Ra Carthage Must Be Destroyed!

00:35 a.m.
Carthrage? Carthage? Hannibal? I once got offered a chance to go there when I was in Lybia, or Lybya, or Libya, or Tunisia. But I maybe asked the boy for the way out of town and anyway I never went to Carthage.I had an idea that the Romans might have got there first.

And Howard just pointed with his gun and said that way down Highway 61. The Inimitable Bob.

Oh, how wonderful it was to be in the theatre this evening! I don't know who wrote it, but some of the dialogue was just ten out of ten. The acting was jaw droppingly wonderful! It fitted in perfectly as a culmination of my wonderful day. But it was just brilliant. One of the times when it was just great to be witnessing something. I'm going to go again. I'd like to watch that from a different angle. I'd like to go and see that every night of it's run!

Usually, it's good, but it doesn't get to be that good that often! This is impossibly so!

Brimfull of wonderful ideas, I thought I should write a book about today! I think I might.

What's stopping you, Hotboy? Well, Jack, this is the start of the wonderful times. This the phase where you live in the heavenly zone. There will be better days than this, Jack.

Once when I was speaking to Gilliebabes in the Diggers about twenty five years ago, I told her I'd like to grow up to be a nice old man. I did not know then about ra bliss, or ra rapture, or ra ecstasy. I'm going to have so many days better than today, but today was a wonderful day. You don't have to grow old and be miserable at all! And if you want to see art, go and watch this show at the Traverse.

Ranother Saturday Night!

10:30 p.m.
I want to be straight. I want to be straight. I'm fed up taking drugs and staying out late! Reckless Eric, I think.

This is the fourth night this week without any beers. Still a fat basturn, but did the best six three minute rounds of shadow boxing since it upped the times sometime last summer, I think. There's nothing like doing training when your feeling fit. So reassuring! So revivifying! Sometimes you've got to appreciate how lucky you are to be healthy!

Two Ton Tony Galento used to stay off the beer for two nights before he fought. Remembered him tonight when I was doing the physical jerks. Ah never heard of da bum! Ah'll moida da bum whoever he is!

Ra Walkout!

Friday 6:15 p.m.
When I was working in the aluminium smelter in Fort William after my first year at university, I met an old joe called Pat Murphy. You don't have to ask someone called Pat Murphy what school he went to. Pat told me the last time he was in a chapel was when the priest told the congregration they had to back General Franco during the Spanish Civil War. (Franco was leading a revolt against a democratically elected government and was a fascist pal of Hitler).

I told Pat what did it for me was the basturn priest telling the congregation that, after all, the Pope was banning contraception, that this was a matter of conscience, but that your conscience had to be guided by the church. Wouldn't it have been great if someone had stood up and said, Go fung yourself!

So I went to see the auld maw today. Straight away she's going on about this bulletin that was handed out at the chapel, explaining Bishop Devine's attitude to voting for the Labour Party at the elections next week. The Bishop doesn't say who he's voting for, but it's not Labour because of the party's attitude to what he termed the family.

The Labour Party and the tims in the west have been hand in glove since the Labour Party started. The tims were all miners and steelworkers. I was told the Labour Party godfather in Bellshill walked out of the chapel during the sermon about how the congregation shouldn't vote Labour. Well done, Harry! Gone yourself, son!

It's like the ground just moved beneath my feet!

I met a very nice actor called John Greive who was in the first play I had broadcast, called The Marijuana Kid. He was well known, partly for acting in Para Handy. At the time I might have thought John Greive was one of these odd Scottish nationalist people (this was circa 1982) because, in the pub, he was rather adamant that there was nothing worse than a toady, and no worse toady than one who toadied to the English. (For those of you not fortunate enough to be Scottish, a toady is a sycophantic, engratiating, favour currying, little freepong!)

Ra Angry Man!

Wednesday 17:02 p.m.
I was going to look up my old diary entries to sort out a time line about meditations, empowerments, etc., for this blog, but I would have had to flick through three diaries and I soon gave up. Up till last summer I still had the money to go to the Samye Ling a lot and the diaries are a lot about being there since socially nothing much has been going on around these parts for some time.

But timelines. Jan Ist, 2003. Took refuge with the lama. Had a strange empowerment to do deity yoga just the week before this in the temple at the Samye Ling. Sunday 6th April, 2003. Had my first and still one of the strongest, if not the strongest, inner heat experience. Since then I've taken a Dorje Sempa empowerment and a 1000 armed Chenrezig empowerment from Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche. Finally, I took the Medicine Buddha empowerment on the 16th of March, 2007.

