Ra Photie!

Someone has stuck a photie of me on the web. It's at robomojo.textamerica.com since my links don't seem to work for some reason. This is a perfect photie of me. For one thing, it doesn't look anything like me. I grew all the hair last year and it's back to the wood again. Superb. I had two novels published without photies on them, but I'd go with this one okay.

Blogging about Joe Hill yesterday brought it all back. I used to know stuff about American labour history. Proudhon was not American. He was French and wrote an essay called "Property is Theft". I don't think Proudhon had an agent, but he could write well. He was, of course, a buddhist. Property being theft is based on the idea of inter-connectedness, or interdependence. Like, millions of people were involved in one way or another in the making of this computer.

Karl Marx might have thought he was a hegelian, but he was really a buddhist as well. Surplus value is about how all the millions of people who helped make the computer .... were ripped off. So you're labour is worth ten pounds an hour, but your company pays you for eight and takes two. I think, the two is surplus value.

I wrote a play about this. It's on my webpage here. It's a black comedy about people eating bits off each other. I sent it to this woman in New York a couple of weeks ago. If she manages to get throught it, she'll only be about the fourth of fifth person to have ever read it. I might have done a bit more drama if I could have avoided speaking to anyone about what it was supposed to be about.

Writing novels is far, far harder than blogging! You have to think harder, especially with a first draft. That's why I'm blogging just now.

Politics? There's an election going on. Brian Wilson said he was going to vote for the BNP since they promise to give everyone an automatic weapon to keep at home ... to fight the foreign invaders. This would cure the crime problems in Scotland almost overnight since ... well, most of us will be dead.

Still not one o clock. The swamp fever is much diminished, I think. Must write and meditate.

Rem Wrathful Dieties!

Felt myself getting better all day today. Strange elevating sensation. The symptoms, like weights, drop off.

Brian Wilson says you can buy pig ears in the markets in Barcelona. Nibbling on raw pig ear, I can see him now.

I got an awful lot of bliss yesterday despite having the swamp. I couldn't fool around with the vase breathing or anything due to the ensuing lung eruptions. Just had to sit. I should have known then it wasn't the real swamp. It was definitely getting better in the evening. Then just white still bliss. There might be something in just going with this. Forget the deity juju.

You think you can't possibly get the visualisations together unless you're in a long retreat situation, but it might not work like that. One day in the Samye Ling temple I was trying to be blue. That is, with your eyes closed, just trying to put a lot of blue in there. Then I was the statue. (If you go to the Samyeling and click on the temple, that's the statue!)So I kind of looked down at myself (with closed eyes) and saw the golden arms, etc. I just went on with the rest of the juju I'd been doing.

This was a wee bit of a worry at the time. It would be a bit tricky to go through the day as a statue. Couldn't really go anywhere.

Like, you wouldn't want to go about as a deity all day. Maybe for some evening's entertainment. If you could switch it on and off, that would be good. But I wasn't trying to turn into the statue. It just happened for a few seconds when I was trying to imagine myself as a blue thing.

So the deity bit might just happen if you're giving your mind a wee nudge every now and again.. .I read this interview with the Nechung Oracle. He's a wrathful deity. When the previous monk who'd been the oracle before him, passed away, he just started getting these episodes. He could bring it on, of course. He's in all this heavy wrathful deity gear and then ... off he goes! The wrathful deity. The boy said it was like being hit by lightning. He did not seem to have any idea what the fung was going on.

I looked at Wisdomebooks
and clicked on fiction. There they were. Ra books!
I just love this internet stuff! You meet such nice people. Graeme Eastman of Wisdomebooks did not have to do that. I hope he has a long happy and wonderful life.

I don't want to be a deity and no remember it. That might have happened before. With the alcohol. You can never really tell. I think what we're looking for is eyes open in the mandala kind of deity. That's got to take a lot of time. You can see you'd probably have to spend a year just doing straight mental calming stuff non stop. But the great thing is you can't really tell. For sure, if you're not on the park, nobody's going to pass you the ball.

Just mention Joe Hill and they come out of the woodwork! The reds under the beds! Oh, why should I work like other men do? Oh why should I work when the sky is so blue! I'm off work till Tuesday!!

Ra Swamp Again!

I was supposed to be going to the Samye Ling this week since I got paid, but I've come down with a cold in my head and the coughing and spluttering, etc. I think I caught this while speaking down the phone to Brian Wilson's chimpanzee. He was phoning from inside a cupboard in some hotel in Barcelona. He said Brian had already polished off the minibar, and had started to take his clothes off. Now he was running down the corridor demanding more beer, better porn and shouting about someone called Tabitha Cash. I advised the chimp that he was doing the right thing. Stay in the cupboard. Hope he forgets that you too have apertures.

You can lose any notion of emptiness and get stuck in crabbit when you've got a head cold. You can't do the vase breathing properly.

Still, no news from Curtis Brown or PFD. The latter has had two packages from me and by this time must have binned them. You'd think they'd let you know. It's been nearly three months. Nothing from Euan Thorneycroft either at Curtis Brown.

Still, that doesn't stop you writing! I wrote about four pages today ... because I had the cold and couldn't meditate as much as I'd like to. Also, I tried to join a webring for buddhist blogs. Had a look at a couple. No mention of ra bliss!

Self awareness is always bliss. Kalu Rinpoche.

I have pictures of Kalu Rinpoche on my wall and sometimes I have him on top of my head, etc. He seems to have had an affair with the lady who was driving him around Europe when he was sent here by the Karmapa. She was called June Campbell. She wrote a book which I haven't read about women in Tibetan buddhism. I expect women were and are as badly treated by Tibetan Buddhism as they are by anyone else. Anyway, it would be nice to meet this woman. She's from Edinburgh.

Ra Blissy Bliss

Since this is a bliss blog, I should just say something about ra bliss. It comes and goes. Sometimes you can be sitting in what you think is ra bliss when you are almost overcome with even more bliss. There is something seriously wrong with the way meditation is marketed to people. THIS IS RA BLISS!! I never knew anything about ra bliss when I started meditating.

