Friday, 31 July 2009

Samye Ling again!

3:03 p.m.
Well, here we go again! In half an hour there's an empowerment for the week of gong bashing!

The Domestic Bliss drove us here and she's staying overnight!

We were going to the luncho right after we got here and saw the lama on the temple steps. The Gatekeeper to Nirvana says he's a bit weakened by the seven weeks in the dark. He got out yesterday or the day before. He was wearing shades. A wee noddy bow from me and a wee wave from him in acknowledgement. Odd that he recognises me. Auspicious beginnings. No drink, dope or anything else for another week! Hurrah!

9:12 p.m.
Rinpoche I didn't recognise was doing the Guru Rinpoche empowerment. I took it, but I'd taken it before. But the Domestic Bliss took it as well as the one nearly a fortnight ago. I wonder if she thinks she's a buddhist. Of course, I'm far too polite to ask.

Bumped into a guy who set up the lou reed deal for me at the start of the holidays, as you do, on the temple steps. He's going to be down here till next June. Too much neurological damage to meditate, I suppose. He is a fortunate creature to have this place and these people. Knows everyone of course. Unlike moi.

A large part of me wanted to spend the next week in bed, but here I am. This time no messing about. Fung off flatheids and here comes ra bliss!!!

Thursday, 30 July 2009

The Bliss!

12:35 a.m.
I've been shying away from the bliss. I saw the look in their faces a few days ago and I realised they thought I was going mad. I saw this same look once before, and I knew you should recognise it. We'd been doing the speed for longer than usual, and I looked at Poisonous and I knew then that things had gone too far. Time to stop.

I know I should always be in the tent the Domestic Bliss bought for moi. My hero is the boy who could float about. I've been shying away from the bliss because it is so powerful. It could blow you away.

Ra Bliss!

12:17 a.m.
I was getting so much of the bliss. I was staggering about .. . so filled and infatuated by the bliss. So much funging bliss!. I was so filled with the bliss ... I couldn't handle it anymore. I asked God for help. I said: Oh, Lordy, Lordy, just help moi with the bliss. And now tomorrow I'm getting taken to the Samye Ling by the Domestic Bliss who will stay for the night.

Oh, Lordy, Lordy, does moi get any merit for this occuring? No, I'm afraid not, Hotboy. I'm afraid not.

Tuesday, 28 July 2009

Tuesday Night






11:40 p.m.
Brought home three supermarket bags filled with onions from the allotment.

I've been wonderfully lazy over the last couple of days. Physically lazy. I had a sudden insight that people might think I was acting a bit weird since I was meditating most of the time. And acting a bit weird. Falling off into the bliss with the eyeballs rolling about and whatnot, just because ... well, there was more and more of the bliss and heat and did seem far more interesting to be there ... and smoking tons of soapbar .. so I decided to start being normal today and went to the allotment and ripped out weeds and harvested onions. The onions are back! Hurrah!

I think I get paid tomorrow. My bed is a wonderful place. The thought of sleeping in a tent right now .... dearie, dearie me!

Sunday, 26 July 2009

Half Way Into the Hols!

Sunday 9:33 p.m.
The second three weeks of my holiday starts tomorrow. It's a week since I came back from the Samye Ling and it seems an awful lot longer. Not that I have done much. When I had to find out that a deep dear friend had been handed the irreducible black spot, I tried a bit harder over the next couple of days. And I stayed in and mooched about, sometimes smoked dope, sometimes had a drink. It was quite like being on holiday.

Any one of us could have been handed that black spot. It occurred to me that even with all the meditations I'd been doing that my false sense of self was so still engrained that I would react to being given the black spot much the same as any other joe.

Today I wondering why I was bothering to meditate so much. If I was just going around being sober and straight all the time and acting like a nice person, then maybe I wouldn't have to meditate so much and I could go around with the happiness spontaneously beaming out.

Because the computery thing in my bedroom doesn't have any connectivity, I was clickying on the desktop icons whilst smoking a joint earlier on. So I was reading stuff I'd saved from the bloggy in July 2005. I sounded as if I was having an absolutely wonderful time at least sometimes during July 2005, and that's four years ago. In all that time I've always thought the meditations were getting better and better, and I still feel that though it can't be true.

Today I was thinking that why was I trying so hard (I could have been cycling in the rain!) when I would never reach the heights of this juju. (This is despair, Oh Lordy, Lordy, caused by the mind pollutions and addictions!)

In actual fact, this is the heights. This might be as good as it gets. I'm in the death zone alreadys! But they can't take the bliss away from me, Jack! When the mutterings of the mumbo jumbo have led to the dispersment of thoughts ... or if you've just sat up right and concentrated on the mumbo jumbo long enough ... you will get the bliss. This huge experience of bliss in your life. I've been getting the bliss since ages ago. What is all this trying crap?

The thoughtless zone. When I die, as I surely will, Lama Yeshe Losal is my guru ... and then I want to go to the thoughtless zone, where there are no things and thoughts do not arise. There may be a consciousness, but only of bliss and ecstasy beyond limitation. A very, very subtle awareness maybe. As long as there are no lying basturn thoughts, that's the main thing. It's when a lying basturn thought arises that you've lost it. We embrace our ignorance. We don't believe in any things. Especially thoughts. That'll be tenpercent off the top, please.

Friday, 24 July 2009

Drunken reflections on the juju!

11:45 p.m.
I have fallen away from the path since I left my dharma brothers and sisters, albeit silent ones; since I left the Samye Ling.


