Dinner With Hayagriva

Part One

Today we're eating at Hayagriva's Diner, the Michelin-starred pitstop joint of the Wrathfully Compassionate One. The menu is ever-changing, but guarantees to serve something for every taste. From heavenly lite-bites to hefty fibre-and-carbohydrate helpings for those with voracious appetites. From sweet and ambrosial desserts to concoctions that will have you rushing to the nearest pharmacy. Hayagriva's Diner serves them all.

Is it vegan fayre dished up in the Diner, or vegetarian maybe? Like many things, I don't know. But for sure, the Wrathfully Compassionate One doesn't go in for lettuce-and-cucumber sandwiches. And he's no soyboy. And, once inside, you'll find the vibe closer to that of a burger joint than a smoothie-and-quinoa hangout. The juke box in the corner belts out incessantly Jim Morrison intoning 'Roadhouse Blues'. But at this point, personal peccadilloes are overwhelming the Hayagriva bit of the business.

In reality, Hayagriva doesn't need any of this stuff at all. His nourishment derives from the sweet, divine nectar of gnosis. From the liquid fire that is kundalini. From the flow and play of the infinite energy of the universe. But it's a game that he likes to play.

Part Two

I make no claim to 'expertise' when it comes to Hayagriva. I have received no empowerments or had special blessings conferred. I have done no formal Hayagriva meditation or had instructions in his mantra. For me, it's not really about that. It's simply that, when you meet Hayagriva, when you feel his great presence, you just know that he's the One....

Time for some primary level education. I have no intention of going into the many symbols and attributes of Hayagriva here. These can be accessed DIY-style by anybody sufficiently interested. I'm more concerned with his overall vibe, his feeling. What is it that communicates from the presence of our terrifying masterchef?

Hayagriva turns up in various guises at various times in various bits and pieces of Hindu and Buddhist traditions. This is enough to drive crazy anybody who insists on simple logic and order as rulers of their universe. But it's just how things grew up, I suppose.

'Buddhism' is an umbrella word, a catch-all term, which imposes a somewhat artificial uniformity upon a multitude of different traditions. There is no central 'authority', no Buddhist pope. Hinduism is even more so, enough to drive any slave to consistency nuts. Things just started, morphed, interwove with other things, morphed again, often on quite local levels. The result, if you can discard the habit of trying to fit everything together nicely, is an incredible richness for the imagination.

Personally, my familiarity is confined to Hayagriva as he manifests in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Tantra. This is who Hayagriva is to me. He is one of the prime 'wrathful deities', as they are termed. There are peaceful deities, or Buddhas or Bodhisattvas, generally the better known figures; and there are their wrathful aspects or counterparts. So, for example, the well-known Avalokitesvara (also Kuan-Yin in Japan), Bodhisattva of Compassion, has a wrathful form, Mahakala, Great Death. At first glance, Mahakala doesn't look very compassionate at all. Manjusri, Lord of Wisdom, has as his wrathful counterpart Yamantaka, a monstrous-looking buffalo-type. And so on.

Hayagriva is reckoned to be the wrathful manifestation of Amitabha, a red Buddha who presides over the feeling faculty, if you like. Buddhaweekly (an online source with a good piece on the Wrathfully Compassionate One) describes him as the 'Incredible Hulk' emanation of Amitabha.

Amitabha is also Buddha of 'Discriminating Wisdom', most relevant in the modern day and age. Discriminating and distinguishing; seeing differences. It's not all One, man, after all. There is One and there are Two; and there are Many. The presence of Amitabha and Hayagriva recognises that difference exists, and it is a vital aspect to the fabric of the universe. Light, dark; masculine, feminine: the sacred polarities, one way in which the spiritual reveals itself.

Part Three

"Where 'ordinary' pacifying speech and compassion are insufficient to the goal - the goal of Enlightenment, or removing the obstacles to Liberation - then normally a Vajrayana Buddhist turns to the Heruka or Wrathful emanations."

This quote from Buddhaweekly spells out part of the story, but only part. To get divinely turned on by the wrathful ones requires a turnaround in ones basic attitude. It predicates a recognition, a realisation about the nature of energy in human life. All the stuff conventionally considered as keeping us in the pig trough - rage, sex, anger, jealousy, passion, desire - gets flipped on its head. Instead of being enemies to be vanquished or fled, they become allies, energies at the service of the Great Quest, the Big Trip, direct emanations of reality.

