RaBadBoyBLissheid

The End is Nigh Again!

2008-07-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-07-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

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!!

Ra Last Samye Day!

2008-07-21T01:14:00.000-07:00

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.

Ra Magic and Mystery In Tibet!

2008-07-20T05:15:00.000-07:00

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!

Ra Tummo, Tumo, or gtumo!

2008-07-19T05:14:00.000-07:00

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

Ranother Friday One!

2008-07-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-07-18T02:18:00.001-07:00

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!!!

Ra Samye Day2 or 3

2008-07-17T01:31:00.001-07:00

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.

Ra Samye 1(2)!

2008-07-16T07:55:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-16T01:22:00.000-07:00

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.

Ra Samye Again!

2008-07-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

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!

Ra Black Dog 2

2008-07-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

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.

Rese Expectations!

2008-07-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

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

Ra Black Dog!

2008-07-07T09:09:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-07-07T02:20:00.000-07:00

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!

Ra Samye Ling Sunday!

2008-07-06T01:26:00.000-07:00

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!

Ra First Morning!

2008-07-05T01:07:00.000-07:00

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!!

Ra Samye Ling 1

2008-07-04T13:09:00.000-07:00

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!

Ra First Day!

2008-07-03T04:48:00.000-07:00

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!

Ra New Dawn!

2008-07-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-07-02T04:56:00.000-07:00

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!!

Ralmost there!

2008-07-01T13:47:00.000-07:00

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.

Ris Growing Season!

2008-06-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

Monday 11:05 p.m.
A couple of months ago there was just the dug over dirt up at the old allotment and now it is hooching with life. There's a lot of strawberries lying there. I got bitten by something and my nose swelled up. Then it deflated. Last week I got attacked by two wasps after I disturbed their nest by the weeding of the onions. No, I got stung by two wasps. The wasps were trying to attract my attention. Stinging a person is brilliant way to do that. It's waspese for fung off!

And what are you going to do for your summer holidays, Hotboy? Well, Jack, I was thinking of going down to the Samye Ling with the tent and doing a bit of the old sitting quietly doing nothing juju. But I'm starting to think that it's mad, Jack. Completely, off it's head mad, Jack!

There are thoughts flying and pinging and bending about in what would be otherwise perfect thoughtlessness, the place where the lies stopped.

Anyway, it's just the hassle. In my kind of utopia, it would be door to door, and I'd get ferried out of here and the tent would be waiting as well at the end. You have to put up your own tent. Practically slavery, so it is. And it'll rain and rain.

Us loonies need a quiet environment. Such will be the firecracker starbursts going off in one's mind, not to mention attempting to emanate as a deity and all, and the tsunamis of ra bliss ... and a few tears as one stumblebums around trying to adjust to the no beers or drugs or even imaginary compensations ... I could stay at home. What's the matter with a couple of beers, except that I've got no money. Hmmmm?

After several weeks of disability, (starting 5th June, Newton Mearns) today at last I was able to don the full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle and hephalump around the kitchen doing my six threes... what a pathetic sight! I'll need to make some money so I get that liposuction thing, and the bum shrinker procedure. But then I got to lie exhausted in the bath. Oh, the bathtime bliss! The arising of the altered state as you lie exuding exhaustion and relaxation in the bath is one of the wonderful spin-offs from engaging with ra bliss.

But now, hark, it is the witching hour and I must go and lie down into the yoga nidra best you could hope for on a Monday kind of ra bliss.

Ra Intimations of Wonderful Times!

2008-06-29T06:04:00.000-07:00

Sunday 2:05 p.m.
Asked the Medicine Buddha (who is moi!) to cure me of my addictions and the blogging went ... just like that. After a couple of days off though, I still fancied a beer, and what with getting paid this week and all ....

So I sat down in the Miss Haversham garden out the back where Poisonous stays, a garden which rarely gets the sun. Dank. I had to sit down on the mouldy green flagstones because the garden bench I'd tried to sit on collapsed a bit when I gave it a go. You worry a wee bit that the flagstones might be too cold ...

I'd had four pints of Highlander in the Cafe Royal and several joints by this point. Bad Boy!

Then the cold legs declined in mind and it was as if you were one of the wee fat baldie guys sitting with big smile on the ledge in the Himalayas during the forty belows. I was amazed that it came on like that. Soaring away in the white light and ra bliss! Hurrah!

On Friday evening, I was wondering if it was time trash the good resolutions and go to the offy when I started in on the vase breathing. I knew then, Jack, that events had taken a major step forward. If there's something about stuff having to enter a central channel ... anyway, I decided that there was no point in posting about it because I can't begin to describe this stuff.

Then there was ra bliss this morning. I'll be going to the Samye Ling next Thursday, I hope, and it strikes me that this development occuring as it does now is most auspicious.

Throughout these wonderments, I've been knee deep in flatheids, the too dumb to meditate and other completely pointless (apart from doing all the work) people. I've not had one full day of meditations since I stopped working on Wednesday. Anyway, I'm off to cycle up the Kirk Brae en route for Liberton Hospital just now. And I'm most pleased to be able to do it!!

Ranaissance!

2008-06-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 9:42 p.m.
My exploded vein had imploded sufficiently ... I cycled to the Tai Chi tonight and ... that is the first physical jerks in over two weeks. I do like taking an awful lot of exercise and feel quite demoralised when bits don't work right. What a big baby! It's worse when the disease hasn't happened before and you are not sure of the outcome. After a couple of weeks of supping beer and watching the footie, I'm an even fatter basturn than I was before. But I'm counting my blessings right now!

I hope I die before I get old.

There can't be any memories in the formless zone. There may be awareness, but nothing forming, no thoughts, no mental formations. If you were lucky, you might have a constant state of satiation, but, of course, there wouldn't be a you.

If I was in the formless zone I wouldn't have to go to work tomorrow. But, then again, I wouldn't get paid on Thursday. I had a dream about soapbar last night. Let's hear it for the cannybliss yogurts!

Ra Yoga Nidra

2008-06-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

Sunday 8:30 p.m.
After downing four bottles of Erdinger last night, I wasn't so fast out of the blocks this morning, but this was partly because I thought I maybe didn't have to get out of bed.

Sometimes I go through a yoga nidra routine when I'm lying in bed in the morning. You visit bits of your body in turn and tell them to relax, etc. Your eyes are closed. My body seemed so relaxed this morning that the sensation of having a body at all was quite slight. There is a great plane of white light and bliss. Hardly any sensation of a having a body at all.

I thought: This is what yoga nidra, the sleep of the yogis, is maybe supposed to be like. So a thought arose. A wee while later another thought arose: If I had no bodily sensations and no thoughts were arising, what do we have here?

Something without centre or circumference. Something aware. Whether it is unconfined or not, I'm not sure. Hmmmmm?

If when I'm dead, I could spend a few eons like that, Jack, it would be like winning the pools, so it would. The formless zone. No conceptualisation. Who needs thoughts? All misconceived. All lying basturns.

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

Ra Tide is Turning!

2008-06-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

Saturday 10:22 p.m.
Started meditating about twelve hours ago and stuck with it, with wee breaks to read the paper, walk up the allotment, etc, until I went to the offy about a half hour ago. The Domestic Bliss was only here for one night and is partying elsewhere till tomorrow.

Let us not be downhearted, Jack. It has been a crap couple of weeks, but the tide is turning!! Every time I get a day like today with no flatheids about and no jobbie to go to, well .... I'm going get all that stuff I thought was beyond moi! I'm going to get the explosions of ra bliss, the non-duality, the whole enchilada! Today it just jumped forward again. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

This is despite the fact that my discipline is lousy and I am a total disgrace, a blight on the juju, and the last joe anyone would expect to have something like this happen to him.

So why is this happening, Hotboy? Well, Jack, I can only assume I have had the crap blessed out of moi in some way I cannot explain. Of course, if I had better discipline, etc., it would surely have progressed much faster. But then I would not have been able to say to all the other reprobates, if I can do it, anybody can do it!

I got out of bed this morning and walked to the lavvy without feeling any pain in my leg. Every day it gets a wee bit better. Hurrah!

Today, I managed to stand on my head for the first time since before Christmas. This is the longest time I haven't stood on my head for twenty years. Hurrah! It might be a while before I get full articulation in my shoulder joint, but I thought this capsulitis crap might take two years to clear. I can only assume the Tai Chi has been a big help.

What a great, great day! Good health is a great blessing in itself. I'll appreciate running and shadow boxing whenever I can get back into it. Apart from the Tai Chi, I haven't been training for a couple of weeks now. But what a fortunate, fortunate creature I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Ra Mr Higgs!

2008-06-21T05:47:00.000-07:00

Saturday 1:50 p.m.
I've got half an hour while the bread is in the oven.

Why has everyone got three stages, like stages of creation?

Hindus?: Causal, Astral, Physical.
Kafflicks: God the Father, The Holy Ghost, Jesus Christ.
Tibetans: Dharmakaya, Shambokakaya, Nirmanakaya.

In some ways these seem to be talking about the same thing maybe. Dharmakaya might be described as clear light mind by the Tibetans.

'When we can see, straightforwardly and non-conceptually, the nature of our clear light mind and remain totally absorbed in this nature without ever regressing from it, we have become a buddha.' Dalai Lama. The Wall.

Tibetans don't really talk about God. They talk about mind. Mind is characterised by three things. It is without characteristics, being without centre or circumference. It has some quality of knowing. It is unconfined, like space. Space allows everything to be in it, sort of.

Without centre or circumference. Hmmm?

This universe is supposed to have started with a Big Bang which proceeded from a point without a circumference. I suppose that's just a handy way of saying there were no dimensions, or time, or whatever before the Big Bang.

A point without a circumference sounds to moi a bit like something without a centre or a circumference, something perhaps beyond conceptualisation, something without characteristics.

Mr Higgs apparently lives in Edinburgh. What a wonderful city this is! Mr Higgs's problem was that although a stone has weight ... you can tell this by dropping it on your foot ... the atoms that make up the stone are composed of wee bits that are weightless. So where is the weight coming from? A fung of a lot of money is being spent right now trying to find out if Mr Higgs's particle, the one that's causing the weight, actually exists of not.

Anyway, are these scientific atheistical folk and everyone else not essentially talking about the same thing? You have the limitless thingy beyond concepts, the energy and then you and me and stones.

What's the difference between a bison and an elephant, Jack? You can wash yourself in a bison, but you can't wash yourself in an elephant. Back to the lobby!

Ra Bliss Of Inner Fire!

2008-06-19T05:02:00.000-07:00

Thursday 1:03 p.m.
This is from The Bliss of Inner Fire by Lama Thebten Yeshe.

'Inner fire meditation is far more effective than ordinary deep meditation. It quickly grows into an explosion of nonduality wisdom, and explosion of telepathic power, and explosion of realisations. It is the key to countless treasures.'

'Concrete concepts automatically wither and disappear. Rest in the feeling of utter satisfaction. You are touching reality, and at the same time you are experiencing bliss. Blissful energy explodes into an intense awareness of the wisdom of nonduality, and you touch an unprecedented level of universal reality.'

'You see all the chakras with pristine clarity, as if you possess telepathic awareness. Because your entire deity body is one blazing inner fire and you are one with the inner fire, you can see the entire universal reality without any obstacles. Your intense bliss is aware of the wisdom of nonduality.'

'When you reach the point where you can naturally and effortlessly hold the winds in strong vase meditation at the navel chakra, the airs will automatically produce blazing of the inner fire in the central channel. The magnetic pleasure will automatically be activated, kundalini will flow, and you will experience bliss not just in your channels and chakras but throughout your entire body.'

'The whole process can become dangerous if you practice incorrectly.'

'If kundalini starts to flow uncontrollably during your meditationand you begin to experience orgasm, try as much as possible to hold it and have it expand inside the secret chakra.'

'For both males and females, the energy and bliss of ordinary sexual experience does not come from the central channel ... if the kundalini energy generates such bliss when it touches outside the central channel, there is no question that it will generate incredible bliss when it flows inside the central channel.'

'Inner fire meditation really shakes our entire nervous system and our entire view of reality.'

'Experiences of heaven and hell during meditation are possible.'

'The lamas of all traditions agree that practitioners can suddenly see visions while doing inner fire meditation...Such experiences are similar to telepathy, but they are not actual clairvoyance.'

'Sometimes you may be able to read other people's thoughts... You will be able to read the minds of others in accordance with your own level of development. This is nothing unusual.'

The Domestic Bliss should just have arrived at the airport after eight flights over ten or so days.

I spent almost all morning meditating in the lobby and, despite starting with a fuzzy head, have done better with these meditations than ever before. When you re-read the book though, you realise that you're just at the beginning of this.

The Domestic Bliss goes off on more adventures tomorrow and I'll go to see the auld maw. I'll be alone again on Saturday and Sunday. Here comes ra bliss! Here comes ra heat! Yahoo!!!

11:30 p.m.
Sober and straight two nights out of the last three. That's the way to do it!

Ra End of Ris!

2008-06-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 23:17 p.m.
I must apologise to the Alien Creatures from Outer Space, the Masai Warriors and the perverts who come to this bloggy for my complete lack of abstemiousness and resultant legless bloggage over the past wee while.

I thought she was French, but she spoke more than two words to me tonight when I was out buying the extra, stupid two beers at Peckhams. We have smiled at each other and nodded over the last few months. Maybe after a while, we could have held hands.

She said: You are addicted to German beers. I realised she was Polish, of course. I said: What is the solution to this? Should I stop drinking German beers?

I should ask her to marry me. I should go there for a while and sit and drink coffee, and not drink beer. I could read the book about flying by Antoine the Frog Flying Genius Writer who got shot down by the Germans, and I could say: Hey, Missus, not only am I completely skint, and a failure at all things practical such as having any money, but I am also A LIVING SAINT who does not have to drink beer all the time. Look at me!

What do you have to do to become a living saint, Jack? Hmmm? Meditate like hell; don't do any stupid things like drink beer practically every night, and be really, really happy all the time ....mainly helped along by ra bliss and ra ecstasy and all.

My chum Poisonous might be indifferent to happiness. Disregarding thoughts is the main thing. Not believing in anything you think.

Poisonous is meticulously sewed up. We walked passed the damsel coming back to Stockbridge on the way from the Modern Art Gallery; she was sitting on a bench like a French person. We nodded hullo. The Poisonous asked if I knew her or was I just randomly saying hullo to gurls. I told him that men didn't like the care in the community clothes I was wearing, but women couldn't resist them.

Lazarus, the Coptic monk, who lives in the St Antony caves knows it's lonesome at first. The Domestic Bliss comes back tomorrow. That should straighten me up. Shame that I'm not a bit better at this!

Thursday 7:08 a.m.
I had six German beers last night, but here I am at seven in the morning feeling really alright. Slightly fashed and bashed, but no real hangover. Hmmm? My leg is nearly cured. I could go running at night soon and lie in the bath instead of hitting the plastic for beers. I don't want to cut up my credit card again. Even in this degenerate age, the buddha says you can become cool. Have to give up the beers. Have to give up the beers. Have to ...well, I won't have any tonight anyway!

Ra Something Cheery!

2008-06-17T06:10:00.000-07:00

Tuesday
You just close your eyes and ra bliss is in there and rising, expanding, lifting. I haven't been enjoying the Domestic Bliss being away, and I've been on ra beer nearly every night since the soapbar ran out, and I've been struggling a wee bit, and my concentration isn't what it should be (six bottles of beer last night! Dearie me!) ... but ra bliss keeps advancing, due to the amount of time I was putting in at the weekend, no doubt.The vase breathing I did at lunchtime today just blew me away! So let us not be downhearted, Jack.

I got a message from my secret agent today telling me that he thinks some sections of the floating boy book could do with expanding, but he says the kidsbook is still out with several publishers. I assumed he'd abandoned it, so that was good news. He'd never heard of the word "dunted", so it must be Scottish. Jemima, his boy wonder, had never heard of Sonny Liston. I had to change the reference to Joe Louis though Sonny Liston presents a far scarier image. Does anyone out there not know who Joe Louis was?

There's some good footie on tonight. Hmmm? To beer or not to beer, that is the question.

