Ra Ego Has Landed Back!

7:30p.m.
I arrived back tired but happy at the Unheard of and McDonald Islands a couple of hours ago to find a rejection letter waiting for me at the cave entrance.

Some semi-illiterate merchant banker from Curtis Brown sent me the usual. We have to be a 1o0 percent sure, etc. This is the same letter they send to everyone of course. Bet you the idiot hadn't even read it, whatever it was. I send messages by email so I don't have to find shit like this sitting waiting for me at home. I'd forgotten I'd sent this moron anything and thought the letter was from a friend of mine. I've a good mind to set one of my wrathful deities on his sorry arse. I hope your legs fall off the next time you walk into a restaurant for a chicken dinner!

It's good to be back! No nice buddhisty people around! Say what you like! There are no things, just labels and functions. Probably no sentient beings, just aggregates and neuroses! Say what you like about buddhist philosophy, but take away the compassion and you can have anyone's guts for garters!

Come out and fight, you stupid English bourgeois pig! We've going to have a boxing ring down on the beach here soon and you are cordially invited to get your block knocked off by the champ of the nearby Flat Island, Adolf the Hun!

888 visitors to this blog so far and 2727 hits. Of course, most of these aren't human beings. Some are definitely robots while the Martians are obviously looking in. Any Masai warriors who would like to send Curtis Brown a ton of horseshit from CrapRUs, be my guest.

Now that I'm not dead at fifty two after all, (like my da) I've decided I'm going to live to 104 like my great granny, Mary the Flea. That means I'm only half way there. Plenty of time to recoup the karmic damage caused by offting at least twenty literary agents. Milarepa, the great Tibetan saint, offted at least thirty folk before he got cold feet. Twenty flatheided agents would only cost about ten years in the hut. After meditating ten hours a day for seven days down at the wonderful Samye Ling, ten years in the allotment hut would be a real pleasure!

For the benefit of those people not from these islands, I should explain some vocabulary here.

Merchant banker is rhyming slang for literary agent. Most of them can't read and sign their names with such a squiggle that you can't get on the blower and make their legs fall off on the spot.

An allotment is a patch of ground about the size of a tennis court given out by the local governance for the purpose of growing vegetables and hiding from flatheids.

Offting someone as in: Spagetti Sam just offted the Batman!

Still got a fortnight's holiday. I think I'll take my voodoo dolls up to the allotment tomorrow!

Ra Going Away!

10:40a.m.
Packed and ready to go! I'll be on the bus to Lockerbie in about two hours.

Yesterday I didn't realise how tired I was till after blogging. Knackered. Then I went and started meditating in the temple and felt great again. What would you feel like after saying mantras for seven days and nights like they'll be doing next July on the Holy Isle? Probably wonderful! They need £65,000.

I was blogging yesterday about the back story with Dr Akong. The first time (the only time!) I spoke to him he gave me a very strange look. If you're reading The Way Of the White Clouds, the autobiography by Govinda, you start to wonder.

My career as a writer, I thought, had come to an end when my partner told me she was pregnant about 18 years ago (Actually, I've never had a career as a writer! I just wrote because I wasn't wanting to do anything else!), but it stumbled on in drama with stuff I had mainly in the bottom drawer ... things I could adapt for radio or stage, or whatever. In my early forties I wrote "On Becoming a Man. Reflections on Sex and Violence. Or, Are you boys cyclists?" Serpent's Tail published it as Are You Boys Cyclists?

I thought this was the last book I'd write. It's really a memoir about boxing and bonking and writing which I wanted to leave for my daughter to read when she was about twenty five or so. So I'd have been dead by them probably. To let her know what kind of man her father was. I tried really hard to get it published and everyone rejected it as usual.

I went into the basement bar in St Stephen's Street one night to meet a poet and novelist called Barry Graham. He had a skinhead and a black teeshirt on which was written in bold white letters something like, DIE YUPPIE SCUM. It was only by meeting Barry that the book got published. This set me off to India and Nepal (made a grand from the book) with Shiva.

So instead of going to become a teacher or something, I kept writing.

How knows how things happen? Are there any accidents or coincidences?

The sensei and reverend is one of my all time favourite people. Some people think he comes from a nice wee village just outside Glasgow, but underpriviledged doesn't even begin to describe the start in life he had. You can pick holes in anyone, but that man is one of the few people I'd bow to. Authentic existence hasn't a look in. He is also a brilliant writing talent!

So what now? If I never get another book published or don't make a penny out of writing, that's perfectly okay. I've had more than my share. But I will when I leave this place ferociously try to make money from Light in the Dark. And I'll work hard on making the book I'm writing just now quite good.

I need money so my wonderful daughter (who means more to me than any number of books and any amount of money!) isn't in debt when she leaves Art College. I need a bit to live on and I'd like to go and see Rumtek (I used to say, see you in Rumtek, when I tried to visualise the 17the Karmapa) and travel in the Himalayas. Other than that, I'm giving the money to my guru so that more people can get a chance at what I've had from this place. If I was rich, I'd fund three and four year retreats.

These people have the skillful means. The y will make you enlightened if you'll just let them. Dr Akong and his wee brother are not your normal joes!

On a less serious note, last night after the five o clock meditation, (I had my eyes closed. What a sweetie eater!) there was bit of a stir among the four guys there. A bat had been crawling along the floor on its last legs. It seemed to have crawled up to the big Buddha statue and expired. Folk thought it was dead anyway. Tell Temple Dave, said the monastic. Smile. I've been calling him Dave the Doorkeeper in this blog, but Temple Dave his is. They left. I went up to where the bat was to have a look. I'd never been that far up the temple before. The bat was still and half on the rug and half off. I thought what brilliant karma the bat must have. Dying, it crawls up to the buddha statue. I kind of moved the rug and the wee thing didn't stir.

In the book on the 6 Dharmas of Naropa there's instructions on how to bring folk back to life. You start on wee animals that have snuffed. I couldn't remember the juju, but I said a mantra and blew some air at it. Left it there. Later, I spoke to Temple Dave. He said bats sometimes got in there. He didn't know how. I asked him about the bat. He said he took it outside and left. Ten minutes later, he went looking for it and it wasn't there. It wasn't eaten by a peacock. You've got to smile. Of course, it was exhausted and recovered enough to get away.

I visualised the people I've had the intrusive, nasty, violent thoughts about and thanked them for helping me on the way to becoming more enlightened. That's a good thing to do. Of course, as I was packing the tent, I found myself imagining their horrorshow ends.

So watch out flatheids! This is the HotboyMadyamika who can surf the oceans bliss. I haven't lost my false sense of self by aeons. Fung with me and one day you'll be walking along the road and your legs will drop off.

Peace be with you. Back to Babylon where, at least, the women will all look gorgeous. Over and out from the best place on this earth, the Samye Ling! HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B.

Ra Seventh Day!

10:23a.m.
Since it's the seventh day, I thought I might be due a bit of a rest. So I'll blogging in the morning here at the Samye Ling. Got colder last night and I slept superbly. Just getting the hang of this the day before I'm due to leave. Sometimes I had a wee bit of difficulty readjusting to things when I get out of here so I thought today I'd just do it and not try at all. Still, I've put in three hours this morning so far.

I've been mainly doing the sitting quietly doing nothing stuff this morning. In ra bliss of course. Take a big breath and whoosh! Still, more or less quite a bit of sitting quietly doing nothing. Yesterday, I think I had a wee flash of insight about self, probably after reading Govinda. There's nothing here but forces popped into my head. In was in the back temple and anything I was seeing was very fuzzy by that point. (I've blogged before about things disappearing when you gaze at them). I don't now if that counts as an intrusive thought! Nobody got whacked in it anyway!

Intrusive thoughts don't really owe that much to any reality that's going down. I was thinking about where your false sense of self (the object to be negated) is and, of course, it seems to be in the mental formations and ideations. Where else could it be? Hmm?

Being demeaned, put down, disrespected and one tends to rear up. My family tree is full of people who react badly to this. Probably induced by three hundred years of being kept down by Ulster Protestants! But that's not even an excuse. I think half my ancestors were Ulster Protestants and half fenians. Frustration in general is a good one.

The whole complex that arises under these circumstances (it wants your head on a pole!) must have the false sense of self in there somewhere.

The thought/image/feeling arises. You can label it: I want to murder so-and-so. Stopping that kind of thing happening at all might be the work of a lifetime, or two. But it stands up as some kind of truth. But it's not really attached to reality since it's happening in your head and you're not going to murder so-and-so. (You might like to!). So it's a mental formation. Can you find the false sense of self there and negate it? You can break the compounded thing into bits. Deconstruct it. Try to take out the screaming I WANT.

You can stick in immediately afterwards, I want to love so-and-so. Counterweight. You can't cut it off because it's already there (you weren't calm enough to spot it coming!). You might not be able to let it go quickly because of the angry emotions involved. Afflictive emotions!

Yesterday, it seemed better to think there was nothing there but forces. Your thought is a part of that. It's just forces, waves, energy. If I ever lose my false sense of self completely, life would be so wonderful. You would be living in heaven.

I looked in my diary yesterday to see about the other retreats here this year. In one of them I was finding mahamudra meditations very challenging. It's stuff like this. Telling yourself there's no thing there might be a start. That's emptiness. I saw that once. Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf describes it a bit.

Just keeping away from flatheids might help as well!

Nobody has called me a flatheid here. There's a nun stashed in an eight by eight wee hut at the back of the temple. The Gatekeeper says she's there for a month doing long Makhala prayers. I don't know what that is.

They want £65,000 to fund folk on the Holy Isle to do mantras non-stop for seven days next year.

I've spoken to Lama Yeshe maybe four or five times. All the time I've talked crap to him. He never called me a flatheid once. If I could just get down to calling them ETs (evolutionary tails) or Them Prehensiles that would be progress.

I'm feeling a wee bit tired already! Why should thinking make you tired? Anyway, back to the back temple till lunch for me!
3:30p.m.
Had a really nice doze after lunch on the pebbles. I should get a pebble bed. I think it's been knackered and totally relaxing.