I stopped smoking tobacco (again!) at the New Year on 2002. This was very important because I first spoke to the lama about 1996 and he said I needed a guru then. I wasted the next six years because I couldn't give up tobacco (a habit I picked up again in Nepal!). There is something evil about tobacco. When you stop doing it, your meditations just go ballistic!

The entry in my diary on the day I took refuge on January 1st, 2003 starts like this: "My meditation this morning after breakfast did not have anyone getting killed, or punched in the face, or anything violent or angry at all. So every day it improves." I hope I can make some money so my daughter never needs to work in a salaried jobbie!

Ra Baby!

Monday 7:12 p.m.
If you ever have the good fortune to be the primary carer for a baby, you will notice how fast they sometimes change. Often the baby you are dealing with one month will be quite a different kettle of fish from the one the month before. All you can do is keep pace with the baby and keep your eye on the ball. Otherwise, you'd miss the amazing developments taking place.

If you're having a problem or some worry with your baby, you might ask someone with a baby just a wee bit older, and they probably won't be able to tell you, or help because they've gone through that stage, and are now dealing with a completely different set of problems. It goes so fast, you forget.

Doing this juju reminded me of what looking after a baby was like. You think you know it, but tomorrow it's different again. An hour ago ra bliss jumped the gate, made off over the paddock and disappeared over the hill once again. Maybe writing this blog is a waste of time in terms of helping anyone with this juju. In over twenty years of raving about meditating to folk I know, I don't think I've really got a single one to meditate. Just goes to show what a truly fortunate, fortunate creature I am.

Now I'll spend an hour planning my new book!

11:01 p.m.
Though I might get old or be crabbit, depressed or sick, tonight I got such bliss, Jack. Such bliss! It looks as if you only have to do one thing right in this life. And if you're not doing it, just give yourself a good slap!

Rat Vase Breath Again!

Saturday 11:15 p.m.
This is RaBlissBlog! Experiential mysticism! I don't know about anything. I don't believe in anything. I don't even believe in scepticism. I'm sceptical about scepticism. But I know what I know.

Hotboy, the Masai Warriors have hopped off the park. The creatures from Outer Space and the spam robots are the only current visitations. You're addressing only the most fortunate of fortunate creatures, Hotboy. You can say what you like!

The spam robots like ra bliss, Hotboy. The flatheids just don't get ra bliss. The flatheids are flatheids after all. Tell us about ra bliss, Hotboy.

If you were the usual sweetie eating progeny of the evil bourgeois, you will not like to be told you are a flatheid, who will never get ra bliss, or even any idea of what human beingness might be at all, because you do not meditate. I thought if I went on about ra bliss, these sweetie eating morons might start to meditate, but the flatheids are lazy and stupid which is why they are flatheids.

Just tell us about ra bliss, Hotboy. Okay, Jack, this one's just for you.

To get ra bliss you have to try.

Do I have the words? Incohate. Incoate. Unable to express ra bliss in words for flatheids ...

Ra bliss evolves. I started getting the white light and wind in my sails when I started getting up at six and meditating for over an hour before I saw anyone or went to work.

Or I got it when I started meditating three times a day, for a half hour each time, but only really got it when I started getting up early and doing the meditations then. It became established.

If you're not doing two hours a day, you're not at the races.

You may interpose with your little snide remarks now. You don't accept your ignorance. You believe in things. Especially things you think, your thoughts. You are a moron. Two hours a day isn't long. What a fool you are!

I can't describe it. Today ra bliss and ra heat made me think I might be a long way away from my comfort zone, which is how they surround me, the flatheids, the thoughts, the beliefs. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Did you get the first bliss of the four blisses, Hotboy?

No, I don't think I did, Jack. I probably wasn't even close. Was it hot, Hotboy? It was comforting and warm and delicious. The after-effects of the vase breathing moved on.

Emile Zola wrote wonderful descriptions. Even if I was Emile Zola, I could not bring you close to what it might be like to experience this level of ra bliss. And even if I could describe it to you, there is no point because as a dedicated sweetie eating fool, you wouldn't get up to do the hour and get into ra bliss.

Oh, what a fortunate, fortunate creature I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Sunday 8:42 a.m.
I've been meditating since I got up about seven. I think I've cracked it, Jack. I can really raise heat! Lots of it! And sometimes ra bliss seems more like ecstasy! What a life! Shame about the too dumb to meditate, but it's not my fault they're flatheids.

