Lost in Thai Meditation Practice

Thailand is a country that sells Buddhist Meditation and Prostitues in one single advertisement.

Tourist who go there come out confused.

Some of the scams, skims the life long savings of the elderly of the Western countries. 

Do not go there for an easy life and end up in one of their many trikeries.

The Thai Law protects the locals and scams are perpetual.

Think before you book a holiday which on surface looks promising.

Stay where you are and enjoy your Own Hospitality at a higher cost.

This piece is to highlight monasteries and Thai Meditation Masters who lure tourists and leave them stranded without inculcating Dhamma Principles.

Read my book on "Meditation (Weaponized) Commerialized", coming soon at Amazon books.

This book was long ovedue. 

I postponed publishing it, mainly due to a few of my family members were involved in Buddhist Meditation, not as monks but as lay people. 

Daryl Ankar come to my mind and he has gone nuts. 

30 years ago, I had seen at least 6 guys over 55 with problems after attempting Meditation in their Retirement. I referred them to a psychiatrist who was a friend of mine. He said that they have no psychological problems except their recent meditation practice. I told them to stop meditation and their physical symptoms aborted in a few weeks.

Many years later, I found a book by Rerukane Chandawimala Himi who had described these symptoms and signs in SINHALA book to monks. I saw him in death bed with JRJ and my boss Juranapathy at Navaloka.

What a cionicidence?

I signed JRJs last blood report saying that, according to blood chemistry of this report, this guy ought to be dead.

I was his best man in his wedding. 

By the way, I had performed this task 13 times and I quit this ceremonial function abruptly after the 13th event.

The last one was with a Doctor a few years younger to me. 

He ended up as a biochemist in U. S. A. 

He was an Anandian and was a crook. 

I was to to go to U. K. at the end of the same year on "No Pay Leave" and this guy somehow knew this and approached me one day and asked me whether I could become his bestman. 

I said Yes without any hesitation since he was my deputy when I captained the University Hockey Team. He did all the organizational work of matches and I had only to come lead. 

He was very good organizer. 

The understanding was that he would spend money for my 3 piece suit that would be useful when I visit UK. 

I did not bother to select the material and the colour. 

Of course, my look alike opposite Left Wing man was (I was Rught Wing) with me to guide me with the instructions on the day of his wedding. He was a parallel batchmate of him from the Science Faculty and he had the Wedding Schedule. 

From 9AM in the morning delivering the invitation bouquet, till 630PM in the evening Wedding Photograph we were running from one place to another non stop. We were promised lunch at his home but we did not get even a cup of tea or a soft drink. 

Afterall, we could sacrifice a meal for a friend. 

After the photograph, I told my cohort "his job is done" and I would not come for the wedding ceremony. If I remember right, co- left wing player had his own car and I asked him to drop me at the Colombo General Hospital. 

I told him, I need a good bath and a drink at the  3rd floor Grandpass Grill and  Bar at Lipton Junction, located near the Colombo General Hospital. This was the time when cats and dogs were served for Chicken, in Colombo.

We used order a full chicken at Grandpass Grill to avoid eating cats' and dogs' flesh.

Everything was cheap then and my take home salary was Rs.1450/=. I started with Rs. 415/= and we had Industrial action to raise our salary 3 times under Sirimovo.

I left to UK after my compusary service and vouched never to join the Government Service.

Many moons later, I joined the University, that also not Medical but Dental School.

Hyde Park Corner which ARPICO acquired later was famous for political meeting. Lipton Corner was substituted for politicsl rallies for Hyde Park on subsequent years.  

SARA Center or something similar to that name became established when Grandpass Grill went bust.

Coming back to my friend's wedding:

He should proceed to the Hotel and If asked about me, say that I was dropped at the hospital.

I kept the wedding invitations of all 13 of bestmans.

I made it a point to invite all 13 of them      (most of the already left CEYLON) but none who remained in CEYLON came to our Wedding. 

The excuse they gave me was that JRJ had come to KANDY for an official function (I wasn't invited by JRJ) and they attened that function. 

Then, I replied that, they could have slipped away for a moment and rejoined the official function. Also said, do not expect any future engagement with me official or otherwise. 

Those who came had a Field Day at Swiss Hotel, Kandy as far as refreshments were concerned. 

In 10 days we were in Northern Island.

