Ra Dry Run!

Friday 7:42 a.m.
Well, stab me! The engine died in the depot and the train to Lockerbie was cancelled, so I would have had to wait for ages and go via Carlisle, and .... and... so I thought: Go with the flow, Hotboy, and got a taxi home. I'll try again on Monday! The fates are forcing me to watch England humping Portugal tomorrow for pretending to be an Ecuadorian last week. Ole!

Ra Samye Day Before!

Thursday 9:24 p.m.
My bag is packed. I'm ready to get the 6:43 a.m. bus to the station, and head off for a solid week of investigating ra bliss down at the Samye Ling. What wonderments and amazements await!

Came here straight from the bath. I usually soak for a while after doing the physical jerks. Since I was 26, which is nearly 30 years ago, I've trained on average about four times a week. I don't count doing hatha yoga or tai chi sets or standing on my head as training really. I count yogic jumpings as training alright since they are deeply sweaty, deep breathing things (I can't spell aerobic!), but usually by physical jerks I mean running or doing shadow boxing sessions.

Donned the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle (three jumpers, teeshirt, bin bag liner, woolly hat) tonight and did ten minutes skipping followed by six two minute rounds of shadow boxing with 30 second intervals (when you allow yourself to put your arms down). For a fat old drunken bastarn, I'm as fit as a flea. Have to lose a stone and get back into road running. By the end of my six week holiday, I expect to feel like I can leap over buildings with a single bound!

I was a wee bit surprised at the comments on my last post about me knowing a lot of people who had been stabbed. I only know a couple of people who've been stabbed!

Mind you, I was in Bellshill today to see my maw and my big brother Silvest - row of forty medals on his chest, big chest - was there. Years ago I was out boozing with Silvest and on the way back from the pub, I was talking about the prisoners my other brother dealt with in the Special Unit of Barlinnie Prison. Mostly murderers. After a wee chat about murdering folk, Silvest pulled up his shirt to show me his stab wounds. He'd been stabbed four times, on four different occasions. I didn't know that.

I've only really met two murderers, both guys my brother worked with in the Special Unit. One was Jimmy Boyle, whom I found very charismatic and very nice indeed. Jimmy, when he got out and was running an arts centre for people with drug problems, helped me get a play called Busted produced and it toured around the country. Maybe if I'd met him when he was younger, and a gangster my opinion of him might have been different, but on personal experience I wouldn't hear a bad word about the guy!

I think he and the second murderer I met had fallen out by the time I met the second murderer, called Hugh Collins.

By the way, both these guys had really brilliant books published and I would recommend them to anyone. Hugh Collin's Autobiography of a Murderer is a wonderful book, and his crime novels are great. A Sense of Freedom by Jimmy Boyle is just excellent.

The Autobiography of a Murderer says some nice things about my brother and when I read it after my brother was dead, I thought I'd like to get a signed copy of it for my maw, so I contacted his publisher.

We'd been in the pub down the road for about four hours and I still hadn't got Hugh Collins to sign this book, so we're out on the street and it's after one and I'm telling him I haven't got a pen and we'll do this some other time maybe, this signing thing. Hugh is a wee Glaswegian and is in your face the way these wee electric Glaswegian hardmen are. Where do they get their energy from? A taxi stopped and this large, slightly pissed and full of bonhomie middle class gentleman lands on the pavement in front of us. Hugh hustles him for a pen. The boy's got a pen. I say: Isn't Stockbridge amazing! Knee deep in authors and writers (this is while Hugh Collins is writing stuff about the dead brother on the inside of the book). This is an informal book signing event, pal! The joe asks, What's the book called? I says, Autobiography of a Murderer. The joe smiles, still full of bonhomie, and asks: Have you murdered anyone? to Hugh Collins. Hugh Collins says: I'm not long out from doing sixteen years in the BarL (as Barlinnnie Prison is known to some!) for murder. The bonhomie disappeared. The boy's jaw really dropped. It was the best moment of the whole year! Anyway, he got his pen back.

Now, that I think on it, I've met four murderers. No, five! Also, two guys who've done time for grevious bodily harm. And I'm a nice buddhist school librarian!

I bet the sensei and reverend has got stab wounds. He's close to you, Lee Ann. Head for Tennessessee. If he hasn't got wounds, he'll have scars from bottles and bricks. He's a brilliant writer as well.

See, I live a quiet life. I'm sensitive. I don't like shouting. I don't watch dramas anymore because they involve conflict, necessarily, and I just want to do ra bliss.

I went up to our allotment today after getting back from Bellshill, partly to collect a wee torch that's there in case I want to spend the night and get freaked by rats or whatnot.

There are about 2oo allotments there. They are surrounded in Inverleith Park by a big fence and there is a big fung off gate with a big padlock protecting it. Only nice middle class people have allotments there. They will have computers. Maybe they will google allotments, Edinburgh and come up with this.

Property is theft (Lelly if you are reading this, stop now!) (any other nice people reading this stop now!). So I'm there partly to get the wee torch (costs about £2:50 tops) and I don't have a padlock on the hut. There isn't really much in there. Some old tools. It's a decrepit old hut without proper windows and no padlock, etc. So I left the door closed with a bright red piece of wire. It was gone. Someone had taken it and gone into the hut. They took a carton of apple juice and the wee torch. They took away a wee bit of red twine.

The evil bourgeois wanted to let me know that they had been there. These things have no inherent existence, far less value.

Your mine, you horrible fung bourgeois basturn pig! I will be in that hut for six weeks and when you come calling the next time, I'll be there. I might torture you to death just for the fun of it, you despicable cretin. I don't care about your problems. I don't care where this evil came from! Come near that hut again, and you're fung dead. The wrath of god will be on your funged up bourgeois arse!

You see, it's all a matter of temper. I'm from a family with a bad temper. The Domestic Bliss has a good temper. She'd never murder anyone. I've asked my other male relatives about this and they are also berserkers ( Stay up a fyord all winter. In the springtime go berserk!). I asked the kiddo once if she ever had mental rages about killing and maiming. She nodded. So don't fung with us! Don't fung with our huts! What are we capable of? We are capable of everything.

Milarepa, who is the saint of saints, murdered at least thirty people before he got into the juju and became the exemplary joe of the Six Yogas of Naropa. I would love to get twenty years in solitary confinement. It might be the only chance I've got. What if he'd stolen anything I wanted? Then I could have got really medieval on the basturn!

Well, for the next week I'll try to do emptiness and ra bliss. I think that's best. I don't know if I'll blog from the Samye. I think I should for samsaramom, who is the only Tibetan buddhisty person who comes here. We'll see! Come tomorrow! I can't wait. The Samye Ling is the only place on this earth where I have been truly happy. Flatheids don't know what truly happy means. I'm sorry about that, but it's not my fault. Well, maybe it is! Just a wee bit!

Ra Summer Holidays!

Wednesday 10:00 p.m.
I don't have to go to work next Monday. Or the Monday after that. Or the Monday after that. Or the Monday after that. Or the Monday after that. Or the Monday after that. or the Monday after that. I've got six weeks holiday and it started today. I was going to stop doing everything bad, but I wasn't feeling kind of on holiday, so I've just poured myself the first beer of the holidays!

Who's from Fort Wayne, Indiana? I can only waste time now looking at the statscounter thing and not the blogpatrol (they stopped letting me in for some reason!), but I do love reading the names of the American places. Rapid Falls. Americans have place names like that. It says it all. Anyway, someone from Fort Wayne, Indiana, visits this blog quite a lot. Is there a spam robot, a Masai Warrior, or a Martian from Fort Wayne? Why should someone from Fort Wayne come to my blog?

Fort William is a place I stayed in once in Scotland for a few months. Great place, nice folk. Fort William is called after a king, I think. But calling a fort after John Wayne is just brilliant! A lot of folk here didn't like John Wayne because he was a Republican, but I loved John Wayne. Him and Robert Mitchum were my favourite film stars for ages. If you can't help me, get outta ma way! Who Shot Liberty Valance? was a great movie.

This blog seems to be getting hit around twenty times a day these days. More than half are spam robots who've been here before. Remember when I wrote about the joe in Bellshill who stabbed his mammy nine times? Well, he got six years for attempted murder. The judge said he'd have given him ten, but he pleaded guilty. His mum is a friend of the family. Seems she did seven years for killing her husband when the son was a wee one. I didn't know that until I read it in the papers. Anyway, men are pigs and you should get off for stabbing the basturns. Beef McDuck, my nephew got stabbed through the heart, but survived. One of the guys I hung around with when I first went to uni ... well, his mum got axed to death by his brother when my pal was seven. At least, his brother was crazy and not drunk.

It wasn't my fault, Lord. It was the drink. This is a perfectly valid excuse. The boy who stabbed Beef said he had no recollection of the events and after two bottles of vodka ..., well, who knows who's stabbing who?

In chilly Jockoland, you can't smoke in pubs now. Apparently, more folk want to go to pubs here now that they don't have to breathe in the fumes. Here is my bevvying schedule...