The woman is wearing her nipples. This has been happening for all the decades since I was a teenager. But her nipples are different from other peoples' nipples. They just are. Is this a statement about nipples? I'm there to talk to someone else about dying people, but the josephine, who is old enough to know better, goes and changes her clothes. There is only the fung three of us there. She changes into a costume which does not wear the nipples, but is causing herself to fall out of the top of her dress. So I'm not going to look at your tits .. I'm not going to look at your tits ... I'm not going to look at your tits.

What are they playing at, Jack? That is an interesting question, Hotboy.

The first person the Domestic Bliss and moi bumped into when we walked into the street last Sunday was a girl with a fantastic bosom, almost maybe falling out of her dress. I said to the Domesict Bliss: (I was just back from the Samye Ling) What the fung is that supposed to be saying to you? She said: It's the fashion.

This is an improvement in fashion. In fashion what they do is give you less stuff, less material, and then tell you that's the fashion. For the last couple of years they have been cutting the fabric on the bellies. So you get to see all these beer bellies walking down the road attached to quiet nice otherwise girls. Having their tits hanging out and having their beer bellies covered is an improvement, I suppose.


Even if you cannot do it properly ... it falls from the middle brain.. and falls and falls until you get to the navel chakra symbol. And then you let it fall into the next three chakras, and at the jewel tip chakra you can say: Where is it? What am I doing here? I don't believe in stuff ... like that. Then it goes completely kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! You cannot believe this. As it is occurring, you cannot believe it. It's a different kind of blissiness! You're supposed to be getting a touch of the clear light mind here.

I did not realise that the great juju of jujus would be so awash with sexuality. Even if it is just your own. The life force seems to be very yang. But, of course, it will be yin where you are, my darling, my lovely, and some day ... some wonderful day!

Saturday 10:00 p.m.
Well, I did have a lot to drink last night. I will write about vase breathing and what's new there later. Maybe

Home Alone!

Friday Morning 10:50 p.m.
I could have gone to Bellshill today, but the auld maw isn't expecting me and I'll just stay in and meditate instead. Then I might weed.

The flat will be empty from this evening till Sunday. Anything could happen, but it probably won't.

Wednesday, 22 July 2009

A New Day!

9:50 a.m.
I feel quite settled now, as if I'm on holiday. Since we are not guaranteed the time, I'm going to spend all day meditating. The weather looks like rain. I hope it buckets down so I can't do any weeding!

Tuesday, 21 July 2009

Medicine Buddha Sadhana 2

11:00 p.m.
... So the Medicine Buddha in front of you zaps coloured light beams into your chakra symbols and you ask it to purify your body (brain chakra), your speech and then your mind. Then you can zap yourself in the navel chakra just for good luck. Then you can get the Medicine Buddha above your head.

You can start a bit of a chat. You can ask the Medicine Buddha to help you to help everybody else. Then let this wonderful stream of blisslight come down and into first your brain chakra, then your throat, etc. This is pretty scrumptious! I then ask the Medicine Buddha (who seems to be me as well!) to cure me of my addictions. And I get the blisslight trick going on again. You are definitely at the party by this time.

You dissolve the Medicine Buddha above your head into yourself and reinforce your image of yourself as the Medicine Buddha. Then go into concentrating on the navel chakra and give it a few vase breaths ... because you deserve it.

Some time later you will become the heart symbol, dissolve that and be in the clear light mind, ground zero stuff again. It could be a meditation without an object, but I can't resist banging on with the mantras.

After a while, you imagine the mandala and be in there, usually sort of hovering above it, while the Medicine Buddha also appears in front of you and you offer the whole shebang up to him.

I think that's the generation stage. Then you get the completion stage which has so much indescribable pleasures attached to it. Sometimes I wonder if this is meditation at all. I got tons of stuff out of saying Sussquehanna to myself millions of time.

And what shall we do when old age and death come rolling in, Great King? What is there to do except mushrooms and cannybliss yogurt and dance the dance of death with the nicotine dragon, Hotboy. And remember that them that dies when they dies will be the lucky ones!!!

Bringing mushrooms into the path.


10:35 p.m.
I noticed some mushrooms on the way to the allotment and picked about fifty or so. The last time I took anything like that was about eighteen months ago at New Year when I took these mushrooms my friend had felt unable to resist picking, even just for old time's sake. I don't know many mushrooms were in the tissue paper I swallowed and neither did he. That's the way to do it!

I ate the fifty mushrooms about half an hour ago. I think once I saw my ego go floating by after I'd taken about twenty five, but I can't remember. After eating how many it was about eighteen months ago, I regained a bit of an interest in hallucinogenics.

I did not mention to the Domestic Bliss that I had gathered or gobbled these mushrooms because ... whatever happened to all those nice tolerant drug addled hippy chicks, eh?

When I picked the mushrooms, I thought of the guy who'd given me the mushrooms eighteen months before. Then tonight I heard that he's been given the black spot. Much nicer guy than moi. So I just took the mushrooms. Nothing much happening though. Of course, I had a cannybliss yogurt earlier on because the Pizzaman brought the tiniest bit of pizza and it shows that times are hard out there.

And we're not quaranteed the time, are we, Jack? I think not, Hotboy. I think not.

Medicine Buddha Sadhana

6:30 p.m.
Most of the this bloggy is worthless crap, but if you put vase breathing into google, my vase breathing posts come up first. Somebody must be boosting them somehow and I hope they are of some use. So I'll post this evening about my Medicine Buddha Sadhana.

This has been hacked together from various sources. I don't use the Medicine Buddha mantra (I don't know it either!), but use Om Mani Padme Hung. The symbols I use for the chakra points are my own as well since the ones I saw looked too complicated for someone like moi!

Obviously, you should have a guru for back-up or go and read Living With Kundalini by Gopi Krishna if you fancy just have a go at this kind of thing, particularly the vase breathing bits. However, I believe you don't need an empowerment to practise Medicine Buddha stuff, so here we go!

