Spot the peacock!

Saturday 12:50 p.m.
                              I was captured and held hostage in a pub in Bellshill yesterday by Froggie McDuck. This meant I missed the consiglieri and the opening of a painting exhibition. Tonight I've been invited out for my dinner. Tomorrow I am due to meet folk in the pub at FIVE O CLOCK. Dearie me. And this is me trying to stay away from folk! The flat's never empty either, but the kiddo and her partner don't stop me meditating.
                             I meditated at dawn and in the morning. The after effects of the vase breath are putting me in places I've never been before. Not quite explosions of bliss and emptiness, but we're getting there now, Jack. We're certainly getting there. I know I'm the most fortunate of creatures when I'm meditating right now. Oh, what a fortunate creature, I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!

Kindle Book!

Friday 8:30 a.m.
                         http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Futures/dp/B003Z9K4XG
The consiglieri and I managed to get into the kindle account after it seemed to be blocked. The book has sold three copies in six months. I think I know who bought two of them. There is a mystery person out there. For 86p you'd think somebody would buy it!!

New Beginnings!

Thursday 9:35 p.m.
                            So I'm speaking to the pizzaman in a doorway near Princes Street. I've been buying pizza from him for about seventeen years. He says he had rheumatoid arthritis diagnosed. He's about forty six. For a fortnight he couldn't get to sleep. Sneezing wracked his body in pain. Sitting up all night on the couch. He says he doesn't know how folk managed the pain before the jags in the bum. It's hard to imagine other peoples' pain. I asked this guy once if the brain haemorragh ...hoemorraghe ... if when his brain exploded, it was sore. He gave me a look which said he couldn't possibly describe it. Head moved jerking to the side in past remembrance. The pain was off the scale.
                            There is no discernible beginning and no discernible end to this samsara.
                            We don't have a lot of this life left, Jack, if they're letting us onto the buses for bugger all. Well, Hotboy, wasn't it always thus?
                             Had a great day though! Had a bit of everything. Meditated at dawn. Meditated in the morning. Meditated at dusk. And also later. I'm gliding. Gliding. Definitely surfing now.

What works?

Thursay 10:30 a.m.
                            Prostrations as a physical exercise are a bit so-so, and I can only concentrate on the number done, but they are really supposed to be as much spiritual as physical, I assume. You're supposed to be prostrating to someone. Someone alive. In the juju, I think you're supposed to prostrate to your root guru, and imagine him as a buddha, and that's how the juju is supposed to work.
                            I was prostrating the Lama Yeshe at the Samye Ling, not just prostrating. And I'm trying to keep that up although I can still just keep the count in mind.
                            A guy called Dave Gibson assured me that taking refuge would improve my meditations, and it did. The empowerments seemed to help as well. And whatever I was doing at the Samye Ling last week has really helped. The meditations now are on a different level, the first one of the day there was just fantastic with a lot of bliss, light and some warmth. They really are working now and I think this must have something to do with my attitude changing a little.
                            I'm not interested in what's true and what's not. The Karma Kagyu juju joes say they have the skillful means and that this has worked for people in Tibet for a thousand years, and I believe them. It's getting your head into the position so that it'll work that concerns me because essentially I'm a pragmatist.
                           I smoked from Thursday to Sunday and then took the nicotine withdrawals to work. A perfect storm. I don't normally feel scunnered, but I did, and now I don't.
                           I'm  a bit desperate to get on with these meditations and I'm going to avoid trying to be normal again. I don't really want to be too sociable. I want to be happy in an empty room.
                           Some of the photies are of the empty room I was happy in last week from about nine till lunchtime; the middle section of the temple at the Samye Ling. There's also a photie of the stupa through my bedroom window.
                          I will be back, Jack! I will be back!!

