Alana's Dharma Blog

After I had sent Mae Yo and Mae Neecha my uber-long synopsis on everything is suffering, they send back a reply that had a  a simple question: “The Buddha said that there are two kinds of suffering – physical suffering that we cannot avoid and mental suffering that we can avoid. In order to avoid that suffering, we need to know the cause of it. Mae Yo asked, do you know what the cause of suffering is?”

On the tail of so much in-depth investigating into the whys of suffering, its fundamental presence in this world, the answer to its cause, at least in my own life, was immediately clear to me — I am the cause of my own suffering.  Here is my reply to Mae Neecha:

The more I considered my reply, the more I realized it may be time for me to turn my attention to the last of the 3 common characteristics,  annatta, or no-self; if belief in a self is fundamental to causing my suffering — for motivating and propelling my births and becoming — then understanding the truth of no self, of the inevitable cessation of all forms and processes, of the illusion of identity I imagine in the aggregates, seems like a natural next step in my path to eliminate my suffering (aka Buddhist practice). Plus, I started this practice with impermanence, dug deep on dukka, it seems only fair to give the characteristic of no-self a little air time. That all brings me to my practice today.  Right now, annatta is a slow faucet drip, I grope around, feeling mostly lost. But I have been here before, I have a plan: Each day I try and find a few examples of annatta, I gather evidence, I analyze to try and begin seeing patterns from the evidence, try to begin to consider the why everything in the world must be annatta (just as everything is impermanent and dukkha). Slowly, I suspect it will come…if and when it does, perhaps you Dear Reader will get yet another interruption in our regularly scheduled program. Till then though….I end will draw this little side-track to a close and return us to our Regularly Scheduled Program with the next blog.

The truth is that what I don’t have I clearly don’t ‘need’ for what happens next: If I don’t have a car, I simply don’t get a road trip, I do something else instead. If I don’t have flour, I don’t get a cake, I eat something else instead. If I don’t have an Eric, or an Alana, I don’t get an Eric/Alana happy future, I get some other future instead.  My future doesn’t depend on  what I think I “need”, or want, therefore nothing obliges the world to deliver these things to me (i.e. they are necessary in my mind alone). Over and over the world proves it doesn’t pander to me, it doesn’t care what I want; How can a world that doesn’t bend or bow to me, that doesn’t give a damn about my ‘needs’ or wants be anything but a continual source of pain and disappointment –i.e. dukka — to me?

A further note on this topic: Though the world doesn’t necessarily give me what I “need”, I suffer continually to try and get it, and I suffer when I don’t get it or I lose it, because I predicate my happiness on the stories I tell myself coming true. At my last mammogram, I felt such relief (lessening of dukkha) when I got an all clear. But then I considered why I felt that way, what a clear scan had really bought me, and I realized it was just a longer time clinging to my imaginary future that “needs” this body. It’s not real happiness at all, it is just another moment in which my dream goes un-dashed. I get to live another day, to stress more about how/if/for how long I can wrangle that future I strive for. If the shit I think I  need so much could really give me sukka, how is it I am not happy now? I still have this body, I still have Eric, I have money, health, so many ingredients I imagine necessary for that happily ever after, and yet I live in a state of perma-stress only momentarily lightened (not eliminated) by an all clear scan.  Getting to that happy ending I want isn’t the way to eliminate dukka (because there is no ending, there is always just some further future fantasy), giving up my obsession with how the story ends, with chasing one ending or another, that is the way to eliminate dukka.

Back, after we left SF and before we touched down in NY, Eric and I took 3 weeks off to travel Europe.I remember, we were so happy, excited, planning our new NY life and all the fun adventures we would have. I had wanted to move, and that brief period of relish in having gotten what I wanted, plus the fantasy of what it would be like, was joy. But as soon as we landed at JFK — with the noise, filth and smog — my imagination was forced to face the reality on the ground, and stress (that eventually turned to crushing anxiety/anger/depression) arose.  When my heart concots its wants, it consults imagination rather than reality. But I live in a world of reality, wants are fulfilled (or not) in the world of reality: In reality everything has two sides, there are always consequences and trade-offs,  I don’t see the whole picture, everything shifts and changes, tomorrow doesn’t look like yesterday or today. Even when I get what I want in reality, it isn’t the way I imagine it ( often, if it had been, like with  NY, I never would have wanted it, worked so hard, uprooted my life, made irreversible changes to get it  in the first place).  The delta between imagination and reality is an endless well of disappointment and pain, and there will always be a delta between imagination and reality, so there will always be dukka. The belief that satisfying my wants will satisfy me leads me to perpetuate a cycle where I invite even more dukkah chasing wants and dealing with the disappointment and consequences of sometimes getting, sometimes not getting, them.

Dear Reader, this blog is a direct continuation of the last, Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 1: Seriously, this is not one of those to try skipping ahead to get to the punchline. If you haven’t already done so, go back and read the last blog prior to reading the continuation here.

Just a a little refresher for those of you who have read the past blog, below is yet more evidence to support my contemplations on the topic that everything is dukka. The evidence is organized into themes, based around the best examples I found to help prove to myself an assertation I had heard many times from my teachers — that everything is suffering. Moreover, I sought to understand not just the conclusion, but the WHY: Why everything in the world must be suffering, what it is about the nature of the world and everything in it that guarantees that every leaf I turn, every rock I look under, every new corner I turn, I will always find the suffering innate in this world.

Back when I was contemplating on the 4es a lot, I came to realize pain is mostly excess pressure (though at times it can be too little/much heat). The problem, that any massage shows us, is that it is a fine line between pleasurable pressure and pain. We come into this world to experience worldly delights, but the same mechanism by which we experience pleasure (an arrangement of 4es that can sense pressure or heat) ensures we will inevitably experience pain. The organs we use to hear/smell beauty guarantee we will hear/see things that make us uncomfortable. But this body is not just a mechanism by which we experience physical pain, it is the cause. Physical pain is a result of embodiment. Having a body is painful, having a body is dukka.

Well Dear Reader, it has been a while since I have interrupted this here nice, orderly(ish), temporally linear(ish) blog, meant to chronologically share highlights of my dharma practice. Things have been going so well, staying on course, so naturally, I am thinking, “what better way to celebrate my birthday than to fuck-up this whole regularly scheduled programing with — yup, you got it — yet another intrusion of contemplations from the present day.”

Kidding aside, I do like to share this blog in order because contemplations build on each other; growth, though meandering, happens in linear time, there is an order to practicing and to deepening my understandings through practice. And yet, sometimes there are just those mind blowing realizations, the kind that shake and shape my practice, and I feel the deep desire to share those ‘real time’. This here is one of those contemplations, which was summarized and written-up to send to my teachers Mae Neecha and Mae Yo, so hopefully, you will indulge the birthday girl and forgive me for skipping ahead, and sharing this while it is hot off the press.

In reality, while this topic is certainly ‘deep’, it is also surprisingly simple and straight forward, after all it is just a super sobering investigation of 1 f the 3 Common Characteristics of the world (suffering, impermanence, no-self) . I think it can stand on is own without all the backstory of how I got here. So, without further adieu, everything is dukka ( in 3 parts, because it is super-duper loooonnnnggg and dense).

For years, when I considered the first noble truth, I translated it as ‘life entails suffering’. This shaped my view of the world, of practice: Life has joyful parts, but it also has suffering parts. You can’t have one without the other. Case closed. But after reading LP Thoon’s biography, I was struck by how often he said “Everything is suffering”. I had heard this in Phra Arjan Dang’s sermons too. I realized how different these takes were from my own, which basically sees happiness, delight, and joy, abundant in the world, just with a “side” of suffering.  I asked Mae Neecha about it and she said:

…Interruption in our regulatory scheduled program:

I know, I know, Dear Reader, you have gottta be thinking I am the worst, most scatter-brained narrator ever. I just got back to the program, and here I am with yet anoooottthhhheeeer interruption. Ugh, I know, but I promise its just a short reflection. One and Done…

The other day, a friend (who incidentally is Buddhist-curious, but not a practicing Buddhist), asked me what my musings were during these crazy Covid times. When I re-read the email I wrote her, I decided I wanted to share it here, on my blog. Now. While this whole pandemic thing is still  a fresh,  shared reality for all of us. I want to share it because, it is not at all technical, there is no Pali jargon, no difficult Buddhisty concepts. This is just the raw, real, reflections of scared-as-shit-there-is -a-fucking-pandemic-Alana…

Blah blah (personal conversation with a friend)…I am bored and edgy though for sure, given that health anxiety and hypochondria are my native fears, a pandemic is definitely a hot button issue to say the least. But, as you have guessed, its certainly a time and a topic ripe for musing…

As a little recap: Buddhism 101: Everything in this world is impermanent, things arise based on causes and when those causes are exhausted, those things cease to exist. Suffering arises because our understanding of the world is misaligned with this truth of impermanence. We don’t understand the nature of this world, so we are constantly hoping and expecting that we can somehow keep what we love forever and avoid what we hate forever. We don’t see that the cycles of arising and ceasing are the law of the land, we are mere subjects, not all powerful sovereigns.

In general,  I like to think I can control my life; with enough gym time or diet restraint I can guarantee my health,  with enough hard work, or money or intelligence I can perfectly plan my future. But a  pandemic is one hell of a bitch slap to my control. The truth is, as a human, I am subject to viruses — their physical nature is to consume humans and my physical nature, as a human, is to be consumed. In fact, the nature of all things in this world is to consume and be consumed, this is one of the faces of impermanence.  Of course, some humans have circumstances that make them more prone to being consumed and to suffering worse health outcomes — there are health considerations, economic considerations, livelihood considerations — but at the end of the day, all humans are subject. The lie I tell myself, that I am special, that some quality or behavior will make me exempt, is laid pretty bare by the fact that I have to be locked down, going stir crazy, in my fucking apartment.

This, of course, is not the future I foretold back when I started planning out my year in Jan. I felt utterly blindsided by this mess. I feel sorrow and horror and fear when I read the news, when I hear about neighbors who have fallen ill and so many friends who have lost jobs and businesses — it all seems wrong and unfair.  But the misconception that lurks beneath these feelings is that this world was going to continue the way it had been going. That April 2020 was going to be, more-or-less, like April 2019, and 2018, and 2017 and 2016…I was lulled by relative repetition (or rather scenarios similar enough that my mind easily glossed the differences and paid attention only to similarities) into forgetting the true ruler of this world — impermanence. All of my consternation is because on some level I feel like the world is broken, like it needs to ‘go back to the way it was’, to be fixed. But this isn’t a state of brokenness at all, this is exactly how and what the world is. What is broken is me, with my hope and expectation that it should somehow be different.

(This friend of mine has to move for work a lot and…)on one of our last outings in SF, you pointed to the unkempt sidewalk and some of the dilapidation in our old hood and you shared that one of your tricks to preparing your heart to leave a place/ to letting go of an old home, was to start paying attention to the negatives. This little trick of yours, bringing balance to your view so as to lessen your attachment, is 100% the same method that practitioners use to achieve Nirvana (freedom from all future rebirths).  Everything in this world has 2 sides (this is another face of impermanence). We humans are generally conditioned to notice the side we like and ignore/forget/minimize/justify the one we don’t.  We fool ourselves into thinking that the side we like is the  ‘normal’ state and that which we don’t is the outlier…if only we plan or control or hedge we can avoid such outliers all together. This hope is the fodder for desire to be born into this world. Gathering evidence to see the full picture, that what we love comes hand and hand with what we hate, is the fodder for freedom from this world. I love community, connection, togetherness but it comes hand in hand with contagion and disease…

So, just a few of my thoughts on all this crazy shit. Lets just hope this global pandemic is my (rude) awakening indeed ;).

This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Interruption Part 16’.

My Dear Reader, I thank you for bearing with me on this looooonnnggg interruption in our regularly scheduled program (an orderlyish, linearish blog tracing my meandering dhamma path), this will be the last posting in our Post-Retreat Interruption Series. It is simply a brief reflection of what I have come to understand my path to be.