Hot white, radiant bright. There's also a wee step into another space and even more enfolding bliss. This feeling is far, far better than you could get with any drugs. It's the quintessential junk. It's the junk beyond the dreams of junk. And I'm sure I'm still nowhere near the first bliss.

For some reason these wonderful feelings of bliss tend to be available about this time of night, later in the evening. I wonder if that's the same for everyone. If boxing training is between seven and nine, about eight if you're fit you can feel like superman. What's going on at that time of day?

There are five eggs in the wren's nest. I put my hand in again and nothing tried to eat it. That's the last. The wren never sits on my head. I wonder if it knows I'm alive.

I dug sixteen tons and what did I get? I love physical exercise, but digging is such a thief. Take my hat off to the Irish navvies. There's always more of the world to dig. The neverending dig. It's brutal to your ego. It's my doing on the path. You bliss and then you dig. The sun was pouring down and the wind was cold when it blew. Perfect Edinburgh spring day.

When the springtime will come, Oh, wont we have fun. We'll get out of jail and we'll go on the bum. Maybe Joe Hill.

Ra bliss this evening was the kind of hit you'd give yourself if you were God. How much bliss can you take? Then it ratchets up. The bliss is neverending and so is the digging.

Ra Dangers Again

Here is a site that tells you about the danger of the kundalini juju. There's tons of them. I thought I should tell anyone reading this blog about this dangerous stuff again, but I'm not going to do much of that anymore. If you really want to emanate as a deity, you should get your butt down to the Samye Ling.


None of these horrible things that happen to folk are going to happen to me. I was probably ready for this nine years ago, but I came back from a trip to Nepal with a nicotine addiction which I didn't manage to lose for about six years. This trip is recounted in the Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf.
If you want to know what an experience of non-self and emptiness looks like, it's there at about the start of chapter four or five.

I'd like another one of them. I don't think I'll have one till I totally clean up my act. I've been trying to do that for the past couple of years, but there's still a wee bit to go!!

It has been a beautiful day here today. I spent most of it ... till after three (it's half six now) ... in the hut. The morning meditations were not really what you want. Too much internal wandering, but after the one o clock gun (they try to hit me from the castle battlements with a shell every day, and every day they miss!), I started into the breathing stuff and then it really kicked in.

Once upon a time ... it's as if I was looking at a photie of Everest. Now I feel like I'm at the bottom looking up. I've just got to climb the bugger now!

I write wee notes to this nun at the Samye. In deference to St Teresa of Avila, that well known buddhist, I'll start calling her Teresa. Well, I write Teresa notes saying there's no problems. I'm not getting pains and the heat seems to be rising as it should. This sometimes reminds me of stories of first time pregnant women who rush to hospital in severe pain. After an examination, sometimes they are sent home again. I know it's sore, hen, but it's no really started yet. Wait for a couple of hours and you'll know what bloody sore is!

I almost got the BBBW published and then I didn't. I told the sensei it was dead in the water and he said you had to bear witness. That's what this blog is essentially. I don't expect to get an agent or get anything published in my life, but I will emanate as a deity!

I had an interaction with someone called Wisdomebooks.
His name is Graeme Eastman. Brian Wilson told me about blog directories which is why I reckon you can find this on Google, but I didn't know about ebook directories until I went and looked. After filling in all these online forms, I got an email from Graeme saying he'd lost them. This was wonderful, exactly the kind of thing I'd do. He also said he sold books on HOW TO, but didn't know bugger all about fiction. I immediately asked him to be my American agent for Bomber. He can get twenty percent of anything he can make on it.

What I'm really into is empirical mysticism. It's mysticalism without religion really. Experiential juju. That's why I call most religious things juju. I like juju. It's the funny hats and that which put people off!

Tonight I'd like to finish by pointing out the the founder of Sikhism was obviously a buddhist. I think he went off to meditate and lost the plot, and then showed up three days later, telling folk there were no hindus and no moslems. I've got a lot of time for this guy, but they've got some kind of weird hairdo and some strange undergarment policies. I think they carry knives as well. Very Scottish. But Guru Nanak was another buddhist. That's Jesus Christ, St Antony, St Teresa and Guru Nanak. Aye, Guatama Siddharta was also a bit of a buddhist.

I'm going to go to the allotment now. I may be some time!

Ra Buddha and Ra Big Bad Wolf!

I only work till half twelve on a Wednesday and got up to the allotment this afternoon. A wren showed up after a couple of hours. It seemed to be checking the space out. Jumping about, sticking to walls, etc. It didn't go near the nest. I wonder if it knew I was there. They've got the wee-est eyes. But it didn't go up to the nest. When I was leaving, I put my hand in the nest and I've never done that before. It looked a bit decepit. There were two eggs in it. They felt cold. I got one out and it was so small! Tonight I was back there meditating and a wren jumped in through the chicken wire and went straight up and sat on the nest.

I was really pleased. I know nothing about birds. But the wrens are great.

Michi Regier sent me an email saying she got The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf and would read it in the mountains this weekend. Brian Wilson got as far as the second paragraph and packed it in. It might have been the first paragraph. He could tell by that sample that no one was going to take their clothes off in this one. The only one of mine he read had people taking their clothes off in practically every page!

Michi Regier plays the violin and has a CD for sale. Brian Wilson says he has perfect pitch and has pots of money, so maybe he'll buy it. This weekend he's representing Scotland in Barcelona where he will sing the Boomerang song at a conference, get drunk on the collapso, then take his clothes off and try to molest the natives.

Michi Regier's favourite book is the Tao te Ching. It might start: The Tao that can be expressed is not the real Tao. Or spoken. Or maybe explained. Or told. Then the boy writes a whole book about it. Try pitching that to an agent. What's it all about, Lao? Can't be expressed. I see. Hmmm.

I think I got hold of The Bliss of Inner Fire around about when I turned fifty, about four years ago. Kick start. Before I read it, I used to get ra bliss and tried to ignore it. That's what I'm going to do over the next few days. Ra bliss and hopefully some of ra emptiness. I don't have to go to work till Monday! Phones don't ring up at the allotment. There's a big lock on the gate.

