Alana's Dharma Blog

Some dear friends had come to visit and I planned a day out for them, and their 2 kids ages 2 and 4, to the zoo. Its about an hour drive from my place to the zoo and in the car both kids fell asleep. My friend, looked back at the 2 sleeping tots and exhaled deeply, with a sigh of relief, admitting she was overjoyed just to have a few minutes of ‘adult time’ to herself. The truth is, I got it, they had been visiting almost a week and, at least while I had been around, there was almost no break from the kids screaming, running, hungry, crying, fighting, disobeying or needing some sort of attention.  I thought to myself, “this is so why I don’t want kids.”

This friend however was one of those women that ALWAYS wanted kids. I have known her since high school and there was no doubt in her mind, even when we were just kids ourselves, that having kids were a key ingredient to life’s success. She had the first one easily enough, but with the second there were issues; there were doctors and drugs and painful procedures. Her husband wanted to quit trying, said they should be happy with the one little boy they had, but she was adamant  — she had always dreamed of 2 kids and she would do whatever it took to have the second. Eventually of course, her wish came true, and now it seemed to me she had a new wish, a few more moments of ‘adult time’ before those little terrors woke-up.

The truth is, this isn’t the first time I have seen this friend struggle with the kiddos; more than once she has admitted she misses our nights out, travel, more intimacies with her husband, a go-go-high powered career, and all the other freedoms and aims she felt she needed to give up when the kids came along. She is always quick to tell me how much she loves her kids though, that of course they are worth it, they have given her life a new sense of meaning and purpose.  I smile, nod, listen supportively, but I always get the vague sense that this might be what Stockholm syndrome is like — somehow victim/hostage has come to love her captors.

I have no kids, so I like to pat myself on the back for being immune to such a life trap, but if I really reflect on it, am I? Of course, my husband, Eric, comes to mind — I love him so much, as my friend does her kids, but look at how much I have had to sacrifice for him. I live in a place I don’t like, forced by his job to leave a city, friends, and a life I loved. Not for the first time either, 3 times now I have moved from my home to follow my husband across the country. Its not just were I live, it is what I do and how I spend my time that I have compromised on as well. Eric is a homebody, so while I used to love being out and about, I have modified my behaviors for him. I wanted to be a lawyer, got into some of the country’s best schools, but my husband already had a high-power consulting job at the time and we decided two high power jobs in one family would be too much of a strain on our relationship, so I declined law school. Frankly everything from my diet to my décor has been a compromise, a negotiation between the royal ‘we’, rather than an independent decision. None of this is to say I am unhappy with my life, I have adapted, adjusted myself to achieve my higher priority, the non-negotiable part of my own vision-of-an-ideal-life I have had since I was a kid –a healthy marriage.  I have aligned my hopes and expectations to be comfortable with the reality of my life. These are my choices, and yet…

And yet, when I look at my friend in the car, hungry for just a few moments of rest, I see her suffering –suffering she has invited with her choices and tradeoffs — suffering she has become blind to. Aren’t I blind to my own suffering as well? Its a bit shocking that we humans can delude ourselves, come to see what traps us as who we are and what we want. But the truth is, we all love our captors: We love ourselves, we are enamored with the world, we cling and strive to what we have and what we hope for. We are tethered and bound, and yet somehow, we close our eyes tight, click our heels together 3 times, and convince ourselves that there is no life better than the one we have or the one we long for. Sure it is hard, sure we suffer, sure we know there are tradeoffs, but its worth it right? Right? Its totally worth it…it has to be. Right?

I walked into Starbucks today and there was a homeless man making a mess at his table near the door, I felt myself move to give him wide berth, going to stand as far from his table as I possibly could while still holding my place in line. The truth is, the man, his rupa (physical form), disgusted me — the smell of filth mixed with urine, the look of his matted hair and scabby skin, his behavior of strewing the table and floor with torn sugar packages, crumpled newspaper, making no effort to keep his surroundings in the restaurant clean.

As I try to place physical distance between that man and myself, I realize I was trying to place emotional distance between the two of us as well.  I so desperately need to believe that that man –with his filth, poverty, inconsiderate behavior — that is not me, that is something deeply ‘other’ to what I am. But, the more I consider it, the more undeniable it is that in many ways, that man and I are more alike than different.

