Ra Answer to Pet Bereavements!

Sunday 8:30 p.m.
Jeff Andro was so embarrassed at getting a mention in RaBlissBlog that he has changed his name to Jeff Patton. If you live near Pheonix, Arizona, you should go and see Jeff because he looks amazing.

Jeff knows all about motors and computers, which is more than can be said about Sandy Buchandyke! Sandy says she works in a national cultural institution, which I think is blogspeak for a lap dancing club. (She says she only works in the office, but that's what they all say. Or, Ah only look efter ra towels!) Due to being brain damaged from carousing with her buchandykey chums, Sandy made a grevious error on her way out the door on Friday evening. And is now suffering terrible anxieties, no doubt, about going into work tomorrow.

Here on RaBlissBlog, we don't do anxieties. Even Jack the spam robot would have known how to react to such a supposed calamity as screwing up the whole computery system in the lap dancing joint.

What you have to do is go on the sick! Jack knows this because he has read my new book! My new book, apart from telling you all about ra bliss, also acts as a guide to malingerers everywhere, and if she had asked for a preview copy by email, she would have had no doubts whatsoever in knowing what to do come Monday morning! She would have got six months fully paid leave just like that!

Then she would have had the time to get into the far more lucrative job of being the manager of The Pet Bereavement Counselling Service. Sandy has an allotment with THREE huts on it! All she needs to do is convert one of them for moi (A one cushion conversion job! Even I could do that! I could bring my own cushion!) and then contact the Fushisushi Cosmococchi Computery Corporation to get the free hardware and software. Since they're Japanese, all she'd have to do is refer their public relations department to the one hand clapping Hotboy and they'd be falling over themselves to sponsor this gig. (I could wear their logo on my jimmy wig!). Had they but the slightest flicker of hesitation, she could refer them to Mr Adrian Weston, a man of great taste and perspicacity, and he would assured them that, yes! It was certain to become a world wide blockbusting bestseller, and they should get aboard the gravy train toute suite!

I put a bird feeder thing inside the hut today. For the wrens. I spent three hours in there today completely blootered by ra bliss. If the webcam and all that was portable, I could move from hut to hut. There will be millions of wrens in there before you know it. I could change my name to TwoHutHotboyMadyamikaSurfingTheOceansOfBLiss!

Ra Bye Bye Jack Dempsey!

Saturday 10:25 p.m.
Shadow boxing early in the day, figured I was ready for Cassius Clay. Fee, fi, foo, fum, look out, Cassius, here I come!

One tai chi set and just over an hour bombing about on the nazi bike. At the back of eight, on went Waiting for the Man and I weighed in. 12 stone 4 lbs. Fung fat basturn! Donned the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle and kept replaying Waiting for the Man for the next half hour. So I started talking to my manager while doing the ten minutes of warm up skipping. My manager is called Jack. Jack's a spam robot.

Thank God we're not over twelve and a half stone now. Over twelve and a half stone and you have to fight Jack Dempsey at some point. This is not a place we want to go, Hotboy. Fung too right, Jack. I called you after Jack Dempsey. You know that, don't you, Jack? Still, we don't want to go there.

Jack Dempsey was an 8 to 1 underdog. 5 inches shorter and 58 lbs lighter. Jess Willard lasted three rounds and ended up with a broken cheekbone, broken jaw, several teeth knocked out and broken ribs. He was down seven times in the the first. Lasted another two rounds. Dearie me!

No, we don't want to go there, Jack. Or hang around among the super-middleweights. This is the death zone.

I felt much better, fitter and stronger than I did when I was doing this on Thursday night. I haven't ingested any pollutants on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday or Saturday. Good boy! Anyway, after five three minute rounds, I was in the zone and I was imagining all kinds of biffings.

What round is it, Jack? It's the thirteen coming up, Hotboy. You're blowing it, son! You're blowing it! Tommy Hearns is ahead on points. And you're blowing it, son. You've got to go out there and take the bum.

What a great thirteen round that was! I think Tommy Hearns was getting five million dollars. By the thirteenth it wasn't about the money. But Sugar Ray Leonard transcended something in that thirteen round. He came off his stool with something I'd never seen in him in the fights I'd watched before. It's like he was suddenly bigger than himself. This is when it counts. This is when you've got to be the man. I think Tommy Hearns made it into the fourteenth. I was a big fan of Tommy Hearns.


I've managed to do a wee bit over six hours meditating today. The Domestic Bliss was out all day. I sat in the lobby. The stuff between about quarter to six and half seven was right on the money. Immersed, engulfed and blissed out, blissed out in ra bliss! I'll sit up tonight and do some more!

Ra Two Ton Tony!

Thursday 11:56 p.m.
What a good day I've had today! Simple, great day! If I can ever give up my job, I'll have so many wonderful days like this!

Food: Soup, bread, cheese, raw onions, Marmite, butter, wee plate of veggies from the Domestic Bliss's dinner, two dates.

Exercise: Two tai-chi sets, two headstands, one hour on nazi bike along the North Edinburgh cyclepaths, then ten minutes skipping followed by six three minute rounds with half minute intermissions for dancing about with the arms down.

The shadow boxing was done in the kitchen as usual. The music was by the Velvet Underground and started with four repetitions of Waiting for the Man, then Beginning to See the Light a few times, then a couple of Sweet Janes. By then I should have finished, but I was enjoying myself so much that I kept jumping about to White Light/ White Heat.

