Full Circle!

Monday
The buses have started running down Princes Street again now that they've got a tramline down. Hurrah! I took the photies of the skyline from beside the bus stop this morning just before eight.

I've just sent my new novel off to the secret agent as an email. I started off blogging on February 2005 as a way of keeping track of my attempt to find a literary agent for a book which I hadn't actually finished at the time. That was four years and ten months ago. After a year and ten months, and about 350 emails later, I did find an agent, a man of great taste and perspicacity, just as I finished the book.

He really tried hard, but couldn't sell it. Then he tried with a kidsbook and sent it to at least one publisher that I know of, Puffin. You can't connect with them at all unless you have an agent. No dice again. Then last September he started trying to sell the McCoy book.

I haven't heard from his office since March. They did try hard with that book though, trying to hustle it at the Franfort and London book fairs. But the last three emails I sent to his office, including two last week about the new book, have not been acknowledged.

Is someone trying to tell us something, Jack? Well, Hotboy, if they don't acknowledge the email which has the new book attached, I think you might be back to square one. This would be somewhat ironic because the new book is in a recognisable genre, has proper chapters and isn't about folk living in caves! I'm never going to love it the way I loved the McCoy book, but it is passable.

I could start another blog!! Trying to keep track of trying to find a literary agent!

And over the time since I started blogging my meditations has just got more and more wonderful. The too dumb to meditate are still too dumb to meditate, but that's not my fault, Jack. Certainly not!

9:55 p.m.
Got this email from the secret agent tonight.

Hotboy - it sounds fantastic.
I shall read this week - might be a great book to kick off the new year with
X

James Bond

Off Putting!

Sunday 9:43 p.m.
There was a joe who might have been coming to meditate with me on Thursdays. I sent him the following as an email, but it seems to have put him off. Dearie me!

Dear Joe,

Been thinking about you coming over to meditate on Thursdays. What a good idea! I read this book once about a Britisher who was lecturing on the sutras when they'd been published in English, and doing it on beer and speed. Then he went to Thailand supported by interested parties and spoke to the Theravadin abbot. He said he knew about the sutras okay, but wanted to do the meditations. So the abbot let him stay in a bamboo box in stilts and set this monk to look after him. After a couple of days, the monk told this boy that he wasn't to leave the box, and that if he left the box, the abbot wanted him to go back to England. THis is the hardest thing. So he could leave the box to go to the loo and that was that. He was tasked to put four symbols into his body. I think this took him six months. After that, he appeared on teevee and was the first English Theravadin monk anyone could remember.

I've been doing this meditation stuff for a long while really and there is no point in bullshitting you about it.It's not easy especially if you haven't practised it before. If you want to meditate on Thursdays with me, you're going to have to give up three hours of your time to do sitting meditations. You will have to go through everything I told you about when we first talked about this i.e. calming meditations, analytical meditations and Medicine Buddha sadhana, which are visualisations. If you just fancy fannying around with twenty minute meditations, it would be better for me if you didn't pick Thursdays since that is my meditation day.

You can come to see me and smoke dope and drink if you like, but if you want to meditate, you've got to meditate. I do not practise all the various kinds of meditaions there are, but I do know what I told you about.

It would be very good for me if you came down to meditate with me since I would try harder. It would be very difficult for you. However, it is supposed to be easier if you're doing it with someone who has had experience and should be faster for you than for me since it took my decades to get even this far. It's supposed to be like lighting candles off candles.

But it's not easy. Learning to stand on your head and sticking your toe up your nose is far easier, but it is not yoga; it is gymnastics for old people. The Higher Yoga Tantra is the deep, deep juju. It's perfect for smart basturns like me and you. And there is nothing better you could do. But there is a commitment involved. If you can't at least be quiet for three hours at a stretch, don't pick Thursdays. Hope to see you on Thursday then. I could write out a programme and you could check on the Medicine Buddha Sadhana on my blog, which I might have wrote when I was more sober than I am right now! All the best.Hotboy

Mare Trees!

Saturday 5:53 p.m.
Our friend with the MS gets back home after a fortnight's respite. I go to see her on Thursday and Saturday afternoon these days when she's in the hospital.And I go to see the auld maw and my Auntie Kathy on Friday afternoon. That's a lot of time spent on public transport and a lot of exposure to disability. But it's over for a while now and get almost all of tomorrow to myself. Hurrah!

It Creepith Uppith!

Saturday 2:11 a.m.
It started when I read The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. The boy mentioned how you could do something for dead people.

This is what you miss if you don't have a religion. You can't do anything for yourself when folk die. The boy in the book said you could remember dead people and kind of dedicate meditations to them ... or just remember them somehow. This is comforting. There is no reason why this should be comforting for the dead people. Anyway, I started picturing all the dead people I knew close to the start of my meditations. I'm kind of embarrassed about this because it's almost like praying for someone.

The Tibetan Buddhism I do, which might be my own kind of Tibetan Buddhism, is like Catholicism cubed i.e. tripled.

So I'm getting these faces up, of all my dead relatives and friends, a growing number of basturns by the way and not all of them very friendly!

Once I'm talking to this joe I know who's dying and he's thinking about going to Switzerland to top himself. Says I, that might not matter if your body has a mind, but it might matter if your mind has a body. Then the flatheids, my deep dear friends, said I had to go and talk to him about this. This is quite embarrassing since what the fung do I know? I don't believe in believing in things. I believe in not believing in things.

After reading the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (which was big help to moi, but not something I could entirely recommend), I did start going through the increasing list of dead flatheids I knew.

Then I started trying to dedicate the merit of meditations to folk who were dead for the 49 days it said you might spend in the bardo between death and rebirth. I did this for relatives though I wasn't sure if this was a good thing really. But it was good for me since I helped me to get over their deaths.