After six months almost alcohol free (apart from those times when you think: Fung, surrounded by flatheids! What am I doing here? I hate this. I'll have a drink. That should work!), I started on the beer again last August when I had to go on holiday from ra bliss, yoga, writing, and all the things I actually like doing. The year before that I was drinking beer. The year before that I didn't drink at all. I think I've managed three straight years without beers at all. I need another one. Tension and stress leads to beer. I'd like to give alcohol up forever. I'd like to stay in a monastery and just do ra bliss; no beers; no compensations; no frivolous chatter; no writing books; just doing ra bliss. Calmness. Focussing.

I wrote a letter to Teresa today saying that I would be down to the Samye Ling with my wee tent for a week come Friday.

This is all part of the culmination and coalescence. I finished the second draft of my novel yesterday. When it's finished, it won't matter if it gets published if I can live on £750 a month. That's when I'll be happy with what I've got. That's where I've got to be. Not wanting anything.

I ate some raspberries in the allotment today. I ate a turnip, a wee one. I ate two strawberries. The finches have fledged and gone already. I'll be there a lot. I will. Yogi Joe, sometimes coming out of his hut to eat his way down through the things growing out of the dirt! Have to go! The kiddo needs taken to the bus stop!

Midnight. Four beers in!

This is a Scottish Haiku. I don't know what a haiku is. I think it's a Japanese poem thing and has got three lines. So this is my Scottish Haiku for Lee Ann, who has a blog I always visit and who maybe isn't getting much bliss right now. It's a traditional Scottish Haiku, composed by anon, as the best things are!

Gowps means it pulses hurtfully.

Beels means it is red and it's hurtful.

A pluke is a spot. Not quite a boil, but what disfigures your handsome visoge when you are a teenager.

Are you ready then for this, Jack?

Haiku for a Pluke.
It Gowps and it Beels
It hurts when it heals
And it leaves a wee mark when it's better.

That's the best I can do, Lee Ann.

Ra Nun!

Tuesday 22:41 p.m.
There's a bit of me that wants to find the catholics. There is a bit of me that wants to be comfortable once again with ra tims, though I haven't been really since I was a teenager.

Culminations and coalescence.

The tims do produce saints. Saints are not holy. We have to dispense with that concept. It is stupid. You do something and you get the result. That's it.

There's a nun who wanders around at my work. I don't know what she does, but there is a saint whose books I've read called Saint Teresa and she was a nun as well.

So I spoke to the nun today. We met in the corridor. I've been wanting to do this for ages, but I am arrogant and shy. She says ... was I hearing this right? ... that there's only one thing. She said there is no difference really with the various jujus. We're all doing the same thing, but with different words.

I asked her what team she was with. She said the Sisters of Mercy.

Well, it's Leonard Cohen time right away. 'Well, the Sisters Of Mercy they are not departed or gone. They were waiting for me when I knew that I just can't got on ... We weren't lovers like that, but besides it would still be alright..'

So I will find my way into ra tims through this wummin. She handed me a prayer from Thomas Merton a wee bit later.

I told a kid today that I was a catholic. Really? I said I was a catholic buddhist. It told the nun today that I only understood Christ when I read stuff by Hindus like Paramahansa Yogananda.

I'm looking forward to writing a letter tomorrow to Teresa down at the Samye Ling. The problem with the catholics is that they don't let you use your intelligence, I think. You have to be .... they talk about mysteries, etc. |Yes! You have to accept your ignorance! I knew I'd get it sooner or later. The correspondence. (sic!). Yes! I'm a tim! I'm a buddhist! I'm a hindu! I'm a zen joe! I'm just a HotBoyMadyamika. SurfingTheOceansOfBliss!

Rem Agents Again

Monday
What a nice start to the day today! Since I am now addicted to blogging like ... well, lots of other things ... I check for email alerts first thing. Early anyway.

Found a really pleasant email from Isobel Dixon of the Blake Friedmann agency. I contacted her on behalf of the sensei and reverend and it turns out that they're knee deep in successful crime fiction and Isobel said she'd take a submission on email. Can't ask fairer than that! I sent the message to the sensei and that might have cheered up his Monday morning.

Of course, I had no idea Blake Friedmann were big on crime fiction, but I'm just stumbling about with this agent lark, hoping for a stroke of luck.

That's not actually true! I sent a second email to Pat Kavanagh. I'm trying to convince Pat to have a look at my new novel when it's finished by sending her occasion emails about me and ra bliss. I think this time I told her about seeing God (I didn't really: ten seconds of non-self and emptiness. Does that count?) and all about the physical bliss and mental ecstasy. I hope she doesn't phone the polis.

And Geraldine Cooke of the Marsh Agency agreed to read the start of Ancient Futures, so I'll get that in the post.

After Wednesday, I won't have to go to work till about August 13th, I think. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

Ra JUJU!

Soon I expect to be able to prevail against the cold. I'll try that again. The cold won't be felt. There will be cold. I think the Emperor Penguins get ra bliss. You stand for three months perfectly balanced against the forty below. Your kind is all there. You have walked off the arena of fear into the cold zone where no one else can go. You do not have conceptual thoughts. I don't think you want much.

Thank God soon I will be able to set sail for the Unheard of Island where I will converse with the child of Adolf, the Emperor Penguin. Sounds as if he might have an attitude. Hotboy

Ra Coalescence!

Saturday 11:01 p.m.
I got into a half decent lotus. There are lotuses and there are lotuses. The picture Mingin took of me in the hut was me trying to do a lotus when I'm not used to it anymore. It might be important to be able to sit in a proper position.

The Dalai Lama says you should start in a lotus anyway because then it is easier for the airs to enter the central channel. Are we talking metaphors here? Well, you do something and something happens. My knee is almost cured.

A lot of my time in the evening has been spent exhausted and sometimes a bit crabbit due to the amount of physical jerks I do. There is something about running if you're fit for it. The metronome pace. The rhythm. It takes an effort to keep running, but some of the best times I've had, the exhilirating times have been spent running. I think I'll be able to run again soon. This is a boon and a delight. When I was a kid, no old guys like me ran anywhere.

I will be on holiday next week for six weeks. My wonderful child, the kiddo, will be here in July. I hope she doesn't get a job. I want to spend a lot of time in the hut. In the best of possible worlds, I might be able to sit there for one week of this time. And maybe my wonderful daughter could come and see me, and I could tell her all about ra bliss. Because although I am responsible for my maw (numero uno), and I am responsible for the Domestic Bliss (we are the author's of our own fate), the kiddo wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me. So I have to tell her about ra bliss, and make it sound natural to pursue this in this the realm of the flatheided.

The Domestic Bliss thinks she may live another twenty years. I tell her I'm already three years overdue. Tempis fugit. But she is far nicer and far calmer than I will ever be. But she doesn't meditate much. She meditated yesterday though. Some people don't want to try hard and they want life to be nice. I wish it was.

My maw does meditate a bit. She does. She wants to understand the tapes I've bought her. You have to understand emptiness to be happy and she is far happier now than she would have been if she had not had me. And I am so fortunate that I have a mother like that and a daughter like that. I'm the mad joe in the middle, but I can do ra bliss, and both these josephines know that I am not telling them lies, and know that I am not a good example as well. But I am some kind of example.

I haven't written anything of my book since I stopped work on Wednesday. I have one chapter left to write. It's not an editing of the first draft. It's the last chapter from here and now. This is a culmination, this whole writing thing with this book. It's a satirical look at education for the working class in Scotland, but I might call it MY NEW BOOK because there are true accounts of ra bliss, where to find it, how to do it, and how not to worry about being holy. The holy is PR. It's bullshit. You do it, you get ra bliss. That's the beginning and the end of it. You can be holy if you like. Even if you can go breathless instantly and levitate, I'm not interested in your holiness. I'm interested in your technique. This is the experiential mysticism blog.

Of course, the book won't get published. How ridiculous to even think it would. You can't ask these whoever they are to validate your life. Ars Longa Vita Brevis. The best of the human beings have always tried. You try to be creative.

St Teresa didn't have an agent, but I read her book. Actually, I've read two of her books. I think I've got one left to read. I'm not a saint like St Teresa. I may not get into the last room ... of course, I will!

This summer will be a culmination, a coalescence. Then, of course, I'll have to culminate and coalesce all over again!

Rat Ecuadorian Granny of Mine!

Ignore this if you're interested in ra bliss. Or if you don't like the footie. This is footie/World Cup post.

I think it's time I started lending my support to the little Englanders in the World Cup. This is the kiss of death. As soon as I get behind the Sassenachs, they're out! I'll give them the kiss later.

What possible reason can I have for supporting the Ecuadorians? Well, the last time I recall the Englanders getting humped by a British team was when Northern Ireland beat them one nil. That's like the pub team beating Brazil. I mean, Northern Ireland isn't really a country. It's not even all of Ulster! Probably not even a couple of million people live there (though they do make a lot of noise!). So 1-0 is a wonderful result for them.

