Once upon a time we were some version of great buddies, teacher and student, back in Vermont 25 or 30 years ago, and John/Seonaidh taught me, the then-prissy anti-smoker, a bit of true compassion that actually got through to me. It was a crucial crack in my prissy-'better-than-yer-average-thou' wall that I will always be grateful for. In a private talk, back when people hung out and spoke privately in person as the normal way to be, he said to me that 'sometimes the kindest thing you can do for a man is give him a cigarette', and somehow I GOT it. Years later when a loved one passed and his spirit-spook wanted me to have a physical smoke in his memory out there on the street, I did indeed bum a fag from a mystified girlfriend and did do my best to let him smoke it through me, me coughing and choking but feeling it a funny goofy kindness to share the body and the joke for a little while. It established a long-standing (if crazy-~wisdom-sounding) spirit relationship that has helped my mediumship even now--spirit-spook loved ones and I 'smoke' plenty of 'smokes' of light and do plenty of maybe-crazy talk and dance through this body for many whom we have never met, and give and take it all for what it might or might not be, and always with compassion and even the hope of wisdom for all. 'Skillful means' is the least-grokked of the trifecta for me so far, so...I remain a dedicated spook-merchant Spookitarian with Celtic Buddhism in my roots, playing in the least and most eternalist of ways-- It feels like good fun use of this body, and would not have happened if I had stayed so prissy and lacking in compassion. So I turned out better than you might have feared, Seonaidh! And yes, I still have the dregs-end of a flask-bottle of scotch we were drinking that I didn't at the time finish--old habits can die hard, since it's been perhaps those 25 years and it's still not done! Like the ngondro thing that was a sort of bane of your existence, when we didn't finish it in long times-- Thanks and love Donnalee D-M