Ris Business!

2008-06-16T14:25:00.000-07:00

Monday 10:25 p.m.
I’m gonna give you some free advice
Never cross a picket line
Don't put anything smaller than an elbow in your ear
Play the long game
Study the odds
Read the form

I hope this hasn't been unduly upsetting, but I really liked this wee poem at Ion's dad's memorial thingy.

At the book launch at Newton Mearns, the secret agent handed me back the copy of the novel and I've just finished doing the re-edits, answering the little problems, the typos and whatnot.

Before the MaDMax kicked in, I was being asked by this person about writing at a party last weekend, as in how to be a writer, what should I do, etc. Having just spent some of my last twenty quid on King Ludwig Weissbier and having no money and no prospects as usual, well, perhaps I'm the last person anybody should ask about how to be a successful anything.

If any of the Masai Warriors, Alien Creatures from Outer Space, or anyone in the Australian Ladies Volleyball Team want to know how to become J. K. Rowling, maybe they should go and ask J. K. Rowling.

My advice was terrific. First of all, you should be able to write, but that's not all that unusual, despite the best efforts of the school teachering basturns. You can teach yourself to spell and punctuate and everything. Of course, you can't teach yourself to be bright ... you have to be a bit bright. Then, get a jobbie as a school librarian and read all the books. Write three books and expect every one of them to be crap. That should take you a couple of years. By this time you should have found out something about markets, etc. Like, what sells? What kind of things sell? This is the short training to be famous and rich.

Then you write the book that is going to work, or at least, the first three chapters. No, you should write the book again and expect it still to be crap. Don't do the first three chapters thing yet because that's cynical.

Then you write your best letter to Julia Churchill at Darley Anderson (find it on the web or the Writers and Artists, etc) and say you are coming to London to do some research on how to be a famous novelist, and could you meet her for ten minutes, please. It's these people's job to meet people. Someone good will give you the ten minutes.

At this meeting, you should imagine that you are gambling against someone at cards, for instance. There is a pile of money before you and you are going to move that money in your direction, but the josephine has a better grip on that money at that time than you have. You have to start moving the money towards your end of the table.

I can't be arsed. I don't care. I never really could.

But then there's the kiddo. She's just like her old dear apart from the hair colouring and the bad temper. Then, I'm thinking she wants to do something really stupid, like make glass objects and paint them. This is just like moi! You should be from the evil bourgeois to have ambitions such as this. So I'm supposed to find the money for this. So I am. This is where the failure is not allowed. I should really make some money so I can give it to her, so she can choose to make glass objects and paint them, or not.

I need some motivation here, Jack. I'd really like to be taken to a closed psychiatric ward, or any jail besides where there was some solitary confinement.

They don't need the money, Hotboy. If the money arrives, which it shouldn't, buy her a kiln. If it doesn't, which it won't, ask yourself how much your forefathers and mother s came to these shores ready to toady up to these evil bourgeois basturns. The main thing is to understand non-self and emptiness, and yet don't bend the knee!

Ra Hotboy Dialogues No 5.

2008-06-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

Sunday 7:27 p.m.
It's not been quite the slough of despond, pilgrims, but the last wee while has sometimes been a pain in the neck. Well, if not the neck, the thigh and the shoulder. Since I can't stand on my head at the moment or sit in a lotus, I've decided to cheer myself up before the footie comes on with a dialogue with little Jack the Spam Robot.

(When the curtain goes up, Jack the Spam Robot is sitting on Hotboy's right knee. There is a bandage round Hotboy's left thigh and one wrapped round his shoulder. Several sticking plasters are stuck at random round his face)

JACK: How did you get all these injuries, Hotboy?
HOTBOY: This meditating is a rough game, Jack. Folk don't realise that.
JACK: (exuberantly) Well, Hotboy, do you want to talk about attachment, emptiness, or the suffering?
HOTBOY: (pissed off) Certainly not, Jack! I want to talk about the sweeties. I want to talk about the Six Yogas of Naropa, raising inner heat, ra fantastic bliss, and bonking kamamudras!
JACK: Bonking kamamudras? And how, pray tell, do you bonk a kamamudra, Hotboy?
HOTBOY: I'm not really too sure about that, Jack. Nobody's told me. But I think if you're really good at raising inner heat, and can withdraw the winds into the central channel, thus, as far as I can see, stopping your heart beating and breathing, then, and probably only then, will you get the instructions on how to bonk a kamamudra.

JACK: That sounds a wee bit like suspended animation to me, Hotboy. How can you bonk anyone in that state?

HOTBOY: I assume you're sitting in a lotus, Jack. In that case, the bonking should mainly be done by the kamamudra, I imagine.

JACK: What exactly is a kamamudra, Hotboy?
HOTBOY: Kama is, if I remember right, passion, Jack, as in Kama Sutra. So a kamamudra seems to me to indicate a passion grip.
JACK: (long pause) Hmmm? So when we're in heaven, Hotboy, and goddesses are strolling by, I can turn to you and say: What do you think of yon four armed red goddess, Hotboy? And you can reply: Yon goddess has grip, Jack.
HOTBOY: Maybe a mudra is a seal, Jack. Or a lock. Still, that last bit has evocated ... this isn't supposed to be like the movie Grease, Jack. We're not supposed to be hanging around street corners in heaven checking out the goddesses.
JACK: Why not? Also, how are you supposed to have an erection if you're not breathing and your heart has stopped?
HOTBOY: Hmmm? I've probably got this all wrong, Jack. Anyway, before I need to worry about all this, I'll be at least eighty years old at my rate of progress. So it won't be a lotus, Jack. It'll be a wheelchair with a viagra drip going into one arm and MDMA going into the other.
JACK: You're such a romantic, Hotboy!
(The footie has just started, so I might come back to this later!)
JACK.

Ra Reasonable Expectations!

2008-06-14T16:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday 00:02 a.m.
I re-read pertinent passages of The Bliss of Inner Fire today. This book, by Lama Thebten Yeshe, was what caused me to become a Tibetan Buddhist, and get empowerments to practise the great vajrayana. It is probably one of the most wonderful things ever published.

Since I don't believe in anything and have a fair conceit about my abilities, I tend to think if some joe or josephine can do it, so can I. Perhaps one should enter the usual caveats: I'm probably not going to run the 100 metres in under 10 seconds. I don't think it was ever possible for me to have done this and I'm too old and fat now. Given the usual caveats ...

It is not impossible to do what the boy says you can do in this book. I'm quite certain that thousands and thousands of mainly joes have done this before the book was ever published. We've got a couple of thousands of years of history since the Buddha lived, so we are probably talking about many hundreds of thousands of people having accomplished this since he died. To that extent, it isn't even unusual. Maybe as many as a couple of million of joes and josephines have done this.

I could have been writing prose or dialogues today, but instead I spent most of my time playing the mind game. The mind game is the only game in town, but there are different ways to play it.

If I am going to gain mastery of the inner heat juju, I am going to have to become a different kind of joe. Maybe this isn't for me in this life. Of course, the amount of ra bliss I will achieve will increase, and so will the heat, but
to accomplish what is in this book ... and I assume this is not enlightenment, even near it ... I'd really have to give up everything and everyone. Hmmm? This is the first time I've thought this wasn't going to happen. How crap are these degenerate days! Tempis fugit, ya bass!

Ra Retreat!

2008-06-14T09:12:00.000-07:00

Saturday 5:13 p.m.
Apart from checking the bloggy and reading the paper, I've meditated in the lobby all day. Since I started about ten, that probably comes to five or six hours. Starting from quite a poor basis, it's been quite hard really. Tons of bliss in the last half hour. I'm away now to watch the Sweden Spango game with the sound town and the noise blockers on, doing some vase breathing and mantra-ing. Just for a bit of a break!

10:05 p.m.
That's me just finished for today. Maybe put in about eight or nine hours on the cushion. Hmmm. Let's hope that's me back on track again!!

Ra Sore Leg!

2008-06-13T14:05:00.000-07:00

Friday 10:06 p.m.
Got a comment asking about my sore leg from Ion. How nice is that?

I've just been out to spend the last of my money on four bottles of Paulaner, Hefe-Weissbier, Naturtrub. Hmm? So I've only now got food money and bus fares till I get to next payday. Thank God for that! Everything has been crap since I got paid. I'd do much better if someone would just tie me up and throw me in a dungeon

The problem is mental calming. You need the mental calming as basis. This means you can sit and sit. Trying to sit and sit in the days after you've been partying with the deep dear friends, and other flatheids, is very difficult.

Nobody cares, Jack! The flatheids don't even know they're flatheids, so why should they care about moi's engagement with ra bliss? They suck the goodness out of you, so they do. If I had a gun, I'd just shoot the lot of them. Basturns!

Just say no, Hotboy. I said no to the drugs, but the drugs didn't listen, Jack.

When I keep away from flatheids and the prospect of personal indulgence, I tend to only see family members and folk who are completely funged. So you don't want to go on about your wee sore leg, especially since you should have been dead five years ago, and even with a sore leg moi is still well ahead of the game obviously.

So this is about neurosis and self clinging.

When you go to see the doctor and you can tell just by looking at him that he hasn't got long to go, well, maybe you'd be better off seeing someone healthy. I'd only seen two guys with worse lungs than this doctor's. No, my old man's lungs were in better shape when they killed him, but he didn't have access to the life saving drugs that this doctor was obviously whacking into himself. Sick doctors are like baldy barbers. It hard to take them seriously. He couldn't breathe. His lips were a wee bit blue.

I had the tiniest thing to inquire about. Being a man and, therefore, a hypochrondriac this tiny thing had assumed massive proportions. I wanted some advice. I had a wee wrinkle developing in a vein on my leg. The dying doctor just makes your heart sink. He says he's had two veins done. He'd forgotten all about them. Just get it done, he said.

So a few months later I'm lying on this operating table and the teenager who is about to operate on me asks why I'm getting this vein out. What? Is that what I'm here for? Dearie me! But I think of the junkies who told me about veins going flat and coming up, and whatnot. It's only a vein. Anyway, the joe can't sew and completely fungs up the stitching, but being a boy he probably had never used a needle till he was sewing up peoples' legs.

Anyway, that was when I was thirty, twenty seven years ago. At the weekend, I assume some other vein went ape in my leg and there were three bumps up and down it. I gave up looking at that leg when I turned forty so who knows? It's quietening down now though. I did my first tai chi set since Saturday tonight. How wonderful to be able to do something!

Ion was maybe wondering if my diseased leg had anything to do with partying at the weekend. Only if totally empathising with flatheids caused me to remain in an unnatural position, painless, for longer than was good for me. This might have happened, but it was probably just one of those things. I always favour that leg. I may have got it diseased by sitting in a lotus for too long, or upsetting it with something like that. However, I have to admit that in a lifetime of bad behaviour I have had only one fit due to being a bad boy. Also,one passing out, fainting, after a very busy four days of little sleep and much employment of Dexy and the Midnight Runners. Of course, with a legal drug like alcohol,well, you don't really want to know what awfulness one can get into with a really stupid drug like alcohol.

Samsara. Ris life!

Well done for the Irish in voting against the Lisbon Treaty. The European Union is great if you can work anywhere in Europe, and get the dole anywhere, and have some kind of bill of rights. The only folk who seem to want the superstate are politicians. Politicians hate democrasy. It occurred to me today. I knew before that capitalists hate competition, but politicians would rather be autocrats than democrats. Big states suck!

Ra Flatheids No! No!

2008-06-12T03:23:00.000-07:00

Thursday 11:24 a.m.
Emerging from some flatheided horrorshow with nothing worse than a sore but healing leg, it looks as if for the next few days I'll be able to surf the oceans of bliss almost as much as I like. Except, of course, for visiting and visitors. I just stopped the juju in the lobby because the kiddo is coming over to pick up a tent.

What a wonderful day this is going to be! I meditated for an hour and a bit there and it was glorious. The effects of the vase breathing are just fabuloso beyond description. Everything still moves on. You close your eyes and everything sinks into a great white bliss, and then it's as if the envelope develops and broadens and fills with more and more of ra bliss until you are sitting there simply beaming with ra bliss.

Although moi is sitting here with a sore leg and a history of failure at almost any kind of human endeavour you'd care to mention, nobody that I know can get anywhere near such a wonderment as the enormous voluminousness of ra bliss witnessed this morning. It's a shame the world is populated almost entirely by the too dumb to meditate, the stupid flatheids, so it is. I'm away back into the lobby to await the kiddo.

Ra Absentee!

2008-06-10T03:52:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 11:53
Diseases and a sore, inflamed (Oh no! I'm going to die!) leg have kept me from my gainful employment this week so far. And I've been left alone in this big flat (hobbling about and sucking on the last scraps of rotten vegetables!) while the Domestic Bliss has taken off for adventures overseas. This is what it must be like to be an old person. You count your aches and pains as you get out your bed and face the whole day alone. I think I might take a wee walk round the charity shops later on, and then fall over and hurt myself.

Apart from that, things here are pretty crap. I wasted my time enjoying myself over the weekend with the type of people who give you diseases, and now I'm out of the way of sitting quietly doing nothing for most of the day, I'm addicted to almost everything, and more or less broke. But I'm always more or less broke, so no change there. I think I'd better go away and emanate as a deity. Bugger all else to do!

Ra Party Joe!

2008-06-07T08:07:00.000-07:00

Saturday 4:08 p.m.
"I was still always falling down during this time, and I would always say, before falling, 'I'm about to fall down', and nobody, almost nobody, ever caught me." Tennessee Williams. The Wall.

This is what happens when a normally shy and reticent fellow like myself is forced to go out and emanate as a writer. I bloody hate that! I hate talking about writing, about becoming a writer, about being a writer, about writings done in the past, or writings half done just now. And all that in the company of a lot of people you don't know and who, quite rightly, should know better than to give a damn. If there's any more book launches for writers connected with the secret agent in Edinburgh or Glasgow, I'll go if I'm asked (hopefully, they'll know better now!), but that's it.

Unless, of course, there is free beer!

The wish that it be made known that 'I was the author' is the thought of a man not yet adult. The Dhammapada. The Wall.

This evening, on the other hand, I'll be going to a soiree where almost everyone there will have been known to me for well over thirty years, well before I even started trying to write. I've known these people for so long I don't even have to talk to them. The only young people there will be progeny, and they might even offer me a sample of some decent drugs. Really looking forward to that!

Spent the afternoon mainly meditating up the allotment. We have a big bush of red lupins and one of blue. There will be millions of strawberries and gooseberries this year. The whole allotment is completely green, mostly from weeds. My money is on the weeds!

Ra Cure!

2008-06-06T04:46:00.000-07:00

Friday 12:47 p.m.
Spent the first part of the morning wrestling with a hate filled hangover. I am a horrible person and shouldn't be allowed near normal people, especially when there's plonko collapso for free. I stayed away from wine for the twenty odd years I had a stomache ulcer, and have never really gotten the hang of it. They should colour it purple like they do with turpentine to stop the alkies guzzling it. White wine just looks like water. After you've thrown a few glasses down your gullet, it tastes like water as well. Dearie me!

So I never got round to meditating till eleven this morning, but immediately all the horrible thoughts disappeared and once more you are in the fantastic bliss. The horrible hangover thoughts are a perfect example of how useless most thoughts are. But it is amazing to be moaning and groaning about the place one minute and then be in ra bliss the next. Quite made my day, it did. I went and got an number one at the barbers and will give all my money to the credit card basturns this afternoon, and try to avoid evil for the rest of the month. Amen.

Before I journeyed to Newton Mearns, I spent the afternoon with the auld maw. She was complaining about her neighbours during the war. Lots of them were waving union jacks and going on about fighting the Germans in 1939, but the only man from the building who went to fight the Germans was my auld man. Everyone who could went into reserved occupations and made plenty of money.

The auld maw showed me the letter she got telling her about the war widows pension she received from the 29th of December 1965, the year my auld man died from lack of breath. She got awarded five pounds five shillings for herself and there was two pounds four shillings each to keep me and Popeye. In 1969 I got twelve pounds a week for a student grant and could sign on the dole during the holidays.

In the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid we do have a hell for all the evil basturns of course, which is just as well!

