Drupon Rinpoche retreat and how the tummo is coming along.

 

I went down to the Samye Ling last week, the first time I've been there since the same retreat last year. Usually, I feel frustrated by sitting in the temple all day, most listening to Q and As, or stuff about the Gampopa text the rinpoche is teaching from, but this time the day just sailed by after the usual settling in time. I sat from half eight in the morning till eight at night (with breaks), staring down at my postcard of Dorje Sempa. This puts you in a semi-meditative state, but most of my meditations these days are full of vase breathing, a no no in a temple packed with folk.

I was expecting to be staring down at my old postcard of Lama Yeshe, taken about thirty years ago. I thought I should do this since what I'm doing is based on Guru Yoga, and I don't concentrate so much on Lama Yeshe as I do on the Dorje Sempa illustration, but at about the time when the photo was taken, Lama Yeshe told me, after I'd told him about going through a series of gurus every morning, told me to concentrat on him. He did this rubbing his thumb on his chest in a very deliberate fashion.

So, I'd been concentrating on the Lama Yeshe photo and I was getting quite good at visualising it. Of course, it's simple. Trying to visualise Dorje Sempa is still beyond me, by miles. The second night I was in Potala House, I had a wee dream. All that happened was my granddaughter, Rowena, toddled towards me (she's about fifteen months old) and gave me the Dorje Sempa postcard I use for visualising (as if I could!). In  the dream the postcard of Dorje Sempa was perfectly visible. I was told that this dream meant that I should do more with Dorje Sempa, and so I was staring at that postcard throughout.

In the evening I was reading Gold Wrapped in Rags, a biography of a Thailand forest monk. It is the best thing I've read about meditational experiences and the first 100 pages or so was brilliant. The Tibetans are shy about talking about experiences. I suppose experiences aren't the point, but not many people are going to get realisation, so folk like me feel inspired by books like this. It's free. I got it off a link on facebook.

Hard to say what was going on while I wasn't really doing any vase breathing, but it's coming yet for all that. Every fortnight something occurs and hope soars. (That's maybe why they don't rate experiences. Hope soars, but the next day where is it?). But I really feel that the wind is at my back now and this winter should be much better than the last. There was maybe a hint of desperation once my relationship finished and I knew I was going into the last phase of my life on my own. Not much option but the plunge in a more or less solitary existance. But I wanted to know that I do without much support and stick with it.

I'm much more confident now in what I'm doing now. I told the wee lama, with whom I had an wonderful hour's conversation, that I'd go to Beaumont in the Spring. Who knows if I'll ever be able to dry off anything, but day by day the experiences change, so I'll post more here even although I feel I'm trying to describe the undescribible.

Almost all my books on Kindle are free today. And for the next five days.

Another update on the inner fire meditations

    

                    I thought I should post here because if I wait till I can make steam appear on a wet tee-shirt then I might wait .... for who knows how long.

                  This is not to say that things have not been happening! When I sat to meditate this morning, it was not the same meditation I was entering as it was last week. Even yesterday. Something does feel as if it is opening and a little further up into my throat.

                   It was a year past in October when something happened when I was meditating and I thought, Here, we go! Here comes the heat! Not for the first time, but it did feel significant.

                    One reason for that was that I felt a wee bit trepidation. The last time I had any of that was decades ago when the pulses were shaking down my arms on the outbreath of vase breathing. Sid, RIP, on the Holy Isle mentioned that. The wee lama asked me if I was scared a while before that. Scared is progress!

                    It was nearly like a wave of flames coming up your torso, so you kind of pull back and away though you can't lift away from something inside you.

                    That's happened another twice, I think, but the problem with this path is that I can't remember ever having down down it, so I don't know the signs. All I know is that the meditations seem to be developing day by day. Also, when I'm not doing vase breathing, sometimes I have felt close to tranquility, but it doesn't last for long.

                    I was wanting to get some success with this meditation before I went back to Beaumont. I don't want to be able to do this in retreat and then come out of retreat and go backwards. This was perhaps not a great idea since I thought I'd be steaming wee tee shirts ages ago.

 

Jutland

          Well, of course, I took some photies for this blog, but for some no good reason the machine is refusing to work. So I could not download the photies. So I could write a post, I emailed one photie to myself so I got have at least one. It has not arrived. It had to travel all of six feet across the room from the phone to the computery thing, but no .... too much to ask really.

