Abstention

Sunday 10:35 p.m.
I haven't had any drinkies or smokies since last Sunday. I am no longer (so) crabbit.

Diggings Again!

Saturday 5:30 p.m.
One of the photies is what you see when you open your eyes in the hut these days, or this afternoon. The other is how much of it I dug today. I have never dug some much of it at one time before, and it only took me about an hour and a half. I take my hat off to anyone who makes their living from manual labour. Brutal, so it is.

I had a dream this morning. I was in a balloon of bliss, or there was a balloon of bliss. It popped, so there were no edges to the bliss.

Just been listening to Obama's eulogy to Ted Kennedy. Brilliant.

The Pizzaman should call within the hour. I'm still a wee bit crabbit from the struggle with the Nicotine Dragon, but there isn't a hope in hell of me smoking any of this pizza. And there's not a hope in hell of me drinking tonight either.

Apart from the sensei and reverend, I don't think any regular visitors to this bloggy meditate. As for the rest of yous, if you think the body has a mind, you're funged! If you think the mind has a body, you're still funged! Such is life and death for the flatheids. Sorry about that, but there it is! Allah Akbar!

Friday Night!

Friday 9:25 p.m.
I was going to have a quiz with the photie of the training mitts palms up, but I didn't think it was fair, so I took two to give yous a chance. The question is: What are they? I was willing to let them go for a hundred grand with cloning rights over the DNA included, but I've had to bin them tonight. I think I bought the training mitts circa 1983 for boxing training at a school I used to work at. What fantastic value! I got twenty six years use out of them! Beat that!


I was meditating with that view up the allotment this evening and came home with those apples.


I did a skipping and shadow boxing session (with fresh mitts!) this evening and that's the first such exercising since the schools went on holiday at the start of July. Happy days are here again!


I haven't had any alcohol or tobacco or bob hope or anything since Sunday. Amazed at how crabbit I've been. Before the holidays, when I'd been a bad boy, I might be a bit knocked off for two days, but five ...It's all down to going to Skye and the aftermath. Anyway, I don't have to leave town tomorrow and I have no events lined up with flatheids at all now.


"Experiences are preceded by mind ... and produced by mind." The first words of the Dhammapada heard at the auld maw's today. So I'd better get my mind right, Jack. It's okay if anyone wants to come and see me. They know where I live. But I'm not moving off my butt and neither shall I provoke any frolickings or cavortings.

Oh, what can we do, Great King, when old age and death come rolling in? Stick to the juju and perform virtuous deeds, Oh Hotboy! There's bugger all else you can do!

And, yes, the first photie is of the lobby. The kiddo returned triumphant after four years at college with great treasure in enough cardboard boxes to fill her large room completely and also the hall! She's so like her mother it's ridiculous!!

The Season Ends!

Thursday 3:30 p.m.
The photie with the produce was taken last week, the rest today.

This www.obooko.com site boy keeps sending me encouraging emails. He seemed to like xxxBugtown. He liked it. I liked it. The kids who read it liked it. Nobody else gave a ... Anyway, today is the day I start the re-write of Bomber, completely change the dynamic, add the humpings and land on the money! Hurrah

Thoughts

Thursday 11:30 p.m.

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

A deep dear friend asked me how could I possibly not believe in thoughts. Some thoughts are trustworthy. One plus one equals two is a trustworthy thought. I hate the basturn, or I love the basturn, or any thought with an emotional edge to it at all is not a trustworthy thought. I'm starting to come round to the conclusion that all emotions are afflictive.

Nothing exists in the manner of it's appearance, and this includes thoughts. They seem to be singular and independent of other thoughts. This is not true. This morning my meditations have been brilliant from the bliss side, but the thoughts, which are bound to sometimes intrude, have been tinged with crabbitness. More on the side of "I hate the basturn" rather than "I love the basturn" kind of thoughts. These thought have been conditioned by my ongoing struggle with the Nicotine Dragon.

Almost all thoughts are conditioned by your false sense of self.

Almost all thoughts are not worth thinking. If you have to believe and cling to any thoughts, obviously stick with the "I love the basturn" kind of thoughts and try to let the other ones go ... even if sometimes these are the only ones you are getting!

