Ra Dave!

4.43 a.m.
Dave and I are from the acid. I met Dave, if I remember right, at the Pink Floyd concert in the Pill Centre circa 1971. This is before we became all dead responsible, before Dave got baldy and all that.

So one step too far with the New Year. I'm still typing in technocolour. So Dave says he's dead sensible these days, but can't stop himself from picking up the magic mushrooms when he's scliffing the shanks, or whatever you do at the goolf.

So in the midst of the awful, awful, but dead nice evil bourgeois shit, he hands me all these munchie munchie mushrooms. Pissed at the time, your honour.

So I ate them all, as you do!

Completely lost it. I'm in the kitchen. Please keep the door shut:

It's not even .... anyway, lost it. Fabulous of course. Totally lost in the kaleidscope. Forgot about how wonderful it was, except for the old women battering on the kitchen door to get in. Anyway, well done, Dave. It's appearances, not reality.

It don' t think women like the New Year. They like Christmas. And being able to see straight and get out the door. So bless them!

2:55 p.m.
The last time I took hallucogenics was when Roseanna Cunningham won Perth in a by election for the SNP. That must be fifteen years ago anyway, probably more.

Never had such a strong effect from taking mushrooms before. Of course, when they started coming on, I'd forgotten I'd taken them. Dearie me! Completely whacked. Lost in beautiful 3D geometric shapes as my head slumped onto the kitchen table. I wouldn't mind having a go at them again, but only when the flat was empty and under medical supervision, of course.

Anyway, now the flatheids will slowly go back to their normal stations and stop running about mad things, and I can get on with investigating ra bliss. I'm hoping to stop doing all bad things this year. And just do good things. No tobacco, no beer, no bob hope. Pay off my debts. Make sure I can afford to be at the Samye Ling over Christmas and New Year next year. Yes!

Ra Hogmanay!

31 December, 2007. 3:30 p.m.
No point in blaming it on the flatheids. I've got a good old nicotine addiction now. One good thing about January for the past several years has been not having to give up nicotine in the New Year. Back to that. Buggeration.

Ra bliss when I've been engaging in the vajrayana, like I've been doing for the last two hours, has been truly exceptional. Unfortunately, the thoughts which will always arise have been very crabbit indeed. This is the nicotine withdrawal. So I went out and bought some fags and I'm having a joint. Dearie me!

Most of last year I was living in the hope that I'd get one of my books published and this has not happened yet. At least, there was some hope. And there still is. And in a couple of weeks time I will feel much better than I do now. Next year I hope not to be anywhere near flatheids at this time of the year. Let's hope I have learnt my lesson.

On Saturday night I was so full of ra bliss that when I was in the pub, I closed my eyes twice during the first two pints, and it was still there. The wonderful, wonderful bliss. If only I could just sit here doing this! There was a band playing. But you can't really sit with a bunch of flatheids doing ra bliss. They interupt you. They say: Are you alright?

The bandit got his name from the necklace he wore, which was made up of finger bones; one finger for everyone he'd killed. The Buddha went for a walk through the neighbourhood the bandit was terrorising, and the bandit decided to do him in, and followed him as fast as he could. Although the Buddha kept walking at his normal pace, the bandit couldn't catch up. Finally, he shouted for the Buddha to stop. The Buddha said: I have stopped. Why don't you stop?

I think I'm supposed to stop .... beer, nicotine, dope.

When should I stop then, Jack? Stop right now, Hotboy, or follow the trail of grief, sorrow, lamentations .... suffering in this life!

Hogmanay is one festival I actually like. I usually start feeling quite excited by about eight o clock. So today should improve. Have a Happy New Year everyone!

8:30 p.m.
I remember having great meditations at Hogmanay before ... over the last couple of Hogmanays. Today was no different. I stopped being crabbit and had two fantastic hours before the Dom Bliss came in. The vase breathing was working amazingly again. Amazingly. More of ra bliss than ever! Such bliss! I must remember that I'm always winning even when I seem to be losing. All I need is some time to sit. Tommorrow will be a right off, but the New Year arrives at the start of the week, and by the 3rd or 4th .... boy, will I have me a time!!!

Ra Blissheid Yo Ho Ho!!

Saturday 8:00 p.m.
Last night I felt so defeated by the vonny Xmas santy basturns that I went out and bought some fags to roll joints. But only two bottles of beer. So it was in a way tapering off time, or the start of some normality.

Just now I had an hour of fabulous bliss. Almost without a body definition sometimes, but really bloody wonderful from start of finish. This is what I should be doing, not playing second fiddle to the spear carrier for the flatheid pantomime. They just drive me mad at this time of the year. You can't tell them just to fung off and leave you alone. They'd get offended. They do not understand higher meditative states. They do not realise what it costs you to cavort with them and they do not care. But that's the first half over anyway. Goodbye, the Insanity Clause for another year!

I took the christmas cake up for the robin redbreast today, but I did not see it. The sunset was lovely though and top half of the bare naked trees went pink over towards the Botanic Gardens. I dug and dug and dug.

I'm having to go out soon to a pub. Dearie me. One tries not to be churlish. One is as churlish as one can be under the circumstances. Oh well. Once more into the breach, dear friends!

Ra Purification!

28th December, 2007 10:16 p.m.
I had meant to take some Christmas pudding up to the hut for the robin redbreast, but I was so annoyed today that I forgot.

I thought I had cracked it with these holidays and it was at least a draw until then... anyway, I dug more in one go up at the allotment than I'd ever done before. I wanted to be knackered, but I think I must be getting too fit! The robin didn't appear. Let's hope the frost didn't do it in over the last couple 0f nights.

Probably meditated through the annoyance for about seven hours today and all the meditations were very good, so why did I get annoyed?

He, she, it, they annoyed me isn't what we do around here. One should not allow oneself to get annoyed. You have to take personal responsiblity for gettting annoyed. So why did you get annoyed? Fung Xmas santy basturns! Well, that doesn't really work.

It's an upward feeling of furies arising. It's a kind of boiling red mist fueled, it would seem, by adrenalin. This is the second time I've become annoyed like this since the summer. Both instances were caused by feeling thwarted, frustrated. As far as the Noble Truths are concerned, we're dealing with the first kind of suffering, if I remember right. Not getting the things you want, or getting the things you don't want. Fung Xmas santy basturns! So the false sense of self is right in there; it's in your face! It separates you from other folk.

At least, I didn't lose it and say something that I shouldn't have.

One day I will kill someone, Jack. You haven't killed anyone so far, Hotboy, so why should you kill someone now that you are fast approaching the free bus pass? Because, Jack, that fury arising is what happens with cornered rats. I am not brave. Some day someone will frightened me sufficiently for this red mist shit to arise, and they will hit me, and then I will unload decades of suppressed fury on their sorrow bottoms, and then it will be too late to say you're sorry. Too, too late then, Jack.

It would be nice if this particular product of bad karma did not fructify. Increasing your compassion and reducing your anger means ... well, you shouldn't get annoyed anyway. It doesn't help.

Regular readers of this bloggie (Hello, you spam robots!) may remember some funny cartoons Jeff Andro made of the sensei and I some time ago. It seems Jeff lost his wife over the last couple of days. "What's important in this life? Ask a man who's lost his wife. " (Chrissie Hynds) In Tibetan buddhism I think you come to again after two and a half or three days. And on the third day, he rose again. I think his wife was called Ro Patton. I might have gotten their surnames the wrong way round, but it doesn't matter. I felt quite upset last night when I heard that she was dead although I've never met her, so I'll do the next seven weeks juju for her. That should take me up to my birthday.

Dearie me! Afflictive emotions? Are there any emotions which aren't afflictive? Constant state euphoria. Or even a wee bit of equanimity. You can be too ambitious. I'd settle for that.

Ra Cross John!

Boxing Day 9:17 p.m.
And on the second sip of Erdinger, my true love said to me ..... Hotboy, ever since you gave up drinking last Thursday, you've had a drink every night. Merely a re-configuring of the middle way, Jack.

Nobody's been in all day. After recovering from the plonko collapso I imbibed whilst scoffing the fabulous Christmas dinner, I started meditating and over the course of the day everything just came on stronger and stronger.

I was still breathing, Jack, but towards the end there was an awful, awful lot of ra bliss. Then I went for a carry out because .... well, because I'm an idiot really. Maybe I got my tao wrong a couple of days ago and what I should do is meditate all day and carouse all night, instead of famine for three weeks and feast for one. No, it's just a bad time of the year to give anything up.

After reading the books by St Teresa of Avila (I've got a favourite catholic saint! Who'd believe it?!), I did promise myself I'd tackle St John of the Cross. He was her wee pal. He fell out with his superiors once, as you do, and they locked him up in a horrible wee pokey place, and tortured him, and brought him out once a week to be publicly lashed. I wonder if they really thought this would help. Anyway, whilst being tortured and so on, I wrote these mystical poems, for which apparently he's famous in Spain. So I'll start by reading them, but it'll be a pain in the neck because I can't read in Spango and I bet it's all praising the lord. Anyway ...

I haven't a clue what ra bliss is. I know how I got it, but I don't know what it is. I suppose that's the same for lots of things, but it doesn't help when you want to tell flatheids about ra bliss whilst doing your missionary stuff. I don't have an explanation. I don't know how it works. You can't show it and you can't explain it. Even if you could levitate for the morons, they still wouldn't meditate. They're just too dumb to meditate. I think it would be best if I just forgot about the flatheids and give up the drink and drugs, and just abided in constant euphoria. Hmmmm?

