Friday 10:30 p.m.
Last year:
1) Gave up having a jobbie!! The only reason I ever went to work (and I enjoyed some of my jobs as well) was because I had no money. Harold MacMillan once said there was nothing wrong with unemployment; most of his friends had never had a job in their lives.
2) Took up great granny sitting. This was a bit of a shock and I have not found it easy to do - I was hoping for a different kind of retirement! - but it has taught me a few things, like don't live for too long. Interesting at the beginning of my old age to be sitting across from the ghost of Christmas to come.
3) I haven't written hardly anything at all this year, which is something I'd been trying to give up. I missed it, but not much because ...
4) I eventually got ten of my books onto Kindle. TEN! I've written more books than that, but I was kind of amazed that I had written ten books, at least often enough to stick them onto Kindle. I mean, I wasn't even a writer. I had a bloody jobbie stopping me from writing, and a lot of other people interrupting me all the time, and trying to get me to do something else, something a lot stupider than trying to write. Also, one of two of the books are actually alright. I think I'm allowed to say that since I don't write anymore. The first one I got published has a great attitude, so it has. So has the second one I got published. Nobody would know that the same joe wrote both books. That's what's particularly satisfying about them. But I hated having to look at them again. I had to get them scanned and go through them with a fine tooth comb when I wanted to be doing something else. Well, I'd given up writing this year. Thank Christ all that malarkey is behind me now.
5) This is the year that I think I can honestly say that I'm getting hot. The lama told me almost a year before I gave up the jobbie that I couldn't do the juju if I had any kind of jobbie at all. Well, I haven't got one now. Neither I have!! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!!!!!
Friday 30 December 2011
Thursday 29 December 2011
Not Home Alone Again!
Thursday 9:30 p.m.
Last week I thought the good mother was doing well enough for me not to spend two nights here and just come on the Thursday. Then I got told she seemed very confused on the Friday. You see what you see. I can sit and roll my eyeballs up to the top of my head, and I don't make demands. But she seems very tired this week. Maybe Christmas knocks it out of you when you're that age. So she's been sleeping a lot, and slumping more when she sleeps now, and went to bed a good bit earlier than usual tonight and last night. Perhaps dying of old age is about running out of energy.
The Tibetans say that going to sleep and dying are much the same process.
I'm thinking of making the effort to stop drinking for a year next year. The New Year's resolution. I've done this at least twice before, maybe more, but some time ago. I'm not going to do it so I can live longer. As the man said, there's nothing worth giving up for a few more years in the geriatric ward.
The meditation stuff has moved on even compared to last week. I'm getting hot alright. If
I stop drinking, I'll be meditating more in a mentally more purified state. I'm now entering the dangerous ground, the really, really freaky stuff. But it hasn't hurt me yet, and I don't think it will. Hope not.
Is this not what you asked for, Hotboy? Well, Jack, if I don't know what it is, how could I have asked for it? I was a fortunate creature in that I didn't have to work like hell just to be normal. Or appear normal.
I feel maybe a wee bit like a professional footballer of about thirty two. Might have another couple of years left at the top, maybe not. Next year is the time to really go for it. So swally on till the 2nd!
Last week I thought the good mother was doing well enough for me not to spend two nights here and just come on the Thursday. Then I got told she seemed very confused on the Friday. You see what you see. I can sit and roll my eyeballs up to the top of my head, and I don't make demands. But she seems very tired this week. Maybe Christmas knocks it out of you when you're that age. So she's been sleeping a lot, and slumping more when she sleeps now, and went to bed a good bit earlier than usual tonight and last night. Perhaps dying of old age is about running out of energy.
The Tibetans say that going to sleep and dying are much the same process.
I'm thinking of making the effort to stop drinking for a year next year. The New Year's resolution. I've done this at least twice before, maybe more, but some time ago. I'm not going to do it so I can live longer. As the man said, there's nothing worth giving up for a few more years in the geriatric ward.
The meditation stuff has moved on even compared to last week. I'm getting hot alright. If
I stop drinking, I'll be meditating more in a mentally more purified state. I'm now entering the dangerous ground, the really, really freaky stuff. But it hasn't hurt me yet, and I don't think it will. Hope not.
Is this not what you asked for, Hotboy? Well, Jack, if I don't know what it is, how could I have asked for it? I was a fortunate creature in that I didn't have to work like hell just to be normal. Or appear normal.
I feel maybe a wee bit like a professional footballer of about thirty two. Might have another couple of years left at the top, maybe not. Next year is the time to really go for it. So swally on till the 2nd!
Tuesday 27 December 2011
Dreams
27th December, 11:34 a.m.
One pressie was from the kiddo; the other from her boyfriend, a bag of goji berries. This means I'm bound to live forever!!
I remember two of my typical dreams from last night. In one I was trying to get home, but couldn't find my way. I've had this dream in real horrorshow places, but the one last night had great vistas of an exaggerated Edinburgh, and wasn't unpleasant. I just wasn't sure of where I was going.
Another dream I sometimes have is of my living space being invaded by folk I can't get rid of. Once it was unruly teenagers, but there's been worse. Last night I remember one when this flat was invaded by happy smiling wee Tibetans, some of whom I recognised from the Samye Ling. I wakened up feeling really happy after that, and it was after eight. A bit of surprise because the flat last night was unexpectedly empty again and I drank a bottle and a half of 12%.
Two of our teevees conked out. One on Christmas Day. One on Boxing Day. Dearie me!
I remember two of my typical dreams from last night. In one I was trying to get home, but couldn't find my way. I've had this dream in real horrorshow places, but the one last night had great vistas of an exaggerated Edinburgh, and wasn't unpleasant. I just wasn't sure of where I was going.
Another dream I sometimes have is of my living space being invaded by folk I can't get rid of. Once it was unruly teenagers, but there's been worse. Last night I remember one when this flat was invaded by happy smiling wee Tibetans, some of whom I recognised from the Samye Ling. I wakened up feeling really happy after that, and it was after eight. A bit of surprise because the flat last night was unexpectedly empty again and I drank a bottle and a half of 12%.
Two of our teevees conked out. One on Christmas Day. One on Boxing Day. Dearie me!
Monday 26 December 2011
Bliss diary Boxing Day, 2011!
Boxing Day 9:09 a.m.
I was awake this morning from about 4 a.m. This means that I will siesta at some point, but i feel it is auspicious to be wakening up at that time. The Dalai Lama starts meditating at four in the morning.
So I've been meditating today for about three hours already, and I think I should try to say something about the heat.
It seems apparent that when I get into a vase breathing routine, I will get hot now. I might get hot without the vase breathing, just by sitting there. The lama told me about eighteen months ago now that I will get hot as part of meditating. It comes eventually, I think, probably after you get episodes of bliss. So it's that kind of "natural" heat I'm getting and not the kind I was trying to get by concentrating on the symbols, channels and whatnot. Though if I keep that up, I think they'll get hot as well. The visualisations are getting slightly better.
Tsongkhapa talks (in The Book of the Three Inspirations, I think) about various kinds of heat you can get. Thin heat, fat heat. Heat the arises within the central channel (which is the best) and heat which feels like sunburn, which is not what you're wanting, I shouldn't think. I sometimes get a wee touch of that as well; surface skin heat. You want it to be deep and throughout, and that's what I seem to be getting most of, when I do get heat.
I've been interested in this heat business for about ten years now. And I've been getting drunk and stoned, and not showing much discipline in that regard at all. But I did keep meditating. So now I am sixty and the heat has started now. I wouldn't be surprised if I had a few problems with this, but Alexandra David-Neel says that after a while it settles down and you react to outside tempratures, so that you don't suffer from the cold. We'll see.
I'm still a flatheid when I'm walking around and doing stuff like this. Things don't look as if they're interdependent. They look separate from each other, just the way they always have done. The world still seems far too concrete. It does not look so concrete when I am meditating with my eyes half open, which I've been doing much more of, but when I'm not meditating I guess I'm as flatheided as the next joe. I hope this starts to change soon. I suppose it should.
All the time I spent meditating has gone. It would have gone anyway. I would have had nothing to show for it. I would just have gotten older, and closer to death, and still been a flatheid whether my eyes were open or shut.
You wouldn't want to be there with all the other flatheids, would you, Hotboy? Certainly not, Jack. Dearie me! The very thought of it!!!
I'll be sticking with the same routine of going to Newmains on Wednesday and getting back to Edinburgh on Friday. All the negative thoughts I've had to battle with over that are entirely due to my selfishness and stupidity.
