RaJuJuBlog

The Jacket

2010-08-14T17:13:00.001-07:00

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

2010-08-13T12:53:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-13T01:30:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-10T15:52:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-07T16:19:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-08-06T15:13:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-08-06T05:06:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-05T16:13:00.001-07:00

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 !

2010-08-04T06:27:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-03T08:52:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-02T13:30:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-01T14:31:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-07-31T15:10:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-07-31T05:43:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-30T15:05:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-30T14:11:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

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

Apres Wifebeater day!

2010-07-28T13:47:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-07-27T00:28:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-26T00:40:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-25T12:45:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-24T02:49:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-23T09:58:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-22T16:19:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-22T04:32:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-07-21T21:32:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-21T03:29:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-20T15:23:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

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!!

2010-07-18T13:21:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-17T16:25:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-17T05:17:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-16T14:47:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-07-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-15T14:05:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-15T04:49:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-07-14T15:07:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-07-13T16:12:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-13T02:03:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-07-12T15:26:00.001-07:00

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

2010-07-10T05:47:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-07-07T00:57:00.000-07:00

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.

Ar be Benn Gunn!

2010-07-05T13:54:00.000-07:00

Monday 9:55 p.m.
I'm on happy now till mid-August. I mean, holiday. There are no appointments. The visit to the Samye this weekend is off due to circumstances outwith our control. I would like to slowly accustom myself to being in the hut.

Hmmm?

Later On!

2010-07-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

Saturday 11:00 p.m.
Oh, yes, we crept out the the sludge, so we did, you and I. And we were standing on the foreshore, then took to the trees. We were all monkeys then. And you get the sour and you get the sweeties and soon we were all swinging through the trees looking for sweeties, so we were, us monkey people.

And then I came to be standing in front of the wonderful mansion called Ra Bliss, and I looked around at all my monkey chummies, and I could see that they were still going around looking for sweeties even although it must have been obvious even to the thickest of them that their heads were stuck up their bums; and I wondered if my monkey chummies even knew that this wonderful edifice was a mansion since all they had been doing so far was looking for sweeties, swinging through the trees, or scuffling about in the jungle.

In Ra Bliss mansion, once you are fortunate enough to be standing right there in front of it, there are a great many rooms, and all the rooms in this mansion are subtly different, but on the door it always says: Ris is Ra Bliss!

St Teresa Of Avila! Everything is in the Interior Castle if you're a kafflick. I think she had a whip thing for flagellating herself. A flagellator. What do you think, Jack? She sounds like the babes for you, Hotboy!

Bumping the bliss!

2010-07-01T04:19:00.000-07:00

Thursday 12:20 p.m.
Whilst the bread is baking ... I just did a head stand there. So you do the headstand and go into a lotus upside down and then come down into a sitting position, still in a lotus. You whack your butt off the ground, or, at least, I do. If you close your eyes at this point ... it really does shock ra bliss into increasing and increasing.

Of course, the spam robots will remember about the bliss bath, and the bliss lying flat out, and sometimes even the bliss when lying on your side. Jolting the bliss isn't something I've been into before.

I assume this is what the monk is doing (as well) with the jumping up from a lotus and getting into a lotus again before you hit the ground, which you can see on Youtube under Tibetan yoga.

Meditated for two and a half hours today. No bother at all. Just got up when I was getting sore.

A piece of cheese?

2010-06-30T15:08:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 11:10 p.m.
And so we entered the days of sobriety and dance once more the dance of death with the Nicotine Dragon. But I won't be bad tomorrow, Jack. You always say that, Hotboy. I know, Jack. One day it might be true.

Enter the realms of the hot bliss! This is an announcement for the spam robots who are following the five point plan for getting out of your face on air... We are now establishing ourselves in a new zone. Hurrah! The bliss body is changed once more. There is, for one thing, a lot more bliss. It just keeps rolling along. How could there be even more bliss?! God knows what it would be like if you could actually do this juju!

Apart from next Monday, I don't have go to the jobbie till August the 16th. I've been thinking about the hut. Geeing myself up. On the other hand, everything's working pretty well anyway. The last couple of weeks have been fantastico for ra bliss! I'm just going to have the most wonderful time whatever I do. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

On Saturday, I'm going on a shopping spree with Poisonous for supplies for the hut. The only other thing in the diary is a two night stay in the tent down at the Samye with the Domestic Bliss. That's the weekend after next. I've got a few days beforehand for practising my Ben Gunn. Ar be Ben Gunn. Have ye a piece of cheese for a Christian man?

There are four people living here now. Three of them went out to the movies tonight. Hurrah! I've never had the bliss I had in the lobby when they were out. Or that much warmth. Take a breath and hold for a wee bit and then ... wonderful, wonderful sensations of bliss and warmth go caressing up inside you.

I have to remember to tell that to the gorgeous dakini fairy nymph babes when they make an appearance, Jack. Dream on, Hotboy. Dream on.

Allotment shots!

2010-06-27T14:35:00.001-07:00

Sunday 10:40 p.m.
The first poppy opened up among the tatties. Stray marigolds have recently been appearing along the side of the central path, but the colours don't come out on the camera. I started taking photies of the stuff I was able to eat today. Blackberries, I think. And strawberries. And raspberries from not a great year of raspberries and this maybe because I haven't now got a hose long enough to water them.

Fecund. This is a wonderful place to spend your life, so it is. I think the allotment might be so fecund because of the harsh winter we had, but who knows? I spent a good forty five minutes clearing the weeds, which seem to be called biomass, but maybe not, from between the ridges of potatoes. No one grows weeds in the whole of the allotments like my weeds. I'm agog this evening at how much they are and how fantastic they will be declining back into the ground with some plus.

The buddhist wummin says hullo. She's at the gate. That's where her allotment is. She was not facing away and bending down as I walked passed tonight.I was just trying to walk past. I know she has a wonderful butt. I do not think she wants to be the progenitor of lustful thoughts and I should be cool. So I'm walking past. She's been doing her botany josephine gig on this allotment for at least the two hours I'd spent sitting meditating among the weeds, but she's hustling me into a conversation, as they do. Or if you are lucky. Because it is not good to be on your own and everyone should talk to everyone even although ...

So she says she can only sit for about ten minutes before she has to get up when she's meditating on her own. She says before this year, every time she went to meditate with the nun, I was there....

Being brought up a kafflick really fungs you up. But it is also providing all the saving graces.

Having been monogamous since Moses was a lad, I cannot really say that I would like to hump this person. Just about anybody would do. No wonder everyone used to wear masks!

Just prior to this, in the hut, I was engaging with some serenity, some feelings of calmness and not having to do anything about anything. Li Ching-Yuen said tranquility was a prerequisite of longevity. So was sitting like a tortoise. Ever tried that one, Jack!? Sitting like a tortoise and walking like a spritely pigeon? I do not think so, Hotboy. Do you know what the Taoist joe told Genghis Khan about how he could live longer? Lay off the babes, Jack. Well, you have certainly done that, Hotboy. Just continue to lay off the babes!

I hope everyone who reads this thinks they're living a wonderful life. I certainly feel like that right now!

Ye of little faith!

2010-06-27T00:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday 9:00 p.m.
In the Disbelieving Congregation, of which I am the sole member and single representative, we don't believe in faith. I found the next thing on a blog posted by a kid I know at Stirling Uni.

One day during a lecture, a Professor of Philosophy, who was also an Atheist, was speaking to his class about the problem science has with God. He asked one of his students to stand. This was their dialogue.

Professor : You are a Christian, aren’t you, son?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor : So, you believe in God?

Student : Absolutely, sir.

Professor : Is God good?

Student : Sure.

Professor : Is God all powerful?

Student : Yes.

Professor : My brother died of cancer even though he prayed to God to heal him. Most of us would attempt to help others who are ill. But God didn’t. How is this God good then? Hmm?

(Student was silent)

Professor : You can’t answer, can you? Let’s start again, young fella. Is God Good?

Student : Yes.

Professor : Is Satan good?

Student : No.

Professor : Where does Satan come from?

Student : From…God…

Professor : That’s right. Tell me son, is there evil in this world?

Student : Yes.

Professor : Evil is everywhere, isn’t it? And God did make everything. Correct?

Student : Yes.

Professor : So who created evil?

(Student did not answer)

Professor : Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things exist in the world,
don’t they?

Student : Yes, sir.

Professor : So, who created them?

(Student had no answer)

Professor : Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Tell
me, son… have you ever felt God?

Student : No, sir.

Professor : Tell us if you have ever heard your God?

Student : No, sir.

Professor : Have you ever felt your God, tasted your God, smelt your God? Have you ever had any
sensory perception of God for that matter?

Student : No, sir. I’m afraid I haven’t.

Professor : Yet you still believe in Him?

Student : Yes.

Professor : According to Empirical, Testable, Demonstrable Protocol, science says your God doesn’t
exist. What do you say to that, son?

Student : Nothing. I only have my faith.

Professor : Yes, faith. And that is the problem science has.

Student : Professor, is there such a thing as heat?

Professor : Yes.

Student : And is there such a thing as cold?

Professor : Yes.

Student : No, sir. There isn’t…

(The Lecture Theatre became very quiet with this turn of events)

Student : Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat, mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no eat. But we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.

(There was pin-drop dilence in the Lecture Theatre)

Student : What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as darkness?

Professor : Yes. What is night if there isn’t darkness?

