Alana's Dharma Blog

For the longest time, I had seen practicing the Dharma as a struggle. A sacrifice. Something I endured for the promise of a better future, or being a better person, or at least understanding the world more clearly.  Of course, it had already been of benefit to me, I saw results; otherwise why in the heck would I keep pushing? But, to be honest, most of the time I imagined my path as me groping in the dark along a thorny road…heavy, serious, a burden I attended to out of a mix of fear, guilt, self-judgment/hate, pride in small victories, and a sprinkle of hope to keep me going.

When LP Nut and I were talking about my wrong views around future options he shared a perspective on practicing that completely shifted my paradigm. For that, I am eternally grateful. Here Dear Reader is a short blog on my paradigm shift: Practice as a relief for unbearable burdens.

LP Nut shared the story of a hike LP Anan had led in which everyone had to take a heavy object along with them. LP Nut took a chair. He labored through the hike, panting, sweating, and at the end LP Anan looked at him and asked, “why are you still carrying the chair?” As LP Nut explained, my mind was already racing: All of our life we carry around the burdens of our responsibilities, of acquiring and maintain our shit, of nurturing our relationships, of caring for our bodies, of making it through this life one day at a time. But these burdens are like chairs on a hike — we don’t need to carry them — we really can just put them down.   Pchwwwfffzzz – that, My Friends, is the sound of my mind being blown. Practice is for the relief of unbearable burdens.

I can’t say my practice is always a cake walk, that it doesn’t take time, dedication and some compromise (sometimes it’s a bit like taking bitter medicine). But what I once saw as harrowing trek along a dark, thorny, road now shines in my mind as a light in that dead of night, a warm blanket against the cold, a balm for my tired feet. Instead of all harshness, my path became a comfort. The Dharma is my faithful companion that no one can ever take away; it is where I go for refuge from my burdens.

So, by the time I got back from my forest nap adventure, I had a pretty solid grasp on the limitations of my ability to preserve what I have, i.e. to keep and maintain control over my present circumstances. But there is another idea in my always choosing A — a fairly pervasive one in my life really — that I can make decisions to hedge my future, to keep doors open so I ‘always’ have more choices later, more potential paths and potential escaper routes. Its like trying to preserve, only for the future. I decided it deserved a little additional attention, so I went to talk about it with LP Nut.

The following blog is an amalgamation of 2 conversations LP and I had and some of my contemplations around them. I never meant for this to get a formal write-up, so his teachings and my thoughts are sort of melded together in the notes I took. Still, there were some powerful seeds of my future practice planted in these ideas/dialogues/contemplations, so I am going to reconstruct and share to the best of my ability.

When I went to LP the first time and expressed my struggle finding the wrong view underlying this idea that I can keep options open for later he shared an example from his own life. He explained that he loves his parents and being with them, but he moved away from home because he also wants his freedom. Even still, in his heart he feels comforted that he can go and visit them, that the option to return to them is still there. But, this feeling is based on a wrong view, that he knows what a future visit will look like. That it will be nurturing, fun, rewarding. That it will be what he wants/imagines. That it will be possible at all.

Fast forward to our next conversation and LP suggested that I need to consider probability and duration more carefully. After all, if I think I can control my future options through my decisions now it’s worth really considering the likelihood of my success, for how long and, of course, at what cost. He also told me to look more carefully at the factors that go into having an experience I want –what exactly are the conditions that had to be met for me to call something satisfying?

We took a recent trip Eric and I had shared as an example. I went to the hotsprings with Eric because I wanted us to be together, share time together. But LP asked, was it exactly how I imagined it? Were there times we were apart (of course), times we fought, or simply weren’t totally happy, where these disappointments (again, of course, of course and of course)?  If I believe I can somehow make decisions to keep options open for the future, how likely is it the future will be what I imagine and hope for? Was it the case with my vacation?