Sunday 1:22 p.m.
I have to give credit to the Buddhas in the south west. Forming some kind of contact with the folk at the Samye Ling is the best thing that ever happened to me. But a lot of good things have happened to me.

I had an inner heat experience in April 6th, 2003, I think. This was a one off really. I first started noticing effects from vase breathing when I took to my hut for ten weeks about this time in 2004. So I've been trying to get into this vase breathing juju since then. Bang on three years since. Fears of blackouts, fits, completely screwing up the energy flow in your body, going mad, etc., etc., were swallowed. For this juju is the weirdest of the weird. But the more I do it, the more confidence I get in the lama. Compared to joes like that, I don't think I've even started meditating.

They say you should do this stuff under the guidance of a qualified master i.e. someone who has at least realised emptiness. I haven't spoken to the lama for a couple of years, but to do this stuff you should regard your guru as a buddha and I reckoned I might have to speak to him, but he didn't have to speak to me. And so it has turned out.

I'm just going to keep practising. Throughout this period from 2004 , I've probably been doing 30 hours a week anyway.

To be happier I have to do several things. I've got to start living within my income. That means I have to stop spending money and pay off my overdraft, etc. Also, I have to give up any idea of getting my new book, or any other book published. I'll probably have to keep my jobbie for the foreseeable and I probably won't get to the Himalayas again, but that's all right.

If you don't meditate and think you're happy, then I'm happy for you. Baiting flatheids is the most fun I get!

Rem Hard Times!

Friday 4:46 p.m.
My auld maw was telling me she worked picking rhubarb on a farm in Mount Vernon (towards Glasgow) just before she got to leave school. She was born in 1919, so would have left school circa 1933, perhaps not the best time to look for a job. For picking rhubarb she was paid eleven shillings a week. She got a job when she left school in the Woodend Hotel in Mossend and worked there from eight in the morning till eight at night. She was paid £1 a month and food.

She said her brother got "fee-ed" out to a farm nearby. For that he was paid five shillings a week and had to live on the farm.

For those of you who didn't have any money before about 1971, five shillings is the same as 25 pence and eleven shillings is about 55 pence.

She said you had to stand in line at the farms and the farmer would pick you out or send you home with the ones he didn't want.

My auld maw thinks she'd comfortable in her old age because she's voted Labour all her life and I think she's dead right on that one. The Iraq war doesn't really concern her. She says there are no poor pensioners anymore.

There's only about fifteen daily visitors to this bloggy just now, but every couple of days folk arrive looking for vase breathing, or the vase breath. Doing the blog is worth it for that. I'll write more about vase breathing later.

Ra Home Brew!

Thursday 7:11 p.m.
Dearie me! I was well pivo-ed by the time I wrote the last post, so today I decided to give up buying expensive beer for good and went to the Edina Home Brew shop for some home brew stuff. Lo! they now sell kits for wheat beer. Munton's Wheat Beer coming in at £11:50 for 40 pints. I also got a Tom Caxton kit because, when the kid was wee, I used to make Tom Caxton kits a lot.

After cycling back from the shop, I took a walk to the Botanic Gardens to read the Medicine Buddha Teachings. I was sitting with my back to the big mansion house there, facing onto a great view of the city, with the castle back in the middle. In the Introduction to the Practice it says: "the practitioner need not refrain from meat and alcohol". I wonder if they drink home brew in Tibet!

Though it did rain a bit today, while I was crossing the football parks in Inverleith Park, I couldn't help but notice how hard and dry the ground was. So I soaked the allotment again. Must be odd to do that in April!

11:24 p.m.
It doesn't get dark now till about nine. Tonight I was well into the secondary zone by then. There's the flatheid, the zone, and now the secondary zone. New sensations and variations on old sensations tonight. You interpose a thought: Mnnn? That's new! We're well passed weird by this time, Jack. Been passed weird for some time now, Hotboy.

They said he was a bit of a loner. He used to hide away in his hut for hours at a time muttering mumbo jumbo to himself. He said he was going to emanate as a deity. On many occasions he asked to be taken to hospital. He kept talking about shooting people. Shooty shooty. Does that remind you of anyone?

Ra supporting deities!

Thursday 1:07 a.m.
The primary deity in support is the auld Maw. She does not see the faults. The littany of secondary deities is numerous. But the secondary deity is the Domestic Bliss. She has paid the bills and allowed us to arise, abide and decline without being embarrassed by the really disgusting and ugly bourgeois. How much, Lordy Lordy, do I despise and hate them!

