Tuesday 22 July 2008

The End is Nigh Again!

Tuesday 22:48 p.m.
I am bound in law to inform you that this is a police surveillance blog. If you have landed on this blog after googling "Hotboy" or "Hotboys", the address of your computer has been noted. Soon a cyberspider will be searching your hard drive for indecent images, moving or still. If any of these images appear to be of minors engaged in sexual activity ...

All personalities and events contained in this blog are purely fictional. Any connection with anyone alive or dead is coincidental. No animals have been harmed or eaten in the making of this blog.

I've just put on the noise blockers for the first time in a week. Peace, perfect peace. Remembrance of things past. I usually wear them when I'm typing and meditating around here. I'm either typing or meditating quite a lot. No wonder the birds sounded loud at the Samye Ling!

I started this bloggy malarkey because I wanted to keep track of the agents who were bound not to want to represent any of my wonderful writings. Cross them off. Also, as a way of venting about ra bliss.

It's all changed now, hasn't it, Jack? I got the agent and now you can't write about what's happening to the writings, it seems. It doesn't help for publishers to come across a book that's been rejected a million times already. Dearie me. Then I had to run away from the schoolgirls. I liked the name of the last blog. It amused me. I was sorry to leave it.

And there's no point in telling the flatheids about ra bliss after you've been going on about it for a couple of years. If you're happy walking around with your head up your arse, what can I say except well done.

In order to disappear further into the deep recesses of the bloggysphere, in the next blog I will not be able to call the too dumb to meditate Flatheids, or Evolutionary Tails, or Them Prehensiles. Neither will I be able to refer to ra bliss, or ra heat, or ra ecstasy. I will have to say bye bye to Hotboy, and HotboyMadyamikaSurfingTheOceansOfBliss. Or, HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B., for short.Dearie me.

I'll email the usual suspects: Mary Queen of Scots, Mingin', Ion, Onan the Bavarian, the sensei and the red goddess with the three heads and the four arms. According to the statscounter, about seven returning visitors land here daily. Anybody wanting to follow the blogerations should just email me and I'll send them the new address.

I'm taking Jack the Spam Robot with me.

Let's get the hut into the rowing boat, Jack. Where are we going, Hotboy? To an island far, far away, Jack. Way over the horizon.

Row, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, live is but a dream!

Well, wasn't that nice?
When you die, are you going to get reincarnated, Hotboy? Certain habitual tendencies may emerge as time goes on, Jack.

Ra Homecoming!

Tuesday 5:11 p.m.
Feel quite sane compared to the last time I got back from the Samye Ling. So how about an overview?

Although the deity yoga juju was working much better over the last two mornings (particularly this morning), I still didn't get much heat. I guess over the seven days I was there, I must have done about sixty hours meditating. Well, I wasn't doing anything else. Meditated, took a wee walk, ate the meals, read a book, and that was about it.

Two rather attractive and probably single women tried to engage me in conversation, but I had to make my excuses and leave. Over the last couple of days I started noticing the bosoms of nuns! Maybe that's when you know you're getting desperate.

No, Hotboy, you getting desperate when you start fancing the mannequins in the shop windows! Lots of women flashing their wobbly bits up Princes Street as I waited for the 29 bus to take me home.


When I was tired and not actually sitting, I had to sometimes put up with an avalanche of unpleasant, aggressive diatribes, interior monologues and commentaries directed against perfectly innocent people I know, and sometimes know and like very much. This is like the old wounds rising from the deep just to let you know that there's a lot of work to be still done there.

Sometimes I felt exhilerated well beyond the usual. So not quite the steady pleasantness one would like, but highs and lows.

I think the Venerable Big Indian might be the happiest person in the world.

Everything was well worth it for ra bliss!!

Monday 21 July 2008

Ra Last Samye Day!

Monday 9:15 a.m.
This is the last day of my visit to the Samye Ling and the sun is beating down out of a clear blue sky.

Once when I was down here for a week in the summer, I felt real joy and true happiness. That hasn't been the story this time, but I don't suppose you should compare. This has been a wee bit like the heavy training boxers do at the start of a training camp. Lots of road work, heavy bags, getting totally knackered, etc.

