Sweet Thursday!

Thursday 11:00 p.m.
                  "Similarly, the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta (D 16), too, records how the Buddha, after declaring that even he, as an awakened being, has to pass away, admonishes us through Ānanda:
Therefore, nanda, you should live as islands unto yourselves,15 being your own refuge, with no one else as your refuge, with the Dharma as an island,16 with the Dharma as your refuge, with
no other refuge."
            This is from an essay by Piya Tan. You can get it on Wikipedia at the bottom of the entry under his name. It's about bad gurus and bad religious friendships. The section on Chogyam Trungpa is riveting.
            I keep coming across stuff about the Trungpa guy. Drinking himself to death and behaving in the worst possible way ... Lama Yeshe says in a CD I have that his students loved him because he would let them drink and smoke (and hump each other!!)(and give each other diseases!!), but when he died, he was able to be in samahdi for the whatever number of days. This is the between life and death scene somehow where you don't develop rigor mortis.
            I'd like to know how that works!! Maybe it's a great inadvertent teaching... don't crawl up anyone's backside just because they can do the juju. Or, you don't have to be in the slightest bit holy to train your mind though I should think restraint must be a huge, huge help at least in the preliminary stages.
            Someday a great buddhist novelist should write a novel about that guy, or based on that story. Unfortunately, it's not for such as me. I don't have that kind of talent!!
            The first meditation today shows progress. I'm doing a bit with the symbols and chakras, but not much. As long as I don't fung up completely, I think my mind is moving slowly (because I am not holy or restrained in my habits!!) towards samadhi. Of course, I don't know what samadhi is. But my mind is going  somewhere very nice indeed.
            The sun is shining. It is a beautiful day. Many times when I was writing during my holidays, I used to watch the beautiful day from where I was typing and have to type on. This morning the curtains are closed in my room. But it's worth it. it really is!

Butterflies!

The butterfly effect is a metaphor that encapsulates the concept of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory; namely that small differences in the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system.
          I have to put down my problems in the jobbiedom to nicotine. This is a condition or a circumstance, or just something affecting. Today, I decided to deal with the poisonous dwarf/ angel by saying as little as possible and going away to another station, leaving her to man/woman her station until I could go home. It would take twenty minutes. I'm at my station and she's at her station. She comes over to my station so I have to converse. I try not to be nasty to the back stabbing bitch basturn currant and autistic brain damaged fungup, and I probably feel easier with this than she does. Even although I don't want this engagement. So I tell her a funny story and then can go home. With no baggage. With no howling banshees telling me that I hate it all and would like to kill them all and such like. 

          You can get a hot towel from the rail in the morning because the Domestic Bliss has switched on the central heating. Now that the colours are being sucked out of the world and it will soon be all black and white and grey, the mobile phone camera might be able to work better. Once the trees have lost their leaves, it'll be worth taking photies again.
           Wouldn't it be nice to snuggle down under the duvets in the winter with someone hot, and loving and caring? Well, we were there once, Jack! What would life be like if we'd come to this stage and were unable to access the bliss. It's Krapp's Last Tape. A dead rat! Oh, what company that would be. So, the idiot journalist was interviewing Samuel Beckett in gay Paree and he asked him if he still played the piano, and Sam the Man showed him his arthritic hands and said maybe not.
           They cannot take the bliss away from me now, can they, Jack? Maybe they can, Hotboy. Maybe you have to think in a certain kind of way to get into the bliss, and maybe when you are old, you will not be able to think like that. 
           I  do not think this is true. The bliss might be variable. It might not pay your rent. But the bliss is something I have found, or something that has found me. It's mine. I know what it is. 
           Are you going to crash and burn, Hotboy? I hope so, Jack! Once more into the breach, dear friends!

Dzong!

Sunday 9:50 p.m.
                          The Domestic Bliss and the kiddo and I went up to Walker Street for the opening of the new centre this afternoon. So I saw Lama Yeshe and said hullo to Teresa. The kiddo and the Domestic Bliss did very well to sit through a puja after the lama gave a wee talk, so we left right after that (that's when I took the photies) and didn't wait for the refreshments and chit chat. I was glad not to have to talk to anyone. Teresa knew I was going to take her photie and she's got on this most beautiful giant smile, but you can't see it because it's too dark.
                          The first photie was put in again (it's of Musselburgh beach) because I like it so much. I think it's the wee figures on the shoreline.The two photies of the sky after that were taken last night when we got off the bus on the North Bridge to go to the High Street and the Netherbow theatre.
                          At the very last minute, a book deal a friend of mine was involved in collapsed last week. It doesn't seem to matter what anybody says to you. You have to see the money. Talk's cheap. I contacted Allan Guthrie, a writer and agent, to tell him about my friend's book deal going belly up. He says the book publishing game is in dire straits at the moment. Books which would have sold 10,000 a couple of years ago are barely making four figures these days.
                           The cold winds of realism shake the expectations and hopes. Right now, I don't imagine I will get anything published again, but that's okay. I'm preparing myself for going back full time if the opportunity arises. I was thinking the other day that I probably had more money when I was a student since I didn't have any debts. I'm used to being skint, but a wee bit of me wants to spend a couple of weeks staying in Kopan monastery in Kathmandu and I can't do that with no money!
                            I've completed the first thousand prostrations. Only ninety nine thousand to go!
                            My meditations continue to develop, but this is very hard to put this into words. There's just a bit more bliss, power, light and heat.
                            I'll be going to bed sober and straight tonight. I'd like to give up all my bad habits as usual, but I get paid tomorrow and .... If I gave up the bad habits, I might have time to start writing again. I do miss it sometimes.
                        