Then I read about Ion's old man dying and said I'd do the 49 day thing for him because it is very difficult for atheists and folk without any good way of dealing with stuff like that(which you do get from religious rituals!) and I thought I'd offer since there wasn't anything else I could offer. Also, I had no one to dedicate merit to. Even if there no merit to dedicate, as part of the mind game, it's not got to be all about moi!

Then there was Peter Bollocks, whom I had a picture to think on, and the kid who was stillborn. Getting my head round that one was really hard. That's got tragedy mixed in as well.

Now my deep dear friend who has been handed the black spot says he'd like to come round and meditate on Thursdays. After all.

All these dedications and whatnot have been extremely good for me. I don't know if they've made any difference to the folk I've been dedicating these meditations to, but the process of doing it is a very useful ploy in the mind game. It really is.

The story goes that to gain a human existence you have as much chance as there would be if a turtle rose from the ocean floor every hundred years and somehow managed to surface with it's head arising through a floating ring.

I want to be able to demonstrate raising inner heat to this joe and I can't do that yet. But I'd try harder if he came down to meditate, so him coming down here would be much better for me than for him. He's a flatheid and has never meditated.

The preciousness of human existence is one of them four foundations I believe. To help make you want to practise.

Do we have to go to the charnel grounds, Jack? No, Hotboy, the charnel grounds are all around you! We've all got the black spot. Tempis fugit. Dearie, dearie me!

Can you reiterate to the spam robots what you actually believe in then, Hotboy? Jack, I don't know anything, so how can I believe in anything?

Non Self, Skandas, and Thoughts

Thursday 8:43 p.m.
In the dhammapada, the boy goes through the skandas, which are body,senses, perceptions, mental formations (including volitional impulses) and consciousnesses, the "heaps" of which we are composed. When you get to the mental formations i.e. thoughts, you might repeat these phrases: they are not mine; I do not own them; they are not my self.

These lying basturn thoughts!

You are supposed to take responsibility for your thoughts and how you think them.

The main differentiation between folk is surely what they're thinking, their thoughts.

In the Disbelieving Congregation, of course, we don't believe in thoughts.

Nothing exists in the manner of its appearance, including thoughts.

But we have to have them and think them just like every other bugger.

There must be amazing numbers of causes and conditions to support just one thought. Most thoughts aren't worth thinking. Until we perfect our minds (and that might take some time!), we're going to have to put up with thoughts which are disagreeable and unpleasant. I do not like having angry or anxious thoughts and I've been focusing my imperfect mind and developing mental formations surrounding stuff recently that is not a help at all. Anxious or angry thoughts can arise due to tiredness, at least as one of the things conditioning them. Everybody gets tired. Almost everybody has crap frames for thoughts to develope in at some time in the day.

The photies of the trees were taken on the way to get my bus pass. The photies of Kirk Brae, which I have sometimes cycled up, were taken from the top of the bus.

When I went on the bus, I put my bus pass on the wee monitoring thing and the info about the operating dates flashed up. I thought I saw a 9. Disconcerting thoughts arose about the validity of the pass for a month if it said the 9th of December. On the way back, I saw the 9 flash up again.

I'm trying to meditate on top of the bus, but my peace of mind was disturbed by thoughts concerning the invalidity of the bus pass. I counted the dates. It was a fortnight till the 9th of December. I'd paid with my cash card for a month. I was going to have to go back to the Ridacard shop and get this sorted out. Longer on the bus. I'd thrown away the receipts. I'd have to hit a cash line first and get a mini-statement to show that the basturns had taken £45 off me for a fortnight of bus travel instead of giving me a month on the pass. Don't get annoyed. Keep cool. Can I speak to your supervisor, please? I checked the bus pass on the wee monitoring thing the driver has before I got off to complain. It said 23/12/09. Bugger all wrong with the bus pass after all!

Stupid, lying basturn thoughts full of anger and anxiety.

On the bright side someone sent me a link to an article about this joe testing some monks for gamma waves and neuro-plasticity. It said they were experts having done between 10,000 and 50,000 hours meditating. If you do the sums, you can do 10,000 hours by doing four hours a day for eight years. It would take you at least that long to learn anything well, like how to play a guitar. 10,000 hours is really a minimum. 50,000 hours can be accomplished by doing two hours for forty years. Since I've been meditating for twenty four years, I must have done well over 10,000 and I'm still a stumblebum. Bunch of beginners really. My guru would have put in up to 1,176 hours during his seven weeks in the dark over the summer. Stuff like that plus maybe twelve years of solitary retreats and whatnot ... well, why don't they stick the plugs onto somebody like that? Probably because they (the juju masters!)can't be bothered, especially after yon Benson bloke wanted to stick rectal thermometers up the the last lot.

Of course, most folk don't meditate at all!! The evolutionary tails. But I won't say anything about flatheids tonight. No, I won't!

Robert Sneddon!

Thursday 00:20 a.m.
Like all the best jannies, he'd been in the SAS. He had fantastic flat eyes. Tommy Lee Jones should have played him in the movie, but I do not think anyone could have acted eyes like yon. I heard he died last week after being retired for about two years. I was so happy to hear yesterday that he did not die from smoking. A virulent smoker. He said when his sister said he shouldn't smoke in her house, he wasn't going back there again. Neither would he fly in a plane when they banned it there. Was on steroids for his lungs before he retired from the jobbie. Killed by cancer of everything below the waist. But what a guy!

Two stories. He says his best friend has been shootied in the head and is dying in his arms. All his pal said was tough. A man of few words. Very poignant

Some supposedly hard case was making abusive remarks about the Virgin Mary during an event in the school one evening. Just round the corner, he led the joe and then picked up the baseball bat and whacked him on the thigh. As the polis arrived and found the boy lying there, Robert said he fell off the roof. I was a fortunate fellow to have met such a guy! Every time I spoke to him, I enjoyed it. A real human being, unlike the drove in, where do they come from, teaching basturns. What a guy! Hotboy

Red Letter Day!