Since I have been using these machines and drinking coffee, the "holiday" has cost me about £20 a day. For this you get the beautiful (wet) surrounding countryside, the use of the temple, and a chance to meditate every day with as close to a buddhist saint as I'm ever going to get. If you wanted a real holiday and had a motor, you could use this as a perfect base to tour the south west of Scotland. The food of course if beyond fabulous!

The meditation with the lama, which has just finished, was pretty serene. Today the back temple will be free and this is better for me since I can do tai chi sets in there and stand on my head, etc. I'll ignore the sunshine and go up there just now.

I've a feeling I may abandon this blog and start another one soon. I'll see after the conference this Saturday.

For almost a week I've done nothing bad excpet eat a few puddings! There have been thought crimes against my deep dear friends, some school teachers and other useless basturns, but that's about it.

I guess I'll go and meditate for the next three hours then!!

1:12 p.m.
There's a wee island in the middle of the river which you can reach and keep your feet dry if you're a good jumper. I've spent all morning on this island and I'll spend a lot of the afternoon and maybe some of the evening on it. This is a real treat!! You face upstream and just fix on some stone protruding from the river ... it's like heaven on earth this place if you want to meditate and the sun shines. And it is a glorious day!! Such wonderful times I have spent on that wee island. I'm away back now, but I may have to waddle due to the fabulous lunch I've just had. With another pudding! You've got to live on soup and home made breid to really really appreciate the grub here.

Sunday 20 July 2008

Ra Magic and Mystery In Tibet!

Sunday 1:15 p.m.
I've just finished reading Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel. What an utterly fabulous book!! Had to finish, of course, with a picture of the Samye monastery in Tibet. I think this place is called after it.

I think I've read it before, but most of it was fresh to me. I don't think I'd have written Light in the Dark if I hadn't read Alexandra David-Neel. Excellent writer, great subject!

If everyone had a granny like Alexandra David-Neel the world would be sorted.

The joy and the sacred happiness have been checking in over the last couple of days. I'm sure I could get this juju working if I only spent more time down here. Still ...

The name of the game is non-self and emptiness, of course. And there are hundreds of different ways to play it. A long list of alternatives is given in the book I've just mentioned. I think the Tibetans like deity yoga because it combines method and wisdom in one practise. The method being meditation/contemplation/concentration and the wisdom being emptiness. I think if you ever get into non-self and emptiness it should look like oneness or wholeness in flow.

Time on this machine is running out. The man who made the delicious lunch is sitting beside me. I'll now have to go to the tent to recover. Raspberry crumble and double cream! I ask you!

Saturday 19 July 2008

Ra Tummo, Tumo, or gtumo!

Saturday 1:14 p.m.
To master the art of living at the Samye Ling, one must be able to eat gigantic lunches and not fall over into a comatose state for the next two hours. Voila!

As far as techniques for raising inner heat as concerned, I think I've come upon these in three different places. The first time was in book by Anagarika Govinda (Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, I think). The the main one in The Bliss Of Inner Fire by Lama Thebten Yeshe. Last night I read another account in Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel.

In the first one, Govinda says you concentrate on the navel symbol till it's hot and them move it up to heat the rest of you. Heat is, I think, supposed to follow the mind eventually. So concentrate till it's hot. The whole enchilada seems to be in The Bliss of Inner Fire, but Alexandra David-Neel's segment adds a bit. She gives a couple of different methods.

When you read of the lengths adepts in Tibet went to accomplish raising inner heat, you realise that here in chilly Jockoland with your bad habits and your jobbie, etc., etc., etc., you shouldn't stand a chance.

I became interested in this because Lama Thebten Yeshe says if you can melt the symbols and explode the inner fire, thus garnering the four blisses, when you meditate in future, you should start at the first of these blisses i.e. absolutely amazing bliss.

This should mean, Jack, that as soon as you close you eyes you're there.

You might not have to close your eyes.

My sister had a wasting disease for most of her life and died young, unable to accomplish much of even the everyday stuff. This might have helped me make an effort in this life.

I think you should develope your human beingness as much as possible.

Grizzly, one of my brothers, told me once that he'd make more money out of selling goats' milk than I would out of writing (he had two goats) and he was correct! This does not mean that trying and trying to become a better writer was a waste of time. Getting dosh from writing (if it's what you want to write), is the least of it.

