Alana's Dharma Blog

I caught myself sitting around and daydreaming; thinking of all the places Eric and I had traveled, back before covid, when we used to travel, thinking of all the places maybe we might be able to go again if its ever safe enough to get on a plane…

I have all these memories of vacations, a collection of recollections of moments I had planned, experienced, fixated-on and identified with in the past. Over and over, I seek to arrange and build just such experiences – trips, events, adventures – that I think will bring me joy and satisfaction. This is literally what I live for, what I toil for, what I patiently waited out covid for, lonely and longing in my isolation.

The problem is that when I comb my memories, when I really pay attention, I can’t find happiness there at all. Mostly there is indifference, some shame/regret. But the memories I call “happy”, are all nostalgic; when I evoke them, they are tinged with longing and loss. Over and over during covid I observed this: I thought of a place I used to go, something I used to be able to do, a person I used to see. In each case, the overwhelming feeling I had was one of longing mixed with loss.

As a specific example, I considered one year where Eric and I spent New Years in Japan. We awoke before dawn to watch the sunrise over the Setto sea, it was magnificent and it stands out strongly in my memories of all our New Years together. The thing is, as I recall that beautiful sunrise, I experience deep craving. I miss that place. I miss that moment. I miss being able to travel. I want that again.

Of course, mixed in with the longing is also a sense of warmth, a fondness, a familiarity: This is a memory that is a cornerstone of my sense of relationship with Eric. The problem is, I already know these warm cornerstone memories, can end up being the most painful when we loose the person/thing we remember: When my dad died, it was these cornerstone memories, the fondest and warmest ones of our time together, that brought me the deepest pain of loosing him. Sure, I had a sense of the comfort I had felt on those special dad-daughter trips, but once he died, and still to this day, they became tied up with a loss and craving that tightens my chest.

I look for happiness in these ‘happy memories’ but to me they seem just like wine or vinegar or something else fermented. You know that once upon a time, there must have been sugar in that liquid, it is a necessary ingredient to create the ferment, but now there is just a trace of it left, it is barely a flavor in the final product.

What is especially crazy is that in memories of moments I was truly terrified, like Eric passing out at the cedar baths, I can still evoke some of the terror clearly, dampened but still present, but the same just is not true of joy.

This then is what I am living for, this is what I spend most of my life planning and enduring for, moments that are hit or miss, but always fleeting. Moments that when ‘happiest’ are the seeds of my future longing and sense of loss.

I was listening to LP Anan teaching and in a class he called out a fellow practitioner who continually has trouble with her mother-in-law. Specifically, she is jealous of the attention and financial support her husband bestows on his mother. LP asked her –if your husband were to leave you, but leave behind millions of dollars, how sad would you really be? She admitted upset, but that the money would certainly temper the emotion. LP called out the issue with the mother-in-law as clearly one of self and self-belonging; the worry that another person would challenge her supremacy, and the material support it provides, in her relationship with her husband.

What is worse, is that this view, it breeds so many negative feelings, negative behaviors and then resulting negative karma. And for what really? We don’t know the future, the mother-in-law could die tomorrow and no longer be a threat, but the negative karma created with her just lives on. Or, they win the lotto and there is more than enough resources to go around, or the practitioner ordains and doesn’t need money anymore, or the world economy collapses and all the money is worth nothing anyway…the point here is, the practitioner, all of us, are so greedy –and stir so much shit resultantly– for a future with an item/person that is totally uncertain.

This got me thinking about Eric and I…

I rely on Eric for his financial support, I encourage him to remain at abusive, but high paying, jobs for “just a little longer”, “for just a little more”, so that we can have the life we dream of. So that I can have the thigs I want and that make me comfortable. So that I can have the money I ridiculously believe will make me safe. But, because I am so picky, the band of conditions I find comfortable, and acceptable, and safe is so narrow. It is so damn expensive. And because he loves me, because he sees it as his job, he keeps working. And I, despite seeing the pain it causes him, end up encouraging him, or at least not discouraging him, because I want the dollars it brings.

I feel guilty about all this, I have the sense that it is wrong, that it is hurtful, worse yet hurtful of someone who does so much for me, who I love so much. Still, I persist because I am greedy. And why am I greedy? Because I don’t understand the true nature of what I am ‘getting/winning’ and I don’t understand the costs. In fact, I pretend there are no costs. This is foolish; I know by now, at least intellectually, that there are costs to everything.

Last night I told Eric to just finish up at his current job and be done. To stop the new job hunt I had been pressuring him to embark on. I told him I didn’t want to keep donkey whipping him anymore, I don’t want the negative repercussions of such behavior and I could learn to live with what we had already.