My family have come in. I'm the only one in my family who meditates. I'm the only one with access to ra bliss. Maybe if I keep going on about ra bliss to them .... that thing without descriptors or explanation ... they'll give me money to go away and live in a cave. After you'd settled into cave life, I just can't think of anything more wonderful or any other opportunity with such potential. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Ra Auntie Anla!

Boxing Day 00:14 a.m.
Eulogising the Domestic Bliss's sister. Very smart. She's the Consultant for the Black Spot in her everyday job. What a fantastic Christmas dinner she made! Other than the Dom Bliss and the kiddo, the auld maw, she is my favourite person.

There is the Gatekeeper to Nirvana, who you speak to at reception at the Samye Ling. He's called Germe, I think. Maybe. So he's for going forward. But when you get the Black Spot, who do you have to speak to? Auntie Anla!

So I say to Auntie Anla .... gie's the hard drugs, please. I've got the hut. I'll starve myself to death. Just gie's the hard drugs because now's my chance to do some hard drugs without anyone saying Oh No! She'll be a fantastic resource when the chips are down.... but unfortunately, she can't do ra bliss.

Tomo Geshe, according to Anagarika Govinda, zapped everyone he touched. He was so full of ra bliss, if you touched him, you got zapped with ra bliss. Wouldn't that be fabuloso?!

Do you think ra bliss could be the same as grace, Jack? Hail Mary, full of ra bliss ... You might be able to interpret grace like that if you wanted to, Hotboy. But ra bliss is ra bliss is ra bliss.

Auntie Anla can't spend six hours a day investigating ra bliss because she's got stuff to do with the folk with the Black Spot. I think I'll have to negotiate with her since the National Health Service probably pay her pots. Gie's ten percent off the top (be a fortune!) and I'll go and sit in my hut. When I can zap folk, you'll be first in the queue. Why isn't anyone ever going to think that's a good idea?

It's a shame about flatheids. Flatheids just don't get ra bliss!

Ra Faither!

Christmas Eve 8:36 p.m.
My old man died on Christmas Eve about forty two years ago. I was about thirteen going on fourteen, or a year older.

I try to think about my old man at this time of year, but only since I got older have I been in this habit.

When I was a kid, for a while I thought my old man and my sister, who was the invalid, were both saints. Some schoolteacher must have told me God loved folk who suffered, or were ill, or something like that. This might have been about the time I thought beams of sunlight coming through the clouds were grace coming from heaven; when I was about seven or eight.

I can't remember what grace is supposed to be, Jack. It's supposed to be good whatever it is, Hotboy. Hail Mary, full of grace ...

A sign that God loved you was that you were funged. This is the opposite of the calvinists. A sign that God loved you if you were a proddie was that you were a rich, bourgeois basturn.

The proddies invented capitalism. God was so good to us that we're all going to die of the warm earth syndrome. Give it thirty years and it'll be a living hell, so it will!

My old man was a devout catholic. Sometimes he got us to kneel and pray for my sister. He was five foot two, a humphy backit, sparrow chested asthmatic with chronic bronchitis thrown in. A natural flyweight. He had five boys and two girls. He was a pict among vikings. My auld maw when she was fair, fat and forty was twice his weight and six inches taller. His first two sons were six footers.

He was brought up in a room and kitchen in Mossend in a family of eleven down by the Woodend Hotel. My auld maw got a job in the hotel when she left school and that's how they met. My old man was a bricklayer. He enjoyed helping to build the Sacred Heart Church in Bellshill. My brother Silvest, row of forty medals on his chest, big chest, wanted them to go to a better paid job, but I think my auld man liked the idea of helping to build the chapel.

My old man had a great sense of humour. He and the auld maw did laugh a lot, both of them. I think they thought children were funny.

It is very hard for me to aspire to be as good as my old man. It is not an impediment to admire your parents.

Merry Christmas from the HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B.

Rallotmenteer!

Sunday 4:45 p.m.
It was a beautiful winter's day. Ice on the pond in Inverleith Park. I meditated in the hut and it was not cold. Then I ripped up the remains of the sweet peas and cut down all the raspberry stalks, and set them on fire with some newspapers. A robin redbreast hopped about. I would have done some digging, but the ground is frozen.

I drank lots of expensive wheatbeers last night, but feel fine today. I've given up being a nicotine addict again. I feel that at last I have recovered from missing a day's meditating on Thursday and carousing for far too long down at Portobello.

Before I forget again, the sensei and reverend has got a book deal for his zen book. I hope it gets translated into thirty languages and makes him a rich basturn. I followed a link from his blog today to a joe in the final stages of the black spot. He's eleven years younger than me. I'm feeling happy just now and not complaining about anything.

Ra Temptations!

Saturday 9:20 p.m.
Just took the first sip ofErdinger. I've been having a moody time of it since I was inveigled down to Porty on Thursday night, apart from blogging last night and drinking more beer. It's all my own fault of course. You can't blame the flatheids.

For they know not what they do, Jack.Hotboy, they've got a better idea of what they're doing than you. It's just that they are too dumb to meditate and do not appreciate that if you weren't wasting your time with them, you could be engaged in the higher meditative states i.e. ra bliss, ra rapture and ra ecstasy.

Before the kiddo, for years I came home from Lanarkshire about the 27 or 28th of December and had a gramme of speed, which used to do me up until Hogmanay. I never saw anyone from when I got back till Hogmanay. I stayed in with Lou Reed. What a great time I used to have. These holidays were great then.

When I spent the New Year in Bellshill, which I did until the rampart alcoholism of the joes there just did my head in, I used to stand outside the auld maw's gate and listen to the bells, and think of what good things could possibly happen in the coming year.

The first Hogmanay I spent in Edinburgh, and ones for years later, were wonderful. Walked into a room off Leith Links and all my deep dear friends are there and they are all drinking something, but completely sober; every one of them with the wide open eyes; all speeding out of their heads. The Poisonous engages with the froggie who has very little English. Vitesse? Vitesse? Waken up, son!

I'm here to say that next year I'm going to flagellate myself, but I don't think I'll bother now. That first bottle of Erdinger has had a very nice effect! I've had great times all my adult life and have enjoyed myself much more than most of the miserable basturns that I know, and almost all the really good times involved drugs of some sort. What I think is the middle way for me is actually feast and famine. It's not between feast and famine. It is feasting and famine. This is the middle way as regards feasting and feasting. I can't just be moderate in all things. I'm not that kind of joe.

For next year maybe I should schedule in debaucheries and stick to a strict timetable. Like one and only one completely excessive weekend every now and again. One a month might do it. Between times, nothing. But like three weeks of nothing at all, with a weekend of being as bad as possible.

I know bugger all about Tantrism even although I do tantric buddhist juju, or what I think that might be. But there might be things called vajra feasts. These joes might wear tiger skins. Mayhap they also hump for India. But maybe that's just like for the weekend. The rest of the time maybe they're just doing ra bliss and staying in.

Next year I've got to separate these things. They're mixed at the moment in an undisciplined way. A sensible thing for me might be nothing for three weeks, get paid, go to the wild west down Ayrshire way, get some MDMA powder and spend the weekend watching dirty videos, and wishing to hump people.

What a productive evening! It's been a revelation. That is for me. Short bursts. Sweeties at the end if you want them. R and R. Once the juju worked sufficiently in the short bursts, you'd stop wanting the sweeties.

You have to get rid of the guilt, the usual fear and loathing concomitant with coming off all drugs, and doing bad things. I'm going to do them anyway, so I think I'll try to get them into a box somewhere and then start to throw sticks at them.

My problem is that I'm too sane. The supporting deities coinciding with my upbringing did such a brilliant job. The fact that I am so wonderful has nothing to do with me. Moi has left the building. In any case, someone has to push out the envelope of sanity and how could you leave this valuable task to the progeny of the evil bourgeois, the cossetted, the mammy's boys, and the products of the severe calvinist toilet training, the middle management fat basturn santy Xmas fungers?

So you're allowed to play the mind game if you're not in vibrant, electric eel response mode. You are not a responding device. It just doesn't go forwards.

I've only had two bottles of Erdinger and feel totally wasted. It's 10:33 p.m. I had the cannybliss yogurt at eight. Of course, I did my six three minute round routine in the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle, then the bath, so the beer will just get sooked right in.

I need more intensive periods of meditation next year. I may be able to do that if I can promise myself a sweetie at the end. Is it time to bring licentiousness into the path? Be a miracle on my income.

A few minutes later: Dearie me! "Be a miracle on my income". Who was that? What fragmentation did that come from?

Could you get young women to go to bed with you, Hotboy? Only in my dreams, Jack.

Is it time to bring licentiousness into the path? Have I found my tao, Jack? I don't think so, Hotboy. But it is the best teeshirt slogan so far. Who could say a line like that? Jude Law. Happy days are here again!

Ra Portobello!

Saturday 11:03 p.m.
I went walking out of Portobello this morning after four, heading away from Brian Wilson's castle. In a moment of drunken delirium, he had agreed to allow his eighteen year old son to have fifty or sixty friends round for a party. Apart from a few of them drunkenly cavorting over the battlements, Brian Wilson and I were worse behaved than the teenagers. The progeny of the evil bourgeois are really very nice. I had on a cowboy hat whilst walking out of Portobello.

I had already decided to give up drinking alcoholic beverages for a few hours before I got the call whilst sitting doing the juju in the lobby...