I have long felt a certain rapport with the wrathful ones. But this heated up no end as the kundalini energy came close to waking up properly in my body. A change in perception took place, whereby what was once to be 'escaped' or 'overcome' was now seen as necessary elements in the working of the universe. 'Feeling' is feeling; 'energy' is energy'. Void of inherent qualities, it just is. Everything else we just hang onto it by dint of our own predisposition to blindness. In this way, I could term myself a DIY Tantrik. Maybe this is the way for the west.

The peaceful Buddhas are more familiar to most people. At first sight they seem more accessible, less threatening and overwhelming. But it is Chogyam Trungpa who makes the point that, in reality, it is the wrathful ones who can be easier to engage with.

Sit in front of a peaceful Buddha form, with all your confusion, your turmoil, your lust, your resentment, your envy. The Buddha just looks back, smiling the eternal smile. Communication is impossible. It can drive you crazy. But take your mess to a wrathful deity, and it will respond. Respond in kind. There is movement, the possibility of communication, the potential for resolving something in the deep dark feelings which bounce to and fro in a frenzied ping-pong of exchange.

Part Four

Hayagriva reaches apotheosis in yab-yum. His consort is normally the dakini Vajravarahi. Buddhism is very fond of conceptualising stuff. Yab-Yum, it will sagely inform you, represents the union of wisdom (female) and compassion (male). This is all very well, and might have worked in medieval Tibet. But to 21st century western minds, this can be a cop-out. Confronted with this blood-red hulk in frenzied union with a tinier blue female with the head of a pig, we can short-circuit any real feelings this bizarre image may provoke with our well-honed intellectual musing. "Ah yes. Wisdom and Compassion. Of course. I get it." I understand. I get it. I am in control, thank goodness. And any possibility of real energetic and emotional transformation is extinguished. We can get on with life on channel normal.

When we chance upon Hayagriva and Vajravarahi in yab-yum, we are not grokking Wisdom and Compassion. We are witness to flailing arms, legs, bodies, kicking, screaming and roaring in off-the-wall ecstatic existential union. It is deep sex energy; it's actually very polarised. But we are privileged voyeurs. And, if we stick with it, we morph into willing participants. The universe reveals its true nature, it's two-in-one, and it is the end of the world as we know it.

Hey, Hayagriva, what's for dessert?


Images:  Hayagriva (Rubin Museum of Art)
              Soyboy
              Amitabha
              Hayagriva yab yum (detail)

              Hayagriva yab yum



 

Last Year's Pages

2019 was a funny year for reading and writing. On a personal level, the number one thing continued to be 'the inner work', 'the inner life'. But, whereas in previous years this was clearly reflected in blog posts - alchemy, Tarot, kabbala, tantra, kundalini, you name it - in 2019 this was hardly the case.

Maybe a point arrives when the inner work no longer requires or insists upon reading, writing, or speaking very much. It's part of the web of everyday life: you just get on with it.

But there was another angle. What I have termed 'the inner life' shouts out for qualities such as honesty, integrity, clarity, - freedom of expression! - for its own fulfilment. In 2019 the bullshit detector seemed to become more finely attuned. It would less readily tolerate apparent lies and deception, either within or in the outside world. So it began to push me more firmly along the path of seeking out truth and deception in the big wide world out there.

What had long been a subject of query now became visceral: what is honest and sincerely in the interests of human civilisation, and what is a veil, a mask, for programmes far less noble in intent. When is this really my own mind feeling and thinking, and when has it been hijacked by somebody else for other purposes? It became a forensic inquiry into situations where, as Don Juan says to Carlos Castaneda in 'The Active Side of Infinity', "The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind."

I need a lot of persuading. It doesn't come easily to my anarchistic/small government individualistic heart and mind to believe that there exist people who purposely set out to control others, are prepared to manipulate and lie in order to get what they want, or feel so certain of their rightness that they see fit to impose their will on entire populations. So I set out on my quest....

I wrote in April 2019 about the BBC. For over a decade I had been aware that the BBC was not an impartial relayer of information; it was a voice for a particular way of looking at the world, for an agenda. I read a considerable tome, 'BBC: Brainwashing Britain?' to find out if it was as bad as I feared. It was worse, far worse. And the propaganda aspect to the BBC became clearer as 2019 progressed, with its anti-Brexit bias increasingly transparent.

