Ra First Visitor!

Sunday 1:05 p.m.
It's been blowing a bit of a gale here on the Unheard of Island, so I thought I'd see if I could get a visit from Empedocles.

A lot of interesting folk were around about 2,500 years ago (like the Buddha!) and that's when Empedocles proved that air was a something. He did this by upturning a bucket in the sea and pressing down. But is there something in the air apart from gases? Is chi something?

Empedocles was a vegetarian who could revive the dead and control the weather, just like Milarepa, the great Tibetan saint. So when I thought of having a sunny spell, Empedocles sprang to mind.

He lives on the moon now and came down to the cave on a cloud, appearance and emptiness conjoined, an illusion just like everything else. And immediately it was a sunny day! We went for a walk round Mawson Peak which is the volcanic crater at the top of Big Ben, and not far away from my cave. We had a wee chat.

Me: Well, Empy, I know the air is something, but is there something in the air?
Empedocles: If there wasn't something in the air, how could I breathe life into the dead bodies?
Me: But if there's something in the air, how come we can't find it?
Empedocles: Maybe it's the kind of thing you can't find.
Me: Like what?
Empedocles: Like your mind.
Me: Right enough. I lost my mind a while back. I used to think it was between my ears. Then I saw the great big mind supporting everything. After that I wasn't so sure. Maybe we've got two minds.

HOW CAN NOTHING EXIST OUTSIDE YOUR OWN MIND?

Empedocles said he was divine. Well, so he was. If we're getting supported by the great big mind, how could we be anything other than divine?

I think this is just a matter of how you look at things. I'm really getting into this divine stuff and everything bobbing about in this big ocean of consciousness.

Empedocles said he would show me the proof of reincarnation. What? So he turned and leapt into the volcano. Mnnn? I'm not too sure what that proved. I think he was more successful with the bucket trick!

Ra Unheard of Island at last!

Saturday 12:30 p.m.
Due to rowing practically all the way round the world to make landfall on the Unheard of Island, I didn't have any time to meditate at all yesterday. Can't remember the last time I didn't meditate for a whole day!

But it was worth it just to get here. What a reception the penguins gave me!

There have been only 240 previous visits by human beings on the Unheard of Island. It rains or snows three quarters of the time. There's usually clouds and the wind is normally quite ferocious. But there are no teevees so you don't have to watch the bombings and hear about the paedophiles, and a lot of other stuff that just gets you upset.

The big hill is called Big Ben. The cave is near the top of the hill and it is snug with a whale skin covering the entrance. I have a telescope and have brought my nuclear weapons with me just in case there's any funny stuff.

If I get lonely, I can imagine people. Just to try this out, I imagined having a chat with my chum Poisonous. Poisonous says the air we breath is made up of gases and nothing else. I used to believe that once as well, but how it made me laugh!

There's something in the air alright. There's definitely something in the air!

1:10 a.m.
The whale skin flaps in the windy windy. That's really just a thought, Jack. And my legs are stiff from sitting in this one position for so long. That's really just a thought, Jack. I think I might die of the cold, and the wind, and the rain, but that, also, Jack, is just a thought. I might die is just a neurotic thought, Jack. It's just a thought, Jack. We don't believe in thoughts. We embrace our ignorance. We don't believe in any things. Especially thoughts. For we arise, and abide, and decline in the big mind. And that, also, Jack, is just a thought. Hmmm? Are thoughts inseperable from the mind? They seem to exist as somehow independent, but we can just laugh at that now, can't we, Jack?

Ra Black Spot! Oh No!

Thursday 2:41 p.m.
As I rowed across the Southern Ocean towards the Unheard of Island, I got a message saying this joe I'd met once or twice had popped his clogs. Nice joe. A venture capitalist. The last time I spoke to him I was asking if he'd retire when he got a few millions under his belt. No, no! A couple of million wasn't enough. He would have been the same age as me, fifty five. Not one sniff at ra bliss, ra rapture, or ra ecstasy. Why should that bother me? I mean, I'm the only joe I know who's not a flatheid! So we have a wee afflictive emotion here which I'll have to deal with.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream!

I'm going to venture out to the Botanics and sit under a tree. Yippee for me!

6:00 p.m.
Picked a tree to sit under this afternoon. Acer Caesium, the label said. Where did it come from? Himalayas once again!

After a couple of sittings and re-reading the book, I stood on my head. No one seemed to be around. When I came down five or so minutes later, this woman and three wee boys were staring over at me from about twenty yards away. The kids were about seven. They clapped!

1:22 a.m.
When I was supposed to die when I was 52, I sent Brian Wilson a list of things I was pleased about as I fell towards extinction. I think the first thing was:
1 No: I managed to get down to ra bliss.

Have you ever got down to ra bliss? Have you any conception about what we are discussing here? Ra Bliss?

This is simple stuff! This is not asking about settling into non-self of the self, and non-self of the outside of ra self .... This is really simple questions. Have you got down to ra bliss? No, you haven't! Well, what's the difference between being you and being a molusc then? Well, a molusc can't help it, I supposel.

So can you do ra bliss then?

If you have never gotten down to ra bliss, you are just the same as all the other joes and josephines. I hope you're reassured by that!

The weather has been unusual. I meditated for about seven hours in this wonderful city, and then I switched from beer to white wine, as part of a dieting regime.

I've managed to do quite a lot of meditating over the last four weeks. I still haven't got it. Not by a long chalk. However, I have been trying and I have been helped by the weather, and the flatheids.

So the joe is deid. And he hadn't a clue about this existence and he didn't really care. So he got what you'd expect .... grief, sorrow, lamentations, suffering in this life.

We can surf the oceans of bliss! We are hotboys! And hotgirls! Ra bliss is ra bliss is ra bliss! Can you do ra bliss or not?

The rowing boat is ruptured and asunder! It's cold in the water, Jack! Scream! Scream! Scream! I don't want to die! And then there I find myself, cold and wet and almost dead ... on the beach ... exhausted and frightened and very alone. Take a big breath. Do ra bliss! Do ra heat! I don't care if I'm dead anyway. Just fung off, flatheids!

2:30 a.m.
Though from the beach, it is very cold and wet out there, and I may be dying also, I have to shout: I've just got here, why don't you leave me alone, you basturns!

Rem Analyticals!

Wednesday 12:50 p.m.
The book I've been re-reading (Essentials of Mahamudra) has made quite a difference. I didn't really do much analytical meditations, but the book is very persuasive, especially the effect these meditations can have on reducing the incidence of disturbing or afflictive emotions. Straight calming meditations don't really deal with these as effectively as you'd like.

Anyway, they promote an appeciation and, hopefully , realisation of emptiness. I think I'm supposed to be combining bliss and emptiness, so it's another tool in the toolbox really.

This isn't normal Scottish weather. It's hot again. I'm away to sit under a tree in the Botanics and do some juju! What a fortunate creature!

5:00 p.m.
Just back from the Botanics. What a perfect afternoon! I picked out a tree to sit under and then went up to the trunk to have a look at the label. "Indian Horse Chestnut" and it comes from the Himalayas. How appropriate! At one time I dozed off for a bit, lying on my side. Went to sleep in ra bliss and wakened up in ra bliss. Wonderful!

I couldn't ask for much more than I'm getting at the moment. I'm having a great time though I do not seem to be doing much. If I can just keep exposure to flatheids down to a couple of hours at at time, well .... I've still got two and a half weeks to go. Thank God I don't have to go a family holiday to some Mediterranean rat town!! Allah Akbar!

10:06 p.m.
BBC news is on in the background. Bombing. Yesterday I read that there's nothing anyone can do to stop the Iranians getting the nuclear weapons. Something even more horrible is going to happen there undoubtedly in the next ten years. Something really really horrible. Well, there's nothing I can do about that, so it's time to bury the head in the sand and ...

Get in my rowing boat and spend the rest of my holidays in the Unheard of Island where I can do deity yoga and become like Prospero. And there's no teevees. And the beer has no alcohol in it. And there are penguins. Some birds. And only one flatheid! Oh, to be happily on my own once the last flatheid has gone!

Wise words in the 80s when the Shah toppled and all the Iranians (with the smack!) came to Blighty. I used to buy beer off an Iranian shopkeeper. Once there was a report of an arms deal between Iran and Israel. I asked the boy about this. (It's my only hope!). He said: But Iranians aren't Arabs. Iranians are Persians. Between the Arabs and the Jews, you cannot take the hate out of their hearts. Well, on the Unheard of Island there is only one flatheid to fight with. As long as he stays away, he might be allowed to live ... and let live.

Ranother Lovely Day!

