The Samye Ling Friday morning!

Friday 10:19 a.m.
They're doing Makhala prayers all week here. Hurrah! That means the high heid yins are sitting in the temple giving it laldy while you sit there with the gong bashing and prayers washing over you whilst you do the juju. I couldn't have timed my visit here any better if I'd bothered to time it at all!

Read in some footnotes of Kalu Rinpoche book that thye completion stage of this juju is dissolving the visualisation into emptiness. I thought it was blasting heat up your whatsits and then going off in the space ship to another planet far far away, so what do I know? Very little. Just don't use this stuff in my bloggy as if I knew what I was talking about.

The one joke I know is appropriate to my relationship with the lama. I won't be speaking to him this trip I don't think.

There's a monk sitting beside him now who bears a strong family resemblance except he's a foot taller. I guess he'll be the abbot here one day.

I know this joke because I spent three days in a tent trying to meditate on the Holy Isle about 13 years ago. I had a copy of the Observer with me and read it through and through. This joke was in it.

This joe is driving past an indian reservation and see a sign: Memory Man! Answer any memory questions for five dollars! So the joe goes into the tepee with the memory man sitting there. How, says the memory man. How, says the joe. Then he can't think of anything to ask. Finally, he says: What did you have for your breakfast yesterday? Eggs, said the memory man. That'll be five dollars please.

The joe is very pissed off by this and goes away. A couple of years later, he's going past the reservation again and sees the sign, and thinks he'll get his own back this time. He goes into the tepee and says: How. Scrambled, says the memory man.

I really haven't got anything to say to the lama. Hello covers everything.