It stood to reason that, given the bias of mainstream media, exemplified by the BBC in particularly toxic fashion, persons were being misrepresented. Mainstream media thrives on simplistic good guy/bad guy narratives. Obviously, the way to discover how far this misrepresentation went, was to research somebody with a bad press. And there was no doubt who the most despised, reviled person in the UK was: Tommy Robinson.

I watched his address to the Oxford Union, complete with clamouring hordes outside baying for his blood. And, more importantly, I read his autobiography, 'Enemy of the State'.

Something marginally interesting has occurred. The Wikipedia entry on Tommy Robinson, at the time of my reading the book, included the words 'racist' and 'thug' in their headline description of the guy. When I checked again the other day, maybe ten months afterwards, these words had disappeared, and 'British far-right and anti-Islam activist' had turned up in their place. At first sight, it looks like the long slow road to respectability for Tommy. However, read further, and you see that, according to Wikipedia, Tommy Robinson remains roughly the most criminal person on the planet.

Shock horror spoiler alert: the impression gained from actually reading Tommy's book was a far cry from what the mainstream was attempting to convey to Joe Public. A real far cry. It is difficult to imagine a more complete misrepresentation. One thing is that Tommy Robinson does not seem racist at all. He has friends - and supporters - of all manner of ethnic origin. Phrases like 'far right extremist', 'white supremacist', 'fascist' have been bandied about freely. Again, totally erroneous, and viciously so. Even in his English Defence League days, neo-Nazis, who did have a problem with people of different ethnic backgrounds and skin colour, were given short shrift. Very short shrift.

The reason the mainstream has turned so viciously against Tommy Robinson is that he sees problems with Islam, and the problems which accompany it in parts of Britain. He has criticised a sacred cow, and asked serious questions about how a problem is being treated - or, rather, ignored - in our modern western society. That's all. Most salutary of all is the terrible way that he has been treated by social media, the courts, the police, the legal system. Hounded mercilessly, as they try to silence him. Charged for offences that hardly anybody else would be charged with, silly things. He is a bit of a hothead, I can see that, but the way he has been 'dealt with' cannot be justified. Terrible.

I was on a roll. I wanted to try and get to the bottom of what 'political correctness' really is, and why. Along with climate denial, being politically incorrect is the most unacceptable thing to the mainstream way of looking at things. It gets you banned, hounded, losing your job, thrown off Facebook, Twitter and the rest. You must be silenced - no debate or discussion required. Once more, the obvious thing was to go for more despised and hated humanity. Milo Yiannopoulos, of course. Who else?

Milo was a big problem. He had to go. He was hated by 'the left' and by a lot of 'the right'. Despite that, he had a big following, especially among young people. He was a big problem because he was pro-Trump, and expert at ridiculing trendy but silly and harmful political ideas. He took his pro-Trump tour around U.S. campuses, and arguably was a factor in Trump's election victory. He was also infuriating, because he couldn't be pigeon-holed. Right-wing but gay, flamboyantly so, with a black boyfriend who became his husband. Undefinable, uncontainable. He had to go.

The opportunity arose when something Yiannopoulos said was misconstrued, twisted and distorted into 'Milo says pedophilia is OK'. Completely untrue, but there we go. It doesn't matter whether or not anything is accurate, provided it has the desired result. Which it did. Bye bye Twitter, Facebook, financial supporters, etc.

'Dangerous', Milo's best-seller, is a book that I devoured in no time. I don't find everything Milo has done and said clever, right, or funny. But this book is exceptional, as an outrageous and sometimes hilarious critique of political correctness, and how free speech is anathema to this way of thinking. Milo takes the revulsion towards him and turns it to his advantage. Chapter titles: 'Why the progressive left hates me'; 'Why Twitter hates me'; 'Why feminists hate me'; 'Why establishment Republicans hate me'. You get the drift.

For an expose of the toxicity of much of what drives today's right-on agendas, you'll be hard put to better Milo's incisive, intelligent, barbed writing. But for good measure, I followed it up.                

In rather more sober vein is 'The Genesis of Political Correctness' by Michael William. I was interested in this genesis: where did this authoritarian madness come from?; how did we get to this strange place? To a degree, I found some answers.

There are long, dense chapters on the three founding tomes of political correctness, according to William. I was vaguely familiar with one of them, 'Repressive Tolerance' (the title says it all) by Herbert Marcuse. You can cheat on these three chapters by just reading the summaries at chapter's end. And the book ends with an extraordinary and deflating catalogue of repressive events that have occurred in the UK in the name of repressive tolerance.