First of all, you die and arise as a light being, The Medicine Buddha.

And when I die, as I surely will, Lama Yeshe Losal is my guru. Mirage, smoke clouds, blue background with red fireflies, guttering candlelight, then white, then red, then black ....

You're on Ground Zero, ground luminosity, clear light mind, Dharmakaya. I'm well blissed by this stage and have been doing vase breathing probably. You can pause here for a bit and this will be like meditation without object. Very nice indeed!

Put in the three channels going from the right as red, blue and white. The red and white are supposed to curl up to the navel chakra symbol (a triangle with bits pointing upwards)which is at the bottom of the blue channel. If you can visualise this, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

You can go into the blue channel and become the white symbol at the top and work your way down the symbols (white, pointing down;red, pointing up; blue, pointing down and red, point up)

You can move from being the navel chakra symbol to seeing it in your navel and give it a few vase breaths. Because if you can get this far, you're definitely worth it!

Emanate as the Medicine Buddha. You're a lapis lazuli joe in a golden garment, holding a branch in your right hand which is on your knee. You're holding a begging bowl at your abdomen in your left hand.

I supplicate, prostrate and make offerings of body, speech and mind to the Medicine Buddha. Then the Medicine Buddha is supposed to appear in front of you. I guess you're two Medicine Buddhas at this point.

You might try to emanate the qualities of the Medicine Buddha about now. These are compassion and altruism, loving kindness, bliss and joy, heat and healing.

Someone has come in. C'est la vie!

Mare Samye Ling Photies



Sunday, 19 July 2009

Samye Ling Photies









Sunday 2:10 p.m.
Don't know why I always feel exhausted when I get back from the Samye Ling, but I do. I'm now going up to the allotment to see how many weeds have grown in my absence!

Samye Going Home Today Day

Sunday 9:14 a.m.
The Domestic Bliss took the 1000 Armed Chenrezig Initiation yesterday. Om Mani Padme Hung.

Have to go!

Saturday, 18 July 2009

Samye Day 11

9:33 a.m.
The Domestic Bliss will be here by lunchtime. So I'll be heading back to the fleshpots tomorrow. Sometimes I've had a few problems coming out of these retreats so this will be a good way to do it. I feel totally settled in this routine now.

I will have fantastic meditations today. So I might as well go and have them!!

Friday, 17 July 2009

Samye Day 10 Two!

1:30 p.m.
The meditations today got better and better again! The temple was chock a block this morning with folk sometimes jabbering and wanes wailing and whatnot, but it didn't really stop me just sitting there getting warm.

People were taking refuge with Dr Akong and I felt a bit emotional during the service.

But he's giving this wee talk before he asks folk to come on down and line up to get the hair cutting, etc., and before he's any way finished, this wee blond kid of about five or six who is in the row of cushions in front of me, which is quite near the back so I can zone out, sets off for the front. His dad starts trailing him, carrying the kata (white scarf), and the kid reaches the throne/big seat Dr Akong is sitting on just as he finishes the wee talk. First. Auspicious, or what? Some cats got it and some cats aint!

His dad used to be monk here. Shiva and I met him on Holy Isle about 1994/5.

After the break, I went into the tent to meditate since there was going to be a Medicine Buddha empowerment and I've already ... I wanted to see how it would be in the tent anyway. Brilliant. Warmth arising; radiance, bliss and rapture; better openings at every chakra. This is the bliss! This is the bliss! This is the bliss!!

They're doing a Green Tara empowerment this afternoon, so I might as well go for that, eh?

9:30 p.m.
What a wonderful day! The last meditation was so, so good! Today I didn't have a shower and I didn't go for a run; a double first. The Green Tara empowerment was brilliant and the meditations all day, especially the last one, were ... I know it can get better, but it's hard to see how. Tommorrow the Domestic Bliss will be here by lunchtime and that's really the end of that. On Sunday night it will be hello to the drunken bum again. Oh, no!

Samye Day 10

9:14 a.m.
Unremitting rain this morning kept me lying in the sleeping back till I thought it must be about eleven. 7:20 a.m.

I had a dream last night about going for a carry out. I went right across the country and got on a ferry and island where the off-licenses were still open, then I had a lot of trouble getting back on the ferry with the booze. Nice officials got me back on the ferry, but they took some of the bottles of whisky, etc. Of course, I don't drink whisky. Took me ages to get back and I was skint then. So I don't think it was a pro-booze dream!

The whole temple is getting used today and tomorrow for initiations. This makes meditating in there a wee bit difficult, but I will persevere. I'm now looking forward to seeing how I get on in the hut next week and in the lobby. I should notice changes. Last night the meditations in the temple were getting hot alright.

I had an inner heat experience on 6th April 2003. This was only a couple of months after I took refuge and I assumed I'd be drying off wet blankets in the bollock naked icefields in no time. Even with the ecstasies and whatnot, there has been not that much heat. What till I get the heat, eh? Just wait.

I think I now understand what Tsongkhapa says when he says you're going to hell when you get the heat and don't have the channels properly visualised. You'd fry your butt off, Jack. So you would.

I've left my mobile phone in the tent and miss it so much. I use it for the time and photies! Dearie me! Attachment, attachment, attachment! I'll have to get some attachments for it!

Thursday, 16 July 2009

Samye Day 9 Two

4:09 p.m.
A monky boy came and sat right beside me at lunch although I was wearing my headphones to listen to the Dhammapada. Dead sociable me. So I took them off to have a chat, but it turns out that he's from Tibet and doesn't have much English. But I asked him if he'd done a three year retreat. He said he'd done a four year one while he was still in Tibet. He asked if I'd done one and I burst out laughing.