A long time ago, I asked Mae Neecha what it really meant to eliminate sakkāya-diṭṭhi (first fetter – self-view – necessary to be eliminated in order to become a sotapanna). She replied, “I would define sakkyaditthi as the view that you are at the center of the universe and understanding/conquering sakkyaditthi is understanding that you alone are the cause of your suffering and wrong perceptions. Eliminating the sakkyaditthi fetter is seeing that there’s a huge difference between your perception of the truth and the actual truth.”

Now, years later, this answer is starting to make more and more sense to me.

We inhabit a rupa body in a rupa world. In this world, elements are constantly interacting. They are shifting. They are decaying and building new forms. They consume and they become consumed. There are predictable patterns, a balance that exists in a world where things arise from the earth and return to it, a zero-sum equation. There are rules, and to be born into this world is to be subject to these rules. I go through life pretending my objects will obey me, my body will obey me, but there is no amount of effort/ self-deception, that will ultimately make me master of this world( not even my little corner of it). The world simply does not revolve around me.

Even more years ago, Mae Yo taught me about the nama aggregates — especially memory (3) and imagination (4). She checked my homework, she drilled me continually, she made sure I was fluent in how they work. Now, I am starting to understand why.

It is because memory and imagination are integral to the process by which I concoct the delusion that the world revolves around me. With nama’s help, in my head, I reshape the world: I substitute reality with my ‘shoulds’/ notions about how things ‘ought’ to be, and I turn a blind-eye to what the world actually is. Nama is the blinders I put on that help me drown out the ugly bits of this world that lurk just outside my rose-colored glasses. Nama is the elixir I take that gets me believing a lovely single-snapshot-moment can be had and kept and repeated forever.

This path is the process of opening my eyes and seeing the world for what it actually is, not for what I want it to be. I suppose I am also understanding why Mae Neecha told me, “This is why Luang Por told Mae Yo, “ Rupa and Nama, 50/50.” Once we understand the tangible and intangible, we’ll have the whole picture.”

This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Interruption Part 15’.

In this blog, I will begin just after the last blog left off and end with a much more recent contemplation, from 6 months later, when I circled back to the topic of meaning in rupa and found a new depth and clarity.

If you recall, in the last blog I came to realize a big mistake: All this time, I looked at arrangements of 4es and knew they reflected something, so I just assumed that something was meaning. But it’s not meaning at all, it’s just a collection of reasons reflected in results.

But how did I get to such a mistaken view in the first place? It is that I see some of reasons, reflected through rupa, and my nama monsters kick-in. When I see a form that seems familiar, pattern recognition (memory) “informs” me of what is likely to come next. I hit a button; I get an Amazon box. I hit a button; I get an Amazon box. I hit a button; I get an Amazon box. Imagination now has all the ammo it needs to run wild: Rupa of button = guaranteed future box. And since, in general (when I close one eye and selectively ignore evidence to the contrary), the items I buy from Amazon make my life more convenient, I begin to believe Amazon box means convenience.

For some amount of time this ‘pattern recognition” can be close enough to predictive that it not only imparts ‘meaning’ in those buttons and boxes, it feeds my ego too. It reinforces the 3s(memory) and 4s (imagination), makes them believe they are omniscient. I hit the button I get the box. Because I don’t see all the interworking between button and box, suddenly I think I am the cause, or at least a partial cause, or at least that I know what the world will bring – a box.

My mind has become so convinced of my Amazon Narrative that even when I hit the button and don’t get a box, I can convince myself these instances are anomalies. I never stop to gather all those never received boxes up as evidence of my flawed vision of the relationship between button and box or my incomplete understanding of the Amazon supply chain. I have rigorously trained myself to ignore each and every glitch in the matrix.

Now the world is faced with a global pandemic. A shift, a new world order that is, in just a few short weeks, so radically different in so many ways. Suddenly, I find that more and more of those Amazon packages are coming late, or not coming at all. Now, in every part of my life, the patterns I was that I was confident in, have shattered, so much is unrecognizable and unpredictable.

Back at the retreat, Mae Neecha offered a re-framing, of a wrong view —  she called it a case of “incomplete information.” This pandemic has made me see that all my expectations, all the meaning I read into rupa, the outcomes I expect, are based on incomplete information. They are based on the past. The past however is over, the future will always be something different than the past, this is the law of impermanence. The world has not been fooling me. Rupa has not been fooling me. I have been fooling myself.

This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Interruption Part 14’.

As a recap: My contemplations had landed me in another ‘stuck spot.’ Namely, I had come to recognize that every arrangement of rupa contains only 4 elements. But, somehow, I still believed that there was a deeper meaning — loved/just/fair/safe/etc. — reflected by rupa. Moreover, it seemed like rupa could portends the future, if only I could ‘interpret’ it correctly…

Of course, logic dictated I must be mistaken. Its not like meaning is a 5^th element after all. But to make my heart see the truth, I had to start dissecting my mistaken beliefs more closely. I had to consider why I was fooling myself and how I was continually ‘finding’ meaning and guarantees in rupa that simply couldn’t exist.

For months, I collected evidence (some of which was shared in the last blog), I kept turning the question over in my head, trying to find an angle of attack. But, in truth, it was slow going.

I was looking at a painting one day and started analyzing the marks. In painting, every time a brush hits a canvas it is called a ‘mark’; it is a term used to describe different lines, patterns, textures, etc. that are made manifest by the artist.

It dawned on me that each mark has its reasons (aka causes) for occurring. There are rupa based reasons –the 4es of the paint, the canvas, the hand of the painter, the training to become an artist. There are reasons in nama: The desire that made the artist want to paint this picture, the things their imagination conjured up to paint. There are reasons behind these reasons, how the artist was born a human, how and why they trained as an artist, their memories and beliefs about art. While there is no possible way for me to see/understand each and every reason that resulted in a mark, those reasons are all there, reflected in each brush stroke as well as the painting as a whole.

My mistake: All this time, I looked at arrangements of 4es and knew they reflected something, so I just assumed that something was meaning. But it’s not meaning at all, it’s just a collection of reasons reflected in results.   

But wait there is more: When I dissect any arrangement of rupa down further, it becomes clear that each reason just backs up into further reasons. Let’s take a very simplified look at the purchase of my favorite green purse as an example: When my favorite green purse wore out, I went on a scavenger hunt in order to replace it. Why? Because I thought it meant that I was special to my husband. Why? Because one time he made a sweet comment about recognizing me from miles away if I was wearing the purse. Why? Because the purse was bright green and easy to see. Why? Because bright green was the color of choice the season I bought it. Why? Ask the fashion industry. Why did I buy a purse that season? I had started going to the gym over lunch and needed a big bag to carry my shoes. Why? I used to go to the gym in the morning before work, but I had started doing yoga in that time slot. Why…

I could go backwards forever and ever and all I would find is an infinite current of reasons. A current is always moving, it is my mind that ‘freeze frames’ a form at a particular moment in time and begins reading the bits of its history that I can see into a meaning and a future. Stay tuned, next time we will peak at the little gears in my brain to see how this all happens.

In the wake of my cake baking contemplation and seeing the extreme limits on my control/tendency to use rupa arrangements to define who I am, I had gone to get my nails done. About a week later, looking down at them, I caught myself feeling surprised that the polish had started chipping so soon. At lightning speed, I caught myself thinking, “I have been being so careful with them.” Then it hit me– it’s not about me. My actions are a single, small factor, in nail polish staying. It is chipping because that is what happens to polish left alone for a while.

My mind went immediately to Dharma Meltdown 2.0,  when I panicked that I got my light colored  pants dirty, that I could never keep white clean, that it was a sign I was a bad Buddhist. For the first time I clearly saw it — dirt on white is not an indictment of me, it isn’t about me, my ego is lying. White gets dirty, that is a natural, expected state of white cloth over a long enough life cycle. At most, I am a factor in temporarily keeping white clean. I am reading meaning into Rupa that simply isn’t there.  There is no innate meaning that lives inside of 4es that is just waiting to be penetrated by me, Alana the Great Rupa Whisperer.

I started collecting evidence to prove that I am the one who reads meaning into rupa. Because if the meaning of an arrangement doesn’t live in the arrangement itself, can the arrangement create meaning (i.e. identity) in the arranger?

1) The meaning I assign to things keeps changing thanks to new information or new beliefs. So my ex-boyfriend’s emails used to mean I was special, loved, that someone so smart must see that same intelligence in me. Now when he emails I feel little, he is my ex after all. My NY home was supposed to prove I had a nest from which to build my NY fabulousness, but then I decided I didn’t want to be NY anything and that same home became a burden I struggled to sell. My car used to make me feel so on top and clever and then, when I went to sell it, at a huge loss it made me feel foolish and duped (here is the car story).

2) I don’t even consistently apply meaning to like objects. I was thinking about a fancy car I rented for some vacay. I remember someone complemented me on it as we pulled out of the gas station. Out loud, I said “thanks,” but in my head I was thinking I don’t own this car, it is a rental, it’s nothing for me to be proud of…and yet, when someone complemented my Porsche, my heart swelled with pride. But wasn’t the Porsche on loan too? Something I used for a time and then parted ways with. Simply the act of believing something is mine changed my meaning of it. The reality however is the only difference between that rental can and ‘my Porsche’ was the duration of use. That, and my imagination.

3) Even if there is some characteristic ‘proven’ in an arrangement of Rupa I help create, it doesn’t adhere to me, it is literally over once the arrangement ends. That mandolin player played a concert virtousically, he created a sound that the people in the room found beautiful. But then as soon as it was done, it was done. He likely took it home – that ego puff – took it to mean something about him later, but how could some past arrangement say something about present him? It literally exists nowhere but memory, so how could meaning in the rupa carry forward?

4) There are times that ostensible meaning of rupa remains, even when the person it is supposed to point to, to define, is already gone. I had recently gone to a museum that has an extensive collection of Sol LeWit wall paintings and something struck me hard – a number of the paintings were dated after he had died. I wandered around till I found a plaque that explained, LeWit left intricate instructions for his paintings, but by design they were meant to be able to be replicated on walls by other artists on his team. He insisted the date written on paintings was not the day they were created by him, but rather the day they went up on the wall. The result is that  the date of his creation, the object that proves his skill and artistry, was posthumous. It is not like the painting happened and then he died, rather he died and then the painting happened, so how could the painting create an identity in him? The only answer possible is that it can’t, it never does.

When I started thinking about my husband, Eric, I started to see the mechanics inside the clock – the way that my own aggregates clobber onto form, assign it meaning, and then reflect that meaning back onto myself.

I take Eric’s sammuti (supposed form) and give it a meaning: special, discerning, generous, good, handsome, mine and then I use the object and the meaning I create to build and define me. Wife, beloved of someone so great, worthy of treatment so kind. This is the way my mind uses rupa; gives it meaning and then reflects the meaning back to reference me, to build me.

The other night I was watching a show and the Golden Gate Bridge flashed on the screen — immediately I thought “mine” and ‘home” and I wanted to be there. As I reflected on my feeling, I realized this moment sort of summed-up a place I have been stuck: I know a bridge is just rupa, there is nothing in it except for 4es, and yet it seems to say more. It seems to have meaning, where meaning is an abstract ideal like loved, or just, or home and/or to offer  some guaranteed future outcome — like crossing the Golden Gate, in my fancy car, with the top down, holding Eric’s hand, laughing at some joke, as we embark on happily ever after adventure.

Stay tuned…in the next blog we will look at how I started to un-stick this very stuck point.

After all of my contemplations I was beginning to see that there was nothing innately special in my objects or my body. Just varying, shifting arrangements of 4 elements. I knew I was not my arrangements, and yet, I couldn’t shake the belief that those arrangements, and my ability to bring them about, must prove something about ME. Alana the great arranger!  I knew I had a huge wrong view remaining – that because I am a partial cause for an outcome, that outcome must prove my identity. What follows is a synopsis of some of the discrete contemplations I used to attack this view.