Tuesday 10:43 p.m.
What a lovely afternoon I had! It was another beautiful sunny day and I went to the Botanic Gardens about half one, and stayed till just after half four. What a nice time! There's a giant birch hedge there and I was sitting among the trees about sixty yards from that. There are flower beds in front of it and I kept my eyes on some red flowers when I was meditating. Between times I did some yoga (standing positions and a head stand) and a tai chi set.

Doing a lot of this mind on mind juju as described in the Essentials of Mahamudra.

After I came home, I did some work on my novel and I think I've got about four decent chapters now. Just after seven I went to the allotment for a couple of hours to meditate. While I was there, an idea of the title of the novel came to mind. Yogi Joe and the Tallybam Tim. Mnnn? A tally is an Italian. A bam is short for a bampot. A bampot is a nutter. If you have to decipher the title, it's maybe not a very good title!

00:22 a.m.
Just finished doing about an hour of deity yoga. Very good, but I'm ready for bed. After I got back from the allotment tonight, I did 54 yogic jumpings. I'm quite fit for a fat, old drunken basturn!

When I was 19 years old there was a general election (1970) while I was living in Fort William. I went to a hustings for the Tory. I remembered shouting out in a quite incensed way when the Tory basturn said they should bring back conscription for the young .... well, guys like me. I had long hair and an old army greatcoat, but really that was as close as I wanted to get to soldiering.
I've been following a show called Bad Lads Extreme about these young guys with criminal records getting put through 1950s style National Service basic training with the paratroopers. I'm sorry to say it actually might be doing one or two of them a bit of good. As for the rest of them .... well, they'll be back on the streets and ... I'd just cross the road if I say one of them coming! I'm not sure if toughening up criminals is all that good an idea really!

Ranother Beautiful Day!

Monday 11:05 p.m.
What happened to getting up at six in the morning? Started my holiday meditations today at half eight. By ten, you could see it was another wonderful day, so I decided to continue in the hut.

As I was sitting there in the hut, I thought: I'm not at tired as I was sitting sometimes at the Samye Ling. Like, I wasn't blanking out for a few seconds and falling into the dream world. But I thought I might just have a wee rest anyway. Along the left hand side of where I'm sitting looking at the mandala sticker on the door frame, there is a piece of wood shaped like a door. So I pull this out ...

00:30 a.m.
The light seems very white. It's pouring through the chickenwire windows, passed the buglia (that's a plant growing outside the hut there). So there is the door shape thing and lying down on it was wonderful. Can you relax, Jack? When I was twenty four or five, I was in a bus going along Princes Street with my pal Gerry and he fell asleep. He could catnap. So I'm in the hut and lying on the big, big plank of wood. Nothing much to rest my head on.

I'm telling myself that I won't fall asleep here, just have a wee rest. There is no proper thing to rest your head on: just your hand and forearm kind of thing. And nothing to cover you. So I thought of my guru and all of ra bliss I'd had, and what a fortunate creature I was... ra bliss arises in the side-on form. ... I'm trying to do the juju for the dream yoga, but I just fall asleep.

This is a hard board, but I feel very comfortable as I awaken, like a cat. I'm aware of this and that. And the light being still dead white and fantastic. I'm in ra bliss. The light is bright. The jacket is over my face. I turn over to my not so good side. I hear the one o clock gun. This is Edinburgh. How much I loved being here in this city at that moment!

I'm sorry that I might upset folk who don't meditate. Or whom I call flatheids. Can you do ra bliss, Jack? Well, what can you do?

Rat Beirut Person!

Sunday 10:41 a.m.
Somebody from Beyrouth, Beirut, Lebanon landed on my webpage with the books on it this morning, according the statcounter. Well, I hope nothing too terrifying happens to you and yours today, pal! I'm just going to start my first proper meditation of this morning (lazy bugger!), so I'll dedicate it to whoever you are!

10:39 p.m.
Thank god normal people go back to work tomorrow! You've got to do flatheids in small doses. In small doses I can cope. When you keep doing flatheids practically all the time, before you know it you might as well be a flatheid yourself. Because where is all your precious time to develope and investigate ra bliss gone to? Wasted talking crap to flatheids. I mean, let's face it, you can talk to most flatheids till you're blue in the face and they'll still be too dumb to meditate.

But there is a wee glimmer of .... spoke to Skinny McDuck on Friday. Skinny told me he'd meditated twice the day before. I told Skinny about the three turnings of the wheel of the juju. The negatation of self in the joe; the negation of "self" or true existence outside the joe; and the arising, abiding and declining in the the big mind, like waves in the ocean of consciousness.

Skinny is only 24. His maw drank herself to death not that long ago. He got himself through university and finished this summer without any real financial support from anyone. I mean, when I went to uni, they practically paid us to go! Anyway, Skinny deserves ra bliss!

They call it samsara. It's the world for flatheids. For the comfortable, complacent bourgeois it might not be so bad a spot to find yourself in. All joes like Skinny have got is themselves, and their brains. I hope they get ra bliss in this lifetime. Skinny is tough. He doesn't ask for anything. He doesn't expect anything. Bourgeois kids are sweetie eaters. You have to have a certain amount of renunciation to want to just sit quietly doing nothing. Maybe it's easier to do that if you think something about samsara is not quite right.

You can't be into buddhism and be an individualist. John Wayne is not going to be a buddhist. Interdependence is for socialists. Non-self is for socialists.

So I've been spending a too long with flatheids over the last couple of days. I think what I should do is go to the hut and not come out. I've got three weeks. If anyone wanted to come to see me, they'd know where I was.

It's worthwhile spending your time speaking to joes like Skinny. Skinny needs something. I could give him something. Speaking to the normal middle class flatheid is a waste of everyone's time. They will never meditate. They will never get ra bliss, ra rapture, or ra ecstasy.

Born to be comfortable! Born to be comfortable! (You've got to think this with the motorbikes revving up and to the Born to Be Wild tune reverberating!)

After seeing the normals for three days in a row, I was supposed to go to a house warming for a vicar today. Hid in the allotment and that wave passed me by! My meditations today have been wonderful. Did about seven or eight hours, dug the allotment a wee bit and fell asleep for a wee bit; did the physical jerks. I don't have any time left to write in. I didn't even get to read a Sunday paper today.

Ra Lost Specs!

Saturday 2:45 p.m.
I couldn't find my specs when I got up this morning. This is a sure sign. Mental befuddlement prior to retiring. Once I couldn't find my specs and went looking for them and then found them on my face. Once I ran off the train and thought: Oh no! I've lost my hat! Then I ran back on board and it wasn't on the seat I'd just vacated. That's because it was on my head!

I was at a dinner party last night hosted by Shiva's son and girlfriend. They can cook. I amazes me, stuff like that. Young people who can cook. Anyway, the food was very nice indeed!

Wallowing somewhat in Boddingtons beer, I noticed it was getting dark. Must have been about half ten then. Everyone else was flying on the white wine and everyone was talking at once as they do at lively junkets like this one. So no one was bothering about me and I managed to, as surrepticiously as I could, take a big lungful of air. Close the eyes and discretely shoot the breath. Whao! A huge globule of ra bliss expanded out and took my arms and legs away. The body shape you have in your head with your eyes shut went formless in this great globule of ra bliss. Did it twice and then pretended to be normal thereafter!

Of course, you get ra bliss sitting up whilst meditating. And I've also had ra bliss lying flat and sometimes on my side. Huge surges of ra bliss are quite possible while your meditating sometimes by just leaning forward and then straightening up. Now you can get a huge globule of the ra bliss to take you back to ground zero whilst half pissed on Boddingtons, sitting among the jabbering wine drinkers, and just after eating a big meal.

This is RaBlissBlog! No, I'm not finished with investigating ra bliss yet!!

This is dead on half way through my six week holiday. I've just taken a loaf out of the oven. Back to bread and soup today! It is a lovely day outside so I'll take out the dharma book and go to my allotment, or the Botanics. Ah, what a fortunate creature I am!

1:32 A.M. Must be Sunday!
I'm not a very well dressed joe. I went to the allotment today and it was a very nice day and I wanted to sit outside. I don't do that much, but I'm trying to be accepted on my own terms. So I take off my jacket and put it over my head and sit on the dirt without support. Vajrayana joes look straight ahead. Just middle distance. So I do the blue, luminiscent blue of the cornflower. So I can do forty minutes looking at that. Change legs and switch to this purple flower. I don't know its name. Then I change legs again and start on the marigold.

Well, I'm just one of them eccentric bourgeois, ain't I?

Perfectly harmless.

