Tommy's Journal - Season 2

I was trying to come up with some pithy opening line for this thread, but sadly I have nothing so you're stuck with this crappy intro.
I'm currently editing the audio for these retreat videos but I'll post the links once I've put them up on the 'Tube, hopefully they'll be at least moderately entertaining.

Since coming home from retreat I've noticed a few significant changes in my experience of the world, although I have to admit that I haven't sat down and formally practiced since Monday so I don't know how practice has been affected yet. In general it feels like I don't really need to sit, not in the sense of "I can't be arsed" or feeling any aversion towards it, just that I feel like I'm meditating constantly already in daily life and, somehow, sitting formally would break this very natural feeling flow. It's like everything's playing out naturally and "I" am not involved in it, very peaceful but I'm still noting anyway, if only to make sure I'm not getting caught up in solidifying anything. I think the most fundamental shift has been in the awareness of everything being just as it is, it's like Kenneth's mahamudra instruction has changed something completely for me, that openness and clarity has become available just by listening for the ships in the harbour. Those "heavy cats from days of yore" were definitely onto something with those ocean metaphors!

I can't accurately say what's really changed but Bill Hamilton's quote "Suffering less, noticing it more" seems quite apt! Ha!

We shall see....
- Tommy

Sounds really familiar (I too sit rarely and feel like the whole day is one big opportunity to be present). I also find the mahamudra thing really helpful.

Good stuff. Excited to see where this leads...

It's interesting to see how the apparent changes I've become aware of since this retreat stand up to reality testing, such as sitting in work and dealing with angry customers, or dealing with a stroppy 10 year old!

What I'm noticing is that the emptiness inherent in all phenomena is clear without having to look for it, it's hard to put into words because it's not like it's sensory, there's just a pure 'knowing' that this is the way things are. There's also a sense of seeing that the attention, the "I" and the entire sense-field as a whole are exactly the same thing. I don't know if that's really the most accurate way to describe this but it's as close as my writing abilities will allow at present although these are just preliminary observations and may fall flat on their face after a few days.

I'm going to sit for an hour tonight and see how that goes then update the thread later on, I just wanted to leave a note on what I've noticed today so far.

Great! Have you looked at the 12 linked chain of dependent origination (I'm not sure if this is the exact term) lately? Once you see in the way you are seeing it's interesting to look at that. They talk about how at a certain point you have the 6 sense organs (after name and form). This makes a lot of sense because originally it is one continuous field of experience. Over time (well very early on in our development) we come to the conclusion that we are experiencing 6 separate senses because we can direct our mind to focus on certain aspects of the one field and name each part "this is hearing, this is seeing, this is touch". Without any concepts there is no seeing/hearing/touch there is just THIS.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Nid%C4%81nas

Lao-Tzu

"Those who are highly evolved maintain an undiscriminating perception. Seeing everything, labeling nothing, they maintain their awareness of the Great Oneness. Thus they are supported by it. "

"Can you let go of words and ideas, attitudes and expectations? If so, then the Tao will loom into view."

Jayson, thanks for that! I hadn't actually looked into this much, and those quotes are tantalizingly appropriate as I appear to have developed a much clearer understanding of Zen all of a sudden.

Sat for 30 mins kasina practice tonight, something I haven't done in a long time but feels like the right thing to be doing right now. I used a medium sized white bowl and hit 1st jhana within about 5-10 seconds, which came as something of a surprise, and was followed by each jhana in order at a rate I've never moved at before and which made me stop, go back to 1st and slowly work through them just to make sure I wasn't fooling myself. Sure enough, even deliberately and gently working through each one brought clear and definable experiences of each jhana, but what's still causing me some confusion is the Pure Land jhanas, and the possibility of deluding myself by getting into a compound jhana.

What happens is this...I move from 7th jhana, just a complete darkness of the visual field, no sense of any mental activity happening other than just being aware of this nothingness which brings on the 8th. I have no idea how to describe what's happening there, there's no body sensation, nothing I could even really define as anything, in fact not even nothingness but it's 'there' and you know it when you're there. I think. Ha! Anyway, from this point I become aware of my body again very suddenly and notice my eyes are drawn up towards the centre of my head like they're trying to see something and flickering away which is accompanied by the same deep pulsating feeling at the 3rd eye I mentioned earlier in this thread. Paying attention to this brings the same pulsing, only this time it's a much finer and more subtle, at the crown of the head and is shortly followed by this same feeling looping back to the 3rd eye area and a sense of being pulled out of the crown.

