The Bliss!

Friday 1:50 p.m.
The red tree is sticking up over the wall of the creekit ground.

I drank the bottle of collapso and then went out for three bottles of beer. My cold had disappeared by the time I wakened up. Don't ask me why.

I was in the hut till about one. As soon as I sat down, I knew the bliss had appreciably developed again. Just like that. Less breath somehow. Great bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Our wireless connection has gone phut again. I knew this computery stuff would never last!

Allotment Shots 12

The photies show the path down the middle of the allotment, which I cut with the shears yesterday; really the first haircut this year.Once again I told myself it couldn't be tiring just cutting the grass and after five minutes my teeshirt was soaking, my head was soaking, and sweat running over the front of my glasses was making it difficult to see out of them. Dearie me.

You can see quite clearly in the first photograph that the soil is disappearing since there is now a banking where once, twelve years ago, it was even. If anyone could offer a explanation as to where the ground is disappearing to, I'd be most interested.

Does this mean that eventually your allotment would disappear? It would end up with very long bankings and just a little tablecloth space left for the onions and tatties. This gardening business is most puzzling. Sometimes you wonder what you are actually trying to do.

On the teevee show there is the tractor ploughing a new field. It has millions of seagulls following it to eat up the bugs in the ground. Twenty years later the tractor has no seagulls following it because turning over that much soil every year kills all the bugs, worms, etc. which normally live there. I dig my allotment twice a year because I don't know diddly squat about gardening and now all the worms, etc., are few and far between.

Also, when I plant my onions, they become surrounded by weeds and this is not supposed to happen. If you weeded properly, you are supposed to be able to get rid of the weeds in seven years. The seeds should all have sprouted.

So as far as I can see, this type of gardening is all about killing the earth. This cannot be a good thing. Is the disappearance of the earth telling me something? If so, none to clearly.

Trashed myself after the grass cutting by running up the five hills before the European Cup Final last night. I slept till twelve today which is most unusual and wakened up with the Domestic Bliss's head cold. Checked out the cold cures in Waitrose supermarket. The bottle of vino collapso was cheaper! I'll drink it tonight for purely medicinal purposes of course.

Resume

Wednesday 11:35p.m.
So many good things! Just finished the four beers. Just about to finish the bob hope. What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Here's some Seneca from the wall. I will show you a love philtre compounded without drug or herb or witch's spell. It is this: If you wish to be loved, love.

Should I tell them about the bliss, Jack? They only want to hear about the allotment, Hotboy. Well, Jack, the Alien Creatures from Outer Space should know that some of us have understood that if you don't mutter mumbo jumbo to yourself, or do something else which seems on the face of it ridiculous, you will not get the bliss. You will remain completely normal. Have a look around. This is not what you want to be.

I think in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, the boy goes on about the individual mind thing and the rigpa, maybe big mind thing.

I may have read that if you chip away at your consciousness with a sound, you could someday find yourself at one, kind of bursting through into the bigger mind. This is stupid! So then you do it and one day it happens.

Anyway, I realised recently that I was somehow bothered by this bigger mind idea because maybe it meant believing in something. Even although I had once seen the big mind. Of course, what you have to do maybe is attend to what you should be doing and mayhap these things will be revealed or otherwise.

These are surely metaphysical speculations! But maybe we should know that stuff like that happens.

What do you need to be a blissheid, Hotboy? Little Jackie, I'm glad you asked me that.
1) The first thing you need is a fantastically developed (false) sense of self. You really have to be up for this one. If you've got a wobbly sense of self, don't even go near it.

2) The second thing you need is great courage. Or having nothing better to do. Like moi, you maybe can't think of anything better to do, so you don't really need the courage. It is helpful, however, if you have had a distinct predeliction to the altered state. If you regularly passed the acid test by saying: 'It's just the acid', you are now elected to become a jedi warrior. Maybe not. But you are surely not going to be too bothered by turning into something else, like a deity or whatnot. If you actually liked dropping acid ....hmmm? Well, this is the juju for you!