Ra bliss is the golden handcuffs. They think you might get stuck in ra bliss. I don't think I'm up to the kind of bliss you get stuck in yet. What a problem! Can't come to work today because I'm stuck in ra bliss.

The sensei says Michi Regier is into zen. I read Zen and the Art of Archery once. You should be able to adapt that to darts and make a lot of money. Hit the bullseye every time. You'd need arrows that split down the middle. The boy in the book couldn't miss. I wonder what that means. Is it about .... assume the boy can't miss the target and it's not just a wonderful show of concentration. Why can't he miss?

How can nothing exist outside your own mind?

If you ask a zen master things sometimes, don't they just tell you to fung off? Sounds great. Appeals to the hinayanist in me.

I've a clear view ahead for the next few days. Nothing to worry about. I'll have to get into the compassion a bit more. Compassion and altruism are the basis of the path. No more flatheids. I'll have to think of something else. Dafties.

I met this very nice woman down at the Samye last summer. Used to work in the same place. She is a much nicer person than I'll ever be. Effortlessly nice, wee fat woman. So I was thinking that all flatheids aren't like Brian Wilson, but the problem is in the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Heard about this guy tonight who's just got MS, a scourge in this country. He's also a very nice guy. It's not the bliss you're after. It's the equanimity.

The Dalai says afflictive emotions will be with you even in the mandala. He says it takes aeons and aeons to deal with afflictive emotions. Let's hope we started a bit earlier.

As the zen violinist said as they were driven away from Carnegie Hall. I'm glad we kept practising.

Ra First Bliss!

Looks like we've got a Taliban tim for Pope. The Panzer Papa.

All that stuff in the last blog about Jesus Christ reminded me of Mel Gibson's movie about Ra Passion. I haven't seen it. I don't think I could take it. When it got to the bit when they start nailing him onto the cross and he yells freeeedom, and then you have to go out and tolchock the basturn English ... who wrote that version?

I'm interested in doing deity yoga because once you have been able to collect the Four Blisses, you can go straight into the First Bliss as soon as you start to meditate. I'm sure the boy said that in The Bliss of Inner Fire. The first bliss is described as completely amazingly extraordinary bliss. Or something like that. More mind blowing bliss than you can conceive of. Ra inconceivable bliss even if you've got ra bliss in abundance already bliss.

This might not make much sense to a flatheid who hasn't had any of ra bliss at all.

The photie I was blogging about in the last blog is of the abbot of the Samye Ling. If I go mad or spontaneously combust or completely wreck my health with this juju, it's no one's fault but my own. They don't sell The Bliss of Inner Fire in the Samye Ling shop. The lama told me to do mahamudra meditations, not this other stuff.

By the time you get to the first bliss, you're supposed to have stopped breathing. The airs have entered the central channel, it seems.

If anyone is interested in doing this juju, I would definitely think twice about it. You'd have to have done tons of calming meditation first. Gopi Khrishna, the man who knows, says messing about with kundalini arousals can make you insane, ill and dead.

It's cheap, it's dangerous, it could drive you bonkers. Here's something mad. I think this is just calming stuff. You're looking out the window from room 11 at the Samye and it's getting dark. You can see the stupa though and the outline of the hill behind it. A garden is below the window and there's the pond with the wee island before the stupa. You start projecting the photie of the lama onto the outline of the hill and it sticks there. You can put the photie along the roof of |Johnson House, the original building there. All over the joint there's photies of the lama. You've decorated the place with them. I don't know what that means. It's only happened once or twice.

The Matrix is a good movie. There will be something out there, but god knows what it is.

Trying to establish the first bliss would be the just the basis for all the other blisses of course. Ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss.

Ra Photies!

I was looking at the Samye Ling site and the photie of the lama had disappeared from the front page. Then another one appeared. The original photie is in with the more pictures, second from the left. The blown up version of this photie doesn't look half as good as the one I have on my room wall. It's the same photie.

I sometimes fix my gaze on this photie and it might stay there for quite a while. Funny things happen in your visual field. I don't suppose this has anything to do with the meditation. I think it just happens when you fix your eyes on something and just keep them there. Nobody does that so they don't notice.

Sometimes everything starts to look like a photographic negative, or you get kind of highlights round the edges of things. If you were looking at a leaf on a bush in your allotment, the perspectives kind of foreshorten and things might blur almost everywhere. The leaf you were looking at might even have disappeared in ra blur.

I mean, what's the point of all that? I been meditating mostly with eyes open these days since the DL says you should, but I still have more fun when they're shut. You're supposed to emanate as a deity, I think, with your eyes open. No funnty hats or other props, I think. No busking it.

Wouldn't you love to be able to do that though? You're supposed to have vajra pride. I think that's just being chuffed at being a deity. Well, you would be. Radiant as well. At last, the Acid King! I can do anything! Maybe a bit too heavy on the vajra pride there. Back to the photie.

The photie changes as you gaze at it. Sometimes it seems happier than at other times. It's been beaming all weekend. There's a guy called Robbie Williams on the telly. He's been brought up a tim. His maw has given him some holy pictures which are placed around his bed. He's a famous pop star. He probably did a lot of naughty things. He said when he's done anything he shouldn't the photies seemed to, well, kind of frown. You've got St Francis looking mildly disapproving. But that's what happens. The photies are staying more or less the same of course. I assume. You're projecting something then. At least, you're perceiving it differently .... because something has changed in you. I couldn't tell you why the one up in the room has been beaming all weekend.

When you turn your back, the photies wave at you, you know. Sometimes make rude hand gestures.

Michi Regier is not an alien being after all. I thought it might be an anagram. |Brian Wilson sends comments to this blog using anagrams for peoples private parts. Michi has a great website which I'm going to visit after I finish this.

Michi is a woman.

St Teresa was also a woman. She spoke to Jesus Christ in his glorified body. What a gas! The people who are having all the really good times are all sitting bare arsed in caves, or stuck in convents. Not only did she speak to Jesus Christ, but Jesus Christ told her he'd do anything she asked because he knew she loved him. It's a romance. Of course, instead of doing all that nun stuff, she could have settled down with a Brian Wilson and surrounded herself with ankle biters.

