Ra Happy Days Are Here Again!

1:30p.m.
No more working till Monday! Yes, yes, yes!

One good thing (actually, the jobbie was good this week!) about the work was getting some kids interested in reading the books recommended by Rosemary Canter, the kidsbook agent from PFD. These were Wind Singer and Missing. I'll have the Wind Singer books by Monday and all I need then is a big bottle of fizz and a packet of chocolate biscuits. Kids are so happy if you can just give them a drink of juice and a biscuit. So that's happening.

The weather is weird today. Sulty and oppressive and warm at the end of August? I'm almost tempted to take my simmit off! Then there's what's on the telly. New Orleans. The domestic bliss is going there next month for a conference of barber shop choruses. I kid you not. Looks like she'll need a paddle.


Someone arrived here after sticking Ancient Futures into Google. Odd that since no one knows anything about that book unless they've looked at this blog. The term that gets most folk here is still wet teeshirts. At least, "sitting on my head" doesn't feature anymore!

People still come here looking for Anjali Pratap, who works with AP Watt. Anjali was going to read some stuff of mine, but I haven't heard anything for about a month or so.

This is the best I've felt about leaving work on a Wednesday that I can remember. The juju has been going very, very well since I last blogged despite having to go to work.

I've talked about a kind of sheath effect in my body that this bliss and heat (whatever it is) seems to operate with. Or through. Or goes on at the same time. There's been a lot of business there over the last few days. Last night I was sitting up in the allotment and thinking that this was the bit where I sometimes grow a little apprehensive. Another road without maps.

Is it the "spirit" from the old holy rollers saying, "the spirit moves strongly in me today! Hallelujah!"? I assume not.

You can grow a wee bit apprehensive because it's not yours. You're not completely in control of it. I do something like sit quietly doing nothing and something else is checking in to do whatever it's doing. It seems to be getting stronger and moving higher. There might be some kind of transformation going on here, but what's transforming and what's it transforming into? I don't really have anyone to talk to about this and, besides, what is there to say? Except let's hear it for the solitary realising foe destroyers!

In the old Tibetan stories maybe you go to your guru and tell him stuff. He seems to always say keep meditating. It's empty whatever it is. But it's accelerating. Meditating at first is quite hard, but if you do it for long enough it becomes irresistable. It's from the tiny trickle stopping and starting to the big estuary unstoppably washing into the ocean. Sometimes over the last few days it's seemed like the last bit. Sometimes I think if I let go of the pollutants (drink/drugs, etc) .... well, maybe there all that's keeping my feet on the ground. But forward, forward! All my plans are simple! So I'm off to the allotment to investigate ra bliss and count my lucky stars!

Ra Sunday

11:10 a.m.
It's dull, overcast, damp and a bit cold today in Edinburgh. The curtains are drawn and the house will be empty till five or six at the earliest. Sitting quietly, doing nothing. It's going to be a good day for that.

12:15 p.m.
I had a comment on the last post asking me why I was trying to stop drinking beer. Well, I only work part time and can't afford it. Also, putting any kind of drugs into your uncontrolled mind isn't going to help with ra bliss. I think .... well, I know .... the meditations work better if your nervous system is well tuned. Beer knocks it off, even if just a wee bit. We're talking subtlties (and spelling!) here. Fixing your mind and concentration. Let's get a clear mind!

Last night because of all the good work during the day and because I enjoy it, I went out for some beers. One of them was Hoegaarden Grand Cru, sold in 33cl bottles and weighing in at 8.5% alcohol. If it wasn't for ra bliss!

Due to the beers, my concentration hasn't been brilliant this morning. But ra bliss, ra bliss! God knows what ra bliss would have been like if I'd kept away from the off-licence. Bliss is what happens to your mind and body if you meditate a lot. But it is not a simple thing and so it does not stay the same. The bliss this morning was back to the kind of hit God would give himself. When it's like that, it feels so wonderful you can't really adequately describe it.

2:10p.m.
I think ra bliss and heat from that last session was greater than any I've had since I came back from the Samye Ling a month ago. That's why you shouldn't drink or take any drugs at all when you're doing this juju. The drink and drugs just ruin the hit. This is sad but true. If I was more a clean machine these days, that's the kind of hit I could start meditations with. What a great idea!

I'm going to have a break for a bit so I'm not trying too hard!

10:20p.m.
I did twenty minutes of sun salutations around five then ten minutes skipping. Knocked hell out of me! I don't know how I managed an hour of sun salutations with Shiva only a month or so ago. Yon's heroic yoga. Then the other people who live here arrived back. That was good. Then they went away again. That was even better! More of ra bliss maybe.

Due mainly to the training session earlier in the day, I nearly fell asleep doing the juju around nine. So I read my current cosmic book (Generation Stage in Budddhist Tantra by Gyatrul Rinpoche) and got to the bit at the end. Persevere through weariness, the boy said earlier on, so I had another bash.

This is RaBlissBlog here to tell you all about ra bliss! We've all seen Star Wars. We know what a light sword is. The last meditation was just like that. You're sitting in the middle of a light sword. There's a lot of uplift. It's kind of nicely hot and very blissy. Thoughts aren't really bothering you too much. Nothing much is. That was it. Or at least a big slice of it! Nothing would bother you. Cold? Where? It's going to be an interesting winter coming up.