Fundamentally, it is that man’s rupa that sets me off, that jolts my deep sense of unease, that my heart uses to ‘prove’ our deep difference. But isn’t that all surface rupa I am fixating on? More fundamentally, don’t he and I share the same genesis and the same disintegration of our rupa:  We are, after all, both formed from the union of sperm and egg, both gestated in in the wombs of our mothers, born to spend some finite period of time in this world before both our bodies disintegrate back into the very same dust of the earth.

After he and I are both  dead and gone, will someone be able to pick up a fragment of bone or a spec of dust that was former flesh and be able to say, “oh this one was that Alana chick, but that little scrap nail or hair over there, that one was the homeless dude from Starbucks.” Of course not, because that man and I have fundamentally the same rupa, the same organs, hair, eyes, skin, arms, legs and head; our bodies –and the composites upon which they are built — are basically the same. His body wears down, I look down at a busted thumb joint, feel the dull ache of a nerve issue in my arms, hear the creaking in my hip, and I can tell you my body is wearing down too. He is dirty, but I am just a few showers away from being exactly as dirty as he is. I am in line at Starbucks –why? Because I need food and drink to live, same as he does, sipping on his beverage. He closes his eyes and sleeps at regular intervals, I am freshly awake from my own last sleep.

In my mind I focus on our differences specifically so I don’t need to grapple with our sameness, a sameness that scares me.  I don’t want to feel the same as someone I see as dirty and disgusting and, frankly, a failure at life in our society. I don’t want to contemplate on how my body can reach the same state, or my life could take a similar turn. So I focus on the superficial physical difference that I use to gauge his ‘fundamental constitutional difference’ (ie. the personality traits and tendencies that made him homeless in the first place).

But isn’t this mental exercise of mine –to seek difference in the face of overwhelming, albeit uncomfortable, sameness — is about as meaningful as fixating on the subtle differences in the shape of each snowflake and ignoring the fact it is all snow: Derived from water when it reaches conditions below 32 Degrees and subject to melting back into water when it reaches temps above 32 degrees. No one shoveling the driveway gives a damn about which flake is pointy and which flake is round-tipped, they are just happy salt seems to help with them all.

Really we are the same. Physically we are indubitably more alike than different. And one thing my practice has really started showing me is that what can be seen in the physical world is often mirrored in the intangible one. After all, impermanence rules it all. My luck, my fortunes, my safety net, my behaviors, all these things (denominated in rupa btw) can change. They will change. Shit, they already have changed — most recently, my move to NY making me feel low, loosing the status, identity and social circle that kept me feeling happy and safe in SF. If I can loose, be brought low, why do I assume I am safe from going lower? If an Alana can go from an SF high to a NY lower why should I believe my self exempt from a homeless lower still?

In a world of inseparable pairs — where wealth and poverty, status and infamy — come together, cycling through states of both is inevitable.  My life hinges on the 8 worldly conditions, just the same as that homeless man’s. I reap the fruits of my causes, just the same as that homeless man. Both of us subject to our ever-evolving-karma. The only difference between that man and I is it is his turn to be low and my turn to be high. Time will change that as it changes everything else, just as surly as snow starts to melt at 33 degrees.

• When my old employee left my organization I got called to help again and ultimately took my job back. I had trained up this employee to replace me, I had planed she would stay, but precisely because things went differently than I had planed I was able to regain a position I enjoy.
• When Eric and I started dating I had no plans for along-term relationship, I thought it would be a short summer affair. Turns out we have been happily married for over a decade
• I had brought powder sunscreen on my trip to Africa and it was insufficient, I was burning everyday. Out of nowhere another couple, on their last day of vacation, gave me their high SPF cream and I was able to avoid getting badly burnt.
• My stepdad had no plans for a check-up, but after an accident he had an MRI and it caught lung cancer at an early, operative, stage.

Counting down days to an upcoming vacation to Seattle and Napa, and suddenly I start wondering to myself,  “what the hell am I going to wear on this trip?”  I would rather wear pants than skirts, in case we are hiking a lot, but then I feel like I don’t have a jacket to match most of my pants. Plus, what if we want to go to a fancy meal –I will probably need at least one skirt.  Should I bring my favorite jacket…I want to pack light, maybe it is too heavy? If I bring a mix of pants and skirts can I get by with just one hat, or will it look too fancy with the pants and too casual with the skirts? Suddenly, what should be a relaxing vacation has me all stressed out, and I haven’t even left home yet.

