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!

The Lama!

Monday 11:10 p.m.
Brian Wilson ... with the pig's face hanging out of his top pocket, the two fags burning, the DVD of Boogie Nights playing on his reflector shades ... well, I will go into hell and save him from the retributions when he dies for what he did today. Such is friendship! He got here before seven and after I mis-read the maps twice (because I am a big girl really!), he got me into to see the lama with twenty minutes to go. It took over five hours driving time.

How long did you have with the lama, Hotboy? Maybe two minutes, Jack. The last time I spoke to him was maybe six years ago, or so. Did he miss you, Hotboy? I do not think so, Jack. Impartiality is what they do. Equanimity. I don't think if I'd been a devil he would have treated me any differently.

How did you do, Hotboy? I was cool, Jack. I didn't burble at him. I wasn't nervous. I was better at it than I was the last time I burbled at him and sat there feeling like an idiot. What did he say to you, Hotboy?

The Great Buddha, my root-guru, Lama Yeshe Losal said that I had to lay off the channels and the drops, the symbols. He said I wouldn't be able to handle the energy which would be unleashed. Although I told him I had only a half jobbie and could meditate there sometimes, he said I couldn't handle it with any jobbie at all. He said it was okay to do the Medicine Buddha juju, but really only the generation stage, not the completion stage, the bit with the symbols and channels and whatnot. He said "Your mind will go to a very bad place if you keep doing this". There will be difficulties.

Last night, because the dakini gave me a wee bit of bob, I was sitting up in bed sober for once, and doing the vase breathing and whatnot, and thinking: Can I cope with this? Will I be able to handle this? Then at four in the morning I'm wakening up with the light bliss heat running through my consciousness, and I was asking myself if I could handle this. Walking around in this jungle of flatheidedness, I do not think so!

He said the all over warmth and heat I was getting was okay. Natural. You get that with the meditations. It wouldn't do me any harm, but the symbols stuff and all was a no no.

I guess I'd better break down all the routines I've been doing, and construct something else. More like sitting quietly doing nothing. Non-self and emptiness is the name of the game anyway. Time to stop trying, Jack, and succumb to the bliss!

Two minutes face time with certainly one of the most exceptional human beings on the planet. What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!

Sunday 9:25p.m.
To see the lama I've got to get to the Samye by eleven. Even with Brian Wilson showing up here at half eight, this might be a big ask. The main thing is not to be disappointed and enjoy the day whatever happens.

.... disappointment, disillusionment and despair ... suffering in this life! Well, we're not having that, Jack, are we? Certainly not, Hotboy. Certainly not!

The goosegogs are delicious just now. I pulled the onions out of the weeds so I could dig in the weeds, and hide them.

It's Alright Now!

Sunday 12:28 a.m.
After one bottle of collapso at 12% and one can of wifebeater ... Brian Wilson, it seems, will deliver moi into some face time with the master of the juju around eleven o clock on Monday morning. After that, or a day or two after recovering from the apres cosmic debauchery, I will try to be good.

It doesn't really matter what you try to do at this stage in the juju. You just have to sit a bit and observe. I was up at the hut tonight ... a beautiful evening it turned out as well ... and I would just like to give up this moi crap and hand consciousness over to the streams and rivers and all that weird stuff flowing through.

Can I go to hospital now, Jack? You can go to hospital if you like, Hotboy, but it won't do you any good. See the man, take to the hut, blow your brains out, none of it will make any diffence. This is ra bliss! This is ra bliss! This is ra bliss!

Saturday

Saturday 1:20 p.m.
I've heard from the Samye Ling that I'd have to be down there before eleven in the morning to see the lama, and that's a bit unlikely since Brian Wilson would have to get to here from Portobello for nine. I don't think he normally gets out of his bed till the afternoon.

Bugger it! Doesn't seem much point now in staying in the hut overnight. The Domestic Bliss was trying to get some folk down here tonight for their dinner anyway.

Right now I have to break off the wonderful meditations to cycle to Liberton Hospital. Oh well. Bugger it right enough!!

Allotment shots!

Friday 10:50 p.m.
Went up to the hut tonight for three hours to check out the ambience for tomorrow evening. I hope I'll be going up there when I was coming away from there tonight. I'll need long johns, a hat; I've already decided to take the terminator gloves. Very nice up there tonight. I'll like it. Less samsaric, so it will be! I'd like to do two big days before Brian Wilson takes me to the Samye Ling on Monday. I might not get to see the lama while I'm there, but I don't think the lama needs to see me anyway. Allah Akbar!