Before donning the Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle, I weighed in. I'm five foot ten. I weighed in at twelve and a half stone. Fung fat bastarn! Like Two Ton Tony, I've been training on beer.

Ah never hoid of da bum. Ah'd moider da bum whoever he was.

How the boys in the camel coats, the fedoras, with the big ruby rings on their fingers must have roared to their feet when he knocked the bum down in the third!

Fancy knocking down Joe Louis! Simon Barnes, who's a chief sports writer in the Observer, I think, said boxing should be banned because the sole reason to punch someone in the head is to damage their brain.

You might as well say the sole reason for throwing darts is to damage the dartboard.

Fancy knocking down Joe Louis in the third! Anyway, I had to hold the bum up for another three rounds so I could finish my training session.

After the training session I had a pint of water before my shower and then weighed in again. About twelve stone one pound. That's a loss of six or seven pounds in sweat. A gallon of water weighs about 10 pounds.

Meditated for six or seven hours today. What a great day it has been!

Rem Seeking Literary Agents!

Thursday 10:25 a.m.
Some of the folk who land on the blog (hello, Jack!) come here looking for stuff about literary agents. I've said some mean things about literary agents before and they were all true. They light cigars with ten pound notes, do lunch, and I'm sure most of them are completely illiterate. But you can't knock doing lunch and lighting cigars with ten pound notes! Much better than wasting all your meditating time reading novels, which I certainly don't do.

Before I finished my book,I'd contacted some 350 agents through the site Everyone Who Is Anyone and I think I got two agents to look at my webpage from that. That's all. Then I started trying to send out emails about one or two of the books on the site and that took the total of emails up to nearly 400. That's from a year past last February.

In fact, I've been sending stuff to agents on and off for decades and got ... no, I had an agent for two years about 27 years ago! Anyway, bugger all!

So I reckoned I'd no chance of getting an agent when I finished the book, but I sent it to Pat Kavanagh, who is not an ice hockey player and might be famous to folk who know about these kinds of things. She was kind enough to let me send her three chapters. She quickly responded. "I like your tone of voice but, honestly, I just don't see that this is a novel or anything resembling one. It reads to me like autobiography infused with fantastical wish fulfilment and written while high on adrenalin? Speed? Dope? (paragraph) I know you can write but I don't know whether you can be published. To my eye/ear this first, isn't publishable."

At the end of the day, she might be right! And I did ask her to marry me once so I'm sure she's a very nice woman as well as a brilliant literary agent.

Having decided there was no point in talking to flatheids about ra bliss, I thought, Fung it all! I'll just go an emanate as a deity! But, as Pat Kavanagh reminded me before, you have to be undaunted. Or how else are you going to meet the 17th Karmapa in Rumtek? So I started at the bottom of Everyone Who Is Anyone this time and sent out three emails. Two were completely ignored, which is what usually happens, but lo! I got a response from Adrian Weston. And the book is now with Polygon. So we'll get the first rejection from a publisher by the end of next week. I wasn't even going to re-read the book till after Christmas!

The new book isn't off the wall. It's not even in the building! But if you're looking for an agent for a crime book ... folk getting their eyes stabbed out, lots of shooty shooty, one legged detectives from Hong Kong, or any of that stuff that sells, go to him. I checked him up on the Bookseller site. He's hot for stuff like that just now.

I always hope folk get what they want so they go on and want something else. Be careful what you wish for! Now that I've actually got a literary agent, I'll have to give everything up again (there's only the beer left!) and succumb to ra bliss! Two hours in the lobby before lunch. Done an hour today so far. Oh, if it wasn't for ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Ra New Dawn!

Wednesday 23:11 p.m.
I cycled rather happily to work this morning, leaving the flat at 7:30 a.m. while it was still dark outside. Most enjoyable cycling to work these days though last night I spent most of my last ten quid on celebratory Erdinger beer. Well, I've been trying to get an agent really hard since I set up the bloggy and the webpage a year past in February, and .... any excuse will do! No, the world has changed just a little bit since the phone call yesterday.

I spent two and half hours meditating up at the hut after work. I was asking myself what I really wanted as I walked through Inverleith Park.

I don't care about making a lot of money. Personnally, I don't need more money. I need less money. I've made £2,500 from getting two books published previously. I owe about £1200 which I'll have paid back by next summer anyway. Any money I make I'll split three ways between the Samye Ling, The Domestic Bliss, and the kiddo. If Adrian Weston can make any more money ... I'd like to give up my job.

I thought I was going to where the Dalai Lama was once (it's in The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf) when Shiva and I were going to Darjeeling, but the Dalai Lama lives in Dharmasala. Well, it does begin with a D. I've told myself I'll see the 17th Karmapa in Rumtek, but I don't think he's ever been there. Anyway, I could write a follow up to the new book about going there and emanating as a deity.

But if I made some money, I could set up the Pet Bereavement Counselling Service from the hut. The soul of entrpreneurship, me! If the book got published, that would help advertise it. What a good idea! I could sit in the hut all day counselling folk who's budgies have died and when I've made enough from that, off to Rumtek, or Tibet!

Sober and straight! I'm not very good at this asceticism stuff. Never had much practise really. Anyway, it looks as if it might all work out one way or another.

