Alana's Dharma Blog

Dear Reader — this blog is a direct continuation of the last entry, Wrong Views on Suffering and Happiness —What, How, the Lie and Why Part 1 — if you have not yet read that post yet please head back there and read it before you continue.

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How: My 3s (memory) and 4s (imagination) plus self and self belonging give rise to my sense of happiness and my quest for it.

Me and the Bench –a recap of the aggregates:

I remember one time I was sitting on a bench, I had found a spot with the perfect balance between shade and sun. I was not too hot, not too cold –I was so comfortable and happy.  As I sat, over time, the sun shifted in the sky and my perfect shade to sun ratio was lost. It was beginning to get too hot so I moved the bench under a bigger tree and again I was comfortable. It was only a little while though till I was too hot again –the shade was just disappearing! I fiddle with the bench a bit more and then I realized. That it was really only for a brief moment, out of all the moments in the day, that I could be happy and comfortable on that bench. Even with all my efforts sometimes would be too hot and others too cold. But that moment of stimuli that my #2 (feeling) interpreted as comfort was something written to my #3’s memory. Then my #4 started imagining ways to retrieve the experience to recreate or to preserve that moment again.

Whether it on trips or benches, gardens, with certain people, doing certain things,I have had times where I have felt worry free and peaceful, where life felt good. All the spin-up of something like Japan, of all my self-created “zones of comfort”, are efforts to repeat these moments. It is my 3s (memory) that remember that once upon a time I have had happy experiences  and my 4s that imagine I can have them again with just a little planning. That if I control the aspects of the trip, of my life, in just the right way I can get the experiences I want and avoid what I don’t.

My own experiences of everyday life belie the fact that finding lasting and predictable happiness in my day-to-day regular life is impossible. After all, even when stuff is going pretty well, I have the constant discomfort of my to-do list, of waking , working, managing life. So my #4 looks elsewhere…I imagine a space, a place, a time, a person, a holiday, something outside of the regular (which I know is can be crap) where I can have a bit more comfort. I imagine that with enough effort I can go there, that there are predictable steps I can take, like getting on a plane and traveling, that will bring me there.

For the system to work, I need the self to come-in and be the choosy narrator, the story teller. The self, pulls together my 3s and weaves together the memory of whats comfortable so that I can create the great getaway plan using 4. The trip itself is both a result of the misunderstanding of the self (thanks #4) …that I can conjure-up a place of refuge, away from my daily life and something that will further propagate that self (where I selectively store more memories to fuel # 4 in the future)—In the small ways i.e., planner, organizer, traveler (and all the meanings I as narrator impose on these concepts) and in much bigger ways, I selectively remember the good parts and gloss the bad ones to create the narrative that it was worth it. That my great plan to escape suffering worked, at least enough to make me think that I should keep trying in order to get it closer to perfect each time.

The interesting catch however is, in the place of refuge I imagine, the terms of its comfortableness are my own creations. They reflect qualities I already value — worry-freeness, safety, cleanliness(cleanliness in particular I have watched closely and seen how much it influences my sense of comfort or safety in a space –my desire to return to a city, a restaurant, a hotel)  — its my own definitions in my head that I project outwards onto a time, experience or space. But if thats true, can there really be some happy zone over there, outside my own imagination, that I can expect to be there waiting for me? And how do I reconcile it with my own changing standards of comfortableness –as a teenager, I reveled in having a messy room, a messy car; I felt like it made me a ‘rebel against the establishment’, someone who didn’t spend time on ’superficial stuff’ like cleaning? And in the end can I really trust that the signs of that happy place (rupa) that I read as  safe or clean really are when I am such a selective narrator and when I lack so much information (I mean I did find hanging out in a garden in the ghetto petting some feral cat to be peaceful and safe). This then brings me to a big problem…. The Lie…

Without further ado: My homework on my wrong views about ‘suffering safe zones’, the  two sides of suffering and happiness, and whether I can really call something sukka if what is outside of it is dukka… This contemplation around  the topic of suffering will be divided into 4 parts: What suffering it really is /looks like, how my wrong views about it arise and why they arise/the purpose they serve .

