Something fishy at the VETS in CHINA!

The MOST BORING video to come out of CHINA - PART 4- you have been warne...

January 22nd 2021 --- One year later... here we go again in China.

Stepping outta 2020 in China stepping inta 2021

Christmas & Contradictions in Hangzhou, China

Visions of China 2020 - Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province - November/December

One Run is a quest to unite people from EVERY COUNTRY. I RAN.

CHINA wants to make love to you (Hangzhou Version)

Yungang grottos exhibition in Hangzhou - amazing use of 3D printing tech...

Bamboo and Tea in Hangzhou, China

Me and David Bowie together for the first time ever....

She said "Let's go to a NIGHT MARKET" - She got a dark side...

Let's go to a night market she said...

Xinjiang Noodles in the muslim noodle place in Hangzhou, China

Handmade Muslim noodles are the best...

Walking Meditation in Hangzhou, China

 Re-write of an article written in 2012 - submitted to an online Hangzhou magazine recently

Walking along the Nine Creeks in the Misty Forest finds you in a truly magical collection of mountains, trees, creeks and running water. On this outing one walks the trails––winding and climbing; the creeks - murmuring and gurgling; the trees - high and low––at one with the poet YuYuelai who wrote these words during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). It is a place that has always been special for humans.

 

Walking the hills and tracks forces one to practise one of the main tenets of walking meditation – that of moving the feet. Buddhists are instructed to be mindful of four stages in each step: (i) lifting the foot; (ii) moving it forward; (iii) putting it down; and (iv) touching or pressing the foot on the ground.

 

And step by step, as I travelled these ways, I entered the meditative state of mind simply by putting one foot in front of the other, or as some practitioners suggest ‘stepping, stepping, stepping.’

 

Walking the meandering creeks and twisted paths, famous since the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279), onehas to be aware of these actions because to put a foot wrong means a turned ankle or worse. By increasing our awareness of our bodies actions we also become increasingly aware of things outside of ourselves, objects we might trip over, other people we might walk into. We become more aware of these, and many of the other things outside of ourselves, than when we are just sitting––especially if we sit inside. These include the wind, the sun, the rain, and the sounds of nature and of humans and machines.

 

But as one finds the natural rhythm (and using a pair of trekking poles forces you into such a rhythm) you find that each and every footstep forms part of a natural mantra. And as the length of the walk progresses, it becomes easier to enter into the detached but aware state that walking meditation facilitates.

 

While walking long distances there will always be feelings associated with our bodies, from the niggling pain of a blister to the pleasant feeling of relaxation. There will also be feelings associated with the things we see and hear, and with all of the other sensory modalities that we experience––including those that are imagined.

 

In paying attention to feelings, the important thing is simply to notice them without either clinging to them or pushing them away. When we are unaware, it is very common for our minds to start grasping after experiences associated with pleasant feelings.

 

Many people say to me when I am out walking that I’ll “be able to have some thinking time––to sort things out,” but it always seems to me that when walking I actually have very little ‘thinking time.’  My mind becomes attuned to the mantra of walking, my eyes to the path ahead and my body to experiencing the sensations of physical activity.  By experiencing our sensations, rather than thinking about them, we help to cut down on unproductive thinking and bring about more calmness.

 

Walking in places such as the Mystery Forest allows us to ‘be in the moment.’ That moment where we can fill our mind with the richness of the experience of walking, leaving less room for daydreaming and fantasy and becoming deeply aware of our present experience, which becomes far more fulfilling than any daydream.

 

This detached state then becomes an integral part of the ‘Art of Walking’. The Buddhist monk Thick Nhat Hanh tells us that “If we practise walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive. We have to be alive with each step, and if we are, each step brings real life back to us. The purpose is to be in the present moment and enjoy each step you make.”

 

Walking alone along these ancient byways is a pure exercise in walking meditation and each step becomes a prayer and each mile dharma.

The MOST BORING video to come out of CHINA - PART 3- you have been warned.

A walk along the Grand Canal Hangzhou, China Oct 2020

Hangzhou Vegan Culture Festival October 2020

Happy New Year

Happy New year from me.

I haven't gone away just been busy with my website here  rob-burton.co.uk I'd appreciate it if you could go and take look, maybe subscribe to get the free newsletter. In this new year you will be able to get my FREE novella - The Castle of the Red-Haired Maidens as soon as its back from the editor.

You can also visit my facebook page and give me a like.

Four More Years... I wrote this in 2004 - just change the name to Trump

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 04, 2004

Four More Years of Bush!

Four more years of Bush (Trump works just as well)

I guess it depends on how quickly you say this as to whether it brings a smile to your lips or you break down in tears. I guess it also depends on whether you have the mentality of a thirteen year old boy or you are serious about your politics. (I hope I am in the latter category) – (Well not too serious!)

So Freedom and Democracy is safe for another four years. I don’t really know how afraid I am when I write this. But I send a word of sympathy to all the good thinking people of the US.

An online dictionary from Princeton University in the US tell us that Freedom is:

the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints.

Is this the ‘freedom’ that Bush jnr. Is imposing on Iraq and Afghanistan? Because is seems to me that this ‘freedom’ Bush talks about comes with a lot of strings and external imposed (by the US) restraints – that’s not Freedom is it?

