Alana's Dharma Blog

Before we move to the next chapter, present Day Alana, wants to share a few final thoughts. Mostly, I want to admit that the issue of my fear that I am a bad Buddhist has softened, but it is not gone entirely. I still don’t particularly enjoy going to temple and I still feel a bit guilty about it. Sometimes it is because I find temple distracting from my personal practice (too many random topics in a teaching when I already have plenty of my own to consider). Sometimes its just too loud and crowded. But there is the part of me that is afraid of being pushed, of being judged, of having my sense of practice = refuge tainted in some way.

Also, I still feel like a fraud some of the time; I worry when I speak harshly to my family or obsess over the latest beauty trend that someone will find me out as an impostor. Forget someone else finding me out – I worry, in my heart of hearts that I am an impostor. After all, here I am working so hard to walk this path, to make Buddhism the center of my life, and still I am so frivolous, vain and harsh.

But now, I see all these traits, this fear and this guilt, not as evidence that I can’t succeed, but as evidence I really have no choice but to try. So each day I practice, each night I set my intentions for that practice. In waking and in sleep, I hunt for evidence to fix my wrong views, I work to build my wisdom, so that one of these days, no matter if I’m a good Buddhist or a Bad Buddhist I can finally become a free.

So Dear Reader, we have finally made the first of our great catch-ups —  here is the moment in my practice’s timeline where I decided to become a Dharma Blogger. Since it was so so so long ago that the prelude to this blog was first published, this week I want to offer a flashback to the beginning. Here it it again, A Prelude to This Blog.

So, Neecha and Phra Anan actually asked me to start this blog years ago (2011). At first I said yes (because who wants to disappoint their teachers?) but then…on second thought…no.  Neecha told me, “We just get so excited about your practice because it progresses naturally and your examples are so clear that we want others to see how it can be done”. But honestly, I just didn’t think I was someone worthy of writing a blog about Buddhism. I certainly had an image in my head of what a Super Buddhist looked like (the kind who wears a nifty get-up, cape optional, and who is worthy of blogging), someone who lives a holy life, someone humble, respectful, gentle in their speech and actions, someone who keeps the precepts flawlessly, someone compassionate and wise, someone entirely unlike me.

I’m just a regular person –I have a husband, a job, a mortgage and a fancy car. I have lots and lots and lots (and lots) of flaws –I can be vain, selfish, greedy, harsh, judgmental, mean to the people I love and owe the most – I have soooo many wrong views about this world and myself in it. But still, I practice.

I practice not in spite of these flaws, but because of them. I practice because these flaws, these traits, they cost me, they pain me and I want to be free. I practice because the more I practice the more clearly I see the cause of these faults, these broken perceptions, and I understand how to start chipping away at them. I practice because, well, it works; without a doubt the Dhamma has made me a less tortured, calmer, kinder, gentler version of myself. But hey, rest assured I’m still plenty crazy (otherwise you would be getting a pretty short blog 😉 so lets call this a work in progress. Finally then, after just a few short years of total delusion, I realized that a well-qualified person to write a blog about being on the path is someone who is, you know, actually on the path so…here I am, one of KPY’s new bloggers.

So maybe, in some cases, this would be a good stopping point. You know the soppy-sweet story; you have the conclusion, that’s the important stuff, right? In fact, from here this entry  does get a little complicated so, if you’re having trouble reading on, if it’s hit the point of snooze,  just skip the rest of this entry and head to the next,  it’s the story that starts my path.  Seriously, that’s a perfectly reasonable option, you can always come back and get here later –I sure did.  

But I did promise you a blog about my path…that is the steps that got me from there to here…so, to be fair, I will start with this (very long) pre-blog and see exactly what misunderstandings  I started to correct that helped me change my mind, my view, about blogging.

Everyday Alana versus the Super Buddhist  –

A: Choose a Side — for a long time I have struggled to reconcile the idea that there seems to be a war going on between 2 sets of desires, one to be super Buddhist Alana and the other to be regular everyday life Alana. On one side, there is some great saintly creature, worthy of the title “Buddhist”, an aspiration Alana really, who has all the “Super Buddhist” qualities I listed above and then some (FYI I would definitely have a cape, can’t pass-up an accessory). Then there is little ole regular life Alana, the wife, employee, crazy flawed person, who still does love my life, love my family, love my stuff, who is just not ready to let go.  But right off, there is a wrong view here:  That I am, I can always be one thing, one Alana ; that I can always be my imagined ideal, that that ideal is even fixed and accurate; that it’s actually better for me to just be that one Alana; that Alanas exist in diametrically opposed pairs and I need to choose one; that it is even about choosing, controlling, exercising my will and –poof — it’s done, I am a certain thing ( do you guys think I can be a fairy princess?) .

