical industry, alcohol, tobacco and the fossil fuel industry.
Some of the ways in which the rich die these days are: breakdown of body systems through the consumption of synthetic medicine, illegal synthetic drugs, alcohol, unhealthy food; delivering themselves to a physician who doses them with death in the name of medicine; killing themselves in fast vehicles that only they can afford to buy; dying at the hands of someone else who wants to steal their wealth; killing themselves when they find out that all the wealth in the world means nothing if one does not have love; and so on...The poor on the other hand die mostly from: starvation; diseases that have been caused by the destruction of nature by the rich to get richer; at the hands of the rich for trying to challenge them; dying for the rich in trying to make the rich wealthier, either by fighting wars for them or labouring day and night till their own health is irreversibly lost; trying to emulate the rich and become like them; and so on...
I believe that the first half of one's life must be spent learning how to live, and the second half of one's life must be spent learning how to die, so that one's education in this world is complete. Hagakure, the Book of the Samurai, says 'Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead. There is a saying of the elders' that goes, "Step from under the eaves and you're a dead man. Leave the gate and the enemy is waiting." This is not a matter of being careful. It is to consider oneself as dead beforehand.' Ganja - as a reality revealer - opens one's eyes to the missing half of the picture. This missing half of the picture consists of the natural world in which we live, and with which we are inseparably bonded. This missing half of the picture consists of the part of the eternal spirit as death and destroyer, and not just as the creator and preserver that we have become accustomed to believe. This missing half of the picture includes the part called death, which is essentially the assimilation of the old, and the giving birth to the new. This missing half of the picture consists of the parts of ourselves that we try and delude ourselves into thinking do not exist.
It is interesting to note that Siva, the god of ganja, is associated strongly with Kashi, the city of death and spiritual liberation. Kashi is where millions of people go every year to either die or to be cremated after death. It is believed that if one dies in Kashi, the soul is liberated from the cycles of birth and death, and recieves moksha to become united with the eternal spirit. It is said that as a soul leaves a body in Kashi, Siva whispers in the ears of the dying man 'aham brahmasmi; tat vam asi' - I am; thou art that - thus cutting the last bond between the body and the soul, much like the umbilical cord is cut when a child is separated from the mother to start life on its own. The Doms - a community considered untouchable and outcast in Indian society - perform the key function of cremating the dead at Kashi, and smashing the skull to let the soul escape from the dead body. The Doms are among the chief ganja-consuming communities in India. Siva, the destroyer of delusion, lives in the cremation grounds, having let the deluded ones run rampant over the rest of the world. He smokes his ganja and meditates in bliss, because he knows that all these humans - like little children who do not want to ever grow up - will eventually have to finally come to face their destiny, which is to meet him in his form as death, destroyer of the flesh and delusion.
The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1894-95 says in its report that 'Among the Gonds, Cowasjee Nusserwanjee Hattidaru describes the following custom as existing: "In the funeral ceremony amongst the Gonds of these provinces, kalli or flat ganja is placed over the chest of the dead body of the Gond, and when the funeral party returns home, a little of the ganja is burnt in the house of the dead person, the smoke of which is supposed to reach the spirit of the dead." It further says 'The Rev. Mr. Campbell says that ganja is used in connection with the funeral ceremonies observed by certain classes, but that the use is not essential. Mr. Merriman alludes to a custom of offering and consuming bhang at the funeral of bhang consumers.' It reports that '[In Berar] The hemp plant itself is not worshipped, but, according to one witness, when a consumer dies, the plant is kept near his corpse during the funeral ceremony.' The individual witness statements that the Commission refer to are as follows: Cowasjesee Meherwanjee Hatty-Daroo, Parsi, Merchant and Abkari Contractor, Seoni-Chapara, says 'In the funeral ceremony amongst the Gonds of these provinces, flat ganja (kali) is placed over the chest of the dead body of the Gond; and when the funeral party returns home, a little of the ganja is burnt in the house of the dead person, the smoke of which is supposed to reach the spirit of the dead...As for the Gonds, the funeral ceremony described above is followed invariably'; Mr. J. H. Merriman, Deputy Commissioner of Salt and Abkari, Central Division, says 'It is also used at funeral ceremonies of such as were consumers of it when alive. Among the males on the day of the ceremony some is placed in the grave and some given to the assembled guests, at least such of them as are consumers. It is an essential part of the above ceremonies'; Rev. W. H. Campbell, Missionary, London Missionary Society, Cuddapah, says 'Ganja is frequently used in curry at funeral feasts, but it is not essential.' Besides these witnesses cited by the Commission, other witness statements include: the evidence of Pesumal Narumal, Farmer and Merchant, Hyderabad, who says 'On the death of a big saint or sadhu vessels full of bhang drink and water are kept all along the way by which the funeral procession proceed'; the evidence of Kamalapuram Nagayya, Komati, Ganja Contractor, Adoni, who says 'Ganja is consumed generally on all occasions, and at times when friends meet together in houses or other public places or on occasions of funeral ceremonies.'
