Ra Politics

Thursday 9:15 a.m.
Yesterday was another day without any pollutions apart from tea and coffee, though several different kinds of pollutions were at hand. Good boy! Wakened up thinking about politics.

There's been a lot of anti-Americanism going around since they won the world in 1945. Then half the wealth of the world was in the hands of the U.S.A.

Politically, what do you want, Hotboy? Libertarian socialism ... where you can get as rich as you like because some people need that ... and a world wide response to climate change.

Of course, we've had it. Saw a programme about a Chinese city I'd never even heard of. Primitive accumulation is the beginnings of capitalism, and that means pollution. The Gulf Stream will stop and the wind will blow. There's too much greed, ignorance and hate going about. Capitalism and market forces will kill us all. The human beings have had it, at least, most of them. But if they haven't ...

I studied American history at university for three years and did a course called American Labor and Society (I think they spelt labour like that!), which was about the left in American history. I spent a fortnight in California when I was 30 and wrote a book about it, called The Real McCoy, which is on my web page.

In the best of possible worlds, Scotland becomes independent from the U.K. and then we sell ourselves to America. Scotland was only in the UK because of the Empire and America is now the empire. I think a fair price would be a million pounds for everyone in Scotland. There's only five million of us. It sounds like a lot of dosh, but it's really only what you'd pay for a few trident submarines and a wee war in the middle east. Peanuts!

The U.S. is a federation and we'd need to get the terms right. A deal that goes big on states rights. Two senators from Scotland and no one to the House of Representatives. We'd need a deal on the constitution so that you can't carry guns in Scotland because we'd shoot each other. We've got a wee Parliament already and this country wants to be socialist and the best way to do that is if everyone is rich to start with.

The best place in the world is Europe. Europe is the jewel on this earth. I think we could do that and stay in the European Union, and the E.U should obviously get Russia in there as soon as possible.

Scotland could ride both horses because of our natural resources and strategic position. America would want Scotland in the same way they wanted Hawaii.

If you're an old age pensioner in Scotland, you can now travel everywhere on a bus for free. Bloody communists! What a great country this would be! The only problem with this idea about selling ourselves to America is that they've got us anyway. They don't need to buy us.

There is no such thing as independence. There is only inter-dependence.

Maybe this occurs to me because the Pet Bereavement Counselling Service might not clean up because I'd have to do something ... like set up a camera or something. I'm far too blissed to be buggered! Samsaric activities, including thinking about politics, is a waste of time. I'm away to the lobby now to emanate as a deity. That's more like it, Hotboy! I've a much better chance of emanating as a light being as I have of becoming filthy rich around here!

Friday Noon
We're going to the Samye Ling for two nights. I looked out the window at the horrible weather and booked a room. What a wimp! But I'll be able to meditate on Saturday night instead of going into the sleeping bag at ten when the temple shuts. I'm just so pleased to be doing this today. So pleased. Here come ra deities! Here come ra deities!

Ra Bookworms Turn!

Tuesday 2 p.m.
I'm on strike today. I love being on strike! Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we'll keep the red flag flying here! Free beer for the workers!

It's about pensions. I don't expect to live that long and if I do, I won't need a pension. I'm going to be a rich novelist, but I'll be giving most of my money away anyway. Even if I'm not going to make any money from my wonderful writings, surely the Pet Bereavement Counselling Service will clean up!

Anyway, my cunning plan to become so skint that I can't afford to be a bad boy seems to be paying off at last. I've had more pollution free days in the last fortnight than I've managed in ages. Ra bliss has been going through the roof. I meditated last night till nearly eleven and left very happy and content to sit in the lobby doing that, eventually.

St Teresa says you take the scorpions, snakes and spiders into the Interior Castle with you. (I think that's bad habits, desires, temptations) There are seven, I think, Mansions in the Interior Castle. By the time you get to the fifth Mansion, the snakes, etc., have turned into wee agile lizards, which shouldn't bother you too much if you don't pay attention to them. There's a great big Tarantula sitting in my kitchen. There's nearly five gallons of Burton Bridge Bitter in it and it's very nice indeed.

Maybe it doesn't ever stop being an effort, not for the likes of me. But it's much harder when you're just beginning and you might not be getting many sweeties at all ... and all your friends are like Brian Wilson and Poisonous. Samsaramom is trying to get her sitting times up. It's hard, but it was much harder for St Teresa, I think. She was into obedience and humility, being a nun, and her confessors (the flatheids!) were telling her ra bliss, etc., was the work of the devil. She did not have the wonderful Tibetans with their skillful means.

I sent the first part of Ancient Futures to Robert Dudley, a literay agent of the Elizabethan age. I also sent him Beef McDuck's review.

There's a series on an obscure channel called Kick Ass Miracles. Caught it about 2.a.m. on Saturday morning. One of the earlier ones had an old guy doing gymnastics and Tai Chi. 105 years old. That's forty year on a pension. Bleed the buggers dry and may the force be with you. Brilliant!

6 p.m.
Got into a lotus for the first time since I pranged my knee ... must be six weeks ago. Hurrah!

Ra Inner Heat Juju

Saturday 11:10 a.m.
Hullo, the Masai Warriors, Martians and Jack the Spam Robot! What a day it's going to be!

I keep remembering coming out of the hut on Wednesday afternoon to dig and finding the snow falling all about me. I felt rather happy. Although it was the afternoon and maybe a time when "the fire element" wasn't usually so fiery, I did not know it was cold. No wonder I was smiling! And the meditations have progressed even since then. I am becoming a hotboy!

Setting the scene. The Domestic Bliss is going west today and won't be back till tomorrow evening. There's no one here just now except you and me, Jack. The perverts don't read this far. I only slept for less than four hours last night, so I might have a siesta this afternoon. I ingested no pollutions at all yesterday (bar coffee) and this in my adult life is almost as rare as the stars on a cloudy night. By the way, the weather was miserable yesterday, but it's only overcast and gloomy today.

As the mind calms and clears, the visualisations become stronger and more distinct. I'm very happy to be here and doing this juju. I want to try hard, but not too hard, so I've got plenty of steam left for this evening. Wonderful things will happen to me today. This is RaBlissBlog! This is the best of times!

