Alana's Dharma Blog

AD: So I just finished reading LP Thoon’s sermon Line of Practice for Developments — in it he talks about how being born in a human body is like building a house. When the time is right, when you have sufficient materials, you will be born/ build a house. If you have lots of assets, it’ll be big and fancy. If you have little, it will be modest. The ‘materials’ are your karma in this analogy huh?

I have been thinking along these lines already: View begets desire, and desire begets action. This is the lefthand of all becoming/creating. Circumstances, or karma is the right. They work together. So, if my desire is to eat cake, my mind goes and finds a way to make it. But it is my training as a baker, my work to have money to buy ingredients, access to a functioning kitchen, they are requisites for that cake to happen.

It’s actually pretty easy to see that this is a chain — one thing builds on another — when I think about getting my first job. The education, the interview skills, etc. were requisites. I got these in school. I got into a good school because I studied hard. I studied hard in part bc of my personality, but also my parents’ values and access to good tutors. I got born into a family who valued education and could afford tutors based on my karma for that family. Actions and behaviors, born of views and desires) intentions, in other lives.

The cycle is endless from the karma — righthand. But by incapacitant desire, via changing our views, the left hand can stop and so can the cycle that requires both hands to continue.

Btw, I know that this response is not about the specific mechanics of how karma works and how particular actions lead to particular results. But I am trying to establish a scaffold — the bones–for how the world works, how births happen and everything else I experience in life happens, and I will flesh out from there. I have understood view as a driver for action for a longtime. But the righthand, understanding why particular circumstances allow cake baking in one case and not in another, I did not grasp. Now, when I think in terms of requisites (karma) for making a cake, or driving a car, or a Porsche, or winning a competition, or being rich or pretty, I can see how it can change:

I see how when I was a kid I passed my driving test on the first go. I was so proud. Many friends had failed. But eventually most did meet the requisites and get a license. Over time folks can lose a license: a friend had a drinking and driving conviction, my grandma lost her eyesight, etc.

There is no reason to take pride or ownership of, or define myself by having, the requisites for a license because requisites can change at any time.

I need to attack Special Alana. The sense I am protected by having certain ‘requisites’ that have played out in the past. I am only now seeing their flux. To understand that it can and will change. I mistake these requisites for control. But I am seeing it is not so: after all, in addition to their changeability, is the fact that requisites are generally built on and up in the past. It’s not even like today’s Alana can muster up all I need for today’s goals from scratch. I rely on older Alanas, blinded  (like today’s) with views that are wrong — dangerous — how do I believe some guaranteed cookie filled future?

MN: Yeah, what we see now is a karmic result from a cause cultivated long ago. Beautiful, healthy, rich, talented, smart – all of these are the result of karma and are subject to change. When we think they are permanent, we act heedlessly.

By the way, your phobias and fears are priceless dhamma material. Many arahant masters had to venture into the forest to practice dhutanga in order to bring out their greatest fears, and here you are in the city, encountering your fears… or in Africa meeting a ferocious rhino.

MN: from Buddho: “While making the consideration of being non-self (anattā), you have to fully understand the condition and nature of self (attā). The aggregate physical form results in there being a corporeal self. The foundation of that aggregate form consists of basic elements. There are four basic elements: earth, water, air, and fire. You need to understand and realize that all objects consist of the four basic elements which are necessary to sustain life. You decompose all body parts and all objects into pieces in your imagination and contemplate them as they really are. You contemplate them until you know and have a clear view, using your wisdom, that there is neither self nor entity in the four basic elements. Everything is just all about supposed self. You contemplate them to eliminate attachment from your mind. All of the internal and external body parts such as hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendon, bones, endogenous bone membrane, the spleen, the heart, liver, lungs, colon, intestine, fresh food, and digested food should be contemplated as the basic element earth. Even all of your possessions and treasures, you need to contemplate as the basic element earth. All of the above mentioned are just used to sustain your life. Every square inch on Earth is where you can contemplate with wisdom. Everything on Earth you can contemplate in Dhamma and the Truth, applying the contemplative technique (upāya). For instance, if you see aging people, ill patients, or dead bodies, you contemplate them in regard to the law of nature and the Truth, that all senility, ailments, and death apply to all animals. Then you bring them inwards (opanayiko), compare the consistency of their bodies, which are composed of the four basic elements, with your body which is also composed of the same four basic elements. You contemplate their bodies and your body in the same conceptual Dhamma and the Truth. You discern humanity and all animals and how they deteriorate gradually as a result of births, and how they become ill, senile, and eventually dead. Their bodies which are composed of the four basic elements change and decline. The reality is that bodies constantly generate rotten waste, loathsome filthiness, and putrid smell. Eventually bodies become dysfunctional and lie still, and they become putrefied according to the law of nature. After you discern the above reality, you bring them inwards. You consider that your body is the same as others which are composed of the four basic elements. Your body will also become old and deteriorate as others do. You can even observe some changing foliage, for these change from phase to phase gradually. You can see clearly the changing composition of the four basic elements. When you bring that contemplative matter inwards, as the foliage is, so are our bodies.