The reason I started meditating in the lobby is because that's where the phone is. I stick photies and mandalas and that around the wee table for the phone. If you don't sit beside the phone, by the time you've got some blood into your poor legs .... the buggers have gone.

Funny things have been happening around here, Jack. You mean, you're going mad, Hotboy. The computer stack in the living room went dead. And it wasn't the connections. Brian Wilson, who is a computer expert, told me it was funged. Then the same thing happened to the computer in here. Stack refused to light up. Then suddenly it did. So I goes into the living room and switched on the computery thing and it came on. Hmmm?

The boy says he can't fix the cooker because there's a bit of the gas pipe at the back not capped properly. Capped? Really nice guy. So instead of fixing the thermostat on the oven, he says he won't shut off the gas because I'd just turn it back on, right ... aye, right ...that's the central heating and all the other heating and cooking ... and it's Baltic out there ... so if I just sign this form to say that the gas has been shut off, he won' t shut it off. But get a Corgi Certificated gas installer guy to sort the pipe and they'll come back and fix the oven. What a great interaction! Like Brazil, the movie of the dystopia. I signed a form to say the gas had been shut down so that the guy wouldn't shut it down.

So I got the guy to shove the cooker back into the slot in the working surfaces, and after a while I cooked a loaf using the top oven. The Domestic Bliss arrives home and I slide the cooker out and let her see the offending unconventional capping, etc. Then, a wee while later, she tries to cook something and .... no gas. The dials aren't doing anything. No gas switches on. There is no gas pressure. ... the other gas appliances are working. Though it wasn't. Now, no gas. Looked at the rubbery pipe at the back. No twists. So why no gas?

Be great if I go into the kitchen tomorrow morning and turn the dial and out comes the gas.

If I get killed in a gas explosion ... Like, obliterated instantly .... well, what a fortunate creature I'd be then, eh?

In the formless zone, nobody asks you about microwave ovens. I might have to get one. This will make me part of the Star Trek generation. They say they can cook stuff awful quick.

So what's a microwave? A wee bit of a thing that isn't a thing? Do they leak out of the wee box and make you sorry later on? Are they good for you? Soup and bread is all we're asking for here. A bit of intermediate technology, thank you very much.

I'm now having a wonderful time and not being a Scrooge McDuck at all this evening!

Ra Holidays!

Wednesday 4:15 p.m.
Just spent a wonderful hour and a quarter meditating in the lobby. Oh, how ra bliss has moved on again. Don't ask me how. Bugger all to do with moi!

I went to Waterstone's to get the auld maw another CD and I found what looked like a really good one: The Way of the Bodhisattva. Yes! Damnation, it was by the same boy as the other one! So the auld maw will have to take her chances with the Dorje Shugden worshippers.

In the Amazing Bloggy Church of RaBadBoyBlissheid the only belief is that you should have no beliefs. I believe in ignorance, confusion and befuddlement. Since I don't believe that I'm here the way I think I'm here, how can I believe in re-incarnation? If something does get re-incarnated, it certainly isn't going to be moi. Moi is ordinary, misconceived and yet unique. Of course, I'm not saying that some kind of rebirth doesn't happen. I'm not saying that it does happen either. It probably happens and doesn't happen at the same time, or simultaneously. In fact, it could be happening and not happening right now. What does it matter anyway?

The bit I really liked about the accounts of the rebirth of Tomo Geshe in The Way of the White Clouds by Anagarika Govinda was that the kid was recognised by his old dog!

They have a bodhisattva thing in Tibetan buddhism, of course, which seems to be about getting re-incarnated for the sake of flatheids. Re-incarnation is not really looked on all that kindly though. In a way, Tibetans don't seem to view life as being much use due to the suffering, old age, death, etc. Really something to be avoided. This is maybe why they seem to have such a low opinion of what goes on the womb.

Geshe Kelsang, the boy who's lost the plot, and Kalu Rinpoche seem to subscribe to the idea that foetuses are having a very moody time indeed. Like, when the mother drinks something hot, the foetus gets scalded, etc. (Wait till they're ripping you to bits with forceps; tearing you limb from limb!) Anyway, my understanding was that in the womb we were all in smack heaven, immersed in a sea of natural painkillers.

I suspect Onan The Bavarian and Ion might know something about this. So what's the story then?

I read a great line in a book by Nyaponica (?) Thera once. He's a Theravadin. He said that, "with respect to our friends in the North", if you reach a certain stage of enlightenment, you can't be reborn. I think I read somewhere else that if you wondered what rebirth was like, just look around you at the other folk on the bus in the morning. Did I write that?

Great article about Kyoto and Bali, global warming, etc in the Times today. The view from Georgia. The woman says they have no public transport. The trains don't run anywhere. Lee Ann, I think, said she'd never been on a train before and she's from Alabama. Have you ever been on a bus, Lee Ann? It all sounds weirdly primitive.

The world is funged, Jack! Totally funged, Hotboy. Growth, greed, consumerism, capitalism ... we ate the world!

Of course, if you believed in re-incarnation, you could get re-incarnated on a planet far, far away where everyone is a fully realised blissheid and there are no flatheids.

Ra Hello!

Tuesday 9:47 p.m.

I hate writing synopses. I spend as little time on them as possible because, like blurbs on book jackets, they are bullshit.

The CD by the renegade joe who has lost the plot is quite good. I was listening to the stages of enlightenment today and feeling that this was a theory worth knowing about. Still, I don't know if I'll be giving it to the auld maw. Little impressions maybe count. This joe won't be a good source of refuge and maybe the positives .... I don't know. I asked Teresa and she said she'd get the auld maw something else. I did ask and that was the answer. So? It's actually quite well done as far as what is says on the label: An Introduction to Buddhism ... well, to Tibetan buddhism anyway. Anybody fancy a free CD?

I've been reading a good book, but unable to keep it up since I don't have the time. Regular readers of this bloggy (Hello, Jack!) may recall that I don't seem to have the time to read books anymore. I read them when I was younger and could smoke joints and even then I don't know how I found the time. Meditate for four or so hours a day and where has your time gone? Anyway, the book was called Wind in the Shadows, or Shadow in the Wind. By a spango. Good writing from what I can remember. Boy must have made pots!

Since I was broke, and therefore sober and straight last night, I watched a film on Film 4. An excellent Spanish movie, called Pan and the Labyrinthe. Or Pan's Labyrinthe. I wish I had written the screenplay. Had something.

Tomorrow I only have to work a half day. Hurrah! I'll meet the pizzaman afterwards .... in the carpark of the school ... just say no ... hey, this is a police surveillance bloggy so maybe we should stray away from this topic!

Next year ... I've been inspired! I'll stop drinking and taking drugs and start on the steps to enlightenment and lose the plot completely. At least, I won't need much money. Just as well. Maybe I could start chasing women. I'd have to read a book to find out about that since it's not really my scene. Chasing women? I'd need to paint on a Groucho moustache

Ranother Resume!

Sunday 9:11 p.m.
I got a chance to see the Ricky Hatton/Mayweather fight today from round 4. The Mayweather boy was too big for him. It's not fair.

I checked out the joe who's doing the CDs I got for my auld maw for Christmas. The boy has started a new thing. New Kadampa Tradition. I suspect he's lost the plot.

I send letters sometimes to Teresa down at the Samye Ling. I regard her as one of my gurus though I don't think we've ever had a conversation lasting more than a couple of sentences. Now that I come to think of it ... I think two of them were telepathic. Anyway, I always send her a tenner out of politeness, and it's a cold call really, and she gives it to something else. My ten spot went to help sponsor something at Bodhigaya. She can't need the money for kirby grips after all.

I asked her something in the reply to her email. The tapes I bought for my auld maw for Xmas have been authored by this Geshe who seems to have lost the plot. There seems to have been an argument about ... they're worse than Presbyterians these Tibetans! Schisms everywhere! Anyway, the argument seems to be about what this Dorje Shugden is.

In the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy BLissheid, we don't need to worry about such things. We have schismed straight off. We're still trying to get the walls to seem less solid; we don't have any of this juju about protector deities, and such like. We are just doing the experiental mysticism and want to know what works with ra bliss and ra emptiness.

We may have the multiverses to contend with ... we rational folk ... and the parallel universes, and the branes, but we laugh at the protector deities, the demons, etc. And so we should!

Yea, though I have taken to supplicating, prostrating (in my mind) and making offerings (ditto) to the Medicine Buddha, I think the Medicine Buddha is moi. It has to be moi at the end of the day. What else could it be? It arises in mind; abides in mind; declines in mind. The problem is the separation or isolation between what moi thinks of mind and what mind could be.

Then I did fifty yogic jumpings from the Mr Iyengar yoga. This kind of yoga is crap, but also very good. Then I did some shadow boxing because I wondered if I was knackered enough. Yes, I was knackered enough! I'd been sitting in the lobby more or less from half eleven this morning till seven when I started the jumpings ... with a break every now and again!

I could have done the sun salutations I learned from Shiva, but I can never get the legs in the right order for lunging, and also they are for wimps. Soldiers jump like Mr Iyengar! Just think you can do anything and then add on a little bit. It's like running. Just add another couple of miles and are you distressed now?

Ra Good Things!

Saturday 9:50 p.m.
Sometimes I walk around and think thoughts before I sit down. I know now that these thoughts are lies and believe them less and less. Here's a thought: Fung basturns! I don't want to sit down. I'm fung crabbit. It doesn't matter what kind of thoughts you have because when you sit down it goes intergalactic. Two seconds on a good day and you're out of all those thoughts and into something much, much better. This is called ra bliss.

How long is a piece of string?

