Ra Springtime Will Come!

Wednesday 5:00 p.m.
From the Wobbly song book. Might be Joe Hill. "When the Springtime will come, Oh, won't we have fun. We'll get out of jail, and we'll go on the bum!" I got paid. I've decided it would be better to stop beating myself up, be a bit more relaxed, go out, and beat up other people. Or, be more engaged. Sometimes it feels as if you can get too much of this heat and ra bliss and emanating as a deity malarkey. Let's have fun and fool around!

It seems unlikely that I will become a buddha in this lifetime. Unfortunately, this is the only one I have. If you're stuck with a false sense of self, you have to accept that.

'When we can see, straightforwardly and non-conceptually, the nature of our clear light mind and remain totally absorbed in this nature without ever regressing from it, we have become a Buddha." The D.L. The wall.

8:00 p.m.
We went a walk up to the allotment though it was already beginning to be dark. Cold wind, lilac in the sky. Two motherfungin giant ducks were standing by the pond on the way back. Strange geese. Why don't the poor people eat these things? They didn't have anything like that round about where I was brought up. Why don't kids spear them and eat them at campfires? Things can't be that bad.

Ra Third Day!

Tuesday 7:00 p.m.
I watched the start of this reality show last night about the beginning of a six week Islamic retreat in Spain. There's a British asian there who believes that time is money and who seems a real chop chop bang bang, let's get rich, kind of a joe. As part of the retreat, they want folk to sit in silence for an hour. This joe cannot for the life of him think why he should spend a whole hour sitting in silence. What is the bloody point of that? he might have said.

There seemed to be quite a few devout religious folk there. Pretty rigourous, some of them. Not once did anyone mention ra bliss! No one said to the stupid flatheid that if he sat there long enough, he would surely get access to ra bliss, and would probably be able to eventually access it when he wanted to. I wonder why none of these religious people ever mention ra bliss. Is it because they do not get ra bliss? It looks as if it doesn't matter how many different kinds of funny hats you put on, or whatever ridiculous vestments you wear. That's not going to get you into ra bliss! I will continue to watch this programme because it's a good insight into Islam, and as soon as someone mentions ra bliss, I will say Hallelujah! But they're not going to, are they?

As the sole member and single representative of the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid, well, I can laugh at all that!

It's the third evening of giving everything up again. I'm just away to a first night at the Traverse.

Rat Giving Up Giving Up Again!

Saturday 3:40 p.m.
Due to having some visitors, I had to give up giving up last night, and duly succumbed as usual. There was nobody there I hadn't known for thirty years. Poisonous went yellow for a while then had to have a bit of a lie down. It was just like old times. He crashed out on my bed. Ten years ago he would have slept on the kitchen floor. How civilised we have become!

I missed Poisonous performing for the first time, a debut, at the Festival Theatre last Sunday during the Chinese celebrations for the New Year because I was throwing up at the time. He had five lines, all in Chinese. I asked if he'd based his portrayal on Obi Wan Kenobe, or whatever Alec Guinness was called in Star Wars. He was playing a monk. The boy needs an agent!

I'm here at this time on Saturday afternoon because I've decided to become a writer. I wonder what I could write about. It's a short step from here to the point when you have to ask yourself if you're going to have dwarves, and if so, how many? I wonder where these writers get their ideas from?

I've just had one! It's a piece of cake this writing business. My idea was to sell the names of the characters. If you want your name to be used for one of the characters in my new book, it'll cost you twenty quid. If you'd like any of the baddies called after your boss or whatever, that'll be another twenty quid. You'd have to write a Russian novel so that everyone has three interchangeable names. Here's the start>

When Adolphus Nannbugger Milngavieavitch raised his eyes from the ploughshare, he saw A Really Long Name come over the hill ..... That's at least £120 in the first sentence. This writing lark could turn out to be a money spinner! I'm going to be rich! Rich, I tell you! Rich!