Is that true, Hotboy? Do you hate them?

Well, Jack, this is just a bloggy, and no, I don't hate anyone.

All the useful folk in my mandala .... your mandala is everything you see in front of you,etc., ... are, of course, women!

Most of the really nice people I know are women. The domestic bliss and the kiddo must come into this. That's it! I'm going to stop speaking!

Thursday 11:51 a.m.
The slight malaise I felt yesterday disappeared as soon as I decided not to go to work today after all. Instead I meditated for a bit in the lobby this morning. Oh, what bliss! Surf's up, Jack! It certainly is!

Ra Visual Field!

Wednesday 3:24 p.m.
So I've just finished a meditation session. This is with the eyes open gazing at the wall, looking directly as a photie of the lama. I've written before about the odd visuals I've been getting while meditating. Rather quickly everything takes a bit of a milky sheen and the outlines of things tend to become highlighted with light, kind of like in a negative. I used to think this was because you had your eyes fixed on something for a while, but these days this comes on rather quickly, as I've said.

Finding any explanation for some of this stuff ... well, it would be nice to have some!

After some time meditating, the air occasionally seems to "thicken up" just a little. This seems to me like the very juniour brother of the whacking great change of visuals I got with the non-self and emptiness experience. But I don't know.

You have to accept that you're dealing with the illusory nature of reality here. Onto this illusion you are trying in deity yoga to superimpose another illusion ... that you are a deity!

Some of the visualisations seem amazingly complex and it kind of takes the heart out of you a wee bit. God, I'm never be able to do that!

On the upside, I know you can manipulate the visual field to some extent and impose something and change what you are seeing. I've done this a wee bit twice. It's like reverse acid in that instead of it changing, you are changing it.

The downside is that I only discovered this effect after some heavy duty, day after day, spells of meditating down at the Samye Ling.

It's Wednesday after work and I'm feeling a bit tired and broke. Usually, I recuperate on a Thursday by meditating for six plus hours, so on Friday I'm brand new again. Tomorrow I have to go into work again. Dearie me!

Reading about Kenchen Thrangu Rinpoche gave me a bit of a leg up, I must say! He's the tutor of the 17th Karmapa and he sounds like a very smart joe indeed. It's his book (Medicine Buddha Teachings)that I'm reading to see how to do this juju. So I'm a wee bit downhearted about the complexity of even the preliminary meditations and the boy says not to worry if you can't see them too clearly. He says you're not working with eye consciousness. It's mind stuff, so it might be the feeling that you are a deity that might count for more.

I suspect this is a sop for joes like me who can't really do it, or who have to go to the jobbie instead of meditating.

I keep trying to be happy with what I've got and just get on with it. I'm not the only joe in the world who thinks he's got better things to do than go to work! But sometimes I just want to run!

"And Howard just pointed with his gun and said that way down Highway 61". The inimitable Bob. So I'm off to the allotment for some more digging and blissing, digging and blissing!

Ra Fame!

Monday 8:45 p.m.
So I'm going passed these hoardings on George Street, which are blocking off part of the pavement, when who is suddenly hoving into view and quickly going passed but Gordon Strachan. (He is the manager of the Glasgow Celtic Football Club for those not fortunate enough to be Scottish). As he was going by, I exclaimed: Wow! Gordon Strachan! and clapped my hands. He said: Hi! and then his head disappeared behind me.

Who'd want that, eh? Any nutter can jump out at you and do anything because you're famous. Say hullo, or shoot you. Worse still! With Gordon Strachan it'll be football supporters, probably drunken Rangers fans wanting to hit him and spit on him, and revile him, and all that. Dearie me!

It's the young girls trying to tear your clothes off that the spam robots are interested in, Hotboy.

So I said to my uncle, Peter Mackenzie, that I didn't want a photie of myself on the cover of the book he was going to publish because I didn't want folk to know who I was. He said: Don't worry, Hotboy. Girls aren't going to be chasing after you and trying to tear your clothes off.

Becoming famous might have it's compensations.

Situations vacant. No. 1. Hut Manager. (see preceding posts!)

No. 2. Famous Author Stand in Person. This is a front man job for a straight ten percent off the top. You have to be available with your body since you will be the photie on the back of the book, do the readings, etc. You walk around being me, more or less.