Just back from the temple. Teresa and the Big Indian were having a laugh. Hardly anyone there. Someone came into the back temple after the last post. Wandering tourists. Stood staring at me doing this Tai Chi set for five minutes. God knows what they thought they were looking at!

Trying to do the juju with the eyes open, but sometime before lunch I closed them and just surfed ra bliss. Then I tried for the zone. Really amazing bliss then. Ra bliss just seems to be there now if you do the breath.

Often when I've left here I've had a huge charge to go with me which gradually recedes, but this hasn't happened in the last year. But nice to build on this. I think I'll get my hut sorted out. Take to the allotment for as long as possible!

Ra SixthDay!

3:25p.m.
I'll just copy what I wrote in my diary as an hour on this machine isn't as long as you think.

2:50p.m. Temple. Teresa and the Big Indian have just left (after Makhala prayers.) No one here but me. I had to wipe the tears of gratitute from my face. Such bliss! Took a breath during the gong bashing and the amount of bliss that followed going into the zone was phenomenal. It just worked. I wasn't in a particularly calm frame of mind. You don't need to be in a deep absorption.(?) And the day is
TUESDAY 26TH JULY, 2005.
(This is underlined three times)
I think I'm ready to be a dharma practitioner now.

Well, there it is. And the day isn't over yet by any manner of means!

It was pretty good before that as well!

Last night I sat up in the tent for a bit with the hood of my jacket up and a baseball cap on. (In case I had to hang a towel over my head!). The air was thick with joss stick smoke and the midgies had vacated the joint earlier, it seems. About 10:09 am, I wrote: I have been sitting here in my teeshirt, so it's a bit cold (this is Scotland in July!). I've been doing a vase breath. It's working. I can warm myself up a bit without too much effort. Isn't that wonderful? Even I have difficulty accepting it. I need a pee so I'll have my coffee break now.

You can just get up and walk away!

I read about the rebirth of Tomo Geshe in the book. A wee tear there as well. I guess I'm a bit emotional today!The book is really inspirational in a way it wasn't when I read it in Nepal. Changed days.

Two things. You're not supposed to do the breathing till you've mastered the deity yoga, I don't think. You should at least have all the tubes in place and the symbols. I'm just managing to make the navel one glow a wee bit, but I feel safe and I seem to be getting results. But you may ask, what kind of results will you be able to get when you can do the visualisations? Have you hit the first bliss yet. Nope! I don't think I've raised enough heat. I haven't melted any symbols.

God, this is going to be a trip. I'll definitely have to live another couple of years.

I don't know anything about Buddhism. I don't know how or why this is happening really. But I feel safe and I don't think I'll get hurt. Why is that?

I can only surmise that it might have something to do with the fact that I've now taken refuge with two of the greatest buddhist practitioners anywhere outside the far east. And maybe even there. I don't know.

Here's an amusing back story.

I first saw Dr Akong the second time I came down here. I'd been talking to a guy in administration and I told him I'd written a radio play, which I couldn't have written if I hadn't started to meditate. He said I should see the Rinpoche. So maybe the Rinpoche had heard about this writing stuff. I didn't make much sense at the talk with him. He gave me a very weird look at one point when I told him I was helped by the no smoking policy not to smoke for a couple of days. Then he gave me this bug eyed frozen look for a second or two.

If Anjali Pratap is reading this and she doesn't like Light in the Dark, maybe she's in the right business because the shelves in my library are full of crap! I'll have to move hell and high water to get that published so I can give these folk some money. Though I don't think they need it really. I would just be handy . They're looking for £65,000 to fund a seven day mantra session (without sleep) on the Holy Island next August. Make it a target. Get out of the job before that and go! (even if they won't let you in and you have to sit outside!).

Love to the Domestic Bliss and the wonderful daughter. The partner sometimes worries, I think, that I might go away with this juju. All these guys in the Govinda book are married with children. They wear pony tails. I want to be one of them! Must go and check my emails before this goes off! So wonderful to be here. So wonderful!

Ra Fifth Day!

3:30p.m.
Read quite a bit of The Way of the White Clouds in the tent last night. Loving this book. Very inspirational. The tent has a lot of the wee bitey entities in it, so you have to passive smoke on the joss stick and have your head covered with your jacket, lying on your side, one arm sticking out. After that, I didn't get to sleep for ages. When you're committed to lying down, it's hard to make a break and sit up again. The fight with the midgies isn't worth it. So you lie with the jacket over your face and wait for sleep. Why am I having a good time?

This morning I was up at six twenty and thought I should feel tired, but I wasn't bad at all. How fast can you get out a tent?

The back temple is quieter than the main place. There is no noise from the air machine or whatever and you only get the tweety birds sometimes. I was in there all morning after the group meditation from eight till nine. Just me and house fly. Twenty minute break for a coffee and I read a wee bit of the Way of the Clouds. Very inspirational, as I said. The boy's guru died and nobody knew for a while. He was still sitting there dead. This British envoy showed up to commiserate with the abbot and was led into the room with the dead guru and the abbot acted as if he was still alive. Wasn't doing the normal rotting. I want to be like that. Of course, probably too old. Be great to snuff it and not rot, still sitting up in a lotus. They could stick you in the museum in Chambers Street with a sign round your neck saying, Still Skeptical. Dead body art!

What about the meditations? Tons of bliss of course and some heat. Went to the back temple for a wee kip after lunch and crashed out on the floor for half an hour. Weird. Just a normal kip! Anyway, then I heard the gongs and went next door to hear the Big Indian doing the chanting. Stared at a light for an hour. Great when you can fix your eyes on something and you know your gaze will just stay there. Thought of the navel symbol and I got hot just sitting there. I tried a technique I got from Govinda when I was in Nepal, I think. You wait till the symbol seems hot and them move it up. Ten years ago I practised this for a bit and then abandoned it because it was too hard. Couldn't get the symbols fixed at all. A wee bit better today.

Went back into the back temple when that finished and meditated for another effortless hour. There's no problem getting tons of bliss as long as my concentration keeps up.

Sorted out the intrusive thoughts. The only thing not perfect in this perfect world is me. I told myself how wonderful all these wonderful human beings were. Transform the crap. Seemed to work, but they'll be back sometime. Your thoughts don't seem to just go away. There are impressions. Sit for long enough and all kinds of stuff comes up. But you can put in new impressions of course.

Vase breathing: You take a big breath, swallow, squeeze from the top and bottom round the chakra symbol and let go. Went straight into the zone this morning several times and a bit this afternoon. Vase breathing is probably highly dangerous. I did it probably before I should have, but I don't care. I should have been dead two years ago! Just getting the symbol there is hard enough. Get empowerments and get a guru if you're going to mess with this.

Reading about Tomo Geshe, the guru of Govinda, makes you think. These folk from Tibet are doing something amazing here. I overheard someone saying a joe was away to the Holy Isle for a four year retreat. That's more than a morning in the back of the temple with a housefly. I felt a real urge to do this stuff. I can't go away for three or four years, but I can take to the allotment for a while! Anyway, I'm totally enthused. And on the fifth day, Hotboy started landing on the money! These next two days will just fly. I'm really loving this. Who knows what the evening will bring! Heat and light and bliss. I'm so happy I can do this juju, or at least, that it's beginning to work better. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!!

Ra Fifth Day!

3:30p.m.
Read quite a bit of The Way of the White Clouds in the tent last night. Loving this book. Very inspirational. The tent has a lot of the wee bitey entities in it, so you have to passive smoke on the joss stick and have your head covered with your jacket, lying on your side, one arm sticking out. After that, I didn't get to sleep for ages. When you're committed to lying down, it's hard to make a break and sit up again. The fight with the midgies isn't worth it. So you lie with the jacket over your face and wait for sleep. Why am I having a good time?

This morning I was up at six twenty and thought I should feel tired, but I wasn't bad at all. How fast can you get out a tent?

The back temple is quieter than the main place. There is no noise from the air machine or whatever and you only get the tweety birds sometimes. I was in there all morning after the group meditation from eight till nine. Just me and house fly. Twenty minute break for a coffee and I read a wee bit of the Way of the Clouds. Very inspirational, as I said. The boy's guru died and nobody knew for a while. He was still sitting there dead. This British envoy showed up to commiserate with the abbot and was led into the room with the dead guru and the abbot acted as if he was still alive. Wasn't doing the normal rotting. I want to be like that. Of course, probably too old. Be great to snuff it and not rot, still sitting up in a lotus. They could stick you in the museum in Chambers Street with a sign round your neck saying, Still Skeptical. Dead body art!

What about the meditations? Tons of bliss of course and some heat. Went to the back temple for a wee kip after lunch and crashed out on the floor for half an hour. Weird. Just a normal kip! Anyway, then I heard the gongs and went next door to hear the Big Indian doing the chanting. Stared at a light for an hour. Great when you can fix your eyes on something and you know your gaze will just stay there. Thought of the navel symbol and I got hot just sitting there. I tried a technique I got from Govinda when I was in Nepal, I think. You wait till the symbol seems hot and them move it up. Ten years ago I practised this for a bit and then abandoned it because it was too hard. Couldn't get the symbols fixed at all. A wee bit better today.

Went back into the back temple when that finished and meditated for another effortless hour. There's no problem getting tons of bliss as long as my concentration keeps up.

Sorted out the intrusive thoughts. The only thing not perfect in this perfect world is me. I told myself how wonderful all these wonderful human beings were. Transform the crap. Seemed to work, but they'll be back sometime. Your thoughts don't seem to just go away. There are impressions. Sit for long enough and all kinds of stuff comes up. But you can put in new impressions of course.

Vase breathing: You take a big breath, swallow, squeeze from the top and bottom round the chakra symbol and let go. Went straight into the zone this morning several times and a bit this afternoon. Vase breathing is probably highly dangerous. I did it probably before I should have, but I don't care. I should have been dead two years ago! Just getting the symbol there is hard enough. Get empowerments and get a guru if you're going to mess with this.