It was awful nice to get a phone call from Jeannie from Shreveport in Lousianna, where the vampires come from, yesterday.
I guess this is the first sober post for a while!! Only half nine in the morning though!
I was awake this morning from about 4 a.m. This means that I will siesta at some point, but i feel it is auspicious to be wakening up at that time. The Dalai Lama starts meditating at four in the morning.
So I've been meditating today for about three hours already, and I think I should try to say something about the heat.
It seems apparent that when I get into a vase breathing routine, I will get hot now. I might get hot without the vase breathing, just by sitting there. The lama told me about eighteen months ago now that I will get hot as part of meditating. It comes eventually, I think, probably after you get episodes of bliss. So it's that kind of "natural" heat I'm getting and not the kind I was trying to get by concentrating on the symbols, channels and whatnot. Though if I keep that up, I think they'll get hot as well. The visualisations are getting slightly better.
Tsongkhapa talks (in The Book of the Three Inspirations, I think) about various kinds of heat you can get. Thin heat, fat heat. Heat the arises within the central channel (which is the best) and heat which feels like sunburn, which is not what you're wanting, I shouldn't think. I sometimes get a wee touch of that as well; surface skin heat. You want it to be deep and throughout, and that's what I seem to be getting most of, when I do get heat.
I've been interested in this heat business for about ten years now. And I've been getting drunk and stoned, and not showing much discipline in that regard at all. But I did keep meditating. So now I am sixty and the heat has started now. I wouldn't be surprised if I had a few problems with this, but Alexandra David-Neel says that after a while it settles down and you react to outside tempratures, so that you don't suffer from the cold. We'll see.
I'm still a flatheid when I'm walking around and doing stuff like this. Things don't look as if they're interdependent. They look separate from each other, just the way they always have done. The world still seems far too concrete. It does not look so concrete when I am meditating with my eyes half open, which I've been doing much more of, but when I'm not meditating I guess I'm as flatheided as the next joe. I hope this starts to change soon. I suppose it should.
All the time I spent meditating has gone. It would have gone anyway. I would have had nothing to show for it. I would just have gotten older, and closer to death, and still been a flatheid whether my eyes were open or shut.
You wouldn't want to be there with all the other flatheids, would you, Hotboy? Certainly not, Jack. Dearie me! The very thought of it!!!
I'll be sticking with the same routine of going to Newmains on Wednesday and getting back to Edinburgh on Friday. All the negative thoughts I've had to battle with over that are entirely due to my selfishness and stupidity.
It was awful nice to get a phone call from Jeannie from Shreveport in Lousianna, where the vampires come from, yesterday.
I guess this is the first sober post for a while!! Only half nine in the morning though!
Saturday 24 December 2011
Tapering off!
Christmas Morning 00:50 a.m.
I bought two packets of Guinness today. For some time I've been going down to the Co-op and buying their very cheap plonko collapso, which I think is about ten times cheaper than it was thirty five years ago.
You don't know what it's like when it comes creeping up on you. And you have to remember what the old, toothless one told you about how the cheap, Australian plonko did for his chummy Jimbo, or his brother.
Tapering off is from The Iceman Cometh. The drunks, if I remember right, hang around in this special hotel bar where you can get a drink on a Sunday, and sometimes they stand up and declare this maybe. Tomorrow I'll start tapering off! The Iceman Cometh is a play by Eugene O' Neill and is the most wonderful play. I know that the few, fortunate flatheids who land on this bloggy do not meditate, but reading this play was one of the wonderful things I ever did. Great play.
Anyway, I switched this evening from drinking wine to drinking Guinness. 4.1%. You almost stay sober, especially when you have to talk to folk who are not drinking, or smoking, or anything like that.
It is, I think, six weeks now since I stopped smoking soapbar. It's been harder than it seemed. I love being stoned. Tomorrow the folk here will go away, and I will try just to sit.
Today the sitting was wonderful. I thought that today I could hold my hand up and say that what I had hoped was possible when I read The Bliss of Inner Fire had been achieved, even if it took me ten years. And so it did. Everything else is crap, but that thing has worked. I got it to work and it did not hurt me. I was a fortunate creature and took the blessings as well as I could, and tomorrow or the next day I will be sober, so I will.
I cannot describe the start of the day when I was doing the bliss, and all. I could tell yous what it was like when the flatheids intervened, but that's what you get anyway.
It's hot. It's blissful. Walk on!
I bought two packets of Guinness today. For some time I've been going down to the Co-op and buying their very cheap plonko collapso, which I think is about ten times cheaper than it was thirty five years ago.
You don't know what it's like when it comes creeping up on you. And you have to remember what the old, toothless one told you about how the cheap, Australian plonko did for his chummy Jimbo, or his brother.
Tapering off is from The Iceman Cometh. The drunks, if I remember right, hang around in this special hotel bar where you can get a drink on a Sunday, and sometimes they stand up and declare this maybe. Tomorrow I'll start tapering off! The Iceman Cometh is a play by Eugene O' Neill and is the most wonderful play. I know that the few, fortunate flatheids who land on this bloggy do not meditate, but reading this play was one of the wonderful things I ever did. Great play.
Anyway, I switched this evening from drinking wine to drinking Guinness. 4.1%. You almost stay sober, especially when you have to talk to folk who are not drinking, or smoking, or anything like that.
It is, I think, six weeks now since I stopped smoking soapbar. It's been harder than it seemed. I love being stoned. Tomorrow the folk here will go away, and I will try just to sit.
Today the sitting was wonderful. I thought that today I could hold my hand up and say that what I had hoped was possible when I read The Bliss of Inner Fire had been achieved, even if it took me ten years. And so it did. Everything else is crap, but that thing has worked. I got it to work and it did not hurt me. I was a fortunate creature and took the blessings as well as I could, and tomorrow or the next day I will be sober, so I will.
I cannot describe the start of the day when I was doing the bliss, and all. I could tell yous what it was like when the flatheids intervened, but that's what you get anyway.
It's hot. It's blissful. Walk on!
Friday 23 December 2011
The altruistic intention!
Friday 10:40 p.m.
The three or four folk who land on this bloggy might have noticed by the last two alky posts that I've been having a wee bit of trouble with developing the altruistic intention recently.
It's hard not to think that the mother in law has five children, and I'm not one of them, and that I do not know how long I have to live, and I've got things to do, and are they just taking the piss letting me sit with her when I could be organising a few weeks in Kopan monastery in Katmandu while they seem to be able to organise holidays whenever they like, and their mother going doolally has had almost no impact on their lives, apart from the hand wringing, and even then, not much of that. The auld maw is right in her assessment of these people: if you're soft, they'll walk all over you.
I thought they might be on holiday this week since almost everyone else is, and that, along with telling the Domestic Bliss that I was cutting the days down from going there on Wednesday to going there on Thursday - no strain there, just spending one night and two days out of my week in Lanarkshire - well, I could go down to the Samye Ling between Christmas and New Year. But no, they're only getting public holidays. Then the Domestic Bliss, who goes there on a Friday night, tells me on the phone that her old dear seemed befuddled and all when I left her clear as a bell, and whatnot. Anyway, I'll have to stop moaning about it and pitch up there again on Wednesday this week.
Is it killing you, Hotboy? It feels as if it is, Jack. It feels as if I'm nailed to the door and cannot get off, that my life is no longer my own and that I cannot make decisions for myself, that I am skewered by being involved with these evil bourgeois basturns at all.
Milarepa was told by Marpa to build a tower in a certain shape, and once he'd done this, Marpa told him to tear it down and build another one of a different shape. Of course, you will not have read the Life of Milarepa, one of the greatest books ever written, but there it is. This juju is not for sweetie eaters!!! The path is hard and long and may take eons.
The Abbot of the Samye Ling in one of his discourses was saying that some yogis seem a little mad. When they don't like you, they just say so. This is not polite. Some people think they are a bit soft in the head, but when they die, well, there they are sitting in samadhi for days and days.
Liberation through samadhi is what the Dalai Lama said to me on one very weird dream I had a long time ago. Just blackness and his head moving from left to right saying that.
Anyway, the evil bourgeois are all going to hell!! I'm going to Waitrose tomorrow to see if they have any Erdinger there, and then on Christmas Day I will try to think about sobering up. It's nearly six weeks since I gave up the soapbar. Now for the alcohol. Very hard to imagine being in Newmains at night and not drinking, or smoking.