Don't Bogarde that joint, my friend! Pass it over to me!

1) It was a very good thing that Mr Adrian Weston told me the first two chapters of my first kidsbook were crap. I have changed them for the better. Perhaps I will have an agent trying to sell two books now, or soon. This is a good thing. In the first chapter ... actually, if you can do the first chapter, I'd give you ten percent.

2) It is a good thing that my auld maw has gained some comfort in her old age from her son, Hotboy, who is a blissheid.

3) Ra bliss and the investigations thereof ... I don't mind now if I crash and burn. I felt a slight concern last night. Feel the power. Then, if I crash and burn, at least it's something I really wanted to do. Existence has become a wonderment to me through the great vajrayana, the juju of jujus.

4) It's hard to ... there are so many good things just now. I guess that's just the way it looks.

Raddictions!

Saturday 9:14 p.m.
Of course, it changed again and the amazements were doing my head in a wee bit ... and it was Friday ... and the bob hope is just about done .... so I went out for some Silk Cut and two bottles of Schweissbeir. I only bought two bottles of the wheatbeer because now I am a nicotine addict and not a pisshead any more.

Smoked five joints and drank the two beers, then I decided to give everything up again, and went into the lobby to sit.

Say, you're looking over a river and usually it's beautiful and silvery in the moonlight. This was more like a lava flow, except not so hot. But there was kind of more in the flow. Totally fabulous!

So you have to ask yourself what it going on here? I'm into purification and accumulation and there I am in the furthest reaches ... and out of my face before I even sat down!

Buggered if I understand any of this, Jack. Bad boys should not get ra bliss. I have to say that this was more of ra bliss than I can remember and I know I say that here every week. Just how much of ra bliss is there?!

During the wonderful two hours I spent in the lobby last night, I resolved to give everything up again. Surely, if I could just get the foundations right, there would be no stopping me.

Also, I have had comments on the blog recently telling me that Silk Cut is bad for giving you cancer. Of course, bloggies are non-attributable, but fair play to the tobacco companies. There's no way the government which stops folk smoking dope would let Silk Cut sell you fags if they were bad for you. Anyway, I gave them up last night whilst in the midst of ra bliss.

The meditations from ten till about two were just where the ones left off last night. Then I got a visit from a deep dear friend. He must have heard that Silk Cut could give you cancer because he had Marlboro with him. These are fantastically healthy cigarettes. You get to ride a horse and wear a cowboy hat and say howdy maam if you smoke them. I stole some from my deep dear friend when he came in the door and I've got two joints worth left. Well, one now!

There will be no bob left tomorrow, and no excuses. No money. Ah, what a fortunate creature I am!

I'm going to start another post about how good things are!

Ra Defilements!

Thursday 8:20 p.m.
Sometimes nice warming thoughts might arise concerning getting pissed and smoking joints. The latter is quite new since I gave up joints about five or six years ago, but I've been cavalier with my addictions this year and here comes the spanking .... warm thoughts about joints.

I've got ten pounds in cash left. Ten silk cut and four bottles of Baltika come in at £2:77 and £5:37 respectively. £8:14. One joint and almost a bottle of beer later: What a wonderful country this is! So it is! What a fortunate creature I am!

All the warm thoughts leading up to buying the carry out, etc., were lying basturns every one. You're supposed to use your brains to understand karma, or basic cause and effect, and act accordingly. Two of my deep dear friends have died from smoking tobacco and another one has a very, very, very bad cough. If you smoke tobacco, horrible things happen. Everybody knows that. But the thought with the addiction behind it is a very strong thought.

Ditto being a pissheid. However, I am much less of a pissheid than I was at the start of this year .... but it's like pressing on a cushion .... up comes the nicotine addiction. Dearie, dearie me!

This is for the spam robots (Hello, Jack!) and the Alien Creatures from Outer Space whom I know are following the 5 Step Programme For Getting Out of Your Face On Air .... Do not do as I do. Do not do as I say either. In fact, don't do any of the things that I do. Almost everything you do is a complete waste of time. With your head jammed up your backside how could it be anything else? But definitely give up everything. No smoking, drinking, the woiks! This is because of the effect these things have on the thoughts, which are all lying basturns and completely unbelievable on any rational level.

It's the thoughts you get afterwards. These are always more horrible. And more believable.

So you might get ra bliss, but you've got to walk about like every other joe or josephine and deal with your thoughts. You really owe it to everybody else to keep your thoughts in order. You cannot be truly happy if you have to drink and smoke joints.

If the addictive thoughts hadn't been there ... even if they were ... the six hours spent in the lobby were fantastico. The problem is settling. Having a part time jobbie just ruins any meditation routine. I could be in the lobby all day. I promised myself that I'd run.

It's the longer run, I think, and the best looking. Through the beautiful city, down Craigcrook Road, and up the Ravelstone Dykes Road Lane ... when it's being like in the countryside ... and then homewards down passed the Mary Erskine School and along Ravelstone Dykes.

When you're doing it without anxiety, and feel vibrant and strong, with gears for the distance you know, there's just nothing like running. It's exhilerating, or exhilarating. Maybe if you sit in the lobby for four hours beforehand, you've build up a bit of yang. Hmmm. Anyway, that was great! Just as it was getting dark, about half three was when I set out. Took fifty minutes. I'm still a fat basturn though. Even fat basturns can get ra bliss!

Ra Kidbook

Wednesday 8:55 a.m.
Here's the new first chapter of Light in the Dark. In the movie Padmasam will be played by Sean Connery!

Of course, I can't get the indents to work, but I'll separate the paragraphs somehow.



Chapter One

The family of Padmasam the Sage owned a large estate of farmlands nestling in at the edge of a vast mountain range. Brought up in the family compound, Padmasam was surrounded by a great many brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins - and almost any other kind of relative you’d care to mention - but his favourite out of the whole tribe was his granny. He loved and respected his mother and father, but his granny was different somehow. She was really something else, his granny.


Ruling over her descendants and all the land she owned like a benevolent despot, she berated some, cajoled others, but even the ones she was nice to were never too sure when the castigations would deafen their ears. She’d never shouted at Padmasam, but then again it seemed as if she’d hardly noticed him among all the rest of her numerous descendants.


One day, when he was about ten years old, she came sweeping through the courtyards near the middle of the family compound with the usual small retinue in her wake, and saw Padmasam playing in a corner with some other kids. She stopped and thought for a moment, then shouted him over.


'You are ...' Though she knew fine who Padmasam was, she sometimes had trouble remembering what everyone was called. She repeatedly snapped her fingers at him, waiting for the cue. ‘You are … You are …’ she said.

'I'm Padmasam,' he replied timidly.

'Stand straight. Don't slouch. I've been hearing about you. A clever boy. Now, there are some things you should know about. Your father, may he rest in peace, was an idiot. Your grandfather, may he rest in peace, was an even bigger idiot. But your great grandfather ... well, he had it. And it seems you might have it as well.' she said, speaking quite quickly.

'What have I got?' said Padmasam, a bit confused.

'The brains,' said the granny. 'The brains to think the big thoughts. Why are we here? What is going on with the world? We've got enough ploughmen. We’ve got enough blacksmiths. We've got enough of everything, so we can afford a philosopher. If we don't attend to this, you'll end up a poet. This family needs someone to think for it. You'd be useless at anything else anyway. Too dozy. Don't worry. It's better than working for a living.’ She paused for a moment then. ‘Maybe when you're older, you’ll understand why your granny's got to grow old and die,' she said.

But when his granny did eventually die after quite a long illness several years later, the problem was that Padmasam did not understand why his granny had to die. He was very upset and wouldn’t stop asking anyone who would listen questions about this. Some people told him to shut up. Everyone said the world they lived in was a good place since they all had plenty to eat and there was enough money around to buy him books and teachers, so what had he to complain about? But he did not understand how the world could be a good place when his granny had to grow old, suffer, and die.

He was really upset when his granny died. For weeks after her funeral pyre, he was inconsolable. Always more introspective than his brothers and sisters, no one could get close to him then. He brushed them off. After a while, he said he was okay. But he wouldn't attend to his studies anymore.

His teachers took him aside one day. Your granny had to die to make way for other people, one of them said. Padmasam burst into hysterical laughter at that one. It wasn't very polite. Then another teacher said his granny was in one of the heavens for sure since she was a wonderful woman after all. 'Where is it?' he shouted out. 'Show me one of these heavens!' he demanded of them. You have to die, said another one, so that life has a meaning. Life doesn't mean anything if you don't have death.

'Are you telling me that you have to suffer and die?' he protested to his teacher. ‘Is that what has to happen in this life?’

'Yes,' said the man.

'Well, I won't have it!' Padmasam shouted at them. 'I'd rather be a wild animal than have a life like that!'

Wanting to be like a wild animal when you are fortunate enough to be a human being is, of course, a bit mad. Everyone thought Padmasam was losing it. He hid himself away in corners of the place and when anyone tried to talk to him, he shout: Go away! I'm trying to think! One day one of his teachers told him to calm down, just wait a while and he'd get over it. This drove Padmasam wild.

'That's it!' he shouted, storming off.

The next day all that was left of Padmasam was a chalked note on a blackboard: I'll come back when I can be of some use, it said.

They thought he must have walked into the mountains, which began where the family estates ended. Holy men and magicians were said to live among these mountains and, though few from the fertile plain ever ventured far into these high places, that is what Padmasam did. Avoiding everyone, he went into the wilderness where he hoped no one would find him and where he might have the peace and quiet to think the big thoughts.