My chum Poisonous would be very good for this. Peter Lorre from The Maltese Falcon crossed with Truman Capote. And the shrink said he was normal!

The author stand in person will have a uniform. This will be the jimmy wig, the black beard, the Groucho Marx nose and glasses.

Who said franchise? Hut franchise! Author franchise! We're bound to clean up!

22:15 p.m.
True story. Between jobs in schools ... I'm walking down Raeburn Place in the summertime. It's just so nice. Lots of traffic though and the usual doubledecker Edinburgh bus starts to edge passed. Lots of traffic lights on this street. The bus is going to go passed and stop, go passed ... for a bit anyway. I'm feeling very good as I'm walking down the road. I'm attracted to the girls battering the back windows on the top deck at the back of the bus ... a wee bit of St Trinians here maybe ... then I try not to look as it seems they're battering the windows because they recognise me from the old school. I'm trying not to smile or smirk and just get along the road. But the bus goes passed, then stops and I come up to where it's at again. I'm trying not to smile, or give myself away at all. Sometimes I look over and this is very nice this. But I try not to look or be embarrassed. Onwards and the bus stops again and I'm trying not to grin. So I start singing the Mellow Yellow song I heard Donavon do at Brickershaw. "I'm just mad about 14 year old girls and they're just mad about me .. doo waa dooo!" Memories are made of this!

Ra Cycling Weather!

Sunday 7:50 p.m.
So I'm walking through Stockbridge and noticing the buildings, pavements, buses, etc., arising, abiding and declining in mind. I struck me at the time that nothing I could see was made manifest by anybody with a university degree. They don't put up the buildings, lay the pavements, or drive the buses. Apart from those people with degrees in things like science, medicine, or whatever ... what is the point of wanting everyone to have a degree? The government says they want 50% of school leavers to go to uni.

My brother Silvest (row of forty medals on his chest, big chest!) was telling me he's been offered a chance to work in London to help build the stuff for the Olympics in 2012. He's a brickie and is 67 years old. They do not have enough brickies because we have turned them all into telephone senitisers with media studies degrees!

You'll probably end up getting told to see the shrink if you end up in one of these psuedo professional jobbies. Yesterday I was out cycling with Brian Wilson. Today it was Poisonous. We've all been to see the shrink. The shrink declared Brian Wilson sane (what a laugh!) and told Poisonous he was normal. This shrink will be getting paid eighty grand a year for this twaddle. Any fool could see that Brian Wilson is off his trolley and that Poisonous is a complete psychopath.

Yesterday I took the cyclepath to Leith and met Brian Wilson at the Shore. Dearie me. The boy's borderline schizophrenic at least. Round three corners, got lost, nearly got killed, couldn't find where we were supposed to be going, and back to the Shore for two pints for me. Today Poisonous was more productive. Take a psychopath with you every time. He shows up to collect me around three from the allotment, and he's dressed like he's just left the Afrika Corps. Mr Neatness.

Nice run to Cramond. We went into the Cramond Inn. What a wonderful pub! It's full of real ales and I bought two pints of beer for £3:64. A moral quandary. I last bought a pint of Guinness in Deacon Brodie's for £3:05, so I thought she'd only charged me for one. But, no! Pints of real ale at 4.5% for £1:82. There is a God in heaven after all!

I've decided to think of this day as the start of me writing a new book. After this, I'll write that down. The date. Then some staring and thinking.

Ra Auld Maw!

Friday 6:00 p.m.
My auld maw was asked by my sister, when my sister was near to death, if she loved her. My auld maw said that anyone could say they loved her, but she was there every day making sure she was cleaned, changed and fed.

I was thinking about my auld maw when I was reading the sensei's book yesterday. She sprung to mind because I'm actually quite well behaved for a male Hotboy. And there's a lot of us around. He said: "Compassion is not about making excuses for a person's atrocious behaviour. Forgiveness is not about turning a blind eye. A compassionate view is a view that does not blame, but does not excuse, because it does not exclude."

Oedipus Smedipus! Who cares so long as the boy loves his mother?

It might be easier to develop compassion if you're brought up in a mining community where sometimes things are a bit tough for everyone. How much harder it must be for the evil bourgeois with the big walls around their families.

They're all going to hell. You know that, don't you, Jack? I thought there wasn't any hell, Hotboy. It's only for them, Jack. Christ said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle ..., Jack, and the Nazi Papa dissolved Limbo. Where else are they going to go?