Together, these two books provided a far better understanding of what political correctness is: its aims and its toxicity, its threat to freedom of speech (which eventually leads to loss of freedom of thought) and a 'free civilised world'.

There were other books, but these will do for now. And, just to show that nobody is safe from the frenzied fanatics, watch this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEkosBa_qGk

And if you don't get the references to Count Dankula/Markus Meechan and Buddha the Nazi pug that got him a criminal record, watch this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rdWlVyN9es

Images: Nag Hammadi texts; Father Ted

The Week's News (In)Digest

Naughty Facebook

You couldn't make it up (actually, the same goes for quite a bit of so-called news). Apparently, in an 'opinion' article in the New York Times last weekend, George 'the Philanthropist' Soros wrote about how Mark Zuckerberg 'should not be in control of Facebook'.

Now, let's have a little reality check, shall we? Didn't Zuckerberg actually set up and start Facebook? Isn't it actually his thing? His company? His brainchild? His baby?

It seems that Soros considers Zuckerberg unfit for purpose, since Facebook, he states, aided in the election of Trump in 2016; and it's going to do the same this year.

This 'social media bias' thing is funny. Both political poles are quick to accuse Twitter, Facebook, and the rest, of bias against them. There were weird accusations against Facebook when the unthinkable happened, and Britain voted to get out of the EU.

In concrete terms, the only thing I'm aware of is the deplatforming, and effectively ostracising, of a number of individuals who, if we want to play that game, will be conventionally referred to as 'right wing'. Tommy Robinson, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Laura Loomer, are the three who immediately spring to mind. It was all done under the aegis of violation of terms and conditions regarding that most nebulous category of discourse, 'hate speech'. But when pressed to come up with evidence, the social media networks have been found wanting. Which is a polite way to say that aforementioned hate speech does not exist, it's just a way to deal with people who have the wrong views about life.

The whinge of Soros is typical of a certain mindset, which finds its apotheosis in the realms of political correctness and climate panic. First, you insult those who hold different viewpoints to your own: racist, homophobe, denier, whatever you can come up. If this doesn't work, then get them closed down, shut up, silenced. Open debate, the free flow of different viewpoints, is not considered at all. And the reason: the opinions and actions of Soros, politically correct fanatics, and climate alarmists do not stand close scrutiny. Intelligence is anathema to them. Open them to a real 'open society' and they will die. This is why they turn into a close imitation of 1984.

Prime info source: Akkad Daily

Helping the BBC

The BBC is in a fix. People don't like it any more. It's indicative of a change of mood among many in the UK: the millions who sat on their pissed-off feelings for far too long are now coming out in the open and saying what they feel. "We don't want to pay for this biased piece of propaganda, that just takes the mickey out of us anyway."

Fair enough, I say.

The BBC is worried about its money. For sure, this state of affairs hasn't been helped by a bunch of already overpaid women claiming and getting a bucketload more dosh. But I've thought of a way to help the BBC in its financial fix, help it save loads of money. My idea captures perfectly the mood of the nation, and is guaranteed to be a ratings winner. It's a new reality show - prime time only - and it's called 'Minimum Wage Dudes'.

The BBC can save an awful lot of money by simply getting rid of all its overpaid faces. No exceptions. It may come as a shock to them, but the population can get by perfectly well without Fiona Bruce, Gary Lineker, and Emily Maitlis. Perfectly well. So the idea is to give them all the boot, and replace them with minimum wage dudes.

Now, unlike the BBC's privileged liberal (I never get that 'liberal' bit) elite, I have actually worked with minimum wage dudes; for quite a while. I have in fact been a minimum wage dude myself. So I know what I'm talking about. And while I acknowledge that the majority wouldn't be up to the job, nevertheless I have worked with a number of minimum wage folk who I reckon would make a decent job of reading the Six o'clock news.

So the new television show would scour the length and breadth of the nation in search of suitable newsreaders, current affairs interviewers, sports commentators, and the like. The sports ones will be especially easy to find. Half the population of Tyneside know as much about football as Alan Shearer, I'm sure about that.

I suppose the show will go through the typical tears-and-elimination process that is the fate of all reality programmes, at which point I'll lose all personal interest. But at the end we'll have a team of first-class front men and women, none of them spoilt elite brats, and all really up for it. And they'll all be more than delighted to earn a decent living wage. What do you reckon? £50000 a year? For a practical, down-to-earth, minimum wage dude, that will be a fortune.

Job done.....

