Alana's Dharma Blog

After a stressful day at the office I decided to stop by my favorite thrift shop on the way home for  a little ‘retail therapy’. I found myself walking down the aisle, looking at each frilly, fancy, colourful dress and thinking to myself, “Will this one preserve me?” “Will this one make me stay young? Return my lost beauty? Make me thin?”  

I watched how my imagination went to work conjuring images of the party I would wear the dress to, the comments from friends,  the shoes that would match, the ‘look’ I was going to capture wearing that dress. I consider how my memory works to draw me to specific brands that have fit in the past, to particular colors and cuts. These clothes, they are tools my mind (my imagination) uses to sell a lie — the lie that I can preserve and control my body, my self.

But If I pay attention, these clothes actually tell the truth… I bring 4 items into the dressing room: Two make me look fat, one makes me look like a frumpy old woman. One item, just one skirt, I can work with (as long as I wear a long shirt with it  because it doesn’t zip it all the way up). How in the hell does my mind use those fitting room statistics and conclude I am in control? I can’t make the items fit me. I can’t make my body fit the items. Instead of preserving me, making me pretty and thin, these items and their not quite zipping zippers, are proof I have gotten fat, lost my figure, gotten old.

These items are bullying and mocking  me and yet I still want them. Tomorrow, when I think of this shopping trip, I will remember it as great fun not a great humiliation. I will look at the new, not-quite-zipping skirt and think –success –something to make me look cute, something the preserve the image I have so carefully crafted. Again, I will ignore the obvious: How can an impermanent skirt, one already starting to unravel around the over stretched zipper, give me the power to permanently preserve?

I decide to head back out to the aisles and see if I can find a long shirt to match that non-zipping skirt. I see a woman browsing ahead of me and feel myself getting anxious and antsy — what if she gets to my perfect long shirt first? As I am maneuvering to get ahead of her, I realize this — wanting/defending what is ‘mine’ — is how wars over belongings get started.

Here is the thing though, my wedding dress has been specially dry cleaned and packed away in my closet. The dress is preserved, but I am too fat and saggy to wear it anymore. Why am I pushing and shoving to find a perfect shirt that, like my wedding dress, will fail to preserve me?  Why am I so easily lulled by ignorance and greed when even a dress knows better?

As I was reviewing past notes, I came across a teaching from LP Thoon that had always really moved me — it is a story in which he instructs a man named Singh on a specific set of contemplations/questions that ultimately result in Singh becoming a Stream Enterer. After re-reading the story, I had a new set of insights on the way my objects cause me suffering. Those insights are presented in the blog below. For those of you who want a recap of the Singh teaching beforehand you can find it in the blog Get Your Grimey Hands off My Teacup.

For a while now I have considered the suffering it takes to acquire an object, to maintain it and then the sorrow I feel when I lose it. But now I see that there is a deeper layer of suffering that lies in my obsession with my objects — my objects force me to come back for them, they continually reignite the cycle of acquisition and loss. My objects are the seeds for my rebirth.

Take my purses for example. I didn’t used to be a purse girl, I used to get by carrying stuff in a backpack, a tote or just my hands. But then I started getting fancier, richer, dressing better, becoming a fashionista, and for a fashionista, carrying my crap around in a recycled grocery bag just wouldn’t do. So I bought a purse, a nice designer one. I worked to find just the right purse (suffering of acquiring); I obsessed over keeping it nice, storing it right, getting it repaired and resealed and never letting it touch the ground (suffering of maintaining); and  when it finally did wear out I was super sad (suffering of loss). And maybe, just maybe, if it all stopped there I would say it was worth the effort, worth the loss to enjoy that purse for a time. But, it didn’t end there…

Enter the deeper layer of suffering; that broken worn-out purse forced me right back to the mall to buy a new one. Now that I was a purse girl, I couldn’t imagine going back, becoming less, so I had to replace the bag with a new one that was at least as nice or better. And when I couldn’t find just what I was looking for I went on a quest, an internet scavenger hunt to replace the bag –to buy as many more as I could– so that I was prepared, that I could do better, the next time it broke.

I think I am in control of my objects. I think I pick out the purse, I manage the bank account, I own the house. But the truth is my shit bullies me. It forces me, it pushes me, it moves me around like a chess piece.  Is this seriously how I want to live? My stuff is like an abusive relationship. I want to think that if a person tried to control me, constantly making demands of me, not loving me back, I would dump them. But then I thought about my ex — Thomas…  

Thomas was super hot, super funny, super likable and super smart. He also, often, treated me like shit. No he didn’t beat me, or yell at me, but he did belittled me, ignore me, toss me aside when it was convenient for him. So why did I stay with him for so long? It seems to me there were 2 main reasons: 1) I built an identity as his girlfriend —  had become his girlfriend, I defined myself in relation to him, I wasn’t as pretty or as funny or as smart as him, but by having him on my arm I could prove my worth, my value, I could own his  good qualities as my very own. What would everyone think if we broke-up? How would it reflect on me if I couldn’t keep a guy like that around?What kind of woman/girlfriend would I be if I just broke it off? 2) I imagined things would get better in the future. I thought that I could change, I could make him change, if I just exerted enough control it would be perfect.