6:50 p.m.
Tonight is the last night when it will be legal to have a cigarette in a pub in Scotland. No smoking in enclosed public places from here on in. Twenty years ago you wouldn't have believed it. I don't get paid till Wednesday and I've got enough cash on me to buy two pints. Hmmm? If it wasn't for the fact that I've got enough plastic on me to buy out the off-license after the two pints, going out to see the pubs for sentimental reasons might be a good idea.

It's just getting dark and a very good time for the juju, so I'll juju till nine and then see!

11:30 p.m.
I've just had a wee look at the Samye Ling site. There's a photie of someone on it called Gyamtso Tashi. He's looking a little old and grey. He's a fixture in that place. Almost every time I've been down there I've seen him. Once I was there and I didn't see him and I thought he might have died, but I don't speak to people much when I go there and so I didn't ask. Sometimes I speak to the gatekeeper to Nirvana, but that's only when you're going in and going out. Anyway, he was there the next time and that pleased me. Although I've never engaged him in conversation, I am an admirer. He doesn't speak English, I don't think. Sometimes he and Teresa sit together at the chanting times and she sometimes speaks to him. She must have learned Tibetan. I don't know how long he's been in Scotland. Probably over thirty years. I'd like to be like him. I'd like to go to live in a monastery in India or Nepal and not learn the language. Then I wouldn't have to talk useless crap to people about thoughts. His name is Gyamtso Tashi. I've always thought of him as The Big Indian, from One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest. The only people I've ever felt any admiration for live in the Samye Ling. He's called Gymamtso Tashi. I wonder when was the last time he had a beer. Or a cup of coffee from the cafe there. Or any money. I wonder what he wants. Or expects. I'm going down there for the first time in a long time next weekend. I hope he nods and smiles at me. I'll have forgotten his name by then.

Sunday 5:10 p.m.
I'm not starting a new post because when you click to the view bloggy bit, it'll only show from the post three posts ago. I suppose if it's for nothing, you can't complain.

Instead of writing my new book, I've been going through back blogs to take out stuff about ra bliss which might be a help. You'd never do that with a diary. Anyway, there's an awful lot of stuff in this blog about bliss. But there's bliss and there's bliss, just as there's heat and there's heat. Subtle differentiations are difficult when there aren't enough words for ra bliss, or heat.

I've been telling myself I should progress a bit before I continue with the book, but I was talking about getting heat last summer! I'm going to have to just write this book. I want to concentrate on the juju, but that's a lifetimes work. And I do seem to be having a fantastic time with my life if you just read the blog. But I am having a fantastic time. Maybe bothering about people not having a fantastic time is just stupid and morbid. Almost nobody is having as good a time as me, but that's not my fault. Here's a wee story I heard in Bellshill on Friday.

This woman, who's a friend of one of my brothers, has a son in his thirties. Father of two kids. She normally doesn't let him in the house. He came to her door on St Patrick's Day and said he just wanted to wish her ... anyway, she let him in. He stabbed her nine times. Straight away. I don't know what kind of knife he used, but she's not seriously dead. Chibbed, as they say in the wild west, round the face, neck, shoulders. When I inquired as to why he should do this to his mother, I was told, with a resigned look, that he's jagging. That's fixing for those who do not know the patois. There's an offer on the Samye Ling site for a place in a closed retreat for one or two years coming up in June. Wouldn't it be nice!!!

I've had a great time on my own here. I think I'll go and sit in my hut till it gets dark.

Ra Emptiness of Emptiness!

Thursday 12:44 p.m.
How many different kinds of voids are there again? 17? I think I'm supposed to be trying t0 combine ra bliss with ra emptiness. I'd forgotten the emptiness was empty as well till I read the Heart Sutra again after seeing it on Samsaramom's blog. The sensei and reverend sent me a translation he did from the Japanese. What? He was illiterate till he was seventeen in that idyllic little village called Maryhill. Fortunately, he's been downsized from the newspaper job, so he might not get shot for a wee while yet.

Couldn't go to see my maw today because the plumber cometh. What a great morning I've had! Up at five thirty for some juju before breakfast. Up to the allotment on a truly beautiful morning. Meditated, dug, planted onions, meditated. Back here for soup and bread, and watching the Commonwealth Games biffing. Great superheavyweight fight. The boy was on the deck three times and got up to stop the other boy with twelve seconds remaining on the clock. Takes a lot of bottle that! You've got to really want it.

Four billion years ago, there wasn't any Earth. Now, we've got eyeballs and everything. It's a truly miraculous universe. Be a good laugh if we discover when we're dead that there's nothing here at all. Even the emptiness is empty. And that's empty, and so's that, and so on. Till the seventeenth degree maybe. These uncivilised pagany boys had all this sorted two and a half millenia ago. What were we doing? Going Ugh? Let go, Hotboy! Let go!

Thank God I'm not at work today! What a great life I'm having!


Later on: Fair play to Nosferato: "I translated the Kannon Sutra, not the Heart Sutra, ya benighted heathen. The translation of the Heart Sutra was by Red Pine, who I think is the best translator of sutras into English. His translation of the Diamond Sutra is definitive too. "

What do I know? I tried to phone the plumber today. (What a great job! I wish I was a plumber. Or could do anything like that!) I couldn't remember my phone number or my post code. The wummin on the other end said: "Is that your last bid?" I love wummin like that. Funny wummin. I'll go to Bellshill tomorrow. To see the entities who ask if Osama is a buddhist. I'm taking my nuclear weapon. Labels and functions. St Teresa told me today that she envied the desert joes. Well, we don't have the option. To be alone.


Tomo Geshe, according to Anagarika Govinda, zapped everyone who touched him with ra bliss. Walked off the park when he wanted to. Hmmm? Everyone before you must have less. Everyone after you must have more.

Friday 8:50 a.m.
Did a great deal of digging yesterday afternoon and felt very tired afterwards. Even if you think you're half fit, digging is a great thief. If I was a peasant, I'd starve to death. How my forefathers managed to work down the coalmines with picks and shovels is beyond me. They must have been as hard as nails. I'm off to Bellshill to see my maw now.