Much of these thoughts actually started in response to something Neecha wrote in an email awhile back , “as we have been coming back again and again, there must be something that seems worth it for us. if we cannot find what that is, we cannot leave this world, either.” In my heart I know this is right. It’s the only logical conclusion. So I started looking at the patterns in my life to see if I could identify what’s worth it to me. I’m not sure its the end all, but one biggie pattern that I definitely noticed is:

Wrong view: That I believe the world can be partitioned off into neat little sections. Sections of pain and sections of comfort. If I just take the right steps — hopping on a plane, sitting in a special place, eating the right food, waiting till the weekend — I can move out of a pain zone and into a comfort zone (illusions of control). Even though I see and understand suffering in my life, a part of me thinks there is refuge just over the line if I can get there. At least I can take small trips over there to the comfort side and that seems to be enough for me to think its worth it (misunderstanding of dukkah). As crazy as it sounds, I will trade X days of unpleasant regular life for X days of enjoyable life (belief that what is enjoyable/un-enjoyable is permanent).

What is the reality/ how to fix the view: Mae Yo already pointed me in the direction of correcting the view — look more closely at suffering and its relationship to happiness and to the world. So here I want to begin doing so through examining my recent trip to Japan to understand the dynamics of my beliefs about suffering and then looking at its reality using 5 aspects of suffering( suffering in the trip, suffering of trying to get the trip, suffering of losing the trip, suffering the trip causes by becoming a standard/benchmark for other trips {i.e. suffering of preservation}, and suffering around the trip that allows me to define the trip as “happy” by comparison).
My trip to Japan:

The Dynamics of my beliefs around the trip in a nutshell: Travel is one of the many “separate” areas of life that I view as escapes from the discomfort of my daily life. But, the truth is,  I remember when I was planning the trip, the process felt painful to me. It was stressful on short notice and I was resentful needing to take responsibility for it even though the trip was Eric’s idea. Still, I wanted to go because I saw it as a time to spend with Eric, a shared experience that would strengthen our relationship and make our life seem happier, more worth living. It was a way to literally get-a-way from the shitty parts of everyday life; a separate time and space where I could play care free. So with that motivation..the desire to achieve those ends, I pushed through the discomfort and planned the trip. Of course, the trip itself had its moments of being fun and being stressful; for the fun ones I pat myself on the back, reinforce my sense of being a planner, being someone who deserves good things, having things in this world that are worth-it. But for the suckey moments, in addition to the discomforts I suffered, I also had the discomfort of feeling like a failure. Being unable to successfully plan the trip–not being able to control my entry into a “safe” zone of pleasure. Still, I see the uncomfortable moments as flukes, and the comfortable ones are the hope that with enough time or effort I can overcome these flukes and have an only pleasurable trip. In the end though, even though I can vaguely recall parts that were no fun (we had a shitty hotel one night, we almost missed our train to Osaka, I over ate tempura and felt sick, I walked too far and hurt my foot, Eric and I argued over where to eat lunch, the volcano smelled terrible, I was self conscious over cultural differences and misunderstandings,etc.)  I put a sheen on it and call the trip a success. I justify all the suffering by highlighting the good parts and diminishing the bad so that I have the wherewithal to do it again in the future.

Trying to come to a more accurate view by exploring the suffering in depth.

1) Suffering in the trip — As I mentioned, the actual trip had moments of suffering. There was physical suffering of hunger,  aches and pains, jet-lag. there was the stress over being jet lagged, feeling like I needed to be out exploring even though I was exhausted. There was stress over spending money and over the tension between spending it on such unique things and being at a place of some financial insecurity in light of Eric’s current job discontents. There were moments of tension and disagreement between Eric and I. Us not wanting to do the same things, me either frustrated with his plan or feeling bad when mine didn’t work-out. There was being uncomfortable with culture differences, worried we offended folks, confusion of language or appropriate actions.One night we went to a Sushi bar and realized after we had gotten our food we didn’t have enough cash to cover it. We worried the whole meal how we would explain. How we would solve the problem (Eric finding an ATM while I waited at the restaurant). We felt extra bad because they were so nice to us. We were so relieved in the end  when they took a credit card…. The main point here is that if there were really an “over there” a “suffering free zone” to be found on a trip to Japan then why was there so much discomfort mixed-in? Why didn’t I find it?