Beaver dam:

I was out hiking and came across a beaver damn. The dams are quite common out here in Connecticut and after seeing the zillionth one, I was hardly impressed. But…shouldn’t I be? I mean here was Beaver the Great Arranger of Dams: the little animal worked hard to cause its dam, this one indeed did look a little bigger and more symmetrical than the rest I had run into. But, in my mind a dam is just what beavers do, there is nothing special – no identity that I assign a beaver – because of its dam.

So, why do I look at things I build/cause, the particular arrangements of my wardrobe, my home, my body, and feel they make me special? Isn’t all this shit just stuff humans do? That’s when it hit me – I am the one assigning value – identity bestowing meaning — to some results/arrangements while ignoring others. A beaver dam is just what beavers do, but my elaborate wardrobe makes me a fashionista. My greatness only exists (in my own mind) because I am self-selecting the qualities with which to build my identity.

What’s more is I have a tendency to get caught-up in details, to use small differences to further sell myself the identity lie. So humans have all figured out how to use bags/baskets/trays to carry stuff, but my LV bag versus your Gap bag is what makes me so special. But the thing is, some beavers have access to better wood, better location, they have more strength or less human encroachment and can build a better dam. So? That is normal. As is the fact that that very same beaver can lose their dam, a forest fire or a building project can make wood scarce, etc. That some humans, some times, can have LV bags and others can’t, that is normal too. Normal and subject to change. So how am I using it to prove something special, something meaningful, something ME, about me?

My friend the baker:

A friend of mine went to culinary school and I always think of him as ‘the baker’. Even when he hasn’t cooked for me in a while, even after he got a job doing something totally unrelated, he remained “a baker” in my mind. But how does an action, done at distinct points in time bestow an identity?

I suppose I could justify a fixed ‘baker identity’ if a  cake he made, even once, stayed steady-state forever… but, without fail, each and every baked item gets consumed, or goes stale, or ends up in the compost bin. I started thinking hard about why that is, why no cake ever just keeps its perfect, post oven, glory and I realized it is in the nature of the 4 elements itself.

Left uninterrupted things that are hot, like cakes out of the oven, tend to cool. Wet/moist things tend to dry. Solid things tend to disintegrate. Movement comes to a halt. In time, all arrangements tend to go back to the states indigenous to their elements. So how can the identity of the arranger stay the same when the arrangements themselves keep shifting, decaying, following the rules of rupa rather than the rules of the arranger. What baker wouldn’t bake the ever-perfect cake if they could?

A trip to the eye doctor:

I was on my way to the eye doctor the other day and got to thinking about the suffering in my day so far. I realized that since I had awoken, I had been at low level stress trying to get to the appt on time. I felt rushed, worried. I realized the suffering wasn’t just my desire to make the appointment, it was arising because of my belief that being on time to the appointment proves what kind of person I am: If I am on time, it proves I am a considerate person, someone good, someone who cares about the life and time of others. I want desperately to be that kind of a person and I can’t face an identity as an inconsiderate bad person, as a late patient, that would disprove who I believe I AM.

The problem is, I use Rupa world shit, stuff I seriously don’t ultimately control, to prove this great considerate identity. I am bound to ultimately fail sooner or later. Trains are late all the time, alarms don’t go off, emergencies happen. In truth I am regularly late, even when I take preparations and precautions, to be on time. When I am late I suffer a terrible pain, a hit to my identity.

But even when I manage to be on time I suffer too. I suffer stress, like I did getting to the appointment. I suffer the preparation time and worry. But when I am on time, I excuse it, gloss over the stress because I think it is worth it, I get to be the me I want to be!

But this is like winning small battles, at high cost, in a war I can never ever win.

Why can’t I win? Because I am trying to derive identity based-off of things that I can only arrange when all the stars align, partially to my liking but always with consequences I don’t like, some of the time, temporarily.

Another day, another cake:

All of this brought me back to the original problem:  Even though I know I am not my arrangements, I couldn’t shake the belief that those arrangements, and my ability to bring them about, proves  something about me. I.e. since I can cause a cake to be baked that cake defines Alana the Baker (baker pronounced ‘Alana the organizer and controller of all Rupa in the universe’).

But after considering beaver dams, my friend the real-life baker and a trip to the eye doc, I realized I can arrange a cake, if:

1. The circumstances and Rupa allow it. I.e. Eric didn’t use the last egg, the weevils didn’t eat the flour, the landlord fixed the oven, etc. In reality this isn’t some fine print asterisk of “conditions may apply”. In everyday life there are countless ways and circumstances that don’t allow for cake baking.

2. Some of the time, ie even if the circumstances allow me to bake a cake it still may go flat or turn out crappy

3. Partially, there are always 2 sides so even if I get a cake that I want, I get a huge stack of dishes I hate

4. Temporarily ie I can bake once, but not necessarily a second time

5. Plus once that cake comes about it is not subject to my rules but the rules of Rupa, so rot, decay, consumed, etc.

When I put it that way…it doesn’t exactly have the same ‘Alana, high and mighty, ruler of the universe ring to it.’ So much for Alana the Great Arranger.

This blog is a direct continuation on the previous blog, “Interruption Part 11: A Major Breakthrough Part 1”. If you have not read that blog yet please go ahead and read it first before you continue on with this one.

4. Does rupa do what I think/ want/imagine in an absolute sense or in relation to myself? 

• Is a quality fixed/innate in myself — Again I started thinking about beauty. I realized that if my 20 year old self saw my 40 year old self in the mirror she would freak the hell out. The only reason my 40 year old self sometimes (good haircut, lost weight, botoxed) can look in the mirror and give myself the pretty thumbs-up is that my nama has change the standard. Rupa may nourish nama, but it is also a limit setter/backstop. When it tells an irrefutable tale, like that I am 40 not 20, then Nama is forced to adjust its standards to cope with the reality of the situation.

The problem is that my nama is a lot like a teacher who grades on a curve. If each year her class gets dumber and dumber, being in the most recent class and get an A doesn’t really prove I am some sort of genius. It doesn’t prove the quality of smart lives in me. Just so, my curve grading nama doesn’t mean that beauty lives in me.

Each object is just an arrangement of 4es. Over the course of its life its arrangement of the 4es change over time/situation. Every object will have a peak/pinnacle look, like all fruit will have a peak ripeness. It doesn’t require any nama observer for this to be the case. This body had a peak arrangement that I would call max beauty. But it was momentary, every other arrangement before and after was sub-peak. And in fact, even at peak, it was just peak for my body arrangement: Across all time and all like objects there will be arrangements that are prettier/thinner/richer. So what this means is that even my ripeness/pretty is retaliative. Its not absolute. I am constantly working so hard, suffering so much, choosing this world over and over for a quality in rupa that is not even absolute and is definitely not permanent no matter what my curve-grading-nama-liar is trying to say.

• Whose fault is it when I need to endure a 4e arrangement I hate (spoiler alert –it is mine)? I  was thinking about a few times when I knew stuff wasn’t really really mine, I was using it temporarily, but I got ticked as hell they were taken from me, to the point of hate/vengefulness and I started trying to figure out why. The examples were:  1) I was in Zumba one day and this chick just came, stood in front of me and took my dance spot.  2) A plane trip where I paid extra for premium seats in front of the bulkhead, but because of where the bathrooms were arrange people kept using it as an aisle and stepping on me; 3) My neighbors hogging the washer.

I realized when I was thinking about taking a body and entering the ‘rupa level’ that the reason I was so angry in these cases is they made me feel like a fool for not reading the fine print. I signed the contract, I get a rupa body yay! I can arrange rupa objects according to my liking as long as it is within the acceptable arrangements of the 4es in a particular circumstance at a particular time. Fine print, there are times the rupa can’t be arranged to your liking, rupa has its own rules, you have to deal with it. You get ears to hear pretty music, but you are also going to get honking Lady. No one wants to feel a fool, no one wants to feel a chump, so I got angry , I felt belittled. In reality I took home the wrong message: the right message is “you need to stop looking to rupa to prove your ability to be master of this world. You are not. You get the power to play within this world, you don’t have super worldly abilities. I am afraid that if the washing machine is being used, you can’t wash your clothes…

• Alana the special snowflake — In winter, I love standing out and catching snowflakes when it snows. Each one has its very own unique crystal structure. They are all special snowflakes. But, each and every snowflake is a 4e object subject to the rules of rupa. They are formed at a certain temp and melt at a certain temp, living a life cycle of vapor to solid to water and back to vapor again. Sure each one is unique, but not in the critical ways that govern their nature, life and death. I realize that I use my crap to try and make me a special little Alana. The body, the clothes, that car — all accessories of my uniqueness. But, really, I am just like those snowflakes..in all the ways that matter most, in the rules that govern my 4es, I am just like every other person, every other 4e object. I have to stop thinking I am some kind of special snowflake, they don’t exist.

5. My belongings don’t have the power to always create or sustain an arrangement of rupa I want, so I suffer.  My shit is like props in a play: 

• The 4es of the actual object (prop) are always changing: My body will go through states of health and states of illness. My bath will go through states of warm and states of cooling. Since I don’t like all the arrangements (not fan of sick Alana or cold bath) I suffer.

• The scene is always changing: I liked the porsche when I was driving the back roads of Napa, but wasn’t a huge fan when I had to stop for gas in Soma. I liked my fav ring on my 30 year old hand, on my 40 year old hand it draws attention to my wrinkles. I liked my wedding ring and then I developed an allergy to the metal and stopped liking it because it caused burning rash/pain. Same objects, but in a new scene, don’t create the arrangement of rupa I want. Since  the scene is always changing, the ability to create the exact arrangement of rupa I want can’t be in the objects .

Further example: In SF life money seemed to make me happy, to continually create an arrangement of rupa I found favorable. So, I dumbly believed that money would do the same thing in NY and, even though I clearly saw when visiting I didn’t like the sounds/smells/ density/etc I believed once I threw money at the problem I would be able to arrange the form to my liking. Duh, it didn’t work and actually money made it worse: we moved for more money, so acquiring this item I thought would guarantee me a favorable arrangement of rupa got me a more unfavorable one. The reason, at most money is a factor in getting an arrangement I want but if it is a factor in getting an arrangement I want than it must also be able to be a factor in getting an arrangement I don’t want as well (I’m going to look more at this point tomorrow).

• The audience changes: I loved that NY house when I first saw it. I bought it. But then my feelings as an audience member, my feelings about NY changed. So then I didn’t like the house any more. Same object, same scene, but my feelings changed. Then, I had to suffer having the object and having to get rid of it.

• I always seem to need new props: Based on how good the last production was, I need new props to make the new play as good as or better than the last. If I had a Porsche, I can’t have a BMW or I am a loser producer.  If I had Goyard, I can’t have gap or I am a loser producer. If I am judged (by myself and others) by the quality of my play, by the successive arrangements of rupa that create a story line of my life, then the next scene, the next play has to be better than the last. But the nature of the world is that things can go up or down (ahh the bubble dilemma). Its impossible to always have better props. It is impossible to keep the props I have pristine. So, I suffer.

Anyway, there is more, but this is the basics. I have had to hack at a few hydra heads along the way, wrong views that were really delaying progress. But otherwise, I am trying to stay on the program — self and self belonging and its many facets. I realize now how much missing the 4e piece was hurting my practice. Even worse though was not understanding the difference between cause and factor; this whole dharma thing is just the truth of cause and effect in this world. To be unclear on this topic, to constantly think I am a cause where I am merely a factor (of various strengths and durations) is like wrong view quicksand — so fucking hard to escape this world when stuck in it…After all, if I am a cause, I can just try harder, work more, do better to get the effect I want since a cause always brings about an effect. But, by definition, a factor is something that ‘works’ some of the time, under some circumstances. All it takes is to see that circumstances are constantly changing, bubbles always shifting and popping, to start easing my gripping heart….

After Several weeks of chewing on all the insights I had gained during and after my line Chats with Mae Neecha, I felt finally ready to send a synthesis of my thoughts and understandings to Mae Neecha and Mae Yo. Below is the email I sent. I have divided it into two parts/ blogs as it is quite long.