Roll on the formless zone where there are no lying basturn mental formations, no thoughts, no wireless connectivities, and no bloody computery things!!!

By noon I will be sitting in my hut. Hurrah!

Recovery!

Wednesday 9:50 p.m.
On reflection, going to Skye with the flatheids was as disastrous as I had anticipated. I think I'm just getting over it. My ability to concentrate over the last few days has been very poor, but I've had nothing to drink or smoke, and I haven't done anything bad to myself since Sunday. Purification and accumulation. Dearie, dearie me! Anyway, I managed to stand up for my right to juju and will not be partying out of town this coming Saturday after all, cold shoulders notwithstanding.

It would have been so, so depressing. I think just about the happiest I can remember being was on the evening I last came back from the Samye Ling. I was joyous, so I was, Jack! Blissed out and full of joy! It's been downhill all the way after that, but now I feel as if I'm slowly clawing my way back.

I haven't got the slightest desire to smoke tobacco (and I have no bob hope), but I can't remember having such a crabbit response to stimuli for a long time. God help those poor basturns trying to give up fags with a real habit, like a twenty a day one.

Tonight I did some hatha yoga in front of the telly; standing postures, a handstand, elbow balance and crab. Been such a long time since I've done these! Probably years. My standing postures were actually not bad which was a bit of a surprise, but not as big a surprise as managing the handstand.

My heart was running at 58 beats a minute in Bellshill train station last Friday, but I haven't felt this unfit for years and years.

Tomorrow I should be up bright and early. I'll meditate, clean up my room and start work on the re-write of xxxBomber. Someone asked if he could put my books on a free books site called www.obooko.com and I said yes. I sent an email to my agent last week asking if the McCoy book was dead in the water and got no response.

The train from Bellshill was held up in West Calder. The story was that a bridge jumper had killed himself further up the line, but it turned out that a fourteen year old somehow got stuck on the tracks. Go to heaven, son! Go to heaven!

Tomorrow will be the start of better days! No jobbie till Monday and I get paid tomorrow. Hurrah!

This time it's personal!

Monday
When one of your friends has been cremated in Bali and another has been handed the black spot, and these bits of news coming within a week or so of each other, then you might be forgiven for thinking something is trying to tell you something. Tempis fugit. Thinking of the preciousness of human life and all that is quite an impetus to practise the juju.

I do practise a lot anyway, but the last two weeks have been very bad for drinking and smoking. For a future hell-being all this stuff might be regarded as being among life's pleasures, but they definitely don't help you practise the juju! Quite the opposite, in fact. Bad boy!

So today is the first day of the new moi! For a few days the new moi may be a bit crabbit, but this is the price we have to pay for wanting and doing the wrong things. Grief, sorrow, lamentations ... delusions, disappointments and despair ... suffering in this life. Ideally, I would like not to see more flatheids than completely necessary between now and Christmas, but the basturns are incorrigible!

On Saturday evening Lama Yeshe was giving a public talk in Edinburgh, and was probably going to talk about his seven week darkness retreat, and I was so looking forward to it .... I had to go to a family affair instead. How depressing! How completely depressing!

I would be much happier if I didn't smoke or drink, didn't spend any money on bob hope, and started paying off my overdraft and credit card debts. It might take a short period of adjustment, but I would become a far happier joe.

I hate having events involving flatheids sitting on the horizon. I thought I had cleared them all away, and that I could look forward to no open graves for months and months now, but is seems I have been booked into going to another basturn party next weekend!!!

I should just tell the flatheids to fung off, Jack. No, you shouldn't, Hotboy, but you should stop doing the bad stuff i.e. anything that reduces the clarity of your mind. Dearie me. Dearie, dearie me!

R.I.P.

Wednesday 9:04 a.m.
So the day he arrived in West Australia he was offered five jobs and took the one in the goldmine because it seemed most exciting. He once exported tropical fish from Sri Lanka. He smuggled pink pearls. He knew how to make money. The last time I saw him, about two years ago now, he told me he'd taken his inheritance of 300,000 and now had four million. He helped poor people in Bangladesh. He let the guy with one leg stay in his garage in Perth, Australia. He lived there for a while with the beer fridge. After a party at his house, I walked into a pink dawn there looking for fags and I don't think I'll ever forget that. He really liked to party! Quite pleased in a way that he got the funeral pyre in Bali. That was quite a guy! Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!

