The Jacket

Saturday 1:20 a.m.
Around about May, or maybe just after Easter, I put away my winter jacket and put on my summer jacket. I've had the same summer jacket for years. It was in a photie which was taken in the lobby here as I was about to go to Nepal around fourteen years ago. I think the jacket must be eighteen years old. The kiddo did the glass thing of the photie.

The Domestic Bliss has confiscated the jacket and is sending it to jacket heaven even although it was good for at least another ten years. She has bought me another jacket. When I wear this other jacket, I am transformed from the care-in-the-community joe and become the kind of joe who is about twelve and whose mother buys him nice, practical clothes. I suppose I should pay more attention.

Standing outside the International Bar this evening ... across the road two very striking and totally gorgeous women were swaying and swinging along. The little black dresses, the provocative just being there. They looked across. I didn't wave. Hello, boys! The Domestic Bliss said they were two of the Ladyboys from Bangkok, who have a show every Festival in the Meadows. She said when have you ever seen a woman walking along the road like that? Going through the West End in the taxi ... there weren't any women quite in your face like that. Hmmm?

I'm going to have to give up all this juju and try to get some money, Jack! I tried this evening to get onto Wordpress so I could bail out of this bloggy, but it looked too complicated for moi! If I do leave here, I'll let the three or four folk who come here know where I've gone. This samsara has no discernible beginning and no discernible end. Neither has the juju, at least as far as the end is concerned. I go back to the jobbie on Monday. Maybe I'll set up a new bloggy then.

Ancient Futures

Friday 8:55 p.m.
The Domestic Bliss did a jobbie swop and I ended up in Perth, Australia in 1990. When I left Edinburgh, there was a play of mine still running at the Traverse, but I left my Amstrad word processor behind me. The house in Australia had a PC. I'd never used one before.

So I thought I'd better write a novel. I was sitting down working out a plotline for a couple of months when I came upon this book about plotlines in the local library. It turns out that the plotline I'm half way through corresponds almost completely with the archetypal hero myth epic. That was a bit weird.

I starts writing this hero myth epic crap and it takes me nearly three years to finish it. Of course, I'm the primary carer for the kiddo and she's only three when I start on this book, but about six when I finish it.

It's not like anything else I've ever wrote. It's more like the stuff you would write if you were wanting to be a professional writer, the writer who writes books for folk to read on the beach.

It's kind of set in a mythical middle east except the middle east in this book looks a lot like West Australia. It took me about three years to write it and after I finished it, I had no idea what to do with it. It's like an adventure story, a kind of romance with hubris. I have no idea what the hell it was trying to be! I think it might be the worst thing I've ever written. I only person I can ever remember reading it was Beef McDuck and he seemed to quite like it.

For 86 pence what the fung do you expect?! You can download it to Kindley things. You can read it on a laptop or on your fiddly phone, apparently. This will lead to masses of folk going blind. If you downloaded it to your desktop, you could print it.

I suspect all my books which are unpublished (seven or eight!) will end up on sites like this. This is very good. I don't care if nobody reads them, but it's nice that they're available.

Two good things I like about this book.

1. The sensei was round visiting me once and I went to the bog. When I got back, he was looking at this bit of scrap paper he'd found stuck to the fridge with a magnet. I used to give the kiddo heaps of scrap A4 sheets to draw on. I think the sensei had turned round the drawing. On the back was a bit of the book, an account of a nightmare I'd had which I'd put in the book. Anyway, he said he really liked it and got it published in Rebel Inc., the same edition with this brilliant story about a visit to Disneyland by Irvine Welsh, which I think might have fired somebody's rockets.

2. There is a bit in the book I really liked. There's not many bits of my books I can say that about.The bit I really liked was a discourse between this monky guy and a supposedly illiterate librarian about how you would find a book in a library.

Of course, when all's said and done, the book's a masterpiece of invention and should have been made into a film starring Victor Mature and Stewart Granger. I mean, what was I doing writing a sand and sandals epic?

I decided to become a school teacher shortly after this and wrote Are You Boys Cyclists? as a parting shot. I think that took me under six months.

The only person who's read Ancient Futures that I know of is Beef McDuck. He wrote a review of it for me which I cannot find at the moment, but I don't think he didn't like it.

Fancy writing an adventure story? I'd have loved to have written Beau Geste!

Cyclista!

Friday 9:30 a.m.
I wakened up at seven and lay in bed for two hours there. Sometimes I was on my back and sometimes on my side, but just about all the time I was in some kind of bliss condition. Not zinging bliss, the kind you sometimes get sitting up, but a kind of background, very pleasant bliss. I'm very happy to be able to do this.

I've got a long day in front of me with much cycling and dealing with the grannies. At least, the weather has improved and I can go an meditate for an hour before I get the train.

Normal!

12:15 a.m.
Of course, I don't believe in thoughts, but I hate everything about being normal. I hate the standing up. I hate the sitting down. I despise it all. The people I tend to see in the normal mode are bourgeois. At least, the working class are funny. They say funny things to you. If you can do ra bliss and then you have to converse with your usual bourgeois ... well, I spent two hours today doing the bliss, and it was wonderful and it had progressed. If I have a choice between doing the bliss and sitting quietly and doing nothing, and conversing with the evil bourgeois ... well, the evil bourgeois are dumb. Straights are stupid. The old, toothless one was great to talk to this evening, but what is the point of wasting your life in conversing with the appallingly idiotic, the evil bourgeois on the side. I want to stay in my hut, Jack! Then I will have overcome the Nicotine Dragon and the Beer Monster, and I will say to everyone no thanks. Sorry, I've got stuff to do. I'd like to be normal, but the normal is appalling.

