Alana's Dharma Blog

Click here for My Mom and I part One:

It was the 2014 retreat and we were reviewing one of my favorite Dharma tools*, the one where you take 2 objects and compares them as follows:

• A is Better than B
• B is Better than A
• A and B are essentially the same, are they even worth comparing?
• A and B are so different from each other, are they worth comparing?

L.P. Anan decided to turn study into a game, a way to learn, speed-up thinking and have fun all at once. He was giving us topics to compare, As and Bs, and then giving us about a minute to come-up with as many comparison points as fast as possible. Over and over we got topics, keys are A water bottle is B, humans are A and dogs are B, Dad is A and Mom is B…and here is where my game got dead serious. My contemplation was as follows:

Dad is Better than Mom:

My dad and I were always close.  While, of course, we had our rough patches (what parent and child doesn’t) for the most part, in my eyes, my Dad could say and do almost no wrong. I loved him absolutely and I craved that love in return. To have my father’s approval was synonymous to being a Good Alana and his disappointment cast me to the depths of  Bad Alana hell.  Basically, from my earliest memories of him to my last, my dad was my hero.

Obviously, when LP called start, my hand could barely keep up with my mind listing all the ways my dad was better than my mom:

• Dad provided for the family
• Dad was more successful
• Dad was funnier
• Dad was easier going
• Dad was more interesting
• Dad was easier to talk to
• Dad was more fun to be around
• Dad took me to the arcade and to get smoothies
• Dad made me feel loved and safe
• Dad gave me more freedom
• Dad was more business-ey
• Dad trusted me more

Mom is Better than Dad

As I have mentioned in this blog before, my Mom and I didn’t always have the best relationship. I spent most of my childhood (and adult life) thinking she was the hard parent. My personal challenge. I spent so much time dwelling on her negative qualities that I didn’t give her any credit for the amazing qualities she has as well (2 sides).  When LP Anan called time, I was off to a slow start. But, as I started writing, my eyes started opening. These ‘better’ qualities of my Mom aren’t just things I admire, they are core reasons I was able to survive and grow and thrive and become the Alana I am today.  

• Mom took care of me when I was sick
• Mom was around more
• Mom tended to my education
• Mom is more tenacious
• Mom has more endurance
• Mom is more science-ey
• Mom helped create rules and structure at home
• Mom helped with my school projects
• Mom managed my daily life, school, activities, health, ect.
• Mom was more beautiful
• Mom fulfills her commitments

Dad and Mom are Essentially the Same:

• Dad and Mom are both my parents
• Dad and Mom were both there for me when I needed them — sometimes
• Dad and Mom both failed me when I needed them — sometimes
• Dad and Mom were each necessary to give me life
• Dad and Mom both loved me
• I love(ed) both Dad and Mom sometimes and hated both Dad and Mom sometimes
• Dad and Mom both protected me
• Dad and Mom both helped make me the person I am today
• Dad and Mom both worked hard
• Dad and Mom are both subject to impermanence

Dad and Mom are Totally Different:

• Dad is a man and Mom a woman
• Dad and Mom had totally different tasks, different responsibilities, they each gave me different things in life
• Dad and Mom were around at different times
• Dad and Mom had different upbringings
• Dad and Mom had different values
• Dad and Mom were good at diffrent things and bad at diffrent things
• Dad and Mom are each subject to their own karma ( their own causes)
• Dad and Mom will (have) each leave me at different times and in different ways

I sat back and read what I wrote and it dawned on me, I am always comparing my dad and mom, always pitting one against the other, always using what I see as my mom’s shortcomings to prop-up my perfect image of my dad, even now, as an adult, nearly a decade after his death. But seriously, can I really compare Dad and Mom? They are so similar and yet totally different from each other.  Logically they are incomparable, so why exactly am I comparing?

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks, every hero needs an anti-hero, a person whose contrasting villainy allows the hero’s awesomeness to shine. I wrote my dad as a  hero to my life’s story, his love proved my own worthiness, my own awesomeness was an extension of his. Naturally, I needed an anti hero to really sell the tale, so I cast my mom, my dad’s natural opposite, in the part.