Hey Mae Neecha — I sure do hope this email finds you well. It has been a few weeks, so I just wanted to share a bit about where my contemplation have taken me…its long, so I thought I would try email versus line. There has been so so much, so this is sort of high-level summary without a ton of details.  Mostly I have just been spending as much time as I can practicing; when I feel stuck or out of ideas I read a book from LP Thoon, or a Mae Yo Q and A or I just try to find examples of impermanence around me since that is something that comes easily. Most of all, I  just keep pushing.

I haven’t been deliberately systematic in my contemplations, but when I look back on them they do seem to be pretty well grouped around particular topics:

1. Going through my definitions of “ownership” and proving that my belongings or body don’t actually fit the definitions/that the definitions themselves don’t actually prove ownership/that rupa has another master.

• Command/Serve — A strong idea I have about what makes my shit mine is I either have the ability to command it (it serves me) or that I am able to/bound to care for it and serve it. So I  looked at the concept of serving/commanding using a fruit and tree as an ubai: I clearly saw that a fruit doesn’t command a grown tree to support it (i.e. the tree doesn’t serve the fruit); for a time a tree, if its conditions allow it, can direct nutrients toward a fruit and if that fruit is able to receive them (i.e. it is attached to the tree, the stem structure is healthy, etc) it does. But this happens only because it is a possible relationship between trees and fruits for a time. Eventually the tree dies or the fruit dies/falls off and it is no longer the case. Likewise with a tree commanding a fruit. I also used the same model of thinking to consider if a seeding fruit and the seedling tree command/serve each other and again realized in both directions all we had was a relationship of factors that could sometimes yield particular outcomes temporarily. The cause in all 4 cases (adult tree/fruit, seeding fruit/sapling) was that 4es are continually shifting as circumstances change; they have the ability to yield seedlings, saplings, trees and fruit, so the cause of all of them is in the nature of 4es themselves: the right conditions shifted into place temporarily and voila, trees and fruit. I then ran a bunch of my own belongings and body through the tree/fruit model to uproot the idea of mine based on serve/command.

• Represent — I tend to think my belongings represent me, so I went through all the ways my body and belongings fail to represent me. How I felt my post puberty body didn’t represent me. How I feel so tough, but on days I need to drop to my knees to do push ups and that doesn’t represent me. How my bladder peed myself in the middle of an important meeting and that doesn’t represent me. When my dad was dying I got sick and I had to wear a mask to visit him. I remember feeling so upset, like this weakened ugly state didn’t represent me at the moment in time I most needed it to, when I was facing someone so important to me for the last time. I was so pained and it didn’t matter, because the truth is my body doesn’t represent me.

• Movement/pain — I was feeling the burn after squats at the gym when I realized I took the fact that I could (sometimes) move my body and feel pain as evidence of mineness. So, I went through a ton of examples (finally landing on a barometer) to prove that the ability to move this body and feel pain did not prove they were mine. 

• Left Behind — I was thinking about one of the things that made me saddest when I went back and visited SF for the first time after I moved was seeing the city was just humming right along without me. I considered it my city, my home, but without me there is continued to grow and change and exist.  I realized the same is true of my body; once nama departs the body will burn or decay or organs will be transplanted — in all cases the 4es will change shape/form and keep on keepin on without me. My car, which will either be sold to someone new, or be chopped for parts, or melted for metal. Or my clothes, jewelry, etc.  How can I own something that leaves me behind, that doesn’t need me to keep going?

The truth is all 4es, after their rental period is up, eventually make their way back to this world, so this world must be their master/owner.  Shit can have only 1 master, so how can I say something is mine when it already belongs to the world? 

• You need a rupa suit to play in the rupa world: It dawned on me that nama can’t actually ‘touch’ the rupa world; it can’t collect, organize, build 4e arrangements on its own, that is why I am born with a body. It is like a video game player that enters a level, “rupa level” and finds there is no way to play or interact with the world until I done a special suit (body) that allows me to play, to talk to other characters, to pick up coins and to beat up baddies. This is why LP Thoon says if we are attached to our objects we will be reborn because of them — we will be reborn in rupa out of the drive to arrange rupa/items as we like; here is how form fuels rebirth.

The problem is once I am in a rupa suit that I can use to touch rupa, rupa items can touch me back. Its the rules of rupa that 4e objects can effect other 4e objects; it can eat them, arrange them, use them but it it can in turn be consumed by them, rearranged by them and used by them. This was the secret trade off I made when I jumped in the rupa suit. I was so unhappy when I got a huge infection on my face, but I signed-up for such risks with my body rental agreement — a bacteria, a 4e arrangement, can consume my 4es, it can rearrange them to create a sore on my face. My 4es can push the petal on a car and drive somewhere, but I can also be crushed by a car that rolls over me.

• 4th aggregate: imagination (#4) sells the ownership lie — I went to a historic house tour in SF. When I entered the house,  I couldn’t see the owner. I couldn’t tell get who they were based on their furniture or art. When I think of my own house, the only reason I believe the art on the walls or furniture says anything about me is because #3 (memory) and  #4 (imagination) tells backstories of each painting, each chair, how it got there, what it is “clearly” saying/proving. #4 ignores all the times mine doesn’t reflect me, it convinces me the times my kitchen is clean are normal and the dirty moments a fluke. The thing is, if #4 is the one doing all the work here then I, myself, clearly isn’t in the rupa, the arrangement isn’t the arranger.

• Compare it to kids — Never in this life have I wanted kids. I have always instinctively understood they are not their parent’s belongings. So I decided to use kids as a model to start running my other items through to disprove ownership.  Kids aren’t yours because they have their own fate, their own path in life that they will follow. They don’t become who you want them to become, they don’t do what you what you want them to do, they don’t reflect your ideas and values because they have their own. They don’t follow your rules. They are influenced by countless outside factors. You and they ride along the same bus for some time, but then you depart each other and go your own ways. You are really not on the same journey at all. I am, right now working to apply this logic to all my stuff. 

2. 2. Proving my rupa can and will break and/or change forms: 

• Internalizing breaks — I have been looking at actual examples of breaking and changing of my belongings and then internalizing them. Example: My tire got a nail in it last week and had to be replaced. I saw that the tire was subject to death because its arrangement of 4es was vulnerable to puncture, to having wind removed to the extent it was no longer a living tire any more. My body too is subject to puncture, to stabbing, to shooting. Such an injury can kill me too because it can change the form of my 4es to the extent I too no longer have liquid flow through my veins or have air move in my lungs.

 I have also thought about ways I am afraid of dying and have been proving those can happen to my 4es because I have seen similar causes of 4e deaths/changes in the world. So for example, I have thought about how infections can definitively spread and eat my 4es because I have watched magma flow from a volcano and seen a tree in my yard overtaken by blight (I have considered heart attack, shooting, stabbing, crushing, cancer, virus, etc.

• Examined my own 4es more closely — I have gone through every major body part and looked at its unique balance of 4es so I can think not just about my body as a whole, but about the arrangements of 4es for skin, lungs, hair, ears, etc.

• Bubbles and Anatta — I was thinking about bubbles the other day and realized that they are the perfect metaphor for the way the rupa world works. Their life/death cycle is so fast, it is so clear how they work. Bubbles are a 4e object born from pushing 4e soap solution through a 4e bubble wand. It seems like I am the great bubble master/creator because I blow the bubbles, but really anyone can blow bubbles, the wind can blow bubbles, the soap dispenser sometimes blows bubbles on its own.  Off bubbles go into world, some go high and some low, some are big and some small, some live a long time and others just a sec, but before long each and every bubble pops. For the time bubbles are in their bubbly shape, we call them bubbles (I finally understand what samutti is now), but if you look at a bubble, it is constantly shifting, it soapy, iridescent form changing, sliding over itself, moving. It is never just a single stable thing. Ultimately it pops, its form is decidedly not bubble any more, and its 4 eas return to the earth. I guess I am starting to see that all objects, ‘mine’ and otherwise are just like bubbles. I let duration and sammuti fool me into thinking they are otherwise and because I am fooled I cling to something that really can’t be clung to, that will definitely depart.  What is more, I use my objects to build status, to build wealth and pleasurable arrangements of 4es. But, ultimately bubbles tell the whole story. Up and down they float then die. Blow another round and the same thing will happen.

3. Testing if my rupa actually does what I think/imagine it does in relation to others. For how long/ under what circumstances:

• Porsche and on top and in control — even though I don’t even own that car anymore, I miss it. I viscerally remember what it felt like to be in the drivers seat; I felt like that car was the perfect image of an Alana who was on top of the world and in control of my life.  Except, of course when it wasn’t… when I pulled into a gas station in Soma (a bed neighborhood in SF) late at night and worried I was a target, when I tried to park away from the crowds at a work event so no one thought my organization was being excessive in their pay practices, when I went to retreat and  felt too flashy and conspicuous, but I only had one car to drive there… Only some of the time did it make me feel on top and in control then…

Even some of the time is hard to swallow when I think harder — one of the highest causes of death in my age group is car crashes. How can I feel like a car made me in control when statistically it is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Even if I was in total control, it just takes someone else who is not to hit and kill me. The idea of a car representing something it it is basically antithetical to is crazy.

• Virtuosi and its parallels in pretty and good — I went to the Symphony and they were playing with this super star mandolin player. He was amazing and got a standing ovation at the end. It made me realize, for some subset of people (like the classical music lovers in the hall), there was no denying that guy was a virtuosi. But, for all his effort and skill, for all the hours he spent honing his craft (karma) he was dependent on 4es to express his skill; an instrument, music, his hands. For some time, he could be amazing, but what happens when arthritis sets in or his mandolin breaks? In the concert hall he is the man, but what happens in the parking lot, at dinner, with folks who haven’t heard him play? He thinks his craft will yield a paycheck, but I am in the classical music business, I know that even the best of the best are having trouble selling tickets. The industry is dying, the audience aging — is this guy’s paycheck contingent on his playing alone, or does it need an audience and industry to support it (in other words factor or cause)?

My big identity issues are pretty and good. Both of these are traits, expressed via rupa, that I feel will get people to treat me well, to care for and love me and ultimately to help me build a perfectly arranged rupa world where everyone is living in Disney movie  peace and joy. But, what happens when my pretty fades (arthritis)? Even if I do something good and everyone who sees it thinks I’m awesome, what happens in the next scene with different people? What happens if folks also see me doing something bad like flipping off the honking cabbie in NY? Even if I were perfectly pretty or good, can it get me a ‘paycheck’, that thing I most want? I had a few guys I liked and persued before I met Eric. A few thought I was pretty and nice by their own admission, but that I was too much of a drama queen for their taste. In my mind, all these guys filled the care-giver/world builder hole in my heart, but I didn’t fit the partner shaped hole in theirs. My pretty/ good didn’t do what I wanted it to do.

• Is my goal even possible?  My great dream is some perfect harmony world, but it it even possible. I remember trading food bowls at retreat one year — a perfect meal for someone else was disgusting to me. It was the same story over and over from other participants. In my perfect world, everyone is happy and agreeing on my particular perfect arrangement of 4es, but it seems like everyone actually has their own preferred arrangement — how will everyone be happy with mine?

Eric and I went o this wildlife refuge where a bunch of animals roam free together in a vast nature park. But…its only herbivores, all the predatory animals live in separate enclosures elsewhere in the park. It seems like a predator free paradise at first, but because space is limited and there are no predators to control populations, forced birth control is used — do none of these animals want babies? They had a rare goose species so they were allowed to breed and then the goslings were taken away to populate other zoos. Each year when the goslings were taken the parent geese shriek and cry. Is it really a paradise? Can it be? Rupa is a closed system I think — some have to die/ be consumed to make room for and fuel what is new. How can I ever have a paradise where no one is hurt or dies?

•  Using Rupa to communicate with others is like a very fucked up game of telephone — as a kid we played this game, someone would whisper a phrase to the person next to them and the whisper would go down the line to the last person. It was always funny to hear how different the original phrase was from what came out at the end of the line. It seems to me that me using rupa to convey the identity that my #4 cooks-up is likely going just as sideways. The rupa, as we have already discussed is a rather imperfect representative, and then it needs to be sensed by others and run through their own 3s and 4s and then I need to read their response through different rupa…Its telephone — I really can’t ever trust that my messages have been absolutely received and they they will continue to be with every round.