The George Gunn

Sunday 00:15 a.m.
                            We went to the Netherbow tonight, the Domestic Bliss, Poisonous and moi, to see George Gunn having a book launch for two plays.
                             I met George in the early 1980s when he and I were members of the Playwright's Workshop. Now, that I come to think of it, I don't think you could be a member of the Playwright's Workshop. Dr Bob McAuley and George Byatt seemed to do the organising for it when I started to go there after I had a play produced on the radio, and George told me he was an anarcho-syndicalist. George was one of my favourite people. No, I think I was a member of the Playwright's Workshop since I went along to the play readings there for several years. Being organised by the anarcho-syndicalist, it was a wonderful organisation. I used to get the plays I was trying to write for the radio read there, which was invaluable. They would give public readings of anything you handed in. This was a wonderful facility and I think they were the best of folk really.
                             George Byatt "directed" a version of Busted for me at the Playwright's Workshop. I met Dr Bob whilst having a beer in what was called The Shakespeare before the reading and he had on his hippy tie. George had two women play the policemen. Victoria Hardcastle and Fiona Knowles. It must have been one of my best nights ever. It was the first time I ever had anything done in public. Really wonderful people.
                              George Byatt was a bit of a mentor for George Gunn, and just a fantastic guy. He passed away about ten years ago, George Gunn told me last night. George Gunn has been organising The Grey Coast Theatre Company for the past eighteen years. Eighteen years!! He's helped develop acting/ directing etc talent from Caithness for all this time and this is a truly heroic endeavour. I take my hat off to that.
                              There were some other folk I knew there. Gerda Stevenson played Tibetan singing bowls and sang a song with Gerry Mulgrew playing the guitar, whom I don't know personally. Gerda Stevenson acted  in the second play I had on the radio, called Clocking Out, and is probably the most talented, clever person I've ever met. She had a gut wrenching, heart breaking poem in the Scotsman some time ago about a still birth. I think the Domestic Bliss kept it. She really is a brilliant actress. In fact, she's from a totally brilliant family, and if you're reading this sometime you've googled yourself, Gerda, I'd like to marry you when the Domestic Bliss is dead, and I will have hundreds of your children. Tonight she only played the singing bowls, sang a song and read out a brilliant poem about George Gunn. She was only warming up. That wummin is a star!
                               I've only spoken to her a couple of times, once when she was in this play what I wrote. She said she didn't know anything about drugs and asked me what her character should sound like in various scenes. I said, she's speeding in that one so be fast and a wee bit nervous. She's stoned in that one,  so be slow and drawl a little. Then you're listening to it through the big speakers in the radio place and she is immediately bang on the money. Women are much better actors than men. They have more variety.
                               I'm a bit shy with people and I didn't get a chance to speak to her tonight. But I did speak to George Gunn. And I did speak to Kevin Williamson. I met Kevin through the sensei and reverend and he was the boy who set up Rebel Inc.
                               Then I spoke to another person!! I spoke to David Campbell. David gave me four hundred pounds twice when he was making wee plays for the Educational Broadcasting unit of the BBC and David is a one off. He stays in the flat in Dundas Street with the original slate flagstones in the lobby. One of my wee plays was the last thing he produced for the BBC unit. They'd brought in a rationaliser who didn't like the producers sitting around talking and drinking coffee and having thoughts. David objected to this idea that he wasn't allowed to sit and drink coffee and hang out and have thoughts, so the boy got rid of him. So the beginning of the last playet he produced has this schoolgirl vomiting at the start. It goes on and on. He spent ages on the vomiting. The actors were worried that there would be no time left on the schedule for the play. Then there's the announcement: Produced by the Educational Unit of BBC Scotland. What a clever guy as well. I told him how shy I was. He said I should come and visit him and I think I will.
                                So, I spoke to three people tonight and I did not run away. There were a couple of others I should have spoken to, but I didn't. But three in one night is bloody good for moi!
                                 And it was so nice that folk were there for George Gunn. He deserved everything nice that folk said about him. He told me what he was really pleased about was that he'd brought some actors/ writers/ directors, etc. through behind him. And that is wonderful!
                                 George told me once that the Scottish Arts Council would pay money for writers to go into schools. The schools were supposed to pay half and the SAC pay half. George said he'd settle for the £30 from the schools. The dole in those days was about £40 so £30 was worth having. So I got George to come to the school where I worked several times and also got some other folk to come, just for half the money they should have had. Then I got the sensei and reverend to come every Friday for ages and ages to this other school I worked at, and then they changed the system.
                                   George showed up at the old Traverse once pissed out of his face. He'd been at a art thing where there was free plonko collapso and he told me later that all he could remember was up to the bit where he left there and hit the cold air outside. So he's sitting in the banked seats of the old Traverse between me and the Domestic Bliss. There's a play reading going on quite a bit far below us. George at one point starts to keel over, like he's going to tumble down these banked seats and end up in the acting space. I remember trying not to pay any attention, and perhaps thinking: Fung you, you drunken basturn. But it would have been difficult for the actors to have continued with anyone lying flat out on the acting space, and I just waited and waited till George hit the tipping point, the bit where the situation was irretrievable, and I caught him by the back of his jacket and pulled him back.
                                   Should I have intervened, Jack? Should I have just let him tumble down those wonderfully banked seats which were like those in the Greek amphitheatres and splodge onto the stage? It wouldn't have mattered to George, I'll tell you that, Hotboy. Due to the tons of physical jerks I've performed in my life, my timing is perfect, by the way. It was the tipping point I caught him at.
                                     He is a very nice man. That is why so many folk showed up this evening to be there for him. At the end of the day, what can you say?
                                     What can you say about Vincent Van Gogh? Except he liked colour and he let it show!