At night he'd make himself a shelter from leaves and branches, and the next day abandon it, and walk on. Whenever he saw another human, he walked further into the awesome vastness. Though he managed to avoid both starvation and predation by wild beasts, Padmasam began to realise that far from understanding all about life and death, which was what he’d hoped to do, in fact, he’d started to lose his mind.

Without anyone around to talk to, the little voice in his head started talking to itself. Eventually, he would find himself standing around muttering complete nonsense. Unconnected words and phrases drifted through his consciousness. Waves of emotion, good and bad, swamped him sometimes. He'd have to get a grip. He'd have to focus his mind somehow.

He began to do this by concentrating on the air going into and out of his nostrils. He found if he did that for a while, the rambling nonsense in his head went away and his mind would really become quiet. His breathing was very dependable. Air always went in and out of his nostrils. He could count the breaths going in and out. He could count up to ten or until a thought occurred, then start again. Sometimes, when he was doing this, his mind and body began to fill with a pleasant sensation of quiet alertness.

One day he was sitting by a stream, staring into the water and counting his breaths when he saw the reflection of a man, who was standing behind him. The man was dressed in animal skins and had a plaited beard with long matted hair.

‘I’ve been sent for you,’ he said. ‘If you want to be any use to anyone, you’d better follow me.’

There was a collection of caves dug out of a hillside where holy men lived, and they took Padmasam in, and taught him things about heaven and earth which very few people knew. Soon he could sit for hours and hours, and his body would fill with bliss. They taught him a breathing technique which allowed him to prevail against the coldest winter. Eventually, he could stay warm in the middle of a blizzard.

Sometimes he seemed to become breathless and his mind filled with ecstasy. After many years spent with these holy men, he didn’t need to sleep. He could go for months and months without eating anything, surviving on breathing in the essence of starlight. By the time he was a grown man and in his prime, the holy men in that hermitage had nothing left to teach him, and he walked on.

Then one day he came upon a perfect spot. It was a large overhanging rock looking down upon a great wild valley between mountain ranges. A stream ran down close by. In the years since he’d left the holy men, he'd seen many good places to sit, but this was exceptional due to the wonderful viewpoint over the valleys and the jagged mountain skyline. He determined to stay in this place until he died or understood everything.

All kinds of strange things happened to Padmasam while he sat there, but if you'd been watching him from afar, you'd have just seen him sitting there. Almost all the strange things that happened to Padmasam happened to his mind. And he sat there for an awful long time. Soon he did little else. One day he sat down and didn't get up. At night time he was still sitting there. The weeks passed, the months passed, the seasons passed, and he still sat there. So deep had he gone into his mind that he didn't notice when the snow fell. Neither did he notice when the sun beat down. He felt neither heat nor cold. He just seemed to be sitting there.

One day, when he thought he’d understood everything he was going to understand, he decided to get up and go back to where he’d come from. But the Padmasam who stood up was not the same as the Padmasam who’d sat down. His hair, now grey, almost stood on end. Though it is possible to describe what Padmasam looked like - he wore a cotton shift which, like a nightdress, almost stretched to the ground - the way his mind had developed was way, way beyond the descriptive power of mere words.

When he finally got back to the fertile plain of his childhood, he noticed how much things had changed. Then by talking to the people there, he slowly came to realise that his whole family had died. And not only that. Their sons and daughters had died too and so had the next generation and the generation after that, and the ones after that. They were all dead.

'Well, I suppose that's just the way it goes,' Padmasam said.

Padmasam realized he must have been over two hundred years old. He wondered how he’d gotten to be so old. If he'd been dead, everything might have made more sense. He could make things happen by just thinking about them, but he didn’t really want anything for himself. Padmasam didn't really care about himself at all. All he cared about was other people.

Since everyone in that part of the world seemed happy enough and prosperous, Padmasam said goodbye to the descendants of his brothers and sisters and cousins and set off back towards the mountains. He walked and walked and walked on until he came upon the old and new kingdoms, a land divided by a raging torrent, surrounded by mountains on all sides.

The people there were not happy or prosperous, but needed his help more than he could ever have imagined.


Of course, I'll probably have to re-write that another fourteen times in longhand .... but if anyone would like to buy a percentage in the final profits, I'm open to offers!

Ra Light!

Tuesday 3:00 p.m.
I finished the re-writes for the kidsbook and have just sent it off to that man of great taste and perspicacity, Adrian Weston. The first two chapters have been completely re-written ... in fact, the first chapter is now the second chapter. Let's hope it is sufficiently improved for Mr Weston to try to flog it. My intellectual level should suit twelve year olds.

I deleted the old version from my webpage and tried to uplift the new one, but I don't know if this works. I'm scared to look. The page gets hit on average about once a day by God alone knows who. And how do they get there? And are they all spam robots? Anyway, some come from a site where I put the kidsbooks, so I hope the link still works. Bugger!

Speaking of agents, I'm still trying to get the crime book by the sensei and reverend an agent. I've managed to get someone to read it just now, but for a couple of months now there was no response from anybody. This is me sending out three emails a week using Everyone Who is Anyone ... which I how I managed to get Mr Adrian Weston. The sensei has had five books published. You'd think getting an agent to just read his blinking crime book would be easy, but it aint! Still, the goodies always win in the end so I'll just have to keep going.

Ra Blootering!

Monday 10:52 p.m.
I think I might have been a bit tired and emotional when I wrote the last post. Poisonous is great to go shopping with. He's like a guided missile. We got an Introduction to Buddhism, an audio book on 4 CDs by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso. Just the trick for the auld maw's Christmas. Then we went into the bars and got blootered despite the fact that both of us are completely teetotal. What larks!

Ra bliss this morning was definitely a notch up. We start from a new plateau, or so it seems. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss! This, as usual, came as a bit of a surprise. But it was a wee leap. I was expecting more heat, not more bliss. And we're talking about an awful lot of ra bliss here. Can I go to heaven now, please?

Ra Poisonous!

Sunday 10:27 p.m.
We can stand around. There are the words. They said he had a disease. It means you can't relate. So we stand around. He has been my deep dear friend for thirty years, but when they told him about the disease, I knew we were funged. The disease had a name. It was a syndrome. I called it Poisonous. I don't think he likes me. I don't think I like him either. Still ...



I can't get by the amazing bliss. I look at my chum Poisonous and I know that he will never get it. Though he has a character which is defined by the lack of ra bliss, still he would enjoy it because ... ra bliss is ra bliss is ra bliss. How could you not enjoy it? He will never meditate. He will neve get ra bliss. It's a shame, so it is. Flatheids just don't get ra bliss.

Ra Resultant

Sunday 1:45 p.m.
So you sit down and close your eyes. Your outline is immediately less distinct than usual. You are, of course, in ra bliss. But there is also a great feeling of satiation and contentment. Your thoughts are arising quite slowly. It's as if you don't have to try. It's all been done.

Unfortunately, I contacted Poisonous yesterday and will be walking along Princes Street today looking for a cosmic CD for the auld maw's Christmas. After the meditation I've just had, today I should just meditate. Oh well! Once more into the breech, dear friends!

Ra Bliss Update!

Friday 7:06 p.m.
I should tell you something about developments in ra bliss even although it's pearls before flatheids, considering the bunch of Masai Warriors, perverts, and Alien Creatures from Outer Space who come to this bloggy. Still, perhaps some fortunate creatures who actually meditate may come across this one day and receive some encouragement - they are almost bound, like me, to be surrounded by sweetie eating, evil bourgeois flatheids of all the irredeemable varieties.

You tell yourself even when you are getting the merest hints ofra bliss to come that it's just like fishing, and you have a long, long line, but if you just keep reeling it in, you'll see a fish on the end sometime in the future. And so you will, and so it is.

You close your eyes and it's white and bright andblissy with fantastic potential to do amazing things. Of course, as you're sitting in a lotus in the lobby, it seems to be holding you up. Very strong around your face and chest area. Pulling the grin back. This level just kicked in a few days ago. It's really fabulous. I put a couple of vase breaths into that just before my aching legs made me get up about ten minutes ago, and whoa! But it seems as if you might just be better sitting there and trying to appreciate whatever it is.

When this has become multiplied, it must turn out to be clear light mind. I guess it's got to get steady and get rid of the arms and legs; any body definition.

It's a wonderful roller coaster this vajrayana! You don't know how this is going to develope, but I haven't had anything other than the good from it so far.

Theauld maw's got another CD connection. Today the Buddha said if I could get rid of my mental defilements, I would become "utterly cool." He also said I should hang around with folk who are engaged in higher meditative states and stay away from flatheids.

It was nippy cold on your face on the platform at Bellshill station. The electronic billboard is fully functional now, but never tells you about the Edinburgh train for some reason. It's got a clock display. I paused from the slow meditative walking up and down the platform to check my pulse. Today I was idling on 56 beats a minute.

Also, I'm as crabbit as hell. I think I overdid the training last night, or overdid the cannybliss yogurt. Having access to any kind of ra bliss when you close your eyes is wonderful of course, but I'd like to have the heavenly view when I open them and see the flatheids wandering around, please.

The other person is out shopping. Fun things to do at half seven on a Friday night. Fung Xmas santy basturn swinehunts that you are, I should have quite a nice time in what's left of my weekend!

Thursday 10:11 p.m.
A nineteen year old shop assistant was given a nine month suspended sentence today for having material which might have been of use to a terrorist, and writing awful poems in praise of Osama the Bammer. The material which might have been of use to a maybe perhaps terrorist was just downloads from the web. Do terrorists have to ask nineteen year old shop assistants for manuals on how to wreak havoc? I think not, your honour. Still, for the lousy poetry she should have been shot.

