Tuesday 31 July 2007

Ra Ninth Day!

Tuesday 9:14 a.m.
The meditations just keep getting better, and better, and better. The one just finished was very blissy indeed!

I just overheard someone saying the Drubcho is finishing on Thursday morning. That's when I leave, so I'll have been here for the whole thing. This is truly weird and coincidental. I was sure I'd miss the last bit. So my auld maw was listening to the Dharmapada CD and then thinks she'll give me £100 to come here. I hadn't more than vague plans. I got here the day before it started, so I was here for the first session. I had no idea it was on. Then I thought I might have to leave early with the Domestic Bliss, but no. I stay till it's over. During these ten days I'll have been sitting with my guru for seven hours a day. It's too coincidental. There are more things in heaven and earth, Hotboy, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I've got a guru, or what? Eh, Jack?

Monday 30 July 2007

Ra Eighth Day!

Monday 9:15 a.m.
I've never been down to the Samye Ling for longer than seven days before. I'm so pleased to still be here. Everything about the meditations slowly but surely gets better and better! The last hour spent meditating with the lama in the temple was just superb. The hour flashed by in much, much bliss!

The Bliss Of Inner Fire is such a fantastic book if you're interested in meditation. I'm so convinced by these Tibetans, and you can tell reading it just how dangerous these jujus could be if you were a joe like me. But I don't care!! Let's go mad! Let's go on fire! See if I care! Anyway, that's for some other joe. Reading this stuff again gives me so much more confidence in the lama. I think he wanted to continue doing this stuff for 20 years, but his big brother said 12 was enough and he had to come out and help the flatheids. I assume by that time he'd developed massive compassion. Otherwise, it's hard to imagine a bigger bummer.

Having re-read it, I think I understand this practising with a kamamudra stuff now. Anyway, even being crap at these meditations, I'm having more bliss than you could shake a stick at. The first meditation this morning was just superb!

I sat meditating in the temple all yesterday evening. The spooky guy was there. I think we've met before. I had my back to a pillar last night though ... just in case he jumped on me and I had to beat the shit out of him, which I surely could. Not a good place to spill blood, I shouldn't think.

It's sunny just now. It was sunny yesterday for a wee bit. What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am! Another full day of meditations lie ahead. Yippee!!!

2:20 p.m.
What a difference a week makes! I was just loving being there this morning. You're concerned with your sore legs, or how long you've got to be there, or anything like that. It was a surprise when it finished, and you think: Oh, that's a bit of a shame! And I thought for a while that I might get some kind of inner heat experience while I'm here. There's been heat and warmth arising now and again for ages, but nothing has happened to compare with the rising heat I had on April 6th, 2003. It's that kind of mind funging experience you're looking for really.

It's great to have all your anxieties disappearing.

Sometimes nasty vicious thoughts of the old ultra-violence still arise. At the moment they're arising without much emotional appendages, and they're sometimes a wee big vague. Before you might sometimes feel your body tense and your breathing come up short.

They'll be back, Hotboy! I know that, Jack. We spring from a warrior race of radge, murderous basturns!

A good if somewhat improbable way of thinking of thoughts arising, which distances you from them, and stops you reacting to them so much is to think that thoughts sometimes occur because of movements of the winds through your subtle body. It's blockages getting knocked away. Funnily enough, when these occur during meditation times, right afterwards a big blast of ra bliss arises. How odd!

Of course, if you're on the ball, thoughts arise in mind, abide in mind, and decline in mind ... like the mountains, rivers, clouds and me.

I was sitting at what I thought was a "silent" table at lunchtime (brilliant food here!), but it turned out to be not so silent. This old woman came and sat nearly across from me. Old women are feature of some Tibetan folklore. She asked me what I was reading so intently. I've got the banned book in front of me and it's wrapped in newspaper. I tell her it's just a book. She asks me what it's about. I say meditation. She asked me who wrote it. This is nearly the story about how Naropa set off to find his guru and acquire the Six Yogas. I told her it was Lama Thebten Yeshe and she said that was a Tibetan? Yes, I said. Nothing else was said. Thank fung for that! Otherwise I might have been introduced to the dungeons they haven't told us about so far!!!

The boy in the book said Je Tsongkhapa practised generation and completion stages together. Hurrah! He said he practised completion stages in the afternoon. Hurrah again! It's the afternoon and here comes more wonderful, wonderful gong bashing!

8:00p.m.
The only excuse I've got for being in here is that I'm totally knackered! This usually happens to me down here. God knows why! You wouldn't think sitting on your bum all day could be tiring, but it is. I'm always completely whacked when I leave here. It must be trying to concentrate for about ten hours a day. Just don't know. Always happens here though. Anyway, the Dom Bliss and the kiddo might be coming down here tomorrow, so that'll be nice.

Sunday 29 July 2007

Ra Seventh Day!

Sunday 9:20 a.m.
What a great start to the day! And it's sunny, at least for now.

I had a very nice evening last night. In the temple late on the Venerable Big Indian was rehearsing some ritual singing and gong bashing while I sat at the side and did vase breathing, etc. The symbol was brighter, the heat was a bit stronger. I think the heat might work better when I'm back in Edinburgh since I reckon you have to do more vase breathing than I usually put in. Last night I did about fifteen breaths and that's more than usual for me.

The meditation with the lama this morning was better, steadier, more blissful than before. Today I might see Ion around lunchtime. That'll be strange and I've just had an email from the Dom Bliss saying she'll be down here on Tuesday. It would have suited me if she'd have come down on Wednesday, but you can't have everything. The meditations will be wonderful today!!

3:00 p.m.
Just lost a post. This is after I lost Ion and her family. Didn't see them at lunchtime. They probably drowned in a flood getting here. Also, I discovered that I've lost £3 on this machine which has some kind of time code. I was advised to buy a lot of time (2 hours), but to save your time you have to press a wee tottie button saying stop. Switching off the machine doesn't do it, I assume.

None of this aggravation would have occurred if I'd stayed away from these bloody computers in the first place!! I must remember that the next time I come down here.

I read the blazing and dripping bit of the Inner Fire book over lunch. No where near doing these meditation right, of course. But ra bliss this morning was fantastic. The time in the temple just flies.

It's when I'm not meditating that I get the problems, Jack. You knew that already, Hotboy!

Saturday 28 July 2007

Ra Sixth Day!

Saturday 9:16 a.m.
Had to ask the nun behind the counter what day it was. How they merge into one another here!