Friday 5:15 p.m.
What's going on with the bloggy thing? This post doesn't appear on my blog when I try to access it. What? And I found a comment in my email which doesn't appear on the blog. I knew this blog malarkey would never last! Anyway, the comment indicated that someone thought I was eccentric. I'm trying to get my head out of my backside while everyone I know seems to be jamming theirs further up and I'm the eccentric one!

I might get away with not having to talk to anyone apart from the Domestic Bliss from now till Monday. Keep away all you normal people! Keep away!

Ra Springtime Will Come!

Wednesday 1:50 p.m.
When the springtime will come, Oh, won't we have fun. We'll get out of jail. And we'll go on the bum!

From the Wobbly Song Book. My favourite

Oh, why should I work, like other men do. Oh, why should I work when the sky is so blue!

The week's work is done and it's only Wednesday afternoon. What a fortunate creature I am!! No social engagements have been arranged to steal my time away. Yippee!!

What a pleasant prospect over the next four days! Week on week the meditations have just got better and better. It's hardly believable, but this is the case. Saturday will be the big one this time. The house will be empty Saturday evening and Saturday night. Solitude, solitude, solitude. I used to be the most sociable of joes. Stay away, stay away, stay away!

On the other hand, I'll have to do something about getting a literary agent. I can't remember why. I think it's so I can make a packet and give most of it away. Anyway, I'm going to spend a wee while sending emails to agents about Ancient Futures. I think the only folk who've ever read that book in the last ten years are me and Beef McDuck. I've got a review by him and I'll send agents that. 14 Martians visited my site with the books on it over the last seven days. God knows why. How did they find it? It not folk coming from here, I don't think. Must be Jack the Spam Robot and his chums. Non-organic entities.

I'm living the wonderful life. Thank God I taught myself to meditate! Right now I'm going to my allotment to sit on the floor of an rickety old hut. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

6:45 p.m.
Fabulous, fabulous meditations in the hut this afternoon. Since it is the Springtime, I was going to intersperse meditating with digging. I got up and opened the door (it's tied shut with plastic string. Very basic hut model!) and went out to dig. It was snowing!! It must have been cold, eh? Didn't notice though there's only chicken wire for a window.

St Teresa was describing the various different kinds of locutions today. That's voices. Sometimes you can hear them out loud; sometimes inside. Sometimes it's because you're a looney of course. I'm going to read Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich next. See me? Ecumenical as hell!

11:10 p.m.
St Teresa says you have to have courage. (A colloquialism for that is bottle!) She was going on about being breathless again, and says she can't see much difference between trance, rapture and ecstasy. I know I'm just at the start of wonderful, wonderful things. Hope I don't need too much courage! I'm dead impressed by St Teresa. She didn't have any lamas at all! Loads and loads of bottle though!

Rat Saint Again!

Saturday 5:45 p.m.
The great meal I had last night was cooked by one Hun supporter and one Jambo. We discussed the game to be played tomorrow between Huns and Jambos, which will go some way to decide which one of these teams gets to play in the Champions League next year. As an obvious neutral (I support Motherwell, honest, since their strip is claret and amber, the same colours the Dalai Lama wears), I think it would be better if the Huns got into Europe because I like to watch the footie on the telly and I think they'll probably last longer in the competition.

The last time I mentioned the Huns in a post, I got a belated comment from a supporter from East Belfast, telling me to lay off. Thank God I have moved to the cave on the Unheard of Island! A belated St Patrick's Day hullo to you, my Irish friend. You've got to laugh! Anyway, to make up for any mistaken idea that I might not like the Huns, I've said a Hail Mary to St Teresa of Avila so that the Huns might prosper tomorrow.

Whilst on the subject of raising heat, here's another bit from the Interior Castle: "...the soul which takes life when, through the heat which comes from the Holy Spirit, it begins to utilize the general help that God gives to us all ..."

Adolf, who is of course a great supporter of the Huns, will have to put up with me camping on his bit of the island for a bit till the orange deities forget about me. (This is not the invasion, Adolf! Heil!) But they've got long memories those folk in Northern Ireland. Four hundred years is nothing to them. Come on, the Huns! Come on, the Huns!

Amazing meditations await this evening. The heat comes out when it gets dark. Dusk now. Here comes ra heat! Here comes ra heat!

Sunday 8:10 p.m.
In the spirit of ecumenicism, I will welcome the visitation of the orange deities to the Unheard Of Island! I can hear them rowing due to the development of yogic powers even though they be still thousands of miles away. Not only that, but I have started building a wall to divide my side from Adolf's. This is a practical demonstration of the dichotomous nature of conventional reality and I hope Adolf does not take it as a slight. Also, I have set up a sound system to play orange folksongs to make the huns feel at home. So our top song is, of course, The Sash My Father Wore with We'll Guard Old Derry's Walls a close second (thus, the wall!). I have also put up signs with directions pointing to Adolf's side of the Island. These say ROSARY BEADS that way! HOLY WATER that way! LIVING SAINTS that way! I need solitude, so I hope Adolf and them get on together and they have a lovely time here before they have to go home! Unfortunately, their team, despite all the Hail Marys I said, didn't do the business today and they might not be able to go to play Roma and represent Scotland at the Vatican next year, but you can't have everything!

I'm about half way through The Interior Castle by St Teresa of Avila. She didn't re-write a word. She didn't even read it over. Eat your heart out, Jack Kerouac! So it's hard to read. But I think I understand it a bit.

I've tried hard since I left work on Wednesday. I gave Thursday to my maw. I got more than I gave. On Friday, I tried to tell Shiva's son to meditate because if he starts now (he's 23) what a life he could have by the time he's thirty! I got pissed. But I was so chi-ed up! Then on Saturday I meditated most of the time till half ten at night. Today, I've done about five hours. Tomorrow, I will be blissed and sometimes tired. But I will be blissed. This is RaBlissBlog telling you not to waste your life. There is nothing comparable to the vajrayana. There is nothing better than being able to fall into ra bliss! Simply ra best. Simply ra bliss!!