I told him my name was Brian Wilson and wrote down the address of my castle in Portobello. He said he'd come and see me and I said he'd be very welcome as I had a nice hut for him out the back.

He had about a third as much as me on his plate for lunch. Even in this degenerat age, it is possible to be cool.

My lungs are in the best state they've been in for ages. It's all the running and vase breathing, Jack!

I've spotted the nun from the Monday night meditations. I don't really want to speak to folk. I really would rather not.

My meditations this morning were excellent, but I'm still not getting much heat. When you've been sitting beside some joe who's done four years in retreat ... well ... I'm away for a walk down the river before going back to the temple since it isn't chucking it down for once!

Samye Day 9

9:11 a.m.
I had a weird dream last night. I was lying in a hospital bed at the kind of disco party for folk from my jobbie. I asked how someone was.

This very nice woman, younger than I am, was given the black spot a couple of months ago. I've been dedicating meditations, etc., to her though I suspect this might not do her any good, but it might be doing me some. Anyway, last I heard she was on chemotherapy.

So I leans out of the hospital bed to ask this man about her. It turns out it's her husband, whom I've never seen. He says I won't have heard what with me being in the hospital, but she'd just passed away. I could see her son moving by looking grief stricken and I wakened up.

Four in the morning as well. So I sat up and did some juju for her just in case. Shit! Who'd want to be clairvoyant? You'd be better off getting it by email!

Tai Situ said having any control in the bardo would be like being given a pen and a piece of paper then being chucked out of a jet plane and being expected to write a four line poem before you hit the ground.

In the stage I'm at, I won't be any better off than you, Jack!

"Them that dies (when they dies) will be the lucky ones!" Long John Silver.

Weather crap. Meditations brilliant. Everything else same old, same old. But what a day I'm going to have!!!

Wednesday, 15 July 2009

Samye Day 8 Two

8:52 p.m.
I managed to get into a headstand today in the temple with feet together and legs straight. Been some time since I was able to do this; probably just before the vein in my leg exploded last summer. Straight when it does this ... going up with your feet together and legs straight. The feet just seem to sail up of their own volition. Kind of effortlessly when the day before it seemed out of the question.

I've done the run down to the kirk at Eskdalemuir six times out of the seven full days I've been here and today was the first day I got soaked. Didn't matter except I missed the start of the silent meditation at five and lay down in the tent instead.

Doing the yoga nidra in the tent was wonderful; so blissful. There was thunder and lightning outside. Most elemental. You could feel the reverberations from the thunder coming through the air. I was having such a good time just lying there that I wondered if I should try to sit in the tent more. But the temple is a bit special. There is a vibe.

I was getting a real reaction when I took the bliss awareness down to the jewel tip chakra today. Whao! Jesus! I'm not even getting any heat when I'm doing this. What a time these boys in the caves must be having !!! What a time!!

Samye Day 8.

10:10 a.m.
The Gatekeeper said there might not be any spaces to book a tent. What?!! Tons of folk are arriving this weekend for empowerments and whatnot, but there was a space left for little old moi! Hurrah!

Today will be just like yesterday. Except the meditations will be better, as usual! Hurrah!

Tuesday, 14 July 2009

Samye Day 7 Two

8:55 p.m.
Not long after I got here, I noticed with a little sadness that the old seat on the island before the stupa had disappeared. I was dedicated the a Mrs Millward, I think. I spent many, many hours meditating on that seat over the years. Gone ... like tears in the rain.

I felt happy today for a few moments while walking from the tent to the laundry, round the back of the temple. I recognised the feeling because the first time I felt it was when I first came down here to spend a week in the summer on my own. Probably early 90s. It's a kind of beaming sense of happiness. It just arises unattached to anything. It doesn't seem to be because of something. This is a very, very unusual feeling. I'm sure some people never feel it ever.

The hotboys, unlike some families, don't do headstones, or grave tending, or dedicated seats when one of us snuffs it. I'm fifty eight, so I should have been dead about six years ago. When I finally snuff it, I want my ashes thrown into the river that runs by here. If it's the summertime, I'd like them chucked into the water from the wee island that forms in the stream. Many, many happy meditations I've had on that wee island! Then if anyone wants to remember me, they can come down here and remember me because this is the only place I've ever felt truly happy. Like today.

Took seven days, no drink, no drugs, no flatheids. The Domestic Bliss will have to drive me out of here next Sunday. I feel really really settled now.

I've got nearly an hour left in the temple. Hurrah!

Samye Day 7 (Tuesday)

9:27 a.m.
If it's not ecstasy, it must be blinking close, Jack. I wish I could keep doing what I'm doing for an awful long time now, but I think I'll be back in samsara on Sunday. But I'll be back down here for the drupcho at the end of July if not before.

3:16 p.m.
You shouldn't be picky about what you're getting if you're getting such bliss, but I can't be anywhere near getting the first of the four blisses yet. Not big time. Initmations is what I must be getting. Of course, it's not going to go whack! and here we are, is it? Creepy uppy as usual.

This morning was just about right since I made it for some of the gong bashing before breakfast and then stayed in the temple until lunch with just a wee break for a coffee here. After about four hours meditating this morning, I started getting the heat. That's why I can't be near the first bliss yet. All this has been done without much heat. Some heat sometimes, but not much. At the end of the morning, there was heat. Some billowing bountifulness of heat from the belly up. It's supposed to be better in the evening so we'll see.

Brilliant time I'm having here! Totally settled in. Just now I'm waiting for the laundry to do itself in the big machine. This is practically the first thing I've had to do for myself for a week. Hurrah!

Sunday, 12 July 2009

Samye Day 5 Two

8:47 p.m.
There's an elongated gong bashing after tea on Sunday nights. I sat in a half lotus because ... well, relaxez vous.

