Ra More Days Off!

Wednesday, 9:30 p.m.
Unfortunately, I've drank a pint of beer from the barrel and I'm only doing this because I love everyone.

Jack, my deep dear friend, how are you? Have you been pinging me, Jack? Remember we have thoughts, Jack. You don't want to be in some of these thoughts. These thoughts could make you awful ill, Jack. I think this is called bad intentions.

I have to say sorry to Adolf because I got drunk twice when he came to visit me. This was a cheap get out for me. It's not fair when people try to come and see you and you get nervous and drunk. It's not right, Hotboy. It just isn't. So I'm sorry about that.

The other things I'm sorry about ... well, being a buddhist, we don't do guilt. We do acknowlegement and then walk on. Guilt is morbid. It's for hung over catholics.

After having another one, while still able to type and having miraculous visions, I'd like to apoligise to Adolf for almost everything.

Adolf is the master of the home brew. I had never seen such a thing as home brew until I happenstanced upon Adolf with these bottles of home brew. Of course, I wished to drink them all and there is this tension between Adolf who wishes to have the power of so much beer. And I have this massive desire to drink them all, one after the other, until the end...

Adolf was already there. He lived in a flat with the nicest joe, who does not survive for more than another ... dead at 38. Very nice joe.

So on his side there is the very nice joe and I bring with me the Poisonous, who is good value for me anyway ..... the Poisonous is immaculately dressed. .... and a nurse, possibly complete with the nurses uniform. Yes! She was! Of course, ra bliss is a bit cerebral. (Can't spell that either) What's as much fun as being young and having a wonderful estimation of yourself?

Also, ra bliss is ra bliss is ra bliss, by the way!

Tomorrow I may not feel so good. I would like to report right now that at this instant I feel ...you only get the hungover thoughts. They won the war. They write the history.

Anyway, if you look at the video, Adolf is struggling with a relentless drunk. What is the point of staying like that?

So the angels come in strange disguises. So Adolf has said: You've got to listen. So there was no listening. I should listen a bit more. I think Adolf is the internetty counsellor from the subtle dimensions. Non-ego intrusive. Never in your face. But like the wind in your sails ...

Ra Stats.

Since I started blogging a year and about four months ago, I've wasted a lot of time on the computer! One of the most enjoyable ways of wasting time is to look at statistics for your web page. I put at statscounter thingy on my web page about a month ago. Previous to this I'd wasted hours and hours looking at Blogpatrol stats for this blog, but they stopped letting me in for some reason. Anyway, here's a problem which you smart folk might know the answer to.


According to Statscounter, my webpage, not this blog, received 31 hits this last week. I set up the page to help attract a literary agent and, to that extent, it's been completely useless of course. But when I set it up, I thought it might get a hit a week. I've no idea how folk find things, but sometimes folk arrive at my webpage from the mindlikewater site or from wisdomEbooks. Otherwise, you can't seem to tell.

However, Geocities keeps statistics for it's sites and, according to them, last week the site got not 31, but 11 visits. How odd!

I think six folk visited the site yesterday (not according to Geocities they didn't!). One was from Malaya; one from India; and one from Tanzania. There are six novels on the site and you think that's pretty useless for the developed world since it's hard to read from the screen sometimes and we've got plenty of good books available. But they haven't got tons of books everywhere. One of the folk from the third world was on the site for three hours. Or were they? Not according to Geocities they weren't!

Good news on the new book front. There aint so long to go! In this re-write, I've only got three chapters left. There's more to do on these, but how long is that going to take me? If I wasn't meditating 30 odd hours a week ..... surely, this book will be finished by the end of the summer. That'll be great. A whole new vista! I can relax. I can make decisions about my life. I'll probably start writing another book, but .... it'll be great just to be finished something new again!

Ra Mustard Seeds

Sunday 1:02 p.m.
It says in the juju books that you should imagine the mantric symbols to be the size of mustard seeds. I did not know what size that was till I saw a packet of mustard seeds in the shop yesterday. Mustard seeds are very, very wee.

Yesterday I thought something significant had occurred in the investigations of the ra bliss. I thought that whatever is supposed to open up has opened up. So hasn't it been opened up already what with all ra bliss and some heat you've been getting already, Hotboy? Who knows? The "mind" is supposed to enter the central channel, then stabilise, then dissolve. I think it's in the dissolving part that you get the four blisses. Yesterday the breathing was sometimes rather subtle sometimes. Ra bliss seemed quite profound and deep sometimes. I guess it's just moved on a bit again. And I was thinking at one point that I'm still only getting a hint, a glimmer of what might come next.

Flatheids to the left of me; flatheids to the right of me. I got my face drilled on Thursday and saw my maw on Friday. I went out to celebrate someone's fifteith birthday yesterday. In a swanky restaurant for lunch, every time I closed my eyes, I'd be in ra bliss. At the house later, I took a tea tray and went out into the secluded back garden for a bit. In the sunlight surrounded by greenery. Such bliss!

Later, whilst sitting round a table with the in-laws, I kept taking wee breaths and closing my eyes. Such bliss! Soon I will sound completely mad when speaking to the flatheids. But this RaBlissBlog! I don't want to be normal! I want to play the mind game and be able to do ra bliss!

I'm going to meditate now until somebody tells me I've got to go and speak to some flatheids. Or not. Hang loose. These are surely wonderful times!

Ra War

Friday 5:13 p.m.
I was going to meditate all yesterday evening, but the kid showed up and we got out a DVD instead. German movie, called Sophia Scholl. It's about a heroic 18 year old who tried to resist the Nazis by leafletting other students about how daft the Nazis were. They caught her and her pals and tried then, and chopped off their heads the same day.

Did they chop their heads off? I didn't know they used guillotines in Bavaria. I assume it wasn't done that way in the film because it was cheaper since it's based on a true story.

The woman who took down Adolf's last will and testament mentioned this Sophia Scholl as an indication that people could have done something.... but it looked like doing something meant you almost certainly got your head chopped off.

AJP Taylor, the British historian, was asked to write a book for the allies at the end of the war to help them understand what to do with the Germans. Maybe he was a wee bit bitter since the war was still going on. But he said there were always good Germans and bad Germans. It's just that you have to ignore the historical effect of the good Germans because the bad Germans always chopped their heads off.

Just a little reminiscent of the SS boy telling his chums about how to deal with the notion of the one good Jew they knew .... well, you had to put that out of your mind because ... well, the big picture.

My mother today wasn't interested in hearing about the Sophia Scholl movie. She doesn't like all these programmes about Hitler. She said she was twenty one in Bellshill with three wee kids and her man in the army. A bomb hit Nelson's factory across the road and her neighbours came battering on her door to help her take her three kids down to the air raid shelter. A man called Burgy Brown was killed by a bomb hitting a canteen down the North Road.