Reading about Tomo Geshe, the guru of Govinda, makes you think. These folk from Tibet are doing something amazing here. I overheard someone saying a joe was away to the Holy Isle for a four year retreat. That's more than a morning in the back of the temple with a housefly. I felt a real urge to do this stuff. I can't go away for three or four years, but I can take to the allotment for a while! Anyway, I'm totally enthused. And on the fifth day, Hotboy started landing on the money! These next two days will just fly. I'm really loving this. Who knows what the evening will bring! Heat and light and bliss. I'm so happy I can do this juju, or at least, that it's beginning to work better. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!!

Ra Fourth Day!

Spent all morning and up till now on the wee island in the middle of the river. I'm settled now.

I was thinking about contentment and not wanting anything. That's how you must be surely if you're doing a long solo retreat. Contented, not wanting anything. You can just sit. Equanimity is probably what you're looking for ... and then some fun with ra bliss!

Being on the wee island was so good. I was overcast and cloudy with a few wee sunny spells, but not raining. Being contented is very good. My mother seems to have developed this over the last few years. Being contented at 86 years old. Got to be the name of the game.

Just a wee bit before lunch, I thought I should go and try to find somewhere to do a Tai Chi set, but I realised this place would be too busy on a Sunday. I don't like showing off, or being in public with some things. No one around, so I stood on my head. On a towel. On the pebbles. Sat down to check out if it had made any difference. Here comes ra bliss! Tons of it. Started a going for it with the vase breathing. That's only the second time really since I came here. Hit the zone of superior and most wonderful bliss with some heat. I'd forgotten about the zone! So into the calming and contentment. I expect I might be in the zone quite a bit this evening. Somehow I don't care. I'm not chasing it somehow even though it's so special. Ra bliss isn't really addictive. It's not like other things.

Went to lunch and Dr Akong was there in the cafeteria place with his family. His wee brother smiles a lot more. His wee brother isn't married! You don't know who could be walking around this place. Some folk are more than they seem.

After lunch, I went back to the wee island and lay down on the pebbles again. Deeper sleep this time. Turned on my side after maybe half an hour and fell asleep for another half hour. Delicious sleep. Weird insights about different kinds of consciousness as well. Why am I sleeping in a tent? Because it usually rains here! Be nice to sleep on the wee island with a mat and a sleeping bag.

Then I sat up and into a lot of bliss immediately. Did some vase breathing and tried for the deity yoga. This with eyes open. Most of the day with eyes open. Ra bliss is not half so strong like that... at the moment anyway. Wonder why? Wonder why they don't just keep their eyes shut.

Thoughts should flow easily from one to the other in a nice sequence, I think. Intrusive thoughts are when you lose the place and suddenly you're thinking about some useless crap. Here comes the work thoughts! No rhyme or reason. But heavy thoughts of ultra anger and seething resentment. Rising up on people. I try to be nice, but there's a killer in there yet.

I ask myself for an explanation. Why these thoughts? From whence to they arise? I remembered that the juju people think you can have thoughts because of stuff happening in your body... well, the meridian/nadi bit of your body. Anyway, there's all kinds of shit down there and I suppose it's got to come out somehow. Once I had a few days here of ra bliss interspersed with ra horrorshow. I want crap out of my mindstream. Also, I would like to give up work. Who wouldn't? Actually, a lot of people.

If I can feel happy staring into a river all day after three days here, how happy could I be if I was sitting in a cave on McDonald Island? How long would it take to sort out the horrorshow intrusions. Probably resigning, plus five minutes! I don't even have to go to work for weeks!

The chinese stole a kid from Tibet. The Panchen Lama maybe. I can see his wee face in my guru meditations sometimes. Don't think he's been seen for years. I was thinking if I could get Light in the Dark published, I should ask someone if I could dedicate the book to him. Nobody's read this book except me and Michi. What do you think Michi? Have to go. Out of time!

9:10p.m.
The guy on the counter has assured me this cafe will be shut tomorrow night! There's only ten folk staying over tomorrow. It'll be quiet.

I was in the back temple this morning from nine till just before ten. There was a course on there. Someone came in and I asked about the course. Introduction to Meditation. I asked her who was leading it. She wasn't sure, but recognised Teresa's name. You're lucky, I said. She didn't know why. God, how I wished some of my connections wanted to come down here to spend a weekend listening to someone like that telling them about meditation!

I had a very good meditation before the six o clock meal. Usually, it's soup. I feel good with soup. Anyway, good hour that. I worked out what I'm supposed to be doing here. Maybe you're getting a wee help from who knows where. Who knows? Anyway, if you're getting the odd angry intrusive thought about whatever, you might have to have a look at emptiness and compassion.

Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path. So I started on the Jesus Christ from the Turin Shroud photie. I've blogged about this before. You make up your own Jesus Christ. Whether it's real or not isn't a sensible question. Can you use it and get something out of it? That's a sensible question. The crucifixtion is the western symbol of compassion and altruism. Or you can make it like that. Even if Jesus Christ was just some joe they tortured and crucified, doesn't matter. Jesus Christ who suffered and died for me is my guru. Please give me your wisdom mind.

You should be able to put the horrorshow images into an emptiness analysis and kind of deconstruct them. If you want to hang onto them at all. With thoughts I think you can let them go, cut them off, or transform them.

I'm trying to meditate mostly with my eyes open, but I know there's a better view of ra bliss with them closed. So if it's getting hard or I'm losing it a bit I close them for a bit.

I was going to do some vase breathing stuff in the temple tonight, but the Chenrezig puja lasted for an hour and a half. I put the joss sticks on in my tent and came here.

I spent almost all of three days in that tent once on the Holy Isle, but I've hardly ever meditated in there while here. Usually, it's pouring. Then the midgies. Tonight I might try sitting up for a bit, but I'd like to read more of Govinda. I'm going to re-read all his stuff again. I'll get more out of it this time.

In one of them he talks about raising inner heat. I think he says the yogi joe concentrates on the navel chakra till it gets hot then moves it up his body. When I read the 6 yogas stuff, I wondered about that. But tonight, during the Chenrezig stuff, that seemed to be happening. I was getting warm just sitting there. When the gong bashing started, I did a couple of breaths. It seems to be there, so maybe I shouldn't concentrate on it just now. Maybe I'm getting in front of myself.

Tomorrow, I'll do the navel symbol predominately, I think. Do the preliminaries (this might take the first couple of hours!) and then sit in ra bliss with the symbol. Get calm enough so that I can do the emptiness stuff on any thoughts arising. Way to go.

Great day today. One blip. Three more to go!

Ra Samye Third Day and a bit!

9:25p.m.
Since there's been no comments left on the blog recently, I went and checked the blogpatrol counter. Yesterday this blog had 33 visitors! That's not hits, but visitors. Usually, it gets eight or ten. Where did they come from since no one is really interested in vajrayana buddhism except really lucky people? It's the Martians and Masai Warriors, my robot chums and those guys from the far side of the Milky Way. Hullo, if you've come back.

However, I did notice that three people arrived looking for wet teeshirts and someone from catherinezetajones.blogspot. Well, I saw her in Oceans 12 (don't bother!) and thought I'd see what kind of blog she had. Playboy pictures? Why is there a blog full of Playboy photies? Is this the work of Brian Wilson, I ask myself?

This is RaBlissBlog and I should stick to ra bliss.

There's a river runs by here. If you walk up a bit, there's a wee island of pebbles you can get to by jumping over stones. This has got to be a more midgie free environment and it is. I went to the island after lunch and meditated. Sometimes the meditations after lunch are great. Shouldn't be really. Or lunch should be at two o clock. Anyway, I was tired and lay down flat on the pebbles with a towel under my head. The sky was overcast. On the pebbles, I fell asleep. Then I wasn't sure if I was awake or asleep. Ra bliss! Kind of without having a body. Disembodied bliss. This is unusual. I had a touch of it yesterday after lunch when I fell asleep on the bench across from the stupa, but this did impress me. I thought later that yogis must sleep like that ... not quite awake and not quite asleep, but somewhere else in ra bliss. Yoga nidra maybe. That was a bit of a peak.

The meditations thereafter went brilliantly. Sometimes I had my eyes closed and sometimes not. I stayed on the island till just before five when I went to meditate in the temple. At times, I remembered that Lama Yeshe, my root guru, may he live ten thousand years, was also on retreat. Big smiles coming through. After reading Govinda on his guru, I was more into it. Lama Yeshe has done 12 years in retreats and done at least 49 days in the dark twice. I wonder if that's what he's doing just now.

Felt really tired after soup. Tried the stupa bench. Midgies. Outside the house. Midgies. Low point. Went into the temple for the Chenrezig prayers which I really enjoy. Here comes ra bliss!! Right after the prayers, Teresa came in with the Big Indian and some of the band. I really love ritual music these days. Gongs and drums. Started giving it laldy with the vase breathing (I don't do that too often) and got amazing amounts of bliss. Some heat, but really amazing amounts of bliss.

I feel as if I'm supported all around. You can tune into the goodwill here. Tomorrow should be better. Fourth day. All I need is not to be tired. Even then. All I'll need sometimes is to lower my head and raise it. But concentration and absorption is everything.

This is a record of how to get ra bliss and how not to get an agent. It'll be of use to someone, but probably not if you're looking for wet teeshirts!

I think I know how lucky I am to be here. Hello, to my family (all of them, nephews and all!) if you've checked this out.

Ra Third Day!

10:37
I really shouldn't be in here blogging, but it's overcast outside and I was feeling a bit tired. Time for coffee.

The midgies did not appreciate the passive smoking from the joss sticks, and were far less abundant last night. I wakened up at 4 a.m. and went outside for a pee. Magnetised to midgies. Couldn't believe it! Stand for a minute and that's it. Face and head covered. So I probably brought some of them back in. But I got up at half six and in much better shape than yesterday. Bitten to hell of course, but that's okay.