Fretting I just don’t have the right stuff, I start trolling the web, looking for new travel clothes. Frankly, I feel bullied: Bullied by my body demanding that I accessorize and beautify it, that I hide the ugly parts. Bullied by the clothes I already have, demanding that I find things to match them.  Bullied by the future clothes that will force me to find storage for them in my already over-stuffed closet, that will need care and cleaning and folding. Bullied by outfits that will rip and stain and tear and make me sad to loose them, or that I will  grow out of and it will sit in my closet mocking me, reminding  me that I have gotten too fat or old to wear it.  My fingers clack at the keyboard extra hard –with the force of frustration and stress — still down, down, down, I scroll through Ebay’s fashion pages. If I am being honest, being bullied, “forced” to search onward by nothing other than myself.

Why do all this if it makes me feel so terrible? Because I need to be prepared of course! I need the right outfit to look chic on every occasion, the right jacket to keep me warm, the right clothes to convey professional but playful and elegant all at once, to announce my status and wealth, to augment my beauty and cover my flaws, to make friends and influence people and to be sure I fit-in. My wardrobe is just a tool box, filled with tools, to make me the on-top-in-control-buttoned-up-bad-ass-chick I know I am.

The problem: Can I possibly own everything I need to look chic on all occasions? To be warm/cool on every occasion? To fit-in and project the image I want to project on every occasion?  Wouldn’t I need an infinite amount of stuff? Can clothes really prepare me, can anything prepare me? Can an impermanent object, existing in an impermanent world, really be a fit-all-tool? I am literally chasing an impossibility.

“Fine” ignorant Alana concedes to wisdom Alana, before sneaking in a but, “but at least I can have what I need to be chic on these 2 occasions– a trip to Seattle and Napa.” Again though, can I really know for sure what the future of these places, in the limited window I am there, will be like? For all of my travels, how often have I brought too much stuff? How often was I missing just the thing I wanted? With countless past failures, why do I think I can be perfectly prepared this time? And is the right hat or jacket really going to be what guarantees my perfect preparation, even if  such a thing existed?

At the end of my frantic fashion scrolling I decided I couldn’t quite find the right stuff to buy. I figured I would just make due with what I already have in my overflowing wardrobe. But as I closed-up my laptop, frustrated both by not finding the “right thing”, and the mad-rush quest to find it in the first place, I couldn’t help but think about how painful it is to be lead around by my wrong view of what clothes are: By my delusion that they reify me, define and protect me, control how others see me.

The truth is, bad shit can befall me no matter what I wear; in fact, I have a high-heel induced toe injury that proves bad shit can happen because of what I wear. People can like or hate me no matter what I wear; in fact, jumping on the Z. Cavaricci  fashion trend to try and be cool in elementary school caused me to be bullied even worse than before I wore those horrid pants. Wearing white won’t make me saint like or enlightened, and keeping around a black jacket won’t make me emotionally ready to handle Eric’s funeral. All said, I can’t even remember a trip where what I wore was some huge issue, or where it made me happy, or satisfied or guaranteed either a good, or bad, time.

Lately I have been contemplating on beauty. It is a quality so dear to me, I dedicate so much of my time, my energy, my possessions in service of it. When I think of a moment I consider to be one of my ‘peak beauty moments’ — standing in front of the full length mirror, modeling my bright red wedding dress, my super-fit 20 something bod and flawless dewy skin — it seems all rainbows and candy canes, the joy and pride and elation of seeing beauty, ‘having’ beauty, being beautiful. Of course I celebrate it, cultivate it, desire it desperately. Why wouldn’t I?

But beauty’s shadow self is already upon me — I literally see it in my own reflection — it is the fact that beauty fades. My own beauty fades, and that loss stabs me in the heart each time I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. 

I was looking through a photo album the other day, I found a picture of my Mom back when Seth and I were kids,  she was so young and so pretty. Now, in a more recent picture she looks so old, wrinkled and saggy. It happened to her, and it is happening to me, RIGHT NOW. My skin around my eyes starting to get crepey, my boobs sagging, my cheeks looking sunken.

Even when I can manage a beauty moment, there is always backsliding. Even as I stood there, 30-something-fitter-than-most-20-somethings, dressed for Halloween as a perfect Wonder Woman, I was eyeing the pizza restaurant wondering when starvation would win over my willpower to be thin.  I just had fillers and I am already thinking of the next treatment, worried about the second to worst cosmetic problem, now that the first worst is ‘solved’. I diet, and am thin for a second, before I backtrack, never really going back to as thin as I was in my peak days. Always, there is someone more beautiful. In my peak days, there were my drop-dead gorgeous friends Erica and Jessica that could turn every eye in a room away from me. Now, in my 40s, there is almost everyone younger.