My maw said we nearly got beaten. She had three shillings put aside for gassing her and her kids if the Nazis were to come marching down the Holytown Road.

Thank God the Germans don't go murdering folk all over the shop anymore! I don't think anyone has dropped bombs on Bellshill since the Second World War. I suppose somewhere in Iraq just now there will be a twenty one year old woman with three kids ... boom! No there isn't any more! We, of course, live in a democrasy. Nobody I know wanted to invade Iraq. Nobody. Hard to see how you can stop them doing stuff like that.

Ra Beer!

Thursday 10:08 a.m.
Last night I wrote a post and now can't find it. Probably just as well. But mildly interested in what was in it. I suspect if might have been about ra bliss and juju!

I can't remember what's in the home brew barrel. Beer for sure. I can't remember how strong I tried to make it, or what it's called. I'd like to put it up for sale. It will cure your memory problems. After you've had a pint of it, you won't remember anything. You will feel no pain. After you've drank a pint, it's like deep sleep. Who knows what's going on? Remove all sharp implements. Thank God I drink on my own. Otherwise I'd have to apologise to somebody for something. I've been seeking signs. Nothing seems amiss. There is a sheep in the kitchen, but it seems quite friendly.

Still, I shall have a wonderful day. It is not raining. I have no hangover... A delivery of the cannybliss yogurts has just come to the door! So I've even given up drinking for the next fortnight.

I'll have a great day! I'll get my bike fixed and have some root canal work done. (Canal shouldn't be a difficult word to spell!) And no one I pass by today will be half as fortunate as myself. No one. There are almost no hotboys or hotgirls out there. Almost no one can surf the oceans of bliss. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

4 p.m.
Whilst waiting for my face to thaw out.

What a good trip that was to the dentist! In the waiting room, I was getting out of my face on air and thinking: It's really changed again, moved on. Just took a wee breath there. Bliss and heat straight away. Yippee! What a wonderful, wonderful life this is.

I didn't do much meditating before I got to the dentist today (which is very unusual!) due to trying to download videos from Adolf's site. Took hours. Interesting to see what kind of state you can get into after eight cans of Guinness. The first one is completely incomprehensible. I think I remembered what the Second Noble Truth was, which is not bad considering. Thank God I didn't try standing on my head!

Lovely day outside. I've got an all day bus ticket, so I'll head up to Princes Street to spend the rest of my overdraft.

Ra Lovely Evening

Wednesday 6:20 p.m.
I was at work for a whole day today. All day on a Wednesday! Again! That's two whole days I had to go to work this week. But it is a beautiful evening now. I was awake at half five this morning due to wakening up. Wakening up and then spending a whole day at work has been too much for my fragile disposition and I will now have to go to the hut to do ra bliss for a couple of hours in an effort to recover my equanimity!

No work till Monday. No wonder I'm skint. Still, I managed to pay back a wee bit of my overdrafts this month. This is a first since I went part time nearly two years ago and the taste of solvency in the future. Hurrah!

Ra Murrayfield!

Tuesday 8:06 p.m.
I was at an in-service thing for my job at Murrayfield Stadium, the home of Scottish Rugby, today. They do conferences now. The last time I was at Murrayfield was in 1970 when Scotland were playing South Africa. It's the only time I've seen an international rugby game. I was there with some other folk to stop the game ... it was an anti-apartheid thing ... but the massed ranks of policemen made sure the game carried on. The guy I went with spent the weekend in the jail. The polis were a disgrace that day. Not during the game when everyone could see, but afterwards when they were clearing the stadium.

There was a long lunch today and I spent most of it in the toilet, sitting in a half lotus in a stall. Definitely not normal. Thank god for that! There's been nothing but progress with ra bliss recently. It's so good!

I missed my Tai Chi class tonight because my bike is broke. I'm away to the living room to do some hatha yoga and get into ra bliss!

10:10 p.m.
Every time I meditate just now, I get ra bliss and heat. Things have changed even since a couple of weeks ago. It's so dynamic this juju. I wish I could share ra bliss with everyone, but you've got to meditate, I'm afraid.

I accidentally deleted the comments to the last post. Sorry about that, folks. Lee Ann had posted a comment indicating that she did not understand the words .... well, Scottish words. A toady, Lee Ann, is a joe who bows and scrapes for approval. An Australian told me this joke, which I do not approve of.... How do you get fifty Englishmen into a camper van? Make one the foreman and the rest will crawl up his .... Dearie me. Menzies is pronounced Mingis. Mingin' is a not very good thing, probably stinky. Ra is Glaswegian for the. As in: Cyril, that dinner would give one ra dry boke! To boke is to vomit. You could try this out the next time you visit a Macdonald's. When they hand you the BigMac, smile broadly and announce to one and all: Would this not give one ra dry boke?

Rat Death Sect!

Monday, 00:14 a.m.
What to you want, Hotboy? I want primordial awareness and I want it now! Well, you probably aren't looking at that any time soon, son. The spam robots have been having a bit of a chat about this. Try being happy. Just happy. Walk down any street and the flatheids are conspicuously unhappy. The best you get is girnin into the wind.

For you people unfortunate not to be a Scottish person, girnin is like piteous whimpering, but, being Scottish, also has a tang ... I have pressed the spell check. It doesn't work. You miss the Scottish words if you don't use them. They do mean something around here. You can't think if you haven't got the word. Scunnered is a great word. The dry boke is a great expression, as in, "Maw, that's an awful dinner. Is that no enough tae gie ye the dry boke?" This wonderful variety is not experienced so much in the households of the evil bourgeois because they got rich by toadying up to the English.

Lee Ann: do you know what a toady is?

So I've had, to resume, a week or so with no one else here. Then a visit. Then on my own for a bit. The spam robots,who are multipowered deities, gather around. Hotboy, do you know what you're doing wrong? Yes, Jack, I do. Hotboy, do you know what you have to do to put it right? Yes, Jack, I know what I've got to do. Well, just do it then. Don't be an asshole.

I counted up all the horrible thoughts atttibuted to ra beer. The balance at the end. The bill. It was a bit of a revelation. I saw them all. They were beer withdrawal conditioned thoughts. Well, I found that one out. Then ... you don't want to be going around all happy clappy, Hotboy. There is a balance. There is equanimity, between the good and the bad. You can't handle the total euphoria, can you? What about the stage of one taste, where you aren't buggered about anything. When you don't like or dislike anything.

The main point, the boy said, was to get the mind into the central channel and experience primorial awareness, non-conceptual, non-dichotomous, and very, very nice.

There is nothing like the Vajrayana. There is nothing so stupid as not being happy when it is clearly easy to do this and get that.