I've got a picture of Jesus Christ on my wall. It's from the Turin Shroud. Take you a long while to raise a smile out of that face. It's really from a photographic negative. This boy was developing the photie and this face appeared. He'd be a tim, of course, being Italian. I mean, that's something you're going to remember. In the darkroom. Looking down on Jesus Christ's dead face.

You might not think it's Jesus Christ since the it was maybe dated to the middle ages recently, but you can definitely change the photie by how you look at it.
But is it Jesus Christ or isn't it? If Jesus Christ could talk to St Teresa and do miracles for her, making a shroud in the middle ages shouldn't have been so much of a problem. I really does look like him as well. He looks pretty dead, but as if he'd taken a bit of a doing beforehand.

I might have mentioned before that Jesus Christ and St Teresa were both buddhists.

St Teresa was a lousy writer. Well, maybe she got better. I'll have a go at Interior Castle next. I'll have to find out how come the Inquisition never set her on fire. They certainly would have if they'd found out she was a buddhist. She must have had a good agent. Be the wrong bloody century of course!

Rat Sunday Night!

Somebody left a comment! Someone called Michi Regier, I think. Is that the name of a Martian? He says he got to this blog through the sensei and reverend and was going to read the travelogue with the buddhisty stuff, but the link didn't work. The site costs nothing, so the links only work sometimes.

The travelogue with the buddhisty stuff has been read by maybe five people, maybe less. There might be a good reason for this. But if anyone has a go and the link doesn't work, email me from the site or email me here.
Of course, that might not work either! My email is madyamika2000@yahoo.co.uk. The M in madyamika might be a capital, but I don't think that matters.

I checked with the yahoo people and the webpage has beeen hit 82 times since it went up on the 3rd of February. I assume I haven't managed to induce any literary agents to it, but yahoo say over half the hits have come from this blog.

The Masai warriors who found there way to the site did so because of Brian Wilson, whose idea this blog was. I'm expecting a lawyer's letter any day now. He's taken the huff because I keep calling him a flatheid. Apparently, he does meditate ... about five minutes a day after a hearty breakfast of pig's face washed down with a half pint of the sticky pink stuff. What does he want me to call him? Mahatma Gandhi?

The allotment was very nice tonight. Haven't been there much recently due to Brian Wilson giving me the disease and going to the Samye the week before last. Blogged about the wrens today. They're not there. Not tonight. Some years the nest is surplus. It's a shame. Then maybe a whole gang of them show up. I guess, it's when they've fledged and the young ones are getting shown around, or something. But the chicken wire passing for windows is just wren size. Nothing much else birdy wise could get through it. It might be the location for wren raves.

Feel much calmer now than at the start of the weekend. Monday holiday here in Edinburgh. The allotment is bang in the middle of Inverleith Park. You can still see the castle from there since the leaves haven't come out on the trees to block the view yet. It's a wonderful place. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

Ra Sunday

Brain Wilson has agreed to hand back the horse, but is keeping the chimpanzee. It'll be listening to Pet Sounds and wondering what the surf board is for as I blog here on Sunday at one p.m.

Anxiety is just anxiety. It doesn't have to be about anything. Safely arrived at Sunday afternoon and the only flatheids I had to deal with over the weekend ... well, they live here.

Two days ago I was standing on my head in the lobby and went into a lotus whilst upside down. Then I bent and sat down, feeling really surprised. Suddenly you're sitting there facing the opposite direction. Last year I saw a friend of mine doing that (they're not all complete flatheids!), but I haven't been big on hatha yoga for a while. Felt great that anyway. I'm 54 years old. I should have been dead two years ago at 52, the same age as my old man when he died. All I've got to look forward to in this life is emanating as a deity, collecting the four blisses and becoming a very happy, nice, older man.

My contemporaries, the flatheids, can look forward to grief, sorrow, lamentations .... suffering in this life. Watching them going down the tubes ..... the sensei and reverend has the right idea. You can find him here.
Go to a foreign country, hide in the woods and eat the inhabitants if you catch them strolling about.

Someone left a comment on the last blog about existentialism, I think. Can't be sure as it was in a foreign language. Who's teaching the martians french? Anyway, all I know about existentialism is that you're supposed to make authentic choices. I'm not sure what that is, but living in the woods in Tennessee is probably one. Pity people know where he is. One of these days he'll look out and be surrounded by flatheids to the left of him; to the right of him; in front of him.

Anyway, it's been a quiet weekend. Quite often in the evening I sit with family members watching the telly with headphones on. There is no music in these headphones. They are noise blockers. Because the telly was on, I closed my eyes and almost immediately was surfing the oceans of bliss. All weekend I've been meditating with my eyes open since the DL says you should. But with eyes closed .... great big clouds of ra bliss. Constant wonderful bliss.

This wouldn't have happened if I'd spent the weekend socialising. Shame about the flatheids ... they don't know what they're missing.

It's not dark now till after half eight here. We've got a hut on an allotment about five minutes away. I'm going there now. The hut is very decrepit and is a wonderful place to meditate. There's a wren's nest in it. Some years they use it and some not. Once or twice I've walked into the hut and had my head surrounded by wrens. Wrens are wee tottie birds. They don't mind me. I think they're wonderful!

Rat dharmakaya again!

Somebody must have looked at the web page! Just when I thought it might be a complete waste of time, I got an email this morning from Synapse Productions, a theatre group in New York. The person was enquiring after a play called Bomber I had performed at the Traverse about a dozen years ago. With the Iraq invasion that's maybe current just now. The play was about terrorism in a way. The book is here.


All you can say about God is not true. Meister Eckhart

This is the last ever about philosophy, absolutes, anything like that. I am not equipped. The dharmakaya, whatever it is, isn't a creator and doesn't punish you. It's not supposed to be like our idea of God. But what the hell is it then? If it's beyond concepts, maybe we should just accept Eckhart and leave it there. That's what attracted me to buddhism. No point in even talking about something that's beyond concepts.

