Alana's Dharma Blog

I was at the hot springs and there was this woman there who was so obese. I tried to internalize what it would be like to be so fat, but my heart refused to accept it. The contemplation was shallow, going through the motions, but feeling nothing. I realized the reason why: I don’t believe I can ever be that fat — I am different, I work-out and mind my diet, that won’t happen to me. But the truth is, compared to a few years ago, I am super out of shape. Weakness and pudge that was unfathomable to me just a few years back was my ‘today body’. Sure there was some laziness, depression from the move, but there was also aging — its not nearly as easy to stay fit and thin as it used to be. So how can I say I am so special, so sure that I am protected for obesity ever happening to me?

 I am always putting distance between myself and the things I don’t want to have happen. Fatness, illness, poverty, death, loss, failure — these things are not me/mine. As soon as I see tragedy or suffering my mind leaps into action, creating a ‘shield of special’, to justify why bad things that are so obviously plaguing others, simply can’t/won’t happen to me. Clearly, it is a trick of my mind, to believe that I have the power to ultimately decide what I can and can’t/ will and won’t suffer.  I base it off my past experiences. I  base it off of what I think I ‘deserve’. I base it off some collection of characteristics/belongings that I think are uniquely mine and will uniquely protect me. All I need to do is snap on my ‘shield of special’ and I’m safe, able to avoid all the stuff other people around me suffer, unless…maybe…just possibly…I can’t.

A few years ago, a friend fell to financial ruin. She had a good job and her employer loved her, but she got bored and decide to quit. Several jobs later, her house was forclosed on and she had to declare bankruptcy. I  supported her as best I could, but in my mind I always thought, “I would never do something so foolish, I would never just throw away a job and a life that was working fine just because I wanted to try something new.” Fast forward and now I am in NY, miserable. I had a great life in SF, but I was feeling restless, I thought I could have more, so I threw it all away only to find myself in emotional ruin. How am I better than my friend?

My dad was my hero. In my eyes, no one was more warm, kind, loving and special, if anyone deserved immortality, it was Dad. But, despite how special my dad was to me, he died. Despite his money, his loving wife and kids, his success, his intelligence, his frequent workouts and careful diet, his top doctors and his sense of humor, he died. All my life I have tried to be like my dad: Even as a kid, I ate the foods he ate, enjoyed the music he listened to. I have tried to have his success, his humor, his intelligence and adoration. Even if I had all those things, can I escape his fate –death? And not just death, disease, suffering, and the loss of a life he loved?

Back when I went on safari in Kenya, I was a vegetarian. I truly believed that my karma with animals was good, that I did them no harm and that they would do me no harm in return. I believed I was special, I was safe. But then I was run down by a rhino that easily could have killed me. Just because I thought I was special and safe it didn’t make me protected.  In truth I think all sorts of things make me exceptional and  ‘justify’ my safety: Goodness, effortfullness, Eric, beauty, money, fitness, planning and preparation. But I have seen countless examples of people, endowed with all these very characteristics, who fall victim to suffering:

• There was the actor in Sparticus, he was so fit and talented, he was just beginning to achieve success in his career after so much hard work. Rare cancer diagnosis at 40, dead within a year.
• There was Eric’s co-worker who planned carefully and retired in Carmel, she and her husband were close and adoring, like Eric and I. 6 months after retiring her husband died suddenly of a heart attack.
• Eric had a friend who he always did right by, he was generous and adoring with him, patient and loving. One day, the friend decided to stop being Eric’s friend even though Eric had done his best to be a good friend and person with him. Eric was heartbroken by the loss.
• Money was supposed to make life in New York easy and enjoyable. I am miserable and the reason we can’t leave is money — fear that Eric will ruin his resume, and won’t get another good paying job, if he leaves after just a few months.
• LP Thoon died after a struggle with cancer — who would I presume is a more ‘good’ or ‘worthy’ person?

These are the stories that stab my heart a bit. They have each stayed with me for years, by virtue of their details hitting a little too close to home. Now I know why —  they are an indictment of my shield of specialness, real live proof that such a shield won’t really work to protect me at all. I guess imaginary shields don’t do much to protect in the real world.

A final thought came to me that day at the hot springs — what if I didn’t have to be so damn special? What if all my struggle to acquire objects and traits that make me so unique, in my mind alone, was to come to an end? Why am I willing to trade fake protection for real burden?

One of the key themes the exercises on uncovering hidden benefits and beliefs kept coming back to was that I continually quest for/seek to build a ‘bubble world*‘ — the kind of place where everyone lives in harmony, according to the rules and standards I think are ideal. In my bubble world, people are respectful and considerate, they are laid-back and peaceful, they are community-oriented and friendly. After living in Cali, fairly happy, for so long, my bubble world had come to look a lot like chill-Cali  and decisively not New York.

The problem, which my new NY home proved by its mere existence, is that my bubble world is a fantasy that the real world simply doesn’t abide by. Which brings me to a pretty shocking self discovery that arose directly from the hidden benefits and beliefs exercises– I continue to strive for, to be reborn for, something that is impossible to achieve. Below I am going to share a raw, unedited, page from my notebook in which I grappled with this newfound, and pretty shocking, realization.

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I get reborn for something impossible. How fucked-up is that? WHY CAN’T I STOP? Because I don’t really believe it is impossible; or because what little I have, what few moments I can spend in my bubble world are worth it;  or because I have already invested so much, I just can’t quit.  I used to think I had earned the comfort that I had back in San Fran, so I should just get to enjoy it, I could worry about practice and enlightenment later (hidden wrong view that enlightenment will be uncomfortable).  But now that I am in NY and I don’t have comfort, all I can think about is how to get it back. I am engrossed in worldly schemes, still not worried about practice or enlightenment.