But I'm a wee bit tired this morning and should sleep well after lunch.

Read some of the Govinda book in my tent before I went to sleep. Really, really enjoying it. The boy's guru is clairaudient, he says. He can tell what you're thinking if your thoughts are directed at him, even if it's in a language he's not used to. Siddhi.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's a bit of that around here. I was trying to do a tai chi set this morning before breakfast in front of the stupa and Teresa was doing the circular walk round the pond. She was on her own. Usually, she and a few others accompany the Lama at that before breakfast. Someone says the Lama is on retreat. (I don't think he'll be blogging!) But it's time I started watching what I was thinking around some people!! I think Teresa picked up something I thought in the temple the last time I was down here. I'd like to take refuge with her. Then I'd have formalised things with her and the Lama and his big brother. You don't want to make a mistake though. I take refuge in the sangha every time I meditate and she's in the sangha.

Of course, I've never actually had a conversation with Teresa or the Lama's big brother. No, I spoke to the Lama's big brother the second time I was down here! I remember saying thanks for coming to Scotland. Too right!

Take a breath and get some of ra bliss just sitting here. Probably couldn't do that if he hadn't come to Scotland.

Can't keep blogging like this if I'm going to stay here for five days. Don't have the cash to spend £1:80 three times a day. But how cheap can you get. You can do a week here all in (travel as well) for £150.

The food here is great, but sometimes upsets my system. Not this time. I think I miss the pints of tea I drink usually. Anyway, since I've got ten minutes, here's my normal diet. I eat bread and soup. The bread I make myself and it's wholemeal. There's only yeast and a wee bit salt in it. I put bananas on it and cheese with some stuff like marmite. Also, raw onions (anything to keep the flatheids away!) while stocks last. Sometimes I'll put honey on it, especially if it's toasted. The last time I had soup it contained tatties and onions from the allotment. Also, red lentils. Usually, I put a bit of broccoli in it. That's it. Sometimes I scavange from the folk I stay with. And I eat pears and stuff from the fruit bowl.

The interesting thing about this is that sometimes it's delicious! Sometimes it's not. But the food must be more or less the same. There's a lot of anticipation and projection going on here.

This is going to be a very good day for me. The only problem is the back temple where I should be just now. There's a wedding going on today! Dave the Doorkeeper told me. That's the only conversation I think I've had since I arrived. Oh well, back to the island in the river before lunch!

Ra Samye Day Two and a bit!

9:10p.m.
Didn't quite get as far as the blootering bliss tonight, but I'm getting there. Bliss seems to get better from about eleven till three in the afternoon and then from about six till ... you get tired. Well, I've done about ten hours meditating today (so far!) and can't feel too bad about having a wee break. This cafe is open on Saturday night as well. Viva Las Vegas!

I think it's time to have a wee think about what I'd like to do with the rest of my life. If I had any sense, I'd start planning now for a three months stay on McDonald Island. I could go there and do deity yoga for three months during the summer after I get some American kids to make me rich. Here's how that would work. The kids get hold of an American publisher and everyone gets a few bob. Not only will the book make a fortune, but me and kids could sell the movie rights. A kid's movie about kids getting a famous classic novel published against all odds. I mean, it's Disney isn't it. Need a dog. I'll be Brad Pitt.

Then, when I've got the Carnegie Prize for kidbooks, I'm famous enough to pitch the idea of a documentary to Channel Four. I'll do a camera blog thing once a day from beneath the shady hamburger trees on McDonald Island. It won't cost Channel Four much money this. It's cheap tv. About twenty year ago an hour of drama on the telly cost £300,ooo. All I'd have to do is occasionally stand on my head and say ra bliss, ra bliss.

I think I need an agent for this. I had hopes that Brian Wilson would transform himself into an agent, but giving up the pink sticky stuff (40 percent alcohol per volume) has proved too much. Alsom, being totally unable to order anything for lunch except tripe and black puddings would be a bit tricky in the kind of restaurants he'd be asked to lunch at. So I'll have to give him the sack.

The only alternative is Adolf. He's already in the Unheard of and McDonald Islands and is already in contact with several American young women through his blog. Also, he's basically unemployed as far as I can see and can tell the people over lunch all about his problems, even although these are practically non-existent, apart from having no one to tell them to.

Really pleased I brought The Way of the White Clouds with me. It's be Anagarika Govinda, who was one of the first heavy duty dharma folk I read. His first book was, I think, The Psychological Attitude of Early Buddhist Philosophy. Great first chapter. Didn't understand a word after that!

The Clouds I read in Nepal in 1996, I think. I understand more of it now. The description of his guru being found after spending twelve years in the wilderness is great. In fact, I'm loving it even although I only read for half an hour today. There's a part coming up, I think, when his guru zaps him with ra bliss. That would be great. Probably have to spend a wee bit more than three months on the McDonald Island to be able to do that. Better than despairing of the flatheids. Come here, flatheid. Zap! Brilliant!

I'm never get round to the Alexandra David-Neil book. She wrote another two that I've read anyway. The one about the Journey to Lhasa is great. The British closed Tibet, so she walked to Lhasa to piss them off, I think. She was 55. I'm 54. When I read that I thought 55 was awful old for a person to undertake such an arduous journey. Most folk that age, I imagined, would be expecting to snuff it soon. She died when she was 104, I think. Same age as my great granny, Mary The Flea. I was going to die when I was 52, but it didn't happen.

I enjoyed reading Little Big Man especially the end. The old blind chief climbs a mountain and makes it rain. Then he says something like: "Thank God for making me one of the human beings!" Slightly different context (the indians called themselves the human beings!), but I loved it anyway. Thank God for making me one of the human beings. Says it all.

Ra Samye Day Two!

3.22p.m.
What a fortunate creature I am! I don't think I've done much to deserve such joy and bliss. I think men in the mystic mountains must have found me in the phone book by sticking in a pin, said: make him a hotboy! What a time I'm going to have here!

Tiny entities attacked me last night. I was having such a good time as well. Then I got back to the tent and found it taken over for a midgie rave. Where did they all come from? The front was zipped up. I only have to walk about four paces across grass so I don't see how I could have brought them in. Dearie me. I'd taken refuge and you're not supposed to kill. Or do anything bad for twenty four hours. Or maybe just not killing things with emotions like, don't kill me, please! Anyway, I put on a candle and read for a bit hoping they'd go away. No. I finally found that I could breathe with my jacket over my face and got up at seven thirty, about an hour or so later than perfect. Sat up right into a cloud of midgies. The tiny entities had been breeding. Must have. Where's the agent orange for midgies? Before I came here I took some joss sticks to the tent and lit two. I don't like joss sticks. Passive smoking. Hope the midgies don't like it either!

So I had hardly time to eat something before I had to sit down for the eight o clock meditation. Lama Yeshe wasn't there. I don't think he's at the centre. Anyway, I just sat there doing calming stuff for the hour and the bliss came on. But if you don't start right, you're always catching up. Then everyone went away and I stayed for another hour. Then I went into the back temple where the visitors never go. Two people meditating in there. Sat down.

The door opened and this kid must have stuck his head in (I had eyes shut all morning) and said, on seeing the folk sitting there, "Are they real?". Perfect! The kid got it in one! What is reality, was, I think, the question for the first big conference after the death of the buddha. Both exist and don't exist at the same time. Exist but not in the way you think you exist. Excellent.

In the back temple, I did some sun salutations and then a very good Tai Chi set. These sets and meditation really go together.

After lunch, I went out to the seat in front of the stupa. It was sunny and warm. I closed by eyes for about an hour and a quarter, almost all the time in bliss, sometimes great bliss. There was such accessiblity to ra bliss that I couldn't really be bothered with vase breathing. In these states, as long as your mind doesn't wander you are in ra bliss to some degree or other.

I gave a thought to the samsaramom, who did a retreat recently, but didn't get too much of ra bliss. You will get ra bliss, Heather! Unfortunately, we are surrounded by silly people, but if you stay with it, you'll get it.

I'm going out to the river. There's an island you can jump onto and no one will bother you. Tonight I expect to be blootered by ra bliss! There's nothing beats happiness!

Ra Ego Has Landed!

11:21 a.m.
Good time for a mental check. I just got here to the wonderful Samye Ling about an hour ago. The tent's up! There's nothing left to worry about.

I think this is the best mental state I can remember being in on arrival here. Very calm journey. I was in Lockerbie at half eight and sat on the platform for an hour waiting for the bus. This is a great place to wait. No one around. Fresh air. Tweety birds. Great seat. Right into ra bliss. I thought: this is going to be a wonderful visit. No one around. I got up and did a Tai Chi set, which has interestingly enough 108 moves.

A guy spoke to me at the bus stop. He was from New Zealand and was down to help with some building. Obviously, a wonderful human being. As long as he doesn't speak to me again! Said hullo to Germe and Teresa looked into the reception when I was there (auspicious? who knows?). Then as I was trying to get my stuff over to the campsite, the Big Indian said hello. That was nice. I'm an admirer of the Big Indian who speaks no English as far as I can see. So that's a lot of conversations so far!

There is a refuge ceremony this afternoon with Dr Akong. One time I was here earlier in the year I walked into an empowerment ceremony, or one came to me in the temple. And I took it. Anyway, the guy at the bus stop knew all about the ceremony. I just walk about in a stupor.

I came in here for a cup of coffee and to email home that I'd arrived okay, but they've changed the rules on these machines. You are on for an hour. I should be meditating right now!

I'll describe the lay-out here a wee bit. The last time I clicked on the site there was a photie of the stupa. In front of that is where I normally do my tai chi sets, but they're doing some building work beside it, so I don't know this time. There's a photie of the gate. There's a mansion leading from that and at the back of the mansion there's a square piece of ground. Two sides of this square have buildings on them. One is the temple. To the left of the temple is open ground and that's where my tent is. A million little bitey things tried to eat me there when I was putting up the tent.