Hotel Swiss was closed for practical purposes and I made it a point that Billiard Room was open for me to play a game weekly. This was extended to Mahaveli Reach for official functions of the Peradeniya University and an occasional billard game for me. 

I believe late Professor R. G. Banabokke had shares of this hotel. Their entire family is gone including his wife and he did not have any friends to call and I was his mental buffer. 

He used give me a call everytime a tragedy hits.

By the way, I haven't played a Billiard game since I arrived in Australia. The last occasion was in Phillip's Island, the Table was occupied by kids. I did not bargain for a game,  since as a real sportman, I should see that the  next generation of players should be trained instead of an old coger like me with poor colour vision hitting the wrong ball and making the opposition guy wins. 

If I rember right, I never lost a game in England.

I only lost to Mr. Banda (from whom I learned the game as a medical student) who was our Faculty Boy and Marcan Marker who was our Faculty Club boy to where I went almost every day with Laxman Denipitiya.

Laxaman is currently in America, a fabulously rich dental surgeon.

He is the only guy of all the bestmen in their wedding ceremonies who kept an amiable relationship. 

I made it a point to invite him as a Guest Lecturer in one of our Symposiums in Dentistry in the Faculty of Dental Sciences.

Coming back to "Bestman Saga" all 13 of the ceremonies were significantly different from the other 12 and there is "No Standard" as such. 

I behaved like a puppet and that job is ideal for master puppet like me. 

When the bridgegroom started coming on elephant tops, I had fully retired and already married with kids. 

I made it a point to refuse all wedding invitations (except the last one), knowing very well that there is an upper ceiling of 250 in most of the hotels, now.

Mr. Rajanayagam

The suit I was given by this guy was of poor quality and was disposed of immediately. 

This is where Mr. Rajanayagam came to my help. Good suit materials were hard to come by, then. I told Mr. Rajanayagam our Chief Technician my predicament. 

Don't worry, Doctor was his usual expression. 

He found me a good piece.

Sad part was when I came home on holiday with a present he had passed away. I met his wife still residing at the Government Quarters at Colombo 7. She said that he had not saved anything for himself and she was fighting eviction from the quarters. 

He did not have any children and I lost touch with her subsequently.

Of course, first thing I did was to buy a Marks & Spencer 3 piece suit for £100/=. 

Later, I tailored, a made to measure suit by London main street tailor for £110/=.

I was obsessed with my dressings from underwear to the top.

I donated both those suits and now I have only one suit left for any formal occasion. 

My hacked two suits were left in CEYLON for good. 

I love my pijamas and I have one sarong left made of pijama cloths in my tiny traveling bag. That is not going to be used since I do not intend to visit CEYLON again.

 

Zebra Fish Experiment

Zebra Fish Experiment

I bought the zebra fish with an intention of crossbreeding them.

They are easy to breed but one need an elaborate tanks to separate the eggs from the parents and also have adequate quantity of infusoria.

Infusoria

Infusoria grows naturally in most tanks, particularly those with live plants. However, there may not be sufficient quantities to sustain a full hatching of fry.
The term infusoria is an old one that has changed in meaning over the years. 

At one time it referred to just about any microscopic, or nearly microscopic, organism that lived in fresh water. That use of that word long ago became outdated in the scientific community.
However, the term infusoria is still used by many within the aquarium community, even by younger fish enthusiasts. To aquarium enthusiasts infusoria refers to many small organisms in water that tiny fry can feed up upon.
Although it's not feasible to name every organism that could be in an infusoria culture, some of the primary ones include, algae (volvox), amoebae, euglena, paramecium, rotifers, stentor and vorticella.

Therefore, it is helpful to culture your own infusoria to ensure having an adequate amount.

Zebra Fish Breeding
Nature has lot of surprises for you and me.
I was trying to raise a Guppy fish with swordtail for ages.
It was easy in good old days when the brood was wild.
They did not have the present sailtail (Sary Guppy) then.
But with the breeding of exotic and the emergence of the sail-tail or sari-tail varieties of guppies one cannot find guppies with the narrow short dorsal end of the tail with a broader and longer ventral end.
I have been screening the tails of guppies and found one with the suggestion of a swordtail and I mixed that one with the wild (not really wild) looking with light featured female guppies but there is no success yet.
They breed less in the glass tanks.
I am waiting for a miracle to happen.
But toady, I was doing my daily routine of mixing different batches of guppies to interbreed and quite casually looked at the fortuitous zebra breeding tank to see whether the water quality was OK.
This plastic kitchen sink type of container was designed to put zebras to lay eggs and in my opinion it was not ready yet to put the adults. But as a conditioning routine I load it with the first portion of outlet water bucket from my main tank with zebras. Idea was to build the infusoria for the young ones, if they lay eggs by any chance. These eggs are very small and not visible to the naked eye. Most of it is eaten by the adult males and adult males are necessary for the fertilization of eggs.  

