Alana's Dharma Blog

A few nights in a clean hotel had proven to me that it was time to figure-out a new living arrangement: Construction across from my apartment was making me sick. As I considered my situation, my mind just kept coming back to the topic of self and self-belonging: The apartment that I had considered mine till just a few days ago was something I was now eager to ‘dis-own’. It was literally making me sick, it was unlivable, assaulting my body. How did something mine turn on me like this?

I expected to be able to rely on my apartment, but here I am essentially out on the street, needing to find a new place to live that will support my body’s breathing pronto. Could this home really ever have been mine if it was able to fall into this unlivable state? If the building itself could essentially evict me, toss me out on its terms, not mine? If I controlled my home, I would, by definition, control it all the time, the fact that I so clearly don’t control it now means I was never really in control – the house was always just waiting to shift into a state that was uncomfortable, unlivable to me. Not a single one of the photos, the decorations, the ‘personal touches’ I used to lull myself into forgetting the not-mineness of that house changed its nature in the end. The house looked alana-picture-perfect, only alana could no longer survive in the house.

My body too was betraying me, my own lungs simply refusing to draw breath. I expect to be able to rely on this body to carry me through the world, but it takes so little — just some construction toxins across the street — to make me feel sick, to hurt, to prevent this body from functioning the way I think it “should”.

The problem is not the body though, the problem is that I have a misunderstanding (a permanent view) about the “way I think a body, my body, should act.” It should be healthy. It should support my continued alana-existence in this world. It should be habitable to me, a tool for my continuing the story I have imagined for both the body and the life. That’s a whole bunch of shoulds, but in reality, the body is acting exactly as it is: The causes and conditions, in this case construction toxins meeting my already diseased lungs, for illness and asthma attacks have been met so illness and asthma attacks ensure. This misunderstanding of how a body ‘should act’ arises from a deeper misunderstanding of what the body actually is —I think it is mine, an instrument of my will, a representative of me, a tool to force about my imagined future, my imagined identity. But this isn’t what the body is at all…

Long ago I read a story about the Buddha, details a bit fuzzy, but I recall a woman who was despondent that a number of her grandkids had died, she sent word to the Buddha for some ‘solution’ to her sorrows and got back a simple message: “Everything that is subject to break will break”. And everything in this world is subject to break. This is the nature of all 4e objects, breakability. They may travel through numerous states before arriving at that point, but they will always arrive at the point of breaking because it is not the various states that are their nature –these are just transitory arrangements shaped by shifting causes and conditions — their nature is breakability.

The nature of ice cream is not its perfectly frozen delicious state, the nature is meltability. The nature of this body in not health, it is not the ideal state I imagine a body that represents me will have, it is not a future state that aligns with my own aspirations for the future. The nature of this body is breakability. And just to be crystal clear, breakability is unclumping, annatta.

Before something has broken, it is usable to those with the causes and conditions to use it. I signed a lease and paid rent on the apartment, so for a time, it was usable by me. Causes and conditions have changed –now there is a construction project spewing off chemicals that aggravate my lungs, so it is no longer usable by me. It was never mine, it was just temporarily usable by me.

This body is something I was born into, as long as it works sufficiently to remain alive, it is something I can use to move through this world (it is also something that, in my ignorance, is usable to build a false identity and imaginary future, to act as a prop in the narrative of self that exists only in my head). When it can no longer sustain life/support consciousness, it is no longer usable by me. Like the apartment, it was never mine, it is just temporarily usable by me.

My asthma suddenly became much worse when I returned to Connecticut from Miami. I went outside to get the mail one morning and I saw a cloud of dust enveloping the construction site across the street; standing there hacking, I got to figuring the construction project might be making me sick. To test the theory, I rented an airbnb for the weekend in a rural town about 2 hours north of my house. I got to the rental and the place was so dirty and dusty it was worsening my already aggravated asthma. As I lay awake, struggling to breathe, I considered the deep discomfort of my situation.

It dawned on me that I am always seeking comfort, but I am continually uncomfortable. The evidence is abundant from my travels: How often are the beds bad? The rooms dirty or dusty, or noisy? The service poor? I have taken to carrying a camping bed, pillow, sheets and an air purifier because rooms are so bad so often.

The reality is that I was born into a world that is innately uncomfortable; it is here – in a fundamentally uncomfortable world – that I foolishly seek comfort. How do I know it is innately uncomfortable? Hunger, which is uncomfortable, is the baseline state. I can work (also uncomfortable) to relieve it temporarily, but it always returns. The nature of this body is to suffer discomfort — left alone long enough it always comes to an uncomfortable state. Still too long hurts. No food, no sleep too long hurts. Insufficient temperature regulation hurts. Any state of total inaction, any pause in the continual process of making accommodations to this body to increase its comfort, means discomfort will set-in. Discomfort is the native state.

On some level, humans have known this since time immemorial, we are continually trying to modify our body or our environment to increase comfort. To solve the baseline of discomfort. Why did we build shelter? To relieve discomforts of living outside. Why build a toilet? To relieve the discomfort of squatting to poop. Why did we create beds? To relieve the discomfort of sleeping on the ground. Spices/salt? To relieve the discomfort of food that tastes spoiled.

