Alana's Dharma Blog

This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Interruption Part 15’.

In this blog, I will begin just after the last blog left off and end with a much more recent contemplation, from 6 months later, when I circled back to the topic of meaning in rupa and found a new depth and clarity.

If you recall, in the last blog I came to realize a big mistake: All this time, I looked at arrangements of 4es and knew they reflected something, so I just assumed that something was meaning. But it’s not meaning at all, it’s just a collection of reasons reflected in results.

But how did I get to such a mistaken view in the first place? It is that I see some of reasons, reflected through rupa, and my nama monsters kick-in. When I see a form that seems familiar, pattern recognition (memory) “informs” me of what is likely to come next. I hit a button; I get an Amazon box. I hit a button; I get an Amazon box. I hit a button; I get an Amazon box. Imagination now has all the ammo it needs to run wild: Rupa of button = guaranteed future box. And since, in general (when I close one eye and selectively ignore evidence to the contrary), the items I buy from Amazon make my life more convenient, I begin to believe Amazon box means convenience.

For some amount of time this ‘pattern recognition” can be close enough to predictive that it not only imparts ‘meaning’ in those buttons and boxes, it feeds my ego too. It reinforces the 3s(memory) and 4s (imagination), makes them believe they are omniscient. I hit the button I get the box. Because I don’t see all the interworking between button and box, suddenly I think I am the cause, or at least a partial cause, or at least that I know what the world will bring – a box.

My mind has become so convinced of my Amazon Narrative that even when I hit the button and don’t get a box, I can convince myself these instances are anomalies. I never stop to gather all those never received boxes up as evidence of my flawed vision of the relationship between button and box or my incomplete understanding of the Amazon supply chain. I have rigorously trained myself to ignore each and every glitch in the matrix.

Now the world is faced with a global pandemic. A shift, a new world order that is, in just a few short weeks, so radically different in so many ways. Suddenly, I find that more and more of those Amazon packages are coming late, or not coming at all. Now, in every part of my life, the patterns I was that I was confident in, have shattered, so much is unrecognizable and unpredictable.

Back at the retreat, Mae Neecha offered a re-framing, of a wrong view —  she called it a case of “incomplete information.” This pandemic has made me see that all my expectations, all the meaning I read into rupa, the outcomes I expect, are based on incomplete information. They are based on the past. The past however is over, the future will always be something different than the past, this is the law of impermanence. The world has not been fooling me. Rupa has not been fooling me. I have been fooling myself.

This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Interruption Part 14’.

As a recap: My contemplations had landed me in another ‘stuck spot.’ Namely, I had come to recognize that every arrangement of rupa contains only 4 elements. But, somehow, I still believed that there was a deeper meaning — loved/just/fair/safe/etc. — reflected by rupa. Moreover, it seemed like rupa could portends the future, if only I could ‘interpret’ it correctly…

Of course, logic dictated I must be mistaken. Its not like meaning is a 5^th element after all. But to make my heart see the truth, I had to start dissecting my mistaken beliefs more closely. I had to consider why I was fooling myself and how I was continually ‘finding’ meaning and guarantees in rupa that simply couldn’t exist.

For months, I collected evidence (some of which was shared in the last blog), I kept turning the question over in my head, trying to find an angle of attack. But, in truth, it was slow going.

I was looking at a painting one day and started analyzing the marks. In painting, every time a brush hits a canvas it is called a ‘mark’; it is a term used to describe different lines, patterns, textures, etc. that are made manifest by the artist.

It dawned on me that each mark has its reasons (aka causes) for occurring. There are rupa based reasons –the 4es of the paint, the canvas, the hand of the painter, the training to become an artist. There are reasons in nama: The desire that made the artist want to paint this picture, the things their imagination conjured up to paint. There are reasons behind these reasons, how the artist was born a human, how and why they trained as an artist, their memories and beliefs about art. While there is no possible way for me to see/understand each and every reason that resulted in a mark, those reasons are all there, reflected in each brush stroke as well as the painting as a whole.

My mistake: All this time, I looked at arrangements of 4es and knew they reflected something, so I just assumed that something was meaning. But it’s not meaning at all, it’s just a collection of reasons reflected in results.   

But wait there is more: When I dissect any arrangement of rupa down further, it becomes clear that each reason just backs up into further reasons. Let’s take a very simplified look at the purchase of my favorite green purse as an example: When my favorite green purse wore out, I went on a scavenger hunt in order to replace it. Why? Because I thought it meant that I was special to my husband. Why? Because one time he made a sweet comment about recognizing me from miles away if I was wearing the purse. Why? Because the purse was bright green and easy to see. Why? Because bright green was the color of choice the season I bought it. Why? Ask the fashion industry. Why did I buy a purse that season? I had started going to the gym over lunch and needed a big bag to carry my shoes. Why? I used to go to the gym in the morning before work, but I had started doing yoga in that time slot. Why…

I could go backwards forever and ever and all I would find is an infinite current of reasons. A current is always moving, it is my mind that ‘freeze frames’ a form at a particular moment in time and begins reading the bits of its history that I can see into a meaning and a future. Stay tuned, next time we will peak at the little gears in my brain to see how this all happens.