There's no way back, Jack! No, Hotboy, there is no way back. I'm not a flatheid, at least, not as much as they are. And I'm not going to be normal ever again, so fung them! Just fung them! Even with all the compassion you could muster, there is no point in discoursing with flatheids. Not middle class ones! I'd rather blow my brains out, so I would!

But I will try to be normal tomorrow. But it's not going to work, is it, Jack? No, Hotboy, it won't work. Just try to be nice and don't talk to the flatheids about ra bliss. They are completely funged and doing that doesn't help.

Kindle

Thursday 5:40 p.m.
I went out to see the consiglieri yesterday to show how normal I could be. We uploaded one of my books to the Kindle thing on Amazon. They say it takes a couple of days to review it before it's downloadable, and if it goes ahead, I'll write something about it. Of course, nobody will know it's there and nobody will buy it, but it was interesting to see how easily it was done.

If it happens, it will be available in the states for a dollar and in Blighty for seventy five pence. This was the lowest price you were allowed to charge. I think I'm due about 26p a download, but the consiglieri will be due 15% of that, so I get about 20p a download.

Rich! Rich, Jack! I'm going to be rich!

Do you know anyone who owns a Kindle thing, Hotboy? Erm, no, Jack. Have you ever seen one? No, I haven't. Oh well.

Fortuitous circumstances!

Tuesday or Wednesday 11:54 p.m.
First fortuitous circumstance: Every night for ages they've settled down to watch a DVD in here. They eat huge meals then watch a movie. I'm joining in now since the Domestic Bliss is having a week's holiday. So I'm joining in, or trying to, so I am. Last night, I was going to really join in and try to watch a movie en famille, but it turned out to be a dead violent movie, and it had subtitles. Subtitles! Apart from the sound effects of folk getting the shit kicked out of them, etc., ... I just sat there with my eyes closed doing the bliss!

Second fortuitous circumstance: I get to go to classical musical stuff with the Domestic Bliss sometimes. This lunchtime I was at a free thing in St Mary's Cathedral. On such business, I have been in lots of churches around the middle of the beautiful, wonderful city, but this one is for Kafflicks. After the hustle I've been getting from the Tibetans, was getting to the Kafflick cathedral apropos or what? Anyway, the songs were in German and Russian and I could just sit there doing the bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Then I got taken to St John's Church in the West End and we saw these Tibetan monks making a mandala. Worth a visit, so it was, but I never wanted to be a monk. I also never wanted to become a priest, when that was something that was offered to me as a kid. Do you have a vocation? Fung off!

So are we going to march in line (def dight; def dight, def dight) or are we not, Hotboy?

I've been getting wonderful feelings thinking about the lama, as in the guru yoga juju, but I am supposed to be one of the folk who are not marching in line. My jobbie in the juju is not to march in line. I am supposed to have read the book they don't like, and to have been unable to properly bond with the masters of the juju, and I'm not supposed to care about crashing and burning.

Who is it who is going to crash and burn? Tell me that, eh?

It's going to be you, Hotboy. You have to take it one step at a time.

Hmmm? I think one has to use one's common sense here. I can't stop doing some vase breathing because of the wonderful, wonderful effects it has. Having developed that, what would be the point of abandoning it now? The connection between breath and bliss is what I've been surfing on for years. Just use it sparingly!

So I'm stuck with generation stage. There is the ecstasy in the generation stage. You can do that there. You can do the ecstasy in the calmiing meditations. I'm going to get the bliss if I just sit in the auditorium, maybe listening to some classical joe's music.

Also, what is the matter with visualising the symbols? So you do the generation stage then go to the symbols ... I think I've got to be less like a teenager with their parent's car. Just do a deep breath when life seems a little dull. That sometimes happens when you've lost the plot and are just sitting there like a moron. So, then you are maybe allowed to do a vase breath to crank you up a bit.

As far as raising the awareness through the symbols is concerned, with the vase breath ... fair enough, that will only be done on the rare occasions when you are pretty pissed with life, and need a mega jump into a happier zone.

My toys have been taken off me, but am I walking off the park, Jack? Am I spitting out the dummy? You are close to spitting out the dummy, Hotboy, but you know ... you know ... you know ... how to handle this.

You need more abiding in the bliss. Less ambition.

For most of the last ten years I have had a great obsession, or a change of obsession. My obsession changed anyway. It looks as if my second obsession has been as difficult to achieve as my first obsession, which was about writing things down.

I can close my eyes most times, Jack, and the bliss will be there. It's like a default position. That's very clever, Hotboy, but so what?

I think I should try to find a middle way between my first and second obsessions.

I do not think this is going to work. My second obsession is so much better than my first obsession. But if I stop meditating so much ... and I have been doing thirty to forty hours a week now for years and years ... I'll have to find something else to do. Hmmm?

The Hotboy Escort Agency is now open for business.

Last Week Resume

Sunday 10:14 p.m.
The best laid plans ... I must say this holiday has not turned out quite as I hoped. Rarely have I done nine hours meditating a day. I only slept in the hut one night. I have had a good rest though!

I'm still niggling myself sometimes with this prostrations and hundred syllable mantra business. It's difficult to see the point. Seems a touch formulaic, eh, Jack? Just get on with it, Hotboy. In Tibet people speak tibetan and it isn't gobbledegook to them. I say mantras to myself all the blinking time as it is. Such like aggravations occurred today.