Though I'm feeling tired, I have to remind myself before going to bed that I am indeed one of the most fortunate of creatures. I tried to get a literary agent and one has appeared. If the book gets published, it might do some good, which is more than can be said for the dirty book I got published before. My root guru is the Great Buddha Lama Yeshe Losal. Because I got into the meditation, my life has already been full of wonderful and marvelous events. Even more wonderful and marvelous events are sure to transpire. Oh, what a fortunate, fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!

Rat Samadhi!

Tuesday
A long time ago I was trying to work out how you would get out of karma, which is, I think, one of the things it would be good to do. Then I had this weird dream. It was completely black and the head of the Dalai Lama traversed the blackness from left to right. "Liberation through Samadhi" was all he said. Of course, it was just a dream. So I was looking up Samadhi on the net there and came upon this quote:
"Samadhi is a very difficult state to explain. In fact I do not think anyone has ever explained it. Doctors have tried to analyze it from a medical and physical point of view, and have failed. I have heard it described as "a state of spiritual ecstasy in which consciousness leaves the body." But this is not the whole phenomenon, as the breath stops and so does the beating of the heart. But it is not a form of trance as in the trance state both of these continue. It is claimed that Samadhi is a state attained only by highly Enlightened people--people who have reached Spiritual Illumination. It is a state where the spirit temporarily leaves the body and goes into one of bliss. All the Enlightened Ones who have attained Samadhi describe it as Bliss."
The bold italics are mine. It's from a woman called Merecedes de Acosta, who was hanging about ashrams with Somerset Maughan, apparently.

Gampopa could sit for days at a stretch before he went to see Milarepa. You might wonder why he bothered. But it says this:
" The attainment of Samadhi is not a sufficient cause to eradicate false knowledge, and since false knowledge is the cause of bondage, Samadhi cannot therefore be the cause of liberation."

3:33 p.m.
I've just had a phone call from Adrian Weston saying he wants to represent my new book! He's going to send me a contract. Well, what do you know? Hmmm? I'm trying very hard not to shout yahoo!! Yahoo! Yahoo! Yahoo! This is, of course, not a cheque. Yahoo and a few hallelujahs! He's going to look at the kidbooks, etc., as well. Yahoo! And a final yahoo! Thank God I don't have to send out any more emails or write anyone letters, or any of that business stuff which I'm hopeless at and don't care about. Just one more yahoo then!

Adolf, I'm afraid that's you got the sack!


I sent an email to Pat Kavanagh telling her I had someone interested in the book. I did once ask her to marry me, but I was only kidding. She is an agent for Laurie Lee, who is a far better writer than me. Laurie Lee might be a far better writer than just about anyone. Unfortunately, he's deceased now, or we could read even more books by him! She replied: Very Good For You. Mr. Weston's not known to me but he's clearly a man of taste & perspicacity.Pat K

Having been to see the Devil Wears Prada... what a brilliant reply! I told her I'd see her at the awards. Without the emaily thing, we couldn't have a laugh like this!

Ra Happy Birthday!

Monday
The kiddo is nineteen today. Nineteen years ago I was a witness at her birth and vowed that I'd never been in one of those places again! I have complete sympathy with the joe who said he'd be present at his child's birth if it was in a very long room with a bar at one end. This new man stuff can be taken too far! Put you off sex for life, so it would! The sooner they can grow kids in a bag in a factory the better!

I got her some books, mainly from the Shelter bookshop downstairs. Meditation for Dummies, The Tao Te Ching, An Alan Watts book about Zen, Initiates and Magicians in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel and The Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. I haven't enjoyed many books more than Sunset Song, which is part of the Grassic Gibbon trilogy of course. God, I still haven't finished the Kite Runner! How other people (used to be me!) can find the time to loaf about reading novels is beyond me!

I'm always going on about flatheids in this blog. But you can't really call folk who meditate flatheids. For, yea, they will become blissheids if they just stick with it! I know quite a few potential blissheids, some of whom come to this blog. Though I did encounter some pretty weird sensations early on when I started meditating, I don't think I got much of the white light bliss precursor till I was in my early forties. It was when I started getting up early to meditate and give up the tobacco. I think it was three times a day, half an hour each time.

I cycled round to see Shiva on Saturday. He still smokes like a lum. Shakti, his wife, doesn't smoke, or drink, or do any bad things that I know of. They're hatha yogins really. And they do meditate a bit anyway, these days. The sensei and reverend meditates. Samsaramom meditates. Apart from Shiva, these people are all much younger than me and are bound to get ra bliss someway down the track. So should he if he does enough meditating. Sandy Buchandyke, Adolf and Menzies Milngavie, of course, will not get ra bliss because they don't meditate. I don't know if Ionetics meditates or not. Simple cause and effect is in operation here. Don't meditate and stay a flatheid. Dearie me! Fancy choosing to stay a flatheid. I was blissed out my face at six o clock this morning. Fancy choosing to stay a flatheid! Dearie, dearie me!

We took the kiddo to see the Devil Wears Prada last night. Worth it for Meryl Streep. When I got back, I found a very pleasant, chatty email from an agent called Adrian Weston. He'd looked at the webpage and this blog. Even after that, he emailed me. I think he liked the post about what not to do to become a famous writer. He was published by Serpent's Tail on the same year as the sensei and reverend. Maybe I could get him to look at the sensei's new book if this Euan Thorneycroft liaison doen't work out.