Bliss and joy to all yous! I don't know why and I know I don't deserve any of it, but that was the best of the best. That's twice today!! The best twice in one day.

Generation stage is when you imagine yourself as a deity in a mandala. This is supposed to clear your mind of mundane conceptions so you can eventually see everyone as deities, etc. Not flatheids, but deities. So I was doing that .... God, why go on about this?

It's ra bliss, Jack!! It's ra bliss! You are supposed to collect the four blisses. You have your guru or the Medicine Buddha imagined over your head and let the juice come down. Brain chakra. Kaboom! You try to hold onto the symbol. Kaboom! Move it down to the other three. They're all opening.

It doesn't stop at the navel chakra. You go down to the one at the perineum. Then along to the one at the base of your penis (if you haven't got a penis, it's the base of what you've got!), then take it to the tip.

I'm a total beginner at this bit. I haven't been getting much sense of opening at the navel chakra until very recently.

When you can do this properly, you are supposed to train yourself to hold the "drops" and not ejaculate. You shouldn't be able to ejaculate eventually.

Then you bring it back up through the chakras to your brain. By the way, this is supposed to feel like thousand times more pleasurable than you can achieve any other way.

When you can do this, you can practise with a kamamudra, who should be able to do the same thing. This is a relationship between god and goddess surely!!!!

Anyway, if you are not fortunate enough to know such a josephine, it seems you can use your imagination. So no change there, Jack!

This isn't about the sex though that must be the mind blower of all mind blowers. It's to help you get to the illusory body stage. The inner heat stuff is just the foundation.

When I realised this evening that the Chenrezig thing was over, how surprised I was! Just flew past. I'd had so, so, so much bliss with these opening chakras and had the joe in the mandala quite good. Then I realised I hadn't been doing any vase breathing at all. Wow!

It is a total shame that I am the only person I know who is doing this! A real shame! On the other hand, what a fortunate, fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

When Gompopa went for training to Milarepa, he could already sit in samedi for days at a time. Milarepa told him it was like squeezing water out of sand. Get into the juju of jujus, son! I think I know what it meant when he handed him the skull full of alcohol to drink although he knew it would break Gompopa's vows to drink it. But you don't need a flesh and blood consort, which would make the Domestic Bliss unhappy. So that's never going to happen. But thank God I have a good imagination and the Australian Ladies Volleyball Squad!!!

Samye Day 5

10:36 a.m.
Torrential rain wakened me up last night. A real Samye downpour. It's a whole year since I was in the tent during one of those. The tent doesn't keep it out either, not all of it. Drip, drip. Cough, cough. The lung disease hadn't bothered me before, but it didn't like the damp. I was a bit damp and so was the sleeping bag this morning. What a downpour!

The sensei and reverend thinks I should stick it out here and he might be right. You don't have to cook or anything, and you don't have to speak to anyone, and there are no temptations. On the distaff side .... I don't want to tempt the lungs. It costs money I haven't got. (Not a problem really, that!) I can't run in the rain here. Too much hassle with wet stuff in the tent, etc. I'll have to get the juju together in my home base anyway. I'll have to stop the beer drinking when I get home anyway if I'm going to stop being a fat basturn. Can't lose weight with the food here. Impossible for me. My guru is my guru wherever I am. Also, there's a lot of building work going on and the noise is a wee bit distracting. I think I need a tougher regime and more solitude. There should be nobody in the flat all day, but me.Also, I start the day better at home. Meditate straight away. Might be different if I had a room and not a tent. But I'll see how it goes. At the moment, I'm going home on Wednesday.

The back temple is ideal, but you can't get into it at the weekend. This morning in the front temple was wonderful though. Am I collecting the four blisses? Just a wee bit maybe. You don't just suddenly collect them. It creeps up like everything else. My visualisations are still ropey, but getting much better. I've got an hour and three quarters before lunch. Hurrah!

3:41 p.m.
Just spent a couple of hours in the tent. This tent doesn't seem to have midgie problems. Tourists don't walk in and say: It's nice and quiet in here. There is still the building site, but the noise is intermittent. The wonderful Domestic Bliss bought me the tent so that it was big enough to sit up in. When I sit up in the tent and close my eyes, I get the bliss. When I lie down, I can get the bliss. I still might go home on Wednesday, but I didn't realise I could use the tent. The midgie problems made me stay away from the tent unless I couldn't help it before. Hmmm? As long as I don't get pneumonia!

Saturday, 11 July 2009

Samye Day 4 Two

8:10 p.m.
I'm having a much better time than I normally have at the Samye, and that's saying something, but it occurred to me that I'm having such a good time that I'd better go home on Wednesday instead of staying for another fortnight.

In the hut I wouldn't be having such a wonderful time. It would probably be raining. Every time I left the allotment, I'd have to encounter flatheids. If there are any flatheids around here, you don't have to speak to them.

Of course, the great thing about coming here is that it's set me on the straight and narrow. No beers and no drugs. Also, I've gotten back into running every day.

The time I made some kind of connection between breath and bliss in the vase breathing was done in the hut. You can go to the hut at nine in the morning and basically meditate for three hours. You can do three hours in the afternoon. You can do three hours in the evening. There is no gong bashing and no lovely river, and no wee islands to sit on. If it was so great to be out here, the lama wouldn't be sitting in the dark.

Also, if I went home on Wednesday and started behaving like an asshole, I could just come back. I'll need at least a week out at some point. Imagine being here for four weeks and then having to immediately mingle with the flatheided hell beings on Skye. Dearie me!

The main thing is that these inner heat meditations are working. The lama is my guru wherever I am. Have to have a good think about this, but I think I'll go home and head for the hut.