Despite all the Boddingtons last night, I did six threes of shadowboxing tonight with full Beer Monster Reduction vehicle on board, plus ten minutes skipping beforeahand. I want to die of a massive heart attack. Not heart attacks. Just one. That's bound to help! Sleeping well, I hope, Jack! Hotboy.

Ra Best!

Thursday 1:05 p.m.
Hello, Jack the Spam Robot! Hello, the Masai Warriors, the Martians and other aliens (we know you're out there!) who regularly visit this blog!

Just had to write down something about the meditations I've been having this morning. I mean, if you weren't so preposterously flatheided .... if I could just give you a glimpse ... if you could for only a few moments experience ra bliss .... well, you wouldn't be a flatheid for any longer than you had to be!! It was so fantastic. I said the the kiddo: I just can't believe this! This is incredible! I mean, incredible things happen to me on a regular basis. The last amazingly incredible thing .... There are no sentient beings ... happened just a couple of weeks ago. There's nothing really to say about ra bliss except that I am indeed one of the most fortunate, fortunate creatures! And if you don't meditate, just give yourself a good slap!

It was so amazing I've just poured about three gallons of home brew down the sink. I just haven't got the time for boozing anymore.

Having said that, I've just taken a phone call from Shiva and I'll take the one brake bike round there just now.

Ra Hottest Hot Day Ever!

Wednesday 12:40 p.m.
What a sunny day! And I got up today around half eight and started meditating at ten. Just finished. This is RaBlissBlog and I must say ra bliss and the heat continue to develope. Every meditation starts in ra bliss these days! Sometimes it just hits home in an odd way. The other day I thought: I can get out of my face on air! I mean, how fantastic is that!

Google translation into Scots. "Ah kin get oot ma face oan air!" You can hear stuff like that on the Simpsons. Scotland's got a great brand, so it has!

Apart from doing a tai chi set and having a bit of a stretch (dog pose), I phoned up the Traverse Theatre today to accept two free tickets to the opening night of their two productions at the Festival. I mean, how brilliant! They give you free wine afterwards as well. These tickets are worth £64 and for someone with £10 left to do me till the end of the month that's not to be sniffed it. I love these nights as well. The kiddo and I sit right at the front.

Quite soon I'm going to go and sit under a tree in the Botanic Gardens and re-read the draft of my novel. It's a tough life, so it is!

3:08 p.m.
I looked up from the draft of my novel at the sun streaming through the trees and thought it just looked gorgeous. The Botanic Gardens is good any day, but today was a bit special.

I read four chapters of the book. The first two don't need more work, but chapter three and four do. So I stopped there, thankful that it was getting hazy. I promised myself I'd cycle the one brake bike to the home brew shop and hit the credit card for some supplies. So I'll do that now.

8:00 p.m.
Narrowly avoiding death on the three lane roundabout near the top of Leith Walk, I got to the home brew shop and it was.... shut! Somebody's trying to tell you something, Hotboy! Yeah, some shops in Edinburgh shut on Wednesday afternoons.

The kiddo's ex-boyfriend is here for his dinner. How weird are young people these days? I wanted my ex-girlfriends (well, both of them!) to die a horrible death or at least leave town so I didn't have to clap eyes on them again. It's eight o clock and no dindins yet!

I went for a run just before seven (we were supposed to eat at half six!) and that's the second one this week. No reaction in the knee. Yippee! Dinner has been announced! Usually, I just eat soup and bread, so vive la difference, or whatever!

11:30 p.m.
The kiddo's ex is a very nice guy. He's in the Scottish Socialist Party. The ex leader is all over the papers just now for suing the News of the World for defamation due to them saying he was into swingers clubs, group sex and whatnot. Obviously, he could hump for Scotland. What is he playing at? Why didn't he say he's also got blow up dolls to hump on his nights off and fung off you with your bourgeois morality. The whited sepulchres and hypocrasy is what we don't need. What a dildo the guy is! He must be scared of his mother or something!

Anyway, I've had a great day! The only downside was getting a wee bit annoyed in the Botanics. That's really why I stopped reading the draft of the book. I haven't got a title. The novel's main concern is about the bum deal working class kids get from the educational establishment in this town. As I read it, I get angry. That's wrong. I have to be amused or I can't write it. I can write an angry book and be amused. I need more distance. But the first two chapters were alright.

It's getting dark at half ten. I leave the dinner party. It's sober. I do ra bliss. I'm getting this right if I just have the time. Or, this will happen for moi if I just give it a chance. It is not mine!

The Kagyu say they have the skillful means.

Remember if you read this, Jack, that I'm just making it up and reading between the lines.

The first couple of hours is spent getting over what you've been doing the night before. Being a bad boy. Then you get up to the last meditation as the sun goes down here in Hotboy Jockoland. It's after ten. The boy says the fire element may be pronounced then.

So I had a really great meditation. Do the death. Stop breathing (not literally!), and go through the mirage, clouds, blue with fireflies, candlelight flickering light, white flash, hot red flash, blackness deep as night, clear light mind (that's bright in all dimensions). You can stick there. This is the end. And the beginning. Are you still here, Jack? If you can do that with thoughtlessness, you can just stay there.

But you want to think. Go blue tube. Put in the symbols. Vase breath every one. Go smaller blue tube with the red tube to the right and the white tube to the left, feeding into the mantric symbol down at the bottom of the blue tube. Vase breath.

When the juju is working with ra breaths, it's hard to hold any of this together. So you want me to cry for you? Just try it.

The results of the vase breath are so wonderful and astonishing. You're a hotboy now. A blissheid. Do ra amazing bliss and be a deity. You're in the mandala. Here, you must remember that you are a light being. You are proud. The mandala is luminous. You are resonant with ra bliss and heat.

Remember the lines: I AM THE ACID KING. I CAN DO ANYTHING!

Do the breathing.

The next bit I can't get yet! You have done generation. Next you want completion.

I think now you do completion. You collect the four blisses.

You go back into the tubes and symbols.

You remove them one by one. Until you are the heart centre, which is luminous blue and pointing down. Then you dissolve that.

So you are back to the dharmakaya

If your legs aren't killing you by this point, you can negate the self within, and then negate the self with out ... abide in the simultaneously arising of everything.

We have appearance and emptiness.

Sorry you're a flatheid, Jack. Sorry you thought having a motor car or a house could make you happier. Get real, Jack! This is a mind game. If you don't play the mind game, what a spanking you might have to take! It was a great day for me, Jack, but it would be a much better day if it had been a really good day for you as well.

I hope my dharma brother is not starving to death! But he's got a |Bulldog 44! What a great country America is!

Ra Long Lie!

Tuesday 10:00 p.m.
Didn't get up today till 11 a.m..Such total collapse of the moral fibre! Knocked off the day completely. So was up the allotment all afternoon and not working on my book at all. This will not do.

But it was a very nice sunny day!

It seems you can get blogs translated. Someone from Rouen in Francais seems to have translated RaBlissBlog. I clickyed on it and the flatheids was tranlated as les flatheids! So there's flatheids in France as well.

I brought two shopping bags full of onions and some garlic home from the allotment this evening. I eat a lot of raw onions to keep vampires away and it must work because they never come near me. I've eaten raw onions in front of kids at school just to freak them out. Actually, food out of the allotment tastes great. While I was there today I ate two white turnips and had a few raw peas. Delicious!

I will get up tomorrow!! I will! I will!

Wednesday 00.09 a.m.
One of the great things about Blighty is the BBC. I got a tv license when they started giving me money once. You have to pay a license to watch the tv in Blighty and a lot of folk from abroad think this is terrible, but here you don't have to watch Friends in an endless succession of repeats.

They had Shimon Peres (Isreali, but not a nutter) on Newsnight tonight and Newt Gingrich (a nutter but not stupid). Newt was very worrying. Adolf's blog might have picked up on Newt. Newt says we're in World War 3 with terrorism, etc. He also says no European country's politicians should be happy with Iran having nuclear weapons ...

Before I go on, I should say that one of the best books I ever read was Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist by Alexander Berkman. Actually, in the top ten is the ABC of Anarchism by Alexander Berkman. Also on the list is Big Bill's Book by Bill Haywood, one time leader of the IWW. I'm not a right wing person.

But I have an admiration for the American right. Ronald Reagan got the job because seven billionaires picked him out at the Goldwater nomination convention and they made a fortune when he got in. But it worked! Gorbachov was a European and those nutters freaked him. And the Soviet Union collapsed. Game, set and match.

Newt Gingrich was pressing the appeasement buttons tonight on the telly. Also, we have to make the Israelis feel happy and secure. They are not going to go away. They will eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth every basturn in that region otherwise. They've got to make the folk in Iran say that Israel is just like a pimple you can't get rid of. They cannot have nuclear weapons if they say that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth.