The truth is, there are no heroes or  ant-heroes in this world. Each of us, my dad, my mom, me, we have 2 sides. We have good qualities and bad qualities, moments of awesomeness and moments of being total dicks. And this my friends was a moment I realized I had been a total dick, to my own mother, for over 30 years…

In service of myself, my agenda, my story, I gathered evidence of my Mom’s villainy and ignored her heroism. I ignored all she had done for me, all she had helped me become.  Even though both my parents played their roles, I chose the things my dad did and called them more valuable, simply based on my own biases and predisposition. My story of my parents was a twisted warped funhouse version of reality. And, my actions, of course, followed my views. But, the Dharma has the power to bring us to the middle (path) and here, as I saw my funhousy story for what it was, I knew it was time to review the evidence and rewrite a more honest, balanced story about my Mom. Stay tuned for how that story unfolds…

*For a more indepth explanation of this tool and how I have used it in my practice, you can see my blog titled, To-may-toe To-ma-toe, Po-tay-toe Po-ta-toe, Alana, Sandy

 

After sharing my contemplations about value with Neecha, she offered me another homework assignment she thought might help me push my thinking a bit further. She told me to go and think about the 8 worldly conditions, how do they work, and what do they mean for all of us suckers who have already been born in this world? Before we get to the HW, a little Buddhisty Background might help:

Lokka-Dtamm Pbat AKA the 8 Worldly Conditions

In the Lokavipatti Sutta, the Buddha outlines 4 pairs of conditions that are built into the fabric of this world, that are inescapable. The pairs are:

• gain/loss
• status/disgrace
• censure/praise
• pleasure/pain

As factors in the world are always changing, each of us, at some point in our lives, experience both sides of the pairs. We gain and then we lose, experience pain then pleasure. In fact, with careful examination, it becomes clear that these factors are also always changing, they are like tall/ short, defined in relativity to their partner.

Because these conditions come as an ever-changing pair, a wise person can see that having just the good side is impossible. There is no need to cling to the desirable and resist the undesirable they arise together, based on each other, in their due turn. And so…that wise one, “knowing the dustless, sorrowless state, he discerns rightly, has gone, beyond becoming, to the Further Shore”. Which, in the Buddhist world, is as close to happily ever after as any of us are going to get ;). Without further ado …

The Homework*

The Wrong View — Tony’s Pizza and the lie that the thing I want (at any given time) is absolute instead of relative (changing).

There was a pizza place I used to love called Tony’s. I went once and I thought it was the best pizza ever. I went back again and it sort of sucked, but I gave it a pass, I figured it was a one-off suck. So, my imagination had me return over and over thinking Tony’s was a thing I could have, I could claim, I could control and repeat. Each time I went searching for the perfect pizza, each time judging if the pizza was better or worse than last time, each time suffering disappointment because I had a goal, a reference point the new pizza didn’t live up to.

The problem was I took my first visit to be the perfect snapshot and imagined that was the true Tony’s  and then compared every other visit to it. My imagination (number 4) smoothed over the fact that my first visit was a composite of many factors (my hunger, my past pizza experiences, the ingredients, the table, the cook, my mood, etc); I didn’t understand that Tony’s was not a monolith, an unchanging experience that could be repeated, exactly at my whim,  so I kept putting in the effort of going and suffering the disappointment of pizza less excellent then the pizza I had before (and had come to expect).

The Concept — More food and the realization that sensation, value and meaning are relative; they come about in relationship/contrast.

Last week I was having a problem with my teeth (an endless source of enlightenment) and it caused food to taste different –sweet and metallic. I was eating this chicken meal I usually like and it tasted horrible.  All of a sudden it hit me-taste is not in the food. Taste arises based on conditions, those that effect me (like dental problems) and those that effect the chicken (like freshness). My sense of taste is not freestanding. I had misunderstood the Tony’s of my mind to be a real and permanent form rather then one subject to conditions.  

Last time I was at the hot springs I contemplated something similar —  water that felt hot when I got in got “cooler” as I was used to it or maybe it got “hotter” if I stayed in too long. But the water was basically the same numeric temperature across my visit.  Cool water felt freezing when I jumped in after the hot water and hot water that had been comfortable burnt when I jumped in after cold water.  

The 8 Worldly Conditions and The Suffering of the Situation—  

I began thinking about the 8 worldly conditions by considering wealth and poverty i.e. gain/loss (actually I tried poking at all of them and wealth and poverty was the clearest to me). I saw pretty quickly that wealth is not an absolute figure, it floats somewhere between 0 and infinity relative to my past experiences and to cultural norms.  Eric and I started out from school pretty broke and each year since have earned more and more. Each time we earn more we think, “we are rich”, then a little later when we make even more we think, “man back then we were poor”. Last year we saved a ton of money (lets call it $10k), this year we haven’t even come close (lets call it $5k) so now we are so stressed. In the past we would have celebrated $5K but because of the $10k, which we were so happy about last year, we suffer with the sense of decline this year.