I've got twenty minutes before Planet Earth comes on. I will look once again at Samsaramom's post and clicky onto the Heart Sutra. There is only one thing!

Ra Tim Saint!

Friday 10:35 a.m.
I had a long lie today, which is most unusual. Haven't meditated yet, but that's how I'm going to spend the rest of the morning and afternoon. Clear, clean spring day here in Edinburgh. So happy not to have to go to work and be able to sit and investigate ra bliss. I'll intersperse sitting with reading the Interior Castle. I'm really getting into training for tomorrow when the Domestic Bliss will be out of town all day and all night. I probably won't have time to write my book, but you can't have everything. I'm so fortunate!! From the first breath, I know I'm going to get blown away. Here comes ra bliss! Here comes ra bliss!

2:05 p.m.
Loved reading this bit of Interior Castle. This nun should have had a blog! "As I write this, the noises in my head are so loud that I am beginning to wonder what is going on in it... My head sounds just as if it were full of brimming rivers, and then as if all the waters in those rivers came suddenly rushing downwards; and a host of little birds seem to be whistling, not in the ears, but in the upper part of the head, where the higher part of the soul is said to be; ... for the spirit seems to move upwards with great velocity."

This corresponds very well with descripitions of kundalini arousals. She also says some of her nuns had "even exterior movements which cannot be controlled." St Teresa of Avila was a yogini. Her juju was all about Jesus Christ and faith and prayer and penance and fear of hell's fire. Method seems similar. She goes on about meditation and absorption. She talks about the Lord's favours, like sweetness. I think I might have translated that as ra bliss.

I'm gaining in respect for this woman all the time. She's got all the disadvantages of being in 16th century Spain, (such as, no Nagarjuna to explain emptiness to her), but what a trier! No complaisant, sweetie eating flatheid, this woman!!

Let's do a headstand then back to ra bliss!!
3:40 p.m.

St Teresa: " ...the soul seems to have withdrawn so far from the body that I do not know if it has still life enough to be able to breathe. I have just been thinking about this and I believe it has not; or at least, if it still breathes, it does so without realising it." There's not a whisker between this woman and Patanjali. "... if any consciousness remains to it, neither hands nor feet can move; as they commonly say of a person who has fallen into a swoon, it might be taken for dead. Oh, the secrets of God!" Breathlessness!!! Love this woman!

5:40 p.m.
I had such a wonderful meditation after the last bit of posting that whatever I do tonight won't really matter. Tomorrow's all mine. Today I have been blissed and blissed again in an empty flat, sitting quietly doing nothing. It was brilliant. Tonight I have to go out for a meal with some very nice people. Am I getting close to breathlessness? Is there anyone in the whole of Edinburgh as fortunate a creature as me? I hope there is.

Ra Two Heids!

Wednesday 10:30 p.m.
I had to work a full day at work today. To hell with that. Usually, I finish at noon, but today I had to work on. So I'm walking down from Princes Street to Stockbridge and I'm feeling like a working man. I can understand why they go to the pub for a couple of pints before they see the homelife because work is slavery and at five o clock about two pints might perk you up for your dinner, etc. Otherwise, you have no energy.

I am exactly normal here. I am a flatheid. The only reason I didn't go into the pub ... lots of reasons. Anyway, I wanted to.

I don't blog about my work, but an angel came and took half my job a year or so ago and if it wasn't for her I would now be in solitary confinement. We'll all get there soon, so don't rush it, Hotboy!

So I'm a flatheid surrounded by deities! Anyway, I didn't go into the pub because twice, during breaks at work, I managed to be on my own and did a few breaths, etc. Have I said ra bliss is compounded of a million different things? So it changes. I think the nine hours meditating I spent last Thursday ... well, you've got to try!

I've got to get the Doctor Jekyll and the Mr Hyde into collusion. What do you want, Mr Hyde? I'd like to fung the brains out of various painted ladies. I want to sweat all over you, Hotgirl! I'm fit and hot as well. Also, give me all your drugs!

But ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss! Somehow, I have got access to ra bliss! It is helped by not doing the Mr Hyde, but is coming along anyway. I've got two heids!

I want to be in the same church as St Teresa of Avila. To get into her church I've got to finish reading the Interior Castle. I think I'm in St Teresa's first mansion, the one where you have entered the path, but have brought with you the scorpions, and snakes, and bad habits really. Other folk are in this church. St Antony is in this church. And the Buddha. And all the Kagyu masters. Christ, of course, is in this church. It's the place where at least there is an aspiration to perfection.

I'll give tomorrow to my mother who is a working class heroine. Friday is mine till the evening till I have to go out for a meal. Saturday might be mine, but might be the detritus from the night before. Sunday is the day before the work cycle begins.

I'm three years overdue, but I have to live for another couple of years. I'll live forever if I can get rid of Mr Hyde. But so would we all!

HotboyMadyamikaSurfingTheOceansOfBliss!

Thursday 10:36 a.m.
Just before I get the train to Bellshill.

The Masai Warriors are back, Jack. For some reason the numbers are back up to about fifteen visitors a day on average. I wonder if it's because I stopped called folk flatheids?

Meditated for about two hours today so far. What doses of ra bliss!! I've read the paper as well so I won't take it on the train. I'm taking the Interior Castle, which is not an easy read. I'll tell you when I get by the bit when the scorpions and spiders can't get at you anymore. But I'll probably fall asleep.

The weather is pitiful. Sleet, rain, snow. Still, here we go, here we go, here we go!

10:55 p.m.
Mnnn? Terribly sorry here. Must apologise. Not very good at this technical stuff. Maybe a bit of a freudian bloggy slip here! I do look at Lee Ann's blog a lot, but if you click on "painted ladies" above, you will find yourself looking down Lee Ann's jumper now. This is actually a wonderful view on a cold, wet and miserable day. I would recommend this view, but the "painted ladies" are to be seen scrolled down a bit. The view is a view is a view. It's just a view. You have to accept that you bring yourself to the view of course. You and the view. Dearie me. Just send me the airfare, Lee Ann. The constant valentine stuff was impressive. Just tell you dad to sign a few cheques and I'll be there! Hotboy

Ra Straight and Narrow!