My auld maw was eighty eight today. I gave her a three CD set of Buddhist teachings and a wee purse containing half of the magical medicine from the Medicine Buddha himself. Mantra-ed for twenty four hours a day for seven days. The best presents are ones you can't buy.

I got home to a letter from the bank. I have inadvertently gone over my overdraft limit by £20 and have,it seems, incurred a penalty of £30 for this transgression. No wonder they're all going to hell!


Whilst sowing brussel sprouts last week ... I think the medicine is seeds. Tiny wee seeds. I could try germinating a few and multiply the factor of seediness by thousands by growing whatever they are. Or I could get hundreds of bags of similar seeds and put a grain of my seeds in it .... where's the Hut Manager? We'll clean up! We will! We will!

Ra Day!

Thursday 10:12 p.m.
Felt fine at 7:30 a.m. due to the no beer policy and meditated in the bedroom, living room and lobby till the back of one. By this time I'd also read the paper, stood on my head, enjoyed immensely a Tai Chi set, baked the bread and made the soup. But mainly doing the juju. I tell myself that I will give up ra beer for a year now. This is well within my scope. Did it twice, at least, before. You know it makes sense. Tired out from all the digging, cycling, etc., but most optimistic.

In the morning everything is arising.

I had two things to do and I wanted to do something in the afternoon besides meditating. So I went out and got a bus up to Princes Street to get a present for my maw's birthday ... and, lo, the world had changed! It was the summertime! Never have I seen an April day like today. How wonderful! And horrible. We know we're going to get a real spanking for this one!

I'm in Bert's Bar and drinking coke and reading the sensei's book about Zen. Then I'm in the Botanic Gardens reading the sensei's book about zen. Then I sat in the allotment (like I did with his last book last summer) and I had to put my jacket over my head the sun was so hot. And I finished his book up there. Most enjoyable.

It's really a different kind of a thing. Now that I've had a while to think about it, it was more than a little bit unusual. It's new and I think it works. You could see it as a book and how it would work and sell.

I read a book by Kurt Vonnegut about four years ago. How much I enjoyed it! Liberal (US) and funny. Amusing. I saw Kurt Vonnegut when I was in third year at Edinburgh University. Was Adam House a place? The William Robertson Building? I had no idea who he was. Nick Phillipson was the lecturer who'd brought him. He did a wee burst of saying stuff at the end. I remember a lot of what he said actually. He said don't take a percentage of the gross. Take the money up front since these film companies just disappear. I read all his books later. He was bothered about not giving up the fags because they killed his sister, or something. Great voice. Well, thanks for the books, Kurt! That's a wee bit of froth on the edge of existence I'm glad to have been a witness to!

I've had few disadvantages. I'll have to think for a long time before I can remember what disadvantages I might have had.

Are we pack animals? You have to be admired and loved in the pack if you're a dog or else your head will drop.

After meditating for seven hours today, I lost heart and went out for the beer.

Ra Time for Sowing!

Wednesday 7:25 p.m.
The main sowing and digging is just about done. So far, I've planted 206 half tatties in bore holes with fertiliser topping. Also, 750 onion sets, some turnips, brussel sprouts, and lettuce.

So I'm sitting in the hut and the floor is a cluttered, mucky mess. Last year I cleaned the floor, thinking I'd stay over there a few times over the summer. But I didn't. Maybe this year.

Last night I started reading the sensei and reverend's new book on Zen. The sensei can write and he knows his Zen so how can I fail?

The text is coming up funny here with html stuff looking primitive. Hmmm? I'll come back later!

9:50 p.m.

You hear stories of folk who meditate on their lonesome for ages having visitations from unwelcome entities. Them be monstrous. Your supposed to ask them to eat you if they want to. I suppose that's polite. Your first instinct might be to tell them to fung off.

The last time the red mist descended was about three or four years ago. Go and provoke somebody else. But before the red mist descends, I'm just a big scaredy cat. In fact, being a sensitive artist I'm even more of a scaredy cat.

So when the baddies come to the hut during the night, Hotboy, are you going to offer to let them eat you?

That might work, Jack, but I'll just try to keep a friendly and neighbourly tone in my voice. What if they poke you with sticks, Hotboy? And mock you? And revile you? Well, then, Jack, there's enough chibs in yon hut to fuel the Peasant's Revolt. It'll be Watt Tyler, ya bass! And them that dies will be the lucky ones!

So I only managed to watch The Passion till the flogging started. This doesn't look as if it's going to end well, thinks I. This boy is not going to get off, is he?