2) Suffering of trying to get the trip— So much work went into the trip. So much money that has been so painful for Eric to earn, for me to participate in..the ups and downs of his job, the drama that effects our life together, the time it sucks from the time we can spend together, the endless conversations, the pressure to be a good listener to give good advice, just to earn enough to pay for a trip to Japan. Then there was the actual effort in planning, the time to research, the stress of making the right plans, of “insuring” that Eric enjoys the trip, that the trip lives-up to my own expectations, my hopes. The moment when I thought we wouldn’t be able to find a hotel in Osaka, the stress of getting train tickets, the endless emails to travel sites and activity planners. Picking out the “right” tour book, writing the packing list, stressing I forgot something. All so that I could go over to the “stress-free zone” of the trip.

3) Suffering of losing the trip — of going home. I am always so so sad at the end of a vacation. I hate coming back to my “regular” life. It feels so lackluster. I feel so overwhelmed by the mail at the door, the piles of papers on my desk, the emails, the phone messages, the to-do-lists. When I’m away I don’t think about making eye dr. appointments, painting the house, re-organizing my files. I don’t worry about putting-on a little extra pudge (that then makes me so sad, makes me diet so vigilantly when I return). But when I come back it all floods back-in and it makes me want to plan a new trip. Have a new escape from all this stuff of everyday life. It sows the seeds for more suffering, to plan, suffering during, suffering of coming home, suffering of comparison…

4) Suffering the trip causes by becoming a standard/benchmark for other trips — Here in SF we have a Japanese mochi shop we like to go to and they have the most delicious cherry blossom sweets. We were so so excited when we found them at a shop in Kyoto and so we bought a half dozen. We were sure they would be even better in Japan then the ones at home,. How could they not be? But the ones in Japan were too salty, the rice too firm and we were so disappointed. We gave the leftovers to some other travelers we met and they loved them..thought they were the most delicious sweets ever. It was so clear to me the benchmark of the sweets from home, the ones we were used to, created the disappointment when the ones in Japan couldn’t live-up to the standard. But ironically, I also know if the ones in Japan had been better we would have come home and been disappointed with the ones here.To me this is one of the clearest problems of this world–there is no win. Each bit of success, and enjoyment pushes the standards higher. It needs to be repeated, at least preserved, but even better if its beaten. But then there is more and more struggle to repeat, to go on.

5) Suffering around the trip that allows me to define the trip as “happy” by comparison — For me this suffering is the most slippery but also the most powerful. It is the cup and women optical illusion. It is the fact that even if all the above were untrue and the trip was all candy and unicorns, the contours are shaped by suffering. If there were no suffering, if I didn’t feel discontent in my daily life, I wouldn’t seek to  find a “happy zone” off in Japan. Two weeks straight with Eric felt so precious, it felt happy, because he is traveling so much for work at this time. Traveling around and seeing new things felt so engaging because my job bores me so much here. Eating whatever I want feels so freeing because I am so rigid here. None of the satisfaction I had on the trip actually makes sense without it being satisfying compared to dissatisfaction that I’m used to, that I definitely experience. It is with this awareness that it makes sense to start considering what happiness really is, how my concept of it arises…

Mae Yo once told me to go look at the idea of preserving, to contemplate on refrigeration, because us humans are always trying to preserve. I’m no different, I’m always trying to either preserve a particular space/time/self, or– as my recent NY life has shown me– get back to the good stuff I failed to preserve. But thinking about the women and the wine glasses, the interdependent nature of suffering and comfort, was starting to make me suspect, I was bound for failure.

