Alana's Dharma Blog

On Karma

On the first day of the trip, Mae Yo asked us to consider what kind of karma folks have to be living in a place like India, to be born into the conditions of poverty we see on the streets around us. (Present day note: a much more complete entry on Karma is coming-up, these are just a few thoughts from my trip).

As I looked out the window of the buss I noticed that folks live in such squalor and don’t even seem to care. They let rubbish stay in the streets, animals roam in and out of people’s shack homes. I watched folks clean their laundry in the river and then just lay it in the dirt to dry. I don’t understand it…there are trees everywhere, why not hang the clean laundry in sheets rather than putting it right back in the dirt? It feels like collectively, people here don’t even notice the conditions they are in, they don’t even look for a way to fix the easy stuff (like sweeping the streets or hanging the laundry or fencing their homes from the goats). That’s the karma of the place, of the folks born here — to not even know there is a suffering, an issue, better yet to try to fix it.

When we went to Nepal it was different. Still poor, much poorer than India in fact, but at least folks tried. The streets were cleaner, more orderly, laundry hung. It was such a contrast.

Then I think about the US. there things are so relatively clean and orderly. With our collective karma, we invent, we problem solve, we come-up with ways to live a more comfortable life, to put off the impermanence, the negative side of the coin. We have refrigerators and medicine and street cleaning, and trash collection. In the end of course, impermanent wins, in the US, India, Nepal, everywhere.

I don’t know what exactly got someone born in India versus in the US. In poverty versus wealth. But I see what perpetuates it. I see that complacency, failure to see a problem means it will never get solved. I see that by not seeing my own suffering I will never solve it, never figure out how to stop being reborn.

On Standards

Last night we stayed at a hotel that was super dirty. The sheets were stained, there was hair everywhere, a peek in the kitchen revealed all kinds of creepy crawlies, the toilet was brown, as was the faucet water. It stank. I was soooo very uncomfortable. As I lay in my bed, I had no choice, no where else to go so I tried to fall asleep. I realized that there is a difference between ignoring the dirty and seeing it for what it is and accepting it when there really is no other way out.

Today we checked into another hotel. It too is modest, way below my normal standards, but it is clean. Just walking in the room filled my heart with comfort and joy. Compared to last night it is heaven even though at home I would never ever stay at a place like this, it is so below my standards.  

From this I see the trap –the way I keep being able to stay in this world filled with things that disgust me, the way I get reborn; Little changes can give me hope, reset my standards, blind me to the terrible parts of life. All I need is something a little better than before and I can accept. But the downside, even a little worse than before and I feel loss.

More on Disgust

Disgust is a symptom of a wrong view. It is the desire to see only one side (the clean and orderly side), one state. But can anyone really be neutral? Can anyone really walk into a room at the hotel from 2 nights ago and be ok? What about folks who have never even stayed in a hotel before? Folks who sleep in shacks. They would likely find the room, with beds and sheets and running water a wonderful place. Our #3, memory, is what sets the standard.

Back in Nov. 2013 my temple took a group trip to visit the Buddhist holy sites in India and Nepal. In the next few entries I will relate some of my notes and observations from the trip. I will go ahead and copy these directly from my notebook and make edits only for the sake of context and understandability.

More Trash

There is trash in the tour bus, empty water bottles on the floor, food wrappers stuffed in seat pockets. It makes me feel disgusted  (clearly a pretty prevalent emotion for me around this time). A part of me realizes it’s what everything becomes — even what I will become — expired, dead and done, something disgusting in my eyes. I know these wrappers used to keep food, something I enjoy and desire, safe and fresh. These wrappers lived a good life, served a helpful function, and still, in the end, it becomes trash. Trash that requires effort to clean, that impacts the environment, that causes me discomfort. And really, it stays trash for so much longer than it was a ‘useful good’.

But, I still eat the snacks on the bus, even if I’m not hungry I’ll eat it for the taste, even knowing they will produce empty wrappers, trash that disgusts me. Why do I do this? If I know the trash is built-into the experience, if I know I will be disgusted, why eat the snacks?

I prefer to ignore the bus trash, look away, look out a window. It’s a pattern I have, look away from the decay as it makes me uncomfortable. I prefer clean places, well designed indoors, nature outdoors, places I associate with beauty and safety and  life. I prefer looking pretty, well dressed, well groomed, I’ll do it even to the point of hurting myself, starvation, over exercise, expense,  so that I can feel beautiful and safe and full of life.

But the decay, the trash state, it is natural, unavoidable. Everything I find desirable, like snacks and pretty places and my own beauty will erode, it will die and decay. I look out the window, I look away from decay, pretending that if I ignore it I can escape it. But I can’t. And Dharma practice is the process of learning to stop looking away. To see the decay, the trash, is built into the system.

Dead Flowers

I observe at the holy sites folks come and leave beautiful fresh flower offerings. After the flowers begin to wither and die, workers gather them up to throw away. It’s the cycle of the world. But I am disgusted by it, by the bus trash, by the dead flowers. How can it be that even these beautiful flowers, offered to the Buddha, die, decay. My disgust is a mechanism to keep me from accepting the impermanent nature of things (Alana’s present day note:  my disgust is actually a result of my failure to believe in my heart the impermanent nature of things…but this took a bit longer to clarify). I am disgusted because in my heart I believe the decay is an aberration, a broken bit of this world, not the norm. I am disgusted because I don’t want to be reminded of impermanence. I still want to believe it’s beatable somehow. That I will beat it myself. But all flowers, even the beautiful ones, even the useful ones, even the ones offered to the Buddha,  die.

So I look away from the parts I don’t like. That is my habit, what I am used to. If I do that though, how can I ever break free from this world? I need to habituate myself to seeing both sides, the beauty and the disgusting bits. This is why Mae Yo gave me the homework to see the percent of joy versus suffering.

Notes From Mae Yo

I shared some of these contemplations with Mae Yo. And her advice was to look at the energy it took to grow the flower compared to the 3 or 4 days in which the flower is fresh and beautiful.  And to know the conditions I set, flowers must be fresh, beautiful, cause me the suffering of continuing to try to meet them over and over again, having to keep buying these flowers when they are at their prime and tossing them when they wither.  Finally, that is looking at my decay is too hard, zoom-out and use external stuff, bigger patterns to avoid just looking out the bus window and ignoring the trash all together.