Tag: Buddhist

Ashram-Retreat Centre – Dolphins – Dream 21-02-18

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I arrive at a large building on multiple levels which backs directly onto the sea. The shore is rocky but not too step. It has many rooms which are like warm rounded caves and are decked out in “ethnic” fabrics and furniture.

Soon various people start arriving. They are of all ages and some with children. The rooms are all open, without doors, yet still afford some privacy, they feed into one another. This is to be the retreat centre it has an ethos of non-denominational, discursive-ness and openness. It is to be themed around dreaming. There is a slight yet noticeable “hippie” vibe. Whilst it is not yet an Ashram, it has the potential so to be.

People are gathering around, and we are expecting a visit from a lama Y. together with his entourage. They tip up and take the tour. We are sat in one of the larger rooms and I show him an “ethnic” carved figure of a deer. He comments that although it is pretty the workmanship is not so good. I have sourced it at a local shop. After this I go to the shop and the owner agrees that the workmanship isn’t high quality. He says that he will send it back to his supplier and replace it for me. He thanks me for bringing it to his attention.

As lama Y. is leaving, he asks me what it is all about.

I say, “Dreaming is dreaming, and it will work itself out.”

From the house we can see all the children playing in the glass-sided infinity pool which is tidal.

I go down to the inlet by the sea. There we can see fish swimming in the creek. We can discern amongst them 3-4 dolphins. This causes much excitement. I whistle to the dolphins and they swim in closer to us. When one of the dolphins gets close it morphs into a dolphin-man. He gets out of the water and onto the stone jetty we are sitting on. He says, “Praxes” and I ask him if he is Greek. He replies in perfect English that he is and that he and his friends run a local taxi business.

I ask him for some business cards which we can put up on the notice board for the guests. He hands me some of these and then dives back into the water. The dolphins swim off.

Two Americans have come to visit, they are a female and a male. The woman has a “hippie” vibe and the man is an astronaut with short hair.  He is unconvinced. He proceeds to wander off to check out the organisation, sceptical.

Dressed now in my yukata I ask the woman if they need some sunscreen. It can be deceptive around here, the amount of sun. The woman thanks me but does not think it is needed. I say that the offer remains open.    

Back now in the main room of the centre many of us are gathered. We look out to the sea and cannot tell if the tide is out or not. I say that we need to install a tidal monitor, which I will do later.

Now we have to decide more about the retreat centre, what it will do and how it will work.

Dream ends

——————

praxis (ˈpræksɪs)

n, pl praxises or praxes (ˈpræksiːz)

1. (Education) the practice and practical side of a profession or field of study, as opposed to the theory

2. (Education) a practical exercise

3. accepted practice or custom

[C16: via Medieval Latin from Greek: deed, action, from prassein to do]

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  • There is an implicit question as to whether I want to form / found an Ashram.

Brocade Book – Occult – Dream 8-9-16

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Here is last night’s dream

I am in some kind of mansion or Chateau. The rooms are dimly lit by candles and gaslight. The furniture is period. The walls are dressed in curtain like hangings stretching floor to ceiling. The colour is a boudoir red / purple. There is a sense of fading Victorian even tsarist grandeur. In the distance I can hear a social function, a party. There are harpsichords playing, laughter and chatter. I wander around the room; it is well-kept but overly opulent and not to my liking. I walk past a table, with ornate carved legs and I trail my hand along the tabletop.

Next, I am in an ultra-modern museum which has a Germanic or Swiss feel. It is somehow on top of a mountain and very high up. The museum is minimalist. There are only a very few glass cabinets. They contain artefacts in gold and other metals. Each has a slip of paper in the cabinet with a date and a small explanation. Many of the artefacts are oriental, Buddhist and relate way back. They are very precious, and security is high. I come upon a case; it appears to be empty. In the case is a slip of white paper saying Dr A.G.Taylor and a list of the universities that he worked at. There is no date. I get excited and go to find the curator. I say to her that this is me…can I have look at what is in the exhibit? She puts on her white gloves and with a golden key attached to her neck chain she opens the drawer below the exhibit case. She pulls out a book, a much valued manuscript. It is kept out of sight to preserve it. It is about standard book size. The book has a cover, even a cage, of the finest golden filigree brocade, exquisitely carved and put together. It is in raised almost moving relief. The cover of the book is white and although not glossy it somehow shines. The whole thing shines and glows. It is radiant. She makes me put on white gloves and hands it to me. I marvel at the book and open it. Both she and I know that it is I who wrote this book.