These flatheids believe in things. They do not believe that appearances and emptiness arise together and that if we don't understand that we're going to make terrible mistakes.

Eric is a soldier and he's going to have to go out there and fung these joes (Syria and Iran) over so that the oil companies can get the price of oil up to 100 dollars a barrel and also get a lot of folk to hate us for hundreds of years.


It's maybe better not to watch the news. You can buy your way into the House of Lords in this democrasy. We have a monarch. We're trying to export this to where? As Deep Throat says: Follow the money! God, I wish I hadn't seen that programme now!

Ra Happy Days!

Monday 7:07 p.m.
What a glorious day to be on holiday! I'm now a third of the way through and have only a month left. A fortunate creature or what?

I meditated in the morning and went to my allotment this afternoon. Too hot to work, as if I was going to! I meditated outside the hut door, gazing on a leaf from a red berry bush.

Then I started work on the third draft of my novel by reading it. I wasn't downhearted. Certainly not! I think I've got a good basis to work on and it might be finished faster than I think. I wasn't expecting it to be this good at this stage.

The last time I read a book up the allotment was the one written by the sensei and reverend. What an enjoyable experience that was! However, since then three agencies have decided not to represent it; one in America and two that I got him here in Blighty. I really thought Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann would go for it. At the moment, I haven't got a printer, but I might find a copy in this room if I ransack (sorry, tidy) it. So I'll email some agents tomorrow if the first three chapters turn up.

If I write anything after this novel, I think I'll return to writing dialogue. I haven't written a play for over a decade, but I have got about eight productions on my cv, and I did enjoy writing plays. I should really try to make some money. I doubt if there's much chance of making any from my new book!

It's heading for being the hottest July on record. Not like chilly Jockoland at all!

Tuesday 00:17 a.m.
A wonderful month lies in front of me. The last time I had a truly wonderful summer was in 1988. The Domestic Bliss went back to work full time after six months off, when we were both off with the baby, (I thought: what a fortunate creature this kidddo is: she's almost got two mothers. But there is, at the end of the day, nobody like your mother!) and I had to learn to look after the kiddo on my own.

If the sun shines, there is not a more perfect place to learn to bring up a kid than where I live. You go round the corner and you go into a park. (It's where the allotments are! Even!) Then you walk across the park and you are into the Botanic Gardens. I was in there today with the Domestic Bliss and there are few more wonderful places on this earth than the Botanic Gardens when the sun shines. But you have to be calm. You have to be able to see it. If you're pre-occupied, you can't. Even then, it will subdue you if you let it.

I sat in Yugoslavia on a summer's holiday in 1987 and decided who was going to be in this radio play I was writing at the time: Einstein, Albert Schweitzer, Frued... there was somebody else called Albert ... maybe it was Albert Einstein ... why is everyone called Albert?

When I was looking after the kiddo on my own in the summer of 1988, we went to the Botanic Gardens every day. The sun shone. I was very happy. I had some money. I was writing the book version of the radio play, called The Real McCoy. I tried really hard to get it published, but it didn't get published. When that happened, I couldn't recuperate because, with looking after the kiddo, I didn't have the time.

Going to the Samye Ling for a week with a wee tent, and doing the juju, and not really speaking to anyone, is a bit challenging. I think I needed the next week to come up for air, sort of. But now I'm here. I'm going to finish writing this book which will never be published ... I thought The Real McCoy would be in 1988 ... or hoped it would be. How could I sell something about ra bliss to flatheids? Flatheids don't get ra bliss. That's why they're flatheids!

I want to be suffused with happiness as I re-write this book. I would like to be amused. I would like to enjoy the process. If I made any money from it, I'd give a third to the Samye Ling, a third to the kiddo and a third to the Domestic Bliss. None of these people really need the money and neither do I.

There were a lot of leaves I could have looked at today, but I was impressed by the boy in the book, the Essentials of Mahamudra, saying that while some joes look down and some joes look up, the vajrayana joes look straight ahead. So I tried to look ahead and diminish the self here and the self there, and then I thought of the Big Mind, and arising and abiding and declining in the oneness, and I realised that somehow, at the end of the day, I was indeed one of the most fortunate of the the fortunate creatures!

And so I am! I should die now. If I went to sleep and died now, I'd have had the most wonderful life! What more could a body ask for?

Ra Even Sunnier Day!

Sunday 1:56 a.m.

I think it's going to be cool because I haven't been boozing and I land into the back door of the council house in Bellshill and this joe is sitting there. On a garden seat. He's called Joe. He is a family friend. He starts right in with this story about the alkie neighbour downstairs where he lives. There are bluebottles (flies!) coming up and he goes down stairs to investigate the bluebottles and the stench arising. So Vincent is lying there and the whole place is stinking of piss and the things accrued by alcoholism in that part of Scotland. There are swollen ankles and suppurating sores and old age alcoholism stuff and I know Joe knows the score because he is a recovering alkie and helps with AA meetings, and such like.

I don't need it. I don't want to hear it. Why don't these poor fungers all just fung off and die, so I can get on with my nice bourgeois life.

The boy who helped is no saint, by the way.

If it's called Samsara, just fung off! I really hate it. Don't tell me about your grannies with dementia, or your pals with the bits falling off, or all this sadness. If these stupid flatheids could take their idiotic suppositions and ... I just don't need to hear about it.

Sunday Morning 10:12 a.m.
Just edited the above to get some of the vitriol out of it. The guy's no saint, but he is in a way. He put on a boiler suit and mask and cleaned this old boy's house out after getting him into a hospital, getting him clothes, etc. A guy who tries his best.

But I woke up feeling wonderful! What a great life this is for me! Shame about the grief, sorrow and lamentations, but there's not really much I can do about that. But I can realise the emptiness of it. I'm going to get into that over the next month and it will be a sunny day for me today anyway.

This is RaBlissBlog so I should tell you something about ra bliss! Adolf and I are going to do a bit of meditating for someone he knows who is not well at all. Well, I've just finished doing a bit of that today. Everything just went whoosh! The vase breathing is really doing the business now! Just finished giving it laldy and getting more heat and bliss than ever. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

And it is a sunny day! The family will be going out to see how beautiful Scotland is today. On Friday the Dom Bliss and I went to Dirleton beach which is about 20 miles away from here. Beautiful, beautiful place in the Forth Estuary. Walked along to North Berwich soaked in the beauty of it all. The world just looked gorgeous on Friday!

Ra Sunny Day!

Friday 12:08 p.m.
All compounded things are subject to dissolution.
Pursue your salvation with diligence.
And blog on!

It's a sunny day here in old Edinburgh town and we're going to the seaside this afternoon, on the second week of my six week holiday. I've made the transition from the Samye Ling to real life much better than last year.

The allotment had exploded with weeds. I ripped out enough to make a small haystack and it's still covered in weeds. Some weeds are quite pretty. The Domestic Bliss said the little blue flowers were called Forget-Me-Nots. We took cabbages, broccoli, onions, tatties, turnips, raspberries, red berries, black berries and gooseberries home with us. And it seems the recent rip off (a torch and a cartoon of juice) was the work of thieves and not the nice people after all.

Checked the cashpoint on Tuesday and I've got thirty quid left on my overdraft to do me till the end of the month. But I've got beer and I've got food. What more can a body ask for!

I haven't started work on the third draft of my novel yet, but I will on Sunday.

Last night I did twenty minutes skipping and upped my shadow boxing to four three minute rounds instead of the usual six two minute rounds. I'm still not running, but it can't be long now.

Ra Samye Ling Day 7

Sunday 3 p.m.
There are no sentient beings, Jack. I read this in a juju book a couple of years ago and I thought: What!? There are no sentient beings. A bit of a shock to put it mildly. Here was I telling myself every time I sat down to meditate that I was trying to gain enlightment for the sake of all sentient beings, and this joe says there are no sentient beings. He said you do the juju for long enough and you get a realisation that there are no sentient beings. Dearie me!

THERE ARE NO SENTIENT BEINGS!

I'm supposed, I think, to be combining bliss with emptiness. I get tons of bliss which is very nice, but the emptiness is something else.

No wonder the Big Indian didn't bother learning English. Not only would it have ended up with him having tons of stupid, frivolous conversations with flatheids, but there aren't really any good words in English for this kind of stuff. Emptiness isn't really a very good word to describe ... well, emptiness. If you want to know more about emptiness, google it.

Since I've been trying to get into emptiness a bit down here this time (since I've already got ra bliss), I keep harking back to a realisation I had of non-self and emptiness ten years ago.