Student : You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light… But if you have no light constantly, you have nothing and it’s called darkness, isn’t it? In reality, darkness isn’t. If it is, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?

Professor : So what is the point you are making, young man?

Student : Sir, my point is, your Philosophical Premise is flawed.

Professor : Flawed? Can you explain how?

Student : Sir, you are working on the Premise of Duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood, either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it. Now tell me, Professor, do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Professor : If you are referring to the Natural Evolutionary Process, yes, of course, I do.

Student : Have you ever observed Evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The professor shook his head with a smile, beginning to realize where the
argument was going)

Student : Since no one has ever observed the Process of Evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?

(The class was in uproar)

Student : Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor’s brain?

(The class broke out into laughter)

Student : Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor’s brain, felt it, touched or smelt it?…
No one appears to have done so. So, according to the Established Rules of Empirical, Stable, Demonstrable
Protocol, Science says that you have no brain, sir. With all due respect, sir, how do we then trust your lectures, sir?

(The room was silent. The professor stared at the student, his face
unfathomable)

Professor : I guess you’ll have to take them on faith, son.

Student : That is it sir…Exactly! The link between man and God is faith. That is all that keeps things alive and moving.

—–
That student was Albert Einstein

————
I might as well stick in the comment I put on this though it's not quite as good!!!

I don’t do faith. I believe in ignorance and scepticism. I believe we have to suffer from misapprehension since we’ll only ever have a partial view of anything. There isn’t a god creator in buddhism, but buddhists are into non-duality.

Samsara and nirvana have the same reality in the state of ultimate awareness. To achieve ultimate reality, I mark everything with mahamudra, the Great Seal of Emptiness. This is the quintessence of non-duality. Milarepa.

So buddhists are into non-self and emptiness.
You don’t need faith to be good. But you do need compassion. I don’t think faith is necessary for me. Having faith in something outside yourself surely is duality. It’s based on the false sense of self that screws everybody up. There is only one big thing made up of lots of wee things. “God” is in everybody, everywhere. I am it. Absolute oneness.
So this is a countervailing view. This post is the best thing I’ve read in a blog for years! Hotboy

Bliss Update!

2010-06-26T04:31:00.001-07:00

Saturday 12:34 p.m.
Today the bliss and hotness have reached a new level. I feel as if I can call myself a proper vajrayana practitioner now though I couldn't dry off a handkerchief yet or visualise diddly squat. Hurrah!

This is wonderful!

Though I am not the author of my own good fortune, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Hail to the Great Yajrayana, the Juju of Jujus!!

And I'll probably be spending quite a bit of the afternoon in the pub!

Hande hoch!

2010-06-25T17:18:00.000-07:00

Saturday 1:20 a.m.

All you are is the result of all the thoughts you've had.

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

One of my favourite things is to listen to the CDs of the Dhammapada at the foot of the auld maw's bed as she lies in the lion posture, dozing off and coming to. God knows what she makes of it, but she loves it.

So I had to lie flat out today due to gauching ... this is a junky term for crashing and coming to .. today since I came over all tired after the cycling through Lanarkshire. But the cycling through Lanarkshire today was better than it's ever been. I was calm. I was not anxious. I was mantra-ing away there in the moment. Thankful that because of the handful of goji berries I have eaten in this life that at almost sixty I could cycle this way at all. (Some people who don't really speak Scottish, who might be from abroad but speak English, don't do irony. Don't do humour. Never take it literally. Do I have to say that, Jack? Well, this is the Koran of the 22nd century, so be clear, Hotboy, be clear!)

So the auld maw was well pleased that Biff McDuck had helped produce her eleventh or twelfth great grand child. I was trying to count it up this evening. I think she has about twenty nine or thirty descendants running around the planet just now. Go forth and multiply. That's a lot of people.

I haven't got a problem with hating English people. I don't hate anybody, but I do enjoy sporting rivalries. That's not really true. I hate the huns. I don't like the British National Party. I don't like the knuckle dragging Rangers supporter who hate us back, but all in all I try not to hate anyone, and understand what a hard time it is for everyone to become someone, even for the huns.

Uber alles! Uber alles!

In a couple of days time, the Little Englanders (who were never as smart as the Chilly Jockos) play at footie against the Fatherland. Because of Adolf Hitler, I do not have as many relatives as I might have had. We'd be talking not one, but two football teams of great grand children of the auld maw by this time. So on Sunday, when the three lions take to the park against the nazi ice warriors, what can I say?

Come on, the huns! Come on, the huns!

This fortunate creature!

2010-06-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

Saturday 1:10 a.m.
I'm the usual joe. The norm. All you have to do to be a bit happier is meditate. You don't have to be smart to meditate. The grief, sorrow, lamentations ... disillusionments, disappointments and despair ... suffering in this life is what you get if you don't meditate. Or you might get. This is plainly obvious. The photies were taken at the good mother's today. She is a very nice person and I'm happy to be of some kind of reassurance. Her and the old maw together make about 182 years. I'm pissed and there's no one else here, Jack, so I'll start again.

Bliss Diary!

2010-06-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

Thursday 9:25 p.m.
Tai chi set, headstand, dog pose, back bend ... ran to Costorphine and up yon great muckle hill in 1 hour 40 minutes ... made soup ....meditated so far for about five hours. The warmth checked in during the last one, just finished. Now, I'm away to visit the allotment. Really wonderful day so far. Just a great day! Really enjoyed the run. Despite the runnings and jumpings and giving up dairy, I don't seem to have lost an ounce!! Still twelve stone. Dearie me!

Goji Berries!

2010-06-24T11:03:00.001-07:00

Thursday 7:05 p.m.
I think if I'm going to get any good as this juju, I'm going to have to live at least as long as Li Ching-yuen, so I went down to Waitrose looking for goji berries. I got a packet of mixed stuff. I was hoping to be able to germinate some of the berries, but the Domestic Bliss says they've been processed. Apparently, the bushes grow anywhere and you can buy them on the web, but I've never bought anything on the web, so it's back to the drawing board.

I bought soup stuff as well. In that pot are lentils, potatoes, cabbage, mustard greens, onion, carrot, broccoli ... kidney beans and chick peas ... salt, pepper, garlic, tumeric, coriander, curry powder, cumin ... and pasta sauce.

I had a photie extra so I took one of my guitar. I bought it from the pawn shop twenty years ago and it's been battered to death. I really need a new one. It's a copy of a hummingbird.

Thursday's Bliss Diary

2010-06-24T01:44:00.000-07:00

Thursday 9:45 p.m.
Just after the first meditation of the day.

Things have started at such a high point. What a day I'm going to have!

Guru Yoga is a very difficult for me since I am so full of moi! But it is integral to this juju, being one of the skilful means.

Wonderments and amazingnesses may be mine today, but I'm not claiming that it's because of what I'm doing. I'm just trying to get onto the park in the hope that someone will pass me the ball. I don't think Lama Yeshe went into his darkness retreat last year, or did all those other solitary retreats, for himself. I think he did them for me. Maybe not just for me, but for me as well. Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path. You're not going to become the buddha that he surely is unless you've developed that. Sometimes today I've felt like he was the sun shining down on me. You've got to try to get your head into that space, I think. Plug yourself into the lineage that goes back to Milarepa, back to Shakymuni. This must help to get the moi out of moi!

These meditations tend to get better and better as the day goes on. Set your controls for the heart of the sun!

Mare Strange Folk

2010-06-23T12:31:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 8:35 p.m.
After being intrigued by the buddha boy and Prahlad Jani, I came across Li Ching-yuen, who is supposed to have lived for over 250 years. Well, he might have lived till he was only 167 or so years, but his mother lost his birth certificate maybe!

He ate goji berries. I've never heard of goji berries. Maybe I could try growing a few bushes in the allotment. I wonder where I'd get the seeds. Anyway, he also did Qigong, which is a kind of tai chi, I think. The Taoists were into immortality, or becoming Immortals. I've never really understood Taoism. I mean, all I want to do, Jack, is to be able to emanate as a deity and then do a voluntary exit from my body. That's not asking for too much, is it? Why would anybody want to be immortal?

I was at the tai chi last night. You do a warm up, then a set of 108 moves (it's like a weird slow dance if you've never seen it) and then you have a break. Right at the end of the set, this joe comes up to moi, offers a handshake and says you look like a master.

I'm not any good at tai chi, but in the joe's defence he was just a beginner ... but afterwards thought this was a weird thing for one joe to say to another anyway. Then I remember putting something about masters and slaves into a dirty book I got published once and then I thought ... have I been getting chatted up by gay men all my life and never noticed?

A woman is never going to come up to you and introduce herself with a remark like that. You look like a master. Yeah? Hmmm?

Unlike the Iyengar yoga classes I used to go to, which were full of gorgeous bendy babes, and a great many with fabulous butts, I doubt if any of the women at the tai chi class are under sixty. The woman who teaches it was an old age pensioner fifteen years ago when I started going. She must be hitting eighty by now, and looks much the same actually. A wee sparrow, so she is. If the joe had decent eyes in his head he'd realise that she is a master of the 108 moves.

So I've got the verbal diarrhoea immediately when this joe starts talking to me. Strange flatheids make me nervous. It turns out he's a horticulturist. I asked him about the weeds. It seems I'm doing the right thing with the weeds as long as there aren't too many of them. He said something about biomass, whatever that is. He's involved in some ecology project in Portobello, hustling fruit trees into open spaces. He says he'd love to have an allotment. I told him I wanted to have a hut so I could sit in it. I can non-sequitur anybody, so I can. Just tell them you want a hut so you can learn to sit in it for days and days and days. Fung off, flatheids!