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The scene changes to another room deep in the vaults of the museum. It is where all the treasures are kept. The floor is of white marble and the room has two levels split by a small half staircase. At the staircase are wall length curtains held back by a fancy golden coloured tie. The curtains are of luxuriant red with a yellow gold coloured backing. I wander through the room looking at the artefacts. Many are to do with magic of both light and dark varieties. I instinctively know which is which and what they are for. As I wander through the room, I get the sensation of something, some being, watching me. I know that it is not benign. So, I “swell up” and fill myself with energy. I open my hands so as to distribute {if needed} and say out loud. “I know you are there, show yourself!!” It is an occult command of very high order. The curtains at the stair flutter in the breeze and I know that whatever it was, it has gone.

The dream ends. I know that it is highly significant. I pause to recollect and store it. I go back to sleep.

On typing today the word Grimoire popped into mind.

Glowing Skelton – Third Universe – Dream 17-11-2012

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Here are some excerpts from what was a lengthy dreaming sequence.

Against a dark backdrop I see an image of myself. I am superimposed upon a glowing skeleton which has pink, fluorescent blood vessels. It is living. The two images or my normal body and the skeleton pulse back and forth in precedence. I am become death the destroyer of worlds.

In the dream I wonder if this is a harbinger of my own death. It is not it has only symbolic value…

—-

I know that the world of this dream in an intermediate world between life and death.

—

I am shown three worlds as three circles / spheres and written upon each world in vivid dripping pink lettering are the following:

The world of starving Spirits

The world of the Hungry Ghosts

The world of the in between.

I know in the dream that this current universe is the third manifested universe and to understand the true nature of Bardo and karma I will need to expand my consciousness so that it can stretch backwards to the times of previous universal manifestations. This will be a part of my training.

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  • Sometimes the nagal or spirit is seen as a luminous pinks shade.

This from 18th May 2012 was more of a vision and seems related to this so I have appended it here:

I see a scene with four “men” dressed in different pastel-coloured robes breaking through into consciousness. They are “pastel” blue, pink, yellow and white, which are mildly and softly radiant.

They are waiting for me on the beach. Their facial features are not easily discernible. They are the four Lords of Karma, the Lipika Lords.

Renunciation or Self-Sabotage?

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The human ability to kid oneself is well known though for those kidding, difficult to accept. At the moment there are many who deem the slaughter in Gaza justifiable and apt. They do not imagine any karmic consequences because that notion would be very inconvenient. Irrespective of how things are temporarily brought to a close, there will be consequences ongoing.

The normal idea of success in the “West” might be to have a good career, make progress, climb the housing ladder and perhaps have a relationship or marriage and thence to propagate the species. One might like a nice car and pleasant foreign holidays. Perhaps gaining some measure of societal kudos along the way. One would not sulkily throw one’s toys out of the cot; one would comply more or less to the norm. Psychology might point you in this direction.

If for example you are a bodhisattva called Siddartha Gautama, it would be OK to run out on a young wife and child, leave the palace of your father the King and renounce the kingdom to which you are heir. But for normal people this would be wrong.

Viewed from one angle this is an ungrateful act of wanton self-sabotage. Siddhartha shot himself in the foot and abandoned a pleasant life, one which many might aspire to. To the starving, the poor and the unshod this makes no sense. Yet according to legend this subsequently facilitated his teaching and his completion of the career goal of any bodhisattva, namely enlightenment and Buddhahood.

In the post previous I pointed at something that many would not understand. I shelved a high value job at a prestigious space agency. The successful completion of which could have opened the way for senior positions and a way back from the “wilderness”. We would have had plenty of cash.

There were a number of warning omens when we were viewing properties in and near Leiden. Retrospect suggests that the job was a temptation of sorts.