Ra Helen Fitzgerald!

2008-06-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

I'm going to read this Helen Fitzgerald book. I was at this book launche (?) Why can't I spell that? Try again: Launche. No, no, no! I don't want to go to rehab, no, no!

Apart from moi, it was okay. I met the secret agent. He said at last I'd given him something he could sell. I wanted to meet Jamima since she was the first person to read the re-write, but I can't do this stuff. Helen Fitzgerald was funny though. I'll have to read the book. I stood in the rain waiting for the bus back into Glesga tonight. What was I doing in Newton Mearns?

Ra Waste of Time!

2008-06-03T14:42:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 22:43 p.m.
Ra bliss has jumped the paddock gate and has
galloped off into the middle distance, so it has. We've reached a new
stage in blissiness ! With closed eyes, it's front loaded, kind of
fuller on at your face. You can imagine that if you stopped doing a lot
of bad stuff, the happiness would soon start to shine through.

So when are you going to stop doing all the bad stuff, Hotboy?
That's always been my problem, Jack. At the moment, I'm still suffering
a little from getting paid, but the money should run out by the
weekend, and good stuff to do is always the cheap stuff!

We left the allotment tonight with a gorgeous sunset at our backs. I
sat with my eyes closed at the side while the Domestic Bliss did
gardening stuff. There was an awful lot of bliss. I hope this keeps
up.

Some people think meditating is a waste of time. I
always thought it was like putting money in the bank. You just start
doing it and keep going. Eventually, you will be able to sit as the sun
goes down and engage with an awful lot of ra bliss. Just close your eyes
and within a few seconds there it is. This is, I think, mainly what I
have achieved in this life so far. You could take everything else away if you would just leave me that. And who knows what it'll be like next year. What a truly fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Ra Weekendingness!

2008-06-01T12:02:00.000-07:00

Sunday 20:23 p.m.
As far as the meditation states are concerned, I couldn't be more amazed at how wonderfully well things are going. Zooming into the great big sweetie nothingness, big gap in the thoughts, with still a definite subject (moi!) and the object, mainly ra bliss ... well, jolly good on that front, Jack. Still, not getting much heat. The visualisations are definitely improving, but still crap.

The post meditation states have become disturbed due to the arrival of the wages into the overdraft account. This led to a great arousal of suppressed desires which I didn't think it wise to obstruct. Also, I've been having a wonderful time. It is really hard to be having a better time than the one I'm having what with ra bliss and all. But there are a lot of folk out there who aren't getting ra bliss, and who are grieving and all that ... fung sake! It's a vale of tears, so it is.

The boy in the Richard Gere book says that if you're doing four times three hour sessions, you're in retreat. I'd heard of six one and a half hour sessions, which I could almost do some fine days, but three hour sessions four times a day ... what a lot of ra bliss you'd get. And other stuff. Bring it on.

At least, you'd be away from all the weeping and gnashing of teeth, and all that, wouldn't you? The resounding clunk as another one falls off its perch. No wonder they're terrified. No bliss either. Dearie, dearie me.

Ra Bliss Update!

2008-05-31T14:32:00.000-07:00

Saturday 22:34 p.m.
(Sorry about the line break problem in this post. I can't work out what's the matter, so I just cut the first bit.)

I really should say something about ra bliss, Jack. At last! At last! Tell us spam robots about ra bliss!

Sometimes dharma books just arrive when you're dead ready for them. The Dzogchen juju from the Richard Gere book seemed most timely. So you're not supposed to cling to ra bliss. Hear that, Jack! Not supposed to have an attachment to ra bliss. Very bad for the rest of the juju.

If you were surprised that there was any bliss at all, and then found great oodles of it, you might be allowed to cavort around in some abandonment for a while. A pause on the path. I think that's got to be allowed.

So the boy says you don't hang onto ra bliss, and you don't hang onto the clarity, and you don't hang onto the no-thought, or the nowness, or anything of the subject/object thing whatsoever.

I was giving this a go today. Sitting in the hut in the wonderful
weather. Reading the book. Smoking a joint. Bad boy! And doing ra bliss. There were different bits in ra bliss today. The boy says the mind is empty (no centre, no
circumference), knowing, and unconfined. You've got to rest your bum on
ground luminosity, no thoughts there, no concepts, one assumes. Can you
find it? Does it just unfold? Anyway, I had a good go at this today.
The gap between thoughts.

I didn't know what time it was today. I was a hippy
just once. I'd been in the lobby meditating then went up to the
allotment, but when? I later found out that I'd left the flat at 1:15,
as written on the note, and didn't get back till twenty past seven.
Just smoking dope and sitting in the hut really. Everything has jumped
forward as usual.

There's a plank that you've become affixed to. It's holding you up. Sometimes the envelope ra bliss seems to manifest in becomes kind of flattened and hard, and it's holding you up.

I was getting held up in the hut today in the easy posture i.e. just simple cross legs. This posture might be quite hard to keep a straight back position in, for most people anyway. If you're in a lotus, you back kind of wants to be straight. It's less stable with just crossed legs. But today I was getting held up in that, for ages.

What is it that's holding you aloft, Hotboy? I have no idea, Jack, but it is a force upwards stuck onto you. What more can I say?

How's about trying to differentiate ra blisses, HOtboy? Well, there was a difference in ra bliss today. The effects of the ra breathing were more straight into nothingness and great bliss accompaniments. Lots of bliss in the nothingness. Even if there's nothing much happening except ra bliss and the whiteness, and some heat, you're still in subject/object land. Thank god for that! I'm not ready to leave this planet yet, Jack! Maybe next week. Ask me again.

Ra Hotboy Dialogues No. 4

2008-05-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 10:21 p.m.
I got paid today. I had to work overtime. I've bought four bottles of Erdinger to compensate for trying so hard with the juju and meditations over the last wee while. Since I cut up my credit card last week, ra bliss has hit much further and greater heights. To celebrate, here comes another slightly drunken dialogue with little Jack, my deep dear friend, in the great vastness of bloggydom.

AFTER THE REVOLUTION!
(The curtain opens. In the chair, Hotboy is bound hand and foot, and gagged. Little Jack, the Spam Robot, is sitting on Hotboy's knee. He has the black beard on a stick in one hand, and in the other a bottle of Erdinger beer which he drinks from throughout. Little Jack is covered in badges which say Library Assistant and Library Monitor)
JACK: We, the Spam Robots and I, do not want to hear any more about emptiness! We do not want to hear about suffering. All that crap about emptiness is for the eggheads. All that stuff about suffering is for the flatheids! Of course, the flatheids suffer because they don't even start meditating; they are sweetie sucking evil basturns, and all deserve to be reincarnated in the worst possible imaginable hells because they have completely funged up on being human beings. The only decent aspect of human beingness that we spam robots can discern is ra bliss! So, Hotboy, tell us something about ra bliss!

HOTBOY: I don't think ra bliss, Jack, is the point of all this.
JACK: Fung off! Can you get down to ra bliss, or can't you?
HOTBOY: Over the past wee while, I think, Jack, that I have almost got down to the thoughtless bliss, the great globule, the envelope, the unfoldingness, the indescribable to flatheids or anyone else, ra bliss that takes you away from the concerns of this world, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

JACK: And has this been of any use to anyone else, Hotboy?
HOTBOY: It has been absolutely bugger all use to anyone I know, Jack. I am surrounded by flatheids, Jack. I don't like being amongst these people, Jack. I keep thinking they might start crying and never stop. Can I go to hospital now, please?

JACK: What? We're here to talk about ra bliss!

HOTBOY: I'm getting pissed. I'd like to go to hospital now, please. Why can't I buy some decent drugs on the street around here? If I can't go to hospital, can I go to the jail? I'd be so happy in solitary confinement!
JACK: I thought you were going to tell us about ra bliss.
HOTBOY: I can't get away from flatheids till Friday. Till then, just fung off! Fung off! Fung off!
(Little Jack the Spam Robot then jumps of the prisoner's knee and before the audience says:)
JACK: So, ladies and gentlemen, it's not about ra emptiness, and it's not about ra suffering, and it's not about ra bliss. It's about ra afflictive emotions! Yes! The fung afflictive emotions! That is ra problem!
(The curtain closes!)
HOTBOY: (off stage!) Dearie me! Thank God, the off-license is still open!

Ris time of year!

2008-05-27T03:43:00.000-07:00

Tuesday
Once when I was in North Africa, a long, long time ago, we were walking to this campsite in the twilight zone. It was a bit strange because objects became very blurry, and distances were hard to judge. You had to watch your step, so you did. No, it wasn't the dope! Twilight is different in different places.

Particularly auspicious times to meditate are supposed to be dawn and dusk. Apparently, it's at these times that the breathing becomes equalised between the nostrils, and that's what you're looking for anyway.

In the wintertime when it gets dark about five or six, you can sometimes feel a difference in your body if you're sitting reading or whatever. (Of course, this doesn't apply to flatheids!) Then you can think: Oh, it's getting dark! I'll go and meditate. This is a very good thing about the winter because I've been missing this recently. The sun might be down by nine, but it doesn't get dark for ages and ages. When it gets dark, then's the time to give it laldy with the vase breathing. But I'm just about ready for beddybys by that time these days.

During the last week, I've only had 3 bottles of Erdinger. Nothing else. I get paid tomorrow. Time to switch addictions. I think I'll buy myself some soapbar.

I suppose due to being a good boy, I've been getting into amazingly blissy states recently, and my understanding has been enhanced by reading this book by the Nyingma boy. After trying to do the visualisations and whatnot, sometimes you should stop trying, let go, just be in the amazing bliss. I knew I should be doing that from other sources, but sometimes you forget and it's nice to get a reminder.

I've done some kind of training every day for the last fortnight apart from Sunday, when I went a walk with Poisonous. Fee, fi, fo, fum. Look out, Cassius, here I come!

Ra Confusing Path!

2008-05-25T03:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday 11:45 a.m.
Every time I read something about the juju, or dharma, Buddhism, or anything like that, I realise I know bugger all about it. I heard recently that you can't practise meditation. It's like practising sleep. Try to sleep and you'll never fung go to sleep. Or the boy in the Richard Gere sponsored book is going on about shravaka meditation. Had I heard of that before? Then there's ground, path and fruition. Path is defined by this Nyingma practitioner as confusion. You're on the path with your head jammed up your backside!

As if we weren't confused enough, Jack. It's all in the mind, Hotboy. All in the mind. Well, what's mind then, Jack? Dualistic mind? Non-dualistic mind? The latter is definitely a tricky one. As soon as you start thinking thoughts, you've got subject and object; a kind of frozen reality. I immediately thought of Niels Bohr's Copenhagen Principle ... or was it the Copenhagen Interpretation, Jack? Anyway, thank God in the midst of all this confusion that we in the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid don't believe in thoughts.

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

It's been no bother not drinking or taking drugs and just meditating for as much as possible. I must have put in about eight hours yesterday. But not polluting your mind gives you a ringside seat on the emotional changes, like going from happy to crabbit, etc. I've been training a lot so I've been a bit tired sometimes and that always makes me a wee bit crabbit... if I can't eat some soapbar or have a drink in time.

Someone who used to land on this bloggy using the nomme de bloggy of Sandy Buchandyke has started cycling across America. You can find here en route blog here.

I've got a lot of time for that, Jack. What cycling across America, Hotboy? No, Jack. I'd be tired and crabbit all the time. No, I mean cycling across America as in funging off. That's what I'm going to do as soon as someone gives me some money. Fung off to someplace where nobody knows me.

What's the point of discoursing with one's chummies if you don't drink or take drugs, and you have no hobbies to talk about? I arranged to cycle to Cramond this evening with Poisonous. Well, that's like a hobby and you can cycle passed the pubs. See some flatheid on the safe side. Poisonous just phoned up and says he wants to go for a walk ... a walk? I've known Poisonous since I was a teenager and I've never gone for a walk with him. Not straight anyway. Basturns! Basturns! Basturns! I was going to go out cycling after seven so I could come home and luxuriate in the bath. He's going to phone me to go a walk about half two. I've got just over two hours to meditate till then... lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. Basturns!

10:01 p.m.
Beautiful day! We walked along the Water of Leith to the Gallery of Modern Art, and Poisonous bought me a bottle of Stella Artois. He had a cup of tea. Then we walked back. He did not say: Do you want to go for a drink? So I walked home. Basturn!

But I dipped into the food fund for three bottles of Erdinger (had one already), so that'll show them! Before that I spent a couple of hours meditating in the hut, and didn't get back here till twenty to ten. The four days of no beers, and no nothing else, and trying hard have moved us on, Jack. They certainly have. Yesterday, I was trying to do calming with object, without object, etc., but today I just closed my eyes and went for ra bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Because thou art saved, shall there be no more cakes and ale?

Well, there's nothing so lonesome, lonely and queer. What a terrible place is a pub with no beer!

Ion sent me a very nice email about the new book, the one about the floating Presidential candidate. I think she might like it better than moi, so that was nice. Since, as usual, it's not a proper novel, without proper chapters and all, it won't get published, but it's nice if someone likes it. Yes, it is!

Ra Richard Gere!

2008-05-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

Friday 5.46 p.m.
Just got back from my Friday visit to see the auld maw. Number one son, my brother Silvest, was there for a bit. He's nearly seventy. Being number four son, I'm but a pup.

Had an email from my secret agent saying the joe he gave the book about the Presidential candidate to had given it a 'rave rave'. The secret agent will read it this weekend. But it's good that somebody has liked it.

All I know about Richard Gere is that he's rich, handsome and very talented. He also has to take sneery flak from some journalists about being a supporter of Tibetan Buddhism. I was reading a dharma book up the allotment yesterday. It's called Carefree Dignity and seems to be transcripts of talks given by Tsoknyi Rinpoche. Read the first chapter. Excellent. At the very end of the acknowledgements (and who reads them?)(well, the sensei and reverend probably reads them, but he's a book freak!), it says print sponsor: Richard Gere. I guess he paid for the book to get published. Fair play to the boy! He's been a help to me!

Saturday 00:09 a.m.
Since I cut up my credit card, I haven't had the slightest desire for beer. How weird! So I've had no beer and no bob hope since Wednesday (i.e. no bob now for about five or six weeks!). I expect to see God at this rate by next Friday.

I did the Ferry Road and five hills up Dundas Street run tonight in the full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle minus the bin liner. It took 41 minutes. The last time took 45 minutes. At my best, I did it in 28 minutes, but I'd be happy with 35 minutes. When I was running regularly, but not long distances, I used to go round in about 32 minutes, but I was not a fat basturn then.

Ris Fortunate Creature!

2008-05-22T02:51:00.000-07:00

Thursday 10:52 a.m.
I got out of bed about half an hour ago feeling so happy. I'm still feeling happy. I haven't started meditating today yet, but I know that ra bliss ... Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

I seemed to spend all night falling into and out of wonderful dreams. I was lost in Peru or was it Brazil? I sometimes asked, I didn't care what the answer was. I had my wonderful friends with me. I was on holiday. The views were magnificent. Gorgeous women kept smiling at me.

And I got out of bed feeling so happy. Buddhism is essentially about making you feel happy and I feel really happy right now. Once I start meditating, today I will sometimes be bursting with happiness.

Though I enjoy winding up the flatheids, I do owe this feeling of being permeated with happiness to other people, especially my family and friends for not being horrible to me, and especially the juju masters like Ringu Tulku and the buddhas in the south west.

I discovered yesterday that the week long gong bashing festival down at the Samye Ling isn't till August. I'll have the money for that. I'm so looking forward to it. I'll have an even better time than I had last year!

I'm so pleased I cut up my credit card. I'll phone them up this afternoon, so I won't get another one till after I get paid on the 28th. Hurrah! Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Ra Soup!

2008-05-21T11:14:00.002-07:00

Wednesday 7:15 p.m.
Just got back from Mr Akrams, the local grocer. Here's what you get for £5:75 around these parts.

1 turnip
1 leek
4 carrots
4 tatties
1 head of broccoli (big)
4 onions
2 500g packets of lentils (these cost 99p each)

So it's about £3.80 for the veggies. That would probably make three pots of soup; easily a week's supply. Just add spices.