B: Who’s making the rules and are they actually fixed– But wait, there’s more…I saw that the idea of a “Super Buddhist”, who plays by certain rules, meets certain criteria, its all in my head. I imagined up what this hero would look like, right down to the cape, and then I proceeded to judge myself against my own creation.  I pretend that if I meet these criteria (which aren’t even fixed anyway), if I could just do a certain set of things, act a certain way, sacrifice enough to get there, then I would be the real deal. So, major spoiler alert (I promise future stories about this with way more detail) but: A) you can’t just become a thing, we change, everything changes, there is no thingness that is permanent and real; B) there is no way to act your way to any ideal: Compassion, Buddhistiness, wisdom, selflessness, etc — these are causes, the actions that follow are the results –you can’t just flip it around.

As for regular Alana, which is also a product of my imagination, my curation, is she fixed? Never to change from being the little ole me I am now? I used to be a vegetarian but now I’m not, I used to be a smoker but now I’m not, I used to dress like a hipster denying my deep love of the color pink – now if you could only see how many heart-shaped pink belts I have in my closet.

C:  Maybe a different, “working definition” of Buddhist (super or otherwise): I really started thinking about what it means, to me, to be a Buddhist and it’s about being on a path. Not just any path however, the path the Buddha laid out for his followers (i.e. Buddhists) to follow. The very first step on the Path (Eight Fold) is Right View i.e. aligning my understanding of the world to reality. Reality is that everything is impermanent, subject to change, to cease, to die, and that woven into the fabric of our lives is suffering , discontent, peril  and consequence, all brought about by our failure to see the world as it really is.

With every story you see here, in everyday of my life, I am constantly trying to pluck out the wrong views, trying to shift my perspective, trying to retrain my mind to see the impermanence I tend to ignore, to understand the costs of my choices, my beliefs. So am I worthy to blog? It really depends on who you ask, whose criteria we are using? But, for me, I finally, came to see how something as seemingly simple as not wanting to keep this blog (plus a ton of other stories, struggles, beliefs and decisions in the last few years) could be underpinned by these strong ,but totally crazy and inaccurate beliefs.  So now, worthy or not, I’m ready.

As I promised, I went home from the retreat and I really considered exactly what my meltdown was about (since a little dirt on pants is usually something I’m pretty calm about) and if my deep dark concerns were really rational. I typed-up my initial analysis and sent it to Neecha. You can read the email below:

Hey Neecha,

I hope you are doing well. I really want to thank you again for being there for me during the great Dharma Meltdown 2.0 last weekend. I have had about a week to triage the situation and, though I realize there are lots and lots of issues at work (like feeling cornered and out of control, unsure about monastic life, being forced, being judged, feeling out of place, wanting to be accepted) it dawned on me that the most urgent and stressful was the exact same view that was taking place in the homeless alana story (also the I don’t want to become a Sotapana story) — there are 2 alanas at war with each other, some ideal angelic alana I want to be and then a more mundane alana that I feel is lesser than the ideal but still something that I am very attached to — one alana “wins” the other “loses” and I am not the me I want to be.

In the homeless alana story, I wanted to be a good compassionate alana who “selflessly” hugs homeless people, but I also wanted to preserve and protect myself from their imagined disease. Meltdown alana wants to be a “good Buddhist”, someone who follows not just the rules but the spirit of the rules, is always at the temple, listens to every sermon, wears the robes,  turns away from the world for a life of practice; but I also want to preserve my life with Eric, the day-to-day activities I enjoy, the pleasures that I see as very un-Buddhist (Korean beauty products and wine …fyi I broke-out so bad from one of the Korean beauty products…not so pretty now) and I’m shameful to taint the “pure” Buddhist with my mundane life. My wrong view at the simplest level is that I can always be one alana, that it can always be my imagined ideal , that that ideal is even fixed and accurate, that its actually better for me to just be that one alana, that alanas exist in diametrically opposed pairs and I need to chose one — whichever I chose now is what I will always be. In reality, an alana, like a plant, has shiny green leaves on top and dirty roots under soil…like a plant the leaves and roots change and grow, wither, die…

But there is even more than that: In Homeless Alana I saw that both the alanas were based on total wrong views themselves. Fearful alana  had an irrational trail of imaginary (#4) permanences that got her from hug to horrible H1N1 death in 2 sec. flat. But compassionate alana was even crazier, she imagined (#4) that she knew what universal, unchanging, compassion looked like (based on my own experiences #3 and desires) , in this case hugs for the homeless, and that if I simply acted in the way I defined as compassionate I would then be, ipso facto, a compassionate person.