Earlier I walked out of a marriage with a very young child which caused the sale of a house in London now worth £ 1 million. I left a new age group which I gave heart and soul to establish. I “gave” my shares back to a start-up company the vision for which was to a fair extent mine. I quit a then tenured academic job at a top university, something to which many aspired. I had no other job lined up just a few training courses. One of these went pear shaped so I gave them up too. To move from a highly timetabled job into near nothing was a bit of a shock to the system. I resigned from another short lived university teaching post. I cut contact with my aged mother. I forwent relations with family.

None of these were easy. I am not a prince.

One could say that I am simply a loser who could not hack it.

One could say that these were acts of stepwise renunciation. The integral over micro-renunciations has a similar effect to sudden departure.

 Or one could call deem them all the INFJ door slam, a fault in my character.

What is it that seeks success? It is the self and not the Soul. In this logic renunciation is indeed an act of self-sabotage. The ambitions of the self are stymied in stepwise succession. I know that I can live without any of these accoutrements. If you like I have physical plane proof by experience. I am not bound by the fear of missing out on a normal successful life.

I could be kidding myself. Trying to find an excuse for my squandering of opportunity. Or maybe I have simply thrown my toys out of my cot because things did not go my way.

Nobody else has experienced these things like I did. Nobody else has felt the tearing, the ripping. I am alone in my moccasins which I may not loan to another.

People might have opinions.

I cannot return to the trajectory my life was once on. Any attempt has gone badly awry. The dramatic might say that I am not meant to. Or one could argue that it is the karma of wanton squandering. I made the bed and now I must sleep in it.

There remains one question concerning what if anything I do with the remainder of earthly sojourn.

Hmnn…

Goal Orientation – Suffering and Dissatisfaction

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If you search for “coaching” you will find many people offering their services as coaches and often a part of this is setting goals or targets for success and advancement. Few notice the similarity of goal and gaol. People can become prisoners of their goal orientation. Society is obsessed with measurable metrics and tick lists of things to do, to the extent that life can be a wearisome endless list of devoirs. It is de rigueur to have goals and ambition it seems.

Siddartha wanted so badly to end suffering for all sentient beings, suffering, or dukka, can be translated as dissatisfaction.

I’ll make a statement: goal orientation is directly causal of dissatisfaction.

If you fail to make a goal you are dissatisfied, if you make a goal, you are temporarily done but the next goal awaits lurking on the horizon. Any “satisfaction” is fleeting. This measurement obsession more often than not suggests some measure of inadequacy, could do better.

People then have massive internal dialogue about whether of not they are meeting their goals. Internal dialogue is nearly always negative and hence the being suffers unnecessarily because of this internal “mental” cacophony.

Goal orientation and rush often skip hand in hand. Focussed only on the goal there is a tendency to finish quick and this can cause poor application to task and lower standards. Goal orientation can prevent impeccability. Eye on goal one does not fully absorb into whatever it is one is doing. There are distractions from other pending goals. Quality suffers on the noose of measurable quantity. Goals hang.

The antithesis of spiritual development is rush. It is impossible to rush it, but many try and seek milestones to prove progress. The hangover of societal obsession with goal orientation is difficult to ease.

Striving is a form of suffering.

Relaxation and complete absorption is the antidote. Complete absorption brings completion but without obsessional suffering. Complete absorption quietens the internal dialogue and therefore reduces dissatisfaction. Everyone knows when they have been impeccable. Impeccability is not an absolute. If you give completely of your current very best that is all you can do, this never brings dissatisfaction. Subsequent comparative internal dialogue can cause the nine headed hydra of dissatisfaction to rise again.

Internal dialogue is a primary cause of dissatisfaction and suffering.

Endless measuring is causal of dissatisfaction and suffering.

Comparison mind is directly causal of dissatisfaction.

Rational thinking causes dissatisfaction. Therefore, rational thinking is an irrational unwise thing to do. It does not make sense.

Of course, under certain circumstances one needs some rationality.

If one is ever goal oriented one never experiences the moment, the eternal now, because the goal is very distracting. Not being fully present causes dissatisfaction. If one lives in the twin worlds of what if and if only, there is rarely now. The past whether melancholic or rose tinted, the future whether idealised or catastrophe is not now, it is mind-stuff often of the nature of internal dialogue. Trash.

