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LP Nut’s Alana-fied Technique to Uncover Hidden Benefits and Beliefs Part 1.

LP Nut’s Alana-fied Technique to Uncover Hidden Benefits and Beliefs Part 1.

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At the 2017 retreat, Phra Nut taught a method of contemplation aimed at uncovering the hidden benefits and beliefs that lay at the foundation of our charged responses to situations we find upsetting. Now, I have to admit that from the get-go that I modified LP’s technique a bit to fit my understanding and thinking style, so, in the interest of transparency, what  you are going to get here is  an Alana-fied version/explanation of all this.

From my understanding, the technique relies on the premise that in a situation where we feel angry/frightened/upset we are already suffering  and yet, despite this suffering, we continue right on doing/feeling/believing the things that cause us pain. The only logical conclusion to why we endure pain: On some level we think there is benefit that outweighs this pain and we have deep core beliefs that justify it.

This technique uncovers hidden beliefs, and benefits, that our mind subconsciously thinks are true/ we will be rewarded with. Once those hidden beliefs and benefits are pulled out of the shadows we have a chance to question them in the full, illuminating light (i.e. challenge our wrong views).  The technique invites a series of ‘what-if’/ ‘so what’ questions that have really helped me dig deeper and learn about some of the unspoken, deep and subtle beliefs that underlie my problems and views. It further involves the listing out of the pros/cons of my beliefs/behaviors and gives me the chance to see the cons that come with the ‘hidden benefit’ pros, and to challenge the truthfulness of those pros.

Below, I will share one of my own personal examples in which I used an Alana-adapted rendition of this technique at the retreat; it will be outlined in a 2 part blog, the first one to trace the ‘what if questions’ and the next a dissection of my pro/con list.  Admittedly, I don’t often find myself using the full-blown, method all that often these days, but elements of it, and the idea that sometimes I need to dig deeper to find my hidden assumptions, has been a powerful supercharge to my practice. In fact, the exercise I am about to share really helped me begin to see some of the deep -seeded beliefs that underlie even ‘simple’ problems and views.  So, without further ado…

Event/Situation: People honk their horns, at all hours. They do it when there is a traffic jam and there is no possible place the person in front of them could go. People even honk at the police officer who stands in the road directing traffic​

My Emotion: Anger        The degree of my emotion from 1-10: 10++++++++ ​

Diagram of my belief:  Click the link below to see a diagram that traces my beliefs. Thoughts are connected by arrows that represent the question: “If that is true, what does it mean for me?”

Click Here For Link to Exercise Diagram

 

When I went through the series of  ‘if that is true what does it mean for me questions,’ I found a road map to my deepest beliefs about what honking meant. What something so simple (a particular arrangement of rupa) signaled to me about the world and the fears it stoked based on my beliefs of the doom it portended. Of course, with those beliefs,  my anger and indignation at the honkers was necessary — because no matter how painful that anger was, it was an emotion that had real benefits: It separated me from the lawless riffraff of NY. It was a safeguard against becoming a complacent rule breaker myself — someone unworthy of love, someone with no hope of living in a safe, predictable and therefore controllable world.

In the next blogs we will explore a part 2 of this exercise — the pro/con list of my attachment to the view people should be considerate (not honking being just one form of consideration).

More Tools of the Dharma Trade

More Tools of the Dharma Trade

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The following is a homework assignment from around this time that I turned in to LP Anan. The content was about how I had used multiple KPY tools in a contemplation of my own. Because tools and techniques have been an important theme in this blog, I wanted to include the homework here:

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One night a friend was over talking to me about some drama that was going on in a social club she had started — she felt like she had been put in a position of leadership that she didn’t want and was being forced to make decisions that made her uncomfortable. As I listened to my friend talk about her own experiences of leadership, I saw that she had so many wrong views that were coloring her thinking. I couldn’t help  internalize her story and ask — has this ever happened to me?