I was thinking earlier on what I'd like to get out of this week. If I could go home with a nice bright symbol in my navel chakra that would be brilliant. I mean, you look down and there it is. I don't know how far away I am from that. Anyway, I thought for a while I could have spent the whole retreat on a bench in Lockerbie station.

I've got time on this machine left, but what the hell. I'm away for my first meditation. I think I'll go to the temple.

This could easily be the best time of my life!

8:15 p.m.
The cafe is open! What kind of retreat is this? Non-stop blogging!
I spent the last half of the afternoon in the temple, taking refuge with Dr Akong. I didn't know if I should or could do this, but he said it was okay for people who'd taken refuge before if they wanted to make a connection. Well, I did. I didn't go forward with a scarf (didn't have one anyway!), but I think that's the second time I've taken refuge: both Tibetan brothers. I assume Lama Yeshe is still my root guru.

When Dr Akong started going on about making connections I felt a cloud of ra bliss go up my body, almost like a reaction of pleasure to this statement. But I did want to be part of it. This is the way to start a week here.

I can easily see the changes in the last year. Before the stupa in the photie, there's a beautiful bridge and a wee island in the middle of a pond. I sat on a seat there facing the stupa today a few times. It's one of my favourite places. A week past in March I was here at the start of my ten weeks off work. Remember well sitting on that seat. Remember thinking what joy this whitey bliss with the eyes closed must have been for poor people in Tibet. Well, I could tell today how the whole thing has moved on in just fifteen months. Today I'm sitting there and no matter what there's some low level bliss. Something is helping to hold you up and there is a feeling of the sheath or whatever in front of your face and chest. Sometimes your head might lower and when it raises, here comes some bliss. If you want a lot of bliss, you merely bend at the waist, or lean forward and rest, then come up. If you want to go to California, you take a vase breath.

This stuff is available almost every time you sit down and concentrate. The vase breathing thing works even if you don't hardly concentrate at all, but just do it.

Before I came in here, I was down at the river. Not much heat, but I haven't really started yet! I'll go to the temple when the machine is finished in twenty minutes and blow my head off.

Just had a look at the Sensei's blog. The photie after the one with tea cosie is a beauty. It should be entitled: Nosferatu meets the Unsuspecting Lunch!

At last, I've worked out how to crack the American kidbook market. This should really be put in the safe hands of Adolf since he hardly works at all and seems to be attracting a lot of teenagers to his site. First find the American twelve or thirteen year old somewhere in the blogosphere. Force them somehow to read Light in the Dark. They will be amazed at how good it is. Then offer them ten percent of anything the book makes from their efforts. What they have to do is get five of their pals to read it (Of course, they will be equally ecstatic!) and then go to the Everyone who is Anyone site. There they can get the email addresses of the managing directors, etc (not the editors!) and ask them why the brits are making all this money from Harry Potter when there's this wonderful book sitting under their noses. This would work with kids. They'd have to be determined. Of course, I could do this, pretending to be the kids. I'd have to set up the blogs, etc. Of course, too blissed to be bothered. But anyone else with schemes to make money from all this stuff feel free to contact me as long as I don't have to do anything.

Sitting on that bench today, I was thinking that if the weather was alright tomorrow I could sit there all morning, in fact all day. Checking out ra bliss! What a life!

Ra Samye Minus One!

2:00p.m.
Yahoo! I'm on holiday till the 15th August! What a wonderful life this is! Holidays as well.

I phoned the gatekeeper to nirvana this morning and he says coming with the tent tomorrow will be cool. I usually write a wee letter to Teresa before I go and I did that today, asking her to look out the straightjacket and make sure fire extinquishers were available near anywhere where anyone could meditate. So all I have to do is get on the train at 7:21 a.m. tomorrow and the Samye Ling here we come!

And today I checked the Blogpatrol thing and 2,500 hits have been recorded. 789 visitors. One of the visitors today came looking for Anjali Pratap, the agent person from AP Watt. She still hasn't got back to me. She might have read Bugtown by this time, but after re-reading it last week, I think I should move mountains to get Light in the Dark published. It's not often I impress myself, but I did think it was something else.

How would I like to be after a week at the Samye Ling? Of course, being fully enlightened might be nice, but I don't really know what that would be like. Seems a little unlikely. But I would like to have a better attitude to people who don't meditate. Nobody I know meditates. Not around here anyway. Flatheids do annoy and irritate me, especially the ones I know well. When I get back from the Samye Ling, it would be nice to see smiley people. Flatheids don't smile much and usually look a bit mentally ill. Sort of, disturbed. It's called normal.

I would really like to give up everything which has any mind altering qualities at all. I'd like to stick to tea. This might mean going into hiding.

The reverend and sensei has started modelling Wurzel and Grommit tea cosies.

Two young women have contacted Adolf in the last couple of days. I think offering to post photies of women in nazi uniforms has got to be a first in the blogosphere. Anyway, one of them was fourteen and has an interest in reading and writing fiction. I've asked her read Light in the Dark. This is called stalking for an agent. Actually, having a fourteen year old agent would have its advantages. You could take them over to the McDonald Island for lunch and you wouldn't have to watch them light up cigars with twenty pound notes!

Ra Samye Minus Two!

I don't think I have to write anything else about buddhism and ra bliss. All I know about ra bliss is how I got it and I think that's in this blog alright. So I've got to stop feeling sorry for folk who haven't got ra bliss and who aren't going to get it. It's not my fault. Instead, I think I'd be better off delighting in my own good fortune! I'm a HotboyMadyamika. I can surf the oceans of bliss. Too bad most of the folk who read this can't, but that's really not my fault.

I think when I get back from the Samye Ling, I'd be better concentrating on my stay in the Unheard of and McDonald Islands, known for the breaktaking scenery and the nazi penguins, and Adolf who has escaped from the Third Reich. Every time I go out to see someone not in the blogosphere, I get into difficulties with the old purification and accumulation. Nobody I know has any good habits. Nobody I know wants to sip tea and discuss origami. But I should cherish them anyway since they are my deep dear friends and will all start falling off their perches any day now.

I am feeling a bit of excitement and trepidation at the prospect of going on retreat. I don't know what seven days of meditation will do to me. With the state of bliss as it is at the moment I expect a great many exciting events to occur while sitting quietly doing nothing. In the vajravana you don't stay in the same place. You go up or down. This might be a big week for going up, but I don't know where.

The last time I was away for a week in the summer all I wanted to do when I got back was sit in my hut and meditate. I couldn't be bothered going out and looking at the Festival even. I have no idea what I might feel like in a week's time. Just now I can get ra bliss by vase breathing. I wonder if it's possible to get it just by breathing. Anything is possible with this juju!

I've packed already. Nervous, see? This time I've packed two books for fun. One is the Way of the White Clouds, the autobiography of Anagarika Govinda, one of the first folk I read about Tibetan Buddhism. The other is Initiations and Initiates of Tibet by Alexandra David-Neil, who must have been an amazing woman. The last time I read these books was about ten years ago. Remembered really liking them. Other than that, I've got the two books by Glenn Mullin about the Six Yogas of Naropa.

I'm going to my allotment now for some bliss and some onions.

Rem Travails!

9:20p.m.
This is a post about not believing in anything you think. I used to come home from work dying for a hit of some kind. So I've got serious nicotine withdrawals because I smoke at night, but not during the day. Sometimes I have thoughts then, but know they are not true. But I might think they are true. You think a thought exists on its own. You think it arises as some kind of truth. You do not see the causes and conditions that made this thought. You've just got the truth and the thought seems to exist on its own, by its own, supported by it's own truth.

Where your biggest enemies are your greatest friends

Once you have learned to ignore the thoughts you have because they result from nicotine addiction ( 0r are in a way brought on by this), what about your other thoughts? Are they not conditioned by something? So we have the start of emptiness somehow. Thoughts are connected to other thoughts and other things. They are not true. They are conditioned.

Anyway, I've been blogging now for some months and to little avail. Nobody is really interested in buddhism. I have not found anyone in months who talks about ra bliss. I have had a bit of fun trying to get a literary agent. I have loved blogging because it feels more amusing that other things I do. I should blog and meditate. The flatheids bring with them other things which condition the thoughts and don't help them. Flatheids do not think about where thoughts come from. They do not exist in a subtle world. Neither do I. But I'd like to. I think it's good that I can go away with my mind to the Samye Ling, where my head is truly flat, and forget the people who do not meditate. Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path. I can do this better in Bellshill where the people are not bourgeois basturns and do not meditate, but are not like .... dearie me! Lost ra bliss a wee bit in Ayrshire. I need to go away on retreat!

Ra Samye and Me!

I guess I'll be down at the Samye Ling by Friday this week. I had quite a sociable weekend so you've got to get back what you've lost on Monday and I was left with some feelings of trepidation about going for a week in a tent to a place where there's really nothing much to do!

I first went to the Samye Ling on a May bank holiday in 1988. I was the first day I was in sole charge of my daughter who was six months old then, my partner having gone back to work that day. The kid's never been back, but it was a very auspicious day for me.

Soon after me and Shiva spent a weekend there. I went with Shiva a couple of times after that, but then he dropped out and I started going on my own.

Going to a place where they don't allow smoking, if you're addicted to cigarettes, isn't easy. You have all the hassle with occupying your time without a tv, drugs, drink or anything, as well as climbing the walls with the nicotine withdrawal. These weekend breaks were sometimes hard work.

Then I went a couple of times over Christmas and was put in Purelands, which is a ten minute walk from the centre. In the countryside it gets very dark after four and I hadn't a torch, so I had to be in Purelands at four in the afternoon. I had a cassette player for cosmic tapes and cosmic books, and that was that. But at Purelands there is a shrine room and you could go in there to do hatha yoga and Tai Chi. Sometimes you might look out of the window of your wee room and you could see the moon and realise you could sit there watching it for maybe seven hours before you could go to sleep. This might have been ten year ago. The nicotine addiction wasn't so bad then, thank God, but I still had that anxiety before starting retreats like this.

I was in Purelands for a week at least twice, I think.