LP shared a story of a girl who had come to the temple recently devastated by the death of her boyfriend. He asked me if I uews

nderstood why she was so upset. I ventured a guess – the girl imagined (#4) a future with her boyfriend and his death destroyed her happy imaginations of that future so she felt loss.  As LP explained, this is the same problem with my imagining ‘options’ and open doors for my own future. They are based on my imagination alone, not on any certain, guaranteed future. The future is unknowable, it is impermanent, it arises based on a precise combination of conditions/factors that are totally beyond my imagination’s ability to know or control.

For Eric and I to go on vacation together a number of conditions had to be met. We needed the money, our jobs needed to approve the time off, the hotel had to have available bookings, the roads needed to be passable, the weather accommodating, our health good enough for travel, etc. A bunch of conditions, most entirely outside of our control, had to be ripe for just one trip to happen. And even if the trip had been all sunshine and rainbows, was exactly as I imagined when I planned it, there is an important caveat – it came to an end. Its duration was not infinite.

The truth is, this world has happy moments, like a good vacation, and then those come to an end. Duration is uncertain; only cessation, at some unknown point, can be guaranteed.

I got back to thinking again about why I always chose A. Why we chose F.U.ber this time around instead of Sonos. It hit me — I think the money and career boost of F.U.ber keeps doors open so that I can enjoy the Sonos beach bum, lazy life, experience later.  So by continuing to choose A, I keep open the future option of more A, or B, or possibly C or D. I think $ and career experience = future choices, future control. But is a job at F.U.ber a necessary, or sufficient, condition to have beach bum life later? Does money or career experience come with any guarantees? Countless times, including my vacation, my imagination failed to predict or control the future. Why should I believe it when it tells me that if I just collect a few tools — $ and experience – I can turn possibility into probability or even a guarantee for ever and always?

Don’t worry, no need to stress, this isn’t a cliff hanger story. Sure, I took a wayward path, but I assure you we are still on topic…Why do I always chose A?

As I was sitting in the forest I had a thought, the reason Eric and I stressed so much about the job choice, and then ultimately chose A is simple — we believe we are better than those trees, that we can preserve, control, that this choice of ours was somehow determinate of our future, finances, careers. That it was all on us.  B had a moment of being tempting because I thought I was ready to change style, get rid of that old hippy shirt and redefine myself with a new story. A change, yes, but one of my own design. In fact, the only reason I even noticed the A A A A always A pattern was that for one moment in time B tempted me…

After the retreat Eric got more troubling, drama-y, news from F.U.ber that again awakened my exhaustion with A and got me wondering if we should have chosen B. In that moment I was so upset and then it hit me — I was upset because I really believed there was a “right choice” that with just enough information or clarity I could pick it . I imagined an outcome that was all sunshine and rainbows if I could just control enough to get there. In truth, option “A” and “B” both have pros and cons. I select based on my biases (3s and 4s) for what I believe the pros and cons will be (imagination) . I know there will be suffering, but I still think I can hedge, I can control the amount, the duration, the nature of the suffering as a variety I can bear. Plus, it keeps my options open for the future. Based on these biases and beliefs I keep choosing A, but as I come to see the suffering involved I think that maybe another option, like “B”, would be better.

Seeing the deeper issue and the perils — Again, I was just sort of struck by the fact that my choosing “A” or ” B” (or any other letter/option) was just like this game we played on retreat. We, as a group, pretended to be a child of a father who rapes us and to really see the suffering. Finally, we convinced ourselves that being born to a father who rapes us isn’t worth it and it will cut us off from that birth (option A) but we may still get “B”, life with a single Mom. Or “C”, life as an orphan. In a nutshell, I keep choosing A because I haven’t yet convinced myself that the drama, stress, and sacrifice of this particular A life just isn’t worth it.