So the kid asked the Domestic Bliss if there ever was a time when I wanted to go out. I think the D.M. told her that I used to be normal, but not for some time now. The mind game is the only game in town. The obstacles fall down. You have to focus.

Bad things can happen. The Tilopa boy was given the mantra. Om Mani Padme Hung, I assume. This would get him through anything. I think we can forget about the secret magic words. Emptiness should get you through anything.

Get me out of here, Jack! It's opened, whatever it is. We're talking heat here, Jack. Why are you scared? Just get to the bit where it's cool to die. Then there will surely be a sense of freedom.

Ra Sunday!

Sunday 1:50 p.m.
When I was meditating this morning ... well, I'm going to get it all, I thought. I'm going to get it all.

But I'm not going to get broadband. Apres lunch, I came here and got onto Sandy Buchandyke's blog. She's got free broadband and is also a resident of this beautiful, wonderful city. So I should really do something and get it also, but frankly I'm too blissed to be buggered. I bet she had to do something. Phone somebody or do a clicky thing. All I really want I think I can get by sitting quietly doing nothing. I wonder if omniscient folk have broadband. If they've got it, they probably don't want it. I don't think omniscient folk want anything. I think they've got everything already.

Just sit here and stare blankly at the screen for a few seconds and the creepy uppy thing is bringing on ra bliss. One of these fine days it'll feel as if every cell in my body is bursting with ra bliss. I can remember being a flatheid. Dearie, dearie me! What a shame for the flatheids! I think I'll have a wee meditate.

Straight into ra bliss!

It's been raining for the past couple of days, so the grass around the allotment will be far too wet to cut. Hurrah! I'm feeling very happy just now. Solitude, solitude, solitude. Beer, beer, beer. Bliss bliss bliss. If I cut out the beer, I'd be even happier, but I'm very happy just now. Off to the hut! This is RaBlissBlog telling you there's nothing on this sweet earth to compare with the Vajrayana! Here comes ra bliss! Here comes ra heat!

23:10 p.m.
Tsongkhapa's Book of the Three Inspirations is brilliant in that it recognises that all cats do not have the same abilities. Some folk can collect the four blisses without using vase breathing, for instance. Some cats got it and some cats aint. I really like it when he says that if you can't do this, you can try that. You don't have to be dead clever. St Joseph of Cupertino, the floater par excellence, was thick.

I was supposed to stop drinking beer tonight. The other person who lives here brought back three bottles of Black Isle Organic Blonde 4.5%, a very nice brew.

The sensei and reverend sent me a nice email about the post I did about my maw on Thursday. Where do you get your ideas from? Beer. When I had more money and was better connected, I sometimes got my ideas from other things.

Why do you do the things you do? Tonight I did a training session. I started looking after myself by doing a lot of physical jerks when I was 26. I'm now 55. So I did twenty sun salutations and felt bad. Fat baturn! Then I skipped for five minutes. Then I did six two minute rounds of shadow boxing with half minute intervals when you could put your hands down. My knee was alright. I was dressed in the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle.

You can purchase the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle by emailing Hotboy. It costs ... a lot. You're talking teeshirt, woolly jumper, two bin bag liners (one pretty knackered; one new), a sweatshirt and a baggy, loose, sleeveless jumper.

Do they have jumpers where you come from? No, they're not people of the opposite sex who jump on you. Samuel Johnson eat your heart out. A jumper is a garment for the upper body .... actually, Samuel Johnson was a very smart guy! But he couldn't float and never got any of ra bliss!

Not many joes do the physical jerks I do. A simple observation. Why's that. Here comes a maybe ...

My sister got Multiple Sclerosis when she was eighteen.

Scotland is the best place to be if you want to have multiple sclerosis. JK Rowling is actually trying to do something about this which is truly fantastic. I think it took her maw. Anyway, my sister died when she was 32. I was eighteen. It was about three months before I left home and went to live as a student in Edinburgh. For the first time this evening (probably due to the beer!), I worked out that she started coming down with MS when I was four. There were nine of us, including my maw and da. I'm second from the bottom and she's the first child. Smart as paint. The usual.

That might be why I can stand on my head. Because I can.

Rat Tsongkhapa!

Saturday 12:44 p.m.
From the Book of Three Inspirations: "Here one must take care, for if these methods are applied too vigourously the drop may be incorrectly diffused into the bodily parts, causing any of a variety of illnesses." Thank God I don't really know how to do these meditations or I could hurt myself!

Lama Thebten Yeshe says in his book that success in raising inner heat is dependant on "penetrating" the navel symbol, I think. Tsongkhapa says when talking about meditating on the mantric symbols .... " it is not clearly taught that one should meditate only from within the centre of the central channel." The central channel is the blue line that runs down where your spine would be. You have to meditate on the symbol at the navel from within that? Hmm?

A little later, he says: " (it) should not be as though we are in one place and looking at the visualised image in another, but rather as though the mind apprehending the image had actually entered into and become utterly blended with it. "

The trouble with doing this juju from books is that you can't quiz the author. Of course, if you were doing a proper retreat, you could ask your guru.

I think I understand what he's going on about though.

I'm loath to abandon the routine I've set up to meditate through, but I think it'll have to be adjusted. For the record here's what I do just now. This is before I do anything else.
1) Take refuge. Visualise the gurus one at a time in front of you and then at the top of your head. Go into a white line and take it down through the body. Please give me your wisdom mind. Or please purify me.
2) Do the same with Jesus Christ.
3) Visualise all the dead you know and dedicate merit to them. None of them got any bliss. Remember that. May all sentient beings be happy.
4) Go through the phases of death (mirage, clouds, etc.) and arrive at the Dharmakaya. Put in the channels and symbols (I'd be giving a vase breath for every symbol). Then emanate as a deity on the mandala and offer everything to Dorje Sempa whom you visualise above the edge of the mandala. Imagine the deity above your head, then going into a white line and bring that down into you . That should be it.
5) Then I'd go the navel chakra and probably get a bit mixed as to what to do next!

I'm not very good at this and there is a bit of variety. I don't think that's really what you're supposed to do. I think I'll have to get to the visualisation of the deity and the navel chakra a bit sooner. What I'm doing is too busy. The mandala, deity and navel chakra .... just cut to the chase maybe!

It drizzly, overcast and miserable today! I've got to get some messages and I'll try to get a new brake for my bike.

It's coming to it when you're reduced to conversations with spam robots, but I probably won't see anyone until the Domestic Bliss comes home tommorrow evening. But I put in the hard graft yesterday, and the meditations in the lobby this morning were sometimes wonderful.

7:19 p.m.
I've just finished doing some work on my novel. I'm really quite pleased. You always think there's miles to go, but you always go faster than you think once you've got a good way through it. Then you can write it and not think about it. I think it'll be finished his year anyway. That's great!