9:05 p.m.
Some cheapskate's has been trying to take advantage of my good nature! Here's the new first sentence to my new novel.

When Adolphus Nannbugger Milngavieavitch raised his eyes from the now mutilated corpse of Albert McClonkiedick, he saw a Really Long Name come over the hill .... That's much better! A crime book! Pots of money!

The Edinburgh skyline from the seat overlooking the pond in Inverleith Park has seven or eight projecting objects, mainly steeples. There is a castle over to the left a bit. The big steeple on the cathedral in Palmerston Place is the most prominent and nearly bang in the middle. So you fix on that. My hands are resting on Kidnapped and I've got the hood up. Although I'm sitting in a half lotus, I'm trying not to draw attention to myself by pretending to be normal.

"All alone in Central Park, I was walking after dark, I must be crazy ..." Rolling Stones.

It wasn't dark at first and the sky was in various shades of grey. Between the skyline and Comely Bank Road, which is the first road after the pond and the park, there's a band of buildings facing you. They seem awful far away and the lights are out . Then it gets dark and the lights in the windows start coming on. It's very nice sitting there. It gets pretty dark. I'm starting to think about getting mugged, but this is silly since Inverleith Park is not Central Park. But it was getting dark. I became aware of someone coming off the main road out of the park and coming up behind me and a wee bit to the side. He stopped. I slowly swivelled my head and this joe says, " Sorry, sorry, I thought you were somebody else ..." and turns and runs off down the road.

If you're going to mug me, pal, you'd better not be on your own. Or have private health insurance because I hear those public wards can get a bit hairy when they turn the lights out at night. For I am not a very good buddhist.

Realising the retreating figure was none other than Albert McClonkiedickhead, the notorious penguin pervert, I took out the steak knife and started off in hot pursuit. A flashback! Already I've got a flashback! Pots of money! Pots of it!

00:30 a.m.
What a lovely weekend I've had! Of course, tomorrow I'll have to give everything up again. C'est la vie!

Ra Beer Monster!

Thursday 3:50 p.m.
Yea, though I forswore the pleasures of ra beer about January 10th, I have partaken in ra beer on about six occasions since then, and got pissed once. This is not quite the same as giving up beer for a year. And I'm still a fat basturn and still skint. However, today I've been meditating from when I got up until about just now, and sometimes it seems that I may need a little something extra in my life besides meditating, and giving up beer, and going to the jobbie. For, on a day like today, I'm still knackered from yesterday's physical jerks and do not feel like running six miles. Neither do I feel like doing any more meditating just now. What I really need is a wee hobby to fill the odd space. Maybe I should become a writer again. Maybe I should walk down to Bert's Bar clutching my free copy of Kidnapped, get quietly sozzled and seek inspiration!

6:00 p.m.
The Tao. I was chatting to the kiddo at the Samye Ling about your tao. Start with the stoics. You're like a dog being pulled by a cart. In this life. Nothing you can do about that except make it comfortable. Being comfortable in your skin. No prizes here for that one!

I could have been a footballer. I didn't care. Short sight checked in. Well done.

If there had been a boxing club in Bellshill when I was a boy, I'd have taken up boxing and been quite good at it. This would have been a disaster. Well done.

I could have done better academically, and become one of them. But not smart enough and didn't like the basturns. Well done.

I might have made pots of money from writing, but I wasn't smart enough and didn't like the basturns. Well done.

We know that it is possible to aspire to perfection. Jesus Christ was a joe. The buddha was a joe. St Teresa was a josephine. We're not excluded from this. We have to be one or the other. Is this your tao? If it was, it hardly seems likely that you'd just come back from Bert's after doing three pints of extremely nice real ale. Hmmm? Sometimes it seems one needs to find a place to be comfortable. Born to be comfortable! Born to be comfortable!

I think it's time to start another book!