3) The third thing you need is the capacity for the bestest enjoyment. If you enjoy being a miserable basturn, this is not the juju for you. If you can handle beaming with bliss and joy, this is the juju for you. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

4) The fourth and last, and really the only thing you have to do, is teach yourself to enjoy meditating.

IT'S MY WIFE AND IT'S MY LIFE. The inimitable Lou.

The photie is of a lupin.

Allotment Shots 11

Monday
When I got to the hut yesterday evening, that was the first time I'd been back there for over a week. So much changes in a week at this time of year.
1) the onions are covered already with weeds. I do not know where the weeds come from. I don not plant them, but they arise in such amazing fecundity. You are supposed to pull them out. I regard this as a bit of a last resort.
2) the tatties have started sprouting throughout.
3) the Dom Bliss has planted the brassica and set up a wee covering thing for them. She says we have another wasp nest. She would say that.
4) The path down the middle of the allotment has grass going mad. The last time I was visiting, I cut the grass with shears down both sides and over the top, and was exhausted by this. Let's hope for a bone dry summer with grass yellowing and blowing away by itself.
5) I do not know if any wee birds are in the wee bird box. It's sometimes difficult to tell.
6) The wrens have for the third year not laid eggs in the nest inside the hut.
7) I took one of the photies of a wee bush outside the hut. I do not know what it is called.
8) The left over potatoes from the uneaten ones in last year's clamp are bursting forth and are my favourites for prizes this year ... because nobody did anything to them!
9) The gooseberries are already swelling and it doesn't rain blossoms anymore.
10) Saw hundreds of bumble bees yesterday which is good since we're all going to die from lack of bumble bees.

Some magpies were making a huge racket in a tree by the wall in the creekit ground. I stopped to look and saw a magpie's final moments (the claw relaxed and opened as it died)as other magpies killed it. It was squeezed into being on it's back against some supporting branches with its claws facing out, probably for protection. I looked up just as it died. That's another one died and no bliss either!

Vase Breathing

Sunday 9:40 p.m.
Stumblebumming through the alcohol and bob tobacco haze, at last I found myself in the hut.

I should note the apparent increment though describing this is beyond me really.

With your eyes shut ... You get white light featureless and beaming. You might get this shortly after meditating regularly. You might get feelings of blasting white light up your spine so that you think you might have a fit. Anyway, you might also get the creepy thing wriggling around inside your shape. Maybe the flat featureless whiteness somehow joins in with the envelope the creepy wriggly sometimes delicious thing starts caressing and pushing against. Like a massage.

I don't know how to go from there to what was happening in the hut. Everything is just much more of everything, but the effects of the vase breathing this evening seemed to be taking me into a different zone again.

And this is a different zone from that which just seems to open up and open up and open up again into further reaches of bliss if you just sit on your bum. So there are zones in various directions....hmmm?


The different zone the vase breathing was taking me into was not unrecognisable. I'd been getting wee bits of this sometimes. It's a bit stunning. You don't want to have to immediately respond to someone when you're in this state. But it felt a bit more substantial this evening. It's like putting a jacket over your jacket. I felt a wee bit regal what with the pretending to be a a medicine buddha and all.

Is this a fourth dimension? How many dimensions are there again, Jack? Anyway, another dimension... can you tell the dope posts from the drunk ones?

The View From The Bridge!

Saturday 11:30 a.m.
From the railway bridge at the station, it is easy to see that Bellshill is just like an other sleepy little Scottish village, the natives indoors mending their kilts and eating porridge with wooden spoons!

I was in the company of some lively interesting people last night. I remained conscious throughout. I remember things.

In the journeyings yesterday I watched the crowds and was very aware than nobody gets the bliss. All these people as well and no bliss. Not even a little bit of an inkling of the bliss. I wonder why it is that I get the bliss and they don't. It would be much better if everyone was getting it, but if they don't get it, I might as well spend the afternoon enjoying it! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Ra Piss!