Anyway, I had to write the boy an email about my wonderful writings so he wouldn't have to look at stuff on the webpage which isn't really as publishable. I've written a lot of stuff. Mostly to no avail, as they say, but a lot of stuff. Mostly these days I just sit there quietly doing nothing. But here comes the heat! Here comes the heat!

Ra Scylla and Charybdis!

Saturday 12:44 p.m.
Hello, Jack the spam robot! And you Masai Warriors, Martians, other creatures from outer space, and not forgetting the perverted Arabs who occasionally land on this bloggy looking for hotboys! This is RaBlissBlog! And I'm here once again to detail further developments with ra bliss! Oh ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

How can anyone explain to a flatheid about ra bliss when a flatheid is too dumb to meditate, and is not even beginning to scrap at the edges of what it might be to be a human being in all it's fullness and glory! Lo! though I am only embarking at the periphery of the great vajrayana, I have this morning wakened up in ra bliss and felt since then that soon, yes, soon I will one day be bursting full, with every cell jampacked, succumbing, immersed and totally lost in ra bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Excuse me for a moment while I take a deep breath to remind myself of what a smart boy I was to spend all those hours and hours, day after day after day, week after week, and, yea! year upon year meditating even when I wasn't getting and didn't even know about ra bliss!

This is not the best of time and the worst of times. This is just the best of times! The vase breathing is working better than it has ever worked before. I can't take any credit for this and I don't know why because I am sometimes a bad boy. It just is. Oh ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

However, as the sole member of the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid, I am sometimes called upon to do missionary work. First of all, I was going to cycle down to Portobello to winkle Brian Wilson out on the bike. Then we would go down the east coast and all would be safe and well because I have got no money. (Well, ten pounds left till my overdraft limit.) Then I recalled the last time I went cycling with Brian Wilson. It was this year in the Springtime and though I had no money, we ended up in this hostelry and he had six pints of the vicious Danish lager and fell off his bike twice on the way back to Porty. Where were the Leith police that day? And it is Saturday today. I could imagine the viking helmet sitting on his kitchen table, the pig's face poking out of his back pocket, and I cancelled. I will see him tomorrow. He won't go to the pub on a Sunday. Instead I will visit Shiva who gave me a phone call. Shiva abhors the demon drink. Of course, after visiting Shiva, I'll have to put my name down for a lung transplant. I don't know any of those nice people who don't have bad habits.

Of course, I should stay in all day and do ra bliss, but I don't want people to think I'm not normal.

Have you heard about Carruthers? He's off to the hills. He's living with an ape. Is it a female ape? Of course! There's nothing odd about Carruthers!

Ra Cyclista!

Thursday 00:39 p.m.
The North Edinburgh cycle pathways ... I have been there before. They are old railway lines recovered and covered over so that cyclists can have somewhere to cycle. The Poisonous took me along them before his kid was born, about eight years ago, but today I went onto them on my own with the nazi bike.

I have a very poor sense of direction. On the cycle paths, it's dead easy if you follow Poisonous on the one brake bike, but with the nazi bike on your own, you have a lot of anxiety checking in. I'm not used to this. Why am I on my own? It's quite bizarre, like being in an alternative universe. There is the track and the trees overhanging and the incomprehensible signs. Ferry Road Path, then the Telford Path, then the Roseburn Path. Outside of all this you see glimpses of the real world. The world outside the paths which you are somehow dissecting.

You can cycle on the pathways, and walk, and walk your dogs. I saw one guy with his lovely wee girl walking along beside two pit bull terriers. They will eat his child at some point. The joe walking his rottweiller. Then there was this guy with the backpack who was obviously crazy. He was the cycle path equivalent of this other guy you see walking around Edinburgh who is also mad, but this joe was better equipped. Nice backpack. Mad as a hatter.

I was expecting Robin Hood's pals to come swinging out of the trees, or to be ambushed, captured and beseiged in some way then .... lo! I found myself out with the real world and on this road in Silverknowes. Not many folk know about this. It's a road, completely unadvertised, to help you look at the view. So I found myself cycling along this road and the view was gorgeous. You could see the still clear water of the Forth, Cramond Island, etc.. Very beautiful views. Cars were parked. Sometimes folk sat in them and were reading books. Just a time out place.

Then there were two police people coming my way back on the cycle paths. They got their horses into line when they saw me. Great big horses! So the first up policeman turns out to be a lady policeman, and she was on top of this big kind of snorting horse, perfectly in control, and she smiled down at me on the nazi bike as I was moving towards her. Hello, I shouted. In that instant, obviously, I was in love with life. On the horse, in that uniform, were you not for that moment perfect, Mrs Policewoman?


An hour and a half on the nazi bike. But there was a liberation in it. After watching the footie last night, then the not going to work, and the biking. God is Great. Allah Akbar! What a good day I had today!

Ra Ross!

Tuesday 11.00 p.m.
He stoppeth one of three... so I was down in the bowels of Ayrshire, and I was speaking to the boy who'd been partying for four days and nights with the Bolivian Marching Band, and, lo! what wisdom the boy spoke!