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I become unusually aware of the breath after this shift and it feels absolutely incredible to take a breath, it's like you want to feast on the air and take massive, long, slow breaths just so that you can enjoy and appreciate this amazing process we take for granted. I begin to feel a deep gratitude for the experience and felt on the verge of tears, a deep and heartfelt wish to do something to show how grateful I am for being able to experience such things. After a few gorgeous breaths, there's a shifting downwards into being one with the entire body and a sense of resting there before going back through the same cycle in reverse, in the same order all the way back to baseline and with a clarity which left me stunned.

What baffled me even more was that 11 minutes had elapsed between when I sat down, and when I came out of 1st jhana because, due to the speed of what I've just described and the clarity with which I could turn around and say "Ok, that was 1st, that was 2nd...." and identify them forwards and backwards, I looked at the timer (something I don't ever usually do during a sit). What I've just described is exactly the same what's happened, only without such clarity, on the other occasions where I've suggested that I'm hitting the Pure Lands during practice but I'm also open to the idea that I may be scripting myself, wishful thinking, compounding jhanas or manipulating the experience after the fact due to some undiagnosed psychological disorder! If either of those are the case then I'm quite happy to admit to my mistake and learn from it, I'd rather look like a **** and learn something than pretend I'm further on than I actually am on this whole 4-Path map and miss out on an opportunity to improve my practice.

Anyway, that was tonight's little nugget so I'm away to finish up the first video which I'll upload tomorrow!

Metta

30 mins total - 10 mins kasina & 20 vipassana

I actually burst out laughing twice during practice tonight. The kasina practice went similarly to last night but not as cleanly and with more emphasis on being absorbed into the jhanas for a minute or so. The first bought of hilarity came when focusing on seeing suffering in all sensation, something I'd noticed before is how I used to "wait" for negative sensations to appear, it was part of the way my mind worked before wherever I'm at now. I waited for something bad to happen, that was my default mode of perception, and I know so many people who are like this all the time and just come to expect the worst from any situation. They're never satisfied for, now, glaringly obvious reasons.

What made me laugh was the metaphor that came from that....standing waiting to be hit by a bus. Ha! That's what it's like though, until we wake up we're just standing in the road and waiting for that bus to mow us down, whether it's an unpleasant itching or the prospect of death. And do you know what's so f*cking stupid about it? We're driving the goddamned bus too!

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The Mind Is A Cheeky Ba*tard

The second outburst was when I was noting. I was noting a lot of subtle space sensations, darkness, seeing, empty(spatial), and doing this very quickly until it became just bare awareness of the sensation. So, I'm noting away and feeling really deeply focused, in the moment, with sensation blip, blip, blipping all over the sense-field at incredible speed....then I note a thought like "Ahhh, well I can just sit back and watch this...." which sparked a search for what was thinking before I realized that the last four or five seconds had been spent watching the mental image and it's associated sensations I'd just described as if it was the experience itself! Idiot!! I laughed and went back to noting.

Noticed attention was firmly up around the head, there's was nothing happening below the neck as far as sensation presenting itself and everything felt very arupa jhana-esque. Noted more of a circling to the pulsating at the 3rd eye and the same faster, more fine vibration at the crown as last night, realized that I was craving these (possibly) PL jhanas and working towards them again. Noted this craving, the desire for phenomena, and how it was pulling me away from going for Fruition but noted effort, trying, striving towards something when there was nothing to strive for, noted a release and the sense of sinking into the entire sense-field and surrendering to the flowing river of sensations, "I" didn't need to be part of this. I couldn't tell you whether there was a frution or not, I just felt like I snapped back into normal consciousness but I can't remember being unaware at any point! Strange, but I don't feel like I've had a fruition so I'd write it off at this point.

All in all a very different vipassana sitting to what's gone before but I'm stumped when it comes to describing why. More practice!!

I did 60 mins of vipassana, merging into samatha and some experimentation with resolutions earlier today with some interesting results. My dreams have also become very lucid and symbolic lately, I went for a sleep earlier, as I had been up at 0445 for work, and had a really horrid but profound dream about the world ending which ended up resolving itself into a clear insight into suffering and it's ending. Strange business, more than likely A&P related I suspect but there's been something educational about the process.