I was taking the weeds out from between the onions tonight. I found a strawberry the Domestic Bliss must have missed when she was up there last night. The lupins are turning into seed pods, passed their glorious best. They planted themselves as they have for years. I'm going to try seeding them in the slopes created by the disappearing ground.

Tomorrow, I will tell you about ra bliss, Jack! No jobbie tomorrow! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

Monday night again!

2010-06-21T13:37:00.001-07:00

Monday 9:40 p.m.
I swear I've only (so far) had one lemonade bottle of home brew and look at the photies. Doubles, triples ...more drinks coming up.

When I got back from the meditation I was at tonight, I did a session of six threes and then had the drink. Straight into the blood stream. Hurrah!

Folk who don't train and drink never get this. Me and my pal Gerry first experienced this after boxing training down at Meadowbank Stadium when I was just over my mid-twenties. Train for two hours, have two pints, and you're flying. Oh, well, I'll go and get another lemonade bottle then.

I went to the Theosophical Society building in Great King Street tonight for the first time in months ... maybe since last year ... to meditate with the nun.

I've got a lot of respect for the nun. The nun did the four year retreat. I've got a lot of respect for anyone who has done these big retreats. It must be like tempering steel. You won't be the same joe or josephine if you've put yourself through that.

She asked me where I'd been. Had I been in Edinburgh? I told her I'd been counting my pennies. She said to come along even if I was skint.

Due to spending all my money on drink and drugs, sometimes I haven't got much for the last two weeks of the month ... you don't go. You stay in. It's the pride that cometh before the next payday and the chance to get into the drink and drugs again.

But there were no flatheids in the room. Everybody was meditating for an hour. It's great that! It doesn't matter if you don't get the bliss or any of that malarkey yet. It's just being with people doing it. So that was great. I've got fifty quid left of my overdraft limit and I probably get paid in seven days. This is much better than usual. Usually, I've got twenty quid to do me over the last two weeks. Loaded, so I am. I hope to go back next week. It was great.

I'm really quite shy. I don't like talking about myself. This is because when I start telling folk about myself I sound fung amazing even to moi! Can write books, stand on his heid, do ra bliss, etc. Are there no end to the wonderments? Thank God I'm going to drink myself to death! It's the only thing I can do for the flatheids to give themselves a chance to smirk and sneer.

Oh, aye, he could write books, stand on his heid, do fabuloso shadow boxing at nearly sixty, and almost emanate as a deity, but what a stupid basturn ... he drank himself to death!

Actually, drinking yourself to death is too much like hard work. Eighty pints of home brew a month isn't going to do it unless I starve myself to death as well.

I'll be sixty next year. You should be dead by this time alreadys, Hotboy! I know, Jack! It's too late for me to drink myself to death. It's like saying a ninety year old drank himself to death. It's stupid. What age was Brendan Behan when he drank himself to death? I bet he wasn't over 48. You should get liver failure before you're thirty five if you're really going for it.

I'm nearly sixty, Jack! Isn't that wonderful. Took refuge at the age my old man died at. That's eight years in the gravy!! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

The fresh air photies were taken last night coming home from the park. The rest were at the Theosophical Society where I went to meditate tonight. One was from a leaflet showing the nun and the lama. One is of the copula at the top of the stairs. I came out much better than you'd think because of the wonky colours from the camera. The surrounds were actually light blue. I think the nun missed me. I said hullo, and as soon as the sitting finished, left straight away as usual. I'd like to be sociable, but if you start that, Jack, you end up invading Poland.

Some photies

2010-06-19T10:12:00.001-07:00

Saturday 6:20 p.m.
As I was leaving the allotment, the buddhist woman with the fabulous butt straightened up, turned round, and offered me a bunch of mustard greens. I have no idea what they are. I took a photie of them on the way home. The shopkeeper said you can steam them and eat them with lamb. I'll just eat them.

She has a fabulous allotment, this woman. She's young. She's American. I like American women. Some days you just like any kind of women. She asked me if I'd like to attend a medicine buddha puja this evening. They were going to have some eats afterwards. I demurred.

I'm so hot for you. I'm so hot for you. I'm so hot for you. And you're so cold. (The Rolling Stones) Yab Yum. Hmmm?

She said she was doing a PHd in Botany. I could have asked her about the weeds.

Just as well I've got leprosy, eh, Jack? It's a blessing in disguise, Hotboy. A blessing in disguise.

I had the first ripe strawberry of the year. Hurrah! It did taste fantastic!

Sympathy for the Devil!

2010-06-19T00:14:00.000-07:00

Saturday 8:20 a.m.
I had a vivid dream this morning where I ended up trying to console Wayne Rooney, who was caught on camera last night complaining about getting booed by the English fans.

I wakened up this morning feeling very calm.

I like hearing the Liverpool accents of some of the English players like Gerrard and Carragher. I like working class English accents. It's the evil bourgeois southerners who stick in my craw. I think when I get acclaimed President of the Scottish Socialist Republic, which I expect to happen soon after I start floating about, I'll annex the whole of the north of England down to the Wash. I can segue from this petty nationalism into the class war no bother.

Wayne Rooney wears a rosary round his neck when he plays. He's one of us!

If the Little Englanders do get out of the group stage, we can see them crash and burn at some penalty shoot out later on.

Come on, the English basturns!

He's scouse!
He's fat!
He'll come and screw your flat!
Wayne Rooney! Wayne Rooney!

I fell off the wagon last night at half time so I could be more enthusiastic in my support for the Algerians.

You can run and cycle from here till doomsday, but if you eat and drink like that, you will stay a fat basturn, Hotboy!

Fabulous Thursday!

2010-06-17T14:54:00.002-07:00

Thursday 11:00 p.m.
What a wonderful day I've had! Some folk never have such a wonderful day in the whole of their naturals, so I am feeling like a very fortunate creature right now. Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

I managed four hours meditations before lunch. I went out for flour supplies and made a loaf. I went up to the allotment and cut the grass down one side. It was an amazingly hot and sunny day for Chilly Jockoland. The reason why the teeshirt is hanging up in one of the photies is because it was wringing with sweat due to the grass cutting. But I'm used to that! That view with the teeshirt in it is the one you get from the hut door where I sat for an hour or so feeling relatively inconspicuous due to the thriving vegetation blocking the view of passers-by. By the time I came back to eat some dinner, I'd put in six hours meditating.

Then I lay on the couch for a bit. When I got up, I phoned the good mother to see if she wanted to go out for lunch tomorrow and since she did, I decided to do the five hills run, and not go down to Costorphine for the nine mile one.

I did it uncharacteristically in just a teeshirt ... no woolly hat and without the two sweat shirts. I took three minutes off the time I usually do that run in these days, which is forty minutes.

After the bliss bath and trying to work out facebook and watching the end of the France Mexico game (vase breathing with the noise blockers on!), I sat in the lobby for the last meditation of the day so far. A cracker! An absolute cracker. Bliss and light and heat! Hurrah!

If I could put three days together like that ... but I have to do the granny run through Lanarkshire tomorrow. Anyway, I can meditate for three hours in Newmains and an hour or so in Bellshill, so I should be able to do five hours in total before I get the train home.

One of the photies is of the current state of the apples and the other is of the sprouting branch of the apple tree. The tatties and onions and cabbages are doing brilliantly this year.

Hurrah for today!! Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!!!

I have to give up the computery thing now to the Domestic Bliss and watch Glee with my eyes shut and the noise blockers on.

It's a small world!

2010-06-16T23:54:00.000-07:00

Thursday 7:55 a.m.
I started the meditations today at 5:30 a.m. At the start of the day, I usually go through a list of the folk I know who have died and whom I'll like to do some juju for. There's now twenty folk on that list, the vast majority of them younger than me when they checked out.

I've decided to put the guy who topped himself last week on it for the next seven weeks since it turns out that he was also a close friend of the Spango Yogini, who shared a flat with him for three years, as well as the sensei's. It is indeed a small world!

What are you going to tell him when you visualise him, Hotboy? I'm going to tell him to go to heaven, Jack. Do you believe in heaven, Hotboy?

Samsara and nirvana are the same reality in the state of ultimate awareness.
To achieve ultimate reality, I mark everything with mahamudra, The Great Seal of emptiness.
This is the quintessence of non-duality. Milarepa, slightly misquoted perhaps.

I'd like to grow old in the conviction that nowhere is anywhere and that anywhere is nowhere; that everybody is nobody and anybody is everybody. Until then ... for the sake of visualising folk in the bardo, I can think of heaven as being just another mental formation, dependently originated, a bit like that which I'm in just now except a lot better. A pure land full of compassion where there are no flatheids, the women are all gorgeous, show great enthusiasm, and don't complain about the mess.

It might be a lot better for most folk if there is no afterlife. In the Tibetan tradition I don't think rebirth is something you'd look forward to, and the bardo between lives sounds as hairy as hell. Of course, if it's like dreaming, you might not know you are dead. And the Tibetan jujuman said controlling anything in the bardo was like getting chucked out of jet with a pencil and a bit of paper and expecting to be able to write a four line poem before you hit the ground.

I
try
not
to
believe
in
anything
has too many lines!!

It's going to be a great day for the bliss!

Wednesday night photies!