The meditations

Wednesday 23:36 p.m.
                                   There is no point in trying to describe meditations to people. You are like the joe who is talking to someone about dropping acid. Unless you've taken acid ... so I'm not going to try to tell anyone what it's been like since I went to the Samye Ling. Mainly, it's been complete crap, the horrorshow, and most unpleasant. To think that it was only a week ago ... and now, here I am.
                                    Today I tried to regain firm ground. Tomorrow I may be able to spend almost the whole day without having to speak to anyone, and that would be wonderful.
                                    I could do much better in an empty room. I'm screaming for it. I need solitary confinement.
                                    But I'm settling into the gross. A week back.
                                    When I'm meditating though ...without the flatheids and all that stuff ... when I'm meditating ... well, I won't bore you with that because you probably don't meditate... and are just one huge despair all on your own. One huge despair, so you are. I can close my eyes to the grossness and fall right into the bliss. But it doesn't seem to help. So what?
                                     Just give me tomorrow, lordy, lordy! Just give me tomorrow without the doorbell ringing, the phone ringing; just give me tomorrow without the flatheids! Just give me tomorrow and I will try and try and try, so I will.

Samye Ling and other photies

The way ahead!

Wednesday 2:45 p.m.
                                 First of all, some difficulties!
                                 I could post photies I took at the Samye Ling last week, but I was bought a new phone for my birthday. It has some kind of memory card in it so that I won't have the expense of emailing photies to myself, but I don't know how to work it. Someone will have to show me.
                                 The consiglieri and I have been checking the Kindle account for the book we put on it a few months ago. We know that it has sold two copies. It might have sold copies to folk we don't know about. Kindle does not recognise our account and won't let us into it anyway, and say we've sold bugger all. I love machines! They take all the problems away. Instead of hassling a real live publisher, Amazon just takes all the money. Has the Amazon moved to Nigeria, or what?
                                I sent the thriller to the Viper's Nest publisher (real live people!!) in London last April. They ignored it, or lost it, or .... so they asked me to re-send it in October. I said I'd check up with them after the New Year. They do not reply to emails. I've sent two. Once I got a book published by the Viper's Nest and I waited six months for them to send the advance and then had to phone the basturns up twice before I saw a cheque.
                                It seems like a long time since I was at the Samye Ling!! After two and a half days at the jobbie, I feel totally scunnered. The only good thing that's happened is that I was told that due to my advanced years I could retire any time. But I do not think that being a job share joe ... I wouldn't have any money to live on. At least, I'll get the government pension in five years. Dearie me!!
                               I have Bellshill on Friday, but no appointments otherwise, apart from something on Sunday night. So I can meditate a lot between now and then. I just hope I get some peace and quiet, and that all the flatheids get killed by a neutron bomb before Sunday. Now, I can do what I really like doing .... meditating!!
                              

Weird interactions!

Tuesday 10:15 p.m.
                             The wummin is Malayan. About forty, but with such wummin as those you wouldn't want to specify. She's a jewel. She has a husband and one kiddo of about thirteen now. Pentecostal, but very stressed. So today she gave me a present, one for being sixty. What? There is a picture of Oban which is bought from a stall from a joe who would be dead soon. There were two pictures. I had to choose. Then the envelope. In that there was twenty quid. What?
                           The wummin is disturbed. But a total gem. Her job is to help pupils who cannot speak English. She went to a buddhist school in Malaya, but had another religion as well, as they do in those foreign places. She smiles and is so lost. Lost and slightly bewildered about the long noses. A real trier, but never going to be relaxed or just happy. They sometimes have strange bodies these folk, like manly bodies except like the kind dwarves would have, androgynous.
                         Although she is employed to speak to the Poles and whatnot, and anybody who cannot speak the proper Scottishy stuff, of course, she is quite incomprehensible herself. And mad as well.
                         Would you like to hump her anyway, Hotboy? No, I do not think I would, Jack. With this wummin we have walked beyond that maybe, what with her being so unattractive. But at the same time incredibly attractive. Attractive beyond the superficial. Heart. Such heart is bound to somehow lessen you, as you witness it.

Retirement!

Monday
            I asked about when I could retire today. They said any time. This is wonderful since it means that all this jobbiness can end. But I wish I had been paying more attention since I don't have any money to do me till I get the state pension when I'm sixty five. I must put my mind to making money and come up with some money making schemes. Like betting on horses. I need to find a way to make just sitting there pay!!

