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
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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.