Get Your Dooks Up!

Friday 5:20 p.m.
Felt as if I'd won a prize this morning when the good mother called and said I didn't have to cycle to Newmains after all. The weather forecast was not good, to put it mildly. Then, when I got to the station en route for Bellshill, I saw that the line will be shut all next week from Shotts, so I can go to Newmains next Friday, but can cycle back to Shotts for the train, which is a far easier bike ride. Hurrah! After I go to hospital tomorrow, I'm practically free. Hurrah!

It turns out that you cannot buy a lunch at the Samye Ling anymore. They're now only for community members and overnight guests. It's enough to make you want to stay the night, those lunches were so good. For a fiver, they were giving them away anyway! I'll have to take pieces on Monday.

When I realised I didn't have to go to Newmains today, I went back into my room and did a fabulous hour and a half meditation. Back on form!! Then it was wonderful sitting while the Dhammapada was on at the auld maw's.

When I'm dead, I want someone to read the Heart Sutra and I want two people to read the dialogue off yon CD (it has more than just the dhammapada on it!) between the Buddha and the Great King, the one that starts: "And what shall you do, Great King, when old age and death come rolling in."

My brother Silvest is 72 on Monday. His maw is annoyed that he hasn't stopped smoking. Fancy having your maw getting on your wick when you were seventy two!

One of the photies is of the cycling gloves I bought when I got the nazi bike. I liked the look of them right away. There's a solid plastic coating over the knuckles. If the hut was under attack, I'd feel very confident opening the door if I was wearing such as those. So I would!

Must do better!

Thursday 10:05 p.m.
I've just finished meditating for the day and the last one was a stunner, but I'm afraid to say that my plans for having a wee retreat in the hut have fallen to pieces.

By last Wednesday everything was going great. I was two days into my holiday. The weather was good and I'd stopped bothering about the time whilst sitting in the hut. But I'd already lost it. I hadn't ignored the flatheids who were telling me it was mad to spend the night in the hut, mad to take a camping cooker up there with me, etc. It's actually quite hard to impose these disciplines on oneself and you shouldn't expect flatheids to be supportive. That's why they're flatheids. Flatheids just don't get the bliss.

But by Wednesday it was coming along anyway. Then I had to visit our friend with the MS in Lanfine. Because the weekend visit to the Samye Ling had to be cancelled when the lady who was taking the class the Domestic Bliss was attending fell ill, I went on the granny run through Lanarkshire on the Friday. That takes it out of you more than just physically.

Then on Monday I had to go to the dentist and the optician. I had to go the optician today. I had to go to the Lanfine today. Tomorrow I have to do the granny run again. On Monday I will be down at the Samye with Brian Wilson and that will involve some kind of apres Samye debauchery for sure.

Too many appointments!!! I need two days of sitting to settle down. After that, I'll be in the gravy. After Monday what should I say to the flatheids, Jack? What you should say to the flatheids, Hotboy, is fung off!

During my summer holidays last year I spent about two and a half weeks at the Samye Ling. That was great!! Slightly marred by realising I'd have to frolic later with the flatheids in Skye, but still great. And easy. There are no flatheids down at the Samye Ling. The reason why I'm not there just now is because I don't have any money. Hmmm?

Thursday

Thursday 12:50 p.m.
The meditations this morning started just where the meditations finished off last night, despite the four pints of home brew intervening. Straight into the warm, glowing bliss! Superbo!!

I'm going to have something to eat now and then go to the hospital to see our friend with the MS.

Another day!

Wednesday 11:08 p.m.
Apart from doing the five hills run, I stayed in all day due to the diabolical weather. Since we didn't have any visitors or such, I meditated up till quarter to eleven. Although I didn't even read a paper, or anything else, I don't think I managed much more than eight hours on the cushion. I think I started too late. Anyway, the last two meditations were glorious.

The trouble with the summer is that it get dark too late. It's stuck in my head that this juju works better as it is growing dark, but that doesn't happen around here till about quarter to eleven at the moment.

The first thing you learn is you always got to wait.

I wish I was on the night shift!

I've been thinking about talking to Lama Yeshe. I haven't been at all successful in these conversations before. The first time I spoke to him, he glowed at me. Or was glowing anyway. Sometimes he's seemed quite pissed off with me (everyone gets there sometime; anyone who teaches me anything anyway). It's been okay for me not to have spoken to him for maybe six years. I have trouble relating to him on any level. I don't know what he is. I have a reasonable appreciation of your usual joe or josephine, but ... well, if you're a flatheid, everybody's a flatheid, and that's easy. This guy is not your usual joe. This has been demonstrated to me.