Instead of prostrating myself, I did the five hills run tonight. The Mull half marathon was run today so the old, toothless one is probably in the undertakers as I write since he was supposed to be running in it today. Or jogging, or plodding, vomiting, passing out and rolling over unconscious, giving all that knew him a red neck. But would he listen? A person of his age and decrepitude should have stuck to playing darts in the old men's huts.

The meditations I have managed to do have been most gratifying, but I've been thinking of becoming more normal.

Saturday!

Saturday 12:25 a.m.
This is the Edinburgh in the festival. Also, there is a second batch of raspberries every summer. I felt very itchy today and had to go for a walk. What a fortunate creature to be able to walk through a city like this.

More Friday Photies!

Friday 11:16 p.m.
I did ten of Mr Iyengar's yogic jumpings this evening. Then I did the hundred prostrations. By about twenty five, the sweat was starting to mark the linoleum on the kitchen floor. By about fifty you wanted to watch how closely you touched your brow since it was running in sweat, and you didn't want that to transfer to your palms since that would make you skid about, and you don't want that.My teeshirt was soaked in sweat, and my hair was wet with sweat by the end. I could get into this prostrations lark, so I could!

Seems years since I'd been in the allotment, far less the hut. I went up for a couple of hours this afternoon and it was wonderful. I collected the food in the photie and came home between showers. The flowers don't show up so good in the dark between showers. But it was oddly warm. I loved being out. I've been meditating in the mouldy room too much.

I've just had a great day! The meditations were a great joy! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Different Kind of Friday!

Friday 1:05 p.m.
The Domestic Bliss is at another wedding today and won't be back till the early hours. I'm thinking of cleaning up my room since I spend a lot more time in there these days. Maybe later.

I've been so fortunate with these meditations. During the first one today I just resided in the various degrees of bliss. Just being happy to be able to be there, and be there almost immediately no matter what I've been up to. That's certainly something worth having.

Weather's crap. I may stay in today. I'm not doing the Lanarkshire cycle due to seeing these folk yesterday. Hurrah!

Wedding!

Friday 12:15 a.m.
Interesting wedding day. Wonderful people. Both the bride and groom cried. There was a lot of dead people at that wedding. I left with two rolls with square sausages in them. Square sausages? You cannot get square sausages anywhere else. I wonder why that is.

Dr Jeykll !

Wednesday 2:30 p.m.
I feel as if I've just spent a couple of days with id. Hello, id! How is Mr Hyde doing these days, Hotboy? He's too alive and well, Jack, stalled in the corner with his viking helmet still on. Hmmm? Well, we're just going to keep him there, aren't we, Hotboy? Yes, we are, Jack. Yes, we are.

You need a metronome existence. Get up at the same time, go to the hut at the same time ... keep everything the same so you can concentrate on what your're supposed to be concentrating on. Chaos arrived with the summons from the McDuck's last Tuesday. That took out the gross body for Wednesday and then there was just Thursday before I had to break off for the cycle to the grannies. All day Saturday I was waiting for the man. Good on Saturday, good on Sunday, bad boy on Monday.

The Charles Bukowski show made me realise I'm still desperate to write. That's waiting in the corner of the room across from Mr Hyde.

There is not a vast expanse of time in front of me now where I could imagine sitting in the hut for days at a time. This is the end of all elaborate plans, my friend. Still, the holiday has had its moments and there's still twelve days to go!!

11:30 p.m.
Feel fabulous this evening. Today, I stayed in all day. Managed a headstand, backbend, dog poses, a tai chi set and twenty of Mr Iyengar's yogic jumpings and a hundred prostrations. Felt so much better after doing the prostrations and jumpings this evening. Sometimes taking exercise does feel great.

Just when I've got myself sorted out .... I'm going to a wedding tomorrow. Once more into the breach, dear friends .... Oh, no!

Despite myself!

Tuesday 4:55 p.m.
After the stumblebumming about the place and the generally bad boy stuff from yesterday, the meditations today have been of a different order yet again. So there's no point in agonising about this stuff. You just have to get on with it.

The lama said the all-over heat you get is a natural part of the meditation, so I guess you reach the heat without the vajrayana. Straightforward calming meditation should get you to heat eventually. I don't know. The heat that rushes up your central channel and fries your pineal gland is the stuff you've got to watch out for, it seems. I've been getting more than usual of the first kind of heat in the brilliant, brilliant meditations I've had today so far.

I have been slightly timorous about the vase breathing since speaking to the lama, but I was casually throwing them in today without forcing it at all and without any channels or symbols and all that jazz. It just feels so right. You've got to listen to yourself as well!!

And the flat has been empty all day, so I've stayed put.

Charles Bukowski

Monday 9:30 p.m.
It was another grey dull day and I felt as if I had been in too long, and so I hadn't been settled, or something like that, and I couldn't get the wee bit of the movie out of my head, the one I saw a bit of last night before sleeping. Factotum. It was supposed to be about Charles Bukowski.

Lance Flynn, who once stayed with the sensei, told me about Charles Bukowski. It takes the shy like moi a long time to find out about anything. So I went and read a novel or two, one I remember about being a postman. Not written seventeen times in longhand, etc., but had something you could't quite put your finger on.