In my own, rather short lived beauty, there have been countless physically painful moments; literal poking, prodding, fillers and botox, laser treatments and hours at the gym, seeking to maintain or return beauty lost. There are all the emotional pains too; the horror of  finding my fist gray hair, looking in the mirror as I get a hair cut and trying to bear the sight of my sagging jowls, humiliation when I have a pimple or a cold sore at a big event. The planning for procedures, the fear I might get found out, or permanently scarred. How do I regularly ignore these pains? How do I ignore a lifetime of hurt to achieve something so so fleeting?

Pain/pleasure, censure/praise,  gain loss, fame/insignificance, as I was considering the polarity of the worldly conditions, it dawned on me that their pairings are inevitable; they will always come together, unbreakably linked for all time. The reason is simple — whatever has the ability to move in one direction has the ability to move in the other: If something can accumulate it can dissipate, if it can grow it can whither, the quality that allows for gain is the same quality that allows for loss. Everything is this way, it is baked into the fabric of this world.

I was looking at my favorite yellow purse, starting to fray a bit at the seams, and I realized I could consider the physical world in terms of pairings as well, in terms of coming together and moving apart. My purse is an aggregation of parts, a zipper, leather, strings, nylon, bottlecaps, by definition the fact that it had the ability to come together means it has the ability to come apart. That is the nature of all 4e objects. My body is the same way, a compilation of skin and sinew and organs and cells, they come together in a certain form, for a time, and then the parts disaggregate. Through this body I experience both pleasure and pain; the same mechanisms — the same neuropathways and brain functions, the ability of all those little neurons and signals to aggregate and disaggregate in particular ways — that allow for pleasure under one circumstance are the very mechanisms that facilitate pain in another.

My problem is that I want pleasure and not pain. I want a purse that is together not falling apart, I want a body whose aggregation is young and fit and healthy. I want beautiful not ugly.  But opposites are built into the nature of each up/down. States that I find preferable all depend on circumstances, and we live in a world where circumstances continuously change, so how could states not follow suite?

In one circumstance a purse or an Alana body are whole and in another they start coming apart.  That is normal.  Which makes me start wondering… maybe what is abnormal is me. More specifically, my expectation that stuff (both material and immaterial) that is part of an eternally bound pair, would only ever show the side of the pair that I prefer. Maybe my suffering isn’t really normal either: There is no particular value built into either side of a pair –heads or tails, a quarter is just a quarter — I only suffer if I am rooting for heads and tails come-up. In other words, I am the cause of my own suffering, I have normalized it, taken for granted that it is just a part of my life, but it doesn’t really have to be; if I can just abandon my preferences/desires that cause the suffering in the first place…man the Buddha was really on to something…

This blog is a direct continuation of the previous entry — Its about me and me. If you have not already done so, please go back and read that entry before you proceed here.

On the tail of realizing that my own standards/impossible desires –and my inability to uphold them — lay at the heart of my negative feelings about my Mom, I started considering a few other troubled relationships in my life to see if I could find the same pattern at work again. My mind immediately flashed back to my old mooching friends, Sandy and Blake (the blog is here), who never seemed to pay for anything when we spent time together.

Ultimately, out friendship ended because of money. We sold them a car, that we had a better offer on, but I wanted to be a “good friend” and sell to them for less because they were in financial straights. A few months later, they sold us a different car in return, but it needed work to be brought up to emissions standards. Technically, the car was illegal to sell in the state of California until the emissions work was done, but again, knowing they needed the money, we bought it from them on the promise that they would get the emissions work done quickly, at their own expense, and get us the working car we had paid for. But months went by and no car. They had brought it in to the mechanic, but the work never seemed done…finally I had enough — I felt like we had gone above and beyond to be good friends and they didn’t return the favor, they didn’t respect us at all. In the end we told them to keep the money and the car and we went our separate ways, the end of years of intensely close friendship.

Now, when I look back on this, I can’t help see the same pattern emerging as I saw with my mom: I wanted to be a good friend, I wanted to be giving and generous, I wanted to be patient and let what I saw as them using me roll off my back. That was an ideal, magnanimous friend in my mind, that is who I wanted to be. But, I couldn’t muster continual patients, my friends forced me past the edge of my generosity ‘comfort zone’. I stopped hanging out with them not just because I felt like they took advantage, but because they made me feel lesser –like a bad friend and an undesirable person. There was a feeling in my heart, each and every time they made me pay, of anger and discomfort because my selfish reflex didn’t jive with the compassionate, always giving, good friend Alana I wanted to see myself as.