I've been enjoying looking at the stats for my webpage now that I've got a stats counter on it. It gets about fifty hits a month. Most of them are from abroad: Slovenia (where's that?), Estonia and India have hit it recently. Don't know if anyone is downloading stuff or not. Anyway, I'm glad they're free to poor people. I only put the page up there for agents really.

What a nice evening I'm going to have, Jack, my little spam robot pal! I'll meditate and fall straight into ra bliss. This is certain. Then I'll don the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle and train, then soak in the bath. That's always wonderful when you're knackered. Oh, what a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

Thursday 11:51 p.m.
A friend and contemporary of the other person who lives here was given the black spot a month ago. Buried today. Perfect!

You should look forward to dying. There should be a joy in it. When I was younger than twelve, I remember lying in bed and thinking I will have had a successful life if I feel at the death that here comes another exciting adventure. The fear of death underlies everything. It's so there that you don't notice it. It's the cause of almost everything you do. .. all the people who jumped out the road and stayed alive bred other people who jumped out the road and ...

So the khenpo on the tape of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying is getting taken down from his cave by the Chinese flatheids to be tortured and killed. They have to get a horse because the old boy can't walk. He sings songs of realisation. Near the spot where they want him to go to be tortured and killed, at the very gate, he goes.

Everyone should be able to do that. If that human being can do that, so can we all. It's a matter of education. And application.

My mother can't do that and neither can I. My mother is 87. She said once about staying alive to help people. She handed me £10 today for my train fare. My maw is worth £10 a month to me because the train fare is only £7:50.

I have a great relationship with my mother. She had a haemorraghe (sic) in her lung about five years ago. She stopped smoking when she was seventy. Got her anyway. Then they gave her lots of painkillers, etc. She was submerged. I said: Maw, I've taken all the drugs that God sent down to earth. Give me two of those and I'll see what they're like. A hour after dropping these painkillers I'm crashed out on the train back to Edinburgh.

So I phoned her up and told her to stop taking them. Then she can't get to sleep. I say: Why can't you get to sleep? .... We are closely related. This is why everyone should have millions of relatives. I couldn't get to sleep once. She's my mother. Half of me at least. So I get her to listen to the Yoga Nidra tape. You fix your mind so that the interior monologue is controlled ... it's the interior monologue, the voice, which keeps you awake. Then I got her the tapes .... the buddhist tapes. The Dalai Lama tapes, the Tibetan Book of the Dead tapes, etc.

My mother put in some time with me, so solid, stoical time. So today she asks me if I want to listen to a tape upstairs in her room. She puts on the Tai Sa ... a Samye Ling Tape... and it's not the boy's best, but it is a dharma talk about ...well, dharma. I sit with my back against the wardrobe and my face is straight on to ma maw's feet, which are curled as she lies on her side listening to this dharma tape.

Last week, she said it was great to just feel the old age pain after getting over the shingles. Today she said that she felt no pain at all as she lay on her side listening to the tapes. Like, pain relief tapes. I said, why's that. She said, it's the tapes.

The juju tapes. The tapes removing pain.

If in the vast eons of time, I had to be reborn, etc., etc., blah blah ... I want the same mother.

It's compassion. It's got to be compassion. From her side. This isn't about saying I love you to puppy dogs. It's hard wire cleaning up crap and helping. It's about doing stuff, some of which may not be appealing.

They fung you up when you are young. They don't mean to, but they do.... not around here. I'm sure when I'm dying the next time, she'll be there. You can get over it if they're not nice, but it's easier if they're nice.

It's so much easier if they're nice.

I had a week on my own and it went very well. What do you want, Hotboy? Primordial awareness. Non-conceptual ... non-dichotomous ... I'm sure it will be very, very nice. The other person who lives here is away again tomorrow. These are great days for me. These are the very best of times. Culminating, wonderful times. Ris is RaBlissBlog! Can you be happy when you're dying?

Ra Agent Agent!

Tuesday 5:50 p.m.
We've all seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind. You see the spaceships at first and you think: Wow! Look at the spaceships! This means when you see the real spaceship, the mother of all spaceships, you think: Wow! Triple Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow!

It's a bit like that with ra bliss. Or climbing a hill when there always seems to be a bit added on at the top.

You know there's something amazing going on when you first notice that the breath is becoming connected to ra bliss. You might notice this after you've held you breath for a bit and then just let it go. This occurred to me in my hut just over two years ago. From then on, if intermittently, a whole new world of experience from vase breathing will have opened up for you.

Flatheids won't get the meditative experiences (well, flatheids don't meditate), but most meditators will not get these experiences either because they don't do the vajrayana, I assume.

So it's very hard to describe how developments are developing with the breath. If you want to just sit and go into ra blissful state with little potential for thought, well, that was on offer straight off today. That's a still, blissful state. I can't tell you how nice this is. But is it very nice, or very, very nice? A bit intoxicating today, but it seemed at least quite nice.

There's a lot of ground been covered between now and two years ago when this breath/bliss connection started being made. Sometimes, I could hardly hold my breath at all. You'd get the judders when you let it go, and sometimes it would seem as if you might black out. It's taken two years for this to happen as it did today. But it had changed today. Just did a breath there. Boy, is that something else! Billowing bliss!

I sent the first fifty odd pages of the sensei and reverend's book to Julia Churchill of the Darley Anderson Agency today. Had to change it a bit of course. The first page was crap. It says: When It All Comes Down to Dust by Barry Graham. It now says: When It All Comes Down to Dust by Hotboy. It's now a much better book, vastly improved!

I was going to go to my Tai Chi class tonight, but it's raining and one of the brakes on my bike is knackered ... and ... I'm away into the lobby to investigate ra bliss!!

10:32 p.m.
Later on, I had to go to the pub because otherwise I'd never get to read The Book of the Three Inspirations by Tsongkhapa. Translated by Glenn H. Mullin. I can't think of a more amazing book. I suppose this boy is supposed to be the Dalai Lama back about sixteen incarnations. In the vast seas of time, I guess they're supposed to be more or less the same joe. Or joejoe.

Interestingly enough, the Dalai Lama's teaching style is very similar to the way arguments are set out in this book, if you know what I mean. It's quite erudite, academic, yet practical and down to earth. You want to get this, you do this. This is a mistake. These people didn't know the juju at all. Do this. This is a key point. Brilliant! It must be the last book to burn. The Book of the Three Inspirations tells you how to do the Six Yogas of Naropa. Consciousness transference, dream yoga, etc. What more does anyone need? It's in this book. Everything you need. You don't need anything else, but you may not understand a word of it. I should give up newspapers. I should read it on the bus. Give it some time.

