Alana's Dharma Blog

The other day, I went to pilates class, and the front desk guy wasn’t wearing a mask; I got so angry at him for endangering me, everyone else – “wear a fucking mask” I thought, “it’s the fucking law!”

Later, thinking about the situation again, a question popped into my head, if everyone were already masking, would there even need to be a law?  There are only laws when folks are already doing, or not doing, the thing forbidden or required. A law proves the thing it legislates isn’t standard, its not universal, and it is already being done/not done.

Anyway, don’t I break the law/rules too? I value rules so much –when I agree with them.  But when I don’t, I casually disregard them the same as the anti-maskers disregard masks. I constantly j-walk, I speed, I use medical weed recreationally. When a rule meets my standards, when I can see how it is important, I follow it. Otherwise, whatevez. When I j-walk on a blazing red pedestrian sign, why do I do it? Because I can use my own two eyes to look both ways and determine if there is a car. The rule is unnecessary, stupid.

And what about the front desk guy not wearing a mask? I don’t know his reasons, but surely he has them. Everyone does. Some folks think they are healthy and strong, so why wear a mask? Some folks think it should be personal responsibility, if you want to wear a mask fine, but don’t legislate my body. Hell, turn on Fox news, plenty of folks don’t even think Covid is real – so why on earth would they mask? Why should I even expect them to? Because it’s the law?

A few weeks later, my mom comes to visit. She wanted to see me since we hadn’t been face-to-face since before Covid. I was too afraid to get on a plane myself, but she was willing to brave it. Me, still deeply Covid cautious, agreed to the visit on strict terms: She wear an n95 on the plane, test before and after arrival, we mask and stick to outdoor activities. Super strict shit, stricter than her own usual standards at home, but standards she vowed she would uphold for the chance to see me.

Mom arrives and for one of our outings, I take her to an outdoor concert in a local park. Its outdoors, so mask laws don’t apply, still looking around I see different folks have different standards for Covid safety. Some folks (like me) still mask. Others don’t. Some folks sit on blankets far from the crowd, while other folks choose close together seats near the stage. Some people are clearly just with their family units, others are obviously using the concert as an occasion for a large gathering of friends.

My mom wants to dance, so I agree, as long as we choose a spot away from the crowd. As we are dancing, there is a toddler that notices my mom and wants to come up and dance with her. My mom, instead of shooing the unmasked germ bucket (aka child) away, dances with her. I was livid, beyond angry: My mom promised to be Covid careful, how in the hell could she go and do something so OBVIOUSLY risky? With the presence of mind to avoid just screaming at my mom, I told her I was tiered, excused myself from the dance, and went to sit on a bench away for the crowd to calm down.

As I calmed myself, I looked out over the crowd, again noticing how everyone is behaving differently, in accordance with their sense of risk. It’s not just about laws and rules, after all, all of my state’s Covid rules had been lifted for outdoor events by this time. It’s the fact that everyone has their own standard for Covid precautions. And the truth is, why wouldn’t they? Everyone has their own health situations, they get information from different sources, they have their own politics, their own beliefs, their own education levels. They have their own vaccination status, their own history with covid and other diseases, their own family situations to attend to, their own priorities for their life, their own risk tolerance…

The even bigger question is why in the hell would my mom be any different from any of these other folks? Why do I expect her to follow my risk tolerance, my set of covid safety standards? Why should I assume these would be obvious to her? The answer became obvious to me: Because she is mine!

But what the hell does being mine even mean? My mom, like everyone else has her own health situations, information sources, politics, beliefs, education levels. Her own history with disease, her own priorities and risk tolerance, all shaped by her life. She has her own unique circumstances, that give rise to her covid safety standards, that are totally different than my own.

Being ‘mine’, is just an arbitrary tag I give her. It is the expectation that for no other reason than the fact I dub her my own, she will act according to my standards, born of my unique circumstances instead of her own.