Another One!

Wednesday 8:35 a.m.
He was cremated on a funeral pyre in Bali which I think he would have liked. Killed by cigarettes. That's the fourth friend of mine killed like that. I think I might give up tomorrow.

And what can we do, Great King, when old age and death come rolling in? Stick with the juju and perform virtuous acts. There's not much else you can do.

Vase Breathing Update

Tuesday
I think I started meditating when I was about thirty three, but I'm not dead sure. About then. Before that, I was a complete flatheid and I'm glad over twenty five years have passed since my head was in that woeful condition!


Anyway, for the first decade or so all I did was straightforward calming meditations. This involved repeating my mantra (Susquehanna)to myself and trying to focus on that sound to the exclusion of everything else. I taught myself to do that and had no idea what analytical meditations were. For a while, I wondered how these could be meditations at all since they involved "thinking" about such concepts as an individual self.


Calming meditations didn't seem to be making such a big difference to my non-meditation times, so I thought these analytical meditations might be worth trying since that's what they are supposed to help with eventually: afflictive emotions.


I first heard about vase breathing from The Bliss of Inner Fire, which I read about seven or eight years ago. I'd done some pranayamas before this, but not much.

I had an inner heat experience with a hot navel symbol (very vague symbol!) on April 6th, 2003, about four months after taking refuge with Lama Yeshe. But it wasn't till a year later that I found the connection between the after-effects of vase breathing and the bliss. There has to be some connection being made here, or re-inforced, between the air you breathe and the "envelope" the bliss seems to be occuring in.

The great yajrayana, the juju of jujus, involves visualisations of course, and this is a different kind of thing from calming or analytical meditations though it has to be said that if you can't develope the calm mind, you might be unable to do bugger all else!

Once you have envisioned yourself as a tantric sex god ... sorry, the Medicine Buddha ...you go on to the completion stage of the great juju and that seems to involve and awful lot of vase breathing.

These days it's only when I'm meditating with other folk that I don't do vase breathing as well as everything else.

At first, you might be resistant to it since it doesn't seem to be meditating at all. The after effects can create great disurbances which do not seem to be anything like what you're looking for from calming meditations. Fortunately, the disturbances seem to develope into more and more amazing feeling of bliss; great pulsings of bliss and joy and such like; and you might tend to stick with it due to the amazing wonderfulness of it and the fact that it seems to develope, or it seems to be developing you.

Of course, I've only found out stuff about vase breathing from practising it myself. I wish I could read a post by someone who's had tuition on this. Perhaps things with me have been working out at the pace they should be, but I suspect that moi would have been further forward if moi had hammered into the vase breathing more. But I might have been doing it as much as I could. Right now, I wish I'd done more of it.

I won't try to describe how wonderful the effects of vase breathing are. They are going to get a lot more wonderful anyway, that's for sure! I've been throwing in a few while writing this at the jobbie.

I wrote an email to my secret agent today and asked about the McCoy book and told him I was re-writing xxxBomber as of tomorrow. Being on holiday makes you realise what a bummer having gainful employment is! I'd really like to go back to my own planet now, please!

Oh yes! I think the navel symbol might be getting, or starting very slightly, to get hot. That's interesting. There's no navel chakra symbol there till your try rather ineffectually to put it there, and then it starts to get hot. Bizarre.

New Session!

Monday 3:07 p.m.
On the first day back, at the beginning of a new term, after six weeks off ....

I had a year off writing last year. It's been a year since the literary agent started trying to sell the McCoy book. I don't contact the agent and I only got to see some rejections about March. So I don't imagine that book will be sold.

Hotboy, how can you have had a literary agent for over two and a half years and still sell bugger all? Well, Jack, it's a bit of a surprise to me as well. Three books he's tried to sell. I should be getting the Dear John letter any day soon.