Eric thanked me, but said that the trick wasn’t in eliminating the desire for money at the earning phase, but at the spending phase; As long as my band for what is acceptable is so narrow, it will be pricey to try and maintain. As long as I view money as a safety net, and I continually feel unsafe, I will need significant financial resources to feel comfortable. My situation moving to NY is the prefect example — what wouldn’t necessarily be a big deals to others, or what would be a strong preference to live elsewhere, became a ‘need’  for me– I was becoming physically ill, depressed, emotionally unstable in NY because I found that arrangement of rupa uncomfortable/unsafe physically and emotionally. A second home, a sudden move to Connecticut, these were ‘solutions’ only available to us because we had the money for them.

This is my need to stockpile, to squirrel and prepare, to be sure I am alright when the time comes  — to be sure I have the resources to effectuate the changes I want, to be safe and comfortable to my standard of both. It is the wrong belief money ‘fixes’ all problems, it doesn’t create them. Money keeps me safe in a world where ‘unsafe’ is a normal part of its nature.

This all got me thinking:

1) Wrong view #1 –I don’t understand the costs: There is a huge cost that I haven’t really considered deeply to having such a narrow band of acceptable, in a world that rarely falls into that band of acceptability. In a world that continually moves and shifts out of states I find acceptable, even if momentarily such states could be found. I think my bad of acceptable keeps me comfortable, keeps me safe, but it is because of these standards that I suffer profoundly — either by not having a set of circumstances that fall into my persnickety bounds of acceptable, or by the sorrow of losing such states when they go, or by the work I do to get to such states, or by the karma I incur trying to force others, like Eric, to help me acquire these states.

I remember the Temiya Jataka, in which the Bodhisatva pretends to be dumb/cripple so as not to have to take on royal duties, and their ensuing consequences. He is tortured to snap him out of it, but he forbears. I always did hate that jataka – in my warped mind, I took it as a personal indictment of my own lack of forbearance. But now I understand: The Bodhisatva, he remembers his past hell births as a result of princely duties in former reincarnations. It was to avoid worse discomfort in the future that he endures some discomfort in the present. This is less saintly perfection and more just good ole’ common sense; it is something even I – a bad and non-forbearing alana – would do if I only had the same level of clarity about where my behaviors have gotten me in the past and where they are likely to get me again in the future. Its not that I am fundamentally and forever lacking in some saintly qualities. Its not that there is no escape from my narrow band of acceptability. Its just that I don’t yet understanding the consequence of my preferences. I prefer them precisely because I don’t see their tradeoffs.

2) Wrong View #2 –I think I am in control: Another wrong view here is that I believe I can effectuate an outcome I want; I have the power, and control, and good karma, and the superhuman will power, to force the world into the states that I want it to be in. At least my little corner of the world. At least for long enough to make all that exertion of effort worth it…

I have recently been rewatching the HBO series Westworld. In it, many of the characters are robots, given a backstory by their creators and programmed to live in loops. Over and over they are killed and then put back into their world where they enact the same basic story with only small variations.  Its sorta a lot of food for Dharma thought.

One particular set of characters and their storylines had really struck me: There is a band of thieves who over and over play out the theft of a safe, living for the promise of the money inside and the imaginary future it will buy them. At one point, they finally get it open only to find there is nothing at all inside the safe. The scene hit me really hard because it is such a powerful ubai for life:

Maybe, with the force of my will, with my good karma, I am able to get my own life’s safes open. How often is it empty inside? Eric had a colleague years ago who worked so hard to become an executive and finally earned enough money to fulfill her dream – an early retirement at a cottage in Carmel with her beloved husband. The husband who died 6 months after the retirement, crushing the dream that had just opened for her. Her story haunts me to the core, for fear something similar could happen to me.

Or maybe there is money in the safe. Something to use for a little while. Yes, you get the money, but you get the problems that come with it. The jealousy, the getting used to a new standard that you need to upkeep, the fear of loss, the dependence. Like with living in SF; I got an amazing city I loved for 10 years, but then it set my standards to a place where New York disappointed me. Angered me. Where I missed my old life and now I keep searching and working to get back what I lost.

In fact, San Francisco makes it so clear that even if I could have stayed, I could have kept my circumstances the same, the city itself is changing. It has become uglier, less safe, less fun, it has slipped outside my standards of acceptable. Because of impermanence, even if the safe is full, the money you get, the stuff it buys, those change and slip away too.

Plus, once those robbers get the money to buy up the things they dream of, won’t they just dream up new things to want?  Eric and I have made so much money in this life, we have been getting richer and richer for years. But for every dollar we make, we have time to use it, or save it, before we start imagining new wants and new needs and where we will get new money to pay for those in the future.

Is any of this really control? Is this a world that I can force? That I can bring all my resources and will to bear on and make even a meaningful dent on? It’s more like hitting waves washing up on the beach with a stick and pretending I am meaningfully changing the shape of the ocean.