The manager of Northern Ireland is called Lawrie Sanchez and his dad is an .... yes, wait for it ... Ecuadorian! Lawrie has told the Ecuadorians how his got his team to pull off their famous victory. Start the game with flying tackles. Get stuck in. Show you mean business and break a leg for every fifty fifty ball. Keep it at one all for as long as possible and wait till the Englanders start shouting at each other. The Englanders were awful at corners against Sweden. Get a corner. One nil.

When the Ecuadorians have to defend the first corner, two men in their defense must be told their job is to stick the nut on Gerrard, who is a fabulous player and the match winner. Nut Gerrard. Nobody will notice in the stramash. After that, man mark Beckham ...

Now, I'm feeling much better! Ecuador can beat this team! Go, Ecuador, go!!

Ra Samye Day!

Friday 7:48 p.m.
Just recently back from the Samye Ling. What a brilliant time I had! I was so crabbit and stupid last night when I did the last post. I thought we might not get into the temple and that I'd miss a whole day's meditating. What a fool! We could get into the temple and the other one sat in it for two straight hours ... two till four ... and she even tried to meditate for some of it. Yippee!!

These Drupchen things seem to involve 24 hour gong bashing and chanting for seven or ten days, but for some reason this time they're only doing eight hours a day. Only eight hours! A mere bagatelle! Anyway, they'd got all this juju talent over from the subcontinent specially and it was good to see these dudes there. Or you might not think it would make any difference.

We went into the temple and were up at the very back where the other person could sit on a chair. I sat on the floor. I opened my eyes twice during the next, nearly, two hours. Once when someone offered to share a text with me (No thanks) and once when I wanted to see if anyone was in front of me before I leant over, as you sometimes do.

Sometimes there's chanting and sometimes there's just the sound of this very bass voice making kind of growling sounds with a slight accompaniment. Sometimes they were giving it laldy on the gongs, drums and horns.

I've had many wonderful, wonderful experiences in meditation, but this one was something else. Started straight into ra bliss! Then the heat. If the channels are supposed to open, well, they opened. Totally blissed and warm. The deity yoga stuff was much better as well. My concentration is not as good as I'd like and sometimes there was drift, but what an amazing time I was having!

Usually, when I'm sitting, I feel some degree of discomfort from forty minutes on, but I can sit quite easily most times for an hour. On occasion, I've sat without too much bother for a hour and a half. This time my legs didn't bother me at all. My bum was a wee bit numb at the end, but that was it. I was surprised when it finished. Asked the other one the time. 3:50 p.m.

The lama said once that he let his students have three hours sleep a night, but sitting up in a lotus. You wonder how that could be possible when you've been meditating for years and after an hour you're stiff and sore. There's something else happening here, if today is anything to go by.

I sometimes despair of the other person, but none of my acquaintances took to meditating like me. But there is hope here. I was hustled into going to see Ringu Tulku by her and that was a great thing for me. Then this. It was she who wanted to go to the Drupchen to see what it was about, not me.

So fair play to the Domestic Bliss!

There's nothing to compare with the vajrayana meditations! Nothing quite as wonderful as ra bliss and ra heat! How exotic to be driven for just over two hours and find oneself in a beautiful Tibetan temple doing the juju with the wonderful wee fat baldy guys!

Ra Pre-Samye Day!

Thursday 10:45 a.m.
Rolled over last night at some unspecified time and go up to start meditating again at nine. Straight into where it's deeper, stiller, and more profound. No beer and the brakes are off, Jack. I know it's only the beer which is retaining the last vestiges of normality. Clinging on by my beer sodden fingertips. I'm trying to keep hold of my bottle here, Jack. I'm off to the allotment. I'm taking food. I may be some time. I wonder if it will be this summer when we set the controls for the heart of the sun?

They're already set, Jack. Aren't they? I think I've just go to let go.

8:50 p.m.
Hard working, good day today. I sat in the hut until I heard the one o clock gun. ( They fire a cannon on the battlements of the castle every day at that time for those of you not fortunate to live in the beautiful, wonderful city!). Then I had cheese, bread and juice before going out to do some weeding. Our allotment grows more weeds than anyone else. I don't know why.

I wondered if I should go home then, but sat down in the hut again. Must have been nearly two. Great, profound, deep bliss then, better than anything in the forenoon. I never expect that although I've many great experiences then.

Whatever I think is always wrong. You should never believe in anything you think. You should just sit and try not to expect anything. For instance, I'm feeling a little down just now (though it's half time and Australia are going to beat Croatia!). Before the footie I did twenty minutes of Iyengar jumps and skipped for five minutes. I think I'm a wee bit knackered! So I feel like a ... something to change the ambience a little. But I want to watch the end of the footie. I could sit and get blissed or go out and get pissed. Mnnn?

11:01 p.m.
I went out, but went to the hut. Good boy! Just back and it's still not quite dark outside just now, but I gazed on the wee sticker of the chenrezig mandala stuck to the doorpost until it was too dark really to keep making it out.

Tomorrow I will get driven down to the Samye Ling. The person who's driving doesn't meditate, so when I get there I won't be able to either. That's the trouble going anywhere with normals. You've got to be normal as well. Normals walk around the Samye like tourists. They can't just sit. They've got to be doing something. But it is my spiritual home. And I will at least be able to touch base with all the great places down there where I've sat quietly doing nothing: the river bank, the island in the river, the bench on the wee island in front of the stupa, the temple. I don't expect that we'll be able to get into the temple what with all the gong bashing and all the juju masters gathered there. But I'll be at the Samye tomorrow and tomorrow night I can stay in the hut ... well, if I haven't done much during the day, I'll have to catch up!

Half watching the Aussies go through on the highlights show. Brilliant! Shame the USA didn't make it!

I think samsaramom might be in the trenches a wee bit just now. You should go over there and say hullo. If it wouldn't help, it wouldn't hinder!

The sensei and reverend got a wee bit passionate after he read about Lee Ann sewing the pelt of a rat onto her jeans before she went to school one day. It takes all kinds. He says he's only a two hour drive away. Be afraid. Be very afraid!

This is RaBlissBlog! What a great day for ra bliss! What a great, great day for ra bliss!

Ra Pre-Holiday Holiday!

Wednesday 2. p.m.
Sometimes sunny here and sometimes raining.

Since this blog was set up to monitor my harassment of the agenting classes, here's some stuff about agents. Today I sent an email to Isobel Dixon about the sensei and reverend's new book. By the way, there's another funny animation of me with the sensei by Jeff Patton on his blog. Trying to hustle up an agent for the sensei will be interesting because I know his book is good. It's much easier to tell with other people's stuff than it is with your own.

I started hustling for an agent, really for the book that I'll be finishing hopefully quite soon, about sixteen months ago. I sent out approximately 350 emails to agents about this book and got nowhere as usual. Well, that tells me something. It tells me I'm not going to get an agent for this book. Not by sending emails to agents and then getting sometimes asked to send in three chapters. Nobody is reading these chapters, I suspect, apart from the Egors and the half wit children of the aristocrasy who sift through the slush piles. That's the big agencies, the ones who count. Anyway, you just get a standard letter back.

One or two agents did make an effort, but just didn't fancy it, I suppose.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. Someone who sent me quite nice emails last year was Pat Kavanagh of the PFD agency, so I've decided to try to get her to read my book when it's finished, hopefully this Autumn. I'm going to try to sell myself to her as a writing joe on the basis of being able to do ra bliss! On the basis that someone like her should do something to help. If the book gets published it probably won't make much money anyway (£1500 and £1000 is what I made from the previous novels I had published!), but I don't think she's motivated entirely by money. I'm sure she's got pots of money already. I'm going to send her emails about the Six Yogas, and doing ra bliss and heat. No one that I'm aware of with my background in the juju has ever written a novel like this.

I don't expect I'll get Pat Kavanagh to read this book, but you have to make an effort!

Speaking of ra bliss, I was standing at the bus stop in Princes Street this morning waiting for the Number 12. It was cold and blustery with some rain in the air. The bus shelter has a transparent wall. I stood there and started doing a tadasana, I think that's the name. It the first standing pose in hatha yoga, the mountain. You kind of manipulate your legs and back, etc. Here comes ra bliss! Felt it coming up my body after I'd held my breath for a wee bit. Another development in ra bliss. Shame about the normals standing around girning into the wind, but that's not my fault.

These are truly wonderful times for me! Here comes ra bliss! Here comes ra bliss!


Thursday 00:29 a.m.
That rare breed, a sober midnight post. Can you tell, Jack?

It's the shortest night of the year. I was fantasising about spending it in the hut, but the weather today deteriorated. I was going to go to Bellshill tomorrow, but I've been let off by the decorators painting the joint. On Friday the josephine who lives here wants to drive down to the Samye Ling to nose about during this big juju thing they're doing. Drupchen. I know nothing about this except that it's a big deal with juju masters coming over from the subcontinent. I think they might be chanting and gong bashing for seven or ten straight days. Maybe in shifts. I don't know.

The lama said: "When I was in Tibet, we were taught that sleep is useless."