We went for a weekend to the Holy Isle, just off Arran, to help with the building work. Dearie me! I spent the three days in a tent, and refused to come out. Before that, we'd been sheltering in this hovel place and one of the books there was a book of poetry by Charles Bukowski. I hung around in there for hours waiting for the rain to stop, and read half of this poetry book. I don't read poetry books. Really loved it.

I saw a telly show about Charles Bukowski and he did not show up in a very good light. Maybe not somebody you'd really want to know. Not nicety nice. Certainly not.

Then I read Ham on Rye, which is a kind of autobiographical thing. It is a wonderful book! It is a bit gross, but the boy is right in your face. A brilliant book.

I read a book once called A Thief's Journal (?) by Jean Genet. A fabulous book. It's about Jean Genet really and he does not seem to have been a very nice person either.

I must say I saw this BBC2 show about Jean Genet when he was old and living in Morocco. (Where else?) I remember him as very charming.

Above all others, to thine own self be true

There's something about being a misfit and losing yourself in the writing process and producing something like that. The Autobiography of a Murderer by Hugh Collins is book of great class as well.

Once when I was a couple of months off the beer, I found an obituary about Charles Bukowski in the Observer on Sunday afternoon, and immediately went for a drink. There's something about Charles Bukowski. Glad I gave all that writing crap up, of course. Mug's game!

I'm so much more fortunate than Charles Bukowski, but I did go out on the beer this afternoon and considered my tao.

Prostrations!

Sunday 10:30 p.m.
I did my first prostration session this evening. Half and hour. I think a prostration takes about twelve seconds, so that's about one hundred and fifty prostrations. (Get me an ambulance, Jack!)So there's only ninety nine thousand eight hundred and fifty to go. I reckon you can do a hundred in twenty minutes, so that's the way to go. Def dight; def dight; def dight!

This joe on the telly prostrated his way from Mongolia to Varanasi in Northern India. He said he knew the size of the world because he'd measured it with his body. Obviously, the boy's brain had gone. I think he said it took him three years.

Actually, he said he felt dead serene when he got to Varanasi.

The can of home brew costs £8:50. That makes forty pints. It's about twenty five pence a pint and tastes like rat's piss.

Food!

Saturday 11:11 p.m.
The first thing you learn is you always gotta wait

Between appointments, I managed up to the allotment to get some food.

Oh, there's nothing so lonesome, lonely and queer, what a terrible place is a pub with no beer.

Most happy to be sober.

Can you start a facebook page called Tax The Dope, Jack? I'll get right onto it, Hotboy. It would help with the cuts we getting imposed because of the merchant bankers. A new tax source, just what we need. While we're about it, we could buy hash off the Afghanis to stop them growing smack. Free the weed so we don't have to smoke soapbar. Once you sober up, it all becomes perfectly clear. Vote for moi!

The Meditations and suchlike!

Saturday 1:45 p.m.
They opened a Scotmid shop down the road which sells bottles of plonko collapso at half price, so for £4 you can get off your face on quite a nice vino. They should put a stop to that. Anyway, the pizzaman should call later on this afternoon and I have now forsaken the demon drink until such times as the bob runs out.

I bought some herbal tobacco from Napiers on Thursday, but that's for tomorrow. Today, as a treat, I will welcome the Nicotine Dragon back into my arms. Shall we dance terum tum tum?

Despite everything, the meditations are still getting better and better! The Lama told me to lay off the symbols and channels, but he didn't tell me to lay off the vase breathing. I still throw in the odd one here and there without concentrating on any particular spots. There was such vastness in the bliss at this morning's meditation!! The bliss does make existence pretty wonderful and there's bugger all I can do about it. I meditate and I get bliss.

I haven't done any prostrations yet, but I do intend to. I had a booklet of refuge prayers which I was given when I took refuge and therein is the 100 syllable mantra. Strangely enough, it has disappeared!! It should be in my diary with the rest of the juju stuff, but somehow it has gone. I read the mantra a couple of times the last time I sat in the hut. Do you think someone is trying to tell me something, Jack? No, Hotboy, I think you've just lost it. Oh well!

Trotsky!

11:05 p.m.
I could give you a list of books that I loved, but I won't, but I read a lot of stuff by Trotsky when I was in my twenties. Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution is one of these wonderful books. Have you read it, Jack? Well, you should have read it. Now, that I read it about 35 years ago, I'll have to go and read it again.

We don't do politics on this bloggie, do we, Jack? Certainly not, Hotboy.

Trotsky, definitely the most wonderful human being of the the 19th and 20th century, said that the human race was like a pilgrim trying to get to a site, and though the pilgrim sometimes went backwards and forwards, the eventual motion will always be forward.

The evil is in the ascendant at the moment, but within my lifetime we will be free. So we will!

For a' that, an' a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That Man to Man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.

Bits!

Friday 10:11 p.m.
First of all, I'd like to thank the anonymous babes in the apache, black and white stripey jumper, who was gloriously demonstrating her bits in the pub tonight. Here is my bosom! Fabuloso, so it was, missus!

I drank two bottles of collapso last night, yet wakened this morning feeling quite wonderful. Maybe it's taken three weeks on holiday to get here. I wakened up loving my life. Things struck me as wonderful!

Once I wanted to be a writer. Someone, who used to be me, had eight plays produced and two novels published. What a wonderment! What fruition! If I tried to pull something like that off these days, what chance would I have? What vindication!