My deeper problem is that I still have hope that I can calibrate my decisions to get what I want with minimal and acceptable downside. Basically, my hope/desire that I can control, at least control enough to make it worthwhile, means even if I tire of one option I will continue to try others (super perilous). The whole trick to avoiding any crappy birth is to avoid birth altogether and that requires seeing the truth that all births have dissatisfaction. Afterall, even in a life as charmed, successful and comfortable as my own –a life of A A A — I will eventually get tired and want B. Maybe, if I really can see this, I don’t have to try every life, every option, I don’t have to turn over every card before I get up and leave the table. Maybe, I can just quit the rebirths that keep arising in service of my imaginary specialness …

A note to my readers: this blog is a direct continuation of contemplations from Contemplations from the 2015 Retreat : Priming the Pump for Insight with contemplations on security and preserving. If you have not already done so, head back and read that entry before you proceed further.

Slowly, I woke from my nap and I opened my eyes to see that the forest floor was covered in leaves. In fact, it seemed like more leaves were on the ground than on the trees. In that semi-conscious awakening moment I   thought to myself, “the trees, so big and beautiful and powerful, with all their tree life force can’t preserve the leaves.” The tree is even the maker of the leaves, and in my mind, should be their absolute “owner” and still, despite their efforts the leaves all eventually fall and die, in the end so does the tree itself. I am nowhere near as mighty as a tree, so why do I believing that I am somehow different, better, that I can be preserved and I can preserve things?

Fully awake now, I reached for a sip of water and I considered my water bottle: I had bought it a  gas station in Healdsburg and brought it up the mountain. I had actually laid it down in the great hall when I first arrived, and had a momentary worry I wouldn’t find it again amongst all the other water bottles on the floor, in peoples’ hands, on tables, in the kitchen…I knew that ‘my’ bottle was basically the same as everyone else’s, but it was special to me, something I worried about preserving, re-finding, just because it was mine.  I realized the water bottle and I are just the same; I think I’m special, exempt from the rules just because I’m mine.

I saw further that it is made of the elements like me it has form; It comes to be “my water bottle” based on causes (arising) – and many of those are based on desire- my carrying it up the mountain bc I want water, the clerk selling it bc he wants to run a business, etc. And it will cease, at first I thought it already had when I lost it (I later found it).  I see I have a memory of a certain me, a certain bottle, I imagine us both as unchanging, as somehow real and mine. The me-ness is what blocks me from seeing the truth, my sameness as water bottles and trees, neither of which can preserve. Its also where all the spinning and suffering begin (just like my worry over 1 particular water bottle, ‘mine’ and no others).

I then started thinking of ways in which I work so hard to make myself special and the pain of the effort (like becoming a vegetarian for 20+years to prove I was more special/ethical than my brother, or the way I had let ‘friends’ talk me into jumping off a bridge as a kid to prove I was cool like them, or the way I worried constantly on how to stay special to my husband). I considered the way I acquire things, like pretty clothes/ hippy shirts, to further build and support that specialness, and the ways I work to preserve those things. I see the changes to myself of course, but I imagine them as selected, curated by myself. Sure I changed career goals, but it was my decision, I chose something better, something more in-line with the values of my new self. Sure I moved past my ‘hippy style’ into something more refined and classy. By subtly adjusting, by glazing those adjustments with an illusion of control, I preserve a cogent sense of self. A uniform being that does change (no more hippy clothes), but only in strictly guarded and allowable ways. My desire to preserve this I is so deep I get exactly what I want — more rebirths to keep this I going — the whole system supports this goal.

 

The Tuk Tok Pie (i.e. suffering): The peril is so clear too…this is why the sponge in the woods, or my disappointment with the jazz singer not singing “my songs” arises and creates such a problem. Because I think I’m so special I believe others/situations either conform to me or they are wrong (present Alana says, “just look at the whole New York hate, I think a whole city of 8mm people deserves fiery death just because they don’t conform to behavior I think is appropriate”) . It’s the main source of frustration and disappointment in my life.

Additionally, by creating and reinforcing “me” in relation to “mine”, I assume a burden to what’s mine, the burden of finding the water bottle, of placating my husband of preserving my company (its so striking too how this burden changes when we no longer perceive something as ours-for example I don’t give a second thought to placating ex lovers).