11:40 p.m.
No, it's not. There are too many good books out there. So today. I had three pints and a smoke. Bad boy! Sat down and waited for the homecoming. It went into another zone! Couldn't believe it. Then, in the spirit of ecumenicism, watched the huns and had four cans of wifebeater, and more smokes. Tentatively, sat down again. Wow! What is this? Purification and accumulation?

Well, there is it. What do I know? Here come ra bliss! Here comes ra bliss!

Ranother Day!

Monday 7:40 p.m.
As far as diseases go, I'd recommend this gastric bug to anyone. One day of disease and the next you're okay! You think it's going to be upchucking for days on end, but by this afternoon I was fine. How odd!

I went out for a wee walk to check out the legs. I posted off the two kidsbooks to Mr Adrian Weston, that literary agent of great taste and perspicacity. He might like them. You never know.

I picked up a new pair of specs today from Mr Wardie of Raeburn Place, an optometrist highly recommended for his affable style and charming customer relations!

I was wondering if I was still diseased as I emptied my pockets of odds and ends into a public bin on the pavement beside the bus stop. I found this written on a piece of paper:

Colours, sounds, smells and so on are not really in the objects themselves, but are impressions produced in us by the action of material particles on our sense organs. Hmmm?

I think it's from a book for kids about consciousness. It might be from Descartes. (Bugger all do I know about philosophy!). He's into the dualism between mind and matter, with these two interacting in the pineal gland. Well, a fair poke at the problem considering when he lived. There aint have been some clever basturns!

"This material world has no reality apart from its reflection in the deliverances of our sense organs." I like that! It was on the same bit of paper. It's from a joe called Berkeley. He was into something called Idealism.

Samuel Johnson said he could refute that by kicking a stone. I love this guy Berkeley. He could be called The Matrix Berkeley. I don't see how you can possible prove that he's not right although what he says doesn't seem "sensible". Tell it's not true, bloggies! Tell me it's not just all happening inside my head!

8:10 p.m.
I do love beer and I miss it sore, Jack. Just one day at a time, Hotboy. Did you hear that basturn on the telly? We drink beer here on earth because in heaven there is no beer! That didn't help at all, Jack! Not one little bit!

Ra Fire Pig!

Sunday 2:30 p.m.
It 's the start of the Tibetan New Year. The Year of the Fire Pig. It's also the Chinese New Year. I celebrated by throwing up my breakfast about an hour ago. If it hadn't been for that I might have gone to the Festival Theatre to see my chum Poisonous appear on stage ... but he wouldn't say as what. Be there as Hong Kong Phooie, dressed in a karate suit. I do hope someone gets a photograph.

9:40 p.m.
Spent most of the day on the couch preparing for my demise. This is a rehearsal for the black spot time, complete with back to back showings of The Life of Birds, an Attenborough show, on one of the digital channels. Digital channels? Anyway, there's this lyre bird that can imitate anything, and it's doing the sound of the buzz saws chopping down the neighbourhood. Although we don't do God here on RaBlissBlog, sometimes it looks as if somebody must be taking the piss. Anyway, I hope to be fine by tomorrow morning. Or I'll go to work and start vomiting around the place to show my commitment. Probably succumb to the couch. Basturns! Basturns! Basturns!

Ra Bye Bye Samye!

Saturday 9:40 a.m.
I haven't been doing much vase breathing when I've been here. I never do. This is because most of the meditations are done in public. The eyeballs rolled up, the jaw at an odd angle, such things are probably enough for the public to be going on with.

But I did a couple of wee vase breaths before taking this break. What bliss! Oh, what bliss! When I finish this, I've got another hour before I have to get out of my room and I'll spend it in the back temple doing the deity yoga juju. Of course, I dipped into a book I've got with me last night when I was waiting for the kiddo in this cafe, and realised, as usual, that I know bugger all about deity yoga. Keep me alive for a couple of years and let's hope!