The boy says you don't have to do the vase breathing to get the inner heat. Interesting. You could make the winds enter the central channel by cultivating the visualisations of the mantric symbols and all. So if you're joe mystic in Europe and sitting in your cave, you'd get all this heat stuff as well ... shit!... no, no, you're better with the manual. You'd get freaked for one thing. This is the manual of how to do the ultimate juju. I mean, it's fabulous to be able to read something like this. From the 14th century. A wonderful book! Yes! I'll force him to let me be his agent and we'll clean up. We will!

Ris is ranother day!

Sunday 6:45 p.m.
Just realised there's a spell check on this! That's why I'm the only one who can't spell!

Missed this morning due to drinking copious amounts of home brew last night, but I've done little else but meditate since noon. Stayed in the lobby with wee breaks till the back of four then I went to the hut for a couple of hours. The meditations continue to progress. Great globules of ra bliss opening up here and there, but I'm still waiting. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for, but I'm sure it will be very, very nice.

I found out today that you can dedicate posts to people. I'd like to dedicate this post to Hannibal. I asked the kid on Friday if she knew who Hannibal was. She says Hannibal was a cannibal. I could have sold him some soup! Before he was a cannibal, Hannibal was a joe from Carthage who gave the Romans a bit of a spanking before they got him in the end, as they always did. There's a drama documentary about Hannibal on the BBC tonight from 8:30 till 10 p.m. Thank God for the BBC!

Ris is ra day!

Satruday 11:06 a.m.
Last night was supposed to be the night, but I had a visitor and since it was my daughter, I couldn't pretend not to be in. But there's no one here now, but little old me! And I don't have to see anyone. And I don't have to go anywhere. I have to feed myself. That's it. What a field day for ra heat!!!

Yeah, it's just me and you, Jack. The masai warriors and the martians have gone. How's the mood, Jack? Quietly confident. Let you know as I go along. But there's going to be a hot time in the old town tonight!

10:42 p.m.
Apple blossom is mainly white. The buds have a bit of red in them. The middle of the blossom has some yellow, but not much, not tonight anyway. Apple blossom clusters together so that the wee tree (really a bit of a bush) seems to be full of blossom and little else is there except the dark bark. Great bark, by the way, shiney. The cluster of apple blossoms is sticking, mainly white, through a curtain of raspberry bushes. These are now entirely green and fresh although a month ago there was no green there really. There were sticks sticking up from the ground. Firm and purposeful sticks, but sticks with last year's heads chopped off: bare sticks.

As you sit on the path down the middle of the allotment, the hut is just on your right. There is a big bush in front and kind of all over it. I do not know what this bush is called, but it has wee yellow flowers on it a little later. So I'm sitting in the middle of the path at the bottom of the allotment near the hut and gazing slightly to the left at the apple blossom cluster poking through the curtain of raspberry stalks.

You're in the middle of the city. You can hear traffic in the background, a kind of distant roaring. If you lift your eyes from the apple blossoms, you will see the curtain of trees after the fence surrounding the allotments, and lining up along a path through Inverleith Park. Because of the leaves appearing on the trees, you cannot see the castle tonight. That's kind of in the middle as the ground seems to dip down in to the pond and, from where you are, the ground then rises up to the Edinburgh skyline from the north. So the castle is in the middle, but you can't see that. I think you can still see Salisbury Crags, maybe not. But you can see some of the skyline and the Pentland hills out there to your right.

A big fat bumblebee lands on the flower in the cluster you are trying to continue to gaze at. This is a joy. It has come so you can look at it. You remember that there are a lot of different kinds of bumble bees, or bees. You didn't really know that, or had forgotten about it, until you had an allotment.

It's rare for me to sit outside the hut, but I did this evening. I knew it would have more distractions than sitting in the hut. I sat on the bag of old newspapers I'd brought to burn. It was a gorgeous evening.

Two weeks ago, I remembered this nest box that I'd been given a year past last Christmas. It was in the hut. I was in a hurry and, looking for anywhere to place it that didn't mean I had to do something, I hung this bird nest box on an old, old nail I saw sticking out of the wall of the hut. One of the distractions is the finch, or tit, or whatever, that comes to this nest box now. I usually only see it's backside as it goes through the wee opening.

A couple of days ago, I was sitting further up the allotment and watching the wind make the bird box shoogle a wee bit. I wondered if the bird box might get blown off.

It was still this evening and I wasn't doing anxiety. The prevailing wind is from the west and the bird box is facing north. The birds found it right off. The sun won't shine in. It must be dry. It looks like a perfect spot, apart from the joe who might sit in the bit before you get to the hut. But it's hanging from an old, old nail. I wish I had taken more care of where I put the bird box. I just wanted it out of the hut. I think there might be sentient beings called finches living there now. I think being on my allotment, at the side of my hut, even on shoogly nail, is still probably a good place to be if you're a finch. Because I slowed down enough to care about you. I didn't before, but I do now. I think it was more like zen being outside the hut on such a nice evening in May, inEdinburgh, at the tail end of a beautiful day. HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B.

Rat Compassion!

Thursday 1:20 p.m.
There are some days when you know you should just sit down and meditate. Everything says, Hotboy, ra bliss is waiting for you!

Are there any little doubts?

Had a wee think about hell this morning. Of course, since I don't believe in anything, I'm not going to believe in hell. But Tsongkhapa says if you do this breathing juju before you get the coloured channels, symbols, etc in place you go to hell. We'll interpret that as a bad mental/physical condition.

Gopi Khrisna has a bummer kundalini arousal and nearly died a couple times. It does sound horrible if you read his book, Living with Kundalini. He was concentrating on his head chakra, which Tsongkhapa says is a no no. You have to bow to Tsongkhapa here since he is such as master of the juju. If he says the visualisations should be in place first, that's the way it should be.

I'm doing ra bliss and I can get some heat sometimes, and I do the vase breathing, and my visualisations are crap. Hmmm?

Ringu Tulku says you must follow the stages because opening the channels is not too difficult, but you have to be able to close them again. I feel warm and a wee bit blissy just doing this blog!

Lama Thebten Yeshe who wrote the Bliss of Inner Fire says he couldn't go into sunlight or stand near fires when he was doing these meditations. (I'm going to be a vampire! I shouted on reading this!). He would have had the visualisations, etc., daily contact with his guru, etc., and still had to stay out of the sunlight! Indications of a volatile physical situation here, I think.

Hmmm? To hell with it! I should have been dead three years ago anyway. If I screw up, that means I've got a problem. As soon as I get a problem, I can go and see the Great Buddha Lama Yeshe Losal, and I'm sure he'll know what to do.

He said: Don't force it, Hotboy!