Another definition is:

Not being under another's control; the power to say or do as one pleases, e.g., freedom of speech or belief or freedom of economic decision making.

None of these, to my mind, is what’s on offer when the United States, through its figurehead Bush, starts to influence the citizens of those countries with displays of military strength and bombing by its Air Force. What about freedom of belief, and freedom of economic decision making? None of these will be part of Bush’s plan (Bush being, I am sure, a part of the ultra-right Christian Evangelical movement for whom Islam would be an anathema)

This leads us to another definition of freedom:

The societal condition that exists when every individual has 100% control over their own property."

That is, if it has not been bombed into dust, along with the rest of your extended family!

Freedom is one of those tricky words that mean different things to different people. For some CCTV is a means to freedom, for others is an abuse of a persons freedom to walk freely without being observed. There is, through the use of CCTV for instance, an implied guilt, that we all have to be observed in some way, like in Orwell’s 1984, and of course its all in the name of the people for the good of the people.

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself—anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face… was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime Orwell 1984


It’s like the bringing together the two words Freedom and Terrorism can be used as a sort of a talisman that allows bullies like Bush and his Government (Which it appears over 50% of the US population support – so using guilt by association, the US is a country of bullies – and not just the red necked sort apparently) to enter legal states around the world and to enforce this thing ‘Freedom’.

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." Orwell 1984.

To be honest I do not want America’s ideas Freedom, I do not want the US to even suggest to me that their freedom’s are better than the freedom’s enjoyed by me in my country. I do not support any invasion of another country in the name of Bush’s idea of Freedom. I do not want the American Dream because from this side of the Atlantic it looks much more like an American Nightmare. The pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness seems to be some sort of horrendous joke when it is applied to whats happening in the Middle East.

Remember Bush and co one day you will be bought to account:

"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same—everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same—people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world." Orwell 1984


Four More Years
Don’t Dry the Tears
On the mothers sallow cheek

When Soldier Boys
Have Lost their Toys
And return in the Brittle Box

A folded flag
Just a political gag
Placed in the Mothers hands

In Dusty Street
Other Sad Mothers weep
For the children dead in arms

It’s Freedoms stain
Americas Shameful Bloody Pain
Four More Years of Bush

My Facebook posts got TRUMPED.

I have been writing since my last update about my new novel The Twelfth Rune. It's coming along although I have been suffering from a cold, a cough and a thick head, so I will not suggest its been coming in leaps and bounds. More like little increments as my brain lightens up enough to let some words flow.

The main problem is just feeling tired all the time and not having the energy to think beyond watching something on YouTube and just longing out.

I've been having a bit of fun on Facebook. Because my new website has a blog facility I was wondering if I really needed to close these blogs down and start another new one on the website.  It was draining just to think about it. Then someone asked a similar question and posted that they were going to use their blog to allow their characters some freedom, so the blog could fill in back stories and so on.

Bingo I thought. So I posted this.

Dear Ann, Please consider this my application to steal the shit out of your idea. I have been wondering how to start my blog on my new website and my mind has been a blank. I, with your gracious permission, of course, will use my main characters voice - so it's not my blog, I don't need ideas - it's his. Yours plagerismly Rob

So then I started doodling a bit an idea for my blog and posted this:

My blog is gonna be so good, so very very good, I'm going to write bigly, I mean that literally it's going to be so so great, it'll be the best blog ever, I mean that, I see words, great words, words like you have never seen words, it'll be great, people will love it, love the words, mark my words, they'll be vetted and checked and edited. They will be edited so so hard that some won't even be allowed into my blog, thats how hard it will be. It'll be great believe me.

It seemed to be popular and someone asked me this. 

Are you going to build a wall around your blog?

And I answered thusly.

 I will build a wall and it will be a great wall, it will be a wonder wall, a wall of wonder, back beat the word will be on the street. It'll be so so great so fantastic, It'll be there until the fire in your heart is out. Really. I love our fantastic firefighters. Really love those guys. Girls too. I just wanna say that. Look I'm sure you've heard it all before, but I just wanna say it again and again. I have no doubts it will be fantastic, really great and you'll never really have a doubt. I don't believe that anybody especially the media with their fake news about my wall, my wonder wall, feels the way I do about it now. I feel great, I love it, I love you all, my Blog is great. Its an alternative fact that I haven't started it. So so bad. I have eleventy billion readers right now. At this moment. Its so so popular. And after all it's my wonder wall. Today was gonna be the day...

But I had my detractors who commented

Don't listen to crooked Rob and the fake news media, my blog is gonna be amazing, simply amazing and run by top people, the best people, better people than you, that's right, we're gonna lock up crooked Rob and his so called blog, we're gonna lock him up, then build a wall around him and make mexico pay for it

I retorted

 Look I like Greg I really really do. Great guy. Love his family too. Lovely family nice nice family. And his daughter. Lovely. Just 19, so so very young. I've known him a long long time really, I have, been to his house, lovely, nice daughter. Great friend. You know why I like him? He wasn't captured in Vietnam. Fantastic. a Hero. American hero. Keeps America great by not being captured by the gooks. Right. Look he does a great job. A fantastic job. Calls Putin daily by the way. Collect. Putin pays. its great. I love him. He works so so hard for me. Greg - you're fired!

Oh the fun you can have with words... and a Trump - et.