The only good thing about getting a full time job around seven years ago was that I could afford to visit the Samye Ling a lot oftener.

I was going three or four times a year for three or four days at a time.

Took refuge right at the start of 2003. First inner heat experience in April 2003.

Spent a week in Room 11 and I was happier then than at any time of my life. Joyousness beaming out of me at times. Had another wonderful week there.

Stopped drinking in 2003. Started again in 2004. Stopped and started again in 2005.

Joined the breath with ra bliss in the Spring of 2004.

Fantastic developments in 2005. Obstacles continue to disappear and I can raise inner heat sometimes. Finding amazing amounts of bliss and having some very peak experiences. But discipline getting shaky again.

I've been three times in a tent to the Samye since October and spent a week in a room. The last time I was there about two months ago I remember being in my tent reading the Gopi Krishna book and thanking my lucky stars that I had connections with people at the Samye which meant I wouldn't have the horrible time Gopi Krishna had!

I have no idea what is going to happen at the place where there's nothing much to do when I go there at the end of the week. There will be bliss and heat. I expect there will be astonishing amounts of bliss and heat. But things have been developing so fast recently ... if it's hard and challenging, that's okay. Maybe it needs to be like that. The last time I found it quite hard I ended up at the gate ready to go away and feeling so wonderfully calm. You can always dip back into that when you need it.

There is ra bliss. If you do not meditate a lot, you will never reach ra bliss.

This is what bugs me. My maw has an old friend who is sitting in a new bungalow among a lot of folk she doesn't know. She had a breast off and she has a colostomey (?) bag. She'd in her mid eighties and cannot get out hardly at all. She is not happy. She is more than not happy.

I ask myself if this woman would be happier if she had any understanding of emptiness and could maybe close her eyes sometimes and sink into profound bliss. I think she would be, but she is from a generation which didn't get the chance to find bliss because nobody knew anything about it and nobody told them it was there for the asking.

I heard once there was a code among pilots during the war. If you were getting shot down, you switched off the radio, so no one had to listen to the screams.

Young people are allowed to be foolish. My deep dear friends have no excuses. If I could end up in a monastic situation by the time I'm old, I won't have to listen to the stupid basturns moaning and groaning!

Rem Visualisations!

Samsaramom left a comment that sent me back to blogging. I'd managed to give it up for half a day!

Visualisations? Hmm? I only know what I've read in freely available books about this juju, so I'm always merely speculating. So this is really just a personal explanation.

I tried to understand the Second Noble Truth by writing The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf. The second noble truth seemed to be that suffering is caused by desire (sometimes actions and delusions) based on ignorance of your own true self. When you ask yourself, what is your own true self, it might be useful to bear in mind that the words were said by a buddha. What does a buddha think his own true self is? Because he's not supposed to be ignorant. We are. Anyway, it looks as if our problems here stem from ignorance and self.

Forget visualisations at that point. You just do the calming stuff and let a bit go and find the object to be negated: this false sense of self. This is not easy stuff. Visualisations might be easier! You could do them as a rest!

Angst might be from fear of personal annilihation.

So you go through the dying process (you have to suspend disbelief: in drama someone's got to die. You're the centre of the universe on this one. You get to die!) and you get into beyond concepts then back out again as a deity in a mandala. As an offering. A radiant and proud and beautiful offering.

I might have made that bit up.

So you hypnotise yourself. I do not know what hypnosis is. I have asked. Nobody seems to know what it is. There must be a connection. Of course, if everything is connnected, there must be a connection. But a close one between hypnosis and this.

You're hypnotised and the boy says this is red. It seems, the bit in your head that tells you it's red flashes red. It's red all the way through. Except it isn't red. But it seems red.

You are the deity. You have to be the deity and not just pretending or imagining. So there must be some connection between this and hypnosis.

Would you want to be a deity for a while. Maybe just a little bit. Say Friday night round at my place. What times we could have!

So you have somehow managed by fantastic perserverance and great good fortune to convince yourself in some way or other that you are a deity, and then you go back to joe/joesephine. What has that done to your problem? Ignorance and self.

It's got to completely unhinge you. You could see how you could go mad if you tried this stuff with a couple of beers in you.


Through a long line of bright folk with no teevees and nothing to amuse themselves with except their minds, it seems that they found this juju was the best way to promote happiness among the human beings. And the method must weaken what you so steadfastly were clinging to and which caused you needless suffering. Your hat. As I said, just a personal explanation.

Ra Bliss Resume!

I'm sure anyone who meditates will eventually get down to ra bliss. There's nothing odd about me! So here's a brief resume of what I know and have experienced with ra bliss.

White light came first. Burst of it sometimes up my body. Sometimes red bursts. This was shortly after starting. But I've done some meditations practically every day since I started about twenty year ago.

Once I was able to sit properly, I started doing three sessions a day if I could. Sometimes in the evening session, which I used to finish before getting out of my face, the space behind my eyelids would go very white and bright. Usually, the first two sessions were much the same as usual: just trying to concentrate and pay attention, going back to the object of focus (Sussquehanna for me!) whenever you'd lost attention.

Got up to about an hour and a half a day, in three sessions. Half hour at a time. Bright light in the third session almost every time

I had to give up tobacco again. Maybe about 41 or 42 by then. In order to do this, I started getting up at six in the morning and meditating for an hour before going to work. Now you've landed on the money! You fly out the door. You smile at the world. You're getting tons of bliss. This is, I assume, due to the purification of not smoking the tobacco and the increased time. Now you're doing two hours a day and things are really starting to work!

I had the experience of non-self and emptiness described in The Buddha and The Big Bad Wolf, about chapter four, I think.

Then I went to Nepal and India and came back with a tobacco habit once more. That didn't go for six years and tobacco is really the worst drug for this juju. You're better drinking! Don't ask me why, that's just the way it is.

During this six years I did make progress, but it was definitely hampered by blowing the first meeting I had with my now root guru. Didn't think I could progress while still smoking.

Hitting fifty and all found the Jonari's book on chakras and soon after bought The Bliss Of Inner Fire. The clouds open. At last, somebody's talking about ra bliss. And I thought I was getting an awful lot of bliss then.

Managed to get in shape for my date with destiny: Christmas when I was 52. My father died at that age and I used to think of it as my life expectancy when I was in my twenties ... to gee me along!

Didn't die, but took refuge with the great buddha, Lama Yeshe Losal, who gave me an empowerment to do deity yoga. Three months later I had my first experience of raising inner heat. I've had several amazing things happen to me through meditation, but this is in there almost with the experience of non-self and emptiness. It was like after the first time I dropped acid: you just knew nothing was ever going to be quite the same again.

I don't think I've been quite so stunned by any other inner heat experiences. Not yet. Since then I've been developing the technique.

So you get white light. Soon after ( I think it was after for me!) the thing that creepeth uppeth might start. This is sometimes like getting a very nice massage across your shoulders and neck, but from the inside. It ripples and weaves snakelike. This then might develope and will sometimes feel like a balloon or envelope easing you into a better alignment. It sticks out the front a wee bit at your neck and face, and sometimes distorts the shape of your face around your lower jaw. It occurred to me today that if this moved up and back, it would feel like a halo. Gopi Krishna said he had one of them.

Last March I began ten weeks off work and spent most of them in my hut. There I made some connection between breath and bliss. A definite connection. When you let go the vase breath, instead of an normal exhalation, you get an exhalation then bliss might start to pulse up your body. It does this in different ways, but it seems connected somehow to this balloon/envelope effect.

The heat comes up the same way.

The odd thing about this stuff is that, as soon as the thing that creepeth uppeth starts, you don't really have complete control. You can do stuff to entice bliss and heat, but somehow it doesn't feel as if it's yours. You have to put in the conditions then, as the man said, just let go.

Milarepa told Gampopa that nothing can whack this juju and he should know!


I haven't got the discipline (unlike all those nice people!); my visualisations are still rubbish; but other than that everything seems in place. I think now I've just got to keep going until I can collect the four blisses. Once you can go instantaneously breathless (not happening soon!), it's game, set and match.

I'd like to be able to close my eyes and go straight into profound bliss. This is the help we could all use in this life.

Last year I had two empowerments from the lama's big brother. For the last couple of years this stuff has really been hurtling along. Much helped by going part time. You need to distance yourself from the sources of afflictive emotions. And get some time to sit in your hut!

The Future: Deity yoga is a full time job. I would like to lose this half job. Do I have the karma to not work? Well, on Tuesday I managed to convince myself again (I was so confident about this book when I finished it!) that Light in the Dark is a children's classic. I think it'll kick ass when this writing competition gets underway in August. Anjali Pratap might fancy selling it before that. Something else might occur. I'm on the park. I need somebody to pass me the ball.

This blog has received 731 visitors and 23i2 hits since March, I think.

Ra Samye in Ra Distance!

2:45p.m.
Finished work for the week again! This time I usually try to gauge how my head is after working for a few days and this time it's really very good. Well, I went to work alright, but I didn't see anyone there at all. This might explain it! If I go into work tomorrow, I can be at the Samye Ling next Thursday morning about ten. And I could stay for a week. What a week that will be!

So everything is looking very calm and clear here from the cave mouth on McDonald Island. I have no plans to see any flatheids at all. Last weekend I saw one of them practically every day. Brian Wilson has shown an initial interest in me showing him how to drink wheat beer, but I think his morale has been lowered by falling into another open grave at a conference last week so that he will think better of this and not pitch up.

I can't say anything meaningful about ra bliss. It continues to increase. The worries I might have had about this, such as, keeling over in a twitchy fit, going on fire, or going mad, have greatly diminished. I feel safe with the juju now. Everything is just going to get a whole lot better. Wonderful, wonderful things will occur. I meditate in the lobby now. You can stand on your head there between sessions!

While I was standing on my head, the phone rang. Froggie McDuck tells me that all the McDucks will be drinking somewhere dry on the 26th. This would be worth going to if you wished to have a leg transplant without anaesthetics. I should be safely tucked up in my tent at the Samye then!