This morning was the best start ever. Slept all night so there couldn't have been any severe storms, or I'm getting used to them. Made the meditation with the lama as well.

I shy away from people. I stopped seeking out my uncle Peter (he's a publisher) once his partner, the Lonesome Cowboy Bill, published my first book. I thought it would look bad, but I really like uncle Peter. When Philip Howard, the boy who runs the Traverse, wrote and said he'd like to speak to me after he didn't want a play I'd sent him, I said no. Lama Yeshe, who is my guru, was in the breakfast place (unusually!) this morning and I'd shy away from him as well. Once I got a message (telepathic!) asking if I wanted to see him and I replied (telepathically) that I'd nothing to talk to him about. This occurred to me this morning when I saw him and even I could hardly believe it. I don't want to speak to Teresa either. I suppose you've got to see me eye to eye or I'm not having it. Natural networker me, so I am!

About the first thing I saw when I got out the tent this morning was a collie dog. It looked like a ravenous, meat eating monster. There are a lot of wee bunny rabbits and peahens with chicks walking about the place. About twelve years ago, Shiva and I visited the Holy Isle and after a few days a female visitor arrived to see the place. She was wearing just ordinary face make up. What a painted jezebel she looked!! Sensitivity, that's what it is, Jack! Sensitivity!

Be nice if when I got back to Edinburgh, the folk in Princes Street looked like deities (some hope!) instead of the mad basturns they usually look like when I get out of here!

14:58 p.m.
Wonderful meditations this morning. I'm doing a lot more vase breathing than I would have done, though I'm not giving it laldy, but trying to be discreet. Anyway, I wasn't getting much heat. I've decided not to think about this anymore. It's a hope or expectation. Seeing the photie of the lama yesterday looking skinny and as mad as a hatter probably helped. You're not going to get this just by wanting it.

I got my first inner heat experience in April 2003, and I'd have thought I'd be drying off half of England by this time. But it's not coming like that. I don't think it's not doing 100,000 recitations of the hundred syllable mantra, but has probably to do with purification issues. I hadn't been drinking for 4 months when that experience occurred. My big non-self and emptiness experience occurred after four months with no bob hope and after a year of not drinking. So what's that telling us, Jack. That's telling you to stay off the bevvy and the bob hope, Hotboy.

I don't miss it here. I really don't. Giving up everything though? Hmmm? Never done that before, not voluntarily anyway.

So the rule from now on is just to enjoy being here and doing it.

Friday 27 July 2007

Ra Samye Day 5

Friday 9:29 a.m.
I finished the first hour's meditation of the day half an hour ago, and it really flashed by. When you've been sitting for two to three hour sessions, what's an hour? A mere bagatelle!

There wasn't as much heat yesterday afternoon as I was expecting, but they say it's better in the morning. I just hope it's not because I haven't done the 100,000 prostrations and whatnot! This morning was great though. Every time there's a wee bit of progress.

You can't accept personal responsibility for any success here. This is a communal effort. In the audience there are about fifty practitioners who are probably further along than me. Then there are about thirty or forty monks and nuns. They're putting in nearly six hours a day at this Drubcho. There are conch blowers, horn blowers, cymbal and drum and gong beaters, and some folk waving about these wee twiddly drums. One of the nuns is miked up and she's leading off the chanting and singing. What an effort for her, but the whole monastic sangha are giving it laldy for six hours a day, and there are two other sets of prayer times and the meditation with the lama from 8 till 9.

I don't know the chants or anything. I just sit there doing my thing and let the whole thing wash over me.

The Great Buddha, Lama Yeshe Losal, is not a young man and he's been there for every session. I don't think he needs this for himself. So all praise to him!!!

I could never have done this in Edinburgh, even with my hut!! There is a lot of juju energy builds up in this place. Don't ask me why or how. Lat year two hours of the Dubchen blow my head off! Have to rush. No many breaks around here!

15:09 p.m.
What a wonderful morning I had meditating! Great lunch then I crashed out in the tent for an hour. As I was waking up, I thought I was in a field of jewels. That's more like it. Last night I had a "lost" dream again when I seemed to be lost in a place like downtown Freetown. Not too bad though, just a bit disconcerting.

Here's another bit for the book. This is about arising as a divine being. "You are standing, having four faces and twelve arms, and are embracing Vajravarahi, who has a body of radiant red light."

Never was much use at handling my expectations! Maybe ten days won't do this for you! There's a new book about the 40 years of the Samye Ling on sale just now. There's a photie of Lama Yeshe in it when he was on retreat. He was 12 years doing this juju. The lama is a wee fat baldy guy, as usual, but the joe in the photie is thin and stares out with hair and a beard, half naked, and looking like a loonie, as these yogi joes often do! So if I get some warmth here I should be bloody well delighted!

9:10 p.m.
Once I was staying overnight at a commune called Lauriston Hall. It was near Castle Douglas and we were going to a wedding that morning. I left the caravan we were in and went to find the time. There was a football game going on. Nobody knew the time there. Nobody really cared. They couldn't have been hungry. I was re-directed and asked others. Not a clue. Bloody hippies! Eventually, I found a clock in the hall. I was trying to think of a comparison to what it's began to feel like being here. I don't care much about what time it is anymore either.

I felt so settle in the temple this afternoon. I didn't how long it was going to last, or how much time had passed.

Tell us about ra bliss, Hotboy. The spam robots want to hear about ra bliss though these dudes with the four heads and twelve arms seem much better than the flatheids! Well, Jack, you close your eyes and there is ra bliss. It's just right there. There is some warmth. There is sometimes a bit of heat. Ra bliss blows your arms and legs off, but I'm getting kind of used to ra bliss. It's all over the place. It's everywhere you sit down and close your eyes. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss. Oh, I'm surfing the oceans of bliss, I am! I'm surfing the oceans of bliss!

This is only half way! Who knows what things will be like tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow!

Thursday 26 July 2007

Ra Samye Day 4 (b)

Thursday 2:05 p.m.
Once I got started today, everything worked wonderfully! I felt so settled and so happy to be here. What a fortunate creature! The visualisations i.e. imagining yourself as a deity in the mandala, etc., are really starting to work. Here comes ra heat! Yes, the heat is arising!

My excuse for being here is that over my fantastically delicious lunch, I began reading The Bliss Of Inner Fire. How much I owe to this book! It changed my life and there's no other book I can really think of that has done that. Hmmm? No, this is it!