Since for many years I was always the first person to volunteer… that chick incapable of saying no…I knew I must have a good tale to tell myself….

~~~~Wavy lines and dreamy tv flashback music ~~~~~~

Background Story: Before I was a student in Laung Por Thoon’s method, I used to practice Buddhism in the Tibetan tradition. One day, we learned our Lama — the big teacher — was coming to town and the students had to plan the entire event. I went to the first planning meeting and it was disorganized and chaotic; I wondered how we were ever going to plan an event in a short time. I have lots of professional event planning experience and it soon became clear that I was ‘the best qualified’ person to lead, and that other members of the group wanted me to take over. So I did.  

The next few weeks were hellish. I spent so much time planning the event  I began to  feel “abused” and taken advantage of by the other students. They were aggressive in asking me to do stuff and gave little help … I felt, ‘how could they do this to me?’ It really surprised me too,  it’s just not how  bunch of Buddhists should be acting!

In the end, the event happened and went smoothly. Still I had a lingering sense of dis-ease that has stayed with me for years. I really felt like I was a victim in this circumstance and my perception of the Buddhist community was really tainted.

Wrong View 1: I am the best person to run the event.  If I didn’t run the event it wouldn’t happen. Right off the bat I had several permanent, and therefore wrong, views about how essential I was in the event planning process. I believed that my past experience planning made me well suited for the current experience (actually I learned planning a religious event is very different than a gala). I believed that if I didn’t act nothing would get done (actually, many visits had happened successfully long before I was a student of this lama). I believed that because others wanted me to act I should. I interpreted other people’s words and actions as indicators I should act and lead when in fact they may not have wanted or expected that at all.

Really all of  this was just ego,  but I couldn’t resist putting me at the center of something that didn’t necessarily involve me and thinking the permanent though –I am the best!!!. Since I’m the best it’s my responsibility to act. If I had allowed doubt –’Am I really the best and is this really my responsibility?’ — to creep in, I may not have ended up in the ‘volunteer’ position to begin with.

Wrong View 2: This isn’t how a bunch of Buddhists should be acting. If some Buddhists act this way, all Buddhist will act this way. When I look back at the story now I realize that my suffering was intimately linked to my expectation about how “a bunch of Buddhists” should be acting (setting conditions).  When I think about rough events that I have planned for work, I haven’t felt “wounded for years” when things are hard and people act in ways I find distasteful;  I figure it is just part of the job.  Since I went into the event with expectations about how everyone in a particular group should act, I was quite disappointed when they behaved differently than I wanted them too.

Moreover my disappointment was compounded when in my mind I applied some super bad logic– If some Buddhists act badly, all must act badly, always. Now in addition to my hurt about the event I had lingering doubt about my faith…about myself as a Buddhist.

Wrong View 3: I blamed others and felt like a victim when in fact I participated for my own reasons and got certain benefits from planning the event. For years I thought of this story as something that “happened to me”; in my mind I was the downtrodden protagonist, but in reality I was an active participant. For starters, I volunteered. I did it, not just because of my wrong view of my bestness, but also because doing so helped meet my needs. I was able to prove my bestness, to feel essential, to be part of the group, to have the event go the way I wanted it to, etc. For all of the frustration of the event planning, I was willing to do it to meet my needs, or to at least try. In light of this how can I blame others and not take responsibility?

Two Sides: When I volunteered I ignored the risks of  taking the leadership role and I wasn’t mentally prepared for the downside involved in the decision. As such I felt “blindsided” and suffered accordingly. But, KPY teaches us that all things have 2 sides, good and bad, that’s just the nature of this world. To do anything, like volunteering for a role, thinking only of the good side, is  bound to set me up for disappointment when I get slapped with the bad side. When I volunteered I considered only the good things–how great it would be for the community and the teachers and (secretly) how great it would make me look and feel. When I got late nights and harsh words and hurt feelings I was so surprised and sad…I now realize that this is just the other side of the coin which I need to be prepared for.

Applying These Lessons : Over the years I have reflected on different aspects of this story at different times and it has really helped me in a number of ways. For starters I was able to see that it’s not always best to be the first one with hand in the air jumping up to volunteer. It is not certain that I am always the best equipped for different roles and I now know that any I do take will have a cost I must be prepared for. This is not to say I will never volunteer again, just that I am sensitive to differences in circumstance and I can make decisions that seem most appropriate for that instance, not just be the chick who always volunteers.

This story has also helped me think more critically about my ideals about being a Buddhist. I am much more reluctant to say a good Buddhist is this or always does this and have become less judgmental (of myself and others) for it. I feel more resilient in my faith which is no longer so easily shaken by what one person, or a group, or I, do as though it were the final word on Buddhism.

Finally, this  story helps me think about some bigger and broader themes in my life and practice, like my tendency to frame myself as a victim and my need to think much more critically about the reasons I do certain things, their risks and consequences,  and the pattern of circumstances that give birth to them.

Alana’s (Seemingly) Impossible Homework Assignment– Go and Figure Out How Memory (3) and Imagination (4) Work. What is Their Process?

Alana’s (Seemingly) Impossible Homework Assignment– Go and Figure Out How Memory (3) and Imagination (4) Work. What is Their Process?

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Another technical entry warning, do your best and feel free to scan and skip ahead to next week if this is all a bit much…

Gurrr, ughhrr, ugggh … those were basically my first thoughts when I sat down to do my homework. Fortunately, as I’m sure all you Dear Readers have noted already, the methods taught by LP Thoon are chalk-full of tools, the most important being to start from experiences in our everyday lives to understand the dharma. So I began to comb through my own stories for one that would help me understand the aggregates of memory (3) and imagination (4) …

When we first moved to SF I discovered we had a mouse in our house. I had never had mice before so it didn’t bother me at all. In fact, after I didn’t see it for a few days I began to worry something bad had happened. I thought maybe the mouse was hungry, so I started leaving out food for it. I went online, to check-out what mice might like to eat (FYI — everything) and started seeing articles about the dangers of vermin in your house. Apparently my cute little mouse wasn’t so harmless at all, it could spread death and disease and plague oh my! This was back in the days of ‘paranoid and afraid of death all the time Alana’ so, it was — Freak-out time!!!!!

Suddenly my house mouse was a pest not a guest.

But the change from needing to be fed to something I dread was all in my head

————————-OK, with the rhyming out of my system — ————————————-

As I began to consider the aggregates of memory (3) and imagination (4) this particular story jumped into my head because well, it was all in my head. The mouse went from furry friend to freaky fiend in my head alone, based on changes to my knowledge and imagination of the future — this was a story I could work with.

What were my original #3s, memory, for this story? What were the ‘facts’, data points, things I already firmly believed to be true based on past experiences, that I drew-on to formulate my beliefs about needing to feed mice in my house?

  • The mouse is missing
  • My mother and stepmother always took special care with animals and strays. It was normal in my household and it was something my father (who I loved and respected very much) appreciated
  • What happens in my house is my responsibility
  • My hamsters as a child died because I didn’t take good enough care of them
  • The folks in my old dharma community and my teachers were always going around and saving animals
  • Caring for animals makes me a compassionate Alana, and compassionate people are loved (see Compassionate Alana Story )

What were my original #4s, imagination, for this story? What conclusions did I draw based on my memories, what did I imagine would or wouldn’t happen, that had me going around and feeding mice?

  • A missing mouse is hungry and in danger (thank the mouse gods compassionate Alana is here to save the day)
  • Eric, my friends, my family would learn about me caring for this poor mouse I would score some serious Brownie Points.
  • But if I didn’t take care of the mouse it would die and I would be to blame since it happened in my house, on my watch. I would be a bed person unworthy of love

( It is worth noting that none of my imaginations really had anything to do with the actual mouse, they were me and mine, my mouse, my house, my compassionate Alana PR)

Enter the internet and a little research on diseases spread by rodents….

What were my post-Googling #3s, memories, for this story? Suddenly internet ‘facts’ filled my brain and I now have a data bank full of cautionary tales about the dangers of mice in my house.

What were my post-Googling #4s, imaginations, for this story? I’m going to die –aahhh. Death by mouse disease, plague, yikes. That mouse needs to get the hell out now.

My mouse story, what I believed, what I imagined, how I acted, changed super fast as soon as my old 3’s and 4’s were replaced with new ones. Clearly, I am choosing which memories to recall, which ones to preference (in this story the new ones not the originals), I am the judge and a biased one at that. Afterall, its not like I had never before seen folks killing mice, or ignoring them, or being harmed by wildlife, or not actually realizing that disease is sometimes spread by animals.  All those things existed in my memory banks right along side what I listed above. But, the rupa (form, 1st aggregate) of that cute little mouse, all alone, in my house, it triggered me to a selection of certain memories, certain facts that I used to imagine myself as a mouse saving hero. And then, in very ‘Alana repeats the same patterns’ form (after all, this is the Homeless Alana theme all over again), even a small glimmer of danger (new 3’s) gets total preference of all other facts and sends me into panic imagining my impending death.

So to return to the homework questions, what are memory and imagination and how exactly does this all work?

What exactly is #3, memory? Its a recall of a memory/object/situation as something familiar, something I already have experiences of, a pattern recognition (animal in apparent distress/human capable of intervening). It can be something taught or told (Dr. Google says mice cause disease) or something learned (not feeding hamsters makes them dead). Most interestingly, our old imaginations, like vegetarians are good people (see the blog the Buddhist who loves Bacon) or Dad will love me if I save animals, can become so fixed that we take them to be facts. In essence our old #4s become new 3s. 3s then are basically our ‘facts’ things we believe to be true (whether they are or not) and use as the building blocks for what we imagine, our #4s.

What exactly is #4, imagination? # 4 is where we interpret the ‘evidence’ in #3 (memory), it’s where we go from mouse is missing (memory) to mouse is hungry and needs me to feed it and if I don’t it will die (crazy ass imagination). 4 is how we fantasize about the future/past, assign meaning and value to things and actions. 4 is the narrator of our life, and in an interesting circular way, it is 4 that selects which pieces of ‘evidence’ from our memory to choose and which to ignore. 4 is extra naughty naughty because it is where the idea of self and self belonging arise from. We have a memory (3) of buying a certain cup, using the cup, washing the cup, and our imagination (4) tells us that cup is ours, that we can own it and control it and have it forever. 4 makes it ‘my cup’.

