The Lama

Sunday 1.45 p.m.
                           I went to two talks by Lama Yeshe Losal last night and today. Here's some of the things he was talking about.
                            He extolled the qualities and reasons for doing the Four Special Foundations i.e. 100,000s of things. This was not music to my ears and I'd like to go to the Holy Isle and dodge a lot of that!!   Particularly, he went into the value of prostrations. He was doing 1300 a day when he was in retreat. He needed bandaging. You can do three hundred an hour. That's over four hours of prostrating. That would kill me.
                             After three years of solitary retreat, he wasn't getting anywhere and wanted to leave, using the excuse that he wanted to see his parents, whom he'd just discovered were alive in Tibet. His minder told him if he tried to leave he'd break his leg. He seems to have cracked it after five years.
                              He was interesting talking about life at the Samye when it was just Johnstone House in the sixties. Sex and drugs and rock and roll. He said he'd tried everything. Perfect bridge really between east and west really.
                               

Changing Days!

Friday 3 p.m.
                     As you might have noticed, I don't have much enthusiasm for blogging these days. The photies have been keeping it going for a while, but really it's run out of puff. There's no point in banging on about the bliss. I'm afraid walking about with your head stuck up your bum is a lifestyle choice which anyone landing on this bloggy has already made.
                     Partly maybe because I'm going back to the early fifties in the New Year, I'm already losing interest in the computery things. I hardly do any "promoting" of my books and I'd like to let the whole computery thing just fade away between now and the New Year.
                      I haven't been drinking much for about the last month or so. I've lost about a stone in weight. I think I'm about eleven stone five at the moment and in quite good shape for someone my age with a newly developed nicotine habit!!! Which will start to fade tomorrow, I hope.
                      I don't think I have to do any more diggings now and will get back to the prostrations, which I do not like.
                       Because I haven't been drinking, I've been meditating more. Also, I've started reading books again for the first time in ages. And I'm writing my journal more often. I'm keeping everything as quiet and "boring" as possible, but I'm building up a really strong desire to write something good.
                        I'm just back from Bellshill. I've been going every week I can to keep in contact with my Auntie Kathy.
                   

There's nothing odd about Carruthers!

Oddness
1) About eight or so years ago, it started to become apparent that by breath holding, etc., there was a connection being made between breath and bliss. This is a bit odd, partly because all these processes take place in somewheres that isn't on the map of western anatomy. Also, what it is in the air besides air; some stuff anyway that you can't detect perhaps unless you experience it; seems difficult to know how you'd begin to weigh or measure.
2)  The bliss. Why do we have access, if we wish to seek it, of such stunning oceanic quantities of the bliss? What is all that about? Is it just some kind of lucky trick. But I think you will find yourself in the bliss anyway if you do the meditations even if you know nothing about the bliss - which is what happened to me.
3) The most ridiculous thing about the juju is that it actually seems to work. You don't have to be holy or anything. (It would help, but it would help anyway) You just have to do the mind games.

                        I was thinking that maybe if I managed to stay three months on the Holy Isle, I'd come back and try to be normal again. Only meditate about three hours a day. Start seriously writing again. Try to make some money. Travel. What chance do you think there is of that, Jack?

To the west!

Saturday 12.30 p.m.
                               I go to the wild west today with Poisonous. I don't supposed I'll have recovered by Wednesday. Oh well.

The Path!

Tuesday 4.05 p.m.
                           We had a path at the start of Spring, but I dug it up, and then it got covered in weeds, and I dug it up again, and again. Now we have a path once more.
                           I never did as much digging as that in one day before, Jack. Much better than prostrating. Much better!

Tuesday 12.42 p.m.
                                Yesterday the cycling wasn't so bad since it only lasted two hours and not the four the last cycle with Poisonous dragged on for. We went down the Innocent Railway Path and ended up at one time going down the Brunstane Burn Walkway. Anyway, we ended up coming out at where the photies were taken. Poisonous says this is Joppa, a place that sounds as if it should be in the Near East, but is actually right beside Portobello.
                                 Nice day yesterday though getting a bit cold.Nice day today as well. The diggings await.

Relics

Sunday 9.35 p.m.
                           I went to see the buddhist relics yesterday with the kiddo. I wasn't ready for it. I didn't know what I was looking it. The remains from the pyres were a little odd, but I didn't realise whose they were at first. According the Alexandra David-Neel, it's the veneration that makes the relics in some way. So I wasn't much use really.
                            I started the diggings to get the counsil off our backs. I'm really looking forward to it since it means I can do that instead of the prostrations. Hurrah! Unfortunately, I couldn't put off Poisonous who seems determined to go cycling tomorrow. He's got a day off. Flatheids should all be working on  Monday! So I'll have to cycle somewhere and then stop and then cycle back home. No bliss tomorrow afternoon at all then.
                              Anyway, I'm having to dig up the path again. Weeds overcame it. The bottom end is half done. I guess I've got about twelve diggings to go before the counsil show up again.
                               I don't suppose it was anything to do with the relics, but the bliss today was even more wonderful than usual. Shame that most folk do not experience this, but most folk don't meditate.