Vicikicchā is the defilement of skepticism and perplexity in the Lord Buddha, Dhamma, and the Noble Monks (ariyasaṅgha); skeptical doubt of the Path, Fruition, and Nibbāna; doubt of hell and heaven; and doubt of the corresponding result of good deed and bad deed. Those who have attained Dhamma enlightenment, becoming Noble Ones, do not have any skepticism, because these are truths according to the Lord Buddha’s statement. The important thing is studying the correct way to practice Dhamma which directs one toward the Path, Fruition, and Nibbāna. This defilement causes perplexity and doubt that one has inadequate fulfillment, merit, virtues, and insufficient coherent ability (paññā vāsanā pāramī) to attain the Path, Fruition, and Nibbāna in the present life. It is advisable that you eliminate those wrong notions from your mind. You should derive self-comprehension that you have tendencies of perfection (pāramī) to practice to attain the Path, Fruition, and Nibbāna in the present life. If you think that your merit and virtue is not ample fulfillment, you need to increase your diligent effort and perseverance in practicing Dhamma. It is like when you know that there is little water in your earthen jar, you should be diligent to fetch buckets of water to fill up the jar. It is the same as deriving perfect fulfillment, keep working constantly on practicing with diligent effort and eventually the fulfillment shall become perfect.”

MN: **the undeserving part sounds familiar, eh?

MN: From Buddho “The important thing to remember is to direct your mind to disavow that the four elements and all possessions are self, and conclude that they do not belong to yourself. They are merely things which sustain lives temporarily and eventually we will part for good. No one could embrace the four elements and possessions, which belong to the world, and take them when departing from the world. Do not attach and pile up possessions into your heart. Do not let your possessions attach to your heart and make you suffer. It does not matter how many possessions you have, make up your mind to admit that all possessions are merely common utensils in families. You constantly edify your mind to disavow that possessions really belong to yourself. Thus the mind shall have no perplexity and doubt as to their true character.”

AD: There is no question my fears/phobias are Dhamma gold jackpot. Not just because they give me a ton of fodder for contemplating, though they do. But because the pain of living in constant fear was what motivated me to practice in the first place, and the success I had in taming some of those fears and balancing my view is what gave me the confidence and desire to keep going. The same tools I used to understand that there is no necessary relationship between what I fear and what occurs get recycled over and over for every issue.

Plus, ironically, the same traits that made me a ‘good phobic’ — super sensitive, constantly alert to my environment, a keen eye towards ‘evidence’ that I am in danger/safe and a propensity to plan ahead and problem solve to stay ‘safe’ — turned out to be an A+ set of skills when I put my Dhamma hat on and turn my attention to practice. To being deeply attentive to the world around me and gathering evidence and putting it all together, just to see the truth rather than what I fear.

AD: I appreciate the excerpt from Buddho, it is such a clear explanation of how to see and use 4e/ Rupa to educate myself and disillusion myself with form and belongings and the physical trappings of self. That is definitely the program I am steadfastly on. Using shifting 4es, or impermanence in form, or the idea of items becoming depleted or consumed and turning this inward to me and mine. Or to considering the inevitably of death, aging and illness. To dispelling any illusion of my exemption and to seeing the extreme suffering of those + birth. To talking myself out of belief I control my body/ stuff, to understand that I can’t pick and claim a single, desirable state of Rupa and then ‘disown’ the aging, sagging, sick and smelly states. To convince myself those are not exceptions and that this body for not represent me, how can it when it cycles through states I want to associate myself with and those I do not? And the burdensomeness of using Rupa and the added suffering that I pile onto the normal everyday burdensomeness by claiming and trying to force the things I claim to be exceptional, to follow my rules, to take and remain in 4e arrangements I want. The extreme sorrow and disappointment when I inevitably fail.