Tuesday
Since the only decent reason for the existence of this blog is to tell the spam robots about the bliss, I try to mark red letter days. And this, although it has not been a great day in some respects, is a red letter day for the bliss!! Or rather, the heat. Or the warmth.

Maybe because my visualisations are so poor ... it's an almost all over warmth we're talking about here, Jack. You close your eyes and succumb to the bliss and the warmth is there almost immediately as well. Toasty. Like a porridge advert where the kid glows in the frosty morning.

I emailed the secret agent on Sunday telling him about the fabulous new book being almost ready. Nothing back so far, so I emailed his assistant today. Be hugely ironic if I've actually written a book the boy could sell, but he'd grown worn out by the three books he couldn't sell!

Would it be better to get books published and become filthy rich, Hotboy, than to get the bliss? Don't make me laugh, Jack! Some things are better than fame and fortune. At the end of the day what it comes down to is this: Can you, or can you not, do the bliss? Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!!

Mossend Bellshill Long Ago!

Monday
The auld maw was due to go to a birthday party on Saturday. It was a friend of hers 90th birthday party. The woman is called Jane McCann. My mother thinks she might be related to Jane McCann, but isn't sure.

My grandfather came to Scotland in 1906 from Rosharkin in Northern Ireland. Some time later a Cassie McCann came over to Scotland from the same place and stayed with my grandfather at first. Jane McCann was Cassie's daughter. The auld maw said these old Irish people would tell you nothing, but she thinks Cassie might have been related in some way to my grandfather ... a sister, a cousin, who knows?

Jane McCann, who was having the birthday party, married Jimmy Dempsey who was the godfather of the Labour Party in Lanarkshire, and a very much respected man, up until I was in my twenties. Bellshill chapel was stowed out at his funeral.

The third time I got arrested, the auld maw phoned up Jimmy and he said she should send me round. He listened to what I had to say and organised for a lawyer to look after me at the court the next Monday morning. People used to go to people when they needed help. That's what politics used to be about in communities like Bellshill. I don't know if it's still like that.

The auld maw is very Labour Party and was really pleased when they won the by-election in Glasgow recently. She said Jimmy Dempsey was a commie at first, but you couldn't get elected as a commie in Bellshill because the catholic church told folk not to vote for them. My maw mentioned someone called Barney McCourt who was a commie and also a much respected figure in Mossend/Bellshill. She said Barney would have been in the Houses of Parliament if he'd been in the Labour Party. She said Barney and his wife were barred out of the chapel for being communists.

My grandfather was illiterate when he came from Ireland. I don't know how literate he ever became. A lot of the miners in Mossend would have been illiterate in those days. A lot of them came over from Poland and Lithuania and I don't suppose they got much education there. People used to go to Barney McCourt if they needed any paper work done. The auld maw said the insurance men were good for this as well.

The auld maw was disappointed that there was no one singing the Red Flag when Labour won in 1997.

When I gave her a copy of the first book I had published, she looked it over very carefully and went slowly through the first pages. She didn't say anything about the dedication, which was to her. She said: Your grandfaither was illiterate when he came to this country.

And the folk who kept them down are all in hell now, Jack! So they are!

The book part 2

Sunday 4 p.m.
I've just finished work on the book!!! I'm so happy I could burst into song! I just don't get these wonderful feelings doing any other kind of work. Hurrah!! I've sent an email to the secret agent. If I can get him to read it and try to punt it, this will be the fourth book of mine he's tried to sell. This time I've got to land on the money! Even if I don't ... well, if I got any money, I'd just spend it anyway.

The old, toothless one and I were out jogging for an hour and a quarter today. We went along the side of the Forth estuary for a while, through Newhaven and around some new slums they're developing around there. Beautiful, beautiful day for it. That's the longest I've been out jogging for many a year.

Sober and straight last night, I was up meditating at seven this morning and managed to meditate for about two and a half hours today. And it's now getting dark. Perfect timing! Here comes the bliss! Here comes the bliss!

The Book!

Saturday 10:35 p.m.
I've just finished the draft of my book!! Of course, I'll have to get it printed out and read it and re-write wee bits of it here and there, but it will definitely be finished very soon indeed. Hurrah!

Today the weather was awful. It's quite a long bus run to Liberton Hospital, but I was sitting in the front seat of the top deck with my eyes closed, taking sometimes a wee vase breath, and doing the bliss. It's wonderful to have access to the bliss at times like this. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

I meditated in the lobby for an hour or so before coming in here to do the writings and what can I say, Jack? It has moved on inexorably once more. So much bliss and warmth. I'm off to bed now sober and straight and tomorrow will be a wonderful day. A wonderful day. It's great to be a blissheid, so it is! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Things to remember

Thursday 22:56 p.m.
1) You are 15 billion years old at your next birthday
2) You are not who or what you think you are.
3) It's not happening to you the way you think it's happening to you.
4) If it's down to your personal karma, you are doing brilliantly because you have some kind of face and you can still walk about and so on.
5) Even if your face is a billowing mess of purple goo and you can't walk about, that's no reason to not count your blessings. You can still read crap like this. You can still think. Thinking is everything. It's up to you what you think and how you think it.
6) Grief, sorrow and lamentations ... delusions, disappointments and despair... suffering in this life is not what your life has been about. Your life has been a triumphant procession leading towards a constant state of bliss and joy. This may have to be fully developed once the Alien Creatures from Outer Space let you get back to your own planet of course.
7) Absolutely no one you know has been as fortunate as you.
8) You have been born at the best time ever in the history of the human race. No having to go to war, no conscription, no rushing into the machine guns, bugger all like that.
9) The self-clinging basturns are all in hell already, but you're not.
10) You are on the path!!!! There is nothing as wonderful in this life as being on the path.