The elites - who pretend that death does not exist, who pretend that the Doms do not exist, who pretend that ganja does not exist, why, who even pretend that Siva does not exist - in their pursuit of wealth and attempts to escape death, eventually find out that all these are an inescapable part of reality. They find out, if at all, that they have missed half of reality and that discovery usually happens in the last moments of life - when life plays in front of their eyes like a movie in fast forward, encapsulating all that they have lived and all that they have missed, as it leaves the body.
On the physical side, ganja - as a medicine for cancer - is known to aid in the process of apoptosis, where body cells die naturally when they are supposed to. It is ironic that by taking ganja out of the picture that deluded humans have created, the human creations brought in to replace it - products of the fossil fuel industry, products of the synthetic pharmaceutical industry, the chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the opium, alcohol, tobacco - appear to keep a wealthy person alive longer than would otherwise have been the case. Unfortunately, this attempt at prolonging life beyond its natural span only results in cells at the individual level refusing to die, thus developing into a cancer within the body. On a global scale, humans themselves are now a cancer afflicting the planet. All this is closely linked to the action of taking ganja out of the picture.
On the mental side, the fear of death, and the delusion that money will save us, envelops the mind to such an extent that it has created vast mental problems like stress, anxiety, trauma, besides the overwhelming insanity of greed. When one consumes ganja and is reconnected with nature and the eternal spirit - because ganja is nothing but the holy communion of the living with the eternal - one sees death as what it is, an essential part of existence, our constant companion through life (our better half, I could say). With ganja, one can learn to not just lose fear of death, but also to respect it and love it. 'I touched her thigh, and death smiled' said Jim Morrison in the American Prayer. It goes against all the instincts that we have conditioned ourselves to believe as the truth. It is the same as loving the snake. It is same as loving the eternal spirit as both creator and destroyer, as beyond good and evil. It is the same as recognizing that all that is creation is nothing but the divine in form. It is the understanding that nature is god, that we are god, that there is nowhere we can go where these truths do not exist. Ganja will make a person meditative, attentive and receptive to the complete aspects of reality, provided of course, that their bodies and minds have not been irreversibly damaged by their delusions.
According to Wikipedia 'The crude death rate is defined as "the mortality rate from all causes of death for a population," calculated as the "total number of deaths during a given time interval" divided by the "mid-interval population", per 1,000 or 100,000; for instance, the population of the U.S. was around 290,810,000 in 2003, and in that year, approximately 2,419,900 deaths occurred in total, giving a crude death (mortality) rate of 832 deaths per 100,000. As of 2020, the CIA estimates the U.S. crude death rate will be 8.3 per 1,000, while it estimates that the global rate will be 7.7 per 1,000.'
Let us look at the various leading causes of death to humans these days.
