Wednesday night!

Wednesday 9:05 p.m.
Once I felt so wonderful at the Samye Ling during this meditation that I wrote them a letter thanking them for the physical bliss and mental ecstasy. For that's what it seemed like at the time, Jack! I think this was years before I took refuge.

Over the last couple of days, the bliss has seemed to increase into something other than just the amazing bliss I was getting sometimes anyway. Something more blissy! I think you get habituated to the bliss maybe, and then it can be cranked up again. But I do feel as if I've entered yet another bliss zone now. Hurrah!

I'm in the same boat as everyone else who meditates. You don't know what the next bit will be like. If you did, you'd practise more.

In the full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle, I did a shadow boxing session last night. Six three minute rounds -after the skipping and the warm up stuff - is very exhausting. It always has been. You always have to finish feeling knackered. I'd recommend this form of exercise to all mad people. You don't stay still. You move as much as possible in a welter of snorting and sweating. It's as exhausting as you want it to be.

This afternoon the old toothless one and moi did the Ravelstone Dykes run. Much cherry blossom. So I don't have to take any strenuous exercise tomorrow. I don't have to do anything tomorrow and the flat is empty tonight. I'm going to have a wee sit now and investigate the bliss.

Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Bliss diary again!

Monday 10:40 p.m.
My wonderful Thursday was removed. Instead what I had was very good, but I didn't feel as if I'd built up the head of steam that the wonderful Thursday with no flatheids induces. You're never quite off on the right foot somehow without the wonderful Thursday.

On Friday I was bombed out of visiting the auld maw. Too many visitors. On Saturday I was bombed out of visiting our friend in hospital. So,on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, I spent all day meditating, more or less, until it got to the late evening, and you don't want to hear about all that malarkey again.

Sometimes you might have wanted to do something else, Jack. Why do you keep doing it then, Hotboy. It's because it works and is working, Jack.

One may have speculations and questions about this and that concerning the juju. Such as, what is all this Guru Yoga crap, and what is all this Deity Yoga crap, and what is all this lineages crap... and so on.

It's not all that close, but ... in the dhammapada: The arrow is in the boy and the boy refuses the physician until he knows all this stuff about the arrow. Like, what was it made of, what were the flights made of, what tribe did the basturn come from who shootied the arrow, and what not? By the time all the questions are answered, of course, the joe is dead.

These meditations work. Or, meditation works. Maybe you've only got calming and insight, and motivation. You could look at all the rest as being toys. Skilful means. The emptiness is what you're looking for. Imagining yourself to be the Medicine Buddha and imagining the M.B. across from you, and imagining them both to be the same thing might hack into your self clinging if you do it often enough. It must have some effect.

Some intimations of emptiness over these last few days.

Today was the Monday off. Such bliss from meditation one. Such bliss.

Hut repairs!!

Sunday 5:44 p.m.
They actually had an eight foot by four foot bit of plywood in Homebase, so I bought that and some nails, and carried it to the allotment on my head and shoulders.

I don't fix things, Jack. I don't do things with things. When I was a kid, I heard the cursing and swearing coming from the older males in my family as they repaired a fuse up there at the dark end of the lobby. Sitting with my maw and the other wee ones round a candle in the living room seemed a much better situation to be in. I think that was then I decided never to learn to do anything useful like fixing fuses, or taps, or painting and decorating, or anything like that. Some folk actually seem to enjoy that kind of thing. I would have liked to give some of these kinds of people the enjoyment of fixing my hut, but no one was in the slightest bit interested. Basturns. The Domestic Bliss said she had a hammer. I did not know that. It would have been nice if she'd offered to use it on the hut, but at least she let me borrow it.

I don't think the rats will be able to eat me up during the night now if I decide to hide up there for a bit this summer. Hurrah!

Mainly Limes

Sunday 12:30 p.m.
These photies were taken during a walk round the Botanics yesterday. Didn't expect the green to be in black and white come the springtime.

Closed Minds!

Saturday 4:20 p.m.


Here's a video about Prahlad Jani, who says he hasn't had anything to eat or drink for seventy years. You can maybe see it here. It only lasts a couple of minutes

Exploring Outer Space:
It was only four or five hundred years ago when everyone in Europe anyway, if not the world, thought the earth was the centre of the cosmos. Everything span round us. That's the way it appears to be, apart from the funny movements of the planets. Everything else seems to go round, but the planets backtrack a little.

At the root of the juju I'm trying to do is the proposition that nothing exists in the manner of its appearance, or that all phenomena are misapprehended.

Other galaxies weren't found till Hubble got his telescope on a weird acting nebula around the 1930s. Now, we've got the Big Bang, and perhaps multiverses.

Could you fit all these multiverses into a cell in a leaf in another universe and start all over again by just scaling things in this other universe up a bit?

If we'd accepted received wisdom and kept our minds closed about the exploration of outer space, we'd still have Galileo in jail!

Because of even smart folk being too dumb to meditate, there hasn't been much exploration of inner space in the West. Well done to Prahlad Jani for letting the flatheids check him out!

May Ist: Labour Day!

Saturday 11:55 a.m.
Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.


It looks like come next Thursday English votes will hand the governance of the people of Chilly Jockoland over to a bunch of ex-public school boy, proto-fascist, neo-con basturns. They will not have a Scottish mandate. They probably won't have more than one M.P. from up here.

It hasn't been all bad under New Labour. We got devolution, the minimum wage, a more peaceful Ireland and civil partnerships, but I think this time the vote on the left has to go with the Scottish Nationalists.

Let's sing the National Anthem!

May he sedition hush,
And like a torrent rush,
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the Queen!


Fung them! Before 1997, almost all of my life had been spent under Tory governments no one I knew voted for. I don't want to have to put up with any more of that! After Thursday, I think we may start living in interesting times. I'll vote for the SNP as a first step towards living in the Socialist Republic of Chilly Jockoland.


Then let us pray that come it may,
(As come it will for a' that,)
That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.
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.

Big Jambo Day

May Ist, 11:30 a.m.
It was May Day twenty two years ago when the Big Jambo and Jeannie took my on my first visit to the Samye Ling. So I try to dedicate this day's meditations to him. I must have been meditating for about three years then, but probably only twenty minutes here and there, as you would do when you start meditating.

I remember looking round the Samye Ling and thinking: I could come here and meditate!

The Big Jambo also recommended and gave me a loan of The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, which I found most inspiring.

Because of such things, I remember the Big Jambo in my first meditation every day. Gone but not forgotten.

Several friends of mine are on anti-depressants. When I started meditating, I used to justify my endeavours by thinking that meditating would improve my mood by about two percent a year. Just by lifting some stress and making you smile a little more easily sometimes. I've told this to these folk on anti-depressants. Even the old ones might live for quite a bit longer yet. The two per cents add up.

Do they listen, Jack? No, they don't, Hotboy! Why is that, Jack? They're just too dumb to meditate, Hotboy. Even if you are too dumb to meditate, it's probably better not to blow your brains out, though I may myself sometimes advise flatheids to do this. You'll be dead soon enough anyway.