I was reading about moslems today. Apart from Mohammed being the last revelation from God, which is obviously total crap, I think I'd like to become moslem. The five pillars of Islam are just up my street. Jihad isn't one of them, by the way. There is also the bit about killing everybody who isn't a moslem when the days of fasting are over ....but since I am already a buddhist (which is the best since it is logical!), and a Christian and a Jainist and a Sikh, I think I'd like to be a moslem as well. None of this Christ is god shite. No trinity either. It's got a lot going for it. Also, giving alms.

Do you have to believe in anything to be a moslem, Hotboy? Certainly not, Jack! Once you've got Christ away from the stupid Christian basturns, of course, you don't have to believe anything to be your kind of moslem. Giving in to god is a bit like humility surely. I need a bit more of that. So does everyone else. God is great!

The Bliss

Thursday 11:22 p.m.
The bliss was interrupted by the postman just there.

Tell the spam robots about the bliss, Hotboy. Well, there's no point in telling the flatheids about it, Jack, since it will never be more than a word to them.

Ringu Tulku said it was easy to open the channels, but you had to do things in the right order since you may not be able to close them again. Hmmm?

There's the usual, copious amounts of bliss you get from the meditations dependant on the various factors, largely it seems from how long you've been meditating and how well, and what your lifestyle is like, etc.

This morning - and I can't really say how long this has been going on for, but it's not long - it starts to open. So you've got your eyes closed and you're getting a lot of bliss alright when something occurs and it just seems to open out. Now you are really talking bliss!!! This is the bliss! This is the bliss! Put a vase breath in there and ... and the doorbell rings!

A few years ago when I was down at the Samye Ling, I was trying to put in the symbols and whatnot when everything seemed to just open up and the whiteness of the bliss just blew any chance of getting any colour in there right out the window. It's that kind of thing that seems to be occurring more often now. Usually, I can get it if I meditate for about three hours in the morning, say. It was there in half an hour today.

Milarepa didn't become enlightened on his own or even for himself. He took a lot of people with him. Shakymuni caused several folk to become enlightened during his first sermon. Obviously, what is happening to me is due to my association with the Samye Ling and the two buddha brothers, particularly my root guru, Lama Yeshe. On a simple level, this is obviously true since that's where I could go to do my wee retreats and whatnot. It's happening on another level as well, one which is way beyond my understanding. Anyway, it took a leap when Lama Yeshe went into the seven weeks in the dark retreat last summer.

I don't suppose I'll ever understand what's going on really. The tims say that only God has full knowledge. The buddhists might tell you that the buddha was omniscient. What do I know? It's only for joes like moi to go back into the lobby, stand on my head for a bit, and get back into the bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!!

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow!

Wednesday 23:15 p.m.
I took the photies of the trees on the way to the hut this afternoon. The one that looks like a fir tree is a plastic thing for sending out wave thingies to mobile phones. The kiddo and I decided to blow it up when it first appeared, but now I have a mobile phone for the photies, I am totally compromised.

In between the meditation sessions, I take a lot of spankings for being a bad, bad boy. When I'm in the meditation sessions, there is something developing which I cannot take credit for. I don't even know what it is that is happening. There is some kind of process going on. I mean, I have to do the sitting down and trying to focus the booze/drugs/jerked off mind, but it's like you're observing something which seems out of your control somehow. It is like grace. I am not saying that it is something I have done, or that I am responsible for. There are joes and josephines out there who are not getting this stuff and I don't know why.

Moi, in the Disbelieving Congregation, is certainly not going to affirm or deny anything. I don't know why martial artists don't get the bliss, and I don't know why all these folk who've done all the praying and grovelling and supplicating do not get the bliss. I just don't know.

Maybe St Augie said that some cats got zapped by God and some cats didn't. I wasn't anything to do with you. This is completely stupid and irrational.

I believe in karma, but only as a cause and effect thing in this life since it is observable somehow. Like, if you stop eating so much, you get skinny. I cannot believe in karma over lifetimes because I do not know about previous lifetimes. Believing in things would be great, but it is stupid.

Not believing in anything and not understanding anything is okay. We are surrounded by things (which we don't believe in!) which have labels and functions. All we need is to get the motivations right. Get your mind right and try to be happy. Don't do this miserable Original Sin crap and get into the bliss. A middle way. Find a middle way. Having erections is okay. Fantasies might be alright. Picking on folk and banging their brains out might not be okay for them. But motivation is everything surely.

Experience is proceeded by mind, is led by mind, is produced by mind.

So you have to get your mind right first of all. This is certainly not an easy thing to do. Get your mind right and you would certainly be much happier.

No jobbie till Monday. I have to see our friend with the MS Thursday and Saturday for the next two weeks. This is a privilege. I'm lucky to know her. Allah Akbar!

St Augie, Original Sin and the Nazi Papa

Wednesday
Been googling stuff about limbo, Original Sin and whatnot. Please don't believe anything you read in this blog. Take everything with a pinch of salt. Getting rid of Limbo didn't mean that the Nazi Papa was confining Plato, Abraham, etc., to hell since they came before Christ and the possibility of salvation after all. The tims seem to have given it a bit of a "don't know" and hoped God would sort out the conundrum in his own way. Not what I expected. I'm going to have to start giving the tims a break on this one.

St Augie wasn't such a nutter about original sin and predestination either. Said it was still up to us and was merely an example of God's full knowledge. John Calvin is still a nutter though. Having a set number of predetermined folk going to heavena and all. So the prods are still getting it in the neck from this blog!!

Thank God I don't believe in anything!!!