2014, the time of this contemplation, was a good, fat year. Mostly, Eric and I were comfortable –we were healthy, wealthy, in love with each other, happy with our friends and community; stress, aside for Eric’s chronic work stress, was low. I thought, this time/space (early 2014) is so good, I want it to stay this way for ever (it didn’t FYI). But, this 2014 time, when I really thought about it, was the culmination of struggles, it was constructed on the foundation of years of stress. There was our first year in SF when we were too poor to heat the house. There was the sorrow and stress of losing our life in Houston where we had moved from. There was the falling out with friends who were not as healthy and stable for us which motivated us to build new relationships.  All that made that 2014 moment in time comfortable was set-up by all the discomfort before it.

And…if I was being honest, its not like early 2014 was all butterflies and unicorns either. Even inside that comfortable moment, the wealth meant the stress of preserving it, of estate planning and financial advising. The stability at my work meant I was often board and unstimulated. And, underpinning all of it was the stress of Eric’s job, the job that allowed us to even afford to stay in the Bay Area.

The truth – there is suffering here and suffering there. Sometimes it is less and sometimes more, but the comfort and ease of less is literally defined by, built off of, the periods there is more. I don’t want to lose my relatively comfortable moment, I want to preserve, to keep the suffering at bay. The suffering I have now is fine, I can bear it, I want this moment static. But, I had said that too about Houston, and then I was even happier in SF. I’d said I was happy with $100 but then I got $1,000. There will always be new things in my life, new people, experiences, stuff, because static is impossible.  And with each new thing I like I have the work of preserving. And with each thing I like that I lose, the work of getting it back.

I shared this contemplation with Mae Yo and she shared a few thoughts that I will relay here:

She said that we try to preserve because once we have something, it becomes necessary. And just like suffering before is what shapes my happy now moments as happy, the happy moments cause my suffering later – each thing I love I will lose, each thing that is good will set the standards by which I view something else as bad. Understanding preserving is tied to understanding the relationship between suffering and comfort; since staying the same, preserving, is never really possible in a world that is always changing and moving, love of what we have sets us up to feel loss when it is gone.

She left me with a final thought about understanding how to practice, how to progress: “in your palm is sticky rice, just keep rolling it till the oil in your hand makes it fall off your palm.”

Its about then I saw the way forward with my homework of understanding the 2 sides of suffering and comfort. I knew I needed to ask 5 questions:

• Suffering in happy moments
• Suffering trying to get happy moments
• Suffering of losing happiness
• Suffering by trying to preserve, repeat and replace with better
• Happiness as defined by surrounding suffering.

Stay tuned for the long awaited homework assignment…

 

When I returned from Hawaii, my mule encounter fresh on the brain, I made an appointment to talk to Mae Yo. I had, after all, identified a huge tendency of mine, a deep wrong view in which I divide the world into neat little partitions: areas of suffering and areas of comfort. I live for those corners of comfort, my spaces of refuge from suffering — that peace, that joy, that comfort is part of my life, if only I could figure out how to have it forever…

Of course, there is no life without suffering, that my friends is Buddhism 101, so my question for Mae Yo — how do I fix this delusion that I can set-up boundaries to delineate suffering free zones? Because, as long as I think those zones exist, I think this world is worth it.

In response to my question, Mae Yo and LP Anan read me a quote from the Buddha. Roughly paraphrased it went something like this, “ If I the Buddha, the most ninja awesome badass ever, could separate Sukka (happiness) from Dukka (suffering), I would have continued to live in this world. But, because I can not separate Sukka from Dukka I will return Sukka back to its true owner, Dukka, and I leave this world for good.”

That then was my homework, to go and see that everything has 2 sides. That and one final question from Mae Yo — Can I call something Sukka if what is outside of it is Dukka?

Once again, I had my work cut-out for me…

 

Eric and I were on vacation again, Hawaii’s Big Island, sitting on a mule drawn carriage taking us on a tour of the Waipi’o valley.  It was impossible not to enjoy a beautiful day, in a beautiful place, as the mules plodded along the path. But then, we hit a rough patch in the road, slippery from mud and puddles, and the mules began to lose their footing. They struggled and slipped, unable to pull the carriage any further until they just stopped.  

