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Month: January 2023

Tickin’ On Without Me

Tickin’ On Without Me

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I was in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror, doing my usual morning beauty routine — lotions, positions, facercize, hair removal —  and going through my usual mental exercise as well. Regularly, as I attend to my body, I try and remind myself that the reason I labor, I suffer, so meticulously beautifying and grooming is because of my delusion that this face, this body represents me, it is who I am.  This morning though, my mind wandered a little and I decided to change up the contemplation a bit; a crazy through jumped into my head, maybe there is another wrong view here, that beauty is who/ what I am.  Suddenly my mind became sharp and I realized that was the ticket…
Beauty is what I am and this body lets me be that identity. It proves me. Who I am and this body are intertwined, I can’t separate the two because –naturally — I need the body to demonstrate the characteristic. It is essential to who I am.  And then the questions and contemplation flowed freely:
How can I be intertwined with, proven, or identified by, things that tick on without me? Back in the day, I thought San Francisco was who I was. Being an SFer was so integral to my identity, it was simply so me,  that to say out loud, “SF is who I am”,  just felt ‘right’ in my heart. But the is truth that I left San Francisco and on it ticked. Businesses still ran, folks continued to live our their lives, the sun rose and fell on the city, even when I was no longer there. I will leave this body, and though the aggregates will change form, they will tick on. This body will tick on without me after I am gone.
And does SF even miss me?  This body too is impervious to whether or not I stay or go.  A long time ago, Phra Ajran Dang warned me that these belongings I love so dearly, they don’t even love me back.
Moreover, while I was in SF its not like I controlled the city, that I got it to do my bidding –just look at the drugs and homelessness and high taxes as evidence that the city was never mine to command. Just so, I don’t control this body even while it is where I abide, if I did I wouldn’t be standing in front of the mirror, doing  the same rituals over and over, to slow the sag and reverse the wrinkle.
How can I be intertwined with, proven, or identified by things when after we part ways, I tick on? Now that I have left SF, I live somewhere else, I am something, somebody, else. The city doesn’t define me anymore, just as I never did define it.  When I leave this body, it will no longer define me. SF went its way and I went mine.  One day, this body will go its way and I will go mine.
When I moved to NY, the pain, the despair was born out of the fact that I believed I lost not just my home, but who I was. By loosing SF, I lost my identity. All the time I lived in SF the  proof  that it wasn’t really “who I am” was clear –after all, I didn’t control the place — but I was able to ignore this proof and pretend that SF defined me. But when I moved, claiming the identity of an SFer strained credulity  too much. The claim of mineness, me-ness, while always a stretch was finally beyond believable, even to my fibbing mind.
SF was, of course, always just a place I lived. Just like my body is a place I live. Still, I let things like where I live, the job I do, the family and friend roles I have, define me. These passing things, that eventually tick on without me, that I eventually tick on without, I pretend to be an essential  aspect of my identity. But the truth is, its not who I am, or  I wouldn’t now be something else. Eventually, I got over the loss of countless  old cities, old jobs, old lovers, long dead family and friends, retired hobbies. I have grown different and my heart has separated from what I once held dear . The pain and loss of  all those old instances fades and I  find myself inventing new ‘who I ams’ to replace the old, queuing up the shit that will cause me pain down the road.
I don’t see if something were really  ‘who I am’, essential to being ‘me’, I wouldn’t be able to go on without it. If beauty were who I was, I wouldn’t be able to tick on as I grow old, fat, have bad hair and skin days. I don’t see that there is no way to get the characteristics of things that aren’t who I am to reflect me. Afterall, how can I hope for success  BEING BEAUTIFUL, assuming that identity, when I  use an uglifying object –this body– to achieve being the pretty me I want to be.
I suffer with each sag, with each pound, through each pyrrhic morning beauty ritual, as my body reminds me, on the daily, that it can’t prove me. It can’t represent me. It can’t be me and I can’t be it. I suffer because each wrinkle, stray hair, extra pound, is a further stain of the credulity of my hollow body claims. “I am SF” an old voice used to whisper in my head. But then I left and SF went tickin on without me. I went tickin on without it. “I am this body, and I am beautiful” whispers a voice in my head as I stare in the mirror. But one of these days, this body will tick on without me and, quite possibly before it does so there will be no beauty in it left to claim. And I, with a new future birth, a new form, a new name, all the new things I claim in service of the new ‘who I am’,  will tick on without this body, queuing up the new shit that will cause me pain down the road.
Sand to Make A Fool of Me

Sand to Make A Fool of Me

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I had been reading the NY Times  and I came across an article that completely blew my mind: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/science/what-makes-sand-soft.html  — it was about sand.  Apparently, this seemingly simple, everyday substance poses one of the deepest challenges to physics, so much so that despite the efforts of some of science’s greatest minds, there exists no ‘general theory of sand’.

Even in a closed system, like an hourglass, where you know the shape and size of the particles encased, the variables of how exactly they will interact are too numerous. There is no way to know how long it will take sand to flow, or even if it will flow at all. All you can do is flip the glass and see.