Right now I'm going to head for the temple. This session will really be something else! Whizzbangs and crackerjacks!

Samye Ling Day 4

9:21 a.m.
I'm not asleep in the tent! Hurrah!

The thoughts you get first thing in the morning might be the ones you don't want to get, especially if you are sleeping in a tent, even one big enough to sit up in. You have to move around and do stuff first thing. And your head and body are not quite right then and this is when you might find that your thought frame isn't right and unwelcome thoughts may appear. For instance, this morning I began to feel resentful about something and was casting the force of my resentment onto someone else. As in, it's all your fault; projecting the blame onto someone else

It takes two to tango, Jack! It certainly does, Hotboy!

So I'm not all alone after all! Little Jack the Spam Robot has appeared!

Anyway, Buddhism is all about taking responsiblity for your own happiness. It's not something out there that's funging you up. It's something inside your head. In fact, it having your head stuck up your backside! Every thought misconceived and lying basturns every one!

Being on this kind of retreat is a good way to take personal responsibility for your own happiness. So we're not doing resentments, are we, Jack? Certainly not, Hotboy! Certainly not!

At the end of this wonderful summer holiday (just finished week one of six!, I am going to have to go to Skye to a house full of drunken flatheids. This has been bothering me a bit ever since it was suggested. The dhammapada is very explicit on flatheids. Stay away from the too dumb to meditate, it says. But it's not all about moi! I am not a hermit, which is a bit of shame really. It's just when the festival starts as well. Dearie me! Of course, I'll have a wonderful time. But I mustn't think about the future either. Anxieties about the future ... or anything else ... are as bad as resentments about the past. There is no future of course. Eternal now.

I haven't spoken to anyone for four days and I'm having a wonderful time here. And the weather has been brilliant!! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!

The meditations just keep getting better and better!

12:20 p.m.
I've spent the time since I posted sitting on the wee island in the middle of the river. What a fantastic time I had!! I think these meditations are actually starting to work. Amazing astonishments! I cannot begin to describe how brilliant those few hours were. This is the life, Jack! This is the life!! And it can only get better. I'm sure this has everything to do with the lama being holed up in Purelands. Everything! Just can't express how brilliant that was. Thank god! Thank God! Thanks Gods!

Friday, 10 July 2009

Samye Day 3 Too!

9:00 p.m.
What a wonderful day I've had today! When the sun shines, and you've settled in, and the meditations are going well, there isn't a better place to be on this sweet earth!

You have to expect bits which aren't so good; when you're tired and at a loss, kind of between things. I don't expect I'll get any of that this time. This is partly because I'm not trying so hard what with going jogging and whatnot. Also, I have a portable CD player with me which the Domestic Bliss gave me years ago and I never used. I'm using it now to play CDs of the Dhammapada I borrowed off the auld maw. So everything is going just superbly!

While jogging today, I came across six geese, then a turkey. What? Then I saw the whole farmyard like something out of Walt Disney with the chickens, geese, ducks, turkeys and all wandering about and out of the gate into the road. A little further along I saw a weasel cross the road. That's the first time I've seen one in the wild since I was at primary school.

The meditations in the temple just before I got here were just brilliant. I'm going off to the tent now and will sit up for a while and see what happens.

Samye Day 3

10:30 a.m.
I'm succumbing to the Samye disease which is sleepybyitis. Yesterday, I crashed out in the tent from 9 till 11. Outside, and monk started mowing the grass with one of those noisy big machines. I thought it was coming from the building site. Vraaam, Vrrrrrooom passed your ear, but I slept anyway. When I got out and saw it was a monk on a big cutting machine, I was so good humoured I wanted to shout, You missed!

I having a coffee now having succumbed to the sleepybyitis again from nine till the back of ten. As long as you don't resist. Just go with the flow.

You want to be in best shape in the evening when the inner fire meditation work best. Last night everyone left the temple after Chenrezig prayers at 7:45 p.m. After ten minutes, the Venerable Big Indian appeared. I was expecting a band of trainee gong bashers to follow him, but he was on his own. He sat down where they sit and started chanting and kept this up for a good forty five minutes. Wonderful to have him there! Just wonderful! I'm a huge fan of the Venerable Big Indian. He's been here for over forty years and hasn't bothered to learn English. I'd love to be like him. With other folk around, I might have been a wee bit embarrassed with the vase breathing routine since it is a wee bit noisy, but no. I thought: He's here for me!

The inner fire meditations were terrific. I'm getting heat alright and the visualisations are somehow getting clearer. Expect nothing, of course.

I had some dreams this morning about being lost again. We'd moved to a bit of Leith Walk I didn't recognise. But it wasn't downtown Freetown! I think Albert might have been in it. No bloody help at all, of course, since he was lost as well.

The cafe will be open this evening since it's Friday night. I might blog again since I've spent the money on the time anyway. I've got two hours nearly in the back temple before lunch. Hurrah!

Thursday, 9 July 2009

Samye Day 2 Two

4:30 p.m.
So here's the perfect Samye day. Up at half five and be showered, etc., in time for the gong bashing at six. Breakfast at seven. Meditate from eight through to three in the afternoon with a break for the huge luncho! Then go for a run at three. I'm just back from jogging down to the kirk at Eskdalemuir. It says it's an hour and half either way. Did it in about 35 minutes which is alright for a fat old man. But it means you go passed Purelands where the lama is holed up. Imagining the juice coming down through your fontanella on the way back is a wee bit of a boost. There's another hour's meditation coming soon. Then soup. Then meditate till bedtime. Hurrah! The problem with banging the run in there is that it's usually pissing down here, but not today. What a fabulous time I'm going to have here! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Samye Day 2.