Tuesday 8:20 p.m.
Just finished doing a bit of Iyengar Yoga in the living room. I haven't been able to do much of that what with the dodgy knee. The dodgy knee is more or less alright now and I should be able to run by the weekend. Or, I'll start running and see. Of course, it might be five weeks since I pranged the bugger and I'm now once again a fat basturn of 12 stone. Not having that. Anyway, today the only pollution I'm taking is tea and coffee.

I am a disgrace. I know that. You don't have to tell me that.

Still, straight into fabulous meditations today after coming home from work. They say the vajrayana is like being in the middle of a bamboo pipe. You can go up or down, but you won't stay still. Despite my awful lack of discipline, it seems unstoppable. It developes as if by it's own momentum. How could anything be as weird as this juju!?

The cave would be nice to stay in from tomorrow evening until Monday, but I'm not on a retreat. I've got to see my maw and we've been asked out for a meal on Friday. Last night, the kid came to see us and we watched the animated Were Rabbit movie. Tonight, the Domestic Bliss is at home and wanta to watch Crash in half an hour.

It's hard to imagine life without ra bliss these days. You just stop and here comes ra bliss!

Ra Totally Bye Bye!

Monday 22:23 p.m.
Eric, samsaramom's man, who is now fabulous at conquering cold places, said in a comment on a previous post: "if you want to experience a terrorizing thing, place a sandbag over your head for 12 hours straight in 40 degree heat. I've done this for a few minutes in the army in the name of training, and let me tell you, it was pure hell. I thought I was going to die suffocated. Americans and Brits routinely do this to their prisoners. Ugh!"

You turn your back to do a bit of juju, and ... what the hell is going on here? The Foreign Office say sticking prisoners heads under water till they think they're drowning doesn't neccessarily constitute abuse, and now this!

Due to spending years at the juju, I have worked out what God told George. (God is a christian and doesn't mind if you half drown brown people as long as it makes them white in the end!) God told George to invade Iraq to start a huge war between the factions of Islam. Sunnis from everywhere get in there and fight the Shia from everywhere. That'll keep them busy. Get the nukes out! No muslims anymore. No Middle East oil. No jews, no Arabs. Billions dead. But lots of money spent on bullets and such for the military industrial complex to get even fatter. George is going to heaven so it's alright for him! It's enough to put you off religion, so it is!

Maybe we need an explanation. Howard Hughes quadrupled his money in the Vietnam War. This was a great success because of the money spent on bullets and bombs, etc. The war in Iraq is a great success. Pots of money for the basturns!

Smoke and mirrors. What to do? Get into the rowing boat, Hotboy. Capn Jambo has picked out the nuclear weapon of choice. Take that with you along with the barrel of beer. Row, row, row your boat. Here is the beach! This is the Pet Bereavement Counselling Service. We're heavy. This Unheard of Island is armed to the teeth with fascist penguins and a great big nuke. So if any marines or squaddies show up to demonstrate the values of western civilisation, it's goodbye, sweet world!

The essential thing about playing football (soccer!) is to take the mickey. You make your opponent look like a monkey. You take the mickey. That's what kids learned to do in the parks around Bellshill. It's called ball control. You get the ball and nobody else can get it off you. Tommy Docherty, then the manager, stopped a Scottish football training sesssion once because nobody could get the ball off Jimmy Johnstone without fouling him. I saw him play many times. Even Pele couldn't take the mickey like Jimmy Johnstone. Dearie me! I must be getting old!

Ra Bye Bye Weissbier!

Sunday 8:50 p.m.
Due to my wanderings further and further into the lonely financial zone, I have just barrelled eight gallons of home brew. Burton Bridge Bitter. This necessitated visiting Beef McDuck who was lending me his barrel and gas cannister. In order to facilitate this manouvre, we had to rejoin to the International Bar. A pub! Yes! I love bevvying in the International Bar though I haven't been there for yonks. Love that pub!

Beef says I should wait a month for the secondary fermentation, but I think he meant to say: Just tan it, Hotboy! Any time you like!

So since I'm going to work tomorrow, and because I've had a wonderful weekend, and because I don't think I'll have another drink till tomorrow .... I went out and bought four bottles of Weissbier! How much have I loved drinking weissbier over the last nine months! First up is one of my favourites Schneider Weisse. It weighs in at 5.4% alcohol and costs £1:89 a bottle. Next there will be two bottles of Erdinger (Oh, how I will miss you!) and the evening will conclude with a bottle of Paulander Octoberfest Bier. Weighs in at £2:19 a bottle and 6% alcohol. But first of all, David Attenborough is coming on: Planet Earth. I will be back!

10:07 p.m.
Here's my plan for what to do after I get handed the black spot. Being handed the black spot is when Blind Pugh shows up and tells you your days are numbered. You get the supply of morphine from the cancer expert, who happens to be a relative of mine, and take to your bed with a big screen showing the whole corpus of David Attenborough programmes. I used to watch Zoo Quest when David Attenborough was in his late twenties, I suppose. The first sighting of the Komoda Dragon. Anyway, when you see the cranes flying over the Himalayas and the eagles eating them up, you'd realise maybe something about your personal importance in the great big universe.

Which is apparently 13.7 billion years old and not 15 billion. The earth seems to be 4 billion years old. There must be planets out there a lot older. Let's hide from them.

Is there 15 billion galaxies? And there's no other prophet but this one boy from Saudia Arabia. And Ex ecclesiam nulla salus (you're going to hell if you're not a tim)

Do the joes (it's almost always joes!) who tell you this actually know anything? No, they want control. They feel superior. They just want to tell you things. Forward, forward! All my plans are simple. Accept labels and functions for things, and nothing else. Play the mind game. Do the juju. Be amazed by ra bliss.

A pause of several hours after being in the International Bar and then I had to go to a 50th birthday do in a very new and nice complex in George Street. This is city centre. Walk in. I never go out. The joint is dripping in young women who seem to be half dressed. Internally, I say: skin, flesh as we walk passed looking for the old people.