The Rumble in the Jungle!

Late!
       I  was with my chums and we had a caravanette and I think we were in Paris then when I saw the headline which said that Ali had won the Rumble in the Jungle. I've just watched it on youtube.
       So we all thought Ali might be dead at the end of the fight. Ali was thirty two years old and that was far too old then. George Foreman had already done the terrible dance of brain damage with Smokin Joe. He should have been given more credit.
       George Foreman hadn't fought more than two rounds for several years. Most folk who come to this bloggy have never done any physical jerks at all. They have not done the exhaustions. When the rounds go three, four, five, six ... if you haven't ever been there, you can't do it. Not when the boxing master is telling you you can't.
        I never saw the fight like that before. George Foreman was funged from round three. However, the body punches Ali took thereafter ... dearie me! On watching it again, I can't think why anyone was so surprised at the time. I'll have to watch it again.
        Actually, I started watching the Thrilla in Manila.
        Everything was better in those days. It was. Smokin Joe is just brilliant, so he is! You can see that he stayed in the gym.
        With the Vietnam War and such like, the satellites starting up and the teevee going eventually colour, what days they were. Why is everything like that crap now?
      

Non Verbals

Thursday  9:30 p.m.
                             At first, I was a bit intimidated by the thought of going to see our friend with the MS because I'm not expecting her to say much back. A few words in the course of the hour or so. Facial gestures. Smiles and grimaces. But I know what she's like. I know her quite a bit better than I did a couple of years ago, before she went into this respite care routine because her husband has his difficulties handling the situation, and who wouldn't? But he's still there and so is she. I rabbit at her for an hour or so. I tell her about what's going on with me and mine. She's sometimes quite amused. She's better value than paying $100 an hour to some therapist. I admire her as well. Nobody could put up with what she's putting up with as well as she does. MS killed my sister so I have some understanding of this. What a trooper!! I've just got to relax more. She can take the silences better than I can.
                           Today, the channels and symbols made a comeback. This might be a good thing and it might be a bad thing. I saw the Ringu Tulku speaking once and he said that sometimes people ask him what practise they should be doing. He said he didn't know what practise they should be doing, but he didn't say that. (Much laughter from the audience) He said he asked them what practise they understood best, and then he told them they should be doing that. This has stuck in my head for a good reason. The Ringu Tulku is very big in the juju. He said even if you became enlightened, you still had to deal with experience. That's interesting.
                           Anyway, the Samye Ling didn't like the Bliss of Inner Fire being published. They are most kind and don't want bad things to happen to folk. Bad things would occur if hundreds of folk just read this book and then went out and did this juju. There would be crashing and burning all over the shop.
                            The acid king who went down as a consequence of Operation Julie wanted to have a statement read out to the jury which his lawyers advised against. The boy said he wanted to change the consciousness of western youth. If a lot of people take acid, a lot of people will have a horrible time. There will be a lot of casualties. I had some bad times taking acid, but not any really bad times. Of course, I did not take all that much acid. But some folk who didn't take any more ended up in Ward 3.
                              That's a check your age reference! Ward 3 was the poisoned ward in the old Royal Infirmary.
                             Be careful. If you can't be good, be careful. I am not going to crash and burn. I am not going to get a Gopi Krishna number. This vase breathing and symbols and channels stuff fits me like a glove. If I do crash and burn, fair enough. I'm nearly sixty. Who cares?
                              Once  when  I got evicted from a flat, I walked with my suitcase to the end of the Meadows and got on a bus to take me half way along. I was between things. I'd been staying in a flat with three girls. When I got to the succour of a flat with my friends in it, I was trying to tell one of them what a fung up my life had become, and the joe kept saying that I'd just been phoned up (I'd given their phone number in the advert I put in the paper) by this guy who was offering me another flat (to get evicted from later).
                              My life has been a procession of this stuff. I'm  not going to crash and burn. I'm acute. I will be forewarned. Like a drug dealer I used to know, I'll stop just at the right time. A little hint and cease. So it's set your controls for the heart of the sun! What bliss I had today!! What bliss!
                               Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!

Just after the jobbiness

Wednesday 9:20 p.m.
                   The josephine, who has been giving me grief at the jobbie, refused a truce today and will have to die. Offted by the Hotboy! Once she seemed like an angel, someone who had come from heaven to save me from the rigours of full-time jobbiedom, but she has metamorphosed into a poisonous dwarf, back-stabbing bitch, basturn!
                   Is it your own fault, Hotboy? Of course, it is, Jack. We are the authors of our own misfortune. I'll have to remember that when I offt her. Anyway, I've tried to be nice and that hasn't worked. Here comes the motherfunger!
                    Sometimes one has to wonder who people think you are. Or, even what you look like. I shaved off most of a five week beard last week and the three other folk who live here didn't notice. I mean, what are they looking at?
                    When folk heard once that I'd done some boxing, they didn't believe it. How could such a nice, handsome, well educated chap have ever done something like that?
                    Once about five years ago, when I was about fifty five or so, I felt threatened by three big boys. Two of them were well bigger than me and the other was just the same, but I'd spent four year in a school sparring with such young men and they can't fight. Not unless you teach them how to. Just being horrible teenage thugs. The false sense of self that arose upset even me. I told them to leave. I got a smirk and worse. If you don't leave just now,I said, I will break your funging jaw, and then I will break your funging legs, and then you won't be able to even crawl out of funging here!
                    I meant it as well. Awful stuff. The adrenalin poisons your thoughts for hours. An upset. But the point is I thought when they were threatening me that you wouldn't be doing this if you knew who I was.
                    And I feel sorry in a way for the jobbie share josephine. Being an autistic funger, she just doesn't get it. I've always been nice and yielding and passive in my dealings with her because I know she's a nut job.
                    You should pray for them, Hotboy. You should do tonglen for these sad basturns. I'm sorry, God, but I'm far too smart for these people! I really am. I need to go up a league to get into a dispute.
                    Anyway, there is no jobbie till Monday. Hurrah!
                  