I like to thank the Masai Warriors and their cattle for bearing witness with me. And hullo to the Martians (I know you're there!) and you robots with your little bits of spam. I've been sitting in a light sword. Darth Vader eat your heart out! May the force be with you! HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B.

Ra McDucks!

12:20p.m.
Hard to believe it was still the weekend when I woke up today. I'm on the third day of my weekend and it's only Saturday. I'm going to have a great day. The place is empty, the curtains drawn. Soon, I will be surfing the oceans of bliss.

Had a wonderful time last night at Froggie McDuck's going away thing. Was dreading it since I thought I might have a drink. Told Froggie I was thinking of not drinking and he handed me a glass of Boddington's. Fantastic beer!

I've given up drinking for a year at a time three times. One New Year just before giving up, someone handed me a glass of Boddington's. Fabulous beer. Like frothy milk. The best thing about it is that it's only 3.5%. Drank seven cans of that and then we went to the pub and I had two pints of Guinness. Saved by the Bonnington's, instead of going back to Beef's to get my arm sawed off without anaesthetics, I said cheerio and walked home. Felt great this morning.

Had a long chat to Skinny McDuck about ra bliss. The value of alcohol. You drink and rap. You get intense. Brilliant that. You don't get it if you don't go to the pub. Of course, as of right now, I'm giving all that up!

Skinny had been reading Alma Mater! He's in his final year at uni, so a book about being at uni in the 1970s is right up his street. He seemed to be enjoying it. When folk tell me that, I always find it hard to believe.

Froggie is interested in the juju. At least, he's trying to learn how to sit. When I talked to him about ra bliss before, he said he'd give it a go and he seems to be. Really pleased about that. I was telling Skinny that he might be one of the kagyu masters come over from Tibet now that the juju is moving to Scotland. Well, he might be. If he decided to become one, there's no reason why not since he's only young yet.

Adolf has stuck some photies on his site. Two of them are me. One of them I didn't recognise at all.

I'm dying to read the newspaper the sensei and reverend is editing. If I take a break today, that'll be it.

By noon today this blog had been visited twenty times. Definitely some robots in there since they are spamming the comments. But a big list of normal bloggers as well. Please leave a comment if you've had any experience of ra bliss!

Persevere through weariness, says the boy. I'll blog and bliss, and blog and bliss! HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B.

3:15p.m.
There is nothing to compare with vajrayana juju. The vase breath stuff is working superbly today. Heat and bliss. Spent nearly two hours getting to the mandala bit. You do the dying sequence and then go from the Dharmakaya to putting in the symbols and the blue, white and red tubes (down your spine). When you do the vase breathing, the heat and bliss arise in your body and you feel different, so different. This is when I think you might impose the emanation of Dorje Sempa, the deity. This was working far better than I deserve since my nerves are a little jangled from the boozing last night. I feel blessed. This might be because I have been blessed, of course. Back to ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss. This is RaBlissBlog telling you to get into ra bliss!

7:50p.m.
I've just had a plate of my home made soup! I made a loaf today. That takes five minutes. Folk think it takes hours, but you only have to do five minutes work in the kneeding. Apart from that, I've been in here, the living room, with the curtains drawn.

I did a head stand today, getting up with straight legs. I could do that until eighteen months ago when I got a sore shoulder, then it went. Now it's back. A better trick. Up with straight legs (which looks impressive) and then go into a lotus and sit back down again. Real juju men can leap into the air from a lotus and change legs and land in the new position. So they say. Hardly seems believable, but raising inner heat seems unbelievable and I can do a wee bit of that.

The meditations have just got stronger and stronger. I'll have another go and then maybe relax. I don't know.

9:30p.m.
26 visitors have hit the blog today so far. Hello, you Masai Warriors. Anyone out there from Mars? Beef McDuck says his jobbie is so boring he looks at this blog. Hello, Beef! Beef actually looks a bit like a buddha, but he refuses to aspire!

Maybe meditated about eight hours today. Stopped now. Watching The Perfect Storm. I am a very, very fortunate creature. I think I might stop going on about flatheids and hassle folk about not being able to sit. Being able to sit is half the business. If you just sit in a good position, other things of a beneficial nature will happen. Alignment will occur. You will avoid the sore back.

People who cannot sit upright comfortably without having to fidget or move ... shit, I couldn't sit till I was forty. We are disabled by couches and chairs and seats. Sit on the floor. Stretch your hips (not your knees!) by trying to get your foot into your mouth. Or ear. This is RaBlissBlog. This is the way to ra bliss!

So good to be able to do a day like today. Lots of people helped, especially all those who left me alone. Allah Akbar. Over and Out. HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B.

Ra New Beginning!

10:50a.m.
I feel so bloody positive just now.

Really had a good time last night. My Uncle Peter showed up at the Cask and Barrel on his own, without his partner, the Lonesome Cowboy Bill. Peter is simply an effortlessly pleasant joe. You've got to take your hat off to this guy. One of the few who made an interesting life in an interesting and hard game, book publishing. I had three beers; two pints of eighty shilling and one Landlord.