Still, getting an agent has encouraged me to take two years off writing out of the last three, but now that abject (financial) failure once more raises its ugly head ... I'm going to have to re-write xxxBomber. Whilst casually ruminating over the past six weeks, I've worked out, more or less, what to do with the plot and characters to vastly improve it. I knew I'd need to find the time to re-write it sometime when I last did a re-write about twenty years ago now. I changed the sex of one of the protagonists for the stage play, but didn't develope that (i.e. I didn't put in any humping!)when I re-wrote the novel.

Apart from that, I'd like to lose a stone in weight and stop drinking and smoking. Same old, same old ...

Saturday 6:30p.m.
Ate dead animals, smoked fags, got drunk every night ... I'm just back from Skye. No computery thing for a whole week! I think you could say a great time was had by all. Managed about two hours meditation a day. Dearie, dearie me!

The Wickerman

Friday 11:27 p.m.
I don't want to appear to be abnormal. I am the norm. I am the norm. Tomorrow we're going to Skye for a week to share a house with seven other people, three of whom we do not know. So tonight is really the end of my holidays, the end of doing just want I bloody well wanted. The Skye scenario is much like a mixture of my two bad dreams; the one where I'm away from home and can't find my way back; and the other one where I'm getting my space crowded out by nice flatheids. It's like being in a B movie.

However, I will have a wonderful time. How can I fail when I can stand on my head and take gigantic vase breaths with the noise blockers on in front of the telly of an evening. I'm taking the tent in case I need somewhere to meditate. And them that dies will be the lucky ones!

They're flatheids every one, of course. If your flatheid has only the being awake, being dead to the world or having dreams, I've been spending quite a lot of time in the additional bit the blissheids get. Quite a lot of time. Now that I have come back from the Samye, it seems that all that time spent meditating has produced fantastic results. So that's all that matters. All the rest is just a lot of old thoughts and we don't believe in thoughts in the Disbelieving Congregation. I suppose this blog will now shut down for a week. Or, if they turn out to be cannibals, a bit longer.

Allotment Today

4:25 p.m.
You try to guess what the photies are of though the colour doesn't come out right with this camera. Any captions for the third one, please?

Mare Shots!

Wednesday 4:10 p.m.
The first photie is of a stone box at the back of the temple. Intrigues me. People go in there for a long time to meditate. One of the photies is of some of the produce I brought back from the allotment last night. One is of the sky at dawn just after the mole has wakened up. The last one is of the river. I think I took it to show how high the water was. There is no wee island to meditate on, or at least, you can't get to it.

Lovely day here in Edinburgh. I was in the allotment meditating mainly from half ten till half three.

Tuesday 10:30 p.m.
Under the tent was a mole hatch. Then the superhighways for moley travel embedded in the thick grass clumps. The buddhas and the bodhisattvas got the mole to tell me to get to fung! I've been butted by a mole, Jack. Not a lot of people can say that, you know.

I've never felt so fabulous coming back from the Samye Ling! I lay in the bath. Bliss everywhere! I lay on the bed. What wonderful luxuriance! I couldn't believe the bliss. I checked to make sure I was still breathing. Yes, I was! Took a wee vase breath lying down and ... oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

As I was sitting at the edge of the allotment, I knew I was in a different mindscape. I was fantastic to be sitting up there and doing the vase breathing. A total knockout! Every aspect seems enhanced! How can I lose when every vase breath is a winner? I'm going to have a wonderful couple of days enjoying the allotment. What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Samye Last Morning!

9:31 a.m.
Whilst waiting for the rain to go off so I could pack my tent.

Feeling pretty knackered here. I got a nudge from that which wriggles under the tent just before I went to sleep last night and then the downpour wakened me up through the night.

Satiation, contentment, completion .... I feel very good about the time I've spent here during this holiday, about fifteen or sixteen days. If I wasn't going to Skye ... that's always been sitting waiting like a great brooding toad at the end of the six weeks. I don't want to be home on Friday and then spending all day in the car on Saturday.

I'd like to find my tao, Jack. What is your tao, Hotboy? I don't know, Jack. Maybe that's why I can't find it. I think it might be something to do with Right Effort. And what you really want. Like everyone else I'd like to be happy. This might mean being happy with yourself and what you are thinking and doing.