 I honestly couldn’t believe it, I found it viscerally unsettling. I  just kept wondering at how something so obvious, so simple, so friggin ancient and low-tech as sand in a jar, could be unpredictable. And then, like any good mindblown Buddhist, I turned inward and asked myself why learning a basic fact about the universe was so shocking/shaking to me. What was it about the unpredictability of lowly sand that was sending me on a mind trip?
I felt like a fool: You see, on some level, I really believe I can game the system. With more knowledge, with study, with resources, I will be able to ‘interpret rupa’ and by learning its secrets I can use it freely. I can predict the future and have the right rupa to prepare me for it. I can be on top and stay on top. I can be surrounded by an environment that is comfy and safe. This is the premise, the silent assumptions, that underlie my desire — my willingness — to be born into an otherwise terrifying, Dukka laden world.
The problem is, if the great minds of our time can’t really predict rupa as simple as sand, what hope do I have of predicting complex systems like bodies, my body, and belongings, my belongings? With sand, there are too many factors, variables, to calculate in even a basic, contained, hourglass situation — the size of each grain, their texture, the way they fall and interact together– all you can do is flip the glass and see what happens. So how do I expect to have a leg-up in this world with ‘knowledge’ that guarantees me a particular outcome? How do I expect to have control of rupa — use it as a tool to prepare me, guard me, comfort me in this life — when I can’t even predict it. How can you control something you that can’t even be predicted?
When I strip away the illusion of control, of knowing, of being able to marshal resources to plot the direction of my life, I am left with the reality that I just need to  flip the glass and see what happens. In a Dukka laden world that really is a terrifying prospect that only a fool would agree to.
Lessons of the Leaves 2

Lessons of the Leaves 2

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In  the fall of 2020, with Covid still raging, and Eric and I still ‘sheltering in place’, we decided it was time to rent a country home — at least if we were going to be isolated, we could do it with plenty of space to spread out in.
We found a nice sized home in Northern CT and signed a lease. Suddenly, all of my thoughts were consumed with the stresses of moving (in a pandemic no less); stress over hiring a  moving company, stress over decorating, stress over buying new furniture online since we still weren’t visiting stores, stress over if we got a good deal on the place, stress over maintenance…in the midst of a near panic attack,  I realized just how much I suffer for my stuff, just how much stress I endure in the hopes of creating, and then abiding in, an environment I like. I seek pleasure/satisfaction in rupa, but I endure mental and physical anguish trying to arrange/force rupa into a state I find pleasurable. 
A few weeks ago, the earliest reds and yellows and oranges of fall had begun to brighten the leaves of some of the trees outside my window. I was so excited, especially in the long and boring Covid year, for the season’s change; impatiently I cursed the slow to change green trees, the ‘boring evergreens’, that were holding-up fall’s full glory. Now though, fall was past peak and the trees were mostly bare and brown.  As I looked out, I was so thankful for those evergreens, that I had cursed just a few weeks ago, because they were the only splash of color in an otherwise bleak view.
Looking out the window, trying to calm my moving qualms, I reflected further on the trees, and I realized my deep misunderstanding of rupa: Rupa forms –homes, trees — really don’t bow to me, they do not exist to give me satisfaction or to create an environment  I like. Anything that takes a form I like, such as a perfectly fall colored tree, does so only because its nature allows it to do so, because the causes and conditions for that state have been met, not because I desire/hope for/control it/force it. And it will eventually change to a different form according to its nature. All while my own preferences are shifting as well, pushing the hope of satisfaction in these objects even further out of reach.
I stress over renting and arranging a house because I imagine that eventually it will bring me satisfaction, that it will be the perfectly curated environment I desire. The problem is that rupa does not exist to satisfy my desires. Those occasions in which I am pleased with a particular state of form, a particular color of leaf, are just sometimeses, I don’t have a full picture of how they will change in the future. I try to use sometimes states to bring me satisfaction, but the truth is that they bring me stress –the stress of trying to bring them about, the stress of trying to keep them, and the stress over their loss. Stress that never really buys satisfaction because what is temporary and changeable only ever leads to thirst.
A Hotel Room and Its Accompaniments

A Hotel Room and Its Accompaniments

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I started thinking that this Alana life — the body and the samutti that is Alana — is like a hotel room. While I am a guest, I get all the accompaniments to the rooms: I can use the pillows, robes, slippers, objects that ‘belong to the room’ (i.e self belongings) and I receive the status of being a guest at the property with the accompanying treatment (the way I get treated as Alana the degreed professional, or Alana the accomplished yogi). But as soon as I check-out, all the accompaniments go as well.

I contemplated in this way because, for some time,  I have been stuck: I keep telling myself I can’t ‘give up’ this body/ I must cling to it as mine, because I ‘need it’ — it is the vessel necessary to receive the accompaniments of my life, the accompaniments that I love. It is essential to keep my wealth, my status, to be recognized and adored by my loved ones.  I took this form, got myself born into this body, and then I proceeded to I imbue it with meaning. I embraced the samiti and the identity, I attached myself to the accompaniements, I clung to the fantasiese that I think it will allow me to manifest. But the thing is, the body dies. Like a hotel room,  whether I am happy with my stay, or miserable, eventually, I need to checkout.
I pretend I am in control; like by clinging to this body I can actually hold onto the life I adore, like it is up to me whether or not I ‘give-up’ either on body or acompaniments. But this is rediculous, becasue, cling or not, when my time is up at a hotel I need to check out; when my time is up in this body, I need to check out.

Getting stuck on ‘needing’ an Alana body is crazy.  Afterall, after I die, I clearly don’t need it for what is next, based on the fact that when the next thing comes, I don’t have it. The truth is, I don’t need this body. I want this body and I want the accompaniement of my life which require this body. That is something  different than needing it. When I consider it in terms of want, I can apply all my past contemplations on whether or not this world bends to my desire, follows my will or rules. Or whether or not this body bends to my desire, follows my will or rules. Can I really use what doesn’t bend to my desire, or follow my rules to ‘manifest’ me, Alana, WHO I AM? Of course I can’t.  I cling in futility; this is not freedom, this is not Alana Pwning, deciding the fate of the accompaniemnts, of my life, via the fate of the body. This is just delusion and the suffering of my efforts and inevitable failure.

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