2010-06-16T12:32:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 8:35 p.m.
The bus stop photies were taken today and yesterday. There's a rose bush in the allotment and the other one is of flowers on the tatties. The trees aren't as good to photograph with leaves on them!

Vase Breathing, Heat and Bliss!

2010-06-15T01:41:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 9:42 p.m.
This post won't interest you if you don't meditate. People do land on this blog looking for information about vase breathing, tummo, gtumo, bliss, meditation and heat. So this is for you.

I don't know what bliss is though I've just been practising and getting shedloads of it. I suppose it might have something to do with serotonin, dopamine or whatever, but if so, I've no idea how it works. I don't think anyone has. In the press yesterday there was an article by this prof saying that serotonin levels have bugger all to do with depression, but this is contested. Nobody knows. Ignorance prevails as usual.

I started meditating twenty five years ago come this September/October, so that would make me thirty four. I started getting into the bliss when I began to meditate three times a day and got up at six in the morning to do some before going to work. I think I must have been about forty two then.

A guy called Dave Gibson encouraged me to take refuge, saying it would improve my meditations, and it did. I took refuge after reading The Bliss of Inner Fire and got an empowerment from Lama Yeshe, in rather peculiar circumstances I might say, around Christmas 2002. I took refuge on January 3rd, 2003.

I had made some connection between bliss and breathing when I was ten weeks off work a wee while after this, but I had my first experience of inner heat on April 6th, 2003. I've never had anything quite like that since.

There has been a slow, gradual development of bliss and heat since then.

I think you're supposed to be opening channels in your subtle body. My visualisations of these channels, the drops, the deity, etc., are very poor, but the channels seem to be opening anyway!

I've encountered no problems with any of this stuff though I maybe should have since I haven't received any instructions and I don't do stuff the way it says in the books.

I started moving awareness up through the four chakras you use about eighteen months ago when I was getting some side effects from concentrating soley on the navel chakra. Also, this is the way to the bliss. The bliss you get from the chakra in the middle of your brain is the business!

These days at every stage of the medicine buddha sadhana I do, I raise the awareness through these chakras in combination with vase breathing. This goes from the navel chakra and always goes back down the the navel chakra at every stage in the process. I don't know if this is recommended or not. I can't remember.

Ultimately, you are supposed to be able to collect the Four Blisses on the way down from the brain chakra. I don't know if I'll ever get there, but I am getting some bliss from every one of the four chakras I use. Not every time, but sometimes.

I'm definitely getting heat now, but not in the central channel. I suppose this is because my visualisations are so poor. But when the heat started checking in some more, these suddenly started to improve. I have no explanation for this. I have no explanation for any of this.

The jobbie is dead quiet today. I'm going to sneak off and do some more meditating. Here comes the bliss!

It's a shame the world is full of the too dumb to meditate, but it's not my fault!

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

Monday Update!

2010-06-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

Monday 8:45 p.m.
I was just about to doze off on the couch this evening after work when I smelt the soup pot burning. Your sense of smell is a quantum mechanical event, like photosynthesis. You smell what you smell because whatever it is isn't acting like a particle (otherwise it was never breach the mucus in your nose), but like a wave.

Why are you interested in quantum stuff, Hotboy? Well, Jack, some saints have been reported as being able to be in two places at once. Padre Pio was one such joe. During the Second World War he used to appear on clouds in front of American bombers and jammed their bombing gear. All the villages around about were bombed, but not his.

Do you believe that, Hotboy? I don't believe anything, Jack. But I find stuff like that interesting.

I think I read once that buddhas could emanate with 100,000 different bodies. I think wee tottie particles/waves can do that as well.

Tell us about the meditations, Hotboy! The spam robots want to hear about the bliss!

I didn't do much meditating early on today since I got drunk last night, but it was evident by the lunchtime meditation that the whole caboodle has moved on again. The warmth and heat is coming on faster than it was last week.

The amazing events and sensations produced by the vase breathing are accepted by me now. It's been such a slow development, over years, not months. I think if your flatheid were to get these feelings all at once, they'd definitely want to go to hospital. You'd be freaked. In an odd kind of way this is comparable to old age. If you were suddenly old, you'd be amazed at how gruesome it was. But if it just takes place in small increments, like day by day, you kind of habituate to it.

According to the statcounter thing, there were seventy four unique visitors to this bloggie yesterday. That's about sixty more than usual. I joined facebook a couple of weeks ago to keep in touch with my young relatives and a lot of these new visitors seem to come from there. I mentioned the bloggie on facebook which might have been a mistake. I'd like folk to meditate, especially family members, but there's nothing you can do about flatheids and the too dumb to meditate. Apart from the great vajrayana being a wee bit dangerous, I can see why the Tibetans sitting in the caves didn't talk to anyone about this juju. Esoteric. The effects, even for someone like moi, are so off the wall ... anyway, even the Domestic Blis and the kiddo don't meditate. Nobody I'm friendly with, in this country anyway, meditates.

Would you like to have never learned to meditate, Hotboy? You might have made some money and been a real man!

Sometimes I'm hilarious, so I am! Flatheids can't appreciate that! Flatheids don't even know they're flatheids!

I donned the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle and shadow boxed through the first half of Italy versus Paraguay. I've stopped eating butter and cheese. The next time I get paid I'll stop smoking and recommence eating the soapbar. I will make light middleweight. I will! I will! I will! By the end of July, the old, toothless one will be gasping in my wake!

Sunday's resume!

2010-06-13T12:22:00.001-07:00

Sunday 8:27 p.m.
The kiddo left the nest again this morning and so I am on my ownio till Wednesday night.

On Thursday, I must have done seven hours on the cushion; Friday, about six hours although I did the granny run on the bike through Lanarkshire; yesterday, another six or so hours before the kiddo came back from the Fatherland; but today I only did about four hours. Now, I'm going to have a drink. Jobbie basturn, grief, sorrow, lamentations, etc., tomorrow. The Fatherland are two nil up against the kangaroos at this moment in the World Cup. I guess if the kangaroos get a real hammering, Albert will have to stop goose-stepping around in his garden for a while.

I think I might be a bit obsessive about meditating. I used to be obsessive about writing, but I've only managed a half hour of doing the wonderful writings since I decided to keep that up last Monday. But this was a very enjoyable half hour and I might end up come my summer holidays with a plotline I can work on.

Am I obsessive, Jack? No, Hotboy, you have a work ethic. You have to do what is necessary and it is necessary that you sit in the lobby and do the calming and the concentrations, the bliss, the rapture, and sometimes the ecstasy over long periods of time so that, if you live long enough to get out of gainful employment, you will have the basis to begin to properly emanate as a deity, and appreciate emptiness. Because this is the best of things. You have written enough, but you have not meditated enough. If you meditate some more, maybe you will have something interesting to write about.

The huns are four nil up. I think Albert should have the day off work tomorrow. They'll be throwing bricks, so they will

The old, toothless one and I went jogging today, which is why I didn't meditate so much. An hour and twenty five minutes along the North Edinburgh cycle paths. You can't rely on the old, toothless one for the long, slow distance running because he doesn't meditate and gets anxious. I don't care if I don't know where I am. We didn't know where we were after an hour and surfaced in a private girls school. No schoolgirls, unfortunately. I applied for a jobbie there once a long time ago when I was still gorgeous, but they didn't even interview me. The stains and spittle marks on the application form maybe put them off. Cloistered protestant girls. Even I, the master of restraint, would be dead by this time.

I burst into tears when I was writing about the joe who topped himself. I wish folk wouldn't do that!

I went to sit this early evening in the allotment. The photies are of the cabbages, which are down to the Domestic Bliss, and of the going home.

I am such a fortunate creature! I don't know anyone who is as fortunate as I am, or as fortunate as I have been. What a fortunate creature I am , I am. What a fortunate creature I am!

Yesterday's photies!

2010-06-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

Sunday 5:10 p.m.
I don't know what the wee bush with the blue flowers on it is called. Otherwise, it was potatoes and lupins again. I suspect the tatties this year are even going to be better than last year, which was bumper crop.

Forever Young

2010-06-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

Saturday 6:35 p.m.
Most of my friends are folk I've known since way before I sold any of my wonderful writings. Well, there's only about three or four of them! The only time I ever hung about with writers was in the early 1990s when I first met the sensei and reverend. I was already forty by then and they guys were much younger.

An actor (and writer!) I knew called Lance Flynn told me the sensei wanted to meet me. Anyway, I went down to the Antiquary in St Stephen's Street to this poetry evening the sensei used to organise. He was pointed out to me. Nosferatu with a skinhead and teeshirt bearing the legend in bold white letters against black: DIE YUPPIE SCUM! After that I saw quite a bit of the sensei, and he used to ask me to go along with him to readings, launches, etc. Kevin Williamson was organising brilliant events with readings and all that at this time.

When I was at these things with the sensei, I sometimes met Paul Reekie. Paul was a very personable, likeable guy. I remember him doing a reading at one of these Rebel Inc events about going to a peculiar kind of party. Very funny.

I haven't seen the kiddo for nine weeks, the longest time since she was born. She's been in the Fatherland checking out glass studios. When I was her age, with a few friends I went in a caravanette to Belgium, Holland, Germany, Luxembourg, France, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Spain, France again and back to Blighty. A song we always had on the tape deck was Forever Young by the inimitable Bob.