After the footie finished tonight, I watched nearly two episodes of Desperate Housewives with the noise blockers on and the eyeballs rolled up. For only about the third time in months, I was confident enough in my knee to sit in quite a good lotus. Then I lay flat out on the carpet in the corpse pose. Bliss straight away lying down. What a fortunate creature I am!

I'm going to sit up doing juju tonight for as long as I can. Something wonderful might happen.

Rem Werewolves again!

Monday 5:00 p.m.
So I'm watching the footie last night and I start to feel this nice feeling happening in my upper torso. It's the sheath coming to visit, a bit of kundalini arising maybe. It's going to bring with it ra bliss and probably some heat if you do a breath. I wasn't quite expecting this and it feels nice so I'm not complaining.

A physical sign that the inner heat/vase breathing thing is going to work is that the air should go up both nostrils equally. This apparently occurs for a wee while like clockwork throughout the day, but is most noticeable naturally at dawn and dusk.

Dusk in Scotland can start at half three in the winter or at ten at night these days, so you wonder how this breathing thing might work. What's happening at dawn and dusk which would affect your breathing? Say you were in a windowless room. Would it work then?


So I'm in the kitchen and there's quite a big window there. As I'm getting these very nice feelings starting, I look over and it's the twilight. I was dead impressed.


I wondered if I could emanate as a werewolf instead of a deity. Werewolves, chickens, deities?Not much of a difference really if you're talking about transcending the human condition.


If folk can hypnotise you so you think you're a chicken, why not? If you emanated as a werewolf, you could have a perfect hairstyle.


I used Adolf's blog to find out about Narcissistic Personality disorder the last time I did any proper writing because I'm using it in my novel. If he could start suing straight away, well, any publicity might be good publicity. The Daily Sport (nipple count never drops below fifty, but trusted by one and all for it's truthful reporting!) might go for it: ADOLF HITLER'S RE-INCARNATION SUES FROM THE UNHEARD OF ISLAND!

Tuesday 5:46 p.m.
I got an email from the sensei and reverend saying that the agent I sent the book to didn't want to see any more than the first three chapters. It defies belief! What have you got to do? When you think of all the crap books that get published as well. Oh well! I'm going to try somebody else. I'll get on the case tomorrow.

This next draft of my current novel has only a couple of hours work left in it. I hope I'll have it by the weekend. If I had sufficient money, I don't think I'd bother trying to get it published when I finish all the re-writes. I'd just stick in on my webpage. Writing is good. All the rest is a pile of crap!

This morning I realised once again how much I've moved on with development of this inner heat juju. First breath and you're straight into bliss and heat. You feel very nice straight away. It just keeps relentlessly getting better and better. As you can imagine, this really cheered me up this morning. Soon I expect to be able to prevail against the cold, at least a bit. Of course, this is completely amazing. Making some kind of connection with the people down at the Samye Ling has been the best thing that ever happened to me. By miles.

My roots are Scottish and Northern Irish (both tims and prods. How ecumenical can you get!). I've got fair hair. Northern Ireland was once run by the vikings. They were fair haired. So as far as I can see I've ever right to don the viking helmet tonight and shout: Go, Sweden, go! So there.

Ra Jeff!

Sunday 11:51 a.m.
The sensei and reverend knows a guy called Jeff Patton who apparently lives a reclusive life in Phoenix Arizona. It was Jeff who took the photie that Mingin took of me in the hut and did this with it. Jeff also fixes up motors and you can find his advert on the web here.

Jeff sent me a very nice email about Bomber which he read sometime last year. I think I might have sent three chapters of Bomber to maybe four agents, so I haven't really hustled it. I doubt if ten folk have read that book, so it was nice of Jeff to get back to me about it.

If you need any motors fixing or any computery stuff done, you should contact Jeff if you live in Arizona! He has a big beard and makes recordings of local bands, so he's probably one of the good guys!

Rose Recriminations!

Sunday 11:08 a.m.
Must apologise to the evil bourgeois and all the flatheids out there. I wrote that post last night when I was feeling somewhat tired and emotional! Unfortunately, I did not have a sober weekend. When I get annoyed with myself, I tend to export it onto flatheids and the evil bourgeois. I really should stop calling perfectly decent people flatheids. I tried this before, but their heads are flat! I'll try calling them normals. The evil bourgeois will now be known as the nice people.

I am going to have to crank myself up for this big long holiday I'm going to have in a couple of weeks. I need to go on retreat and it's hard when you can't physically go anywhere to get away from people. I'd love to spend six weeks meditating down at the Samye Ling. That would do me so much good, but I'm skint, so it has to be the hut. To the hut! To the hut!

Ra Six Weird Things about me!

Saturday 23:54p.m.
Well, it's something to do late at night here, Jack. Six weird things. Couldn't you be doing something else? Something more profitable maybe. Certainly not! Here's six weird things about me.

Setting the scene: I'm 55 years old. My old man was a nicer man than me and a brickie. I had four brothers and two sisters. I come from a magnificent family of dead smart and compassionate flatheids. I am the only one since we were small furry creatures to ever have access to ra bliss, and this makes all my family members far more heroic than me.

The things that have been happening to me over the past five years have been very weird and I should be happy to exemplify them. What is the first weird thing about me?

(1). I took refuge as a buddhist and I have a buddhist name. It is Karma Dorje. I was sleepwalking into this first juju sacrament after taking lots of sacraments as a catholic when I was growning up. I have a confirmation name. It is Peter. JC says: You're name is Peter and upon this rock I will build my church. I'm trying to do this buddhist juju for several reasons, but this boy called Dave Gibson says it will imrove my meditations if I take refuge. So I'm going to walk through this sacrament. This is before I had any empowerments though I 'd read the Bliss of Inner Fire by then. I'm the first joe to go forward. I'm keen. The lama takes the first card off the top of the pile and hands it to me as I go forward first. I was going to do it, but I had my problems with leaving the Judeo/Christian/Graeco/Romano world and entering the zone of the wee fat happy baldy guys. So the lama hands me the card and it says Karma Dorje. This means Indestructible. I was confirmed as indestrible twice. The first weird thing about me is that I am indestructible.

(2) I had about ten seconds of non-self and emptiness when I was about forty four. This is out of clock time. This involved a loss of self, or the false sense of self. I saw God, if God is immanent in our universe. I was thereafter one of the Holy Ghostie Men.

(3) Because I was brought up among the tims who got on with it and endured, and loved their families, I was totally supported as a kid. Only when I left Bellshill to go to university in Edinburgh did I discover that the evil bourgeois hated their children, and just about hated everyone else. Among their children, these druggies, I found my friends, almost all of whom were either funged up, disturbed or bizarre. There is nothing worse in this life than being brought up by the evil bourgois. Not only are you even more ignorant and stupid than the smart working class, but you will never recover from the complacency. I have always despised and hated the middle class people because they were the problem: they live behind their little walls and they don't help anyone. Lives of quiet desperation. On the beer as I am just now, I'd rather blow my brains out than have the mind of these evil little bourgeios inflicted on me! So I do not like the way the world is ordered and I do not properly aspire to be one of them. Shoot these complacent, comfortable bastarns. What are they for? Are they helping? I don't think so.

(5) I am going find myself one day in the state of primordial awareness, which is non-dichotmous, non-dualistic and very, very nice.

(6) I am not holy, and I am not good, and I certainly am not nice, but I can do ra bliss. St Teresa of Alvila, St Francis, St Antony and all the buddhas and the bodhisattvas are saying to me: All that matters is enlightenment in this lifetime. You don't have any other lifetimes. You don't have any other selves. This is the beginning and the end of everything: this lifetime. And the last weird thing is that they all say: Hotboy, just go away from the flatheids, and all the nice evil and stupid bourgeois! This is your time. This is your six weeks holiday which you have saved up. This is when you emanate as a deity! This is your time! This is when you sit in the hut!

There is no point in talking to flatheids about ra bliss. Too dumb to meditate. That is all there is to say about flatheids. Just too dumb to meditate! Dearie, dearie me.

Ra Incommunicado

Saturday 1:12 p.m.
I don't think I was in bed till about four last night, but I was up meditating just after half nine. I don't need that much sleep these days.


I've been invited out to lunch, but I'm going to stay in and spend most of the afternoon in the lobby meditating.


I've got six weeks holiday coming up at the end of June. This presents a fantastic opportunity for me. I have to keep people away. Let's hope I don't have to go any holidays! I'll have to get off all pollutants. I don't want any aggravation from flatheids. I will see my the kiddo, the Domestic Bliss, and the folk in Bellshill. That's it. I just need to clear a big space. Incommunicado.


I'm really wanting a lot of solitude over the summer. I don't want visitors. I want to get this juju done!! Tempis fugit. Back to the lobby!!

11:44 p.m.
Watched the USA against Italy in pubs this evening. What a great performance the Americans put up! That was great to watch. I mean, Italy are not a pub team like ... anyway, the USA boys were just heart and soul. They deserved to win, but it's not always about that in the footie. Great teams get beat sometimes by pub teams, but that was a heart and soul performance and just uplifting to witness. I thought they were magnificent and a total credit to the game of football. I know most Americans don't care about the footie, but they should get behind them for the next game. Truly valiant!