Rat Ringu Tulku!

2008-05-20T01:07:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 9:11 a.m.
Yesterday afternoon the Dom Bliss and I took in a talk on Guru Yoga from Ringu Tulku. What a brilliant exposition! Without notes, he talked for about 50 minutes and then took questions for another 40 minutes. I've heard talks by Ringu Tulku before and I've never listened to anyone who can explain the juju better. His answers to the questions at the end were sometimes funny as well. He's obviously got something I wouldn't mind having!

I was getting blissed out sitting there on the floor of the Theosophical Society room in Great King Street. You just have to sit for a while with a straight back these days and something starts happening. Progress, progress, progress! I wakened up about 4. a.m. this morning and after a wee while, I was lying on my side feeling absolutely wonderful, in a cocoon of such bliss! It just kind of overcame me. This is a fantastic way to start the day!

Since I've spent all my money this month already (on beer!), I could only go to one of the Ringu's talks, which is a great shame. Opportunities to listen to guys like that shouldn't be missed!

11:20 p.m.
I haven't been going to the Tai Chi for the first four months of this year ... partly the capsulitis, partly being skint, etc., but I've been going back now for three weeks. I've grown fond of the wummin who teaches me this. The Tai Chi has been great for me on ways of slow increments. Subtle improvements. The wummin has got to be 78 years old anyway. She's like a little bird. But there are stretches in that wummin ....

I drank four bottles of Erdinger tonight and then cut up my credit card. After the Tai Chi, I went to my hut and meditated for a bit, then drank the four bottles of beer. More and more I feel as if I am on the cusp of wonderments, but I slow myself up and pull myself back, and try to stick with normal things ... like drinking beer. Well, I'm not normal. I haven't been normal for three or four years. I was never nice, but I always told myself I was normal, the norm, the usual joe. Time to hack into the habitual tendencies.

They do not give you the credit cards to help you, Jack. It is a great convenience for the better off, the retentives. I wanted to keep it because with two grand in credit you could always run, or pay for somebody's funeral. What did I do before I had one? Time to find out!

Ra Weekend So Far!

2008-05-18T06:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday 2:40 p.m.
Friday was wonderful. I'd probably put in about three and a bit hours before I got on the train from Bellshill back to Edinburgh. I was doing ra bliss as usual on the train, but started dozing off now and again. You go out in the brightness and come back in the same way, which is very nice indeed. Pulling out of Wester Hailes, I came to again, and soon was amazed by ra bliss. I checked my breathing to see if I still was breathing. Most subtle. Bizarre to be even considering this at all.

I was really tired from the shadow boxing when I was at Iron Man, a movie, en famille. I closed my eyes for a few seconds, and WoW! Such bliss! That was yesterday. Couldn't get enough time away from the flatheids yesterday, but you have to stay engaged.

Then on the way home we stopped at the traffic lights at Haymarket. A buxom wench in a low cut top opened up the window of a flat the sensei and reverend used to live in, the one just above the pub, or the flat just next door. Maybe sticking out her head to have a fag. Across the road, two drunk guys were coming down the pavement and one shouted over: Get your t*ts out for the boys! The girl stuck the fag in her mouth and duly obliged for a few moments. I wonder why that stuck in my mind.

Ra Hotboy Dialogues No 3.

2008-05-17T10:29:00.000-07:00

Saturday 6:30 p.m.
(To balance the force ...after the whole of Scottishness was disgraced by the behaviour of the hun supporters in Manchester last Wednesday night, their title challenge imploded today against Motherwell F.C. Jack the Spam Robot, a Celtic supporter, is heard drunkenly singing The Wild Colonial Boy offstage. The sounds of a scuffle and drunken obscenities are heard then Hotboy comes onstage with little Jack trussed up and with an elastoplast over his mouth)

Hotboy: Okay, Jack. Are you going to behave?
(Jack nods. The elastoplast is removed)
Jack: (Singing) Armoured cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons ...
(The elastoplast is put back on)
Hotboy: No sectarian songs, please!
(Hotboy whispers in Jack's ear and Jack nods again)
Hotboy: Ladies and Gentlemen! Jack the Spam Robot has agreed to behave if I allow him to
give you a little song at the end.
(Hotboy removes the elastiplast)
Jack: I was so happy before you showed up!
Hotboy: You know that happiness is an afflictive emotion, don't you, Jack?
Jack: Fung off! How can happiness be an affliction?
Hotboy: I was thinking this out in the bath just before we came onstage. All emotions must
be afflictive because they are part of the suffering of change.
Jack: Those buddhists are worse than the greetin faced calvinist basturns. The first
noble truth is the truth of suffering. And you get the usual suffering that everybody
understands, the suffering affecting being happy since you stop being happy, and
all pervasive suffering which you are always trying to dodge, the suffering inherent
the punishment and reward of the whole gig! Fung suffering contaminating even
joy of watching the huns getting put to the sword! What a bunch of miserable
basturns these buddhists are!
Hotboy: You might have something there, Jack. But perhaps there's the chance of
having a good feeling that doesn't change into a bad feeling. Perhaps you can get your mind into a kind of solid state serenity, or equanimity. Maybe you can be a happy , smiling basturn all the time.

Jack: (cries) I never got my badge! You're a rotten basturn, so you are.
Hotboy: I'll give you another badge next time, Jack. It's a Library Monitor badge. When the library assistants see you with a badge like that, they'll all turn green.
(Jack springs off Hotboy's knee and though trussed up sings The Fields of Athenry. Since catholicism is a bit Irish around these parts and is known as The Great Bridge to buddhism, many of the audience have Irish connections. The sad song about the Potato Famine brings tears to many an eye and Jack's performance brings riotous applause at the end.)

Ra McCoy!

2008-05-15T05:48:00.002-07:00

Thursday 1:50 p.m.
Just sent the Presidential candidate book off to my secret agent. I hope he likes it. Just watched film of the Rangers fans rioting through Manchester on the news. Also, there was a report of Tommy Burns, a Celtic man, dying of cancer at 51, which is six years younger than moi.

No, we are not guaranteed the time, Jack. So I'm going to meditate my socks off today!

Ra Hotboy Dialogues No2 (Try Again!)

2008-05-14T14:12:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 10:13 p.m.
Ra bliss hit another level in the allotment today, but I had to watch the footie this evening, and as a Rangers supporter I had to go to the off-license when they unfortunately lost two nil. This is three beers in.

(During the first performance of the Hotboy Dialogues, Hotboy fell off his stool and had to be helped to his dresssing room due to feeling somewhat tired and emotional. The ventriloquist dummy, Jack the Spam Robot, will be speaking to his agent if any more embarrassing scenes like this occur again. Jack isn't happy with this gig!)

(The curtain rises. Centre stage we have Hotboy Madyamika S.O.B. and on his knee is little Jack)
J: Why do we have to keep going on about the moon?
H.B. It's emptiness we're going on about, Jack. The moon is just a kind of illustration of that.
J: Why do we have to talk about empitness?
H.B. Good point, Jack. Ra bliss today was fantastic. I think I could just stick with ra bliss, but it seems that you have to do analytical meditations to feel good about the times when you're not blissing.
J: Well, why don't you just bliss all the time? If you can hit huge amounts of ra bliss, it will make you grin like a monkey and everything will be engaged with through ra bliss surely.
H.B. They say analytical meditations will help me with the afflictive emotions ... like not liking Celtic supporters.
J: The Dalai Lama says it will take you eons and eons to deal with the afflictive emotions, Hotboy.
H.B. In that case, we'd better hope we started a while ago and get on with it. You have to remember that sometimes I'd like to kill people and that's not a bodhisattva thing.
J: Okay then. This is even although your root guru told you that you'd get everything through calming meditations ...
H.B. I used to write plays, Jack. You can brown study plays, like go down the road with them in your head in some kind of way and make lateral connections whilst absorbed in thought. When I'm not doing ra bliss, I want to think about things like emptiness because that's the way I got the cosmic revelation about twelve or thirteen years ago. It's doing your head in, Jack. It's dealing with the contradictions, like HOW CAN NOTHING EXIST OUTSIDE YOUR OWN MIND? Alright.
J: Okay, Hotboy. Let's go again. Dearie, dearie me.

Hotboy: Okay, Jack. Just tell us what you know about the moon.
Jack: Fung sake! The moon is up in the sky. It presents itself as one thing though it is made up lots of little things, which we do not really understand fully, like glue-ons, and Klingons, and upside down-ons. It does not exist in the manner of its appearance and yet nonetheless conventionally functions with valid presence. In order to dispel this illusion, contemplate the metaphor of an image reflected in a mirror. Imagine the moon reflected on water. Thus shall we regard all things.

Hotboy: Hmmm?
Jack: Do I get the badge that says I'm a Library Assistant then?
Hotboy: If you get the badge, you'll have to keep the library books tidy and in order on the shelves.
Jack: Fung improvement on this gig.
Hotboy: Okay, I'll give you the badge if you can tell me about chariots. What can we say about chariots, Jack?
Jack: I'd rather talk about stagecoaches.
Hotboy: Okay, stagecoaches, Jack.
Jack: All you can say about stagecoaches is what we know about them from the famous film by John Ford with John Wayne making his debut. A stagecoach is made up of things and exists in your mind, but has a valid presence perhaps. It has a name, stagecoach, and it has function. You sit in the stagecoach and red indians ride alongside and try to shoot arrows into you. There's not really much more you can say about stagecoaches.
Hotboy: Okay.
Jack: Can I get the badge then?
Hotboy: I'm afraid I gave all the badges away to charming Polish kids.
Jack: Are you telling me the badges only existed in your mind?
Hotboy: In the next dialogue, Jack, we will talk about how emptiness should affect attachment, alright?
Jack: Fragging currants! Basturns! Basturns!

Ra Hotboy Dialogues No. 2.

2008-05-14T13:59:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 10:00 p.m.
Just after watching the footie. In the spirit of ecumenicism, I've been trying to support Rangers in Europe this year, but the sight of their fans streaming in their thousands and tens of thousands towards Manchester in the news today ... it was the Union Jacks hanging out of the car windows... it was like a National Front rally! Every country in Europe in the 1930s produced a fascist party, but only in Scotland was the fascist party directing its venom towards catholics. As someone brought up a catholic in the west of Scotland where the bigotry is at its worst ... how pleased was I when the St Petersburg team put them to the sword with a second goal in the last minutes! I am sorry for the management, the owner (who has done wonders for that club), and the players, but not for those knuckle dragging bigoted morons ... I was really supporting the Manchester Police and like all neutrals hoping when the shit hits the fan that they do not run out of baton rounds.

Dearie me, Hotboy! What is the matter with you? It was the Union Jacks what did it, Jack. Made me see red they did!

Ra Boy is called McCoy!

2008-05-13T06:04:00.001-07:00

Tuesday!
I've just finished the re-writes and corrections to my book about Presidential elections and obsessions and God and death. I am so happy with this! This is the great thing I get out of writing, that feeling you sometimes get at the end. Something akin to exhileration. Completion. Satisfaction. I loved writing this as a radio play and I loved it when it was first done as a novel about twenty years ago, and I just love it to pieces just now.

Who cares if no one likes it? Who cares if it never gets published, which it probably won't? I just feel like it's been my best shot and I feel great about it and you can't ask any more than that!!
If anyone wants a look, just leave a comment or send an email and I'll get it to you.

How did you ever get to be so fortunate, Hotboy? I just a jammy basturn, Jack, so I am!!

Ra Blissheid Status Report!

2008-05-11T15:33:00.000-07:00

Sunday night. 23:35 p.m.
The emotional bit comes first. Then I'll do the development of the juju bit, but it might not work out like that since I don't really edit this stuff.

Since the Domestic Bliss went out of town to the singing and dancing competitions on Friday morning, all I've really done is meditate, then drink. Still, there were ...

Yaroo! Yaroo! sounded the giant horns of the longships as they came into the Firth of Forth and nestled beside Portobello. I heard them three times and thrice did I reach out for the viking helmet and wish to rush forth and perform the drunken cavorting manouevres on the beach with my fellowship.

I was young once and walked by myself, and lost my way. I knew myself rich when I found a comrade. Man's joy is in man. From Sayings of the High One. The Wall

In my confusion, I landed out at the bus stop with my twenty pound note, but the gods told me to go home and stop being an asshole, or at least not that much of an asshole. And so I stayed in last night.

I don't do so well when the Domestic Bliss buggers off for the weekend. I kind of just lose the plot. There is not a sufficiency of calming down beforehand.

This rushing out into the street happened ... after the emotional bit.

I'd been meditating on Saturday for about four or five hours before I set of for this memorial service for someone I'd never met. Every day for about seven weeks I had tried to think of this person and ... well, this takes it out of yourself, like it's not really for you, etc. Anyway, I went to this celebration of Steve Engelman's life, and embarrassed myself by how emotional I felt.

A foundation practise might be to consider the preciousnness of human exsistence, considering how unlikely it is, and how wonderful it is to partake of such a thing.

I can't speak in public, but people spoke up for him, and as the personality unfolded, the tears kept welling up.

Anyway, I'm completely useless at these things. So everyone has to stay alive so I don't have to go to anything like that again.

It was Ion's dad's memorial thing. I hadn't met Ion before, but I knew she'd go outside for a smoke afterwards, and I waited there, but I felt too upset to cadge a fag off her, which is what I usually do when I interact with smokers.

I rushed out with my twenty pound note, which I'd stolen from the food money supply, and the gods opened the heavens and drenched me before I even got to the bus stop. Then the bus was going to be another twenty minutes, so I ran back home.

After I'd calmed down a bit, I sat in the lobby and did the juju.

Oh, what bliss there was! And heat! Not as much heat as the first time the heat ever occurred, but heat, the heat that prevails against the cold. This is, despite everything else I do, on the money, major juju, yogic fung trance heat. So, afterwards, I got up from the seat in the lobby and got pissed again, watching the boxing on the telly!

Oh, you're going to crash and burn! You're going to crash and burn! Ee Aye Ahdio, You're going to crash and burn!

I read the book and it asked me if I'd like to get the gold medal for meditation ... already I'd had such wonderful bliss, etc, ... and I said yes!

So when you can raise inner heat ... which I can' t do yet... when you can raise inner heat, and do the breathlessness, and have included the descending blisses in your juju .... remember, Jack, that the first bliss of the four blisses is the extraordinary and totally amazing and wonderful bliss, and they just get better from then on in ... that when y0u can do this, every time you start to meditate, the bliss you start with is the first bliss.

Hotboy, are you anywhere near this first bliss? I do not think I am anywhere near this first bliss, Jack, but I would get a fung of a lot closer to it if I ran out of money and stopped drinking beer.

I will not cycle to work tomorrow due to being pissed just now and not caring about the environment that much. I will sit in the bus instead. I will close my eyes and notice the improvements in ra bliss since the last Monday I sat on the bus going to work. Though I am a disgrace, and a feckless basturn ... I have lots of bottle and am very brave. To be a solitary realising foe destroyer takes a bit of bottle. The heat, you can't believe the heat. Ra bliss!! The whole thing is completely bizarre. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Ris Precious Human Life!

2008-05-10T16:10:00.000-07:00

Sunday 00:12 a.m.
I loved this post. And it disappeared, just like that. Oh, well. As NedKelly said: such is life! I did get a lot out of writing it!

Ra Hotboy Dialogue No. 1.

2008-05-09T15:54:00.000-07:00

Friday 11:56 p.m.
Jack the Spam Robot has been following the Five Step Programme on How to Get Out Your Face On Air. This is a record of his first test. If he passes this test, he gets a badge. The badge says Library Assistant. This is the first grade as a preliminary to entering novitiateness giving one a chance in a future lifetime of becoming a member of the Amazing Bloggie Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid.

Now that moi has finished moi's life work as a novelist, I would like to be best known in future as a ventriloquist act. The following constitutes the first draft of the script. Imagine the lights come up and sitting on stage is moi with little Jack sitting on my knee. Since I cannot do the ventriloquism, I will have a big black beard on the end of a stick which I will raise in front of my face whenever Jack has to speak, thus enhancing the illusion.