How exactly does all this work, what is the process of memory and imagination?

For this grand finale, I think we will need one more story/example…

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Back in the day (i.e. some indeterminate period of time before this current story/homework) Mae Yo had given me another assignment I never quite did/understood. — Tell me how/why refrigerators were invented (which, now that I understood the assignment, is really a question about the  aggregates, how they function, relate to each other and what they create/result in  in this world).  During the current contemplation on the aggregates the answer finally came to mind clearly:

It all starts with food (#1, rupa, form). We humans know from experience  food spoils (#3 memory ) and we also notice that it spoils more quickly when warm and slowly when cold (still #3). Since unspoiled food is yay and spoiled food is yuk (#2 Vedanā/Feeling), we humans start scheming, we start imagining, we start inventing (#4 Imagination) ways to make the food last longer, ways to get more yays than yuks. Through trial and error, a ton of hard work, we come-up with refrigeration.

This is all well and good, but refrigeration is just one instance where we succeeded in curtailing impermanence, naturally it sits amongst many failures. But we imagine (4 again) we can do it again and again, that we are ultimately the ones in control of food and its decaying process. We commit this one success to memory and we create a new #3s, a data point we use to sell the lie, to feed the hope (again imagination) that we can beat impermanence in the end. And we suffer. We suffer the effort of manifesting our imaginations, of ignoring the consequences (I’m sure refrigeration has had plenty of negative impact to the environment, farming economy, family structure, etc), of our ultimate disappointment when impermanence has the final word.

And after all that, I answered a bonus question; how do I  use this information in my  practice?

Naughty naughty #4 (imagination) has been ruling my life forever. It is after all the creative process and it creates my sense of self (my wrong view of self).  I have been letting it go unwatched, unchecked. But I have another option. I can gather evidence. I can create new #3s (memories) that show me the truth of this world (impermanence/suffering) and use that to drive my imagination. I can use it to imagine risks and perils, to see the other side, to internalize, I can use it to help get myself free.

Tick, tock, goes the clock —  it’s time to start looking at that those watch gears a little more closely.

That Thing Ringing in Your Hand, Its a Phone — PICK IT UP!!

That Thing Ringing in Your Hand, Its a Phone — PICK IT UP!!

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My brother Seth called, again, I finally pick-up the phone and I get an earful, “(something like) Why can’t you just pick-up the phone. Or if you can’t pick-up the phone why can’t you just call me back. It’s been days I have been trying to get a hold of you. I always return my calls, is it so so much to ask for that you do the same?…”.

In my head I’m thinking, “ he is blowing this out of proportion. I know his news was important, this time, but usually he just calls to chat.  4-5 days to return a social call seems fine to me. He is such a complainer.” Huff, puff, whatever, I forget about it.

Fast forward some amount of time, I am trying to reach my husband Eric and he just won’t return my call. I’m thinking, “I’m his wife! Why won’t he pick-up? Get back to me quickly? It’s important. Why doesn’t he think I’m important? Whats wrong with him?”

Freeze: There it is, my moment of internalizing: I do the same thing to Seth as Eric does to me. I have my reasons to not call back Seth, busy, other responsibilities, my husband has his reasons to not call me too. But me, I think my reasons with Seth are reasonable, my standards, 3-4 days to return a call are fair. But I think Eric’s reasons are weak, his standards to call back (even though it’s more like 3-4 hours not  3-4 days) are neglectful. So which is it? Whose standards are fair? Why do I default to mine? What are mine anyway since they seem to be changing depending on the circumstance, the issue, the caller? Basically it seems my standard is ‘ I want what I want when I want it’ — put that way, not terribly reasonable is it?  So really, is that who I want to be? And, how frustrating is my life going to be since, clearly, I can’t always have what I want when I want it.

More importantly, when I don’t get a call back from my husband, it hurts.  It makes me feel unimportant. Neglected, an afterthought. But here I am doing the same thing to my brother. I have someone in this world who wants to speak with me, who cares enough to be affected by whether or not I return a call. And what do I give him in return? Well if it’s anything like how I feel when Eric doesn’t call me,  I give him  hurt, disappointment, frustration.

The thing is, I do love my brother. I love Eric too. If you asked, “hey Alana, do you want to make your brother feel like crap and be super angry/critical of your husband today?”  I’d say of course not, really, who does?   But  I am so accustomed to seeing my side only. So when Seth calls, my side is  I’m busy –he’ll understand. When Eric calls, my side is I’m his wife, I’m entitled. But there is another side.

Seth is my brother, he is important to me, I want him to feel that way. Eric lives in this world, has many responsibilities, works hard to support not just himself, but me too. Why do I lose patience and forget  my gratitude to these people so easily? Whats wrong with me?  
With a little glimpse into what’s happening on the other side of the line … an adjustment to  my own telephone habits came pretty naturally.  

Judge this You Crazy Witch

Judge this You Crazy Witch

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New Technique Alert: Internalization (Opanayiko)

We humans are super used to seeing everything from one side, our own, and that makes us blind (well at least it makes us half blind, which may be more dangerous than fully blind where at least we know we can’t see…). This semi blindness reinforces the idea that our beliefs, our actions, the great ‘I’ is exceptional…it traps us. Fortunately, the Buddha did us all a solid and gave us the crazy ninja tool of internalizing; in so doing he  made the path and the ultimate achievement of that path doable for us normal folk. In essence internalizing is taking a thing, a situation, a story, the behaviors or circumstances of someone else, and turning it inwards to ourselves. To use it, we just need to ask the deceptively simple question,  “how am I like whatever I am seeing? Have I ever done this thing? Have I ever been in this spot?.”

The power of internalizing is that we can start seeing the other side (as in, not the usual me me me side). Internalization is like a mirror that shows us our ordinariness, our frailty, that we aren’t immune from the characteristics of this world (impermanence) and we aren’t always the heroes of the story. Internalization can cue us into the possible feelings/suffering of others, and to the times we may be contributing to that suffering   It can help us iterate through possible roles, identities, outcomes and more quickly free us from our desires to play them out in real life.  Basically, internalization is like kryptonite to our egos… You have actually seen it already in a number of these blogs: When have I ever “overeaten” like Sue (smoking)?, when have I mooched like Sandy? When has my body been subject to decay like the phone? So without further ado.. A tale of internalization versus being judgemental and how this crazy witch started seeing the witchy side of my crazy 😉

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I’m up at the hotsprings resort and there are a bunch of hippies sitting on the grass out front having a drum circle. I catch myself thinking, “damn dirty hippies, being all hippyish”. Immediately I think, “damn judgy Alana, being so judgemental” (I begin the process of internalizing..instead of looking at the hippies I start pointing the spotlight on me).

Here is the weird part —  I used to be a hippy, well I dressed the part, and did the free love thing, even if I did prefer to shower everyday.  But now, that I have changed I criticize those hippies, “with their fake peace, harmony, mumbo-jumbo commune crap”. It’s just like with Sandy, I have to say that, I have to make them bad so I am good. I have to validate my identity, my way of living. I need to justify my life, my choices, the changes I have made to myself, by making those other folks (who I used to be just like) the villains.  After all, I have to be the hero of my own story and how do I define a hero in the absence of some villains.

It’s not just that I was judgmental, or that my judgment had an agenda; I had already started seeing that with Sandy. But here, I started to see the mechanics of my judgements more clearly. I came to notice that in many cases, my harshest judgement was reserved for folks who I used to be like in the past (the hippies). Or people with traits I see some of in myself, traits which cause me self-doubt and shame. For example, with Sandy one of the things that annoyed me the most was her not having a real job and mooching. But I have a pretty easy job next to my husband who basically supports me financially. And I feel super self-conscious about it. I constantly make-up stories about why I “deserve” his support, why I’m unlike Sandy who should pick-up her own tab once in awhile.

More examples popped into my head; just that morning I had judged the day-use people (versus the sleepover people) for being too rowdy, for not really relaxing like us long termers…of course, on my last hot springs visit I had been a day use person. I was so annoyed with the folks talking loudly in the pools, but the night before I had called-out to my husband near the pools because I couldn’t find him in the dark. I am critical of people who dress poorly even though there are plenty of days that I can’t seem to get out of yoga pants. I am critical of people who are know-it-alls, even though I am often the first one with my hand up in a class, I think women that respond to men’s catcalls are either idiots or whores or both, even though I used to give-out my number to anyone who asked just to make myself feel sexy, special….

The more examples that came to me, i.e., the more I internalized, the more I saw that I am so not the good guy here…or at least, I am equally as bad guy as the villains, at least some of the time. Plus I am so arbitrary; I create values that constantly change, based on circumstances, need, based on the identities I want to create . Then I go and apply them to other people. I judge. Here is the truth though — I can’t even fulfill my own expectations all the time, even I can’t live-up to my values, my rules, so how can I go judging other people when they can’t live-up to them either? I judge the hippies for being too loose, too sexually free, but I was like that just a few years ago. I judge Sandy for mooching, but I do it all the time. I judge the day use folks, even though I was a day user in the past and may well be again in the future; after all many circumstances, like if there are cabins free to book, are totally out of my control. Being loud by the pool is ok if I have a good reason, searching for my husband, but a deep offense when other folks do it for their own reasons. Everyone should dress well, look buttoned-up, as long as it’s not so well it puts me to shame…

I wish I could say that this put an end to my judginess (which seriously is such a pain, a constant monolog of criticism and dissatisfaction in my head) but that would be a lie. Still it was an important starting place, a foundation for later contemplations. By asking, “have I ever done this? Been this way?” I went a little way towards dulling my criticism, diminishing my sense of self, of absolute rightness and I  empathized a bit with the folks I was so eager to villainize.  Moreover, seeing the why of my judgment, seeing my sad and desperate need to preserve my sense of identity, seeing the origin of my criteria (myself, not some great being on high) and my own inability meet them, it gave me a glimpse of the fictional story I told myself about who I am and about who other people are. It softened me, a little anyway…after all who’s really being the crazy witch with all these criteria and judgments?

 

Incompetent Employees and the Voices in My Head