Everyone knows you shouldn't be trying to achieve bugger all in meditations, but I thought if I could go for this inner heat juju, other benefits might accrue anyway. And so they have.

Are you not going to get there then, Hotboy? Who knows, Jack? I might have a long life and still have my marbles for decades yet. But I'm not going to be able to achieve it in the next couple of days. But I will have experiences!! I surely will!

I got up in time for the lama meditation today and sat in the temple afterwards for another three hours. Thank God I'm not a complete flatheid, Jack! Ra bliss!! Oh ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Everyone's granny should be like Alexandra David-Neel. I thought I'd read Magic and Mystery in Tibet, but I'd only read the first part. I don't know why. How appropriate to have taken a book with descriptions of tummo in it!! Synchronicity or what!?

Two nice quiet orientals were here the other day. They were sitting in the back row of the temple at night as was moi. Then they both started doing this weird prostration stuff. They did this about ten times. If you want some time off your jobbie and a few days in the hospital, you could have a go.

You sit on your heels with your knees together (my right knee has already dislocated at this point!). Then you curl your toes down so your feet are no longer flat to the ground and stand up. No hands, no nothing. Just stand up. Then come down again and lay your brow on the ground. Ten times.

What a nice couple! Both obviously well matched with common interests. I wouldn't have picked a fight with either of them after I saw them doing that!!

One of the stories in the book is about a joe called Karma Dorjee. Take off the last "e" and that's my buddhist name. He wanted to do the Short Path so he could fung over folk who'd been rotten to him due to his lowly birth.

Of course, I always looked down on the progeny of the evil bourgeois since most of them are sweetie eating, ignorant morons completely lacking in anything you might describe as character! Even the smart ones are too dumb to meditate!!


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

Friday 18 July 2008

Ranother Friday One!

Friday 8:15 p.m.
And on the third day ... tons and tons of ra bliss! Tons of it. The emanating ... everything is working a lot better, but I'm still not into ra heat zone. Also, I'm getting very tired. Often I remember leaving here and getting home feeling exhausted. I think it's worse with the tent really since you don't feel as inclined to have a wee lie down apres luncho, etc. I may go home on Monday, but I'll see if I revive a little tomorrow. Easy to sit though. Easy peesy! The weather has been bogging, of course, since Tuesday. No chance of meditating up by the river.

The Makhala Prayers between 4:30 and 6 p.m. It's the gongs, Jack! The gongs! They made me deaf, you know. (Does anyone know what that's a referral to?) The bells? The bells? Not to worry.

The last hour in the temple this evening may be a little special. I saw the sun go down behind the hills last night about 8:30 p.m. Good meditation time!

Ris Addiction!

Friday 10:18 a.m.
Thought I'd gotten over my addiction to blogging, but it seems not! Eight bunny rabbits were visible round my tent last night as I was getting ready to crash out.

You have to get the four symbols on your chakra points visible somehow and blow the heat/bliss up from one to the other in vase breaths. It goes from the bottom one to the next one, then back to the bottom one, then up through to the third one and so on. By the time it gets to the crown chakra, your head blows off.

I'm still not getting a lot of heat.

After three nights in the tent, this is for me!! I feel totally settled. I've decided to try to give up achieving stuff and just let it flow as it will. When I get back to the Planet of the Flatheids I will meditate less and do some more writing and just try to enjoy my life. This place is so good for me and I'm so happy to be here!!!

Thursday 17 July 2008

Ra Samye Day2 or 3

Thursday 9:31 a.m.
The rain wakened me up a few times last night, but the tent is a wonderment compared to the last one.

Time just flew yesterday.

There's an assemblage for putting your scrolls and photies on in the temple. Everyone has one in front of them. Mine collapsed into its constituent parts just before the lama arrived for meditations this morning. Much hilarity from the monastics. I should have said: All compounded things are subject to dissolution ... but I only thought of it a later! What meditations I will have today!!

Alexandra David-Neel's book is completely fascinating although I'm sure I've read it before.

Wednesday 16 July 2008

Ra Samye 1(2)!