•  No one else’s reaction to me proves anything innate about myself.  So this is a biggie which I understand is a little beyond the Sotapana contemplation, but it really needed to be dealt with because it was getting in the way…I was thinking about a time in high school, I was at a party and members of rival gangs where there and a fight broke out. Several members from both sides had been trying to date me, so I walked over, batted my eyelashes and broke up the fight. At the time I thought it proved I was good, I was pretty –I was in control and creating my Disney world– after all, those guys all did what I wanted. But when I think about it, those guys had their own agenda. They did what they wanted. Just like I was using those guys to confirm my special self, they wanted to date me, to use me, to confirm their own specialness. Can I really say that someone acting according to their own beliefs and desires proves something innate about me? I was not the cause (factor again).

When the people I love, Eric, my dad, love me back and care of me I take it as a sign that I am worthy of love and care, that I am a special person. The thing is, love is a whole lot like hunger; everyone who is hungry needs to eat. Sure, certain food is more palatable than other food, sure there is a range for people based on what they are used to, but at the end of the day, those starving will eat anything. I can’t know the state of hunger of those who care for me, so how can I assume that ‘my fulfilling them’ (i.e. getting them to love me) is some great commentary on me?

What I do know from Eric’s Japanese cooking kick is that the palate begins to crave what it is already used to. It becomes easier and easier to cook recipes and food types you are already cooking, techniques to make it delicious are on the brain, ingredients already in the cabinet. Momentum is strong to keep filling oneself with the same food type. But, back to the bubble — am I really still the same type of food as I was back when Eric and I started dating? Married? Just last year? How is it I am taking his love to reflect something steady and stable and awesome about me?

Several weeks after I had closed-out my exchange with Mae Neecha I went back to review our Line chat and see if I could squeeze any more wisdom juice out of it. I saw the following exchange:

A: I still think I can use my cute yellow purse to convince people of my awesomeness even if I don’t really control the bag itself.  Actually, I think I can convince some people some of the time. But that is enough…

MN: If its only true some of the time, then is it true?

And then it hit me…

Everything that is true in this world ( lowercase true not universally true i.e 3 conditions) is true some of the time.

I have been stuck thinking that because the yellow purse makes some folks think I’m awesome some of the time it proves something special about me. It proves I am a master of the universe, albeit in some limited and temporary way.

But, even stuff I think of as super true and widely accepted is still only sometimes true. My family and I all thought my Dad dying was bad. If we could undo we would. But does the person who got his job after he died think his death was bad? Bad was true, some of the time ( or in this case for some subset of folks).

If some of the time/in some ways/ for some people is a truth about the world, it doesn’t actually prove anything special about me. At most, I am a factor in buying the purse, a factor wearing it, a factor putting myself in an environment with folks likely to share my view it is cool, a factor in selling the message as part of a wider package( wardrobe, facial expressions, word choice, etc.) such that in any given case some folks might see purse and think awesome Alana for some moment in time. But I was never the cause. The cause is in impermanence/ two sidedness. So sometimes can’t be taken as evidence that I am avoiding the rules of the world some of the time. It isn’t evidence that with more effort/time/ tries I am going to finally succeed in making this world my bitch. It is evidence that my ‘success’ is just one, temporary, possibility of the world.

Actually, I can take the opposite perspective and see all the times my stuff proves I am not awesome/ special and master of perpetually arranging Rupa as I desire( i.e. this world is not my bitch): example– I think my apartment in SF proves I can control my life and arrange it as I want it to be, where I want to be. But, the only reason I have that apartment is my old SF life that I loved so much is gone. I chose to leave and ended up miserable. So how can the tool I am using to allay some of that misery and loss (not even all of it) prove I am master of my life and universe?

So I guess the simple answer to Mae Neecha’s question is that if something is true some of the time, it is not true some of the time. Which is actually proof that impermanence is the real master of this universe, not me. Just need more evidence…

A note from present day Alana — writing this now I see an additional angle that I missed so here are a few more thoughts on the ridiculousness of using a ‘sometimes success’ to prove a permanent Awesome Alana…Spoiler alert, the endeavor is built on a foundation spoiled at the core by a wrong view.

Over the summer, back when my contemplation were fast and furious (that is the period this ‘Interruption’ series is covering) I kept getting stuck on the fear that because of my practice I was going to loose something important to me — my life with Eric. I was looking at a picture and I realized that my ‘life with Eric’ was an idea, a film reel in my head of he and I driving, top down, along the California coast, listening to music, holding hands and laughing. It was a compilation of several trips, several memories we had together. As I laid in bed in Connecticut I realized that the life that I am so afraid of losing is already gone. The car is sold, the towns we drove through fire ravished, the joke we laughed at long ago forgotten. My fear of ‘loosing’ began to ebb as I understood that what I clung to was just a memory of the past and a hope for a future that looks the same way. What I came to understand is that the particulars of the past can never ever be the same in the future; causes, conditions and circumstances are continually changing.

The exercise of using a purse to prove Awesome Alana, even just some of the time, suffers a fundamental flaw at the root — what I believe ‘proves’ awesomeness now is based on what I perceived to have worked in proving awesomeness in the past. The problem (which is clear in my imagined life with Eric) is that the future arises from different causes than any instance in the past and yet I expect exactly the same results. This is why there are never any guarantees about what the future holds.

Circumstances are always changing, arrangements in the past can’t ever be the exact arrangement again..and yet that is what I depend on to defend my notion of my identity. Alana is built on an already shifting, crumbling, changing foundation and yet I expect her to be steady state.

A Post ‘Course Correction’ Plan for Further Progress

A: I think I have a plan for right now:

1) look for evidence that shit doesn’t turn out like I expect and see both sides/full picture more clearly ( example: the restaurant we are on last night had good food, but the seat cushions were all stained and it disgusted me).

2) look specifically at my belongings. What are their nature (4e) where do they come from, go, how do we depart from each other.

3) In what circumstances and for how long can I use these items? How am I a factor in relation to them and how are they factors in determining my beliefs and actions.

4) Can I prove my perception of an item (as pretty/ making me pretty) is not universal. Even in the subset of people who seem to share my perception does it have the effect I want( just because someone sees me as pretty are they nice to me, do they want to care for me, are they moved to hold my hand and join me in creating a stable harmonious environment?)

5) Since I am so good at seeing what problems an item solves (sometimes) can I see the problems it creates and their connection. This one I think may be a biggie. I am watching a show and there is a character who has been kidnapped to be part of a military test because she has a rare Gene mutation. One of the soldiers tries to save her because she is cute and looks like his daughter. Typical Alana would see this as proof the  cute works to protect and is necessary. But  last night I started thinking — how did she get into the kidnapped situation that her cuteness got her out of in the first place? Genetic condition, Rupa. The downside proof is literally in the pudding, Unjust never look.

Anyway, I’m just going to keep pushing, especially on the sotapana stuff. If it’s ok, I’ll reach out if I get stuck.

Right now just trying to hit self and self belonging hard. I feel it is doable. With the 4elements piece I am truly starting to understand.

Before, I could say shit wasn’t mine till the cows came home, but it didn’t help. I assume because I didn’t actually understand why. Now though, I am starting to see that shit can’t be mine because it had its own rules that it follows, they aren’t mine. Shoes, food, my body, same basic composition, same basic rules ( change form when the causes for for changing have been met). Under certain circumstances, for some period, I can be a factor and possibly get an outcome I want ( imagine) from them. But I have been mistaking my plants perking up when I water them as a sign they somehow respond to me, grow because of me, worship me. But it’s just a factor, sure plants need water, but they need so much more. And sure I can water them, but some can the sky, or someone else. Their little perking up is not a confirmation that they love/need/ worship/ prove specialness in me.

Plus, ultimately like two travlers on the same bus for a bit, I’ll go my way and my shit will go its way. I

MN: Im happy to hear that your practice is balancing out. This is why Luang Por told Mae Yo, “rupa and nama, 50/50” once we understand the tangible and intangible, we’ll have the whole picture

This blog is a direct continuation of the 6^th, so if you haven’t covered it yet, please head back there to read that one first. In that blog we explored how rupa forms the foundation for concepts like love, hate, goodness, cleanliness, etc.  We left off with a simple question I had for Mae Neecha: What is the rest of the story?

Here we will recap a bit and then launch into ‘the rest of the story’, which really amounts to the way these contemplations about the relationship between rupa and nama tie back into my broader practice that focuses on the 3 common characteristics (suffering, impermanence, no self) and the eradication of wrong views. This blog here is the culmination of the  ‘course correction’ Mae Yo and Mae Neecha felt I needed; an equilibrium between Nama and Rupa, the inside world and the outside world, from the perspective of my practice.

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A: Ok, I see that we love in a Rupa world. Rupa is the foundation for the world, the things I do in it and what I believe. As a resident in the Rupa world I am at most a factor, causes are in the Rupa itself.

But that isn’t the whole story…if I get a hot meal it is the hot meal that triggers my view/belief that I am loved and cared for. I use the Rupa as proof…

But then, I don’t think the cause of my view is the Rupa, I think the Rupa is a factor. If it were the cause, my views would be born out in the real world and I think we have established they’re not, after all I hate NY because it exposed a rendition of Rupa I don’t and to see/believe exists.

What is the rest of the story?

MN: The rupa/tangibles serve as “proof” of that “love.” The “hot meals” represent being cared for. However, there is actually nothing other than the 4E in that rupa of “hot meal.”

The stimuli (“hot meal”) being processed in the #2, #3, #4, #5 intangible nama factory is how the label/identity/notion comes about.

MN: Cause and foundation are different, yes?

Rupa is at the foundation, not the cause, of view. Rupa doesn’t actually do anything. The intangible nama is where the cause is generated.

Example: We are built out of the 4E so we are subject to the birth, aging, sickness, and death of all 4E. In an effort to live in comfort and safety (to protect our 4E body and our 4E belongings), we desire shelter. Figuring out that we want security and shelter is a nama process (cold or hot being a negative feeling and being covered/sheltered being a positive feeling, sanna: memory of having shelter or being taught the necessity of shelter, sankhara:  imagining shelter solving discomfort, vinnana: seeing a structure and processing it a candidate for shelter, etc).

But the embodiment of that shelter is a 4E structure. Without the rupa, there would be no shelter. But the rupa doesn’t cause it. It is only the medium for the desire to come to fruition.

This of it like this, rupa is money. Paper money doesn’t actually cause anything. But it is the foundation for everything: love, happiness, survival, sadness, grudges, appreciation, etc

A: All of this makes sense…but what is the cause of a wrong view?

MN: Permanence in the process of the intangible aggregates. Not seeing the entire picture, being limited to only our own views

A: Got it nama is the cause, but how does my imagination get me so far from the Rupa rules? That I think I can keep my kitchen perpetually clean when it goes through cycles of clean and dirty as part of it’s function?

Do I just take one snapshot –clean — and imagine it is possible to will it (cause it) to remain?

Crap, I think I am so busy hoping/wanting/ willing/ working to uphold  my vision of the world that I just pretend the real version doesn’t exist.

I now see the rules of 4 Es (that everything is subject to decay, changes, arising and ceasing) governs the Rupa of my. Body, belongings and other physical stuff in the world.

I guess I am trying to square all this with my own views (slightly more clear) and then how I interact with other peeps who have their own views.

Where should I go from here?

MN: I think, go back to our conversations since your being in the zone and see if there’s anything that still isnt clear to you. See whether you still think the same way, or if anything has shifted, and if so, what and why?

A: (Here it is Dear Reader – a neat little tie-up of what I had learned thus far/ the culmination of my much needed course correcting) Well one thing that has definitely shifted is I see the real world and my cartoon overlay are connected, not separate, so I am a factor in my Mom’s feelings. Also that  exactly what configuration of 4es I call pretty and the meaning I assign it may be in my heart, but the configuration itself and my ability to sense it and the perceptible range for a human and the real world experience that acclimate me to a certain arrangement over another are all in the Rupa.