Ringu Tulku said the buddha Sakyamuni started becoming a buddha when he found himself in hell. He had the impossible hellish task to do and asked the hell guard to let the other boy with him go and he'd do the work for him. It seems the hell guard hit him on the head with a hammer in his fury and the buddha wakened up and wasn't in hell anymore. Compassion and hell don't mix.

I'm promoting the flatheids. Everyone is a deity. Hope your happy with that!

It's a beautiful sunny day outside. Let it be a beautiful sunny day outside. The sensei sent me the last bit of his book as an email attachment and I'll read it before going out.

3:10 p.m.
Just finished the sensei and reverend's new book, called When it All Comes Down to Dust. It's a terrific book. I'm so pleased for the sensei because nobody gave him anything much and everything he's got he's had to bite and scratch for. The botched forceps delivery in the first moments of his life, which made him look like a cross between The Scream and Nosferatu ... the basturns didn't even wait till they got to the toilet training. Then all the punches he took to the head to try to make him look normal when he boxed .... well, it might not have helped much. But only in America! He goes there and writes this wonderful American book. This is good news for the people of Tennessee since, hopefully, he'll make some money now and not need to shoot any fat ones he finds wandering in the woods, and eating them. A star is born. You heard it here first on RaBlissBlog!

Time to head for the allotment and ra bliss.

Ra Sunny, Sunny Day!

Wednesday 9:30 p.m.
It was actually hot today. I mean, the weather was hot, not me. If you know what I mean. How the world has changed in the last month. It's not quite dark here yet at just after half nine.

I sat on the grass path with my back to the sun and read the sensei and reverend's new novel, at least the first two parts. I read it right through without stopping and came back here just before seven. I didn't know what time it was and I was feeling a bit hungry. I must have read non stop for nearly five hours. I never do that. What a brilliant book though! I was so pleased that it was so good. Real class. I'll get the last bit soon. I think he finished it last night. The sensei never expects to make money out of writing novels, but I'm going to be rich! Rich, I tell you! At last, a novel I could get published. Film rights, the woiks! All I need is for a nasty accident to befall the sensei in the next few days. It's a really good book! I could put a transatlantic flight on the plastic and go and see him. We'll have a few beers and I'll get him to show me his Bulldog 44. Then I'll accidently shoot him. It would be instant death so he wouldn't mind.

Actually, the death penalty is a deterrent. Thank God we don't have one here. You can kill folk here and be out in eight. In the allotment there are now thirty six shallow graves. Undulating, mounds of earth. It's the tatties. They could be graves. Any murderers out there want to bury any dead bodies just let me know. It wouldn't have to be murderers. Folk who didn't want to buy a lair or pay cremation fees would be welcomed. I could clean up.

I wrote a play on an idea a bit like that about ten years ago. Last play I wrote. It's on the webpage.

00:47 a.m.
I didn't meditate much today due to being at work and reading the sensei's book. But I did a bit tonight and it was definitely brighter, stiller, and very, very blissy. You wish you could concentrate better and longer. You wish your legs never went numb or sore.

The flat is going to be all mine for a week from tomorrow. I was going to organise a card school for Friday because the home brewed beer is really good, but I decided against it. I'd just waste time enjoying myself. From tomorrow morning, I should just head into ra bliss!

Ra Tulku Again!

Tuesday
I seem to have lost the post I did last night. Oh, well!

The talk Ringu Tulku gave last night was superb. What a great time I had! Although I've been doing vajrayana meditations for a while now, I know bugger all about the vajrayana, except what I've read in books. The talk was called Creation and Completion Part 1. That sounds a bit like something from the vajrayana, but I didn't really expect to hear a tulku giving a public talk on the vajrayana in the middle of Edinburgh. But that's just what he did!

So I'm trying to concentrate like mad on everything he's saying and the edges on his shape are going that photie negative way things go when you're into a bit of meditation. Sometimes I was trying to be in the mandala. What a great time I was having!

I really cannot think of anything more appropriate for me to be doing at this time than go to a talk by this guy! I couldn't have been helped more or been more impressed.

He cleared up a problem I'd had about gurus. He said he had plenty of teachers, but never did anything they said. There is an idea that you should look on your teacher as a buddha. If you think of him as a buddha, you get the blessings from a buddha. If you think of him as a donkey, you get the blessings from a donkey, kind of thing. But this attitude to the guru has been a big problem for some people. And if your source of refuge is not pure, this could .... He said don't force it. You confidence in the joe/josephine will increase as you get on in the juju. The teaching is the important bit, not the teacher.

He talked about degrees of enlightenment which was fascinating. He talked about what was essential and what wasn't. This was particularly good for me because I try to strip the juju to the bare minimum. I don't know any chants or prayers (apart from two mantras!) and I don't know Tibetan either.

I felt totally inspired by this talk. I'm supposed to be going to the Traverse Theatre tonight, but Part 2 is on. No contest really. If you get a chance to hear this guy, don't miss it. An exceptional joe!

6:40 p.m.
Just finished an exceptionally good meditation. Heat and ra bliss. It's got better again! Most appropriate since I'm about to get ready to go and see the Ringu Tulku once more. What a fortunate creature I am!

Wednesday morning.

Lost the post I did last night as well! What's going on?

Resume: The tulku read out a text in Tibetan, called Creation and Completion. This is apparently an oral transmission. Then he just took questions.

Ris is RaBlissBlog! Could you talk a bit about ra bliss and ra heat?

Hotboy, ra bliss and ra heat are really side effects. The main thing is to get the mind into the central channel and experience ...primordial awareness. This he says is a state of ... he's searching for the word .... non-dichotomous, says the woman who'd done the three year retreat. Non-dichotomous, he says. Non conceptual awareness. This is very, very nice, he says. Pause. Smiles.

I've been off the scale with very, very nice. This must be very, very nicer!

That's two posts lost in a row. It's enough to make you think twice!

Wednesday 1:30 p.m.
Yahoo! Off work again!

I had a wee chat with the Tulku later. He said opening the channels isn't too difficult, but the problem might occur in not being able to close them, or control the energy. He said you must go through the stages of the practice. That's what I wanted to hear. Now, that I seem to be getting the juju to work, I'll have to go back and re-read the books.

Outside, it is hot and sunny. I'm going up to my hut to start the new novel by the sensei and reverend. This will be a treat!

Ra Tulku

Monday
Last night we went to hear a talk by Ringu Tulku up in Castle Terrace. Great talk! These guys ooze calm. Sit crosslegged and speak without notes. Made me laugh a couple of times. Afterwards I bought a couple of his pamphlets so I could get him to sign them. He shook hands. I wouldn't have initiated that. A wee namaste maybe. I haven't a clue where this guy's head might be!

I think he said: Hotboy, don't get wired up about the flatheids. Accept people for what they are and don't expect them to change too much. If you want them to change and they don't (and they won't!), you just get the grief, sorrow, lamentations .... at least, you'd get frustrated.