So everything when you don't meditate is crap. The flat's crap. Going to Newmains is crap. Learning to drink Americanos in Costas is crap. Not being in control of your life is crap. When you are not meditating, everything you see is crap.
But tonight, though I was tired out from the living out of a bag and drinking myself to death and all the travelling to and forth, I sat down in here and started meditating. Watching the clock, having difficulty settling - this is the worst thing going to Newmains has done. If I wasn't going there, I could just sit for an hour and a half every time no bother - and then I lay down in the bed. The bliss from yoga nidra is so wonderful and reassuring. Then I sat up again and the candle was lit and I was facing my wall with all the gurus, and I had the bestest meditation ever. It's the end of the beginning with the raising of inner heat. I cannot describe it and I cannot explain it, but it was wonderful to witness it. This is ra bliss!! This is ra bliss!! This is ra bliss! Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!
The three or four folk who land on this bloggy might have noticed by the last two alky posts that I've been having a wee bit of trouble with developing the altruistic intention recently.
It's hard not to think that the mother in law has five children, and I'm not one of them, and that I do not know how long I have to live, and I've got things to do, and are they just taking the piss letting me sit with her when I could be organising a few weeks in Kopan monastery in Katmandu while they seem to be able to organise holidays whenever they like, and their mother going doolally has had almost no impact on their lives, apart from the hand wringing, and even then, not much of that. The auld maw is right in her assessment of these people: if you're soft, they'll walk all over you.
I thought they might be on holiday this week since almost everyone else is, and that, along with telling the Domestic Bliss that I was cutting the days down from going there on Wednesday to going there on Thursday - no strain there, just spending one night and two days out of my week in Lanarkshire - well, I could go down to the Samye Ling between Christmas and New Year. But no, they're only getting public holidays. Then the Domestic Bliss, who goes there on a Friday night, tells me on the phone that her old dear seemed befuddled and all when I left her clear as a bell, and whatnot. Anyway, I'll have to stop moaning about it and pitch up there again on Wednesday this week.
Is it killing you, Hotboy? It feels as if it is, Jack. It feels as if I'm nailed to the door and cannot get off, that my life is no longer my own and that I cannot make decisions for myself, that I am skewered by being involved with these evil bourgeois basturns at all.
Milarepa was told by Marpa to build a tower in a certain shape, and once he'd done this, Marpa told him to tear it down and build another one of a different shape. Of course, you will not have read the Life of Milarepa, one of the greatest books ever written, but there it is. This juju is not for sweetie eaters!!! The path is hard and long and may take eons.
The Abbot of the Samye Ling in one of his discourses was saying that some yogis seem a little mad. When they don't like you, they just say so. This is not polite. Some people think they are a bit soft in the head, but when they die, well, there they are sitting in samadhi for days and days.
Liberation through samadhi is what the Dalai Lama said to me on one very weird dream I had a long time ago. Just blackness and his head moving from left to right saying that.
Anyway, the evil bourgeois are all going to hell!! I'm going to Waitrose tomorrow to see if they have any Erdinger there, and then on Christmas Day I will try to think about sobering up. It's nearly six weeks since I gave up the soapbar. Now for the alcohol. Very hard to imagine being in Newmains at night and not drinking, or smoking.
So everything when you don't meditate is crap. The flat's crap. Going to Newmains is crap. Learning to drink Americanos in Costas is crap. Not being in control of your life is crap. When you are not meditating, everything you see is crap.
But tonight, though I was tired out from the living out of a bag and drinking myself to death and all the travelling to and forth, I sat down in here and started meditating. Watching the clock, having difficulty settling - this is the worst thing going to Newmains has done. If I wasn't going there, I could just sit for an hour and a half every time no bother - and then I lay down in the bed. The bliss from yoga nidra is so wonderful and reassuring. Then I sat up again and the candle was lit and I was facing my wall with all the gurus, and I had the bestest meditation ever. It's the end of the beginning with the raising of inner heat. I cannot describe it and I cannot explain it, but it was wonderful to witness it. This is ra bliss!! This is ra bliss!! This is ra bliss! Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!
Thursday 22 December 2011
There are no sentient beings!
Thursday 11:10 p.m.
They think they exist, the sentient beings do. That's why all you hear from them is the moaning and groaning. Oh, no! I'm going to die! Well, like everything else, that's not true. In this ocean of missapprehension, nothing is true. These are just the thoughts, lying basturns every one!
Even if I could prove my existence to my satisfaction, I would not like to exist for as long as the mother-in-law, or the auld maw, or any of these examples of good health. Well, where does all that good health get you? Feeling, Clinging, Craving, and Becoming, Birth, Old Age, and Death --- Disllusionment, Disappointment and Despair --- Suffering In This Life!!
I am not doing that, the old age and dying bit. That's for the stupid people. As soon as a few folk pop their clogs, I want to go and spend the about fifteen grands I've got on blow-jobs, nice friendly whores, some decent drugs, and then suicide. It's definitely not going to be me who dies anyway.
What do you think, Jack? This is much more positive than the last post, Hotboy. Well, Jack, I've decided that some old person's old dear is really okay, and it was just my sense of guilt that drove me to waste the first year of my retirement sitting around here, doing nothing. The mother in law has got better. Today she spoke on the phone and said something sensible and it took a long time.
Also, today the bliss was hot and blissful. Maybe I should be working now on the shyness and the catholic residue, and find some nice friendly whores, and loll around on foreign shores for a bit, and then blow my brains out, or just come home.
I don't want to do this stuff anymore!
The morning after!
I bought two bottles of plonko collapso last night, but cunningly poured half a bottle down the sink as soon as I opened it. However, this morning I found this post and don't remember writing it. I would have deleted it, but Mingin' had left a comment, so ...this monk like existence has obviously been getting to me!! Feeling great this morning as well. I must be habituating to the white wine!!
They think they exist, the sentient beings do. That's why all you hear from them is the moaning and groaning. Oh, no! I'm going to die! Well, like everything else, that's not true. In this ocean of missapprehension, nothing is true. These are just the thoughts, lying basturns every one!
Even if I could prove my existence to my satisfaction, I would not like to exist for as long as the mother-in-law, or the auld maw, or any of these examples of good health. Well, where does all that good health get you? Feeling, Clinging, Craving, and Becoming, Birth, Old Age, and Death --- Disllusionment, Disappointment and Despair --- Suffering In This Life!!
I am not doing that, the old age and dying bit. That's for the stupid people. As soon as a few folk pop their clogs, I want to go and spend the about fifteen grands I've got on blow-jobs, nice friendly whores, some decent drugs, and then suicide. It's definitely not going to be me who dies anyway.
What do you think, Jack? This is much more positive than the last post, Hotboy. Well, Jack, I've decided that some old person's old dear is really okay, and it was just my sense of guilt that drove me to waste the first year of my retirement sitting around here, doing nothing. The mother in law has got better. Today she spoke on the phone and said something sensible and it took a long time.
Also, today the bliss was hot and blissful. Maybe I should be working now on the shyness and the catholic residue, and find some nice friendly whores, and loll around on foreign shores for a bit, and then blow my brains out, or just come home.
I don't want to do this stuff anymore!
The morning after!
I bought two bottles of plonko collapso last night, but cunningly poured half a bottle down the sink as soon as I opened it. However, this morning I found this post and don't remember writing it. I would have deleted it, but Mingin' had left a comment, so ...this monk like existence has obviously been getting to me!! Feeling great this morning as well. I must be habituating to the white wine!!
Wednesday 21 December 2011
In Newmains!
Wednesday 11:20 p.m.
There is part of me that thinks that the world is moving in exactly the way it should be moving, that everything is happening exactly the way it should be happening, and that everything will be alright in the end.
The end may be eons away. Everything is happening the way it should be happening because of the inexorable cause and effect. And it may be moving in exactly the way it should be moving, but I do not like the way it is moving. I don't like it at all.
I've been doing this for months, and it is very hard. But I am going to keep doing it because that's what I have to do.
For the people who visit the psycho-geriatrics for an hour or two, this is like visiting for two and a half days. And it is not my mother.
But the world is certainly moving in the way it should be moving, and I am here, and I will do this though it is difficult. Doing good things is sometimes very difficult.
Are you on the path, Hotboy? Hard to say, but sometimes it looks like that, Jack. And what is the basis of the path? Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path. And what are the three things you have to remember? Well, Jack, I think you have to remember that you don't want to be reborn; that you do want to develop the altruistic intention, and you do want to have correct view of reality.
So it's all right here in your face, in Newmains. No one ever said it was supposed to be easy.