Age-related causes tops the list. According to Wikipedia, 'Of the roughly 150,000 people who die each day across the globe, about two thirds—100,000 per day—die of age-related causes. In industrialized nations, the proportion is much higher, reaching 90% of the deaths per day.' That's 36.5 million deaths a year from age-related causes. The World Health Organization (WHO) says that 'Tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year, including an estimated 1.3 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke' WHO says that 'The harmful use of alcohol is a causal factor in more than 200 disease and injury conditions. Worldwide, 3 million deaths every year result from harmful use of alcohol, this represent 5.3 % of all deaths.' The United Nations Office of Drug Control (UNODC) says in its World Drug Report of 2019 that '585,000 people died as a result of drug use in 2017. More than half of those deaths were the result of untreated hepatitis C leading to liver cancer and cirrhosis; almost one third were attributed to drug use disorders. Most (two thirds) of the deaths attributed to drug use disorders were related to opioid use.' I believe that these figures of death from drug use are under reported, especially when the deaths in most developing nations due to drug use are unknown. The figures will be much higher for the years since 2017. For example, in the years 2020 and 2021 millions died the world over when they were pumped with cocktails of dangerous pharmaceutical medicines in the name of Covid treatment. These deaths were, however, attributed to a virus i.e. as a vector borne disease when in fact the deaths were caused by rampant and improper administration of synthetic pharmaceutical medicines. The WHO states that 'In 2022, 630 000 [480 000–880 000] people died from HIV-related causes and 1.3 million [1.0–1.7 million] people acquired HIV.' Wikipedia says that 'According to Jean Ziegler (the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for 2000 to March 2008), mortality due to malnutrition accounted for 58% of the total mortality in 2006: "In the world, approximately 62 millions people, all causes of death combined, die each year. In 2006, more than 36 million died of hunger or diseases due to deficiencies in micronutrients". WHO reports regarding chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that 'Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the third leading cause of death worldwide, causing 3.23 million deaths in 2019.' The WHO says that 'The world’s biggest killer is ischaemic heart disease, responsible for 16% of the world’s total deaths. Since 2000, the largest increase in deaths has been for this disease, rising by more than 2 million to 8.9 million deaths in 2019.' Regarding stroke, Wikipedia says that 'In 2015, stroke was the second most frequent cause of death after coronary artery disease, accounting for 6.3 million deaths (11% of the total). About 3.0 million deaths resulted from ischemic stroke while 3.3 million deaths resulted from hemorrhagic stroke. About half of people who have had stroke live less than one year. Overall, two thirds of cases of stroke occurred in those over 65 years old.' Wikipedia says that 'Lower Respiratory Tract Infections (LRTI) includes pneumonia, acute bronchitis and lung abcess. It killed 2.74 million people in 2015.' Regarding lung cancer, Wikipedia says that 'Lung cancer is the most diagnosed and deadliest cancer worldwide, with 2.2 million cases in 2020 resulting in 1.8 million deaths.' Regarding tuberculosis (TB), WHO says that 'A total of 1.3 million people died from TB in 2022 (including 167 000 people with HIV).' Regarding air pollution, WHO says that 'The combined effects of ambient air pollution and household air pollution is associated with 7 million premature deaths annually.' Regarding water contamination, WHO says that 'Some 1 million people are estimated to die each year from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation and hand hygiene.' Regarding death from violent homicides, WHO says 'Globally, some 470 000 homicides occur each year.' Regarding cancer, WHO says that 'Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for nearly 10 million deaths in 2020, or nearly one in six deaths.' Regarding diabetes, WHO says that 'In 2019, diabetes and kidney disease due to diabetes caused an estimated 2 million deaths.' Regarding Alzheimer's and other dementia, WHO says that 'Dementia is currently the seventh leading cause of death and one of the major causes of disability and dependency among older people globally.' Regarding vector borne diseases, WHO says that 'Vector-borne diseases account for more than 17% of all infectious diseases, causing more than 700 000 deaths annually. They can be caused by either parasites, bacteria or viruses.' Regarding deaths in armed conflict, Google says that 'According to the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, more than 526,000 people die each year because of the violence associated with armed conflict and large- and small-scale criminality.' Today, death due to climate change is emerging as one of the biggest causes. It is very likely to dominate the causes of death in the near future as a single catastrophic event can kill millions. However the death due to climate change is not easily detectable, just like deaths due to synthetic pharmaceutical drugs, as it is hidden under various other causes such as heat strokes, drowning, starvation, etc. The WHO says 'Research shows that 3.6 billion people already live in areas highly susceptible to climate change. Between 2030 and 2050, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year, from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone.'