Incompetent Employees and the Voices in My Head

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I had this employee, let’s call him Glen, who just couldn’t get it together and stop making mistakes. I tried everything — I taught him, nurtured him, scolded him, guilted him, spelled-out the consequences of his mistakes, warned him — but still, every assignment he turned in was filled with errors . I WAS FRUSTRATED BEYOND BELIEF. Glen was a smart guy, he seemed pretty normal, with the skills of other opposable thumbed creatures, so how, HOW, was it possible that his attention to detail could be so bad ??? What in the heck am I supposed to do about it now???

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Interjection: For all of you  that read the above paragraph and thought, “well duh..of course you are frustrated” or “Glen is a screw-up, you have every right to be upset with him, do what you must” or some other version of,  “my feelings are Glen’s fault and my reaction based on those feelings is reasonable” — this blog is for you!  After the story I will address the issue of how I separate my feelings, or ‘Inside Voice’,  from my roles and responsibilities in the outside world,  aka my ‘Outside Voice’.

I have learned that separating the Inside Voice from my beliefs about outside roles is critical for practice. Without doing this its sooo easy to fall into the trap of blaming my outside roles and responsibilities for my wrong views instead of fixing the views and, by fixing them, having a much clearer sense of how to perform real world duties. If I had just said there is nothing wrong with me, with my frustration, Glen really is a screw-up and it is my duty to fix it,  I would have had all the suffering of my frustration, I would have allowed that frustration to dictate my actions (likely firing Glen),  and then felt guilty, always wondering if I had made the right decision, since I fired Glen in a fit of frustration.  Game over, no one wins… So back to the story…

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First off, whenever I am  truly surprised I know there is a wrong view lurking. I believe something about the world is true in all cases, which is impossible. So,  why couldn’t I believe a smart, normal, human could be detail challenged? I have met lots of absent minded professor types, I have a donor at work who fits the profile –so smart, so nice, so generous, but he can’t remember start times, can’t find concert tickets, doesn’t even know what day it is. I like him just fine… so, is it  really all humans I think need to be attentive to details, or just my employees?

Was it because he was hired to do an administrative job and really I thought all Admins had to be detail oriented? I am detail oriented after all, I hired him, I know what I was looking for, why wasn’t he what I expected? Why wasn’t he like me? Or maybe he was…

Flashback moment… For many years I took piano lessons. I  went to class consistently, I practiced on my little keyboard, I did my homework, I wanted to learn. I think I am a smart and normal human, I definitely have an opposable thumb — but I am a horrible piano player. Sure I improved a little over time, but really, for all my effort, I just sucked. So why can’t I believe that someone else would have something they also sucked at? I was a piano student who sucked at piano. My Admin was an Admin that sucked at detail oriented administrative work. Is this really so impossible? Should I be totally surprised? Upset?

I remember too, my piano teacher didn’t suck. She played well, she was attentive and instructive. I heard some of her other students play and they sounded fine. But, despite all she did to help me, I remained a terrible pianist. I wonder if she was as frustrated with me as I was with Glen. Or, if she saw the truth — no matter what you do, you can’t control other people, you can’t make them something they are not. Those people are not yours, they are not under your power. Sure you can provide guidance, you can give feedback, you can discipline and teach. But in the end,  you can’t make a terrible piano player into a concert pianist and you can’t make a non-detail oriented person into someone detail oriented. At most we can be a factor in someone’s success or failure, it’s not like we are an ultimate cause.

In fact, for as much as I saw myself as a hero trying to ‘fix’ my broken employee. I played a starring  role contributing to the problem in the first place…I hired Glen after all. Glen was my first hire, my first employee, I had no idea what I was doing. I knew what I was looking for (someone detail oriented  like me) but when I look back at the interview questions that I wrote, they were terrible indicators that someone had the skills I was looking for. Glen may have sucked as my Admin, but I sorta sucked as a Manager too…

And now it’s time for another later addition, an insert that doesn’t really follow the timeline of my practice, but which provides extra information I want to highlight. Here I want to talk about a technique (not KPY sanctioned, I came-up with this one on my own),  I call:

Separate the Inside Voice from the Outside Voice:

In this world, we all have duties, we have roles that we have to play.  I  play boss, employee, spouse, daughter, sister, student, customer, patient,  etc.. when I interact with folks outside my own head, I use what I call my Outside Voices. I really try to use my very best outside voice possible — basically because I have noticed that when my outside voice  (words, tones, intensity, timing, actions) is wrong for a situation it can get ugly fast. FYI If you are interested in some more details of a helpful outside voice guideline the Buddha gave us called the Sappurisa Dhamma you can check-out LP Anan’s class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re9E0G7IsWw&index=2&list=PLVuzoIVk88hhgIMzqmf4sNdoPlULI5DMX

I also have an Inside Voice. This is the understanding that I have of a situation in my head/heart. If I have right views then my inside voice is correct, it is aligned with the true nature of this world (the Dharma). If I have wrong views that inside voice is dead wrong, it sees permanence in a world that is always changing.

The critical thing to realize is that the way we ‘play’ in the outside world, our Outside Voice, does not always have to say what our Inside Voice believes. On some level, I think we all know this. For example, when a store clerk asks how my day is, I say “good” or “fine”; even if it’s a terrible day; it’s really not appropriate to spill my problems to the store clerk after all. Guys out there…when you have already left the house, you’re stepping into an event, and your gal suddenly whispers, “do I look fat in this dress?”, there really is only one right answer no matter how she looks.

By extension, even if we correct our Inside Voice, really see the impermanence and the places we are at fault in a situation, it doesn’t mean we suddenly stop fulfilling our roles in the outside world …its not like we can say, huh I can’t ultimately control my teenager so I won’t bother to punish them for sneaking-out at night. Or, I know this patient of mine will live or die based on their karma, so I’m not going to bother giving them medicine.  Or I was the one who hired this person, that was my mistake, now I am stuck with them no matter how much they mess-up or cost the company. This would be ridiculous and ultimately, the clearer my views become, the more naturally correct behavior comes anyway…

It really was a huge ah-ha moment when I understood that just because I have a duty to manage my employee it does not mean,  in my heart, I need to be upset by their work quality. Even if given the situation it is appropriate  to scold them, fire them, (sometimes for some folks to yell at them), it doesn’t mean I need to be angry, hurt, disappointed, etc. inside my heart.

In the end, I fired Glen. I put him on a performance plan first, tried to support him in correcting his mistakes, but when I felt like I had exhausted all my options, I let him go. I did it with a clear heart as well. By correcting my wrong views I was no longer so frustrated, I saw the role I played in the events and I saw what role (changing Glen) I ultimately couldn’t play. I learned from my mistakes too.. It took a few more hires, I’ll admit, but  I started to change my interview tactics, changed the background checks,  I refined the training I provided, the feedback I gave, etc.

To-may-toe, To-mah-toe, Po-tay-toe, Po-tah-toe, Alana, Sandy

To-may-toe, To-mah-toe, Po-tay-toe, Po-tah-toe, Alana, Sandy

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Again, I have chosen a story that utilizes a method that I have found particularly helpful in my practice. The method, which was taught at the 2012 KPY retreat, basically takes 2 objects and compares them as follows:

  • A is Better than B
  • B is Better than A
  • A and B are essentially the same
  • A and B are so different from each other they are not worth comparing

Back in the day, I liked this method as a quick fix –something that really forced me to shift my perspective in a hurry, something to take the edge off of a bloated sense of self. Without further ado, here is the story:

I was on my way home and my husband called to tell me that our friends Sandy and Blake were at our house, unexpectedly, to borrow  something. As soon as I hung-up the phone I started feeling uneasy –I really didn’t feel like seeing those guys at all. I was already edgy about Sandy and Blake from their mooching (see the last blog). Plus, at the time, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why (don’t worry, this will be the topic of a future blog), but even though I loved Sandy, she could really get under my skin — the things she said and did annoyed me. A lot. Often. I simply wasn’t in the mood that day.

I pull over the car, to stall, but also to contemplate a bit. To try to do something to set my heart at ease enough that I wasn’t being mean to everyone as soon as I stepped foot in the door. Here is what I thought:

Alana is Better than Sandy: Well Duh. Of course I’m better in all ways…but more specifically, I am smarter, more responsible, prettier, I dress better, I actually have a job,  I had better grades in school, I am richer, more generous, more articulate, I don’t mooch,  I am more considerate, more conscientious,  more physically fit, I plan ahead, am more calculated, more cautious, more compassionate,  people just like me better (some people anyway…).

Sandy Is Better than Alana: Sandy is more fun, more care free, skinnier, easier going, has more friends, more adventurous, more outgoing, more open to new things and new people, more outdoorsy, more tolerant of change, Sandy goes with the flow, is less of a worrier, more of a caregiver, Sandy cooks, she is crafty, good with her hands, good with kids, good in new situations, gives her husband more freedom, people just like her better (some people anyway…)

Sandy and Alana are Basically the Same: Honestly, we are both 30 something white women living in SF.  We grew up with rich daddies and married young. We  are both college educated, have masters degrees, we like the same music, the same food, the same hangouts, the same activities, we have the same set of friends. We both like to play dress-up and peacock around. We both try to find jobs that make us seem important, busy enough, but not sooo busy or sooo important as to be stressful. We both bask in our sense of self awesome, open-minded, new agey hippy crap. We love to jump on trends that reinforce our hip sense of our hip selves. We spend every Friday night, almost every free moment, together, doing the same things. If she weren’t blond and I weren’t brunette –would anyone even notice if you switched one of us out for the other? In those critical ways that make up our everyday identity we are basically the same. Why quibble over who is better or worse?

Sandy and Alana are so Different from Each Other We are Not Worth Comparing:  Sandy and I each have our own families, husbands, jobs and responsibilities. We manage each of these according to the rules, the norms, that we believe are appropriate, based on our own experiences and beliefs. We each have our own dreams, our own aspirations for the future. What success means to me is different than what it means to Sandy. What makes me happy, satisfied, anxious or angry are totally different than the things that evoke those responses in Sandy. Ultimately, my karma and Sandy’s are totally different from each other, so what is the point in comparing tomatoes to potatoes, they aren’t the same vegetable at all.