Before and after this call to arms, ra bliss was fabulous. So just more or less sit in ra bliss without doing much in the way of visualisations, mantras even. Just ra bliss. Then bring up the navel chakra symbol and go for a breath. What can you say? Ra bliss has moved on. Great beaming bliss!

Ra Practice!

Since someone might have asked me to join a buddhist blog ring, I should maybe detail my practice. This is what I did when I got up today.

First, a wee bit of alternate nostril breathing. I take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. May I gain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.Then I go through my gurus, visualising them in front of me and then on top of my head. Then I turn them into a white line and run them through my body. Sometimes black stuff goes way down and is eaten by a bliss dragon far below. Bit confused and tired for that at the start today.

The guru list just now is root guru, the great buddha Lama Yeshe Losal; Dalai Lama; Kalu Rinpoche; 16th Karmapa; 17 Karmapa; Lama Thebten Losal (the author of The Bliss Of Inner Fire); then back to Lama Yeshe Losal.

Maybe I should be doing this just with the lama, but I've been doing this, or variations of it, for years now.

Then I do Jesus Christ from the Turin Shroud photie. I've been doing this for just a couple of years. Same as the other gurus, but with prayers, sort of. Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world have mercy on us. Repeat twice. Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world grant us peace. When it's on top of my head, I say: Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for me, is my guru, give me your wisdom mind.

After that I visualise all the dead folk I know and try to give them a bit.

Then I go through the process of dying as described in the books. (Mirage, smoke, fireflies, flame, white, red, black). Then Dharmakaya, Sambhokakaya, Nirmakaya. Then you are in the mandala, and you can do some vase breathing and get right out of your head.

Then the alarm went. That takes an hour. I'd like to have just sat there for a while with just the red symbol at the navel, but didn't have the time today.

I'm definitely not a tough guy. It takes me a while to get to sitting quietly doing nohing!

This blog has had 706 visitors since it the blogpatrol thing was put on about March. Also, it's had 2216 hits. Unfortunately, I don't know what they mean. Yesterday, 16 visitors. Usually, there's about eight to ten. I assume that means these people have been before, but who knows?

I got a really nice email this morning from Jean Kitson of MBA. I don't know why I sent her the email since she says she only represents screenwriters, but she said she'd pass the email on. Some people sound naturally sympathic. The email send out last week actually produced a couple of nice replies and Robert Dudley from the court of Elizabeth Ist even followed it up!

Because I have to put them into a contest in August, I have re-read Bugtown and Light in the Dark over the past two days. Bugtown is okay. I've just finished Light In The Dark. It blew me away. I went into this reading with a lot of insecurities (thought of bits maybe to change, etc.), but came out totally reassured. It might be the best thing I've ever written. When I was getting kids to read it, telling them it was written by someone else, it beat Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone four to one. I was a bit perplexed by that, but now I realise it's because it's fung brilliant. I'm afraid anyone who knocked that back who is involved in kidbooks needs their head examined.

I wrote about my practice earlier. Michi Regier mentioned something about the meditational juju in Light In The Dark. I'd forgotten or I get insecure when folk read stuff. Anyway, three dimensional meditations are the name of the game according to Anagarika Govinda who sold me on Tibetan Buddhism originally. Light in the Dark is a great book for Buddhist parents! And kids! I'm so pleased I liked it.

I'm expecting Anjali Pratap to get back to me soon and I expect she'll say no to the kidbooks. That's okay. At least, she did read one! I hope she gets back to me soon because I will sell Light in the Dark. This could be good for blogging about. Every agency who deals with kidbooks knocked that book back. What a bunch of morons! Send in the RSPCA! No wonder kids don't want to read books!

Robert Dudley mentioned a review in Amazon when he emailed me last week. Assumed he'd made a mistake since I haven't anything in print. Checked it today. There's a review of Are you Boys Cyclists? by the sensei. Such a nice thing to do. Maybe even helped with this agent thing. I went to his blog and there's some photies. There's one with him and his cat with a pig they've just shot, and another one where he's trying to lasso a reindeer. I'm definitely a post-modernist now!

Ra Bugtown!

In preparation for this book fight coming off in August, I've just re-read Bugtown. Apart from a couple of typos, it seemed to be in English anyway. I must have given this book to twenty kids to read at least and didn't ever get a bad reaction. In fact, some of the reactions were brilliant. This probably doesn't say anything good about Bugtown. Most of the stuff punted at kids is crap.

For some reason I was thinking about Robert Louis Stevenson the other day. Treasure Island isn't a kidbook these days because most twelve and thirteen year olds I see couldn't read it.

I put Anjali Pratap into Google and this blog comes up second and third. That's a drag! She must have read Bugtown by this time. Wonder why she hasn't got back to me. Bugtown would make a great film. It's got dinosaurs, castles, aliens, bugs .... but couldn't get an agent to look at it. Ms Pratap is probably only the second or third and I finished it a couple of years ago. Kids liking books isn't any reason to publish them of course. Most kidbooks sit on the shelves and nobody wants to read them! I'm going to read Light in the Dark tomorrow. I so enjoyed writing that book. Be indecent to make money from something you liked doing so much.

But the one good thing about getting books published is that you don't have to read them again!

11:15 p.m.
You can eat stuff almost straight out the ground now. You can pull out turnips and twist the leaves off and just eat them. People might look at you if you do it a lot. But it was an especially beautiful day today. Like being somewhere that wasn't Scotland. Spain maybe. The earth has proved most fecund this year. I was in the allotment for three hours tonight. Saw a mouse. Ate a turnip. Watered the tatties. No back breaking stuff. The meditations were good without being spectacular.

Rem Sun Salutations!

9:00p.m.
Beautiful, sunny day. Cycled round the volcano and bumped into Shiva again. So we did fifty four rounds of sun salutations. This was not quite as anxious an experience this time because I knew I could do it without spending the next six months in traction. It's the slippy puddles of sweat as much as anything. Streams of the stuff were flying off my arms as you do the last part when you come up and get your arms above your head. Brilliant exercise. Also, his 54 and my 54 of course make 108. But he is also 54 as am I. That's another 108. That's a meaningful number to some people, but I can't remember why.

Since I stopped work on Wednesday, I've done a skipping/shadow boxing session, a six mile run, played nine holes of goolf, and did the sun salutations today. Also, I've drank four bottles and two cans of beer! Probably put in an average of about five hours of meditating a day.

I want to be happy most of the time. I want to do things that help me think good thoughts. I think this summer, my 54th or 55th, will be the best of my life. I'm dead pleased I taught myself to meditate and fell in love with it.

Ra Bad Boys From Kham!

Have to report that the wheels have come off the temperance wagon. Last night I had to go and see Poisonous. I'd be better keeping out the road since all I'm interested in just now is the weird stuff happening after the vase breath. But you have to go and see people. So we went to see Poisonous. Four bottles of Budvar at 5% and all the way from the Czech Republic. A prince of beers. Four bottles just right. After the second glass, no one was talking to me (we were outside in the back garden. I was sitting cross legged on this wall) , so I rolled my eyes up and had a wee breath. How wonderful! Ra bliss right there. Could have taken away the beer, the people and the garden and I'd have been fine. As soon as I start doing that in company (I was doing it last week when we saw folk at the Make Poverty History march), the Domestic Bliss starts attracting my attention. I wonder why. Eyes rolled up and a glaikit grin on your face. What's the matter with that?

The sensei and reverend emailed me about my bad habits and doing this vase breathing juju. Purification and accumulation is the name of the game, so you should just do the meditations and lay off everything else. This is easier when you're skint. But I can't seem to keep up laying off everything for very long. Several times I haven't had a drink for a year, for instance, but I've always had a beer afterwards ... to see what it's like. Frankly, I've never said no to anything. Some things I don't like, but I tend to say yes to everything else! This is obviously a problem in progessing in this juju.

Nice people who don't drink or do drugs, and are not addicted to tobaccco should find this meditation stuff dead easy. That's why nice people really irritate me. They seem all neuroses and no drive! (Maybe I say that because I wish I was nice, but I can't help being naughty!)

In the Vinaya, which are the monky rules, I believe, there is a part which says, "Monk, you may inhale smoke from a small pipe." First of all, this might not be true. Secondly, what's in the pipe?

It's not appropriate to be totally honest in a blog like this. The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf has stuff about purification from the more honest perspective.


I'm somewhat encouraged by this half remembered, probably apocryphal story about the four brothers from Kham who were with Gampopa. Anyway, the latter was away meditating. They were having trouble with the four brothers back at the monastery. They kept donning the viking helmets and taking off for babes and booze. But when the boy in charge of discipline was throwing them out, the animals started leaving as well, along with the birds, insects, etc. So Gampopa had to come back and ask them to return.

But if you haven't got some discipline, at least sometimes, I don't see how you can get the mental calming. Without that, you've got zip.

Ra Wet Teeshirt Competition!

At last! Just over the last few days I've been thinking it was just about time to get some flatheids round for an exhibition of drying off wet blankets. This might involve lots of blowing and snorting and feeling silly, but not if you replace blankets with baseball shirts. Such as those over here.

Since this is RaBlissBlog every now and again maybe I should define ra bliss. You have the punishment. You have the reward. Ra bliss is the reward. It is what happens if you do this and do that. You get this other thing, maybe a somewhat surprising thing. If bliss doesn't have the connotations, just think of the best thing. The best thing is ra bliss.

Samaramom has been on my mind recently because if you just call folk flatheids and jibe at them maybe you forget how hard it is, and how hard it is to try. I read this book by the first English guy to become a Thai monk. He'd been lecturing on the newly translated sutras on a mixture of beer and benzedrine. In Thailand, he wanted the meditation, which no one knew anything about. The abbot stuck him in a bamboo box on stilts (cue Colonel Bogey's March!) and when the boy tried to come out for a wee walk about, he was told to get back into the box or he was on the next boat back to the flatheids. He had a task. The task was to put four symbols into his body. I can't remember the colours, but it was the same as the four big hindu/buddhist chakras. I think he spent four months in the box. Might have been six. Definitely three at least.