Goal orientation causes impatience which is a form of dissatisfaction. Goal orientation when one is driving a car is a cause of road rage.

Letting go of goal orientation is liberating.

Try it, having no goals is harder than it might seem, because societal habituation near worships them.

Hence there is suffering and dissatisfaction, which we might call samsara or saṃsāra, which is another term for endless human folly.

The Superpower of Patience

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I’ll speculate that immediacy and the immediacy of gratification are part of the modern way of life for many. People do not like to wait and many suffer badly from premature conclusion which can be messy. The concluding kangaroo can be found easily on all sides and people jump great distances to form dodgy yet firm conclusions without real basis. Many rely on what “they” say and are unwilling or too lazy to look into things themselves.

Śāntideva in the Bodhicharyâvatâra has a whole chapter on the virtues of forbearance which is a close ally of patience. The jewel of awareness forbearance is depicted by tarot 12.

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Sometimes you are required by karma to bear whatever life brings and to do so in as cheerful a manner as possible without pissing and moaning or whingeing like a stuck record. Often there is light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a TGV train oncoming.

This urge for immediacy means that long term policy making is neglected and life is governed by knee jerk reactions and sticking plaster temporary “solutions”. If it can’t be “sorted” quickly people lose interest. This condemns life to the shallows and the profound depths are never plumbed. It is a natural law that depth needs time and application. Concentration without distraction for extended periods brings insights more meaningful than a short flashy TikTok video. If you wait long enough an insight might come along and then just like with busses you may get several.

Humanity is in a rush like never before in some senses.

This means that the superpower of patience is fading and heading towards a mass extinction event. Being patient is not fashionable, nor is it good clickbait. Being patient is for losers. Gimme, gimme, gimme.

Aligning a complicated dye laser to give the best balance of laser power output and narrowness of spectral linewidth is nearly an art form. I refer to it as Zen and the Art of Laser Alignment. If you get twitchy and impatient it can go badly wrong and you are returned back to the start. All the good work can be undone by one or two impatient tweaks of a mirror positioning knob. If you note that you are losing patience, best to stop go out of the room and then come back calm to start again. In the past I could work at laser alignment in four hour sessions.

This loss of patience and hasty reaction is fairly prevalent. If gratification is not immediate interest is lost.

In Buddhism theory even after one has entered the stream it takes several lifetimes to complete liberation. Patience then is a scale. If one can work over many lifetimes that is patient. If one gets annoyed by the slow loading of a Netflix film, that is less patient. We boomers had ~50 kilobyte per second modems, we were initiated into patience thereby.

Pavlovian society is now conditioned to immediacy, buying in a click and getting food delivered to the doorstep in many places.

I wonder if I could survive the massed impatience and accompanying ire / agitation of London these days. For a long time, I was immersed therein. I doubt I could hack it now.

I think it fair to speculate that I am more patient than average. I can sit in a hospital waiting room without my comfort beads, by smartphone. I do not have to scroll frantically.

The need, it seems, for constant distraction is having a detrimental effect on mental health. The data dealers keep pushing more deal baggies of gigabytes at us, encouraging us to use high definition cameras like junkies to make huge files and selling ever more data to satisfy this addiction.

If people could go cold turkey on the taking and publication of all that imagery, the climate would not get so hot.

I think that were we all to better develop our superpower of patience, the world would be a better and perhaps more tolerant place. It would stop being so knee jerk reactive and it might even try to understand differing views and perspectives. It might ease the pervasive malady of premature conclusion.

Dice Numerology Mantra and Periodic Table Dream – 20-11-2024

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Here is this morning’s dream segment perhaps following on from my Tibetan Dice dream at the beginning of November. I am in a project to carve some dice out of some Apple wood from our “orchard”.

In the dream I am shown a 3d image of a wooden die rotating in space. I note that the pairs of faces are 1 and 6, 3 and 4, 5 and 2. Each opposing pair adds up to 7 which in the dream I know to be the jewel of awareness 7, or need for guidance. I know that the maximum score of two dice is 12.

In the dream I know that 6 represents Carbon and 1 is Hydrogen. They are chemically fond of each other. Carbon plus Hydrogen is 7.