The driver clicked at them, but they wouldn’t budge. He yelled but still they wouldn’t move. He began to beat them with a stick and finally the animals began to pull, their breath heaving, their feet sliding under them, as the driver kept yelling and hitting some more. My heart broke, I felt for the poor animals, their suffering, the shitiness of their life, of being a slave to such a cruel driver… but its not exactly like I could hop off the cart in the middle of the jungle in protest.

When we got back to the barn, I watched as the driver unhooked the mules, and they ran into the field and began frolicking and grazing with their friends. They were being so playful, they looked so carefree, it was like the beating and the struggling were some distant mule memory…stupid asses I thought.

Then I realized, the stupid ass is me. In my mind, I divide this world into neat little sections, sections of pain and sections of comfort, sections of suffering on slippery roads and sections of frolicking in fields with my friends.  I believe if I just take the right steps, hop on planes to Hawaii or plan the perfect dinner date, I can move out of the pain zone and into the comfort zone.

Of course, I understand there is suffering in my life, but a part of me thinks the refuge is just over the line if I can get there. At least I can take small trips over there to the comfort side and that seems to be enough for me to think it’s worth it. And the trips — to Hawaii, out to dinner, frolicking in fields with friends — they work sometimes, for a little while, long enough to forget the suffering on the road just behind me.

Something Neecha had said to me in an email had been bugging me for weeks. She said, “as we have been coming back again and again, there must be something that seems worth it for us. if we cannot find what that is, we cannot leave this world, either.” Intellectually of course I knew she was right, but I just wasn’t feeling it… As I stood there looking at those mules, I realized that this partitioning off of the world into sections is one of my huge patterns, it is how I view the world to make it seem ‘worth it’. But how do I undo, how do I make this world seem not worth it? Time for another conversation with Mae Yo…

 

If self is the storyteller, self belongings are the props that help make the story believable. They are the accessories that make the outfit, that make the whole thing pull together…Enter, the pink skirt:

With my organization’s big annual gala in mind, I start trolling ebay looking for the perfect outfit. As soon as I saw that neon pink, silk, Oscar De La Renta  skirt, I knew it was mine. In my mind, I was wearing it before I even paid for it — thinking of the shoes, the purse, the shirt that would match. Thinking of the look I wanted so that everyone would  see me as fun, young but professional, stylish. Above everything, so people would see me as pretty, someone worthy of adoration, someone worthy of love and attention, someone valuable. A good Alana.

The skirt arrived a few days later, my excitement high as I tore open the package and ran to the bathroom to try it on. Wooohooo.. Yikes, fat, frumpy, cotton candy ass was totally not the look I was going for. I banished that skirt straight to the give-away-pile, it’s just totally not me, its not mine at all (or if it is, its my burden to carry over to the Goodwill)

That give-away-pile, was filled with stuff I gathered to sell the story, to dress the part of the Alana I wanted to be. But it was all stuff that failed to do its part in the end. It was props that made me look dated instead of fashionable, fat and frumpy instead of beautiful and thin, cheap instead of rich, whorish rather than sexy. That then is the truth, these props, these self belongings, they don’t do what I think they do, at least not all the time, forever, with everyone. If they did, that pink skirt would have made me a knockout..no further shopping required. And if the storyteller’s props are a sham, what about the stories?

I set-up these stories, these standards, these “refuges” –beauty is a certain thing, moral rightness is a certain thing (like not being a cheater) , likability is a certain thing (adventurous rhino survivor). With these ideas, these parameters, which I myself define, I create a narrative of a structured and predictable world and an Alana that deserves the best that world has to offer. These stories keep me safe from a chaotic world, just like a fit body keeps me safe from death, and a pretty face keeps me safe from being abhorred. But beauty fades, the face sags, the moral standards change (vegetarian Alana versus meat eating Alana), what is likeable to one person isn’t to the next. And besides, 1000 times I have seen pretty young people die, horrible people have good fortune and good ones face suffering. I have seen people safe and stable in one moment and then swept-up in a landslide the next.