Of course, some places are more comfortable than others — some hotels, homes or environments are better than others, but they still exist on the scale of discomfort, simply a few notches above my current apartment or the dusty airbnb. And left alone long enough, these places too will become more uncomfortable, dirt accumulates, beds become flat, décor goes out of style. My apartment that used to be an escape from the discomforts of NY, now has a massive construction project out front that makes me deeply pained: Just a small change in circumstances and my heaven, my relatively comfortable place, can become a hell state. Why? Because the nature of this world, of my experiencing it in a body, is discomfort –  time will always reveal that innate nature to us if we somehow we are foolish enough to have missed it to begin with.

this is a direct continuation of the previous blog post Deep Personality Traits Part 1. If you have not already done so, please go back there to read the first part of this contemplation: A stab at the 2022 retreat home work which I turned into Mae Neecha.

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Now…back to… Goodness has utility…

Goodness has a utility, namely safety: A good alana ( especially one with the effort and willpower to pwn my body and life) gets cookies instead of whammies. She is loved and cared for. This is the trait that makes her special, and therefore exempt from the lows of the world. Each of the virtuous traits contributes to my safety in some way: Afterall, an alana that puts the work in, that problem solves, that mitigates risk, that has the sheer force of will to bring so much into existence, must be safer than a willy-nilley-go-with-the-flow-out-of-control Kim. Abstract goodness and its associated virtues obviously must have physical markings — enter beauty, a reward deserved by the good, a fit and healthy body honed by willpower and effort, a Porche the pinnacle on top and in control of the world car. It also must have behavioral manifestations — a compassionate vegetarian, a warm and considerate SFer in NY, an attentive and valued family member and student and employee. And standing alongside the goodness traits, I have a few others that follow a similar pattern and aim for the end of safety; short callout that cleanliness which I don’t necessarily see as good, is another super important trait for me in the service of safety. Wealth and financial stability are rupa I seek to acquire to help guarantee safety. There are so many facets of my life, and personality that I fixate on this goal of being safe. There is my crazy fear and hypochondria, which is actually a twisted effort at staying safe–if I can catch the signs of disease early enough, be proactive enough I can save myself. Safety is the goal, it is the drive, the characteristics and behaviors that support it are what is important. Those same characteristics are the ones I have ever-so-pragmatically reified as who I am ( biggest strengths and identity). After all what hope do I have of sustaining a good/ on top badass self, without a safety net in this super cruel and risky world?

Now having gotten this synopsis of core traits and tendencies out of the way, I want to point out the most obvious problem: It doesn’t fucking work. At the most basic level it doesn’t work because what do I really think I can be safe from? Do I think any measure of goodness, any type of safety, lets me escape illness, aging and death? As I said before, building good karma (which is hit or missish what I think my ‘virtuousness’ has aimed for, though I have often ended up creating bad karma instead ) certainly gives one a turn at a better life. Hell it is quite clear when I look at my very charmed life, it has worked to some degree, this is certainly a pretty good turn. But here I am still in line, and if you are in line, you are always just waiting your turn to suffer. I pinkie promise we will return to the dukka issue in depth momentarily, but first, let me offer a slightly more nuanced version of why this crazy scheme doesn’t actually work:

Years ago I was hiking and I came across a beaver dam. They are common in Connecticut, and as I looked at it it dawned on me it was a pretty well constructed beaver dam as beaver dams go. Beavers are these master builders, but I am never super impressed with the beaver. I think nothing of it because beaver life and talents are totally unimportant to me. Contrast that with a master painting, or a virtuosic symphony, the constructor of those I celebrate, I value, why –because I love art, I love music. These are things in this world I associate with myself, I build my identity with (beauty>good>safe), hell, I went so far as to create a career that I can use to identify myself with the arts. The more I considered the dam, the more clearly I understood that I am the one who selects what to ‘pay attention to’, what to value, what to interpret as meaningful. It is truly arbitrary. All the qualities I have chosen to call virtuous, all the behaviors that exemplify them, it is arbitrary, based on my own 3s and 4s, my bias. The reality is they are as meaningless as a beaver dam, to the world they are as meaningless a beaver dam, but because I am blinded by my delusion, by myself, to me these are significant and so I gather them up and use them as the building blocks of my atta mountain. But, to make this explicit –how in the hell can I expect to use an arbitrarily chosen set of actions, which I arbitrarily assign value/import to based on how well they align with an arbitrarily chosen set of traits I call virtuous, to keep me safe in a world that so clearly has no shelter? Where there is no one in charge?