And that I’m not special. That these physical things in various shifting forms have no capacity to make me special. It’s snowflakes all around. I alone cause my solution, sell myself a story — plugging in small details of difference to build an identity of special. Reading meaning, based on my own 3s and 4s, into Rupa and then tricking myself with it. Believing it is there. Prancing around — like the emperor that has no clothes — claiming Rupa, with it’s self-injected pretend meanings and further pretending it makes me a ME. Seeing the mechanics and providing to myself that the lies I tell me are lies. That basically is my program right now. Over and over, I actually am pretty damn confident I can crack this.

To be fair, I am generally pretty good at staying on that program, but I do sometimes hit obstacles I need to ramp down. Karma as a topic was such an obstacle. For a few reasons I now see: 1) I kept thinking it was about me, proof of my unworthiness, and it was getting in the way of my staying the course with confidence I could prevail. But I think I delt with this, enough anyway for right now, to forge on. 2) because I felt the tit for tat and some of the details of karma were too unbelievable. It niggled at my ‘faith’ in the path, but with my own story about helping my friend to pay back my debt to you, I realized it wasn’t so crazy after all and 3) to see the right hand. To see how karma creates circumstances in which our view– to desires– to action– play out and the measure to which they succeed or fail. I needed that, to get a more comprehensive picture and to see a place I hide my specialness ( in the way circumstances play) and to understand it’s not special at all — just like a particular arrangement of Rupa, it is an arrangement, circumstances shift, come together and desegregate when the time is ripe. I can’t hide a ‘special’ or ‘exceptional’ in there any better than I can in an apple or an apartment or a body…

Anyway, thank you!! I am forging ahead. Will keep you in the loop of course. Just one foot in front of the other for right now I think. Self and self belonging alla Rupa.

MN: I like this! And yeah, there seems to be an issue with how you define “bad” and “good”. Do you use the same standards to judge others as well? Or is it more about beating up Alana?

AD: I am judgmental as hell on if people are being good/bad (by the ole’ alana standard) although my practice has minimized this greatly (mostly by my finding evidence I am no better than those I judge, I have double standards. This helps my casting the stones outward, but obviously not inward). But there is no one I am less forgiving of than myself. That is why Eric essentially asked if I would be so harsh thinking about my dhamma friends.

When I look at every major meltdown story, this is Alana being good enough (selfless enough, sacrifices enough, equanimities enough, restrained enough) is the hot button. All the way back to homeless alana — do I protect myself or be compassionate enough?

Good is a defining trait for me. It is what I strive for, it is what I think I am deficient in. Even beauty, which is another biggie is tied to goodness — on some crazy level, I think beauty is won by/ physically manifests goodness ( I have no answer to Ivanka Trump).

I deal with this again and again. But these days, I know to look. It used to be this view could lurk in the background wrecking havoc unwatched. But this time it only took me a few days to see it pop up…

MN: “Good” for each person is different. What matters for us is our specific brand of “good”: For Mae Yo it is metta – saving others, sacrificing, being the hero/leader.

For me it is order and sacca – everything in its place and being honest and literal, punishing bad and rewarding good.

For you it seems to be about … compassion and beauty and safety/security?

AD: I would say for me good is compassion, willingness to self-sacrifice for others, doing duty/ fulfilling roles (often to make others pleased: here is where good Buddhist, good daughter, good employee, etc.) and consideration.

I then value certain  traits that I think allows one to ACT good. In other word, do behaviors I think reflect good regardless of ones desires/ thoughts or emotional state. In fact, the more you can ‘slog through good’, the better the action is ( hence my discount of good actions I actually want to do). Extreme will power is an example of these ‘helper’ traits — it helps suppress reluctance to do the  ‘right thing’ when faced with a choice. The homeless alana story, was a failure of will : I should overcome my selfish /desire for safety in order to act compassionate by giving a hug.  Just like I can train and force my body through discipline and hard workouts/diet I should be able to train my heart to Just Do It.

Or equanimity, which I was so self- hating that I lacked in NY, if I had it I could be calm, suck up a situation I hated and not burden Eric.

AD: Beauty in relation to goodness, it is a marker, a sign in people who have it — outer beauty reflects inner goodness. Not solely, beauty has other aspects for me, but there is definitely a cookie for goodness element.