So, to bring this to the meltdown — mundane alana imagines that the things I enjoy will always be enjoyable to me, but that they are, somehow, fundamentally un-bhuddist. The only way to become some great Buddhist is intense sacrifice, now, and in my head I imagine staining my new white robes, which I was supposed to be able to keep pristine with my superhuman dharma infused carefulness, with tears over the loss of Eric and the life I loved. Just like homeless alana I have gone from 1 weekend wearing white to living in a cell doing whatever Buddhisty things real Buddhists do 100% of the time. Super awesome ninja Buddhist alana has already imagined that I know exactly what being this great Buddhist looks like (anti-Sotapana Alana had the same problem), what activities are “in” and what are “out” and if, like compassionate alana, I just act the part (that I created using my 3s and 4s and then which I also judge myself by) I am by definition a great Buddhist.

Here’s the thing though… this ideal Buddhist, just like compassion is a concept in my head (created by me in order to serve me). Real compassion, just like real enlightenment, is something you can’t just force by practicing the result. I actually have evidence from my own life: I couldn’t just stop being phobic of everything because I wanted to, or because on the outside I was acting all calm, fear abated when I saw real impermanence; when I tested the matrix over and over and came to see there is really no necessary relationship between what I fear and what actually happens.  Similarly, when I saw that with just one jury summons my joy over not being called earlier in the year turned to regret  since now I was qualified to serve, I saw how my desires, the things that make me happy, are so changeable — as a result I became so much less easily disappointed. Like with clothes, the more I contemplate the rips, the effort to dryclean, the disappointment pulling out from the box and having it not fit, the pain of sending it back, the limitations in the things ability to make me happy or to make me special –lets just say my monthly credit card bill has gone down. And as for compassion, I’m still not exactly sure what it “looks like”, but I look at myself, some one who is so much more forgiving, patient, appreciative, yielding, balanced then I used to be before the dharma.  I look at my relationships which are so much smoother and less contentious, and I have to assume that I am becoming way more “compassionate” than homeless alana possibly was. Ironically, the only Buddhisty thing I have tried that has made a huge difference for me (despite lots of chanting, fake compassion, meditating, mantras, studying, trying pretty unsuccessfully to be a disciplined and self sacrificey-type and feeling guilty about my failings {which went just great for me last weekend}) has been learning to recognize and fix my wrong views.

The reason why the story of the Bodhisattva and the mango tree (MahaJanaka Jataka) was so powerful for me is, I get it. I get how life can be all shades of awesome and one (me) could look at this world, my life, and think its just not worth it. Clearly, I’m not exactly ready yet to take a last wistful glance at my kingdom and head out for an acetic life, but, I do get it. I understand quitting smoking, quitting fishtank keeping, no longer obsessing over Tony’s pizza. I see how my everyday life is actually getting smaller, quieter, its less and I’m less, how I’m more reluctant to get entangled thoughtlessly, how I see the risks, I see the impermanence —everywhere.  The other thing I see is change. Back when I was 23 I remember thinking to myself –I can’t stay living in Nashville, everything closes by 2A.M., I am missing out on life, people, parties, by staying here. Now though, especially late at night,  mostly I just want to be home –alone–in the quiet (I have some theories on why for another day, but the alone and the quiet are definitely side effects of my Dharma practice).  What I want when I want it seems so permanent, but the truth is, what works now, what is appropriate now may not be tomorrow.

I know there is a lot more to go on this issue. I have a real deep-seeded tendency to think dualistically. Its yes or no, all or nothing. Happy space over there, suffering over here; exciting on trip, boring at home; stuff is right or wrong and I can judge; Mom is  bad guy I am vulnerable hero; Seth is an evil carnivore, I am a moral and lovable vegetarian, etc…In someways, this mental strictness works for me, it protects my sense of specialness, value, and makes me feel justified in my belief I deserve cookies not crap. The duality also helps me preserve the hope, the sense of worth-it-ness in the world, it parses the happiness from the sorrow and lets me compartmentalize, fantasize the possibility of one completely removed from the other, the perfect life. This past weekend though it did me no favors, I was in so much pain, I still feel a bit shaken by that level of emotion. And for peril… what if it caused me to give-up, to say since I can’t today be the Ninja Buddhist of my fantasy  now, better to turn-in the membership card all together. And while, I know, like seeing that optical illusion and not being able to unsee it, I can’t really go back, I can’t really quit seeing impermanence and suffering all around, I could humph around licking my wounds for a while and waste time instead of using this experience to further my practice.

Anyway, this at least is a start and a relief. Thank you thank you thank you again for being my Dharma friend even though there is leaf and roots…clarity and definitely lots of crazy.

Warmly,

A