This guy, and his big brother, are probably the most amazing joes to ever live in Scotland. I heard a rumour a couple of years ago that he might retire from being the abbot of the Samye Ling, and where would he go? Will he open a night club in San Franscisco. I think not. I imagine he'll go and sit on the Holy Isle, but I don't know.

When Lao Tzu was leaving China, the guard on the Great Wall told him to write it down and we got the Tao Te Ching (obviously, this might not be exact, but it is a wonderful book!). The lama needs a ghost writer. I saw this Roman Polanski movie about Blair and that showed you how to be a ghost writer. You taped some joe, and then got a secretary to transcribe it and then you smoothed it out. Fancy have a secretary to type it out!! Anyway, this is not a job for me, but somebody should do it!

What is going to happen to you, Hotboy? Nothing, Jack! But I would like somebody to sit on the knee of the Jade Emperor and ask him what happens during seven weeks in the dark, and such like. Because the joes who have done this are very few and far between. And the ones who've done it three times are like stars in the daytime. To think that I may even see such a creature on Monday is a wonderment.

This retreat ... pissing around really. Sitting en famille watching the telly. Dearie me! Tomorrow, I've lost the afternoon and on Friday I've lost the whole day and on Saturday I've lost the afternoon again. These losses encompass virtuous deeds, but they don't help you emanate as deity, Jack. They do not bring on the serenity, satiation, contentment. If it wasn't for the rapture, bliss, ecstasy and all that, I'd cut my throat, so I would. But not this week, Jack! Not this week! March on!

Tuesday again!

Wednesday 12:15 a.m.
I got to the hut about half ten this morning, due to indulging the night before, and sat there on and off till half six. Beautiful morning. Lovely afternoon. The meditations only really started working in the last two hours, but then I had to go home and await a visit from Uncle Brian.

I did fifty of Mr Iyenga's yogic jumpings and felt much better than I expected. My overall fitness is much improved over the last year. Mr Iyenga's yogic jumpings separate the men from the boys.

Uncle Brian came to visit and I cadged a bit of bob hope and bought some fags. Only three bottles of home brew, and as you will be able to tell if you've been reading this bloggy before, almost sober.

I got an email from Teresa yesterday. A whoopee moment. She said I should speak to the lama sometimes even if I don't have a problem. Brian Wilson may be taking me there on Monday. Maybe I'll get to speak to the lama. What will I say, Jack?

Just fall on your knees and ask him to swop minds, Hotboy. Forget all this sitting in the hut crap! Go straight for the mind swop. He can have my body, which can do fifty of Mr Iyenga's yogic jumpings, and is a good eight years younger than his, and he can give me his mind. I've no idea what his mind must be like. Maybe fifteen years solitary retreat, plus three shots at seven weeks in the dark. Hmmm? I would really like to have a mind like that, even if just for a wee while. He could have the mental chaos, severe addictions, and, of course, the Australian Ladies Volleyball Squad.

So he doesn't fancy swopping minds. What do I say after that? I think I'm having an even more wonderful life than I was having before since I took refuge with this guy, and got the empowerments, and whatnot. Hmmm? I'll have to think up a joke. He'll probably know it already.

I had rich tea biscuits and two bananas in the hut today. Plus eating fruit. There are still strawberries. Very deathless in their delights.

New Day

Tuesday 10:05 a.m.
I took the photies last night. The allotment looks like Helmand. I must find out how to make opium this year. The cherries are going red. The gooseberries are sweet. It's unexpectedly gloriously sunny outside and I'm away to the hut now.

I got an email from Teresa down at the Samye Ling yesterday telling me to see the Lama sometimes even if I don't have a problem, so I'll make some efforts to get down there soon.

I have to go to the Lanfine on Thursday and Saturday. I have to do the granny run through Lanarkshire on Friday.

I've stopped buying a daily paper, but I must stop watching the news on the telly for the next couple of years. Watching the Tories slavering over the dismemberment of the welfare state is not going to be a pretty sight!

Day one!

Monday 23:27 a.m.
So we are trying to do nine hours a day. We're not going to live in the hut since the folk around here are all flatheids and think this is mad. Well, of course, it's mad, Jack! Otherwise, what's the point?

Well, the point, Hotboy, is to get beyond the beyond, and get into the vast openings, the openings, the openings ... which are beyond the quiet and waitings, just slightly more interesting.