                

Empty flat!

Tuesday 8:55 p.m.
                             The flat is empty till Saturday. How wonderful!
                              I noted today that I find the world more beautiful these days. Much more so than, say, ten years ago. I don't know why this is really. It might have been getting better spectacles.
                              The meditations around this time of night, about nine, are the best of meditations, for me anyway. Usually, there's folk around and you have to try to keep some kind of socialisation going, but when they've all gone away for a while ...
                              I had a good look at the reply I got from Teresa to the email I sent her about my practise. I've just got to watch out and not take any risks. I'd rather be a powder keg than a damp squib.
                              Hotboy, that is your false sense of self talking! I know that, Jack. You can spot it sometimes. I think I'll just have to stick with gaining enlightenment for all sentient beings even although there are no sentient beings. Anyway, I'm back to heading into the bliss. I had a problem with someone recently and bad thoughts, and nasty thoughts, and evil thoughts were arising, but last night the bliss just blew them away, and the solution appeared. It wasn't a thing, but a feeling.
                              I'll go back to the lobby.
                            

Bottie Day!

Monday 7:00 p.m.
                            It was a beautiful day today! It was a bank holiday. Lovely weather. Usually,  after the Festival is over, you expect the worst. Anyway, I took the photies of the mixed flowers and sweet peas in the allotment.
                            The Domestic Bliss and the kiddo are going to be abroad from tomorrow till Saturday. I'll be home alone, so I will. Back to work tomorrow. Dearie me!

The Object to be Negated in the Object!

Monday 12:30 p.m.
                              Being unable to locate the object to be negated in the self is a bummer. I know I haven't lost my false sense of self, so it's in there somewhere. It's a bit tricky trying to negate something you can't quite put your finger on.
                              Sometimes you might be sitting in tons of bliss and not thinking very much at all. Is the thing doing the observing of this the false sense of self? I don't think it can be. When you're not thinking very much and just kind of observing the bliss, there's not much mental activity really, a wee bit like deep sleep, and there's no false sense of self there.
                              Say you are sitting in the bliss though and a little thought appears, such as, "I will fung murder that basturn!" This might be a thought that occurs once every twenty thoughts or so when you are having problems with someone at your jobbie, say. An intrusive thought.
                              There is a lot of  (false sense of) self in that thought!! It's on its back legs and getting its dooks up. But how do you not have that thought? Once you're thinking it, you're thinking it already and you've already missed the boat! If you were very, very mentally calm, of course, you might be able to see that thought coming, but you're only ever going to be that calm in a retreat situation, at least as far as I'm concerned.
                               Sometimes I think I'm never going to get this buddhisty business to work. The Theravadins don't think you can become a buddha in this age and, as far as I'm concerned, they seem to be dead right. The Theravadins don't go much further than dealing with this phenomenal "I" thing, and you can see why.
                               It looks to me that massive amounts of mental purification is required here!
                               Of course, once you've sorted out your false sense of self in yourself, you can look outside at the world around you. Nothing is permanent; everything changes; there is no inherent, unchanging essence in anything. Though it doesn't look like that, it's obviously so. So I don't really have to problem with the object to be negated in the object ... until I really start to think about it.
                                After that, you're supposed to consider mind. It's supposed to be like space in that it allows everything to appear in it. It's supposed to have some kind of awareness, I think. There's another characteristic which I can't remember just now. Anyway, you can't find mind. It's a bit like trying to point to something that happened before the Big Bang, before there was any time or space or anything at all.
                                 You are supposed to keep all this insight stuff up until you realise that there are no sentient beings. What? Well, I think its talking about ultimate and not conventional reality, but if there are no sentient beings why am I trying to become enlightened for the sake of sentient beings, and what do all these flatheids think they're playing at?
                                 I don't think I've got enough smarts to deal with this insight stuff! I know that some folk are supposed to become enlightened in a flash, but I think  I'll have to settle for a gradual improvement in how I think my thoughts.
                                  I had a dream once where the Dalai Lama told me I'd gain liberation through samadhi. Of course, it was only a dream and these are not very reliable, are they? Still.
                                  If the flatheids were having a good time, I might try to pack all this stuff in. Unfortunately, the flatheids are completely funged!

The Object to be Negated!