Safety/security/ comfort is my other deep driver. It is what I want, what I seek in this world –for myself and how it ‘should be’ for others. But my quest for it is ‘bad’ it is my dirty little secret that I am so desperate for it. In my crazy-funhouse mind want for safety/security/comfort is the arch nemesis of Goodness. Homeless Alana truly has it all as stories go: I was a failure, not the good me I want to be, because I didn’t have the will power to forgo my impulses to protect myself from disease and compassionately comfort the homeless guy.

I feel guilty regularly that the security/safety/comfort side is usually the winner in my stories. I want to protect myself from my Mom, so I am reserved and limit contact. If I were a good daughter I could make her happy by enduring endless abuse to satisfy her desire for my company.

I hoard money, which is a proxy for safety for me. Why can’t I be a good person and give more of it away to help others. Proof again that I am a bad alana. Obviously, I have spent some time on this topic ;). But if I were to self-diagnose — it is noteworthy that I never deal with view, only action.

I have a split world –compassion/other centric versus safe/comfortable that exists in my mind (probably only on my mind). Is defined by my traits and behaviors of my own choosing. And then I continually test/ challenge my self — try to build an identity–around my ability to force my behavior. People who can sufficiently force get cookies. Others whammies. Alana is crappy at forcing. How could I deserve the ultimate cookie of enlightenment?

Or, another way to look at it is that I think goodness is acting the results. Hence acting compassionately. If I can’t act the results that I assume (all in my mind here) are the results of enlightenment, how can I ever hope to achieve enlightenment? This is all crazy btw. I see it as I write it.

MN: It seems you can’t let yourself win. How exhausting. Why do you think you choose to practice results? Is it easier, or do you think of it as fake it till you make it? Or do you not recognize what the cause is…And if you did recognize it would you do the cause? Or does action mean more to you than view? Or is it that action seems to be more easily perceived by others? And you need others to be supporting actors in your drama? To prove your goodness?

AD: Well, its definitely not ‘fake it till you make it’, that feels like being a fraud and I hate feeling like a fraud. It’s also definitely not easier — harder is what helps prove goodness, and harder is what comfort hates. View means more in my heart, but action, being able to suck it up and overcome, is how I define myself. That set of just do it, suck it up actions, that is what proves I AM GOOD.

MN: It seems like you’re damning yourself if you do, damning yourself if you don’t. If you do what you want, that’s bad because you’re giving into desires. If you don’t do what you want, you think you’re a good person but at a painful cost. But it isn’t about forcing yourself to not do something that makes it good. It is measured by intention, action, and result. Not everything that is difficult or painful is good.

AD: I want so bad to be something that no matter what I do I don’t think I am, or at least I am not enough — good. I guess I have always felt helpless to change the view — the desires — so I have tried to fortify myself with qualities I think will change the behavior. This is actually what drew me to our style of practice – I had never before considered changing my views, but upon reflection, it seems so logical, so doable.

MN:  Behavior changes when you see enough evidence of TTP, or see how ridiculous/impossible/illogical your view is. Forcing behavior can help, but it only helps if it enables you to see the results of a different path you’d normally take – like evidence that you’d normally not get to see if you continue to choose your go-to option. Forcing behavior isn’t sustainable.

AD: Yes I totally hear you on this. My practice ah-ha moments are really so often about seeing how ridiculous my beliefs are. Or how injurious their consequences are.  If I were to self-diagnose again…this is super deep and pervasive tendencies for me. Since starting this practice I see a different path: View first. I have worked on it diligently. But these issues are dragons. I go back and forth on if I should stir them and face them, or if I should let them lie and come back when I am stronger. But this good verse bad, other-centric versus self-centric, is how I define myself and the world.

MN:  I wonder how much proof you have that the rest of the world operates or confirms your views? It seems you’ve tied yourself in knots being so unforgiving toward yourself. Why can’t you forgive yourself? Why such strict/impossible standards? Society and the laws of karma are much more straightforward. When I can’t forgive myself it is because I think I’m likely to repeat the same mistake.

Control freak does not mean good, though. It’s impossible to control everything. Exhausting and not practical, too. Believe me, I’ve tried. I think I prefer the world’s system, with its checks and balances, to my flawed system.

AD: I am quite contrite, especially when something I have done hurts others…it’s not my intention. The act usually stops cold there, so its not about the concern that I will repeat. I think it is about the fact that I believe revenge/ justice/ punishment is necessary. That is why the whammy side of karma scares me so much: Who will dole out harsher punishment than I for myself?