I remembered joking about this in a book I got published. This religious person was trying to explain to someone who'd never heard of Christ all about the crucifiction .. cruz ... cross thing of the all powerful one. The kid thinks the religious person is telling him a funny story, and interjects at the end that the guy on the cross takes off, cross and all, zooms over the crowds a few times, then off into the sunset. Just for a laugh.

Ra Back Tomorrow!

Monday 9:00 p.m.
An emanation of the Medicine Buddha offered to make us lunch on Sunday, so I was in Morningside, in the midst of evil bourgeois land, sitting on a bench out the back garden when I had one of the top five meditations ever. Superbo! Fabuloso! Oh, ra bliss!

I think they were getting a wee bit worried inside and the emanation came out to see if I was okay. One of these days folk will be so used to me sneaking off to do ra bliss that it won't be worth a comment!

I was in Greyfriars Kirk on Friday night to hear the plain chanting person I know. There was a choral premier by the joe called James McMillan. He's a tim composer. I had my eyes shut throughout, but doing ra bliss with these wonderful sounds in the background was a bit special. Before anyone arrived, I got there and waited in the graveyard, sitting on a flat gravestone and gazing at the wonderful bare tree, very black against a darkening cloudy grey sky. It was hard not to be aware of the history in the space around you. Of course, if you'd been a tim there around the 1640s, the only way you'd be in that place was if you were hanging from one of the trees! Dearie me. Not fair at all, Hotboy! The democrat in me is presbyterian!


I've had an especially good weekend. It all part of the wonderful existence I'm leading now that I'm trying to practice the vajrayana. Why are you a flatheid again, Jack? Because I'm the spam robot, and your audience, Hotboy. Well done then, Jack. Well done.

Rem Miracles!

Good Friday 4:50 p.m.
To get canonised by the tims you need a couple of verifiable miracles. This nun in France seems to have been cured of Parkinson's after praying to the deid Papa and a columnist in the Times was debunking this yesterday. Most adamant he was. Fair enough.

Is it possible to get a spontaneous remission from Parkinson's? No point in telling me it wasn't the deid Papa. What is the explanation then?

To be religious is to know that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. L Wittgenstein. The wall.

The world, as so understood, contradicts itself and is therefore appearance and not reality. Bradley. The wall.

Something that has intrigued me for ages is the appearance of the Virgin Mary in Egypt in the late sixties. You can get the photie here. If I was writing in the Times about this, I'd start with the headline: What the fung is that? I can accept that it's not Christ's mum since she's been dead for a while, but what is it then?

I've been to Lourdes twice. A scientific commentator went there with a BBC show a wee while ago and he went on about miracles. The example he took was of a woman who got out of her wheelchair and was cured of Multiple Sclerosis. Of course, the scientific bloke said that remission for MS did happen and this wasn't the proof of any miracle. Well, fair enough. But they've got a museum in Lourdes and they've got photies of a joe getting cured of cancer on his tongue, the before and after shots. Very impressive. I wish the scientific commentator had picked that one. Tell me what happened then?

The so-called scientific people approach this stuff with such arrogance! They think they know something about something. The do not understand that they are looking at the world with their heads jammed right up their backsides!
I'm sure the explanation for these things will be far more wonderful than are dreamt of in our philosophies!

When I was a kid, we had a three hour service to go to on Good Friday. You couldn't wait for them to get the job over with. Three hours is a long time to wait around, especially if you're nailed onto a cross.

Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path.

I've felt a wee bit moved today on several occasions. I think this is because I've been using the photie on the head on the Turin Shroud as part of the juju I do. He's the tenth in line guru. So you imagine the photie above your head and get it into a white line and bring oodles and oodles of ra bliss down through your body. This is very good indeed, especially after practising on the first nine. Jesus Christ who suffered and died for me is my guru. Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world have mercy on us....

So, if you were a Christian and wanted to meditate, but didn't like all this Eastern malarkey, I'd totally recommend something like that. Get that image in front of you and then on top of your head, the white line coming down through your body, etc. It doesn't matter that it's not Jesus Christ. Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison is a great mantra as well. It was in the best bit of the Tridentine Mass.

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

I'm going to force myself to watch Mel Gibson's snuff movie on Sunday night. The Passion Of Christ. At least the first five minutes!!

Ra Beer Monster Reduction Update!