Insubstantiality

Wednesday
There was another great Horizon programme on last night about measurement, sort of, which supported the idea that it's just a load of old photons, Jack!

It was going on about quantam mechanics again. Apparently, when a photon hits a plant cell, the conversion of light energy into chemical energy works at 98%. You might have expected about 50% except the photon is in more than one place at once in this cell. What? So if it wasn't for particles being able to be in numerous places at the same time, we'd all be starving to death.

In the Medicine Buddha Sadhana juju we are supposed to imagine ourselves being the Medicine Buddha and also facing the Medicine Buddha at the same time. Is this a correspondence? Maybe not, but interesting anyway.

This woman also said that if we take out the space between particles, you could reduce the whole of the human race to the size of a sugar cube. I suppose it would be a pretty heavy sugar cube with all the fat basturns going around, but shows how insubstantial everything really is.

The Medicine Buddha arises from death as a light being without much substance at all.

Interstingly enough, if you're trying to realise emptiness, you're supposed to be reducing the concreteness of the world, or the way the world seems. I think it's supposed to seem pretty insubstantial. We're hardly anything other than space, it seems.

But it doesn't look like that, Hotboy. With your head stuck up your backside, what do you expect it to look like, Jack?

Tuesday

Tuesday
I remembered a most unusual dream this morning. I wasn't lost and trying to get back home, which are the dreams I usually remember. I was sitting up in bed, the way I sometimes do to meditate first thing, and was advising David Cameron, the leader of the Tories, about what he should do to stay in power for the next twenty years.

Nobody thinks he's going to lose the election due for next year. I told him I might even maybe vote for him. What a preposterous idea!! I've got as much chance of voting for the Party Protecting the Rights of Cricket Lovers!! Be interesting when David Cameron and his toff friends start running the country of course. I expect Scotland will be, more or less, completely self governing within five years. Either that, or it'll be worse than Thatcher. Dearie, dearie me!

I'm not addicted to anything at the moment. I don't want to smoke or drink, and I have no money to speak of. Oh, happy days! All I have to do is steer clear of flatheids and everything will be wonderful from here on in. God preserve us from the flatheids. The meditations today were brilliant!! I've only got ten or so pages to do now of the re-write. So it'll be finished soon. Hurrah!!

Wintertime

Monday
I poured the last of the home brew bottles down the sink last night. Lead us not into temptation ... so I'm skint and since I don't get paid for ten days, I could be sober and straight for ages and ages (for moi!) Hurrah!

I wakened up today feeling joyful and blissful. It's great when that happens, so it is. I read once that deep sleep, the black totally unconscious stuff, was really full of bliss. Of course, once you cross over to wakefulness, you don't remember the bliss. Interesting idea though I don't know how you could verify that one!

The bed is lovely and snuggly and warm in the wintertime. Here's some other good things about this time of year in Chilly Jockoland.
1) Because the pipes are on during the winter, you get warm towels in the bathroom. Hurrah!
2) You have more opportunities to meditate by candlelight, staring at the flame, when it's darker faster and for longer. There's something very pleasant about staring at candlelight.
3) Though it seems completely ridiculous to say so, the inner heat meditations seem to work better in the dark. Last night there really was a lot of heat coming into my abdomen while I was fixed on the candlelight in the lobby. It wasn't there during the afternoon meditations.
4) Hardly anyone goes up to the allotments during the wintertime and certainly not when it gets dark. And it will be dark tonight at half four.
5) Fires look great in the wintertime. You need the dark and cold for fires to really come into their own up the allotments.

I spoke to a catholic nun today. She asked me how I was. I said I was really happy. She said no one ever says that.

I've only got forty pages of this re-write to get through. Could be finished it easily by next week. Hurrah!

The photie is of the view to the right of where I am just now.

To be Happy!

Sunday 10:00 p.m.
Sometimes I have felt the spontaneous smiling face appear. Not recently. The spontaneous smiling face has always arisen in the times, too few, when I did not drink or consume anything other than a cannybliss yogurt.

This last while has not been a good time for moi. Maybe we are talking about this year. The Beer Monster arising and dancing the dance of death with the Nicotine Dragon, and the alternating between these two, means that the spontaneous smiling face has been replaced by the crabbit basturn more often than not.

However, I must say that I do love smoking dope. Joints. When I am gorging myself on cannabis resin, I am a very happy joe. It really suits me. But there is no middle way with this, it seems. Not just now. I will die of horribleness if I get back into nicotine because my lungs are too old. My old man died from lack of breath and this is not an easy way to go.

If I had more money, I could make better choices. If I was drinking alcohol, I could drink better alcohol, and have less nasty repercussions. I probably wouldn't drink that much if I had the money to keep a constant supply of dope.

Purification and accumulation.

I don't like saying no to people. Unfortunately, all the folk I know are complete flatheids. And all of them smoke. Only about twenty five percent of the population smoke now, I think, and I know all of them!

Even as I stumblebum around and have these deep problems with the non-meditaional times, the meditations continue ... even though my concentration gets funged up by my awful behaviour ... to increase and increase and increase.

What do you want, Hotboy? I want serenity, Jack. I want completion, satiation, and contentment. I don't want to want anything. Allah Akbar!

Fortunately, as I realised when reading the bit of the re-write yesterday, I am a fabulously brilliant writer. Not here, Jack, but I am. I haven't cared about that really because it has come quite easily. Trying to become a buddha is not fung easy!! Now, I can see why the basturns in the BBC wouldn't speak to me after I walked off the park. Because some cats got it and some cats aint! So this book I'm re-writing is going to land on the money. Just at the time when it won't stick my head any further up my bum. I'm going to be cool. It will not feed my ego.

I'd like to thank all the supporting deities for getting me here, especially the old, toothless one and the Domestic Bliss. Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!

Into Temptation!