I had resolved to experience a Fruition at will and saw where I'd been going wrong with resolutions before, it's hard to explain but it's like I needed to incline my mind in a slightly different way. This led to being able to get Frutions, particularly similar ones to the 'violent' fruition mentioned before (it's like a hard popping sensation, the blank out and then a slow tingling, blissful re-entry which causes quite a dense, thick wave of pleasurable vibrations to cascade downwards from the crown) very quickly and at varying rates of intensity. I noted a sense of a build-up to the Fruition, like two or three mini blips then the main event, a lot more clearly than the always surprising Fruition of usual practice. There was also a fruition which happened and felt very body-based, like a massive blast at the solar plexus accompanied by a huge pushing sensation right across the torso which isn't something I've noticed before. It was noted along with the surprise, shock and various sensation associated with that.

I'm going to start a more precise and phenomenological reporting again rather than these paragraphs of "Look what's happening" as they're not beneficial or indicative of the subtleties being noted in practice.

Metta

10 mins kasina practice
50 mins vipassana

My suspicions of having crossed the A&P again have been confirmed over the last two days as all the familiar Dark Night reactivity and disgust with the world has come to the fore, these sensations are all being noted as they occur but there's a deeper set of sensations presenting themselves. I'm seeing replays of old emotional patterns and worn-out reactions to things coming and going without any self involved, but the more these are observed the more it becomes clear what's still left to be done. This has got to be at least the fifth full cycle of insight I've counted since hitting Stream Entry and, at present at least, it's like spiritual groundhog day!

Due to getting into 4th jhana with the kasina, I started with noting positive sensations of equanimity, joy and contentment. After having had a generally unpleasant day with glimpses of equanimity it would have easy to solidify this but I know that the only way to make progress is through insight and so I noted accurately, noted effort, aiming for accuracy, placing of attention, any sensation which is still being seen as being self is being observed, dis-embedded from and the 3C's seen clearly in each moment.

At present, I can't be arsed with anything and will leave the reporting here for the moment as I've just typed two paragraphs of contrived, predictable and boring reporting which, on re-reading it, just sounds like I've copy/pasted from an earlier report. I'm noting a lot of nausea right now as I sit here, but I'll stick with it as I know there's really nothing else for it.

Metta

Oh God... tell me about it.

Feels like the frigging tour de france with all the cycling...

Metta Metta!

@Mumuwu - I feel your pain my dharma brother! Ha! Let's get this thing done and maybe we'll be cycling downhill before the end of the year.....

Woke up this morning (duh dehdun deh dun) and felt the weight had lifted. I made a resolution last night to abandon chasing Paths, I used to get so concerned about having attained this or that and I can't say that it hasn't been helpful to have these goals to work towards, but I've come to view we're calling 4th path as 'just' a landmark, not the goal itself which is the way I viewed it when I first came across Daniel's book.

This decision seems to have caused a shift and there's a sense of freedom from that searching, a realization that the answer has been right there the whole time in the search itself and I can now just be like a pebble in the stream, allowing life to flow without trying to control it because, when it comes down to it, there's nothing to control, things just are as they are and there's no need for them to be otherwise. Cliched, I know....lol

There's still work to be done and I don't think that this will ever change, this is an ongoing process but now there's an understanding, a perspective which wasn't there before and which gives a sense of contentment. I don't know if "done is what needs to be done" but I can't say that I have any preference either way.

Metta to y'all

Y'know sometimes you look back at your notes and think "Well I should really have just kept my mouth shut there....."? Yep, I spoke too soon.

Before I went on retreat, I stopped taking my fluoxetine. I know, it's a pretty stupid to stop SSRI's outright with no gradual reduction but I knew the risks and done it anyway. As anyone who's taken, or has experience of anyone who takes, an SSRI and stops it knows, there's no change for the first four or five days so this didn't interfere with the retreat or the results obtained but it's now been two weeks since I last took any (the last one I took was the Wednesday before I left) and, about three hours after writing that last entry, "Discontinuation Syndrome" kicked in.