I would oh so like to be left alone with my thoughts and thinking. After a couple of weeks in a cave, what a time I could have. What a time!
There is part of me that thinks that the world is moving in exactly the way it should be moving, that everything is happening exactly the way it should be happening, and that everything will be alright in the end.
The end may be eons away. Everything is happening the way it should be happening because of the inexorable cause and effect. And it may be moving in exactly the way it should be moving, but I do not like the way it is moving. I don't like it at all.
I've been doing this for months, and it is very hard. But I am going to keep doing it because that's what I have to do.
For the people who visit the psycho-geriatrics for an hour or two, this is like visiting for two and a half days. And it is not my mother.
But the world is certainly moving in the way it should be moving, and I am here, and I will do this though it is difficult. Doing good things is sometimes very difficult.
Are you on the path, Hotboy? Hard to say, but sometimes it looks like that, Jack. And what is the basis of the path? Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path. And what are the three things you have to remember? Well, Jack, I think you have to remember that you don't want to be reborn; that you do want to develop the altruistic intention, and you do want to have correct view of reality.
So it's all right here in your face, in Newmains. No one ever said it was supposed to be easy.
I would oh so like to be left alone with my thoughts and thinking. After a couple of weeks in a cave, what a time I could have. What a time!
Tuesday 20 December 2011
Camera test!
Tuesday 5:51 p.m.
The plasterer was supposed to be coming this afternoon, so I went out to the Botanics to test the camera. It doesn't take true colour. If you look at a bright red, that's not what you get in the photie. It did occur to me when I was out testing it that someday someone will think of adding a radio to one of these things, and maybe an alarm clock, or even a phone.
I thought the plasterer might be phoning around two, so I got off the cushion to investigate. It wasn't the plasterer. Then, at around half four, someone came in the front door, and I got off the cushion and ....
Meditating for six hours a day isn't really much of a bother at my stage of the game. You've just got to habituate yourself a wee bit. You know that after a few days one and a half hours four times a day would be a piece of cake. The absorptions would be wonderful! I should have been doing this solidly from about June, but what with having to travel to Newmains every week, and going to Bellshill on the Friday, and living in a coup ... well, it's not really working out the way I hoped.
But the channels are still opening and the bliss is still getting blissier and warmer. I have to go to Newmains tomorrow and I can't say I'm looking forward to that. But it was the mother-in-law on the phone and not the plasterer. You wouldn't wish it on anyone, neither you would. Hope all you flatheids out there are looking forward to dying like dogs, but I'm really hoping such a fate does not happen to me! My liver is bound to go way before that!!! Hurrah!
Monday 19 December 2011
In the War Against the Machines Part 5 and a bit!
Monday 11:53 p.m.
There might be photies. What I hate is wasting time. I don't mind laughing and having a joke with the odd flatheid. I don't mind getting drunk and stoned so long as I don't do it so much that it makes me less happy. What I totally resent is the computeryness of the machines these days. So I buy a camera with the Poisonous. I want to point it and click, and that's all. I don't mind then handing it to a properly qualified camera technician to do the rest, but what I really don't like it being asked to do stuff. Like, I was in the shop with Poisonous and he said this, the cheapest for an idiot camera you could buy, took videos. I said I did not want to take videos. I want to spontaneously take snaps. Snap, snap. Poisonous says something like even biros take videos these days, or he should have said that. Anyway, they have a CD with the digital camera. And a cable. And instructions that say if you really want to know what this camera can do, go to the website and find out. I can't wait. Lets see if I can get some photies then. Here we go.
Hurrah!
This is the chaos I am living in at the moment. This could be a lovely flat. There are three big bedrooms, a big kitchen, a big living room, a bog, and only two folk living in it at the moment. Since last week, I've been going out to drink a cup of vile coffee in the vile coffee shop to get away from it. It's been almost impossible to live here since last April when the men came to stick the gable end back on. Then the decorating started. Why does the decorating have to last six months and still not be over? I do not know the answer to this question. All I know is that there is no room to swing a cat. Once the other person who lives here has died, almost everything you can see in these photies is going in the bin. There will be cushions. There will be lots of space to do tai chi sets. There will be no ugly plants. There will be no one else. Maybe some schoolgirls.
But what wonderful space there will be! Space is like mind except without awareness, but space allows things to be in it. This does not mean that you should fill the space until there is no space.
I'll have to leave here the day after tomorrow to go a live out of a bag in a place which is strangely enough much the same, a place were there is no room to do yoga, or yogic jumpings, or anything like that, except in this case, the space is largely filled with buckets for the dripping, dripping drippingness.
Oh well. It takes sixty seven steps to get up to this flat. Once you get here, you spend all your life moving crap from room to room. It says clinging and craving, and holding and grasping and never being able to let go. I tried to keep my room out of it, but you get bullied and now there is no room here either, no space, just someone else's anonymous shite filling everywhere. The auld maw is right. You'd be happier living in a tent, so you would!
There might be photies. What I hate is wasting time. I don't mind laughing and having a joke with the odd flatheid. I don't mind getting drunk and stoned so long as I don't do it so much that it makes me less happy. What I totally resent is the computeryness of the machines these days. So I buy a camera with the Poisonous. I want to point it and click, and that's all. I don't mind then handing it to a properly qualified camera technician to do the rest, but what I really don't like it being asked to do stuff. Like, I was in the shop with Poisonous and he said this, the cheapest for an idiot camera you could buy, took videos. I said I did not want to take videos. I want to spontaneously take snaps. Snap, snap. Poisonous says something like even biros take videos these days, or he should have said that. Anyway, they have a CD with the digital camera. And a cable. And instructions that say if you really want to know what this camera can do, go to the website and find out. I can't wait. Lets see if I can get some photies then. Here we go.
Hurrah!
This is the chaos I am living in at the moment. This could be a lovely flat. There are three big bedrooms, a big kitchen, a big living room, a bog, and only two folk living in it at the moment. Since last week, I've been going out to drink a cup of vile coffee in the vile coffee shop to get away from it. It's been almost impossible to live here since last April when the men came to stick the gable end back on. Then the decorating started. Why does the decorating have to last six months and still not be over? I do not know the answer to this question. All I know is that there is no room to swing a cat. Once the other person who lives here has died, almost everything you can see in these photies is going in the bin. There will be cushions. There will be lots of space to do tai chi sets. There will be no ugly plants. There will be no one else. Maybe some schoolgirls.
But what wonderful space there will be! Space is like mind except without awareness, but space allows things to be in it. This does not mean that you should fill the space until there is no space.
I'll have to leave here the day after tomorrow to go a live out of a bag in a place which is strangely enough much the same, a place were there is no room to do yoga, or yogic jumpings, or anything like that, except in this case, the space is largely filled with buckets for the dripping, dripping drippingness.
Oh well. It takes sixty seven steps to get up to this flat. Once you get here, you spend all your life moving crap from room to room. It says clinging and craving, and holding and grasping and never being able to let go. I tried to keep my room out of it, but you get bullied and now there is no room here either, no space, just someone else's anonymous shite filling everywhere. The auld maw is right. You'd be happier living in a tent, so you would!
Saturday 17 December 2011
Poisonous and the Xmas Shopping!
Saturday Midnight!
I saw some reindeers today. I wish I'd had a camera. I was on the way to buying a digital camera, going along Princes Street, walking down the street because there is no traffic there anymore what with the trams being not delivered and all, when I could see something going on, and then I walked over and saw my first ever reindeer. They've got horns. They were great.
There was also an artificial slope with snow on it a wee bit along. I thought the street would be empty what with the trams being not delivered, but it was a hive, so it was.
Poisonous found me a digital camera which cost £26 or so. Then the boy said I'd have to buy a memory card, and all that falderal was happening and I just wanted to give them all my money no questions asked so I could take photies again and not have a phone. It seems they do not have digital cameras with an FM radio or a watch or an alarm clock, but the boy was very nice and I got out of the place with a digital camera which ended up costing about £34. Then we went to the pub.
He doesn't really do anything anymore except get older, but that was okay because you can engage with Poisonous about states of mind. When we were young enough to know folk who could sell us drugs, Poisonous was my preferred joe for taking drugs with. He has a point of view. It's kind of unforgiving and nasty and mean, but it is a point of view that I have much enjoyed through the years. I really like Poisonous and he is my deep, dear friend. I'll have to find a source of weed so I can buy it and smoke some with him.
We went to the Burke and Hare bar.