They lay over 400 to 1000 eggs but rarely a few survives in the tank. 

By removing water at the bottom by siphoning, I expect few eggs by chance to remain trapped with fortuitous black fungus (which appear like a tuft of leaves when fully grown).
Fish do not eat this black fungus probably it has nasty taste or alelopathic chemical.

Then in the main tank to clown fish do the cleaning up of the eggs no sooner they are laid. 

I have been doing this religiously for the last one year but without any luck.
My first batch of zebra (breeding) was discovered accidentally in a bucket with water plants left to nature.
I had about 20 odd young ones and introduced 16 to the main tank leaving behind only four in the original bucket. 

That was a shear intelligent decision the ones introduced to the tank (fairly big) were eaten by the adult in one night.
They are very good at population control of their kind.
I wonder how they survive in the nature.
Probably the adult die soon after breeding with endemic parasitic diseases.
To my surprise there were six young one in the plastic container that survived the natural population control. Now I cannot put siphoned water to this tank for at least six months since they (young zebras) will eat all the eggs. 

I have to leave them in series of buckets and I have no room in my rooftop garden for any more buckets. So my zebra breeding will have to be done on makeshift containers. I cannot put the six young zebra fish to the main tank with zebras (they will be eaten) or to the other tank with live bearers. 

Young zebras will eat all the live-bearers’ young ones.
It is a paradox and reproducing nature is only an ad hoc experiment.

In a different note, I have a fabricated rainfall detector (modified fish tank) and it recorded half an inch of rain for the last one week. 

That I think is 25% of the usual rainfall and my predictions are we will have a drought by next April.

Albino Tetras

 Albino Tetras

Toady, I received a batch of albino tetras free of charge from a dealer, whom I knew for two decades.
The idea was for me to look after them (confirmed disabled) sympathetically until they die.
One of them died on transit due to shock.
Rest went into panic state the moment, I introduced them to my main tank.
I sat there and watched their agony for half an hour.
Only two recovered in half an hour.
Most of them were partially blind or an eye was totally missing.
One was totally blind and took the longest to recover.
After one hour all of them could balance and swim in a comical manner.
They had two problems.
 

One was blindness.
 

The other was balancing.
 

I believe these strains are poisoned in their breeding.
They must be using very toxic material.
There is unsupervised breeding programs in this country.
These chemical are hazardous to humans and other animals and are slowly percolating into our ground water.

Who is allowing these materials to be imported?
 

That is my big question.

 

Zebra Fish and Black Guppy

Zebra Fish and Black Guppy
I have reason to believe there is unhealthy practices of Fish Breeding.
I may have briefly mentioned this sometime in the past. 

I cannot trace the piece of writing.
In any case there seems to be new developments.
There is a guy who breeds albino zebras.
He has now introduced a pink strain.
I have an obsession on the topic of pigmentation, especially in regard to Guppy fish.
 

I wished as a kid, I could see a Guppy black like a black molly.
A guy in Thibirigasya, actually accomplished it.
 

He deserves a Nobel Prize.
 

I do not know how he accomplished it but to see a Guppy with band of black is common now.
These Guppies are robust, healthy and of reasonable size.
 

But all the variants of Zebras were tiny.
 

They do not grow to adult size in spite of proper feeding.
They do not mix in the shoal with normally colored zebras.
In other words they were unhealthy.
  

Goby Fish

Goby Fish

Goby fish is an ugly fish. 

Small in size similar to Guppy fish but live in both fresh and sea water. 

I have not seen one live. They type that live in mangroves slide into tunnels made by crabs on mangrove roots with the sliding tides. There are tiny octopuses who feed on these fish. 

The ecosystems in mangroves is unique. Our mangroves in the Negamboo, Ceylon is fast receding.