"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". The Dalai Lama.

If the dharmakaya and clear light mind are the same (they seem to be!) then it would be useful to know what everyone is talking about here.

If the dharmakaya is an absolute and doesn't change, then it shouldn't be interacting or inter-relating with anything. Or it would change. You're supposed to be able to get a glimpse of this clear light mind when you're going to sleep, or having an orgasm (don't look at me!) or dying. The dying bit is important in deity yoga since you are supposed to go through that. It's maybe supposed to look like a clear blue sky. Or compared to. I think it's focusing on that which stops yogis going into rigor mortis when they die. So it is something?

My best shot at this is that maybe it's like a quantum thing. You look for it as dynamic and it's dynamic. You look for it as still and it's still.

If absolutes occur only in the mind like the number two maybe, well, everything in buddhism seems to exist in Mind. Thus one disappears right up one's back passage. Definitely, nothing about absolutes ever again.

I still have a lot of purification issues. Yesterday the mind was agitated from being bad the night before. I really needed to settle down. And not have visitors. Unfortunately, in my guise as a hinayanist, I compared flatheids to horses or chimpanzees to Brian Wilson. This can't be right. Chimps don't know anything about ra bliss. Chimps don't waste their lives eating sweeties and being bourgeois ... I think I might still have some purification issues here today!

Hinayana buddhism should suit some Scottish protestants. They didn't like bishops and wanted to find God by themselves. Unfortunately, their God concept led them to predestination, which is probably the stupidest .... must be kind to Calvinists today. Anyway, meditation is really anarchic. You can teach yourself how to do it. You don't need anyone else. It's kind of gnostic.

I'm not into God, or worship. Speculation is really a waste of time. I believe in the illusory nature of reality. Incontrovertible that.

Going to write today (It's Saturday), blog, meditate and take some exercise. I'll blog again as a break later.

Ra Bliss? What is it?

Really good book called The Opening of The Lotus: Developing Clarity and Kindness by Lama Sherab Gyaltsen Amipa. He's got 33 stages of samatha, which is calming meditation. 29 is physical bliss. 31 is mental ecstasy.

I've had this book for ages. You're reading this and you're meditating as much as you can, and you're getting zip, or very little as far as the physical bliss and mental ecstasy is concerned. These 33 stages aren't doing much for you either. Then one day I was sitting in the wee room at the Samye and I'm in the physical bliss and mental ecstasy. It wasn't like catching a bus. I wasn't waiting for it like that. It happened. And the tears were running down my face. Tears of joy. Your really can get them.

The trouble with ra physical bliss and ra mental ecstasy is that it changes. It's as if it can always get better. It must be made of bits, or parts, or be composed of something. If it was simple, it wouldn't change. It's hard to see how there might be an end of the road with ra bliss. It's maybe like a bit of string. You can always add a bit.

I must say this is a bit disappointing in a way. Ending up sitting there in the Samye with the physical bliss and the mental ecstasy should have been the end of it. I wanted the tee shirt. That's it, I've done the bliss. Where's the emptiness?

Bliss is a feeling, so where are they from? Feelings maybe occur in your mind, but some must have a physical base. Is there something going on with the neurotransmitters? Is serotonin, or something like that, involved? Is the meditation rewiring your brain?

Fascinating speculations such as this can all be directed towards Captain Jambo who, whilst living amid a forest of nuclear weapons in Louisianna, is developing the Phantom Brain which will eventually be able to answer all questions under the sun.
So is it the neurotransmittery things, Capn? And why don't the flatheids get any?

The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf on my website
is full of stuff like that. About ra bliss.

This other book said things that don't change are called absolutes. It said the Buddha didn't like absolutes. If the soul doesn't change, you can't have one. It's an absolute. So is God. No God, no soul (if you've got one of those that don't change). This did my head in when I first came across it. If everything is in flux, you might feel a bit anchorless at first.

I think absolutes might occur with mental things, like logic or things like numbers. The number two isn't subject to change, is it?

So having got used to the idea that absolutes ... well, you're not going to bump into one. Then this dharmakaya appears. This is described as the absolute body of the Buddha. Well, that sounds like a bit of an absolute to me. Absolutes don't change and, therefore, aren't interdependent. They don't affect other things.

This is the buddhist offside rule. Is the dharmakaya interfering with play or not?

You see, the problem is when you're doing the deity yoga, I think the dharmakaya is followed by, and leads onto, the shamboka.... something like the holy ghost.

I wish I'd never started this.

If I can get some of ra bliss, anybody can. I'm bad, I am. I'm really bad!

Ra Hinayana!

There are maybe three vehicles to nirvana. The Hinayana is probably the original one. It's a good start. All you need to be a hinayanist is the Four Noble Truths and the Five Skandas, the composites that make you up, and maybe the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination. You can leave the material world more or less as it is. It doesn't have to be interdependent, or empty or whatever. You pay attention to cause and effect and try to disappear your false sense of self. It doesn't seem to be particularly compassionate, this hinayana juju.

I think if you're a hinayanist, you can tell folk to fung off. That's what's attractive about it. You've got yourself to sort out first. So you don't have to be nice to the people who are wasting their lives with bourgeois, flatheid, sweetie eating.

I feel like the fish that was caught by the Old Man of the Sea. It's Friday. By the end of the weekend, all the flatheids could have come and taken lumps out of me and by the time I get back to the Samye Ling there will be nothing left.

Brian Wilson is already threatening to visit. He refuses to let me know when. He claims to be bringing along Landfill Jim. Landfill can at least form proper sentences that don't contain the works creekit, Beach Boys and forty percent alcoholic content. Despite not having seen Landfill for a while, I have asked Captain Jambo to tell Brian Wilson that I have moved to Pitlochry, but I know it won't do any good. Brian Wilson has got a stalking horse, a beard. Half an hour in the door and the beard's off, the pink sticky stuff in being quaffed and I won't be able to hear anything except the sound of my head banging off the wall.

You need a good dose of Class A drugs just to handle being in the same room as these people!

Still, it's only ten in the morning. Maybe after about six hours meditating, I'll be ready for it.