For every one of the above causes of death - age-related diseases, air pollution, respiratory diseases, AIDS, dementia, diabetes, drug abuse, cancer, violence, hunger, alcohol and tobacco, etc. - cannabis can be viewed as a preventive mechanism to mitigate and reduce the death count. The deaths caused by the industries opposed to cannabis - the fossil fuel and allied industries (non-biodegradable plastics, synthetic fabrics, construction, transportation, etc.), the legal and illegal synthetic pharmaceutical industry, opioids, alcohol, tobacco, the chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the arms industry, the black market for all things - can all be counter balanced with the legalization of cannabis. The deaths caused by the power structures - politicians, law enforcement and judiciary, armed forces, drug enforcement, religious orthodoxy, physicians - that keep cannabis prohibited to ensure the protection of these harmful industries can be lessened through the legalization of cannabis. The deaths caused by the use of resource intensive unsustainable agriculture - in the form of pesticide use, farmer suicides, crop stubble burning related air pollution - can be reduced with the sustainable agriculture of legalized cannabis. The death caused by the income and wealth inequality between the elites and the world's laboring classes can be reduced with the legalization of cannabis, when the laboring classes have a means to safe intoxicant, medicine and sustainable livelihood. The deaths caused by malnutrition and starvation can be counterbalanced by growing cannabis as an agricultural crop for food, medicine and supplementing a poor family's income. The use of cannabis for industrial purposes can lessen the harmful impact of the industries opposed to cannabis on land, water, air and the climate. It is not just human deaths caused by these harmful pursuits of humans that can be reduced, but also the deaths of countless other forms of life who would benefit from cannabis, and who now suffer from the actions of humans.
Yet, the legalization of cannabis for recreational use and home growing world wide is a subject that is given least importance. It is not that cannabis legalization will stop death - because death is unstoppable. Instead, legalization will enable death to occur as naturally as it will enable life to occur. It will hand back the function of death to nature, who is as capable of performing this function as it is of creating. It will reduce the number of instances of human-induced death, a number that is increasing exponentially today as the desire to possess more and more becomes even more prevalent. It will enable humans to create and destroy within the framework of nature, with the awareness and understanding that their actions will always be bounded by the reality of nature, and that there is no going beyond nature and no escape from death. When we embrace the state of being that recognizes life and death as equal realities, then we can go beyond life and death, we become immortal in the here and now, we are in the paradise that is the zone of the eternal spirit forever...Only when we are alive can we experience both life and death, when we are dead - without a body, devoid of the senses - such things as experiences no longer matter, let alone what we think we possess...Hagakure, the Book of the Samurai, says 'The person without previous resolution to inevitable death makes certain that his death will be in bad form. But if one is resolved to death beforehand, in what way can he be despicable? One should be especially diligent in this concern.' It says 'Thus, the Way of the Samurai is, morning after morning, the practice of death, considering whether it will be here or be there, imagining the most sightly way of dying, and putting one's mind firmly in death. Although this may be a most difficult thing, if one will do it, it can be done.'
Oh, by the way, what do you think the death count due to cannabis is? Nobody has died from the direct use of cannabis, despite thousands of years of usage by billions of persons across geographies. If anybody has died as a result of cannabis, it is primarily due to the prohibition of cannabis. Persons die at the hands of law enforcement for associating with cannabis. Law enforcement personnel and criminals operating in the black market die through confrontations over the illegal business of cannabis trade. Innocents, in their attempts to procure cannabis, die at the hands of criminals who exploit them. But cannabis - as one of nature's most wonderful creations - has not killed anybody. It saves lives, not just human. Today, the plant gets killed wherever it is found, and humans increase their own likelihood of coming face to face with death - their ultimate destiny - through this killing of the divine herb...The Book of the Samurai says 'As everything in this world is but a shame, Death is the only sincerity. It is said that becoming as a dead man in one's daily living is the following of the path of sincerity.' It also says 'If a warrior is not unattached to life and death, he will be of no use whatsoever. The saying that "All abilities come from one mind" sounds as though it has to do with sentient matters, but it is in fact a matter of being unattached to life and death. With such non-attachment one can accomplish any feat.'
Related articles
The following list of articles taken from various media speak about the
above subject. Words in italics are the thoughts of yours truly at the
time of reading the article.
