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!
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!
posted by Hotboy at 10:25 AM
2 Comments:
ok here's my problem... your using alot of big words in your blog like
readjusting, circumstances, allotment. just a word of advice if you want people to be able to understand what your saying than you gotta dumb it down. k? thanks!
Sorry about that! An allotment is a patch of ground given to people by the local government to grow vegetables. It's among about 150 other ones in a beautiful park, but surrounded by a big fence and has a locked gate. If I knew how to stick photies in this, I put one in! But thanks for looking in anyway. You said you liked going to church. What kind?
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