All this time I have been looking for the wrong thing–to be safe. Beauty to keep me safe, money, love, my family, my friends, popularity, clothes, my body, health, food, all things I look to to keep me safe from what exactly? No matter what things I have, no matter what stories I tell, I’ll still grow old, suffer, die.

The truth is my ‘refuges of safety’ —  the stories my self is born to tell — are lies that keep me safe from nothing at all.  Impermanence is the final word. And now I at least have an inkling as to why all those wise Buddhists before me have said, the only source of refuge in this world is the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha.

This blog is a continuation of the previous blog — Some (More) HW on Self and Self Belonging.

As I began to understand how the process of creating self and self belonging works, I struggled with my usual question: Why do I do this — prop-up a self and continue to fuel it? What purpose does it serve?  My contemplations so far had gotten me to see that my sense of self and self belonging help sell a lie about an unchanging self and world, they smooth isolated instances in time into a narrative and help me pick facts to include in that narrative and which to ignore. It is like self is a gifted storyteller…(did you guys ever see the movie Usual Suspects?)

But beyond that, I was stuck. humph. I asked Neecha and Mae Yo for guidance and they suggested I consider what would happen if I didn’t create a self, is it even possible to avoid? I struggled with this for a while and decided to apply one of those old handy dandy contemplation tools I keep in my pocket — I decided to zoom out…if self is a storyteller then instead of asking about self (which I’m totally stuck on),  I can ask questions about telling stories: What kind of stories do I tell in my life? Why do I tell stories or exaggerations or lies?

I see that I generally have 2 types of stories I tell..the ones that are told out loud to others and the quiet ones I tell to myself. Let’s take a closer look at each:

Example Out Loud Story: The Great Tweezers Lie of 1993:

Finally, I will admit the truth, all these decades later — it was I who took my Mom’s tweezers and forgot to put them away. But back then, 14 year old Alana was afraid of getting grounded; when my Mom came-in and accused me of taking the tweezers, I looked her in the eye and I lied, “ What tweezers? I don’t have any idea what you are talking about.”

So there is is the reason for my story: I lied to save myself, to avoid my Mom’s wrath. How many other ‘out loud stories’ have I told and why:

• At a dinner party, with everyone captivity listening to my travel tales,”I got run down by a rhino on safari and lived to tell the tale.”I tell of my adventurousness, my glamorous exotic experiences; I never admit how afraid I felt, how I never want to go on safari again…
• 30 minutes late to work and I exaggerate to my boss, “traffic took 30 minutes to move 10 blocks.” I leave out the part that I left the house late. I want to seem responsible, a victim of circumstance not a person who can’t make it out the door on time.
• Talking to a donor at an event, I learn they went to my university. It was a fine school, but I’m hardly a die-hard alumni. Still I find myself sharing tales and ‘bonding’ over a common experience which, in general life, means quite little to me. But I want to be liked, to find common ground with a stranger, to be successful at my job.

The stories I tell out-loud are always meant to control other people’s perceptions of me. They are meant to get people to like me, or to protect myself from negative judgement or consequences.

Example Story I Tell Myself: That’s Not Cheating

When I was in highschool I had a ‘rule’ — I would not be a cheater. I would not cheat on my partners and I wouldn’t would mess around with someone else’s partner either. But there was once, I liked a guy so much, he just already had a girlfriend. Based on my rule, I wouldn’t cheat, but I flirted, invited him over to study, insinuated..I got him to break-up with his girlfriend so we could go out. But that’s not cheating..I waited till after the break-up to mess around with him. I created an imaginary line, a story, and then I defined myself as someone who stayed on the “right” side of it. I did it because I wanted to protect myself from seeing myself as a cheater. I wanted to believe I was a good person, who deserved friends, and good faithful partners.

