A day

Tuesday 10:40 p.m.

                              I sat down for the first meditation at ten, a wee bit annoyed that I'd slept in, and grumpy. Got up just before twelve. I'm in half lotus these days and you can really last like that, but I hardly noticed the sore legs because they weren't really sore. Hmmm. Then I stood on my head and did a tai chi set, then I went back and meditated again. I had lunch. I lay on bed after that with the news programmes on and did the flat out bliss. Got up and meditated till the back of three when I went out to meet the consiglieri. Started meditating again about quarter to six and finished that one at the back of seven. Then I did the physical jerks, had a bath, and spoke to the Domestic Bliss. She asked about this on the wall...

                            " For only he who passes this way can understand it, and even he cannot describe it." It's by St John of the Cross. 

                             "What can he not describe?" quoth she.

                             " He cannot describe the bliss to flatheids," said I. We have very lofty conversations in this flat.so we do.

                             I did not have time today to write my book. I did not finish the wee twenty pee Independent. Great bliss though, whatever that's worth. But more or less a perfect day. I'm going to open a bottle of plonko collapso now that it's ten to eleven, and the footie will be on soon. I may be back if I can think of something interesting to say. Or if I get steaming.

Saturday 10:35 p.m.
                               The first photie wasn't yesterday.
                             
                              So I'm engaging with the auld maw yesterday. I'm already in the old and dead zone. I'm the almost youngest of her children. She talks about the contented mind. She says the things the folk with money are after don't really exist....DM came in right then. Oh well.

Going away day!

Thursday 11:43 a.m.
                                This week has been a bit so-so. I haven't felt great. This might be due to doing fifty of Mr Iyengar's yogic jumpings one day and then trying to run the next. It's the day two days on from the fifty yogic jumpings that your legs are going to be sore from it. The run didn't help. But yesterday I managed to do six hours meditating, and that is my benchmark, and I'm not hitting it enough. But the chaos is slowly starting to diminish and there's hope yet.
                                 This morning I wakened up feeling happy. I really like that. Wakening up feeling happy and then adding the bliss. I am a very fortunate creature, but I do work at it.
                                  Yesterday we put back the living room carpet and re-installed the telly. This does not have to be moved again. This is where it can stay till hell freezes over. The first piece of stability for months and months!
                                  I've been working at the writings, and I've got to a bit where I can just stop for a wee while and plan. Of course, now I have to go to Newmains today, Bellhsill tomorrow, etc., and this will put me back a day when it comes to the writings again, but that's alright. I'm progressing and I'm happy enough to be writing again.
                                   Now that Newmains is down to one night a week, I feel as if I can stabilise things now. Of course, I got a message concerning our friend with the MS. I haven't been seeing her when she's been on respite recently because you can only take so much disability, but now that I'm only in Newmains for one night ..... next week it'll be a day with the dementing geriatric one, a day with the feisty geriatric one, and then the next day with the MS one. This is not how you write books.
                                    Anyway, happy days are here again!!!

Thick. If someone as thick as moi ...

1:32 a.m.
              So ...
 I think you have to look out at the world and see that as your mind.


How long did it take you to work that one out, Hotboy? Eons, Jack! I used to be a squiggly wee thing in the pond. Eons and eons even to speak anything other than woof woof. So having at last sussed it out, I think I should repeat it.


 I think you have to look out at the world and see that as your mind.


What do you think, Jack? 


Crap. Nowhere near as good as: The mind game is the only game in town.


Frankly, I'm wallowing like a hog fed on grain. Of course, it will not always be like this.

Slightly drunken ramblings!