When I started the car again, it was with a profound sense of relief. Relief from the burden of needing to return home and keep vigilant watch, to note each of Sandy’s words or actions as evidence in my case against her and in favor of me. Overtime, my annoyance crept back…it wasn’t for quite a while longer till I started finding the deeper causes of my unrest with Sandy and could start killing them at their root.

Warning, this is another current day addition…looks like I just can’t help myself: I have used this method several times over the course of my practice with some very epic issues. Watching the pattern, I can look behind the curtain a bit and see where the profound power of this exercise lies:  it uses a sneaky trick of my mind — the way in which I use comparisons to define the world — against myself. This exercise forces me to face the fact that it is my perspective, informed by all of my past experiences, biases and beliefs, that colors my ‘reality’ — Alana is better than Sandy. In truth however, there are always 2 sides, Sandy is also better than Alana in certain ways, at certain times, and according to certain people.

Deeper still, is that if I am able to see both sides, to minimize the bias for self, I can start to see that these comparisons I use to prop-up myself, the things I love and believe in, are hollow; ultimately, things, people, are so similar — made of the same elements, the same aggregates, arising and ceasing, having virtues and flaws, for people having hopes and disappointments, etc.  This exercise has helped bring me way more humility because it shows me my own unexceptionalism.

Deepest of all, no two things are the same. In fact no one thing is the same from one moment to the next. For Sandy and I, we each have our own unique causes, karma, factors, directions and ultimately cessations. We are comparable only in my mind, only in select aspects, only for a very short time, only to serve my own agenda. So where is the sense in comparing? In boosting my sense of self with ‘information’ that ultimately fails to see the impermanence of each of our arising and ceasing? In tethering my sense of self to someone else, to something else,  when in the end, that causes me to be the one who is bound, tied, imprisoned, not free.

Watching Plants Grow May Not Be as Boring as it Sounds

Watching Plants Grow May Not Be as Boring as it Sounds

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I would like to preface this blog by telling you upfront, you have heard it all before.  It is on a theme you may have noticed already —  Ideal/ Good Alana versus Normal/Bad Alana. You can see it in the prelude to this blog (Super Buddhist versus Everyday Alana), in the Homeless Alana story, In the Compassionate Alana story, spoiler alert : in an upcoming blog about mooching friends and in the last blog of this section about fearing my practice progressing.  I am not so clever … it has taken me 6 years to truly see how deeply this wrong view, and its close cousins — Good Alana versus Bad Other Peeps and Bad Alana Versus Way Holier than Me Peeps — runs.

It has caused so much havoc in my life, just read the stories, they speak for themselves. It’s a real danger because, among other things, it builds my ego; Good Alana is a judgey, entitled, thankless, witch, but even Bad Alana is egotistical (little heart variety), she thinks she is soooo exceptional (after all, she is the worst of the worst… so unworthy of enlightenment she barricades her own path).  It’s a hindrance to my practice, to my relationships, to my sense of wellbeing. The weird thing is, this duality that underpins my views, this belief that I can separate one side from another in neat bundles and still retain the whole …it’s not even possible. You know how I know that ? I spent time staring at a potted plant. Yup, there is wisdom to be found in the most unlikely places; all around us in fact. One of the reasons I am sharing this particular story is to highlight another one of my superduper all time favorite dharma techniques…cue ooohhh ahh soundtrack flash a few lights…

Ubaitam

An Ubaitam is essentially an external stimulant that helps us apply the truths we see out in the world to ourselves. It is a tool for internalizing ( which we will talk about even more in a future blog), for drawing parallels that show us the way in which we, just like everything else, are subject to the basic conditions that govern this world (they aren’t called the 3 common characteristics for nothing). The belief that we are so special, so exceptional, is the source of many of our wrong views; actually, thinking we are so special is a major foundation for our entire wrong view of self. Ubaitam can be  really really  helpful to show how all of us are like plants (which have two sides), and cell phones (which break), and umbrellas (which decay).

The Story: We had a group of nuns visit the temple and I was speaking to one (Mae Toy) about my difficulty accepting my faults. When I was a Bad Alana, someone who made mistakes at work, lost my patience with my family, even just skipped the gym for a day, I would feel guilty for weeks. Really, I would think over and over again about my shortcomings, about my failures, about how far I was from being the ideal Alana I wanted to be. This was not a productive assessment of my mistakes and a consideration of how to avoid them in the future. This was just rolling around in my self-hate.  

The Nun went to a table and picked-up a potted plant and asked me what I saw. I went on and on about how green and lush the plant was. About its beauty and the beauty it offered to its surrounding. When I was done she pointed out that I had forgotten some stuff. The plant sat in, was in fact nourished by, dirt. Almost half the plant, with its root structure, sits in darkness and dirt below the base of the pot. Just like us humans, just like everything in the world, the plant has two sides. There is the lush green part but there is also the dirty roots –you can’t have one without the other. Anything less is not a plant.

This was my first mini understanding, tiny glimmer, that my flaws, my shortcomings and all my mistakes are part of who I am. In fact, many of the same causes of attributes which I consider virtuous in some situations, end up manifesting as faults in other situations. Deeper still, who is judging which Alana, Good or Bad, is playing the starring role in any given situation (if I am being a ‘considerate Alana’ and letting the car in front of me enter a lane, the car behind me may think I am slowing them down) ?

Bad Alana exists as part of the same package as Good Alana –they don’t come apart (actually, the whole package is a continuously changing bundle anyway, not static good or static bad).  There really are two sides to every coin — it’s never just heads or just tails — I  however get so distracted by what I am focusing on (green leaves), I forget about the other side (the dirt).

For years, actually, for all my lives,  I have been in denial about the basic nature of this world, with its two sidedness and about my own nature as a being that is in and part of this world. With this story, I got the first tiny shards of awareness (it was super early in my practice, 2011 maybe), the first bit of evidence that I am not really special at all, that I can compare myself to the things around me to give me the perspective I need to fix my wrong views and lower my ego. 

The awesome thing is, years later, this Ubaitam keeps giving. Each time (and clearly there are many many many times) that I begin to sense the Good/Bad duality wrong view is lurking, I imagine the plant. The image, it’s like a shortcut, some quick reference that can keep me focused, can help recall the contemplations I have had on the plant theme, i.e. two-sidedness, over time.

I love, love, love, Ubaitam. You will see them all over my practice because for me they are like video game powerups, or  like finding a secret warp to a new level. They are shortcuts to big understanding. So Dear Reader…can you spot all the Ubaitam so far 😉 ?

Tree Pose and a Decision Tree

Tree Pose and a Decision Tree

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Impermanence is the meat and potatoes of my practice. Though over the years my thinking (and this blog, which will soon follow that thinking) evolved to consider many more Dharma topics (self and self belonging, suffering, aggregates, karma, etc.), I always come ‘home’ to impermanence. It’s my staple food for thought. It is my constant companion. It is the Dharma, my great refuge.  So here I want to offer you, Dear Reader, one more simple tool that I consider a straightforward, ‘pure play’, impermanence thinking technique:

The Decision Tree

Like the Matrix, the Decision Tree provides a structured approach to seeing multiple possibilities for a given situation. Unlike the Matrix however, it is not strictly binary so it allows me to think through more possible factors/outcomes at once. It lets thoughts grow, branch-out, explore many possible futures/outcomes; ultimately, it helps to understand the TRUTH of this world —  the outcomes I hope for/worry about/believe will happen are really  just one single solitary leaf on a tree filled with leafy possibilities.

Story:

I was in pain. Daily. I would wake-up and my lower back would ache, moving around relieved it, but anytime I had to sit for an extended period, back it would come. Per my physical therapist, the cause was a destabilized joint in my lower back and/or a tear in my hip;  incidentally, both  common injuries amongst dancers and yoga folks and the like. Her recommendation, lay-off my 6X a week 2 hour a day intensive yoga practice and give myself time to heal.

For a saner, less stubborn, less worry warty, less vain person, the story may have ended right here. But for cray cray Alana, much to the benefit of this blog, there is of course more…  

I was so attached to my practice, to the way it defined me and the results I believed it had (my ideal ‘dancer’s body’) I just couldn’t lay-off. So in and out, in and out, in and out of the physical therapist’s office I went.  I honestly thought: if I quit doing yoga I won’t stay physically active (which is ironic since before I did yoga I used to body build). I will get lazy, inflexible and fat. I will lose the ability and the figure I had worked so hard to build. If all that happens I’ll be miserable. I  realized I had a great deal of certainty that I had built up around the idea of quitting yoga so  I decided to analyze if I could really be so sure that the outcomes I imagined would come true.

Enter the decision tree –which is a link here since I can’t seem to get a flowchart into the blog: Click on Me 

For me, my mind has a tendency to leap from imagined A to imagined Z super quick (just like from hugs to the homeless to swine flu death, or mole to cancer, or not being invited out to not having a true friend). So, a tool, like a tree, that helps me imagine some of the many other possible outcomes softens my sense of ‘for sureness’, my sense of permanence. Just so you know…I don’t actually always go around drawing a tree…but you may notice just from reading this blog, my mind works this way naturally, the serious of questions/reality checks I often ask myself show tree-like echos throughout my stories (just look at the prelude to this blog for a very recent example). The truth is, for this story, the tree did soften me-up a bit. Ultimately though, it was the pain, the suffering and consequences, that got me to take a break and give my body a chance to heal.

Tracing the benefits of a yoga practice got me to start and continue doing it,  but using the same thought process to see the harm got me to quit. Of course, it’s worth noting that my desire for the benefits of a yoga practice (strong, fit, flexible, dancer bod) remained so I simply replace yoga with other activities that I thought would help me achieve that aim with less pain…the deeper questions of can I control my body, can it stay strong or fit or a particular shape forever, are those things I preference really more valuable?  Can they make me loved? Cared for? Safe? Safe from what exactly? Is it worth the effort? What is the middle ground? Those are questions for later in my practice, questions I still face right now. Questions that maybe will motivate you to stay tuned…

Wanna Play a Game? Its Called Gathering Evidence

Wanna Play a Game? Its Called Gathering Evidence

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It was one of my early retreats, 2012 perhaps, and Mae Yo started playing a game some of you ‘old timers’ might know: How are those birds related? The set-up is simple; imagine you look up and see 2 birds flying in the sky. Explain how they are related.