He said where the creationists got it wrong was that they should have said that God, being omnipotent, had created the world five or six thousand years ago, but WITH A HISTORY. So having dinosaurs is okay. And the big bang and whatnot. I loved this idea maybe because it slotted in with my idea that the Turin Shroud might have been made in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, but made by God, or Christ because that's when it had to be made and they, or he, could do that if he or they wanted to, being God and all.
Most folk don't have any faith at all which is a real shame. I don't have any faith, but it's okay for me because I'm a pragmatist and I can do the bliss and all, so I don't really need faith. What folk like me need is experience, or experiences.
So I had three pints of Guinness and that's very civilised. I got home with my bag and the contents therein. No one slipped me a Micky Finn. No pink sticky stuff. No decent drugs anymore, unfortunately, but you can't have everything, can you?
I saw some reindeers today. I wish I'd had a camera. I was on the way to buying a digital camera, going along Princes Street, walking down the street because there is no traffic there anymore what with the trams being not delivered and all, when I could see something going on, and then I walked over and saw my first ever reindeer. They've got horns. They were great.
There was also an artificial slope with snow on it a wee bit along. I thought the street would be empty what with the trams being not delivered, but it was a hive, so it was.
Poisonous found me a digital camera which cost £26 or so. Then the boy said I'd have to buy a memory card, and all that falderal was happening and I just wanted to give them all my money no questions asked so I could take photies again and not have a phone. It seems they do not have digital cameras with an FM radio or a watch or an alarm clock, but the boy was very nice and I got out of the place with a digital camera which ended up costing about £34. Then we went to the pub.
He doesn't really do anything anymore except get older, but that was okay because you can engage with Poisonous about states of mind. When we were young enough to know folk who could sell us drugs, Poisonous was my preferred joe for taking drugs with. He has a point of view. It's kind of unforgiving and nasty and mean, but it is a point of view that I have much enjoyed through the years. I really like Poisonous and he is my deep, dear friend. I'll have to find a source of weed so I can buy it and smoke some with him.
We went to the Burke and Hare bar.
He said where the creationists got it wrong was that they should have said that God, being omnipotent, had created the world five or six thousand years ago, but WITH A HISTORY. So having dinosaurs is okay. And the big bang and whatnot. I loved this idea maybe because it slotted in with my idea that the Turin Shroud might have been made in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, but made by God, or Christ because that's when it had to be made and they, or he, could do that if he or they wanted to, being God and all.
Most folk don't have any faith at all which is a real shame. I don't have any faith, but it's okay for me because I'm a pragmatist and I can do the bliss and all, so I don't really need faith. What folk like me need is experience, or experiences.
So I had three pints of Guinness and that's very civilised. I got home with my bag and the contents therein. No one slipped me a Micky Finn. No pink sticky stuff. No decent drugs anymore, unfortunately, but you can't have everything, can you?
Thursday 15 December 2011
The end of all that!
Thursday 9:58 p.m.
If you don't like drunken posts, well this aint for you.
What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!
This is because I know what you have to do. Anyone who has read the Life of Milarepa knows what you have to do, even if it is from a standing start. Or, even if you are or have been a bad basturn, there is a way to freedom and liberation from all of that.
There is no discernible beginning and no discernible end to this samsara.
Oh, what can you do, Great King, when old age and death come rolling in?
The problem is that what you have to do is so obvious, and yet so very, very difficult. It takes such an effort ....
But there are some people who just get it all at once. Apparently, the juju gets explained to them and BANG, there it is. They've got it.
I assume they get it all at once, if you accept rebirth, because they've toiled for eons and eons previously, and are then just ripe for it when the boy tells them about it.
What then am I? What is the self?
It is in the body.
It is in everybody.
It is everywhere.
It is the ALL.
It is Self. I am it. Absolute oneness.
But for joes such as moi, it's just a lot of hard work. That's why the Milarepa joe is so wonderful. Massive determination. When he kills all his maw's enemies early doors, he just has to stay walled in for a fortnight, doing that juju. Just a fortnight? As you flatheids will know, it is hard to sit for five minutes without being walled in. Just imagine five minutes without all the clicky beepy crap, like being without all that. Oh, no!
So I'm obviously not even at the races. I meditate for a few hours today, and then I do the clicky beepy crap to promote my ebooks; all my access to my accounts and all collapse, and I got out to the off-licence.
But I have to say that I'm having a great time throughout this. Even getting my account blocked was a relief. Why am I bothering with this crap? I don't need to sell books to anyone. I mean, the books aren't that good. I only tried really hard on a couple of occasions because I knew that the evil bourgeois would only allow moi to protest so much. And all of that!
I will write again. But I will stop doing this ebook kindle crap because it's just stupid. Ten percent to anyone who wants to do it. Ten percent off the top of my seventy percent. No, sixty percent. I've only got sixty percent of myself. That's very good. When George Foreman stopped fighting the first time, he had no percent. All the percentages had been given away for the money up front from his "backers". I'm quite prepared to give fifty percent of my percentage to anyone who will take these clicky clicky beep beep machines away from me and throw them all in the bin. What a waste of time this clicky clicky intermittent re-inforcement stuff is.
Jack, I can't get into my reports or my accounts or my Author's Page or anything anymore because I do not understand the multiple password username monsters. They are not human beings. They make no sense. They do not want to talk to you. You can't even whisper seductively. They are the stupid, unempathetic machines. Thank god they have barred me from doing anything. I must not go back and try again. I must walk off the park now.
I need a kid who hasn't got a jobbie to take all this away from me. I'll have to find a gay boy to come and live with me, one who is homeless and would like to spend some time in the newly decorated rooms, and doesn't mind a platonic gay relationship. Some sap from Iowa maybe. No, be better if I didn't have to talk to him, and just get him to do it for the ten percent of my fifty percent. Of course, the kiddo will get ten percent. The Domestic Bliss is, of course, an utter bourgeois and they can always be counted on to look after themselves.
Oh, well. The door has gone open and shut, and I will have to stop now. There is a cave waiting for me somewhere. And a lot of weeping and wailing, and pulling my own teeth out and stuff like that. Then, once all the teeth have been pulled out -there will be a weeping and gnashing of teeth, but the teeth for gnashing with will be provided - just serenity, and peace, and contentment, and equanimity, and not not wanting anything, not volitional impulses.
Just when you've got over them, just when you've managed the being on your own, up comes Frankie Howerd to stand in front of you and tell you a few jokes, ones you would have liked to hear some time ago, but ones you don't want to hear right now because, right now, you're doing something else, something you've managed to get into and find wonderful because of their absence.
What are they for?
Well, Hotboy, they became the real men. And you could have been a wee mention on the end of feminism, the one which enjoined the necklace of testicles, the trophies that they took, on the way to not being able to do anything other than pretend to be pantomine dames instead of the women that they could have been, the one who had the babies and got the wages and ran this world, the ones like my auld maw, instead of these beings who do not know how to nurture, which is what the wonderful women in the noble working classes of my youth used to do.
The wakes. The fat wee women used to run the wakes. They had control of everything. The got the wage packets. They made stuff, they controlled the world. As a kid, I wanted to be one of them. The men sat and make jokes, and were funnier, but they women had it, so they had. Whatever happened to them?
If you don't like drunken posts, well this aint for you.
What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!
This is because I know what you have to do. Anyone who has read the Life of Milarepa knows what you have to do, even if it is from a standing start. Or, even if you are or have been a bad basturn, there is a way to freedom and liberation from all of that.
There is no discernible beginning and no discernible end to this samsara.
Oh, what can you do, Great King, when old age and death come rolling in?
The problem is that what you have to do is so obvious, and yet so very, very difficult. It takes such an effort ....
But there are some people who just get it all at once. Apparently, the juju gets explained to them and BANG, there it is. They've got it.
I assume they get it all at once, if you accept rebirth, because they've toiled for eons and eons previously, and are then just ripe for it when the boy tells them about it.
What then am I? What is the self?
It is in the body.
It is in everybody.
It is everywhere.
It is the ALL.
It is Self. I am it. Absolute oneness.
But for joes such as moi, it's just a lot of hard work. That's why the Milarepa joe is so wonderful. Massive determination. When he kills all his maw's enemies early doors, he just has to stay walled in for a fortnight, doing that juju. Just a fortnight? As you flatheids will know, it is hard to sit for five minutes without being walled in. Just imagine five minutes without all the clicky beepy crap, like being without all that. Oh, no!
So I'm obviously not even at the races. I meditate for a few hours today, and then I do the clicky beepy crap to promote my ebooks; all my access to my accounts and all collapse, and I got out to the off-licence.