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/alcohol
https://wdr.unodc.org/wdr2019/prelaunch/WDR19_Booklet_1_EXECUTIVE_SUMMARY.pdf
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hiv-aids
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/chronic-obstructive-pulmonary-disease-(copd)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lung_cancer
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/tuberculosis
https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water
https://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/en/
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarrhea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alzheimer%27s_disease
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/vector-borne-diseases
'In each of these situations one turns away to ponder the question: Who
has made the decision that sets in motion these chains of poisonings,
this ever-widening wave of death that spreads out, like ripples when a
pebble is dropped into a still pond? Who has placed in one pan of the
scales the leaves that might have been eaten by the beetles and in the
other the pitiful heaps of many-hued feathers, the lifeless remains of
the birds that fell before the unselective bludgeon of insecticidal
poisons? Who has decided - who has the right to decide - for the
countless legions of people who were not consulted that the supreme
value is a world without insects, even though it be also a sterile world
ungraced by the curving wing of a bird in flight? The decision is that
of the authoritarian temporarily entrusted with power; he has made it
during a period of inattention by millions to whom beauty and the
ordered world of nature still have a meaning that is deep and
imperative.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'Even as Bruce was being buried in Seattle, more headlines about him were appearing in the Hong Kong press. First lab tests from the autopsy, not done until thirty-six hours after death, were just coming in, and the big sensation was again "cannabis." Eventually the fact that there were traces of cannabis, or marijuana in Lee's stomach was completely discredited as a reason for his death. A doctor later said that it had as much meaning as telling him Lee had drunk a cup of tea the day he died.' - The Legend of Bruce Lee by Alex Ben Block, 1974
'There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat. This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can only do so when it is in full possesion of the facts. In the words of Jean Rostand, 'The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'These insecticides are not selective poisons; they do not single out the one species of which we desire to be rid. Each of them is used for the simple reason that it is a deadly poison. It therefore poisons all life with which it comes in contact: the cat beloved of some family, the farmer's cattle, the rabbit in the field, and the horned lark out of the sky. These creatures are innocent of any harm to man. Indeed by their very existence they and their fellows make his life more pleasant. Yet he rewards them with a death that is not only sudden but horrible.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'Morphine hits the backs of the legs first, the the back of the neck, a spreading wave of relaxation slackening the muscles away from the bones so that you seem to float without outlines, like lying in warm salt water. As this relaxing wave spread through my tissues, I experienced a strong feeling of fear. I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving, as I turned my head, so that I quite never saw it. I felt nauseous. I lay down and closed my eyes. A series of pictures passed, like watching a movie. A huge, neon-lighted cocktail bar that got larger and larger until streets, traffic, and street repairs were included in it; a waitress carrying a skull on a tray; stars in a clear sky. The physical impact of the fear of death; the shutting off of breath; the stopping of blood.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'There was a raw ache in my lungs. People vary in the way junk sickness affects them. Some suffer mostly from vomitting and diarrhea. The asthmatic type, with narrow and deep chest, is liable to violent fits of sneezing, watering at eyes and nose, in some cases spasms of the bronchial tubes that shut off the breathing. In my case, the worst thing is lowering of blood pressure with consequent loss of body fluid, and extreme weakness, as in shock. It is a feeling as if the life energy has been shut off so that all the cells in the body are suffocating. As I lay there on the bench, I felt like as if I was subsiding into a pile of bones.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'I was too weak to get out of bed. I could not lie still. In junk sickness, any conceivable line of action or inaction seems intolerable. A man might simply die because he could not stand to stay in his body.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'C[ocaine] is hard to find in Mexico. I had never used any good coke before. Coke is pure kick. It lifts you straight up, a mechanical lift that starts leaving you as soon as you feel it. I don't know anything like C for a lift, but the lift lasts only ten minutes or so. Then you want another shot. You can't stop shooting C - as long as it is there you shoot it. When you are shooting C, you shoot more M[orphine] to level the C kick and smooth out the rough edges. Without M, C makes you too nervous, and M is an antidote for an overdose. There is no tolerance with C, and not much margin between a regular and a toxic dose. Several times I got too much and everything went black and my heart began turning over. Luckily I always had plenty of M on hand, and a shot of M fixed me right up.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'An eating habit is the worst habit you can contract. It takes longer to break than a needle habit, and the withdrawal symptoms are considerably more severe. In fact, it is not uncommon for a junkie with an eating habit to die if he is cut off cold turkey in jail. A junkie with an eating habit suffers from excruciating stomach cramps when he is cut off. And the symptoms last up to three weeks as compared to eight days on a needle habit.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Rollins listened to my account of the previous evening. "You're going to get your head blown off carrying that gun," he said. "What do you carry it for? You wouldn't know what you were shooting at. You bumped into trees twice there on Insurgentes. You walked right in front of a car. I pulled you back and you threatened me. I left you there to find your own way home, and I don't know how you ever made it. Everyone is fed up with the way you've been acting lately. If there's one thing I don't want to be around, and I think no one else particularly wants to be around, it's a drunk with a gun."' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'I got drunk on the fifty pesos. About nine that night, I ran out of money and went back to my apartment. I lay down and tried to sleep. When I closed my eyes I saw an Oriental face, the lips and nose eaten away by disease. The disease spread, melting the face into an amoeboid mass in which the eyes floated, dull crustacean eyes. Slowly, a new face formed around the eyes. A series of faces, hieroglyphs, distorted and leading to the final place where the human road ends, where the human form can no longer contain the crustacean horror that has grown inside it.