What was the real kicker was that it came on at the same time as a fallback into Re-Observation! Nightmare scenario, but it's not almost 2200 and I've taken 25mg fluoxetine which has lessened it somewhat and allowed me to continue my life as normal. The reason I post this is because IT'S A REALLY DUMB IDEA TO STOP TAKING SSRI's WITHOUT CONSULTING YOUR DOCTOR AND/OR GRADUALLY DECREASING THE DOSAGE.....and it was also an interesting experiment to observe how the dukkha ñanas felt side by side with this set of sensations! Self as laboratory, I suppose. Anyway.

What I noticed most was that the withdrawal symptoms are far more physical, with psychological side-effects wheras the dukkha ñanas feel much more mental with the physical discomfort as a side-effect. It's hard to explain clearly so excuse my clumsy efforts, this is just some observations based on what's happening in my body right now and my thought-processes are a bit scattered. From about 1600-2000 I noted intense twitches similar to kriyas but heavier and more of a whole-body thing. There were also a lot of physical contortions and tensions similar to 3rd ñana....

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...particularly at the neck, spine and shoulders, but there was a whole different set of mental sensations happening. Rather than the confusion and the sadness of 2nd into 3rd, or the frustration and irritability of 10th, there were thoughts verging on the manic, often violent, and a mild sense of being a second behind the experience of reality. As I type here, I feel this all subsiding more which is making it difficult to talk about what's just gone as, when I read this back and think how to describe the details, it sounds like full blown psychosis. It wasn't pleasant but it was certainly informative, and I remained fully in control of my faculties ensuring that I endangered neither myself, nor anyone else.

This entry now sounds kinda tame and less interesting than it seemed when I started it....Ha! I continued noting through this but there was too much mental noise happening to get clear about each sensation, although it certainly helped, if only by quickening and intensifying the process. I'll think more about this and see if I can contribute anything more to Ron's discussion about depression and Dark Night as there's something very different there, Re-Observation in particular, which is nigh on impossible to pinpoint and, due to family and work, I don't want to explore this any further at present as the repercussions would be unfair to those around me. At present, I'm fine and it feels like I've moved into Low Equanimity so I'm off to work on these other videos and get some stuff finished up!

Metta, mudita, peace and clean socks.
- Tommy

60 Mins (10 kasina - 50 vipassana)

Day to day experience has calmed somewhat and I've been able to stop bleedthrough more on this pass through Dark Night territory, although there a lot of paranoia, fear and baseless anger at times which isn't much fun. Metta practice and noting throughout the day seems to keep the worst of it from getting anywhere but today's been a bit more difficult than normal, but there's been periods of Equanimity with noticeable transitions back down into the dukkha ñanas and at present everything still feels very much like Re-Observation. Attention is really wide and flat with emphasis at the edges, there's a lot of fast vibration and tension over the chest and throat with occasional twitches usually originating at the back of the body. All in all it's a pain in the arse!

Sat down to practice tonight and didn't force the attention to the centre of the kasina, I just sat naturally and allowed attention to rest on it which led to me start noticing how the attention tries to flit from one object to another unless it's led gently to a point where it can rest. Didn't try to control the jhanas, noticed more of a shift into each one though and felt quite solidly in the 4th in particular which was a nice break from the buzzing irritation of earlier in the day, and so used this as a base to begin insight practice.

Noted a pulsing like a narrow tube of about two cm in diameter coming from the crown area, it contracted and expanded at a rate of around once per two seconds and was unaffected by the breath. This expanded to feel as though it were covering my head and neck areas, neutral in tone with a tingling warmth and a slightly slower, but wider in terms of how it emanated outwards from the body, vibration to it. A similar rate vibration was noticed around the edge of the visual field with eyes open and closed which moves inwards toward the center...

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...of view, noted each aspect of this (seeing, light, movement, time/rate, interpreting, analyzing etc) and watched it's impermanence.

Noticed a lot of pain and tension at the neck area, right at the base of the skull which is something that always happens at some point during a sitting. There was sense of a "popping" (for want of a more accurate word) at the heart area and a warm, dense sensation rising up to the base of the skull just before that appeared so I'm assuming this is related to an energy blockage in the area. At present I've got a pulsing pain just above my heart, this and another sensation which involves feeling like little holes of contracting pains are appearing within my chest and shoulders before closing up again are quite common when I feel like this (Dark Night) but can become food for the fear and paranoia of these ñana, sending me off on loops of worry about having cancer, a heart attack, or some terminal disease. On the flip side this means I get to see these fears for what they are, although they still hit with the same bodily correlations and unpleasantness till they vanish.