Monday 12:25 a.m.
                             The first thing you've got to do is find the object to be negated. This is the "I" thing. So that should be easy. You should be able to isolate that. And then dissolve it. And then reside in the emptiness of whatever, and not lurch into nothingness and nihilism.
                              So the object to be negated.
                              The "I" of "I will walk down the road" is not what we are talking about here. That's maybe a language designation, or whatever. You can talk about your "ego", but this pre-dates Freud. They say that when you get angry, you can see it belching out there, or when you get scared. Is it a feeling of separateness? Whatever it is, it has to be negated.
                              I know what it's like to get angry, and sometimes I know what it's like to be in the baboon colony, and to have  to display myself in my wonderfulness to get some status acceptance from these lesser beings.
                              You're asleep and not dreaming. So that's cool for everyone, is it? There's no self there at all. Nothing spikey, no pressure on the otherwise, fung all. Apart from that, there is the mind and it is like space so that mental objects arise and abide and decline.
                               I couldn't find it, this false sense of self. I'm not trying to be funny here. I know that nobody meditates. But I was trying. So I was upset because I always get stuck at the first bit, like, is it in the body? Well, obviously, it's there.
                              Then the senses, perceptions, mental formations (volitional impulses, ideations, arisings, etc.) and bugger all could I find of the falsse sense of self there anywhere.
                              This is a pain in the arse. I don't even know where the object to be located is existing. Where is the object to be negated? Where indeed?

Emptiness!

Sunday 4:30 p.m.
                           One photie is of the view back to town from Musselburgh beach. The other is an example of what you can do when you've nothing else to do on a Sunday late afternoon. That's what I'm going to do a wee bit later. Go to the allotment and set things on fire!
                           Here's a bit of Tsongkhapa:

                           The practice here begins by examining the sense of "I" that we all have. Examine this "I" to see if it is one with or separate from the psychological aggregates. Eventually you will develop a firm understanding that this "I" had no self-existent nature whatsoever. This is the training on the emptiness side.

                            However, the conventional existence of the self arises as an object of the mind. That is to say, we have the appearance of living beings as irrefutable conventional phenomena. There are collectors of karma and experiencers of the of the results of karma. Even though nothing has a self nature, all phenomena conventionally function with validity according to the laws of interdependent arising. Cultivate a definite realisation of how in this way all things are ultimately empty of self-existence but nonetheless conventionally function with valid presence.

                             A lot of folk say that they don't believe in anything of a religious nature, and I think they might be right since I believe in not believing in things. They do not believe that they are going around with their heads jammed up their backsides either, but they believe in an existent self, this false sense of self, and that's more or less the same thing as going around with your head jammed up your backside.
                              I know I am a flatheid because I have not been able to eradicate this mental fault. I haven't gotten very far with the training on the emptiness side, the first part of the Tsongkhapa quote. I can usually do the bliss, but the bliss and all that comes with using certain methods. It's the wisdom that you need at the end of the day.
                               Nothing exists in the manner of its appearance since all that appears is conditioned by your ignorance. Dearie me! How did we get here?
                               To the hut! To the hut!
                          
                          

The jedis

Friday 11:45 p.m.
                          Something weird happened to the camera. I can't tell you what it was, but something disappeared and stopped working. Took ages to get these photies on here. If the phone camera thing stops working, I think this is the end, at last.
                          The tims in Bellshill today loved the mass on the telly, the one with the Nazi Papa in Glasgow. Well, when I was a lad, I knew the tims could do the theatre. Saw it in Rome, at  Lourdes twice, etc. Brilliant.The robes, candles, men dressed up in weird costumes. Wouldn't have had it any other way. Now, of course, when you see a big mass with more than four priests involved, it's spot the paedophile time.
                           I watched the third Star Wars film en famille this evening. It is a film for children and better than the ones we had to watch, apart from In Search of the Castaways. Why adults watch these films is strange, apart from looking for religion in their lives. Well, the next time the censor asks me my religion, I will definitely be down as a Jedi Knight. May the force be with you.
                          

The Nazi Papa Visiteth Us!

Thursday 8:45 a.m.
                             Just finished the first meditation of the day. There is going to be tsunamis of bliss and heat this morning! So it's alright for me.My friend who's wife is in respite care at the moment came to see me last night. He's on the max dose of the medication for depression. To say he's having a hard time is a bit of an understatement.
                             Both of us were brought up catholics and at one point we were discussing all the ridiculous things we were taught to believe as kids. The big one on my friend's list was original sin, by which he was taught that even newborn babies are bound for hell unless they were saved by Christ's sacrifice through the Catholic Church.
                             The Catholic Church has let people like my friend down very badly. He needs to believe in something. He needs apple pie in the sky when he dies. Or a belief in re-incarnation, or the tooth fairy, or ...because he is having a hellish time right now, and I suspect his situation is only going to get worse.
                              It's okay for me as the sole member and single representative of the Disbelieving Congregation to say that I don't believe in believing in things, especially thoughts. And it's easy to say that we are all responsible for our own misfortunes. And it's easy to say that if the morons don't meditate what else can they expect?
                              What do you get if you want the wrong things, Jack? Grief, sorrow, lamentations ... disillusionment, disappointment and despair ... suffering in this life, Hotboy.
                                Even if you do what you can, you can't do very much. If there is such a thing as rebirth, before I was me I must have done something very badly wrong to have ended up with flatheids to the left of me, flatheids to the right of me, flatheids fung everywhere!
                               Anyway, on that cheerful note, I will go back to spending most of the rest of the morning in the bliss.
                            
                            
              
                          

New day!

11:40 p.m.
                We got told today that we were all going to get funged by the deficit reduction robots. A wage reduction of about ... some money. Some young people who have mortgages and children will loss four grand off  the top. They will cry.
                After this,  I was told it had been noted that I sat around, sitting quietly, doing nothing whilst the deaf , dumb and blind kid did all the work, and that I would be crucified if I didn't shape up.
                And there was moi thinking I was an adornment, a jewel, the only wonderment in the whole horizon, but it seems that now they will come after moi and crucify moi in these tough times because we have to help the merchant bankers, and the deaf, dumb and blind kid who does all the work.
                The autistic jobbie share has been an angel, and I will not think badly of her because I'm scared if  I do that then she will die a horrible death. People who fall out with me tend to die. I wish that wouldn't happen.
                I always thus try to think well of folk, But it seems that I have to go and wait my life out in Brian Wilson's hut in his back garden. I think he has prepared this for moi!
               I think he might not pay for the whores. So if you want someone gone, you should send me a photie. And some money. I can definitely oft them! What use are they anyway? Almost completely useless!