I watched curiously. "I got the horrors," I thought matter of factly.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Ike came back from the bathroom with the works and began cooking up a shot. He kept talking. "You're drinking and you're getting crazy. I hate to see you get off this stuff and on something worse. I know so many that quit the junk. A lot of them can't make it with Lupita. Fifteen pesos for a paper and it takes three to fix you. Right away they start in drinking and they don't last more than two or three years." - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'I lay there trying to control the fear. I did not know much about uremic poisoning. A woman I knew slightly in Texas died of it after drinking a bottle of beer every hour, night and day, for two weeks. Rollins had told me about it. "She swelled up and turned sorta black and went into convulsions and died. The whole house smelled like piss!"' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'What about Roy?" I asked.
"Didn't you hear about him? He went wrong and hanged himself in the Tombs." It seemed the law had Roy on three counts, two larceny, one narcotics. They promised to drop all charges if Roy would set up Eddie Crump, an old-time pusher. Eddie only served people he knew well, and he knew Roy. The law double-crossed Roy after they got Eddie. They dropped the narcotics charge, but not the two larceny charges. So Roy was slated to follow Eddie up to Riker's Island, where Eddie was doing pen indefinite, which is maximum in City Prison. Three years, five months, and six days. Roy hanged himself in the Tombs, where he was awaiting transfer to Riker's.
Roy had always taken an intolerant and puritanical view of pigeons. "I don't see how a pigeon can live with himself," he said to me once.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'When you give up junk, you give up a way of life. I have seen junies kick and hit the lush and wind up dead in a few years. Suicide is frequent among ex-junkies. Why does a junkie quit junk of his own will? You never know the answer to that question. No conscious tabulation of the disadvantages and horrors of junk gives you the emotional drive to kick. The decision to quit junk is a cellular decision, and once you have decided to quit you cannot go back to junk permanently any more than you could stay away from it before. Like a man who has been away a long time, you see things different when you return from junk.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Withdrawal symptoms are allergic symptoms: sneezing, coughing, running at the eyes and nose, vomiting, diarrhea, hive-like conditions of the skin. Severe withdrawal symptoms are shock symptoms: lowered blood pressure, loss of body fluid and shrinking of the organism as in the death process, weakness, involuntary orgasms, death through collapse of the circulatory system. If an addict dies from junk withdrawal, he dies of allergic shock.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'All the symptoms of shock can be produced by an overdose of histamine. Histamine is produced by body tissue wherever injury occurs. Histamine enlarges blood vessels so that extra blood comes to the place of injury. When a blood vessel is enlarged, its walls are stretched thin and porous and so fluid escapes. Loss of blood leads to lowered blood pressure. Excess histamine leads to lowering of blood pressure and shock, as occurs in serious injury. Adrenaline is the body's defense against excess histamine, and before the specific antihistamine drugs, was the only chemical antidote for histamine poisoning.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'It would seem that junk is the only habit-forming drug. Cats cannot be addicted to morphine, as they react to an injection of morphine with acute delirium. Cats have a relatively small quantity of histamine in the blood stream. It would seem that histamine is the defense against morphine, and that cats, lacking this defense, cannot tolerate morphine. Perhaps the mechanism of withdrawal is this: Histamine is produced by the body as a defense against morphine during the period of addiction. When the drug is withdrawn, the body continues to produce histamine.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Opium is formed in the unripe seed pods of the poppy plant. Its function is to protect the seeds from drying out until the plant is ready to die and the seeds are mature. Junk continues to function in the human organism as it did in the seed pod of the poppy. It protects and cushions the body like a warm blanket while death grows to maturity inside. When a junkie is really loaded with junk he looks dead. Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding.
Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'There is still very limited awareness of the nature of the threat. This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged. When the public protests, confronted with some obvious evidence of damaging results of pesticide applications, it is fed little tranquilizing pills of half truth. We urgently need an end to these false assurances, to the sugar coating of unpalatable facts. It is the public that is being asked to assume the risks that the insect controllers calculate. The public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can only do so when it is in full possesion of the facts. In the words of Jean Rostand, 'The obligation to endure gives us the right to know.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'These insecticides are not selective poisons; they do not single out the one species of which we desire to be rid. Each of them is used for the simple reason that it is a deadly poison. It therefore poisons all life with which it comes in contact: the cat beloved of some family, the farmer's cattle, the rabbit in the field, and the horned lark out of the sky. These creatures are innocent of any harm to man. Indeed by their very existence they and their fellows make his life more pleasant. Yet he rewards them with a death that is not only sudden but horrible.' - Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, 1962
'Morphine hits the backs of the legs first, the the back of the neck, a spreading wave of relaxation slackening the muscles away from the bones so that you seem to float without outlines, like lying in warm salt water. As this relaxing wave spread through my tissues, I experienced a strong feeling of fear. I had the feeling that some horrible image was just beyond the field of vision, moving, as I turned my head, so that I quite never saw it. I felt nauseous. I lay down and closed my eyes. A series of pictures passed, like watching a movie. A huge, neon-lighted cocktail bar that got larger and larger until streets, traffic, and street repairs were included in it; a waitress carrying a skull on a tray; stars in a clear sky. The physical impact of the fear of death; the shutting off of breath; the stopping of blood.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'There was a raw ache in my lungs. People vary in the way junk sickness affects them. Some suffer mostly from vomitting and diarrhea. The asthmatic type, with narrow and deep chest, is liable to violent fits of sneezing, watering at eyes and nose, in some cases spasms of the bronchial tubes that shut off the breathing. In my case, the worst thing is lowering of blood pressure with consequent loss of body fluid, and extreme weakness, as in shock. It is a feeling as if the life energy has been shut off so that all the cells in the body are suffocating. As I lay there on the bench, I felt like as if I was subsiding into a pile of bones.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'I was too weak to get out of bed. I could not lie still. In junk sickness, any conceivable line of action or inaction seems intolerable. A man might simply die because he could not stand to stay in his body.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'C[ocaine] is hard to find in Mexico. I had never used any good coke before. Coke is pure kick. It lifts you straight up, a mechanical lift that starts leaving you as soon as you feel it. I don't know anything like C for a lift, but the lift lasts only ten minutes or so. Then you want another shot. You can't stop shooting C - as long as it is there you shoot it. When you are shooting C, you shoot more M[orphine] to level the C kick and smooth out the rough edges. Without M, C makes you too nervous, and M is an antidote for an overdose. There is no tolerance with C, and not much margin between a regular and a toxic dose. Several times I got too much and everything went black and my heart began turning over. Luckily I always had plenty of M on hand, and a shot of M fixed me right up.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'An eating habit is the worst habit you can contract. It takes longer to break than a needle habit, and the withdrawal symptoms are considerably more severe. In fact, it is not uncommon for a junkie with an eating habit to die if he is cut off cold turkey in jail. A junkie with an eating habit suffers from excruciating stomach cramps when he is cut off. And the symptoms last up to three weeks as compared to eight days on a needle habit.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Rollins listened to my account of the previous evening. "You're going to get your head blown off carrying that gun," he said. "What do you carry it for? You wouldn't know what you were shooting at. You bumped into trees twice there on Insurgentes. You walked right in front of a car. I pulled you back and you threatened me. I left you there to find your own way home, and I don't know how you ever made it. Everyone is fed up with the way you've been acting lately. If there's one thing I don't want to be around, and I think no one else particularly wants to be around, it's a drunk with a gun."' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'I got drunk on the fifty pesos. About nine that night, I ran out of money and went back to my apartment. I lay down and tried to sleep. When I closed my eyes I saw an Oriental face, the lips and nose eaten away by disease. The disease spread, melting the face into an amoeboid mass in which the eyes floated, dull crustacean eyes. Slowly, a new face formed around the eyes. A series of faces, hieroglyphs, distorted and leading to the final place where the human road ends, where the human form can no longer contain the crustacean horror that has grown inside it.