How many other ‘inside stories’ have I told and why:

• In my relationship with my mom, I painted myself as the victim and my mom as the ‘wicked witch.’ I ignored the other side, the times I was hurtful to her, the times she was the hero. I did it because I didn’t want to see my own ugliness, my lack of gratitude. The truth that I was being a bad child a lot of the time.
• I hate New Yorkers, I look outward to find ugliness in their actions, to distract myself from my own ugliness, the traits about myself I don’t like.

The stories I tell myself are all designed to bolster my sense of being a good Alana. They obfuscate my negative qualities, they defend my righteousness and justify my potentially bad behavior through selective memory, arbitrary rules and standards, and downright lies. I need to be a good Alana. I value goodness, I think it is what makes me worthy of love, of protection, of good karma and a comfortable life.  I believe that good people deserve good outcomes and that the world will deliver those.  So I tell stories that affirm my goodness, because that goodness is what makes my worldly existence seem predictable, orderly and safe.  

At the end of the day, my self as storyteller reinforces my vision of the world as a predictable place, one I can navigate if I just follow the rules (rules of my own creation). It lets me be in control, to imagine a world worth living in because I ,as a self proclaimed ‘good’ person, will get good stuff and avoid the bad. It makes me believe it is worth being born.

 

 

Mae Yo, once again, offered me her favorite homework assignment — “go contemplate self and self belonging.” This time around, she gave made it a little harder —  “go contemplate self and self belonging in the situations of your life and  pay special attention to the relationship between self, self belonging,  the aggregates and  the arising of suffering.” Somehow, I never seem to get those easy assignments….Anyway, here you can take a peek at my answer and see how I did :).

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I’ll give more details below, but as a preview: I’m starting to see that self and self belonging is a lens through which we interpret the world. It’s a judge, and a filter and it seems to be one of the main reasons we are able to imagine permanence.

The Situation:

So my contemplation started when Eric and I went early on a warm morning to sit in a garden/coffee shop down in Bayview. It was so lovely, warm, good coffee, quiet. We found seats in a private area, on a heated bench, there was even a cat there that sat down with me and snuggled-up. I noticed my comfort. I noticed my imagination already running… Here are a few of those imagination thoughts: this was a special spot for Eric and I now, we could repeat it, If anything happened to him would I be too sad to come back here or would it be a spot that brought me comfort? I hoped people wouldn’t come trekking in our little nook. I wondered how long Eric would be patient just sitting…  I realized that in such a short time I made the spot ‘mine’ part of my narrative, a place I sensed I belonged and in some way belonged to me.

The Aggregates:

So I started to look more carefully at how this all arose. First I looked at the rupa (form #1), the fabric of the scene. So many things that I already know I am predisposed to liking. It’s a garden –a green space with nature, but nature that is groomed, trimmed, controlled. It was empty, not many people, so quiet and I felt alone, safe. It was warm –warm coffee, warm sun, warm seat (I don’t know why yet, but warm is a thing I associate with comfort and vitality) There was a cat, cuddling-up, making me feel special and liked.  In essence there were a bunch of forms (#1) (cat, garden, warm stuff) that nudged my memories (#3) into remembering all the positive associations I have with those. My feelings (#2) kicked in and I felt positive about the situation so then came my imagination (#4)–making it mine, making it a place in association with me, that affirmed me.

The Harm:

Just looking at whether the image I painted was even true was enough to highlight some of the harm –here I was, at a coffee shop, in the ghetto, petting a random animal and feeling illusions of safety, comfort and mine-ness –that’s sort of crazy. Is the place safe after dark? Even during the day?Is it mine–really?If I didn’t buy coffee would I be allowed to sit? When folks started poking around the place I was sitting, I started feeling protective, defensive of a space that is very clearly not really mine even in a conventional sense (where it belongs to the shop owner). As the rupa changed, my comfort decreased..it became a little too warm, the cat ran away, I felt hungry and restless and then I felt dissatisfaction that something that had previously been so perfect was already decaying.

Additionally, before I went to this place I had no sense of it in relation to me. It was just a store across town. But once I was there and my aggregates got cranking somehow I became interwoven with the place. I got puffier and bigger than before. A new Alana, garden-coffee-shop-Alana, arose (and subsequently softened again after contemplation).