Sunday 2:43 p.m.
Every night, since facing down the Nicotine Dragon on Wednesday, I've been on the juice. Last night I was inveigled out by Poisonous and this was a big mistake. Crabbbit then and even worse this morning when I had to jog with the old, toothless one. Beautiful day for it though. So I never got in the first meditation of the day till twenty past one. Dearie me!

And it was so completely wonderful. I knew that's what I should have been attending to last night. New vistas seem to be opening again and again and again. I cannot imagine how gross life would be without this. You just sit down and it takes care of everything.

The other positive thing is the writing. I read thirty pages from page 100 yesterday, the part I'd been working on, and thought it was brilliant. That doesn;t happen all that often, but I was really blown away by it.

Been a gorgeous day today. I'm away to the hut!

Pets!

Saturday 1:20 a.m.
The dog in the dream I had was fab. First of all, it was large and black and scary, then it was,in closer approximation, after it gave me a wee nip, able to speak in English although it was a Dutch dog.

The FOX 1, or something like that, gene switches on a few other things and you get language. I think this is something to do with this dream. I had watched this on Horizon then saw it in the Times the next day.

The cat couldn't speak at all. But it could rise in the air thirty feet and then it could change into an ... well, it was going yippee up there ... when it started to come down, it careers towards the ground and then fluffed up and landed perfectly, a demonstration of how to do it. As you would if you were a cat.

The Domestic Bliss has always wanted a pet, but I have always said she ... anyway, tonight after the dream ... I'd like to have a cat, and a doggie and a parrot ... having an animal has got to be a bit selfless. Pack animals. I can't go abroad anymore since I do not have any money. I'll get a parrot then. Or a gullah bird. Something completely incomprehensible who loves me. Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight!

St Augie!

Friday 9:40 p.m.
The photies were taken up the allotment on Wednesday afternoon. I started out with this mobile phone camera thingy taking that photie of the bare trees around February, I think. Anyway, bare again. For some reason the yellow on the marigold came out. Usually doesn't.

Interesting programme through the week about the History of Christianity on BBC Four, the free digital channel. The joe was going on about St Augustine. There's a school named after him in this city, so he's big with the tims.

St Augie invented Original Sin. This means that you are funged from the word go. No chance. Corrupt through your humanity per se, or through sexuality. The catholics have always had a problem with their naughty bits. St Paul, for instance, said it was okay to get married if you couldn't stand the torture. Anyway, to get out of the problems with Original Sin, which we got from Adam and Eve, you needed to be saved by God. God might save you and he might not.

Predestination, the boy said. This pissed me off. I thought only the stupid calvinists had that. Anyway, I have read a bit of the Confessions by St Augie, but now I'm going to have to read that and the City of God, so I can disparage him even more.

St Augie was obviously a flatheid. Who wants to hear anything about theology from some joe who is walking around with his head up his backside be he ever so prominent? I'm glad I can refute all this Original Sin crap. If you get rid of all the stupid lying thoughts from your mind, what you get down to eventually is ra bliss. Someday you might get down as far as the ecstasy without boundaries. I'm sure there are bits after that which I haven't reached yet, but so far I can affirm that we are not intrinsically bad or evil, but are totally wonderful and fantastic.

I've got more time for St Thomas Aquinas. He obviously had the big, big brain and he tried to think the big, big thoughts about God and such. He wrote a great many writings (which I haven't read!)about the proofs of God and whatnot. Then one fine day up at the altar in Notre Dame Cathedral, he had some kind of revelation or realisation. After that, he couldn't be bothered about the writings anymore. He said they were crap. Actually, he said they were "straw", which I think might be the polite, medieval froggy way of saying they were crap. He died soon after. What a guy! I take my hat off to such a joe as that!

The guy who poisoned Milarepa was a scholar. Milarepa wasn't. I don't think there would me much point in hassling my root guru (if I ever spoke to him!) about the sutras. You don't have to know much to sit. You should know what emptiness means maybe. That might help. Otherwise, the practise doesn't have to be at all intellectual.

I walked passed a joe yesterday on George Street who had no recognisable face. There were eyes and purple balloonings and no features at all really. We instinctively withdraw from weirdness like that. It's a way to get away from disease. I had a problem when I was a catholic with the concept of a beneficent deity. Dearie, dearie me! But it's okay from moi, Jack! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Before Bellshill Dreaming

Friday 9:56 a.m.
The last post made some kind of sense last night!

I remembered a dream I had this morning. I was lost again and trying to make my way back through sometimes slightly difficult terrain. But it wasn't downtown Freetown and I got help from a lot of folk along the way. I think I was in Holland. This might be because I haven't been smoking for a couple of days. I saw a cat that could fly and I met a dog which had a good command of English. Actually, quite a nice dream!

This Day!

Friday 00:28 a.m.
If you don't have the winter, you don't appreciate this. In warm places, you just maybe lie under a sheet. Then you waken up and get up. I have done this. There have also been times when you just lie in bed all morning and relapse into funging. I remember this. This is being young. Last night, I had three bottles of home brew. There was no company. Then the company arrived and there was some talking. But in the morning, this morning, and you don't get this really if you do not have the winter, I lay in bed on my own in a bed piled up with a furry sheet underneath, and the two downies ... and I stayed there and stayed there and did not have to get up. Then I stayed there some more. I was a truly fortunate creature then, so I was. News from the North. It's Scottish, or Scandinavian, or someplace cold like that. I mixed this with the bliss, which unfortunately is beyond the ken of your usual flatheid. What a shame! Allah Akbar!

Black Holes and Singularities!

Wednesday 5:55 p.m.
The cannabis programme they did was a disgrace, but three of the best programmes on the telly I've ever seen were Horizon programmes. They did black holes and singularities last week.