Here's a quote from the introduction: "Tantra can lead the misguided practitioner into realms of mental and physical suffering of unimaginable enormity." This might be why the lama here (May he live 10,000 years!) didn't want this book published!. I think this rules Albert the Bavarian out! This tantric juju isn't like ... well, Albert will know what I mean!

Lama Thebten Yeshe says right away. "Tantra does not work with people who are miserable, because they have no resource of pleasure to utilise." That maybe counts out one of two folk I know!

This maybe hooked me the first time I read it. " The lam-rim, the step-by-step presentation of the path to enlightenment, brings satisfaction in a more religious way; inner fire is more scientific because actualising it does no depend upon religious belief. If you act, the experience automatically comes. No customs or rituals are involved ... you are dealing with the kundalini and heat energy that you already possess. It is amazingly powerful, like a volcano erupting within you."

Anyone who is interested in meditation should have a look at this book. But if you practise this juju without a teacher and go on fire, or go mad, well, don't blame me! Well, you can if you like, but I don't care.

This is where I am supposed to be and this is what I am supposed to be doing. I'd love the rest of my life among the flatheids to be like this, but at least I have this day, this hour, this moment. And the next few days are going to be amazing!!!

Ra Samye Day 4!

Thursday 10:17 a.m.
The clock was a wee bit wrong this morning, so I missed the starting time to be in the front temple with the lama for the morning meditation, so I went in the back. Such bliss! Also, I was getting heat. The whole thing has just moved on a bit again. I can feel the whatever moving around my shoulders and neck area as I write this. Also, a little warmth.

So I missed the start of the drubcho this morning since I was doing my juju through the wall partition which divides off the temple. How it rained outside! I checked the weather forecast. More and more rain is coming our way.

It's like the start of one of these scary apocalyptic movies. It rains an awful lot a first and you see the nice family looking out and saying it's just an awful lot of rain. Ten minutes into the movie and the wind is blowing constantly at 100 m.p.h.!

The rain battering on the tent wakened me about four o clock, but it was much better than in the last tent when the bugger flapped and flapped like the sails on a big boat! Anyway, this isn't a beach holiday! Thank god for that! You're a bit cut off here of course. I expect England is a foot under water by this time!

Wednesday 25 July 2007

Ra Samye Day 3(b)

Wednesday 7:57 p.m.
I finished Tsongkhapa's book today and started on The Bliss of Inner Fire. It was because of reading the latter that I wanted to take refuge and get a guru. They don't like this book at the Samye Ling, but I came with it covered in newspaper like the poor kids at school used to cover their jotters, the ones who couldn't afford the brown paper.

I says the boy whose teachings it represents managed to develope an "illusory body." From what I can make out this is a ghostie man or men you can send off to do stuff, etc. I'm not sure. Tsongkhapa is supposed to have used his to put out a fire once.

What's all this illusory body stuff about, Hotboy? Buggered if I know, Jack. Sounds ridiculous, but so did raising inner heat, and I can do that a wee bit sometimes. How about going breathless? Well, two years ago that was ridiculous, but St Teresa of Avila went into breathless states as well. It's not just the buddhists or Tibetans who talk of such things.

Today has been great and everything about my meditations has improved since I got here. I realised it was a year since I was here on my own for a week. This is because I wasted all my money on beer and bob hope. Well, it's a week since I had a drink, or, I've had one drink in the last two and a half weeks. I gave up drinking for a year twice before and it was after spending a week here. It gives me such a boost. I've got to get a grip on my debts and start spending all my spare cash on getting down here more often.

I haven't had a conversation since I got here. I got an nod from the lama, a smile from Teresa, a big hullo from the Venerable Big Indian, and the initial chat with the gatekeeper to nirvana. That's enough.

Ra Samye Day 3!

Wednesday 9:23 a.m.
What a good start to the day! First of all, I got out of the tent with my trousers on the right way. Then the first person I bumped into as I stumblebummed to the bog and shower was Teresa, my favourite nun. What a great smile she gave me. Really cheered me up. Yesterday the lama nodded at me on the steps of the temple. I think he does know who I am!

The new tent is brilliant. It's designed to confuse midgies and sends them all in the wrong direction. The last time I was camping here I had to kill millions of them before I could go to sleep, which can't be good for a vegetarian, even if you don't eat them afterwards.

Capn Jambo asked for the url for this bloggy, so hello, Capn Jambo and I hope them nuclear missiles surrounding you in Louisianna don't get you!

I'm feeling quite exhilerated. Two and a half hours gong bashing starts right after this and then anything is possible. I had so much easy access to ra bliss during my first hour this morning with the lama.... meditating in the temple with the lama is great. Nobody knows more about meditating than that guy, unless it's his big brother. What a truly fortunate creature I am to be here!

Before I departed the realm of the flatheids, I got an email from the man of great taste and perspicacity .... some publisher got a "very positive" report from a reader about my novel. Just when I'd given up. Unfortunately, sometimes I think about it and hope, which is totally uncool. Wouldn't it be wonderful to get a yes about that before I had to go back to my jobbie? Of course, I shouldn't care. And it is difficult to tell the difference between good and bad fortune.

May all sentient beings be happy and may all flatheids start meditating! This will surely be a wonderful day!

Tuesday 24 July 2007

Ra Samye Day 2 (C)

8:45 p.m.
Three times blogging on one day! Dearie me! Still, apart from meditating, all I've done is read my buddhisty book. I was looking at the visualisations these boys do, and I have to admit that I don't see how I can mimic them. Even though I do think these visualisations are possible, I don't see how I can ever get into a position to be able to do them. You'd really need to be in retreat a long time and my circumstances won't warrant that, as far as I can see.

I'm going to stick with them whilst remembering that there are different ways to skin a cat. It's non-self and emptiness we're after here, which should bring in its wake true satiation and probably contentment, happiness, equanimity, etc.

Even without the juju, it's very good to get away from your usual circumstances sometimes. Down here at the Samye Ling, anxieties start drifting away. Right now, I wonder how long I'll stay. I've never been down here for longer than a week. Hmmmm? Who knows how I'll feel in a few days. I've only paid till Friday. Guess I'll stay at least till Monday. Been quite a day!

Ra Samye Day 2(b)

Tuesday 2:52 p.m.
I was lying on the bench on the island near the Stupa for the last hour and a half recovering from lunch. The gong bashing doesn't start again till quarter past three, so I thought I'd share with you bloggies some stuff about corpses and getting one of your own to live in. This is from Glenn H. Mullin's translation of the Three Inspirations.