I spent all yesterday afternoon in the temple. There was a lot of gong bashing going on of course, but for some time I felt in a state of wonderful contentment and satiation. My emperor penguin mode when you don't want or need anything else. This is a wonderful feeling and another one never shared by flatheids.

I can never repay what I've been given by this place. One summer when I was here I felt truly happy for days at a stretch. I told a flatheid about this when I was out at a social event. The flatheid said: Are you not happy now? There's little point in talking to flatheids about ... well, anything. True happiness and contentment. Dearie me. You're as well talking to the wall as talking to a flatheid about that!

The last couple of times I've left here I've felt some regret. Back to the needless insecurities, anxieties, and those too dumb to meditate. I need to get to the hut, Jack! I need to get to the hut!

Thank God the auld maw gave me £100 so I could think about getting the kiddo here. She's done a lot of sketching and says she's enjoyed being here. If someone else gives me some money sometime, I'll certainly bring her down here again. What the world doesn't need is another flatheid. There's plenty of flatheids to go around!

9:55 p.m.
And how did you land on this shore, brother? The chat at the bus stop just outside the Samye Ling. Family breakdown, unemployment and disease. The same old story. A manual labourer. Now, he sometimes spends whole days meditating in the forests roundabout, or sometimes up by them there hills. I wondered if he'd got down to ra bliss, but was too polite to ask. He landscaped the gardens. After paying for everything, he had fifty quid a week to spend. He was going into Langholm to have a pint of Guinness and place a few bets on the horses, as you might on a Saturday afternoon. What a fortunate, fortunate creature he seemed to be!

Ra Samye Day Two!

Friday 10:45 a.m.
There's been a lot of unusual gong bashing activity going on at the temple over the last two days. I asked someone why there wasn't the usual programme. It's the Tibetan New Year on Sunday apparently and special gong bashings are performed for five days in advance.

It's great if you dig the ritual music! I was in there for two and a half hours this morning. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss! When I came out for a break, I found the kiddo sitting in the cold sketching the temple. I told her nobody would bother her if she sketched in the temple.

The man who set up this centre forty years ago is in the temple leading this chanting. Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche. Hmmm? I wonder what kind of mind he's got? I think he was an abbot at four. Then he comes to Scotland and we have this marvellous temple ... a real work of art so it is ... and all these buddhists like me running about the shop. Imagine going as a refugee somewhere, skint, and ending up with all the stuff he's done. You've got to take your hat off to some people!

It's a wee bit of a different trip this for me as I don't meditate all the time with the kiddo here. We had a chat in the new lounge in Johnstone House for two hours last night before going to bed. That was nice. She lives a frugal life being a skint student. I'm so glad she didn't turn out anything like me!

Now I'm filled up with reviving instant coffee, it's off to the temple for me till lunchtime.

Ra Samye Ling!

Thursday 3:30 p.m.
This is RaBlissBlog coming to you from Bliss Central, the wonderful Samye Ling here in the borders of bonnie Scotland!

The kiddo came down with me. I'm so pleased. She doesn't meditate, of course, but has a sketch pad, so she can sketch stuff when it's not raining on her, or freezing her butt off!

The first time I came to the Samye Ling was the first of May, 1988. This was the first day I had control of the kiddo after the Domestic Bliss went back to work. You could say in some way this marked the end of my life as a prospective filthy rich writer and began my life as a meditator. So what good fortune that was!

I just want the kiddo to have an interesting time here.

The journey was great! I walked up to Princes Street and from where I live, most of that is uphill. But there's not many buses at half six and walking up to Waverley Station was okay. The train takes an hour to get to Lockerbie. Closed eyes and a straight hour in ra bliss.

I went into the back temple at quarter to eleven. Someone was already sitting there. After an hour and three quarters, I'd changed my position once, but she hadn't budged. She was still sitting there when I got up to go for my lunch. How folk manage to sleep in lotus positions is beyond even my imaginings. I think the longest I've sat without moving is two hours.