It's spot the crime time, folks! As you reach out for it, it kind of recedes. What bad stuff did she do again? Maybe they're just trying to freak out shop assistants.

White sheets of ra bliss arising for long spells today. Sat in the lobby for most of the day, then did the shadow boxing, bath bliss, and blog. What a fortunate creature!

Rose Moments!

Saurday 8:36 p.m.
I was lying in the bath.

I thought of what I could do, if I was filthy rich. What would be the best possible thing to do?

Knocking your pan out with massive amounts of physical jerks is the first thing you have to do. You should eat the cannybliss yogurt prior to embarking on these endeavours since it takes an hour and a half to come on. Pre-plan. Full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle.

Afterwards you lie in the bath. That's it. Two hours later ... what can you say about what happens in those two hours. First of all, there is ra bliss. As the water comes over you, already you are sinking into ra bliss. The bouyancy and the exhaustion beautifully combine into a fabulous relaxation ... and there is ra bliss. Thoughts arise, abide, and decline in ra bliss. Eventually, the cannybliss yogurt comes on .... too many thoughts ... chaos arising ... but there is a wee bit of pleasuring in the cannybliss yogurt and if you can get down passed the thoughts ... if you can try really hard to concentrate although the cannybliss yogurt is a holiday from that ... well, you've got ra bliss ... the cannybliss yogurt ... the relaxation ... the exhaustion ... so I thought that this was the best possible state to be in and I could do that even if I was skint.

You can't describe how wonderful ra bliss was. It's not just soaking in a bath.

Then the most fabulous food to eat is the soup I make. Thinking about the taste of it in the bath ... yummy! If I was a filthy rich person with a car, the best thing I could eat is my soup .... which I learned to make because it doesn't cost much.

If I was filthy rich, I could travel and give up the jobbie. I could travel and give up the jobbie even if I wasn't filthy rich.

The CD player is broke in Bellshill, so the auld maw and me were listening to an audio tape I brought once from the Samye Ling. It's this big juju joe talking about the bardo, well, the interval between death and life.

Well, it might not seem to be an appropriate present ... for an old person, but the auld maw was singing its praises. I was sitting there getting blissed out of my face and listening to the tape as well. I just love sitting there will my auld maw lying in the lion pose on her bed. It's perfection in its way, so it is!

Ra Six Yogas Of Naropa!

Thursday 1:50 p.m.
And, yea, though I did go to the pub last night to watch Celtic put the cheating basturns from the Ukraine to the sword in the dying seconds of the game, and did get verily steamboats, the meditations this morning in the lobby were once again wonderful. The effects of the vase breathing have moved on. Apres luncho, I can't wait to get the hut, but thought I'd comment on a report in the Times yesterday about the Dalai Lama offering a vote on whether or not he should be reincarnated.

I am the expert on all non-doctrines and lack of beliefs in the Amazing Bloggy Church of the BadBoyBlissheid, being the sole member, but I make no claims to knowing much about Tibetan Buddhism. Still, march on. Eh, Jack?

"The Chinese government in August claimed exclusive rights to approve all Tibetan lamas' reincarnations ... to establish control over the region's clergy" The Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said among other things: "The Dalai Lama's statement is a blatant violation of religious practice and historical procedure."

The Chinese government can give you a good laugh, so they can!

They're all going to hell, Jack!

"The Dalai Lama said there was a historical precedent for a lama being reincarnated while still alive.."

I think the most distinctive thing about Tibetan Buddhism is the Six Yogas of Naropa and the whole vajrayana, the juju of jujus! One of the yogas is the projection of consciousness into another residence. This can be a newly dead body, or a living body. You are supposed to be able to give your body to someone else's consciousness as well. This goes back to Marpa who brought the juju from India in the first place, and you can't get more historical than that!

The Times says : "Buddhism teaches that the soul is reincarnated as another being .." No, it doesn't! There aren't any souls in buddhism. No God creator, no soul, vast emptiness. No sentient beings either. We're smeared across infinity like electrons when no one's looking!

I'm not too sure about that last bit yet, but I do hope the Chinese don't assassinate the Dalai Lama. I consider him to be one of my gurus and getting annoyed isn't good for you.

To the hut!

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

Rem Quantum Sums!

Tuesday
So there was a teevee show on last night featuring Hugh Everett's son. Mr Everett seems to be the boy who posited the idea of parallel universes, or the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics.

You don't know bugger all about this, Hotboy. I know, Jack. If I knew anything about sums, I wouldn't be two grand in debt, but what the hell? Here's how it seemed to go.

There's a particle wave duality. Subatomic particles seem to exist as waves and particles at the same time. BUT if you look for particles, you find particles. If you look for waves, you find waves. Niels Bohr has the Copenhagen Interpretation which seems to be that the "fact that a human being had observed some event changed the reality of the event."

Let's let that one sink in, Jack. That's a beauty! Has this strayed into the area of consciousness? Consciousness is awareness of something surely.

Then along comes Schrodinger's Cat. The pussy is in a box and it's life depends on the behaviour of a sub-atomic particle. Unless you look in the box, the cat is alive and dead at the same time. Maybe it's half alive and half dead at the same time. Brilliantly absurd. This is a contadiction it is hard to live with. So you've got to sort that one out somehow. Or else there seems to be some kind of border or barrier where this quantum stuff operates and the classical physics stuff doesn't. Along comes Hugh Everett.

He posits the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics which seems to imply parallel universes where every story has a plot. It's harder for me to get this ... maybe the cat's alive somewhere and dead somewhere else.

Maybe this deals with the absurdity of the quantumy world, but it's still sounds crazy and impossible, etc. Hmmm.

The boy in the programme kept saying, well, why can't human beings exist in two different places if atoms (he didn't say sub-atomic particles!), electrons and such like can exist in two different places.

Of course, there have been claims forever of Christian and Hindu saints being in two places at once. Also, isn't buddha nature supposed to be in everything, everywhere. I think someone said electrons can be everywhere and not just in two places at once. Maybe if you were to become a buddha you'd be able to kind of jump the quantum border or barrier. The answer to all this nonsense must lie somewhere in consciousness surely, or the level of consciousness you can attain. Do buddhas then embody the unified theory that answers the problems of the real life and sub-atomic dichotomy?

Probably not, but there you go. Stuff like this just nips my heid!!

Ra Differentiation!

Sunday 2:10 p.m.
I had to explain to someone on Friday night that I was a Christian as well as a Buddhist, and of course I am. For the last couple of years I've adopted the head on the Turin Shroud as the iconic image of altruism and compassion for the Amazing Bloggie Church of the BadBoyBlissheid, of which I am the sole member and single representative.

Of course, you can count yourself a Christian and not believe in the creator god, or that he was the son of God.

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

It's time to reclaim Jesus Christ from the flatheids!

I'm not really interested anymore in labels like Christian or Muslim. I don't care what you call yourself. What I want to know is whether you're a blissheid or a flatheid. You could refine that a little bit. On the one hand, you have the Forever Flatheids.

The Forever Flatheids don't meditate, will never in a month of Sundays get ra bliss, will always go around with their heads jammed up their bums, and will talk nothing but complete crap about anything you care to mention. Apart from doing all the work, they are completely useless.

The only folk I won't make disparaging remarks about who don't meditate are the ones who go schizophrenic when the see someone else smoking cannabis.

On the other hand, we have the Budding Blissheids. The Budding Blissheids all meditate, but some of them do not as yet get ra bliss. This is probably because they haven't been meditating for long enough or do it often enough. If you only meditate for twenty minutes a day, you probably won't get ra bliss, but what do I know? Maybe I had to meditate a lot more than most because I am so bad. If you meditate like moi, you will get ra bliss if you do it three times a day for half an hour a go. I regard myself as the average joe on this one.

People who want to kill other people because they believe something other than the crap they believe in, of course, are flatheids of the worst order. I assume all sensible people subscribe to Christian ethics (which are the same as Buddhist ethics, etc., etc.) since this seems to be the best way to get about this world.

I meditated straight through from eleven till two today. Superbo!!

7:50 p.m.
I did my longer run today as it was beginning to get darker, around 3:30 p.m. Most reaffirming! Felt fit and loved doing it. I thought it might be six miles, but it can't be that long. Was running for about forty five minutes. Blissed out then dozed off in the bath. The meditations just finished have been exceptional, but I haven't done any work on the kidbook since Thursday. Well, I did have my tooth extracted on Friday, went to Bellshill, then had to go out in the evening for emergency missionary work. On Saturday I had a most enjoyable visit with out friend with the MS at Liberton Hospital and the Dom Bliss and I had an evening last night watching the telly. Everything is looking up!!

Ra Teef!

Friday 4:45 p.m.
In defence of the literal truth of the bible... The preacher says: There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth! (Matthew 24:50-51)The gumsy joe asks: What if you aint got no teef? The preacher: Teeth will be provided!

What a nice visit I had to Bellshill today! Same people and circumstances as last week, but a completely different mood. Everybody was dead cheerful and no diseases were mentioned. Also, I had two co-codomil from the auld maw's stash and ache from the tooth extraction just disappeared.

The two guys from San Fransisco invited us to Thanksgiving. We were going to leave the day before, but they really wanted us to stay for Thanksgiving. They couldn't leave because you had to pay for the campsite on the way out and they hadn't enough money. One of them was really hoping for fifty dollars to be sent from the States for his Christmas. They were a long way from home, near Tangiers in 1974.