Thursday 10:10 p.m.
Ravings. Don't bother with this. Fragments from here in the living room.

On my last and fourth beer just about now. A one skinner awaits after that. Hmmm?

So I watched my first tv show on the computery thing. It was The Baby and the Buddha, on BBC4 IPlayer download thingy brought to moi by broadband.

We embrace our ignorance!
We don't believe in any things!
Especially thoughts!

The boy said engaging in metaphysical speculations wasn't the real juju.

I enjoy speculations especially about subjects I know almost nothing about.

I watched this boy judging the terriers at Crofts, the doggy show. He shook something inside his fist. The dog that stopping staring into space and tried to bite his hand got the prize. Because that's what terriers do.

The kid, after a lot kids before him had shown little interest, was offered the rosary, and took it and wouldn't give it back.

The chances of this kid growing up to be a very full of positivity human being are probably pretty good. If it's nurture, we need to do a bit better with all the other kids. It it's nature ... well, some cats got it,and some cat's aint!

At the moment I might almost be in a death cult with two leaders, a schism. The interesting thing is what does the karmapa who is not the karmapa turn out like. He's got to have had a better chance at becoming a buddha than moi! That's the really interesting thing. Being well educated. Folk caring for you. Making a bit of a fuss!

Sweet Thursday!

12:05 p.m.
You just close your eyes and settle into the billow of bliss. There seems nothing to be added. Peace and contentment. Somewhere you know there is building and developing and increasing as you sit there... I can't be bothered typing for sinking into the bliss. When you rush around with the unfortunate ones, it changes in your absence. It's a shame to miss it. I'm just a complete blissheid today!

4:24 p.m.
The photie is on the pavement in Gloucester Place. FREE THE BOB! FREE THE BOB!

Been smoking pot and doing the bliss all day. What a life! The pot runs out today. Like snow off a dyke!

Flatheids!

Tuesday 5:05 p.m.
Flatheids all day Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. It's enough to make you question your positivity, so it is.

People who have hobbies are sad basturns. The Poisonous.

The too dumb to meditate have to fill their time somehow, I suppose. I agreed to go along The Saint Cuthbert's Walk for a bit with this old flatheid.

A flatheid may be described as a person who when they shut their eyes do not default to the bliss. Flatheids just don't get the bliss. It's just a word to a flatheid.

I'm trying to appear more normal so I agree to go on this walk. This means you have to go to Melrose and then find this hill and you walk up it in the pouring rain. Then you walk up and down more bits in the pouring rain. Eventually, it stops and so do you. You can lunch on horrible stuff you'd never eat or drink normally in a month of Sundays. Mars Bars. Orangina. But you can do the bliss as soon as you park yourself onto the damp bench. But flatheids don't do the bliss and they can't stop talking either. Blah, blah all day whilst walking pointlessly through the rain. The last thing a flatheid is going to ask for is a wee break so he can reacquaint himself with the bliss.

So from now on there's going to be new rules concerning exposure to flatheids.
1) Never find yourself in the company of flatheids for more than two hours at a time.
2)Do the standing up bliss if you have to, given that you can't keep to 1).
3) If anybody asks you what you're doing, just tell them you have a touch of the petit mal.
4)Nice flatheids who don't take drink and/or drugs must be avoided at all costs!

The photie is of some wasteland near Melrose when it had almost stopped raining.

Generosity 2.

Sunday 8:30 p.m.


The shop is where I bought the morning paper. Baddies in a dumper truck rammed it in an attempt to get at the treasure. They previously rammed into the garage, but to no avail. Later on, they smashed into another retail outlet. Gained no booty. Never captured. Must have been quite a night.

No dust, no powders, no pills. Hurrah! Nice bottled beer on the house and weighing in at a modest 4.2%. Back on the grass. It wasn't like going round to Sawney Bean's place after all. Positivity! Everything is great as long as you give it the old positivity! I couldn't understand what anyone was saying for about two hours, but remained conscious throughout.