I watched curiously. "I got the horrors," I thought matter of factly.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Ike came back from the bathroom with the works and began cooking up a shot. He kept talking. "You're drinking and you're getting crazy. I hate to see you get off this stuff and on something worse. I know so many that quit the junk. A lot of them can't make it with Lupita. Fifteen pesos for a paper and it takes three to fix you. Right away they start in drinking and they don't last more than two or three years." - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'I lay there trying to control the fear. I did not know much about uremic poisoning. A woman I knew slightly in Texas died of it after drinking a bottle of beer every hour, night and day, for two weeks. Rollins had told me about it. "She swelled up and turned sorta black and went into convulsions and died. The whole house smelled like piss!"' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'What about Roy?" I asked.
"Didn't you hear about him? He went wrong and hanged himself in the Tombs." It seemed the law had Roy on three counts, two larceny, one narcotics. They promised to drop all charges if Roy would set up Eddie Crump, an old-time pusher. Eddie only served people he knew well, and he knew Roy. The law double-crossed Roy after they got Eddie. They dropped the narcotics charge, but not the two larceny charges. So Roy was slated to follow Eddie up to Riker's Island, where Eddie was doing pen indefinite, which is maximum in City Prison. Three years, five months, and six days. Roy hanged himself in the Tombs, where he was awaiting transfer to Riker's.
Roy had always taken an intolerant and puritanical view of pigeons. "I don't see how a pigeon can live with himself," he said to me once.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'When you give up junk, you give up a way of life. I have seen junies kick and hit the lush and wind up dead in a few years. Suicide is frequent among ex-junkies. Why does a junkie quit junk of his own will? You never know the answer to that question. No conscious tabulation of the disadvantages and horrors of junk gives you the emotional drive to kick. The decision to quit junk is a cellular decision, and once you have decided to quit you cannot go back to junk permanently any more than you could stay away from it before. Like a man who has been away a long time, you see things different when you return from junk.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Withdrawal symptoms are allergic symptoms: sneezing, coughing, running at the eyes and nose, vomiting, diarrhea, hive-like conditions of the skin. Severe withdrawal symptoms are shock symptoms: lowered blood pressure, loss of body fluid and shrinking of the organism as in the death process, weakness, involuntary orgasms, death through collapse of the circulatory system. If an addict dies from junk withdrawal, he dies of allergic shock.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'All the symptoms of shock can be produced by an overdose of histamine. Histamine is produced by body tissue wherever injury occurs. Histamine enlarges blood vessels so that extra blood comes to the place of injury. When a blood vessel is enlarged, its walls are stretched thin and porous and so fluid escapes. Loss of blood leads to lowered blood pressure. Excess histamine leads to lowering of blood pressure and shock, as occurs in serious injury. Adrenaline is the body's defense against excess histamine, and before the specific antihistamine drugs, was the only chemical antidote for histamine poisoning.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'It would seem that junk is the only habit-forming drug. Cats cannot be addicted to morphine, as they react to an injection of morphine with acute delirium. Cats have a relatively small quantity of histamine in the blood stream. It would seem that histamine is the defense against morphine, and that cats, lacking this defense, cannot tolerate morphine. Perhaps the mechanism of withdrawal is this: Histamine is produced by the body as a defense against morphine during the period of addiction. When the drug is withdrawn, the body continues to produce histamine.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
'Opium is formed in the unripe seed pods of the poppy plant. Its function is to protect the seeds from drying out until the plant is ready to die and the seeds are mature. Junk continues to function in the human organism as it did in the seed pod of the poppy. It protects and cushions the body like a warm blanket while death grows to maturity inside. When a junkie is really loaded with junk he looks dead. Junk turns the user into a plant. Plants do not feel pain since pain has no function in a stationary organism. Junk is a pain killer. A plant has no libido in the human or animal sense. Junk replaces the sex drive. Seeding is the sex of the plant and the function of opium is to delay seeding.
Perhaps the intense discomfort of withdrawal is the transition from plant back to animal, from a painless, sexless, timeless state back to sex and pain and time, from death back to life.'
- Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
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