Suddenly, all my anger at my mom just disappeared. I realized that I had completely insane, and unrealistic expectations for her; it was beyond silly for me to be angry at her for not meeting these impossible expectations. What is more, I realized she had already done a lot. She had already gone way further than most would to  accommodate me and my crazy covid safety standards just to spend time with me. In this world, how many people would even bother to do that? I suddenly felt deep gratitude to my mom for her efforts.

Over the next few days, my mom and I enjoyed a wonderful visit together. In fact, years later, we now have a mostly pleasant and easy relationship, which is a marked difference from the 40+ years that came before. I realize that when I stopped expecting she would follow my standards, and when I stopped feeling that I always had to defend myself and my standards against her standards (like it was some imaginary war to prove who was right), I stopped getting angry at her. When I stopped getting angry, I stopped stirring shit. When I stopped shit stirring, there was nothing to spark a cycle of bickering and fighting that had been going on since I was a kid, it was just over.

Obviously, this turned out to be one of those big real-life results of dhamma practice that has made my life a lot better. But also something I know I need to continue to learn from. Afterall, its not just my mom…what shred of proof do I have that I should expect anyone or anything to act as I want – according to my standards – when everything/one acts according to their own unique circumstances? My standards are arbitrary, shaped by my circumstances, and yet again and again I find myself indignant. So sure I am right and others are wrong. So convinced of what I deserve, of what will happen, of my power to drive and shape the world as I see fit. Of my power to own, to pown, what I claim. And yet, over and over, I get evidence to the contrary. Evidence that even ‘my’ closest, most intimate ‘possessions’ – my own mother – won’t bow to my rules. Why do I hold out hope for anything else?

My mom called, she was feeling depressed and had started wondering what she had done in her life to have value, feeling regretful that in her old age, she has found she hasn’t done enough. I tried to console her, reminding her she had raised kids, had students, been a part of her community, etc. But she said that wasn’t enough, she felt like she needed to do something more for other people, for the world, for society. It occurred to me that my mom was feeling so stressed because she feels she has failed to BECOME up to her own standards of what a worthy becoming is.

I had been re-watching one of the animated videos of the enlightenment of Sariputta, one of the Buddha’s chief disciples. Sariputta struggled to become an arhant, his desire to BECOME the right hand of the buddha inhibited his ability to become enlightened. Because he clung to being the right hand, fretted over not having the characteristics, in his own opinion, that would make him that identity, he stressed. He was stuck until he realized that clinging – even to that ‘holy’ identity – was still clinging. Only then could he let go and he became enlightened.

It made me start thinking that all these criteria for meeting identities are made up by us. I do this a lot – standards to be, to become, to be worthy. There are already hundreds of blogs about what would make me (in my own un-humble opinion) a good enough alana to bear the title Buddhist, better yet to be worthy of enlightenment.

But more and more lately, I have seen in the past that my standards aren’t the arbiter of the world, if they were than everyone would wear masks and stay home and socially distance like good citizens. Hell there wouldn’t even be a pandemic, since that is certainly not part of my standard of a good and livable world. Shit, even my own body and behaviors, getting sick, getting angry, lashing out at all those unmaskers, isn’t living up to my standards. My standards aren’t arbiters of anything, they are just arbitrary.

My mom, myself, even Sariputta, we just arbitrarily choose what it is we think we should become and then we choose the ‘markers’, the characteristics and traits we think will get us there. But no characteristic is necessary to make you become something because, you can’t become an identity at all. All of us doing this are just stressing over manifesting the impossible. You can simply do certain things, based on certain beliefs, that have certain consequences.

For a few weeks, I had been considering each of the ‘aggregates for clinging’, how they operate to delude me into thinking I AM, I CAN BECOME. These aggregates are like funky colored glasses that obscure reality so that I can mistake an ever-changing process as self. So that I can cling to an identity I arbitrarily create, proving it with arbitrary characteristics and behaviors of my choosing.