It was the year Shiva and I went to India and Nepal, really the end of a great period, and the start of a more moody one. I came back from Nepal addicted to tobacco again after kicking it (again!) for two and a half years. That Christmas I met Lama Yeshe for the first time and he said I needed a guru. I thought this wasn't much use to me till I gave up tobacco and that took me six years. Dearie me! What a waste of time that was! If someone like Lama Yeshe says you need a guru, jump into his lap straight away!

Before I went to Nepal, I had a mega realisation of non-self and emptiness. Yes, it's in The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf! This involved a loss of phemonenal ego and a seeing of wholeness in flow, oneness. It was an awesomely powerful sight! Felt dead true, but inexplicable in words, as if you'd gained special knowledge, the whole mystical experience for ten seconds out of clock time.

How can nothing exist outside your own mind? That's what kicked it off. I got the big mind, like a gigantic supporting consciousness, immanent in the universe and through everything. The Big Mind.

I keep coming back to that event because I think it's made doing these analytical meditations a bit easier for me. Well, I might not understand emptiness, but I have seen it.

The Essential of Mahamudra, which I've read since I got here, says these analytical meditations can bring you complete enlightenment. They're for joes and josephines who can't hole up in caves doing deity yoga and all that stuff, I guess. I explained, or tried to, in an earlier post this week about doing the calming meditations and then doing these analytical ones. Understanding emptiness isn't what the game's about. Emptiness is dead logical. It's easy to understand. I can't really at the moment think of a way to explain what a realisation of it is though you'd know it if you had it!

I really like this postcard of the medicine Buddha. I've gazing at in in the middle temple this morning. It's about eleven o clock. So I do the bit when you find the false sense of self, or try to, and negate it. Then you try to get into the object you're looking on and you manage to decide that this a combination of appearance and emptiness. So are you.

Then you start looking for mind. It's like space. It's everywhere. It's has the quality of luminosity (which means it's knowing. English words again!). So it's empty and "knowing". Everything is of the same nature of mind and nothing is separate from it. Mind is empty and so is everything else. I think that's how it goes.

Everything in your visual field is a mixture of emptiness and appearance. Form is empty: Emptiness is form.

Sentient beings arise as appearance and emptiness, inseparable from mind. They arise, they abide and they decline in mind.

I think that's when it hit me. There are no sentient beings, Jack. There's the Big Mind and phenomena arise in it, abide in it, and decline in it, inseparable from it!

Still doing my head in, Jack.

There is no Buddha. There is no Dharma. There is no Sangha. And there is no Heart Sutra!!

I think I started meditating about twenty two years ago.

It seemed like quite a big realisation when it happened, but it's only a wee one. When I get home, I'll go to my hut every morning I can and try to re-inforce it.

Yes, there is no dharma! There is no Hotboy! There are no sentient beings. We arise and decline like waves inseparable from the ocean of mind.

Whenever I come here, I always think I get a wee present from the lama. That might be it. After twenty odd years (read this blog, Jack, and you could do it in five! No bother!), I guess that's the end of the beginning. Or game, set and match. I've got the teeshirt now, Jack. THERE ARE NO SENTIENT BEINGS!

It's bye, bye for now from RaBlissBlog. And over and out from HotboyMadyamika who's off to the temple to surf the oceans of bliss!!!

Ra Samye Day 6

Saturday 9.15 a.m.
Just in here for a quick cup of coffee to help me stay awake all morning. At the start of the 8 o clock meditation in the temple with everyone else I felt really tired, but gradually became a lot livelier!

Emptiness. Doing a lot on the emptiness. Well, a lot more than usual. You can't sell emptiness to flatheids. Actually, you can't sell ra bliss to flatheids either. Well, if people don't want to meditate, that's up to them.

Everything should be seen as waves on dharmakaya, it seems. I was doing the meditation on emptiness I mentioned in one of the previous posts and started to try to fix on the experience of non-self and emptiness I had ten years ago. It's in the Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf. That might have been an alright book if the publisher hadn't gone phut and I'd got to write it another fifteen times. Anyway, I've seen emptiness and that makes me obviously confident in doing these mind on mind meditations. The lama told me to mahamudra meditations a couple of years ago, but I didn't know what he meant. I'd understood a different interpretation of the word, or was just a bit thick about it. Anyway, being doing a bit of that today. Here come ra emptiness! Doesn't have quite the same ring as here comes ra bliss!! I'm supposed to be combining bliss and emptiness. So I'll just go and do that then!

3 p.m.
Just another cup of coffee, Jack! I've been listening to the Sherab Ling boys giving it laldy again up at the temple. Yesterday, I asked one of them for the time as the joe was going by on the way out the door.

I haven't got a watch. I've brought a travelling alarm clock with me. I think I got two of them for two pounds out of Woolworths ages ago. Anyway, it hasn't got a proper back piece and the battery keeps coming out, so I waved it at this joe and gestured for a look at his watch. Three o clock, it said.

What a nice watch! A gold job. Expensive looking. I don't know anything about buddhist monks really. Do they take vows of poverty? You're supposed to be practising non-attachment. You could do that with a gold watch. I could have asked him to swop it for my old travelling alarm. It's not really what you think it is, Popeye! It's a co-emergence of appearance and emptiness. Oh well!

Speaking of poor basturns, I noticed this morning that the sensei and reverend has put out the begging bowl. He must have pawned his gold watch. If someone doesn't cough up with a bag of beans, some fat Tennessean is going to go missing in the woods soon! Another one!

I wrote in my diary in big letters just before lunch yesterday. RED LETTER DAY. This means there's been a big advance that day. I went to the back temple this morning after being here and, well, you can't write that in your diary every day! Fabulous bliss and visualisations! If I'd just had that, the whole week would have been worth it.

Trying not to go to sleep after the gorgeous lunch (the food here is brilliant!), I went into the front temple to listen to the gong bashing. Tried not to doze off at first and then it all just carried on! I'm getting hot, Jack! The bliss if off the scale and visualisations of the deity and the mandala are vastly improved. I've been doing more vase breathing than normal as well, really giving it the gun this morning. I don't really know where I'm at, but the navel chakra symbol is starting to look like the red on traffic lights, very bright!

Now that my lunch is probably settled, I'll go back to the back temple (there's never anyone in there usually but me. What luxury!) and get on with this joining ra bliss to emptiness. What larks!

I was in the back temple (middle temple now, they'd spilt the placei into three) and lay down for a bit of a relax. Dozed off in yoga nidra. Came to in ra bliss. Very nice.

I'm blogging just now because I think I've just spent one of the most wonderful hours of my life. They'd done the Chenrezig prayers and they usually all leave. I was gazing on one of my favourite images: the blue medicine buddha. It's a postcard. Brilliantly vivid in it's colours. The rest of the lights in there are golden and brown. As you gaze on the image, everything kind of merges into a golden glowing.

The Big Indian stayed on and he and two nuns started playing the ritual instruments while the Big Indian sang songs of .... realisation? ... songs from old Tibet. He doesn't speak English. He's been a long time out of Tibet. I'm a big fan of the Big Indian!

How far back does this music go? Anyway, I'm doing this emptiness stuff ... the image, myself, then mind like space with knowing. Everything appearing in mind and empty.

Then I start doing the deity yoga. The deity inseparable from my guru, of the same nature, etc. You try to be in the mandala and do the offering and then get the deity to dissolve into your through the top of your head.

I can't begin to explain to you, Jack, how wonderful this feels. Even if you weren't a spam robot, it would be way beyond the scope of your poor, flatheided experience.

As you do the vase breath, you go into an awareness of the three channels with the red mantric navel symbol at the bottom. The heat feels wonderful, ra bliss unbelievable. All the time the Venerable Big Indian is making ancient music. You can take your awareness into the blue channel and try to become the symbols starting from the top white one and moving down. You try to become the red mantric symbol.

As you're doing the breath, you can move into the mandala, then the three tubes, then into the blue channel. A real practitioner would be able to the this just like that. I'm still vague, but the feelings, the feelings, Jack. I just can't describe the feelings.

It's a gift, Jack. I've been given a great gift from these people. The most wonderful of people. £15 for a tent and £1:85 for a coffee and half an hour on the machine. It's the deal of a lifetime, Jack. Maybe the deal of a great many lifetimes!!

The machin is about to close. It's goodnight and sweet dreams from RaBlissBlog!

Ra Samye Ling Day 5

Friday 3:00 p.m.
Hello, Jack! Some people say spam robots don't exist, Jack, but just don't listen to these flatheids, Jack. They don't exist either, at least, not the way they think they exist. So welcome the RaBlissBlog, Jack. I'm always glad you can drop by, along with the Masai Warriors, Martians, and the Holy Ghostie Men.