Most appropriate! The flatheids are cool!

I'm going back tonight.

I got a hard copy of the new book by the sensei and reverend, but I won't get a look at it till Wednesday at the earliest. But it's a fat one! Stuck me when I was collecting it that it'll probably be the first book I've read by him that wasn't written on a typewriter. I wonder if I'll notice any difference in his writing style.

I've decided to keep Adolf's mum tied up in my hut for a while. The homeopathic cannibal soup didn't sell too well. Maybe I should have posted the recipe. Anyway, I've asked for a ten grand ransome. I think that's fair.

Here's the soup I live on with my homemade bread. To produce homeopathic cannibal soup just dip your toe in the water when you fill the pot up.

500g of red lentils.

Cumin, coriander, tumeric, pepper, salt, garlic, plus a big squelch of tomato sauce or pasta sauce.

Tatties, onions, broccoli, and any other vegetables you have lying around.

The only reason I'm not starving to death is because of the beer!

Ra Last Weekend Day!

Sunday 1:04 p.m.
Becoming omniscient like the Buddha or Christ is not going to happen around here anytime soon, that's for sure. Since I try not to believe in anything at all, I've only got one life. What I do know is that you can attain access to ra bliss, that ra bliss can become part of your life even if like me you are not in the slightest bit holy, or even particularly good. It comes easier if you refine your addictions, but I'm still a mess of addictions and I can get ra bliss. If I can get ra bliss, anybody can!

The only aggravation I'd had since I stopped working on Wednesday has resulted in being concerned with people suffering and not getting any bliss. Or even knowing that they could be steeped in bliss. I don't think this is anything to do with compassion and I've got to deal with this somehow.


I think I should adopt what I think of as a hinayanist attitude. I could get a tee shirt bearing the legend: FUNG OFF, FLATHEIDS! It seems your hinayanist realises he's got to sort himself out first and to hell with these morons running around with their heads stuck up their backsides. It does not seem to be a particularly compassionate gig, but maybe I should realise I'm not ready for that.

I think to be happy in this existence, and not completely in thrall to the slings and arrows, you have to meditate and understand something about the theory of emptiness. What I should really do with the problem I have with flatheids is apply an emptiness analysis to it.


I think I had to get that off my chest, Jack. You might just be a Spam Robot, but you've got more chance of getting down to ra bliss than anyone around here.

If I recall correctly, I meditated for most of the day on Thursday. On Friday I went to Bellshill, so I only did about four hours on Friday. On Saturday, I meditated from half ten in the morning yesterday till about three. Then I cycled round to see Shiva.

I usually sit in a half lotus. (If you're too dumb to meditate, you should at least stop slouching in chairs. Sitting with a straight back will help!) Round at Shiva's, after chatting for a bit, I felt the sheath come on. The whole body envelopment. This wasn't bliss, but more like an affectionate arm round your shoulder. This has never happened before to that extent and is a wee development in the developments.

When I got back here, I started meditating again and kept that up as much as possible till about quarter past eleven.

Then I sat up and watched four or five programmes on this new digital channel called BBC3. Mind, Body, and KickAss Moves. Love this show. A real treat for me. The Crudelli boy is a martial artist from England and he shows you the stuff the grand masters of various fighting styles get up to. I love it because he keeps going on about chi. One of them was in a discipline where only one person in a generation knows the ultimate juju. It was like Kill Bill. He demonstrated this killer blow. He says when you can do it, the real skill is not killing people with it. Zapping chi into people. This and other things were amazing.

When I was in bed this morning, I felt this wee bliss burst opening up in my head. This is because of a no beer Saturday night. I'm supposed to be writing my book just now. Later on, I'll go and visit our friend with the MS and then I'm going to a church to hear a boy called Tulku Ringu.

Finding Adolf's mother will solve my cash flow problems. I went down the road singing the Horst Wessel Lieb, as you do, and she goosestepped right up to me. What a wonderful woman! I commiserated with her about the terrible way little Adolf had turned out and, to cut a long story short, we've decided to get married. We've going to Italy to get help from that boy who gives the infertility treatment to geriatrics, and we're going for the clone. I'd love a clone. I could teach a clone to meditate straight off. Anyway, the film rights alone will be worth a fortune!

Rat Omniscience!

Friday 6:50 p.m.
Back to the chair from the previous posts. Jesus Christ is supposed to be God, if you're a Christian. Say Jesus Christ opens his eyes and there's the chair. What does he see? Being a joe, he must have the same sensory equipment as us, but being God he has to know everything about the chair. He has full knowledge of the chair. Does he see the chair in the process of change and flow? Does he know everything about all the things that made up the chair, like the trees it came from, etc., and know everything about them in the past, present and future.


Jesus Christ, I think, is supposed to know everything about the chair in the past, present and future, and everything about every aspect of the chair in the same way. This is down to molecules, atoms, strings, and whatever.


Is that the way omniscience is supposed to work?


The Buddha Sakymuni was a man, but he was supposed to be omniscient as well.


Fancy knowing everything about everything.


Of course, how can you tell what omniscience represents if you are not omniscient? But there may be different ways of knowing. You can ask some savants for the cube root of 3433436456411342346744 and some of them will tell you right off. But they don't seem to do any calculations. They don't work it out. The answer appears in their mind's eye. They just read out the numbers.


I did a good job yesterday by meditating most of the time. Ra bliss is bursting through today. I even got some in Bellshill today during pauses in the conversation with my maw.


My maw is 87. She's just getting over the shingles. I was sitting beside her bed before I left and she fell asleep listening to the seventh tape of the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which I got her years ago. It's the part which details the process of dying. Before she dosed off, she said it was heaven to lie there listening to the tape with just the usual old age pain.


On Tuesday I was at my tai chi class and spoke to someone I didn't know. Very nice person. Turns out she's a bit paralysed down one side due to a brain tumour. I avoided speaking to the guy who's undergone the triple by-pass. A friend of ours is at the stage in multiple sclerosis when she won't ever walk again. And the First Noble Truth is the true of suffering. If you are young, you might not see this. Just wait. While you're waiting, you should meditate. Otherwise, you will never get ra bliss!

I've just finished reading the first four chapters of my new novel. I think it's different. I enjoyed reading it to my surprise and I think it will be good when it's finished. If it's good, it won't matter if it doesn't get published. I'm sure some of the best books ever written were never published.

Saturday 10:30 a.m.
What a great day this is bound to be!

Ra Chair Again!

Thursday 22:39 p.m.
When I was jogging this evening, I remembered that the chair (from the last post) used to be a chariot.