3:55p.m.
I sat in the back temple this morning for three hours without moving off the cushion (or opening my eyes). That's only happened once before. Got up just in time to stand on my head, do a dog pose, twist and tai chi set before lunch.

Sent a postcard to the kiddo saying if she couldn't beat three hours in this lifetime that was me won!

Much enjoying Alexandra David-Neel's Magic and Mystery in Tibet. She has to have been an amazing josephine! Here's what she says about death.

"The profane generally imagine that Buddhists believe in the reincarnation of the soul and even metempsychosis. This is erroneous. Buddhism teaches that the energy produced by the mental and physical activities of a being brings about the apparition of new mental and physical phenomena, when once this being has been dissolved by death."

Well, there it is! Wonder what metempsychosis is?

Ra Samye Day 1

Wednesday 9:22 p.m.
I wasn't going to blog .... It was great coming down here yesterday in a motor car with good company.

'Whoever you are, I've always relied on the kindness of strangers'. Tennessee Williams.

The sun shone yesterday as well and I had a great easy slide into the major juju coming up. But it started a bit late this morning since I slept in till half eight, which is a Rumple Stiltskin number around this place. So I haven't done any meditations at all so far. What a time to give up! Wrong place! But it looks as if it might rain a lot today, so what else is there to do but go try to emanate as a deity. If anyone had told me twenty years ago ... Here comes ra bliss! Here comes ra heat! I've got 45 minutes left on this machine, so I'll be back.

Monday 14 July 2008

Ra Samye Again!

Monday 5:10 p.m.
My bags are packed and I was thinking of going to the Samye Ling this morning, but I'm glad I didn't. My tooth fell out. I had an amazing meditation before I cycled off to get it glued back in this afternoon. The effects of the vase breathing have just done another somersault into the great oceans of ra bliss! Then I'm in the dentist chair and trying to relax, as you do, when this wonderful warm feeling filled the whole top half of my body.

Had a touch of the dark night last week. Woe is me! What kind of a nutter have I turned into that I have to go and sleep in a tent for a week when I should be looking forward to a fat pension and spending all my Christmases in Majorca, where you can get fish and chips? Hmmm? Switherings and doubts. Not nice. What you really need is the door to door utopian arrival model. And there in the emails an offer of a lift from Ion. What larks!

I'm going for at least a week. I'll take the rest of my cash, about forty quid. If I can stay off the computers and don't drink coffee, that forty quid could last a couple of years down at the Samye. So I'm trying not to blog, but I probably will.

I was up the allotment this morning doing emergency going away weeding. Another wasp stung me. I was in a different part of the plot, so it probably remembered me from the last time. But I was much less impressed, I must say. I'm not the anaphylastic ... anaphylactic ... the kind of joe who falls down dead from a wasp's sting. Thank God for that!

Sunday 13 July 2008

Ra Black Dog 2

Monday 00:4 a.m.
As it crested the hill, at first the black dog seemed like a gigantic slavering beast hell bent on ill will, like something out of the fung Hound of the Baskervilles. Fortunately, by the time it sat down in front of me, it had shunk to about a quarter of its previous size and was now a nicce doggy. In fact, through hanging about in Samye Ling it had developed telepathic powers and as it looked up at me, it really trying to say:

Hotboy, said the doggy, do not venture further into the Planet of the Flatheids because out here are the wars, and famines, and a lot of folk not being very nice to each other. You may frolic and cavort with your chummies, but that is the way to the grief, sorrow, lamentations .... suffering in this life.

Unfortunately, I have no telepathic powers at all and what the doggy was trying to tell me about went right over the top of my head.

But I'll be back, Jack. I'll be back.

Thursday 10 July 2008

Rese Expectations!

Thursday 8:00 p.m.
I harvested a bed of the disappointing wee onions today and discovered they were shallots. So I got 163 shallots and about thirty onions from the first of five or so beds of onions. Hurrah! Apart from the stawberries and some rhubarb, that's the first real food from the allotment this season.

Not having been a run for about five weeks, I took my old and raddled body out for a waddle about an hour ago. Dearie, dearie me!