This has really been a heavenly place to be for me, except, of course, I complained all the time. And moaned and groaned. Fortunately, at some point, I stopped believing in all the thoughts I was having. Most folk I know have trouble dealing with this idea that you can't believe in anything you think, but once you get the hang of it, everything gets much better.

If you would prefer to believe in the truth of things, well, just blow your brains out right now.

But tomorrow I expect the pizzaman may appear and the addictions will swop over. This is your last chance at this then, Jack!

Well, Hotboy, why don't you tell us spam robots about ra bliss!? I'm afraid, Jack, that there is no point in telling the spam robots or the flatheids about ra bliss because the flatheids will never get ra bliss. I always have to remember that the flatheids don't know they're flatheids and the flatheids will never, ever get anywhere near ra bliss. Why is that, Hotboy? I'm sorry, Jack, but they're just too dumb to meditate. And they cannot help themselves. Why is that, Hotboy? I might say that they cannot help themselves because they are stupid, lazy, complaisant basturns, but I really don't know why even smart flatheids cannot meditate. I don't even want to think of that. It would be better if they were happy, but I've never met a happy flatheid. Dearie me!

After the two botttles of plonko collapso, I wakened today in one of those rarely occasioned wonderful moods. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

I changed the route from Shotts to Newmains and went through Bonkle. Well, that's a bit of a laugh anyway. Then went through Allanton Woods, more scenic by far. Sat meditating in the good mother's house until she returned from lunch. What kills you is exhaustion if you get awful old. I could see that looking at her when she got back from the luncho.

So I went through Wishaw and Motherwell instead of going through Newhouse and Holytown. Like a bat out of hell. There are many roundabouts where the cars try to kill you and I scoffed at them. I just pedalled and flew like a bat out of hell and loved it and did my mantra and tried not to sing my cycling song which I used to sing when I was out of my head on the one brake bike so long ago.

I'm the urban spaceman, baby! I've got speed. I've got everything I need!

I seemed, more or less, downhill on that route, and I went to school in Motherwell, when schools were good for the proletarians, and the journey was very evocative memorywise, so it was.

So I have associations with the Domestic Bliss, the grannies, the whole of Lanarkshire, and ... well, my root guru might be the most amazing joe in Europe, and I have to stop complaining.

You don't complain all that much, Hotboy. Thanks for that, Jack!

What a fortunate creature, I am, I am!! What a fortunate creature I am!!!!!!!

The grannies!

I have to cycle from Shotts to ... well, I have to cycle for about an hour and a half tomorrow and then fall down and lie on the floor and give up to the world.

Being a granny is very hard. Everyone else must seem most stupid. I will cycle between them tomorrow.

They are fantastico, so they are! But I hope I die before I get old. Hope I die before I get old. Apart from all the books I'd have liked to have read!

Aspirations!

12:30 p.m.
Once when I was a much younger joe, I wanted to be perfectly in love. Once I wanted to have a perfect marriage. Once I reckoned there wasn't anything stopping moi being anything. I thought I could do almost anything if I just put my mind to it. There were few obstructions, apart from the obvious ones that I was brought up to despise the managerial, evil bourgeois, and all those nasty little fungpigs who found fruition by marching in line ... def, dight; def, dight; def, dight! I was very aspirational, so I was. Useless in this world as far as acquiring wealth and whatnot, but very aspirational.

To become a buddha all you have to do is sit quietly doing nothing for six years in a cave. What's so difficult about that? Obviously, I can't do it, but if some other joe or josephine does it, isn't that me as well? Except I don't know it.

Tonight's photies

Wednesday 10:05 p.m.
Had a wonderful meditation up at the hut just as it was getting dark.

Apres Wifebeater day!

9:50 p.m.
I got a phone call yesterday to go and see someone from Cloggieland who was up the Beef McDuck's. So all the wheels fell off the wagon, but I remember walking home which is good going when you've been to Beef's.

I got paid today, so I had some money for the phone. Two of the photies are from our visit to Cramond, but the others were taken on Monday/Tuesday when I slept over in the hut.

Despite drinking seven cans of wifebeater last night, my meditations today were great. I also did a very long shadow boxing session in the full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle. But I doubt if I've lost any weight at all despite giving up on the dairy produce; quite the opposite. But I'm eating delicious dinners of tatties, onions, and cabbage from the allotment along with fried eggs. I've been pouring the vegetables into the frying pan and frying them in olive oil. Two Ton Tony, here I come!!

One night down!

Tuesday 8:30 a.m.
Got to sleep about midnight and was up at half five. So I must have managed about eleven hours meditating yesterday. Also, brought home most of the stuff this morning which I took up to the hut yesterday. What a drama queen! Once you're sure the rats can't get you, sleeping in the hut is a piece of cake! You just need the sleeping bag, a candle. There are plenty of agricultural implements around to fight off the baddies!

My meditations and all that juju are at last back in gear!

12:30 p.m.
Just finished another two hour meditation there. Seems sudden that I'm doing them for two hours sometimes now.

I suspect my mobile phone isn't sending the photies anymore because there's no money on it. Anyway, morning in the flat, afternoon in the hut!

6:00 p.m.
Blowy and sunny and cloudy this afternoon. From about two till four, the meditations were wonderful. Satiation, contentment. Just sitting on my log section in front of the hut door (to stay in the shade) and being in the bliss. Those kinds of meditations where you're not even trying but well absorbed in bliss are very nice indeed. At one point, I tried to concentrate on my breathing, but there really wasn't all that much of it at all.

Then it started nodding off all the time! So I'm going to have a wee sleep now!

