Whinge, Moan, Complain

I've been away from blogland for a while, as my Dad died last Monday. I had been visiting him the Sunday before and he had been fine except for a little cough. Then My Mum rang Wednesday to say he was unwell with a chest infection. She called the Dr who gave him antibiotics. But he got worse and couldn't breath so My Mum called an ambulance. He was rushed to intensive care where he spent his last three days hooked up to drips and machines. He had pneumonia. He was unconscious all the time so suffered as little as possible. The staff at the hospital were wonderful. They did everything they could for him and explained everything to us. They were all very kind, which really helped. His funeral will be held on Thursday. I still can't believe what has happened, when I see a picture of my Dad he looks so alive, I can't believe I will never see him again. He was such a lovely kind, generous person. Now I feel guilty that I didn't appreciate him enough.

A blanket ban on smoking in pubs and private clubs has been approved by a massive margin of 284 MPs. Tony Blair joined those using a "free" vote to overturn his own Government's policy of exempting private clubs and those pubs that do not serve food.

I think there is a naive idea of reincarnation that sounds bizarre and is often what people take the Buddhist idea of rebirth to mean. The question is - what is a person in the first place? I think the crude idea is that we are some kind of living entity that flits from life to life, even when the worlds that we find ourselves in are not connected to this world at all.

For example we might think we were an ancient Egyptian in a past life - but what was it that connected us to that time and place? Our body is obviously not connected, we may think, but then how is our mind connected? What is the mind? How does it connect to a body at birth? It’s all rather incredible isn’t it?

How do we get in there between the sperm and egg and somehow make it our home? Were we already there or did the sperm and egg somehow create us? How did our mind emerge from stuff like cell tissue and DNA and so on? What has our mind got to do with DNA? How did it produce its first thought - what made it suddenly think 'I am'?

So it’s important to reflect on how odd it all is and on how, ancient Egyptian apart, it’s all pretty incredible! The point is that our view of materiality is too material and our view of mind then becomes too material too - both body and mind are mysterious and cannot be grasped as this or that. Nonetheless we can know what they are simply by being them in a very simple and direct way. That is the path to Awakening.

It would be like being the dream and being the awakened person who knows they are dreaming and somehow being so in touch with the experience that you can know exactly what the dreaming mind can and cannot do - how it deceives and gets lost and then wakes up - just by being it - just by recognising its nature from the inside as it were. Similarly we can be in touch with what our body and mind really are and somehow wake into what the whole of experience and the whole of the Universe is - Universes in fact.

When you realise this you stop thinking of the mind as a kind of entity that can somehow hop from one time and place or one universe to another - instead we can gradually understand from the inside how we emanate as an empty but distinct emanation that can be grasped as solid and real by the deluded minds of ourself and of others to create worlds we can enter, create, engage in, share with others and in the end step or slip out of again. Yet the essential nature of our being remains unchanged. This is the Indestructible Heart Essence.

We can discover this mysterious reality and recognise how it manifests as the whole world around us and how that world dissolves and reappears again and again. It is like life and death - a timeless display - and rebirth is taught within that context.

From the practical point of view it’s as if we pass from life to life just as we seem to live from day to day. Analysed logically that doesn’t make any sense. You cannot find anything that travels through time from past to future. We cannot find it even in our every day life. That is what Buddhism teaches us to notice. Buddhism doesn’t say 'you have to believe this in order to be saved' but challenges us to look and see for ourselves. It is pointing out something that we are overlooking all the time, to our cost, to the cost of our ultimate happiness. So it’s a challenge.

You can follow the path to Awakening without taking on blind beliefs but just like people asking a guide to show us the way, it’s no good if we start off by declaring that we don’t believe in either the starting point or the destination. In any situation like that it’s a calculated risk, you check out the guide as best you can and then you go for it - but keeping your wits about you all along the way.

--- By Lama Shenpen Hookham

I got this in an e-mail from Buddism connect.

In my e-mail from India today my bloke said:

Thank you for being part of my life and I hope I can give you
something in return. Long may our relationship continue - i guess that's up to both of us. Love and Best Wishes for Valentines Day.

He has also used the word 'love' in other e-mails. He normally runs away from any mention of love. He is a bit mixed up though and I do wonder if he will still feel the same when he returns or whether he will get scared again. I really care about him and would like to work on our relationship. But if he doesn't ever want to live with me, where can it go? Up until now it has felt like a teenage relationship IE just sex and going out. May be he has decided he wants to be more grown up now, I hope.

This is a really cool site if you want to make a difference in your local area.

You can Change the world around you
Start small: share concerns online
Grow roots: find people near you
Branch out: make a difference in your neighbourhood

You may even get your story on the BBC news!

... from my boyfriend in India at 8.15 this morning. It woke me up and I thought it would be a wrong number. How nice to hear his voice. I have a week and a day now until he returns. I'm going to meet him from the airport.

I was so paranoid that he would visit a prostitue while he was away. (If you've read previous posts you will know that he has confessed to doing that before). But I actually trust him that he hasn't. You may be thinking HMmmm, but you will never really know - true, but I don't think he has, and that makes me very happy.

... seem to be picking up radio signals! It seems a bit spooky to hear quiet voices coming from my computer, when I don't have anything open that makes a sound.

Right, who is thinking 'yuck, disgusting'? Why? Why is it OK for men to be hairy but not women? Who makes the rules?

... and yes it is my pit.

'I don't want to go away for as long as 3 weeks without you again. I should have taken a shorter trip.'

'I do value our relationship over and above the sex and I know how upset you get at the thought that I might go somewhere else. So I won't.'

These are great quotes from my blokes e-mails! (well, they are for me anyway even if you don't really care, and quickly go off to read something more interesting )

Why is it that so many blokes like oriental girls? especially young ones. What is the attraction? Half the personal ads in the paper are for Oriental girls. A bloke at work just mentioned that he likes them and my bloke likes them. Is it because they are normally small and skinny and look younger than they really are?

A bit late maybe, but I decided to add a pic.

I have downloaded a feedreader recomended by Landers. It's cool, you can do everything in one place. It's better than the blog.co.uk feedreader. If you want to know details of where and how to get it, go to comments on my post 'Feedreader not working'

Probably not for another month yet. But I've found another place, not far up the road from where I live now. It will £100 a week, more than my rent here. But I get get a good sized bedroom/sitting room, a small kitchen, bathroom with an airing cupboard, and loft space for storage! I will also have access to the garden. There is already a separate phone line. The reason I can't move yet is because the land lady is putting in a new carpet. She said I can paint the room as well and she will pay for the paint. It will be great to have a kitchen, and a garden in the summer! I can even use her washing machine - so no more trips to the laundrette!

I really want some! I have two weeks and two day to wait until my bloke returns ... so long!

I have put all my friends and some others in my feed reader. It's much easier to see new posts etc. But can I trust it? Tonight not all new post were showing up! I had to click on the person first and then it showed unread posts. But I only just realised! I won't trust it in the future!