Things have not been going well for me physically. I am waiting on an MRI scan of my Hip, something I first proposed three years ago. Meanwhile I am seeing an osteopath who is good and confident but my body is weirding out completely. It is habituated to being 5′10″. I got to 5′ 11.3/4″ two years ago. Then 18 months ago, one day, I discovered for a glorious half hour that I am 6′1″ when standing properly. Then it all fell apart.

I decide not to let any shit get me down though. All contents of mind are passing phenomena, best suited to laughing at. And when the Dhamma does not work I use a different Dhamma: I put Julie Andrews On and think of a few of my favourite things. Friends I have known and know, places I have been and may yet visit, experiences, expectations and other entertainments.

Of course, that is not terrifically Buddhist of me, what with it being a game of ego-reinforcement based on ephemeral recollections and projections. But then, as I’ve always said, “I’m a very bad Buddhist”.

Always living with a sense of myself as being fundamentally flawed I expect no good in my life. In both regards I am wrong. The paedophiles who disected me with their actions did not break me and I will not let them win. I will overcome all obstacles in trying to attain what is attainable and I will take all I can with me if I cross the way. That’s what I promised when I took my second Buddhist vow, the Boddhisattva Vow. And when I meet the right girl I will surely marry and be a dad, too.

Because really, honestly, this world - this existence: they are so precious, so amazing, so beautiful, and often so undervalued. How often do we stop for a moment to appreciate all that. And think about how we are in this beautifull world, how we are manifesting..

President Bush does not understand the world or anything around him. As I have written before this is principally because he is trapped in the unknowing of Dry Drunk Syndrome, where the uncertainties of life are concreted over by factoids and warped thinking. In Mr Bush’s world, if he thinks it, it must be true - after all no-one less than God put him in power after all.

Bush has made two accusations: that his opponents are trying to “rewrite history” about the Iraq war and that their opposition and falsehoods put American troops lives at risk.

Starting a war based on known lies about “weapons of mass destruction” is the falsehood that put American lives at risk. After the event a total lack of evidence for this “reason” for war has demanded the agenda be historically rewritten, by Mr. Bush, such that regime change became the justification for war.

Bush makes the fundamental narcisitic error we can expect from a dry drunk: he takes the word history to mean “his story”: If he thinks it, it is surely true. And then he blames his faults on the world around him and others. This is the dry drunk’s motive in becoming such a fundamentalist: Unable to cope with the realisation that it is they who are flawed and not the world, the dry drunk retreats into hard unrealistic positions that protect the fragile sense of self from collapse.

I have written before of the apocalypse. Another 87,000 dead in the Asian earthquake, following the quarter of a million or so Tsunami victims. Much of America under water or destroyed by wind. 30,000 kids starving to death or perishing from curable and preventable disease daily. This was not the sort I thought we might be in for.

The etymology of the word Apocalypse is interesting. Greek Apo means to remove whilst calypse stems from lid. I understood the lid coming off to mean the revelation of truth being evident before all. I dreamt of a change in earthly ways to accomodate that. I thought it might be informational and political/economic/social. That the four horsemen are on the door seems most strange.

At the same time I find myself nesting furiously. I have a “new” desk. I constructed it from the bottom part of my old coffee table and the four legs I was given to build a bar. That was to be a temporary bar til I slung the desk top on it and put the two drawer plinths underneath as little stand alone units. It means I can stand and use the computer at the right hieght or sit on a barstool. It’s much easier that way.

You must learn to crawl before you learn to walk. It’s just the way things are, the way our bodies work. Much in life is like this. There are many conditions that come together and all of a sudden something new appears.

Some spiritual teachers have not done their homework deeply enough for the commitments they take on. This can lead to divisions within communities. I would never wish to be one of these persons, were I ever to be fortunate enough to attain a level of enlightenment that would allow me to ’shine the torch’ for others.

This is why several years ago, when asked when I would start teaching, I refused to say. I knew I knew something but I didn’t know what. And I knew I didn’t know enough. I feel I face a similar situtation in my life at the moment. There is this sinking feeling.

I have just finished, almost, decorating my flat (with the help of friends for I am incapacitated). This has been a long ride as I moved in two years ago and it was a tip. Blown Vinyl, overpainted red and cream lined the living room, the bedroom was mauve and green, the bathroom pink artex and the kitchen yellow. The floor, throughout, was concrete.

Now the living room is saffron at the seating end which contains the desk from whence I write, a hammock, a rocking chair, a futon and a medium size palm. It is terracotta at the dining end where I have built a bar and have barstools and some shelves and joining the colours and areas are two long strips of deep crimson red, the colour of love, padma. One strip runs under the windows, 22 feet long and the other is 2 feet wide and eight feet high on a short return wall.