MN: How much punishment is enough?

AD: Spoken like someone with clarity 😉 But seriously — I try to find evidence of the world systems, and a lot of the times I read it through my funhouse mirror mind. This is the trap of my own wrong views — I am continually reading the world through them, so my readings are wrong.

That was the big gift of seeing that working out so much only proves that I think ‘working out =extreme will’, not that it ACTUALLY means working out equals extreme willpower. This was the first time I actually saw saw saw how twisted-up and convincing my own delusions are.

Usually, I have a plan for tackling stuff, I honestly don’t have one for this issue yet. But I do suspect the world is full of evidence it doesn’t operate according to my view.

I also see that since I started practice, I have only dealt the hydra heads of this issue –this notion of goodness/badness and worthiness/unworthiness –I have tamped them down just enough to keep practicing when my sense of unworthiness gets in the way.

First the Ongalimara stories, and the recent take two on the Muggapaka Jataka, are the first times I am starting to see goodness is not the defining feature of practice. It is not the goal. It is not even — in so far as we are talking about Alana’s version of goodness — the effect.

It took me aback to see that Ongalimara wasn’t a 1-off, accidental, dick. He had the tendency of murder deeply; he just also had a parallel tendency of wisdom. And the idea that self-sacrifice in Muggapaka Jataka had zero to do with being virtuous for it’s own sake, and everything to do with avoiding future suffering, was also mind blowing. It is like I am just now absorbing the fact this practice has the goal of elimination of suffering. Which is, if we judged by my own standards, selfish…

I’m impatient as hell, so I hate to say it, but maybe I just need time. View and understanding are already shifting, just not at the pace I want (which is always finished and done yesterday ;))

Huh… I always thought the wanting-to-be-good-alana ‘side’ drove my desire to practice, but maybe it is the comfort/safety ‘side’ that is the driver. Or probably this world and alana aren’t really fractured warring poles at the end of the day.

MN:  Gotta find more like this, then. They are part of the same view. Maybe you see being good as a kind of security.

AD: For sure. Security of folks loving me and caring for me & security of ‘deserving’ cookies/ good things to happen to me. But also I see goodness as an identity. I was thinking more today, and I wonder if I make it unwinnable on purpose — that way I always have more room to become…I define my success/identity/goodness through action, in part, because there are always more actions. Like when we saw that Lute maker clip — I never thought of being good in that way before, once I saw it my feeling is it was a call out, ‘ alana go be good like that dude’.

MN: Then maybe it is about proving whether goodness necessarily leads to security. Like the lokatissa monk – his one bad act made him go to hell and be reborn as a dog for 500 lifetimes, but immediately thereafter he was human and enlightened. The bad was huge, but he also had good in there that secured him that arahant spot. It is a mix. He was enlightenment and still never had a full meal…security but no security.

Or phra devadatta. He will be reborn as a paccekabuddha immediately after an eternity in the lowest hell. He’s definitely not the poster child for good, yet he’s secured a spot even higher than normal arahants despite all his extremely evil karma. In fact, I’d say evil is a prerequisite for enlightenment more than good. You don’t want to get enlightened when everything is good. Just like you don’t want to leave happiness with Eric.

It’s that you are bad and suffer the consequences and want to get out. And how do you get out? By doing good? Not by doing good or by upholding the precepts first. Wisdom is the prerequisite. You can become enlightened by just realizing the truth of a wrong viewpoint. No goodness required.

AD: Oh, I suspect I have been bad, suffered the consequences many many times already and at that fork in the road, where you decide how to get out, I thought ‘be ‘good’ instead of ‘fix the view’. Now I see I need to fix the view.

So where do I go from here? Or Maybe that isn’t a fair question to ask someone else…

MN: More of what works. If stories like Angulimara help, find more. Or focus on that theme in whatever you are watching/reading.

AD: So I guess my instinct is to look at the evidence of if the world does/doesn’t confirm my rather binary views on good/bad.

MN: Yeah, that’s basically the big idea

AD: Ok I know starting with Rupa works. I know my daily self-assigned exercises to find examples of whatever I am contemplating on in my day works. Which is sorta like having a theme in mind for everything I see/ read/ do. That and just not quitting works quite well for me: both in Dhamma and worldly pursuits.