 

Blind Fish

Blind Fish
I volunteered to look after a batch of blind and partially blind fish.
After nearly 20 months only three are left.
One has total visually capacity now.
One is blind in one eye.

The other is totally blind.
It amazes me how it survived.
 
It more amazing how it detects me.
 
The moment I sit next to the tank it comes near to the side my chair is kept.

The blind fish knows I am there.
 
I do not touch anything.
Probably it detects my foot steps and pulling the chair (gently).
I do not feed that tank (to confuse the blind fish in a way) first as a routine but feed the fish in the main big tank.
 
Moment I start putting the pellets that sink to the bottom, the two clown fish make a mess of the bottom sediment, and then the blind fish hits at the bottom or the floor in a random fashion and finds its food.
That's how it survived.
I believe the other fish, especially the clown fish (scavenger) gives a subsonic message to the blind fish.
They are all in one community.

 

Guppy Fish

Guppy Fish

I have a life long relationship with Guppy Fish.

I grew up with them.

 

They taught me biology without having to read a textbook.

 

What I discovered was Guppy fish suffers from a disease called Guppy Disease.

I have a healthy batch of almost wild Guppy stock. 

They are in my big outdoor fish tanks.

 

Those tanks are meant to control mosquito population. 

 

Guppy fish love mosquito larvae even though they do not kill other fish.

They are called community fish since they live in harmony with other type of fish.

Most important thing one has to do is to quarantine the new batch of fish.

 

I have a quarantine tank.

 

They are kept there until they breed. 

Breeding is a good sign of healthy fish.

The new shoal is transferred to a new tank and once they are big and a sample is put to the outdoor tank.

Since, I follow this routine regimentally, I never had an episode of Guppy Disease.

 

I used to release some of them to the streams nearby.

 

I stopped doing this die to a good reason.

 

We tend to release washing machine discard to our stream.

 

The chemicals used in washing cloths cause gill disease and 90% fish released die. 

That was not acceptable to me.

Humans are the ones who poison our environment on daily basis.

Guppy Disease

 Guppy Disease

 Guppy fish used to be my favorite but now my interest is water plants especially water lilies.
But one cannot have a pond without fish.
 

The mosquitoes would take over in no time.
 

Guppy fish is the only solution.
 

But over time the fish lose their bright colours and become the wild type. 

The wild type is resistant to disease.
 
Just to introduce some colours I bought a batch of bright coloured guppies.
 

Knowing very well they are incubating guppy disease I introduced them to the stock tank.
I added few of my wild guppy to interbreed.
In no time one by one all the guppies started dying.
Not other fish types.
 

It was evident that the guppy disease was the cause.
 

I believe it is a virus disease and over time they become resistant.
 

But unfortunately my fish in the main outdoor tank started dying.
I made sure there was no contact or contamination.
 

I was puzzled and worried the fish food was the cause.
 

I need to work on this.
 

The vendors treat these disease fish before selling.
Within 24 hours they show the signs of disease and start dying.

 
If you buy a new stock do not introduce them to your main tank.
 

Observe them in a hospital tank for at least a week.
Treat them if necessary and introduce only the healthy ones.

 
Ideally the next generation of young fish.

 
If they are healthy they breed and breed fast.
 

You have a healthy batch then.
 

I now think even contaminated fish food carry disease if not guppy disease (viral) but by bacterial disease.
 

Fish do not have a well developed immune system and succumb to diseases especially bacterial.
 

So keeping the tanks in good healthy condition is a priority.
 

My Fish with Scoliosis

Tuesday, September 1, 2015
My Fish with Scoliosis
 

Fish physiology is very complicated.
Even though the life started in water, unlike terrestrial organisms they are at tremendous odds.
They never sleep.
They have to be under constant vigilance.
 

Lately, I had been watching deformed fish.
 

The first lot was blind.
Out of 11 four are still living.
Most of them died due to poor water quality.
Once I improved the water quality they adapted well.
Strangely, they instantly sense my presence near the tank.
How they do that I do not know.
 

Even in that set up the partially blind fish attacks the completely blind.
 

The blind one cannot survive outside, in the wild.
 
Coming back to the fish with scoliosis it makes a tremendous effort to swim if not float.

It is an ugly sight to see it swim but when tired rests on top of the air pump.
I put some floating plants so that it can rest and have the benefit of oxygen at day time.
Funny part is other fish also take advantage of the plant nest.
It is a cool resting place for them.