Blogging isn't writing, so to justify wasting all this bloody time, I should re-draft this script again and again until I get it right. So the first draft will be very rough, and is really just for moi since no one comes here anymore anyway. And I used to enjoy writing dialogue.

(The curtain opens. On stage is HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B. and on his knee is little Jack, the Spam Robot. )
H.B: Hello, Jack.
J.: Hello, Hotboy.
H.B. Where is the moon, Jack?
J: It is up in the sky, Hotboy.
H.B. What is it made of?
J: Everyone knows that the moon is made of cheese.
H.B. What is cheese made of?
J. I think it comes from milk, at first anyway.
H.B. And what is milk made of?
J. Milk must be made of big molecules, which must have a lot of carbon and stuff in them.
H.B. What are these big molecules made of then?
J. Atoms.
H.B. What are these atoms made of?
J. Um. Electrons and protons?
H.B. What are these electrons and protons made of then, Jack?
J. I think they are supposed to be made of wee-er tottier things, like glue-ons, and lots of
other names for wee things.
H.B. What?
J: Well, glue-ons, and upside down-ons, and right-ons, and left-0ns, and Klingons. Stuff
like that.
H.B. And what are all these wee tottie things supposed to be made of?
J: Um? Wee string things.
H.B. And what are they made of?
J: Okay. I don't know what the fung anything is made of.

H.B. Say you landed on the moon, Jack. What would you say?
J: I'd say: I have landed on the moon. I am the second Scottish person to land here, the first being Neil Armstrong.
H.B. Is the moon in your mind then when you land on it, or independent of your mind, or a mixture of both.
J: Since it seems to be made of rocks and dust, and that's not true ... it is made of half-ons, half-offs, and underside down-ons ....

(next morning: around about here the moon and the mind and the half bottle of plonk I found kind of just added to the general confusion already induced by the four bottles of beer! But I've deleted it now whatever it was!)

Ra McCoys ra boy!

2008-05-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

Friday 8:23 p.m.
I've just come to the end of the re-write of xxxThex... of the book all about God and the Presidential candidate. I'll just have to read it a couple of times now and make minor adjustments. 47,389 words. Most satisfying to be at this stage in the game. And its a wee gem, so it is!!

Ra Black Spot Not!

2008-05-08T14:17:00.000-07:00

Thursday 10:35 p.m.
I went to the Anne Ferguson Building at the Western General Hospital to pick up a friend of mine who was having colonoscopy. There was a plaque about Anne Ferguson on the wall beside where I was standing waiting. She passed away a year younger than I am just now, the same age as the joe I was waiting for. Sometimes it seems that if it wasn't for bad luck, this joe wouldn't have any luck at all, but they gave him the all clear and didn't hand him the black spot, not this time, Jack.

I was amazed at how fit I felt tonight during the shadow boxing session. I was jumping out of my skin. Someone told me yesterday that this joe they knew used to dig his garden continually when he was getting ready for a boxing contest. Never heard of that before. Heard of John L. Sullivan chopping logs, but never heard of anyone digging. Anyway, I felt great over the six three minute rounds and didn't even feel that exhausted in the wonderful bath. Gratifying but puzzling.

I haven't had any cannybliss yogurts for about a month. This is the first time in about twelve years that I haven't bought any when I've had the money to. But I really need to pay off my credit card debt to spend much time at the Samye Ling this summer.

Had another fantastically vivid dream this morning. The Domestic Bliss and I escaped from the underground and stood on tall buildings watching the other tall buildings explode. No fear or anything though. Just spectacular views, totally spectacular, better than in the movies. Must have been New York because when we looked down at ground zero, you could tell it was the aliens what done it because bodies were hovering a few feet above the ground in a green light beam force field.

I'd like to tell the Alien Creatures from Outer Space who land on this bloggie that I don't hold it against them at all.

The Domestic Bliss is away for a few days as from tomorrow. Hmmm?

Ra Writings!

2008-05-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 9:55 p.m.
I had another vivid dream last night and wakened up before 5 a.m. After meditating for an hour or so, I had a wee think about the writings.

It won't be long before I've finished re-writing a novel about God, obsession and American politics. For ages I've wanted to re-write this novel since, by the year 2000, it was out of date. I had a webpage once. I used to be able to say in this bloggie what the novels were called and stuff like that. Apparently, this is not a good thing to do if you want to sell the fungers.

It's about having a body of work, Jack. When the joe from Fontana books bought me lunch when the kiddo was not a year old, and said what you do is write and get published four books like that .... I said, books like that? The same? He said, not exactly the same, but kind of like that. Although being a full time carer for the kiddo meant that I couldn't write books 'like that' every eighteen months, the given time frame, I didn't want to anyway. Had the kiddo not been there, I could have written what I wanted in the morning and written 'books like that' in the afternoon.

What I wanted to do in my life as a writer was appreciate that nobody writes more than three good plays and three good books. Mostly, writers don't even write one good play, or one good book. What most people do is write one book, and write it ten times. This is what the business wants. If you're a playwright, you're lucky if you write one good play. Arthur Miller wrote several good plays. So did Eugene O'Neill. Tennessee Williams wrote several good plays. Oscar Wilde wrote one good play.

Although I will never write as good a book as someone really talented, or write even one good play like Oscar Wilde, I wanted to give that kind of thing a bash. I wanted to try hard to do that.

Mostly my friends and contemporaries settled for sweetie eating existences among the evil bourgeois, and they will be able to spend their retirements going holidays in Majorca during the winter, and good luck to them.

I wanted to be able to write different kinds of books. A crime book, a travel book, etc. I did have seven or eight plays produced and you'd think in the ten years I had a go at that .... but I always thought there was a permanence, more substance somehow in prose.

Such a fortunate creature I have been that I don't really have to earn a living. After I finish this book about the boy in the desert, I will go back to scanning stuff and go back to working out how to set up a webpage again. And when James Bond, my secret agent, have realised what a mistake he made in taking on the unpublishable, I will have the webpage with all the stuff on it, published and unpublished, and if no one ever accesses it apart from the spiders from cyberspace and the alien creatures, well, folk have better things to do surely than waste their time reading that kind of crap when they should be meditating on emptiness anyway.

It's great to be 57 years old! We are not guaranteed the time. You can have the perception of living from conception to death, and all that's looking great just now, the shape of it. You also have the moment by moment. And, sometimes, I can surf the oceans of bliss. What a fortunate creature, I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Ra Cannabis Reclassification!

2008-05-07T05:51:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 1:50 p.m.
The fuzzy faced old Moroccans sat around the cafe verandah in their jellabahs playing snakes and ladders, or draughts. Now and again, they would bring the small bowled clay pipes with the long stems into view and take a puff.

It was the best dope I ever smoked. They wouldn't sell it to you, but the boy making the coffees or mint teas would give you a puff when he was taking your order. One puff was all you could really take. I think it was called kef, or keef.

If the dope is strong, you don't need to smoke so much of it. The less you have to smoke, the less you damage your lungs. Because they say skunk is stronger than ... I'm so agitated by these stupid basturns I can't concentrate enough to vent the spleen.

I got so annoyed watching the news that I couldn't settle into my normal Wednesday afternoon post-prandial kip. It's called following the tabloid agenda. The government say they are going to reclassify cannabis from Class C back to Class B, reversing one good thing the Tony Blair government did. Basturns! Basturns! Basturns!

Of course, we're awash in booze. The Times said today that 40% of murders are alcohol related. Six people die in Scotland every day from drinking. Our sclerosis of the liver count is going through the roof. Wasn't these New Labour basturns who were going to bring in 24 hours drinking licenses?

It's enough to make me go out to the pub and get sloshed, so it is, Jack. The news had a hidden camera with a reporter who bought some skunk in Camden Town in London. Right in the middle of the street. In full view. I wish I lived in Camden Town. Within a five minute walk from my front door, you can buy drink from about twenty outlets easy. Basturns! Basturns! Basturns!

I had high hopes for that Gordon Brown basturn! I was at a party Gordon Brown was at when he was shadow chancellor. Two of his friends from uni were there and I know they both smoked dope. What a rotten stinking currant and basturn he turned out to be! Resign! Resign! Resign, ya useless basturn that you are!

If I can't vote for someone on the left somewhere, I should just stop voting. It just encourages the stupid, useless basturns!

Rat Dream Yoga Again!

2008-05-04T02:33:00.002-07:00

Sunday 10:34 a.m.
So I was falling into and out of dreams for a couple of hours this morning. This is perhaps partly a consequence of drinking four beers last night. Even with that amount, you're not going to be sharp as a tack and jumping out of bed at six or seven in the morning.

I was lost as usual, but it wasn't in downtown Freetown. It was a most gigantic and wonderful country mansion with rooms the size of Superbowls and fabulous vistas wherever you looked. This was the Potala Palace or the Gormenghast of country houses.

I was trying to get back to the Domestic Bliss so we could get on a bus, but with my sense of direction ....we were still there when it turns out that this place is some gigantic public school. I ends up walking along a bit with Boris Johnson, the old Etonian who has just been elected Lord Mayor of London (by the stupid Englanders). So I says to him: You're Boris Johnson! When he says he is, I tell him I must be dreaming then, and he says I'm not. This is a very vivid dream, but I know I must be dreaming if Boris Johnson is there, so I try to see if I can fly, and jump up and down a few times, but I don't fly.

I was so pleased when I wakened up after that one, and was looking forward to dozing off again.

Then I'm back in the country house and it's a huge and affluent public school place now. There's a huge staircase and it's got hundreds and hundreds of public school boys on it (they all looked too old to be at public school) and the crush of them is terrible and things feel as if the situation might get a wee bit out of hand, not that I'm particularly worried. I can see the Domestic Bliss's brother Chris round the curve of the staircase and up there a bit. Then I see him standing beside me. I look back and forth, and when I see that he's in two places at once, I say to the Chris beside me: I must be dreaming. I' m once again very elated by this even although Chris tells me that I'm definitely not dreaming.

I tell him that we can get out of this crush and to just hold onto me. I put my head down and, like a mouse under a tablecloth, I push against this stream of public schoolboys ... this normally would be like paddling up a waterfall ... and with feelings of great elation emerge with Chris behind me in the freedom of open space. This is the performance of the impossible in dreamland.

What a happy, happy start to the day!

If you wanted to look on this dream as a comment the Labour Party going down the toilet in local government elections the other day .... if the nowhere people from nowhere land think they can saddle Scotland with a government stuffed full of proto-Thatcherite, old Etonians, well, maybe not this time, Jack! If Labour can't win in England, the vote on the left is for the SNP.

9:20 p.m.
Since my partner was out all day, I stayed in and read the papers, investigated ra bliss. Fabulous meditations there were, Jack!

I haven't been running much recently, but soon after she came in, I went out running. I was getting a bit stir crazy after being in a lobby for most of the day, and jogging through the beautiful, wonderful city was such a tonic.

My head was just so right for it this evening. No anxieties. I wasn't really trying hard. I knew everything was going to be alright and everything felt alright. I was on the four mile run which takes you up the five sections of hill as you look up to the Scott Monument, up Dundas Street. Trying to move lightly on the earth, even on the hills. Kind of effortlessly gliding in a way. I am so fortunate to have these feeling from physicality at 57 years old, fortunate to have them at all. I just loved that run this evening. What a fortunate creature I am, I am. What a fortunate creature I am!

Telling yourself that you're dreaming when you're walking about awake isn't all that different, is really the same, as telling yourself that your reality is illusory, or that emptiness is all there is.

Like images seen in a dream; thus must we regard all things. Nagarjuna. The Wall.

Sweet dreams to one and all!

Ris Wonderful Life!

2008-05-03T16:42:00.002-07:00

Sunday 00:43 a.m.
"Shadow boxing earlier in the day, figured I was ready for Cassius Clay. Fee Fi Foo Fum, look out, Cassius, here I come!" The Inimitable Bob.

My arm feels okay until I try to put it into certain positions. I haven't stood on my head for about five months. This is the longest time for over twenty years. Still ...

I went for a jog yesterday and did the six three minute rounds of shadow boxing this evening in the full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle. It wasn't too sharp, but I managed to go the distance. Thank God for the end of the diggings!!

You're still a fat basturn, Hotboy. Thanks for reminding me of that, Jack. You will stay a fat basturn unless you stop drinking beer, Hotboy. If you keep drinking beers every other night, you'll have to fight Two Ton Tony and not Marvelous Marvin. When I've had a few beers, I don't care who I'm going to figh, Jack!

Ah've never heard of da bums! Ah'll moida da bums whoever the are!

The wonderful day starts with the dreams. The dreams were very vivid, although not yet lucid at all. But they were so good that when you wakened up, you wanted to go to sleep to continue the dreams, the most enjoyable dreams.

I was talking to the kiddo about the shape of my life today, and how happy I am to be moving towards the black spot on the basis of so much bliss, the increments in ra bliss, and all the wonderful things that have been given to moi by ... it has to be a kind of grace, a something you cannot take any credit for. You've got to ask. The flatheids can take all the credit they like for the grief, sorrow, lamentations ... the suffering in this life, and the great spankings they will have to endure for being such ... flatheids.

Aren't you supposed to feel compassionate about the flatheids, Hotboy? I think you are, Jack. But eventually there is no this and there is no that. There will be no flatheids. But not if I keep hanging around with flatheids. It is a shame that they are so disturbed, funged up and bizarre, but I can't see how that can be my fault.

I wish I could describe ra bliss today, but I can't. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Ra Yoga in Daily Life!

2008-05-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

Saturday 22:09 p.m.
After complaining about having no one to meditate with .... the Domestic Bliss goes to a yoga class at St Ninian's Church and she says afterwards that they have a FREE meditation class. No use to her, of course, all that meditation malarkey, but I goes down today to check it out.

It was only an hour, but I couldn't have been more impressed at the way the boy did it. He's got a swami and everything, and is only about .... under thirty. But if that boy hasn't got down to ra bliss, he will be soon. A wee bit of pranayama, a stretch or two and about thirty five minutes meditation with him talking you through it. Very, very good way to spend an hour on a Saturday morning. A doddle for anyone, even someone with a dodgy shoulder!

I couldn't recommend it enough to folk from the beautiful, wonderful city! There were only three punters there, including moi. Much as I enjoyed it, I won't be going back. Cost £8.

I'm going out (of the room) now, and I may be some time. But I may be back! After giving up the Erdinger, the buggers put it on offer. Four bottles await! Hmmm?

Ra Auld Maw!

2008-05-02T16:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday 00:45 a.m.
I get to the auld maw's about ten to one. By just after half past one, she's lying on her bed and I'm sitting in a lotus at the bottom of her bed, and the CD thing is on. Today I put on the Dhammapada No 1 CD.

Mind precedes experience....

It really sounds a bit abstract compared to the last CD of the set from the devil worshipping, Dorje Shudgen schismists, which is really brilliant in its exposition, by the way. Got to hand it to the devil worshippers on that one.

I'm doing ra bliss. Because of the dynamic nature of the great vajrayana, the juju of jujus, ra bliss is a bit further on from the last time I was able to sit like this with the auld maw. We can't really leave the other family members, but have to chat in the living room when they show up when I'm there. Flatheids are just a pain in the arse. You can't just sit and do ra bliss with flatheids. They're a waste of human beingness, so they are!

The auld maw may not get ra bliss, but she lies there on top of her bed, and it seems she can do that forever. We're doing this, her listening or whatever, and me doing ra bliss for .... from the back of half one till ten past three. Hardly a word passes ..

During this ... I've had the most wonderful time. She's the only person I can do this with because everyone else I know is a fung moron!

Apart from the sensei and reverend, who sits around meditating with people ... so as soon as I win the lottery, I'll going to go to Arizona for a holiday. And I'm going to meditate with the sensei and reverend, and get a big shady hat and an umbrella and sit in the desert ... It's not the Nullabor Plain, but it is a desert. I could write this thing about Jacob Merryweather being in the desert much better if I'd actually been in one....

I'm giving up Erdinger. I've had IPA tonight, about four bottles, and at 4.4% I think I can sit up and meditate for hours and hours and hours. Because I don't have to do anything or see anyone who doesn't meditate, apart from the Domestic Bliss, till Tuesday. What a fortunate creature I am, I am. What a fortunate creature I am!