Shiva lives in the neighbourhood and I dropped in on him. Shiva started telling me how much he liked Shiva, the Indian God I'd called him after in this blog. He doesn't read this blog. But there he is going on about Shiva. What he really liked was the dope smoking Shiva who hung around the Ganges not doing very much.

I'm going to enjoy some wonderful meditations today. At some point I'll start the re-write of the novel. The curtains are closed in here because of the scaffolding outside. I've got the noise blockers on. This is RaBlissBlog! Here comes ra bliss!

1:40p.m.
I don't deserve to have the meditations going so well today. Really top class. The vase breathing is stretching my mind right into the zone. The whole perceptual business does go a bit wonky: I'm gazing on the sticker of the Kalachakra Mandala and when you've done the breath, it doesn't look the same any more! Is this the way the visions lie? Bet you it is!

It's a fine day. I'm going up to my hut. I may go to the Botanic Gardens to read my book on Generation Stage Deity Yoga. I mean, what a life!

Seeing my uncle Peter last night has reminded me that you don't have to meditate for years on end to be a good person. But it is better to meditate because it makes you happier more often, even if you don't get ra bliss. But I do get bliss and tons of it! I'm just going off for some more.

Calming is everything. Don't have calming; don't have fung all.

I read the first draft of the new novel; some twenty thousand words short. Right now, it just looks like a big effort. So is everything. Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.

As part of the purification and accummulation: I did my benchmark training session, sort of. Someone once asks me what I was training for. Just training. I've added the first bit to an old, old routine. So, dress up. Teeshirt, jumper, binliner, jumper, ski hat. Old bandages with some blood still there and the rotten old mitts, after the skipping. Five minutes of sun salutations. Then five minutes of skipping. Then six sessions of two minutes long of shadowboxing.

Bud Schulberg talks about the potential beauty of shadow boxing routines in The Harder They Fall. Never seen it expressed elsewhere. Six twos is the benchmark. It tells me how unfit I am.

Didn't feel too smart on the last two rounds, but happy enough after the riot of the last couple of weeks.

Then I couldn't resist. Had three bottles of Premier Cru (6% alc per vol.) and ...

Felt excellent. Still feel excellent. From about five till about eight I didn't. Not enough calming. You have to know that nothing can condition your happiness. That's what I think calming should do.

People spend time on their blogs, and try hard with them. This is really not much more than rabbiting. I'll really have to spend time thinking about sentences if I'm going to write this new, and probably never to be published, novel. But I'll keep blogging about ra bliss. Unless I get the black spot (Robert Louis Stevenson. Blind Pugh. Treasure Island. Scottish) pretty soon, something might happen with ra bliss. Something wonderful. If it does, inexpressible as it may be, it will be noted in some way here. So today I've been trying.

The best bit of the day was wakening up. For years and years I hated the first part of the day. Gie's a fag! A cup of coffee! Don't talk to me, you bastards.

I can't do the mandala, the sticker on the back of the old diary. But when I'm lying in bed first thing, it's much easier somehow. You die as you go to sleep, and emanate into your dreams. You die in your dreams (hey, where did the black bit go?), and arise as a diety in the waking state. Something about deity yoga.

The lying feeling good in the bed and trying to visualise yourself on the mandala is wonderful. You have a bit of ra bliss anyway. And the image of yourself stretched out. Then you try to lie yourself on the mandala, as an offering maybe. Or just lying there.

Flatheids don't get ra bliss. If you don't meditate, you might as well say you enjoy going about with your head stuck up your arse. Something about being a flatheid.

Ra Free Time Again!

1:50p.m.
Thank God I don't have to work a full week at the moment. Only a year ago I was working full time. It's there that the madness lies!

What have I got to do in the next four days?

I have to stop drinking beer! This might be a bit tricky today since I'm supposed to be seeing my Uncle Peter in the pub in four hours. I said in the last post that it was my Uncle Peter's firm, Mainstream Publishing, who published my first novel, City Whitelight. It's not on my webpage (6 unpublished books are), but I believe you can buy it on Amazon for a pee! What an investment opportunity! For a gallon you could clean up! Actually, there's fifty copies in my room which have never been taken out of the brown paper packages.

Another risk point is Friday night when Froggie McDuck will be having a soiree over at Beef's as a going away back to Froggieland kind of thing. I'll just have to say no. Or, no money! But I'd be glad if I can stay off the beer from tonight until after I'm dead. I think I might spend some time in the International Bar when I'm dead.

It's always hard to start again!

August has, frankly, been a disaster. You give them an inch, they take a mile. Right now, I'd like to be rowing down the Forth on my way to the cave on the Unheard of and McDonald Islands. No people, just penguins and ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

4:15p.m.
Since I last posted a couple of hours ago, I've made a loaf and meditated. If you drink beer, your mind might take a couple of days to calm down (depends on how hungover!), but that doesn't mean to say that you will not experience oodles of ra bliss. The vase breathing juju doesn't seem to need the same levels of concentration. So it's all still there! Great, huge uprisings of ra bliss!! Must say that's really pleased me. It's easy to forget or grow despondent because the flatheids seem to suck away the energy, but it's really just doing what normal folk do. My Uncle Peter, for instance, probably goes to the pub every night after work and drinks about three pints. You can't really do that if you want to do ra bliss.