Boris Greenwash

Does Boris really believe all this climate change guff? Or does he just like the photo shoots? Or maybe he secretly dreams of being on 'Top Gear' (the real one, the first one, with Clarkson, Hammond, and May) and has an insatiable curiosity for funny new cars and assorted other little gadgets.

The questions arise after seeing pictures of him at some climate change bash or other, having a jolly good chinwag with David Attenborough. And his pronouncements about saving the planet with funny new cars that don't go very fast or far, and which have all manner of problem with them.

He's already succeeded in pissing off a lot of people with this stuff. If he thinks that he can 'deliver Brexit' then get on with the self-same agenda of Cameron, May, Brown, and Blair before him, then he may be in for a nasty shock, his tenure at number 10 already less assured than it was a week ago. That's not what Brexit means, to a lot of people. It really means looking after this nation and taking its inhabitants seriously. As I read somewhere yesterday, the nation is in no mood for salvationism.

Don't be surprised if there are a lot of angry people speaking out, Mr Greenwash. That's not what you were voted in for. You've already lost half those first-time Conservative voters up north. They are relying on you to come up with the goods properly, not swan around with puppet of darkness Attenborough and pronounce on making their own lives more difficult while China spews crap into the atmosphere at will. The game is up, Mr Greenwash, the game is up.

As for David Attenborough, I wouldn't take a photoshoot opportunity with this guy at any price. It's the kids which really shows what a nasty piece of work he has become.

Sorry - no, I'm not sorry - but I find it reprehensible: the kids. Kids love animals, they love nature; it's their instinct, their joy, their uncensored innocent delight. Cue Attenborough with his blockbuster films. Drowning polar bears, emaciated polar bears, walruses tumbling off cliffs. And it's our fault. It's all our fault. It's our culture, our rotten civilisation, our bloody carbon dioxide. Scare the children shitless, get them young, then they'll really buy into your version of reality. They will know nothing else, nothing different. And you know what? A good half of it is untrue, it's a lie. This is not what childhood is about; this is child abuse.

I was young decades ago, before anyone had come up with the bright idea of climate panic. Then the dark bogeyman was different. No fossil fuels and carbon dioxide to hold our darkest fears. Then it was Russia, the Cold War, the commies, the nuclear threat. But there was a difference. I was well aware of the peril as a child; but it wasn't pushed down my throat by schoolteachers staring me scarily in the eye, or by films directed at me and fashioned to instil fear and anxiety. The Lords of Darkness have upped their game since then; and Attenborough and his cronies have much to answer for.....

Should you know any children, or adults for that matter, who have been traumatised by watching films with walruses falling off clifftops and emaciated polar bears, all caused by the wickedness of human beings and their bloody CO2 emissions, I suggest the two short videos below. They are at least closer to the truth than the propaganda churned out by Attenborough and his chums. Tell the kids that these things happen, it's nature, it's kind-of OK, and it's not because of evil humanity.

youtube.com/watch?v=IatVKZZcPG0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7KTfPlCrgY         

Images: Laughing Buddha, Aica
             Attenborough - Funny Memes

Religious Studies: the Church of St Greta

Ah yes, the battle twixt truth and falsehood. It goes on and on and on. And on. On our level, in this dimension, it seems there is no way out, no means of ending this war. It is part and parcel of human life as the mass of us experience it. It is our training ground, our education, granting us the eventual possibility of graduation, amazingly enough.

There is climate change fraud - the lie of certainty where certainty does not exist. Where, in reality, nobody knows properly what's going on. And then there is the manipulation of human frailty as a means for getting what you want. That is really the story of Greta Thunberg, and the new world religion that is being born beneath her hallowed name. It is sick and it is twisted. It is not primarily about Greta, but about those who use her.

Finally, a video has come out that has captured a load of people's attention. The Rebel News expose has, by now, had over half a million views on YouTube. That's great, and it's the first link below. There's also an older Red Ice piece, the second link. It's a bit more wordy, and you can find it on their website or on Bitchute. But it's survived on YouTube (whence they have been banned) under another person's re-post. Ha Ha!

The Rebel News bit is especially worth devoting 28 minutes of your time to, I suggest. A new world religion warrants those few moments in a person's life. I issue my usual disclaimer about not necessarily agreeing with everything Rebel News or Red Ice say, in fact I definitely do not. But, then, I am not a utopian looking for a heaven on Earth.

So, here's to young Greta: Patron Saint of Panic.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTXdhTwO320

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co3dWjHqmxI