I'm going to do another post now about six things which are weird about me. This invitation came from Lelly, who has her own wood with animals of all kinds therein, and I'll do that, but I can't tag six people. I don't know six people in bloggyland. There's only us wall flowers, and Jack the Spam Robot, and the Masai Warriors. The martians haven't got anyone to tag anyone else with!

Rat 1966!

Friday 4:47 p.m.
Just before the Dutch Ivory Coast game and just back from Bellshill. They've just put on this little programme about how England won the World Cup in 1966. Isn't that sweet?

The sensei and reverend is 4o tomorrow so he must have been born in 1966. How's that for a coincidence! Many happy returns to the sensei from RaBlissBlog. He will surely be a floater by the time he's my age. When I was forty, I could sit in a lotus for twenty minutes tops. Last night I came upon the sensei's blog and found this hilarious treatment of the photie with the eyeballs rolled up on it. It did make me laugh. Here's to a happy and sober weekend!

Sunday morning... 1:51 a.m.
I was sitting up in my bed meditating there, but I kind of bottled it a wee bit. It's nearly two. Just poured myself a beer, the first one.

Lee Ann sometimes looks at this blog. She will not know what "bottling" it means. Lee Ann, "bottling it" indicates a loss of courage. Keeping a hold of your bottle means you feel the fear but march towards the the sound of gunfire.

Jack The Spam Robot sometimes comes to this blog and so do some Masai Warriors. Hello, also the the joes looking for hotboys. Well, you might be a fortunate creature tonight to have found a joe like me! For this is RaBlissBlog and I'm going to write about further developments in ra bliss!

So I'm lying down on the couch in the living room. I usually sit on the floor in a half lotus, but it's either carousing or meditating around here just now and I was feeling a bit fashed and bashed (what a good writer Anthony Burgess was! I bet all the Enderby books are out of print!). Anyway, I was watching the footie from the couch and realised that the vase breathing thing was working. This is lying down. Already we've had tastes of ra bliss lying down and ra bliss lying on the side. This is ra heat a bit and ra bliss while watching the footie. Is this meditating? I don't think so. The kundalini (if that is what it is) thing is kind of separate from that.

Anyway, no carousing tonight. I was going to try to be good. I'm tired, but I don't have to keep to a schedule and I sat up to meditate because I haven't done all that much today.

Something has opened up. We're sitting up in bed and we're getting hot here, Jack. We do a vase breath and there has been a qualitative shift again with ra bliss.

I'm one of the badboy brothers from Kham. We can meditate our socks off, but we can also don our viking helmets and carouse in an empty room. So our minds are sometimes not so calm. And when it is apparent that all we have to do is do nothing and give up everything and ra bliss and ra heat will be truly, truly astonishing, well, we realise the enormity of what this juju is about, and we think ... I'm going to lose my bottle here.

Have I got a tiger by the tail? You bet!

What I have to do just now is re-inforce my confidence in my root guru, the Great Buddha, Lama Yeshe Losal. He has done twelve years of proper retreats and is undoubtedly a juju master.

I can't do any of these meditations properly. I'm opening up something and let's hope I can close it. This is what happens ... I've got six weeks holiday coming up. I go into the hut. I do not crash and burn. I come out of the hut and go to see my doctor. I tell him I cannot go to work anymore because of the euphoria, and I get a year off work to sit in my hut and do deity yoga. Meanwhile, my new blockbuster get published and I get enough of an income to help the Domestic Bliss give up work, and then I just stay in the hut for most of the day and someone else volunteers to take care of everything else and manages me so that I can get on with the Pet Bereavement Counselling Service, which is about the best good I can do.

On the third pint of the last of the barrel. 2:55 a.m.

I have a false sense of self. It shows up in the ideations. It might be another name for anxiety. You have to take the anxiety away from the thought. The thought might be complex. Is there any anxiety in the view, Jack? If you weren't anxious, you wouldn't lose your bottle. You'd just hit it and hit it again, wouldn't you, Jack. Shoot the breath. Do ra bliss.

There's a green dot on this machine. If you had a watch, you could put it under it and you could kind of look at the green dot and the watch at the same time. Or you could look at the green dot and be aware of the watch. If you could let a minute pass like that, well, that's the way to ra bliss!

I get a lot of support. I am not an individual. I am not separate. I am not alone. Surely, there is only one thing. 3:18 a.m and the blackbirds have started giving it laldy! Ra bliss is a kindness. It is a loving kindness. Or it seems to be! Goodnight from RaBlissBlog!

Ra Glorious Day!

Thursday 10:13 a.m.
After watching the Fatherland put the Poles to the sword last night (wasn't it always thus!), I seemed to have gained in confidence and invaded blogs all over the shop.

I only visited Germany once, but felt really comfortable there. Way back when (1974/5) the frogs tried to machine gun me when I walked down the backstreets of St Tropez. They thought I was a German and those froggie boys have long memories. Thank God we only fight on the footie parks now! So come on the huns! Last night the BBC little Englander swinehunts showed another programme about how they won the cup in 1966. If Trinidad and Tobago are leading at half time tonight ... well, it would be bliss!!!

My life has become a wonderment to me due to doing the juju and investigating ra bliss. It is another lovely day here. I'm going to spend all day having a wonderful time in my allotment and the Botanic Gardens. I know I don't deserve it, but I have to accept that in this life I am surely one of the most fortunate of all the fortunate creatures. This is RaBlissBlog and I'm off to do ra bliss!

10:25 p.m.
About twelve hours ago, I sat beside my hut and stared at a blue/purple flower for about an hour. I had my back to the sun and my shirt over my head; the shades on, the hat on. Some other allotmenteers walked by in the middle distance, but that was nothing to do with me. The sun shone. I hosed down the allotment and then sat in the hut, gazing at the sticker of the chenrezig mandala on the door post. Then I did a Tai Chi set in the shade in Inverleith Park on the way home. After lunch went to the Botties. The secret garden was occupied, but I found a quiet spot and stared at a daisy. Daisies are simple. You've got the yellow centre and the spiky white bits. Then I stood on my head. Then I stared at a wee yellow flower.

You can sit in one of the bits of Inverleith Park on a day like today and there's a hundred yards of grass in all directions, at least. So I did a Tai Chi set and then stared at the sticker of the Kalachakra Mandala on my old diary. For the first time I closed my eyes and had some fun, doing major bliss and heat.

The little Englanders played Trinadad and Tobago at five. England were complete crap!

The kiddo unexpectedly arrived. I watched the first half of Sweden versus Paraguay dressed in the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle and skipped, shadow boxed. Shower at half time and down to the pub. The Swedes were wonderful. They play football, unlike the Sassanachs. I was musing about how unfair the world was until Sweden scored with a minute or two left of normal time. On Tuesday, they will destroy the little Englanders and then the little Englanders will be matched against the Fatherland, and we won't have to watch anymore programmes on the telly about how "we" won the World Cup in 1966 for another four years. Allah Akbar!

So I talked politics with the kiddo at the bus stop. There was a very perceptive letter in the Scotsman newspaper today. The joe said that what should be banter and good natured rivalry between neighbours turns to something like intolerance, etc., due to the fact that we haven't devolved the news and sport along with the other things our wee Scottish Parliament have got.

I hope England win the World Cup. They won't get by the Fatherland, but if they won it, which really they would if they had a Scottish manager, we would have independence really quite soon. The Tories will win the next election because Gordon Brown is Scottish. Gordon Brown is probably the best thing that ever happened to this country. He helps the poor. The Tories have in the shadow cabinet the shadow Home Secretary, Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence all to the right of Maggie Thatcher. They're doing wonderful PR just now and they will get in.

The kiddo is a young person and she is not scared of Scottish independence. I don't want to invade anyone. I don't want the Monarchy. I don't want the House of Lords. I want asylum seekers to come and live in Scotland. I embrace the multicultural. I see a lot of kids from abroad at my work and they are the best. Kids from Zimbabwe, etc. These are the best of where they come from.

This is a great town. This country is a wonderful place to emanate into. Once we leave the little Englanders, you won't hear much else from them. The Scots are the testicles of this country. Also, we have ra bliss! It has come to Scotland with the wonderful Tibetan brothers. We have the Samye Ling. We have the Holy Isle.

It's about half eleven. If you don't meditate, you are not engaging with the human beingness. I hope you are well and happy. But you are short. You're a pound light. You are less than you could be. You are a flatheid. What can you say? You will not live forever. At the end of the day, what it comes down to is this.... can you do ra bliss?

Rallotment!

Wednesday 9:57 p.m.
On Saturday, me and the other person were in the allotment and the weather was wonderful. So I'm standing there in the gorgiousness and something from 100 Years of Solitude starts happening. Petals were falling from a clear blue sky. They weren't petals. They were elm seeds.