You get the dead body and put it in your hut, sitting up, dressed with fine clothes, garlands, etc. Then you do some breathing juju on it.
"... Eventually, the corpse will be resusitated and will begin to breathe.
When this happens, one has a beautiful friend offer it appropriate food and tend to it. For half a month it is kept hidden inside; and until this new "residence" becomes steady, one also keeps one's old body hidden inside the hut. Then one can cremate the old body in a tantric fire ritual .... One then takes up one's new life in the newly acqured body, and performs great deeds for the benefit of living beings."

I really love the sound of Tibetan ritual music these days. I don't know what they're saying or doing. I just sit at the side and do my juju as usual and let it all wash over me. It's uplifting, so it is! And another three hour session is coming up!

Ra Samye Day 2!

Tuesday 9:48 p.m.
The first night in a tent is the worst. You always make some little miscalculation. Last night my mistake was taking off some clothes before I got into the sleeping bag. Wakened up cold. I don't have a lamp, but I have a candle. Lit the candle and put on the trousers. Heard the gong for the eight o clock meditation with the lama. Can't miss that, so it's a running scramble to get there from the tent. Of course, I then discover I've got the trousers on the wrong way!

The meditation was wonderful! How well I remember trying to sit for an hour through these meditations years ago. Oh, what sore legs! The only thing that was missing was the odd vase breath to blow your head off, but when there's a lot of people around ....At the moment, they've started the special gong bashing, but I really needed a cup of coffee after my shower and general scrappy start to the day.

They've got broadband here. You can watch videos! Last night when I'd a few minutes spare I went onto the sensei's blog to watch some YouTube boxing. Dearie me! Having broadband would be worth it for the videos. What next? A microwave oven? A mobile phone? Maybe I should start with a watch. I'm wandering about this place with a travelling alarm clock, the battery of which keeps falling out. Still, how happy I am to be here! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Monday 23 July 2007

Ra Samye Day 1.

Monday 11:07 a.m.
I'm here! This is my favourite place on this sweet earth. Everything about getting here went okay. The morning was sunny and beautiful. I meditated on the train and in Lockerbie station. I thought the bus was at 9:40, but it was at 9:30, but due to my caution I caught it anyway!

And the tent went up like a dream! Temple Dave gave me a wave as I trundled across the puddled wasteground to the field. Even the midgies like me here! I love being here. I'm just going to have the most wonderful time!

Sunday 22 July 2007

Ra Day Before!

Sunday 9:10 p.m.
The first meditation today was just wonderful. So deep, profound, delightful was ra bliss! This is a good sign since I'm going to the Samye Ling tomorrow. This is thanks to the supporting deities: the auld maw provided the money and the Domestic Bliss bought the tent.

I put the tent up in Inverleith Park today to see if I could. It only took me an hour. It'll blow away. It's got bendy poles on the outside. But you can sit up inside it! So before it blows away should be pretty good!

Coincidentally, they're starting ten days of gong bashing and chanting on the Tuesday. When you're sitting there blissed out and then they start giving it laldy with them big gongs and cymbals and horns and whatnot ... well, what a time I'm going to have.

So I've just got to get there and get the tent up. My preparations have been quite good. I have meditated a lot over the past three weeks and I've only had one drinking spree since I gave up completely two weeks ago. You're not supposed to expect anything, but if the next wee while was utterly amazing, I wouldn't be the slightest bit surprised.

Friday 20 July 2007

Rat Confession!

Friday 5:50 p.m.
Just when Broon the Basturn has decided to sent potheads to jail again, nine or ten of his cabinet have confessed to smoking cannabis once or twice while still students, though all of them apparently stopped immediately they graduated, and then went on to become the disgusting evil bourgeois careerist basturns they now are.

An Alien Creature from Outer Space was going to vote for me for our own wee Parliament here in Edinburgh if I'd managed to get on the ballot paper, so I think, bearing this in mind ... and also that I am a church leader ... that I have a little confession to make as well.

Once in 1970 someone handed me a sweet and sickly smelling cigarette. His name was Albert the Bavarian and the polis should arrest him now for supplying and possession. I'll certainly testify against him!

After two puffs, I realised that I had done wrong and vowed to never again take drugs. This did not stop me from developing schizophrenia (Are you still there, Jack?) and being unable to make the transition into an adulthood where I would have become a useful member of society and a hypocritical bourgeois basturn except that it was too much bloody effort.

Readers of this bloggy must realise that all that stuff about the cannybliss yogurts, the Bolivian Marching Band, Benny and the Midnight Runners and such like is just a novelist's way of brightening up what might otherwise have been a boring and predictable route to sainthood.

God told me I'd get my book published if I stopped drinking beer. Here's the juju way to get over your addictions.

You get the Medicine Buddha sitting over your head. He's a light being filled with ra bliss and heat, compassion and altruism. You say: Medicine Buddha, cure me of my addictions, please. Ra bliss comes down in a white stream and you imagine it coming through your fontanella, down through your chakras and eventually filling you completely. You keep going back to the top of your head and down till this has happened. Then, the Medicine Buddha says: Hotboy, I have cured you of your addictions. And you say: Fanks, Medicine Buddha. Fanks a lot!

That'll be ten percent off the top, please.

They've put a new electronic sign up at Bellshill station. I checked my pulse rate today as I waited for the train back to Edinburgh. 55 beats a minute. Quite slow for a fat basturn!

Thursday 19 July 2007

Ra Visitations!

Thursday 9:00 p.m.
It was an overcast and cold day. I wasn't in the allotment much, but while I was sitting in the hut, I was visited by 4 wrens! The wren's nest above the door hasn't been used for the last two years, but two of them were having a good swatch at it. Then the other two arrived. There might have been more in the queue, but I had a furiously itchy nose and had to touch it ... alarm call and they were away! What's all that about?

I made some soup when I got back. The onions, tatties, cabbage, broccoli and turnip were all from the allotment. Only the lentils and spices were bought in. The first surge of raspberries are gone now.

I brought my sleeping bag back from the hut today without ever using it. This is a wee bit disappointing, but I was a bit wearied today anyway. It might have been the weather or over-training, or too much cannybliss yogurt the night before ... probably all these things in combination. But I'm not doing under six hours most days and I've only had that one drinking session since a week passed on Saturday. The visualisations are coming on though! They are getting stronger, but it's hard work this sitting quietly doing nothing all day, so it is.