By the way, the buddha on the Dhammapada C.D. was most specific. He said if you cannot find a superior being to do the juju with, go for solitude. You just catch flatheidedness off flatheids. And wasn't it always thus!!

Ra Big Jambo Day!

2008-05-01T00:45:00.000-07:00

Thursday, Ist May. 8:46 a.m.
The Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid has declared the Ist of May to be Big Jambo Day. It was on the 1st of May, 1988 that the Domestic Bliss went back to work and I was left for the first time in sole charge of the kiddo. And it was on that day that the Big Jambo and Jeannie drove us down for my first visit to the Samye Ling. It was also the Big Jambo who introduced me to the Autobiography of a Yogi, which was very influential. Rest in Peace.

Of course, it's also Labour Day. Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we'll keep the red flag flying here!

10:58 p.m.
You can't explain about ra bliss to flatheids because they're flatheids, but ... when I got off the couch about four, it was pouring down and I sat in the lobby instead of going to the allotment. The Dalai Lama said that even when you are in the mandala, you will have to deal with the afflictive emotions.

Grieving and bliss. My face was wet with tears. I didn't mind. You have to grieve sometimes. It's cleansing. Such was ra bliss and the tears rolling down my face. So long as nobody's there to see you, it doesn't really matter. When someone you know commits suicide, there's such a sense of failure with the loss as well. All this during the startling bliss.

Filled with the spirit. What can you say? The priest once said that you're body was a temple of the Holy Ghost and that's why you shouldn't do bad things to yourself. The Holy Ghost, and kundalini and prana ...

I've been using as many Thursdays for meditation as I can since I became a part time worker four years ago. How they have helped! These days are my best days. The tears aren't a problem. Sometimes you're supposed to weep.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up the remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains, an' go to your Gawd like a soldier. Kipling.

The diggings have all been dug, Jack! Apart from a little band where the strawberries are growing, I've dug the whole bloody thing over the last month. You can't win. It's my penance. The weeds will overtake you in the end, but in the war against the couch grass, today is one nil to moi. And it has become my little piece of heaven. Everything looked wonderful this evening. The sky, the grass, and the robin that sat on a post right behind me and swooped down on the odd brown, glistening centipede unearthed. The daffodils are fading and the apple blossom is starting to bloom. All I have to do now for ages is keep the grass borders in order. The digging always kicks the shit out of me, but the allotment has never looked better than it did tonight. There is a satisfaction in this completion.

Rat Dream Yoga

2008-05-01T00:05:00.000-07:00

Thursday 8:15 a.m.
Dream yoga is one of the Six Yogas of Naropa. Since raising inner heat, the tummo, is the foundation practise, you probaby can't do dream yoga properly until you're good at that. Still, sober and straight going to bed, I thought I'd give it a go.

The wummin who owned the Holy Isle sold it cheap to the Samye Ling after she was told to sell it to the buddhists by the Virgin Mary in a dream. The lama flew over it once in a lucid dream when he was practising the Six Yogas in America.

You might be able to get into lucid dreaming by telling yourself you'll dream and be aware of your dreams before you go to sleep. Otherwise, you can tell yourself that you're dreaming while you're awake.

I think Descartes of the pineal gland thought your first philosophical step was to ask yourself if you were dreaming or not. I think therefore I am. I am therefore I do.

Do be do be do. Frank Sinatra.

Anyway, not a very successful experiment. Vivid, yes. Lucid, no. In the first dream, a dark shadow at the foot of the bed was squeezing my feet (I fell asleep in the yoga nidra position) and I got a bad case of the heeby jeebies trying to waken up to fight that. Then, I was involved in some horrorshow between the jews and the nazis living next door. Oh, no! The bomb! The bomb! The last one of this heavy menacing trio involved straightforward working class sectarianism starting with a kickabout in the street. Ally McCoist, the assistant manager of the Rangers, made an appearance in this one.

After eight hours in bed, I still feel knackered as well! Back to the drawing board.

I should add that I will be supporting the huns tonight in their attempt to reach a European final. Gone are the days when the team management, owners, football players, et al were steeped in masonry and orangeism. So I'm supporting the huns tonight and just hope the orange basturns among their support get the good doing they so richly deserve from the Italian polis! Once they get rid of the Act of Settlement, there will be nothing much to be an orange fascist basturn about. God save the Queen!

Ra Robin!

2008-04-30T11:53:00.002-07:00

Wednesday 7:55 p.m.
In the book Seven Years in Tibet, Heinrich Harrar (?) says the Tibetans weren't very good at getting on with the digging, partly because they tried to help the worms that were exposed by the work.

After lousy weather today, up the allotment was beautiful this evening. During the two hours I spent digging, a wee robin was in close attendance. It would come and go, come and go. Once I held an earthworm on my finger and thought I'd let it have the worm if it took it from there. It flew off and I covered the worm up. Then, it came back and it was a wee bit agitated. It was looking for the worm. Where is the worm, Hotboy?

They must have great eyesight, Robins. It was eating stuff I couldn't see; wee centipedes, slatter like things, etc. But it's a wee bit odd eyeballing a robin, so it is.

Christianity divorced us from nature, perhaps because Christians think human beings are the only living things with souls. And God gave man dominion over the birds of the air and .... the monkeys. Despite Darwin, we seem amazed at what they've found out recently about primates; the use of primitive tools, etc., and there has been great resistance to accepting that we're embedded in nature, are part of nature, and should watch what we're doing.

Thank god, we don't believe in anything, eh, Jack? We ate the planet. If we think the history of the twentieth century was pretty bloody, well, we aint seen nothing yet! You wouldn't want to be reborn in a lot of places in the next hundred years. Dearie me! Ignorance, greed and hate are the three baddies ... but it is the greed what did it, Jack.

After talking to Allan Guthrie about the kind of things agents do, I feel very calm about my prospects with regard to possible publications. James Bond, my secret agent, will do just what he said he'd do. He'll go through the books. If he thinks there's a chance, he'll tell me what he thinks is wrong, and I'll fix it.

I don't have to rush with anything. I don't have to worry about anything. In fact, I don't really have to do anything. I'll potter about with a wee bit of re-writing and concentrate on ra bliss.

Apart from seeing the auld maw on Friday, I have nothing lined up. Now, I'm going to do ra bliss in the bath and listen to the Chelsea/Liverpool second half. I feel tired from the diggings, but a most fortunate creature right now!

Ris Life!

2008-04-29T14:50:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 22: 52 p.m.
Well, I remember someone asking me in my fourth year at uni what I was going to be. I said I'm going to be moi! I did not say I am going to be a car mechanic, or a plumber, or a university servitor, or a famous author. I said I was going to be moi! As good a moi as I could be.

I am well pissed off now that I have had to ask Onan the Bavarian to do things to my webpage to disguise myself ....

This bloggy had about 31 hits yesterday. Most of them were probably spiders and spam robots. I reckon about four folk hit this blog regularly, and I am glad of that, and they have been a joyous thing for me. But ...

What's it going to be, Jack? Let's get the hut in the boat once more, Hotboy! Let's start rowing. We were happy in the Unheard of and McDonald Islands, Jack! So we were! Row, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream! Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

What about the flatheids, Hotboy? I didn't know anything about ra bliss, Jack, when I started meditating. There's nothing you can do for flatheids. Even the smartest flatheids are too dumb too meditate. If they were going to meditate, they would meditate. No point in waiting for the flatheids. Just head for ra bliss!!!

Wednesday
It was the footie what did it. The best laid plans .... got in four bottles of Erdinger last night to watch Manchester United progress to the final of the European Cup. After that I decided I was going to abandon this bloggy and start again, but ..... what's the point? Blogging is very ephemeral. One burst of solar wind and it'll all disappear anyway! Blog on!

Ris Bloggeration!

2008-04-29T06:34:00.000-07:00

Tuesday
I've spent quite some time editing this bloggy and the previous one ... taking out references to the kidsbook and the one before. Blogging used to be such fun! Now, I've got to worry about stupid basturn editors reading it, and such like. I thought it was bad enough when the schoolgirls were after me. Also, Onan the Bavarian has had to do sterling work on the useless blinking webpage to disguise it. Crumbs, crivens and help ma boab!

I don't want to take the webpage down because occasionally it gets hit from a couple of ebook directories I inputted ... fung putted ... basturns the lot of them!

The other blog and this one does get hits from folk looking for the 6 dharmas of Naropa, vase breathing, deity yoga and whatnot, so I don't want to stop blogging about that. There aren't a lot of drunken bums doing this vajrayana juju, you know. Onan says the webpage is probably getting hit by spiders. Fung spiders from cyberspace! Bad enough the fung spam robots.

Hotboy, if it wasn't for the spam robots, where would you be? Fair play to the spam robots, Jack. If it wasn't for you, I'd be talking to myself, wouldn't I?

Now that I've been paid again, the cunning plan for this month is to give it all to the credit card basturns and stay cashless, and beerless and bob hopeless, at least for as long as possible. My capsulitis shoulder is a lot less sore now and I can get back into shadowboxing and running now that the diggings have only two big diggings left in them.

Are you going back in the ring, Hotboy? I hope so, Jack. I'm at supermiddleweight at the moment, just about. I've got to go straight down to lightmiddleweight as fast as possible because the sensei and reverend sent me a tubey thing of Marvelous Marvin's greatest hits. In the video Alan Minter waves him in for a brawl. Big mistake! Big, big mistake. No, we're not fighting Marvin Hagler. Not for all the tea in China

Ra Nova Scotia

2008-04-28T03:19:00.000-07:00

Monday
I can't do lucid dreaming, which might be a lot of fun, but I tried last night, going to bed sober and straight. I didn't work, but I wakened up a couple of times through the night and seemed to be emerging from heavenly dreams. This is a big improvement from dreaming that you're lost in the slums of Nairobi, I'll tell you.

When I was taking refuge with Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche down at the Samye Ling, he gave us a wee talk. One of the things that really struck me was when he said that when you owned something, you should always think that you've borrowed it, that it wasn't really yours. I assume this is to deal with attachment, clinging, craving, and whatnot.

I've often thought that borrowing books from libraries and giving them back was communism's last stand.

The previous Panchen Lama was, I think, quite excited by the opportunities offerred by the Chinese revolution at first. The commies are atheists, of course, and so are the buddhists, no believing in a creator god anyway. It's utopian, so it is, putting these two philosophies together. Shame the Chinese turned out to be flatheids.

Since the Traverse artistic director has changed, there's no free tickets to first nights anymore. The end of an era! But last night I went to a preview performance of a new John Byrne play because you get in for half price. Much enjoyed it. I think it's the fourth part of the Slab Boys trilogy, called Nova Scotia, and I thought it was really good. I liked it better than the other three. I laughed a couple of times which is good going for me. Be better tonight, it's real first night. Great that John Byrne can still be bothered. Great that whoever persuaded him, persuaded him!

The only performer I recognised was Gerda Stevenson. Gerda acted in a radio play of mine a long time ago and showed what a class act she is once again. A stellar quine, that one!

Later:
I spent several hours today taking any mention of the blissy book out of all posts in this or the old blog. Dearie me! What tedium! That'll teach me!

Ra Signings

2008-04-26T04:35:00.000-07:00

12:40 p.m.
I had a most fascinating time talking to Allan Guthrie in the Filmhouse Bar yesterday morning. Allan has had four books published in the last three or four years and is an agent for twenty writers, so he knows the writing business back to front. He's conspicuously smart and will make pots of money, I'm sure.

Somewhat bizarrely, I was the first writer he ever met ...when he was working the till in Waterstone's one day eleven years ago, and I asked him how many copies of Are You Boys Cyclists? had sold. This kind of info is accessible at the till. Anyway, I remembered the conversation because when I asked him if that was a reasonable number for a first book, he told me it wasn't the writer's first book. We had this conversation without me saying I was Hotboy. I was amazed that anyone knew I'd written City Whitelight, which had been published over a decade before.

He was very kind about Are You Boys Cyclists? which he seems to have read twice. He had copies of both books with him, which he asked me to sign. This was a bit weird.

He said the webpage was not a help at all and I should take it down. Since it is a useful repository, I've asked Onan The Bavarian to change the title, etc., so that you can't google me and find that.

He also said agents can't really sell two books by the same author at the one time and made me understand my agent's position much better. I don't think I'll be able to refer to him by name again in this blog. I think the best known agent is James Bond and I'll call him that, if anything.

Brian Wilson and I donned the viking helmets and rampaged through the beautiful, wonderful city last night after meeting at a memorial service for Angus McSorley, a character in the book I'm re-writing at the moment. I have vague visions of falling out of one of them bike rickshaws. I really enjoy binge drinking with Brian Wilson though I know I shouldn't. Bad boy!

10:40 p.m.
Sober and straight on Saturday night. That's the way to do it!

The lama said he allowed his students three hours sleep a night, and that sitting up in a lotus. Hmmm? I'll try sitting up in bed tonight and maybe wait till I fall over.

Would you like a piece of advice, Hotboy? What, Jack? Don't tell folk who don't know you well enough to realise you are crazy that your main ambition in life is to emanate as a deity. Allan Guthrie looked a bit phased by that. But it is my ambition, Jack! Just keep it under your hat, Hotboy.

You see a lot of sky if you look up the slope and pause from the diggings. A blazingly beautiful sunset tonight. Sunsets and birdsong in the middle of the city. What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Ra Changed Days!

2008-04-24T14:30:00.000-07:00

Thursday 10:32 p.m.
The folk upstairs were the granny and grandad, then the last daughter, her man and the two beautiful wee boys. The McCools. In the Fullwood Foundry the ladle full of molten iron spilled at the wrong time and the men went running, and some of them didn't make it. One of them was Etta McCool's man, John Murray. A quiet guy. He used to walk passed me as I sat on our step, and he'd say hullo. He was the young family joe from upstairs. Ninety five percent burns. He only lasted a few days after that.

His eldest son was brought down to sit with us and watch the telly while all the grown ups were going to hospital. He'd never been down to our bit before. I'll never forget the way he sat there without moving and how he stared at the telly for a couple of hours while his family went and waited for John Murray to die. Just sitting there, perfectly parked.

They don't have the pits, or the foundrys, or steelworks in Bellshill anymore.

When I left uni, I got a job in the No2 Mill of the old Stewart and Lloyd's, where they rolled the giant tubes that maybe you would sink into the oil wells. A couple of times I walked through the No1 mill where they make the steel and saw the big vats where the steel was made. I remember thinking what it would be like if the giant vat tipped over and you had to run for your life. You stumble and fall.

Today, as I was walking to the auld maw's, this wummin was crossing paths with me and these two young guys, maybe twenty years old. It's Thursday lunchtime, about quarter to one. Into the mobile phone: Aye, here's Shuggie and Jim. They've got a carry oot. He's got two bottles of Buckfast ... the tale of Buckie and bottles of cider....

I worked in the steelworks for a year after I left uni partly because I wanted to see what it was like to be a joe from Bellshill who had to work there, the three shifts, etc. Hmmm? I should write about that again after I finish the next unpublishable book.

One of these days maybe I'll write something worth reading. Of course, it'll be free.

Rose Commuters!

2008-04-23T07:52:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 3:55 p.m.
As you're standing at the bus stop in Princes Street of a morning, you're not going to see many happy, smiley faces. Blank, or at best neutral, going to the jobbie. I'm not smiling either. Sometimes when I'm really not smiling, I try to cheer myself up by thinking how long I would have to stand there before someone passed me who had even the faintest connection with ra bliss, or any access to it at all. Almost the whole population of Edinburgh could walk passed me and I'd still be standing there.

The world is full of sad basturns, so it is, Jack! The really weird thing is that you can become a clergyman or woman and stand up there telling folk all about God and Jesus, and not have a fung clue about ra bliss. Dearie me!

One of the reasons for writing this bloggy was to let anyone fortunate enough to land here know that it isn't all that difficult to surf the oceans of bliss, given a little time and effort.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the most fortunate creature of them all?