The other person said it must be something Treefest was doing. Treefest is a one day festival of wood held in Inverleith Park on Saturday. We wandered around the big white tents later. Some beautiful things made of wood. A Treefest boy said it was elm seeds. Authoritative tree hugging joe. Obviously, others had remarked. It was like the day when the coral goes spunk; the air was full of seed. Today, I saw piles of elm seeds beside the big road leading down to the Forth Road Bridge, the one that skights passed Stockbridge.

I've never seen anything like this before. I thought all the elms were dead, killed by Dutch Elm Disease. I think this is something to do with the weather. The weather has been wonderful recently for here. The raspberries will be great this year, and so will the apples on the wee tree, and all the other fruits in the allotment. And it doesn't get dark till late, late, late. This is a great surprise every year, but when you're young and don't have an allotment you might not notice it too much.

The elm seeds rained down on the Treefest. Here comes the elms!

I think I'll grow an elm.

I think I'll put some elm seeds in a position where they can grow themselves.

I think elms will grow even if I don't do anything.

I thought I should maybe remove the previous post since I wrote it when I was pissed, but ... it's a snapshot. Of when you were pissed. This blogginess is as close to letter writing as I get, except I never wrote letters when I was pissed.

I did a little writing tonight on the book. I'm going to call it My New Book. I think I may be able to have a second draft finished by the end of the school term, two weeks away. There was a time .... anyway, I'll have a draft soon. Then I should re-write it another fifteen times and then I'll have something. Am I too blissed to be buggered?

I feel wonderful. I've had two pints from the barrel and really that should do it, but probably won't. The sheath thing ... I've mentioned it before ... is sitting out there waiting for ra bliss and ra heat.

I need to get calm enough to stay in the hut overnight sometime this week. I'm feeling a bit calmer than last week. There's nothing in front of me except some kind of drinks reception I got invited to from the Traverse. Authortalks. God knows what it is. I must be on someone's list. Another open grave. Just as long as I don't mention kamamudras. Actually, on this beer I feel dead interesting. I will mention kamamudras. As long as I don't start singing the Country Joe and the Fish Song: Hey, baby, would you like to ball? In the kitchen or the shower stall? Hey, baby, that ain't all ... They don't write lyrics like that anymore.

Dearie me! Time to hit the statscounter thing. As Titus Oates said: "I'm going out. I may be some time." Or as the Governator and hopefully the next President of all the Americas might say: I'll be back!

Ra Summertime!

Tuesday 23:40 p.m.
The sensei and reverend started this post. I was going to leave it for a while, but suddenly there's ... a spike because the sensei and reverend stuck the photie from the big game hunter on his blog.

First of all, with the rolling eyeballs thing. It just happens. Then you can do it if you like. So the kiddo tells me when she walks into the kitchen that my eyeballs are rolled up to the top of my head and my eyelids are kind of flickering. I hadn't noticed. My attention wasn't there. I think this is mentioned in the Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf. Yes, it is! Around 1995 the kiddo came upon me and said: Oh, that's really horrible! Anyway, the photie was a simulation of this. You can just roll them up. But I think everyone can do that. The funny stuff ... known as the glaikit look in Scotland ... around the mouth with the kind of upturning is unavoidable for me. This happens as I'm going to see my mother in Bellshill while I sit on the train. One is always fearful about such developments as this. I told Poisonous that my face was now changing shape as a result of the juju. He is my deep dear friend. Especially since he doesn't like me. Or anyone else.Ra Poisonous said: "Get yourself a face mask like an ice hockey goallie." We'll get there soon enough. It's an unattractive curl. It's an effect.

" Well, Mingin', at the end of the day, what it comes down to is this: "Can you, or can you not, do ra bliss?"

What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

Ra Big Game Hunter

A big game hunter visited my hut and has posted some photies here.

Ra Beautiful Game!

Saturday 1:55 p.m.
Whilst waiting for the Englanders to get cuffed by Paraquay. Come on, whoever you are!

God save our gracious Queen/Long may she serve ice cream and candy floss/ We are victorious/ Half a loaf between the four of us/Thank God there's no more of us/ God save the Queen!

I've tried to support Rangers in Europe. I've tried to be a little Englander, but I'm afraid ... well, just get stuck in Paraquay! It's hot in Germany. I hope it's really hot in Paraquay. Kick off!

2:05 p.m.
What a pile of dingo's bollocks! Paraquay have lost already. Goalie off and England one nil up.

It's a well known fact that the best football players in the world come from Bellshill, which just happens to be where I played football when I was kid. This is not exactly true. The best football players in the world come from Viewpark, which isn't even a town, but is separated from Bellshill by a couple of fields. Jimmy Johnstone, the best football player who ever lived, came from Viewpark.

When Tommy Docherty was in charge of the Scottish national team, he held a practice game, but had to abandon it. In practice games you wouldn't be allowed to foul. Nobody in the Scottish team could get the ball off Jimmy Johnstone, so the manager stopped the game.

Football, as I knew it in Bellshill, was mainly about taking the piss. I played in teams till I broke my collar bone when I was seventeen, but the best football games were played without proper parks, referees, or sometime even without a decent ball. Sometimes the game had to be abandoned because the owner of the ball had to go home for his tea. Also, it was mainly played in the summer, or at least in good weather.

You could go anywhere around that area of North Lanarkshire and if there were two of you, you could always get a game. It was normal for the best player to be given to the team that was losing and vice versa. The game sometimes lasted all afternoon, sometimes all evening in the summer. We played football the way Aboriginals do route marches. Sometimes you'd be chasing after someone who didn't have the ball! Sometimes you'd stop for a while and sit and have a chat, or more likely a wrestle.

People who pick football teams want winners. These are generally disturbed individuals who get really upset when they get beaten. When you get beaten in a football game, why take it personnally? There's eleven of you for God sake! It's not like boxing when you can tell the extent of your defeat by looking in the mirror!

Anyway, us Scots can't support England. They still show you programmes about how they won the World Cup in 1966 for God sake! But rarely in these programmes do they mention that the next year the English played Scotland at Wembilee in what was probably the best football game ever. We destroyed these so called world champions 3-2. Who can ever forget Jim Baxter playing keepy uppy with the ball then putting over the boy's head and Dennis Law taking it down on his chest? Now, that's taking the piss!! That's real football!

I was still trying to support England till a few nights ago when there was an English programme on about the best World Cup goal ever. They gave a prize to this Brazillian from 1970 who finished off a move ... well, he just finished it off. God almighty! Everyone knows the best goal ever was the one Maradona scored against England in 1986. How many English players did he leave in his wake? Seven was it? Eight? Obviously, the second best goal was the one Ronaldinho scored from the forty yard free kick, the one that went over Seaman's head and into the net. Perfect piss taking goal! Unfortunately, these goals were scored against the Sassannachs (aka the English imperialist swine!), so they couldn't be best, surely not.

The game of this group will be Sweden versus England. Go Henrik Larsson, go!

Ra Signs!

Friday 9:09 a.m.
How weird it was to come to blog late last night and find the bloggy no longer worked! One detected a reliance, a dependence. Dearie me! Something else to be addicted to.

I had a great day yesterday. Today I will try to have a roughly similar great day as I'm not going to Bellshill today. The meditations this morning will be brilliant. You can tell. I put in a lot of work yesterday and must have done about eight hours practise.

I've had the necessary empowerments to do deity yoga, etc., but I'm doing this juju from what I've picked up in books. No one I know is interested in meditating really so there's no even anyone like that I could ask. The expression "busking it" comes to mind. ( A busker is a person who plays a guitar, etc., on the street ... forget it!) .

My meditations start with a very long rigmarole of visualising all kinds of gurus, dead folk I've known, etc.... anyway, they're working, but I know I'm not doing them right. I assume there is a right way to do them.

It clearly says in The Book of the Three Inspirations by Tsongkhapa, a forerunner of the Dalai Lama, that you should view the navel symbol from inside the central channel. The central channel runs down your spine. So you have to view the symbol from a place near your navel? Like, you're viewing something from near the bottom of your spine.

What can this mean? If you try to imagine a triangle where your navel chakra should be, you naturally tend to be looking down, not looking across. Your normal viewpoint is from your head, surely. I assume you have to imagine going down your central channel until you get to the navel chakra then stop and view it from there. The central channel is blue. I assume you imagine going down there starting with the crown chakra and moving down as you would moving down through the body of a deity.

This might not be making a lot of sense to you if you don't play these mind games, but this is an important technical point and thinking about it now will help me this morning when I'm doing it out in the lobby.

I have been practising moving down the central channel for some time. You step into your own head as if it was that of a deity and you become the white triangular shape there (it points down!) . You're surrounded by blue. And you just slip out of this shape and move down till you get to the navel chakra. You can imagine the other symbols stretching way above your head.

Lama Thebten Losal who authored the Bliss Of Inner Fire says you have to "penetrate " the navel symbol to gain success in raising inner heat.

Does this mean that you imagine yourself to be the navel symbol? I can't see what else it could mean.