I've spent a lot of time not writing over the last few years so I could try really hard at this Medicine Buddha juju, and I have made considerable progress. Among all the benefits, a heightened sexuality has been evident at times and, I suppose, most folk might think that was a benefit as well.

Maybe I just need a bit of a rest! A couple of good nights' sleep, but I think I should be going more straightforward calming meditations and analytical meditations. I get oodles of bliss. I need more emptiness. I need more non-self.

I was speaking to a retired joe a few days ago. Mentioned that to me Buddhism was about non-self and emptiness. He has no idea what I was talking about. Hearing about my friend getting the black spot (never having had the bliss!), has made me realise what a fortunate, fortunate creature I am.

I'm fed up retreated. Forward, forward! All my plans are simple!

Bailing Out!

Monday 8:02 p.m.
I've decided to bail out and head for home. This morning at the drupchen was great really. For the two meditation sessions proceeding this I'd been slipping in and out of sleep. After the luncho collapso, I thought I'd make up on the snooze time in the tent, but the wriggly monster underneath wouldn't let me doze off! This ruined the afternoon session as I kept falling asleep again, and eventually ended up just wishing it was over. What with the lama not leading the sessions and the weather forecast for heavy rain over the next three ... bugger it!

Reading Tsongkhapa's Book of the Three Inspirations has been interesting over the years. Some parts, which I'd skimmed before because they were way beyond the stage I was at, seem much more relevant now. I'd just more or less ignored the stuff with any sexual references, and warnings about heightened sexual cravings, etc. This juju is heavy duty and you have to watch what you're doing.

Today I was noticing particularly the variations in outcomes. Some folk get more heat than bliss or ecstasy, etc. Some folk find some things easier than others. This isn't just a single route. Different folks for different strokes, I guess.

Over this holiday, and particularly since hearing that my friend had been given the irreducible black spot, I've decided to stop being so goal orientated, to stop trying to achieve stuff. Like melting the drops, blazing and dripping, or whatever. I'm just going to enjoy the meditations, which look like continuing to improve as time goes on as long as I keep doing them. I think this is partly why I'm bailing out of here when I've still got time paid for. I don't think I've ever left here earlier than I'd planned before, no matter how difficult it was.

I want to lie in my bed and do the allotment and get myself mentally prepared for going to Skye with the hell beings.

Once or twice recently when I've been speaking to flatheids, I've thanked my lucky stars that I learned to meditate. But I'm going to try and hammer it less and enjoy it more. I can surf the oceans of bliss for God's sake! What more can a body ask for? Apart from a decent night's sleep!

Samye Monday

9:15 a.m.
I wakened up far too early this morning and I keep falling asleep during the medtitations ... so far.

Something seemed to be eating the grass and dunting the side of the tent this morning very early on. Could it be the giant flesh eating rabbits? Whatever it was seemed to have got under the first flysheet and was definitely nudging the tent at my feet. What?

I went back to sleep then there was a wriggly feeling massaging the back of my legs. Like a ripple. I was lying on my back. The last time anything mysterious like that was happening to me was when I used to lie drunk in a hammock in Australia and the half feral cat used to rub against my back. So I tapped at the groundsheet part of the tent and hoped whatever it was would go away. I thought it might be a mole, sending a wave over the soil under the tent. Anyway, I was feeling this through the sleeping bag, the insulation sheet and the base of the tent.

I think something is coming to live under the tent, Jack. Don't worry, Hotboy, it'll only be an anaconda. They're harmless. So are pythons. It's the flesh eating mice you've got to worry about.

Has something like this happened to anyone out there before? Answers on a postcard, please.

12:25 p.m.
Special morning really. Tons and tons of bliss. Vast openings, but not much heat. Not really hammering the vase breathing though. Anyway, I feel a bit more settled than I did this morning.

Samye Third Day Night

9:19 p.m.
After the gong bashers left and the temple was all for moi, it was pure sweeties tonight, so it was. Despite being still lousy at the visualisations of the channels, symbols and all, I really am getting tons of bliss from these meditations.

