What BADI is all about

[Digger]

BADI, the well respected but little known training agency, proudly announces the first in a series of promotional videos.

Ever since our conception, BADI (Buddhist Association of Dive Instructors) has been focused on acheiving the ultimate aim of perfect horizontal levitation, understanding of the inner diver, and general zen-like perfection that all other agencies have not been able to get close to.

Not to be confused with BUM (The Brotherhood of Underwater Monks) who frankly are a bunch of dodgy eastern european types who think trim is the plastic bits you get off ebay for doing your car up, and whose Deco on the Pie techniques have never been trialled on a mass scale.

See here, a video of a BADI diver in true balance with the cave itself:
http://www.anticlockwise.com/~amy/ga...epic854_3.jpeg
Obviously some people will suggest that this is merely a photo, but they would be very wrong. In fact the diver is just so still in the video that it appears this way.

You will notice in our promotional video that the diver is alone. This is because other divers cannot be trusted. We see them stealing from lovely wrecks, and we all know that there's no honour amongst thieves. BADI divers are thieving bastards as well, so you can't trust the guys you trained with. This is good, because it prevents people lulling themselves into a false sense of security thinking they can rely on the team, when in fact the team just stole their reels and bags and left them to drift off in the channel, lost and alone.

We don't bother with fancy music, we don't bother with shit hot scooters that cost £10K, we don't drive big feck off trucks, we pootle about in the smallest practical car we can find (in the case of BADI HQ we use a Ford Ka) and use the minimum gear we can for a dive, allowing for everything going wrong all at once, a bit of the sun falling off, and losing an arm in the explosion as well.

The qualification system is simple - Firstly you need to attend the stripping of the monk ceremony, normally carried out in the car park of a well known East Midlands dive site, and then the dressing of the monk ceremony.

Once you have completed this ceremony you are eligible for the Open Water Monk ticket, a 4 year course where you will be forced to contemplate your own future before you are allowed to touch the equipment. This course also includes the cough test, where we decide if you're man enough to take the Advanced Open Water Monk ticket. The force must be strong to pass this test.

Unfortunately it seems that our lack of worldy goods has left us without any decent dive gear as well, we are conscious that some people use equipment to solve a technique problem. We use technique to solve an equipment problem - all our equipment is crap.

We have recently fallen out with the Insh'allah diving extremists, who believe that whatever is meant to happen will happen, so there's piss all you can do about it if they decide it's your day. We believe that you don't have to worry about all that crap anyway, a slow and painful death will be nothing against the humiliation of coming back as a gibbon.

Digs. AOWM. BEng. OBE-Wan-Ker-Nobe.

[Mike Cunningham]

Just sounds like another mantra to me

[Digger]

Originally Posted by Mike Cunningham

Just sounds like another mantra to me

We don't like mantras, we're more into wrecks than large pelagics.

Digs.

[Mike Cunningham]

ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Mike Cunningham]

Originally Posted by Digger

We don't like mantras, we're more into wrecks than large pelagics.

Digs.

lol

[bythesea]

Sounds like my kind of dive org...sign me up, am practising horizontal levitation at the mo, am about 2 feet of the floor, ok, with the help of the sofa but we've all got to start somewhere

[Stevie H]

Now if Carlsberg only did promo ads for diving.......

[Blu DL]

do buddhist divers who reach enlightenment need to put extra weight on their weight belts to compensate? - in fact does this mean that those guys in the club who jump in with 38kg of lead are not trainees but are in fact BADI's?

[Digger]

Originally Posted by Blu DL

do buddhist divers who reach enlightenment need to put extra weight on their weight belts to compensate? - in fact does this mean that those guys in the club who jump in with 38kg of lead are not trainees but are in fact BADI's?

BADI divers do not need lead. Once you have acheived complete balance with your environment you are completely neutrally buoyant. You are the water. Or at least 90-odd% water.

The guys with 38kg lead are on the other side of the BADI Wheel (a lot like those wheels they have for getting to Nirvana) and need to come full circle before they will be complete as Advanced Open Water Monks.

Digs.

[Howard Payne]

I would like to apply for the post of Training Director?

I can hear the sound of one hand clapping and have seen the many colours of the wind Bodhisattva Digger.......