I picture a periodic table of elements and see 1 – Hydrogen, 2 – Helium, 3 – Lithium, 4 – Beryllium, 5 – Boron and 6 – carbon. I know that 7 is Nitrogen.

I understand that the dice represents the Mantra of Manjushri and chant it in the dream.

Om ah ra pa tsa na dhi.  

Wisdom ripens all sentient beings. Om 1 2 3 4 5 6

In the dream I know that Li and Be are highly reactive but I do not know much about Boron. Lithium is the basis of many batteries but it is very flammable in metallic form. Lithium is 3 mixed abundance.

I understand in the dream that I need to complete the manufacture of the dice and work on the Manjushri mantra.

Dream ends.

Note in Mo the numbering goes Om 6 5 4 3 2 1

Buddha Pronounces the Sūtra of the Total Annihilation of the Dharma

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This prompted by my dream see previous post.

Translated from Sanskrit into Chinese

by

An Unknown Person

Thus I have heard:

    At one time the Buddha, together with bhikṣus and Bodhisattvas, was staying in the city kingdom of Kuśinagara, where He would enter parinirvāṇa in three months. Countless multitudes came to the Buddha and bowed their heads down to the ground. Surrounded by His devotees longing to hear the Dharma, the World-Honored One remained silent, and His radiance did not manifest.

    The venerable Ānanda made obeisance to the Buddha and asked Him, “When the World-Honored One pronounces the Dharma, His awesome radiance is always displayed before and after. Now in this huge assembly, His radiance does not appear. Why is this so? There must be a reason. I pray to hear its implication.”

    The Buddha remained silent, not responding. After Ānanda asked this question for the third time, the Buddha told Ānanda, “After my parinirvāṇa, as the Dharma comes to an end, the way of the māras will thrive in this world of the five turbidities. Māras will appear as śramaṇas so as to undermine and destroy my Way. They will wear lay clothes and delight in the monk’s robe dyed with a mixture of five colors. To gratify ravenous appetites, they will drink alcohol, eat flesh, and kill sentient beings. Devoid of lovingkindness, they will hate and envy others.

    “At that time, there will be Bodhisattvas, Pratyekabuddhas, and Arhats, who energetically cultivate virtue and treat all with respect. Esteemed by all, they will teach and transform others impartially. They will pity the poor and old, and help the needy and unfortunate. They will teach others to revere and uphold the sūtras and the holy images. Kind and benevolent in nature, they will do meritorious karmas. Never harming others, they will disregard any harm to themselves in order to help others. Kind and friendly, they will endure abuse, not protecting themselves.

    “Although there will be such good people, all māra bhikṣus will be jealous of them. They will slander, malign, and banish them. Afterward, individually and as a group, the māra bhikṣus will not cultivate virtue. Temples will be deserted, falling into disrepair then into ruins. Greedy for material wealth, they will accumulate things, not using them to acquire merit. They will sell slaves to work in the fields. Devoid of lovingkindness, they will burn mountain forests, harming sentient beings. Male slaves will become bhikṣus, and female slaves will become bhikṣuṇīs. Devoid of morality, they will engage in sexual debauchery and perversion, whether with men or women. Such people will cause my Way to fade away.

    “Some of them will seek sanctuary in my Order to escape prosecution by the law. They will become śramaṇas but will not observe the precepts or regulations. Although they will, in appearance, recite the precepts on new-moon and full-moon days, they will be reluctant and indolent, not wanting to hear the recitation. They will omit some precepts, not wanting to recite all of them. They will not recite or study the sūtras. If there are readers who do not know the words [in the sūtras], they will claim that they know them. They will not consult the learned ones, but will instead seek fame for self-elevation. They will glorify themselves with fake elegant ways, expecting offerings from others. For committing any of the five rebellious sins, after death, these māra bhikṣus will fall into the hell of uninterrupted suffering. They will then be reborn as animals or hungry ghosts for as many kalpas as the sands of the Ganges. After their sins have been purged, they will be reborn [as humans] in a fringe country where the Three Jewels will not be accessible.