Teevee tonight!

Monday 10:30 p.m.
                             I massage the Domestic Bliss's back sometimes. This is because she's the champ and has to get out for round fifteen sometimes. Being too dumb to meditate and being a wummin from the generation who all forgot their gym gear ... well, she's still a champ and has to be attended to sometimes, or she won't be able to get off her stool and the three other folk in here will all starve to death.
                             Whilst doing that, I thoroughly enjoyed this Alan Cumming show about finding out about his grand dad who died while playing Russian Roulette in Mayalsia. Most poignant. It was a really great bit of telly.
                              I only spoke to Alan Cummings once. I hassled him in the toilet of the old Traverse. There was a party in behind the door with the combination lock thing on it. Those who weren't getting in had to go home when the bar shut. I told Alan Cummings that I was a radio playwright and would become rich and famous from writing plays and that I would make sure he wasn't going to be in any of them unless he got me into this fung party. He was extremely nice about this. And got me in.
                              Jenny Killick was running the Traverse in those days and all these folk like her and Peter Arnott had come up from Cambridge and they didn't do a great job, but quite a good one, but what they did really well was have parties. They had great parties. Being a theatre, the Traverse had a good sound system. A stage, a sound system, banked seats. I was speeding out of my face at one of these parties when Tilda Swinton came and lay down beside me.
                              It's great to see folk getting on, so it is!
                              Today, I heard that my secret agent, the one I had before I got the consiglieri, had ripped off the wummin whose book launch I went to a couple of years ago for fourteen grand. How ridiculous our aspirations and hopes are. It's enough to make you a zen buddhist, so it is! If this joe had sold anything by moi over those four years of hoping ... well, he would probably have kept all the money.
                              I contacted Allan Guthrie about this today because it was gossip, but, of course, I'm the last to hear about anything and it turns out that he has the wummin as a client already!
                              Trevor Royle was also in the Alan Cummings show. Alan Cummings  used to do a double act thing with Forbes Masson who was in one of my plays, and was a very good actor. Amazing in rehearsal. Didn't have enough rehearsal for the half production shit I was involved in.
                              I got told today that my jobbie is going sessional. This means that they will take four grand off a full time worker. It's okay for me. When it happens, I'll start writing again since I will have the big holidays. No money of course, but I've never had much. Spoke to a wummin today who was widowed last year and left with a big mortgage. Four grand off her wages and she's funged.
                               I know I am a fortunate creature although I don't have much money, and have to drink wine to get over the nicotine withdrawals, and this kid today, who is not too bright, came into my office whilst I was standing on my head, and asked me how come my neck didn't break when I did that, and I said anybody can do that if they practise, and so they can.
                                I started reading another book by maybe Antoine de Sainte Exupery. He used to fly planes. A poineer. What a fabulous writer he is!! It makes me want to read it in French. The only person who made me feel like that before was Emile Zola.
                                They just take four grand off folks wages these days and no one does anything. Isn't that a wonderment! My auntie Kathy said married women ruin work. Married women will put up with any crap you can throw at them. But maybe not. May you live in interesting times!!
                            

The Wonderful Writings!

Thursday 8:05 p.m.
                            When Baby Jesus arrived, it almost put me off my dinner!
                             I weeded the bottom half of one side of the allotment today. Only decorative flowers were left after the slaughter.
                             The consiglieri thought it was better to take out all references to the putative publisher of The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf, so I've been doing that. This made me remember four or five years ago when I put up a webpage of the wonderful writings in the hope attracting an agent. It's less aggravation if you don't attract anybody. Much less.
                             I haven't look at the current crime book for a couple of weeks and I don't see how I can find the time for it, considering the amount of time I want to spend meditating, so I could consider the writing part of my life to be over now, at least for a while.
                              I have a body of work. I'm so glad I didn't end up writing  the four books for Fontana when this was offered to me twenty odd years ago. Because I've been so unsuccessful in getting anything published, it meant I tended to write whatever I wanted to write. The unpublished novels fall into three categories. Here they are in order of importance.
The Autobiographicals

ALMA MATER : Within this is a truthful account of what I studied at university.

ARE YOU BOYS CYCLISTS? This has a true account of my boxing experiences and the stuff about my wonderful writings is true as well. This one got published by Serpent's Tail.

THE BUDDHA AND THE BIG BAD WOLF   This is really as autobiographical as it gets. It's about buddhism and travelling in India and Nepal. Someone is interested in publishing it next year.

RaBlissBook:  I don't think I made up much about the first five years of my current job in this one! Almost as soon as it was finished, it got a literary agent, but he couldn't sell it.

THE NOVELS:

CITY WHITELIGHT. This one got published hardback by Mainstream and paperback by Fontana.

ANCIENT FUTURES: This one is available from Amazon Kindle for 86p, the lowest price they allowed.


THE REAL McCOY: I think this is my favourite. My ex-agent said he thought it was "wonderful", but couldn't sell it.

REMOTE CONTROL. Finally finished this just before Christmas, thirty years after starting it!

THE KIDBOOKS

LIGHT IN THE DARK: I expected to get this published since the kids at school loved it. The agent offered it to Puffin, but they didn't want it.