Because I had comfort and happiness for a while, I know it is possible. Now I need to preserve what comfort I have and get back what I lost. This is why Mae Yo has taught to pretend to be others, to feel and experience all the options of this world — to know discomfort is possible just as I know comfort is possible from my time in SF. All the possible good stuff motivates my hope, my worldly schemes, my bubble world quests. But what about the possible bad stuff– shouldn’t it be motivating my practice, my plan to escape (rebirths)? Instead I just look away from the bad stuff, I try to avoid it.

I look away from disease, from homelessness, from broken families and ugliness of all sorts. In my head, I make those things ‘not me’, ‘not mine’. I come-up with reasons in my head that those will never be me or mine, why I am special. In my bubble world I am always healthy, fit, rich and loved. But I already have evidence from my move to NY that I can slip out of my own bubble world so easily. ONE MOVE and I feel like SF Alana is slipping away, yielding to cold and bitchy, unlovable,  NY Alana. I fight back, I flail, I seek to retain myself and my identity. But I have already lost control, I have already exited the bubble. So why do I create/strive for  something that is so impossible to attain  that even I can’t do it perpetually? Even I can’t live up to my own bubble world standards and rules.

It is time to practice the truth, to internalize what makes me so uncomfortable — I am not special, I am subject to impermanence, there is no special bubble world where I can live exempt from the rules of the world. There is only so long I can keep moving my bench into shady spots. In the end, I am subject to loss, death, to discomfort and to existence in a world that doesn’t meet my ‘just so’ standards.

 

 

* I want to note that this concept of my wanting to create and live-in a bubble world, was an idea that got fleshed-out more thoroughly at the retreat with a friend who was generous enough to share her own reflections and conversations with LP Nut about the tendency to try and create harmony  –‘a bubble world’ — in her workplace. She was a massive help to me in recognizing my own similar tendencies, to try and create and environment and surround myself with things and people I felt were considerate and ideal. I have borrowed the term and concept of bubble world from her, but don’t feel comfortable sharing more about her story or situation on my blog.  I am however immensely grateful for the conversations we had which brought so much clarity to my own deep and mistaken beliefs.

Dear Reader, today’s blog is a direct continuation of last week’s, LP Nut’s Alana-fied Technique to Uncover Hidden Benefits and Beliefs Part 1, so please do read that one before continuing on here.

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In the last blog, we began an exploration of an Alana-fied version of a technique LP Nut taught at the 2017 retreat to uncover hidden benefits and beliefs. The premise behind the technique is a simple one — if we do stuff that we know hurts us, there must be a reason why we do it since no one likes being in pain. By bringing the ‘why’  — i.e. hidden benefits and beliefs — to light we can begin challenging their logic and alignment with correct view.

In last week’s example we used a series of ‘what-if’ questions to uncover some of the hidden beliefs that under gird my extreme anger at people who honk their horns. Here we will continue the exercise by taking a slightly broader concept — the benefit to my view that people should be considerate (not honking is just one form of consideration) — and digging into the pros and cons of holding that standard/view.

Exploring the Pros and Cons of  my Belief: Everyone Should be Considerate/Follow Social Standards* 

Pro 1: If people follow rules/standards then I feel the world is predictable and I am in control

Challenge 1: Am I really in control? I have a standard that people shouldn’t honk and the streets of NY are blaring anyway. Does my rule actually allow me  to be or prove my control? 

Con 1: I am miserable when people honk. I am angry and disappointed whenever I think rules/standards have been broken.

Pro 2: I can follow rules/standards and by doing so I can prove that I am a good person and that people will love and accept me for it

Challenge 2: What about all the times I can’t even follow my own rules? Eric is supposed to clean-up after himself, but don’t I sometimes leave dishes in the sink? And do people love me for upholding these standards? My stepmom used to complain all the time of how difficult I was as a vegetarian, she certainly didn’t love me more for the standards I upheld.

Con 2: This gives me a false sense of superiority and safety. 

Pro 3: I can define my vision for a ‘bubble world’ — my ideal setting that is harmonious and rule abiding. 

Challenge 3: My bubble world is a a fiction that does not exist in reality. In reality, people break rules and undermine my standards all the time. 

Con 3: I feel enraged when my imaginary bubble world is threatened, in New York I have fantasies of punching, or shooting or killing the honkers. In this life, the harm to others is in my head. But can’t I envision the risks of clinging to the idea of ‘bubble world’  in another life/circumstance?  It is possible I would kill for it or go to war for it? Then I would reap the karmic consequences on such actions, all because I am a person who holds so firmly to a belief the world should be according to my standards.

Pro 4: These standards, when they are followed, nurture my hope that with time or effort I can ultimately  find a perfect world that is worth living in.

Con 4: Over and over I am reborn because of the false hope that my perfect bubble world exists. Each time my standards are met, I save that example in my memory of prof that birth, this world is worth it. That I will ultimately be able to game the system and have a rule abiding/ standard following universe where I can abide in comfort. And until that time, because my standards are so rigid and high, my conditions so numerous, that I rarely find a place that I am comfortable being in.

* Something I really love about this technique is its round-about way of getting to hidden wrong views. Typically, I would ‘challenge’ the permanence of a view like’everyone should follow my standards’ upfront. But instead of doing that, the hidden benefit approach lets such wrong views stand for a little while so that we can get at the deeper wrong views that underlie this one and start exposing those to scrutiny.