Alana's Dharma Blog

I was walking around the mall yesterday and I went to the American Girl store to look around. For those of you, Dear Readers, who don’t know what this is, google it. Seriously, it’s amazing, a vast store with nothing but huge, pricey dolls and doll accessories. There is even a salon and make-up counter where your doll can get a makeover. Each doll comes with a book, a story about who they are, and a starter kit of accessories unique to her – an equestrian set for the cowgirl, a surfboard and lay for the Hawaiian girl, Native American ritual objects for the American Indian Girl. Add on items at a charge, of course.

I marveled about how these pieces of plastic were given these elaborate identities. How it’s so natural to build identities with objects that little kids who get these dolls instinctively believe. Become invested. Are able to build ever more stories, with ever more accessory packs.

Its easy to wistfully shake my head at the naivete of children, but doesn’t adult Alana do the same? With just a few wardrobe adjustments didn’t I sell myself the ideas of being (and try to broadcast to the world) Free-Love-Hippy-Alana in college. Smart-Sexy-Professional Alana at my first job, then there was Early-SF-Hipster-Alana, followed by Aspiring-Wealth-Designer-Alana…More recently, this tendency of clothes for identity has loosened a bit. Maybe I have come to understand a little mor clearly, maybe I’m just getting older and it feels harder. But isn’t my body just the same?

For my whole practice, its been easier to consider the clothes, the homes, the car, and see how I use those 4e objects to tell my story. They are the accessory packs. But the body, that seems so much more me, who I actually am. It’s still there when I strip off the clothes after all.

But after seeing Dark Sister abandon her lightsaber (see the last blog post), a new perspective is dawning on me: The body is like the lightsaber, its just something I pour meaning into, and the meaning I pour into it is self –Alana. Since the body stays with me for the entire course of my memory, for one life, it seems more permanent than the clothes and books and homes that come and go. It seems more basic and primal. But the truth is they are the same: Same 4 es, same process of meaningfication.

I imagine my body to be what holds together my narrative, my identity, my imagined future. But are those things in this alana body any more then those storys and narratives are in the doll bodies? If they were, we sure as hell wouldn’t need accessories and books to sell the tale –it would just be who we were.

Meanwhile, if Dark Sister had understood the lightsaber didn’t mean anything, she could have just used it practically for as long as circumstances allowed her to use it. It wouldn’t have to have the heavy, aching meaning, we assign things. It wouldn’t hurt to have, to use and then to loose. But weighing 4es with meaning, it makes them extra burdensome. Even as I sit on a plane, typing this blog, I stress about every sniffle and sneeze I hear, the threat of illness to this beloved body. This is the dukkha my ignorance of objects causes me.

Back at the American Doll store, I had looked at the Hawaiian doll and wondered, with her whole story built around being Hawaiian, what happens if she had to move to New York, who would she be then? Who was I when SF Alana left for NY? Not knowing, feeling lost, it crushed me. Made me hate my new NY life. Over and over I am building my identity off where I live. A New Orleans Alana, an SF Alana, A Miami Alana. Like knowing the streets, or feelin the vibe, or having the neighbors know my name really proves something about myself. Then I have to move. So many times, like 15+ I have moved. Each time has sucked, each left me with a sense of losing my narrative, myself.

It’s not just my attachment to the objects I use to tell my story that pains me, it’s my attachment to the story, the self, that is the root of all this dukkh. Over and over I build identities, and then they are torn down. Never do I stop to consider these identities are fabrications, like the stories crafted by the doll company, to sell the product, get us invested in the tale, claim it, own it, want more of it.

And because I want more, I want to be and become, I am always building anew. New stories, new objects to sell those stories, fresh losses when it falls apart. And the clincher is, its totally arbitrary. I tell the story of an SF Alana because my life circumstances brought me to SF. If I had moved to Hawaii, I would have just as easily become a Hawaiian Alana.

What is arbitrary, what is circumstantial, can’t be who I am. Because what is arbitrary and circumstantial arises based on conditions, sustains based on conditions and ceases based on conditions. And if I am only ever, at most, one in the sea of conditions; part of, and shaped by that sea of conditions; arising, sustaining and ceasing based on a sea of conditions; subject to, not in control of that sea of conditions, than what is conditional can not be me, myself or who I am. This last thought however is a current day reflection. Keep on reading to see how I got here…

I have been watching the new Star Wars spinoff, Obi Wan. In it, heroes and villains alike use lightsabers, the only difference seems to be which color they glow. It’s classic Hollywood dramatic effect.

Throughout the series one of the characters, a hero-turned-villain named Dark Sister, struggles with her decision, with her life choices, with her identity. By the end of the series she decides to abandon her life on the darkside and return the light. In a dramatic moment, she shows her resolve to turn to the good by throwing her lightsaber on the ground and walking away.

As she walks away, the main good guy in the show, Obi Wan, tells her, “Now you are free.”