Landing back on the Planet of the Flatheids was as bad as it gets on Monday. I thought with just being away for the three nights and how easy it was the last time I was there .... anyway, it wasn't. Took me about till Wednesday to feel stabilised again and what's the bloody use of that?

I've been giving some thought to what the monk said about the spontaneously arising happiness. I'm not going to become an enlightened joe like the original buddha joe.

I think guys like that don't suffer. From what I've read that means any suffering. Like, if you cut yourself, you don't suffer then. The Four Noble Truths are a prescription to stop the suffering really. I heard a tape where someone asked the Dalai Lama if he suffered. He said yes. He had a cold at the time. He said that was a type of suffering. The monk at the weekend said when Lama Yeshe was asked how much time he was actually meditating out of the fifteen (it's 15 now!) years he'd spent meditating, he said about a minute. So I suppose he was an enlightened being for about a minute. Anyway, he says he's not fully realised, and if he's not fully realised, there's not a hope in hell of me becoming fully realised in this lifetime.

Also, to collect the four blisses in the deity yoga juju, you have to get the winds to enter the central channel. That means you stop breathing. This is rather a lot to ask or expect of moi!

'May they never be separate from the sacred happiness untainted by suffering.' The third of the Four Limitless Contemplations.

The boy in the Richard Gere book said that in Tibet the juju was not thought of in terms of being a religion, the way the west looks at religions. It was regarded as a way of living, a way that would make you happier.

'The Tao that can be expressed is not the real Tao.' We don't have a proper translation for tao, do we?

So instead of trying and trying with the juju and all that, what I should really be looking at is increasing my happiness. It's by getting happier that you know it's working.

Suffering is caused by desire based on ignorance of your own true self.

I'd be happier if I could stop going to the off license. I have a barrel of home brewed wheat beer waiting to be siphoned off.

I'd be a lot happier if I could stop drinking the stuff I used to buy in the off license. Well, I'd be a lot happier eventually, no doubt. It's the couple of weeks in the straighjacket beforehand I find hard to countenance

Monday 7 July 2008

Ra Black Dog!

Monday 5:09 p.m.
I've had some interesting encounters waiting for the bus to take me away from the Samye Ling. Today two women were standing there, but due to the midges I was pacing about a bit.

As I was looking in that direction waiting for a bus, a black dog came crested the hill and started down towards where I was standing. This is in the middle of the countryside. It was a sturdy looking black labrador. How odd to see a dog behaving like that! It stopped when it reached me and sat down. I patted it and said hello doggy, then it investigated the two women, then went into the centre.

One woman said to the other woman that the dog lived up the road a bit and often went out for a walk on its own and visited the centre. That dog's a lot smarter than most people I know!

The black dog is, of course, a symbol for depression.

I'm just back. Don't quite know what to do with myself. I'm a wee bit tired so I think I'll just have a wee lie down!

Ra Last Samye Morning!

Monday 10:21 a.m.
The lama was still here this morning! Hurrah! I've just finished two hours in the temple. Great, great, great!

Two very good things about this wee visit. One was being in the Medicine Buddha shrine. I've just been speaking to Temple Dave (I haven't spoken to anyone else!)who says he'll open the shrine for me any time I want to use it. Sometimes if the back temple is being used and tourists are all over the main one that'll be handy.

By the way, Temple Dave asked if I'd be back down in July and I said I'd like to, but I'd have to hit the plastic if I did. I could see that the expression 'hit the plastic' meant nothing to day. So I said: I'll need to use my credit card. Oh, yes, says Dave. Dave won't have a credit card. Dave probably didn't get annoyed about the last Iraq war or the first one. He might not have heard much about them.

We don't believe in any things, especially thoughts. I don't want to believe in rebirth partly because I must have been a bad basturn or made some terrible mistake previously. How come otherwise I've got to hang about with flatheids to the left, right, back and front, and Temple Dave just gets to meditate and clean the temple? I think Temple Dave will live for a very long while and become enlightened. He's got a better blinking chance than me anyway!

The other good thing was the only bit of teaching the monk did on the course. He was talking about the Four Limitless Contemplations. The third one is: May they never be separate from the sacred happiness untainted by suffering.