Fourteen billion odd years ago, the Big Bang started everything in this universe. Life and death come from the Big Bang. The Big Bang came somehow from a singularity.

A singularity has no centre or circumference. Since there was no space or time for it to be in before the Big Bang. In Buddhism mind, or Mind, has no centre or circumference either. I think with Mind though there is some kind of awareness implied.

Experience is proceeded by mind. The Dhammapada.


There is a singularity in the middle of every black hole. There is a black hole at the middle of every galaxy. In our galaxy, our sun is a million times the size of Earth, but the black hole at the middle of our galaxy, which isn't a big one, is four million times the weight of our sun. Black holes and singularities have been crucial to how our galaxies have been formed.

Folk used to worship the sun, which makes sense since it supports life. Also, you couldn't look directly at the sun. You can't see black holes of course.

They can do the sums for the big things using Einstein and they can do sums for the wee tottie things using quantum mechanics, but nothing seems to work right when it comes to black holes and singularities. This seems to be partly due to the gravity in black holes. Quantum mechanical sums can't handle gravity, it seems.

In singularities there seems to be infinite density and infinite gravity. This is what the sums pan out to. In the real world there is no such thing as infinity. In singularities our understanding of nature completely breaks down. It is beyond our mathematics so far. The black hole problem means that we don't really understand anything. I enjoy stuff like that since I believe in ignorance above all else.

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

The Buddha didn't seem to have much problems with infinity.

This samsara has no discernible beginning and no discernible end. The Dhammapada.

Escaped!

Wednesday 12:50 p.m.
That's me off till Monday! Hurrah! Apart from running up the hills with the old, toothless one and seeing the auld maw on Friday, I have no engagements. No flatheids to the left of me! No flatheids to the right of me! No flatheids! Hurrah!

Bliss again!

Monday 9:00 p.m.
Hotboy, since there is no one else except you and me reading this stuff, why don't you just have a wee go at telling the spam robots about the bliss? Okay, Jack, I will tell you about the bliss I've just had before getting to the computery thing.

Tired eyed off the couch and too late to go to meditate with the nun, I sat down in the lobby. You close your eyes, take refuge, then ...

Bliss is a compounded thing. The more you get of it, sometimes the more compounded it seems. It has components.

Sometimes over the years it has seemed as if you were sitting in the middle of a light sword from Star Wars. That's actually not a bad analogy. You can sometimes be very whitied out and the bliss seems to be flat and thin, but still bloody wonderful.

Tonight it was straight into the light sword stuff, but these days it seems a lot thicker somehow, with more depth to it. More potential for heat as well.

There are thoughts arising during this bliss state. The more thoughtless, the more profound the bliss perhaps, but the bliss is like a backdrop somehow, except it's not in the back! You are totally immersed in the bliss.

If I was a bit better at meditating, I should probably just leave it there. Just be in the bliss. Of course, the stuff you might do after this initial exposure to the bliss creates more bliss, and helps bring out other fascinating components. I was just about to do the chakras and whatnot when the door opened and Domestic Bliss was in the lobby.

I find it very frustrating that no one else I know gets this, at least nobody I know in Chilly Jockoland. What a different world it would be if everyone got the bliss!! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Monday, Monday!

Monday
Safer shores approach! Tonight I will run out of bob hope and can start tackling the Nicotine Dragon again. Also, I have almost reached the limit to my overdraft for this month and this does give moi a little protection from the temptations of cavorting with the flatheids.

The meditations continue to improve and amaze despite all the bad behaviour. I've regretted not being able to fully describe the bliss and such to yous flatheids, but at the end of the day I've decided that it doesn't really matter. If I could describe the after-effects particulary of vase breathing, it wouldn't make any difference. I can totally see the hinayana point of view. Flatheids are flatheids. They're too dumb to meditate and too dumb even to know they're flatheids. I didn't start meditating because of promises of bliss.

Though I haven't managed to convince one single flatheid to start meditating in the four years or so I've been writing these blogs, I have managed to totally convince myself, and that's really what matters. These vajrayana meditations are the most wonderful thing on this sweet earth! When the chakras start opening from the bottom up and you get to the mid-brain chakra ... well, we're definitely not in Kansas anymore! One of these days every cell in my body will be bursting with bliss. One of these days every breath will bring bliss with it.

The viewing figures on Statcounter have been falling away over the last couple of weeks. To cease blogging I need them down to nearly zilch, or for a couple of the folk who come here regulary to die. (Not you, Jack!)

Epistle to the Dakini

Friday 6 p.m.
The dakini emanated at the Silver Gate of the Botties yesterday and later we went off to get pissed. Mea culpa. I've decided to make the dakini my first convert to the Disbelieving Congregation. So I've just sent her this email. The dakini doesn't read this blog anymore, so I'll post any similar, haranguing emails in future.


Dear Dakini!
I've been thinking a lot today about you saying that I have not made any converts yet to the Disbelieving Congregation, of which I am certainly the sole representative and only member. In order to rectify this, I've decided to convert you since you are the only one who ever lets me talk about phenomenology.


The key to all this lies in your lungs. You are the only person I know whose lungs sound worse than mine. I've had three friends dying of lung diseases who have had better sounding lungs than that!

As you know, in the Disbelieving Congregation you don't have to give anything up and as I have succumbed once again to nicotine addiction, I am in the perfect position to offer advice.

It's not the cough that carries you off; it's the coffin they carry you off in!

It's good to give up coughing! But it is also good to be doing something to counteract the phlegm that rattles around, probably not doing you any good at all.

Here's how you give up coughing. Say susquehanna to yourself for two minutes. (Only two minutes!) Then tell yourself resolutely: I will stop coughing three times as a positive affirmation. Then take three huge breaths, one after the other, holding your breath for a bit when your lungs are full, and making sure you don't do that so long that you cannot attempt to completely empty your lungs. Squeeze the wheeze at the end.