What is more, I wanted my good friends to act in a certain way –namely I wanted them to do things I believe confirmed me, made me feel good and special and loved. The problem with all the mooching was I began to wonder if their friendship was validating my awesomeness or validating their want for money.

Obviously, there are a ton of wrong views in these thoughts: That good friends are by definition people who are generous and giving; or that the purpose of friends is to validate; or that Blake and Sandy’s behavior was mutually exclusive with respect; or that the reasons for the car not being done were about me, or them for that matter; that making us pay regularly was taking advantage and that the non-monetary things they contributed to our life had lesser value. I dealt with many of these, years ago, in the original blog (the blog is here). But the truth is, none of these views triggered powerful enough emotions that they would have led me to dissolve such a dear relationship on their on.

What triggered emotions strong enough to break up with Blake and Sandy was me and me: It was the fact that my emotional response, to their behavior, reminded me of the limits on my own self-imagined magnanimity.  It was always me, my views of right and wrong, my standards for good and bad friends, and my need for friendships to validate my view of myself…I am starting to suspect that, in fact, it is ALWAYS about me and me.

Today I was at Whole Foods and a call came over the loudspeaker, ” Can the owner of the silver BMW with plate number XYZ please come to the front”.  That was me, “that is my car” I said, as I rushed to the front desk. It turns out I had parked crooked over the line and the person in the space next to me couldn’t get out. I hadn’t realized I had done it, and I was already feeling bad and self conscious as I went outside to straighten the car, when a stranger in the parking lot mutters, “who the hell would park like that?”

I was so angry, I suddenly hated that stranger, even though I didn’t know her at all.  But in my mind, I was sorry, I didn’t park badly on purpose, it was an accident, so why the fuck is she being so mean and judgmental? As I fumed in my car, repeating the mantra, “I hate her, I hate her, I hate her”, it dawned on me,  I don’t really hate that woman at all. The person I am truly hating right now is me…

Alana is considerate and kind, those are traits I pride myself on. I think these are important qualities in a person, and in a community. In my mind, situations where people are considerate go smoothly and those where they don’t, well the threat of disorder and violence lurks beneath every honk and curse and broken social norm. I value living in orderly places; it is the reason I moved to uptight Greenwich from unruly NY, it makes me feel safe. But here I am breaking my own rules. Feeling upset when the place I normally appreciate for its citizens’ polite policing, is finding me to be the offender. I can’t just let go of my rules, I can’t admit that the fact that I can’t even keep them faithfully should call their absoluteness into value.  No! For me polite/considerate/compassionate is true and good (even though their upholding is making me feel pretty bad about myself right about now). So, instead of dealing with that whole kerfuffle of contradictions, I shortcut the cognitive dissonance I feel with a simple emotion — hate.

In a flash I project the hate outward, on the woman who wouldn’t give me a pass. Who judged without seeing my intentions, my usual polite nature. But it is my own value of this quality that makes me so upset at being judged lacking in it. It is really me, my failure, that I hate.

A few weeks ago I was at the Wat and LP Anan was playing a little instructive game with me. He opened up a website about ‘miss-matched’ couples and started sharing pics. One was of a super tall guy and a tiny woman, another an old guy and a young woman, another a fat woman and a skinny guy. He asked if I agreed with the website that these couples were, ‘mismatched’, if their being together bothered me in some way. I admitted they did and he asked why. I said the guy is too tall for that lady, the second dude too old for the woman, the third woman too fat for the skinny guy.   He called me out — he said that the problem wasn’t with the coulpes, the problem lies in my heart: The height difference in the first couple exceeded my threshold for height differences in a couple. The age difference in the second couple exceeded my threshold for an appropriate age difference in a couple; that the weight difference in the last couple exceeded my threshold of acceptable weight differences between a couple. In other words — my thoughts, my judgments, were not about the couple at all, they were about my standards and expectations. They were about me and me.

I had taken this lesson home and started contemplating on it when it hit me. My Mom and I have struggled with a hard relationship. But ever since a trip we took last summer together, I have been feeling like I hate her. I agreed to the trip because she wanted to travel so badly. She promised she would be ‘easy’, not make a big deal about her religious diet, that she would be so very grateful. On day 1 she was dragging me to restaurants I didn’t want to go to so she could get a kosher meal. A small misunderstanding about a rural stay, and her diet options in the town of 150, had her screaming at me for 45 minutes telling me what a bad person I am, how inconsiderate, etc. I broke. I yelled. I wanted to drop her on the side of the road and drive away. Instead, I calmed down on the outside, and seethed on the inside, through the rest of the trip. Them, I went home, with hate unlike any I have had before, in my heart.

