Dear Reader: The following post draws upon an old ubai, a bubble (like a kid’s bubble or a soap bubble), which had been a critical tool for my contemplations on physical form, samutti (supposed form or conventional form), and annatta (no self/ or the nature of everything in this world that aggregates to become disaggregated/ or the un-clumping of what seemed, or was temporarily, clumped) for years prior to the present contemplation.

As a reminder, an Ubai is a tool, an example we see out in the world, which we can use to internalize the truths of this world, to see dhamma (which after all, is just the truth of this world) more clearly, to draw parallels with so we can understand how these truths –which apply to our ubai –apply to everything including our so-seemingly-special-selves.  As a further reminder –here is a much earlier contemplation I had on bubbles and annatta. I suggest you go back and read that section of THIS BLOG HERE, before moving onwards.

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All this samutti stuff from LP Thoon’s Autobiography brings me back to old ubai: Bubbles and annatta.

Its clear to me that bubbles are a perfect way to think of the most basic sort of samutti: A bubble is a constantly shifting array of  four elements, but as long as it maintains the bubble form we call it bubble. We superimpose a fixed concept onto an ever shifting 4e object and it adheres there, in our mind, until the bubble pops, at which point it strains credulity to keep calling it a bubble anymore.

From a strictly rupa perspective, we could use this as a simple way to consider ownership. For a constantly shifting set of 4es, which one moment, which state is ours? Clearly, an object needs to be a thing to claim it, enter samutti –the supposed form of the object is what we claim. If we want to say ‘all the states’ of the object are ours, then we need to accept those aggregates before they come together as well as after they disaggregate. We have to accept states of the object when we dislike it, when we are disgusted by it, when it is dirty and decayed, when it doesn’t any longer reflect whom we believe ourselves to be.

But it strains credulity to say our body is ours when it is a sperm and egg, or rotting in the ground. It feels off to claim the cancer cells are us, even though they are so obviously a part of our body. We don’t claim our poop, even though it is in us and comes from us. We don’t identify with disease states,  in fact, we feel assaulted by these states, they need to be fought off and ‘corrected’. This strain of credulity, the ‘extreme’ edges at which our claims clearly make no sense, is a way even simple physical objects can be used to make the truth known to us –the world doesn’t abide by our concepts of it, by the suppositions we superimpose.

Like a bubble, northing in this world can stay still. Nothing is fixed like the stagnant ideas of  things that we conjure up, and that we superimpose onto the world around us. No — objects change, they aren’t what we suppose — what we think they should be.

I claim items because I think my claiming them, “owning them”, can flip a magic switch and fix an item, freeze it from it’s continual shifting. I think my claim has the power to make my objects abide by my expectations of it, my supposition of what such-and-such a form will be and behave as. I think my claim means I can use this object to represent me, to prove myself, my self conceived identity, my control, my autonomy. With this claim I hope to upend the actual rules that govern the object –rules of rupa, of cause and effect, and substitute in my own expectations. But this doesn’t work, it can’t work. How do I know? Because every vial of botox and filler I inject into my face is a response to a body that keeps going ‘renegade’; it keeps sagging and wrinkling against my wishes, against my expectations of what an ALANA looks like, of who she is. This face is totally oblivious to, indifferent to, my claims of it.

The truth is: I am not attached to the object, I am attached to what I imagine it to be, to my fixed concept of it. That is why it is so painful when a face I claim sags and ages. This is why I can so easily move on to a new wardrobe when I feel like the style of the old clothes don’t reflect me anymore.  When I mourn a loss, it is the loss of the supposed form the object represented, not the object itself. Eric is not attached to me, he is attached to what he believes me to be. My mom is not attached to me, she is attached to the supposed form of me. Even I am attached to who I think I am –the supposed form of Alana.

Of course, I suffer! Of course my life is a series of disappointments and  dissatisfaction — I want shit to be what its not. I am attached to an idea of things, an idea that exists nowhere other than in my own mind.  And I scurry through this world trying to force items to align with my  ideas instead of accepting them for what they are. And when everything, eventually, shows itself to be what it is –at the latest when it goes all annatta and pops like a bubble — et voila, I have Dukkha.