I'm not the only sweetie eater. Maybe it should be hard. We find it hard to endure because we do not know about ra bliss. Even if we get some bliss, it is still hard. You have to try. That's unfortunate.

Ra Extrarordinary Bliss!

3:20p.m.
Just got back from the allotment. The allotment is green. Most of the green stuff is weeds. Haven't quite figured out the weed thing. That's why I have to dig it so much.

This morning's meditation in the hut, the first one, re-wrote all the rules. Afterwards I thought, this is day one. We start here. It's not just the white out bliss I was getting with my eyes closed. (The big ones tend to be with eyes shut) The effect of the vase breathing is what's doing it. It is just simply amazing. The zone you go into is maybe similar to the whole meditation thing i.e. you have sleep, dreaming, being awake and meditation. So you discover that meditation is a zone where you can find all kinds of things. Then with the vase breath, you get another zone. This seems to be becoming established a bit (though as what: it's all over the place!) , but the sensations therein are unlike other sensations. It's hard to recall these sensations when you're not having them, but at the time they were amazing. The situation you are in is so different.

There's something odd happening in Michi Regier's blog. Are these real jumpers?

My 17 year old daughter went towards Gleneagles yesterday and came home so excited and happy. At this point I'd like to say something nice about the pigs. The pigs here in Scotland are some of the best pigs in the world. You let your daughter go to the revolution and she sees stupid people being assholes and the chinook helicopter came out of the skies and 30 of the polis in riot gear ran across a field. This is a whole education when you are 17 years old. But she was able to demonstate and got home safe. Well done the Scottish police! And I should add that whenever they've arrested me they were quite nice considering.

Got in from the allotment to find out that London has been bombed. That's partly why I'm blogging just now. To hear the news. Dearie me. Hope there's no one I know blown up. Still a beautiful day here. I'm going for a run!

6:30p.m.
I woke up this morning thinking about the wisdom. I was blogging yesterday about the method. Method and wisdom, they go together. The wisdom is maybe emptiness. I was thinking about post-modernism, which I knew nothing about till Adolf started blogging about it.

There must be an element of emptiness in post-modernism since they have fudged the subject and the object. It's as if they're talking about one thing. The joe/josephine and the book interact surely and are not quite separate. Things that relate to other things change. Things look as if they're staying the same. That's not true. So you misapprehend everything. You could say what you have is a view. A mistaken view. Ignorance is the first link in the twelve links of dependant origination. People don't feel comfortable admitting to ignorance. We like to think we're smart.

This never made it onto my wall: "Samsara and nirvana are perceived as one reality in the state of ultimate awareness. To perceive ultimate reality I mark everything with mahamudra, the great seal of emptiness. This is the quintessence of non-duality. " In other words, you walk about saying, It's no true. Definitely, no true!.

Ra Traffic Jam!

Due to the G8 stuff, there was a traffic jam this morning as I was trying to get to work. On the bus. Just sitting. Eyes closed. Great bliss. White light, thickish bliss. This is the only way to wait in a traffic jam. Wish it had lasted a bit longer!

Decided to send out the last batch of the totally unsuccessful email. Must have gone out to over 250 agents by this time. I sent one to Robin Wade because I somehow like his name. I can't help myself. He sent back an immediate reply and said I sounded desperate. Maybe that was putting folk off. First laugh of the day! Anyway, I'm supposed to be blogging about agents, so I have to be active.

RaBlissBlog has taken 2003 hits since it was set up in February.

Got a really nice email back from Robert Dudley. I recognised his name. I think he was involved with Elizabeth Ist, which makes him the oldest agent in Britain by some way. Anyway, he says he's not up on kidbooks, but wanted to have a look at the current thing I'm working on and the start of The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf. No one has ever asked to see that.

He asked for it by email. Wonderful. None of this going to the post office malarkey and getting rejections back from people you've long forgotten. Fung off straight away and on to the next thing. That's more like it.

It's good to have more than one iron in the fire at a time. I had my hopes that Anjali Pratap would have got back to me with rave reviews of Bugtown by now, but maybe she's looking at Light in the Dark. Maybe she's ill. Who knows? You have to give folk time and not care what they say.

How nice to be home again in the Unheard of and McDonald Islands! It's Wednesday afternoon and I don't have to go to work again till next Monday. Yahoo! Now that I've sent off the email to Robert Dudley I can relax.

Ra bliss on the bus this morning was exceptional. I should spend the whole summer sitting quietly doing nothing and I'll do as much of that as I can. I think I can get to the Samye Ling during the last week of the month. I don't care if the tent blows down when I get there. As long as I get there. I feel on the cusp of extraordinary events.

I'm away to my hut in the allotment now. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

11:10p.m.
Had heat tonight in the allotment. I'm really enjoying being up there in the evening. What can you say about heat? It's nice. I'm amazed sometimes that when I stop meditating everything seems completely normal. Like, still a tired crabbit basturn. And it's strange that it can be so wonderfully good and you somehow don't crave it the way you'd expect. Its non-addictive. You seem to always be able to get more.

It's just occurred to me that the email worked! At least, once. After more than 250 shots. The recipient in the best of possible worlds was supposed to do what Robert Dudley did. Now, if the stuff what I wrote was any good, that would be just ... one thing just leads to another. Much better to examine ra bliss.

Ra Method!

Samsaramom's retreat has ended. I was really enjoying the posts. Inspirational really. Makes me feel like a real sweetie eater. She seems to be using only the breath. I'd find that quite tough as I've never used such little support. I taught myself to meditate using Susquehanna, a mantra I made up. I thought with the mantra what might happen is that when you get some nice feelings, you might associate them with the sound, so that when you use the sound, the nice feelings should emerge faster.

I remember reading if you count the breaths and go back to one when you've had a thought, you'd probably stay at one for maybe the first eighteen months.

Just using a point in your body when you first start must be murder as well. If you're using a symbol to go with the point, that must be dead hard too because there won't be any symbol there for some time.

I got quite interested in some just sitting meditations a wee while ago. This is a method I really quite liked. You get calm however. You're sitting. Then a wee bit of your consciousness goes looking for your false sense of self. This is what causes the suffering and is what you're trying to negate in this stuff. So you look for it in your skandas. Is it in your body, senses, etc.? When I first started doing this, you can say, "It's no there!" and just go on. But it must be somewhere. So you continue to investigate and come up with the notion that it must be in your mental formations, the volitional impulses, the ideations, the thinking that arises in your consciousness. But it's not always there. And it's not there in every mental formation, I don't think. When you've done this for a bit ... looking for the object to be negated ... you might fancy going back to saying, "It's no there!"


I stopped using Susquehanna about nine years ago when I went to Nepal. I decided to use Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum, but somehow I ended up using Om Mani Padme Hum an awful lot. I still like the sound of Susquehanna (sounds like suspicious!) and think I maybe should have stuck with it and not made any concessions to anything religious. Of course, then wouldn't have got a guru and taken empowerments, which are very good indeed, it seems.

I do sequences of visualisations and breathing and different kinds of routines. Anything to keep you sitting really. I'm sure tough guys just sit.

Once you get light and then ra bliss, of course, everything becomes a lot, lot easier!

Ra First Draft!

The bloggy counter is showing 630 visitors and 1963 hits since it was put on. That seems to be working out at about thirty hits a day, averaging ten visitors a day just recently. No idea what that means really. It might mean I get about ten visitors a day. Or ten regular readers? That's twice as many as I'd expect. Most must be poor souls probably looking for someone blogging about penguins!

I was half expecting to hear from Anjali Pratrap from AP Watt today. It's nearly a fortnight since she said she'd read Bugtown. Maybe she's reading something else.

I've just now finished writing the first draft of the novel I'm currently working on. Now all I've got to do is find a nice quiet seaside town and sit down over the winter and re-write it seventeen times in longhand. Then put it back on the computer and write it again. That's probably what I should do, but I can't even if I wanted to. I'll hack about in it and get it finished somehow by next summer.

Of course, I've mentioned this current work in all of the maybe 230 emails I've sent out to agents and no one has picked it up. Having the novel rejected by practically every agent in the country, and certainly several times by every agency, even before it's written might be the smartest move I've made. Obviously, there's no chance of anybody publishing it. So if its just for me, I'll have to make it really something. A work of art!

There's six books on my site. I've had two other ones published. I've had about eight plays produced and one not. There are maybe two other novels not on the site. (Wasn't trying to sell them/didn't have time to scan them). That's about ten books I've written and nearly the same number of plays. Almost all of this was done while in full time work or while I was the primary carer for a child. Even I don't know where I got the time.


The bliss was thick today and liquidy white. There was heat. Last spring I had ten weeks off work and managed to connect the bliss with the breath. I can't collect the four blisses and my visualisations aren't great yet, but I am most definitely ......

Peace and quiet would be one thing. The things are too separate. Ra bliss shouldn't be over there. You have to get it. You don't have it.

I went up to the allotment tonight and sat in the hut for two hours of ra bliss. It's still not dark here yet at half ten at night. I don't remember how long it's been happening for, and always these bits emerge by degrees, but in some states all you have to do to get a huge whoosh of ra bliss is lean forward and straighten up. When you first accidentally come across this - you might lean forward to ease your hips - it is a bit of a boon. You just have to lean forward. Not always, but oftener these days, you just do that for more of ra bliss. Isn't that a wonderment. I think it's possible that this is what you'd do if you could do this inner heat stuff properly, which I am far, far from being able to do, and you wanted to warm yourself up ... in the cave. Just lean forward and straighten up with a great wave of super heated bliss. Unfortunately, not yet by a length or two. But ra bliss, yes. There is, of course, no perceptible end to ra bliss.

We had a riot on Princes Street, or a rammy as they used to be known. I missed it. It's on the telly just now. Thank god some things are still predictable. Pencil in July 4th for the riot. Still, the joint seems to be livening up. They were rioting passed my bus stop in Princes Street.