But I have to say that I'm having a great time throughout this. Even getting my account blocked was a relief. Why am I bothering with this crap? I don't need to sell books to anyone. I mean, the books aren't that good. I only tried really hard on a couple of occasions because I knew that the evil bourgeois would only allow moi to protest so much. And all of that!
I will write again. But I will stop doing this ebook kindle crap because it's just stupid. Ten percent to anyone who wants to do it. Ten percent off the top of my seventy percent. No, sixty percent. I've only got sixty percent of myself. That's very good. When George Foreman stopped fighting the first time, he had no percent. All the percentages had been given away for the money up front from his "backers". I'm quite prepared to give fifty percent of my percentage to anyone who will take these clicky clicky beep beep machines away from me and throw them all in the bin. What a waste of time this clicky clicky intermittent re-inforcement stuff is.
Jack, I can't get into my reports or my accounts or my Author's Page or anything anymore because I do not understand the multiple password username monsters. They are not human beings. They make no sense. They do not want to talk to you. You can't even whisper seductively. They are the stupid, unempathetic machines. Thank god they have barred me from doing anything. I must not go back and try again. I must walk off the park now.
I need a kid who hasn't got a jobbie to take all this away from me. I'll have to find a gay boy to come and live with me, one who is homeless and would like to spend some time in the newly decorated rooms, and doesn't mind a platonic gay relationship. Some sap from Iowa maybe. No, be better if I didn't have to talk to him, and just get him to do it for the ten percent of my fifty percent. Of course, the kiddo will get ten percent. The Domestic Bliss is, of course, an utter bourgeois and they can always be counted on to look after themselves.
Oh, well. The door has gone open and shut, and I will have to stop now. There is a cave waiting for me somewhere. And a lot of weeping and wailing, and pulling my own teeth out and stuff like that. Then, once all the teeth have been pulled out -there will be a weeping and gnashing of teeth, but the teeth for gnashing with will be provided - just serenity, and peace, and contentment, and equanimity, and not not wanting anything, not volitional impulses.
Just when you've got over them, just when you've managed the being on your own, up comes Frankie Howerd to stand in front of you and tell you a few jokes, ones you would have liked to hear some time ago, but ones you don't want to hear right now because, right now, you're doing something else, something you've managed to get into and find wonderful because of their absence.
What are they for?
Well, Hotboy, they became the real men. And you could have been a wee mention on the end of feminism, the one which enjoined the necklace of testicles, the trophies that they took, on the way to not being able to do anything other than pretend to be pantomine dames instead of the women that they could have been, the one who had the babies and got the wages and ran this world, the ones like my auld maw, instead of these beings who do not know how to nurture, which is what the wonderful women in the noble working classes of my youth used to do.
The wakes. The fat wee women used to run the wakes. They had control of everything. The got the wage packets. They made stuff, they controlled the world. As a kid, I wanted to be one of them. The men sat and make jokes, and were funnier, but they women had it, so they had. Whatever happened to them?
Wednesday 14 December 2011
Today
Wednesday 10:07 p.m.
Just out of the bath really after a shadow boxing session. Quite surprised at how fit I'm getting these days. I wanted to do more. I reckon it's losing some weight.
I went into the kitchen and found the cute decorator sitting there this morning. We chatted. She said the room she was working in was really cold. She hopped off her seat and came over and touched her hand on mine. See how cold it is, she said. I could have offered to warm it up over my candle, but we're not going there, are we, Jack?
Went to the coffee shop again this afternoon and had another basin of Americano. It still tasted crap, but not as crap as yesterday. You can get used to anything, so you can.
I managed to buy a book off Amazon.com. It only took me about three quarters of an hour, and that was mainly because of the address thing. It thinks Edinburgh is in Midlothian, and it wouldn't believe that I stayed in 3f2, so I ended up agreeing with it. I stay in Flat 1. Why can't they just let you put your address in? Then I thought I'd bought the book, but I hadn't because you had to clicky on something saying GBP. That seems to mean sterling. If you say you want the damn thing sent to Edinburgh, does it think you're going to pay in Yen? I really don't like doing all that clicky clicky stuff. I just don't like it. However, I can now get onto discussion threads there, and see the Kindle reports and it hasn't screwed up anything.
This is the third night out of four being sober and straight. I'm waking up at four and meditating before dawn, sitting up in bed. The meditations are going great. Once the bathroom is back to normal and the ragged trousered philanthropists stop walking about the place ... God, it would be like living in normal flat.
I'm not in Newmains this week. That'll be the third week I've had off in six months. Somehow I wished I'd been there when I heard that the mother in law is on antibiotics for her leg. Some complication after some ulcers healed. She's throwing up as well and can't sleep. She can't lie on the floor because she wouldn't be able to get up.
I can't die before I get old now, Jack, because I'm old already. I'm not going to die like that either if I can help it. Great motivation to practise. It's not how long you live, it's how you die that counts.
Just out of the bath really after a shadow boxing session. Quite surprised at how fit I'm getting these days. I wanted to do more. I reckon it's losing some weight.
I went into the kitchen and found the cute decorator sitting there this morning. We chatted. She said the room she was working in was really cold. She hopped off her seat and came over and touched her hand on mine. See how cold it is, she said. I could have offered to warm it up over my candle, but we're not going there, are we, Jack?
Went to the coffee shop again this afternoon and had another basin of Americano. It still tasted crap, but not as crap as yesterday. You can get used to anything, so you can.
I managed to buy a book off Amazon.com. It only took me about three quarters of an hour, and that was mainly because of the address thing. It thinks Edinburgh is in Midlothian, and it wouldn't believe that I stayed in 3f2, so I ended up agreeing with it. I stay in Flat 1. Why can't they just let you put your address in? Then I thought I'd bought the book, but I hadn't because you had to clicky on something saying GBP. That seems to mean sterling. If you say you want the damn thing sent to Edinburgh, does it think you're going to pay in Yen? I really don't like doing all that clicky clicky stuff. I just don't like it. However, I can now get onto discussion threads there, and see the Kindle reports and it hasn't screwed up anything.
This is the third night out of four being sober and straight. I'm waking up at four and meditating before dawn, sitting up in bed. The meditations are going great. Once the bathroom is back to normal and the ragged trousered philanthropists stop walking about the place ... God, it would be like living in normal flat.
I'm not in Newmains this week. That'll be the third week I've had off in six months. Somehow I wished I'd been there when I heard that the mother in law is on antibiotics for her leg. Some complication after some ulcers healed. She's throwing up as well and can't sleep. She can't lie on the floor because she wouldn't be able to get up.
I can't die before I get old now, Jack, because I'm old already. I'm not going to die like that either if I can help it. Great motivation to practise. It's not how long you live, it's how you die that counts.
Tuesday 13 December 2011
Coffee
Tuesday 4:06 p.m.
The cute decorator chapped my bedroom door and I opened it before putting the light on, so it looked dark with the curtains drawn and all, and I had to show her my candle. Because you don't want folk to think you're weird, neither you do, even when you are.
Later, I went out to order Pointing Out The Great Way from Waterstone's and then went out for a coffee down the road a wee bit.
I'm trying to learn how to do this coffee shop stuff. First I learned that you can say double expresso and you get a wee tottie cup. Last week when I was in the pub with Allan Guthrie, he ordered a latte, so I was going to order a latte in Costas today, but I don't do dairy these days, so I chanced my arm with an medium Americano without milk. You get a giant cup of horrible black stuff, but it's actually quite good value. I sat for nearly an hour sipping it while reading The Times and, unlike with beer, there is no way you'd want to drink another cup of that crap.
I have no inclination to buy any soapbar at the moment, but the last three weeks of no soapbar have been quite alcoholic, and now I'm gradually weaning myself off the booze. I haven't had anything to drink for the last two nights out of three, and I think what I'll do is drink a bottle of plonko collapso every second night, then every third night ...
Yesterday, I went to the hut and sat there for three straight hours to get away from the plasterer. I didn't take gloves, but I wasn't too cold. The vase breathing and all is a help in these circumstances, but I'm still miles and miles away from prevailing against the cold.
This morning I wakened up at half four and was meditating by five. At seven I went out for a paper. I fell asleep at the back of nine and started meditating again just before eleven, and the cute decorator chapped the door at just before one.