           Interesting to be in Denmark for the first time. We're in a place called Trige, near a city called Aarhus. That looked good today. And is quite a nice, scenic kind of a place, at least in some parts. But the part we are in is a big housing scheme. But everything is good. I will not let my happiness be qualified by the stupid machines. I only wasted a half hour on it today, so it's good to know when to walk away.

             And the email still hasn't arrived. The photie was of a deer. There's a deer park with tame deer. Never was so close to one of those beasties before.

Playing the last post.

          I'd like to thank the folk who read any of these posts and, obviously, the folk who left comments, some of which were most amusing, and were much enjoyed, I'm sure, by other spam robots in other virtual cyber galazies in .... anyway, bye, bye.

New Year's Day

Ist January, 2013. 2.25 p.m.
                           Looking for positives .... last year was the first for about twenty years when I didn't have to go to work at all. And I was not sick. And I was not skint. So hurrah for that!
                            It's been a hard year otherwise. Lost the auld maw and the mother in law within two weeks of each other. Two of the Domestic Bliss's best friends were handed the black spot last year. My pal from the west is just off the phone after telling me his wife is in hospital was heart beat problems. I saw an old friend of mine yesterday who is not well at all though mentally very good, and that's what counts. But it's not been good. Half the folk I see most aren't there any more or soon won't be. Terrible times really. This is the death zone you get into after turning sixty. But it can't go on at this pace and must abate due to the diminishing candidates. My daughter is at a hospice today for her father in law. Fifty four. It's just one after the other at the moment.
                             You can tell you're old by the faces of your friends. I see the world the way I have always seen it. Logically, it is illusory, but I do not see it as illusory. I see it as real. If I could see it as illusory,  I would not have the emotional reactions and could veer towards equanimity. That's what I want to get from meditations.
                              This blog should come to a natural end tomorrow as I will be setting off early on the 3rd. I think I started blogging nearly eight years ago, when the world was a different place. I think I was wanting to get an agent so I might stop working. The blogging got a wee lift when I started to post photies, but since I can't do that anymore, when I get back from the Holy Isle .... I guess if I'm blogging, I'll have to do so from another blogging platform. But I think just now I'll stop. Going on about the bliss to flatheids who are too dumb to meditate is just plain depressing.
                              It's nearly three o clock and I haven't been able to meditate today yet. That's what these holidays do. Fung you up!

Started packing

Saturday 6.00 p.m.
                             I've got most of my packing done. The problem has been that I've never been away from here for three months before. How long does a bar of soap last? I'd been puzzling this out and decided to leave it at two bars when I re-read the emails. They provide the soap. Anyway, I remember from visiting the Samye Ling that most of the stuff you take with you is completely unused. But there is an anxiety.
                             I don't know what kind of retreat place this will be. I assume that I may have to come home at some point, but the Domestic Bliss isn't expecting me. I told the kiddo that her maw was a bit unwell and I would have to wait and see .... and that's given short shift as well. So it looks like the two folk I thought  ... anyway, off you go, they say, and don't come back for three months. I was a bit concerned about the Domestic Bliss, but her disease seems to be receding.
                             Today I finally stopped to strangle the Nicotine Dragon. Despite smoking practically every day since the start of September, stopping today wasn't too bad. The physical withdrawal I can handle. It's the horrible thoughts!!! But there weren't any today. So the first days on the island will not be too bad from the nicotine anyway.
                              I just checked and I started doing these blogs on February 2005. Brian Wilson told me to start a blog to help me find a literary agent. God, there's been a lot of water under the bridge since 2005. Of course, I'll have to take a break in a couple of days.
                               
                         

Christmas Day

Christmas Day 1.55 p.m.
                                      I'm having a great Christmas! Nothing has happened yet.
                                       I was feeling a little delicate this morning, but as soon as I closed my eyes for the first meditation, I knew things had progressed. Profound was the bliss! And it had developed a little so that I thought I really need to do a retreat because I think you could sit for a long, long time in bliss like that. You drink and you smoke and it doesn't really seem to matter so much, apart from it stopping you meditating properly and making you feel like crap. But it is a wonderment, so it is, Jack.