I do see more clearly now why the backpack on the floor is real and made of 4e, but the designation of mine is in fact in my heart. Just starting to feel like if the bag is made of 4e and has to follow the 4e rules and not my rules, it can’t really belong to my heart world (nama).

My heart actually depends on the Rupa of the bag to “claim it” but the bad doesn’t depend on my nama to have an identity or to operate as bags operate.

I suppose someone’s nama somewhere came up with the idea to arrange the 4es of a bag as a bag, but they could only do it because it was within the scope of allowable arrangements of 4es.

I want to say now that Rupa isn’t in nama and nama isn’t in Rupa. But nama uses Rupa to enter this world and spin it’s tall tales. Maybe more clearly Rupa is not controlled by nama and nama is not controlled by Rupa (otherwise all views would be aligned with the actual Rupa world). But nama uses Rupa to feed itself and to reinforce it’s own version of ‘reality’.

I guess I am seeing the rules of Rupa quite clearly now:

• All Rupa is made of particular arrangements/ proportions of 4e
• 4e can act within the boundaries its particular configuration allows and some adaptation, within limits, is possible. So a bird can fly, a fish can swim, a human can hold their breaths and can practice to lengthen exactly how long they can hold it for.
• ultimately all 4es change configuration/proportions. Or they die or decay or get reconfigured or absorbed by other 4es.

A: But what are the rules for nama? So far I can guess —  nama relies on 4 Es to activate and feed it. Nama must be subject to change because my thoughts do change.

What else am I missing here???

MN: Everything in this world is subject to suffering, impermanence, and non-self – including nama. Our suffering comes from not wanting it to change or not allowing it to take its natural shifting course.

A: I feel like maybe if I can see the whole picture more clearly I can start understanding karma ( which I am guessing is the umbrella rule for everything) . There is definitely a massive hole in my understanding of karma.

If I were to diagnose my most basic problem right now, it would be that I have seen folks be nice to me because they like my stickers or boobs or purse. I have been able to buy comfort and safety with money. I’m not dumb, I know it doesn’t work every time, but I feel without these things it can’t ever work at all. And I want to be liked, to have comfort and safety.

Some little wisdom angel on my shoulder is whispering, “Alana if you want to be liked and to have comfort and safety all the time, you are in the wrong world”.

But ignorant Alana can’t get past the fact that  it works some of the time ( with a fat helping of 3s and 4s to add a dash of cover-up and lipstick to all the situations)  and since I am a factor maybe I can get it to work more of the time. If I just bring the massive force of my will to bear…

Crap, not sure yet how I am going to get out of this mess. Maybe if I understand karma? The fact that I am a factor throws me…after all, if it never worked this would be game over.

Or maybe I just need more evidence that shit won’t turn out how I want it to. After all, the past is gone, I am living for the future and only if that future is within the bounds of what I want will accept it to be.

But, anything is possible (need more proof) and even if my factorness is powerful enough to  get what I want my desires and the situations and objects keep changing.

MN: Anumodana with your progress, especially over the past couple of days.

I’d suggest looking for concrete evidence, coming up with more questions and answers, and testing theories.

Keep in mind to incorporate rupa into your nama-heavy contemplations, and to keep it simple and straightforward (illiterate villager level)

So, a little warning Dear Readers: This next blog is a bit our of order. It is a continuation of the Part 5 blog and will start out exactly like that blog and then go in a completely separate direction. So, if a few sentences in you have that creeping deja vu feeling, please press-on my friends. “How can this be?” you may be asking… “I thought you were trying to give a blow-by-blow as close to real action report as possible –liar.” Please recall my friends that this contemplation unfolded as a Line conversation, so there were different threads that were simultaneously unfolding. Plus, this contemplation reflects my own thinking process and there are frequently branches in my thought, new topics that arise and which I circle back to address at a later time. Hang in there, I promise the  next blog will continue on from where we ended in Part 6 and incorporate thoughts from here as well.

By way of content introduction, this fragment of the conversation is an exploration of the difference between being a factor and being a cause.

Please do note, my early contemplations on this topic didn’t get it all exactly correct: After many more months of contemplation, I now understand how Nama can be a cause of things in the Rupa world (my original conclusions assumed otherwise). But, these first contemplations, though not entirely on the mark, helped me begin to floss out the topic of control in the context of my new understandings around rupa and that is the most important part for now.

MN: The thing that most practitioners don’t understand is that even when you get the outcome you expected, it is still an impermanent outcome.

A: Of course! I think each time I get an outcome I want it confirms my control. Like picking heads or tails in a coin toss correctly. But if I were in control the evidence would be replicability and the ability to preserve. I suppose this is one way that nama and rupa’ interact. Rupa’ stirs my imagination to self-lie, with the agenda of selling my personal fairytale of Alana the in-control hero who accurately guesses coin tosses.

MN: I really like what you’ve said here. If you always believed successes are fully attributed to your amazingness and your amazingness is no longer the cause, what can you attribute them to now?

A: My amazingness isn’t the cause of heads/tales in a coin toss, the cause is the 4es of a coin, meeting the 4es of a hand, meeting the 4es of the air and the surface it lands on.

MN: So what is the cause for situations that seemed safe to you, or the cause for whenever you’ve thought yourself to be good or compassionate?

A: Back-up a sec, I have a qq: take the situation that my bra strap breaks midday. The cause is the erosion of the 4Es of the bra band. But if I saw a thinning bra strap this AM when I put the thing on and I ignored it, I have some fault that it broke midday and I had to run around with lopsided boobs. So the coin is obvious, but this example seems like a mix of the bra 4e and my own actions (and the beliefs that led to those actions).

MN: If you remove your behavior and it happens anyway, what is the true cause? Have you ever bought something and never used it and it still broke?

There are causes and factors. Causes are crucial to the result, factors contribute and magnify but on their own cannot cause the result

A: If I remove my choice to wear a thinning bra this AM then the cause of breakage is the seed of change/cessation/breakage innate in the 4es of the bra.

The factors though? I suppose I put it in the dryer and heat has the ability to expedite breakage, or my boobs are extra big and the pressure can expedite breakage?

But what about my behavior? I suppose wearing it, the friction, the heat, the sweat that the bra was exposed to because I chose to wear it are also factors for it breaking today.

But how do I see my choice to wear it? A factor? And if so, a follow-up possible conclusion is I am not ever a cause in this world, but a factor. Yes? If causes are in the Rupa?

MN: This is worth proving or disproving

A:  Wait, one thing I do cause…my birth. Wait, if after birth I am no longer the cause for anything in this world…how can I be a lord of my stuff? Of my body? Not cause =no control.

Am I a queen if ‘my’ subjects don’t actually subject? If they don’t follow my rules at all? If the actions I read as adulation (confirmation of my awesomeness like heads on a coin toss) is not something I am the cause of?

A: Ugggh…I still think I can use my cute yellow purse to convince other people of my awesomeness even if I don’t really control the bag itself.

Actually I think I can convince some people some of the time. But that is enough…not enough suffering maybe?

MN If it’s only some of the time, then is it true?

A: I wish I could believe that some of the time is untrue… I can’t even control my own delusions all the time.

A: (reply several days after the previous exchange) To answer an earlier question  — if I do something and my mom is unhappy I am a factor not a cause. The cause is her view/expectations about how daughters act, I and my actions in the Rupa world are magnifiers. Moreover, the magnitude of my factorness varies across time/situation, so if my brother and her are on the outs for example it can magnify my factorness.

This all brings me to self and self belonging. I (wrongly) view myself as lord of my belongings. They follow my rules, they are subject to me, they representative me by singing hymns of my glory in all directions. Except…

Except that in a Rupa world causes must lie within Rupa (excepting birth, delusion, the elimination of delusion and possibly karma???). So really I am subject to my shit. I have to follow its rules. I suppose I’m the one that must be singing praises to its glory. I am testing as I am able. Brush my teeth, service to Rupa. Put in contacts, service to Rupa…store glasses, service to Rupa. Shower, dress, eat, caffeinate. Even this vacation is so Eric and I can survey Portland and Seattle as possible future homes — I am taking Rupa and using it to feed my imagination about possible future rupa. Back and forth to SF is in service of spending time in MY job, the one that represents me. The time I spend in the north east is in service to my bank account, Eric still needs this job. Ugh, it’s kind of sad actually…

I misunderstood factor and cause. So I thought every cavity free dentist visit, every pound lost, every wrinkle frozen, every slimming outfit, every lifting bra, every complimented hand bag, were all victories. Now I am starting to see that, at best, they are moments that I am a factor in staving-off the ‘losing’/decay/aging/ dirtying/ change that is caused by the 4es of the body and objects themselves… All this before I even start really considering 2 sides and cost… More thinking to be done on this front for sure.

But before our last few days in Rupa mode I knew the conclusion –I don’t control my belongings. Now I actually understand why.

MN: I like this. This is how incorporating rupa and the 4E into dhamma contemplations balances everything out.

You can believe in whatever fiction, but the rupa will be an undeniable, straightforward truth that either proves or disproves it.

Factor vs cause is key in dhamma contemplations. Understanding the differences can make all the difference

On to the Hard Stuff…This blog is a direct continuation of the last, so if you haven’t covered it yet, please head back there to read that one first.

As a recap: the last few blogs have pivoted off of questions Mae Neecha had asked me early in our conversation:

“Is hot and cold generally the same for humans? For instance, desert temperatures are hot, arctic temperatures are cold? Is human hot and cold the same is kangaroo hot and cold? Or penguin hot and cold? If it is indeed only in our minds, then if we don’t think it, then it won’t exist?”

As you may recall, my first ah-ha/zone/retreat night contemplation had left me too nama-centric; taken to an extreme, but logical, conclusion, the view was that my mind/ my thoughts/ my beliefs alone govern my experiences of this world. All the work, till this point, has been about balancing out that view. Developing a rather nuanced understanding of rupa so that I could see what it is, how it functions in this world, and how my nama relates to it.

In the last blog I got as far as seeing how the fairly straightforward ideas of hot/cold are grounded in form: both the form of the temperatured object and the form of the beings that perceive the temperatured object. And then that particularly tempetured objects, like hot food, can have a meaning I assign (being cared-for or loved) based on my experiences and imagination.

Here we will start digging a bit deeper. I use literally the same model of how hot/cold work to begin to dissect even more abstract, and for me emotionally loaded, topics like good, pretty, safe, etc. So here we go…

A: I have figured out a few more: strong/weak, loud/quiet, delicious/yuk, dark/light, rich/poor.

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NOTE: This part was not in the original conversation, it was implied. But I will fill it in here so you can trace my thinking process a bit more clearly.

Strong/Weak — Based on the 4es of an object, it can exhibit a particular hardness or weight. Based on 4es of a human, humans can have the ability to exert a certain amount of power or strength on physical objects. There is variability within species because I can regularly weight lift, thereby altering my own 4es to become stronger. Moreover there is natural difference in 4es of muscle across our species, across sex and age.

Delicious/Yuk – The 4es of a particular food give it a taste. The 4es of a human enable us to register taste. There is some consensus across the species – most poisonous plants taste bad. Sugar tastes sweet. But if I find a food too bitter or too sweet can be based on what I am used to, based on what my palate has been trained for. So, a Japanese person who has spent their whole lives eating Japanese food will have a different palat then an American person. I used to find certain Japanese foods too fishy, but as I ate more Japanese food my palat was trained and I no longer found I so fishy.

Rich/Poor – quantity of goods is something that can be measured for 4e objects. Humans can use our own 4es to sense and therefore quantify objects. But the amount of an object that constitutes a lot can depend on the context of an individual. A lot of money in India may be less then a lot of money in America based on what I am used to and what a single dollar can buy. Moreover, a lot can depend on what I had in the past.

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But I am stuck on ones like good and pretty because I see that what something is used to/adapted to has a role in all of this, but I can’t see the purely Rupa role for clean or pretty or good.