Now, almost a year later, with LP’s lesson on the brain, the hate starts making more sense: I want so badly to be a good kid, to be a calm, patient, saint-like person. To be equanimous, like a good Buddhist. It’s the Alana that hugs homeless people, and frets so much about being a good Buddhist. My Mom, she pushed me too far to be that ideal Alana, she forces me to acknowledge that there is a threshold, after which I am not calm or patient or good, I am just fucking pissed.

My hate of my Mom is really just me hating someone that reminds me of my own failings, of failings of this world. I need the world to follow my rules and standards, only in this world of rules, and consideration, and goodness, and patients, can I possibly be safe. I can’t bear to see the bald truth, that my own inability to maintain these qualities means they aren’t really absolutes of this world at all. Nor is Alana identity, rife with wonderful qualities, an absolute. So, I just tune out the uncertainty and impermanence and fixate on nice, simple, hate.

But is it really fair to hate my Mom just because she reminds me that I come-up short in following the rules — that I made up in the first place — about how things and people should work ( even though they don’t actually always work that way)? This really has nothing to do with my Mom; this is about me and me.

All those couples LP showed me obviously don’t agree with my standards. My mom doesn’t think she is acting in a way that would drive me away, or she wouldn’t do it. The lady in the parking lot today was Greenwich-style-polite-policing in a way I usually do, I usually agree with, only this time I needed a pass. Clearly these standards of mine aren’t absolute truths of this world, because not everyone agrees with me. I am catching myself up in webs of me and me, worsening my entrapment and suffering with each surge of struggle and hate, while the world moves along, being what it actually is, unconcerned with me and my standards.

• For time with my beloved father, for feeling special and valued when he loved and approved of me, I had a childhood suffering with an ill mother, bullying, being jealous of my brother, striving for popularity and friends, and then shattering pain and loss when Dad died.

• For time with my ex Fede, and the imaginary future of a long happily-ever-after marriage, I had to deal with him prioritizing his studies over time together,  his years of absence when he went to study abroad,  his condescension and withholding of affection, for sexual deprivation and ultimately the sorrow of a bad breakup.

• For my time with my ex  Alex I had years of sexual tension between us, the fear of losing a friend, his acerbic comments, worry about him and drugs, awkwardness of losing my virginity, getting used for a final stand, all for a few weeks together and then me sobbing away our breakup.

• For my job I had years of anxiety trying to prove myself, frustration with my boss, stress of employees, embarrassment of not being more senior and anger at being constantly reminded of it. Uncertainty, feeling like I was undervalued in the search for the director’s replacement, travel back and forth, stress on low pay, all for a few moments when I feel exhilarated, pride at being a part of something I identify with.

•   For my beloved Eric, I trade the stress early dating if he was the one, stress being domesticated and feeling like I cant go out , be sexy, build my identity and worth off of everyone wanting me, stress of him being distant in early Uber and dating days, stress of the times I feel like I have disappointed him, stress over his health and his jobs, feeling dragged around, under valued in one way and undeserving in another, stress of missing him and of having him there, all for the moments and memories of joy and hope for more later.  And definitely an end where, either I leave him and worry for his wellbeing, jealous Ill be replaced, worried we wont meet again, worried I will owe him. Or he leaves me and I am lonely, I miss him, my identity is shattered, my sense of safety and wellbeing is shook, my financial and logistical worries take over, I worry about if to ordain or keep lay living, of where to go and what to do with myself when I exhaust the imagination of a partner shaped object beside me while I enjoy life, to make me enjoy life more and prove it is enjoyable. And the pain when my hope for finding my happy ending is dashed.