Of course, I do not think you will empty your lungs, but will start coughing your guts up half way down. This is very good and will start to move the phlegm.

Then you can have a fag! It'll taste much better!

Just do it for your health. If you do it in front of others in the buddhafield, it might help put them off fags!!

If you started doing this every day, you would surely take your first steps on the road to heaven on this earth. If you do not start something like this, by the time you get to my age (if you live that long!), what will you face: a miserable, unhealthy old age characterised by grief, sorrow, lamentations ... delusions, disappointments and despair ... suffering in this life!! If you don't feel like doing this for yourself, you could try thinking about all the unhappy basturns you hang out with! Meditation should make you 2% more cheerful with every year. This is a huge amount! This will be a help to everyone you encounter. And you'll be able to call folk flatheids!

Just remember this is nothing to do with religion! It's self help. Flatheids are too stupid to even realise they are flatheids. Smart people should play the mind game because the mind game is the only game in town!

That'll be ten percent off the top! All the best! Hotboy

Thank God It's Wednesday!

Wednesday 11:08 p.m.
The whatever it is, which fills the sheath with bliss and warmth and the wonderful pushing and stretching, is coursing through my upper shoulders and neck area as I write this.

The old, toothless one and I are really starting to nail this run. I became such an old fat basturn over the summer. You think you'll never get it back. This is it. You've lost it. You're coughing and spluttering, lugging yourself around. Painful psychologically. Then, by tonight, I felt as if I was flying in comparison. There's nothing like running. You never get that kind of breathing when you are cycling. Tonight on the hills I got way down passed the wheeze! It was great, so it was!

Then at ten I settled down in the living room in front of the telly with the Domestic Bliss. I've got the headphones on and my eyes closed. Maid In Manhatten is the movie that's on. So much bliss!

Unfortunately, once more I dance the dance of death with the Nicotine Dragon. I guess I'll have to set my mind on giving up smoking the bob, getting back to the cannybliss yogurts, or just giving up in the New Year and trying to clear off my debts.

I have a full appointments diary until Sunday. On Saturday night, a Beach Boys evening is on down at Brian Wilson's castle in Porty with moi and FungI Dave in attendance. I may have to go to hospital on Sunday.

The Bus Bliss

Tuesday.
"The visions of the forms of the Deities which appear in meditation are merely signs attending the perseverance in meditation. They have no intrinsic worth or value in themselves." Milarepa.

My Auntie Kathy says you'll always have trouble with your teeth until you get them all pulled out. My dentist had a heart attack a couple of weeks ago and this coincided with one of my fillings going mental. I got most of it fixed yesterday by a locum. The real pain is when you have to pay, which we do now in Chilly Jockoland because the New Labour basturns aren't socialists.

As soon as the boy zoomed the seat back, I was doing the bliss and trying to visualise the Medicine Buddha. In the presence of the locum, the dental assistant seemed a bit frisky. She patted my arm and said I was her wee pal. A very nice looking girl indeed! If they'd just put up a sign saying she'd suck the teeth right out of your mouth, business would boom!

The last time I went meditating on a Monday night with the nun was about June. So it was interesting to go last night and see how the space behind the eyes had developed.... there's a lot of this kundalini stuff filling out the sheath these days. And you might be meditating away there good style when it all seems to open up somehow into even more bliss and light. I wonder if this is the "channels" opening, or the "winds" entering the central channel. This has been going on since the summer anyway. A real delight when this happens.

9:45 p.m.
Today in the bus to work I didn't sit in my usual style. Normally, I put my knees up on the seat in front and curl onto my bag. But today I felt very blissed after the morning meditation and sat up like a normal joe. What amazing bliss! That's the best it's ever been on the bus. Such bus bliss! Whatever next!

FungI Dave

Sunday 2:30 p.m.
FungI Dave, the joe with the unfortunate diagnosis, has been coming to see me about once a week. This is very good. He's about the only one of my friends who isn't a complete basturn. His health is still okay, but he does not seem to be too interested in the meditations, and I don't blame him. However, we do have a good laugh, smoking dope, drinking, and on Friday he brought down some magic mushrooms.

The last time I got a dose was down at FungI Dave's one Hogmanay. He handed me some wrapped in a bit of kitchen roll. If you squeezed it in your hand, it would between the size of a golf ball and tennis ball. I'm not very good at keeping things for later, so I just ate whatever it was. No idea how many there were.

Dave told me on Friday night that he just hoped I wasn't going to die. My head went down on the kitchen table. He said there was a picture of George Bush on the kitchen wall. (Must have been a cartoon!) He said he knew I'd lost it when I took off my shoes one after the other and threw them at the picture. I took twenty five mushrooms on my way to the bliss bath yesterday. It wasn't as good as the straight bliss bath, but interesting, of course. But I must have taken a helluva lot of mushrooms yon Hogmanay!

About thirty years ago, I took some mushrooms and watched my ego (none too pretty) globulate across my vision.

About that time, we always used to think that Poisonous might not live long since he sometimes went grey and passed out. What would we do if he snuffed it?

... Take your old lady by the feet, drag her into the darkened street, and tomorrow morning she's just another hit and run.... (the Initimable Lou)

I checked my pulse on the way home from Bellshill on Friday, after sitting in the train for about an hour. 53 beats a minute. My nephew, Froggy McDuck, who is into rowing,has a resting heartbeat of 45! I expect mine to run at 60.

The model of my home planet is actually red, but comes out white. I took the photie because I sometimes sit in the dark staring at it. The pig it met on Skye this summer. He told me The Alien Creatures from Outer Space weren't going to let me go home unless I stopped drinking and (especially!!) smoking, and being a complete disgrace. Everything is a work in progress, Jack!

Life is much better now that the Domestic Bliss is home!