Some folk are hard to see if you don't go to the pub. Uncle Peter is a joe like that. But I really like my Uncle Peter, so I'll gladly make an exception and get steaming with him if I really have to! But this is RaBlissBlog, so after that I must stay off ra piss!

Rem Robots

38 people visited this site yesterday. A couple of days ago I set the comment thing so that anyone could leave comments and the last post was spammed ... I think that is the term. Robots! I knew it! So I re-set the thing though I don't know if it'll make much difference since these robots seem to have sites in bloggyland.

Even if the 38 visitors were all robots, it's still a lot of robots. Actually, that's the most Masai Warriors and robots to have visited the blog in one day.

I'll tell you boys from the other side of the galaxy, what I'm supposed to be doing.

I'm supposed to be becoming a rich and famous novelist. To this end I have a webpage with six or so unpublished novels and an unproduced play. It's been up since February and is getting about ten or so hits a week just now, but none of them from literary agents, the reason it was set up. I suppose I've got a better chance of being asked out by Madonna than getting a literary agent, but how can you tell? How many wishes in a wishing well?

The other thing I'm supposed to be doing is raising inner heat. This is the basis of the 6 dharmas of Naropa. The inner heat thing is going quite well, considering I have lots of time off for running about, getting drunk and going to stuff in the Edinburgh Festival. So, I've been a bit of a disgrace to the juju since I got back from the fabulous Samye Ling. God, it was only a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I should count that in pints of beer consumed.

Of course, I haven't written anything all August (except this!) and my discipline has been terrible recently. So as of this week, the hammer is on, the lash is out!

Unfortunately, I bumped into my uncle Peter on Sunday as I was staggering by Deacon Brodies Bar. My uncle Peter half owns Mainstream Publishing and if it wasn't for having relatives in the book business, I'd never have had my first book, City Whitlight, published. So I'll go to the pub to see him tomorrow, but after that ..... the lash!

Ra Magic Mantras!

10:15p.m.
Wasn't going to blog. Checked the blogpatrol thing and found that somebody had arrived on this blog by typing into Google "Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum", so I went looking for myself in Google, using the same mantra. Maybe we're on the fifth or sixth page. Fung sake! Is there no one out there in the blogosphere interested in ra bliss? How could that be?

I read the post the joe/josephine arrived on. It was very interesting. Dead interesting comments I hadn't seen before. When someone reads something, you should get a ping in your mind. Ping!

I'm reading (slowly!) a wonderful book about generating yourself as a deity. Fung! Research! I'll have to go and find the damn thing!

The Generation Stage in Buddhist Tantra by Gyatrul Rinpoche.

Persevere through weariness, the boy says.

It's transcriptions. Some joes/josephines can speak in public. It's a representation of how the thoughts follow each other in the joe's mind. In a steady sequence.

He also at one point intimates that this stuff is going to take a lot of time and effort.

Lot of imagery talked about. Extremely complicated and totally wonderful. You can tell by reading the stuff that the joe/josephine has done this juju. It's the magical realism at the end of ra bliss rainbow. I want to be able to do this stuff. I cannot do it unless I get the circumstances together.

I can't understand why no one else is the slightest bit interested in this.

This is ra bliss. This is the end of punishment and reward. This is the end of being a rodent. Ra bliss says that at the end of the day you can say fung off, if you bother me enough, I'll fung off and sit down in ra bliss .... which would be much better than this.

I told the wummin who lives here about this, so with regards to Adolf and Louis McNeice, as we settled (raucously!) into the taxi on the run from Deacon Brodie's to god knows where, I leaned over to the young woman (must have been at least nineteen) who was in the seat across from me and said in a loud drunken voice: "What do you think you're doing getting into a taxi with a drunken old man like me?" What a smile she gave me!

Never fear! The lash is coming out!

Ra Strangest Thing!

2:20p.m.
Slept in this morning and couldn't make the usual visit to the aged parent, so I went up the meditate in the hut. Two hours later I'm coming back down passed the pond in Inverleith Park when someone approaches me and asks, "Are you Hotboy?" Normally, I might have said, "Who wants to know?", but I was so surprised (I didn't know the josephine from Adam) that I said, "Aye, indeed. Hotboy, I am."

She met me in 1980. She said there was something I'd said to her which she'd never forgotten. (You have to remember that I still haven't any idea who this josephine is!) I asked with some sense of trepidation what this was.

I was finishing a job creation thing at the time and going back on the dole. She'd asked me if I wasn't worried about being stuck up shit creek without a paddle (or words to that effect!), and I'd said no because some of the folk around here were to their necks in concrete.

I mean, it's not that good! Twenty five years later it's still rattling around in someone's head.

I have fully recovered (!) from the Viking helmet incident on Thursday. Adolf was asking me about the cricket ..... the Celtic have just got one back and are now two one down against the huns. Radio commentary. Now, that's a game! When there's a shower, the players don't all walk off the park! There wasn't any creekit at all on Thursday. Bugger! Three one to the huns.

I think I'll go back to the hut.

Has your mind got a body, or has your body got a mind? If it's the former ..... impressions you stick in there might be important. Like, things you believe in; stuff you've put in there. This is where believing in stuff might become important. (The regular Masai Warrior and robot who visit this page should know that I try to be a super sceptic) Faith leads to an impression of heaven. You're dead. Your mind isn't. What comes up?

