Alana's Dharma Blog

I had a dream/vision –one of those almost asleep , but still awake and thinking states that can be a real boon to practice. In it I saw a huge tower of stuff –my stuff– piled high, like bricks, but precariously balanced. I felt like it might topple at anytime. There were physical items like clothes, cars, pictures, people, jewelry, money, my body. There were also items that represented more abstract stuff, my college diploma that stood in for my knowledge and skills, office items that stood in for my career experience, all sorts of workout equipment for my physical training  and prowess. Each layer was set upon the one below it, dependent on what was below for stability. The tower was wobbly though, and I found myself running around trying to patch holes and make repairs; I felt panic knowing that it was so fragile, tired out by the unending need to  patch and fix.

When I got myself back to being fully awake, I thought about the tower more. I realized my whole life is like this –continually building and acquiring, in order to support this body, to have enjoyment, to become the alana I want to be. But if any object, if any layer of my past accomplishments fail, the whole structure I have built is at risk.  It is so stressful to worry about the inevitable collapse. It is so exhausting to tend and to build. And as soon as my body dies, the tower will crumble to the ground in an instant, no matter what height it had soared to before.

Once this body is gone, all I worked so hard for, the objects, the degrees, the professional skills, the relationships I have nurtured, the fitness and beauty, it is just gone. My accomplishments are useless in my next endeavor, I am unrecognizable to friends, my savings are left behind. When this body dies Alana is game over and I need to start the tedious, exhausting process of building it all from scratch over again.  This is the problem with relying on rupa –rupa is unreliable.

I saw from this dream how burdensome it really is to build the life I do, how stressful and, brief, the fruits I enjoy from my labors really are. It was a little spur, a motivation to keep pushing on my practice so I don’t have to persist in building precarious towers to nowhere only to watch them collapse over and over again.

I was reading a comic book version of the story of Ananda. In it, he and a number or his noble friends decided to depart from their worldly lives and go ordain as monks to follow the Buddha. Heading out into the forest to find the Buddha they stop along the way and decide to disrobe of all their finery. In the story it says that since they are going to become monks, they don’t need these things any more.  That moment, the giving up of what is not needed any more –without any pain, or anguish, or fuss — really struck me. It got me to start thinking about what it means when I think I still need something versus don’t need it any more.

Again, I thought of that Corvet I rented on my road trip to Florida. I had planned to drive it from Orlando to Miami and when the trip was done I returned it without a fuss. I felt no sorry, no regret, because my trip was done, I didn’t need it anymore. Why didn’t I think I needed it anymore? Because I imagined no further continuation of my journey; my vacation was over, my plane tickets to fly home from Miami already purchased, my mind was already spinning a new story. Just as Ananda and his cohort had already imagined up a new future for themselves in the monkhood.

On the other hand, when I think I still need something –when my mind is still wrapped up with a future I imagine with it, when it is still MINE — there is tremendous suffering when I part ways with it. When I lost my wedding ring, I was inconsolable, after all, I still NEEDED it. I needed it to prove my status, to prove I was someone beloved and cared for, to prove my worth and my specialness. After the ring was lost though, after the thing I NEEDED left me, life went on.  The world kept turning,  I remained beloved to my husband and my marriage kept-on-keeping-on.

I get so obsessed, open myself up to the pain of loss, because I imagine future needs. But in truth, once something is no longer with me, how can I possibly need it anymore? Not having that thing simply means there will be a different future, one in which, by defection, I can’t possibly need the thing I don’t have any more in order for it to occur. What I mourn isn’t an object, it was the future I imagined I would have with it: I mourn the loss of something I never actually had.

Years later, I don’t actually miss my wedding ring at all. Not only has life moved on, but my imagination has too: I built a new imaginary future, using new objects (like a Porsche) to ‘prove’ my specialness and worth.  And while I go about claiming new things, things I NEED to populate my new imagined future, I am laying the groundwork for new pain and despair when those new things inevitably leave me as well.   Maybe it is time to re-think what it is I actually ‘need’.

By the end of 2019, my contemplations around rupa that had begun during the retreat, had grown increasingly more refined. While at times those contemplations seemed stunted or fragmented, I had moments where they really began to gel into a cohesive understanding. Though self and self belonging –grounded in rupa — are a prevalent theme of the time,  I also began to  expand my considerations and explore the role of nama, particularly imagination, in bolstering my wrong views of ownership.

In early December Mae Neecha asked for my help editing the translation of a sermon LP Thoon had given at a retreat in Virginia in 1998. The process naturally provoked a lot of Dhamma contemplation for me and was a catalyst for my beginning to be able top piece some disparate angles into a more comprehensive understanding around the relationship between desire, clinging, my sense of self, and the objects I use to bolster that  idea of self.

I had an exchange with Mae Neecha when I returned my first bunch of edits that really captures and synthesizes many of the themes and ideas I had been contemplating on around this time. In the next few blogs I will share that conversation and some of the other thoughts I had around the time I was helping edit the sermon.

I had actually started on the sermon  edits last week when I was visiting with Eric’s parents in Chicago, and you were right, it was a good nudge to my practice to read these; actually it made me realize I wasn’t quite as stuck as I thought I had been …I have been contemplating a lot lately, trying to tie back to the topics I covered over the summer, it just hasn’t been quite as orderly and tight, so it feels more scattered and less like ‘progress’. I’m starting to think though its just stuff waiting to gel further when the time is right.