The bedroom is blue and yellow but I am going to overpaint the blue lower wall with white. The kitchen is the same terracotta as the dining area and the hall is white. Everywhere is wood laminate floor, except kitchen and bathroom which have fake wood vinyl floor.

The bathroom is a masterpiece, and a tribute to my passion and, I fear, my downfall. Having removed half the artex I gave up. That took a month and was chip by chip. I covered everything with four layers of lining paper for a nice finish glueing the first on with pure PVA. Then the upper part I papered with maps from all the places I have travelled and lived. Amsterdam, France, Warsaw, Koln, Samos, Santorini, Dorset, Norfolk and others. The lower part is currently purple but I think that will go white now too. Everything in there is varnished. Including the raw copper pipe that holds up the shower curtain and the one that leads to the 81/2 inch shower rose.

And that sinking feeling? I want to get in my Landrover and drive to India. Just when I finished laying the f*cking floor and painting the bl**dy walls. My flat looks a million dollars and I want to piss off and travel.

President Bush made it official yesterday: he is not completely stupid. Very, very stupid, yes, but not an utter fool. Speaking with his Argentinian counterpart prior to the international summit the Argentinians have the displeasure of hosting this weekend Bush admitted he was not a popular party guest. Unfortunately, this moment of clarity was ruined by the obvious pleasure Bush took in the fact. He looked very infantile and was reminiscent of a baby full of joy having discovered the displeasured reactions it causes by shitting in it’s newly changed nappy.

For my American readers:
I went to look up “Fart” on dictionary.com where I discover it is a part of your popular parlance too. The definitions given are:

noun.
1/ An often audible discharge of intestinal gas.
2/ An annoying or foolish person.

In this story I am using the first of these definitions, though the second could of course figure prominently too. “Lift” in English usage refers in this story to an elevator.

* I have heavily paraphrased Mr Bush for the sake of clarity.

From “The Power of Now”, Eckhart Tolle:

“The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much graeater than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and form. The inability to feel this connectednedssgives rise to the feeling of seperation , from yourself and from the world around you. You then perceive yourself consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm.

I love the Buddha’s simple definition of enlightenment as “the end of suffering”. There is nothing superhuman in that, is there? Of course, as a definition, it is incomplete. It only tells you what enlightenment is not: no suffering. But what’s left when there is no more suffering? The Buddha is silent on that, and his silence implies that you’ll have to find out for yourself. He uses a negative definition so that the mind cannot make it into something to believe in or into a superhuman accomplishment, a goal that is impossible for you to attain. Despite this precaution, the majority of Buddhists still believe that enlightenment is for the Buddha, not for them, at least not in this lifetime.” (Emphasis mine).

Whether Tolle is fully enlightened or not he accurately diagnoses the root problem with Buddhists and Buddhism today, and in that alone he is more enlightened that 99% of Buddhists I have had the pleasure of meeting.

Bill Gates is one of the most powerful individuals on this planet. He is donating $200 million to help stop Malaria. This is good news. It’s a bit tiny though Bill - in all honesty - like the mosquito’s who carry the parasite.

According to Bill Gates Wealth Clock he is worth around $61.4 billion today. 0.003% of Bill’s personal wealth may make quite an impact on Malaria transmission in Africa but if Bill lived on the 0.003% and donated the rest to help find soutions to the seemingly intractable problems of the continent I would be impressed. And Bill would, after all, still have $200 million to play with.

Come to think of it, he could live on 0.003% of the $200 million, which would leave him $655,737. According to the World Bank, Gross National Income per Capita for the world’s poorest countries averaged $510 per annum in 2004. Bill was born in 1955 which makes him 50 this year. If we assumed he were to live another 50 years and spend all that cash he would have an annual expenditure of around $13,100.

This would still be 26 times the spending power of the poorest. A lot of money perhaps but nothing compared to the 120,264,682 people who will survive this year collectively on income to the value of Mr Gates wealth (yes one hundred and twenty million). And this shows the real problem. “Personal” wealth is never personal, it is always a collective effort channelled by our economic systems into a smaller number of hands than creates the wealth. And until we change that, a few hundred million here or there will not solve any long term problems.

And before I get whinging complaints from free marketeers, I know Mr Gates has funded his charitable trust to the tune opf $37 billion but only $3 billion of this has been apportioned, let alone the value actually spent. And don’t send your whinges anyway because I am not a free marketeer. Markets are a game set up by humans: They have rules and are never “free”: The rules dictate who can play, how and when.