Monday 23rd Jan., 2012. 9:56 p.m.
                                                       Rosemount Reserve. Expertly selected. Semillon Verdelho. 2010. Plonko collapso. Half a bottle gone already.
                                                        Of course, the best thing is to be a fortunate creature. To be a fortunate creature you have to look passed the vicissitudes and get into seriously counting your blessings. Well, I don't see how else you can count yourself fortunate if you are a flatheid and also self-flagellating, and full of negativities, such as the awesome negative self talking. Oh, no! If you are not feeling so fortunate, you could start counting your blessings by realising that you are not on fire. Somewhere, at this very moment, someone is on fire, and so thank fung it's not you.
                                                         Of course, the best thing is to be cheerful! Some folk just seem to be cheerful. There's no stopping them. They are just very well brought up, go out there and give of yourself with a big smile, totally fortunate, cheerful basturns, so they are. I don't see what they've got to be cheerful about, but they just are.
                                                         You have to remember that almost nobody starves to death in this country. If you're a homeless person, your life expectancy in this country is about forty three, I think. That's totally fabulous. If you were a caveman, you're life expectancy would be about twelve, tops. But, in this country, you can shuffle about the alleyways until you are forty three. You could be cheerful throughout, and a happy joe or josephine. So who is the happier?
                                                          I think the happier person is the happier, Hotboy. You might be right about that, Jack. But how do you get to be the happier person? Well, Hotboy, you get to be the happier person by thinking the happier thoughts.
                   We may pause now to consider the mental formations. So it's really just a lot of photons, and stuff you can bump into, but is it mostly mental formations, or not? This is why you have to take drugs. Nobody I know takes drugs anymore because they are too old. But when they were young enough to take drugs, you might be able to engage them in this mental formations stuff.
                    Myself, well, I have to say right now that all I can believe in is lots of little boxes, like you open one box, and there's another box inside. Lots of little mental formations inside lots of little mental formations.
                    Whether or not, it is arising in mind ... well, where else is it arising? I think you have to look out at the world and see that as your mind. Like this typey, typey thing, and computery thing, and the room stuff, and the history of the world that I think I know about ... well, it's all in MY mind, and what I've got to do is somehow look out at it and think that it is mind. Like, there's an underlying mind. And the computery thing and I arise simultaneously in MIND, so it's out there and bigger, and not my mind. That's got to be the start of losing your anxiety.
                    That'll be ten percent off the top, please.

Flat

Monday 9:41 a.m.
                            Most of the stuff in the lobby should be in the living room. Last night, since the man is due today to fix the floorboards, some of the stuff from the living room had to be moved to the bedroom. My heart sank. Another hour of lifting stuff and moving it from one place to another place. None of this stuff is mine. My heart sank. I could only hope for these people to die so that I could burn all their stuff.
                            I have not put up a photie of the bathroom. You still can't get a shave in there since the walls ...
                            This has been going on since last April. That's when I started having to lift the daughter's stuff and the stuff of the Domestic Bliss about the flat. Sometime soon I'll have to move all the stuff from the bedroom back into the living room, the kitchen, and my room, of course, because we'll need to get some kind of carpet laid in there. After that ....contact, feeling, craving, clinging ... the flatheids just can't throw it away!

Some bliss stuff!

Saturday 8:15 p.m.
                             Almost as soon as I sat down this morning, I was in a wonderful mental state - bliss, satiation, contentment. This is with the eyes closed and should be done as soon as possible when arising after drinking too much plonko collapso the night before. It's bye bye to not feeling so good.
                             All this stuff about the bliss and all that, Jack, isn't airy fairy. This is the hangover cure to end all hangover cures. Succumb to the bliss for an hour and you're back to your usual ten men.  Well, until you try to get up anyway.
                              When the meditations progress like this, it is hard to feel downhearted. But I am not sitting long enough. There's just too much chaos around. It's always good to remember that I'm the normal one.

Bogged down in January!

Wednesday 11:50 a.m.

                                   Thought I should post since I haven't since Saturday. Just bogged down in January really. Not much going on with the weather, just kind of dull and bleak most of the time. I've started pretending to start writing again. The flat is still a complete mess. I feel as if it's going to stay like this forever. At least, with no bathroom mirror, the leprosy has been cured. Bits still fall off, but you don't notice. The meditations are so wonderful. The more boring and dull everything else gets, the better they get!

Addictions and all!

Saturday 3.20 p.m.
                            Equanimity is what you're supposed to get eventually. Not bliss, equanimity. We maybe would also like some sense of satiation, contentment. If you are content, it must mean that you are satisfied, in that you don't want anything. In this realm of desire ... that's a lot to ask for. Serenity and contentment. You're supposed to get rid of disturbing emotions by getting into emptiness/analytical meditations. This does not sound like an overnight job. But you cannot expect to feel satisfied or content for long if you are subject to any addictions at all.
                            I sat down to meditate at ten this morning and didn't get up till ten to twelve. I wasn't sore either. You just go slightly somewhere else. This happened a couple of days ago as well.
                            I did  the five hill run this afternoon. I did not enjoy it. Since I gave up smoking anything over two months ago, and with the Christmas Sanity Basturns .... well, I'm back to being a fat basturn.
                            The bits when you're meditating are the best bits

A elephant, is it?

12:35 p.m.
                The boy says you're mind (and everything else) is like an elephant you see in a dream. It doesn't exist, but it appears. It appears, but it doesn't exist.
                What do you think, Jack? Well, the mind (and everything else) has got to exist in some kind of a way or you'd be into nihilism. So maybe it exists, just not the way you think it exists.
                 I'll try that one on the mother in law this afternoon. If she goes for it, I'll try the existing and non-existing at the same time.
                 I had a fabulous meditation this morning. Stopped after an hour and forty minutes because I'd lost track of the time and didn't want to be late.
                 Mind doesn't have any characteristics, and is unfindable, but it is is there. You know it's there, don't you? Even when you've lost it, you'll know it's there.
                 Newmains has been cut back to one night staying there a week. At least for this week. Hurrah!