Comparison is actually the source of suffering and of joy in our lives. It is why $5K is rich/ poor, chicken tastes yum/ “off”, and Tony’s Pizza is such a joy/disappointment. The 8 worldly conditions are part of the fabric of our world so comparison, and its suffering and joys are built-in (actually–I am starting to think that it is comparison that enables us to even experience the world. Without it, a thing is unnoticeable– when I was in Miami I was watching a rain storm and I realized I could only see the rain against the skyline, or on the ground. Without a comparison, all I could see was grey) .The big lie (thanks imagination, #4) is that we can keep improving and having only joy while avoiding pain. But this world is impermanent, things will arise, but then they will also cease — nothing stays peachy forever. Even more fundamentally however is there is no peachy without crappy. Tony’s could only be the best pizza because I had tried worse and it could only fall from grace because once it was the best. I remember how ecstatic I was when my kidney stone passed –I can barely describe he sense of relief, but if I hadn’t had extreme pain from the stone I wouldn’t have had relief. The joy, the yummy, the relief, the sorrow, the gross, the pain — its can’t even arise on is own, it is conditional.

In the act of enjoying something, like pizza, we sow the seeds of our suffering, of our later disappointment when the restaurant declines or the striving and work to repeat the experience. Tony’s at its best, my $10k, my jury summons avoidance*( blog story) they all have a shadow self. Its almost like built into each thing we like, there is already what we don’t like, but we’re not paying attention to that part while we are still filled with enjoyment.

My best example is when I get a potted plant I get the pretty green leaves and the dirt –its 50/50. Just because I only look at the leaves it doesn’t mean the dirt is not there. When the dirt spills on the floor suddenly I notice it, but it was a danger all along. It was the cost of bring the plant home.

Ever since I was a kid, I wanted a fish tank. I’m not talking about the small bowl you throw a goldfish into, I am taking the mega fancy big tanks with the super colorful fish. My Mom used to take me to the fish store so I could stare in awe as a kid.  Each tank its own little world, pretty, and orderly and perfectly balanced. When I moved to Texas, now as an adult, the dream was fueled further because every doctor’s office, shopping mall, and lobby in Houston seems to have an amazing tank. Well hell, I was an adult, working my first job, I was going to buy that tank I had always wanted.

That first tank was a passion project. I constructed the environment with such care, piling rocks and choosing substrate. I studies-up about the fish I wanted, picked out the right number and combo for the tank. A rainbow of colors and an army of fish each doing their own jobs, the cleaners, bottom feeders, fancy fish, etc. Finally –I was in control of my own, beautiful, perfectly balanced little universe. For about 4 months…

The cute cleaner catfish I had picked out were getting picked-on by their aggressive tank mates. I began to worry they would be killed and, I did love them so much. The solution…another tank to put the catfish in. And so it began, the 3 year run-up of fishtanks each one to solve some problem, to uplevel, to make me a bigger and better master of my fish universes. I put the catfish in a tank and wanted to put plants in, but the catfish swam around the bottom too fast for plants to grow. So..I got a planted tank. The planted tank was so successful I wanted to try a marine tank. So…I got a marine tank. All the fish in the marine tank, except for one little clownfish, kept dying to I moved over to a coral only tank…

The fishtanks of my memory, in malls and stores were so pretty, soothing and calm. I imagined that is just what I would get in my home. But, what I actually got with my own fishtanks was fish drama — work, problem solving, cleaning, dead fish, new ‘needs’ for new tanks constantly arising. I thought I was going to get little universes I could control, but I got universes that controlled me. That made me problem solve for bullied fish and delicate plants.

It turns out those little fishtank universes are not at all like I thought.  I saw a snapshot, a frozen moment in time, of pretty manicured fishtanks in fish stores. I never saw the care that takes place after hours. All the dead fish were scooped out and flushed long before customers could see them.

The tanks, like this world, are not what I thought they were. I thought they were the one sec. snapshot. They were frozen. I didn’t see the work that went into them. I thought I could have that pretty snapshot, one side. I could control my sense of calm. I could control the experience. But instead I got fish fucked…. When I finally gave away my last tank, found a good home for all the fish, I swore — no more tanks ever again. I still like to go into fish stores, see all the pretty, picture perfect tanks. And then I turn around and walk away , never tempted to bring any of those fish home.  Now I just need to learn the same lesson for everything else…ugh.