Spent quite a bit of time in Equanimity and resolved to remain there for a while to see what I was missing when noting here, noted a lot of drop-outs which could have almost passed for Frutions if "I" wasn't still there to experience them so noted the disappointment, acceptance, pleasure, spatial dimensions and movement of sensations. Sat quietly and felt like the last man on Earth, I mentioned this metaphor to Kenneth when we spoke actually as it seems like a nice image to communicate how it feels in the 11th ñana, while gently paying attention to long, slow vibrations in the visual field and a sense of movement upwards accompanied by an intense throbbing sensation at the 3rd eye. I think there was a Fruition but, if it was, it was just that feeling of having his the reset button.

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I noticed a blissfulness in the body and a feeling of being "there" in every possible sense, but there was no awareness of entry and exit so I'd be willing to accept it if it weren't the case. I sat with these feelings and continued being aware as accurately as possible, not labeling, not identifying, just being as the feeling of coming back to baseline returned with a sense of disappointment due to having to return to the world. The afterglow of practice has since faded and I'm firmly back in this uncomfortable, disconcerting vibe-fest so it's back to doing what has to be done.

Through the last two days in particular I've got that sense of having just given up, like the world has run over me. My mind is awash with irrational fears and there's a deep feeling of knowing that this is just the way it has to be, submission, surrender and acceptance of what is because fighting it just drags it out, the truth grabs you by the shoulders and screams in your face telling you to just shut the f*ck up, look at what's happening right there in front of you and pay attention. But no, the self wants it's bit part and insists on having it's say even though you know what it "is" and how it works, even though you've sat down for hours and dissected the sensations that make it up it STILL wants to be center stage and say "This is mine". Dark Night's got a habit of sending me off on tirades about it, but there's compassion in the shadows here which inspires and moves me. A dark beauty with jagged edges.

This is the path we choose.

Metta & A Monty Python Boxset.
Tommy

I'm taking it upon myself to rename 9th & 10th ñanas. Desire for Deliverance is now "Knowledge of Screaming Bloody Murder And Wishing It Would All Just Go Away", while Re-Observation will henceforth be known as "Knowledge of Damning The Entire World Of Sensory Experience"....Ha!

In all seriousness, this Dark Night malarky is about as much fun as a drive in the country with Ted Bundy. I haven't sat formally for the last two nights, although I've been noting through the day and working with tattwa cards as kasinas which has led to some deep jhana experiences, and also some quite strong siddhi activity (Mainly "astral visions" using the tattwas as doorways, and phenomena easiest described as clairvoyant/clairaudient/synesthesia experiences i.e. "seeing" energies around people in the street and "hearing" thoughts) although these are all seen as being side-effects of practice. Interesting though, although nothing new as I've worked with these things before through other magickal practices and consider them to be more of a hindrance. On the upside, they were a welcome detour from the anxiety of the Dark Night and certainly lightened things up for a while!

There's still some DN hangover going on but it feels like the worst has subsided for the moment. There's still this baseless anxiety but the ability to really get down to examining sensation in detail has returned, attention is less jumpy and irritating but there's still effort required to break the process of identification with these negative mindstates.

Another interesting thing has been noticing the spatial qualities e.g. narrow and tight within 'normal' experience of the world such as sitting in work, or watching tv. During the more intense periods of DN I've noticed this as tightness, the sensation that objects are....

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...right up next to you, it's like some sort of claustrophobia which left me feeling like phenomena was being shoved in my face and leaving me no room to breathe. This triggered some panic-like sensations in the body with a lot of anxiety which at times bordered on utter terror, this wasn't helped by my mind turning every sensation and thought into something threatening, spinning out scenarios involving death, getting sacked from my job, and the "end of sensation" fixation typical of DN. This spatial awareness has become a really useful diagnostic tool while moving through DN actually, and I can see how much insight can be gleaned from paying attention to sensation being experienced "outside" of the body and how the perception of the "ambience" of a situation can colour the experience.

This thread is starting to look more like a diary than a practice journal but I wanted to record some info on what's happening during daily life right now, especially since my practice has changed so much from before and is being conducted on a near constant basis with less emphasis on one particular technique. It seems like my experience of the ñanas and jhanas has become much deeper and more intense, but at the same time more fulfilling and educational, even when it sucks!