This was after thinking today that I might get home early; wondering if I wasn't committing too much of myself and my time to this juju, etc.

None of this is entirely easy of course. You have to get fed fab meals and share a space with some spiritual giants, some of whom are playing weird ethnic music for you and doing some great chanting. Murder so it is! I can't wait till I get to the pub in Skye next week.

I'll be sitting in the corner with my eyes rolling about in my head, in a full lotus of course, while Brian Wilson and Landfill Jim hand out the fliers to the local gurls. HUMP A LIVING SAINT. PURELY FOR RELIGIOUS REASONS OF COURSE. PLEASE BRING YOUR OWN GONG.

I think I'm getting over tired again, Jack. Time to head off for the sleeping bag for a luxurious night's kip. I must be off my head!

Samye Third Day

9:31 a.m.
Last night in the temple was wonderful. It's great when the gong bashers leave and the place gets darkened and there's usually no one else there but moi. What a fabulously reaffirming meditation I had! This morning I wakened up in a glow! Hurrah!

2:31 p.m.
Excellent morning here! Stopped meditating at ten to twelve and went into the back temple to do some headstands and tai chi. This dakini came in and asked if I minded her doing some yoga. Go ahead! Hmmmm? Then the luncho collapso and a half hour snooze in the tent.

I found these bits in the Book of the Three Inspirations over luncho.
1) Speaking of Marpa, the book says: " ... he learned the methods of inducing the four blisses through both the inner practise of inner heat and the outer practise of kamamudra yoga."
My assumption had been that you had to have induced the four blissed before you got the consort(s).
2) "When one trains well in this technique (i.e. getting the winds into the central channel), the strength of the experience has power to control the loss of the bodhimind substance (i.e. the sexual drops). Then, based on this power, one can rely on a kamamudra as a conducive condition to arouse the four blisses. On this foundation, innate ecstasy is aroused."

What if your teeth are shot to hell, and you're an old fat drunken basturn unable to find a kamamudra with short sightedness, Hotboy? Well, Jack, I think then we may be taking winking into the path.

This is a weird religion, so it is!

Samye Saturday Night!

8:00 p.m.
I'm even more at odds with myself for being here than I was the last time I came down. I guess I was enjoying lolling about in Edinburgh, getting addicted once again to tobacco and sampling the home brewed beer. With the Domestic Bliss and her friend being here till today ... well, that was unsettling. I meant I was doing something other than meditating or reading about meditating, etc. Far too many conversations. We had one at lunchtime today with someone else .... going on and on. To me when I'm down here the last thing I was is a lot of frivolous conversation.

Then the Domestic Bliss drove away and I wanted to go with her. I couldn't even be bothered listening to the Dhammapada. The drupchen was not being led by the abbot which was a disappointment I must say.

At the chenrezig prayers this evening, a huge space for bliss opened up and that's been the best thing so far. Too many people, too much noise. I hope they all bugger off tomorrow or Monday. I might bugger off myself at this rate!!

Because the computery thing in my bedroom has no connectivity, I read through a few pages of old books last week. Did like The Real McCoy, but not so much RaBlissBook. Looked at the first chapter of Bomber. I'm going to re-write that. It needs tons of work, but it'll be faster than going on with the Traffic Warden book.

I need to spend less time meditating to write again, change priorities. I'll need to cut down on my drinking and stop funging around with tobacco. Oh well, back off to the temple for moi!

Samye First Day

Saturday 9:15 p.m.
Unremitting rain on the tent kept me in the sleeping bag till half eight. Getting started in the rain is a problem with this camping lark. Nothing quite like a hot reviving shower and a change of clothes! The Domestic Bliss will be going today and then it's just all about meditating and being on retreat. Dearie me! I don't think the first session of the drupchen will start for half an hour. Hmmm? Another cup of coffee, please!

3:26 p.m.
The Domestic Bliss has gone. She met a friend down here who is gone as well. I might be a goner soon, so I'll have to make the best of this time. Yes, I will! So here comes more gong bashing. Only disappointment is that the abbot isn't doing it this year! I'm such a fan!