Apart from being skint, that is. My chances of getting any money for the short comic novel are now, I think, almost nil, at least for the foreseeable. It's been a year and a half since I finished it, and still no takers, despite the literary agent's best endeavours. I don't think there's anyone left to punt it to. There were enquiries about a kidsbook at the London Book Fair, so that one is still afloat. You'd think someone might be interested in a kidsbook which was basically an allegory of the Chinese invasion of Tibet, but I suspect the kidsbook business has been sewn up by the big literary agencies. At least, that's what I was told by Nicky Singer when I was trying to flog it on my own. But who knows?

If I'm going to meditate full time and do big retreats, I'm going to have to get a break with The Real McCoy. I've got Jacob Merryweather in the desert at the moment, so I could be finished that in a bit of a rush if I just put in some time with it. So that's what I'm going to start doing soon after I finish here.

When I fix my gaze on anything, the visual field goes very strange very quickly these days. I know I've mentioned this before, but it's becoming more pronounced. It's a blur of brighter lighting effects with distances much foreshortened, etc. For a moment today I thought it might be possible to project a reality onto this light palette. I was gazing at the Kalachakra Mandala at the time, but going from this notion to actually being in the Kalachakra Mandala seems a long, long way away.

Before you even go anywhere near that, you should be able to sit facing the Medicine Buddha, the front visualisation, while you are the Medicine Buddha. So you're there and here at the same time. I imagine this might help you understand how much of what's supposed to be outside yourself is projection.

There is something out there, Jack, but it's really hard to say what it is, or even what it's made of. You just need to be rational to know that. Emptiness isn't really a belief. Obviously, nothing exists in the manner of its appearance.

Jacob Merryweather is a far, far nicer joe than moi. Unlike the short comic novel, which made me mad, this one is really a wee bit of a joy to re-write.

9:30 p.m.
Being up the allotment tonight was lovely. Watching the sun go down, it was a wee bit cold and damp and very nice indeed. There are now seven beds of onions and garlic, and only about a sixth left to dig and plant. I'm looking forward to getting back to completely useless physical activities like running and shadow boxing.

Working on The Real McCoy, I discovered that twenty odd pages are missing from the copy on my webpage. Dearie me. So the ending there doesn't make any sense. I doubt if anyone has ever downloaded it anyway and, fortunately, I have these pages and will have to type them in. Apart from that, the book feels nearly finished, or will be finished far faster than I expected.

Rat Waiting For Goddo!

2008-04-21T05:22:00.000-07:00

Monday 1:23 p.m.
While they were trashing the reputations of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir on the radio this morning, I remembered looking up a definition of existentialism once, and what a big effect it had on me.

Once I believed in God, then I was an agnostic, then I decided I was an atheist, Thomism and the first cause argument notwithstanding.

I might have written about this before in The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf.

So the definition said that an atheistic existentialist was in the position of a person with their toes on the edge of an cliff, looking down into the abyss of personal annihilation. When there's no goddo ... when you're dead, you're dead.

I said this state led to feelings of angst, which is perhaps some kind of generalised anxiety or alienation.

The first noble truth is the truth of dukka, which can be interpreted in this way.

To get over this angst, your existentialist tried to find methods of connection, such as, humping folk (Moravia) or becoming communists. (Sartre)

In the first turning of the wheel, you'd ask who it is who is suffering from the angst, and hopefully deal with this false sense of self.

To be religious is to know that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. L. Wittgenstein. The Wall.

I found this definition when I was working as a library assistant in a university around here. I got the job because at the interview I was asked if I had any mental problems. On looking at the two guys interviewing me, I wondered if mental problems were a requirement for getting this job, and told them I didn't really have any mental problems, but I was a member of an amateur boxing club and didn't know if that counted or not.

The physical attributes of Angus McSorley in The Real McCoy, which I'm supposed to be re-writing this afternoon, are based on one of these interviewers. I heard today that he'd passed away after a fall. Michael Wills, one time deputy librarian at Heriot Watt. What a great guy he was! Everything I knew about him was flashing through my head this morning and nothing but good things arose.

What can I say about the meditations this morning? We're not waiting for goddo around here, Jack! March on! March on!

Rat Talent!

2008-04-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

Sunday 6:52 p.m.
When I started this bloggy business, I thought I could stop raving at flatheids I knew about ra bliss. I can have whole conversations with folk now and never mention it once. But someone at the start of this weekend mentioned it to me. They said they'd tried to meditate by repeating a sound to themselves for seven minutes, but couldn't last that long.

It brought it all back, Jack. When I started trying to meditate, I thought ten minutes with your eyes shut muttering mumbo jumbo to yourself seemed like an awful long time.

One of the reasons I started to write when I left uni was that I'd realized by then that I hadn't any god given talent. Prodigies have natural talent. You need natural talent to be a musician, or a painter, or to do hard sums. I didn't think you needed much to have a bash at writing novels.

Of course, I've been singularly unsuccessful in writing novels, having made about two and a half grand from prose in thirty odd years of endeavour. Still, it gave me some shelter from doing anything sensible with my life like having a career and toadying up to the evil bourgeois.

I haven't done any writing since I stopped work on Wednesday, but I've done as much meditating as I can. Once I would have spent all that time writing. But for meditating you need even less talent. You can be as thick as two short planks and be a brilliant meditator. All you have to be able to do is sit and think. You don't even have to know the alphabet!

After you've repeated the mumbo jumbo to yourself for a while, something else will begin to arise. Eventually, a great envelope of ra bliss will arise and you will then be a truly fortunate creature like moi.

Someone sent me an advert for a 15 hours a week jobbie in the jail. There isn't enough cash in it even for me, but I am sorely tempted. Being a librarian in the jail is but one little step away from getting the jail. They'd maybe put me in solitary for my own protection since my brother was once a prison officer. Solitary confinement has some attractions when all you know are flatheids who don't even know they're flatheids. It would be horrible at first, of course, but after a wee while .... what oceans of bliss there would be to surf in!

I cycled up Kirk Brae today on the way to a most enjoyable visit to our friend with the MS and I'm too knackered now to dig, but I'm away to the hut. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Ra Froggy!

2008-04-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

Saturday 7:40 p.m.
I dug up a frog today. What a surprise! Do frogs live under the ground? Do they hibernate? Anyway, it was about the size of my thumb and yellowy green. So I'm lifting the ground with my fork and letting the soil fall through so I can remove any couch grass and such like nuisance basturn interlopers when there's this frog sitting there. It was alive, but disinclined to hop off so I picked it up and draped a half mangled sod over it after putting it to the side. I'll look and see if it's still there tomorrow.

One whole side of my allotment is now dug and planted. Five beds of onions now lie below the shallow graves where the half tatties are holed up. That's about 600 onions. There's little more than a half of the other side left to dig. If any nice middle class people who think that manual labour is somehow romantic would like to dig the rest for me, then I won't charge them very much. The Subsistence Farmer Experience! Hours and hours of digging fun! Dig the stress out! Just leave your wallet with the man in the hut!

11:41 p.m.
Sober and straight on Saturday night. That's the way to do it! The meditations today just got better and better. The one between nine and ten tonight was something else. Roll on tomorrow!

Ra beddy byes!

2008-04-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

Saturday 00:40 a.m.
At the end of the day, what it comes down to is this: Can you or can you not, do ra bliss!?

Well, not so much after all the Guiness! Great evening though. Nice with so many folk who are like me, extended family.

Take a breath! Do not succumb. Tommorrow is a bright, shining wonderment, and on my own ... into ra bliss!

Rem Analytical Meditations!

2008-04-18T04:40:00.000-07:00

Friday 12:42 p.m.
The Hotboy project will never be anything other than a work in (slow!) progress, but practising meditation is supposed to make you happier. If you are a Hotboy Madyamika and you can surf the oceans of bliss, at least sometimes, well, you're not going to get much happier than that, at least in those moments.

As you stumblebum towards breathlessness and ecstasy, it could be said you are happier than when you are in mere bliss, but this equates happiness with experiencing wonderful sensations. Anyway, it's quite possible to resume normal life and be very quickly once more the greetin', crabbit faced basturn of yore.

Analytical meditations are supposed to help you with this; help you become more happy in your grotesque bourgeois version of existence, and so they will!

Does all this take forever, Hotboy? I think, Jack, that it probably takes the whole of your life. But if you'd rather live like a self satisfied moron; if you'd rather look for sweeties to suck; if you think it's okay to continue as a greetin' faced, crabbit basturn, just keep your head up your backside. You'll have plenty of company.

Once the lama told me, when I was asking him about the great vajrayana, that I'd get "everything" from calming meditations. I had my ten seconds of non-self and emptiness before I knew anything about analytical meditations.

I thought it was just thinking about stuff and concentrating on that kind of thing, whereas I was looking to widen the gap between thoughts. The sweeties I was looking for didn't seem to be in thoughts as such.

Ultimately, losing your false sense of self is what is going to make you happy, but this is probably not going to be easy, or happen overnight. Of course, it might be for some lucky basturns. For the rest of us, it seems to me that the more you think about this "false sense of self", which is supposed to be what is causing the suffering, the more difficult losing it seems to be.

I was going through this routine one day of denying the existence of an "I" in the body, senses, perceptions, consciousness and mental formations, which include ideations and volitional impulses, when it struck me that it was in everything I looked at. I was trying to narrow this down to mental formations, thoughts, but it dawned on me that this false sense of self was everywhere, in everything I looked at, totally bedded down in my perceptions. If the computery thing seems separate from you, I think that's because of your false sense of self.

The mind game is the only game in town.

When I had the ten seconds of non-self and emptiness, the false sense of self was gone, but it came back. At least, this was a huge incentive to keep meditating, but you want this false sense of self to fung off eventually and, hopefully, not be there at all. Then you will have serenity, contentment, satiation and true happiness.

As they say, you might not be inducing retributions to your own wee self, since at last it has gone, and then you can do what you like as long as your motivation is sound, which it should be since great compassion for the flatheids is supposed to accompany this transformation of perspective. Bring on the dancing girls, beer, drugs!

I wish sometimes I'd forced the kiddo to meditate. There's no reason why you can't get your mind sorted by the time you're thirty odds, which is when I started. What a great life you could have after that!

I had a most exhilerating cycle in the wind and rain back from visiting Shiva last night. He's off the fags, so it's reefer madness all the way. Sometimes I'm concerned about the kiddo being a flatheid all her life like everybody else, but last night I got a full face image of her in my head. It's a big smiling baw heid. Then it interchanged with the face of the lama I used in my meditations, then went back to her. I thought: she looks a bit Tibetan! The wee fat baldy guy has a big smiling baw heid. It was as if all the accumulations of worriedness about her just disappeared. That kind of relief makes you more happy.

The first full day I get to myself is Monday. Be nice to keep down the collateral damage to the nervous system over the next couple of days. The only real difficulty is tonight. I suspect I'll be up shit creek without a paddle as soon as Froggy McDuck rings the doorbell!

Ris Wonderful Life!

2008-04-16T16:24:00.000-07:00

Thursday 9:33 a.m.
Just deleted a post from apres the footie last night.

All the way there I wasn't going to buy a carry-out, but succumbed at the last off-license. Though the forces of darkness seem once more in the ascendant, the huns got put to the sword with practically the last kick of the game. What joy!

I've dug and planted about two thirds of my allotment now. Yesterday I bought 700 or so onions from the Botanic Gardens shop and much enjoyed the stroll through the gardens.

I've been keeping a diary/journal since I was seventeen, but the last book of about 200 pages lasted three years, which shows how little I've been writing in it since I took up blogging. Hmmm? Blogging is more fun, but it's not the same.

I wonder where this blog is. Where is it kept? Does it have any actuality at all? Someday I'll switch on this computery thing and it won't be there anymore. The journals are kept in an old battered cardboard suitcase my Uncle Dan took to Australia in the 1950s. They're under my bed.

I'm going into the lobby now to meditate till lunchtime. After that, I'll cycle to the respite hospital in Liberton. Despite the beer, I feel good today and here comes ra bliss!!

Ra No Jobbie Days Ahead!

2008-04-16T10:02:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 18:04
A third of kids at bog standard comprehensives by the time they reach fourteen do not reach "expected" standards of reading and half do not reach "expected" standards of writing. This means they cannot read and write very well. Of course, being able to spell is well beyond anyone's expectations these days.

The last book I wrote was partly about this. I hasn't been published yet, and probably never will. If you want me to email you a copy, just ask.

Half the kids who come into my place of work at breaktime and lunchtime are Polish. I've been told how they don't have much in Polish schools, but you don't need much. The Polish kids I've dealt with all seem to be able to spell and do all the stuff that my generation were taught to do in school.

By the way, I heard of this PHd student who stopped doing tutorials at Strathclyde Uni because the essays she was getting handed were doing her brain in. Screeds of words without decent punctuation, paragraphing, spelling, etc. It was a history course she was teaching.

It's amazing how kids these days get such fantastic results for their exams when they can't spell, or punctuate, or write, or count, or anything.

The education system in this town is a blight on working class kids, so it is. But I don't have to go back to the jobbie till next Tuesday, so hurrah for that.

Anyway, to amuse myself I've been trying to learn some useful Polish phrases. Nie biegaj ... don't run. Nie bij sie ... don't fight. The wee Polish lassie just takes the pencil out of your hand and writes this down. Scottish kids get told they'll get written work to do in class as a punishment. Anyway .... the great thing about wee kids is that sometimes they laugh so much that they fall down and roll about, literally. So today they were high as kites, and like Mexican jumping beans. I stand in the middle of this melee and ask this kid to write down the Polish for don't jump on tables. I suspected the kid was taking the piss, but I was up for it anyway. Nie hojaj po stole! I shouted in the worst Polish accent anybody has probably ever heard. All over the shop, the Poles exploded with laughter, and did this falling down and rolling around stuff. So I shouted it out another couple of times. I wonder what it means, maybe fung off the lot of yous. It might have just been my accent.

Rem Evil Ways!

2008-04-15T01:11:00.000-07:00

Tuesday
Taking anything which disturbs your central nervous system is a complete no-no when it comes to progressing in this juju. If you're not going to meditate before going to sleep - which you should! - you can get away with having maybe three bottles of Erdinger or eating a wee bit of soapbar ... not enough of anything to have much effect the next morning.

Falling occasionally into open graves and carousing in general with flatheids is very bad indeed. Doing that for a couple of nights in a row is ... well, it's really a terrible blight on ra bliss. Basically, it probably comes under the heading of greed. Greed, anger and ignorance are all to be diminished somehow.

My latest cunning plan was to be so skint for the last two weeks of the month that I couldn't afford to be bad, and I am right now cashless.

Just about all social engagements are regarded as obstacles to me these days. I only socialise with flatheids with bad habits. The only joe I know who doesn't drink, smokes like a lum.

Froggy McDuck is coming to see me on Friday night, all the way from the South of France. His brother Beef will probably show up as well. Brian Wilson is teetotal in comparison to this crowd.

Just say no, Hotboy! I'd have to leave the country, Jack. I'm like a rabbit in the headlights right now. I need flatheid repellant. Oh well. Once more into the breach, dear friends. I'll stay straight and sober till Friday and then just wait and see.

The London Book Fair is on at the moment. If I only had a grand, I could be a millionaire! If I only had a grand, I could spend six weeks of the summer at the Samye Ling. I haven't been there for nearly a year. Flatheid respite!

Ra Respite!

2008-04-12T17:50:00.000-07:00

1:52 a.m.
I got told the wummin had MS by Shiva when I was about 26. When I heard this, I sat down half drunk on the wall which runs along Dalgety Avenue, and said she was lucky her husband was a tim, because he would stay with her if he was a tim. It shows how awful it is when you mix with the evil bourgeios that you have to say re-assuring things like that to yourself because obviously your husband should stay with you whatever comes along.

So I will go and see our friend with the MS tomorrow.

I know she doesn't like being there. Maybe you get left on your own. I can talk to her for about an hour. What the wummin needs is company. A dead rat! Ah, what company that would be! So tomorrow I'll stare out the window after speaking for a bit, and do ra bliss, and tell her about ra bliss, and just spend as long in her company as I can. Previously, I'm in there for an hour. I just have to calm down and be there. The babes isn't going to talk back anyway.

Ra Auld Maw!