So you're imagining you are the navel symbol. Where is your focus as you're sitting there? It has to be on your navel symbol somehow, looking down, while you are the navel symbol.

Then what about the blue, white and red tubes going up your body?

What a muddle! I do love this stuff though. It's kind of quantumy somehow. Also, when you imagine yourself in the mandala (still bloody hopeless at this) you make an offering of everything to a buddha (Dorje Sempa) who looks exactly like you. Then you are supposed to become the thing you're making the offering to!

You can see why doing straight calming meditations are a bit easier.

We lost the folk who come here looking for sexual perversions there, eh, Jack! The Masai Warriors are looking a bit flat footed now alright! This is RaBlissBlog telling you that the mind game is the only game in town. Here comes ra bliss! Here comes ra heat!

1:25 p.m.
Meditated till quarter to one. That involved three sitting sessions interupted by a head stand and a Tai Chi set. So pleased I kept up with the Tai Chi. It's only easy to do when you can't do it. Doing it these days between meditation sessions feels very powerful. But the best thing about the morning was that I managed to sit in a full lotus for the last session. Yes! It felt a little tender for the first five seconds, but then it went away.

The Dalai Lama says you should at least start these sessions in a full lotus since it makes it easier for the airs to enter the central channel. But it is a great position to sit in. So strong and stable.

It's overcast today. Humid and almost foggy. The plus side of this is that The Botanics and the allotments will be quieter. I appreciate that not many people are fortunate enough to have a day like this off work. I am a fortunate creature.

Everybody knows if you don't do anything with your body, it's goes slack, atrophies and gets sick easier. The same thing happens with people's minds. Most folk don't get much wiser just because they're older. The habitual tendencies dig deeper grooves and folk sometimes get more resentful and stupider the older they get. Well, it's not happening around here, Jack.

There's no one I'd swop places with right now. I can sit in a full lotus! I can do ra bliss and I can get some heat. One of these days I may experience primordial awareness, non-dichotomous, non-dual, and very, very nice. Shame to be surrounded by folk who are too dumb to meditate, but it's not my fault! What a great afternoon I'm going to have!

00:26 a.m.
After midnight on a Friday and fully compis mentis. How odd!

It was kind of foggy today and got very foggy tonight. It wasn't that foggy when I got to the allotment this afternoon. I felt a bit tired and instead of going into the hut, I lay down on the wee path beside it and tried some yoga nidra. Started dozing off. Someone squealed and wakened me up with a start. It was the American lady with the loud voice coming upon this prostrate joe, probably dead. Maybe lying down in the open air like that and dozing off isn't normal.

Very productive day! The meditations have moved on again. So I'm watching Poland versus Ecuador at the World Cup and doing the breaths. They work if you just do them. You're getting bliss and heat without meditating. I'm not normal. Definitely not normal. Looking forward to the meditations tomorrow. Very much so!

So it's goodnight and sleep well from Edinburgh, from RaBlissBlog!

Ra Thursday!

10:55 a.m.
Bloggyland wasn't working last night for a bit. Signs and portents. What does it all mean? Who knows?

Then there was the cash line during the first outing to the shop for the paper and soup supplies. Dearie me! Zero cash. Hit the end of the overdraft limit already and I thought I had 150 quids left! Oh well. Thank God for more than one bit of plastic!

On top of that, what happened to the sunny day? Typical! We were promised three days of scorching weather. Three days in a row? Never! Overcast and humid is the best we can do just now.

On the other hand, I could be at work!

In a few minutes, I'll recommence getting blissed out of my face again. After lunch, I will recommence getting blissed out of my face again and then go to visit the home brew shop. Soup, beer, bread! What more can a body ask for?

2.09 p.m.
Today so far I've made soup, made bread, stood on my head, did a tai chi set, read four or five pages of the paper, and meditated for about four hours. What a great day it's been so far! And it'll get better! Right now I'm going to cycle the one brake bike down to the home brew shop and hit the plastic again.

3:03 p.m.
Big roundabouts with buses and lorries at the top of Leith Walk. Whee! Bikes are fun, especially one's with only one brake because they're also bloody dangerous. Still, back home safe it's changed into the gorgeous day they promised us in the weather forecast. This could turn out to be the perfect day for me! I'm off the the beautiful Royal Botanic Gardens.

Ra holidays again!

Wednesday 1:13 p.m.
It's a lovely day. I couldn't stay on to do any overtime today because it is a lovely day. I don't have to go to work again till Monday and that makes me so happy. I've got nothing planned. I don't have to do anything. I don't have to see anybody. This week will be better than last week. What more could a body ask for? I'm off to the allotment. And I don't have to do anything there either. What a fortunate creature I am!

11:35 p.m.
In the summertime on a day like today you can clip shades onto your spectacles, and then no one will know you're not normal as you seemingly stare down at the book in your lap, your eyeballs rolled up to the top of your head. I'll try it tomorrow. I'm not used to it being sunny yet. Maybe it'll be sunny tomorrow as well. Today, I went to the Botanical Gardens after sitting in the hut for a bit.

There's a wee garden hidden away beside the big house in the middle of the Botanical Gardens. Not many folk know it's there. The entrance does not invite. If you go in and someone is sitting on the one bench, you always go away since it seems as if you might be intruding somehow. You'll definitely go away if someone is sitting in a half lotus on the bench with his eyeballs rolled up to the top his head!

I'll go back tomorrow if it's sunny. I'll take food. There's enough of a lawn there to do a Tai Chi set in no bother. The grass is covered in daisies just now. The rest of the Gardens is very beautiful at this time of year when the sun shines. It's only five minutes from here, a stroll across Inverleith Park. What a fortunate creature I am!

Rose Unfortunate Ones!

Tuesday
The trouble with flatheids is that they miss so much. So you've got the being awake, deep sleep, then dreaming. That's all flatheids ever get. There's a lot more to the human beings than just these differentiations in consciousness.

Some people would say that meditations put you into a quite different set of brain waves and might constitute a different kind of consciousness.

That doesn't really matter. Flatheids miss the control. They cannot do things with their minds. If they were left alone, they'd start to cry. Their minds cannot be directed towards bliss and ecstasy.

I can do that. Direct my mind towards bliss and ecstasy. It's a shame if you can't do that and it is available. Why can't you do that anyway? What's the matter with you?

You might be able to get everything from calming meditations. Physical bliss and mental ecstasy are the end results of that. But when you are introduced to the wonderful vajrayana meditations, the whole thing opens out again.

So now you've got sleep, being awake, dreaming, meditations and the effects of vase breathing.

Ra bliss you get from getting the vase breathing technique to work is beyond compare. It's almost as if the vase breathing juju has given you another mind to fool around with, one that's much bigger, much better than your ordinary mind.

For m0nths and months these mediations (guru/deity yoga) had just got better and better. And that's just going to keep on and on and on. Today I'm closing my eyes and immediately a great globule of ra bliss fills the front of my head and chest. I take a vase breath ... I'll just do one. Go on, Hotboy, do a breath and go to California.

Beaming into space with the soaraway bliss! Then it goes bigger and richer, bigger and richer, bigger and richer.

It takes a lot of meditating to get to this point. When you get to this point, what else would you rather have done with the time? Stupid, stupid question. What a laugh! What else would you have done with the time? Lost it! Ha, ha, ha! Shame you're a flatheid, but it's not my fault!

10:05 p.m.
On becoming weird. I went to my Tai Chi class this evening. I haven't been there much this year. I've been doing this Tai Chi class for ten years. Ten years ago, I thought there wasn't enough in it. I didn't think it was hard enough. You learn to go through 108 moves and that's about it. Strange looking, but you can see that it's really for old people.

I've stopped trying to look normal at my tai chi class. I sit in a half lotus. I always sit in a half lotus, but I know it looks strange to normals so I tried not to do that at this tai chi class until recently. Now I don't know anyone else, I can be as weird as I like. So I don't talk to anyone much, but they're very nice folk there. Sometimes I exchange pleasantries.

Tai Chi must be about chi. Ten years later I still can't to the set right. But I know that what you should do is meditate and then when you're stiff and too sore to sit any longer, get up and do a tai chi set. Then sit down and meditate again. Tai Chi boosts ra bliss. It does.

I cycled home from the tai chi class, along the Ferry Road on the one brake bike, and went to meditate in the allotment. It's still not dark at 22:19 here just now. I watered the allotment because it is the summertime here, and there is nothing better than a summer's evening in Scotland. They are so surprising. So different from a couple of months ago. So different from tomorrow.

If you are an unfortunate creature, and not a Scottish person, and do not know what an allotment is, you can take a look at one in Sandy Buchandyke's bloggy. My allotment doesn't look anything like this. My allotment itself is rubbish since I can't garden and have no interest really in that kind of thing. But what a setting! The evil bourgeois are all around me there. And they are very nice. The other allotments I've seen are better in that I could build a big hut on one, but the Inverleith Park allotments are truly gorgeous. It is really just a wonderful place to be. The skyline and the prospects as you walk home. Even before consciously, properly emanating as anything, surely this was still a wonderful, wonderful place to be. You've got to deal with the view. If it doesn't look so good, can you change it? The trouble with bad moods are that folk can't see they're having them. They're just right there in the bad mood. You can't see outside the bubble then. You're just in it.