He was talking about stopping being a pisshead. He said willpower wasn't enough because of the internal voice, which is a lying wee basturn. That's the one which says it's okay to have another drink even although you should have begged for the dialysis machine days before. Anyway, this sung to me. I wrote about this in my book called The Buddha and The Big Bad Wolf, which had a readership of four extremely fortunate people. He said willpower was not enough when you were a pisshead and what you needed .... then, he leaned into me and said: Do you believe in a higher force? I said yes.

He said I was half way there ... to the cure!

I do not believe in a higher force. I have seen the higher force. This is called the path of seeing. Hey! Here comes the view of the higher force. In the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid, we don't allow ourselves to believe in things, especially thoughts. So though we were gifted with a view of the higher force once for maybe ten seconds, we're certainly not going to abandon our scepticism for that!

All this was fitting in very well with the stuff I'd been reading by William James in the Varieties of Religious Experience. The descriptions of the pisshead conversions. You get to asking the polis to put you in the cell after you've been doing the DTs for four nights in a row and you ask for Jesus. And, lo, Jesus will come into your life in extremis and push all that other desirous stuff out to the margins. This is definitely a plus thing for the joe or josephine.

William James has allowed me to understand what being born again is. I didn't know what it was, or I've forgotten how it worked for the 25 years since I read the book first of all.

It's given me some sympathy for George Bush, who I think found God so he could get off the sauce or leave the Marching Band. However, we have now arrived at the emptiness of the emptiness. I have seen the Big Mind. I don't have to believe in it. But, of course, I don't accept it. Believing, accepting ... we can do better than that! In the illusory nature of reality, you should not succumb to the Big Mind just because it is an more comfortable illusion.

I think this is a half pissed post about ra emptiness of ra emptiness, or the voidness of the voidness. There's a lot of voidness out there!

I read something about the 12 links of dependent origination today. Volitional impulses. That means, I think, stuff you want to do. What a bugger that is! Chain me to the wall! Chain me to the wall! Tilopa got chained to the wall for 12 years. Hmmm? I'd like to go to jail now, please. Solitary confinement. Just the job!

Wednesday 10:50 p.m.
I wrote the above after watching Celtic gub Benfica three nil. Most satisfying evening with the beer and the telly.

Consequently, I've taken the morning off work, which is great, and will now meditate till lunchtime. If it doesn't rain this afternoon, I will go for a long cycle run so that I will be able to enjoy cycling up hills. How weird is that?

Ra Wild West!

Sunday 7:40 p.m.
Yesterday morning I felt a bit tired after the terrible trauma of spending Friday evening without any pollutants in my system at all. After meditating for about an hour, I lay down on the bed and did the yoga nidra. Eyes closed. Full on Star Wars light sword with ra bliss reacting to the deep breathings! Never has there been such amounts of ra bliss whilst lying flat out.

Thank God I'd been invited to what turned out to be a pharmaceutical convention on Saturday night down in the bowels of Ayrshire! It might have been billed as a birthday party for twenty one years olds, so I expected to be in rooms full of glassy eyed young women half falling out of their dresses. And I cannot say I was disappointed.

I had my carry out of eight cans of Guinness, but was met at the door by Egarious Eric from Eindhoven, and half an hour later I was getting eyestrain in this room full of charming young ladies half falling out of their dresses, so I was ushered next door where some old people were gathered.

In August I was at a party there for old people and met the boy whose brain had exploded one day, causing him to waken up the next day with a tube sticking out of his forehead. I must say he seemed to have lost a bit of weight. Still seemed undaunted. Hardly had I been chatting for two minutes before he introduced me to Benny and the Midnight Runners, a bit like pulling a fast one. But he seemed very wise on it. After his brain exploding and all, he'd decided that the secret of life was to feel contented and take every day as it comes.

Two glamourous ladies half falling out of their dresses were swaying around to a CD by some modern beat combo and the joe quickly got up to join them. So I turned to my right and this other joe starts telling me about the twelve step programme you get at the AA. He seemed very alert and had been off the sauce for two and a half years. I was telling him how well he was looking on the sobriety when he insisted on introducing me the Bolivian Marching Band he'd been partying with over the last four days and nights! Where there's a will, as they say!

I was determined not to talk to any of them about ra bliss! When I was there in August, I'd been spending a lot of time in the hut over the holidays and felt like I'd just landed from Mars, and felt a bit sad that none of these very nice if somewhat lawless people would ever get ra bliss. So I started talking to one of Shiva's sons about writing, which is something I rarely do. Anyway, he finally agreed after I'd been talking incessantly at him for about an hour and a half straight to read my new book. Most of the books I've written have had a readership of less than five people and this would take the count for this latest effort up to two, if you exclude Adolf since I doubt if he got passed the first two pages.

Got to bed at half five and was up bright as button at half nine. Spent most of the afternoon meditating in an empty house in Lanarkshire. Stood up at one point to relieve the aching legs and did the mountain pose, the first pose in hatha yoga. Full on light sword bliss with good reactions to the breath holding juju. Surely, one of these days I will be able to give up everything and follow the one step programme which is simply to succumb to ra bliss! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Ra How Not To!

Thursday 6:10 p.m.
I'm in a hiatus, the bit between having written something and wondering if you should try to write something else. In my heart of hearts, I know I should just stop, but I've known that for about ten years and I haven't stopped yet.