2008-04-12T15:48:00.000-07:00

Saturday 23:51 p.m.
My auld maw is 89 years old tomorrow. The trains don't run to Bellshill on Sundays, so I won't be there.

I started intervening in my auld maw's life when she couldn't get to sleep. She'd had a lung haemorrhage and had been a bit old and ill. Everything seemed to cheer up for the auld maw when she started listening to the yoga nidra tape.

About twenty past one, the third CD from the devil worshippers goes on, and I must admit, the description of emptiness on it is superb. About two, the CD stops and I look over and up at the auld maw and she's not moving, but staring straight ahead, lying there in the lion pose on her bed.

The auld maw is the last of her primary school class to be alive. The auld maw can remember standing beneath the banner in Mossend at the start of a march during the General Strike.

Here's to the auld maw! Happy birthday!

Ra Sorry Heid!

2008-04-12T05:38:00.002-07:00

Saturday 1:40 p.m.
Most thoughts aren't worth thinking, but usually it doesn't matter these days what your thoughts are like before you sit down to meditate. Today I was a bit slow off the mark, and feeling a bit fashed and bashed after Brian Wilson visited me last night.

Gin? Why did he buy gin? I wish all my chummies took illegal drugs!

But as soon as I sat down, I soared away in ra bliss. Flatheids only get flatheidedness, sleep and dreaming. It was wonderful to be able to move away from the mild hangover thoughts and go into ra bliss. The too dumb to meditate can't do that, no matter how gifted they may be. It's a shame really about flatheids, so it is.

The amazing bliss and warmth have moved on and turned my day around. I'm off to the diggings now.

8:50 p.m.
Sometimes it's alm0st worth staying British for the BBC. Well done to Dan Cruickshank and BBC2 for putting on the Lost World Of Tibet tonight. What a treat! It was really a show about the Dalai Lama in some ways, with lots of old colour film of Tibet, the Dalai Lama doing his final exams, etc.

I owe an awful lot to the Tibetans down at the Samye Ling. A literary agent will be trying to hustle two books of mine (I hope) at next week's London Book Fair, and both of them are products of my contact with Tibetans. That's the least that I owe.

I think my root guru was in a party of over three hundred trying to escape Tibet when the shit hit the fan, and only about thirteen of them survived the journey. If I can get some money from writing the two books, I will put my head in his hands. Allah Akbar.

I was planting shallots today. To plant anything other than tatties, I dig enough to straddle. So I'm straddling the earth today and planting the shallots, trying to do as much juju throughout as I can. Then I straighten up, as you do, and bending from the waist does something, and the colours start to be shimmering and the world looks more luminescent and less concrete. Perhaps when things work through, I will have this view. I don't know if I could live with the view I had on my ten seconds of non-self and emptiness, but that one I could live with.

Ra normal joe!

2008-04-09T15:34:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 23:50 p.m.
I was watching this programme about gifted children. Let's hear it for the common man! I am dead ordinary. I always told myself I was completely normal. In fact, the norm. You don't want to be gifted as much as supported. Hut management is everything.

I kept digging. It's another addiction. The personage to the south is really taking something out on the ground. There are now about 220 little holes with half tatties in each hole. Plus a mound of couch grass and sods, and bits of half burnt paper, and old, discarded tatties. My money is on the detritus. You just get in the way of stuff wanting to grow.

It's four years since I walked off the jobbie and sat in the hut, and the breath became somehow connected with ra bliss, at least, sometimes. Due to the abysmal efforts at self control, the progress since then has been .... no, it hasn't. I'd be much happier if I didn't do bad things because the thoughts are badly framed, but the other thing is the other thing, and it just seems to be rolling a long. I do meditate a lot, but I am a total disgrace. Bad boy!

Ra Holidays!

2008-04-09T04:58:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 1 p.m.
Oh, how good it is to be moi right now! Apres the jobbie, normally these days it looks quite good, but today ... today .... today ... it's just a lot better. There is almost a clear view till Sunday night since the Domestic Bliss has gone off to Barcelona with the kiddo. I have to visit the auld maw on Friday and will see our friend with the MS who is going once more into respite care. But it's ra bliss, Jack! What a fabulous amount of ra bliss there will be! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Ra Different Strokes

2008-04-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

Tuesday
This was sent to me from Michelle in Spango. It's a talk by a brain scientist about having a stroke and what it's like to have no left side brain imput. Fabulous talk! I'll try to link it and it won't work. Clicky here. Sorry, I can't get it to work. The URL is www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU. This effort might have been a mistake!

Ra Sunday!

2008-04-06T04:30:00.000-07:00

Sunday 12:32 p.m.
You might waken up like your usual flatheid; a wee bit grumpy and groggy, with that generalised feeling of mild dissatisfaction and frustration. You know you have to start pulling yourself together now.

I know it is possible to go to sleep in ra bliss and emerge once more out of ra bliss, but this rarely occurs with moi since my non-meditating behaviour leaves much to be desired.

But almost immediately after you start into the juju, a great glowing globule of ra bliss arises and it's as if thoughts will only bounce off ineffectually and not penetrate to any degree. There is a peacefulness and some sense of serenity accompanying this great glowing globule of ra bliss, and then you put a vase breath in there ..... and after an hour or so passes, you have to get up and the memory of ra bliss starts to fade immediately, but you know that there is nothing but nothing which could ever be as wonderful as ra bliss.

And so I expect the day to go on doing ra bliss then keeping the flatheid in me occupied. It's baltic again and there has been snowings.

10:20 p.m.
Let's be joyful that I have got a jobbie to go to tomorrow! Hurrah! Hurrah!

I haven't socialised with any of my deep dear friends since Tuesday evening. I've probably meditated for about twenty five hours since then until now. Today I donned the full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle and did six three minute rounds. But I felt alright and did some diggings as well. The fight back against the evil demon nicotine is underway, and all's right with the world.

2008-04-05T14:37:00.000-07:00

Saturday 22:14 p.m.
It's not so often it happens, but sometimes you just want to sit. I sat all day, and then indulged, and now I just want to sit. You should be me. Being me is sometimes fabuloso. Sometimes when I forget to disbelieve everything, I get upset. But I have totally wonderful and amazing moments in the aftereffects of the vase breathings these days . These are just a congromeration of fantastic and unbelievably wonderful sensations, but surely mere signposts on the way to ra bliss of blisses, and beyond ra bliss. Now, I will retire to the lobby and get totally out of my face on air!

Ra Reefer Madness!

2008-04-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

Friday 9:20 p.m.
Two full days without any people. It was wonderful. I should not now tell yous about the outstanding bliss because ... inchoateness.

I decided to stop reading the Scotsman a long time ago. I used to read books and had a look at the reviews on a Saturday, even although I knew it was a freelance cheapie. Then, one day there was a review of Michaele (?) Tournier's autobiography. I was a fan at this time. The reviewer started by explaining that the book was really about his books, but the reviewer had never heard of Mr Tournier and hadn't read any of his books. In the same review section there was a review of a boxing book by a woman who started her review by saying how much she hated boxing...

I don't know why I bought it today. I'm reading it whilst waiting for the train to take me to Bellshill...

It's a piece all about skunk factories, and all these criminals coming from Vietnam to Scotland, and what a dearie, dearie me all that is.

Then he says how the plants can harvest four times a year. This is an expert. This shit palimpsets into people's heids. Fabulous plants though. You chop them down and smoke them and they spring up again! If you had the byre, you could harvest plants four times a year, but not the same plants.

It's a police press handout about how well they are doing and how we should watch out. The writer couldn't be bothered translitering it properly.

Well, did it make you go schizophrenic, Hotboy? After smoking a half ounce of it over the last week, I must say that it is really quite good. But a terrible gateway drug. I am now definitely a nicotine addict. Again. So it's back to the drawing board, except for the amazingness of ra bliss. Since further and further it moves on and in, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Rem Undulating Rows!

2008-04-03T11:57:00.000-07:00

Thursday 8:00 p.m.
There are now eleven rows of tatties down one side of the allotment and nine rows down the other. A personage came walking by and stopped and inspected the rows. She said there were little holes all the way along. Why was that? I said I found it aesthetically pleasing. She asked if there were little tatties down all the little holes. I said there were. She asked if the hole would kind of collapse in. I said I had no idea. I supposed the rain might collect in the holes. I told the woman that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But whatever it is certainly kicks the crap out of you. After only two hours of digging, I came thinking: I'm knackered. Completely fung knackered!

Ra Beautiful, wonderful day!

2008-04-02T08:18:00.001-07:00

Wednesday 4:19 p.m.
When you have to put up with our winters, you can really appreciate a day like today. Blue skies, daffodils everywhere, and the birds hopping about, tweeting their heads off. I was actually enjoying the digging.

Now there are eleven long, thin, undulating shallow graves down one side of the allotment, and four down the other side.

Sometimes one pauses, and looks up. As you stand straight, there is a hint of this breath sheath thing emerging, and the lovely colours kind of pulsate and shimmer a wee bit. The world was just a gorgeous place this afternoon.

23:54 p.m.
I moved from the lobby to the living room when the Domestic Bliss came in, so I could keep her company during Desperate Housewives. Says I: this might be the best hour of my life. Of course, I'd have my eyes closed and the noise blockers on; plus the blasts of noisy vase breathing interupting everything.

'A dead rat! Ah, what company that would be!' The Great Samuel.

The aftereffects of the vase breathing were just so fantastic in the lobby. Then another brilliant, brilliant hour. Just amazingly beaming with ra bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

And tomorrow is all mine! Mine! Mine, I tell you!

Ra Discoursing!

2008-04-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

Tuesday 23:43 p.m.
Speaking to flatheids over the course of more than two hours without recourse to drink or drugs is enough to make me lose the will to live. It used to be the same long times ago with straights. The nicety nice. Folk sitting, having cups of tea and looking nervous, for hours and hours and hours. And that was just moi!

After having two full days at the jobbie ... there's nobody there, Jack. Just me and the computery thing and the passage of time. I say hello once a day ... I really feel the need for some empowerment.

So you're skint. Being skint isn't really too much of a problem if you can just tell theflatheids to fung off. Being skint, if you're trying to be nice, is a misery. My problems with money don't involve the money, they involve having to do things on account of trying to be nice with the rich basturns, and the evil bourgeois, and the flatheids.

I want to be skint. It would be better if everyone around me was as skint as me, and then they would go back into their burrows, and get depressed, and never come out again. I don't want to be skint when I feel that I have to justify myskintness to folk. I'm trying to tell them to fung off and leave me alone. I'm trying to be nice. I really hate nice people. I'll have to stop being nice and just tell them to fung off!

I've got enough money. I can get stoned and drunk as much as I like. I could grow grass and make home brew if it came to that. Pots of money really.

The sweetie eating, evil bourgeois and otherflatheids just have to be told to fung off! Just fung off! If you don't want to meditate with me, just fung off and leave me alone!

Apart from the crabbitness .... three really good things occurred today. Or good things occurred three times.
1) Ra bliss was so full and thick, the breathe was very slight, the thoughts as they arose were very slow ....this is a difference from a couple of weeks ago. I think I can go there now. But not right now.
2) The seats in the cinema for the Bette Davis movie, Now, Voyager, were lousy, yet ra bliss came on and I started to get quite warm. It's better if the seats are good and it's a foreign language film .... one day I will take my noise blockers to the movies .... but I had to wonder about ra heat.
3) The third good thing is that I cannot remember what it was. There were a lot of good bits today, but they were all concerned with investigating ra bliss. The breath sheaf is the one to gambol in. This getting wrecked stuff is completely useless by comparison.

Ra Plain Chant and Song Juju!

2008-03-30T13:46:00.000-07:00

Sunday 9:50 p.m.
The sister is trying to check the auld maw's hearing aid. "Where do you keep your money?". "Under the bed," says the auld maw without looking over. You have to have seen it. We are quite funny sometimes. Everybody's well passed grown up as well.

Someone I know gets into the chorus, and the plain chanters are amazing singers ...

Too many people are coming to thisbloggie! I wasn't counting the page loads. I counted the unique visitors. I hadn't read the text, of course, and just assumed the middle column was .... anyway, don't tell anyone you come here. This is a police surveillance bloggie trying to catch paedophiles .... before you know it, the schoolgirls will be after me again, and I'll have to decamp once more. ...

It's my perfect night out. You show up in one of these churches somewhere in the beautiful city, places you'd never normally be in. The closer they get to the catholics, the more gorgeous they become. Last night was austere, in theCannongate Kirk, but it doesn't really matter if you're going to close your eyes anyway.

Meditating in churches ... it's the least embarrassing place. You can hide your half lotus under your jacket. Nobody needs to know. Closing your eyes is fine. You don't buy a programme and you don't really listen to the music, but it's there. Fabulous background noise. Beautiful, beautiful noises. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

I'd like to convey something about the happiness in the emptiness and how wonderful this past week and a half has been since I was last lashed and held fast to my jobbie. Everything just becomes more and more wonderful.

Ra Horrorshow!

2008-03-28T17:38:00.000-07:00

Saturday 00:40 a.m.
So the nightmare starts with you slotting the video into the machine....then you're in the video .... then the video changes to a computer game, and the josephine in the back of the motor is telling you about the nine levels and she's only on level seven ... if eleven policemen get killed during the riot/vampire/zombie gameshow then it will all stop. And it stops. Then you turn to the josephine and she's wearing the horrorshow mask for the twist at the end ... also, with the wake up scene when you haven't wakened up at all. That was this week, sometime.

And today I was so happy. Anybody could see it. Once when I was sitting in the lobby ...so blown away with ra bliss! It came in there. We flew. Not literally of course. But it felt wonderful today sometimes. The wonderful breathings, the breathings. Boom, Shiva!

Rat Deity Yoga Again!

2008-03-27T15:12:00.000-07:00

Thursday 10:14 p.m.
Last night, feeling exhausted from the diggings, I was lying in the bath with the Scotland versus Croatia game on the radio. I'm doing ra bliss.

Once at the beginning of all the meditations, I remember getting somewhere and thinking hurrah, I'm getting somewhere, and then it dissipates immediately, destroyed by a thought. These days with the breath sheath thing, or whatever it is, you can do ra bliss and half listen to the radio, and close your eyes and try to visualise the image of the Medicine Buddha from the postcard. Last night, it seemed to be there, kind of emerging from ra bliss, or from within ra bliss context.

Is anyone still with me here? Yes, Hotboy, the spam robots are listening!

So it kind of seems to be there in the whiteness, in ra bliss, the Medicine Buddha. It's not 3D, but at least the arms are blue, and the head, etcetera.

Once I read somewhere that the biographies of the 84 Mahasiddhas were all the same. At some point the deity appears. It's from one of these 84 Mahasiddhas, Tilopa, that the juju I'm trying to practise comes from.

St Teresa of Avila got to speak to Jesus Christ in his glorified body, who said he would do things for her because he knew she loved him, and she started with the hands. The thing I read said you could start with scanning the image from the top to the bottom kind of thing. You just sit for as long as possible and stick with it for as long as possible and see what you can get.

Was it really Jesus Christ, Hotboy? Of course not, Jack. There is no real Jesus Christ. There is no real moi. There in maybe only projection and motivation. There is only vast emptiness. This is the mind game. The mind game is the only game in town.

But did she do miracles, Hotboy? Of course, she did, Jack. Among the flatheids with the placebo effects and the hysteria and with their heads stuck right up their bums, if you can get Jesus Christ to speak to you ... any miracle has got to be easier than that!

Maybe some miracles you could do and maybe some you couldn't.

The biographies of the all the 84 mahasiddhas is the same. The deity appears.

Nothing exists in the manner of its appearance. Tsongkhapa.

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

Who are you? says the emperor to the wee fat baldy guy. I don't know, replies the wee fat baldy guy.

Know thyself.

To progress, I have to stay straight and sober till at least half ten at night. I got paid today. Tomorrow I will begin the process of switching from eating soapbar (when I have it) to smoking the stuff that makes you schizophrenic, skunk. The soapbar is £100 an ounce. I can get the skunk for £70 a half ounce, so I won't have anything for most of the month.

Who made me, Hotboy? I don't know, Jack. Who made ra bliss? I don't know, Jack. But it's not mine.