Question & Answer #165: from Facing Death to Pets in the Pali Texts

Questions include: the best mental state for facing death; monks taking psychedelics; laypeople taking psychedelics; knowing or deducing past lives; “powers” strengthening faith in Dharma; the “mechanism” of animal sacrifice; low and small beds; out of body experiences resulting from meditation; is Mahayana false Buddhism; religious people not really being religious; the value of being bored; irreducible complexity in cells; how enlightened beings can be equanimous AND feel compassion; the longest I ever went without sleep; must a monastery’s abbot be the preceptor of ordinations; the most important factor determining the quality of one’s rebirth; misconceptions of early western Buddhist scholars; spiritual healing and its possible dangers; construction trades; Guru Viking; psychedelics and the fifth precept; the ethics of microdosing; future talks with Brian and/or Otto; Jesus, the Buddha, and buildings; Metallica vs. Megadeth; the lyrics of “Rational Gaze”; seeing Matrix codes while on DMT; the Bhagavad Gita; is spiritual progress personal or impersonal; the ethics of logging; deliberate nonsense in the Bible; the eventual disappearance of the Abhidhamma Pitaka; the possibility of re-ordaining; (answering transgressive fourth questions); being bitten by a dog in Burma; politicians vs. women as manipulators; and pets and other domesticated animals in the Pali texts.