3) Wrong View #3 – I don’t actually understand what money is: I believe money is a tool for comfort, safety and satisfaction, despite so much evidence to the contrary; I completely ignore all the ways/times that money is a tool for my discomfort, danger and dissatisfaction. We moved to NY, we did it for money, but instead of bringing me satisfaction, that move brought me stress and depression. And while I credit money with helping solve the problem –a second home in CT – that view sorta ignores the glaring truth that the rat race for $$$ was what got me into trouble in the first place.

This pattern plays out over and over — I lust after rupa arrangements, and the money to buy them, but it is precisely rupa’s sucky nature I am trying to fix with money in the first place. Always trying to solve a problem, that should tell me what the world I lust to buy really is (obvi a problem).

And when money does buy a shortly satisfying arrangement or circumstance, I just need to go back to the robbers and the safe to know that, along with an assortment of pretty things, the money in the safe also buys strife and worry and standards that just make things harder going forward. Empty or full, ultimately the safe is the same – stress, not satisfaction is what will be found there.

Furthermore, having money now doesn’t mean I will have it later. It doesn’t mean that if I do have it, I am safe. Illness and death strike rich and poor alike. I hear Eric — I may face a problem later, that if I just had more money, more stuff, more people, more skill, more whatever I could overcome. But I will definitely face a situation that, no matter what I have, it is not enough to overcome the obstacle before me. The reason for this is simple –stuff is finite, money is finite, karma and still and relationships are finite. Dukkha however is endless.

In this way, it’s a lot like a video game: If one baddie doesn’t get you, the next one will. Only unlike a video game, it goes on forever…this is what I cause Eric suffering for? This is what I am greedy for? Still, I am always building, squirrelling more, clearly convinced on some level that if I can just have enough, whatever next time brins, I can game the system and win. Or maybe I just willing to try and extend my game as long as possible, no matter the cost, somehow convincing myself a little longer is all I want when in reality no about of win, of play time, of being on top, of being in a life we love, is ever enough.

In many ways, this life – my very blessed alanahood, is to date, as close as one can get to being able to game the system: I have been well cared for, mostly comfortable, mostly healthy and safe. But is it satisfactory? I live in fear all the time that I will loose what I have. I squirrel and skimp and ask Eric to work so I can stockpile – this peak life is a life of fear, work, greed and task-mastering. And what do I really hope for the future? What are the great aspirations I think I can realistically hope for with this peak life? A house or two. A few years with Eric to travel, after covid, before the next global or personal catastrophe? A ripe old age for both of us, which is max only another 50ish years.

My problem is, I am always zoomed in. I worry about having enough resources to take on one problem at a time; enough money to weather a pandemic, enough nutrition and medical care and strength of body to weather an illness. I worry about each moments’ arrangement being comfortable and satisfactory. Such myopia breeds greed, because greed is born from not really understanding the thing we are greedy for, from not understanding the costs of clinging to that thing.

Zoom out and it is clear I can’t have enough forever. Resources diminish, situations change and what works one time fails the next. Ultimately this body craps out and there goes everything I built in this life.  Zoom out and it is clear if I get past one obstruction, I will just meet the next. Zoom out and I can see birth, age, sickness and death are the mile markers of this life, even a peak life, with suffering all on the road.

As part of my efforts to stave-off an autoimmune disease, my rheumatologist had recommended a regular program of 5 day fasts to help renew and regenerate immune system function. The fasts allow for a small amount of pre-allocated food – around 600 calories a day of bars and powdered soup – enough to make unsupervised fasting safe, but certainly not enough to feel close to full. On a recent fast, I woke up on day 4, out of 5, and simply didn’t want to get out of bed; all I had to look forward to was another day of hunger. On this fast, I find myself rationing food, licking the last bit out of every container of what meager crumbs I am given. Flash dried soups and rancid nut bars that in any other circumstance would be torture are my cravings and delights. I just can’t wait for the fast to end, a few more days and I’ll be in heaven, free to eat as I may.  That is the thing that keeps me going, taking satisfaction in the thing that comes next. Or, the imagination of that satisfaction anyway…

This week, the power went out for 2 days after a storm. It was such a pain in the ass, no lights, no TV, no computer, starving in the dark, carefully rationing the phone lest we be out of battery in an emergency. About a day and a half into the blackout the lights flickered on, for just a minute. Eric and I were in the middle of a little-happy-dance-we-have-power-again, when suddenly everything went back to blackout. We bitched and moaned about the inconvenience; we were so excited when the power company posted a schedule to get the lights back on. When they did finally come back, it was a moment of relief and then back to life as normal. That and the fear that tomorrow’s storm could bring a whole new set of outages.