What you've got to do is hit the point when you don't mind what time of day it is, and what might come next. When serenity starts returning, you know you're starting to get back to where you should be. The Domestic Bliss won't be back till later in the evening and I'll meditate for as much of the interim as I can. I won't do any hard training tonight. Yesterday I stripped a wall and a ceiling and felt so, so exhausted afterwards. I couldn't believe it. Knackered. So I'll lay off this evening and maybe go out for a bottle of collapso later, and maybe not.
What do you think, Jack? Well, Hotboy, once you give up the booze, there will be nothing left to give up except the coffee and tea. Onan the Bavarian doesn't drink coffee, so it must be bad for you. I wonder why.
The cute decorator chapped my bedroom door and I opened it before putting the light on, so it looked dark with the curtains drawn and all, and I had to show her my candle. Because you don't want folk to think you're weird, neither you do, even when you are.
Later, I went out to order Pointing Out The Great Way from Waterstone's and then went out for a coffee down the road a wee bit.
I'm trying to learn how to do this coffee shop stuff. First I learned that you can say double expresso and you get a wee tottie cup. Last week when I was in the pub with Allan Guthrie, he ordered a latte, so I was going to order a latte in Costas today, but I don't do dairy these days, so I chanced my arm with an medium Americano without milk. You get a giant cup of horrible black stuff, but it's actually quite good value. I sat for nearly an hour sipping it while reading The Times and, unlike with beer, there is no way you'd want to drink another cup of that crap.
I have no inclination to buy any soapbar at the moment, but the last three weeks of no soapbar have been quite alcoholic, and now I'm gradually weaning myself off the booze. I haven't had anything to drink for the last two nights out of three, and I think what I'll do is drink a bottle of plonko collapso every second night, then every third night ...
Yesterday, I went to the hut and sat there for three straight hours to get away from the plasterer. I didn't take gloves, but I wasn't too cold. The vase breathing and all is a help in these circumstances, but I'm still miles and miles away from prevailing against the cold.
This morning I wakened up at half four and was meditating by five. At seven I went out for a paper. I fell asleep at the back of nine and started meditating again just before eleven, and the cute decorator chapped the door at just before one.
What you've got to do is hit the point when you don't mind what time of day it is, and what might come next. When serenity starts returning, you know you're starting to get back to where you should be. The Domestic Bliss won't be back till later in the evening and I'll meditate for as much of the interim as I can. I won't do any hard training tonight. Yesterday I stripped a wall and a ceiling and felt so, so exhausted afterwards. I couldn't believe it. Knackered. So I'll lay off this evening and maybe go out for a bottle of collapso later, and maybe not.
What do you think, Jack? Well, Hotboy, once you give up the booze, there will be nothing left to give up except the coffee and tea. Onan the Bavarian doesn't drink coffee, so it must be bad for you. I wonder why.
Sunday 11 December 2011
Bliss diary!
Sunday 8:41 a.m.
On Friday - and the weather wasn't nice -I was on four buses and one train, saw two great grannies, and when I got home, felt knackered. The two bottles of wine I had didn't really help. Life is actually not brilliant at the moment. I feel kind of without a place to stay, or to call my own.
Obviously, I'm camping in Newmains in a big, damp, cold, leaking house. There are buckets collecting drips everywhere. When I got back here, the basin had been removed from the bathroom and the bricks bared, etc. I can do that Newmains thing when I think that I wouldn't leave a dog to die like that, but when I'm tired and things aren't going so well, my motivation gets clouded by thoughts of the uselessness of ...(the next section was edited later to take out the bilious, libellous comments ... the automatic spell checker on this thinks libellous has one el.
I've sold sixteen books in ten days. My writing blog is averaging about ten page views a day. I don't know what that means. It's averaging six visits a day.
Mostly I've been drinking in the evenings since I gave up the pizza, but I had to stop last night. I had a slow start yesterday after the two bottle night the night before, and I was on my own almost all the time, but I sat and sat and sat, and stayed sober in the evening. It's a lonely old life, so it is.
I was wondering if I'd get the sweats while sleeping, or have bad dreams, but I slept well and had a lovely dream. It was about getting nice reviews for my books. I was showing them to my mother-in-law. So I wakened up feeling really good. Then the first meditation of the day was great, just as it was turning from darkness to light, and I felt real heat and great bliss.
I'd love to be able to meditate for most of today, but I have to strip the walls and ceiling in one of the rooms. Then the ragged trousered philanthropists will be in the flat on Monday and Tuesday, and it's back to Newmains on Wednesday. I've had two weeks when I didn't have to go to Newmains in the past six months. It's starting to tell on me. I could just stay here and ... (this was also edited out to get rid of the libel!)
Keeping my mouth shut today would be a good idea!!!
On Friday - and the weather wasn't nice -I was on four buses and one train, saw two great grannies, and when I got home, felt knackered. The two bottles of wine I had didn't really help. Life is actually not brilliant at the moment. I feel kind of without a place to stay, or to call my own.
Obviously, I'm camping in Newmains in a big, damp, cold, leaking house. There are buckets collecting drips everywhere. When I got back here, the basin had been removed from the bathroom and the bricks bared, etc. I can do that Newmains thing when I think that I wouldn't leave a dog to die like that, but when I'm tired and things aren't going so well, my motivation gets clouded by thoughts of the uselessness of ...(the next section was edited later to take out the bilious, libellous comments ... the automatic spell checker on this thinks libellous has one el.
I've sold sixteen books in ten days. My writing blog is averaging about ten page views a day. I don't know what that means. It's averaging six visits a day.
Mostly I've been drinking in the evenings since I gave up the pizza, but I had to stop last night. I had a slow start yesterday after the two bottle night the night before, and I was on my own almost all the time, but I sat and sat and sat, and stayed sober in the evening. It's a lonely old life, so it is.
I was wondering if I'd get the sweats while sleeping, or have bad dreams, but I slept well and had a lovely dream. It was about getting nice reviews for my books. I was showing them to my mother-in-law. So I wakened up feeling really good. Then the first meditation of the day was great, just as it was turning from darkness to light, and I felt real heat and great bliss.
I'd love to be able to meditate for most of today, but I have to strip the walls and ceiling in one of the rooms. Then the ragged trousered philanthropists will be in the flat on Monday and Tuesday, and it's back to Newmains on Wednesday. I've had two weeks when I didn't have to go to Newmains in the past six months. It's starting to tell on me. I could just stay here and ... (this was also edited out to get rid of the libel!)
Keeping my mouth shut today would be a good idea!!!
Thursday 8 December 2011
And the wind did blow!
Thursday 8:30 p.m.
Felt a bit useful today! The gale blew and the social services collapsed around me. We only got the carer in for this morning and they had to call off the next three. But I think they would have fought through somehow if the old doll had been without family here. Or me. I made dinners and didn't train due to the weather outside. Even running up and down the garden path was not on today due to the horrible weather. There's nowhere I can train indoors here. Anyway, it has been a good day! I managed to meditate for seven hours anyway, I think, though, of course, there are interruptions.
I'm used to coming here now. As long as the routine stays more or less the same, I can get along with it. And I seem to have strangled the Nicotine Dragon to death this time. First the nicotine. Then the drink. The Beer Monster has turned into a wino, but nothing stays the same and, once the Nicotine Dragon has been subdued .... well, that's the hard one! It's nearly three weeks now, I think. Soon the drinking will diminish and the flatheids .... I'm going to have to withdraw from the flatheids and keep them down to once a week. There's bugger all you can do about the too dumb to meditate. One has to detach eventually almost completely, at least for periods.
Having said that, I'll be seeing Poisonous on Saturday or Sunday. To buy a digital camera and have a cup of coffee. Maybe a cup of coffee!
I've sold about nine books in the last eight days. Most pleased that three of them were the kid's book about Tibet, sort of. Also, I sold the Buddha and the BBW to some French person. My first French sale. The money doesn't really matter, but it's been good that Kindle has allowed these ten books to be somewhere where someone might stumble over them!
Felt a bit useful today! The gale blew and the social services collapsed around me. We only got the carer in for this morning and they had to call off the next three. But I think they would have fought through somehow if the old doll had been without family here. Or me. I made dinners and didn't train due to the weather outside. Even running up and down the garden path was not on today due to the horrible weather. There's nowhere I can train indoors here. Anyway, it has been a good day! I managed to meditate for seven hours anyway, I think, though, of course, there are interruptions.