I couldn't follow this cunning plan because the leg fell off my specs, and I had to go to the local optician.

I have to interject here that I live the bourgeois life, but I don't have any money. I get about 850 spots a month, which is the wages of poor people, but I do not live with poor people. Thank god for that because if you live with poor people you cannot afford to see when the leg falls off your glasses.

The optician was gorgeous. I would like to recommend this optician. It's on this street, not far away. She says look at my face, when she is testing the pressure of my eyeballs in this darkened room, and then when I was thinking: Gies a break, look at my ugly coupon, she zaps my eyeball with some air, and it's really startling!! I just cannot believe how good looking this optician is. From the neck down ... well, not an athlete. But with brains and from the neck up, I'd like to offer you my hand in marriage.

So then one of my teeth fell out and I had to go to the dentist. If I become a multimillionaire, I will buy the dental receptionist. She can suck the teeth out of my face. I just fall on the floor and roll over and die every time I see her. She is a young, beautiful person. She's now trying to squirm out of flirting with me. I'm her grandfather. What is the matter with this woman? She just hasn't ever met such a wonderful, penniless waster like you before, Hotboy.

I'm going to the hut, Jack! It doesn't really matter what you do. You've been doing it for so long, it's just going to happen, so it is. From now on. I'll see yous at the limits, at the fence, in the hut. Oh, ra hut, ra hut, ra hut!

What I was trying to say was that the Domestic Bliss at the bottom line will not leave me to have no specs. Or no teeth. I will be able to bite and see because of her. It's something to do with community, Jack! It's going to be horrible watching the government the English landed us with for the next wee while. But these evil, misshapen basturns will not endure. And when they die, they will all go to hell, so they will. So they fung will!

Update

Saturday 1:50 p.m.
The bloggage may diminish over the next couple of weeks. My emails might not be getting answered. But some folks do not seem to think it is normal to take a camping stove and a sleeping bag to the hut. I wonder why, Jack? It's because only homeless basturns and nutters go and stay in leaky, draughty huts when they could be snuggled up in their beds at night. They don't get ra bliss, Jack. They just don't get ra bliss.

At first, what I'll try to do is nine hours a day. That's meditating from nine till noon; two till five; and whenever in the evening that is conducive to maintaining some toe-hold on family life.

Have to be ready for Monday. The dance of death with the Nicotine Dragon will cease when the bob hope runs out this evening. Tomorrow I may do some head banging. I have forty pints of home brew in the cupboard, but I will try let it sit there after this weekend.

I finished reading Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde last week. I thought I'd read it before, but maybe I hadn't. What a brilliant writer Robert Louis Stevenson is! I'm so glad he's Scottish.

Shame about him being a flatheid. The Mr Good and the Mr Bad, this dichotomy which we all know we have in us somehow, has actually to contend with Mr Blissful. You only get to meet Mr Blissful of course if you make the necessary effort, and, since almost everyone is too dumb to meditate, almost no one gets to meet Mr Blissful, or Mrs Blissful, or Ms Blissful, or any blissfulness at all. Which is not my fault.

I'm hoping Mr Blissful blows Mr Good and Mr Bad out of the water, and reduces them to means, some skilful, some unskilful. All I've got to do over the next few weeks is lay off the dakinis, the booze and the tobacco, and I will be happy!

I took the photie of the snail up at the allotments this morning. The weather is dreich, rainy and overcast. I meditated for a bit in my room (I haven't got the lobby to myself much these days!)and that's the view from where I sit against the door. It strikes me that I should maybe sort the room a bit so I can do headstands and such in there. I had a photie left so I took one of the wall. Everyone is there apart from Teresa and Lama Thebten Yeshe. The leaves were a gift from under the Bo-tree.
Under the Bo-tree
Joy without Passion
Love without Desire
Radiant Light.

Allotmenteering!

Wednesday 9:00 a.m.
I'm starting for the hut today a wee bit later than I'd hoped, but I don't expect to come back here till seven this evening when the semi-final is on.

The meditations at Great King Street have finished for good and the nun is wanting folk to help her paint and decorate a new place in Walker Street. I averted my eyes. Two of the photies are of trees in Bellshill last Friday.

I decided to dodge the tai chi this month as well. In fact, I've decided to dodge everything I can this month. I'll still have to go to Lanfine to see our friend with the MS and I'll still have to do the grannies on Fridays, but apart from that .... to the hut! To the hut!!

If anyone wants to offer me sexual favours or drink or drugs, just go to the bottom fence and holler Hotboy.