The Church

Friday or Saturday 9:37 p.m.
                                            The only way to get any money is to invent a new church. This is the Disbelieving Congregation going larger.
                                            1) You've got to wear Marks and Sparks training bottoms. They are not for folk training, but are very good for lolling about in.
                                             2) All heid banging ceremonies have to be accompanied by The Velvet Underground's Sister Ray.
                                              3) You're allowed to kill anyone who is related to you, even just by marriage, or anyone you've known for a long time. Killing folk you haven't known for at least ten years results in hanging.
                                              4) You can take loads of drugs and drink if you want to in this new religion. And you can also do anything you like as long as you have some kind of reasonable consent. No chickens, nobody under your evil power, etc.
                                              5) All you have to do is meditate for two hours a day.
                                               6) If you do well in this religion you get a badge saying: Library Assistant.

Apres Samye

Friday 8:00 a.m.
                        I was so exhausted when I got home yesterday. It's always the same. You'd think sitting around all day for a week would give you a bit of a rest, but I always come home knackered. So I did a bit of self medication and watched two episodes of Episodes, which is very good and brilliantly acted. No drinking though.
                        I expect to get a sweetie now from the lama the day I leave the Samye Ling. I started calling it that as a joke when I noticed that the meditation I have on the morning I leave is always stunning. I'm not sure if it's a joke anymore. Don't know what that says about my state of mind. Anyway, I sat down by the river for an hour or so before I left and .... the bliss, the bliss, the bliss!
                        I might be when I stop trying. But it isn't.
                        Then I'm in Lockerbie staying waiting for an hour and I'm feeling completely exhausted.
                        I saw a Kindle on the train. I've never seen one before. The woman across the aisle was reading a book on one. I wondered if you could download books straight onto it while sitting on the train. I didn't know. Maybe you have to upload it through the computery thing. I thought it would be a laugh if I offered the woman a pound to download my book. She would have made fourteen pence since it only costs eighty six pence to buy.
                        I don't know if it's sold any more than two copies. I don't know how to get into Amazon and find out since it was uploaded at the consiglieri's and I don't know .... anything about it really. I'll have to visit him and see how you do that. I'm going to have to read it myself. I haven't read it for years and years and I'm sure it's bloody awful. Anyway, here's the link if you've got eighty six pence to spare. I wouldn't have put a link on this before. Hmmm? That something changing over the last week ....
                         http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ancient-Futures/dp/B003Z9K4XG

Funeral Rites

Thursday 10:00 a.m.
                                Going home today. Felt a bit emotional during the morning meditation and worked out what I wanted at my funeral.
                                 If there's any music besides gong bashing, I want Bob Marley's Redemption Songs, Songs of Freedom. I would also like my daughter to read out the first chapter of Light in the Dark and also the Heart Sutra. I would like my ashes scattered in the river down here, at the far side of the wee island that forms after the wee falls during the summer time, where I have spent many, many hours meditating.
                                 Must have meditated between sixty and seventy hours this week. Really hammered it the last three days. Allah Akbar!!

Two days to go!!

Tuesday 9:23 a.m.
                            I feel like a big tabby cat curled up by the fire. Spent all last night meditating in my room since the cafe is shut at night apart from Friday and Saturday. Everything is feeling quite repaired about me just now. My skin is better. I'm sleeping better. I remember once being here in a tent and lying down to sleep and realising that all the stress had gone, even the stress I didn't realise I had.
                            I think the touch down back in Samsara should be okay this time as well. This has been the best of retreats. Usually, you doubt yourself sometimes, or you're feeling exhausted sometimes, and  ... all that kind of thing, but it's not been like that this time. Maybe it's having a room. That definitely helps! Coming down here in a tent at this time of year, which I have done several times before  .... when it sometimes doesn't stop raining for days at a time ... I'm impressed by myself, so I am!!
                            Only two days to go!! I need months and months and months of this!!

Samye Monday!