I don't spend enough time at the Samye Ling, but I'm here now and I've got the kiddo with me! Yippeee!!!

Ra Emperor Penguins and Moi!

Saturday 1:55 p.m.
We're not doing individualism here. This is an anarcho buddhist collectivist bloggy. We don't want to feel separate, alienated, and would like generally to put some distance between us and ..... grief, sorrow, lamentations .... suffering in this life!

I have the same moon as the rest of the human beings. I do not have the same moon as a bat. I share my kind of consciousness with the rest of the human beings. The moon is in my mind, mainly, but when I die, it'll still be there in much the same way for the rest of the human beings.

The main difference between me and the rest of the human beings lies in what we are thinking about, in the kind of thought which is arising. If you take away the thoughts, I share with the other human beings a certain thoughtless awareness. There is a kind of consciousness or awareness there in which the thoughts seem to arise.

It is possible to see this kind of human awareness/consciousness thing as being shared .... I mean, actually see and witness this sharing .... because this kind of thing happened to me once at a party. You'd lost an individual sense of sense and joined in the self everyone else seemed to be sharing. The joes and josephines there were having their different individual thoughts, but they seemed to be joined and sharing some kind of basis.

This was a very temporary and minor example of non-self and emptiness.

I know it might be difficult for your usual flatheid to imagine what it might be like to have a wakeful state with no thoughts in it since flatheids generally live in a state of almost constant thoughts arising, most of which are misapprehended, idiotic and, fortunately, almost immediately forgotten.

Meditation is initially about mental calming that seeks to spread out the time, or enhance the gap, between thoughts.

Once about three years ago, around this time of the year, I was sitting on the island in front of the stupa at the Samye Ling. The weather was overcast and cold, and really quite thoroughly miserable. But it wasn't wet, so it was okay to sit there. With your eyes open, what a horrible prospect! So you just close your eyes and you're in ra bliss. There's light and ra bliss. Though you are sitting in the midst of the not very nice weather, you are feeling extremely pleasant. When thoughts arise, you let them go, cut them off, or transform them. You don't want the thoughts really. Bugger the thoughts!

If you were to be joined by your usual flatheid, discontent would arise almost immediately. What are we doing here, Hotboy? It's horrible here! Why don't we go and look for some sweeties somewhere?

Fortunately, I was joined not by a flatheid, but by an emperor penguin. The emperor penguin said, Hotboy, you're just like me. Come with me to the Antartic and, boy, will I show you a time!

It seems to flatheids like a cold, living hell. There is no sunshine and it never rises about zero for months and months. Sometimes you can see the stars in the sky when you're huddled with all these other emperor penguins, but quite often there's nothing to see except white-outs and darkness. So most of the time your eyes are closed.

Do you have a pineal gland? Yes. you do! So when it gets dark the way it's going to stay dark for months, your pineal gland will maybe put your body into almost hibernating condition. You are maybe not hiberating, but you're not really awake either. You're maybe in a between kind of state.

In the time between being awake and being asleep in the human beings, this is a time very similar to meditation, according to how your brain waves or whatever are manifesting. You also get a glimpse in this passage period of clear light mind, which is landing on the money as far as this juju is concerned.

I hope the emperor penguins are in some kind of meditative state. They don't move much. Organisms that don't move much seem to be fairly satisfied and content. They don't seem to need much, or they'd be moving. Emperor penguins don't seem to have much language and they probably don't have many thoughts at all during this wonderful time in their lives. Maybe the odd image of a fish floats by!

Not wishing to be separate but in some kind of union, maybe you should start with some kind of unity with the flatheids, and then move onto the emperor penguins. Then maybe try to include cats. Do cats meditate? In that dozy bit between being awake and asleep, maybe a cat and I aren't all that different there in terms of our minds and even feelings.

If you don't have thought arising, but just awareness, what can be the difference?

The flat is going to be empty except for moi all today, all tonight and all tomorrow. I'll try to be good, but I may not succeed!