The weekend before they'd been involved in some kind of rammy at the cinema, and got lifted by the polis along with a lot of Moroccans. They were kept in the yard at the back of the police station, but in the course of the night all the Moroccans were allowed to go home in dribs and drabs. Eventually, there were only the two of them left. They were bothered about getting beaten up by the polis, so one of them tries to make a break for it and he's half way over the wall when his pal starts shouting: He's escaping! He's escaping! because he was scared of being left to face the music on his own. Of course, both of them got beaten up.

I told the dentist not to worry if my eyes rolled up to the top of my head when he was doing the business because that happened when I started meditating. It's better to keep your eyes shut, but sometimes you don't notice if they open themselves. Once he paused and asked if I was okay when this was happening before. Who'd want to be a dentist?

Ra Diet!

Thursday 2:30 p.m.
Just interrupting the start of re-writing to blog this. I'm going to use this stuff in that book and also in the re-write of The Real McCoy. It's from the notes section of Tsongkhapa's Six Yogas of Naropa, translated, etc., by Glenn H. Mullin.


“The practice of chulen, or taking the essence … making essence pills from flowers and then abstaining from any food and eating only a few of these pellets each day. While living in India I knew several yogis who thus cut off intake of ordinary food for two or three years at a time, eating only a pellet or two a day for sustenance. They lost weight for the first three or four months, but after that even became quite fat.
The three main forms of the practice are: pellets made from flower petals; pellets made from certain minerals; and “stone essence,” in which a stone is put into a glass of water several times a day, mantras recited, and the water then drunk. The First Dalai Lama’s writings mention a fourth technique: breathing in the essence of starlight at night. Starlight is considered to be the essence of energy, and thus the most quintessential form of nutrient.”

Nothing like having a perfectly balanced diet, eh?

10:35 p.m.
Had a very good day today! Probably meditated for just under six hours, including an hour in the hut. Also, I worked on completely changing the beginning of Light in the Dark and that was must enjoyable. Had a joe breathing in the essence of starlight. That's the way to do it!

I need to get rich! Rich, I tell you! So I can give up this part time jobbie. Going to work is a complete waste of my time, so it is. I've got far too much to do!

Rose Heroic Lives!

Wednesday 10:30 p.m.
The world is full of people who are much better people than me; people living lives of quiet heroism, like my friend whose wife is quite far down the road with Multiple Sclerosis. The world is full of them. Folk like my auld maw who was widowed in her mid-forties and left with two young adolescents, a pre-adolescent, and my sister who couldn't do anything for herself. There are people out there who don't complain and just get on with what they're supposed to do.

And here is moi, part of the generation - some of whom like me hardly worked and never wanted, who ate the planet, who never had to go to war with anyone, etc., etc., etc. It's almost embarrassing that someone like me has come to be 56 years old, experienced not a great amount of personal tragedy or even much disappointment, and I can put my mind into states of amazing bliss.

You can see why folk want to believe in rebirth, reincarnation, or whatever, because this life does not seem to be fair.

Trying to understand and then realise non-self and emptiness, or even just engaging in calming meditations should even the score a little, but almost nobody knows about buddhist philosophy and almost nobody meditates. Oh well!

The flatheids don't know they're flatheids. They think they're alright and I suppose they are. They're not going to fall apart and go about moaning and groaning to me when they get the black spot. They'll just do the usual denial, anger, acceptance, blah blah, and shuffle off their mortal coil they way they do.

I have been given a fantastic opportunity in this life. An unbelievable opportunity. For this I must thank the folk who took an interest in me a few years ago when I was regularly going down to the Samye Ling. I wasn't going to courses or really talking much to anyone. I used to go and meditate. If I had the money, I'd been down there meditating yet every time I had a holiday. But there are some special people down there and they did notice me, and they did help me, and they are helping me even as I write this.

All I've got to do is try hard, at least over the next few days. I've got to stay off the beer, the dope, the tobacco, in fact, pursue purification and accumulation. And stay away from my deep, dear friends because they are all flatheids and sweetie eaters, and they will never get ra bliss.

I'm on antibiotics. I get a tooth pulled on Friday morning. But tomorrow is all mine. Tomorrow belongs to me!

Rat Escapism

Tuesday
I got an email from someone called Lynne Pema from Canada, I think. So hello, Lynne!

I really have a great desire at the moment to meditate. Last night, I had to sit with the Domestic Bliss and watch the telly. It was quite nice. If you were asked if you'd rather become blissed, get out of your face on air, or watch the telly ... if you're a flatheid, you'd probably want to watch the telly!

It's dark when I leave the house in the morning and it's dark when I get back in. Usually, miserable, horrible Scottish weather as well. I mean, who'd want to escape that?

Today I started to dread Christmas. It's not unusual for me to start dreading Christmas about August. Last year I had two really nice evenings over the horrible holiday fortnight. I was sitting in front of the telly with the Domestic Bliss and the kiddo, the noise blockers on, the eyeballs rolled up, investigating ra bliss. Two lovely evenings in the midst of a sea of engaging with the too dumb to meditate.

The two best Christmases I've had in the last ten years have been spent down at the Samye Ling. They don't have Santa Claus. There isn't a bit of tinsel in sight. You don't have to sit drinking yourself into a stupor wishing you were anywhere else but here. Last year I told the kiddo that we could go down to the Samye this Christmas (they run a beginners course then and show films at night in the cafe!) if I had any money. What a laugh! It's really unusal for me to have money at Christmas time.

But I've got a tooth abscess (just swelling, no pain. Hurrah!), a slightly knackered shoulder and I'm at work.

On the bright side, I'm enjoying re-writing the beginning of the kidsbook and I have a dental appointment at 4:50 p.m. tonight.

It said in the papers yesterday that you don't have to go to work if you're so obese, and have trouble walking, etc. Pass the Christmas pudding, please.

Later
I spent the best part of my lunch break hiding in the toilets. Sometimes I hide in the empty lecture theatre, but it was busy today. What bliss! How unexpectedly did the heat arise! Not many folk practise vajrayana buddhism in the toilets at their work. Mostly, it'll be practised in monasteries and caves and such like, but needs must!

Let's hope the dentist reels back in horror and phones emergency services. What I need is to be surrounded by medics dressed in space suits, shaking their heads and saying: You're a carrier, Hotboy, but you have no symptoms. You'll have to stay here under observation and in isolation for the next three years. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I would be then!!!

Ra Resume

Sunday 3:20 p.m.
I heard this story once about a joe walking among the Pentland Hills, eating magic mushrooms as he went along. Then there was fog, and whizbangs, and soldiers with bayonets all over the shop. Most unsettling!

Just at the sign which tells you the Pentland Hills are an army training environment, the boy's bike saddle came to bits. Hurrah! Does this mean we can go back home, says I? So I was only out and about on the nazi bike for about two and a half hours yesterday.

I meditate in the lobby mainly because the telephone is there. About half three I checked the calls, and discovered that my friend with the clinical depression wasn't up to getting visitors to watch the footie, which started at five. He's the husband of the woman with the MS I sometimes visit. You couldn't make it up.

The call-off really cheered me up. I could listen to the radio. I didn't have to go out. I'd really like to give up being concerned with the footie, but the Dom Bliss intervened and I, feeling doomed, went to see the footie elsewhere.... so I got a carry-out, smoked fags, and ended up eating a steak later on in a restaurant which probably didn't have a vegetarian option.

All that and a dose of the spongiform as well!

I've been meditating with breaks in the lobby since half eleven today. Thank God that I've run out of overdraft and won't have any money to waste till I get paid again!

Ra Best Laid Plans!

Thursday 10:00 p.m.
Two and a half hours of verbals in Bellshill today. The big sister was there, so there was no blissing out at the foot of the auld maw's bed. Two and a half hours of diseases, and calamities befalling people ... the awfulness that can occur in the ... grief, sorrow, lamentations ... suffering in this life! Dearie, dearie me. Phenomena are empty of existing in the manner of their appearance except in Bellshill. I can't say: I don't believe in anything! I don't believe in anything at all! Well, I can, and I do, but it just makes me seem a bit strange.

Tomorrow I'll have to take to the hut. I have won the day.

Ris Wonderful Life!

Wednesday 11:22 a.m.
Whilst awaiting for my wonderful jobbie share partner to come and set me free!

I'm back, Jack! I'm well back in the game! No booze or nicotine since Saturday and I can feel the serenity, the equanimity begin to shine through ra bliss! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss! You just close your eyes today and there it is: The great arisings and the great flowings of ra bliss!

Ringu Tulku said it was easy to open the channels, but you have to be careful to do things in their right order, or there might be difficulties closing them again. Tsongkhapa says in The Book Of the Three Inspirations that if you haven't got a clear view of the red, white and blue channels .... well, you're going to hell, Jack. No, it's not me, Hotboy! I'm a spam robot. It's you! It's you! It's you!

Bugger it! This afternoon I'm going to give it the gun! Pedal to the floor! Set your controls for the heart of the sun!

Hopefully, this will take place in my hut. It will grow dark. I will set fire to a week's supply of newspapers and watch them burn. On this day of days, there is no more fortunate creature in this wonderful, beautiful city than moi!!

If you were to ask yourself, dear reader, why you cannot go like Hotboy into a cold, dingy allotment hut and have the time of your life .... lay off the flatheids, Hotboy! Some cats got it and some cats aint!

Ra Work!