Later, we were supposed to go to the nightclub downstairs, but they wouldn't let in le chef, who was visiting from another blog. When I were a lad, they used to search you at the door in gangland to make sure you weren't carrying a chib (a sharp metallic thing!) , but they wouldn't let in le chef because he was wearing open toed sandals. This was in case broken glass cut his toes. Inside, women who were wearing even less clothes than those upstairs were hanging off the walls. Yes, between sixteen and twenty four. Can do the 64 arts of love. Unfortunately, unable to stop breathing and turn into red Indian goddesses on the spot, but you've got to start somewhere! I think I'll have to get out more often. Lose a stone. Get one of the new face transpants. I am Grey Wolf. I come from the Happy Hunting Ground.

Maybe we should accept that we no longer have the karma for that and just go to work tomorrow. HotboyMadyamikaSurfingTheOceansOfBliss!

Ra Damn Disgrace!

Saturday 1:16 p.m.
"Forcing a prisoner's head under water until they believe they are drowning does not necessarily constitute torture or abusive treatment, the Foreign Office has said." This is in today's Scotsman newspaper. What?! "Victims experience and automatic gag reflex and acute terror, quickly and inevitably pleading for the ordeal to end."

This country is supposed to be governed by a Labour government! I still can't believe it said that. Orwell's newspeak is with us now alright! It would be better if there was a hell so that these basturns could get stuck in it!

Tony Blair thinks God will judge him. I hope he does. Which one is it going to be for Tony, God? Is it the hot hell or the cold hell? Yes! It's the watery hell where they dunk your head into a basin of water until you're nearly drowned and they keep doing that, son, for ever and ever and ever. All the time all you can hear are the words "this does not necessarily constitute torture or abusive treatment."

That's it. I'm voting Scottish Nationalist the next time. I want to live in a wee country, too wee to go to war. If we want to really piss anyone off, we can fix the footie so that The Glasgow Rangers get drawn against one of their teams, then subsidise the air fares so that all "ra orange scum" can go and visit them!

Ra Biffing!

Friday 9.00 a.m.
Pretty pissed when I posted last night. Can you tell? I got the beers in to watch the Joe Calzache/Lacy fight. I was supposed to watch it last Saturday night, but it was on at 2 a.m., so I fell asleep.

Rarely will you see such a one sided boxing match between two undefeated champions. I'd never seen Calzache fight before. He's a southpaw, which means he leads with his right. Sugar Ray Robinson refused to even spar with southpaws. Most southpaws are a bit awkward and ungainly, but not Calzache. He can really box.

What an awful night Lacy had! I felt so sorry for him. He hardly laid a glove on Calzache. What a comprehensive doing he took! He was really quite heroic, just in the wrong place at the wrong time. He's got a big punch and his corner couldn't pull him out of a title fight. By round five, you knew he hadn't a hope in hell.

I had eight novice boxing matches in my late twenties. It's not important, but I lost three times. You always lose your last fight. The other two were to southpaws. It's not fair. They should be banned!

Despite drinking too much last night, I feel good today. Since I was in Bellshill yesterday, I can meditate all day!!

11:20 a.m.
Surf's up! The weather outside is miserable. Let it be miserable. I've been in the lobby sitting. I haven't sat in a lotus for about a month due to pranging me knee, but this means I can sit for longer without moving. A straight hour and a half there. I've been telling myself I'll be working on my book this afternoon, but .... ra bliss, ra bliss.

I started reading the Interior Castle by St Teresa again yesterday. Of course, she's a well known buddhist and the book is about four hundred years old. I wonder if she's got an agent. Oh yes, there's no hope of anyone giving me any money at the moment because I haven't got anything sitting in slush piles. Chicken House didn't want to read Light in the Dark. The webpage with the unpublished books on it is still taking about nine hits a week. Back to ra bliss!

I:45 p.m.
Much amused by a news report that says UEFA (the European Footie Association) are investigating ra huns due to sectarian, anti-catholic chanting at the game in Spain on Tuesday. As an almost born again hun (see two posts ago!) , I must protest. When the Celtic fans were in Spain a couple of years ago, Uefa gave them an award for good sportsmanship. Giving an award to that bunch of knuckle dragging, tonic wine drinkers showed Uefa up as a front for the Vatican straight away. It's a popish plot! God save the Queen!

9:30 p.m.
I've read a newspaper today, and blogged, and meditated. That's it. I must have done nine hours anyway out of the last twelve. Tired but happy, I'm off to the off-license! Now that I think about it, I'm knackered! Why should sitting quietly, doing nothing make you knackered?

Ra today!

Thursday 11:51 p.m.
She'd been lying on her side on the bed. It's a very nice place. I'm sitting unusually on the floor of my mother's bedroom. She's two weeks into shingles. Don't get it. It's two weeks in. I've been there for a bit. Her wee sister has already given me something to eat and I'm sitting there. My eyes are closed because she's asked me to put on The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and I've just completely changed in relationship to my mother when she wants to hear this. So I get into sitting. The juju is comforting to my maw who is a tim. As am I.

Have I told you I'm the world champion at sitting except for the real champions.

I'd like to kill lots of people.

My mother's parent's couldn't read and write. At one point, she starts to sit up and suddenly asks to clutch my hand. We're the Scottish people who do not touch each other. So my old dear is not any longer lying on her side, but is sitting up suddenly with her eyes closed and holding my hand. The woman is 86. She's not holding my hand. She's squeezing my hand. Ra pain. Only lasted for a minute. I've had shingles, but not a pain like that. I had the band round the middle. It's in my maw's face, her eye, her ear ... it is the grief, sorrow, lamentations ... in a physical sense ... suffering in this life.

I'm dead fond of my maw. She has seven kids. They all like her, even the dead ones who didn't live long enough to know what she was, and especially me. I do like my maw.

We don't need this. It is completely unnecessary. Killing yourself might be more interesting!

You're not supposed to say that!

Ra Holidays again and again and again!

Wednesday 14:50
This is RaBlissBlog! Here to tell you about further developments whilst surfing the oceans of bliss!

Last night, I was sitting watching the footie and trying to support The Huns i.e. The Glasgow Rangers Football Club. The Huns refused to play a catholic in their team until well into the 1980s, I think, when St Graham Sounness, the then manager, signed their first catholic. I supported another team when I was a young man, but in the spirit of ecumenicism, I was trying to support The Huns.