10:30 p.m.
It'd just like to share a little with you alien creatures and spam robots in the blogosphere what it might be like to experience the great whooshing and uprising and stretching and the roaring in the ears that accompanies the attempting to type to yous all about ra bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss! You forget what its like when you're not doing it. But at this time of night you can get totally off your face on air. The cannybliss yogurt just holds you back because it causes distraction (though it comes into its own later when you have to do other things). Anyway, I can't really do real time bliss blogging because I haven't got the words and you probably hadn't had an experience in the same ball park. There is just something astonishing about the after effects of a vase breath once you've made some kind of initial connection (don't ask me how!) between the breath and ra bliss.

I'll just have another vase breath here and then try to convey what it's like. Maybe. It's just wave upon wave of roaring and rippling and expanding ... first there is the disappearing breath, the one that seems far easier to hold somehow. That's weird. Something weird going on there maybe. After another two breaths .... well, the sensations are better than anything you've ever had or ever will have in this life. That last breath put it way passed the best feelings you could ever get with anything else. Incomparably fabuloso sensations. You do feel as if you're going to float away. It's wonderful. Go again. You miss the subtle nuances of exquisite pleasure with the involvement of the cannybliss yogurt because it unsettles your mind, but it does seem to initially give your chi a wee bit of oomph. It's probably the melted rubber in the soapbar.

A double dose of Rome comes up! I may not stay awake. Even with all the bonking and chibbing.

Wednesday 18 July 2007

Ra Story of O!

Wednesday 6:50 p.m.
The poppies are still looking fabulous, but my hopes of expanding the activities of the Amazing Bloggy Church of RaBadBoyBlissheid on the back of opium production are looking less than robust. Huge bubbles of opium did not emerge from the slit marks on the seed pods as expected. In fact, nothing emerged at all. How disappointing! Also, my cactus correspondent tells me that the peyote is selling at about £50 a hit, so that's definitely out of the question. On top of all this, it seems that Gordon Brown is going to reclassify cannabis as a class B instead of a class C drug. Get to fung! Dearie me! Yon boy's lost the plot already.

I started meditating today at the back of ten and we're back on schedule after a slight wobble to the pub yesterday. There was heat this morning alright and another very strange sensation of entering a different zone again. This afternoon the sun began to shine and I had a great time in the allotment. Also did a bit of digging and buried a rat which was decomposing on the path I was meditating on. A sweet sickly smell.... A dead rat! Ah, what company that would be! (Samuel Beckett).

The Dom Bliss is out this evening so I'm away to the lobby to meditate. About eight I'll probably eat a cannybliss yogurt to prepare me for Rome, which comes on at nine! Love that show!

Tuesday 17 July 2007

Ra Falling Down Again!

Tuesday 7:50 p.m.
The joe with the very, very bad cough might not be coming around this way too often from now on in. So with his arising, abiding, and declining .... I got pissed with him. How else could I speak to this joe, who is my deep dear friend? So I have to start once more from day one. Eight days off and one day on. But, oh, he was worth it! I gave my sobriety to him, the year without bevvying, etc. He told me so many glorious things which without the sitting and drinking I would not have heard.

I could not explain to him about ra bliss. Flatheids don't get ra bliss. But he has got four million somethings. Dollars, pounds! I did not mention ten percent off the top. It would be a small amount, a soup ..... it sings to me! Soup son, con? Anyway, he has stared death in the face and is on the mandala down to the right, my deep dear friend who cannot breath too well. I will be able to imagine him there when he goes back to Oz.

11:55 p.m.
The sole member and single representative of the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid visited a mosque today. I'd never been in one before. Ecumenicism, ya bass! We got shown around by a woman who was reassuringly dressed up a bit like a nun. They had clocks on the wall to tell you when to pray. It seems you've got to pray in the middle of the night. I was dead impressed. Also, there weren't many chairs. Much healthier for the hips, knees and ankles, the weight bearing joints. The woman who was dressed up a bit like a nun seemed happy and was a good advert for this religion, but I suspect that she did not get any of ra bliss. This just pisses me off. I'm a complete disgrace compared to a josephine like that. Her yamas will be spot on. Now that I have sobered up, I will go off and wallow some in ra bliss. At least, I got something right.

Monday 16 July 2007

Ra Start!

Monday 11:12 p.m.
Sitting was so easy today. Such feelings of peace and contentment arising, it was indeed like the start of this holiday. Everybody needs longer holidays. Your holiday takes two weeks before you're really on holiday. By then most folk's holidays are over, but what a fortunate creature I am to have another four weeks left.

With the weekend over, most deities go back to their more static places and there is less chaos, more peace and quiet. It's Monday. You can pause and consider how you are getting on. Today felt like a turning point. I recognise this. It's like after you've been meditating at the Samye Ling for three days. Then it becomes exactly the thing you should be doing. There's a satiation in just sitting.

Is this the ninth day since I last had a drink? I did a murderous shadow boxing session tonight. You're still a fat basturn, Hotboy! Thanks for that, Jack.

Been in and out of my head all day that story about the emperor and the wee fat baldy guy. So the emperor says to the wee fat baldy guy the stuff about will he gain merit from all the monasteries and temples he's built, and all that. And the wee fat baldy guy says no.

With the grinding cogs of karma still crunching round ... well, factoring that in with the wee fat baldy guy's response ... you don't really need much more buddhisty stuff than that.

What with the cannybliss yogurts and the wee fat baldy guys, who could ask for anything more? I forgot to tell yous about ra bliss. Some other time.

Saturday 14 July 2007

Rat Statscounter Thing!

Saturday 5:55 p.m.
I meditated today from about half eleven straight through till five o clock with about half an hour off. After the first two hours ... oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss! But not much heat. Then there seemed to be some development there ... and the doorbell went!

Here's what Tsongkhapa says about ra heat from the translation of the Three Inspirations by Glenn H. Mullin.

"The inner heat that can be aroused is of various types. For example, there is the inner heat in the central channel, that is first aroused in the chakras at the navel and the secret place, and there is the inner heat that blazes and increases outside the central channel. Secondly, there is the heat that is aroused from the depth of the body, and also the heat aroused at the surface, between the skin and flesh ... Then, there is the heat that rises slowly, and the heat that arises quickly. Also, there is the heat that seems thick, and the heat that seems thin. In each of these pairs, the first is better than the second. The second indicates an inferior experience."