    “When the Dharma is ending, women will diligently do meritorious karmas while men will be indolent and arrogant. Men, having no faith, will not use the words in the Dharma, but will regard śramaṇas as feces and dirt. When the Dharma is ending, gods will shed tears. Flood and drought will ravage, and five kinds of grain will not ripen. Epidemics will be prevalent and many will die. People will endure a hard life, and government officials will exploit them. People will not follow good principles, thinking only of pleasure and strife. The evil ones will become as numerous as the sands in the sea. The good ones will decrease to one or two. As a kalpa is ending, the sun and the moon will be unstable and human lifespan will shorten. At the age of 40, one’s hair will turn white. Men indulging in sexual acts may die prematurely from depletion of their semen, or may live to only 60. While men will live short lives, women will live long to 70, 80, 90, or even 100 years. Faithless people will say that the situation can be permanent.

    “A massive flood will suddenly rise, lasting endlessly. Various species of sentient beings, lofty or lowly, will drown or drift in the waters, and they will be eaten by fish and other sea creatures. Bodhisattvas, Pratyekabuddhas, and Arhats, driven away by the māras, will not convene. [These holy beings of] the Three Vehicles will enter the meritorious grounds in the mountains. There they will live a long life, tranquilly biding their time. They will meet with one another when the god-kings escort Moonlight Bodhisattva to appear in the world. Together they will revitalize my Dharma for fifty-two years.

    “Then the Śūraṅgama Sūtra and the Pratyutpanna Buddha Sammukhāvasthita Samādhi Sūtra will be destroyed, to be followed by all other sūtras in the twelve categories. Their words will not be seen again. The monk’s robe will naturally turn white. When my Dharma perishes, it will be like [the flame of] an oil lamp. When it is dying, its light becomes brighter for a while then dies out. When my Dharma perishes, it will be like the extinction of a lamp. What will happen afterward is hard to describe. Eventually, after tens of millions of years, Maitreya Bodhisattva will descend to this world to become a Buddha. All toxic gases will then be eliminated, and the world will be safe and peaceful. The rains will be harmonious and the five grains will thrive. The trees will be tall, and humans will each be eighty feet tall, with a lifespan of 84,000 years. Innumerable sentient beings will be delivered.”

    The venerable Ānanda made obeisance to the Buddha and asked Him, “What should we call this sūtra? How should we uphold it?”

    The Buddha replied, “Ānanda, this sūtra is called Total Annihilation of the Dharma. Pronounce it to all and let them know its significance. Your merit will be immeasurable, beyond reckoning.”

    The four groups of disciples, having heard this sūtra, were distressed and downcast, but they all activated their resolve to attain the unsurpassed bodhi. Then they made obeisance to the Buddha and departed.

False Monks – Karmic Stones – Car Park Dream – 16-11-2024

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Here is this morning’s dream had after seeing the full moon light up the garden through our glass back door.

I am at some kind of a modern retreat centre. It is in a grand European style mansion. I leave my room and head downstairs into the atrium and start of the dining area. I run into a number of people dressed as Buddhist monks. The colours of their robes are vibrant and the quality of the cloth luxurious. Although they have shaved heads they are heavily made up with lipstick, eyeliner, eyeshadow and face powder. They greet me good morning. It is more than a tad bizarre.

They ask me if I remember Antoine. (A Russian I once met). Yes, a little. He comes into the atrium dressed as a monk with very short dark black hair. I do not recognise him. He too is made up.

They ask me what I want for breakfast. I only want to have some water for coffee. They say that they can’t allow that. I should join the other guests in the new dining block which is their pride and joy. It is the latest addition to the centre. They gesture towards an orangery type of out building the other side of a small canal or river. There I can see well heeled and expensively dressed men and women enjoying a hearty breakfast with fresh juices. These are paying guests.

I say that I only need coffee because I have work to do. Reluctantly they let me help myself to only a large mug of strong black coffee.

I head out and up a nearby hill. I find a pile of large stones there which I have previously placed. These are my rocks of karma which I have carried up the hill. It is time to take them down, put them in my car and dispose of them. I start to roll the stones down the hill. Some of them roll easily and accumulate near the edge of the retreat car park. Others take more effort to budge and roll in a more haphazard manner. These ones after rolling a while vanish into thin air. I do not need to take them home.