Rose Zombies!

Tsongkhapas six yogas of Naropa - been looking at the Mullin translation. Great book - included instructions about how to transfer your consciousness into that of a dead body. This is all very well, but the trouble with dead bodies is that they're not usually too healthy. That's why they're dead. Say you were feeling a bit crook and came across a nice looking dead body. Once you'd transfered your consciousness, it would be a bit late to find out that the body had died of something horrible. Maybe you could ask first. Like, find someone you fancied transfering you consciousness into and .... you'd probably waste years following them around.


You could maybe strangle someone or suffocate them. Then you'd know the body was alright. Brian Wilson is threatening to come and see me this weekend. The last time I saw him I ended up with a disease that lasted two weeks. I've just got over it. If I strangled him, I'd have a body that might be a bit old and toothless and baldy, but at least not suffering for something imminently terminal. But who's to say that two weeks after transfering into this new residence you wouldn't be standing there chewing on the dead pig's face, smoking a fag and quaffing some pink sticky stuff at 40%. Once that flatulence kicked in ... it doesn't bear thinking about.


The best person to get you a dead body is bound to be the sensei and reverend in Tennessee. Someone says the last link didn't work, so here's another peek at him. Get the hat off, grow the ears and teeth and I don't want to be walking about in that part of the woods. He's surrounded by animals. Tsongkhapa says you can practise on dead animals. Have a bunch of dead animals walking about!


It's Thursday. I'm off work till Tuesday. I could go back to the Samye Ling
for a couple of nights. Except I'm skint. And I wouldn't want people thinking this wee hobby I have is taking me over!


I had a fabulous meditation on Monday morning. Really special. Got through a whole sequence of busy mind things ... like trying to imagine a deity on top of your head ... and managed to get to the bit where you've just disappeared everything. The lineage prayer they use at the Samye has a wish to be able to meditate without using anything. Sitting in a white cloud of bliss with nothing much happening; nothing much having penetrating power. A couple of times recently this has felt quite wonderful.


If this a mahamudra meditation, I think that's what I'm supposed to do.


The king asks the yogi joe for the juju to avoid death and the joe gets as vase, puts his hand inside it and takes it out again. He says, it's empty. Is that the juju that avoids death? says the king. Sure is, says the joe. The king threw the joe in jail. You can see his point of view. The yogi joe might have been saying something about appearance and reality, but I still can't work it out.


I went to see my maw on Wednesday. She stays with her sister in Bellshill, which is another idyllic little village near Glasgow. She was 86 years old on Wednesday. Though I rave continually at her about ra bliss, she has never experienced ra bliss. I don't know anyone who has any idea about what I'm talking about when I talk about ra bliss. I think I'll start blogging about ra bliss, what it is, etc.


Surf's up! The visit to the Samye lifted the plateau once more. Everything is working better than before I went. What more can a body ask for? If I live till I'm 86, I'll have had more than forty years of ra bliss. Probably dissolved in a puddle of ra bliss well before then.


I got quite hot today. I've forgotten to be worried about it. Hotboy.

Rem Hearts Fans!

Hearts fans boo Pope's minute's silence shock horror. Well, they're a bunch of huns, aren't they? Apart from Captain Jambo, who emailed me about this hammerblow to the good name of your typical, knuckle dragging Hearts fan.


The Captain now lives in an intercontinental ballistic missile forest somewhere in Lousianna and now feels quite safe from all this sectarian Scottish stuff. In fact, his religious progress has been quite interesting. Brought up a tim, but was sent to John Knox Academy (This passes for parental choice where he comes from!) where he was destined to become a Hearts fan ( to fit in and not get killed) and born again orangeman. Now, he lives among the nukes and has gone into the evangelicals. In Louisianna? I suppose if you live in the middle of all these nuclear weapons, putting snakes down your trouser legs won't be that scary.

Another Scotsman lives quite near him .... well, Tennessee. He lives in a forest as well, but there's just trees in his. A sensei and reverend by day, at night he takes off his hat, grows his ears and teeth, and turns into Nosferatu, the bogeyman from Maryhill, an idyllic little village near Glasgow. You can buy a wallet made from real Tennessee person's skin here.

If you don't buy a wallet, buy one of his books and give it to me for Christmas. I've just looked. He's flogging a book of short stories. He wrote a book of short stories when still in chilly Jockoland, the first one about being young in Maryhill. It was called Get Out As Early As You Can. Well, the book was. The first short story did my head in at the time. Shows what a nice upbringing you might have if you were lucky enough to have nice parents in Brigadoon. Great story!

This isn't the Samye Ling. (This is)
You can't meditate all the time here. Once you get into being happy sitting there for most of the day, why go anywhere else?

Before I left, I was in the temple and another meditator I'd never seen before was sitting there. A woman, she was robed up. I sat there. She sat there. About an hour later, the door opened and some visitors were whispering, so I decided to go. I was doing straight calmness stuff. But before I got up, I took a wee vase breath and exhaled. A wee cloud of heat and bliss rose. Very reassuring that. Something like that usually happens to me before I leave the Samye Ling. I've started thinking of it as a wee gift from the lama. Anyway, I got up and left. The woman was still sitting there. Like a stone.

Flatheids to the left of you; flatheids to the right of you; flatheids in front of you.

No one has yet decided to make me rich.

Ra Going Home!

Just wasted half of the time on this machine trying to enter this blog into Britblog or something. Activation key? What is an activation key when it's at home?

This was sent to me by Brian Wilson who still wants to be my agent. It's sabotage. He says if he doesn't get to be my agent he is going to start playing with himself in public like Diogenes, the famous Greek philosopher who lived in a barrel. The Greek did this to affront folk and show his utter contempt for bourgeois values, as such things existed among those spear chuckers.

This is fine by me. Somebody should tell him that in jail they don't give you pigs faces for breakfast or black puddings and tripe for lunch!

I just checked out with the gatekeeper of Nirvana and told him to look at this blog. This is dodgy as then somebody sensible might look at it instead of the robots and Martians and Masai warriors, and Brian Wilson.