From half ten to half twelve today I had the best meditations of my life so far. The first one went a bit like this. It was an analytical one, the kind I don't often do.

Calm the mind anyway you do. I was sitting in the back temple facing a picture of the refuge tree. You look for your false sense of self. You can go through the bits you think make you up, like senses, perceptions, arms, legs, etc. You probably won't find it, but it is there sometimes; there's not much point in denying it completely. You might find it in ideations; ideas, thoughts that sometimes arise. It's not always there. It's not there when you're in deep sleep. But it will be there when you're enduring afflictive emotions; when you're angry, frightened, etc.

But you can look at the "I" that thinks it owns your arms and legs and try to dissolve it somehow, if you can find it at all. It's the unchanging, permanent presence that you think you are. Of course, this is a silly way to think is really isn't too smart to stick with that. Look what happened to Boudicca!

Anyway, you try to get calm enough so that there's only the sitting joe and the will to keep sitting. That should do you for now.

So you are in some kind of egolessness, at least for the moment. You've negated the false sense of self.

You're looking at the refuge photie. Form is emptiness; emptiness is form. That always does your head in, but you can see that the refuge photie appears as a single thing. It should be quite easy to break that up into parts and realise it's a composite. The wee buddhas sitting in all the branches are helping to make the composition and that might help. Might not.

Although the photie appears in your mind as a single thing, you can dissolve the single thing into parts and eventually you shouldn't find anthing there that you could designate and say: That's it. You mind seems to have made the single separate thing up.

So at this point you have emptiness of self and emptiness of the object you're gazing upon. Are you still with me, Jack? You're doing mind on mind juju here!

So you can start investigating the mind. You are supposed to ask the questions like, what colour is it, what shape is it, etc. You should come up with the sense that the mind is without characteristics or attributes really. (Yes, Jack, that's empty as well!)

It's supposed to be a wee bit like space. Space is everywhere. It contains everything, but it's hard to say exactly where it is or what. But the mind also has the ability to know, so it's not just like space. It cognises stuff.

As you sit there in front of the refuge photie, you can ask where the mind is. You could tell yourself it's between your ears. But the photie has appeared in it and the photie seems to be out there.

How about the moon? Is the mind in the moon? If you think about the moon as you sit there, of course, the mind is in the moon. You can do the analysis you did with yourself and the photie if you like and you'll have to admit that they both seem to be empty.

If you can move the mind from between your ears until it's outside you and inside you, well, Jack, you're head's not so flat now!!

Take your mind to the edge of space. Yes, it's there as well.

The mind seems to be everywhere. If you've still negated your sense of "I" and the false sense of self here, you might be getting somewhere.

If you go back to you and photie, which comes first? Close you eyes and open them again. Your mind has to come first or it wouldn't recognise the photie as photie somehow.

The Nyingma (we're Kagyu here!) idea of the individual mind (sem) and the big mind (rigpa) might be helpful here.

Anyway, how does your individual mind recognise the photie. It's colour and shapes, Jack. It's light, or parts of it, bouncing back off the photie and going in through your eyeball; messages along nerves, etc.

What is light anway? Is it waves (what? What are they?) or is it particles. Do the particles have mass? Is it waves and particles at the same time, depending on how you look at it?

If you go back to the emptiness of all this stuff, maybe you should understand that the photie and you arise simulataneously in mind. Or is it Mind? I'm not to sure about this part, Jack, but if you get to this bit, in a few eons you''ll be able to walk through walls, on water, and all that stuff!

While doing this stuff today, I felt really wonderful. I might even have had a wee realisation of emptiness. Understanding it isn't the point, Jack. You've got to settle into it and get realisations.

That'll be tenpercent off the top!

That took me an hour. Then I stood on my head and then did the diety yoga mentioned in the last post. Never, ever has it been so good! What a fortunate creature I am! But I've only got twenty minutes left of the hour now and will have to look at my email. Of course, I wish you all were here and could do this juju with me. Because as I went to lunch I did feel like a very fortunate creature indeed!

16 minutes to go!

Just checked the mail and comments on the last post.

I thought about Eric last night. Eric goes hiking through the vast wildernesses of Canada sometimes.

I was going to build a fire out on the wee island in the middle of the river. Nothing gets to you there except the midges. My mind was quite calm at that point in the day (did over ten hours meditation yesterday) and I thought of the short story "To Build A Fire" by Jack London. Once I got a short story on the radio and thought I'd better read some to see how to write them (hadn't really read any before). I found this schoolbook with the Jack London story in it and I just loved that story. It's about a joe in the Yukon who dies because he steps into a river and can't build a fire to dry his foot off, so it freezes. Brilliant story. That's when I thought of Eric and the wildernesses of Canada. There are all kinds of ways to calm your mind and put things in perspective. Walking through vast lonely beautiful places must be 0ne of them.

Before I knew anything about meditating, I went for a walk in Scotland. I walked up a road with a sign saying it wasn't really going anywhere and ended up for three days in a tent during a bad storm. The tent got ripped during the first night as the storm tried to blow it over. Anyway, when the weather cleared, I packed up the wet tent, etc., and started walking. I found the West Highland Way, which I'd never heard of. I said you could walk right to Glasgow. Delighted, I was.

That night I built a fire beside Loch Lomond. Looked into the fire and had a kind of cathartic experience about the dead people in my family, dead long ago, and people I hadn't thought about for a long time. Some tears were shed. I hadn't wept for some time. Weeping is cool. Anyway, this machine is just about to shut off.

This is RaBlissBlog coming to you from Bliss Central! Buddhas to the left of me! Buddhas to the right of me!!

Ra Samye Day 4

Thursday 10:15 a.m.
Put in about ten hours meditation yesterday, and it was not really an effort at all. When you start it's hard work sometimes. Not now, baby! Not now!

I'm totally settled in now. Last night as I was getting ready to get into the sleeping bag, I noticed that all my anxieties had gone. Anxieties I didn't even know I had. And I'm not a particularly anxious person.

Was asleep by eleven. Lay on my back doing yoga nidra and slipped off while in ra bliss. I awakened feeling so grateful. I can't repay these people down at the Samye Ling ever.


I had the most amazing meditations yesterday. Last night I was doing deity yoga while gazing up river from the wee island in the middle of the river ... big clouds above the hills and the river; pinks and reds and blues. I built a wee fire, but didn't light it. I was too tired to stay till it got really dark.

The heat has arrived! The warmth in the abdomen; the shoggly feeling as you hold your breath. Sometimes you get most of the benefit when you go home, but not now. I was ready for this.

Almost nobody I know will ever feel like this, but all my friends ... well, just too dumb to meditate, I'm afraid. What a terrible, terrible shame!

Anyway, this is about the half way stage. Only got half an hour on this machine. Got to go and investigate ra bliss and combine it with ra emptiness!

3:00 p.m.
I almost had a conversation. At the back of the lunch queue, there's Teresa, the nun I write letters to. I've never spoken to Teresa, apart from a few words. Most of them were delivered telepathically, now that I think of it! Anyway, there is no such thing as coincidence. She asked me how I was getting on with my visit. I could drool and dribble all over these people. I just said something like it was the most fantastic and amazing time of my life. That just about covers it.

After lunch I lay on the bench on the wee island in front of the stupa. Purple rhodedendron flowers profuse at my feet. Idyllic. Dosed off. (It's all action here!). When I was getting up to go for more gong bashing, I passed Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche. He was talking to a man who was probably a builder of some kind. (Before they left Tibet, Dr Akong said they were building a bit of monastery at the back when the Chinese were shelling the front!). The Doctor isn't even baldy. He looks like a wee fat guy who isn't even baldy. Dr Akong came here when there was diddly squat with the other tulku boy who went to the states and drank himself to death, but must have been some joe otherwise. Dr Akong looks quite normal and ordinary. He's not!

It's not as hot as it was. I might spend some time in the middle of the river.

Happy days in the sunshine down at the Samye Ling. Happy, happy days!

Ra Samye Day 3

Wednesday 3:30 p.m.
I've been reading a book called "Essentials of Mahamudra"by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche. Totally recommended for anyone interesting in the juju.

I hardly ever do analytical meditations, but the boy in the book was going on about them and since I've got all day to meditate (what a fortunate creature!), you can have a bash at all sorts!

So you walk round a corner and there's a chariot. Wow! A chariot! It seems like a single thing, this chariot. On closer inspection you can see that it is made up of things, like wheels and axles, etc. In fact, if you try to find the chariot itself, it gets a wee bit tricky. You can only put your hand on parts of the chariot, like the carraige. The chariot is really a collection of things. Which appear in your mind as a single thing: a chariot.