When I got back to Bellshill after about five months, the auld maw ran up and down the lobby in delight. She wasn't allowed to go to Glasgow when she was young in case the Chinese took her away for the white slave trade. I will be pleased to see the kiddo when she gets back tonight.

The Domestic Bliss was watching a Sons Of Anarchy DVD last night. It had Forever Young as part of the sound track. I stopped hanging about with writers after the sensei funged off to America, but I did bump into Paul Reekie once or twice, here and there, as you do, but I really remember him from those Rebel Inc things. The sensei let me know that he'd committed suicide last week. I wish folk wouldn't do that! He was a one off, great guy!

May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0gUgTrYja8&NR=1

Friday night!

2010-06-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

Friday 11:40 p.m.
The week after I run out of the bob hope always tends to be rather alcoholic, but I'm sober and straight tonight. I was on the bike today for an hour and forty minutes. Passed by a sign near Holytown saying James Keir Hardie was born here. I was chuffed that he was born near Bellshill when I was kid. No burglars came calling while a house sat in Newmains, so I didn't get to kill anyone.

New Rules!

2010-06-10T15:16:00.000-07:00

Thursday 11:20 p.m.
There is only one thing, so it's not all about moi! I already get my zen from the sensei and reverend. The exoticness I get from the juju joes and josephines from Tibet. I think I should take dietary advice from Albert. Albert knows stuff about the body since he is smarter than anyone and more neurotic than anyone, so it all balances up with him. So since we are a compendium of thoughts, mostly from other people, I think I will bow to the sensei about zen, and bow to the Albert about diet, and all things neurotic. I take advice from Mary Queen of Scots on how to live my life because she has spectacularly overcome broken arms, basturns and tough times. The body who grows tomatoes knows much more about plants than I ever will.

I changed blogs once because too many people were hitting on my blog. I just want a few people.

I can do the plodding stuff, the sitting for ages stuff because I am convinced it does work, but I do need the input and criticism from the few folk who land on this bloggie.

I read the quote on my wall at the tai chi on Tuesday, from the book by F.C. Happold. How strange. It was from the sufis. Allah Akbar. I think I wrote it on my wall, as I did most things between being thirty and thirty five.

I am not the body
I am not the senses
I am not the mind
I am not this
I am not that
What then am I? What is the self?
It is in the body
It is in everybody
It is everywhere
It is the all
It is self. I am It. Absolute Oneness.

I need help. I get a lot of help. I am spectacularly not moi! So I'm not!

No interruptions today. No worries. Perfect Thursday!

World Cup

2010-06-10T14:03:00.000-07:00

Thursday 10:05 p.m.
You are supposed to treat everyone the same. I think it's called equanimity. I tried to support the Rangers in their bid to win a European trophy a couple of years ago. I managed until the final when I saw the huns flood into Manchester with the Union Jacks streaming out of their motors, and hoped there were plenty of riot police waiting for them. Unfortunately, not enough as it turned out.

Flicking through the channels after getting back from the allotment this evening, what did I find on BBC Four but the Bobby Moore Story. Fung sake! I told my line manager, who is a very, very nice man from Chester, that I would try to support the Little Englanders until the semi-finals, that I was friendly with a lot of English people, and that they should have won it more than once. Dearie me. It's the fact that the "British" media keep harking back to 1966 that sticks in everyone's craw up here.

1966 was only twenty one years after the end of the Second World War. I do remember sitting on my da's knee and asking him what he did in the war. But since about 1975 the Second World War has always seemed like science fiction to me. Also, it's in black and white, mostly. Why would anyone want to kill all the jews? While fighting a war against almost everybody as well. I do find it hard to get my head round that.

So, according to the Bobby Moore Story, the Russian referee who walked over to the Turkish linesman, with whom he couldn't converse, to discuss whether or not the ball had gone over the line for the third English goal had had between thirty and forty members of his family killed by the Germans in the Second World War. The English player who had the best view said the ball didn't go over the line. With a referee like that ... I remember being really happy when the Gerries equalised with almost the last kick of the ball in the regulation ninety minutes. It should have gone straight to a penalty shoot out.

I think every time the World Cup comes round, in Scotland we should get to see the WHOLE game when Scotland drubbed them, took the piss, rubbed their noses in it, etc., because all we get is the 1966 stuff and not the game which made us all so happy in 1967.

So maybe it's time the Little Englanders won it again so we don't have to keep looking at this 1966 crap. Also, they've got an Italian manager. He'll have paid the referee.

Mare Photies!

2010-06-10T11:27:00.001-07:00

Thursday 7:30 p.m.
The sun started shining and I spent all afternoon in the allotment. One of the photies shows flowers appearing on the potatoes. Two are the views to the left and right of where I was meditating. And one is of a gooseberry I tried. Still not sweet enough.

More About The Writings!

2010-06-10T03:31:00.001-07:00

Thursday 11:30 a.m.
Slept in today and didn't start meditating till an hour ago. But what a meditation that was!!

The Spango Yogini asked me about writing. I'm going to re-commence writing the book about The Traffic Warden Massacre. I had a go once this week and I'd forgotten how hard it is to write, or at least start books. I always find first drafts tough. I love re-writing. That's easy. And, yes, I type everything. I've never written in longhand. I learned to type by trying to write a book when I left uni. I thought it looked more like a printed page.

When I was lying in bed this morning, I was thinking about writing for radio. Over a ten year period, I had four radio plays produced by Radio Scotland and Radio 4. These were good. Someone once described them as "acclaimed". I think I had eight plays produced over the ten years I was writing plays, but I never thought of myself as a playwright. I was always writing prose as well.

Today I want to concentrate on the juju. I hope it rains so I don't have to go up to the allotment. There's tons of work to be done up there.

Time for one more meditation before luncho!

Wednesday night!

2010-06-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 8:45 p.m.
I've decided I'd better do something about my diet, Jack. Why is that, Hotboy? Well, if you live on bread and soup and beer, you end up getting leprosy and become a fat basturn. Also, I eat loads of butter and cheese and there's something no right about that.

Once I used to stir fry in a wok. Once I ate a lot of pasta. On neither of these times did I turn into a fat basturn.

Then it occurred to me that I can change my diet next month because then the tatties will come on stream.

We went to visit the allotment this evening. There have been days and days of nothing but drizzle and smirr recently, so I have not managed to get up there for a bit. The place has exploded. Everything seems twice the size it was a week ago. The potatoes do love the wet! It is tattie heaven up there. When I go up tomorrow I must remember to talk in an Irish accent ...

The best thing I've ever heard on the radio was a reading of The Poor Mouth by Patrick McGee, a now dead fabulous actor. It's a satire about the west of Ireland (I didn't have to tell you that, Jack, did I?) and nobody in it eats anything but potatoes.

I reckon I could have a potato diet by mid-July. Hurrah!

The first photie is of the cherries before they go red. Then there is the tatties. There's a photie of our lupins and one of the laburnum tree on the way home. Then there is a couple of bees. They say the bees are in trouble, but not around our allotment they aren't. It's hard to get a photie of them though with a mobile phone camera. Then, by accident, there are two photies taken from where I was sitting on Tuesday at the issue desk of my jobbie. Dearie me! Let us not think about that when I don't have to go there till next Monday. Hurrah!

I do hope the weather is okay tomorrow. I need a Thursday with no flatheids. I really do. I can't stand on my head at the hut or do back bends, but you do feel stashed up there, safe and secure.

On Friday I will visit the good mother, who will be going for lunch, and kill some burglars. The kiddo comes home from the Fatherland on Saturday and leaves for the highlands on Sunday, so there will be much agitation everywhere, and I really need to have Thursday on my own. Despite getting over the nicotine and drinking way too much, the meditations continue to be fabuloso.

New Day!

2010-06-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 3:10 p.m.
What a difference a day makes!!

Quite often I have a lousy sleep on a Sunday night. This is probably because I almost always drink some beers on a Sunday night, and when I waken up in the middle of the night, I don't get back to sleep again. This does not happen on a non-work day. Beer or no beer, then I just sleep.

I used to hate being awake through the night. You're tossing, turning, wishing you could just go to blinking sleep!

These days, due to the advancements in the meditation, I usually hardly mind at all. In fact, sometimes I really quite enjoy it, this being awake in the middle of the night.

It's the bliss, Jack! The bliss from the yoga nidra. Last night, I found it harder to stay flat out doing the yoga nidra for long, but was getting the bliss on either side. That's the way to do it!

A wee while ago, I was nodding off. I'm looking forward to hitting the couch after I get home! But today has been so much better than yesterday. Tomorrow I attain a modicum of freedom around noon. Hurrah!

Just finished a good novel called The White King by a writer called Gygorgy Dragoman. There's a section in a wheat field that's as good as anything.

Writings!

2010-06-07T11:56:00.000-07:00

Monday 8:00 p.m.
Such a rotten day! Had a great night's sleep as well due to going to bed sober and straight. But I couldn't settle today and there's really nothing to do at the jobbie at the moment. Second day of no nicotine after a ten day binge. Basturns! All thoughts seemed unhelpful.

Such as: How the fung did I end up with no money, a menial, crap jobbie, etc.? Hopelessness descending on a Monday morning. Bleak.

Thank God I don't believe in thoughts, but I have to put up with them just like everyone else!

I can't live without hope. Maybe Fargo Publishing will publish a book of mine next year and give me some hundreds of pounds. Maybe I'll get well off and be able to get out of this jobbie. Maybes and more maybes.