You open your eyes and there's a chariot. Try putting your hand on it. No, that's the wheel. No, that's the reins. No, that's the spokes. I think this is supposed to make you think that the chariot is made up of things. It is compounded. It is a mental construct. Yeah? Wait till it runs over you!

You open your eyes and there's a chair again. What makes a chair? Say, you take away the legs. If it's got no legs, is it still a chair? Say, you lose it's back. Is it still a chair?

All this is supposed to make you realise emptiness. It didn't work for me.

So what else about the lying perceptions? At least, they are perceptions. Dead folk don't have them.

Here comes the chair again! Have a good look. The thing that bothers me about the way the chair looks is that it always looks the same. Intellectually, I realise this isn't true. But you don't see the chair changing. If nobody sat on it, in a hundred years the chair would look quite different. It might have disappeared.

A kalpa is the time is takes for a silk scarf to wear away a metre of granite block.

So you don't see the chair changing. You see the clouds changing. You see the water changing. You see the fire changing stuff. You do not see the chair in the process of change. Your perceptions are not telling you the truth. You do not see the chair in flow. Though intellectually you know it must be so.

How much of the chair is a thought? Or thoughts? Or the result of thinking you know stuff about the chair?

We embrace ignorance
We do not believe in any things
Especially thoughts.

The chair is there alright because you can bump into it. How much of it is from your side and how much of it is from the side of the chair? Percentages of actuality.

I think what did it for me was reading that they said that your wee individual consciousness was bobbing about in a great big sea of consciousness. Then I got a look at that. This is somewhere described in the Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, about chapter five, I think. Perceptions of emptiness means you have disappeared into something much bigger. Unfortunately, you revert. Still, one of these days you know the chariot will come round and pick you up again.

I've had three pints of home brew and a good day, better than last Thursday. I started meditating at nine thirty and finished at twelve thirty. (headstands, tai chi set in between). Lunch then allotment. Another two hours. Digging. The end of the digging! Dinner and then meditating and writing for an hour and a half. Then I went for a wee jog. I did a wee jog a fortnight ago and my knee reacted. Second wee jog in two months! No wonder I'm a fat basturn! Then I barrelled some beer and came through here.

I found an email from the sensei and reverend asking me if I wanted to read his new book. He's almost finished it. When you've finished a book, you have to get someone to read it. I used to do this to people. Like, I've just spend two years writing this. Is it crap? Yes. Oh well, I thought as much. I might have been one of the first people to read The Book Of Man, which the sensei probably finished about 1992 or 1993. I remember it well. I lined up some bottles of home brew and read it in a oner. Excellent evening. The sensei has got something. There is something outstandingly solitary about the main character in that book. I should really read all his books again before I read the next one. Anyway, I'll get him to sit there with his Bulldog 44 and tell him it's crap, blow your brains out. That's the best way to get rid of the opposition. But he's not the opposition. He is my comrade in arms. The book will be great. At last, some fiction I really want to read!

I should say something about ra bliss. People who don't meditate would like me not to talk about ra bliss because it makes them seem inadequate somehow. But I had to try today. Sometimes it isn't easy. It took an effort. But don't worry. Just be like everyone else. See how happy they all are!

Ra Chair

Wednesday 1:15 p.m.
How could it get any better than this? I have no difficult diseases. My injuries have healed and I can probably run and jump tomorrow if I want to. I am on holiday till next Monday. I have made no arrangements to meet any flatheids. The springtime has come. My meditations are going just absolutely brilliantly. This is surely the best of times!

Talking about setting up a new religion for bloggyland... We embrace our ignorance. We do not believe in any things. Especially thoughts....10 percent off the top, please.

So there's a chair. What do you know about that? Quite a lot really. You could describe it, draw it, measure it in such a way that other joes could make you a replica.

You open your eyes and there's a chair. It's in your sensory fields. Information, mainly through your eyes, goes into your brain and you can work out that it's a chair. Due to experience with chairs before, you know you can sit on it. Maybe you don't like it, or maybe you do.

You open your eyes and there's a chair. What comes first? The mind or the chair? What arises simultaneously?

Your view of the chair is partial, dependent on your eyes, brain, and experience. You know that you could view the chair some other way if you had different senses. If you could see a bit better, you might say that the chair was composed of molecules. If you could see a bit better than that, you might say the chair was mainly space, or whatever. What about all the sub-atomic theories? What about all the theories about matter which no one's had time to come up with yet?

You might say that your knowledge of the chair is finite, but your ignorance of the chair is probably infinite. There are so many things about the chair that we do not know.

Emptiness is form and form is emptiness. This is all very well, but I have to go to my hut now and try to cope with some extraordinary and amazingly astounding doses of ra bliss. I may not be able to consider the emptiness this afternoon due to having my head stuck unbudgeably in ra bliss. Oh, what a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

Rem Thoughts!

Tuesday 5:30 p.m.
I used to smoke tobacco, but not during the day at work. Sometimes coming home I'd be in a very crabbit mood, and I would have unpleasant thoughts about my fellow man. I would think that I'd like to cut my fellow man's head off and kick it into the sea.

After I'd had some tobacco, I used to feel okay and these bad thoughts did not occur.

You might think what you're thinking is somehow true and real. You get the impression that your thoughts arise independently. The thought about kicking the boy's head into the sea did not arise independently. It was conditioned by nicotine withdrawal. When you can see that one thought has been conditioned by nicotine withdrawal, you are entitled to ask what if anything conditions your other thoughts?

Maybe everything that has happened before conditions every thought somehow. Has almost everything that's happened since the Big Bang affected your wee thought? How about the language you speak in then? Your genetic predispositions? The learned stuff like fight or flight? Millions of things you know about condition even one wee thought. How about all the things we don't know about? Do they condition this wee thought as well? Of course, they must.

Since we are the human beings, maybe the thing that really differentiates between us is what we are thinking, our thoughts.

If you don't have many thoughts and there's never anything much in your head but that little sound going beep, beep, beep, well, you can have my thoughts. I don't trust them. I try not to believe them. In any case, most thoughts aren't worth thinking!

Stephanie Thwaites has the first couple of chapters of Ancient Futures to consider. Apart from that, there's nothing out there. I don't think my heart is really in this hustling of old books, or even new books.

Far too busy to get anything written this week. After Thursday, when I managed to meditate nearly all day, it was flatheid after flatheid. Every day another wave of flatheids drifted up the beach. Very nice, but any time I had to myself I used for meditating.

On Saturday, I realised the meditations had moved on again. Thicker bliss with few thoughts and hardly any breathing. Looking at the photie of the guru, the distortions in the visual field were more pronounced. The air seemed to be getting a little thick, as if it had some further substantiality.

Go to work tomorrow then I'm off again. I cannot complain. I'd like to complain, but I can only complain about having nothing to complain about. What a fortunate creature I am!