MN: Rupa is the foundation for understanding how common and not unique we are. If we are all subject to the same worldly laws, then your strict alana laws can’t possibly be the standard.

AD: Yah, I already know I need to hammer this home.

AD: Alright – I decided to change tactics and to see if I could make better headway coming from the karma as cookie direction instead of the karma as whammy direction. I am starting to understand how tit-for-tat would makes sense, how the debt cycle doesn’t need to be paid directly to the one who you incurred the debt with, how debts are settled in kind or degree and how the circumstance of such can arise. I have considered wider world stuff, but also some personal examples.

Here is the clearest personal example in that it shows how I ‘remembered’ a debt owed, I tried to begin paying it with like kind, I paid it forward to someone else (not directly in return), and upon payment I got extra credits (like interest?) and positive reinforcement to continue this kind of cycle.

A few months ago, I had a big dhamma realization — that idea that my putting so much effort into working out so hard didn’t prove that working out = extreme willpower, but rather proves that I BELIEVE working out shows extreme willpower, and I am someone who values that trait. I know it sound kinda obvious now, but I was really stuck. I couldn’t see past my view. Anyway, it was a big help in practice, so I did spend some time considering exactly how I arrived at such a big shift and I recognized that the nudge I needed actually came straight from the story of a dhamma friend that I internalized —  For the purposes here, it came about as a ‘bonus’ in my process of trying to right a debt.

The friend had Lined me out of the blue and asked if I would review her dhamma HW and wanted to exchange some thoughts. It was on rupa and 4 elements, I felt confident that I could share from my own experiences and contemplations, so I helped. I mean I really gave it my focus and attention and time, not just a quickie. Obviously I helped for a lot of reasons, she is a friend, I love the dhamma and want to have it thrive, but most of all, I helped because I feel like I owe you (Mae Neecha) a debt. I am keenly aware, and grateful, that over the years, you have always been my call/line/email a friend lifeline in practice. I also know I can’t pay that back to you directly because of our positions. So, when someone asked for similar help, I was especially eager, and conscious, of a chance to do so as a ‘pay it forward/back’ opportunity.

The cookie I got from you is guidance in practice, what I gave, was in kind. When the opportunity came, I immediately saw it as a way to give in kind. The further cookie I got as a result of my efforts to pay back my karmic debt by helping a dhamma friend, was clarity on a stuck point, a boon in kind. It also makes sense: The context is all practitioners doing practice. That it is continuous and further opportunities for karma to be traded in this sphere also makes sense. This story also shows how karma might be able to play out without being a continual exchange with the same person.

Honestly, I don’t think my block is about understanding how the contours of karma work, it is about thinking it is an indictment of me. I only see one side. Especially when I start from whammy side, I imagine all the whammies I deserve, will be subject to. I think it proves I am a ‘bad’ Alana. A worldly law, that simply describes the nature of cause and effect/ reasons and results, — in my fun-house-mirror-mind — warps into personal indictment.

Then I go extra bat-shit crazy and want to quit practice. Because I don’t ‘deserve’ enlightenment, I am bad. Enlightenment must be a cookie dolled-out according to Alana’s laws and standards of goodness (j/k but also sorta how my mind must work). If I can’t succeed, I might as well quit before I try –better that than failure.

Eric asked me, “Alana, do you think your dear dhamma friends, like Oat and Amy, are failures because they aren’t enlightened?”. I answered, “of course not, no one would call an unripe grape a failure just because it hasn’t ripened yet” That I suppose is my answer to myself here. That and the fact that whether I think I can succeed or not, my feelings aren’t really the arbiter of reality, they don’t dictate what happens — I should have already learned this lesson when I delt so thoroughly with fear/hypochondria.

This pervasive view, that Alana is/can be/should be/ GOOD, it the bigger problem here I suspect. I am working on it, but it is like whack-a-mole. One of these days though….

Anyway, stay tuned . Some other thoughts that overlap karma and self building currently brewing…

Yesterday I started thinking about how I can use a paradigm of ‘meeting the qualifications’ to think about dhamma (in particular self and self-belong). My goal is to reinforce the idea that Alana is not some special snowflake, she is just the same as everyone and everything else in the world — subject to causes and effects, to the rules of the world and to its common characteristics.

I need to prove to myself that all the objects, qualities, experiences or accomplishments that I claim, that I believe belong to and make me a special me, aren’t really proof of my exceptionalism at all.