The difficulty has nothing to do with the players on the park. You have to remember that a large section of the support for the Huns seem to be drawn from those sometimes referred to as "ra orange scum." These are the basturns who would not let us live. However, you have to remember that we're all in the same boat and will end up deities after a few trillion years have gone by. "Ra orange scum" may spend most of these eons yo-yoing in and out of the hot and cold, and occasional hells, but at the end of the day I'm forced to admit that "ra orange scum" are really more or less deities like myself.

Beerless, I'm trying to support The Huns. Has anyone seen a movie called The Abyss? At one point a water sprite sort of rises out of this pool. It's shaped like the head and neck of the Loch Ness Monster ... a long neck and wee head. It seems entirely composed of water and yet is standing up out of the water and seems to be looking around.

As I'm sitting watching the footie, this seems to have come into my body. It sits in you and starts to push out, hold you up. But it's not water. It tends to get warm and blissy these days. But you sit still and it joins you. What it is, where it comes from ... I don't know. But it's strong and seems to add great strength to your posture.

The Huns scored. I cheered. You can change your view if you really try!

At one each I put in a vase breath or two. Just recently, I've been thinking that I've been getting the vase breath thing to work. Well, for nearly two years now it's been working a bit, or sometimes. Then last night it really seemed to work. You think you've seen it, you've done it, and then it really starts to happen, and it just takes your breath away!!

And everything has lifted to a different plateau. Your eyes are shut, but they should be popping out your head in amazement.

This is really serious juju now. This is right off the edge. I'm trying not to lose my bottle again. It said in one of the main books that if you did the vase breathing without having the visualisations in place that you'd go to hell. That could mean a bad mental space. This might mean that something very bad could happen to your health and you'd end up like Gopi Krishna, completely funged and half dead for ages.

Deal with the fear, Hotboy. It's empty.

The Great Buddha Lama Yeshe Losal is my guru and everything is going to be cool!

I ended up with a wee smile on my face last night. I'm sure most folk think I'm having a very quiet, boring time. "All he does is sit and meditate!!" I'm really having the best of times!! What a wonderful time you could have as a hermit! No wonder half of these buggers ask their gurus if they can just stay in the caves till they're dead, and not bother coming out ever.

Often I think amazingly extraordinary and wonderful things are happening to me and even more awesomeness will occur. Is this a reasonable, objective opinion? It seems like that, but these might just be the feelings that go along with the process. Everyone who does the vajrayana must feel this. It is simply beyond wonderful!

Cracked being a footie supporter, by the way. Support The Huns. Cheer when they score and don't give a damn when they're beaten in the end. Just joy!

I'm off to my hut to further my investigations into ra bliss!!!

Rem Deities again!

In the vajrayana, I think, you're asked to go about not believing in anything. You've got the wrong end of the stick, so we have to start with an appreciation of our misapprehension or ignorance. You need to change the view.

What this deity yoga juju is doing, I think, is overlying this delusional view of reality with another delusion. Convincing yourself of the second delusion should weaken the previous one. We hope. Of course, this might make you completely crazy instead.

So you start maybe by telling yourself it's not true. You don't believe it. It's empty, in that technical buddhisty sense. Telling yourself it's a dream is supposed to help as well, especially when you're wanting to control dreams later on.

It's easy to see flatheids if you're surrounded by folk who don't even meditate. How about seeing deities? It sounds difficult. Prospective deities is far easier, especially in terms of evolution.

Is it kind of true that there was nothing of this universe before the Big Bang? Nothing? And then there was light and heat, or so they say (Where did ra bliss go?)(Was ra bliss there first?). So 15 billion years ago that was us. Just light and heat maybe. Hmmm? Try to imagine an eyeball developing from the earth. Try to imagine people growing out of the earth, which seems to be what's happened.

I think Hindus believe that we're all going to be enlightened beings at some point. Unfortunately, we have to go through millions of these moody incarnations. If you look at it in terms of the Big Bang being 15 billion years ago, this doesn't sound so daft. Now we've got eyeballs. What would we have given another 15 billion years?

I'm supposed to be trying to see deities instead of flatheids. Human beings are miraculous creatures if you think of them simply as human beings, without adding in souls or anything. Even as animals we're completely fantastic. So I'm trying this out. I don't want to be surrounded by flatheids. I want to live in wonderment!

I had a great day at work today. A much improved view!

Ra Fight Night!

Saturday 23.29 p.m.
Ten years ago, there was a series of super middleweight boxing contests on prime time telly. The neurosurgeon started watching them because these fighters kept arriving on his operating table.

Great cruiserweight fight on just now!

So let's say a wee prayer for Gerald McLellan (?). He fought Nigel Benn and got beat because his brain exploded. The boy is still very unwell and probably broke. Then, in another wonderful fight, Michael Watson's brain exploded and he completed the London Marathon last year, but it took him a courageous week or so.

I'm on my own here. This is a great fight. I wish I was watching it with the sensei and reverend, who knows far more about boxing than me. Boxing is wonderful and awful.

Tonight there's a supermiddleweight fight topping the bill at 2. a.m., so the folk in the states can watch it. The Welsh boy I don't know. Joe Calzache (?). Anyway, he's been champ and nobody noticed since the brain explosions stopped the prime time shows for ...well, until now. This American has come over to fight him. He's called Lacey. You never seeing biffing on the telly unless you've got Sky these days. But I hope nobody gets too brain damaged tonight. The boxers on the telly just now did mirror combinations on each other. Fung you. Great fight. Anyway, this american has come over to fight the Welsh boy. The name Buster Drayton springs to mind. Lacey's manager sounded impressive to me. Buster Drayton came over to Britain once to make money biffing British middleweights. Three of them in a row, as I recall.

Bye, bye! This is exciting!

Ra Good Times!

Thursday 9:30 p.m.
Two beers in. No beers since Sunday.

We were motoring out of Strathaven on Sunday morning. Toad of Toad Hall was driving as usual and I don't mind. Everything was wonderful. The sun even shone. Feel the weight of the world fall off your shoulders. You're glad to be there like it's in the movies!