I'm in a position to practise the old generosity again, but I'm not sure how to go about it. After the last time, I don't think phoning up folk and offering them free drugs is the way to go about it somehow.

Folk will just think you've flipped, Hotboy. I haven't flipped, who has, Jack?

I think maybe you should be cultivating generosity and trying to exude it a little. Not actually being generous, but feeling generous. This is bound to be cheaper and less embarassing.

I'd showered and was meditating by 8:30 this morning. No hangover. Quite bright considering. The mirrors in Ayshire make you look more handsome by far. Instead of appearing as a fat basturn, one is merely well proportioned. Like a reflection of the moon on water ... wonderful supporting conditions.

This Modern World!

Midnight on Friday/ Saturday!
This is a broadband message brought to yous after a solid day of praying to Saint Jack the Spam Robot! It's amazingly fast.

I was exhausted this evening. It's better and much easier to be a moron and a flatheid, and be diligent about your jobbie. Go forth and just go forth! Even doing ra bliss is a piece of cake. A whole four days of sobriety and nae drugs, and meditating, and meditating, and meditating ... you get these points where you get fed up, and think between the massive amounts of bliss, increasing and increasing, that you would rather be born to be comfortable like the evil bourgeois, and this alternative would have been so easy. Oh, the jobbie! Oh, the jobbie! Oh, the jobbiesRUs!

But no! After the bliss reached an extent where it had never been before ... and the exhaustion ... I think it was caused by concentrating continually ... I went out and bought four beers ... even although I did not have any real money.

I cranked it up this week, I certainly did. And I am maintaining my positivity! I will go to the Wild West tomorrow and, hopefully, some young women will totter up to moi in high heels half falling out of their dresses, but in any case there will be pills and bob hope and bevvy and my deepest, dearest friends, and what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

DisconnectionsRUs?

Friday 11 a.m.
Enlightenment in this very body is all that matters. Shakymuni.

I read once that the biographies of the mahasiddhas were all the same. At some point the deity appeared. This does not seem to me to be as ridiculous as it once did.

Tipola claimed that he got the teachings for the Six Yogas of Naropa from a deity. Dorje Chang, this deity, is at the head of the lineage prayer. Dorje Chang, Tilopa, Naropa, Marpa, Milarepa, Gampopa ... and all the way down to this day.

Deity Yoga is supposed eventually to be a three dimensional visualisation.

St Teresa of Avila spoke to Christ in his glorified body. She started with the hands, and eventually he spoke to her. He might have said: I love you and I will do anything you ask of me because I know you love me too, babes.

Alexandra David-Neel says she managed to create a monk in her meditations. Not only that, but other folk could see it and, not only that, but it started having some kind of independent existence and became a sly, sneaky basturn. It took her months of further meditations to dissolve this entity.

It's reality, Jim, but not as we know it.

How close are you to achieving any of this juju, Hotboy? Well, Jack, I am not even in the same ball park as these joes and josephines! I don't think you can get much progress in deity yoga unless you are in closed retreats, but that does not mean I'm going to stop trying. The great thing about practising deity yoga is that it combines method and wisdom in the one practise.

I haven't had a drink or any drugs since the weekend. No bother and hurrah! I'm getting oddles and oodles of bliss and the heat was starting to work this morning. (My auld maw is getting her kitchen done so I can't go there today.)

My problems are still when I'm not meditating. I don't seem to be having a fantastic carry through there sometimes. Like, on Wednesday I tried to cut the grass with shears which had been unused since last summer and they wouldn't cut. My heart sank. Such disappointment. Such a stupid, afflictive emotion. There was no choice about it. The emotion arose. I know if someone started to intimidate or threaten me that if might feel great fear at first, but the red mist would soon ascend. My responses to experience are still complete ... well, I won't use that word since I'm trying to purify my speech of course.

Speaking of which, we are not supposed to have this dial up anymore and we are going to try and fix the wireless broadband tonight, so ... It's time I started getting religious and began to pray to St Jack the Spam Robot, the patron saint of wireless connectivity for the Disbelieving Congregation.