Eric and I were traveling in Japan over the 2018/2019 holidays and we decided to spend a few days in Naoshima, an island in the Seto Sea famous for its many museums and art instillations. Eric and I went into an instillation, Backside of the Moon, by the artist James Turrell and the piece absolutely blew me away. Spoiler alert here: I am about to describe he piece, so if you had big plans to travel to Naoshima to see this work, you may want to skip this blog. Otherwise…proceed at your own risk:

The instillation is open, by appointment, for 15 minute slots. When your time arrives, you and a group of around 10 people are escorted inside a room that is pitch black. The docent announces there is a bench directly behind you and you are instructed to step backwards and sort of grope your way onto the seat. Then, you wait. In total, pitch darkness, you sit and do nothing at all. Minutes ticked and ever so slowly, I thought I saw a bit of a flash in front of me. More time and more and more, a bit of light appeared. Gradually the light brightened and grew until I could see a large illuminated square directly in front of me. Eventually, the docent returned to the room and instructed us all to walk toward the square, and we could all see, and proceed to, the light in front of us. Then, the docent explained we have been in the same room for 15 minutes and nothing in the room had changed. No light was turned on, no curtain pulled. What had changed was us, the viewers, our eyes had adjusted to the room and come to see the faint light that was there all along. Pweefff –that is the sound of my little mind totally blown…

After I left the exhibit, my first though was really that the piece is a perfect ubai — a parallel — for dhamma practice: This world doesn’t change, but us practitioners adjust our view, and slowly we see this world for what it is, for what it always has been: A world that is inconstant and stressful.

What is more is that I don’t expect change, I don’t always see it coming, because circumstances, and form, can shift at a creeping pace, but in the end the magnitude of change can be seen, just like the square of light at the back of the room. We mistake barely perceptible change for permanence and then face a huge –often heartbreaking — shocker when what we know and love changes in an undeniable way.

Additionally, I tend to look outward for change: I know that everything in this world continually shifts, but I rarely look inward to see how this common condition (duhh, it is called a common condition for a reason) applies to me. I don’t internalize change, but 15 minutes in a dark room was all it took for me to change. My rupa, my eyes, adjusted. My nama adjusts all the time too –it makes me see that even if I had a perfect, mythical, world, where nothing changes at all, I couldn’t hope to find satisfaction in it because I change. What I am used to changes. What I see and therefore what I want and what I imagine changes.

This particular art piece has stayed with me over the years. Over and over it comes-up in my practice as the perfect illustration for some topic I am considering, so I am sure you will see it again.

I will give a little further spoiler about this piece:

About a year later, this piece was an essential data point I used when I was trying to learn about and understand rupa. I had been deeply considering why all human rupa wasn’t the same and it was thinking back to this exhibit that made me realize that my own rupa body interacts with the rupa environment — that what I am exposed to and used to effects my form. That many of the physically based differences between humans — tastes, strength, fitness ability — arises not because of “specialness” but because all rupa form is subject to the same rules: It adjusts and shifts in reaction to other rupa in itself and in its environment.

Last night I was in bed in my Manhattan loft fuming  — the neighbors had lit an illegal fire, in a condemned chimney, and smoke was pouring into my apartment. For me, this type of situation is my worst fear, a reflection of my greatest sense of injustice; people being inconsiderate and breaking the rules, resulting in an affront to my personal safety.

This situation felt particularly affronting because it is on the tail of my asthma flare due to recently being caught breathing wildfire air on my last trip to SF. The smell of smoke in my apartment was a flashback to the panicking feeling I had as smoke filled the air in SF, and my breathing became labored, just a few weeks ago.

This sense of dread that I could stop breathing, fear that the situation wouldn’t be rectified, indignation at the neighbors’ blatant disregard for the rules…it triggered several contemplations, but here I’ll share just one about making SF ‘un-mine’:

The recent fires in CA have already made me really rethink any goal/fantasy to go back West when Eric and I retire. I have a respiratory disease and the fires are getting worse each year. But I noticed it hasn’t just effected my long-term fantasy; I don’t even feel like going back for work or visits in the short term either. The idea of more back and forth is exhausting, the time away from Eric, feeling unsettled in my life. This past time I was on the East Coast (right after the fires) I started thinking maybe I hadn’t given Greenwich a fair chance, maybe I could build a better life in Connecticut after all.

Laying in a smoky house, fear and anger making my focus extra sharp, I realized what has changed: SF isn’t mine anymore. When I said it in my head, my heart knew for sure it was true. And though practice has taught my mind to try and refuse my belongings and my identities before, this has to be the first time my heart really really felt it as well.

When I started poking around to see what has changed, I realized the biggest thing is my imagination that I have a certain future in SF (or Cali, or anywhere out in the West Coast fire country), that it can be my “forever home”. I just can’t reconcile the fires/air quality with a belief that I can mold both the home, and the home-shaped void in my heart, to fit each other. Without this sense of hope and permanence, my heart rejects the West Coast, I am ready to move on.