1:23 p.m.
My meditations are already much improved. Total crackerjack before lunch today.

Things might be a bit easier for me if I believed in rebirth. My position is that I don't believe in anything I don't know for certain, and since almost all thoughts are misconceived, relative, partial and almost always lying basturns ....

I'm re-reading Mullin's translations of the the Book of the Three Inspirations. In the introduction, he relates a chat he had at Kopan with the dharma brother, coincidentally of Thebten Yeshe who is responsible for the stuff in the Bliss of Inner fire. Mullin is a wee bit concerned that he's translating stuff that used to be secret, but Lama Zopa tells him it might benefit some people. Folk who have had no past connection with it won't be interested and if they are, they won't understand it.

My eyes were opened by reading the tantric stuff. I was born in Chilly Jockoland about the time the Chinese started invading Tibet.

And if there is rebirth, the evil bourgeois, sweetie eaters will all go to hell and then be reborn as bad smells in toilets, waiting for another trillion rebirths before they get a shot of being human beings again. Hurrah! Conscious rebirth would be something interesting though ... the Baby and the Buddha along with some other stuff has me almost convinced.

I stood on my head today and did two tai chi sets. I'm thinking of running down to Eskdalemuir and back, but we'll see....

I seem to be settling in really fast, which is the main thing, and it's not even raining!

Wednesday, 8 July 2009

Sanye Ling Day One

2:33 p.m.
I have to wait an hour at Lockerbie station and I always sit on the iron bench away at the side and almost always meditate. How the whole process has moved on!!

I felt very unanxious about putting the tent up and it sailed up very easily, and I never hit a stone with the pegs. That's a first.

I have a very slight cold, but nothing to worry about.

I don't know how long I'll be here for, but I've paid for a week.

This is Blissheid Central. The Gatekeeper to Nirvana told me that the lama is doing his dark retreat just up the road in Purelands and not on the Holy Isle like I had imagined.

I haven't done any proper retreats at all. No wonder I feel like this juju is other powered with a life of its own. Anyone who has followed this bloggy will realise that I'm not very good at resisting temptation. Far from it. But sitting in Lockerbie station I thought that I'm going to get this. I'm going to get the four blisses, the whole shebang. Maybe not this week, but sometime. Let the fireworks commence!

Tuesday, 7 July 2009

The Day before the Samye Ling!






Tuesday 7 p.m.
The weather forecast for today was rain, rain, rain, so I thought I'd take another day to chill out from the shenanigans of the weekend and go to the Samye Ling tomorrow. I can feel a wee infection starting in my lungs and hope that this won't be too much of a bother.

Hotboy, you can't sleep in a tent in the pouring rain (which it always is down there!) with a lung infection coming on! Yes, you can, Jack! Yes, you can! Let's hope when I wake up tomorrow, it's not too bad.

I was reading the bits of The Bliss of Inner fire that I needed to remind myself of ... the Blazing and Dripping bits, etc., because I'm not for once taking it down with me. And I came upon the bit that says why you should, and when you can, practise with a consort (It's on page 165 if you want to have a look at the google book version). Hmmmm? What an amazing time you could have if you'd practised hatha yoga with a partner and then came upon this juju to practise together! Even if you told this to a young flatheided couple ... unbelievably, they would still be too dumb to meditate!! I'm glad I'm getting away from these flatheids for a while. How can they be too dumb to meditate?

The photies were taken up the allotment this afternoon. The goosegogs at the moment are so succulent, but there's almost nothing tastes as good as a ripe strawberry taken from the ground.

I shouldn't waste time and money drinking coffee and blogging down at the Samye, but I probably will.

Spango Yogini! The way I did the crow into the headstand move was by going from a headstand into a three pointed headstand and then coming down in to the crow, up to the three pointed headstand, then back into the usual headstand. So it's kind of the other way around, but it's probably easier. If it pours down at the Samye, I'm hoping to get back into more of that stuff!

Sunday, 5 July 2009

Taking Lou into the Path!

Sunday 7:15 p.m.
You should go to Youtube and listen to Amphetamine Annie by Canned Heat while you're reading this. I put it on before the Wild West Roadshow arrived.

About ten of my deep dear friends, folk I've known for nearly forty years, were milling about in my kitchen on Friday night. What a wonderful time I was having! When the toing and froing left me in a gap, I closed my eyes and was in such zinging bliss. I opened my eyes when engaged once more by jabbering, and jabbered back. You could think how terrible it is that they do not get the bliss. But moi is getting the bliss. What's the point of being miserable just because they're all flatheids? It's not going to help them. It's not going to do anyone any good. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

A couple of days later, the dakini came down on a rainbow from the buddhafields, and viewing the drug paraphenalia, the pornographic books and the blown up sex dolls, said: It's empty. It does not exist in the manner of its appearance. Sublimate it. Move it upwards into even more of ra bliss. And gie's the rest of the Lou Reed! She was accompanied by RaBigGorgeousOne who was acting as a bodyguard. So all's well that ends well and no harm done. What a wonderful view I have at the moment.

Beaming with positivity, so I am! My meditations have become so much better since the lama went into the dark.

Thursday, 2 July 2009

More Drunken Reflections on the Path!

11:50 p.m.
Scene setting. I've had four cans of wifebeater. I went out and bought three bottles of beer. The first is Grolsch Premium Weizen Wheat Beer, a very tasty and expensive brew.

It's been amazingly hot for Chilly Jocklanders today.