So, the plan for tonight is to sit formally again for an hour to do vipassana and see what happens. I'm feeling drawn to more Zen practice, and have also just discovered that some of the Vajrayana techniques are similar to the invocation techniques I used while practicing magick so I may do some further research into that also. At present, I'm aware that the spatial aspect of things feels much broader and softer although there's still 'interference patterns' of paranoid feelings, thought-loops and unpleasantness but they're also gradually fading over the last hour or so.

Metta,
Tommy

Well, well, well, well, well....and if you've never read "A Clockwork Orange" then do so immediately so that you can appreciate my attention-seeking attempts at literary humour....Ha!

It seems that DN has passed again, but there's a slight, albeit oddly perverse, sense of missing the anxiety and frustration. I suspect that this is due to there being a reduction of possible data points to be identified with since moving into Equanimity, for example I had an extended period of being unstuck in space/time last night, a complete loss of any sense of being in any location at any point in time. Also noted a lot more subtle sensation such as the suggestion of space outwith the 'everyday' space, the perception of the body and it's arising and passing as solely mental phenomena, and a sense of the whole of the perceptual field slowly expanding and contracting like the "breath of God" (seems like a good metaphor at least) type hoodoo.

Something else interesting was a 'flashback' to remembering the first time I ever crossed the Arising & Passing. This was something I'd wondered about until last night when, during practice, I noticed that the arising and passing, as it shows itself in my experience at least, could be described as being like pinching a piece of fabric, lifting it up lightly and letting it fall again. Seeing this "pinching" and "dropping" of phenomena was exactly what happened when I was 12 and doing what I thought was just visualization excercises, so it appears that my suspicions about having been a chronic Dark Night Yogi for the best part of the 16-17 years before starting vipassana was probably correct.

It's starting to get a bit busier in work here so I'd best finish up this post here and get back to it! I'll try to post an actual practice report tonight as my contributions on this front have been a bit thin lately....

Sat for an hour tonight, started as usual with 10 mins kasina on a small white bowl until stabilized before noting the intention to close the eyes and going from there.

Physical awareness diminished rapidly and even the bodily outline was noted as arising and passing away, although mental activity and sound were still evident which made noting them more clear. Noted quick transitions from 4th to 11th ñana, breath shifts and upwards movement of the entire body. The sense of being aware of the background was effortless and spacious with a sense of complete ordinariness, serene and peaceful but neither here nor there with everything just being observed as it is.

Shifted to noting again, more slowly and deliberately objectifying sensations implying an observer and anything phenomenological until a soft, almost gentle Fruition and a subtle wave of bliss passed. I remained in 11th ñana and resolved to experience "a big fruition" in the hope of being able to examine the entry more clearly but I was blown sideways by a complete blank which left an exquisite bliss and pure joy which quite literally knocked me backwards. I had to lie down for a while, it's at times like this, after dealing with all the sh*t DN throws at you where you can feel you've earned this, you've paid your dues and can enjoy the fruits of meditation.

The specifics here are a bit scant, I know, but much of this unfolded in a very low-key way which is difficult to describe in sensible language. The general vibe was one of acceptance and peace, the dukkha ñanas were experienced clearly but passed quickly and without trouble, if anything they were seen as being quite funny and ordinary. Concentration was really strong throughout this which led to slipping into jhana by staying with one object for a little too long, not unpleasant but annoying nonetheless (noted annoyed...Ha!)

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I feel like I'm much more "in" my body nowadays, particularly during meditation, and it's as if dis-embedding from mental sensation has brought me out of my own head, so to speak, and allowed for a much fuller, richer experience of just "being" without that mental echo of identification distracting from the immediate experience of things as they are. This isn't the default perceptual mode, but it's become like a 70/30 split of being "awake" compared to being at the mercy of everyday automatic functioning so it's wonderful to see how effective Kenneth's teaching is in practice, and to be able to stand up and say "You know what? This works and this dude is the real deal!".

Mr. Folk, you are a legend in your own lunchtime. Ha!

Peace out,
- Tommy

Thanks, Tommy, for the compliment as well as for your dedication to awakening. Your practice is really cookin' now.

As a wise man once said, "Metta and a Monty Python box set."

Kenneth