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!