This bloggy is now a fortnight old. I haven't put it into any blog directories or whatever. I only told six people where it was. So how come I got 26 returning visitors last Wednesday then? All week there hasn't been less than 10 returning visitors each day. What can it all mean, Jack. The statistics are useless, Hotboy. That's what it means. They're all Masai Warriors, Alien Creatures from Outer Space, and spam robots anyway. So blog on and bugger it! At least the statscounter thing alerted me to the link with my work, so it was useful for that. Does anyone know anything about the statscounter statistics?

Ris Life!

Saturday 10:55 p.m.
I asked after her sister, whom I met in Marchmont one summer's evening about 1970. Her sister was just going to Oxford to do the first year of a chemistry degree, I think. She then went on to study medicine at McGill in Canada and went into paediatrics because she wanted patients with good long term outcomes. Just when HIV/Aids arrrived with all the dying babies. She was at the forefront of research into how this was transmitted from mother to child, and has three children of her own. Her sister showed me a photie. She's in the terminal stages of motor neuron disease as I write this. A whole lifetime with no bliss. May God be good to you, missis!

So we're not complaining about having to sit through dinner parties with no drink or drugs, are we, Jack? Certainly not, Hotboy. Always have been and always will be a fortunate creature.

It was worth it for the people. It's not all about moi! The woman I knew thirty years ago has a husband called Kendal Hippolyte, a fab guy with a great dreadlock haircut, a poet and dramatist, director, etc. He'd read Are You Boys Cyclists, but I skipped right over that! Most together dude!

So, I've managed to get through the first week without having a drink. The pizzaman will arrrive with the bob hope later on this afternoon.

I haven't been doing as well as I'd hoped, but the visualisations are becoming a bit clearer. Forward! Forward! All my plans are simple!

Friday 13 July 2007

Rem Decompensations!

Friday 5:50 p.m.
The start of the week was very good, especially with several nice evenings in the allotment, but yesterday was a real wobbly one! I really, really need to be left alone, but I'm not going to be, so I'll just have to ...... get me a gun!

I wasn't feeling too great today either ... well, I think I should be doing better! ... but I meditated all the way to Bellshill on the train, as is my wont, and that made the view a little less frustrating. Then the auld maw wanted to listen to the Dharmapada C.D. when I was only there about forty minutes. Yahoo! So I sat in a lotus at the foot of her bed for the next hour and a half, and did ra bliss with the words of the buddha in the background. Fung off, flatheids! All I need to do is sit. That was a real boost. Right after the CD finished she sat up in her bed and said she was going to give me the money to go to the Samye Ling for a week. She said it just came to her when she was listening to the Dharmapada. Of course, I protested, but she wasn't having it. So I'll be down there, no doubt in the rain, in a tent for a week before July is out, and I'll be as happy as a pig in shit.

There are no cannybliss yogurts at the moment. Tonight I have to go to see someone I haven't seen for thirty years with no bob hope and no drinkies. I think I'd rather put my head down the toilet. I could be attempting to emanate as a deity in the full on bliss verging on ecstasy. I'm the only person I know who objects to just about everything they do, but keeps on doing it. It might be called being a wimp! Does anyone know anything about assertiveness training?

Thursday 12 July 2007

Ra Tattie Man!

Thursday 11:50 p.m.
Today I took some potatoes from the allotment and boiled them, and ate them up with fried fresh onions and two fried eggs. You'd have had to have been there to appreciate it. I'm going to turn into a raspberry if I eat any more. I pulled a turnip out of the ground and ate that as well. Did I eat anything else?

Still no drinkies. Ran out of all supplies. Suddenly very manic. Went to see Shiva for emergency resusitation. Managed to float passed the office license on the bike on the way home, but it was a close one. Some days it's just not your day. Still, tatties are back on the menu!

Wednesday 11 July 2007

Ranother New Beginning!

Wednesday 1:45 p.m.
Started meditating today at 6 a.m. That's the way to do it! Got to Helmand province about 10 a.m. I cut some of the seed pods, but I'm not expecting much more than a couple of tons. Ate plenty of raspberries and brought home some shallots.

In "The external condition of relying on a karmamudra" from The Book Of the Three Inspirations .... well, you get three choices. With a real yogini ... and I don't think she has to be a young gorgeous babes since you should be seeing everyone as a deity by this time, I think .... or with an imaginary one. "When .... the visualisation arises with total presence and radiance, one can enter into sexual union with this visualised consort and arouse the four blisses." And if you can't do that, "one simply relies on ecstasy and cultivates the samadhi that rests one-pointedly within that bliss." Hmmm? Interesting that there's some kind of religious practise that uses sex. Even if you've got to sit in a cave for ages before you get near any! Makes us from Christendom just look a bit glaikit really!

12:10 a.m.
I love the Nazi Papa! Firstly, he removes Limbo and then says there's no salvation outside the Church, thus sending all the prods to hell. Hurrah! Now he says the other churches were never proper churches anyway. I hope he wasn't including The Amazing Bloggy Church of The BadBoyBlissheid! Just because we don't believe in anything (that's me and Jack the Spam Robot) and don't know anything doesn't mean to say we can't have a church. We've got a hut already. (And if the Proceeds of Crime folk want to take it because of the opium plantation, well, it's in my partner's name, so fung off!) Ron Hubbard said if you wanted to be a millionaire, you should start a religion. I'll have to stop calling flatheids flatheids. You have to uplift folk so they don't mind the ten percent off the top so much.

A near perfect day. The aftereffects of the vase breathing were weird tonight about half ten, just after dark. It's always just about then. That's beer time. Without the beer, things will get queer!

Tuesday 10 July 2007

Ra Tuesday's Child!

1:30 p.m.
The horrible weather, with the wind and rain and cold, disappeared yesterday and I had a wonderful evening in the allotment. Sitting at the side meditating, as the Dom Bliss did some weeding, was just so very nice. This is the way life should be, thinks I. The Dom Bliss at one point gave me a goosegog to eat, and a sample of the blackcurrants and red currants, and a cherry!

I'm so happy about not drinking any more beer. I did not have any night sweats or funny dreams at all. Never quite made the grade as an alkie then!


Sometimes you try to make a decision about something like booze, and though you'd like to, you cannot carry it through. Millions of fag smokers are like this. Sometimes you maybe don't care enough, or you haven't got enough oomph behind the decision somehow. Self disgust is a good one though. You can use self disgust. I'd really like never to drink alcohol again, but another year off would be good. Let's hope!