Dream!

Monday 8:42 a.m.
I took most of my stuff up to the hut about an hour ago. I hope to follow later on.

Last night I had a dream where I was going on a long journey in a motor car. But the engine needed fixing. I spent a long time under the bonnet fixing the engine, but eventually fixed it and put down the bonnet. A good dream to start the second half of my holidays on!!

Dorje Sempa

Sunday 9:00 p.m.
I've just started on my last bottle of home brew, but I've got a bottle of collapso for later on. Tomorrow (and tomorrow!) I might be giving up the drink, but not tonight!

Tell me what your problem is, Hotboy. Well, Jack, I think the problem is the fantastic conceit of have of moiself. This problem has been in my face since I spoke to the lama and has been causing me all kinds of grief. And what is the solution to your problem, Hotboy? The solution to my problem, Jack, is to do what the lama tells me to do.

Sometimes I have actually got some enjoyment out of digging the allotment, but my main feeling about digging is that I don't want to do it. You have to dig if you garden like me, that is, badly. You have to dig, but you don't want to do it. You don't have to go running, or cycling, or shadow boxing, or tai chi, or yoga, and I would much rather do any of these things than dig. I do not think digging is a very good form of exercise, but if you dig, you cannot do these other things because digging knocks the crap out of you. It's just something in the way, stopping you do stuff you'd really like to do.

I don't want to do prostrations because that looks to me like another crap kind of exercise. Okay, it is going to be good for the supporting joints, like your hips, knees and ankles, but I do not think it is as good for them as doing knee bends like you do in tai chi. Also, you need equipment or you are going to hurt your knees, etc. Crap, crap, crap!

There is perhaps a humility aspect to doing prostrations, but that's also debatable. You could get very chuffed with how many prostrations you were able to do.

So I'm complaining to myself all week. Why do I have to do 100,000 stupid prostrations? Just because it's in some tradition? Because that's what they say you've got to do? Why? Why can't I just do a 100,000 sun salutations, or something that's not as dumb as doing prostrations, something better for you?

100,000 prostrations is the first of the four uncommon foundations which make up the Dorje Sempa juju, the initial vajrayana thing I was empowered into.

The second of the four uncommon foundations is 100,000 recitations of the 100 syllable mantra. What is the bloody point of that? This giant mantra isn't even in my language. I do a lot of mantra-ing anyway, but they are all short mantras. I understand the power of repetition here. But with this long mantra stuff, am I being asked to pray? I don't like praying! I did some praying when I was a kafflick. What are these people praying to anyway? Well, Hotboy, they say that each syllable represents a deity and .... pass the sick bag! If there are deities out there, or demons, or purple people eaters, well, I haven't seen them so far, and as the man from the Disbelieving Congregation, who is trying not to believe in the table or the computer, I really don't need this crap about deities. I'm trying to get into emptiness, that is, nothing existing in the manner of its appearance, and I'm being asked to do some deity worshipping crap, which I don't even understand. Who wants to waste there time remembering or even reciting nonsense like this? I want to meditate. Oh, you could learn to meditate on the recitations of the 100 syllable mantra, Hotboy. Fung off! I can do better meditations than that already.

What was the matter with doing the channels and symbols, and going to mental hospital? Actually, the problem with that was that I couldn't visualise the bloody channels and symbols properly. But I digress!

The last two of the four uncommon foundations are mandala offerings and guru yoga. In the former you visualise the universe as a mandala and offer it up ... no problem there since I understand what the visualisations are supposed to do. With the guru yoga, you are supposed to develop devotion for your root guru, and I have less problems with that than I used to have. So these last two are not a problem.

I think the problem is back to moi! Being asked to do something as stupid as the 100,000 prostrations would probably be good for developing my humility. This might be why I'm resisting it so much. They say all these joes and josephines who have achieved enlightenment have done this stuff (I say, who cares?)(St Teresa of Avila didn't know what a prostration was. Neither did St Francis of Assisi!).

You could end up prostrating for ever. There was a guy on the telly who prostrated all the way from Mongolia to Bodh Gaya!

I don't like being asked to do the stupid stuff, but since the lama told me to do it, I'm going to do it. If I didn't resist it so much, I wouldn't be tempted to do it. It's the resistance indicating a problem.

The photies were taken down at Cramond on Friday night. The Romans were down there before me. The legionnaires would have looked at the same skies over the Forth.

Monday's appointments have evaporated. I'm determined to start on the nine hours a day meditation cycle tomorrow. I've packed my bag for the hut at last!

I'm just going outside now, Jack, and may be some time. Try to last at least till lunchtime, Hotboy.

Saturday

10:50 p.m.
I don't remember having a week with so many afflictive emotions! It's been a bummer, but it will get better from about Tuesday. The appointments for yesterday evaporated (hurrah!), but I still have appointments today, tomorrow and maybe Monday. It looks like the only way to go on holiday is to be totally unavailable. If you are around, folk want you to do stuff. Things are showing signs of improvement though.

I had some very nice dreams this morning. In one of them, the investigator was looking into the buddhist holiday his servant was having and realised he'd gone through all the skandas (body, senses, perceptions, mental formations and consciousnesses) and failed to find a self. I wakened up with that. It cheered me up.

Still pissed off!

