“The Rude Guy”
Everyone who is calm and sensible is insane – Rumi

CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy Podcast #29

Rich Zubaty guides a 16 Step Thai Buddhist Meditation

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[Rich Zubaty guides a 16 Step Thai Buddhist Meditation composed of the following 16 Steps:

Long Breath
Short Breath
Body Breath
Calming Breath

Rapture
Simple Joy
Knowing the Mind Conditioner
Calming the Mind Conditioner

Personal Emotional Inventory
Delight
Non Delight
Emptying Yourself of your Self

Impermanence
Dispassion
Cessation of Clinging
Abandon Yourself (to God)

[birds and Om Mani Padme Hum chant]

This is Rich Zubaty, the Rude Guy no more. Actually, that’s probably not true. The Rude Guy’ll be back—

[RG Voice:] You bet your ass he will, dipfuck.

Ohhh… Good grief…. I didn’t hear that, did I?… I really didn’t want to hear that. Not now.

[tweet]

Anyway, no time for dicking around with him today because, TODAY, I’m gonna walk you through a Buddhist meditation, I learned at Wat Suan Mokh, a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.

Buddhist meditation is the OPPOSITE of rudeness. It’s a way of stepping back, and objectifying life. Disengaging from the madness. And… it helps. When my inner apes are shrieking, and my fear thermometer has shot through the roof, meditation helps to calm the monkeys down.

What you are about to hear is a 16 Step meditation, that’s about 2500 years old. It’s worked for a long long time, for millions of people. The meditation is arranged into four groups, of four steps. 16 steps in all. But the main thing about it is, that it moves our awareness first to one extreme, then the opposite extreme, then settles us down on the Middle Path, which is the Buddhist ideal… the Middle Path… Up, down, middle. We’ll see that dynamic repeated over and over.

So… sit yourself down comfortably. In a nice chair or on a stream bank or something. Close your eyes. Try and put your hands on your thighs and turn your palms UPwards. If you focus on it, you can almost feel a connection, an interplay, between your palms and the heavens above. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. Just try and feel it.

Oh… I wouldn’t do this if you’re driving, because to me this is actually a type of self-hypnosis. You’re hypnotizing yourself to become calmer than you have been in years. Some people really zone out behind this practice. Enter another mental state. So if you’re driving, you could lose it.

Here we go… comfortably seated, in a quiet place. We start with Step One, the Long Breath. Take a deep slow long breath… And exhale, slowly… (audible on the mic) And another… You’re slowing down your breathing, which is slowing down your heartbeat. The whole movie is slowing down… Just think about your breathing. Nothing else. Deep, slow long breath.

OK… Now the first change up. Short breath. Breathe short and fast and shallow like you’re having a panic attack, or you’re running from a dog, or you’re overcome with anxiety… (audible on the mic) You’re running, you’re afraid, you’re breathing short and fast.

OK, enough of that.

Step three, the middle path, the Body Breath… Breath in, slowly, imagining the oxygen going to every cell in your body. Imagine it going into your head, and your chest and your arms and your fingers. THINK about your body. Think about the PARTS of your body. Imagine the oxygen going to your stomach, and your groin, and your thighs… and your legs, and feet. Then, exhale… and imagine ALL the carbon dioxide coming out. Coming out of every cell in your body. Flowing out of your feet and legs and thighs…your stomach and chest and fingers and arms. OUT with the CO2. Flowing out of your brain and blowing right out your mouth… Now do it again. Breathe in oxygen to every cell in your body. Think about the parts of your body. Focus on the parts of your body, drinking in oxygen. Then breath out again, ridding every cell of CO2. In with the good. Out with the bad.

Now, still breathing slowly, imagine your body as an hour glass full of sand. An hour glass full of sand. Then imagine you open a little valve in your toe and, like an hourglass, the sand begins draining out, starting from the TOP of your head. The sand drains out of your forehead, leaving behind emptiness. It drains past your eyes and your cheeks and your jaw, leaving behind emptiness. It drains through your neck… through your heart… through your stomach, leaving behind emptiness. Still breathing slowly. Through your groin… your thighs… your legs… your feet and toes… leaving behind emptiness. (more…)

CLICK HERE to listen to The Rude Guy podcast #28

Rich Zubaty reveals the Sex Adventures of Republicans, and reads excerpts from his autobiography, Romance, offering up vignettes from his travels in Europe, South America, India and the South Pacific

or RIGHT CLICK HERE (Apple command/click) then click “Save Target As” to DOWNLOAD the podcast to your computer or playback device

[Rich Zubaty reveals the Sex Adventures of Republicans, and reads excerpts from his autobiography, Romance, offering up vignettes from his travels in Europe, South America, India and the South Pacific.]

This is Rich Zubaty, The Rude Guy. I’m getting sick of doing political shows. There’s a lot more to life than politics. So, this morning, I pulled an idea out of my ass, to do a show called: the Sex Adventures, of Republicans… then I realized, that show would only be a couple minutes long. I mean, come on. What IS Karl Rove? What IS Condoleeza Rice? They don’t have kids. Are they homosexual? A-sexual? Eunuchs to power? Do they get their rocks off washing the dirty political underwear of the bombers and plunderers… the preening peacocks of imperialism? Seems kinda SICKO to me.

Or what would being INTIMATE, with Dick Cheney, be like? My god, if I were a woman, just the thought would feel like worms crawling around inside my veins… And can you picture Laura Bush doing it doggie style?… I can’t. She’s too sweet – even though she IS a Christian – and even though Christians are notoriously over-sexed. I mean, come on. They don’t have drink or drugs or gambling, or any other compulsive behaviors to get off on. Just sex. So they’re pretty good at it. But not her. I can’t picture her on her hands and knees, howling at the moon. On the other hand, I CAN imagine Laura’s HUSband doing it just about any ol which way, given his past history. And that’s the problem really.

Our leaders are no longer admirable people. They’re not Franklin Roosevelts or Woodrow Wilsons or even Dwight D. Eisenhowers. Guys who inspired us. Guys who were leaders, not pollsters. Men and women we could admire and respect.

From Reagan on down they’ve just been a bunch of actors. Handsome, air-brushed, digitally enhanced images, of men and women, who look good on TV… and lie about who they are, and what they’re up to. George W Bush actually admitted he was just a cre ation of the media. It’s all a fantasy. A preposterous fantasy. The soft machine. The gravy train. The purple people eater. Red alert, yellow alert. The tyranny of the brainwashed majority. Government by prayer breakfast… A withering… fantasy.

And, since this is the Reality Cult… the show that has declared WAR on human fantasies… instead of talking about politics today, I decided to read some excerpts from my UNpublished autobiography. It’s called Romance.

[tweet]

Have you ever noticed? EVERYONE inhabits a fantasy. Everyone is an addict of one fantasy or another. Some dress up like Elvis or Madonna or Ernest Hemingway. Some believe America is the only free country on earth. Others think that either the people will control the corporations, or the corporations will control the people. Some think we all evolved from amoebas… others believe we were made in the image of God. Some say that God loves capitalism, and others that there is no god. Some say men are the oppressors of women. Others say women, are the downfall, of men.

In fact, we live in a world of colliding fantasies. Very few of the things we encounter on an average day, are real.

But the good news is: There IS an antidote to fantasy. That antidote is Romance. (more…)