Allotment Shot 11

Wednesday 6:05 p.m.
Taken from The Inward Journey by J.C. Happold, this is a quote from Robert Oppenheimer's 1953 Reith lecture.

To what appear to be the simplest questions we will tend to give either no answer or an answer which will at first sight be reminiscent more of a strange catechism than of the straightforward answers of physical science. If we ask, for instance, whether the position of the electron remains the same, we must say "no"; if we ask whether the electron's position changes with time, we must say "no"; if we ask whether the electron is at rest, we must say "no"; if we ask whether it is in motion, we must say "no". The Buddha has given such answers when interrogated as to the condition of man's self after death ...

Lucid Dream 2

Sunday 1:35 p.m.

Dream yoga is one of the Six Yogas of Naropa. I think it involves being aware that you're in a dream while dreaming and maybe being able to consciously direct the dream.

I saw a programme about sleep a wee while ago and it said, I think, that western scientists didn't think lucid dreaming was possible till the 1970s. If you know anything about that, I'd appreciate a comment.

I think Tibetan Buddhism might be keen on lucid dreaming because your dream body is the subtle body, the one they say you are left with when you are dead and in the bardo. If you can learn to control your dream state, you might have a chance to forgo the spanking the flatheids take in the bardo with the terrors and all. Anyway, I had a lucid dream this morning when I went back to sleep around 8 a.m.

So I'm back in my bedroom in the house I was brought up in in Bellshill. There were a lot of folk in the room (this is a recurrent theme these days; getting crowded!), but one of them gave me a big lump of cannybliss at a cheap price due to favours I'd done previously. Yippee! I'm going to go out and buy some fags and skins!

THIS IS NOT WHAT I'M GOING TO DO IF THIS EVER HAPPENS AGAIN!

So I goes down to the bottom of the road, where the prefabs used to be at the end of Thorndean Avenue, and I trying to buy the fags and skins there, but I fail and walk on. Eventually, I cross the Motherwell Road and go into the Free State.

The Free State was the nickname for the scheme beside the golf course because, I suppose, it was full of tims.

I looked back from Community Road ...

Robert Owen of New Lanark fame established loads of communities in America and one in Bellshill where the golf course now is. Hence, Community Road.

I should have been able to see the Coo Park, the Glen, and the prefabs from the end of Community Road, but I saw a far different and, in fact, very pretty vista. I knew that wasn't right and it was then I realised I was dreaming.

I tried to fly. I tried this in the first lucid dream I had and failed again. So I'm stuck in the dream, trying to buy fags and skins, and then trying to get back to my auld maw's house in Bellshill. Another kind of lost dream though not lost in downtown Freetown on a Saturday night.

The photie is of a version the Kalachakra Mandala. I try to grow this in my head sometimes whilst in the hut, but it's far, far too difficult so far!

Last Orders!

The photie with the blue sky background and the white blossoms was taken a week ago. Know what it is? The other one was taken about six when the horrible weather stopped being horrible.

I got an email from the secret agent telling me I'd find out about any interest induced by the efforts made on my behalf at the London Book Fair in a wee while. I've given up hope. I'm not writing at all at the moment. I think I'll start working on the writings again. I do miss it.

I phoned the Pizzaman yesterday to ask about the cannybliss supply situation. He said things where he was were 'brutal'. I was hoping to give up on the Beer Monster when I got some cannybliss to eat, but I'm just going to give up anyway and try being sober and straight all the time. Dearie me!

"Well, there's nothing so lonesome, lonely and queer, what a terrible place is a pub with no beer!"

Here are some of the reasons why I should give up the beer! Just to remind myself.

I was in a pub last Sunday with an alien creature and I can hardly remember anything from the eight hours I spent in there. This is actually quite unusual for me and has got to be a bad sign! Except I think she said it would be a good thing for me to get off with her mother. This would be a good match since I am skint and her mother will have pots of money. However, I am not taking my shirt off in front of unknown female company while I'm still a fat basturn, so I'll need to lose a stone.