In the wake of my cake baking contemplation and seeing the extreme limits on my control/tendency to use rupa arrangements to define who I am, I had gone to get my nails done. About a week later, looking down at them, I caught myself feeling surprised that the polish had started chipping so soon. At lightning speed, I caught myself thinking, “I have been being so careful with them.” Then it hit me– it’s not about me. My actions are a single, small factor, in nail polish staying. It is chipping because that is what happens to polish left alone for a while.

My mind went immediately to Dharma Meltdown 2.0,  when I panicked that I got my light colored  pants dirty, that I could never keep white clean, that it was a sign I was a bad Buddhist. For the first time I clearly saw it — dirt on white is not an indictment of me, it isn’t about me, my ego is lying. White gets dirty, that is a natural, expected state of white cloth over a long enough life cycle. At most, I am a factor in temporarily keeping white clean. I am reading meaning into Rupa that simply isn’t there.  There is no innate meaning that lives inside of 4es that is just waiting to be penetrated by me, Alana the Great Rupa Whisperer.

I started collecting evidence to prove that I am the one who reads meaning into rupa. Because if the meaning of an arrangement doesn’t live in the arrangement itself, can the arrangement create meaning (i.e. identity) in the arranger?

1) The meaning I assign to things keeps changing thanks to new information or new beliefs. So my ex-boyfriend’s emails used to mean I was special, loved, that someone so smart must see that same intelligence in me. Now when he emails I feel little, he is my ex after all. My NY home was supposed to prove I had a nest from which to build my NY fabulousness, but then I decided I didn’t want to be NY anything and that same home became a burden I struggled to sell. My car used to make me feel so on top and clever and then, when I went to sell it, at a huge loss it made me feel foolish and duped (here is the car story).

2) I don’t even consistently apply meaning to like objects. I was thinking about a fancy car I rented for some vacay. I remember someone complemented me on it as we pulled out of the gas station. Out loud, I said “thanks,” but in my head I was thinking I don’t own this car, it is a rental, it’s nothing for me to be proud of…and yet, when someone complemented my Porsche, my heart swelled with pride. But wasn’t the Porsche on loan too? Something I used for a time and then parted ways with. Simply the act of believing something is mine changed my meaning of it. The reality however is the only difference between that rental can and ‘my Porsche’ was the duration of use. That, and my imagination.

3) Even if there is some characteristic ‘proven’ in an arrangement of Rupa I help create, it doesn’t adhere to me, it is literally over once the arrangement ends. That mandolin player played a concert virtousically, he created a sound that the people in the room found beautiful. But then as soon as it was done, it was done. He likely took it home – that ego puff – took it to mean something about him later, but how could some past arrangement say something about present him? It literally exists nowhere but memory, so how could meaning in the rupa carry forward?

4) There are times that ostensible meaning of rupa remains, even when the person it is supposed to point to, to define, is already gone. I had recently gone to a museum that has an extensive collection of Sol LeWit wall paintings and something struck me hard – a number of the paintings were dated after he had died. I wandered around till I found a plaque that explained, LeWit left intricate instructions for his paintings, but by design they were meant to be able to be replicated on walls by other artists on his team. He insisted the date written on paintings was not the day they were created by him, but rather the day they went up on the wall. The result is that  the date of his creation, the object that proves his skill and artistry, was posthumous. It is not like the painting happened and then he died, rather he died and then the painting happened, so how could the painting create an identity in him? The only answer possible is that it can’t, it never does.

When I started thinking about my husband, Eric, I started to see the mechanics inside the clock – the way that my own aggregates clobber onto form, assign it meaning, and then reflect that meaning back onto myself.

I take Eric’s sammuti (supposed form) and give it a meaning: special, discerning, generous, good, handsome, mine and then I use the object and the meaning I create to build and define me. Wife, beloved of someone so great, worthy of treatment so kind. This is the way my mind uses rupa; gives it meaning and then reflects the meaning back to reference me, to build me.

The other night I was watching a show and the Golden Gate Bridge flashed on the screen — immediately I thought “mine” and ‘home” and I wanted to be there. As I reflected on my feeling, I realized this moment sort of summed-up a place I have been stuck: I know a bridge is just rupa, there is nothing in it except for 4es, and yet it seems to say more. It seems to have meaning, where meaning is an abstract ideal like loved, or just, or home and/or to offer  some guaranteed future outcome — like crossing the Golden Gate, in my fancy car, with the top down, holding Eric’s hand, laughing at some joke, as we embark on happily ever after adventure.

Stay tuned…in the next blog we will look at how I started to un-stick this very stuck point.

After all of my contemplations I was beginning to see that there was nothing innately special in my objects or my body. Just varying, shifting arrangements of 4 elements. I knew I was not my arrangements, and yet, I couldn’t shake the belief that those arrangements, and my ability to bring them about, must prove something about ME. Alana the great arranger!  I knew I had a huge wrong view remaining – that because I am a partial cause for an outcome, that outcome must prove my identity. What follows is a synopsis of some of the discrete contemplations I used to attack this view.