I'm calming down. The flat being empty last week wasn't a help. This morning before I came here to type, there was a significant development in the after effects of the vase breathing. So, although I put my sleeping bag in the hut yesterday, I may not need that yet. No beers and no jobbie (how wonderful it is not to have to go to work for another five weeks!) with seven or eight hours meditations a day should be enough for the next wee while.

I'm heading to happiness now. You can be very happy while you're meditating and it's as if there were two joes when you do that. Anything the flatheid joe ever thinks is nonsense anyway, but worse when it's infected with the addictions. Thoughts arising due to the pollutions are worse. If I stay off the beer, I will become euphoric.

You will have to go to a dinner party on Friday, Hotboy. How will you handle that? Well, Jack, I will eat a cannybliss yogurt just before I set off. That gives me about an hour and a quarter. By that time the flatheids should be on their second glass of wine. Occasionally, I will leave the room and get out of my face on hair for a bit, which you can do on the cannybliss yogurts. Hmmm? Maybe one day I'll be able to sit among the flatheids with my noise blockers on and my eyeballs rolled up. Really, it would be better if I could get away from the flatheids altogether, but I can't afford to go to the Samye Ling. So needs must. If I have to lie there and think of England for a couple of hours, so be it!!

The wind and rain and cold are back!

5:30 p.m.
The weather wasn't as bad as expected. I meditated for while after reading a wee bit of the Book of the Three Inspirations in the Botanic Gardens. Beautiful spot! Here's something I read. The translation is by Glenn H. Mullin. This is how they count the time once you'd taken a big breath and squeezed it ... "one places one's right palm on the left, strokes three times, and then snaps the fingers six times." (How long is that, Jack? Got to be 8 seconds minimum, Hotboy!) "The best practitioner can repeat 108 cycles of the measurement; the intermediate can repeat 72; and the smallest can repeat it 36 times while holding the breath. All three of these (have reached the stage at which they) are able to triumph over death."

By my reckoning, the best type of practitioner is holding their breath for maybe 14 minutes. Is the world record for breath holding not approximately 9 minutes? The worst kind of practitioner is still holding their breath for about 6 minutes.

Got a way to go there, Jack! A long, long way!!!

Sunday 8 July 2007

Rat Total Embarrassment!

Sunday 2:35 p.m.
Due to being completely teetotal these days, I am unable to gauge the effects of alcoholic liquids, and got completely pissed last night. What's the point of asking folk round for their tea and then getting so pissed you can't remember the bon mots, or what time you went to bed even? Dearie me!

You're a disgrace, so you are, Hotboy! I know, Jack. I know. I know. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! Still, an improvement on last weekend!

One of the folk who came round is going to cycle across America next year. She says she's not going to carry a gun. This is very brave. Having seen Jeepers Creepers, I would be far too scared to do such a thing. Anyway, if you're one of them serial killers, you can follow her route from the bloggy and bag another one!

I haven't even got a hangover! It's not fair, neither it is.

Before our guests arrived last night, I had the most wonderful meditation. Although I have been a bad boy for the first week of these holidays, amazingly enough ra bliss doesn't care! It was an amazing meditation. Then, before I came here to blog, I had another fabulous meditation. White light, bliss, heat, the woiks! It's just the bit in between that I screwed up. Will do better next week!

Friday 6 July 2007

Rem Eight Things!

Friday 11:20 p.m.
Here's 8 fings about moi! Tagged by an Alien Creature from Outer Space to reveal eight things about moi which you do not know.

I know everything about you, Hotboy! Just keep it to yourself, Jack!

1) I'm completely teetotal! There's another guy who looks just like me. Boy, does he have a good time!

2) I'd like eighteen hundred similar offenses taken into account if I'm found guilty. Otherwise, it's nothing to do with me, man, as usual.

3) I look much younger than my real age (15 billion years) because I do not sin. That other guy is in a photie in the bottom drawer. Dearie me! What a state!

4) Someone once asked me what I was going to become and I said I was going to be moi. Not moi the bank manager, or something like that. Just moi. Unadulterated moi!

5) I've never sat on a horse so I can't be John Wayne.
6) I'd like to start my acceptance speech with something like: "The Hotboy Escort Agency is now open for business!"
7) I've already seen God so what else is out there?
8) Whoever you are, I've always relied on the kindness of strangers ... all time great finishing line. Someone wrote after it.... but I've never supported Glasgow Rangers. I was a hun when I was seven because I never understood not supporting the winning team. Whatever happened to that?

Hmmm? It's a sin to waste your time, so it is!

Thursday 5 July 2007

Ra Cyclistas!

Thursday 9:45 p.m.
One of my teeth fell out. I didn't eat it this time, but went to get it glued back in today. It was a lady dentist. At one point I thought she might be resting her bosoms on my head, but I was too polite to remonstrate. I guess if you're a lady dentist that's maybe one of the things that sometimes happens.

I guess that's about as erotic as it gets around here these days, Hotboy? Bring on the dancing girls, Jack!

Here's something from the Readings on the Six Yogas of Naropa, introduced and translated by Glenn H. Mullin. This is a bit from Lama Jey Tsongkhapa, who in juju terms is the Dalai Lama's main man in precedence ... though I'm sure it goes back through the kalpas.

A kalpa is the length of time it takes for a silk scarf to wear away a metre cube of granite by being blown over it.

"The consort Bhagavati Vajra Varahi is gazing intently at you, the Bhagavan. Her body is naked and is red in colour. She has one face, three eyes, and two arms. Part of her hair is fixed in a knot on the top of her head and the remainder falls down loosely over her shoulders. Her right arm is wrapped round your neck and holds a skullcap filled with the blood of the four maras and other evil forces. Her left hand holds the curved knife and shows the threatening mudra to all harmful beings of the ten directions. She blazes with a fire like that at the end of time and her two legs are wrapped around your waist in order to pull you into a sexual embrace with her. Her essence is great compassion manifest in the nature of supreme bliss. She is adorned with the five seals, has a crown of five dried human skulls, and wears a belt of fifty dried human skulls."

I love you too, babes!

Did a murderous training session last night then ran out to Peckhams and got pissed watching Rome. Getting pissed now and then two episodes of Rome are coming up!

Hmmm? I think I have to go away. How long would it take to get a babes like that? I might already have one. I think if you're doing primordial awarenes, you must be the babes and the joe, and the mandala all at once. Hmmm? I'm still well. I don't have the black spot. What am I doing here?

Yes, after cycling to the dentist's, I cycled down to Cramond. It looked truly wonderful as you hit the shore. What a sky! This is a truly wonderful and beautiful city. Everyone should come and live here!