By the way, I am NOT a fat basturn due to the beer! I have always drank beer and I never became a permanently fat basturn till about four or five years ago when I went part-time at the jobbie. But it is because I am now a fat basturn that I will have to stop drinking beer.

My diet is about 250 grams of wholemeal a day at dead weight, soup, bananas, cheese and butter. Also, on average about three bottles of beer when I have no cannybliss which has been most of this year. Anybody else would waste away, Jack! It's not fair! It's not blinking fair!

The lama says you should sit like Mount Everest. That's as much as he wants you to move. Today I did that for about six hours before I got to writing this. You can be skinny just by figeting a lot. Also, I did a half hour in the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle. I take a lot of exercise. I don't know anyone who takes more exercise than moi!

Whenever I get to meet the alien creature's mum, I'll have to be eleven stone.

To help give up the beer, I'm going to start running in the evening. It's still light at nine o clock at the moment. Run then lie in the bath, maybe watch Newsnight and go to bed with a good book. If it wasn't for the bliss ...

The flat is empty this weekend.

The heat isn't happening just now the way I expected. It's suffusing the whole envelope just like the bliss does. I was thinking it would localise on the symbols, but I'm not getting the calm mind calm enough for that to happen at the moment, I suspect. Everything is going brilliantly in that regard though. Still progressing, still increasing. Hurrah!

The Bliss!

11:26 a.m.
Wednesday was a bit like Thursday since I didn't go to the jobbie yesterday. I meditated all day really and then I got drunk when it got dark.

Immediately I sat down in the lobby at ten this morning the bliss was so satisfying and huge that I didn't really want to do anything but abide in the bliss. Oh, ra bliss! Oh, ra bliss! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

And I thought I should come and tell yous about it, but there's nothing much to say.
.
Is everything just a metaphor, Jack? I think it might be, Hotboy.

The winds are surely entering the central channel. Maybe the bliss will stabilise and dissolve and the four blisses will occur. Who cares? I'm really very happy right now. I wonder what it will be like when I can actually do this juju. Allah Akbar!

4:45 p.m.
Just back from listening to Ringu Tulku talk about diligence and wisdom. And bad habits. I think I need to get positive about getting negative about beer.

He said when he was ten, he had his first lesson with some other wee tulkus from a very erudite khenpo. He had the lesson in the morning. In the afternoon his name came out of a lottery to see who would repeat the lesson (what a great way to teach!). After that he said the khenpo would teach him anything he asked him to. Boy's a star! Some cats got it .... he said the khenpo died teaching. Gave his talk, sat down and died on the seat.

I'm going to see Ringu Tulku again tonight. Mind training. We could all do with a bit of that!

The end!

00:12 p.m.
There is maybe just one moment left of the dial-up! So we cling. The wireless thing gave everyone cancer who had it and they all died. After they paid their dues for the wireless thing happening, and the hard rain fell and everything was covered with darkness and haar, there was only me and little Jack left in the whole blogosphere. He was so thin. He shivered all the time. Sometimes he sat down and didn't want to move until I handed him a biscuit. We're carrying the fire, I said to him. Fung off, you pederast, he replied.

I've become a completely huge Cormac McCarthy fan since I read All the Pretty Horses, which I enjoyed much more than I did The Road. The former was about being young. The latter might have been written by an old joe. Who knows? There are other ones after the Pretty Horses which I will have to buy and read. The Road is completely fung brilliant of course.

I am not able to quite reach completion at the moment. I was handed a box of computery things to assemble this morning and I did meditate all day in the l0bby except when I tried to get the beepy things to work, and I suppose that was quite a time. Then I did the physical jerks, and then I sat down in the lobby again, and whenever anyone talked to me I felt tired, but I did not feel tired in the bliss.

I do not have the Four Foundations, or even the one foundations, or any foundations organised. I just don't have that.