Let me share how far I have gotten on clean and maybe you can help from there…

I was thinking about light and dark and remembered an art exhibit I saw in Japan; people in a group go into a pitch-black room and sit. Then about 15 min later I started to see a light. Everyone else saw it too. I thought something had turned on but the docent explained nothing in the room changed, our eyes simply adapted to the darkness and we could see. This is how I know adapted/used to plays a role here and I saw it in rich/poor, strong/weak, etc.

For a dirty room, I see the 4es can accumulate and there is some quantity at which humans 4Es can experience it. So dust for example, a certain quantity interacts with human eyes and is visible, it can interact with lung 4es and effect breathing. I know dirty for a dust mites or mole must be different than for humans. I also know my own personal 4Es play a role–as an asthmatic it may take a lesser quantity of dust to begin a 4e coughing reaction in my chest than yours.

My problem is, I know dirty in India is different than dirty standards in SF. I also known when I take my SF self to India it is really troubling to be in a society where the clean standards are so different than mine. For Innuits vs Miami folk and temperature I can clearly see the Rupa reason why we would call different things cold, but I can’t see it for dirty.

Also for things like good/bad, lovable/hateable I am having an issue. I can see how what I am used to plays a role: so if I wasn’t used to SF I don’t think I would hate NY so much. I also see not everyone and not every species hates it. But I can’t break it into Rupa, it seems so personal preference. I see love is something that exists across humans and across species, but I can’t see how I love Eric but my brother loves his wife is something that is deeply rooted in the Rupa realm other than on each of our individual interpretation of it based on our own 3s and 4s. Struggling with beauty too.

Thank you!!!

A: Ok on clean maybe I am closer than I thought. In Mexico, Mexicans drink the water and don’t get sick, but my Dr. warned me not to drink water when I went cause Americans are more likely to get sick. So fine I see the Rupa in clean.

But how is love or goodness broken into elements…hard ☹️ Wait..does good have to do with karma? Ugh hard

MN: You’re making good progress! (good)

Here’s the answer to back solve for – Every intangible quality has rupa and the 4e at its core. Without rupa and 4e, those qualities wouldn’t be able to be seen or proven.

For love, what is it that you love? How do you perceive that love? What tangibles prove Eric’s love for you? What physical things prove your love for Eric?

Let’s get the rupa and 4e cleared away before we dive into karma. That’s also important and seems that karma’s role in everything is missing from your in the zone realization

A: Ok I got beauty/ ugly is just an arrangement of 4Es that is pleasing/displeasing to my the senses (more 4es).

I think I have figured out hate too ( I’ll get love on my own as an extension). I’ll start with the punchline: for me hate is about stability and I can clearly find a 4E basis for stability.

I used to keep fish tanks and you are not supposed to empty all the water out of a tank to clean it, only some. The water has its own unique temp, pH, boom and if you change it all at once it can shock the fish to death, they need stability.( 4Es of fish need a particular arrangement of 4 Es in the environment that can’t change too quickly).

I hate NY, it is loud, dirty, overcrowded, people speak harshly, body language is harsh, movement is fast. Alana’s 4es was used/ adapted to an SF arrangement of 4es and NY 4Es shocked my system. It was unstable.

I hated my mom as a kid; when she flipped out for seemingly no reason she would flail, yell, withhold food, clothes, shelter, physical affection and attention and isolate me so no one else could provide these. The 4es of my environment registered as unstable to my 4es.

There are 4 E reasons a Bedouin would register a certain arrangement of 4Es as more or less stable than a Midwestern kid who has never left their hometown. But there is a range for humans. There is also a different range for cockroaches than for ( the super sensitive) Mandarin Gobi.

Moreover(I’m still testing) if temperature is in the 4e of water and registering it is in my 4e than feeling heat is a symptom of the interaction btwn the water 4e and my 4e. Just so, stability is in the environment and my ability to register more or less is based on my 4 es. Hate is a symptom of the interaction between the 4es in the environment and the 4 es in my self.

Zooming out of Rupa world for a sec: To this day my Mom’s voice, word choice perfume, face, all prickle me. It is old memories and my storyteller self (4) smoothing over all that has changed and selling the lie that my mom and I and the situation are still the same. That she is still a much weightier factor in my stability/instability than she act is in the current circumstances I.

Also, as long as we are zoomed out here: I spend most of my life chasing shit I love and trying to avoid what I hate. If hate is just instability, and instability is (increasingly obviously) the rule of this world…that is a pretty clear path to help me loosen my attachment.

Anyway, next needs to be good/bad. I have saved it because it is crazy hot button for me, but I will try. My instinct is to start with worthy of reward/punishment. Or worthy of safety/ unsaftey. Any thoughts?

Thank you!!!

MN: The 4E are the basis for everything. Our feelings of like or dislike are represented by things, tangible physical objects.

If I am pleased after a meal, that pleasure is based on the 4E of food my 4E has just consumed.

If I hate someone, that person is the 4E that I hate, the subject of the things we disagree on are all 4E. Our clashing values are represented by 4E – the greedy take and the non-greedy pass… on what? On a tangible thing like a dress, a car, a meal, etc.

If I am annoyed at someone driving slowly, what are they being slow about? Driving a 4E car on a 4E road at a rate that makes 4E me think I’ll be late for my appt with my 4E doctor at the 4E medical building.

A: I see how the 4Es serve as a base. I do have a question though: For hot and a group of humans from Miami there is general consensus on a hot or cold day.

For hate though, it seems harder. When I really push I see that everything I hate is wrapped up with Rupa that  makes me feel like the world around me is unstable/unsafe/ unpredictable. This then gets to a core wrong view of mine– that a stable predictable world is achievable and preferable and that if I just make the right tweaks I can get there.

For you, it seems like the 4es you hate are different things because you read the rupa to mean different things. Yes?

Is this all part of how rupa and nama interplay?

MN: When it comes to hate, there has to be an object for that hate. Whether it is a person, place, or thing.

If you hate hot weather, a high pitched voice, a fussy baby, being low on gas, cars honking, dishonesty, etc … each instance of hate is embodied by something tangible. Without that object of hate, the feeling of hate wouldn’t be triggered.

Have you considered that this instability that you are adverse to might be part of the overall stability of the larger system?

And the world IS predictable in its way… only we don’t understand or see the world’s rules because we are so focused on our own…because we think we are the world.

A: Ok, I see that we love in a Rupa world. Rupa is the foundation for the world, the things I do in it and what I believe. As a resident in the Rupa world I am at most a factor, causes are in the Rupa itself.

But that isn’t the whole story…of I get a hot meal it is the hot meal that triggers my view/belief that I am loved and cared for. I use the Rupa as proof…

But then, I don’t think the cause of my view is the Rupa, I think the Rupa is a factor. If it were the cause, my views would be born out in the real world and I think we have established they’re not, after all I hate NY because it exposed a rendition of Rupa I don’t and to see/believe exists.

What is the rest of the story?

Alright Dear Reader, this is our pausing point. We will return to this question in an upcoming blog, but this has already run quite long.

Rupa Beyond the Basics – How Rupa Lies at the Foundation of Concepts Like Safe, Clean, Good, Etc. 

If I understand what rupa is –alternating, shifting, decaying arrangements of 4es – and I am still consumed by desire for it, it points to another problem: I am dazzled by what I think rupa represents, what it MEANS, or what it guarantees. That, and I don’t truly see its shadow side, the pain and suffering it delivers to my life. I don’t yet feel exhausted by its impermanence, its unreliability…Ugh, clearly, I still have a lot of work to do…  

But, as a starting point, I needed a bridge, an understanding of how rupa and nama interact. How lil’ ole’ rupa, just a collection of those 4es, ends up providing a foundation for absolutely everything: love, safety, goodness, etc.  

Rupa is just like soil, it is the medium through which our desires are nourished and then born out. Rupa is the building material our nama uses to build itself and its vision of the world. It drives us, but only because of the meaning we assign to it, because of what we believe it means or what we believe it will help us achieve/become.   

This next contemplation takes a little to warm up, but it is a biggie –it is where I start actually seeing the way rupa provides a foundation for all those concepts that rule my life: Safe, good, clean, pretty, etc.  

Because this is super long, I am going to divide it into 2 blogs. In the first I look at a rather simple concept: hot/cold. In the next blog you can see how I used what I had figured out from the relatively easy concept of ‘hot/cold’ to work through way tougher topics like love/ hate, clean/dirty, good/bad.  

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MN: The thing that most practitioners don’t understand is that even when you get the outcome you expected, it is still an impermanent outcome. 

A: Of course! I think each time I get an outcome I want it confirms my control. Like picking heads or tails in a coin toss correctly. But if I were in control the evidence would be replicability and the ability to preserve. I suppose this is one way that nama and rupa‘ interact. Rupa’ stirs my imagination to self-lie, with the agenda of selling my personal fairytale of Alana the in-control hero who accurately guesses coin tosses. 

MN: I really like what you’ve said here. If you always believed successes are fully attributed to your amazingness and your amazingness is no longer the cause, what can you attribute them to now?  

A: My amazingness isn’t the cause of heads/tales in a coin toss, the cause is the 4es of a coin, meeting the 4es of a hand, meeting the 4es of the air and the surface it lands on.  

MN: So what is the cause for situations that seemed safe to you, or the cause for whenever you’ve thought yourself to be good or compassionate? 

A: Is it really the same as a coin? The cause of a hotel room I think is safe is the configuration of the 4es? 

MN: What is safe, in terms of 4e. What 4e cues indicate safe or unsafe 

A: Cues of safe: clean, orderly, kempt… 

But what is clean on 4E terms?  

OK I’ll try: safe in 4e terms concerning cleanliness is non decayed? 

MN: What kind of configuration signals safe or clean or good? 

MN: What is safe on safari? Safe at the temple? Safe at the grocery store? All in rupa/4e terms? 

For instance, safe can be where you are far from harm (harm being another living being) or safe from predators. Or safe being enough food and water and warmth and shelter. See how it is physically based? 

A: So I tend to focus on cleanliness as safe from disease. But there was a decent looking cafe “fooled” me into thinking it was nice and clean and safe till I saw the filthy bathroom; a part of me wants to file this under incomplete view, once I saw the bathroom I had more info on the rupa to feed through my nama. 

But, I freaked out because I thought that dirty must = diseases. That is what started me down the Homeless Alana rabbit hole…. 

I’m still not totally clear though, is it that cleanliness is based in the form but I interpret the acceptable degree and the imagined outcome via memory and imagination? 

MN: What is dirty? What is cleanliness? It is totally related and contingent upon rupa. What is disease if not the 4es? 

A: I guess disease is an arrangement of the elements I don’t want? Diseases are an arrangement of rupa that results from, and leads to, further decay. 

MN: What kind of diseases are there. Can you name some? 

A: Cancer, diabetes, flu, cold 

MN: What is cancer? What is the flu? What is diabetes or a cold? In a strictly physical sense? 

Isn’t the flu a virus? What is a virus? What is it made of? How does it come into existence, live, multiply, decay, and die? 

A: Virus is also 4es has liquids that are encased in a solid cell wall it is able to move, more freely than in heat than in cold. It requires liquids to spread and replicate, etc. 

MN: Viruses are alive, living things that require liquid blood, air, solids, heat. They eat our 4e to survive. So if dirty means diseases like viruses, then is dirty based on the 4e? 

A: Definitely 

A: Which brings me to the question of how a group of peeps can all agree water is hot… Fire can act on water and make it hot. It is in the Rupa. 

But you and I can have a different view on the desirability of hot; if I am trying to make coffee it is great, if you are trying to wash salad greens you may think not so great. 

It also acts on my Rupa differently than yours. So If I was just in a cold pool and jumped in a hot one than the hot water will cause a greater change in my Rupa than in yours and that is perceptible to me. 

MN: Go back to what I asked about humans and animal species and living beings perceiving hot, and consensus among a species. Why would that be? How is that explained by 4e composition?  

A: Humans, kangaroos, snakes are all types of 4e arrangements. When water of a certain temp interacts with our type-similar 4es it has a similar effect. But not exactly the same either because of variation within the 4es amongst humans or amongst snakes. 