Say, you walk round the block and come back. There's Boudicca. It's her chariot. She standing looking at the chariot. You think Boudicca is a single thing. But on closer inspection you can see that Boudicca is made up of lots of things, like arms, legs, eyeballs, senses, etc.

If you look for the essential Boudicca, I don't think you can find her in any of her bits.

This is alright for you maybe, but it spells big trouble for Boudicca. She thinks she has some kind of unchanging self which owns her arms, legs, eyeballs, etc. Boudicca's head is, of course, completely flat.

You probably think you have an unchanging self as well, which you cling to and hope to preserve, etc., for ever. This might be okay for you when things are going hunky dory, but the world around you changes and when it does .... here comes the grief, sorrow, lamentations... suffering in this life!

The trouble with a false sense of self is that it gives rise to afflictive emotions. Boudicca is extremely angry at the Romans, for instance. She should stop and ask herself where it this self that's getting angry. In fact, what is this anger and where the fung is it coming from. Yes, it's coming from a false sense of self.

It's okay having an intellectual grasp of emptiness, but it doesn't really do the business. The afflictive emotions will still arise. If you are, as they say, highly realised, you will have realised emptiness sufficiently so that you can, if you were Boudicca, laugh at the Romans and everything else. You could get on your chariot and head up to Scotland instead of doing what your going to do which is a very big mistake.

The revolt against the Romans might have been because Seneca, who was Nero's tutor, had called in his loans and the British governor started hustling everyone he could to get the dough to pay him back. Seneca wrote a brilliant book, called Letters from a Stoic.

"I will show you a love philtre composed without drugs, or herbs, or witches' spells. It is this: If you wish to be loved, love." The wall. No mug was Seneca!

I was doing the chariot thing up at the temple before I got here. The monks from Sherab Ling were recording. Just negate the false sense of self and sit there. Bliss, bliss, bliss!

I managed about seven hours sitting meditation yesterday, but I slept most of the morning. I slept okay last night. Actually, I conked out at ten and was wakening gradually over a couple of hours as it was dawning, etc. Some dreams check in when you do that.

The D.M. went in another direction and I was lost again. I was in Prague, but it looked awful like a housing scheme in Bellshill. I tried to ask this woman for directions, but, of course, she's not even speaking English (nobody in Bellshill speaks English!) and I'm getting a few afflictive emotions checking. I said: This is a nightmare! and snapped out of it. Not quite as good as Whitby, but we're getting there.

The weather if beautiful here just now. And it was lovely last night too. As the sun was beginning to set (about 9:30 p.m), I was reading my book out on the wee island in the middle of the river. The White Esk runs by the Samye Ling. If you look up the river from the wee island (you have to jump on slippy stones to get there!) , there a wee waterfall and then a stretch of calm river. On the left there are trees and the sun is moving from behind the trees and will soon be in view, and going down behind the hills.

The setting sun was catching the millions of tiny flying things hovering over the river. I mean, maybe fifty feet of them. Trillions of midgies. Where I was, there was only the odd one or two. Looked about. Could hardly see any. Odd.

That's nearly an hour up. Fabulous bliss today. Not much heat, but it hardly matters. Huge expansion of bliss in the top two chakras. How I wish everyone could have the kind of time I'm having here just now! What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

Ra Samye Day 2

3:20 p.m.
So the name of the game is to get rid of your false sense of self.

Suffering is caused by desire (or actions and delusions) based on ignorance of your own true self.

This is RaBlissBlog! We're trying to get out of the suffering. Grief, sorrow, lamentations ... suffering in this life. You've got to take a bit of a spanking, but thank God I'm not a complete flatheid. Flatheids think things external to themselves will make them happy. That makes me laugh!

My chum Poisonous sneers at happiness. That, at least, demands a wee bit of respect!

The next bit is useless to flatheids. It's what I'm trying to do in deity yoga and is not authoratitive by a long chalk. Couple of books and reading between the lines.

Calming comes first. If you can't do calming .... your head will always be flat. Adolf thinks he knows about being calm. Try this Adolf. Count your breaths. If a thought arises, go back to one. How long would it take to get to ten? The book I read said it would take eighteen months for a beginner to get to two!

So you start with being dead. You've stopped breathing anyway. You go through the process that breaks down your individual mind as the supports collapse. It goes mirage (I do the lama here. You should do Christ if you're a Christian. You should do your dog, Adolf, because that's the only unconditional love you're liable to get), smoky clouds, blue with sparks, flickering candlelight. Then there's a white flash, a red flash, then total blackness. Clear light mind checks and hold it there.

Turn into a blue tube and place the four symbols in the tube. The red (triangle will do) one is at your navel, the blue one at your chest, the red one at your throat (the reds point up, the others down!) and the white one right in the middle of your brain.

Shrink the blue tube from either side and add a red one to the right and a white one to the left. These connect with the red symbol at your navel, from the bottom.

Then go deity. You're in the middle of a mandala. (You can become your dog here, Adolf!). A deity looking just like you is hovering over the edge of the mandala. The mandala represents everything. You offer it to the deity hovering, realising its voidness.

Get the deity over your head and into a white line. Bring it down. It's a light being full of compassion. ( In a way, it might be compassion). You're a primordial buddha here.

Dissolve the deity and the mandala and return to being the blue tube. See the navel symbol and give it laldy with the vase breathing. Collect the four blisses.

Dissolve the tube and the symbols until your are the blue symbol at the heart centre. Dissolve that from the top and bottom until there is nothing.

I think that should be primordial awareness ... non-dual ... non-dichotomous ... and very, very nice.

If your mind was properly calmed, you should be able to move from image to image, etc., without being interupted by other thoughts.

If you can do this, you are a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

That'll be ten percent off the top, please!

All this is done in bliss from the word go!

The bliss has gone ballistic today. And this is only the second day. I haven't settled in or settled down yet.

I slept badly last night due to the midgies, but I've worked out how to deal with that tonight.

Got up in time to hear the boys from the Sherab Ling do the morning chants and gong bashings. Blew me away. When you can do ra bliss and have few thoughts arising, these boys just blow your brains out!

Had breakfast and managed to sit through the hour's meditation with the lama from eight. I kept falling sleep for seconds as I sat there. Falling into wee dreams and out of them.

I said in a previous post about "lucid" dreams. I meant vivid dreams. As the sensei and reverend pointed out, lucid dreams are ones when you know you're dreaming. That's how you do dream yoga. It's the same as the deity yoga mentioned above except you go into the dream state from the clear light mind, I think.

I did have a lucid dream once. I was in Whitby. I'd had a nice visit there before en famille. Dracula also visited Whitby once. I kept going up to foll in the street and saying: This is a dream, isn't it. No, they said, this is Whitby. One of the few vivid colourful dreams when I've had a good time! Roll on, says I!

Went and slept in the tent for two hours after the meditation with the lama. Vivid dreams again. I was with Brian Wilson. He went into a chinese restaurant and these two guys in great big chainsaw machines came down the road after me, but what a doing I gave them! Very self affirming. Bruce Willis eat your heart out!

This machine is the first one I've used on broadband. What a difference!

Every meditation is starting off now in mega bliss. Close your eyes, Adolf! What do you get? That's because you're a flatheid. Not my fault!

This has cost me £2, so I may not be back!! It doesn't promote calmness, I don't think! But I'm not talking to anyone else, Jack!

Ra Groundhog Day!

Monday 6:12 a.m.
It's raining outside just now. The weather forecast for Eskdalemuir over the next couple of days is for rain, showers, thunderstorms. The usual. Try to remember that this is just a wee camping holiday. May all sentient creatures be happy! Depart the flat at 6:30 a.m.

4:40 p.m.
This is from the Samye Ling cafe! Yes, yes, yes!

I spent all morning at the Lockerbie train station waiting room due to being a complete prat and leaving my knapsack on the train when I got off. What a wally! The ticket boy was on the ball and got it back from his chums in Oxenholme, where the train stops for a tea break. I discovered I was missing it as I was about to saunder off to the bus stop (you wait for an hour in the train station waiting room anyway) through a mega downpour, so having to wait that out was probably okay anyway. So I got to the train station at Lockerbie at 8:20 a.m. and left it at just after noon.

It's in situations like this (waiting!) that being able to meditate really helps. I can't remember the last time I felt bored. I remember when I started meditating thinking that this was the end of feeling bored. If you're doing mantra, you can do that anywhere, anytime. If you're mantran brings on good feelings, when you start doing it, good feelings should arise. Unfortunately, the good folk of Lockerbie don't need me sitting in a half lotus with my eyeballs rolled up in the local train waiting room, so you hve to be discrete! I pretended to be asleep, or dozing.