The sacred happiness is, he says, the stuff that arises spontaneously. I have had wee bits of this. You don't get it if you pollute your mind with drink and drugs. The Butterball Boy exhibits this. He can hardly get through making an announcement (he's an assistant to Dr Akong, I think) without going into a high pitched giggle as he's trying to get out the words. The Dalai Lama giggles all the time as well.

Anyway, if it wasn't for the flatheids where would we be? If they weren't doing all the work, I wouldn't be on holiday for the next six weeks. So hurrah for the flatheids!

Sunday 6 July 2008

Ra Samye Ling Sunday!

Sunday 9:27 a.m.
The worst bit is getting used to sleeping in the tent. Not quite there yet. But last night I thought I'd never felt rain on a tent like it, but I have, and it was here, probably last year. Wakened up at seven feeling really nice and cozy.

The lama is not away to the Holy Isle, at least not yet. Hurrah! This morning's meditation was great. Really looking forward to the rest of the day, but I will go home tomorrow. Being Monday, that's really the start of my holidays. When I get home, I might pretend that I'm still here!

3:06 p.m.
The course I've been on has just finished. It was a course for free and without teaching, just a bunch of folk meditating together. Quite supportive. Usually, I just meditated away on my own most of the time down here, so that was wee bit different.

Out of respect for the too dumb to meditate and other pond life, I haven't mentioned ra bliss, the great static sheet lightnings of ra bliss and the clearing visualistions of the Medicine Buddha and whatnot.

Anyway, this cafe is shut this evening and the tourists will be departed, and I'm really looking forward to sitting in the temple till it closes. Last night with the Venerable Big Indian rehearsing the band was just fantastico!

Saturday 5 July 2008

Ra First Morning!

Saturday 9:10 a.m.
What a fantastic dinning the birdies were making this morning! Not quite as raucous as around April, but pretty full on really. There must be millions of different kinds around here.

I've just finished the first meditation of the day, the one with the lama. I think he's going to the Holy Isle, but it's great to have sat there meditating with him at least once this weekend. The more this stuff you do, the more you appreciate guys like that.

I'll have to sit in a half lotus for this trip, so I'll have to be mindful of my back. Also, I should avoid wasting money on computery things. What a day for meditating this is going to be.

Of course, the sun has disappeared today and it's gotten colder. That's more like the Samye Ling!

2:12 p.m.
Temple Dave looks after the temple. Obviously, a sweet guy. He's been here, I think, for about fourteen years. Calm guy. Anyway, we were looking down from the temple into the car park when this gathering of high heid yins shows up. Some of them are going to the Holy Isle. There was a visiting khenpo. And,Dave says, a nephew of the cosmic brothers who is due to take over the stewardship of the Samye Ling in about 2010. Well, there is it. A bit of continuity. The cosmic brothers, may they live 10,000 years, are about a decade older than moi.

Excellent morning in the back temple meditating and doing Tai Chi when folk left for breaks. Then the giant lunch. Then the yoga nidra in the back temple with the dozing off. I'm normall maybe go to the tent for this, but it was pouring. Samye Ling weather!

I'm addicted to these machines, so I am!

9:13 p.m.
As far as first days at the Samye Ling go, today has definitely been tops! Something seems to open or be opening up. Stunned by ra bliss during the Chenrezig prayers this evening. I've really grown to love Tibetan chanting. Ra bliss was so full on that I stayed behind when everyone else left. Then in comes the Venerable Big Indian with several nuns. Is it a rehearsal or a practise? That's the first time today I was able to really get into vase breathing. It was wonderful to be there doing it with the twirly drums and bells, and all the chanting and tinkling!

Must have meditated for nine hours today anyway. I'm tired now and the rain is chucking it down. Have to dash for the tent soon. Quote of the day from the joe in the Richard Gere book. "Meditation does not cater for people with short attention spans."

May all sentient beings be happy, including those who should know better and the too dumb to meditate!!

Friday 4 July 2008

Ra Samye Ling 1

Friday 9:09 p.m.
I got to Lockerbie this morning with an hour to spare before the bus came and I still missed it. Talk about laid back. Sitting around Lockerbie train station, but the weather was pretty gorgeous today.

Strange not to have been here for a year! Teresa was saying hullo as soon as I got my bags up to the door which I regard as auspicious. Getting the tent up with no bother and then I went for a meditate down by the river.

