Saturday 9:09 p.m.
Happenstance. The Gatekeeper to Nirvana tells me the timetable is skewed because of the week of gong bashing to clear away obstacles and whatnot being performed by the sangha. I'm not sure what that means.

I get into the temple about two and the lama is there. Also, his apprentice, I imagine his heir apparent, is sitting to his right, and to his right is the Venerable Big Indian, then two other Tibetans who aren't always there, and then Teresa. This is quite an array of spiritual muscle. They're in order of ascendance. Across from them are nuns and such, but I can't see them from where I am.

They are chanting and making the ambience while I sit with my eyes closed and try to do my thing. This is wonderful and unexpected. This goes on till six, with a break of about twenty minutes. It starts the next morning at eight and goes on till six. After the soup, I go back for the Chenrezig prayers and stay till closing time, which is ten. You get two hours alone in the temple with the vase breathing and whatnot.

I've really no idea what they're doing.

They're clearing away obstacles. There's only three or four folk looking on, or in my case, doing the bliss. I'm getting blown away. Getting blown away for hours and hours at a time.

It's not like a river because it's not going anywhere. It's like a section of a river which is continually going upwards and it's bright and thick and warm in an odd kind of way, and distending. Sometimes you're trying to put visualisations into this and sometimes they're far better than they used to be, but then in the midst of the chanting they start giving it laldy with the giant horns and cymbals and gongs and drums, and that's the state you want to be in to appreciate that ritual music. It rips right through you. Everything is continually fantastically blissful. Of course, you get tired as well.