You've got to remember that we're talking about a lot of projection e.g. I'm trying sometimes to emanate as a deity. Most of the shit out there is really in your mind.

This is not to say that there's nothing out there either!

Someone in the introduction to the Tibetan Book of the Dead says what comes up when you're dead is culturally dependant. So if you think you're going to heaven and heaven is full of gardens and randy virgins, that's maybe what you'll get. (But, of course, it won't last).

Faith? I had to rethink my attitude to that a wee bit. Might be a useful tool if you can't lose your false sense of self.

But Kalu Rinpoche is quoted in something I read as saying that it doesn't matter if you believe in peacefulm, wrathful deities, or not. They will show up when you're dead anyway. So, his view might correspond a wee bit with Jungian archetypes. Somehow, in the great big Mind these things exist in a way.

But does it matter? They are illusions. Illusions have a reality of course. As illusions.

I'll have to go back to the hut. If you're going to post about ideas, you should really spend more time blogging. Or thinking. I'm going back to the hut a supporter of The Heart of Midlothian Football Club!

Ra Next DAY

11:35a.m.
I got Brian Wilson, now reborn as a goldfish, up to the flat yesterday and showed him the cricket ground out the back window. When I said it looked as if the covers were never going to come off, the poor wee thing went belly up with the disappointment of it all. I was pouring him down the toilet when the doorbell went and who was there but Brian Wilson, spontaneously reborn in his previous condition!

He had a tiger skin with him and a necklace made out of human finger bones. He said a wrathful deity gave them to him as a parting gift from the bardo. This buddhist stuff is dead easy, he says. You just shake the wrathful deity by one of his twenty seven arms and say you're just the same a me, pal. We're emanations of the Great Big Juju.

He took me out for lunch at Peckhams, just down the road. I had a Premier Cru, Kronenburg 1664 at 6% and a most enjoyable beer! Then we went to The Baillie where I had a pint of Belhaven Best. Soon we were in the Pleasance where there are tons of shows and you can drink out in the quadrangle where pretty girls come up to you and tell you all about shows you're not going to see.

By this time I had reverted to Guinness and Brian was becoming a lager lout. We were pretty pissed by the time we got into the rickshaw which took us to the High Street. Great fun was had by all! We shouted at the world going up Clerk Street. We sat on the kerb in the High Street, which at this time of year is chock-a-block with festival goers and people handing out flyers. Brian told me to stop lying back and looking up at the sky. Everything seemed very pretty.

Several bars later, we ended up in Deacon Brodies where an African woman expressed her faith in Jesus Christ with wonderful and simple conviction. Only Africans can do that right. When Americans come out with stuff like that, I always assume they're nazis.

There was a taxi and a very loud band somewhere. I was right up against the stage and jumping about like a maniac. The band was terrific. I wish I knew where that place was. I'd go back.

Sometime this morning I got off the floor and tried to go to my bed, but I found Brian Wilson camped there already! What a wonderful day!

However, it was not all fun and games. When Brian arrived, he didn't say anything at first, but handed me a card which said he'd taken a vow of silence until I mentioned ra bliss. So I threw a cushion down at the end of the lobby and told him to meditate on that. We didn't say anything for an hour and a half. He had to get up and read the newspaper. I had a really good go at vase breathing, and put on a wet teeshirt at one point. But didn't dry it off. Says something about how things were going though.

Brian paid for everything, including the rickshaw! Of course, I haven't got any money. Just bags of stamina!

I'm going for a stroll round the Botanic Gardens. Edinburgh is the most wonderful city in the world at this time of year!

Ra Creekit!

10:15
It's damp and overcast. It will rain. The creekiters will not come out in Scotland in case they get their blouses damp. What a truly stupid game that is! Apparently, this afternoon I'll be able to take Brian Wilson in his goldfish bowl down to watch the spectators get pissed in the beer tent. So that's why folk go to watch creekit!

The sensei has posted the photie of his future assassin. This old southern gentleman has wall eyes. Best "Don't fung with me" photie for a while.

I had a very nice awakening this morning. We were out late at an Amnesty Benefit. Got ra bliss with some images of the lama and a demonstration of loss of self. That was before I was properly awake! Why you have to be unconscious when you're asleep beats me. You must miss lots of good stuff.

Workman hammer on the scaffolding outside the window looking onto the street. I'm going into the lobby with my wee statue and the sticker with the kalachakra mandala on it. Ra bliss awaits. So does the phone!

Ra Wednesday

1:35p.m.
That's the first week back at work over! Just checked my webpage. The hits on it have doubled for some reason over the last fortnight. Wonder why. If anyone has trouble downloading anything, just email me and I'll get back to you tout suite.

Finished another hard week at the jobbiething. Allah Akbar! Don't have to go back till next Monday. I'll have to start the re-write of my current novel, which regular readers to this blog will realise has already been rejected by everyone before it was even written, within the next couple of days.

Adolf says I've been missing comments on my blog because I don't get them emailed to me. Well, I've sorted that and anyone now can comment on this blog. A right wee nerdy person am I!