Monday 3:02 p.m.
                            The penny dropped yesterday as to how I managed to get into a fankle with the lama last summer. I was going to get into sitting in the hut big time over my summer holidays and I went to see him courtesy of the old, toothless one, and he told me to stop meditating on the drops and channels and whatnot, indicating that I would go bonkers and possibly explode. Or ...
                            Reading a really good book called the Life of Gampopa by a joe called Mackenzie Stewart. He was going on about the Dorje Sempa (with is the 100,000s of prostrations and whatnot) and how after that your lama might give you another empowerment. That's the one that should allow you to do what I was wanting to do last summer.
                            Shume mistake! I assumed the empowerments I got off his big brother were sufficient, but this is not the case, it seems. So I was jumping the gun big style. Something horrible might have happened if I hadn't spoken to him, so fair play to the old, toothless one for driving me down there.
                            In the book I've been reading, there's a brilliant chapter on what happens to Gampopa when he is practising the inner heat juju. He has problems!! He goes to see Milarepa who tells him what to do, but he really does have problems. At one point he falls into black despair and that's just a side effect.
                             It's comical really. I'm stumblebumming around in this vajrayana juju and almost always getting the wrong end of the stick. One thing's for sure: I'm a million miles away from getting anywhere near this inner heat juju. A noble aspiration, I'd say.
                             But the meditations down here are going superbly. I've been sitting on the pebbles by the raging river a couple of afternoons in a row and that's been particularly good. Unexpectedly good for that time in the afternoon. Unfortunately, it's raining just now so I'll go and sit in the temple again!!

Samye Saturday Night!

8:40 p.m.
              Everything feels better here. Even my teeth feel better. Slipping into the meditations very well though I'm really only doing calming ones. Very little vase breathing.
               The last time I was staying here - a whole nineteen months ago - was when I must have read the Life of Milarepa for the first time. Yesterday I found a book in the library called The Life Of Gampopa by Jampa Mackenzie Stewart. Sounds a bit Scottish to me, but he lives in Austin, Texas. I'm really enjoying reading it. The chapter on the boy practising inner heat meditations made me realise once again that I know bugger all about this juju. When I've thought channels and whatnot must have been opening due to the amount of bliss and all, well, that was just crap. I'm nowhere near getting anything to open. Still, the meditations have been great today.
               Loving everything about this trip. The food, the room. The temple at the moment is divided into three bits. The bit in the middle has nothing in it. This morning there was just me. Meditated for three and a half hours this morning; stood on my head; did two tai chi sets; and 100 prostrations. Great morning, really great!
              Having the room ... I was really making an effort coming down here all those times in a tent. I really was. All I want is a room somewhere. A  room! A room! What luxury!!

Samye Ling Day 1

1:30 p.m.
               Little anxieties declining as the bus dropped us off at the gate of the Samye Ling in a bright, bright sunshine. After lunch I had a chat with Teresa. It lasted about two minutes so it's the longest chat I've had with her ever.
               She said she'd just gotten my letter that morning and that the lama wasn't about, so I didn't need to go and see him! I asked about him retiring and that's retiring into more meditations, but he won't be going for a couple of years. A replacement has already been picked, but he hasn't got enough English yet anyway. We agreed the place would be odd without the lama and she said she'd find it hard there without him. Well, she's been his right hand woman for years and years, and the boy is cosmic. I asked if he'd thought of getting an autobiography published, or written, and she said he'd need a ghostwriter. I said nothing to that. I don't know if I could be his ghostwriter. All I know about it is what I saw in the movie "Ghost" about Tony Blair's ghostwriter. She said it wouldn't bother him getting it published when he was still alive. When I mentioned his passing, her face screwed up a bit. This joe means a lot to a lot of people around here.
              I'm off to see Germe, the gatekeeper to Nirvana, for my room key. Hurrah! Hurrah! I'm so glad to be here!!
8:40 p.m.
              Oddly the cafe is open on a Thursday. There's a gang of pretty young women, about nineteen year olds, who must have come for some kind of tour or other. So the cafe is unexpectedly open.
               This is really a day for settling in. Tomorrow should be much the same. I haven't gotten out of the long johns I put on for the journey or the thermalactle vest, so there's been no jumpings or prostrating from me yet. I feel a bit disappointed by that. I don't know if I can do the prostrations in my bedroom. It's got just about enough floor space, but the sweat does start to pour after about fifty of them. We'll see.
               Could hardly have had a better first day. Great lunch! I'm in room 11 of the Potala House, facing the garden, just as I asked Germe.
                I worked out from my diary that I haven't stayed here since just before we went to Skye to gross out with the flatheids in 2009. That's where all my troubles with the credit cards debts started as well. Well, I've just about got the flatest heid around these parts, so no fears there!
                So glad to be here!!!