Anyway, I decided to start writing again. At least, that might keep me out of trouble. It was the writing that got me into this guddle, and it won't get me out of it, but I did enjoy writing.

I bought beer last night to help with the nicotine withdrawals, but I threw up after the first sip ... must have been something I ate, Jack. Aye, I'll go and have a beer and the day after tomorrow, the sun will rise and I will be good again. Basturns! Basturns!

Bliss Update

2010-06-06T05:42:00.000-07:00

Sunday 1:45 p.m.
On Thursday, the three interruptions. Friday is a Bellshill day and we had the wild west arriving on Friday night. Recovering on Saturday and then the kiddo's boyfriend visited us last night. And after smoking for ten days straight, it stops today.

With the wine stains on his white linen jacket; the pig's face half chewed and hanging from his side pocket; a fag in either hand, Brian Wilson tells me he wants to become a drug addict and could I get him some bob hope. I pointed out to him that he is already a drug addict what with the plonko collapso and the fags, but he insisted. It seems the government has told him that the bob hope makes you schizophrenic and he'd like to try that out. Anyway, I got him a bit, but couldn't handle the responsibility of turning him into a drug addict, so I just smoked it myself. With fags. That's ten days of smoking joints. But it's finished now. Drug addict? Fung drug addict? I'll give you drug addict, so I will! Come near me today and I'll stab the lot of yous! Thankfully, the flat is empty and all the sharp implements has been removed for safe keeping.

Photies backlog

2010-06-05T09:45:00.001-07:00

Saturday 6:30 p.m.
My friends from the wild west showed up yesterday and stayed the night. That was excellent!

You'd think the cavortings would put you back a bit, and they usually do by making it harder for you sit and sit and sit afterwards, but when I finally managed to start meditating today, the process seemed to have moved on a wee bit on its own. So I was turning into a porage oats advert again, glowing with the warmth.

The top photie is of the weeds between the tatties. The last two are Bellshill. One of the doubles is lupins. We've only got red ones this year and only one bush. Usually, we have red and blue and white.

Weeds 2!

2010-06-03T05:29:00.000-07:00

Thursday 1:30 p.m.
It dawned on me about the weeds. The weeds must be taking carbon from the carbon dioxide in the air and making it into cell walls. Organic chemistry is all about carbon and weeds are organic. So since carbon is good for plants, if you pull the weeds out and just leave them there, they must add something to the soil. When they rot, it must be mostly water that's disappearing.

If weeds are beneficial, given that you've got plenty of room and are not choked in weeds, why then does nobody want to grow them, Jack? Mayhap this be more anal retentiveness from the severe Calvinist toilet training regimes, Hotboy, which, combining with the .. def, dight, def, dight! ... marching up and down, makes the upwardly aspiring, evil ones neurotically tidy.

Tidy folk are not happy people. Just waiting to be agitated by messiness. We might have leprosy, but thank God we don't suffer from tidiness, Jack!

Changed Days

2010-06-03T03:22:00.000-07:00

Thursday 11:25 a.m.
"I bet she's still a virgin, but it's only twenty five to nine. You can see a million of them down on Heart Attack and Vine." Tom Waites.

So I'm sitting in the lobby waiting for the architects and engineer to come and have a look at the cracks on our wall. Ding, ding! Three young women! Very attractive. Very, very attractive. I wondered if they liked the care in the community look I've made all my own. One of them was wearing a low cut top. Well, it seemed awful low cut to me.

"See that little Jersey girl in the see through top ... " Heart Attack and Vine.

The freedoms won by women in my lifetime have been great for slobs like me. The one in the low cut top started trying to explain what was going to happen, and I said I didn't want to know. I left all that kind of thing to my partner. Send her a letter. Hurrah!

I suppose I'd better go and do some more of the bliss then. Somebody's got to.

Rene

2010-06-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 9:45 p.m.
I know nothing about Descartes, but he sometimes has shown up on teevee shows I watch. The first thing I liked about Descartes was the question he might have put: How do I know I'm not dreaming?

The teevee show this time was The Story of Science. The boy says Rene realised your senses could get things wrong. You might think a circular tower was square from a distance. (I must say I thought that was a weird example too!). Anyway, he was big on doubt and scepticism, and wondered if everything might be illusory, including himself. I was really warming to Rene when it got to that bit.

Unfortunately, Rene seems to have actually wanted to believe in something and it seems he thought that if he, the doubter, was thinking doubting thoughts then he must be a somebody. I think therefore I am.

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

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

Anyway, it seemed to me that Rene had got right down to the false sense of self, the object to be negated, and maybe was wanting to get back to God or something like that maybe. He might have said there was nobody thinking the thoughts, that the thoughts just arose, abided and declined in your consciousness, which is just a kind of cognizant thing, an awareness.

You could say you were your consciousness, Hotboy. You could say that, Jack, but what about when you're in deep sleep and not cognizing any thoughts, and not conscious? Who are you then when you are unconscious?

I ran down to Costorphine and up yon big hill from quarter past six. It took me an hour and three quarters again. It's ten o clock now. Tomorrow I do not need to take any exercise even if I could. Tomorrow is all mine! Mine, I tell you! All mine! Hurrah!

Weeds

2010-05-31T14:54:00.000-07:00

Monday 10:55 p.m.
Does anyone out there have an O'Level in Botany?

The allotment is now awash in weeds. I do not know where these plants come from. I assume the seeds are wee tottie things you cannot see whilst digging. You have an aspect of dependent origination since the seed will need water and soil. From comments I had in previous years, it seems that the plant does not suck up the earth, but only water. It uses the minerals in the water to make itself. Is that it?

So what are weeds made of and why are they so big? Like how much mineral does it take to make the plant that big? Is it sucking carbon out of the water .... I know nothing at all about plants. I assume there has been just a very little amount from the earth to make this really quite a big thing when you consider that you can't even see the seed. I know it's getting energy from the sun. Photosynthesis.

The more you look at plants with all your ignorance of botany, the more amazing they become.

They must be ninety odd percent water.

So you pull up the weed and cover it up in the ground. Has the soil gained anything here, or has it just been equalised somehow? Has the plant added something that wasn't there before, from the sun and the water? I don't know what to do with the weeds. I usually just let them grow. Nobody grows weeds like me. I must be doing something wrong. Any suggestions?

The photies were taken at the bus stop this morning. Nice day.

The Last Appointment!

2010-05-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

Monday 12:30 a.m.
It was in a restaurant. I didn't have my credit cards on me, but had about forty five quid. I did not know if that would be enough. I was told it was for free, but the folk there didn't need it to be for free, and so no one mentioned it. The evil bourgeois. I went into a discrete half lotus and told the waiter I was on a fast, and he ran away. That was good. I know how to handle being in restaurants now.

I don't want to have an appointment ever again. I go there and I hate it and I get drunk so I can escape, and then I regret the whole sorry business. What is the point of flatheids? I had to leave something approaching ecstasy for this. I got back here about seven. Glad to say that I missed the last three hours. I think I gave up memory after about three big glasses of the collapso that everyone was throwing down their necks. Then I slept till eleven and then the Domestic Bliss came back home.

There was a time when I didn't like hanging around with straights. Straights in those days were people who didn't take drugs. Really boring people. But, like in the Rhinoceros play by Ionesco, I think, they all started turning into straights. In the play everyone turns into a rhinoceros. Exactly the same process. Except now they're all flatheids! Too dumb to meditate. God preserve us from the flatheids!

I had a wee lie down on the couch before writing this post. The bliss is still there. You just have to go in and look for it. Or look at it.

This time last year I was dreading going on holiday for a whole week of flatheids and, at least, I don't have that in front of me now. I have no more appointments to dread. Today has been a complete waste of part of my wonderful life. That's it! Fung off, flatheids!

Very Early Sunday Morning!

2010-05-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

Sunday 00:20 p.m.
I ran to Costorphine and up yon great big hill when I got back from Bellshill today. One hour and forty five minutes. That's five minutes faster than the last time I did that run. Couldn't have been slower.

I got into the bath at half six and got out of it at half eight. I was most surprised at how long I'd been in the bath. I think I might have dozed off, Jack. Crashed out in the bath for an hour anyway. Mr Fit.

I noticed I was feeling calm on the train to Bellshill. I've noticed this calmness a couple of times recently and it's made me realise I'm not usually calm at all. Calm is like a drug. It coats you. There is not much to feel anxious about. It's as if the underlying anxiety has diminished for a bit. And you can tell the difference.

So I didn't get down to the meditations till half nine. Perfect timing. Maybe a quarter of an hour before sunset.

I have never felt as much bliss as I have over the last couple of days. If you look at the analogy of channels opening, it seems that they've become open, but they haven't. They've maybe opened a wee bit. Then over the last few days they've opened a bit more. Who knows what it would be like if they were really open!

Of course, you get up and the bliss just immediately goes away. And the bliss isn't really much like a drug at all. You don't have to go back for more, or even want to. This makes it a bit peculiar. There was hardly any heat in all this. I don't understand this heat business at all.

It's hard to describe how the bliss could be any blissier than I've said before. There was a feeling of quite an amount of force in the bliss when it was full on tonight. And a background hum like the ones you get in hydro-electric power stations where the hum is all you hear of the amazing power being generated under the shiny outer casings. It makes you think of power.

It's much more fun blogging when you are pissed. I'm away to bed.

Wonderful Friday!