As I was meditating this morning, my mind was flooded with lots of instances of how not to become a rich and famous writer. On the other hand, it could be looked on as a route map towards ra bliss. But if you want to be thick, stupid, smug, fat, writing basturn, don't do any of these!

1) Don't say no when you're offerred a chance to help write the Archers. This would have led to other things. It's called hack work. A guy I know now gets £750 every time River City (a Glasgow soap) is shown even although he doesn't write it. It's called a format fee.

2) Don't write to your producer on the radio and tell him you don't want to write radio plays anymore. (I'd been having a problem with this wonderful joe and right in the middle of it, I got a phone call telling me my brother had broken his back, and I thought why get wound up with this trivial shit?)

3) Don't get bought lunch by the editorial director of one of the biggest paperback companies (who'd just published your novel) and tell him that no, you can't write him a set of similar novels at eighteen month intervals because you have a baby to look after.

4) Don't, once you've been invited to a seminar about writing for the BBC television joes, tell them that you don't really want to write for the telly; you were only there because they told you you'd get expenses, and you wanted to see who the other writers were.


5) If you get invited to meet with one of the biggest theatrical agents in London, don't show up pissed and proceed to roll joints on the office filing cabinet. (That was my best moment!)

6) Don't tell the new Artistic Director of the Traverse that no, you don't want to meet him if he doesn't want the script you've just sent him. (That was Philip Howard, who is due to leave the job next year after, what I'd call, ten superbly successful years in charge!)

You've got to laugh! Anyway, you don't want to spend your life crawling up folks' arses, do you? After having written the totally unpublishable novel once called Let's Kill Fatboy, which isn't like any other kind of novel, but might actually be a wee help to the flatheids, what should I care! We're not starving here. This is a gust from evil bourgeoisville!

There were more raspberries to eat in the allotment today. It was such a nice, sunny day that I went to the Botanics to meditate under a moulting tree in the autumnal sun. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am!

Rat Vase Breathing Again!

Tuesday 9:55 p.m.
This post won't be much use to you, Jack. The Masai Warriors should maybe bounce off elsewhere, but the aliens from outer space are welcome and should know that we earthlings are not all flatheids, at least not completely.

This blog has taken four hits in the last two days from people googling vase breathing techniques. RaBlissBlog comes up third or fourth on the first page, which is really truly pathetic since what do I know about vase breathing? Most of the stuff I know (I hate repeating stuff in this blog!) I got from reading The Bliss of Inner Fire and The Book of the Three Inspirations by Tsongkhapa, the accompanying Readings book, both the latter translations by Glenn Mullin. These are published by American buddhisty basturns who can't even be arsed to answer their emails!

There were two problems in trying to read between the lines in The Bliss of Inner Fire. At one point the boy says you have to view the navel chakra symbol (something like an upperward pointing triangle) from inside the central channel. This is a blue tube running down your spine, sort of. The other troubling point is when he says you must "penetrate" the navel symbol.

Joe, if you're trying this juju without a guru who has at least realised mahamudra, don't come greetin' to me when you go on fire, or get ill, or go right off your fung rocker!

I can't do these visualisations. I don't think you can get there without a long time on your own, but I do try to do them because who knows what the future will bring? Maybe some day. But I haven't had intructions on this. I've had empowerments, but not direct instructions.

So I think this is how it works. You go through the death process as in the books. This is after you stop breathing. You do the eight steps till you reach clear light mind, which I take to be the basis of everything.

Then you built up the intermediate stage, which is the three tubes with the four symbols in the four chakra points and, especially the red navel symbol, which is where the heat is supposed to come from.

Then you do the last stage, which is emanating as the deity in the mandala. The mandala represents everything. The important part here seems to be that the mandala should be radiant and the deity figure proud.

This is, I think, the generation stage. You offer everything to a deity who looks just like you, and bring that down through your body as a white line coming through the top of your head.

The completion stage comes next. Maybe you should wait a year before you try the next bit!

So you take a big breath and go in from the deity back to the tubes with the navel symbol, which you squeeze from the top and bottom. My guru says you don't force it. But then you let go and shoot the breath.

When you are holding the breath, you go further in and see the navel symbol from inside the central channel. So you're in blue, and as disembodied as possible, looking down on the red symbol.

You might become the red symbol here or after the breath. So you're trying at least to imagine yourself as the red symbol around about here.


It's a descending and ascending order. I think a juju master would be able to go from deity to symbol and back again according to what they were trying to do, or according to the breathing stage.

You're supposed to collect the four blisses and experience primordial awareness, which is non dualistic, and very, very nice, at some point. But I'm nowhere near there yet.

On the way back, I think you go in from the deity to the blue tube and dissolve the symbols. You end up as the blue heart symbol and dissolve that till you're back to clear light mind. Then you can reverse the death process and come up as the usual joe or josephine.

It's a way of loosening your false sense of self, I assume. Which is the name of the game.

"When we can see, straightforwardly and non-conceptually, the nature of our clear light mind, and remain totally absorbed in this nature without ever having to regress from it, we have become a buddha." The Dalai Lama. The wall. The Vajaryana is supposed to have the potential of making you a buddha in one lifetime.

All this stuff about becoming a symbol, and a deity, and viewing something from within a blue central channel is a wee bit like the quantum physics stuff I was going on about in posts last week or so. Don't you think?