Beaver dam:

I was out hiking and came across a beaver damn. The dams are quite common out here in Connecticut and after seeing the zillionth one, I was hardly impressed. But…shouldn’t I be? I mean here was Beaver the Great Arranger of Dams: the little animal worked hard to cause its dam, this one indeed did look a little bigger and more symmetrical than the rest I had run into. But, in my mind a dam is just what beavers do, there is nothing special – no identity that I assign a beaver – because of its dam.

So, why do I look at things I build/cause, the particular arrangements of my wardrobe, my home, my body, and feel they make me special? Isn’t all this shit just stuff humans do? That’s when it hit me – I am the one assigning value – identity bestowing meaning — to some results/arrangements while ignoring others. A beaver dam is just what beavers do, but my elaborate wardrobe makes me a fashionista. My greatness only exists (in my own mind) because I am self-selecting the qualities with which to build my identity.

What’s more is I have a tendency to get caught-up in details, to use small differences to further sell myself the identity lie. So humans have all figured out how to use bags/baskets/trays to carry stuff, but my LV bag versus your Gap bag is what makes me so special. But the thing is, some beavers have access to better wood, better location, they have more strength or less human encroachment and can build a better dam. So? That is normal. As is the fact that that very same beaver can lose their dam, a forest fire or a building project can make wood scarce, etc. That some humans, some times, can have LV bags and others can’t, that is normal too. Normal and subject to change. So how am I using it to prove something special, something meaningful, something ME, about me?

My friend the baker:

A friend of mine went to culinary school and I always think of him as ‘the baker’. Even when he hasn’t cooked for me in a while, even after he got a job doing something totally unrelated, he remained “a baker” in my mind. But how does an action, done at distinct points in time bestow an identity?

I suppose I could justify a fixed ‘baker identity’ if a  cake he made, even once, stayed steady-state forever… but, without fail, each and every baked item gets consumed, or goes stale, or ends up in the compost bin. I started thinking hard about why that is, why no cake ever just keeps its perfect, post oven, glory and I realized it is in the nature of the 4 elements itself.

Left uninterrupted things that are hot, like cakes out of the oven, tend to cool. Wet/moist things tend to dry. Solid things tend to disintegrate. Movement comes to a halt. In time, all arrangements tend to go back to the states indigenous to their elements. So how can the identity of the arranger stay the same when the arrangements themselves keep shifting, decaying, following the rules of rupa rather than the rules of the arranger. What baker wouldn’t bake the ever-perfect cake if they could?

A trip to the eye doctor:

I was on my way to the eye doctor the other day and got to thinking about the suffering in my day so far. I realized that since I had awoken, I had been at low level stress trying to get to the appt on time. I felt rushed, worried. I realized the suffering wasn’t just my desire to make the appointment, it was arising because of my belief that being on time to the appointment proves what kind of person I am: If I am on time, it proves I am a considerate person, someone good, someone who cares about the life and time of others. I want desperately to be that kind of a person and I can’t face an identity as an inconsiderate bad person, as a late patient, that would disprove who I believe I AM.

The problem is, I use Rupa world shit, stuff I seriously don’t ultimately control, to prove this great considerate identity. I am bound to ultimately fail sooner or later. Trains are late all the time, alarms don’t go off, emergencies happen. In truth I am regularly late, even when I take preparations and precautions, to be on time. When I am late I suffer a terrible pain, a hit to my identity.

But even when I manage to be on time I suffer too. I suffer stress, like I did getting to the appointment. I suffer the preparation time and worry. But when I am on time, I excuse it, gloss over the stress because I think it is worth it, I get to be the me I want to be!

But this is like winning small battles, at high cost, in a war I can never ever win.

Why can’t I win? Because I am trying to derive identity based-off of things that I can only arrange when all the stars align, partially to my liking but always with consequences I don’t like, some of the time, temporarily.

Another day, another cake:

All of this brought me back to the original problem:  Even though I know I am not my arrangements, I couldn’t shake the belief that those arrangements, and my ability to bring them about, proves  something about me. I.e. since I can cause a cake to be baked that cake defines Alana the Baker (baker pronounced ‘Alana the organizer and controller of all Rupa in the universe’).

But after considering beaver dams, my friend the real-life baker and a trip to the eye doc, I realized I can arrange a cake, if:

1. The circumstances and Rupa allow it. I.e. Eric didn’t use the last egg, the weevils didn’t eat the flour, the landlord fixed the oven, etc. In reality this isn’t some fine print asterisk of “conditions may apply”. In everyday life there are countless ways and circumstances that don’t allow for cake baking.

 

2. Some of the time, ie even if the circumstances allow me to bake a cake it still may go flat or turn out crappy

 

3. Partially, there are always 2 sides so even if I get a cake that I want, I get a huge stack of dishes I hate

 

4. Temporarily ie I can bake once, but not necessarily a second time

 

5. Plus once that cake comes about it is not subject to my rules but the rules of Rupa, so rot, decay, consumed, etc.

 

When I put it that way…it doesn’t exactly have the same ‘Alana, high and mighty, ruler of the universe ring to it.’ So much for Alana the Great Arranger.