2010-05-28T05:31:00.000-07:00

Friday 1:34 p.m.
Yesterday, when I was having some couch time in the afternoon, it seemed as if my body was swimming in ecstasy; slipping and sliding. I didn't want to open my eyes and get up then. Falling into a doze once more would have been fine because I knew the bliss would be there when I came to. Then the door bell rang.

I saw the pizzaman yesterday and the Domestic Bliss was in and out of the house all day and evening (well, she does live here!), and that was very nice, but I didn't think I'd put in enough on my own time. So I cancelled today. Tomorrow is the new today.

I've just finished my third meditation and all of them have been brilliant, despite the fact that I was puffing the magic dragon between sits. Boom, Shiva.

I was going to go for a long run around three, but I may sit on. The Karmapa show is supposed to be on the web at seven tonight. I bet it aint! But it would be great if it was.

There wasn't much heat this morning though some did come in during the third meditation. But plenty has been going on! Mainly, I've been trying to concentrate on the navel chakra symbol. When I've been moving the attention up the mid-brain chakra ... this has been much better than ever. Thick, thick blissiness!

9:15 p.m.
Of course, the Karmapa's webcast didn't happen. Methinks some skullduggery is afoot here.

I'm going to leave of the meditations there. The consiglieri came to see me for a hour and a bit, and I went to the shops for five minutes. Apart from that, it's be meditating just about all day. No running, no bugger all.

These have obviously been the best meditations I can remember, at least for the advancement of the effects of the vase breathing. Not much heat though. It is still light here yet ... I'm going to have three beers now and watch the second part of The Scheme on the BBC Iplayer. The first part is probably one of the best or worst things BBC Scotland has ever done. But it's been a great day for the juju!!

Bliss Diary!

2010-05-27T04:26:00.000-07:00

Thursday 12:30 p.m.
Sometimes you're just getting there when you have to stop. The second sitting of the morning was nearly an hour and a half, but sore legs stopped play. My concentration wasn't as good as it could have been, but loads of the bliss, especially towards the end. I coughed at one point when trying suck in a big breath and that seemed to kick start the heat somehow. Not much heat though tons of bliss!!

Can you see any obstacles coming up over the weekend, Hotboy? Well, Jack, it looks as if I should have the wind at my back. The Domestic Bliss is going out of town for the weekend and I only have one appointment. I hate having anything lined up, but this one is a bit special. The widow of my friend who was cremated in Bali last summer is putting up some money so his pals can have a drink on him this Sunday lunchtime. If ever there was an open grave ... but he was a special kind of a guy, and I'll be meeting up with the folk we did a house swop with twenty years ago, etc.

"He's never early. He's always late. The first thing you learn is your always gotta wait." The inimitable Lou.

I'm going to score this afternoon. I have always loved scoring. One of my favourite things!!

7:50 p.m.
I can't connect to the Karmapa broadcast. I think I'll just go into the lobby and do the bliss instead.

10:00 p.m.
The photie of the hut was taken when I'd stopped meditating, realising that a storm was blowing in. Twenty wonderful minutes with eyes shut, sun bathing in the bliss, then it got a bit dark quite quickly, and blowy. There were hailstones before I got home. Then the skies opened. Hurrah! This is a brilliant place to live, so it is. None this opening up your curtains in the morning and saying,"Not another bloody beautiful sunny day!" We get a wee bit of drama. Thank god I don't live in Kansas. You can get too much drama. Wee hailstones. Moderation in all things.

Karmapa

2010-05-27T01:29:00.001-07:00

Thursday 9:30 a.m.
The Karmapa is broadcasting on the internet at 7 p.m. tonight British time. Hurrah!

Purification!

2010-05-26T15:17:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 11:20 p.m.
Sorry about the double photie again! It's a lavender bush. The apple blossom has gone now. The rhubarb is doing well. I've just burnt it in the pot. It came home with some leeks which had over-wintered, and were really neglected and left too long.

On the web, I was reading about this boy who walked off the park when he was sixteen. Can't remember his name. Another swami joe. So he gets this loss of "false" sense of self and goes to this sacred mountain and sits there. His false sense of self has gone and it's not coming back. I lost it once for a few seconds, but this boy just lost it. And it wasn't coming back. So he goes to the sacred mountain and just sits there. There's a name for this kind of samahdi, but I can't remember what it is. Nava... something. Anyway, he's just sitting there doing this further on state from ra bliss for years. Things start eating him as he sits there, but I don't think you'd notice in that state.

Later on, he has the ashram as these boys do, and when other joes ask him about how to temper desires, he says you've got to lose the false sense of self or they will arise again somehow. Like, you can get rid of them for a bit, but they will spring back as soon as you lose attention, or stop trying, or whatnot.

Hotboy, some folk really don't seem to have strong desires. They just go around being nice all the time. This is true, Jack, as far as we can observe. They don't drink too much, or do anything too much. I take my hat off to them. I wish I was one of those nice people. Unfortunately, I am not very good at that, whatever it is that makes them not too desirous, and quite nice. I'd like to apologise to all the nice people out there and say I would like to be just like them. You are what everyone should aspire to. The opposite of the Daleks.

I will get paid tomorrow. I will change addictions from the home brew, the last of which I will throw down the sink tonight, to soapbar, which is not a very good bit of bob hope at all really. But it's a million times better than home brew!

The lama said I should talk to him again when I had a problem! What a laugh! How many problems could I list? Apart from the bliss and the heat and the attempts to emanate as a deity, I've got bugger all but problems! The whole of moi is one big problem!

My credit card debt has disappeared. Somebody stuck a grand into that debt and now there is only about 93 quid to pay off!

Whoever you are, I have always relied on the kindness of strangers. Tennessee Williams. The door.

Crows and Foxes!

2010-05-24T13:49:00.000-07:00

Monday 10:00 p.m.
Last year a wee crow fell out of its nest and was hopping about in the road between the trees in the park. Big crows swooped down on anyone who went near it. As I walked down from the allotment passed this scene, I had a wish to get the wee crow and take it to the hut where I could look after it. I thought the foxes would get it when it grew dark. I thought they'd get it in the hut as well, what with the holes in the wall.

A couple of years ago, I visited my brother Grizzly, who lives surrounded by trees, and he went to his window and called for the raven. He'd hand reared this when it fell out of its tree. Amazed I was when this raven flew up and landed on the window sill, and came inside. He gave it a plate of cornflakes. Hard to imagine anything more black and beautiful and more incongruous than that bird eating cornflakes in his living room.

Konrad Lorenz studied jackdaws. He said when you fell out with one jackdaw, you fell out with all the jackdaws. They told on you to all their pals.

It was easy to tell where the fox was tonight in the allotments because, wherever it went, a crow followed close behind and made a racket. Every creature great and small was going to know something was afoot. That's how I got the photies.

I felt a bit guilty about not doing something about the wee crow last year. The big crows would swoop, but I don't think they'd actually hit you, or claw you on the way passed. Now that I've got the hut in better shape I could hand rear one this year.

When Grizzly eventually took the raven out to fly about, all the other ravens gathered round and gave it support, and accepted it back into their group. A friend of the ravens forever would Grizzly be after that.

Later!

2010-05-23T15:39:00.001-07:00

Sunday 11:43 p.m.
On Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night, I had flatheids to attend to. This is far too many flatheids. Being with the Domestic Bliss on Friday was alright ... fair play to the Domestic Bliss, but tonight was the first evening for ages when I could just go and investigate the bliss. You want to be investigating the bliss when the day turns to darkness.

I am no use to flatheids. People who stop me meditating, including moi, do not excite my compassion. If I just meditated a lot more, then I could deal with the flatheids a lot better. The first noble truth is the truth of frustration. I got the evening meditation together tonight, but this is Sunday. Had I got it together on Thursday, the whole weekend would have been much better. I was a bit surprised by how calm I felt this morning. So I knew I had not been calm before. Basturns! I had great meditations in the allotment this evening, but ... I'm sorry for the too dumb to meditate and I give in, but I'm not any way advanced enough in this malarkey for that not to affect moi. Flatheids are like an infection. The more you have to deal with flatheids, the more flatheided you become.

The air was sometimes thick with dandelion seeds as the old, toothless one and I ran along the cycle paths of North Edinburgh. I'd never seen the like before. We ran for forty five minutes, or padded along, and then turned back. The hour and a half of jogging takes three hours out of the day. There is an hour in the bath afterwards. Then there is a half hour lying on the couch dozing off and waiting to see if you will ever be able to walk and talk again. Then you start sitting in the lobby again.

I'd just arrived at the mid-brain chakra, and so far it had taken about six hours to get there, when the Domestic Bliss came back home and I had to stop.

I was sitting in the allotment by nine o clock. Back to the post for holding up the raspberries, the allotment photies were taken at ten o clock. The bus stop photies were taken on the way to the Traverse last night. There were no open graves to fall into last night. Hurrah!

I left the allotment tonight at half ten. You folk from Chilly Jockoland who are now living in deserts might remember that it's almost still light then at this time of year. Some of the birds, who had been talking to each other throughout, were still chattering away at half ten. The auld wummin in the allotment at my back told me once she didn't want to attract too much attention because she was often in the allotment late at night. She has a wee drink. She enjoys the sitting there in another kind of way. I think I should silently offer her my protection since I expect to be sitting with my back to her quite a lot this summer. God is good! God is great! God is nothing like moi!

This wonderful day!