So…we again have a mighty important, but mighty technical blog before us here. I will issue my standard caveat  that I share some of these wonkier contemplations not to mess with your mind, nor as a model for anyone else’s practice to follow. They are here because they played a formative part in my own path, my evolution of thought, so I feel like I can’t really leave them out of a blog about my path…though seriously, I wish I could, I have no idea how I’m going to write this one. Yikes!.

Do Note: This blog will draw heavily off my earlier contemplations on the 5 Aggregates of the Self. In case I haven’t lost you yet, and you need a little refresher on those aggregates, you can head back to these 2 blogs here for a review: Alana’s 3s and 4s and Alana’s Seemingly Impossible HW.

Alright, having overcome a warning and a homework assignment, you, my truly hard core Dear Readers have but one more obstacle to surmount. Ya gotta watch the following two youtube videos before you read any further:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uYne5ezkfw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heMgid4rkzU

So my select few remaining Dear Reader(s?). Here is the story:

Back at the 2014 retreat Neecha showed me those sand painting videos and they really stuck with me. They shook me, hard. I kept going back and watching them over and over till one day it was crystal clear — the sand paintings are a model of how we interact with the world, for how everything ticks (an Ubai). All that  we see and hear (i.e. our experiences) gets filtered through our aggregates. Our aggregates interpret our experiences and give them meaning. In the words of the Buddha, because seriously, who could put it better, the aggregates “Construct conditioned form as form”( SN22.79). And what the hell does that mean…well, let’s consider the sand paintings.

The scene opens and there is sound, phone, music, already I have an idea. A sense of what is going on and how I should feel. From seemingly nothing comes a form, a woman, then a belly, I assume a conditioned form — baby. I assume her baby. Now another form, I assume conditioned form –father. I assume conditioned form — family. Conditioned forms are supposed forms, things we believe are really real based on our experience and imagination. It is like the way we assign value to money that is just paper. The way we assign an identity and a set of roles and responsibilities based on relationship in family.

 And we are, my own memory of what a family is has kicked in, imagination #4 has already begun to run. I  am dragged along. As the story unfolds, I  imagine being in it. Sometime I’m the  parents. The child. I am determined to do better with my family, my relationships.

But if I stop running, following, getting swept-up… something else is happening. It’s just sand, Rupa (form). It is just shapes in contrast against the backdrop. Its just a sequence of sand shapes moving.  My own memory of certain elements, taking different forms, is what tells me to think woman, man, baby. Seriously, seriously, it’s just sand.  My imagination gives meaning to shifting sands. Because really, the story is only a story because I fill-in the gaps, allow each scene to have a meaning that drives the meaning for the next scene. It is conditioned, supposed form being misinterpreted as real form by my distracted running mind. It is a sequence of isolated moments that feel like they create a  real story, have real solid forms, real solid identities as mom, dad, child, in relations to each other, only because they happen serially, so quick, one after the next. That my mind can take sand particles and get to forms and then get to identities and then make-up a story and then think it has something to do with me and my family, it’s kinda fucked-up no?

And here it is folks…that Ubai I promised. Isn’t everything just bits of form. Elements that take shapes like people, houses, cars. Just like the sands they shift and change. Just like watching the story, I get engrossed. I buy that house or car, marry that person and now they are mine. And I imagine responsibilities that go with those things that are mine, tethers that keep me tied, promises they will stay with me, help me, do my bidding. I am caught-up. Each scene of my life gives shape to the next, gives it meaning, makes me and that car and house and husband seem solid and unchanging  just because they have been around for a series of clips.. Isolate instances, momentary placements of different forms against different backdrops  are now a story, I have interpreted them, made them my story. I am swept-up, trapped, so engrossed I can’t step back and see the particles, the shifting, the process.

This is the trap. So hard to see in my life. But the sand paintings gave me a glimpse. A look behind the curtain of just how my mind works, convinces me that little shifting specs of matter that compose me make me immortal, invincible, a real solid self. Just because one scene blends to the next. Because my imagination fills the gaps.  

This contemplation gave me an ubai –a real solid image for the aggregates and self. In the next Chapter of this blog we will get more deeply into self and these sand drawings lay a foundation.