Does this not make it slightly tricky, Hotboy? Well, Jack, almost nobody has even garnered the first foundation and I can't even remember what that is!

Everywhere I look there is nothing but flatheids, Jack.
Don't look then.
I have to look.
No, you don't.
Will the flatheids all die, Jack?
I hope not, but I think they will.
What if you looked and there were not flatheids, Hotboy?
Well, if I looked and there were no flatheids, what would there be?
Maybe there would be continuum? Space. Arising and declining. Thoughts. Just thoughts.
Would there be any girlfriends?
I think after a while, there might not be any girlfriends.
Well, what will there be, Hotboy?
If we are lucky, there will just be thoughts, Jack. Just thoughts. Arising and abiding and declining.

I think Cormac McCarthy must come from Northern Ireland and be pissed all the time he's writing this stuff like all the great writers.

This Modern World!

Wednesday 12:15 p.m.
I've spent the last hour trying to get a wireless connection set up for this computery thing. Got to the last sentence. No profile, click on the manual with the CD. Nothing.

I was told by my maths teacher once that I should enjoy solving problems. I have never enjoyed solving problems. I could solve problems, but I didn't like doing it at all. Now that I am into positivity, I think it would be wonderful thing if these computery things all just disappeared. If we hadn't these computery things, would be be in a world wide slump at the moment? I would happily go back to radio 4 and reading books and writing books in longhand if necessary.

We're not supposed to have a dial up connection anymore. I don't know why this is still working. I expect it to stop. This will not be anything like as bad as the nuclear winter.

Last night I finished The Road by Cormac McCarthy. It doesn't have any chapters or proper paragraphs and some dodgy spelling and punctuation, but it is a wonderful piece of writing about the nuclear winter and people eating each other. I would not recommend it except to folk who like brilliant writing and don't mind reading about the spanking the flatheids are going to get during the nuclear winter which will surely happen sometime.

I went to hear Ringu Tulku speaking about the Four Foundations last night. You close you eyes and are straight into the bliss. You've got bliss and light. This is almost the default position these days, Jack. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Then you can be in the bliss and concentrate on the words. I'm sorry the unfortunate ones cannot do this, but that's not my fault.

He was mentioning dependant arising, interdependence and what not, then said if you really penetrated impermanence there was no dying. He maybe stumbled a wee bit there over this choice of words since he was the only tulku in the room. I think I understood what he meant and got a little intimation of it for a second or two. These little intimations are sometimes very nice.

He finished with a brilliant description of the tonglen method.

Compassion and altruism, loving kindness, bliss and joy, heat and healing .... these are in the lobby. You do not get these out of the computery thing.

Tom McGrath

Monday.
I found out Tom McGrath had passed away from reading the sensei's blog a couple of days ago. I just have to say something about Tom McGrath because he did me an enormous favour once.

My radio producer had given him a look at Clocked Out, a radio script, and he wanted to see me. He had some kind of job with the SAC at the Lyceum. Just right then I was up shit creek having just heard that I was going to become a daddy and was watching my so-called writing career seemingly going down the toilet. I thought I needed some money so I could give up the jobbie and look after the kiddo anyway. I had four grand coming in from the radio and others, but I needed another three to swing it. So when I saw Tom, he said he'd get it for me from the Scottish Arts Council and refereed a writer's award for me. This was a giant help at the time.

You don't forget stuff like that.

I only spoke with him a couple of times afterwards. I'm not at all good with the well known. The last time I saw him in public was in the Traverse Theatre after his last production there and I could see his health wasn't great. He was recovering from a stroke. So I'm glad I sent him a card then thanking him again for the help he'd given me.

Tom McGrath was quite a national treasure. I doesn't really matter what his writing was like. He was an exceptionally nice man. I asked his partner, Ella, how he was keeping once before he had the stroke and she said he was doing fine considering the life he'd led. Quite a guy!

Positivity 2!