MN: What is the lowest and highest temp humans can tolerate vs lowest and highest temp penguins can tolerate? Why is it similar across species? What is the basis for this tolerance? Physical make up or mental makeup? 

A: Physical makeup is the foundation of tolerance. Similarities arise because we all share the same shit. Differences because proportions are different and the threshold in which disease/imbalance sets in for a human versus a snake. 

MN: Yes. For bison with thick wool, whales with blubber, they can tolerate colder temperatures than humans. So human cold, something all humans would not survive, is still tolerable to these animals. They wouldn’t say it is deathly cold. 

MN: So is hot and cold in the physical make up? Some insects can even freeze and unfreeze back to life. So our human perception of universally freezing cold is nothing to these insects. 

Some animals in the desert can survive just fine in temperatures in which humans would be burnt to a crisp. Again, the difference in the 4e make up is at the root of this difference. 

A: OK –temperature is in the physical properties of water. What temp is hot or cold will depend on the 4es of the type swimming in it. 

A: I understand hot and cold clearly. Based on the 4es of an object, it can exhibit a particular temperature. Based on 4es of a human, we can register that temp as hot or cold. There is variability within species because the 4Es of water can act on the 4Es of my body and so I can actually experience a certain temp as hotter than you because I just jumped out of a cold pool which changed the state of my own 4Es and causes me to experience temp different then say you, coming out of a sauna. 

I can also have a preference and/or assign particular meaning to hot/cold and that is where 3 (memory) and 4 (imagination) comes in. I associate a hot meal with care. My mom rarely cooked and from very young, before I could use a stove on my own, I had to figure out how to ea. So now if Eric serves me hot food, versus cold food I feel more loved and cared for. 

MN: Ok so if hot and cold are determined by physical make up, can you apply the rest of your safe/clean/good qualities list to this concept, to see how they have 4e rupa at the foundation?  

Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here.

A little summery/context/extra info:  The dialog below essentially captures the process through which I began to understand how the 4 elements work to make up every physical form in this world. Truth be told, for a long practicing Buddhist, I had a really poor grasp on this ‘101 topic’ prior to this contemplation. After I started really understanding the 4 elements I came to see my practice had no chance of success without this key understanding –how can I expect to become unattached to my possessions if I don’t even understand what they actually are? How will I stop believing the things I call ‘mine’ are subject to my rules until I understand what the actual rules of the world that govern all forms are?  How  am  I supposed to internalize the decay/death of objects when I don’t see the fundamental building blocks of those objects are exactly the same as my own?

I spent an entire day just trying to understand the way 4 elements come together into particular forms and then dis-aggregate, feed and rearrange into other forms. I started with simple objects, coins and coffee and went on to trees, bees, and then compound objects like cars and cows.  For example:

A Tree: arises from the earth, is nourished by water and solid minerals and requires heat to synthesize nutrients and circulate (wind) those nutrients through the tree and grow (wind). The solid of the trunk , protects and provides channels for the sap (liquid) to move (wind) up to the leaves so they can effectively capture sunlight (fire) to photosynthesize nutrients. A shift in the balance of the elements creates change in the tree and if the shift is sufficient it causes death.   If there is insufficient water in the earth to move up the roots (solid) of the tree, it will die and its elements will go back to the soil.  An absence of heat causes sap (liquid) to flow (move) less freely  and the solid of the leaves  becomes more fragile and wind  blows them from the tree where they decay and nourish the bugs.  If a rot softens the solid trunk of a tree it can no longer protect the softer inner layers and it is prone to being consumed by insect. A tree requires wind to carry the seed to the ground where it grows, but a hurricane can uproot and kill it.

Several weeks later I came back to this topic and did a little exercise in which I analyzed each of my body parts to understand it in terms of 4 elements. I then considered how imbalances in each of these parts, and then ultimately my body as a whole would lead to sickness and death.  So For example: my lungs are solid tissue requiring a certain body temperature to move and blood to be nourished so that it can move air through my body. As an asthmatic, I know that solid particles (dust) can move into my airways and cause a liquid to form in my lungs that creates greater resistance to solid tissue’s moment and makes it hard to move the air I need to survive through my body. I have had fish tanks and seen the little air hoses become clogged, start filling with water, cracking and ‘die’ because they can no longer move air into the tank. So can’t I also die if my balance of elements becomes sufficiently  changed?

In addition to softening my belief that I am somehow  exempt from death and decay this exercise also helped bolster my understand of exactly why all form is temporary (impermanent). The elements are constantly shifting and changing balance and effecting each other. The introduction of a particle of dust can shift the 4es of my lungs. No 4e object is a closed system in and of itself, the interaction with other objects, and the shifting that comes with changes in the environment, and the  propensity for each element to erode back to the earth  is the REASON they will never be stable. They will never be ‘mine’ forever.

But…I am way way ahead of myself here. So, if you want the nitty gritty of how I got here, see below:

How the 4 Elements Work –The Basics

A: I don’t understand the 4 elements. Can you perhaps give me an example of how you would use them to talk about a tree or fish or bird?

MN: Everything is made up of the 4 elements. A tree requires sunlight to grow, needs water to live, breathes in air, and draws from minerals in the dirt and it has a solid form.

Fish require water to live, air to breathe and internal air pressure to tolerate various depths, heat to stay alive and moving, and is comprised of solid matter. A larger fish eats a smaller fish, and in doing so absorbs the smaller fish’s 4 elements. When the big fish poops, it releases some of those 4 elements back into nature. When it dies and decomposes, its 4 elements return to the earth.

MN:  Try to see how all things are comprised of the four elements. For instance, like the tree we consume the 4 elements: we need air to breathe and air pressure to function, water to drink and blood to flow through our veins, solid foods (made up of 4 elements, as well) to build up and sustain our own solid bodies, and heat to stay warm and flexible. An imbalance of any of these, we get sick and die. Absent any of these we instantly die. When we die, the four elements return to the earth – our corpses fertilize the earth and plants and animals eat our discarded 4 elements.

Try to understand the role rupa and the 4 elements have in defining particular qualities in order to understand whether these qualities truly *only* exist in the mind.

–How do “hot” or “cold” relate to the tangible form and the four elements?

— How are “safe”/”unsafe” or “good”/”bad” or “skilled”/”unskilled” determined by the tangible form and the four elements?

–How can we feel the same things, have a general consensus of what is “tolerable”/”intolerable” among species? Why is it different from humans to various animal or plant species? What is the role of rupa here?

—What is the role of rupa in shaping view? What is at the foundation of view?

—What is the relationship between reality and view? Is there overlap or are they mutually exclusive?

A: QQ: just once– how would you think about the elements of a coin in a toss?

So the coin is solid, its toss depends on air, where are liquid and heat in a coin? Does every item need to have all 4 of the elements?

A: Wait maybe when fire is applied to a coin it becomes liquid. So heat was actually required to take the original metal, liquify it, and turn it into a coin shape?

MN: Yes. Like you said, in forming the coin, there are solid metals forged in heat, cooled with air, shaped while in liquid form.

A: So do you need to see all four elements in every object

MN: Yes

A: Is it because everything is all 4 elements in different proportions?

MN: Yup

A: I like this hot and cold game 😉… Do the proportions dictate the particular rules of each object? So if a really coin has a particular proportion of solid such that when flipped the air acts on it to give a probability of getting heads 50 Percent of the time. But…a false coin, which has a different proportions of solid could interact with air such that it flips heads at a much higher percent of the time?

MN: When it comes to a coin toss, whether metal coin, plastic coin, or glass coin, the probability of heads or probability of tails is contingent on what?

A: The interaction of the solid and wind elements I think?

MN: The coins are forged in different ways, combining different proportions of the 4 elements. There is so much impermanence involved in this process, even when the same type of coin is replicated in a single factory’s assembly line. Each coin is the same, yet unique in terms of its composition.

Then when the coin is tossed, those slight discrepancies in the four elemental composition will factor into the conditions that cause it to show heads or tails. For instance, a coin that is “heads” heavy may be more likely to show heads. But ultimately chances are it will end up with a mostly random combo of heads and tails.

And yes, the physical conditions at the time of toss also factor into the results. The wind element, the moisture in our fingers and the air, the weight of the coin and the surface it lands on, the heat and how it reacts to that particular material.

So, how do the 4 elements factor into probability and impermanence? How do we use tangibles and the 4 elements to determine, value, and define things?

A: How about something like coffee? In its liquid state fuels my solid forms movement through a solid worlds

MN: Coffee is also 4 elemental, once in our body, the 4 elements of coffee break down and travel to their respective teams… liquid from coffee feeding liquid in our body, solid feeding solid, air feeding air, heat feeding heat

AD: Ok so a diamond with higher clarity and shine is more highly valued because it is more rare. Can we say that the heat and pressure in the earth acted upon a particular diamond of a particular proportion of the elements and resulted in more shine and clarity? How do I get more nuanced?

So, we need to think about not just the elements in the current state of the object but also in the process of forming and the process of dissolution?

Is it possible to understand the proportions of say one diamond versus another is a nuances way or is it sufficient to see they are different?

So if diamond a has more clarity than diamond b than do I need to understand what element and in what proportions cause clarity? Is it even possible? Or is it sufficient to see the difference and understand there is an elemental cause?

Can I go a step further and see that whatever elemental difference causes great clarity in diamond A, that difference began in the formation. Creates a different perception in a human in it’s current state and will solve in a different way/ proportion of elements back to the earth? All along it will act differently RE; shine?

So there is however only so clearly or cloudy a diamond can get.

MN: Just a basic understanding is fine. For instance, if the diamond has more or less clarity, it could be due in part to the pressure (wind element) where it was forged, the mineral composition in the ground, as well as the moisture and heat in that location. You don’t need to know precise scientific reasons, just the trends the elements follow. Wind element contributes to___ features, water element contributes to…

The differences appear in all stages: birth, aging, sickness, death

A: So maple syrup (yes I’m at a farmers market) has liquid but it flows which is viscosity, a combo of it’s water and air. Or it’s water and earth spectrum which is influenced by current heat and air. It has solid elements and it changes from liquid to solid at certain heat leveled so in the bottle I see it has a level of heat in it that is responsible for it’s current viscosity. It has a flavor that that is derived  of it’s solid parts and liquid parts…what else?

MN: Maple syrup is tree sap and part of the tree, the tree grows by eating minerals in the dirt and increasing its solid form, by drinking water, by breathing air, and by being warm enough to survive. The syrup is made by boiling and cooling, all of which depend on liquid, heat, air, and earth elements

A: So it’s like a paint pallet. An artist will know a color and oil versus water type, thickness, the ratios of paints together and the type of canvas you put it on will all determine the characteristics of the final painting?

MN: Yeah –Even paints are 4 elemental. Colors, as well. We are each a piece of 4 elemental art. Only there is no “final”, we are living art, shifting and changing all the time

A: QQ: am I right that it is impossible to think about just the elements in an object without considering how the elements and elements in other items  have acted on the object and how the object will act on the elements and elements in other objects in turn:

Example fish doesn’t just have blood it needs water in ocean and it acts on the ocean by peeing.

Or tree had air that allows roots to spread that act upon the movement in the soil? I ask to be sure I am correct in thinking about the whole picture bc I am having trouble isolating a fish without thinking about ocean

MN:  All interrelated, not isolated.

Everything feeds off of everything’s four elements. We eat certain meats bc we cant get those nutrients (aka 4 elements) on our own. We eat cow meat to get grass nutrition  (our 4E eats cow 4E), eat nuts from trees for certain vitamins (vitamins=4E), mosquitoes eat our 4E in sucking our blood, flies eat our 4E in eating our skin. Goats lick the mineral salts from rocks to get their 4E, leopards eat those goats, leopards 4E back to earth when they poop and pee and after death.

We are all connected. Like that pocahontas song!

A: I will say rupa is a straight forward contemplation, but pretty powerful too…I generally think the world is so exciting, but today I started thinking it’s not as alluring as I thought, it’s just the same shit mixed up in different mold.