The truth is when I have ‘the basics’ — food and power — I don’t really relish these things, they aren’t the cause of celebration or deep satisfaction, they are just there. Only in their absence do they become the fodder of hopes and dreams. Obviously, power is a significant convenience, and food a basic need, I don’t deny the value in having these things. But the idea that they bring satisfaction, beyond their temporary fulfillment of physical needs, is undermined by a basic truth: That satisfaction arises from a former state of deprivation. 

Satisfaction, happiness, Sukkah – the great goal of my life – doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it requires states of not having, of longing, of dukkah. I have to feel hunger to feel satisfied by eating. I have to deal with darkness to be dazzled by lights.

What is more, is that the satisfaction doesn’t last. This is my second fast: A day or two of normal eating after the last fast and basic food like an apple or oatmeal felt like a given, something I take for granted, it was no longer an orgasm in my mouth the way it had been when I broke that fast. To get excited, I needed the promise of more, something fancier or novel, a special dinner out, an exotic ingredient imported from Japan or Italy, or some other land far away.

In fact, if I am being honest, the greatest joy came in anticipation of my first post fast meal, not from the meal itself: The smell of the fruit as it was sliced, the tantalizing twirl of the blender blade, as it whipped-up my post-fast smoothie. Even that first sip didn’t taste as good as I imagined it would, as the smoothie of my mind; by 4 or 5 sips I was already full, the elation I had dreamed about as a reward for 5 days of self-imposed deprivation come and went in an instant. But while the satisfaction was fleeting, what remained was the dread of next month’s  fast. Dread of the next storm’s potential power outage. Which brings me to truth number two: The satisfaction that arises from states of deprivation may be fleeting, but the fear of loss, of repeat suffering, that arises from deprivation, that manages to endure.

The goal of my life, the thing I plot and plan and prepare for, that I hoard possessions and qualities, people and skills for, the dazzling future I cling to hope for, basically boils down to a “happy life”, a good life, a life where I am free of excessive suffering and satisfaction is bountiful. Details of exactly what this looks like may change, but the essence is the same. Each becoming, each birth, is a refinement, a chance for a different path, a different ending, when I can finally get what I want. The problem is, what I want is inextricably bound to what I don’t want. The satisfaction of fullness exists hand-in-hand with hunger.

I blindly strive for satisfaction and I don’t even notice where it really comes from – deprivation. Or where it leads to – fear and loss.

A long time ago, LP Anan and Mae Yo read me a quote from the Buddha. It hit me so hard, it burrowed into my brain, the meaning crisp and clear, but the words morphed into “Alana speak”. It went something like this:

If I, the Great Dhamma Lord (i.e. the most-awesome-crazy-badass-ninja-ever), could separate sukkha from dukkha, I would have used my powers and merit to do so and gone right on merrily living in this world. But because, I could not separate sukkha from dukkah I returned sukkha to its rightful owner –dukkha — and peaced-out.

The question for you Alana is this: If even the Buddha could not separate suffering and satisfaction, what hope exactly do you keep clinging to?

Many of you Dear Readers have perhaps already read my big ‘ah-ha moment’ blogs on everything is dukkha. These were so powerful and poignant, that I skipped ahead and published them real time. But, of course, there is a back story, a progression, a series of contemplations that brought me to that big ah-ha moment and in this next chapter of my blog I will share the trail of thoughts that got me there.

During my long lockdown, I had been reading one of LP Thoon’s sermons and it stressed the importance of understanding causality. In particular, it talked about needing to identify the cause of our suffering. For several weeks the idea had preoccupied me and, amidst the stress of my many medical surprises, I had begun to fixate more on identifying and tracing the causes of my suffering. As a result, around the summer of 2021, dukka had again become a dominate theme/ focal point of my practice.

Then, in October 2021, Mae Neecha asked for my help editing LP Thoon’s autobiography and I was left hanging on his repeated statement that everything was suffering. In truth, I had heard this before, from LP Thoon, from Phra Arjan Dang, from Mae Yo and Mae Neecha. I had heard it, but I suddenly realized that in my heart of hearts, I didn’t believe it. Even in the face of the dukkha I experienced during Covid, the dukkha I was experiencing from my own medical scares, I still held the view that dukka was half the picture: Dukka was part of our experience of the world, but there was also sukkha (happiness).  I mean there had to be right? I feel happiness, its the other side of the dukka coin, it seemed logical — experiential — and yet here are all these teachers I trust and respect telling another story. I decided it was worth exploring whether or not I could find truth in the assertion that everything is dukka, and I set myself to the slow task of gathering daily evidence to see what my own inspection of the topic uncovered.

The blogs of this chapter capture my thoughts along the way, and a reprisal, in context, of my final ah-ha that everything in this world must indeed be suffering.