Before, I looked at the city, and my situation, with such soft eyes. Sure, I saw the needles on the streets, the cost of living, the strain of going back and forth, but these things were worth it. I also saw the city changing, the people, the places, the weather even, but it was still similar enough, familiar enough that I could literally, watch my imagination fill-in the gaps, smooth over the changes by focusing on the familiar. Now, in the wake of disillusionment, I feel the weight of the commitments I have made, my duties, that keep me bound to travel to SF, for right now, so much more strongly.

It really stuns me, I have spent so much energy and desire fixated on how to leave NY and go back to the West Coast: Seattle, Portland, Denver, Cali, pushing Eric into countless job interviews at companies in all these places, so that I could align my heart home with my full time home. So I could align my location with my identity: A West Coast Gal. But 1 new piece of information is all it took to kill this hope.

Recently I sent a whole bunch of clothing to consign and before I did I assessed the “story of impermanence that each item tells”; there was a whole category of items that I was disposing of because I got new information –down is warmer than wool, I have a nickle allergy, silk is too hard to clean, etc. It dawned on me that I am constantly getting new information and with it my needs and wants are also constantly changing. In other words, there is literally no end to my desire and there is also no possible way that I can satisfy it. I am on an endless treadmill!

My big question now is how do I get off the treadmill? As I started divorcing myself from Fire Country, new imaginary homes began to stew in my brain. Maybe CT is a forever home, maybe Vermont is the perfect place to retire.  And so the treadmill keeps rolling…

Of course, this isn’t the first time  I have unmade something as mine: Once the ugliness or untenability of something hits my heart, disillusionment sets-in. Just take my still smoke filled NY Loft for example: This thing was ‘un-mined’ almost as soon as I bought it. Like the West Coast, there was an evolution in my understanding that I didn’t control the place (too small, lot line window, noise, maintenance issues and ultimately a city I hate), I can’t shape it to my imagination. I can’t force it to bend to my will. I bought it because I thought it was one thing, a cozy new nest for Eric and I to build an exciting life, and it quickly became a massive failure and financial mistake. Now it is up for sale, us hoping to cut our losses.

Once an object strays too far from my imagination of what it is/will do/will make me, I purge it from my identity. Even if, like the NY loft, it remains with me physically, it is gone from my heart. Once my heart, my sense of self, strays too far from what I imagine an object to be, like countless fashion looks I have cycled through and left behind, I purge it from my belongings. If all it takes is a change of object or a change of heart to make something not mine, how can I believe it was ever really mine to begin with? I cling so tightly, endure so much suffering in the name of that clinging, to things I will eventually let go of –by choice or force. I suffer not even for the objects, but for some duration where I can fool myself into thinking they are mine.

It was November 2018 and I had managed, by coincidence, to escape smoke from the fires raging in Northern California by a single day. My flight back to New York from an important event I had been working out in San Francisco departed early in the morning, by afternoon fires had created all kinds of delays and cancelations. Smoke filled the skies of San Francisco, air quality went to the danger zone, friends were texting me pictures of orange and black skies, complaining it was impossible to breathe.  A part of me felt relief that my asthmatic self hadn’t been caught in the fires. But another part of me felt ‘survivor’s guilt’; as the fires raged on, I started feeling bad that I had escaped when I had so many friends and co-workers stuck and suffering.

A few days later, I went to have coffee with a friend in NY and told her of my guilt. In my mind, my guilt was a sign of my compassion, my deep empathy for friends. So, you can imagine my surprise when my coffee companion told me to get over myself and quit being so egotistical. “Egotistical, WTF?” I thought. “Everyone finds their own way” she explained.

After we talked, I thought more about what she said: Everyone does find  their own way, i.e. each person has their own karma. As I wondered and worried about why everyone else couldn’t just leave, or find a way to be spared, what I was really doing was wondering why everyone wasn’t just like me. I was assuming everyone would be as effected as me. Everyone would have priorities like me. Everyone would  have the same causes and effects as me. I was being egotistical, missing the differences that exist amongst people who are, well, not me.

But, in my self-centered assumptions, I was making a more subtle , but equally egotistical error — I was missing the sameness between me and everyone else. This time, I may have been spared suffering. This time, I watched from afar as the skies turned black, and with distance felt pity mixed with superiority: I was spared after all. But what about times before and times after? In one instant, one situation, I can count myself advantaged –my karma allowed escape; but like everyone, I am subject to my karma, my turn at suffering has happened before and it inevitably will again.