Let’s take the example of being in a raffle: If I have a raffle ticket, that means I met the qualifications of being in the raffle. I was at the right place, at the right time, to buy the ticket. I had the desire to participate in the raffle based on whatever view I had that made me buy the ticket (for example I was doing it for charity or because I really wanted a particular prize). I had the money to buy the ticket and I was ready to assume the risk/reward of winning or losing.

If I do win the raffle, it is because I met the criteria for winning — a ticket plus karma/circumstance to win. But raffles are a dime a dozen, some you win and some you lose. Wining any one doesn’t make you a winner, it doesn’t confer identity. It just means the circumstances for participation, and then winning, in that particular case, were met.

Take another example — A dance competition like So You Think You Can Dance: To make it to the show you must qualify, based on skill. But you can end up voted off at any time, or you might leave due to injury or personal circumstance. The simple equation that winning proves skill, and skill proves identity, quickly breaks down when I watch seasons where the most skillful dancer has had to forfeit the competition because something, other than their ability, forces them to take leave from the show.

When I win a competition, I use that win to stroke my ego, to build an identity – Alana the Master Debater, Alana the Horseback Champion, Alana the Great Poet. But after binge watching many seasons of So You Think You Can Dance, I see there are winners each season, winning is not so unique. Nor is being a winner/loser a permanent state: Someone who wins once may lose another competition and someone who loses may go on to win later. How can a status (winner) that is not particularly unique, and that changes from one competition to the next confer identity?

Folks who don’t make it into the qualifying round of So You Think You Can Dance one year can then come back, try again, and make it in a subsequent year. There are folks who may still have the requisite skill, but stop being able to qualify for the competition because of the show’s age limit. In other words, someone can have the qualification for something and then lose those qualifications or they may not have qualifications for something but later be able to meet them.

Meeting the qualifications for something (as well as winning/losing), is bound-up with circumstance. It is not absolute. What is circumstantial doesn’t point to the innate exceptionalism of anyone/thing, it is just the result of all the requisite causes coming together temporarily.

It is like getting a drivers license, I had friends who failed the first test. I passed. But after another shot they passed too. In the end we were all qualified to drive, we met the qualifications.  Later some of those friends lost the qualification – one drank and drove, loosing her license, another developed a disability and could physically no longer operate a car.

I had the qualifications for a Porsche. I had the money, I found the car, I had a license, a garage, I lived in an environment suitable to driving a little low sports car. But then the qualifications ended — I moved somewhere snowy, since I was raised in Miami I was incapable of driving in the snow and needed an 4w wheel drive that made it easier to navigate icy roads.  So, I no longer had the skills/knowledge – the requisite qualifications – to drive the Porsche; the circumstances changed.

I loved that Porsche, I believed it was mine. When I drove it down the winding highways, I felt like it proved I was loved by Eric who bought me the car. I felt like its fanciness, the way it hugged curves and performed, proved I was on top of the world. But I went in and out of having the qualifications to have/use it as the circumstances of my life changed. So how could it be mine, how could it be there to represent me and prove something about me? It only proved that for some time, the qualifications were met.

I have started thinking everything in the world is like this, it is circumstantial; the appropriate elements – be they for a raffle, competition, license or item we claim (but really just use) – come together, for a time, and provide the qualifications for a certain status, right, access, ‘ownership’. But then the circumstances change, and just like with the Porsche, you can no longer claim an item, or status, right, ability, access, etc. These things hinge not on ourselves, our exceptionalism, but upon the qualifications being temporarily met.

Lately, I have been contemplating on karma and I feel so stupid, so stuck, the topic feels so impenetrable and impossible that I just want to quit. Frankly, I feel like such a failure of a practitioner, I rather just give up than forge ahead, it truly feels like I will never get ‘there’, never be a person worthy of seeing the truth, worthy to become enlightened. So why work so hard, why bother to try.

But what if the path, and its fruition, is just like getting a license or winning a show, its not about exceptionalism, or being super special –its just that pieces need to come together, the proper circumstances must arise. If that is the case, enlightenment –whether I can achieve it or not – isn’t really about being a bad or good alana, its just about meeting the qualifications. And just because I don’t meet the qualifications for something today, it doesn’t mean I won’t meet them tomorrow; there is no reason to quit, to pre-empt my inevitable failure by throwing up my hands in submission, when instead I can work on building the requisites I need and waiting for the circumstances to shift.