Going away today. Oh well. Was looking at the floorboards in the back temple recently. There's a wee hole I'm looking at. This looking might go on for some time. Is the hole separate from the floorboard? Is seems to be. How can you get a hole without the floorboard? So maybe it's separate and not separate at the same time. The hole is maybe dependently arising based on the condition of the floorboard. Is the floorboard and the hole part of the same thing? I guess if you can see the hole and the floorboard as part of the same thing, that might help. It's getting yourself and the floorboard and the hole to be all part of the same thing that might be the tricky bit. I think that might be emptiness.

I've got ra bliss. I haven't got ra emptiness. I shouldn't really leave her until I've got both.

This has been a wonderful break. I settled in better than ever. The tent stayed up. My visualisations of being in the mandala have improved while I'm here anyway. This is the place where you can come and make yourself happy. This is the best place on earth. So far. Over and out from HotboyMadyamikaSurfingTheOceansofBliss

Ra Blootering Bliss

Just a wee break between having the heid stuck firmly in ra bliss and ra even greater blisses to follow later on!

After the Makhala prayers, I left the temple and went and sat on the wee bench on the island in front of the stupa. One of my favourite places when I'm here, but the rain k.o.s it sometimes. Well, a lot of the time here actually! Anyway, it's cold, but bright and I'm really well wrapped up. So I've got the eyes closed and I'm just sitting there with a huge grin on my face. It's really the same as the grin on the photie I have of the abbot. It used to be on the front of the Samye Ling page, but it's gone now.

Say you were poor and didn't have any telly and had to sit on the hillside watching your old man's goats, or some other joe's goats. If you had done your homework with the meditations, you could close your eyes and be right into ra bliss, with doubtless some warmth, and you wouldn't have to look out at the horrible weather anymore. What a gift! No wonder the Tibetans seemed to love their lamas!!

Last night in the temple about nine o clock, there was no one else there. The lights were low and only the big statue had some lights on it really. So it's dark red, and brown and goldeny in there. I lay on the floor for a bit to ease the legs or whatever, and ra bliss was still there. It's ra blootering bliss. It happens in the evening. Well, it's happened in the evening the last few times I've been here. It's hard to describe this to a flatheid who has a telly and no goats to look after, and who can sit in his centrally heated condo. But it's wonderful. It's ra blootering bliss. You're intoxicated with it, kind of. If you move and sit up, whoa! Even more bliss. What I really like is leaning forward and then straightening up. Huge globules, clouds of ra bliss ascend when you do that. I think it's something to do with your chakras, but, of course, they don't exist.

Nobody likes the pope getting wheeled out when he was on the way out. I didn't like watching it either, but I did like it. Especially after having the flu and wondering how to die feeling happy. Some fortunate ones will just drop dead with the heart attacks, but it's calvary for the rest. Nobody likes to think about that, do they?

Before I sign off as the time here is running out, Id just like to say hullo to all the robots, Martians, and Masai who read this blog. For we are fortunate creatures indeed. The great buddhas have come to Scotland! Om Ah Hung Vajra Guru Padme Siddhi Hung!

Ra Pope's burial day

I awoke to flappy tent noises today. What a racket! The tent I'm in here is about twenty years old and is very saggy. It used to be a two person tent, but you can't believe it now. Everything touches everything else. Still, last night coming down from the temple, the stars were blazing. You can't get that in the city anymore. So it wasn't raining for once.

I was inside the sleeping bag when I wakened. I thought: trade up! Trade up! Get a room for the night. But that's just the first thing feeling. The gatekeeper told me I could use the showers, so once you've showered everything is cool again.

I was in time for the eight o clock meditation today. I'm a big fan of one of the nuns here and I send her letters telling her about the state of ra bliss, etc. I was thinking as I was going into a deity yoga session, should I be doing this. Yes! An impression of her flashed up. I don't know if that was from me or her. I got the same thing once when I was thinking about sex after a visit here. What do you do about sex? Meditate! I got the lama flashing up for that one.

I'm in the cafe here for a half hour break. Really, I should be reading my cosmic book, but I'm getting addicted to blogging. I keep a diary, but you can't type in it! It's nearly eleven in the morning. The wind is biting and the sun is out.

The meditations this morning were superb. Great bliss and some heat though I kind of forget about the deity yoga sometimes. Emptiness and ra bliss is what I suppose I'm looking for. But just before I got here was brilliant. People who don't learn to meditate are unfortunate creatures. I don't know why I'm so lucky to be here. I guess I knew how to make the effort.

I would have watched some of the Pope's funeral on the telly today. Once a relative of mine, who throughout the time I knew her caused nothing but problems, died of ra drink. I went to her funeral and it was all forgotten. You've got to forgive and forget. The Holy Roman Apostolic and Universal Catholic Church is why I'm a buddhist. Being the Pope is a tough gig. I hope he can cure my pal of his bad cough. I assume not, but this is a miraculous universe and what do I know? Hotboy

Rese Buddhisty People!

Spoke to the guy who shuts the temple at night today. Sometimes at night here the temple is empty except for me (after about half eight) and often this quiet person who closes up afterwards. He saw a lot of me last October when I was here with the tent and in February when I was in a room, but into meditating in the temple (after October). I asked him how long he'd been here. Thirteen years.

The Big Indian from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest has moved here. He was still chanting when I left the temple ten minutes ago. He doesn't speak English. I doubt if he thought it would be useful since all his religion is in Tibetan. He must have been here over thirty years. I wish I was like him. He doesn't have to speak to anyone!!

Sometimes when I'm feeling less inspired and drowning in flatheids, I think: I could walk from here to Princes Street and there's no one I could talk to who knows anything about ra bliss, ra rapture and ra ecstasy, and this fortifies me in my efforts. Here, I'm the flatheid. But you just can't tell. The guy who shuts the temple wasn't wearing robes.

What a wonderful place this is! It's full of nice people and people who are trying to be nice. It's great that some of them recognise me here. It's my home from home. What a fortunate creature I am!

Ra Thursday at ra Samye!