          We got sent a letter from the counsil. It said that some parts of the allotment looked neglected. Fair comment. I will have to set aside the prostrations for the diggings, which are much more humiliating, as I might have mentioned sometime ago.
          This is for the spam robots, or maybe for the alien creatures who are soaking up this crap, and want to know who are the flatheids and who are not.
           So what I wanted to do was be a proper practitioner. The Bliss Of Inner Fire. The more I have tried to do this juju, over about ten years, the more I have come to realise that it is impossible within current constraints. Like flatheids being everywhere. And being a pissheid and susceptible to any temptations whatsoever.
             Then the big Juju man scared me off it. But I slunk back into it. The dark side. Oh no!
              So, why are you going to the Holy Isle then, Hotboy? If I get there, Jack, it will be because the Domestic Bliss bullied me into it. She's dead right. Get over yourself. Three months on the penal colony with the nutters, becalmed on a desolate, Scottishy island, well, I think that would be good for somebody else. Any takers?

Chestnut tree

Wednesday 11.46 p.m.
                                   Sitting in front of the chestnut tree, the canopy of boughs and branches and leaves stretch down to the ground in front you, rising and sighing in the breeze.
                                    The computery thing started telling me about washing dishes then. They're doing it again!! Load after load of clean dishes. A cleaner dishwasher means cleaner dishes. How come the computery thing has started talking to me about dishes and dishwashers then?
                                     I booked up today for the three month gig on the Holy Isle. You could book for an Individual Retreat and I did that since it seemed simpler. The wonderful afterglow from the Samye Ling is fading now. Too many folk to see. Roll on January!

Problems with the bliss.

Sunday 9.38 p.m.
                            The bliss has no evolutionary purpose. The flatheids are breeding like rabbits. What is it anyway? It must be made up of neurons and transmitters, and hormones, and electrical and chemical, tottie wee thingies. So it is something for the human beings. We do not know if animals have access to the bliss, but they might have sometimes. Who knows? The bliss occurs when you do something that has no connection at all with the bliss, such as repeating mumbo jumbo to yourself. The operating mechanism does not seem to be apparent.
                             When you talk to folk about what you are doing when you are doing hours and hours of meditating, you cannot factor in the bliss. You cannot factor in almost everything because the unfortunate ones have not investigated their minds by repeating mumbo jumbo to themselves for years on end, and do not have any experience at all of what arises.
                             Big changes in the bliss this month or so gone by. The three day fast started something. I asked the lama to bless me. You have to know how to take a blessing. And you are surely blessed when you can close you eyes and within no time at all, you are engaged with oodles and oodles of the wonderful, wonderful bliss. Imagine you could do that. You just close your eyes and off you go! Not being able to do that when it is freely available and when meditations, once you get habituated to them, are really enjoyable does make a person seem very unfortunate to me.
                             But we must accept the world as it is. Unfortunateness is everywhere you look. But I will not be put off blogging about the blisss because of it. Because I am not unfortunate. I can surf the oceans of bliss. Oh, what a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Cyclisting!

Wednesday 6.33 p.m.
                                 Poisonous showed up before half one and we started cycling. The East Coast Trail. He wanted to show up at ten in the morning, but I said I had to meditate and got it put off till after one. So we cycled. We went through Portobello and Musselburgh, and probably Prestonpans. We ended up somewhere past Seton Sands, so far along the coast that we couldn't see the beautiful, wonderful city. Then we cycled back.
                                 On the way through Musselburgh, Poisonous stopped for a fag. We might have said something about the Paralympics. Poisonous doesn't like the dwarf swimming competitions. Apart from that, we hardly said anything at all on the way to there and on the way back from there. Cycling.
                                  I got home at ten to six. I did see some nice seascapes. Apart from that, it's hard to know what to say about this flatheided stuff. Knackering. No bliss either. I don't like spending four hours without any bliss in it at all!

Back From the Samye

Saturday 6.06 p.m.
                             I had a wonderful few minutes of chat with the Lama today.
                             This isn't going to be about vegetables then, Hotboy? I'd wondered where you'd gone to, Jack. Why do you just blog about vegetables now, Hotboy? Well, Jack, there's no point in telling the unfortunate ones who do not meditate about the bliss. Pointless. And there's nothing much you can say about it anyway. But there was a lot of bliss going around down there.
                              It looks like I'm going to go to the Holy Isle for three months from the the start of January next year, all things going well. It'll be the kind of training camp Roberto Duran would admire. If I do 50,000 prostrations before I go, I'll only have to do two hours of prostrations a day when I get there. I told the Lama I didn't want to do any more prostrations after that.
                                Anyway, no computery things. No beep beep. No telly. I might take a radio and something to play my cosmic tapes on. Pens and paper. Buddhisty books. Just like 1950.
                                 The pheasant just sat there. Sometimes it looked at me and sometimes it didn't. It wasn't bothered. They must be copying the peacocks.