These are the best of times for me. My disbelief has paid off! I believe in illusions. I can do ra bliss! I can almost fall over myself with this idea. I can remember being a flatheid! I was great at that. Ask anyone. This is much, much better!

Ra Sunday!

2:15 p.m.
What a good time I had last night! Nothing like convivial company. I think everyone there had a good time.

I was a bit mean about this Alan Partridge show last night. Brilliantly acted and constructed, etc. I just didn't like the character the boy was portraying.

Yesterday I obviously blew a fantastic opportunity to get into contact with sitcom folk on the telly. I had more in my writing background that anyone else there. Eight or nine plays: two novels. They don't put on stuff like that unless they're looking for people. Might be interesting writing sitcoms, but I'm just too blissed to be buggered. I think I've got to stop doing things. Finish the book I'm writing just now and stick with emanating as a deity. That's the game, remember? Emanating as a deity. Not emanating as sitcom writer. There's no contest really, is there?

Bit of a slow start today due to the jollities of last night, but despite all the bad boy stuff, I cannot stop ra bliss getting blissier and the heat getting hotter. The creepy uppy thing around my neck and shoulders wants expansion, an opening out as I type this. Just closing my eyes right now and I'm straight into stupendous and profound bliss. This is very nice. This very, very nice. This is very, very nice indeed!

Ra Day!

Saturday 9 a.m.
I was dead crabbit yesterday. As soon as I try to be nice and normal, it puts me in a bad mood. I don't need to be nice and normal. I need to carve out the time to write a book and do the juju. But thank God I got to the allotment last night. After Bellshill, I spent three hours sitting quietly doing nothing, and then started to feel wonderful again.

So I've been up since six and the meditations have been just fabulous. I'm quite looking forward to this afternoon now.

There's a CV thing on my webpage, a list of writings I got paid for. If you've ever looked at it, you can see that I used to write radio drama. I think I might have been quite good at that. Someone who used to be a radio drama producer, and a very good one, is holding a seminar this afternoon at the Traverse Theatre about writing comedy for the telly. It wasn't an invite. Costs £5. Be interesting though. Might see someone I used to know.

6:40 p.m.
Tried to be normal again and completely blew it. So there's this seminar thingy about how to write sit-c0ms in the Traverse and the guy, who is the head of almost everything in commissioning in the BBC, gives us this talk about scripts and what makes a sit com script, and it's really good. The woman I met once twenty years ago wasn't going to show up. Then he put on a sitcom for us to watch. It was Alan Partridge. I am not too sure what this is since I don't watch sit-c0ms , but as I'm watching it I can spot who is going to be the next stars of sit com writing: they are laughing. I laugh twice. I think all the folk who are involved in anything to do with this Alan Partridge shite should be disembowelled on the spot. Anyway, all these folk are dead clever and they all think it is great. The boy says that we should have a break and when we come back we can spend some time writing three paragraphas so we can pitch this shite to guys like him

They've started selling draft Erdinger in the Traverse Bar. It's very hot outside and theTraverse Bar is pretty subterranean. So I'm reading The Book Of The Three Inspirations and sipping Erdinger. If the boy had said we want six episodes like this ... well, I could have done that. I think quite clearly: Yes, I can do that. But can I speak to these people about doing that? Can I even imagine getting my wee self worked up so that I could try to impress a flatheid like that? No,no, no. I think young people should try to become something. Like, tv writers.

So when they're dead old and have written the wonderful tv sitcoms, etc., and are starting to die ... well, what it comes down to is this: Can you are can you not do ra bliss?

Very nice people will come here soon for their dinner. Two of them will be young. I really like seeing young people. They cannot do ra bliss and they have no understanding of emptiness. But anything is better than all these old people! I'm 55, but I definitely want to have done the necessary before I'm 60. Why live any longer than that? What for?

Might be a good time to get a cannybliss yogurt on board. Two hours on and I'll be in California.

Ra Letter M.

Friday 00:42 a.m.
This is the letter M, Jack. That's how low we've sunk, Jack. The letter M.

Mahatma Ghandi: This mis-spelling came to my knowledge through my sister. I kind of picked up on what my sister was reacting to in the news. She, like the josephine I visited today, had MS. She liked Mahatma Ghandi and she liked Fidel Castro.

MacCastro: This is a revolutionary. There is one left. Well done, Fidel, for staying alive for so long and being an inspiration to anyone who smoked a cigar which didn't immediately explode.

MacBliss: The corporation promising bliss to the world for a mere ten percent off the top, run by the evil genius living in the Unheard of Island, called Adolf. This may be a reincarnation of the previous Adolf (who calls their kid Adolf these days?) , but he may not even be called Adolf. He's an idea. Wouldn't it be great to be more than a thought? Or worse? Be terrible to be real. Wouldn't like that at all!

Meditation: This is a state of mind that occurs if you are not a complete and total moron. A planet guzzling waster. Or just a complete waste of space. If you don't know anything about meditation, or have never tried to practise it, just blow your brains out if you're over fifty. What have you been doing with your time? Give yourself a good spanking! Fancy having the human beingness and never getting down to ra bliss!

MaFreeSchooolDinners: Schools in this country have the percentage of kids who get free school dinners as an excuse for their poor attainment. They stick this on their publicity. It says that they have so many poor people, so what can you expect? I got free school dinners ...

Here I should explain to any foreign people unaware of the idea of free school dinners...Well, this is a communist plot so that poor people can be well enough nourished to follow the teachings of the evil bourgeois.

Milarepa: I got into imagining gurus and having them up above my head and the white line, dissolving, etc. Anyway, I got into Kalu Rinpoche. There were three books about him. Very inspirational. And you read that the 16th Karmapa gets him to be the first Tibetan joe to bring the juju to the honkies, kind of. So he's getting ferried around Europe with this lady driver and he and the other monk with him are ... well, I don't know. She said it wasn't any tantric juju, I think. Maybe standard humping. Kalu Rinpoche was said by some to be the rebirth of Milarepa. For joes brought up in the great Universal and Catholic Apostolic Church of the Romans ... the humping stuff is always a bit tricky. Depends what you're thinking, I suppose.

The boy was in his mid-seventies when this shocking behaviour took place! At fifty five, I'm shocked.

So what was he thinking?

MaTsongkhapa: I was in the pub last night. Drinking two pints of IPA, reading Tsongkhapa's book of Three Inspirations, as you do. So he's ... by the way, this boy is the Dalai Lama from a while back if you don't know that already ... describing how to do one of the Six Yogas of Naropa. This is the how to transfer your consciousness into that of the dead body. A little shiver went up my spine. You sit in the hut with the dead body in front of you. You have dressed it up. There are garlands. You do some juju about breathing stuff from your left nostril into ... anyway, it's a bit like that. Mingin' Mulguy comes soon to the hut. Hmmm? A real writer/bloggy person would do that, wouldn't they? Kill him and jump into this body.

MaLotus: I haven't been able to sit in a lotus for a couple of months now. I was proud of myself to be able to do it. I was proud to be able to stand on my head and go into a lotus and then sit down in a lotus, and be dead proud in front of other people.

MaKnee: I think I should lay off my knee. I grew happy and a wee bit impatient with my knee. You're supposed to change illusions. You do the deity stuff and look on the physical as a bit silly. So I pushed on with the knee.

The knee is not M

I think I am moving into the best of the possible times. Probably the best times that almost anyone has ever had. Constantly repeating mumbo jumbo to myself has brought me to this pass. This is RaBlissBlog. If you're unhappy ... just stop that! That'll be tenpercent, please!

Ra Next Day!

Thursday 11.00 a.m.
What a great day I'm going to have today! What a good time I had last night as well. That home brew just made me feel wonderful sometimes. I told myself to remember the feelings. You feel wonderful just now, Hotboy! Don't forget it.

Instead of getting up at six, I got up at ten. This seems to be the only real cost. There seems to be nothing but good times stretching out ahead. I've got two hours to meditate before I have to go out to the dentist to get a crown stuck in. Then I'll go to see our friend with the MS. Flitting around the city on my bus pass instead of having to go to work. And I'd like to say that I don't feel in the slightest bit hungover. A miraculous brew. I wish I knew what it was called, or how strong it was, or anything about it at all. So I'll spend the next two hours in various degrees of ra bliss and then go out. What a wonderful life this is! What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

12:55 p.m.
This is RaBlissBlog! I have to tell you about developments in ra bliss. Oh, what a brilliant meditation that was! Once again an escalation of ra bliss! At the end of the day, all you can say is this: There's nothing, nothing on this sweet earth to compare with ra bliss! If you're reading this and you don't meditate, just give yourself a slap. How I wish I could stay in and meditate all afternoon. Anyway, when I'm in the dentist's chair, I'll have to avoid rolling my eyes up to the top of my head. I think that threw him a wee bit the last time.