Alana's Dharma Blog

It was a beautiful sunny day, and since I was already on an errand in Oakland I decided to pay a visit to the historical Mountain View Cemetery, just to check it out. I went into one of the crypts and was struck by how massive it was — hallway after hallway, 4 stories tall, and that was in just one of dozens of buildings. It was like a maze. I looked at one wall, filled with names, and I realized… all these plaques look almost exactly the same. Each of these people once had lives like mine. They had families, things, activities, etc. But every person, every BODY, ends up the same.

I have a body too. Just like every other object in my life, I use it on its terms. When its hungry I feed it. When it is tired I sleep it. I think this body makes me special somehow, unique. But I clearly don’t control it, because whether I like it or not, just like every other BODY of every other person in that crypt, it will die and decay. I will be just another name on some wall somewhere.

I started thinking about my wedding dress. Like every other dress, it is made of spun threads. It had an origin: a bolt of fabric somewhere. But for some reason (i.e. my memory and imagination) my mind persuaded me to believe that the form the dress temporarily took — the particular color and shape — made it special, made it more than just a pile of fabric. And when I put it on, the dress made me feel special, it transferred its specialness to me.  I thought the dress reflected my beauty, my uniqueness, my edginess (it was red). I thought I could stand-up in front of everyone wearing it and prove what a catch-I was. How desirable I was, how lucky Eric was to score me as a wife…

I am finally starting to understand that rupa is the props that I use to sell myself the lie of my own specialness. It is the decoration that makes me mistake one dress (or one body) as so much better than/ different from the rest, when in fact all dresses are made of the same things, have the same function (clothing) and will all be torn or destroyed or rot in some other way.  On retreat I had started thinking about the dolls I used to play with as a kid. I would dress them-up in special doll clothes and then tell a story. Imagine a life for them. The clothes, the accessories, the car or the horse were a central part of the story I told. I never just played with naked dolls, there was no story there.  The story may be in my mind, but there is no way to play it out, to make it feel compelling and true, without the props.

But just like Rupa can sell me the lie, I can also look to it to learn the truth too. After all, it is no secret that sooner or latter my day in the crypt will come. No dress, no body, no hope, or prayer, or power in this universe can prevent my joining the ranks of all the other folks who are now just name plaques on a wall. How special will I be then and how special am I now if I share the same fate as everyone else?

The Story

My husband’s boss up and quits — it wasn’t exactly unexpected, she had been unhappy for a while.  But what was unexpected was that my husband wasn’t immediately promoted to her position; he was the most qualified, had been groomed to be her successor, it was, we thought, ‘in the bag’. Only, it wasn’t ‘in the bag’, and now my husband and I started to stress about his career and what came next.  Not getting the big boss job felt like a career set-back, plus someone new was likely to come-in and fire/demote all the senior staff so they could bring in their own people. Either way, it wasn’t looking good for my husband. This was bad…

Or was it? Dharma practitioner Alana started to contemplate on impermanence. I recalled my jury duty story, a time when I was so happy about an outcome until a little later when that same outcome made me sad — there is impermanence in my desires.

I thought about my last trip to the GYN: all year, I feel fine, so I don’t worry — I have the wrong view that since I was healthy before, since I feel healthy now, it will always be the case. But when I am in the Dr’s office, waiting for my exam, my mind fills with the threats of cancer and disease and troubling test results. But the truth is if the Doc finds something today it was likely there yesterday too, I just didn’t know it yet — there is impermanence in my body, my life, I am just not always aware of it.

Which brings me back to my husband and his job — we thought he would be promoted,  for sure. But whether we are aware or unaware of the uncertainty –aka impermanence — of his job, it was always there. We were upset simply because we were seeing what was always there for the first time.  The thing is, this uncertainty that surprised us when my husband didn’t get promoted can just as easily surprise us again and a different, possibly better way down the road. Or, the situation can stay the same, but our desires can change and we can be happy with this non-promoted outcome that seems so devastating right now. Likeliest of all really is that the two-sided nature of reality shows its face and we get an outcome that we see as good in some ways and bad in others.