Mainly Blown Down Trees!

Saturday 4:14 p.m.
                            I went for a walk to the Botanics this afternoon. It said in the paper that forty trees had blown down last week. When I was there I remembered reading about a writer - might have been Joseph Conrad, but maybe not - who had himself lashed to the main mast of a sailing ship so he could watch a typhoon. What an amount of roaring and crashing there must have been in the Botanics during the storm last week!! I would have loved to have been there.

Back Home Again!

Friday 7:14 p.m.
                         The first photie is across from the bus stop down from Shotts station. Then the bread, which I always make when I get to Newmains, and the great granny at the same time. Then the trees at the bing on the way to the auld maw's. And the second bus stop on the way home, showing the St Stephen's Church.
                         Couldn't handle Newmains last night and got pissed. Getting pissed tonight, and will try the pizza man. Start giving everything up again after a visit to the wild west on Sunday. Why can't these bloody holidays just last one day!!!

After a crabbit start!

12:26 p.m.
                I'm not sleeping all that well at the moment, not getting to sleep for a while anyway, and I didn't wakend up till ten this morning. This leads to a very crabbit start to the day because I don't sit up and meditate in the bed first thing. Then, when I did start to meditate, what an amazing amount of bliss. How wonderful and almost effortless it was!!! The purification and accumulation do work. It's the rest of it that's crap. But what bliss there was, Jack! What bliss! I'd love to be able to just keep doing that, but .... off to Newmains in an hour and a half. Once more into the breach, dear friends!

Peaceful Dreams

Wednesday 7:56 p.m.

                                 Last night I remember having two very nice dreams. In one of them I was on a school bus and the interactions with the pupils were great. Everyone was happy and friendly and being helpful to each other. In the other I was watching David Cameron give a speech and afterwards he came over to me, and he was really helpful in giving me advice about how to present this piece of A4 I had with typing on it. The printing was very dim, etc. After this good advice, I told him that I thought compassionate conservatism was a good idea because the word compassionate was in it and I was a Buddhist. Since anyone who knows me knows that I'd poke my eye out before I voted Tory, I took this to be a very good dream indeed.

                                Did a hundred prostrations this afternoon and twenty minutes of shadow boxing because it was chucking it down outside. I had the day off from going to Newmains today, but will go there tomorrow. Hope the weather is better and the trains running this time.

                                I've been baking bread for the last thirty five years, but always the same way. Someone gave a bread baking book for Christmas and I gave it to the kiddo, but was surprised to know why bakers slash the dough on top of some loaves. So I did that and it worked. The first innovation in thirty five years!!  Another present I got was the candle. I gave the book to myself. Thrangu Rinpoche, the author, had a stroke recently. Hope he's getting better.

                              Candle flames are good if you want to negate the self in the object and consider dependent origination, as you should. It's dependent on the wax, the air, the wick ... and is constantly changing  and transforming. 

                              And on the third day with no drink or drugs or bugger all, I went out and got a DVD so the Domestic Bliss and I have got something to watch later on!!

                              How are the meditations going, Hotboy? Fantastically well, Jack. One day all that'll be left is a pile of ashes on the cushion!

And another day!

10:30 p.m.
                Nothing much happens when you don't drink or smoke or do anything much, and it's horrible outside. Thank God it's getting lighter and lighter, and better and better. Might go for a run in the rain tomorrow to have some fun!

Sober and straight!

10:04 p.m.
                This is the first sober and straight day of the New Year. Hurrah! I'd really like to keep this going for a year. I think the last time I did this, not drinking for a year, was about ten years ago, but I was eating cannybliss yogurts at the time. I'll see how I get on. That's one down, about three hundred and sixty four to go!!

January Ist, 2012

Sunday 4:40 p.m.
                          Went for a walk today. The first two photies were taken yesterday. Despite the Jack Daniels last night, the meditation before the walk was amazing for the heat. It's like that part doesn't give a damn what the rest of me does!! This is definitely going to be the year of the heat!!

Fleet, ya bass!

Too early New Year's Day
                                         Somebody keeps landing on this bloggy from Fleet, Hampshire. God knows why, but Happy New Year to you, whoever you are. Whoever you are, I've always relied on the the kindness of strangers. Fleet was the name of a gang from Maryhill, of course. As in, Maryhill Fleet, ya bass!