Friday 6:00 p.m.
It's not been easy trying to change the way I was meditating, and visualising stuff. I feel very constrained still. When I'm meditating, I find myself trying to stop doing stuff, like vase breathing, like concentrating on the navel symbol. The lama wants me to do 100,000 prostrations, and 100,000 recitations of the 100 syllable mantra; the Dorje Sempa juju. Oh well. These are preliminary practices. If the alternative is that I'm going to fung up and end up not being able to meditate at all ... Gopi Krishna had to stop meditating altogether. But it's a drag and it will be a drag for a while, I suppose. If he'd told me to go to the hut and not come out for the next three weeks, I'd have been so happy!!!

I've taken out all the onions now and dug over where they were growing to hide the weeds. I brought home the garlic and the shallots tonight. It's a change of times when you'r back to the diggings again, Jack! The explosions of growth are over and the harvestings are well under way.

A beautiful day!

Friday 12:28 a.m.
The afternoon turned out to be completely beautiful. Pouring yesterday, gorgeous today. I was in the allotment for the start of the afternoon and then went to the Botanical Gardens to meditate around three. The green photies, due to the duff colour resolution, actually give a better representation of what it's like to meditate (well, for me) with your eyes open. Blurs a bit. Blurs a lot.

I still feel as if I've not quite gotten over speaking to the lama on Monday, and then I left the overgrown glade where I'd been sitting (nobody is going to walk into that place!) and, tired probably due to the excessive beers the night before, I lay down on a bench.

I always read the dedication on benches when I'm going to meditate on them, so it's a worthwhile remembrance to buy a bench for some dead joe or josephine. A lot of other folk probably notice the wee plaque as well.

I had a baseball hat with me. I would have had the akubra hat, but I wasn't expecting the sky to be so clear. So I wasn't going to get burned and lay down on the bench, and fell into the bliss. It was the lying down on the couch bliss, but I don't get to lie down on the couch much these days since it's usually occupied by folk watching re-runs of Friends. It was so re-assuring to lie down there and succumb to the bliss. I recognised it. I wasn't trying to do something. I just relaxed into the bliss. So re-assuring!! I fell into the bliss and then fell asleep for a wee while, and came to in the bliss. Of course, I was wearing the care in the community outfit, and sometimes you could hear the evil bourgeois stroll passed, but they were okay and I was much more than okay. Yoga nidra plus on a park bench. Wonderful.

In the evening, I went to the allotment again and sat in the hut. Am I supposed to do the vase breathing up and down the chakra symbols, Jack? I think not, Hotboy. So I don't. I have to submit and be more humble. Humble doesn't usually come up as one of my obvious characteristics.

There used to be a wren's nest in the hut. All compounded things are subject to dissolution. I maybe didn't spend so much time in the early growing season in the hut until I got more into meditating there, and this is maybe why the wrens stopped using the nest. Maybe the hard winter ... sometimes you'd walk into the hut around this season and there would be a wren rave going on. Six wrens bouncing off the walls and disappearing out of the chicken wire windows. So tonight I'm sitting there in the hut, and I get visited by a wren. There's a buglia bush just outside the windows and the wren is checking that out for a while. Then it comes into the hut more and more. Wrens can stick to the hut walls. Eventually, it goes onto the ledge above the door where the nest used to be, and makes weird cheeping noises. Wrens make different noises as they grow up .. I know that much. So I have to open my eyes and attend to the wren as it's sitting there on the ledge making these weird noises. I wonder how long wrens live for. It knew where it was.

Before I left, I got a cabbage and some tatties and some broccoli from amidst the weeds. It's not free food, but it's not expensive either.

The good mother doesn't need me in Newmains tomorrow and I can't reach Bellshill on the train. Allah Akbar!!

Vase Breathing/Vase Breath

Midnight Thursday!
Around this time last night I thought I should maybe stop blogging partly because I might be doing some harm. If you google vase breathing, you might end up on one of my posts and what the hell do I know? If you were a nutter like me, you might just go for all this stuff and end up in the loony bin.

The cat's out the bag with all this tantric stuff having been published in the last twenty years, Hotboy, and you really have to be weird and obsessive to want to go for something like that. Most flatheids just want to be comfortable, bourgeois, and hopefully nice, and thank god for that. Will I end up in the loony bin on my own then, Jack? I think so, Hotboy. Well, Jack, I'd like to wave to the other nutters on a fullish moon like this tonight and say I'm sorry if you've gone for the sweeties because of moi. Maybe the emptiness is harder, but it must be the emptiness that works.


THIS POST WAS WRITTEN BY JOHN McKENZIE WHO HAS TEN BOOKS ON KINDLE. THE ONES CLOSELY CONNECTED WITH BUDDHISM, MEDITATION, BLISS, VASE BREATHING, TUMMO, ETC., ARE
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Buddha-Big-Bad-Wolf-ebook/dp/B005AIP7QE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319126284&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Buddha-Big-Bad-Wolf-ebook/dp/B005AIP7QE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319126284&sr=8-
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Land-Demon-Masters-ebook/dp/B004XJ7OEO/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319126424&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Real-McCoy-ebook/dp/B0054H4MO4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319126490&sr=1-1

Inner Fire Kundalini!

Thursday 12:35 p.m.
Once I was trying to read Gopi Krishna's "Living with Kundalini" by whatever light I had in a tent down at the Samye Ling one night when it was blowing a gale. Gopi had years and years of pure hell after a bummer kundalini arousal. I remember thinking how glad I was that I had some back-up with the Lama while trying to do this juju. That's what I got on Monday. Back-up.