It's twenty years since I first came here. Many memories of other times I'd sat there gazing into the river; all kind of merging into each other since it was never raining and always just me and the gazing stuff.

During these holidays I was hoping to come down here for short bursts, mainly at the weekends, but I'll see how it goes over the next two days.

Most of my deep dear friends have sat in my kitchen over the past couple of weeks. I used to categorise them as disturbed, bizarre adn funged up, but after speaking with Brian Wilson last night, I realise they're all mad. Mad, I tell you!

They're too dumb to meditate, the lot of them, Jack! They're just not as fortunate as you, Hotboy. What else can we say about the too dumb to meditate, Jack? Flatheids don't even know they're flatheids. And they'll never get ra bliss! How dumb can you be to know someone who has stumblebummed into the oceans of bliss and not even show the slightest interest in meditating? But this is Samye Ling time. Time to forget about the flatheids!

Thursday 3 July 2008

Ra First Day!

Thursday 12:49 p.m.
Being able to raise sufficient tummo to sit in the brass monkeys and not be the slightest bit bothered by the cold implies a feat of such amazingness that it should hardly be a surprise that I can't do it. But I will be able to do it someday, Jack. So I will.

The meditations this morning have been just fantastico!

I feel boyishly joyous about spending the weekend with my sangha brothers and sisters, in the temple of the Samye Ling, sitting quietly doing nothing. I cannot think of anything better. I will be surrounded by accomplishment. I'm so pleased, so I am!

Wednesday 2 July 2008

Ra New Dawn!

Wednesday 11:56 p.m.
In the psychiatrist's chair. The lights are low. Jack the Spam Robot is quizzing Hotboy about ra bliss.

Jack: Hotboy, what would life be like if you didn't have ra bliss in it?
Hotboy: It would be like being a ferret.
Jack: Why do you think other people don't have access to the great oceans of ra bliss, Hotboy?
Hotboy: They are too dumb to meditate.
Jack: Is there any way that the too dumb to meditate can get into ra bliss?
Hotboy: I'm afraid not, Jack. But then again, we can't rule anything out. Some people get ra bliss even although they are a complete disgrace.

I harvested lots of strawberries this evening. Noting tastes as good as one of these strawberries. Spectacular strawberry year.

Also, the tatties. You get different flowers on the tatties. This should tell you something. Fabulous tattie year. This has got to be the best tattie year in all the years of the allotment. The onions are crap. I crept straddle legged weeding towards where the wasps are. I ran away twice. Wee basturns. Corporal punishment. Bound to work. Beat the shit of the them!

Ra Holidays!

Wednesday 12:56 p.m.
I am on holiday now till the 18th of August. Allah Akbar! I have seen all of my deep dear friends in the last couple of weeks, except for Brian Wilson who wil emerge from the samsaric underworld, chewing on his pig's face, wearing the light coloured and badly stained linen jacket, sometime early tomorrow evening. After that, they can all fung off!

On Friday I should be on a train about ten in the morning heading for the Samye Ling. Hurrah! This weekend's course is to sit quietly doing nothing all weekend. No instruction, no teachings. What more can a body ask for? It's as if they knew I was coming, Jack. It's yon magical realism, so it is!!

Tuesday 1 July 2008

Ralmost there!

Thursday 11:36p.m.
I got to send a typescript of the sensei and reverend's ultimate crime novel to Isabel Atherton. Let's hope she bursts into tears and can't believe her good luck. It's just got to be at the right place at the right time.

This bloggie is one year old. I looked back to see what it was like back then. Dearie me. I thought I was going to get this book published, I thought it would be sunny weather and I could sit under the big trees in the Botanics, like I had the year before, but it was not to be, Jack. It was not to be.

This summer I'm expecting nothing. I noted that last summer I seem to have refrained from alcoholic beveridges for nigh a month. What a heroic effort, but what a total arse I must have been except I can't remember kind of a gig ... to have preceded this heroic effort.

So after noon tomorrow there will be no jobbie for six weeks. Hmmmm? Who knows what that'll be like? Brian Wilson is coming to see me on Thursday. Already it is time to count the fingers and toes.