BUGTOWN: I tried to write something that I could sell. Kids loved it as well!


I could email any of these books for nothing to anyone interested except the published ones, which I don't have in digital form yet. But I do have forty odd copies of City Whitelight which have never been out of the wrappers. I would post one to you if you'd cough up a tenner!

That's ten books! That's not bad considering I was working for the vast majority of the time as well. Anyway, it's a body of work. Getting any of them published would just create hassle when what I really want is peace and quiet, and time to do the juju. The best thing would be to have a website and charge a pound to download a book. Nobody would download them and almost nobody would know they were there, but that doesn't really matter. It's a presentation of a body of work. This would really suit me much better than getting steamed up about being published. For the money you'd make, it's hardly worth the hassle. In fact, it's not worth the hassle.

            

The bliss is no hassle at all! It changes again and blossoms and blows your mind. Sometimes I think the bliss is certainly moving towards something and it must be samadhi. I'm feeling quite certain now. The lama told me once I'd get everything with just calming meditations and now I'm spending a much higher proportion of my time meditating on just nothing, or using a mantra, and sometimes just letting thoughts go as the bliss gets deeper and deeper, like an onion unpeeling itself. This is glorious! These are also mostly calming meditations. All the meditations are vastly improved over the past ten days or so. There's been serenity and peace in abundance. It's been a bit jaw dropping sometimes. A wonderment!

                      So I can't be bothered with the wonderful writings. If I got a webpage up, I could kind of seal away that part of my life, and get on with the next bit. Forget writing, forgot getting published, forget about all that. What a wonderful thing it is to be investigating the bliss! Why do anything else? Clear the decks! Clear the decks! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

                      

Hostages

Thursday 11:40 p.m.
                              You may note the resemblance of the potatoes to Joseph and Mary, the parents of God. I dug them up and now I'm keeping them hostage. If some Christians don't cough up soon, I'm going to eat Joseph and do despicable things to Mary before boiling her alive and eating her as well.
                               Such wonderful meditations last evening. Oceans of tranquillity disrupted by the arrival of Brian Wilson. I was forced to go to the pub and now I have spent all my money and don't feel half as wonderful as I would have. I'm going to stay in for the rest of my life.

Swami

Tuesday 9:50 p.m.
                            I was going to go back to the Tai Chi tonight as I haven't been since the start of July, but the Domestic Bliss convinced me to go and see a swami instead. It was in the Quaker's Meeting Hall, not much of a place to get into a fight, I shouldn't think, and you can sit there in a half lotus with your eyes closed during the swami doing his swami stuff, and no one is going to think that's all that odd, what with the joe being a swami and that. He looked a wee bit like Karl Marx, except a bit browner, which I found quite reassuring. After talking for twenty minutes, he had a ten minute break, and then had everyone meditating for twenty minutes. I started doing the bliss almost as soon as we got seated in the best place, at the back with the bench and cushions, and so it was good when he got everyone meditating, so it wasn't just me.
                           He didn't mention the bliss. The Domestic Bliss told me he'd had a message for me, but I never heard it. Luckily, she'd remembered it afterwards. There's messages and there's messages. I got a message from Teresa yesterday.
Dear Hotboy,

Thanks for your email/letter.  I'm not exactly sure what to say about your meditations as I don't have much related experience myself.  I mentioned it to Lama Yeshe and he says that it is best not to mix traditions but didn't say you should or shouldn't do any particular practice.  So I guess it is up to you to find what you feel more or less comfortable with and what seems to work for you, without taking risks (I've talked to a few people who have had trouble with kundalini).  The Lama's advice is only advice (not a command) and he definitely doesn't expect you to follow everything to the letter if it makes you feel bad. 
Anyway, I don't know if this will be much help but I hope your practice goes well and that you are able to get down to Samye Ling in October.

All the best,

                  Teresa.
                   I sent her a message back saying everything was going fabuloso now and thanks very much.


                   My facebook account has been disabled. I don't know why. I was using it to keep track of the prostration count. It's dead modern, so it is.Brian Wilson seems to think I could sell a copy of Ancient Futures (available to you for 86p from Kindle Amazon!) if I tweeted. I have no time to tweet. Tweet, tweet. I think the consiglieri should get someone to tweet as moi for a deferred percentage of a percentage of the eventual vast fortune which will accrue.
                   Only a half day at the jobbie tomorrow. Hurrah!

Diggings

Sunday 7:00 p.m.
                          I've eaten all the cabbages. There must have been about twelve of them. I've consumed them at a rate of two a week. The photies are of the diggings. All I've got to do now to stop the council terminating me is clear up the weeds covering the tattie mounds at the bottom and dig a couple of wee bits at the other side.
                          The consiglieri looked up the Amazon kindle sales report last night. According to Amazon, Ancient Futures hasn't sold any copies at all. Lying basturns! I know it's sold two copies. Do you think they're trying to rip off my twenty pence in royalties, Jack? Could be, Hotboy. Every little bit counts. I'd sue the basturns if I'd anything to sue them with.
                           Since I got away from the jobbie on Wednesday, I've been having a really lovely time. Hours and hours spent just arising, abiding and declining in the bliss. I feel as if my practise is much improved now.
                    

Newmains and room

Saturday 7:08 p.m.
                             If you sit meditating under the big black birch tree, you can see these two views. This was yesterday. I sat meditating there for most of the time I was house sitting. It was easy to sit there because of the amount of bliss. And the weather being so good. The other photie is of my room, which, as you can see, has been tidied up!
                             I've loved Thursday. I loved Friday. Today has been very good indeed. The consiglieri is coming over tonight so I'd better be off for some last minute meditations.