Samye Ling!

Thursday 8:20 a.m.
                             I'm  about to set off for the Samye Ling in half an hour. I may not blog when I'm there. I may not reply to comments if I blog. But it'll probably be the same as usual!!

On Becoming Sixty!

Monday 8:20 p.m.
                           I'm sixty tomorrow. I can't say I'm over the moon about reaching sixty, what with the expected intimations of mortality and all, but it's just one of those things you have to put up with.
                           It is odd to be one of the old folk. When I look at my contemporaries, some of them do look old. They really do. I'm one of them. When I see old folk getting on buses and whatnot, it's hard to think that the baldy, grey, wrinkly ones are my peers, but there it is.
                           Not many of them can stand on their heads, Hotboy. This is true, Jack. I have been very hard on my body through the years with the drink and drugs, but I have also put myself through exhausting physical jerk routines of one kind or another three times a week anyway since I was twenty six. At the moment, I'm carrying a stone of fat which I don't need, and I've been intermittently smoking for the past two years, but I'm really in quite good nick for someone of my age.
                            In fact, the only fly in the ointment is that I'm in debt. If I'd made any money, I could probably retire in a couple of years. When I get back from the Samye Ling, I'll contact the personnel folk at work and ask them when I could go. If nothing changes, I'll have to work till I can collect my state pension at sixty five.But something might change.
                            Although there has been talk of me getting something published by Wells Fargo in the summer, I'll believe that when I see it. I suspect I'll end up putting up a webpage like I did before and just give the stuff away to anyone who wants to read it.
                            I know I have been living a wonderful life. I have nothing at all to complain about. I don't think anyone in my family ever got into the bliss before. My grandfather was illiterate when he came to Scotland from Northern Ireland. I've never had to be the breadwinner around here and that is fabulous. When I used to see my old man going out to work on building sites with chronic bronchitis and asthma to support his large family, I knew I didn't want to do that.
                            I think if my daughter had not been born when she was, I would have made something out of the writing business. Her birth was a defining moment. The selfish life ended right there as it does with any parent. People, of course, are better than books!! I wouldn't swop having brought her up for all the tea in China. The first day I was looking after her on my own was the day I visited the Samye Ling for the first time. When she was born, I started going to yoga classes. I guess you've got deal with winning some and losing some. It's just a shame for her that her old man doesn't have any money!!
                           I've been with the same woman since I was nineteen. This has been the love of my life. I think we get on better now than we ever did.
                           Although it is my birthday tomorrow, I still have to go to work!! Bugger that!
                          

The end of times!

Sunday 8:55 p.m.
                          I spend a lot of time on the clicky clicky thing. And sometimes that has been great. Like sticking your ego into a sweet and mushy cake. But what is there left to say? I think I had aims when it came to blogging in  the beginning. Now I can't remember what they were. Not really surprising that they have changed since everything else does too. There will be an anniversary on my birthday and I'll see after that.
                         

The bliss!

Tuesday 9:30 p.m.
                           There's the boy with the arrow sticking out of his body, and he tells the doctor that he doesn't want the wound fixed until he'd found out everything about the arrow. Well, he'll be deided from the wound before he finds out everything about the arrow. I don't think the Buddha thought there much point in me worrying my fluffy little head about metaphysical speculations when I'm lying there with an arrow sticking out of me.
                            The wee idea I had on Thursday is not any use at describing the world, but in the context of it's arising during a meditation on emptiness was well worth having. Anything that helps you be less concerned about your own wee self.
                            While surfing the oceans of bliss, since bliss is compounded and subject to change, there are bound to be peaks and troughs. When the surf's up, you might as well just go with it. Over the last few days there have been marvellous sensations in the meditations, and always and always there are greater concoctions of bliss when you hit these peaks. The bliss this evening so far has been so warm and comforting and satisfying. When you're meditating like this, it is obvious that not a minute of all the previous times you've meditated has been a waste of time.
                            I don't understand why I stumblebum about the place, worse than almost any flatheids apart from some that I know, when I'm not meditating. Oh well. Forward the Light Brigage. Charge for the guns, he said.