It seems though that the very same delusions that kept me tied to Thomas shape my expectations for, and attachment to, my objects.

1: Objects Build Identity — That purse was the cherry on top of my fashionista identity. All together, each dress, shoe, belt, purse makes me buttoned-up, in control of my image, in control of how others view and judge me. Sure I have never been perfectly skinny, perfectly beautiful, but when I walk into a room with that purse on my arm it proves my worth, my value, I can own its beauty and status as my own.  If suddenly I went back to wearing grocery bags what would people think of me then? How much of a loser would I look like, to let my image slip, to become so careless and junkie? But does a purse really do all that I imagine? There have already been contemplations of black boots,  pink skirts and green purses — none can control other people’s thoughts, none can make me a thing when these very things go and fade.

Back when I was a kid, right through my finishing grad school, my father paid for everything. He was rich and I never wanted for anything; his money made me feel like I had financial cushion, like I was safe. But after I graduated my dad cut me off. I had been rich but was suddenly poor. If the money  were really mine, if I could own its qualities, how could I go from rich to poor?

In fact, sometime my objects, which I think are busy making me what I want to be are actually having the opposite effect. Remember my mooching friends Sandy and Blake? I want so badly to be a good friend, a good person, but my desire to protect my bank account made me a selfish friend. When my clothes don’t fit I look in the mirror and am reminded of my lack of control, of my failings to discipline my body, to manage my life. And let us not forget that time my pants split and a big gaping hole in my ass made me the least fashionable person in the room. And so, its back to the mall I go for new pants, new clothes, new purses, which brings me to…

2: Things Will be Better in The Future — Yes, I know that purse wore-out, but that is why I bought 6 more just like it. So next time I am prepared, next time will beat the purse reaper. The future, through the sheer force of my will, will be different. But it never seems to work because with each purse that wears or dress that gets too tight I am forced right back to the mall, not just to buy another object, but to reassert the control that object going and breaking cost me.

Ultimately, I did  break-up with Thomas. I was just tired of loving someone who didn’t seem to love me back, who couldn’t fulfill my needs, who let me down everytime. Phra Ajan Daeng once warned me: All the objects in this world I am so obsessed with aren’t obsessed with me back. So why do I keep on loving them when they hurt me, when they bully, and push and abuse?

As I started the process of organizing my thoughts, my notes and my stories to write this blog, something became abundantly clear: My practice is a path, it has a particular progression to it.

I suppose, on some level, I always understood that practice wasn’t just a random series of flashes from the darkness. But, it wasn’t until I started to really outline the first chapters of this blog that I saw that new stories built on old stories, new skills and tools built off the ability to use old ones. Crazy… it’s like cause and effect are real and they are playing out in my Dharma practice!! It was this insight, that practice builds on itself, that dove me to create the blog you are reading now — a more-or-less linear series of entries that capture the progression of my practice, that paint an ongoing story about what it means for me to walk this path.

This insight about the linear-ish nature of my practice was also a real confidence booster for me:  For years I fretted over what would happen if my practice “went off the rails”, If Mae Yo wasn’t there anymore to guide me, if I got so lost I couldn’t see my way out (see the blog Mae Yo Q and A). Mae Yo told me I had to be self reliant, that I already was self reliant, that I just needed to keep relying on myself the same way I had up to this point in my practice. I smiled and nodded at her wisdom and then silently kept panicking.

But with this blog, the evidence was laid out plain to see — I had in fact slowly and steadily built up understanding, used old conclusions as scaffolding for what came later.  Shortly after I started this blog I was speaking with Mae Yo and she told me I had all that I needed already in order to figure out how to get myself free. Finally, I believed her. For better or worse, no one can free me but myself…here’s to self reliance.

Once I had decided to become a Dharma Blogger, I faced an interesting question: What the heck was I going to write about? I started by going back through my very first notebook: reviewing, rehashing, rewriting old stories to turn them into blogs. As I immersed myself in all the old stuff, something crazy happened, I started powerfully seeing so much new stuff in all my old stories; it was like my practice was supercharged, like I was looking at everything I thought I understood with new, fresh eyes.

This next chapter is going to share some of the insights that came-up for me as I prepared the outline and the earliest entries of this blog. As you will soon see Dear Reader, one topic in particular that took on a great deal more clarity when I began to write this blog is Rupa.

Mae Yo always told me to think about Rupa (form); it is after all the foundation of birth in this realm, the starting point for every problem, and a clear understanding of it is the key to attaining the first level of enlightenment. In the early days of my practice I really did try, as instructed, to consider Rupa in each of my stores. Unfortunately, I kinda sucked at it. As I went back to the oldest stores and the oldest instructions I was given by Mae Yo, I was lead right back to Rupa again, this time finding a clarity I simply didn’t have before.

So, as you peak into the earliest days of my life as a Dharma Blogger, be on the look-out for my own personal come-back kids…all those old themes taking on a brand new beginning.