That'll be tenpercent off the top, please!

Ra Scottishyness!

Sunday 1:30 p.m.
And, yea, though they were more handsome, and bigger, and more skillful, when the national anthems were over, then did we capture and beseige and ambush them at every turn, and nutted them, and kickied them, and pushied them, and finally cuffied them froggies one nil, and sent them hameward to think again! Who said miracles don't happen? Scotland 1, France 0. Just occasionally, it's great to be a Scot, so it is!

I haven't been going on about ra bliss much recently to you spam robots, Jack, because I sometimes think what's the point of talking to flatheids about ra bliss when they seem quite content to walk around oblivious to ra bliss all around them, with their heads up their backsides, like chaff in the wind, like chickens who think at every dawn the grub will be there until one day, lo!, they get their heads chopped off.

But this is RaBlissBlog and I'm here to tell you flatheids all about ra bliss even although you are too dumb to meditate. Just before I go up to the allotment, I thought I'd let you know, Jack, that this morning ra bliss was once again astonishing! The effects of the vase breathing were amazing! Astonishing and amazing, Jack! Amazements and wonderments beyond your ken! Why should I care if you're a flatheid if at the end of the day there are no flatheids, and there are no sentient beings? Anyway, until I fully realise emptiness, I will just have to remember that I am indeed one of the most fortunate of fortunate creatures! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

8:50 p.m.
A wren visited me while I was sittting meditating in the hut this afternoon. I didn't come in through the chicken wire windows as they normally do. This one came in through the door! Hello, I'm Ms Wren, she tweeted. No, but the door is tied shut with twine and there's a wee gap at the bottom. The wren came through that. Then it checked the hut out, as they do, hopping about all over the shop. This one came closer than ever to me before hopping down to the floor and leaving by the door again. What's going on here? Is it trying to pretend to watchful eyes that it's going nowhere near the hut? Are wrens becoming civilised and using doors instead of windows where possible? Nice when they visit though. Good to have a wee wild bird hopping about he place from time to time.

Ranother Friday!

Friday 5:55 p.m.
I did get drunk last night, but wakened up feeling fine and went to Bellshill anyway. If you're going to get drunk, get drunk on expensive bottled weissbier. Erdinger and Paulaner are totally recommended.

The day started with blazingly brilliant meditations here and on the train. Nothing is stopping the progress of this juju at this point, it seems. Yahoo!

On Radio 4 just now it said the catholics are getting rid of limbo. It seems this is to stop Africans changing into Moslems because Moslems say babies who die in childbirth go straight to Paradise. Unbaptised babies seem to have been sent to limbo by the catholics. I await to hear what the nazi papa says about this with some interest and amusement.

He's already said Ex Exclesium Nulla Salus is the way it is. That means there's no salvation outside the church. Or, you go to hell if you're not a tim. Limbo was invented, I thought, because the early church fathers felt a bit iffy about sending Plato to hell and made up Limbo for the righteous pagans. A lot of joes in the early church were neo-Platonists of course.

Limbo is also the name of the town in my kidsbook called Bugtown. The fact that I couldn't get that read by folk in the business far less published shows what an unfair world we live in! So it is. Poor Plato! Not his fault he wasn't a Christian since he was born about five hundred years before Christ. What a lot of codswollop these religious people spout!

We embrace our ignorance.
We don't believe in any things,
Especially thoughts!

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

11:20 p.m.
Straight and sober after eleven on Friday night. Dearie me. Makes you feel as if you're getting old. But I just found a photie of the front cover of the dirty book I got published in 1997 in Sandy Buckandyke's blog. Some things just don't go away!

Ra Get Me Out of Here!

Thusday 11:05 p.m.
I went to see my friend with the M.S. today so that her husband could do some messages. She's handling life, I think, much better than me. She was parked at the window. The room is very dull behind her, but out the window it is very green. They have a lovely garden.

The more I do this, the less I'll speak, but today I tried to tell her about the false sense of self and the second noble truth.

Suffering is caused by desire based on ignorance of your own true self.

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

I discovered from reading this book in the summer that the first turning of the wheel of the juju is .... negate the false sense of self in the joe/josephine. You don't have to do anything else. You can forget all about the outside of the joe/josephine, I think. Just do that. It's the first analytical meditation. You calm your mind and just do that. It's not easy. Finding the thing to be negated is not easy.

Tomorrow I'm supposed to go to Bellshill, but being surrounded by disablement is doing my head in, so I'll just get drunk and go to Bellshill on Saturday.

Someone who is talking to me is William James. He was resolving the problems of the sick minds in this lecture, using Tolstoy and John Bunyan. God! What a fortunate creature I am! I've never had the suicidal despairs. They must be awful. Why don't more people just kill themselves, especially calvinists and other protestants who are not allowed to sing, dance, laugh, or tell jokes.

He says St Augustine put it better than anyone. I've got a job in a school called after him. Only me and the nun know anything about him. Interestingly, William James says someone spotted a wee lie in his Confessions. I think his Confessions are the first autobiography. That can't be right. Anyway, pretty early in biographical history.

It's about the divided self. Do you feel evil when your banging your brain out? Or is there an evilness in there? He talks about lust and ra spirit. William James, one feels, wants to get us to arrive at the distant shore where you can be a saint and not have a willie, or a whatever you have if you're a babes. Like, what are we going to do with lust?