How the wind blew and the rain lashed, and the wriggling about in the tent trying to keep your face warm. There was sleet here yesterday, but what the hell!

Didn't get up till I heard the gong for the eight o clock meditation and then I rushed out and managed to collapse the tent. At least, it was only drizzling then. Still, nothing like a good hot shower to get you going!

Meditated for about two and a half hours this morning so far with two Tai Chi set and a wee bit of prostrating. The system for raising heat seems to be in place alright, but the problem is in the concentration and calming, of course. I won't be able to do these visualisations properly, I don't think, unless I'm in a long retreat. But who knows?

£15 is all it costs to come here with a tent and you get three meals for that. And you can have a shower. This has got to be value for money. Machine's running out. I'll blog again this afternoon, if I start floating!

Ra Samye Ling!!!

Blogging from the cafe at the wonderful Samye Ling!!

I feel so pleased to have got here without incident and to have started this three day retreat in such good form. I don't remember ever feeling this good on my first day here

Train at 7:21 from Edinburgh Waverley and you're here at ten past ten. Put up the tent. The ground is full of stones and some of the tent is starting to look like old age, but I got it up during a break in the rainy day. But a really good journey on the train. Everything really good. Unfortunately, there won't be any meditating with the abbot this trip since Germe, the gatekeeper to Nirvana, told someone he was on the Holy Isle.

Was told last night that a really good friend in Aussie has got the very bad cough from smoking fags as a younger joe. Well, I may be there someday myself. I've already asked the Pope to sort it out for him, so I expect him to be better as I write this! Otherwise, I guess I'll dedicate all the merit from this retreat to his health.

Rat Samye Ling Again!

I got an email today from PFD, replying to an email I sent two months ago, February 7th. They said they now had my package. So there's a package into PFD and the one yesterday to Eaun Thorneycroft at Curtis Brown. This was not supposed to happen.

This blog about not getting an agent has been on the go now since the start of February. Since then I have made practically no progress at all. I still haven't managed to get a single agent to look at anything and not one has been induced to look at the web page.

I could have sent packages with books, tapes, etc., out to all the big agencies in Febuary and I doubt if it would have made any difference at all.

I'd much rather emanate as a deity! That sounds much better than trying to convince people you don't know to make money for you. Much better. So I'll be on holiday at the Samye Ling for three nights from tomorrow. I spoke to Germe, the gatekeeper to Nirvana, this morning. I was swithering about taking a tent, but I had to tell Germe then and there. So it's a tent. I'm a wee bit nervous, but I'm sure by Thursday evening I've be sitting in the temple intoxicated by ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss.

I saw the original Samye Ling on a video last Wednesday. It was a wreck till one of the Dalai Lama's gurus paid it a visit after thirty years of exile. He wanted it fixed and it seems to have gotten fixed. It would be great to be able to do stuff like that. The man, whose name I can't remember, has been in and out of my head ever since. Nice manner, this boy had about him. Made me want to visit Bhutan. I'll need to get books published to get the money!

Rat Curtis Brown

Somebody called robmcj/andrew sent a comment to this blog on March 22 and I didn't see it. Anyway, if anyone has any trouble downloading stuff from the site,
just email me and I'll send you whatever you want to look at. The site is free and they don't let you download as much as you'd maybe like.

Angus Legless will maybe solve all these computery problems. But I'll have to wait till the Domestic Bliss sorts something out with him.

Anyway, I wrote an email today which I think I'll just keep on file and send out when necessary. It's a better explanation of what I'm trying to do, I think. I'd put it in here, but it's on my other .... computery problems!

I was wanting to send a package which would actually get to someone, but I kind of blew it today. I composed the email and sent it to this guy Euan Thorneycroft of Curtis Brown. All I really know about Curtis Brown is that they must be big. With the email I sent the first chapter of the new book as an attachment. I got an email back saying I should send the first three chapters into Curtis Brown. Well, I did. Well, you would. But I told the guy I'd wait a couple of weeks before I contacted anyone else. And I'll have to do that. That was stupid since the guy didn't say he was going to look at it. My assumption was that he'd looked at the first chapter and wanted to see more, but he probably just sent back the standard big elbow into the slush pile.

I've actually screwed this up. I can't email this joe and ask if he actually looked at the first chapter. Yes, I can. If it's going into a slush pile to be looked at sometime by .... well, if I was an assistant at Curtis Brown, I'd just throw everything in the bin. I'll email him tomorrow.

I stuck Euan Thorneycroft into Google and he showed up with a couple of sales. At least, it didn't say he owned half of Manhattan!

The wind is cold here and my lungs haven't quite cleared up from the flu. I'd like to camp down at the Samye Ling on Wednesday, but I don't want to catch pneumonia!

Samye Ling! Can't wait!

Rat Healthy Feeling

Had a relapse of ra flu and it's just gone now really. Two weeks of more or less swamp.


I was engaging with Pat Kavanagh of PFD over trying to get an agent, sending packages that will go straight into the bin and such like business matters. So there's no chance of her becoming my agent! I checked out her client list which popped up on Google. Laurie Lee's estate, etc., etc., etc. This woman is not skint. If I'd her money, I'd have stopped working a long time ago. Having said that, she did reply to any email I sent her, so if you'd anything anyone wanted to buy, she'd be great, I'm sure.

Just before I went to the Samye Ling at the start of this blog in February, I set up the web page
with the six books, etc., to try to attract an agent and I can say with some certainty that I haven't managed to get anyone in the business to look at it yet.

I think what I'll have to do is get an agent to agree to look at a package with published books in it, etc. There has to be a way to get passed those who filter the mail. This is going to cost. Return post, etc. I'll have to speak to someone on the phone. What a bummer! If it wasn't for the poor starving orphans!

With the lungs clearing up, I was able to get back into the meditations today. You forget how weird this inner heat juju is. You don't only get ra bliss and ra heat, there's another state of mind checking in there as well. And things start to look even weirder than they normally do. I don't know what this is. Actually, I don't know what anything is.

I don't care if it's tough stuff down at the Samye this time or happy clappy cavorting in the springtime stuff. Can't wait!