Vajrayana update

Saturday 11:51 a.m.
                              An encouraging thing about buddhism seems to be it's reasonableness. It's rational. All you've got at first is the four noble truths, the eightfold path, the skandas and the twelve points of dependant origination. You can find out what they are and think them over, and argue with yourself about them. If you start to meditate with this stuff on board, you don't really need much else. When you start hitting the bliss, you might become a bit puzzled as to what it is, why is it, etc., but it might be that some folk won't get the bliss anyway, and you don't really need it, I don't suppose, since non-self and emptiness is really what you're looking for.
                            The Great Vajrayana, the Juju of Jujus, does not seem so susceptible to reason. It is difficult to find a rational explanation and I think this might be because we don't have enough knowledge of psychology, physiology, cosmology and whatnot. With the great vajrayana, you will have to accept experience and get on with it. Experiental mysticism is the name of the game here!
                           Since I sent the email to Teresa last week, there has been a great deal of movement. I am back to doing quite a bit of vase breathing though I have given up concentrating on anything while I'm doing it  now. I hardly think of channels and symbols at all. I am doing a lot of generation stage stuff and not doing any symbols and channels completion stage stuff at all.
                           There are parts of the generation stage where you dissolve everything into nothing. This is like meditation without object. I've been doing some vase breathing in there.
                            You are supposed to do 100,000 mandala offerings. This is, I think, generation stage stuff. Because I used to whizz passed that to get into the symbol stuff .... anyway, now I'm doing repetitions sometimes where you are generating the deity, offering the mandala and everything else, and then having the deity overhead drop blessings into you. Dissolving everything, starting again. This increases the amount of mandala offerings you make and takes the bliss ... what can I say about the bliss, Jack? You can tell the unfortunate creatures about how the bliss is yet again even blissier, Hotboy.
                            This is ecstasy in the generation stage. This is supposed to be a mere bagatelle compared to the ecstasy of the completion stage. God alone knows what that must be like.
                             For those of you who were fortunate enough to hear about the Four Noble Truths and such like, but not fortunate enough to meditate, well, good luck to you. You are the author of your own misfortune.
                            I am  the patron saint of mediocrity. I absolve you, I absolve you, I absolve you.
                            What a great line that is!!!
                          

Photies

Thursday 10:17 p.m.
                              Sitting on the bed with the telly on and closing my eyes and doing such a wonderfulness of the bliss was the best bit of the day. But that was just the last bit. It might get better.
                              What a beautiful day! I was up just after seven and the weather was awful. By ten,  the sun was splitting the trees. I dug an eighth of the allotment before noon.
                               My usual dinner and lunch these days is still tatties and onions and cabbage, boiled then fried in olive oil. Sometimes two fried eggs. Lots of tomato sauce. Tons of that. This is the most delicious food! Usually, I just put the tatties into the soup, but this year I've really been pigging myself. Of course, I'm off the butter and cheese and milk still and this has made the boiled tatties fried in oil  something truly yummy. Appetite is everything.
                               I did not get too exhausted. I was digging for an hour, I think, and my teeshirt was dripping in sweat, but I was only a bit exhausted, so I managed to go and meditate in the Botanic Gardens during the late, lazy afternoon.
                              I took the photies of the flowers in the late morning sun. What a pleasant surprise today was!!

Something a bit peculiar!

Thursday 9:45 a.m.
                            Last night I was doing some yoga nidra before going to sleep. At some point I realised I couldn't tell where my arms and legs were. Usually, you have some impression. I had no idea whether my hands were resting on my thighs, palms down, or not. I couldn't really feel anything from my chest down. So I moved my arms a little and my hands weren't where I'd expected, but the hands were face up and a few inches from my body, just where I'd put them at the start of the yoga nidra of course.
                            I've had experiences like that before, but not so pronounced. I assume this is a stage of going to sleep. Anyway, I wondered what it would be like if you'd lost the upper half of your body as well. So you couldn't feel anything to do with your body at all. Consciousness in space?
                            Since this bloggie is mainly supposed to be about the wonderful writings, I'm going to hassle the consiglieri to get onto Wells Fargo about "building the author". That's what publishers are supposed to do. Build the author. We could build castles in the air on the basis that the Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf starts to sell shed loads.
                            Also, Albert thinks we should go with a tweaked version of Alma Mater. I think he could tweak it himself. After all those years wading through computer manuals, I'm sure he's just the man for the job!
                            The meditations are starting to go to new places again. What I've got to do today is make sure that I don't get totally exhausted too early on. Like, in the morning. But I think I should go up to the allotment now. It is a sunny day. If you wait to get exhausted from the diggings till evening, all kinds of little monsters come out then and bite you. That didn't used to happen around these parts.
                      

Diggings and Diggings ...

Wednesday 9:50 p.m.
                                 I prostrated to the council. I think that's always the best thing to do. Don't put up a fight. It was a fair cop. Now I have a goal. My goal is to go up to the allotment and spend all day there meditating and digging. In the evening, I expect to be lying on the floor propped up with pillows, staring at the telly. With the yogurt and the bliss.
                                 Since I sent the missive to Teresa on Saturday, everything has got much better. Tomorrow I going to have a wonderful, wonderful day.
                                 The Beer Monster disappeared in a puff of smoke on Sunday, Jack. Just like that. I've started prostrating to the Nicotine Dragon, of course, but sometimes she looks so seductive. Just for a little while, you think and hope. Shall we dance?