I'm used to coming here now. As long as the routine stays more or less the same, I can get along with it. And I seem to have strangled the Nicotine Dragon to death this time. First the nicotine. Then the drink. The Beer Monster has turned into a wino, but nothing stays the same and, once the Nicotine Dragon has been subdued .... well, that's the hard one! It's nearly three weeks now, I think. Soon the drinking will diminish and the flatheids .... I'm going to have to withdraw from the flatheids and keep them down to once a week. There's bugger all you can do about the too dumb to meditate. One has to detach eventually almost completely, at least for periods.
Having said that, I'll be seeing Poisonous on Saturday or Sunday. To buy a digital camera and have a cup of coffee. Maybe a cup of coffee!
I've sold about nine books in the last eight days. Most pleased that three of them were the kid's book about Tibet, sort of. Also, I sold the Buddha and the BBW to some French person. My first French sale. The money doesn't really matter, but it's been good that Kindle has allowed these ten books to be somewhere where someone might stumble over them!
Wednesday 7 December 2011
Goodby to all that!
10:16 p.m.
So I wakened up and looked to my left at this asian kid and he did not like the look of me, but then immediately got off the bus. Where the fung am I? So I got off the bus and looked at the front of it and it said Tranent. I have no idea where Tranent is.
It's cold and kind of snowy, so I kind of staggered off to have a piss against this tree, then came back and tried to engage with the bus driver about where I was and all that. He's a kind of fat basturn and probably one of those public service folk who do not have a pension, and I ask him if the bus is going back to town, and he says it is.
Before I lost consciousness, I think I must have got on the bus in Portobello. I was in Portobello at the behest of the consiglierie, but he was not able to be there, so I had to interrupt my meditations to be there on my own and meet up with Allan Guthrie, who is really a sweet guy, and someone who can tell you all kinds of things about how to get some attention on the Kindle thing. I cannot say enough good things about such a joe and will put him on my list of deid folk whom I think of every day, but he is not deid yet.
So he was able to tell me about how to optimise my chances of making even more than £10:88 from the Kindle thing.
I could have died out there in the snowy wastes of wherever I was, except for the wonderful man who was driving the bus, who took me back into the town.
I've got ten books parked on Kindle. If you are a fortunate creature, you may read one or two of them, the ones about the bliss and such like.If you would really like to read a good book, a much better book than I could ever write, read A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. Anything by him is much better than anything I have ever written. I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the best of books, and was written by the joe who wrote Cider With Rosie. A modern book worth reading is The City of Thieves, a lovely book. Don't bother reading any of my books. There are much better books to read. Darkness at Noon. Goodbye To All That. If There Be A Man. The Way of The White Clouds. The Book Of The Three Inspirations. The Bliss of Inner Fire.
If you'r a smart kid read Junk by M. Burgess. Holes by Sachar. Tons of books that are way better than anything I've ever written. I don't read books any more. I've got ten books on Kindle now. If you want them, your karma will lead you to them! But there are much better books!
(I posted this last night on my writing blog, but deleted it this morning. So I've stuck it here.)
So I wakened up and looked to my left at this asian kid and he did not like the look of me, but then immediately got off the bus. Where the fung am I? So I got off the bus and looked at the front of it and it said Tranent. I have no idea where Tranent is.
It's cold and kind of snowy, so I kind of staggered off to have a piss against this tree, then came back and tried to engage with the bus driver about where I was and all that. He's a kind of fat basturn and probably one of those public service folk who do not have a pension, and I ask him if the bus is going back to town, and he says it is.
Before I lost consciousness, I think I must have got on the bus in Portobello. I was in Portobello at the behest of the consiglierie, but he was not able to be there, so I had to interrupt my meditations to be there on my own and meet up with Allan Guthrie, who is really a sweet guy, and someone who can tell you all kinds of things about how to get some attention on the Kindle thing. I cannot say enough good things about such a joe and will put him on my list of deid folk whom I think of every day, but he is not deid yet.
So he was able to tell me about how to optimise my chances of making even more than £10:88 from the Kindle thing.
I could have died out there in the snowy wastes of wherever I was, except for the wonderful man who was driving the bus, who took me back into the town.
I've got ten books parked on Kindle. If you are a fortunate creature, you may read one or two of them, the ones about the bliss and such like.If you would really like to read a good book, a much better book than I could ever write, read A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. Anything by him is much better than anything I have ever written. I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the best of books, and was written by the joe who wrote Cider With Rosie. A modern book worth reading is The City of Thieves, a lovely book. Don't bother reading any of my books. There are much better books to read. Darkness at Noon. Goodbye To All That. If There Be A Man. The Way of The White Clouds. The Book Of The Three Inspirations. The Bliss of Inner Fire.
If you'r a smart kid read Junk by M. Burgess. Holes by Sachar. Tons of books that are way better than anything I've ever written. I don't read books any more. I've got ten books on Kindle now. If you want them, your karma will lead you to them! But there are much better books!
(I posted this last night on my writing blog, but deleted it this morning. So I've stuck it here.)
Sunday 4 December 2011
Disability and moi!
Sunday 11:03 p.m.
Tomorrow at noon I'll be letting my chummy Brian, who is clinically depressed but does not think meditating is a good idea, go to the hospital by sitting with his wife who has MS. I haven't asked what he's going to hospital for. Sometimes you are better not asking.
On Tuesday I'm having a meeting at about two o clock with the consiglieri and a nice man so we can talk about God knows what. Obviously, stuff I'm not in he slightest bit interested in since my main aim is to stay away from flatheids so I can settle my mind and enjoy being on my own, and doing something to how I perceive the world. Your mind does not settle if you engage with the flatheids who make you think about things, and always things you'd rather not think about because these things are stupid things, and you should leave all that stuff to the flatheids to think about.
On Wednesday I'll be sitting with the mother in law, and I will be doing that through till Friday when I will visit the auld maw. I get back to myself on Friday about four o clock.
Did I stop trying to write for this?
Who ever you are, I'll always relied on the kindness of strangers.
I'll have to learn how to meditate whilst walking about. I'll have to learn to meditate in a way I know you can't learn to meditate because leave one chink in your armour and these flatheids will not leave you alone.
Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path. Fung them!
Tomorrow at noon I'll be letting my chummy Brian, who is clinically depressed but does not think meditating is a good idea, go to the hospital by sitting with his wife who has MS. I haven't asked what he's going to hospital for. Sometimes you are better not asking.
On Tuesday I'm having a meeting at about two o clock with the consiglieri and a nice man so we can talk about God knows what. Obviously, stuff I'm not in he slightest bit interested in since my main aim is to stay away from flatheids so I can settle my mind and enjoy being on my own, and doing something to how I perceive the world. Your mind does not settle if you engage with the flatheids who make you think about things, and always things you'd rather not think about because these things are stupid things, and you should leave all that stuff to the flatheids to think about.
On Wednesday I'll be sitting with the mother in law, and I will be doing that through till Friday when I will visit the auld maw. I get back to myself on Friday about four o clock.
Did I stop trying to write for this?
Who ever you are, I'll always relied on the kindness of strangers.
I'll have to learn how to meditate whilst walking about. I'll have to learn to meditate in a way I know you can't learn to meditate because leave one chink in your armour and these flatheids will not leave you alone.
Compassion and altruism is the basis of the path. Fung them!
Thursday 1 December 2011
Forward, forward in the war against the machines!!
Thursday 8:00 p.m.
So the camera part of the mobile phone has stopped working and I'd have had to look for the warranty, and get involved in all sorts of hassles ... but the alarm part still worked, so I set it for eight. It was supposed to go off once, but went off twice. The second time I had to go back into the room and placed it on top of the duvet. I turned away to do something and when I turned back, I discovered that the phone had magically slipped off the duvet, fell off the side of the bed, and landed in a half full cup of water!!
Dead as a dodo!! Killed it stone dead! Hurrah!
You shouldn't have written this, Hotboy. Someone will tell you how to get it fixed. No, Jack. It's like the Triffids. As soon as they get wet, you don't have to worry about them anymore. Hurrah!!
So the camera part of the mobile phone has stopped working and I'd have had to look for the warranty, and get involved in all sorts of hassles ... but the alarm part still worked, so I set it for eight. It was supposed to go off once, but went off twice. The second time I had to go back into the room and placed it on top of the duvet. I turned away to do something and when I turned back, I discovered that the phone had magically slipped off the duvet, fell off the side of the bed, and landed in a half full cup of water!!
Dead as a dodo!! Killed it stone dead! Hurrah!
You shouldn't have written this, Hotboy. Someone will tell you how to get it fixed. No, Jack. It's like the Triffids. As soon as they get wet, you don't have to worry about them anymore. Hurrah!!
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