2010-05-23T03:09:00.000-07:00

Sunday 11:10 a.m.
The best thing was when the old, toothless one put back our run from one till three p.m. That gives me time to do everything before then because I don't expect to be in much of a state to do much afterwards! By everything, I mean the odd dog pose, head stand, bit of tai chi, and about four hours on the cushion. There's no rush now. There's no one in either since the Domestic Bliss was at her mother's last night.

I'm really enjoying feeling calm this morning. You cannot over-rate feeling calm. It's only this morning when I'm feeling quite calm that I realise I haven't been all that calm up till now. Too many flatheids! Too many appointments! Little things on your mind that you don't even know are on your mind.

So far I've done an hour and a half, the first meditation. That took me up to the Kyrie Eleison Christe Eleisons, and the bit when I ask for help for all the dead people I know. The next bit is when you die and arise as a light being. I know this is going to be great this morning!

Why do I have all the fun, Jack? It's because you meditate, Hotboy! Why do the flatheids give off all that moaning and groaning? Because they do not meditate, Hotboy! It's a simple life, so it is! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

1:05 p.m.
Felt the heat coming on during that meditation, but not during the first one.

3 p.m.
The run was put back till four, and I did another hour just then in the lobby after going out for some messages apres luncho. Concentration not quite as good as in the morning I felt like dozing off a few times. Came on strong at the end, but no such much puffings of heat. I'll do some more and await the phone call to tell me of the approach of the old, toothless one. It's a hot day for a run!!

Allotment photies

2010-05-22T10:32:00.001-07:00

Saturday 6:35 p.m.
The night photies aren't supposed to be there! The other ones were taken today. Apart from the tatties photie, that's what you can see from where I was sitting to meditate in front of the hut door. You can kind of hide there, especially if you're wearing shades and the wide brimmed, Australian hat. It was boling hot today. Peely wally legs everywhere. The meditations were fabulous today and I've done nothing else really since the back of ten this morning. I'm just about to get ready to go to the Traverse. I've got twenty pounds on me so I told the person I'm going with not to expect to be falling out of one of them bicycle rickshaw things at half two in the morning, but you never know. Once more into the breach, dear friends!

Bliss diary resume!

2010-05-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

Saturday 00:23 a.m.
To get on with this meditation malarkey, it is much easier to get a gun and shooty shooty all the flatheided basturns that come near you. But some folk might say this is not compassionate. On the other hand, I do not think it is compassionate to walk around with a flat heid, with your head stuck up your arse and emanating as some kind of pond life moron. And stand there in front of moi exciting my compassion when I'd much rather just tell you to fung off. This is maybe not so true with your old relatives.

So I cycled down from Shotts today and landed into the good mother's. It took me a half hour on the bike. Then I cycled to Bellshill and the auld maw was great. I got an hour meditating in her bedroom whilst some Tibetan boy was going on about the bardo. What a way to spend the afternoon! Sitting with someone over ninety listening to the boy talking about death.

And what shall we do, Hotboy, when old age and death come rolling in? Just fung off and die, Jack! Just fung off and die!

So I'm too old and fat for this cycling malarkey. Like, after an hour and ten minutes on the bike, with one close death experience - the power relationship is wonderful. This motor is heading straight at me on a roundabout in Motherwell and I brake, twist, and I'm away, half glancing at the horrified face of the motorist. You see, you're free on a bike because you cannot kill anyone, only be killed - after this amount of cycling I'm half dead and would like to go to sleep. This makes concentrating on anything a bit difficult. I just would like to lie down for a bit.

But I feel once again that I am on the cusp on something wonderful with this juju as long as I can get the time on the cushion in.

I got a phone call from the consiglieri on Thursday night and he came down for a wee visit. I'm not going to say no to the consiglieri.

You cannot explain to the flatheids what you are missing by having to sit with them because they do not get the bliss, far less developments of the bliss, the ones you are missing by sitting there having what's called a good time with them. But I did have a good time and it is not appropriate to tell the consiglieri to fung off just now.

The meditations through the day yesterday were fantastic and I knew if I could just get through the evening and was still in there when it grew dark ... but it was not to be. It's not all about moi, though why shouldn't it be when the too dumb to meditate are always going to be too dumb to meditate?

He's the worst agent in the world, by the way. I think I might be the worst writer, so there is an appropriateness in this somehow.

It's a building block thing. You miss having the wonderful Thursday all to yourself and ... you just haven't done your best to do what has to be done.

The best thing on the telly, if you're going to sit there in a lotus with the noise blockers on and the eyes closed, is a foreign language film. I don't speak any foreign languages and they're usually quiet since they are so cheap. No helicopters, no big explosions. One of the worst things was what was on tonight. Sons of Anarchy. HBO. Actually, if I had the time I'd have probably wanted to watch it. But I don't watch much telly. How are you ever going to fly about the place is you spend your time watching stuff on the telly? Anyway, this DVD has lots of explosions and a great soundtrack and meaty punchings and is exactly what you don't want on the telly when you're trying to keep company with the Domestic Bliss whilst doing the vase breathing and whatnot. After that, there's a BBC Four show about a brilliant rock band ...

Despite it all, I was getting some bliss and even some heat. But no where near what I could and should be getting.

The Domestic Bliss is going to be out of town tomorrow evening, but somehow I have got a date with Poisonous. I forced him to agree to go to five small opera things at the Traverse tomorrow night after the DM told me she'd these tickets and would I like ... No, I wouldn't! I should phone up Poisonous tomorrow and tell him to fung off. We used to take quite interesting drugs together, but the last time I saw him for a night out, I ended up falling down and hurting myself. That's another reason why the decent drugs should all be legalised. When you are old, you don't network, you're not in a scene, and what's left? The legal drugs! The totally accessible alcohol! Basturns!

But they are not so fortunate as you are, Hotboy. No, Jack, this is always correct. These flatheided basturns are not as fortunate as moi, but that's not my fault. Just one interaction a week with any of these too dumb to meditate bourgeois basturns would be quite enough.

Despite all this, I am quite good humoured as I head off for beddy-bys because this juju is really working, so it is. So it is! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am.

I joined facebook to trace a relative. The upside down photie is moi! There's a photie of the auld maw from up above her bed and from about seventy odd years ago. And a before and after sky shot from the allotment this evening - between 8:40p.m. and 9:40 p.m. And some weird blue flower on the way out. God is great! Allah Akbar!

Debriefing!

2010-05-20T10:10:00.000-07:00

Thursday 6: 15 p.m.
I was still always falling down during this time, and I would always say, before falling, "I'm about to fall down", and almost nobody, nobody ever caught me. Tennessee Williams. The door.

A fabulous sentence, don't you think, Jack?

I found a fag in my shirt pocket on Tuesday morning and wondered how it got there. But no mysterious bruises, nothing like that. I had all my fingers and toes, but emailed Beef McDuck to find out about the end of Monday evening. Apparently, I bolted for a taxi when we were on the way to the pub, and escaped the copious amounts of whisky Beef and Froggy were heading for. It seems they started, in a friendly way, to punch each others ribs in the bar to see how good they might be at that. Beef said his ribs the next day were fine, but his hands and wrists were a bit sore. There's three inches of blubber on Beef before you get near his ribs, so God knows how Froggy's ribs felt the next day as he carted the wife and wanes back to Froggieland.

One of the photies taken on this glorious afternoon is of the gooseberries starting to appear already. You get a lollipop if you can say what the other plant is. I'll give you a clue. It's like making a lot of money.

Just out of the bath after doing the short Craigcrook/Ravelstone Dykes run.

The bliss has been exceptional today. I may blog about it later.

Fox

2010-05-18T14:42:00.001-07:00

Tuesday 10:50 p.m.
There was an in-service thing at the jobbie which meant that I couldn't meditate all day. What a waste of blisstime! And despite falling into an open grave last night, I was fabulously cheerful on wakening up this morning due to the amazingly blissful yesterday.

Tonight I went up to the allotment to meditate. The two sky photies were taken from the spot beside the post holding up the raspberry bushes. Before and after shots. I took the other one because you can get three photies in a message from the phone.

I sat down at ten to eight and got up just before nine. Gazing at the next door neighbour's apple blossoms. Quite quickly, of course, they stop looking like apple blossoms. I was sitting on the tree section in the easy posture and I could have sat gazing at the apple blossoms for a lot longer, but a fox came walking down the middle of the allotment and I glanced round. It was only nine feet away. I tried to get a photie, but wasn't fast enough. Unusual things happen when you sit still.

There was the nice wummin in the allotment at my back. They're all going to have to get used to me just sitting. Modelling for flatheids. She said she saw the fox trying to get at something under the hut the other night. Scrabbling. For rats, no doubt!

Whee!

2010-05-17T10:27:00.001-07:00

Monday 6:20 p.m.
I wish everyone could be living the wonderful life I live! So I do!

I left the sitting here and went up to paint the hut at half three. This involved five minutes painting and two sittings. You don't want to work too hard, Jack. You really don't. More of a Tom Sawyer kind of paint job!

It's the sittings I wanted to talk about, but what can I say!? Blistering balloonings of bliss! I think something is supposed to enter, then stabilise, then eventually dissolve. Of course all this is very subjective and if I can't describe it, I don't see how anyone else can. What can I say? Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss has progressed once more. Hurrah!

Now I have to go and visit the McDucks. Thank God they keep spare livers in the fridge and a dialysis machine round the back!