This is a good time. I'm going to spend most of the afternoon in the allotment. What a fortunate creature!

9:45p.m.
Read something interesting in the intro to the Tibetan Book of the Dead this evening. The Tibetan who was responsible for the translation had studied Christianity and rejected it as an immature version of Buddhism. He reckoned that Asokan missionaries (Asoka was a buddhist emperor) from India went to Syria and Alexandria, where they spread the idea of some kind of trinity. He also reckoned there must be some kind of buddhisty connection with the Essenes, whom Christ was supposed to have connections with (maybe). Anyway, he says Christ must have known about buddhism because the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount are buddhist.

Made my night. I must have read that before.

There is a brilliant editorial from the sensei and reverend which might rate as one long suicide note. I think he should go around Tennessee in one of those hats Ned Kelly used to wear ... the steel bucket job.

Brian Wilson would be so sorry to miss the Australians getting whacked at creekit out the back tomorrow. I've decided to relent and go and get him. This will cost me as he is now in the pet shop, a goldfish. Getting the wrathful deities pissed in the bardo didn't help. They've got three eyes in each head so they can see the past, present and future. They knew he'd be a goldfish all along!

Ra Tuesday!

5:10p.m.
Robert Dudley of the Elizabethan era didn't like Light in the Dark. I sent him a fabulous email to get him to start reading it anyway. I might recycle that email if I get the usual response to the kidbooks from kids this term. The book fight is still on! I got the offer of five copies of the Wind Singer by William Nicholson. I haven't read it. It's the first one up. Then I'll give the kids one of mine with Alison Main on the title page. The kids will have to mark the books out of ten and then say if they liked that book better than the last one they read. The second book will be Bugtown, which I don't think is quite as strong as Light in the Dark. Then, the next book will be Missing by Cathy McPhail. These books should, of course, beat mine since they have been edited, published and recommended by a top agent, who rejected my books. We'll see. Aye, think you're hard enough? I could have been a contender, you know!

The reason why I'm blogging is to relate the events of 4 a.m. on Monday morning. I got up to go to the bog ( five beers on Sunday!), but when I lay back down, I felt as if in this wonderful blissful cocoon. It was like a cocoon except it didn't really have an edge. A lot of bliss though. Sometimes I've wakened up with this cocoon (though not generally such a strong bliss) when I've been getting up at my normal time (6 a.m.), but that bliss on Monday morning was really something else. Difficult for flatheids who don't know what ra bliss is. But episodes like that really make me glad I stuck with the meditating. You can't buy feelings like that. I have tried!

Ra Last of the Holidays!

1:10p.m.
Back to work tomorrow. What joy! It's only a half time job and even I should be able to cope with that. I see the year ahead working out something like this ... well, I don't expect I'll get an agent and I don't really expect to make any money at all from writing anymore. But I've got a novel to finish. I've got the first draft already and will start the first re-write this week sometime. I expect it'll be finished next summer. Since it has been rejected already, more or less, by over 300 agents in Britain before it was even written, then I'm pretty sure, when it's finished, I'll just stick it on my webpage.

So that's the writing business sorted out!

This holiday really has been a bit disturbing on the old meditation front. Had a great big week's meditation down at the Samye, but back here among the flatheids I couldn't sustain the momentum. But when I get back to my normal routine, it's all there. I've just got to get back the discipline and put in the hours.

I'm in trouble socially really since no one I know meditates and they all have bad habits I'm trying to get rid off. Also, I haven't got enough money to socialise. What I'd like to do in future is what I did when round seeing Froggie McDuck and his family on Friday. I had four bottles of ale, but I'll have to stop that and take along the noise blockers instead. Anyway, the juju worked even after four bottles of beer. Just take a few deep breaths. Ra bliss and ra heat commences. Your eyeballs might roll up to the top of your head and certain distortions might appear on the handsome visoge.

The domestic bliss tugs my arm when I do this. Maybe it's not nicety nice. You're not really engaging with the flatheids when you do this, but it's not my fault that they've chosen to be mentally handicapped. If they can't fill their bodies with bliss, it's not my fault. Honest.

The perfect holiday for next year. The other people who live here go away somewhere. I spent a fortnight in the lobby. I've got a sleeping bag. There's the toilet at the end and the kitchen half way along. If you've got the noise blockers on, you don't hear much since there's no traffic noise there really. After a couple of days, what an amazing time you could have!

Meditate, blog, meditate. Back to the lobby. They're all out today. Paula Radcliffe is first in the world championships for the marathon. By the time I stop in the lobby the next time, I expect she'll have been overtaken. I ran a marathon once in 3hours 33 minutes. She'd still beat me!

Paula Radcliffe won. Good. I went out and ran for a few miles, and fell over, but didn't hurt myself really.

1101 visits from the Masai Warriors and robots so far.

Ra Saturday

12:30p.m.
16 folk hit my webpage last week. That's just about double the hits it normally takes. If anyone has any bother dowloading anything (it only allows limited dowloads apparently), just email me and I'll send whatever as an attachment.

It's been nice getting pleasant responses. Jeff from America somewhere seemed to like Bomber. At least, he read it awful quick. Michi Regier has read Light in the Dark and The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf. Beef McDuck has read Light in the Dark and Ancient Futures. Nobody has read The Real McCoy that I know of. That should be quite good since I loved writing it.