Ra Birthday Boy!

Thursday 11:28 a.m.
It's my birthday today! I feel quite irrationally pleased about that. Also, it is also the birthday of RaBlissBlog! Since it is my birthday, I may celebrate tonight with a few bottles of beer! How unusual! Until then .... thanks to everyone who's landed on the bloggy and especially thanks to anyone who's read anything off the web page I set up.

The meditations started this morning about half five. After fifteen billion and fifty six years, I can now put my hand on my heart and say that I can do ra bliss and I can do ra heat! Because of this, what's left of my life is going to be just bloody wonderful! What a fortunate creature I am!

I'm just away to see my auld maw, without whom none of this would have been possible!

7:30 p.m.
Been to the pub with the kiddo. How fortunate! Asked the boy in Peckmans for the packet that says SMOKING KILLS. Second packet in five years! It's the carefree mixtures of my youth for me tonight! I shall take the kiddo to the Samye Ling next week. I feel so happy and so fortunate because one of these days I will know how to think. And what to think about! Everybody should meditate. Everybody should have access to ra bliss. But it they don't, I don't mind just doing it myself! So I'd like to finish now by singing yous all a little song ... no, I have to go and get my tea!

Ra Wonderful day!

Wednesday 3:05 p.m.
After the meditation I've just had, I know that my life has not been entirely wasted. Yea, though I have walked around with my head stuck up my backside for most of it, and, yea, I have been a bad boy time without number, today ra bliss was so fantastically extraordinary that I must have done something right! Ra bliss has jumped the gate, raced across the paddock, and disappeared to frolick among the deities in the middle distance. So let's sing the praises of ra bliss! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Heard about two people, both far younger than moi, succumbing to the black spot today, Jack. And it was a great shame and one of the endings not very nice at all. But what is worse, Jack, is that they were flatheided at the beginning, flatheided in the middle and flatheided right through the gruesomeness at the departure gate. We're not going to be like that, are we now, Jack? Well, not moi anyway, Jack. But the too dumb to meditate, flatheids like you, Jack, are just never going to get ra bliss!

What a beautiful day it is outside! You can keep your rat towns in the Mediterrannean today alright. With the crystal clear and the coldness, it is a perfect day today in chilly Jockoland! But it will not be chilly for me since I sit here writing in the full Beer Monster Reduction Vehicle, minus the bin liner. This is the day to take to the roads and do the six miler. It's probably been a year since I did that run.

I'm going out and I may be some time. If I fall down dead in Ravelston Dykes, I don't want anyone to think there was anything sad about my life. If I die today, my life will have come to an end after a period of great wonderment. At my funeral, I would like all the flatheids to be handed revolvers and invited to blow their brains out on the spot. Because they do not know anything about being a human being, or the glories to be had and enjoyed in this life. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

7:00 p.m.
Speaking to the person who does all the work at my job today, I thought maybe the two sweatshirts, tee-shirt, and two layers of wool might be enough to run in, without the bin liner. We don't want to seem odd, now do we, Jack? Anyway, I weighed in before the run at 12 stone four and finished it bang on twelve stone. Four pounds of sweat is, I think, about three plus pints.

Most enjoyable run. Just under fifty minutes for a fat boy! The area around about the junction of Craigcrook Road and Ravelston Dykes Road has a wonderful atmosphere about it sometimes. It really has. I have no idea why. The fairies must dance there in the moonlight.

10:25 p.m.
The living room was empty till quite recently. So I've been doing a lot of juju this evening. In front of me on the carpet lay two A4 diary notebooks with the Kalachakra Mandala stickers on them. Further on, there was a big calendar photie of the Karmapa. It's the real Karmapa. Some of the photies of him as a kid are photies of a very striking kid. Then I had one of him as teenager and you could just tell. Some cats got it, an' some cats aint!