A couple of days before the meeting, I'd been thinking that the navel symbol was displaying some of the characteristics it had when I had a kundalini arousal experience at the beginning of April in 2003. For some time I'd been looking for that to happen again, thinking it was a sign of progress, but you have to watch what you wish for.

Synchronicity? I was waiting to see the lama before going to the hut and getting serious about this stuff over my holidays. Then ....

If you read the Bliss Of Inner Fire or the Glenn Mullin translations of the tantric stuff, you really should read "Living with Kundalini" as well!!

I was speaking to the lama for more than two minutes, of course, but I wasn't there for chit chat, or to waste his time. I was completely knocked off balance by what was said. And I've been trying to re-jig my practice since then. It has been difficult to stop my mind habitually following the routines I've been setting up for the past few years. I'm trying to abandon visualising channels or symbols altogether. I've been doing a wee bit of vase breathing since, but trying not to concentrate on my navel chakra while doing it. And not trying to hold my breath for long.

The lama said the over-all heat was natural to meditation and wouldn't do me any harm. With a lot more of that than I've had yet, you could dry off wet sheets. The stuff that goes straight up your central channel is what he was warning me off. Obviously, I'm not ready to mess with that.

He said doing the Medicine Buddha sadhana was okay. I'll re-read the book I've got on that and continue doing it. There's no mention of channels or drops or symbols in this book. I just added that. I'll subtract it now.

I'm not saying the meeting with the lama didn't do my head in because it has a bit. He said I'd end up in a bad mental state. Tsongkhapa said you'd go to hell if you tried to raise heat without being able to visualise the channels and symbols clearly. I said to someone once that we could interpret that as being in a bad mental state. Same words even. He wasn't giving me some party line. He was talking to me.

"I was young once and walked by myself, and lost my way ...."

The last time I spoke to the lama was in Johnstone House, but they've moved the interview room to the new building ages ago, it seems. I'd never been there. A sign tell you about the Abbot's office. There was no one in the waiting room. I couldn't just go in there and wait since no one might know I was there. I chapped the office door, got a come in, and stuck my head round the door. Teresa was coming across the room. There was a very concerned look on her face which struck me as odd at the time. She told me just to sit in the waiting room. It turns out there was one last guy with the lama.

It's not raining at the moment. I'll have something to eat and go to the allotment. I hope I'm back on track by Monday. The Domestic Bliss has filled the weekend with appointments. Dearie me!

Recantations!

Thursday 5:35 a.m.
I was thinking once again that I should give up blogging. I said so in a post I wrote last night before going to bed and have just deleted it. I've enjoyed blogging and it's kept me in touch with some folk and gotten me in touch with some others, so I'll keep doing it.

It's not been the best of weeks, but things will improve!! The weather doesn't look so good either. Grim and grey and pouring down outside! Dearie me!

Bliss diary!

Wednesday 11:30 a.m.
The first meditation of the day was just finished five minutes ago. It lasted for an hour and fifty five minutes. Usually, I get quite sore after about an hour and twenty minutes, so I don't know what was going on there!

I was trying to get back to basics and was using Susquehanna and nothing else until the very end when I did a wee bit of visualisation. But no channels, no symbols.

In the hinayana, there are the four noble truths, the eightfold path, the skandas and dependant origination. All that is perfectly rational. There are no fairies, nymphs, or even leprechauns! The problem is the consciousness of an existent self and what you are looking for is ways and means of getting rid of that surely. How do you skin the cat?

Since there is nothing to be achieved and no one to achieve it, I think I'll stick with the calming meditations for now and throw in a bit of the analyticals; the negating of the self in oneself and negating the self in the object kind of thing. I'll also do a bit of the Medicine Buddha, but avoid the channels and symbols for now, and only do the vase breathing when the meditations feel stale.

It is apparent that I will not be able to avoid the shedloads of bliss when I'm meditating, but I'm not going to chase the heat. If you're are fortunate enough to get some advice on your meditations from Lama Yeshe, you'd be very stupid to ignore it.

Was I going to crash and burn, Jack? I think you were, Hotboy! Time to try and rest in the serenity, tranquillity, contentment!

The day after!

Tuesday 11:25 p.m.
Doing the channels and the drops and the vase breathing is such a part of my meditations these days that today I was a wee bit lost after being told to lay off these things.

Somehow after seeing the lama I expected to be enthused and hit the hut big time.

I'm a bit confused now. What I'm going to do is enjoy my holidays.

I thought today of the times when I made up my own mantra, the great sound of sussquehanna, which I used for nine years before I went to Nepal and got into involvement with the wee fat baldy guys. I got ten seconds of non-self and emptiness with that sound and I've never had anything as mind funging since.

I can feel myself starting to walk off the park. I'll give it a few days and try to mull over what he said to me. I've no doubt the lama is right, by his lights. I'm obviously concerned that he was giving me the party line and not attending to moi ... I feel a resistance. I have humility issues to deal with.

I was saying sussquehanna to myself as I walked home from Waitrose today. This is the sound of mental calming to moi! I've tried to run too fast too early. The lama told me once I'd get "everything" by calming meditations. I think they're trying to keep folk safe because this inner heat shit is a deep, deep heavy juju.

I was slightly pissed off today, and thought I might as well attend to things, like writing. Maybe cut down the meditations to about four hours a day, and write a bit. Attend to samsara! Somehow I do not think this is going to happen. I'm going to start by stopping trying and watching the time pass.

I meditated in both the photie shots today. The photie with the grandad in it was taken in a cafe in another place a long, long time ago!