Since I set this site up in February to attract an agent, I don't think I've managed to get an agent to read anything yet. I have sent out a few packages with three chapters from the thing I'm working on now, but I'm sure that's a complete waste of time.

I guess I might start hustling publishers and give up agent hustling by Christmas, so if anyone likes anything on the site, it would be helpful if you sent me an email saying so. I could use them.

It's raining today in the wonderful Festival city. Let it rain. The flatheids can't bother me today. I can meditate as much as I like. Roll on ra bliss! Roll on ra heat!

Ra Reader!

5:30p.m.
A guy called Jeff read Bomber. He emailed me because he couldn't download it from the site, so I emailed him a copy back. He said : "I couldn't stop till I'd finished it. I really enjoyed it." Well, that was nice. I think Jeff is the first person to have read that book since I re-wrote it last year. One out of one!

The most used keywords for visiting this site are Anjali Pratap, the agent from AP Watt. They must be from writers looking for an agent. They're checking up on her. My lips are sealed.

Ra Aussies are coming!

12:45p.m.
This is RaBlissBlog and I started it partly to blog about ra bliss! Well, last night and this morning the chickens have all come home to roost, and thank God for that! You don't go to the Samye Ling for a week so you can get hammered with the McDucks and lose all your juju. You go so you can get back to the cave on the Unheard of Island and get right into ra bliss! What a great day it has been for ra bliss! And the emanating as a deity! Still, crap at that, but it is coming on!

Fortunately, on these islands the only beer available has no alcohol in it. This reminds me of the time they first brought out non-alcoholic beer and removed the alcohol, but left in the hangover! Anyway, it's time Adolf got a proper job and sold the idea of the hotboy deity yoga retreat on the McDonald Island to the Australian teevee. He can start this next Thursday.

The Aussies are coming to play creekit out the back garden next Thursday. There's a fantastic view of the pitch from my back window. Brian Wilson, who's been dead for a while now, is still in his mental body and clairvoyant. In the last communication he said the wrathful deities were great for getting served in the bars. Guys with five heads, three eyes in each head and twenty seven arms have no trouble getting served there at all. But he says he wouldn't mind coming alive for a bit so he can see Scotland gave these colonials are real spanking. He could rush onto the pitch with a sign saying: Free the Unheard of Islands One! which would give Adolf the chance to phone up the teevee companies downunder.

Enough of this nonsense!I've sat all morning in the lobby. It's the quietest place in the house. Especially with the noise blockers on. Got the kalachakra mandala sticker and the wee statue from Nepal for the gazing upon. What a fortunate creature!

8:00p.m.
This being RaBlissBlog, what an amount of ra bliss I got today! I could easily have been in the pub with Froggie McDuck, but the fates conspired and I went up to the allotment instead. From about three o clock this afternoon till nearly five, I was in the most fantastic amount of bliss. Still, calm, satiated bliss. The whole bliss thing just opened up as I sat down. It was wonderful. Such a surprise as well. I wasn't expecting much since three o clock doesn't chime too well with ra bliss memories. Red letter bliss. Inpenetrable.

The phone rings. It's Froggie! Brian Wilson didn't have to die! Here he comes. There goes ra bliss. Dearie me.

Ra Five Days Holiday left!

11:05a.m.
Last night it felt like I'd made up the ground I lost by going on holiday to Skye and acting like a flatheid for a week. It's not enjoyable being a flatheid. If you're a flatheid, you want to give it up. You really do!

In bed last night I dozed off while in a big globule of ra bliss. This doesn't happen often, but is really nice when it does.

The sensei and reverend has got a job! And he hasn't mentioned anything about taking in his Bulldog 44 and he seems to have been in for two whole days so far. Nothing like being happy at your work.

Adolf wants more people to visit him on the Unheard of and McDonald Islands, despite looking like a dog and being a rebirth of a not very nice Austrian who passed away in the bunker in 1945. However, he's into subtle sexual perversions. Hope this helps!

Ra Dead for Longer Brian!

12:50p.m.
Just before going to my allotment I checked this blog and 34 visitors hit it yesterday. That's the most ever. The sensei and reverend said some nice stuff about the wonderful writings the other day and that might have helped. You just don't know. A german dude on holiday in Majorca left a comment. Anybody out there into death cults? Anyway, I'll find out more shocking events for Brian Wilson to encounter when I've got the time to read some more of the Tibetan Book Of the Dead, and will post about that later.

9:00p.m. I think I converted Froggie McDuck tonight. You tell Froggie the hit from ra bliss, far less ra bliss and ra heat, is so much better than any experience you could possibly have with any drugs, and Froggie's signed up just like that. He knows I can't be lying to him because I'm his Uncle Hotboy.

Brian Wilson's progress through the bardo between his brain exploding and his rebirth as a ..... isn't looking like much fun. You seem to get this mental body so you can be scared witless by horrorshow monsters. Put you right off dying, it would. Then there's the spanking everyone seems to get when your consciousness is being reconstructed. "At the reversal of the fire wind, there is the feeling of being grilled in an immense fire. " Well, that doesn't sound very nice, does it?

