Friday 9:51 p.m.
Around Christmas time in 2002, I went down to the
Samye Ling hoping to take refuge and get an empowerment to do deity yoga. The temple there looks at its best when it's dark and wintery outside; all browns and goldens, dim reds and yellows. It was my first day there and the lama was giving a talk to all the folk who'd showed up to spend Christmas away from the InSanity Clause. They run a beginners course then and the temple was full of folk, most of whom might be beginners.
Previous to this, I'd sent the office a letter telling them about reading The Bliss Of Inner Fire and how I wanted a guru and an empowerment to do the great vajrayana. So I'm sitting there in the temple when the lama .... the lama has an informal speaking style. He just talks. He often looks amused. Anyway, I'm listening to the lama when he suddenly says: This is an empowerment to do deity yoga. I thought: What? So he says this is an empowerment to do deity yoga and I can't believe it. I look around at the folk there and ask myself if they're hearing this. If they are, it won't make much odds to them because most of them won't have an idea of what deity yoga is. So why is he saying this? Then I'm locked on him as he explains about this white globe of light (He pretends to hold this up as if it was above his shoulder) and the different coloured rays going out of it and into your body.
I was amazed at this because I thought it was just for me. And I couldn't really believe that.
I said in an earlier post that I wasn't empowered to do deity yoga with the Medicine Buddha, but then I remembered that occasion. In fact, I think that was an empowerment to do the juju with any deity going; a general empowerment.
All the "real" empowerments I got from his big brother. I asked the lama if he could give me something which would be like a seed since my family circumstances precluded any monky business or any long stays in caves. So he said I need a Dorje Sempa empowerment. I did feel pleased. This is an empowerment maybe involving a commitment to do 100, 000 prostrations and 100,000 recitations of the 100 syllable mantra. Of course, I have done none of this.
I thought that was a real guru thing. Like, I asked the lama for something and he gave me something.
"The Way of the White Clouds" is what you want to read if you're interested in getting zapped during empowerments. It's a climax to a lot of hard work on your mind.
Well, we're not anywhere near there yet!
The Royal College of Physicians, it might be called. 9, Queen St. Strange to walk along there. It's right beside Radio Scotland. Once, I had my feng shui. I had about six scripts produced there and it's only a quarter of an hour's walk away.
It has a beautiful, beautiful main hall, this Physicians place. It must be one of these Playfair jobs, one of these amazing Edinburgh buildings you're never in. Greek columns, oil paintings, brilliantly ornate ceiling. I have no excuse for never having been there before. It is a beautiful spot to sit in. This is where the boy who some may regard as the emanation of the Medicine Buddha, Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche is going to give this empowerment. How did someone have the feng shui to put this together? I mean, this is Edinburgh and this is a medical town. Surgeon's Hall is fabulous as well.
Though it wasn't that full, the most beautiful woman in this big, big room asked if she could sit beside me. My eyes were closed and I'm in the half lotus (I do sit like that if I possibly can!) and usually folk stay clear if you do that, but I moved aside and she sat down.
A springtime story!
She was really sweet! She had four silken scarves. She sat with her left hand in her right palm, and she was there for the empowerment. She asked if she could sit down and she said excuse me twice and I grunted maybe once and a half as I let her get by. I could have gobbled her up in one mouthful. Let the empowerment begin!
We were there to enhance our karmic bonds, Jack.
Dream on, Hotboy!
The Medicine Buddha is represented, as usually happens with buddhas, by a postcard. But it's the best postcard because the Medicine Buddha is the same colour as lapis lazuli, a kind of gorgeous blue. And the postcard is kind of psychodelic and that helps since the visual field hits unusualness these days in seconds flat.
But what a wonderful thing to be involved in and how fantastic that it happened at all. Of course, I was blissed out of my face throughout really. The amazing surroundings and the weird juju that was being enacted with great good humour, I must say, from the rinpoche, made the whole thing just a fabulous way to spend a couple of hours.
I got a wee plastic bag of cosmic medicine. The Doc says it has been matra-ed over for seven days at twenty four hours a day. It's in grains. It's grains of something. If you're starving, one grain can appease your hunger for a day. Total hut management failure here of course. I've got the juju grains from the emanation of the Medicine Buddha here. How much a grain? When you're dying and have to humiliate yourself on the cross of self to save yourself, you can ask me for a grain then. You're not getting any.
I might give it to my auld maw. Saw her today. She didn't like the Bishop of Motherwell saying he wasn't voting Labour. No respect for the clergy. Never did have really. She'd appreciate the magical qualities though.