In the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid, we must celebrate lust, and being on the piss, and all that sensational stuff. Sacraments of bonking. And I love you to, babes! Nobody gets left behind!

Ra Dooms!

Wednesday 10:30 p.m.
William James in the Varieties of Religious Experience was going on about sick minds over these two lectures. Joes who had lost the zest for life and fell into the despair. Quoted Tolstoy and John Bunyan. Dearie me! What chance have you got when stricken by the melancholia? Kind of pissed me off, I must say.

I sent five chapters of the sensei and reverend's book to Euan Thorneycroft today, so I hope the book sticks this time. I also sent my new book to Bill Campbell of Mainstream Publishing. They don't publish fiction, but Bill did publish City Whitelight twenty years ago. I sent it to him because I was feeling brilliant today after getting up at five and meditating from then on. Exuberance. Then you just go with it. Even although it's really pointless. But I told him to bin it if he couldn't do anything it and maybe the bin man will take it out and read it, and get into ra bliss.

Ra bliss continues to develope. It just does. In the vajrayana you don't stay still. It's so dynamic. I know I've been blessed by people who can give you a real blessing!

I ate the last of the raspberries at the allotment this evening. The light was very clean and clear, and sharp. I did some digging. The earth is wet. There's a nip in the air, but the sun was still warm and the trees still have leaves. But you know, you just know that the winter is coming. Let's embrace what made us dour, hard edged Scottish basturns! How could we have come through hundreds of years of living in Scottish winters, living in turf covered dug outs? Living off oats mixed with salt, sometimes, and water. Anyway, we have central heating now and live in the lap of luxury, so well done all you ancestors!

Ra Flying Scotsman!

Monday 9:00 p.m.
Glided to work today on the nazi bike; thought that's about six weeks since I've been doing this and it's no bother now. On the way home, I had to put on the waterproof jacket for the first time since it was raining, but that was alright as well. Much better than getting the bus. I was almost home when I thought I saw this big pothole full of water in front of me and hit the brakes. Whee! I flew right over the top of the handlebars and the bike came clattering down on top of me. But apart from the slight graze on my right elbow, none the worse for wear. A nice person came over to inquire as to my state of health. He looked well impressed.

Karma Dorje is my buddhist name. It means indestructible.

Read the fourth lecture of The Varieties of Religious Experience this evening. He was going on about the mind-cure movement; optimism, positive thinking and such like. Getting in touch with a divinity immanent in this world. He mentioned meditation and sitting quietly in quiet rooms, a bit of solitude to help you get in touch. Right up my street!

I remember writing a short story inspired by reading this book. It was the first one I'd ever written. (I think I've only ever written three or four!) The boy in the story ends up hanging from a cliff face until he can hang there no more. When he falls he lands on a ledge just below him. My eyes kind of popped open when I read the same thing in Lecture Four. I did not knowing rip this off.

"The idea that it may be made known that I was the author is the thought of a man not yet adult." The Dharmapapa. The wall.

The story was called The Eye of A Needle. The first sentence was, I think:
"I used to be a rich man, but I have a taste for dice, and now I keep a quiet inn down close by the shore." Really like that sentence. Don't know why. It was broadcast on Radio Scotland one Sunday evening right after the God slot!

I sent three emails out last week to agents about the sensei and reverend's book. Got a positive response today from Euan Thorneycroft who now seems to be with A. M. Heath. I'll be careful in the letter I'm going to send him to tell him that the sensei doesn't really write genre books, but this could be sold on as a crime novel. I guess to be counted as a commercial crime novel you'd want a chainsaw massacre, a bit of disembowelling, or at least a bloodfest of shooty shooty in the first chapter!

I sent an email a couple of weeks ago to the Shambala Sun, asking if they knew of any agents who handled buddhisty stuff. They suggested I contact The Shambala Press, Snow Lion and Wisdom Books and ask. None of them replied to the emails. Buddhist basturns!

Ris Weird World!

Sunday 19:29 p.m.
I'm supposed to be trying to emanate as a light being, filled with ra bliss, heat and compassion, called Dorje Sempa. It would help if I knew what light was made of, don't you think?

So it's made up of photons which can be waves or particles. Has anyone ever seen a photon? Are they just inferred? As a particle, it's not supposed to have any mass? What? Are there any other things that don't have any mass? Yes! Ideas are things and they don't have mass. Ditto with thoughts. Hmmm?

I had a word with Poisonous yesterday about mobile phones. He says they emit micro-waves which are picked up by telephone masts and then ... The waves must be going out in all directions and they must be able to go through solid objects like walls since I used one in the lobby. I wonder what they come out of. Does my head in. Beep, beep, beep. Can't be coming out of a point without a circumference!

If photons and whatnot can exist in a particle/wave duality, which doesn't seem to make any sense at all, why can't we? Are you an independent individual, free standing, autonomous, etc. as all the right wing basturns insist you are. Remember the Thatcher saying there was no such thing as society? Or, do we exist in a web of interdependent connections?

I don't want to be an independent individual. They die. Oh no! I want to be a wave riding on a great big ocean of consciousness.

At the end of the day, there isn't any truth. It's just a view. I really like scepticism!!!