Froggie took away the severed leg he'd brought with him. He and Beef had found it under the couch after the wee drink we had on Saturday, but it wasn't mine. There's always somebody worse off than yourself.

Ra dead Brian!

Well, without beating about the bush, things aren't looking so good for Brian, now that he's dead. A few things seem to go on beforehand, but he failed to notice anything until this bit: ""Am I dead or am I not dead?" It cannot determine. It seeth it's relatives and connexions as it had been used to seeing them before. It even heareth the wailings. The terrifying karmic illusions have not yet dawned. Nor have the frightful apparitions or experiences caused by the Lords of Death yet come."

I told him to meditate but he said he didn't have the time. But does it matter if you don't remember it? You know, that bit afterwards when the horrorshow starts?

Rat Uplift!

Almost gave up blogging for a week there! Hope for us all!

1002 Masai Warriors and robots have hit this blog since the blogpatrol thing was put on in March. It's had 3038 hits.

Robert Dudley from the Elizabethan era said he will read Light in the Dark. He says he'll do it after next week when he gets back from holiday. Can't say fairer than that.

After being two weeks on holiday, I feel like I've been in a train wreck! I went on holiday for a couple of days to Skye. Hope this week to give up everything again and get back into the juju.

Managed to read a bit more of The Way of the White Clouds by Anagarika Govinda. Though I try not to believe in anything, his account of Tomo Geshe's rebirth is a bit convincing. Just in case .... Brian Wilson has had to go!

Brian's demise was a blessed relief for almost everyone who knew him, but he went out just the way he would have liked. There he was propping up the bar as usual, his dentures placed handily by his elbow in case he felt like chewing on a pig's face later on. He'd been warned many times not to try sniffing the sticky pink stuff up the straw, but it seems a possible new route for the alcohol to enter his body was too much to resist. Of course, his brain exploded. He's to be buried with his creekit stick and his surf board. The chimp will play the last post.

I don't think the bit between being dead and getting reborn is very nice for some people, especially those who don't meditate. I'll look out the Book of the Dead and find out.

A twelve year old asked me to show her how to meditate last night. That was nice.

Ris Bloggy Business!

RaBlissBlog has had 948 visitors since it was set up and 2918 hits. Since I still don't know what there figures mean, I have to assume that the hits are from robots, and my friends from outer space. I've been wondering if it's worth going on with this blog, but it was hit 28 times on Saturday and 33 times the Friday before. Maybe there's about twenty people reading this every week. Who knows?

The return to samsara has been really hard. Yesterday I got a bit of my life back and spent from about eleven a.m. till half five meditating in the allotment. That was wonderfully re-affirming.

At the Samye Ling, you have to pay for an hour on the computers these days. So if you've committed yourself to emailing someone, you might as well blog. I thought folk back here were looking at the blog and I wouldn't have to describe the time I'd had when I got back. Of course, they weren't looking at the blog. Who was? People trying to find out about agents come to this blog. Also, people looking for wet teeshirts and Masai Warriors. I have not attracted anyone who seems to know about ra bliss. My web page gets about seven hits a week, but I've no idea if any of these folk are downloading books. Anyway, all the traffic it gets seems to come from e-book directories. I do enjoy blogging, but I'd also like it to be useful.

I've been reading a book about generation stage deity yoga. As soon as I read something like that, I realise I know almost nothing about Tibetan Buddhism. This is not a good resource for anything even mildly technical. It is good if you want to find out about ra bliss, ra ecstasy and ra rapture, but I don't think I've ever got anyone to meditate yet and I don't suppose I ever will. I'll just have to accept that the world is full of flatheids.

Everything I know about buddhism is in The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf and this blog. There's no need to write any more on that. How I got to ra bliss has been described.

I'm having to leave here on the Unheard of and McDonald Islands to go on a car journey to Skye. Toad of Toad Hall is driving, but luckily she's been given Mr Magoo's specs, so the next bit might be a bit irrelevant. I won't be back till Friday.

As far as agents are concerned, I've been trying really hard since February. I've sent out at least 300 emails to agents in Britain. Only one, Robert Dudley of the Elizabethan era, really paid any attention to it. I emailed him a couple of days ago to tell him to look at Light in the Dark. But he probably won't. Apart from that Anjali Pratap was supposed to be looking at the kidbooks, but she obviously hasn't got much time for reading books at her work. Then there's Rosemary Canter who agreed to put up two books in competition to mine with a jury of five fresh new first year kids.

I didn't need a blog for any of that last bit!

I'd like to have a reason to keep doing this. Unless I get some comments telling me to go on, I think I might stop. I could start a blog as a 13 year old, my future literary agent, from Dayton Ohio called Alvin Sheerman. That at least would be interesting as a writing exercise. The other option is to kill off Brian Wilson.

He hasn't got a blog and couldn't retaliate. Also, anyone who can take out their dentures and place them on top of a public bar to suck up pink sticky stuff through a straw deserves all they get. And he refuses to meditate. So I could kill him and put him through the bardo. That's the 49 days between death and rebirth. This would give me an excuse to go back and read the Tibetan Book Of the Dead.

Happy days to anyone who reads this. If it's been any use to you, leave a comment. Otherwise, it's hullo Alvin and over and out from HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B.