The night before I had been a good boy for me. Four bottles of Erdinger. Finished drinking them about nine thirty and didn't drink any more as the autres were tanning it, as they say down colloquial way. Went to bed first. Good boy. Last time I was there I started drinking at ten thirty and drowned in beer. Guzzle, guzzle. Dearie me. So these joes have known me forever. They're great people. Far better than me. I started to do the sneaky breath. Okay? Well, we all used to do the drugs. We're sitting there now, half semi retired and they're all getting out of their faces on plonk and the bob, so I think, fung it, I can do ra bliss! Such is the galloping nature of the progress in ra bliss these days that I just take a few breaths and despite the pollutions hither, thither and yon, I started wallowing around in ra bliss. This is a first. |

Whilst in company in future, this is what I'm going to do. I mean, when the deities come to visit me. I'll do about the first hour or two of what everyone else is doing, and then when everyone one is a bit loose, I'll stop and start taking huge lungfuls of air, holding it, and doing ra bliss. I'm going to look mad. Staggering around dinner parties doing ra bliss and drying off wet blankets.

There was also the happiness. I was truly happy for a few hours next day. I recognised it as happiness because I'd had the same feelings down at the Samye Ling. But nowhere else. Not ever. This is being lost in happiness.

Happiness is ra bliss bursting out into real life. It's taken a long time. And I've only got it once or twice. But the happiness bursting out into real life is only possible because you Martian deities, and you Masai Warrior deities, and you Spam Robot deities, and all you perverted wet tee-shirt deities have supported me in this wonderful, wonderful time in my life. How can I thank you enough?!

Ris is RaBlissBlog! What could be better than ra bliss!?!!

Rat Idea

Thursday 8:30 a.m.
People are a bit odd about writers. I hope I never do a public reading. I usually don't tell people I'm a writer. If you do, they ask you where you get your ideas from. They really do.

Ideas are, of course, compouded things. I had one this morning while lying in bed. It could change my life. It probably won't.

I've got a draft of a novel which is half the size it should be. It's in two bits. There's the juju bit, which readers of this blog will be familiar with, and there the facing story sort of, which is really about getting away from having a job. Anyway, it involves ficionalising aspects of things from my past employment. So I've got these two threads and I'm trying to balance them with a narrative voice. It's too short. That's a problem. I could bulk up both threads of this story, but I think it would loss shape. In fact, it would turn out like The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, but the BBBW was supposed to be a buddhist primer and travelogue and not really a novel as such. So let's have a look at the narrative voice.

The way to make this work as a novel is to go at the narrarive voice from the point of view given by the Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Have the narrative voice be a joe who wants to become one of the rolls royce owning gurus with the fleets of aeroplanes. You'd have to do this with a light, amusing touch. So I could use stuff from this blog like calling people flatheids, etc. Obviously, before you get to the hundred foot statues at the top of Ben Nevis, you'd begin in places like the internet cave.

I might not be explaining this very well, but it could work. That's the book. I've now got the book.

Say you managed to write this book and it was an interesting enough and well written enough book. How could you sell it? You get an agent. You get the agent to sell the book to a publisher with the promotional idea that I will sit in an internet cave doing the Pet Bereavement Councelling Service for, say, nine hours a day. I'd like to be meditating that much every day by next year anyway.

If all this happened and was successful enough, I could try to convince someone to put up the money to send me to the Unheard of Island to spend months and months doing deity yoga. With the blog.

Of course, I don't want to be famous. I'd have to get the book published under my buddhist name and appear in the cave with the Groucho Marx glasses, nose and moustache.

This is integration. Great idea. I won't sell the book or get an agent or anything like that, but that doesn't matter. I'll have the book.

Good start to the day. I'm going to visit my mother in Bellshill today.

I'm giving up encouraging people to meditate, except members of my family. Basically, it's a waste of time. So no more flatheids from me, apart from using such terms to develope my narative voice (i.e I might not be able to resist!). So keep your heids flat so I can come and impress you with my narcissistic personlity disorder!! If you meditate, you'll end up worshipping demons. You will. I'm telling you!

I'm now trying to pretend I'm in a kind of heaven surrounded by deities. You don't emanate as a deity unless everyone else does. You should see Bellshill. It's a peaceful like Scottish village, a bit like Brigadoon and chock a block with deities!!

Ra Book

Wednesday 9:30 p.m.
I'm trying to write a novel that is maybe a wee bit different. It's an autobiographical novel with a first person narrative voice. It's about two things. It's about ra bliss and there's a storyline about something else to keep you reading about ra bliss. It's similar to the book I got published in 1997 in that it interweaves several things. The joe telling the story is supposed to be able to raise inner heat, so all the meditations aren't going to waste. It's nice when you can put things in your life together like that. Meditation and writing here. It might be a wee bit different because of the way I'm writing it and because not all of it is fiction, but it is a novel. At the moment, it's a very short novel. None of this explains why it's any different.

I should have been dead three years ago so I don't really have to bother. Writing isn't going to stop me becoming something I don't want to become anymore. I'm 55. I've already done that. I could live like I'm living very happily once I get the homebrew barrel organised.

I feel as if when I finish this book I can kiss off writing novels. The subject matter and the way I'm writing it is a culmination. This isn't like writing another play. It's a style thing. Are You Boys Cyclists and The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf were attempts at a different kind of style, or an amalgamation of several styles. The thing I'm working on just now is a culmination of that cycle. So I could stop there and concentrate on the juju thereafter.

The last time I was supposed to give up writing was when I was about forty two. I wrote Are You Boys Cyclists? and it got a publisher, via the good offices of the sensei and reverend, and that kept me writing. Zip since. But I haven't written anything any good since.

I think the vajrayana is my only chance of true happiness, true satisfaction and peace. I don't ask a lot. Already it's made my life wonderful. This does not give me any right to call people names. I do that because I enjoy it. Bad boy. But I've had such fabulous feelings of ra bliss and I wish everyone could get those. I think human beings are supposed to have access to bliss. We're all just such a little step away from being able to breathe bliss. This is RaBlissBlog! We're getting out of our face on air here!