Wednesday 4 July 2007

Ra Gie's a Break!

Thursday morning at quarter past midnight!
I lost power with the aggravations of last Friday. But what I should do is embrace my jobbie. Somebody convinced me that going to the jobbie is my tao. After this time of holidays and trying to hide, I will go back and be more wonderful than previously, and try to do that a wee bit better than I was doing it before.

Will they love you, Hotboy? They won't even know who I am, Jack, but some of them will have a slightly better time in this life is I just show up!

Will you show them you're trick, Hotboy? My trick is to do a headstand and then go into a lotus upside down and then come down and sit. Will you show them your trick, Hotboy? Well, Jack, I haven't been able to show anyone my trick since I got drunk one night and pranged my knee. But I will rehabilitate myself over these next few weeks and then I will be able to do my trick once more.

What will you tell them about the trick when you can do it, Hotboy? I will tell them that they are indeed fortunate creatures to have witnessed such a trick, Jack, and that they can borrow two books, one fiction and one non-fiction.

Is that your tao then, Hotboy? I think it might be, Jack.

Ra Gie's a Break!

Tuesday 3 July 2007

Ra Perfect Day!

Wednesday 7:30 a.m.
Ah, what a wonderful day this is going to be! Yesterday I had to go out in the evening, and see flatheids, but they were all at the Tai Chi, and waving their arms about and such, and not saying much. After the splashing of sweat hither and yon while half the folk there were doing the stuff in their woolly jumpers, I cycled home, necked a cannybliss yogurt and took to the bath for two straight hours. The cannybliss only comes on well after an hour has gone, but what a great two hours that was. But you can't really count it as meditating. More like wallowing in ra bliss! So, I meditated for about seven hours yesterday.

I started meditating this morning at half four. That's the way to do it, Hotboy! And I don't have to see any flatheids. What great bliss I'm going to experience today! How fortunate I am to be practising this juju!

2:00 p.m.
I managed to put in four and a half hours on the cushion this morning. This is really going to be a perfect day! It's not even raining. What a difference it makes if you're on your own without a disease and with no beer barrel, nor any inclination to drink beer. I feel myself veer towards happiness. All I need is to get the discipline right and stay away from flatheids! It's not hard to be happier and blissed out your face whenever you want. It's really not. Now, I think I'll go sit in my hut.

Ra Second Day!

Tuesday 1:30 p.m.
So I ended up sitting in the hut yesterday afternoon anyway. Someone came home. I'm sitting there and the rain is falling in grey sheets, the air inside the hut is thick and wet, and I'm wondering what the weather might be like in Afghanistan. There are about 60 opium poppies now growing in my allotment. In nearby allotments, there are some opium poppies, but I have got more than anyone else since my fellow allotmenteeers are flatheids, and do not spend their time sitting in their huts, and therefore do not grow such good weeds.

Say you accidentally nicked a seed pod with a sharp knife on passing. Later on, there was some black sticky stuff coming out and you licked it. Can you get arrested for that? Some people talk to their plants and they do not get arrested. Licking them is just a wee bit more touchy feely. Between licks you could sing It's a Long Way To Tipperary ... having British soldiers guarding them will make them feel right at home!

A cactus fan told me they're selling lorpha ... lorcy ... peyote in a shop in town. The size of your fist. Big clumps. The two wee buds I've got refuse to grow though I shout sombreras, ya bass! as I pass them by.

I told the Domestic Bliss I might eat one or two of these cacti the next time she was away for a bit, and suddenly she's away from a bit now. Of course, I can't do it during this holiday since I have to emanate as a deity, and I don't know where the cacti shop is. She won't be back till Friday afternoon.

This time I do not have a disease, or a barrel of beer, or a jobbie to go to, so I should be alright.

I started meditating this morning at 9 a.m. The bliss is full on, but I need to calm down. The kiddo was here yesterday so I don't need to see anyone till I go to see my auld maw on Friday. And I don't have to sleep in the hut and catch pneumonia. Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Monday 2 July 2007

Ra First Day of My Holidays!

Monday 1:23 p.m.
Imagine the reluctance as I took the coarse body up to Tollcross on Saturday night to binge with the McDucks. Froggy was on a quick visit home from the Mediterranean rat town wherein he now resides. Skinny had been lifted by the polis in Bellshill and had spent the previous night in the cells. Welcome to the club! Skinny thanked me for telling him how to meditate as it seems to have come in handy once he's sobered up enough and had run out of Irish rebel songs with which to regale the polis.

The woman who sells the Sunday papers downstairs at the corner saw me as I stumblebummed my way home when it was already light. I came to about eleven and had hardly time to check that I still had all my fingers and toes when I discovered Brian Wilson ... smoking two fags simultaneously and with the half chewed pig's face sticking out of the side pocket of the white linen jacket ... waiting for me in the kitchen. There was a creekit match going to happen at the Grange Cricket Ground, which you can see out of the kitchen window. I took two panadol, necked a cannybliss yogurt and headed once more into the breach, dear friends!

The view from the picturesque wooden pavilion ... as you look down passed the seats and out into the ground itself .... was very impressive. Not like the middle of a city at all. You can hardly see anything other than grass and trees. No one playing cricket fortunately due to the driving rain. The game was cancelled. The bar was open. You're probably not supposed to be in that area unless you are a member. After about four pints and five gin and tonics, I spoke to the club secretary on Brian's behalf. Though dressed as usual by the underclass, flatheids don't intimidate me much, even ones in flannels and a blazer, with a posh English accent. Brian is now a social member which means he can go there and binge with the evil bourgeois any time he likes. But we stopped bingeing about seven o clock in the evening, so I'm alright, more or less, today.

I had a very nice email from someone who wanted to follow the other blog to here. A tim from Bellshill who now lives in Spango and teaches yoga. She'd downloaded all the stuff from my webpage and liked the Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf the best. She likes the stuff in the blog about the juju. So there is now one more! Hello there, Michelle!

Feeling just a little doomed for a moment yesterday morning, I left the Dom Bliss to engage with Brian Wilson and got to close my eyes for a second or two. And the bliss just arose, or rather the sheath in which the bliss gambols arose. This was most re-assuring. Someday the sheath might just stay there and the bliss will be accessible twenty four seven. What a fortunate creature I will be then!

The weather is really bogging. Overcast then drenching. Not a day for the allotment, so I'll just go back to the lobby.