Sunday 10:00 p.m.
I cannot remember all that much after the first couple of pints of Guinness, but I woke up today at six in the a.m. and felt very good indeed, considering. Count the attenuations. Ten fingers and ten toes present. Well done!

I felt yesterday that I had turned a corner.

Is this an important announcement, Hotboy? No, Jack, but it is an announcement.


Normally, when I was walking towards an open grave, I have my doubts and reservations and caveats and wish I wasn't doing this bad thing. With positivity you don't get that.

What is this existence? If you were a Tibetan buddhist, you might say it was a ceaseless round of births and rebirths ... grief, sorrow, lamentations ... delusions, disappointments and despair ... suffering in this life.

Well, from this existence I have got the bliss. Sometimes when I just close my eyes, I fall into such depths of peaceful warm bliss ... like I was doing today. So, this life is not about grief, sorrow and lamentations ... it's about the bliss. This existence gives rise to the bliss. It seems sometimes perfectly obvious that the whole of this existence is based on bliss.

So when I open my eyes and go to the pub like I did yesterday, this is the way I got the bliss. This is the kind of joe I am. I am the kind of joe who loves losing it in bars; forgetting where I was the next day; and wondering whether or not ...

Also, smoking and smoking and smoking and eating dope till it was coming out of my ears ... and all of that kind of thing. Like being a sponsor and cheerleaders for the Australian Ladies Volleyball Squad. All these things.

And what happened after all these things, Hotboy? After all these things, I was able to access the bliss. Profound bliss. Silent and peaceful and profound.

And I owe it all to the flatheids, the too dumb to meditate, the unfortunate ones, the supporting deities.

And when the wee fat baldy guy says that the purpose of buddhism is to create happy people with a positive outloook, then that means being happy and positive about everything. It means being happy and positive about getting pissed yesterday in the pub. It means being happy that the giving away of the skunk meant that even more skunk alighted on moi; it means being happy with the dance of death with the Nicotine Dragon and it means welcoming the nicotine withdrawals!

This has to be towards the endgame. This has to be what it is like to be secure in the bliss. This is the bliss! This is the bliss! This is the bliss!


23:41 p.m.
Are you going to hell with the nicotine withdrawals, Hotboy? Maybe I should be going to hell with the nicotine withdrawals, Jack, but did not the nicotine withdrawals result in moi? Did they not contribute and help condition the thoughts which resulted in the bliss? How can you say the nicotine withdrawals were disagreeable and hateful when they resulted or helped result in the bliss? How and you say that? How can the nicotine withdrawals not be anything other than wonderful? Have they not been so forever so moi?

And what about when you die, Hotboy, and fall into hell? Well, Jack, have we not been in hell before, you and I? Have we not cried and cried, and filled more oceans with tears through being unable to arise between what was agreeable and the disagreeable? And all that jazz?

So thank you, everyone! Thank you, to the dakinis, the yins, with whom I went out drinking yesterday. What a wonderful pause in the bliss! Thank yous! Thank yous! Thank yous! Without this, we do not get that! Thank yous! Thank yous! Thank yous!

Generosity!

Friday 7:42 p.m.
A friend of the Nicotine Dragon slipped me some free skunk. You could smoke it in a pipe if you liked but ....

Practising generosity makes you rich. I never believed that either, Jack. But I thought I'd give it a go, and split up the free skunk into two bits, and put away one since that bit was no longer mine. My bit looks awful wee. Craving and clinging is a bit more moi! I phoned up the buddhafield, beginning to sweat, tremble and feel a little sick... maybe you shoud wait till you feel generous before you practise the generosity, but we'd all be dead by then ... and asked for the dakini. She said it was awful nice to offer half the free skunk for free, but there's tons of the stuff in the buddhafields. Hurrah! It worked first time! I doubled the skunk I had!

How's the Nicotine Dragon looking, Hotboy? Well, Jack, kind of slinky and sophisticated, a bit like Marlyn Monroe if you squint the right way. Shall we dance? Baroom, poom, poom!