Worse of all though, I see so clearly how me is the foundation for the horrible stuff I do to others too. I behaved so badly towards my Mom for so long just because I needed to cling to a particular narrative, an identity as a victim and as the person more deserving of my Father’s love (my specialness).

In the end though, I will decay like the trees. I am the same as the water bottle, as everything in this world. And I suffer because I think I’m not. Because I work so hard to weave stories of how I am special and different, I have forgotten I am the author of these tales, so I have become overly invested, I think they are true.

A note to my readers: this blog is a direct continuation of contemplations from the 2015 Retreat: It’s multiple choice, but I always chose A (i.e.The Problem). If you have not already done so, head back and read that entry before you proceed further.

Background Thoughts: For those of you who may be new to this blog, we are going to skip ahead to a conclusion easily born-out by 100 prior posts (about health, relationships, beauty, fear, etc) — my life, my motives, my actions, my desires, often come down to my deep desire for security and safety,  So, a good preliminary question for a contemplation about jobs, money, security and preserving is: Why oh why do I assume money will keep me safe? Why don’t I assume more time with my beloved, doing things I enjoy, living a laid back life will keep me safe? And why do I feel like a job has to be the biggest job, the most lucrative, to be a path to further jobs and further security and further $. And, even if I have money, a job, a partner or safety in this instant, is it something I can really preserve long-term? What about the Sukatam Lok I so diligently contemplated? In my notes, I referred to these questions as “background thoughts”, to keep in mind as I moved through the ‘meat of my contemplation’.

The Contemplation: When have I tried to preserve, has it worked and what is the cost?

• My Fancy Porsche – Damn I love(d) that car. Sort of. It was also a pain in the ass. I worried about dents, theft, parking near grocery carts. Back when I had a Toyota, I never worried about those things. But the Porsche I had to preserve. Because it was mine. I wanted to be a certain Alana, with a shiny, perfect, fancy car. Some of the time. But, not always, not when I needed gas in a shady hood at night and that Porsche made me feel like a magnet for being robbed. Not when I wanted to avoid jealousy from my coworkers or my boss thinking I didn’t need raises because I was already financially fine. But still, I worked so hard to care for that car.

The funny thing is, back when I had a Toyota, I never wanted a Porsche. Once I had the Porsche, I felt like I couldn’t go back to just a Toyota. Having more made me more vulnerable. More likely to lose something. It was less safe and made preserving all the more difficult…

• I had a little hippy shirt I had found in a thrift store back in college, It was so so so me and I loved it so so so much. But it was already old when I got it, thread bare. I was so selective about the times I chose to wear it, knowing with each trip out of my closet it came closer to its final rip, tear or hole. I would be so careful to avoid stains, sweat. I would sew it each time it ripped. I worried so much about that shirt and long before it died, it fell out of fashion, was no longer so ‘me’. I grew-up, grew-out of hippy style and all that worry, effort to preserve, didn’t even mater because I didn’t want the damn shirt in the end anyway.

 

• I came to a Kulti (a hut) in the forest that seemed so worn-out. It made me sad. Why had no one tried to preserve it, repaint it, rehammer lost nails, fix the broken gate? My instinct is to overcome the nature, forest, trees trying to take over. To hold back time and decay. The Kulti made me think of myself, my body. My once beautiful skin fading like the paint, my joints creaky like the gate, my body sagging into disrepair. I do try to fight, to preserve. There is botox, creams, makeup, threading, spanx, corset training (I quit that pretty fast as I couldn’t breathe), 100s of hours at the gym, starvation diets. And really does it work? Kind of, a little, enough I keep trying. But do I really still look 20? 30? Can I, ever? The cellulite won’t go away even after a week of starvation, the sagging won’t stop even with every lotion and potion. I so want to be a pretty Alana, a thin Alana, an in control Alana. But even my body betrays my desires.

My head was swimming with examples, exhaustion, I didn’t quite know where to keep going so I decided. Nap time. Yup, I laid down in the forest, closed my eyes and said sweet dreams till next time…