What a brilliant lunch I had. Got here just in time! Then the worst bit: putting up the tent! The ground has some bricks in it and the midgies sense fresh blood straight off, so there's a fair bit of huffing and puffing and trying not to wish these wee tottie sentient beings instant annihilation! After that, I was completely drenched in sweat as it is humid down here today!

The monks from the Sherab Ling (?) monastery in India are over here just now and they sell records of gong bashing all over the world, so the Chenrezig prayers tonight will be something to look forward to. Hope I can stay awake. Have to get up to the temple now for the five o clock meditation. What a fortunate creature I am! What a great week I hope to have here. Once the tent's up, you're in the gravy!

Ranother Samye Day Before!

Sunday 10:46 p.m.
I left a comment on someone's blog last night saying it was long time since I'd had any vivid dreams, ones that I remembered. Had three in a row last night.

So I'm dreaming that I'm lying asleep (might have been in a sleeping bag!) and I'm trying to waken up as I've become aware of these three bumps in the bed. I realise they're big bats which are trapped; the size of fruit bats. I realise they aren't going to bite me, but I want to waken up and deal with them. Nightmarishly struggling to waken up.

The Buddha is the Awakened Joe

We're not doing interpretation of dreams here, but in buddhism there are three major poisons, I think. Ignorance, greed and hatred. (Or why else is the world going down the toilet?) You should be able to diminish these, but you'll always be in ignorance until you realise buddhahood.

I embrace my ignorance.
I don't believe in any things,
Especially thoughts.

In the second dream I've lost the Domestic Bliss, who takes care of everything about travelling, etc., etc., and I'm lost and alone in New York - a big, old fashioned railway station with stalls, milling strangers, etc. Anyway, I've got the address we're staying at, but I can't find a map. I'm trying to get directions or a map from these stallholders and some of them are very strange indeed. Not as bad as the first one.

Third dream: I'm in the same position as the second dream, but I've got the kiddo with me and she's only about two. I'm lost, but I'm happy. I have a meal with some strangers and they aren't strangers for long because the kiddo is being so charming. I'm also totally charmed by the kiddo even when I have to find a place to change her nappies. Very lucid on the nappy changing, by the way, but it wasn't a problem. I had to save the kiddo from falling on her head at one point and she got lost in the crowd (as a joke!) for a few seconds. Everyone who's ever looked after a kid has visited these places.

If the kid hadn't been born just when she was, I think my life would have been completely different. I'd most likely have made an awful lot of money from writing and would probably be dead by this time. Anyone who's been with this blog for a while (Hello, Jack!) might know that I try to regard myself as three years overdue anyway. My old man died at 52.

My old man was a devout catholic. My maw told me on Thursday that when I was born, he was waiting behind the door. (Why we these days have to witness the slaughtering and butchering, I don't know!). When I was born, I was handed to him. He said: It's like looking at God ... meaning you could see God in babies, not that I was God!

If the kiddo had come later, it wouldn't have been the same kid.

So all these things were running through my head this morning as I wakened up after the third dream. I don't regret now not making the money which I would have made if I hadn't had a kid to look after at the time. I don't regret anything except the times I've been rotten to people.

When I got up, I did three rounds of alternate nostril breathing and gave it three wee bellows breaths. Closed my eyes and went straight into really deep bliss. A vase breath and it all seemed to be there. The lama told me I'd get everything from the straight calming meditations when I was hustling him about the deity yoga, etc. I'm taking a book called the Essentials of Mahamudra to read down at the Samye Ling tomorrow. How appropriate!

If I had a lot of money just now, I couldn't deal with the greed. No, I don't have many regrets just now. ..

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

11:25 p.m.
Hello, Jack. I hope you and the other spam robots are doing fine. Thought I'd better write a few words before I leave the Judeo Christian/Graeco Romano civilisation for good and let myself wallow and succumb to the arts of the great juju masters tomorrow. If Thomas The Tank Engine stays in the huff and refuses to leave the depot like he did on Friday, then, Jack, I may be wrong. I want to be a sceptic, Jack. I don't want to feel guided. Chance would be a fine thing!

I told them the only thing that was keeping my feet on the ground was the beer! No nothing for the last three days and nights. That should be enough to get most of the poisons out of your system. Tonight, just about half an hour ago, I tried to put my legs into a full lotus and ... no pain or discomfort at all. Just before I go to the Samye Ling. Call it coincidence. Call it what you like, but there has been a fundamental shift since I gave up the pollutants.

I'm sorry I can't really explain it now and I couldn't really explain it before. Words fail.

The joe who goes down to the Samye Ling, Jack, won't be the same joe who comes back a week later. Not by a long way! I'm sure of that. I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going there, Jack. I hope I don't crash and burn, but I asked for this and I'm getting it. Let's try to keep our bottle! Now, at last, it's chocks away and set your controls for the heart of the sun! What a time I'm going to have! What an amazing, amazing time I'm going to have! This is a HotboyMadyamika culminating and coalescing, about to transcend and tranform, setting off tomorrow morning to surf the limitless, unimaginably fantastic oceans of bliss!

Rat Calmness!

Saturday 9:18 a.m.
In most of an adulthood spent trying to give things up, I can safely say that I have never managed to give anything up. But I have sometimes stopped doing things for a while. For instance, I don't smoke cigarettes just now. I didn't have any pollutants at all yesterday and tried to remember that I was supposed to be in a wind and rain battered tent down at the Samye Ling.

My mind felt quite calm this morning when I was meditating.

If you don't meditate and you think you know what calmness is, you don't.

If it was what you think it is, St Antony wouldn't have spent forty years in a cave in the Egyptian desert practising it.

If you don't meditate and you think you know what bliss is, you definitely don't.

Flatheids just don't get ra bliss!

If raising inner heat is the foundation stone for practising the 6 Yogas of Naropa, calmness is the basis for everything else.

Over the last year I have really enjoyed getting pissed and blogging. Sometimes I have felt most amused and exhilerated. I do enjoy my brains and I do like thoughts. The kind of blogging I do is more like scribbling if real writing is copperplate, but I have really enjoyed doing it.

Getting pissed and doing most other kinds of drugs (well, the kind I like anyway!) is not conducive to mental calming. Calming and stimulation are obviously at opposite ends of the spectrum.

If I had managed to get to the Samye Ling yesterday, the night I got back I would probably have hit the beers. I will probably be exhausted when I get back and flatheids will seem like mad basturns to me. I don't think I've ever met a flatheid who exuded calmness, contentment or happiness.

Yesterday, I spent some time in here gazing at the picture of Lama Yeshe. I think it came to me how to view the navel symbol from the central channel. I may write that down later.

Today I will wholeheartedly support the Englanders against the Portuguese. I hope they reach the final. I hope they're playing the Fatherland. If Ballack is fit after the kicking he got from the Argies .... Adolf says things always balance up ... The Fatherland have to hump them four two. They have to get a dodgy goal. Then, at last (!!!), we won't have to watch programmes about how they won the World Cup in 1966! Uber Alles!

7:10 p.m.
I tried to support the Englanders as much as I could. I'm the kiss of death! They didn't deserve to go out like that. But I have to admit that when that boy put the Portuguese through .... my Id kind of popped out!

11:41 p.m.
Just before half eleven I was looking out the kitchen window and you could still see the silouhette (I used to be able to spell! I did!) of the trees over at Inverleith Park against a background of lovely, light blue sky. Out of he toilet window, the silou ... outline of Fettes College, black against the light blue, made it look as if Mad Ludwig once passed through this way.

It that an obscure reference? Mad Ludwig built Disney like castles in the Fatherland.

The Brazil/France game was coming on at eight and I really felt like going to the pub and watching it, but I skipped and shadow boxed through most of the first half instead. No beer or anything else tonight. Good boy!

I can't describe the effects of vase breathing to you if you've never connected breath and bliss. But you go to different places, places tonight I'd never really been to before. Even although I can't do the visualisations at all well, ra bliss and heat in the sheath like thing ... well, if you're too dumb to meditate there's not really any point in trying to describe it to you. Don't think I could anyway. You do transcend. My breath was very subtle tonight. Of course, I don't really know what I'm doing, but I don't really care. I'm going to do it anyway.

I can't remember what it was now that St Antony heard in the church he walked into. Something from the Gospels. He believed it anyway and just spent his life doing it. Bertrand Russell is dead funny about him in the History Of Western Philosophy. I think he ran into a bed of nettles when he saw some Josephine strip off to bathe. Thank Buddha for the middle way! Just staying off the beer will be enough round here!