I heard this and I thought, “this is sorta idiotic”. I mean who cares how the birds are related? Sure, sure I know the punch-line before we even start the game (because if you hangout with KPYers for a bit you’ll catch-on that it’s always about impermanence and/or suffering); the relationship between the birds is impermanent, which in this case means it is not just what we initially think, but some huge number of possibilities. But this isn’t a real-life situation. No one would play a game this simple. What’s the point? Isn’t there some ‘real Dharma’ we can be learning? Still, like a good student, I played:

Folks start calling-out how  the birds might be related and a list goes up on the board:

  • The birds can be lovers/spouses
  • The birds can be a parent and child
  • The birds can be friends
  • The birds can be enemies
  • The birds can be travel companions
  • One bird could be teaching the other bird
  • One bird could be hunting the other bird
  • The birds could be leader/follower
  • The birds could be siblings
  • The birds could be be strangers going in the same direction
  • The birds may have no relationship at all, we just see them for a single moment flying in one space

The list went on…The conclusion was just what I thought it was at the start of the game. Our assumptions about this world are based on one view, one belief, one perspective –ours. Reality is there are many possibilities, many perspectives. I get it already…moving on to the next big idea…

But once I went home from that retreat, I noticed that I had started playing games like this in my head  when I had a few minutes to myself. I would look out at situations in the world, the way two people interacted, the meaning of words in a language I couldn’t understand, the possible outcomes for a game or an interaction and I would start listing –what could it be? I watched, I gathered evidence, I noted when I guessed correctly and when incorrectly (when that information was available). I played. I let my mind imagine and I checked myself.

One day I get a letter in the mail slot of my house, flip-it over and see it was addressed to someone else. In that instant I  realized something had changed in my heart  because I noticed I wasn’t surprised* to be getting a letter for a stranger. Sure, sometimes I get letters for other folks, its a normal everyday event, but it always surprised me a little bit. After all, I expected that the letters in my mailbox were for me, when they weren’t it was surprising — an exception to the rule. The rule is permanent, the exception is a corner case, not something I need to worry about, not proof that my basic assumption about letters in boxes is wrong…But all that practice, all that play, it had helped me start seeing possibilities. I had begun, in small everyday ways, to train my mind to see the impermanence that is always there, to not just write-off the corner cases, to not ignore the evidence. This was the first time I really recognized that my Dharma practice wasn’t just solving my big problems, it was reshaping my habits of thinking, my expectations about how everyday stuff happens in the world.

This story may seem small, may seem trivial. After all,  where is the suffering of thinking 2 birds always relate in one way? What’s the suffering of thinking letters in my mailbox are for me?  But imagine a similar situation — I see my husband at a cafe with another woman  (2 birds) and I believe it can only mean one thing (lovers), what’s the suffering in that? If I believe that an invitation to a friends’ outing should be coming to me only to find it addressed to someone else, where is the suffering in that? If I believe every mole is cancer? Every dentist appointment will hurt? Every fat person will die young, where is the suffering there?

The thing about impermanence is we all already know it’s real; we know the conclusion before we even start the game. I sure thought I did — Yah, yah, old  punchline, yipee, moving on… But, knowing abstractly and really believing in my heart are two different things. Believing only comes from my gathering the evidence, training to look for it, making note of when I am right and wrong. If I really already knew impermanence ruled this world, it would be game over, I would have no fear, no surprise, no disappointment, I would be enlightened already.

I offer you, Dear Reader, this story so you know my practice isn’t all heavy doomy and gloomy all the time. Sometime I just play, I let my natural curiosity guide me, I re-explore the world I think I know so well, I note when things are not the way I thought. I use the technique I will call “Gathering Evidence” — making mental (and sometimes written) note of  the many possibilities that exist in the world, the huge number of possible futures, possible meanings, possible perspectives —  so I can learn to believe in impermanence, not just ‘yah yah’ it and move on. And when I have a real problem, when life gets heavy, I can  turn back to the technique of gathering evidence, which I have been practicing all along, to show myself how so many times this world isn’t really how I imagine it to be/ will be at all. 

*  A note about being surprised: Just like anger or fear or annoyance, surprise is one of those warning lights we have a wrong view of permanence. We are surprised because we believe we already know what will happen, what is normal, what the rule is. When something else happens, something other than our expectation we are surprised. If we deeply understood anything can happen, that the world operates by its own laws (karma and impermanence) not by our expectations, we would not have any surprise in our hearts. 

The Matrix — Method Not Movie

The Matrix — Method Not Movie

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Another Prelude to Introduce A Super Duper Important Buddhist Concept — Two-Sidedness:

This next 2 section will have lots of entries on two sidedness so this seems as good a time as any to offer an introduction to one of the most fundamental ideas in Buddhism — Everything, everything, EVERYTHING, has 2 sides. 2 sidedness is a feature of impermanence. What exactly does that mean? Actually, it means lost of things. A few simple ones:

  • The things that we enjoy come with suffering and the things we hate also have good parts. Example: I love buying fresh flowers, until a few days later when I feel sad to throw them away…
  • Everything that benefits us also has a cost. Example: I buy that dress, it looks great on, but I’m afraid I’ll stain it every time I put it on. The dress costs me money and worry.
  • Opposites come together,  they define each other.  If everyone were the same height would there be short and tall?

There are even more ways to think about 2-sidedness and there will be future blogs on the topic. Here though I want to talk about using 2-sidedness to combat a super sneaky and troublesome wrong view — seeing things only from one side, our own. So today’s aspect of  2-sidedness:  

  • Any time I have a conflict (i.e. suffering), either in my heart or out in the real world,  there are 2 sides to the story. I however am only seeing the one I am used to, that I already believe, that benefits me, that belongs to me –I have a permanent view that  my side is right, in fact, I often can’t even see an alternative (I call that super permanent).  That whole other side out there is a blind spot.

I like to think of blind spots as bright, flashing danger lights on my dashboard. And how do I fix danger lights? With a tool of course!! Enter:

The Matrix

The Story: I had a coworker, we’ll call her Barb, who I was just beginning to become friends with; we had started having lunch together, riding the bus together and hanging-out after work sometimes. I really liked Barb, I wanted to be her friend and I though she felt the same way too, until…

It was after a huge work event, Barb and I had spent months planning the thing and it was a success. A few of the folks from the office were helping to clean-up and Barb, who had been talking to another co-worked, Rina, while cleaning, asked Rina if she wanted to go hang-out after the cleanup was done. I was standing right there but no one invited me. I was crushed. My heart hurt so bad as Rina and Barb walked away.

I went home sulking thinking Barb wasn’t really my friend, I had misread all the signs…after all, if it had been me who had invited-out Rina, I would have invited Barb to come along.  Real friends just don’t leave their friends out like that (this is my side, the belief I already have, what I am used to). Then as I lay awake in bed, too upset to sleep, I thought, “wait”, “is it really true that Barb not inviting me means she isn’t my friend?  Is it true that real friends invite each other to every single gathering? Is it possible there are factors besides our friendship at play here?”

The Matrix: So the matrix is really just a series of 4 squares that cover all the logical conclusions of a problem statement: If X then Y, If X then not Y, If not X then Y, If not X then not Y. Then, it uses examples, evidence from real life to show us that really, any one of the possibilities can be true. Us clinging to the squares we believe, just because we haven’t stacked sufficient evidence in the other squares isn’t reasonable — it is a wrong view. Let’s work it for the Barb Story:

Problem Statement: On some level, I think Barb not inviting me out means she isn’t a real friend…  So let’s use the statement — Real friends always invite their friends out.

Real Friends Invite Their Friends Out:

I already believed this one was the truth.I based this off my experiences, my gut reaction that it’s what I always do. When around multiple friends, I include everyone in my plans. I wouldn’t just leave people out. No more evidence needs to be stacked here since it’s my starting belief.

Real Friends Don’t Invite Friends Out

—  When I think a friend is sick,  tired, broke, has other plans, etc. I don’t always invite them out; I don’t want to put them on the spot. In this case, I had to admit, Barb knew how late I had stayed-up the night before the event.
—  I don’t always invite Eric, my husband and best friend out when I want to have girl-time, or talk privately.  Again, thinking a little more… Barb had mentioned she wanted to talk to Rina about a project that didn’t involve me.
— Sometimes as much as I love my friend Sandy, I need a break. Barb and I had been together non stop planning the event
Already, it was clear I don’t even follow my own rule of “always inviting out friends”

‘Fake’ Friends Invite Their Friends Out

— I had a ‘friend’ back in college who invited me out only when they needed me to drive or pay the bill.
—  I have invited ‘friends’ out just so I didn’t need to go out alone when I wanted to go dancing.

–I have had ‘friends’ that would invite me out just to make fun of me, or make themselves look good next to me since I was less attractive, popular, stylish.
Clearly, it doesn’t require someone to be my friend in order for them to invite me out.

‘Fake’ Friends Don’t  Invite Friends Out

Again, I believed this one and didn’t need evidence, it’s just the opposite of what I already believed: friendship = invite so no friendship also = no invite.

 

When I really thought it through, I was upset for nothing. I was upset because I believed one possibility, one side, was true and didn’t leave room for the other side in my heart. I didn’t even see it. But evidence from my own life tells me that there are many possible situations in which Barb may not invite me out and it does not necessarily mean she doesn’t think of me as a friend.

If I had just stayed upset I would have been sad myself and may well have put my relationship with Barb, as well as my other co-worker, in danger. Barb and I actually became  very close friends over the years.  Since this incident there have been many times she has invited me out and many when she has not. She has mostly behaved like a good friend and sometimes like a bad one too. We have both grown and learned a great deal from each other though and I am so so happy I did not let this early-on incident stand in the way of our friendship.

As for the Matrix, it’s a simple tool that can help focus my mind on the ‘other side’. I will admit, that for complex problems, it may not be my starting place as it can be a bit too simple. But it does, ultimately represent the TRUTH —  the matrix is the logical conclusion of a correct view (check-out Killing the Crazy to see how I got to a “matrix model”  on the relationship between what I fear and what actually happens using the evidence). So why not try drawing one out every once in awhile…

 

Get your Grimey Hands off my Teacup

Get your Grimey Hands off my Teacup