Do you ever feel lonely being the only member of the Amazing Bloggy Church of the Bad Boy Blissheid, Hotboy? No, Jack. I'd like to get a lot lonelier for a bit. I think it's time to get the rowing boat out and head for the Unheard of Islands!

Rat Pineal Gland!

Tuesday 10:25 p.m.
I've only had five evenings with the beer since a month ago. Considering the last eighteen months, practically teetotal! So I got on the scales this morning .... twelve and a half stone again! What? You can't put on a half stone in a week! Shurely shum mishtake! Anyway, no beer tonight for Hotboy regardless. What fortitude!

Spent some enjoyable time just there with the pineal gland. It's right in the middle of your head. There's supposed to be chakras located near between your eyebrows and at the crown of your head, I think ..... but in the juju I'm doing you have a symbol to concentrate on right in the middle of your head. I think that's the location of your pineal gland, which it seems you're stimulating doing kundalini yoga, etc. It did strike me as odd that the Tibetans put the symbol there and not where the chakras might be conventionally placed. Is this a coincidence, Jack?

The pineal gland might be associated with something called DMT, which is a naturally occuring hallucigenic. Maybe this has something to do with the light, etc. Maybe you could forgo all this sitting around on cushions (becoming a fat basturn!) by eating the pineal glands of the dearly departed. You might have to go someplace like Liberia or Sierra Leone for that. I wonder if monkeys have pineal glands. Will there be a vegetarian option?

Ra bliss has been just outstanding today. Surf's up! Surf's up!

Ra Day One Again And Again!

Monday 22:45 p.m.
Yea, though I was indeed feeling like a crabbit, tired and torn faced basturn for most of the evening, once I was sitting with the noiseblockers on, watching the telly with my eyes closed .... well, Jack, usually it's well beyond any delight a flatheid will ever experience, but tonight it was just totally fabuloso, wobbly heat and deathless deliciousness streaming up the torso in what was indubitably, yes, another development in ra bliss! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Ra Run!

Saturday 5:22 p.m.
The run goes from here along Comely Bank and you turn up by the west end of Inverleith Park and go on up there until you hit the Ferry Road, and go right. Along there it's very nice and you get the whole Edinburgh skyline. What a brilliant day for running as well! Clear and bright and cold. You cut off the Ferry Road and head down past the east gate of the Botanicas, and you go right at Brandon Terrace. Just by here you can wimp out and head back to Stockbridge through the colonies, or go on up the big hill. Today, I went up the big hill for the first time in many months. To me this is an archetypical view of Edinburgh. The hill glides up and up, and perched at the top of it seems to be the Scott Monument, silohuetted black today against a pale blue sky. But it's probably best not to look up when you're actually doing the hill because it does seem like a long way up. I always cut out at Queen Street and head along back and down to Stockbridge that way because there's too many folk up at the George Street.

Two layers of wool, the sweatshirt, tee shirt and black plastic binliner. Weighed myself when I got back in. Twelve stone three pounds! What? You just look at a beer and you put on three pounds! It's enough to drive you to the drink, so it is!

Rat Divine Vision Thing!

Friday 9:05 p.m.
So about an hour after dark, I left the glowing embers behind me and, turning my back on the Castle, headed up to the main path through the allotments, then turned right. Straight in front of me there was a huge, beautiful moon hovering over the treetops way over at the Botanic Gardens. This was strangely coincidental since I'd been thinking about the moon a lot today.

Where is the moon? Is it just in my mind?

When I used to write plays, I did stuff like that often. Like, you're walking along pondering and running things through your mind sometimes, and sometimes just kind of absorbed in the problem. A brown study, I think it might be called.

"Like images seen in a dream; thus must we regard all things." Nagarjuna. The wall.

I'm not into anything being true. So I said to Shiva that hopefully all this buddhisty philosophy was given to us as a tool to help us ponder the makings of reality. Maybe to try and prise you from your normal way of thinking.