Wednesday 8:50 p.m.
Just back from the allotment... and what fantastically brilliant weather!... and before soaking in the bath, I weighed in at eleven stone thirteen pounds! A loss of four pounds since the last weigh in and this down to eating less of my home made bread! Oh, what nutritious breid! Half of a one and a half kilo bag of wholegrain flour. Yeast, water, salt. A wee touch of sugar to get the yeast going. That's it. Surely, another case for the putative Hut Manager.

So I'll make any rich people a loaf of this super bread every day for say ... make me an offer. If Amazon can deliver next day, why not? Totally hand done, of course. And mantra-ed over, and with a grain of the cosmic, magical medicine from the Medicine Buddha in every loaf!

I'll be worth a fortune in no time!

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake bread that feeds but half man's hunger. Kahil Gibran. The wall.

I was thinking of bringing a touch of millennialism into the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid. Like, the weather was wonderful today! Very, very unusual. This global warming will be great for Scotland in the short term. And then ... one day the Gulf Stream shuts off and it's freezing cold for months and months around these parts. Everybody dies! Except, of course, for the blissheids with the yogi joe central heating systems, known as ra inner fire. And thus will end the reign of the flatheids! Of course, it'll have to wait a bit since I couldn't dry off a postage stamp at the moment! Anyway, yous have all had it if yous don't meditate, so there!

And don't think you can get into the hut with me! It's just for me and the Australian Ladies Volleyball Team and that's it!

Is it fair to frighten people for their own good? Does the Nazi Papa really believe there is a real place called Hell with the eternal damnation and all that? Or is he just trying to freak people out for their own good?

For the aliens from Outer Space who come to this bloggy and have been following the ABC of the BBB one step at the time route to being able to get out of your face on air... it is now time to move to step two!

For the spam robot who can't remember anything...Hello, Jack! The first step went like this. You sat with a straight back and said Mumbo Jumbo to yourself for as much as you could. Then, when you weren't doing that, you sometimes said to yourself: It's just a lot of old photons.

For step two you still say Mumbo Jumbo to yourself as much as your can when you're trying to meditate, but when you're walking about you should say to yourself: It all arises in mind, abides in mind, and declines in mind.

You don't have to think of the wee individual mind or the GREAT Big Mind for this. Where else can anything, or any thing arise?

Remember it's not about truth this. It's about being a bit more comfortable. So I was walking up Lothian Road today and the town looked great in the great weather. It just felt very nice that everything arose in mind ... blah, blah. Because it was the same with you, or your view of yourself. You are arising, abiding and declining, etc., along with everything else. It was a very in it together feeling. Embracing. It felt as if something had started to work. So I don't feel as if I own anything on Lothian Road. And I in the same way don't own the feelings I'm having. Arising, abiding, declining. Like thoughts. They are just there.

The lama told me to do mahamudra meditations, but I didn't know what he was talking about at the time. Now, I've forgotten what it means again. Anyway, I've been doing them more since I read the Moonlight On Mahamudra book last year down at the Samye ... in the wondeful summertime. Can't wait!

This is the fourth day without a beer again. And again. Don't you think that might have something to do with you losing the fat, Hotboy? Such admissions are heresy in front of certain women and needlessly encourages their condemnation of the innocent male passtime of sitting half pissed in front of the telly, Jack. So let us not talk of that again.

Oh, there's nothing so lonesome, lonely and queer! What a terrible place is a pub with no beer! Yon digger.

Ra Sensei!

Monday 7:50 p.m.
I've got another book to read! The sensei and reverend has written a book about Zen and he's sent it to me, which was very good of him. Last summer I spent a very pleasant few hours up in my allotment reading "When It All Turns to Dust". I really enjoyed reading that. So far I haven't been able to get a British agent for it, but I've only tried about six or seven. Another four hundred to go!

I actually had a conversation up at the allotment this evening. This young joe, who is new to allotmenteering, stopped to chat. I told him I really did it for the hut. I told him I liked sittting in the hut and if I disappeared in there for a couple hours, don't be surprised. He asked me if I wrote in there. What an odd question! Do you write in there? I said no, but I did write.

I don't seek out folk at the allotments because it might seem peculiar to the evil bourgeois that I sit in there so much. But it's no problem now! Of course, I'll say I'm a poet. Poets are weird. Also, some of them look fung weird. The sensei is a poet. Says it all.

What if they ask to see some, Hotboy? Fair enough, Jack. I'll tell them I'm a male escort. I hide in the hut so that none of the dissatisfied customers can find me!!!