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The reason I chose this story to share is it uses one of my all-time favorite contemplation methods. The method comes directly from a teaching Luang Por Thoon gave to a man named Singh that quickly led to his enlightenment.  The method is essentially asking a series of questions about objects we ‘own’ in order to better understand the nature of the objects (impermanent) and our relationship with those objects (also impermanent) and, in the process, to  weaken  our attachment to them. Basically, we have a bunch of stuff that we use while we are in this world, but it doesn’t actually belong to us, it is not stuff we ultimately own or control, it’s not like we can take it with us when we die. We work so hard to get ‘our’ things, we work hard to keep them, we mourn when they are gone. Because we are deluded, we believe these things will serve us as we imagine they will,  permanently, and our misunderstanding drives us to continue accumulating, to come back for more lifetime after lifetime and with each life, with each scavenger hunt for things, we suffer the pains of being disappointed by the limitations of these objects, the pain of getting them, the pain of trying to preserve them and the pain of their loss. . . Without further ado, the questions*:  

  1. Where did the item come from
  2. Think about the item leaving you
  3. Think about leaving the item behind
  4. How do you control the item
  5. How does the item control you

The Story:

I get to the 2012 KPY retreat and on my first night I grab a cup from the kitchen. I wash it SUPER well and then I tape a note on the cup, “Alana’s Cup, do not clean, I will reuse teabag”. Sounds very eco of me right? Conserving and all, who can argue with what a great person I am being? The real reason —  I do not want to to share cups with other folks at the retreat, I don’t want their germs, their disease. So clearly, if I just take a cup and make it ‘mine’ with this simple sticky note, I will be safe from all those dirty grimey folks licking-up on my cup and making me sick. My cup is, by definition, cleaner and safer than ya’lls cups (even though I kept forgetting it outside and there is some possibility all manner of bug and vermin were crawling-up in it –wait how is the plague spread again?). Clearly, this is all very sane ;)…

So, let’s start with the idea that the cup is mine (I did label it after all) and get down to our questions:

  1. Where did the cup come from? The cup came from the KPY kitchen. Someone may have donated it, KPY may have bought it, some other person whose cup it was may have brought it on retreat and left it behind. Before that the cup came from some store, before that some factory. Someone labored to make the cup, manufacture it, the clay that made-up the cup was molded, shaped. Before that it came from the ground…  When exactly did the cup become mine? In fact, when exactly did the cup become a cup instead of a lump of clay? Why would I believe that a sticky note (which was written in my super illegible handwriting, in English, at a retreat where most folk’s first language is Thai) made it mine. Made it so others would know not to use ‘my cup’ and my cup would know not to run -off with some other thirsty person…
  • How can the cup leave me? The cup actually did leave me several times on retreat –I kept forgetting it outside. Sure I managed to recover it each time, but was the cup mine when it was lost? What if it broke? Would it still be mine..would each piece be mine? What if someone took the sticky note off of it –that sticky seemed to have the magical power to make the cup mine so did its removal return it to the status of KPY community cup?
  1. How can I leave the cup? Clearly I could leave the retreat center, so was I going to take the cup with me? Was I actually going to steal a KPY cup because I had convinced myself, with that all powerful note and a little effort of a good scrubbing, that the cup was mine? Or, I could be out in the woods, get attacked by a bear (that was attracted by the sweet smell of my delicious tea) and die — I guess I wouldn’t really need the cup then…
  • How do I control the cup? Thats easy, I can wash it, label it, carry it around, drink from it, play mini drums on it, I can do anything I want right? Because it’s just an object and an object that’s mine! Well, maybe I can’t do anything with it, I can’t make it sprout wings and fly after all, but of course I am the person and the cup is a cup, I must be in control. Right? Well, not so fast…
  • How does the cup control me? Once I make that cup ‘mine’ suddenly I have a responsibility, a burden. I have to carry it around (so no one takes it –clearly even I don’t believe my note is enough), I have to wash it, I have to make sure my sticky isn’t chipping off. When I lost the cup I had to retrace my steps, one time I had to walk halfway down the mountain, to retrieve it. I felt slightly self conscious about the cup, about labeling it, so I both wanted folks to see the label but I also wanted to hide it as best I could. I had to worry –should I take the cup back to the tent? I know food in the tent is a no-no because of bears…can they smell tea?

What are the risks of all this craziness? Someone could see the label and be offended by it, I could create disharmony in the community. Perhaps I lose the cup carrying it around, or someone who needs a cup to drink from can’t find one since I have raided the kitchen for ‘mine’.  

More dangerous still though is that I feed the control monster — I reinforce this idea that I am empowered, I can control risk by having my own cup (cup=control). I can avoid all the death and disease out there that is lurking behind every corner just ready to get me.  I create a false sense of safety , built on a false understanding of the nature of ‘my cup’, rather than dealing with the fact that diseases spread and I am subject to them with or without a cup.

Plus, what does ‘after me’ really mean? Is disease after me? Is impermanence a personal affront that with enough effort (and some teacups) I can control? LP Nut helped me immensely with this contemplation…he taught me  the method of  “Killing the Hope”. (Lucky luck, we have a twofer here –two methods, for the price of one story). As  he explained it,  I need to look at the world, look who out there is exempt from death and disease and loss. Gather the evidence and determine whether or not I can control or change these things, exempt myself, or whether they are realities that need to be accepted. I.e. I need to kill the hope that I can escape impermanence so that I can accept.  So here are a few highlights of my evidence:

  1. I, unlike my husband at the time, vigilantly watch what I eat and exercise  –my blood sugar is a little high and his is just fine, all my control is not yielding the results I desire.
  2. I was considering taking a yellow fever vaccine for some travel, my Dr. recommended against it. Why? Because a number of folks have gotten the vaccine and actually gotten yellow fever from it. Guess control wasn’t working for them either.
  3. As hard as I diet and exercise I still feel fat most of the time
  4. I wash my hands obsessively, but I still manage to get sick
  5. I hired financial advisors to help manage and control my money and then I still lost money the last time the markets dipped
  6. I went to Italy for an easy, risk free, vacation and ended up getting food poisoning
  7. I went on birth control to manage pregnancy and menstrual symptoms but it caused me weight gain
  8. Despite all my lotions and potions I am starting to get wrinkles and grey hair
  9. Once I graduated university I had to leave all my friends and my university life behind even though I did not want to
  10. My father died
  11. My cat died
  12. My friend Sue gained weight even though I tried to ‘help her’ avoid it
  13. I lost faith in my Vajrayana practice even though I worked so hard at it, chanted hundreds of thousands of mantras and meditated every day
  14. This actor I really liked, played Spartacus on TV. He was so talented and crazy fit/beautiful. He was diagnosed with a rare cancer just when his acting career began to take off. At first they said it was highly treatable and then, he died from complications
  15. I tried to control my teeth, prevent pain, by getting crowns and then the crowns ended up causing me pain

Gathering all this evidence (there was actually even more, but I won’t bore you)  was what helped the pieces started coming together, when I started seeing the limitations of my control and the fact that sometimes I can’t just fight, I need to accept.  My next few stories will take up this theme further.

I also want to say that, mostly, at the time of this contemplation my focus was on impermanence, on my wrong views regarding control and disease/unwanted outcomes. Contemplating on the cup, realizing my relationship with it and its abilities to fight disease were not fixed, were a backdoor into considering my control of death and disease more broadly. In other words, I used an analysis of my crazy view that I control the cup and use it like a talisman to ward off disease, in order to consider the broader questions of whether disease is something within my complete power to avoid . But now, reviewing and rewriting this story I see so much more fruit here sooo…. I am going to write this later addition synopsis concerning ownership, which is another potential aspect of the teacup contemplation. Though this does not follow my contemplation timeline,  I think it will help clarify and make this entry richer. So I am going to use that ‘blogger’s prerogative’ and fill-in the lines a bit more on the topic of owning (plus..this is how my practice works, back over the same stories, the same themes, getting deeper and richer over time):

We get so caught-up buying things, owning things, thinking they are ours –we don’t notice these items totally manipulate us, they bully us, they force our hands all the time. Like with the teacup, it’s easy at first to say I’m in control, the cup makes my life better, more convenient, safe from the disease I fear. Or that, with my extensive wardrobe, I can define who I am, shape my identity and make it real. But from the get-go the items are in charge. I seek them out, it’s not like the cup labeled itself or my clothes hop into the shopping cart on their own. I pay for them with money or elbow grease. I need to care for the items, to clean them, to interact with the items on their  terms if I have any desire to retain and preserve them  (if it’s breakable I have to handle with care, if it’s white fabric I have to be so careful about stains, when a part or a gear wears out I must replace it, when the car needs gas I have to stop what I am doing and feed it).

Trust this fashionista, once I have found that perfect purse I have to have it (it’s like it calls to me from across the store). I spend hard earned money on it  and then  I worry constantly about keeping it nice. When it finally does wear out, or goes out of fashion, I need one that’s just as good or better..it’s not like I’m going to go from carrying a Chanel purse to something from the Gap..I have standards after all.  And those standards, they came from the Chanel bag (my misunderstanding of it anyway), from the wardrobe I have built that matches that bag, so really, who is in charge?

Even more subtly still, these items, each one, we obtain to solve a problem. I need a cup to keep me disease free. I need a bag to carry all my other stuff, I need an accessory to match my clothes, I need a thing I wear to make other folks think I’m pretty and fashionable (that I am a person who is in control of my super buttoned-up image). And in return for a problem patch I get an item that creates a bunch more problems — gives me new responsibilities, sets new standards, makes me dependent,  plants the seed for the ‘need’ for more new items in the future. And does the item even solve the problem I think it solves? If so, for how long? Can a cup keep me disease free? Can a purse make you see me as beautiful or polished or in control?  So is an item we can’t control really ours? How much do we pay, how much do we suffer, for the privilege of fake owning it for some limited time?

* I have actually see multiple versions of the questions that go with this story. Here I have the ones I used for this contemplation.

I Rather be Doing ANYTHING Other Than Having a Root Canal

I Rather be Doing ANYTHING Other Than Having a Root Canal

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OK a little warning: This post is a little more technical/boringly written in an effort to more clearly show the structure of my thinking. However, it does deal well with the key cause (wrong view) of fears and phobias –the crazy belief that what has happened to in the past/what we imagine is an indicator of what will happen in the future. Spoiler alert: it’s not, too much changes, all the time… So anyway, if you can stay awake, it may just be worth the read ;).

I Rather be Doing ANYTHING Other Than Having a Root Canal:

Step 1, Story/Situation:  I have spent most of my life in absolute dread of the dentist. I mean horror movie-like scenes  played in my head at the mere mention of the word. When I was a kid, I had a sadistic dentist and when he was angry, annoyed, or just having a good time, he would drill my lips and gums ‘accidentally’ when filling cavities. Needless to say, once I was an adult, I avoided the dentist like the plague.  This strategy worked great, till it didn’t, and I started having pretty intense pain in a back molar.

One night, I go to the Temple in a panic, I clearly needed to go to the dentist, but I was so so so so so so so so so so so so so so so afraid. Help!! Mae Yo and Phra Anan came to the rescue and started talking me through the crazy and fixed ideas (i.e. permanent so by definition wrong views) I had in my head that were clearly creating suffering (the unique type of suffering that arises from not having paid a visit to a dentist in 15 years…). Here is what I began to see:

Step 2. Wrong Views: My wrong view of the situation

a) That the dentist is always scary/painful

b) That my past bad experiences with the dentist will be mirrors for my future experiences — to convince myself that this was wrong, I did a little exercise; I considered all the ways I could think of that this experience would actually be different from when I was a kid. For example, now I’m an adult, before I was a child. This is a different dentist, in a different city, the old dentist is dead already (though zombie dentist would be in keeping with the horror movie dentist I had been imagining for 15 years). Dental technology has changed. My pain tolerance and perception has changed. In essence a ton of stuff had changed. This exercise, which Mae Yo walked me through, began loosening the gripping belief that underlaid my phobia –I had one bad experience and now they will all be the same. Even though, factors and conditions had already changed.

c) That I can predict  what will be painful/the source of my suffering

Step 3 Concepts: The deeper concepts or beliefs that underlie this particular (and many other) stories

a) That a particular stimulus will yield predictable results. In truth, there is uncertainty. No stimulus (like a dentist visit) is ever exactly the same as a previous one (circumstances constantly change) so there is no guarantee that results will be the same. Plus, I am not all knowing, so I don’t have the power to fully understand all the causes, how could I predict results with 100% certainty?

b) That a past experience is a credible indicator for what will happen in the future. That I know what to expect. In reality I have experiences all the time that I then try to replicate and am unable to do so. This idea is actually one I consider all the time with food. If I go to a restaurant and have the best pizza, best ice cream, can I go back and get it again? If I do go back, and the dish is still there, I notice sometimes the flavors change, the cooking changes, its better or worse than before.

c) That something being a certain way means it will always be that way. All things in fact cease. As such  they can never always be the same

Floater Step, More Stories, More Evidence:  More Story: This set of contemplations, plus the throbbing pain in my tooth, were enough to get me into the dentist’s office. As it turned-out, I needed 4 crowns and elected to have all the work done under a mild sedative. The procedure, from my doped-out perspective, was over in a minute and involved absolutely no pain. So me and the dentist lived happily ever after…

But actually, there was more to it, the next day I went to eat solid food and each chew was agony… I went back to the dentist and the crown didn’t quite fit. It took several more visits before it finally did and the chewing pain ceased.  In addition to several more trips to the dentist, my post procedure experience exposed a new wrong view and gave me more evidence to consider. I originally worried only about pain during the procedure, I had no concern at all about  pain afterwards. Once I had pain afterwards, I suffered a new wrong view (actually, you may notice it is just a different version of the previous concept that my past bad experiences predict the future)  that once I had pain I would have pain and suffer with it for a long time. That it would be hard to fix. In reality, a few trips to adjust the crown brought my pain to an end.

When I really thought it through, I saw that my beliefs about pain, fear, the stuff I worry about, they were not entirely accurate. After all had they been I would have hurt in the dentist’s chair and been fine after. Once I wasn’t fine, I would be in pain forever. Fortunately, I managed to escape eternal pain, this time around. Step 4, Suffering: But, all the suffering I managed to create around one little trip to the dentist, was pretty epic in scale. There was the physical pain of my tooth ache, the worry about going to the dentist, the worry afterwards that the pain from the crown would never get fixed. There was my sour attitude toward my family, toward the dentist and his staff –I was so busy being immersed in my fear I had no concern for anyone else. There was also the very clear consequences of my wrong view that prevented me from going to the dentist in the first place — years of refusing to go for even a cleaning probably contributed to the state of decay my teeth were in.

Step 5, Dharma: Later blogs will have much more detail about  the aggregates, which is a major ‘dharma idea’ about what makes-up our ‘self’. If this does not compute now, fear not, it will later. But Rupa, or form, was the first topic given to me for contemplation, the only thing I considered deeply, though weakly, in this early period of practice. It is the outside world trappings (i.e. not stuff in my head) that provides the foundations for all the drama imaginings that ensued. In this story, we have my body, my teeth, the dentist, the dentist office with its machines and funky chair, etc. My memory and association of each of these material things triggered an imagination, built on memories, that prompted my fear.

Method to Undo the Madness

Method to Undo the Madness

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For me, one of the most empowering aspects of the Dharma approach taught by Luang Por Thoon’s students is the use of methods, tools, to structure my practice. Though I incorporate many different tools into my contemplations (I will call-out a few special ones in some of these blogs), there has been one in particular that has supported almost all of my contemplations —  this method, which I will outline here, was adopted from what I understood from a teaching by Mae Yo and LP Anan at the 2010 KPY retreat. I suspect I have changed it, altered it, made it workable for my own thinking style. It is simply a series of  5 questions/steps as seen below.

The reason I share this with you is not to dazzle you with technique or bore you with details .It’s because one of the greatest assets in my dharma practice has been a notebook and a system, some kind of outline to put down on a blank page to get me started. Then whenever I  have felt sad, angry, afraid stressed, etc. (which is actually a little dashboard warning light that I have a wrong view), I could just pick-up a pen and paper and start working some predefined steps till something shook loose. This has really helped me train myself to be systematic, organized, fast and structured in my thinking and I have been rewarded for that effort with clarity, progress, and alleviation of stress and suffering. So without further ado… the 5 steps:

1) Tell the story or situation. Make it elaborate. Spill what’s in my head so that I can read it for clues about what the real issues are. Back in the day I used to go back to all the permanent words in my story (always, never, must be, can’t fail,  etc.) and underline them as a starting place.

2) Find the wrong views in the situation. What is it that I believe that is contrary to the actual impermanent nature of the world. I can look for things that surprise me (showing me what I expect must be permanent or I wouldn’t be surprised by a different outcome), things I want to control, things that I think are/should always be a certain way.

3) Find the concepts. This is where I peel away the specific details of a situation and find the  themes that underlie the wrong views in # 2. This step is critical because these themes tend to come-up again and again in our lives, by learning to strip away details we can see patterns much more effectively.  So, in Sue’s story for example, one of my wrong views is if Sue loves me she will lose weight. Some of the  wrong concepts behind this include: people all express love the same way, or there is a necessary  link between people’s feelings and their actions, or being loved gives the beloved control. There are more…

4) Identify the Tuk, Tok, Bie, or the risks, suffering and consequences. These are basically the bundle of unpleasantness that comes from my wrong views and the behaviors, beliefs and situations that those views give rise to. They can affect affect me and affect others.  Sometimes, especially at first, it was hard to see “suffering” —  that seemed like something that is happening to those starving kids in Africa, not to me in my charmed SF hipster life. So instead, I started by  think of the costs/tradeoffs, what I pay (not just in money but in time, in loss, in emotion, in effort, in risk, etc.) in exchange for holding these wrong views and the behaviors, situations and beliefs that they give rise to. For me, it’s very very easy to see that everything in this world has costs. The better I get at seeing them, the easier it is to decide whether I’m willing to continue paying them or not. Is it worth it?

5) Find the Dharma. This is the step where I apply all this to the dharma concepts I am currently contemplating. Stuff like rupa (form), self and self belonging, the four elements, the 8 worldly conditions, karma, etc. At first I found this hard, I really didn’t understand any of these things, so I  just did a  quick pass mostly considering form (rupa) and checked it off the list. Eventually, this step gave me a place to add details, it evolved naturally over time because –and this is critical– seeing the impermanence and the suffering is in fact seeing the dharma. Doing that over and over helped clarify these other fancy ideas, it brought them to my mind naturally (or my teachers nudged me a little, but because I had practice seeing the impermanence and the costs, I was able to run with them). I say this in case you out there, dear reader, are following along and thinking, “well, I was ok till step 5, totally doable, but now I’m lost, what the heck is rupa or worldly conditions…I give up.” But if you made it this far, you were on board till you felt confused by step 5, don’t give up! Just start to see the impermanence, the broken views and the costs, and the fancy stuff can arise from there.

X) Floater Number –Tie in other stories/ Evidence — This is something that has became much more central as my practice has grown.  I tie together the concepts across multiple stories or situations so I can better understand the tendencies of my mind and/or overcome those tendencies (ie wrong views) with evidence. I do this in different sections depending on the story and my own goals or practice at the time.  The important thing here is that I take the opportunity to tie things together over time, to reinforce my understanding rather than just trying to solve a single story/problem.

At the beginning I used these bullets as a template, I would write them out and then fill-in; I was very diligent about following the method and each step in order. I think that was a huge help in really making each step, each part of the thinking process very clear and ingrained. Overtime  I have become more flexible, ordering more based on story and need (so sometimes suffering comes before wrong view for example) or lumping together different steps for different segments of a story or concept and then tying everything together in the Dharma section. Still, each distinct step is a part of 100% of my contemplations. They work when I consider actual stories that are mine and they work when I, internalize, put myself in other people’s shoes and imagine how I would feel in their stories.  Best of all, when I get stuck (or so emotional it’s hard to think straight) I can always go back to this structure.

Most of these blogs have been written for readability, so I am not outlining each step, but you can see if you can identify them as you go. In the next blog however, I will give a story about going to the dentist as an example that follows these steps in a clear way. So, read on…

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