So Shiva said the problem with the mind only school was that other joes were standing around looking at the moon as well. And you could die and the moon would still be there, etc.

The moon did look amazing as I was coming home from the allotments. As I walked along staring over at it, I was joined by an alien from Outer Space. It was only a foot tall with two heads and five eyes in each head, and it's heart beat went at 5,000 beats a minute, and it lived for 100,000 years or thereabouts.

I asked the alien from Outer Space what it thought of the moon.

Because of the severity of the toilet training on Planet Zoggie, from whence the alien came, the alien had a fantastic sense of smell and said the moon smelt a bit cheesy, but it didn't like the purple stripes and the red dots, which is how the moon would look to you if you'd two heads with five eyes in each head, and came from Planet Zoggie.

So you have to admit, Jack, that we have the moon that the human beings have. We have evolved the sensory and mental faculties to have that kind of moon. So if I drop dead, the same moon will still be there for the human beings. That doesn't mean to say that it isn't just in your mind. You just expand the mind a bit to take in all the human beings.

This is a way to make heavens exist.

But do we still have a moon, Hotboy?

I guess so, Jack.

Is it just in our minds, Hotboy?

Buggered if I know, Jack. I guess there's something out there, but it's really hard to say what it is. Maybe you can only deal with the way things appear to be.

But we know a lot about the moon, don't we? It's made of cheese and the first human being on the moon was a scotsman called Neil Armstrong. (Well, he has to be Scottish with a name like that! He's not a Cherokee, is he?)

Gopi Krishna saw the moon in a completely different way from the way I see it because he had divine vision. Everything looked a bit heavenly to old Gopi perhaps. It's got to be a vision thing. You do something and you've changed the way things appear to be. It would be nice to have a shot of that even if it didn't last for long.

Bugger this for a Saturday night! I think it might just be time to fall off the wagon again and change how things appear to be. I'll give up again on my birthday. I'm going to be 15 billion and 56 years old next week.

Ra Tims and I

Thursday 5:45 p.m.
They should have a breathalyser attached to these bloody computers. Anyway, my meditations didn't start today till eleven due to ... well, guess! I meditated all afternoon. As soon as it grew darker, other dimensions in the vase breathing switched on. Meditations are supposed to be better at dawn and dusk due to the equalisation of the air going up each nostril. At other times one nostril or the other predominates. Why should that be?

I might post about being brought up a tim later.

10:30 p.m.
I had an interesting chat with Shiva yesterday about emptiness and the mind only schools of philosophy. You have to use your brains in buddhism. It's very open to reason. If you don't agree with the Buddha, that's okay as well. In catholicism you get told to believe things. I got told I'd go to hell if I missed mass on a Sunday, any Sunday. Fancy telling kids crap like that! I was going to post about being brought up a tim, but I forgot I'd done that in The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, so I won't.

There's a lot more in the after effects of the vase breath today, Jack. On an evening like this evening, it's so wonderful. Ra bliss is superblissy in the evenings. And, of course, you have a connection between the breath and ra bliss, so you take a big lungful of air, shoot the breath, and wobbling wobbly up the body goes ra wonderful bliss! Shame about you being a flatheid, Jack. It really is.

Do you think the nun got ra bliss, Hotboy?
The nun knew about ra bliss, Jack, and translated everything I said into a tim context, but, no, Jack, I do not think she got ra bliss.
That woman must have said a lot of prayers, Hotboy.
I know, Jack. That's what nuns do a lot of. Praying.
You must think you're a very fortunate creature then, Hotboy.
I am indeed, Jack, one of the most fortunate of fortunate creatures.
But why didn't she get ra bliss in spite of all that praying?
I don't know, Jack. I don't even know what ra bliss is. Maybe the praying was going outwards when it should have been going inwards.
How did you get ra bliss, Hotboy?
I trained my mind, Jack. I must have trained my mind. If I can train my mind to go to ra bliss, anybody can!

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