I work so hard to be, to become, a certain thing. I work, I effort, I cultivate, I act: I workout to be a fit on top and in control Alana, I practice to be a good Buddhist Alana, I act and morph to be a good family member, employee, friend, citizen to have these traits I have lionized of good, and beautiful and willful and strong. But as soon as some marker stops, I feel the loss. As soon as I leave SF, I fret I am no longer an SF Alana. I mourn the loss of self.

And so, I am on to building the next me, finding and clinging to the new stuff I think will uphold that me, in a cycle that of clinging and loss that can go on without end.

During Covid, with time on my hands and my dhamma practice in high gear, I had begun (and still continue) a daily chanting practice. Sometimes, I just rush through, phone it in, chant for the sake of chanting simply because I have taken it upon myself as something I will do. Other times though, something I chant/read will really hit me and I will go down the rabbit hole of contemplating on a single line, even a single word, until I feel like I really understand it.

At some point, I was reciting the part of the morning chanting that says, “the five aggregates for clinging are stressful”, it then goes on to list: Form as an aggregate for clinging, feeling as an aggregate for clinging, perception as an aggregate for clinging, imagination as an aggregate for clinging, consciousness as an aggregate for clinging…and I started wondering what the heck is an aggregate for clinging anyway? Or, another way to ask, how exactly do I use aggregates to cling? So I decided to go ahead and consider rupa a bit more closely:

How do I use rupa to cling:

I cling to my body. My face is broken out and I am embarrassed. Using stickers and creams to clear it, I try to force it back into a non-broken out state I prefer. One I want to be seen with. One that will get folks to desire me. To be awed by my beauty.  I have an old friend coming to visit, I haven’t seen her since before Covid –I am desperate to fix my face before her arrival. Why? I want my face to show her I am on top, I have weathered the pandemic ok, I am not just some shadow of my former self.

But is that all really the truth? My face is damaged. My body is damaged. I have not weathered this time unscathed. I am diminished. Emotionally diminished. Physically hanging on the potential precipice of illness with my newly found autoimmune markers. and with my positive. These are all facts. How do I expect to use a body to prove what isn’t even true? More importantly, why would I want it to?

Rupa is the object I cling to — look at how tightly I cling to my body. Fear for illness, death, loving it even as I despise certain states it passes through –a breakout, an autoimmune disease – states not reflective of ME, that belie my ability to be on top and in control. Embarrass me in front of friends.

And yet still, I somehow convince myself this body is a tool to broadcast who I am to the world. That it is a tool to prove who I am to myself. I cling to it because I believe without it, I can’t prove my identity. Rupa is an ‘aggregate of clinging’, in so far as it is a tool I use to establish an identity. An ALANA, that I desperately cling to.

I try to use body and belongings to paint a character, and then I try and convince myself that is me, who I am. Though in one way, I know the body isn’t me, I still think it is a scaffold. Without it there is no self that can be built, what else could I use to prove the characteristics and behaviors I identify with? Rupa is a fundamental tool for building the identity of Alana who clings. Clings to what? To the identity of Alana, which requires a body, that I then also cling to.

So there it is – its not just that I cling to rupa, the truth is rupa is also a tool for further clinging. I need a rupa body to play in a rupa world, where I search out other things to cling to. I need rupa to hold together the Alana identity I cling to so tightly; the body feeds the summutti, helps me pin down and stabilize as sense of Alana self, when that self, especially nama, shift so quickly. Rupa is a primary tool I use to establish permanence. Most basically performance of an Alana self. A solid, flesh and bone manifestation of who I am.

If I really saw the world as something in contain flux, always changing, I would understand there is nothing to cling to amidst all the shifting movement. But I don’t see that, in fact, I deliberately try to delude myself – to affix things – so that I can cling, and rupa is tool #1 for containing what is always moving, for trying to create a steady state, sameness, in a world where there is none. I guess its starting to make a little sense how rupa can be an aggregate For, ie in the service of, ie a tool to promote, clinging.