I don't know what attracted me to meditating. One time I think I understood that everyone followed punishment and reward, in that no one does stuff to hurt themselves, not intentionally. They can't all be loonies these joes and josephines who sat in caves. There is deferred gratification. I did not think that all the saints in the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church could be mad. There has got to be a sweetie in it somewhere, as there must be in watching creekit, though that is a path I did not feel attracted to. So I do not know why I was attracted to meditating. Maybe finding such disappointment in the lack of anything in the catholic church helped. As Kalu Rinpoche said, it is not profound. In fact, Catholic theology is stupid.

You don't need much to meditate. I did not expect much. I wanted to suck it and see. I was very keen on the arrangement of words at the time and meditating was something you could do when you weren't doing that.

The pulsations, the red and white shocks up the spine and all of that stuff at the beginning did not freak me out because of the way I was brought up and became somebody. Everything was always going to work out alright. I was not scared of myself. Us hotboys aren't all that good at doing anxiety.

And all the way through whenever I have had cause to think that maybe this was going a bit squeegy, that maybe this was getting a bit much and not being normal ... the feelings that you might be going fall over with the strangeness of what was happening with the breathing and breath-holding ... all the way through I did not think that I wasn't up to this juju. I did not think that this was beyond me, that other cats could do this and I couldn't.

This was a confidence that was given to me by my family, by the loving caring and attention that was given to me by my female relatives. I was always boosted by them. They did not bequeath to me anxiety.

Then you start getting the bliss. Maybe sixteen years ago I started getting the bliss. The bliss is a big subject. How long is a piece of string? When you talk to flatheids about the bliss, they might respond by telling you about how much they like gardening, or playing with the computery things. Bliss is just a word to flatheids. Flatheids, unfortunately, do not get the bliss. It's just a word to a flatheid.

Today, I had to sit in the Assembly Hall on the Mound waiting to watch my daughter getting capped. This is boredom you can afford. Whilst waiting, I started in on the breathing. The envelope started filling with heat. Later, I'm standing outside. I really don't want to stand in the sun. Sensitivity. I don't want to stand in the sunshine. Heat beyond what it should be.

All the way down the line, what has happened is so far what it said in the book, The Bliss Of Inner Fire. I thought I might crash and burn because of physiological disturbance, but this is not what the problem is at the moment.

This is the jet plane. This is crash and burn. This is not the walking path, or the motoring path. This is the high risk juju.

The heat is sexual. Or it turns out to be sexual. Or, it becomes more sexual, and sensuous. I wasn't expecting the bliss and I wasn't expecting this sexual energy thing. I'm fifty eight years old. When I was an adolescent, I thought all this malarkey would stop when I was about thirty five. I have never welcomed it. Because I was brought up with the Virgin Mary, I was autistic about it.

It's life, Jim, but not as we would like it to be.

Recently, in the last week or so, I think I have understood what this juju and the heat is all about. When the boy says that the juice goes down to the navel and the secret place, then onto the secret secret or tip place; hold it there and bring it back up. Taking desire into the path is a very, very hard thing to do.

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

Knowing more, experiencing more than your usual flatheid, dispels a little bit of ignorance.

When you come back from the Samye Ling this summer, Hotboy, will you hump their brains out? No, I will not do this, Jack. I will not exploit folk with my little bits of charisma. I will be filled with compassion and alruism, loving kindness, bliss and joy, heat and healing ...

When Gompopa met Milarepa (later on he fainted when he heard that Milarepa had died), Milarepa offered him a skull full of alcohol. Gampopa had vowed never to drink alcohol, but since he was there for guidance, etc., thought he'd better drink it all in one shot. I do not know what that means ...

I'm so hot for you. I'm so hot for you. I'm so hot for you.

When I have become a tantric sex god, I may need a yogini who is just like me. I understand it now. You can't do unity without a yogini. Can the spango yogini stand on her head? Can you come down into a sitting position? I promise I'll go to the Samye Ling this summer and lose a stone. I'll be gorgeous, so I will. You'll look like heaven to me!

Friday 5:35 p.m.
Please don't take offense, especially if you are the Domestic Bliss or from Spango! It was the drink! I don't like editing the drunken bum stuff out since it might tell you something. What would it tell you, Hotboy? Well, Jack, it would tell you to get a breathalyser fitted to the computery thing.

I was sober and straight for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. On the beer Wednesday and Thursday. Tonight there will be no drinking since I'm being visited by my stimulating friends from the Wild West, who will have Eric from Eindhoven and/or Lou Reed and/or the Bolivian Marching Band with them. Don't know which. Hope it's Lou. Never was a huge fan of the Marching Band and I don't need my serotonin levels boosted right now. Yon Eric can be a bit of sex pest as well! Dearie me!

Wednesday, 1 July 2009

Towards the Island!

Wednesday 10:45 p.m.
I do not have to go back to the jobbie till the 17th of August. This is a long time away. I am truly fortunate despite, or maybe because, I do not have pots of money. But I have credit. Hurrah!

There is a little island that forms in the summer time just a little upstream from the main place. Waters tumble and the view upriver is wonderful sometimes. This is where I want to be. Sometimes there. Sometimes in the temple. When it's raining and there are tourists, sometimes in the back temple. Sometimes on the bench in the wee island in the middle of the pond looking onto the stupa. Sometimes it will be glorious to be there, just to be there. Satiation, contentment, and maybe a little sense of completion.

The flatheids have taken away my wonderful Thursday. I give away Friday and will see my chummies from the Wild West on Friday evening. On Saturday or Sunday I will pray to the dakini, and then chill towards the island. One day some years ago I managed to spend the whole day on that wee island and felt happy. Just a few stepping stones and then here comes the bliss! Here comes the bliss!

I shouldn't go to the cafe and spend time on the internet doing my blog. I should blog if something very interesting happens, but not as a routine.

What do you think, Jack? This is surely going to be the best of times, Hotboy! This is surely going to be the best of times.