And now, as pinkie promised, let’s talk a little bit about dukkha… with the caveat that there is no way I can cover all the sides and facets and levels of dukka bundled in with this nonsense even if I had 100 emails to write to you. This will be some highlights…

Starting with the fact that idolizing these traits, and then trying to ‘live-up to them’, is dukka: Let us remember, I kicked-off this practice, wailing, in the middle of a room filled with strangers about the the ‘epic struggle of trying to be safe versus trying to be compassionate’. 5 years after H1N1 was passed, long after Shak had disappeared from his usual corner in front of CVS, there I am crying about my failure to be the compassionate me I want to be. If that is not dukka I don’t know what is (actually, I do know what is…everything…). My body is plagued by physical injuries born of the extreme willpower and the extreme workouts I used to ‘prove’ it. My hypochondria, and the stress and pain it causes to both Eric and I, was born out of my futile drive to control my body. My need to apply untempered diligence to my studies wracked me with anxiety and nervousness for over two decades, from kindergarten through grad school, pushing and pushing, fearing failure not just of a test or a topic but of myself and my virtue/value as a human. By idolizing these arbitrary traits, and yoking myself with the obligation to try and manifest/embody them, I have the constant struggle to act, the continual fear of failure, and the crushing ego blow when I judge my actions fall short of the standards I have arbitrarily set for what A or B or C virtuous trait should look like. For what an Alana should look like. And since no act persists, and these virtues don’t actually inhere (that self I try to build up all solid isn’t actually solid at all), its insufficient to pass 1 test, to be fit one time, to act kindly or considerately on an occasion, no I must continually run, chase, I am on an endless treadmill to sustain my image of self.

And the dukka is not only limited to those things I call virtues, in what I find important, there is dukkha by treating stuff as trivial too… Had I not trivialized my teacher’s advice to straighten my yoga mat I might have spared my hip? Had I not trivialized Kim’s behaviors, might I have saved our friendship? Just one sentence I said to Eric a few years ago — It was less the words, “whats so wrong with finding another job later?”, it was more the tone– but he was despondent, said I was trivializing his dreams, his aspirations for an early retirement. I have rarely seen him so crushed, he cried and cried. I watched, helpless, what could I say?That was probably the moment our relationship came closest to divorce. The thing is, I’m sure I did trivialize his dreams, I trivialize his thoughts and preferences so often. It is the main source of conflict in our relationship. What about my dhamma practice -I know there are topics I have turned from, considered less important or worthy of my time– till recently dukka was one of them — how much time have I wasted by not giving these a fair or timely think? A while back, you offered an alternative explanation of a wrong view (its just a different articulation of impermanence, but it resonated): You called it having incomplete information. When I cut off a large portion of information, by trivializing it and therefore ignoring (or worse despising) it, I am binding myself to a wrong view
and we all know wrong views are the root of suffering big and small. But this pattern of mine, it is particularly insidious because by carving out the world into what is worthy of my attention and what I will turn a blind eye to, I leave myself so little wiggle room to see another side, the rest of the picture. Its not just instances of suffering, it is a big’ole trap for continued ignorance.

And now, a dukka reflection a wee bit more subtle: By defining myself, and the actions I partake in as virtuous, I shut my eyes to their peril, I act heedlessly because I believe I am exempt from negative consequence, afterall –I’m a good Alana. So now some personal history I’m not super proud of, but I really used to be a player. I had rules to my playin of course, after all I am someone with a strong sense of morality, but my rules were totally arbitrary (imagine that). I had ‘lines’ I wouldn’t cross, I told myself it was only cheating or wrong if it crossed this line –it wasn’t cheating without penetration, it wasn’t cheating if it was emotional not physical. I made sure everyone consented, “knew ahead of time” that my flings weren’t serious, there was no feeling involved –if my partners got attached that must have been their faults, after all, I so honestly and morally articulated my playerhood, my rules, before the relations. Besides –they were flings, their feelings were trivial just based on the context. Now, I look at this behavior and I am appalled –do I really think I didn’t hurt people, that there won’t be consequences to my actions just because I had ‘lines’, because I called myself a moral person following some rules? Of course that is crazy, but what it does let me see so clearly is the way my mind uses these totally made-up virtues to justify, to let me turn a blind eye to, my own actions, to be heedless while pretending I’m ‘covered’. Zoom out a little and I see this nonsense everywhere: The folks violently storming the Capitol, they were ‘protectors of democracy’, that guy who shot-up a Tops grocery in a black neighborhood in Buffalo was just, ‘defending the white race”, the Taliban is just ‘upholding the faith’.

OK , I think I have rambled long enough, and my little brain feels like it may pop, so I’ll stop here. Thank you so much, to you, Mae Yo, and LP for teaching at this retreat. I do have to say I got a ton out of the session on the 3 common characteristics. I had recently listened to the translated sermon clip on the same topic and had been powerfully stuck By LP Thoon’s speaking particularly on Anatta there, in this particular instance he uses a definition so palpable and accessible to me: Anatta as there is nothing that belongs to us, it is all meaningless. And then he asks –how is it meaningless? I have really been thinking about that one question a lot. I guess you can see echos of the answer in my assessment of arbitrary here. It was interesting to shift the focus again and think about Annatta in terms of clumps, in terms of mountains, in terms of what we solidify. It seems to me clinging and solidification go hand-in-hand; clinging is what turns the aggregates to stressful poison (Sankhittena Pancupadanakkhandha duffka), and the stuff we cling to most basically is what we think belongs to us. Wonder what happens if we stop clinging …Anyway, this topic is a lot deeper, I need more time to consider, but stay tuned, I’m sure I’m going somewhere just not quite sure where yet …

Warmly,
Alana