I get to the bottom of the hill and start to load the stones into the boot of my car. My car is small and light coloured. The car park is jammed with very little space between the cars. All the cars are pointing up hill except mine. Many are black and like 1960s style American sedans. My car is at the far side of the car park nearer the exit. There are only two rows of cars between me and the exit. I am blocked in. There is a young woman dressed in 1960s style clothes with a VW beetle which is pink. She moves her car to unblock my path. She then gets into another big black car blocking and manoeuvres that so that I can leave the car park.

I drive off out of the car park.

I know that all the cars, cheek and jowl, pointing the wrong way is a wider metaphor for humanity and its glamour and gluttony. I know that that the made up monks are trying to be popular and because of that set a bad example. They are also glamoured.

Dream ends

Science and Divination

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My book on Mo the Tibetan System of Divination by the polymath Jamgon Mipham arrived last night and I have had a quick scan through. Like many things Tibetan when something has negative aspect they don’t hold back.

“The Demon of Death – If RA PA – the demon of death – appears, then the symbol is destruction.”

I’ll speculate that if you were to ask most physical scientists if there is any merit in divination techniques, they might say it is a bit of fun but there is no reality to the predictions, divination is a superstition

I have published in Physical Review Letters, Chemical Physics and Faraday Transactions. This is evidence that at least at one time I was able to “do” modern science at a fair level.

In the early nineties I was in a bookshop in Tring and this copy of the I Ching literally fell off the shelf and onto the floor by my feet.

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You could argue that this was purely coincidental or that the universe was telling me something. One could say that the I Ching wanted me, was seeking me out. I have consulted on an off for three decades. I have done consultations for myself and for others. In some cases, people’s faces have gone white with the “accuracy” of how the oracle fits life circumstance. Some of these were scientists! In the late nineties I went on my first “New Age” course with Jay Ramsay a co-author of “I Ching the Shamanic Oracle of Change”. People on the course were suspicious of me because I was a “scientist” from a hardcore science and technology university.

What is safe to say is that a consultation nearly always opens up a new approach, or a new way of thinking about a situation, dilemma or problem. It adds a perspective.

In some cases when approached with the right attitude the fit of the advice to circumstance is uncanny. If you are a dick with the oracle, it can tell you so. Of course, this perceived fit could be my confirmation bias. I am not a premature conclusion sort of person and tend to keep an open mind. I have allowed consultations to alter my actions and orientation. Just like I do with dreams.

There are many that might consider this mumbo-jumbo.

I attended a foundation course in North American Indian shamanism. As a part of that we looked a Scandinavian Runic Shamanism. I carved my own set of runes out of slate. I was accustomed to wear runes around my neck on a cord. I gave lectures on physical chemistry wearing my home made runes. There is a divination system based on runes in which one blind selects the appropriate rune from a bag to advise on a question. The selected rune is compared to a guide book and the intuition invoked to answer the query.

Astrology does not light my candle.

But I do like Tarot and Numerology. I am not drawn to typical Tarot spreads, preferring only to use the major arcana.

Maybe I should go on “Fesshole” and confess to doing Tarot whilst at Imperial College…

In my Tibetan Dice dream I throw One One or Dhi Dhi

“A little later I see two dice. I see that they are carved out of a deep root of a tree and shaped and polished. It is a long process and a labour of love. These are my Tibetan dice. They are perfect cubes with sharp edges and corners. I hold them in my hand and throw the dice, and I see two faces each with a singular dark blue dot. I have thrown two. They are made of root and Tibetan. The workmanship is exquisite. I know the meaning of two and its significance.“

“The Jewelled Banner of Victory

If DHI DHI – the hoisted banner of victory – appears, then you are victorious and excel, like the raising of the banner of victors over every direction.  You are able to accomplish whatever activity you wish to do.”

DHI DHI is increasing and DHI transcendental wisdom, multi-coloured, mind and thoughts.

To dream an auspicious oracle is probably auspicious.

Up in the orchard there is a fallen Walnut tree, taken out by Tempest Ciaran on the first of November last year, the morning I had the dream. Some of the roots are exposed. I could fashion for myself two dice out of the root. Walnut is a very decorative wood.

I have been wondering what to do about the roots of late…

Until I have made the dice, I won’t consult the Mo.

The dream has pointed me at another method to explore…..