The Deeper Creepier thing Going On:

Forewarning, we are entering territory that’s still fuzzy along the edges for me… But when I really thought about it, I realized that I was picking and choosing the rupa to pay attention to, the “facts” of the situation. And moreover I was interpreting the stuff I did pay attention to in a way that suited me, that affirmed the story I wanted to tell. So for example, there were planes going overhead making noise but I chose to filter them out. We were in fact in the ghetto, on an industrial street just outside the garden, again, I chose to ignore it so that I could build the illusion of the scene I wanted. That made me comfortable. A long time ago, Mae Yo asked me how we ignore the “background noise” –I am starting to think it goes something like this:

Somehow (still a black box for me) our minds hold together a narrative. We take bits and pieces of data, we take isolated moments of arising, and we string them together into something cogent, unified and whole. Its like our sense of self and self belonging help sell the lie, they smooth the narrative over (ignore the background noise). They help us pick which facts to include and which to ignore.

Several days after the garden, I was contemplating about it while sitting in Union Square over lunch. I had snagged a public table and then some guy came and sat with me. He sat a little close and I had a sense –he is in my space. Then I really thought about it. what does it mean. Is it the air around me?  If I move to another table does my space follow me? Does it shrink when Eric, or a close friend is in it but expand for a stranger? The only thing that unifies the “space”, if its here or there, or in relation to who or what, is me. That made me see so clearly that self is the lens through which I interpret the world.   Its how I make something impermanent and totally unreal (like personal space) seem steady, meaningful, real. Its literally,in the case of space, my perspective.But unless I examine it closely it seems so factual and definite, not just like a perspective.Even weirder still, I had the sense that self is the reference point that I use to see the world as something steady, but even my sense of self changes. It is moving, just like if I moved my body to another table in the square my reference point would change, my sense of space would change. So I have an impermanent self that looks upon an impermanent world and tries to fix it as permanent, as controllable, as singular in its reference to me.

Self is also how I decide and judge –I was filling out my sample ballot for the Nov. election and I watched myself weigh my choices, each one I considered how it either affected me or aligned with what I think is right.

I also noticed that my sense of self likes to build itself. When it’s choosing what to pay attention to or how to judge something, the criteria are usually things that affirm it as real, benefit it and make it feel safe. When I look back on my narrative of me and my Mom, for the longest time, I was the victim. I was the hero who suffered quietly and emerged an OK somewhat functional adult. But when I started contemplating gratitude I was forced to look at all the parts of the story I chose to ignore–that I edited from my book. Only now do I see all the stuff I did that wasn’t so heroic and the stuff my Mom did, which I had ignored, but which are worthy of my appreciation.

All this brings me to my biggest question  that I am stuck on– why do we do this –prop-up a self and continue to fuel it? What purpose does it serve? Sometimes, when I understand why I do something I can analyze whether or not it works and it helps me stop.

Stay tuned for the next Blog in which I get an answer, in the form of more homework…ugh….

 

Up until now, my practice had, of course, considered suffering and self; after all, they make the obligatory appearance in most of my stories. But, they had always been an appetizer, maybe a big kale salad,  sometimes the all important desert (I have a sweet tooth). But they were rarely the main course. That honor generally went to impermanence or other interesting Buddhisty stuff like karma and aggregates ( had I been paying close enough attention, I would have noticed karma and the aggregates are really just fancier frameworks in which to think about suffering and self, but I am not always the swiftest student on the path…) . Anyway, around Sept. 2014 that began to change and I made a big push for looking at suffering, self, and ultimately the connection between the two, head-on.

Ironically suffering and self are sort of the headline acts in Buddhism. The problem statement is that this world contains a ton of suffering (and our selfs are the ones experiencing it). The Buddha’s sales pitch is essentially that there is a way out of suffering and, if you followed his program, he’ll lead the way. The practice itself is in fact moving from suffering to freedom from suffering and seeing the role of our big fat selves is a critical part of that path. So after a lot of prior ado … let me introduce the stars of tonight’s show, suffering and my self…