Tuesday!
I've just had a message saying I'll be getting a package from my agent with a copy of the kidsbook with a lot of red ink all over it. The man thought the first couple of chapters were particularly awful, so I'll have to drop the re-writing of The Real McCoy and get on with that.

Some writer told a bunch of kids once that being a writer was like having to do homework for the rest of your life. It would be better than working for a living. I suppose I should be glad to contribute. I suppose I should be grateful that I only have to work for two and a half days a week. But I'd be very happy not working at all, especially since today I now feel fully recovered from the pollutions I was able to afford at the weekend due to having a half time jobbie. No beer or nicotine since Saturday. Wouldn't it be nice if I could have sat in the lobby and meditated all day today. What a time I would have had!!

Ranother Saturday Night!

Saturday 6:40 p.m.
The Domestic Bliss is away this weekend. After Brian Wilson has resurrected himself from the couch this morning and set off back to his castle in Portobello, there was a bottle of Budvar and two glasses left in a bottle of Plonko Collapso. There was also three fags left from the ten I'd bought to roll joints, now that I'm a nicotine addict again. So I started the day with a couple of glasses of wine, a bottle of Budvar, and a couple of joints. What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am! Then I read the paper and had a wee snooze.

I think I might have been overdoing the self-mortification and asceticism lately.

So I didn't start meditating today till half four. What amazing amounts of ra bliss! How stunning it was! While I was engaging with this degenerate age, it seems to have continued with developments regardless. It just amazed me again. How could there be so much bliss? No wonder you can't get these yogi joes out of their caves! I mean, I can't even do this juju!

Ra Highlights!

Thursday 2:42 p.m.
When I was meditating down at the Samye Ling last summer, one time I got an image of the lama in front of me, asking me if I couldn't just be happy being there. I was trying and hoping, I suppose, and it wasn't working whatever it was. I've been using this image and admonition a lot recently. I really don't need anything else to make me happy than I have just now. Contentment coming through from the meditations is very welcome, at any time.

Recent highlights: 1) After having a great visit to Bellshill on Saturday, when I got home I did fifty yogic jumpings; the two kinds of sun salutations I know. The Iyengar sun salutations are brutal. Before I started them, I ate a bit of cannybliss yogurt. I spent two hours in the bath afterwards. What a wonderful time I had in there! First you're doing ra bliss and combining it was the exhaustion. Then the cannybliss comes on. I gives you a chance to daydream. I was daydreaming about emptiness, and doing ra bliss, and drifting off into snoozes, and coming out in ra bliss!

2) I got a visit at the jobbie from the josephine I was really horrible to about eighteen months ago, but all the anger and frustration I've had with this jobbie had almost entirely dissapated. These are all ego and false sense of self generations. So I was dead calm and very nice to her. I left the jobbie yesterday feeling better than I can remember. Everything seems to have moved up and on.

3) After dozing off for an hour on the couch, I went up to meditate in the hut. It wasn't that cold. I was in the hut from half three till six. So it's dark when you get out. You can see through the trees again at the castle lit up on the skyline.

4) This morning I was sitting with our friend with the MS. She said she wanted to read the paper and I sat there meditating for close on two hours; the eyeballs sometimes rolled up, the woiks. The flatheids never see me like that. What a great time I had!


It's very hard to see how I could be having a better life right now. In fact, it's hard to see how anyone could be having a better life right now.

Ra New Developments!

Monday 8:10 p.m.
You just close your eyes and the sheath/envelope becomes fuller and is caressed by ra bliss!

Things have moved on a little bit again, Jack, and I just thought I'd better let you know. But it's so hard to describe it. Regularly, I tell the other person living here that there have been developments with ra bliss, but I can't really say how that can be so. I've experienced the kind of bliss I'm getting when I close my eyes just now, but it's never been so consistent, or felt so easily accessible.

I think the winds are supposed to enter the central channel, become stable, then dissolve. As they dissolve, you get the four blisses and the simulation of death. Or maybe it's life, Jack, but not as we know it.

Sometimes I feel so happy to be doing this juju, the great vajrayana. I'm in my mid-fifties. What else could give me experiences like this? The sweetie eaters, those Evolutionary Tails, them Prehensiles .... fancy missing ra bliss! It's amazing there's all this bliss in a world full of the too dumb to meditate. Human beingness is completely wasted on flatheids, so it is!

Ra Not Django Rhinehart!

Saturday 00:15 a.m.
I bought a guitar once - a copy of a Humingbird - about 1975, when I got a tax rebate. The only new guitar I ever bought. A thing of beauty. The Domestic Bliss stalked it everywhere, and knocked it over, and dropped it, and finally killed it circa 1993. Better than the executioneer's axe, it fell perfectly onto an edge and the head flew off it. Hmmm. If I had put that guitar on a guitar stand in the middle of Hampden Park and let her loose in the blindfold without telling her about the guitar being there, she'd have gone to it like a homing pigeon and knocked it over.


I cannabilised a part from what was left of it last night to fix the guitar I use just now and, instead of putting it back on top of the cupboard, I decided to burn it up the allotment.


The train to Bellshill was cancelled today so I was meditating for a couple of hours up the allotment this afternoon. As it was getting dark I rolled up, twisted and knotted two plastic bags fulls of newspapers, and then put the guitar on top of that to stare into the flames, the fabulous flames.


I started to learn how to play the guitar when I was twenty one and staying in a room in a student house with a very good guitar player. I couldn't tune it. I have no musical ability at all; my sense of pitch is lousy.


In those days I knew that all drugs were bad and when anyone ever offerred me one of those funny smelling cigarettes, I always said no in case I immediately came down with the schizophrenia. However, I was lying in the dark somehow, probably having succumbed to the dense, smokey atmosphere the progeny of the evil bourgeois used to inflict on me, when I heard Albert the Bavarian picking out a tune on the guitar I had then.


If I'd known he was gay at the time, I don't think I'd have felt safe wtih just him in the room, in the dark, as he picked out the Hall of the Mountain King by Peter the Gynt. I asked him if he'd ever played the guitar before and he said no, this was the first time. Amazing musical ability really, it seemed to me especially since I don't think I'd even heard of Peter the Gynt.


Only when reading his bloggie thirty five years later do I discover than, in fact, he was ukelele maestro from an early age. I mean, it's lying really by default sort of, but I can understand why he did not want to admit the bit about the ukelele. Because it might not have seemed all that cool at the time.


I use the start of the Hall of the Mountain King to see how out of tune my guitar still is to this very day. He must have shown it to me.


The cannybliss yogurt delivery man came half way through this post. What a nice man! Bring on the dancing girls!

Ra Clear Horizons!

Thursday 11:05 a.m.
Fair play to the jobbie-men for at last they've done something right! What an amazement! Partly due to this, I left the jobbie yesterday, after my half a day working week was over, feeling most exhilerated. Trying to realise non-self and emptiness is, of course, a full time job and I shouldn't really be doing anything else. An exhausting half a day it was too, but I felt great again after I had a wee lie down!

I can feel the happiness starting to shine through. I haven't had any beer or cannybliss yogurt since Sunday and, although that's supposed to be par for the course for most evil bourgeois basturns, it's still quite a stretch for me these days. A friend of mine once met a gurl, got engaged, and split up over an eighteen month period without ever having been with her when he was straight. I mean, that's normal, isn't it?

That description of reality/emptiness from Tsongkhapa given in the last post probably comes, more or less, from Nagarjuna, the Indian sage. I assume both these joes were fully realised buddhas. They're trying to describe reality for flatheids like me and you as a help to judder our minds into a better, newer way of thinking. What I mean is that I don't think this stuff starts with the descriptive thoughts. It's coming backwards, as it were, from the realisation. My guru told me once I'd get everything from the straightforward calming meditations, but I didn't listen to that of course. But I find that the descriptions of what emptiness might be does help me.

The meditations power on and the next few days might well be fantastic. I hope so.

3:45 p.m.
What a great day I'm having! At one o clock I was doing some sitting with our friend with the MS so her husband could go a message. What a great big smile she gave me! I asked her if she felt she was becoming intellectually impaired. Let's be frank. Some folk told me she was becoming doo-lally. She can't speak much, but she can still speak much better than my sister (who had the other type of MS) could speak. For years nobody could understand a word my sister was trying to say except us family members who'd listened while her language deteriorated. Nobody in our house ever thought the MS was making her any stupider. So I asked our friend with the MS if she could still follow a radio play or something on the telly. She said yes; she liked listening to radio plays. She thought her mind was fine. She gets tired. She can't speak properly. I asked if she wanted me to shut up, so she could listen to the radio, or would she like to hear about the three turnings of the wheel of dharma? She asked for the dharma.

It might have been at least as good for me as it was for her. Trying to tell someone something is one of the best ways of remembering and learning it yourself. It lasted about an hour and just at the end, the doorbell rang and the carers showed up to do the caring. Then her husband came back just as they were leaving. I cycled home. Whee!

Then I came in here to do some re-writing of The Real McCoy. I did about an hour on it last week. Last night I decided the introduction to Angus McSorley was really appalling bad and would have to be completely re-written. The character had no fung character! Anyway, I've just had a great idea on how to change the story and make it much better. Something just fired my rockets!

Where do you get your ideas from, Hotboy? I get them from thinking, Jack! Where the fung else would I get them from? They arise in mind; abide in mind; decline in mind!! I'm having a great life, so I am! What more could a body ask for? Oh, yes, I'm quite exhausted now after writing my novel for half an hour and I think it's best if I go for a wee snooze!