The scene really moved me, and I immediately thought to myself, “Clearly she is not free, she just wants to become something else, something good.”

I was surprised how naturally this thought came to me. But it was so obvious: Perhaps she is free from one old identity, but she is already building another in opposition. If she were really free, she would pick-up that light saber –a super practical tool in the Star Wars universe – put it in her pocket and keep rolling. She would understand the lightsaber is meaningless, a tool that’s pretty practical to keep around to get shit done, not proof of her hero/villain identity. But the meaning she assigns to the object is too strong. Even as she walks away from it, she is still using it to build herself, to build her narrative as a freshly minted hero.

A long time ago, at a retreat, Mae Yo held up a vase to a student who had been assigned to contemplate on the object. I don’t remember the exact details of the contemplation he shared with her, but it was about becoming enlightened. She asked him what he would do with the vase (presumably a metaphor for his body in this conversation) if he became enlightened. He said smash it, and I remember so clearly the way she shook her head. No she said, why would you do that? You can just put it back on the shelf. Eventually impermanence will kill it.

I’m gonna be honest here: When I was listening to that retreat discussion, I immediately thought the same thing as that other student–smash the vase. Some dramatic, forceful show. When Maw Yo shook her head with disappointment, I was so relieved she hadn’t called on me. Whew, my smart student identity could stay intact for at least one more discussion…

It’s only now, all these years later that her answer came back to me and makes so much more sense: Its just like with the lightsaber, if you know what the item is (a worldly tool), you don’t have to wildly, stressfully, dance around trying to use it to build identity (which it not actually a tool for). You can just use it for useful shit till it can no longer be used. That right there is freedom.

A few bits from some sermons from LP Thoon have really struct me lately. The first was in a sermon on how to get to heaven. He basically said you could do good deeds and not get to heaven. Why? Attachment. You cling to things from this life and then you end up reborn with them. If you want to go to heaven, the way to do it is to relinquish attachment.

In a second sermon on the 3 common characteristics, he explained Annata as, “Nothing belongs to us. Everything is meaningless.” Then he asks how is it meaningless? Leaving the question open for the listener to answer for themselves.

I started thinking along these lines: How nothing belongs to me, how to stop clinging, how to understand the idea that everything is meaningless. The next few blogs will cover some of these contemplations.

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I was thinking about the new house I recently purchased in Miami. I realized that it is only convention that makes it mine. By law, I hold a deed, I have a right to use it. But despite the law, it can be taken from me at any time. In this world, it is normal for there to be floods, fires, thieves, civil unrest, imminent domain confiscations, etc. These things don’t give a damn about my deed. The law can’t make the home truly mine if it can be taken away at any time.

What is more is that by law, I also have rights to an Airbnb I rent for a week, or my old Greenwich rental apartment — there is some legally binding contract letting me stay for a time. So why do I imagine so strongly that the home is more ‘mine’ than the rentals? These are all just places I can lay my head while circumstances allow. Places the norms, laws and conventions of our society govern the use of, to the extent they are able.

In my imagination, the home becomes something I will use on my terms, whereas the rentals I must use on someone else’s. But is the house really usable ‘on my terms’? Do my terms dictate if and when I can use the house? In the case I am forced out by a flood –is that really my terms? What about needing to leave because of bankruptcy or rezoning? Shit, this has already happened to me once before: Construction and asthma forced me out of an apartment I had rights to, a contract I had dutifully upheld with monthly rent payments. Why do I imagine the house to be different?

Even while I am able to use the house, can I use it entirely on my terms? Aren’t there already limitations, by city ordinance, by neighbors, by the physical realities of the construction, by my budget, that all govern its use? In the end, the house is something I use temporarily, no more mine than other places I use temporarily. A deed — a legal document, only confers any meaning in conventional, societal terms.

Yesterday, Justice Clarence Thonmas started talking about appealing abortion rights. For decades, women in America have had the right to an abortion –to dictate how we use our body vis-a-vie pregnancy. Now, in one court ruling, decide by 9 total strangers, my body rights, the body rights of all American women,
can be limited.

The rallying call of the pro-abortion movement has long been, “my body, my right”. But when I really consider it, I see a thinly veiled truth behind these words: These aren’t really my rights. If they were my rights, they couldn’t be denied by a law, or by society. They would be a matter of fact, not circumstance and convention. And if I don’t actually have rights to this body, if it is controlled –ALL THE FUCKING TIME –by the state, by social norms, by viruses, by aging cells, by the constant, exhausting, need for food and sleep and shelter, is it mine?

In a context where I don’t control the use of something, when I am bound to interact with it on someone/thing else’s terms, where I have no actual rights to it, when even my ‘reasonable expectations’ for use can be dashed by a construction project, a court ruling, a medical diagnosis –anything, anywhere outside of my control – I’m not so sure I should be calling that mine. Mine is conventional, like a deed. Truth is that convention is ultimately meaningless, a hurricane doesn’t give a damn whether both myself and the state call the house mine.

I was watching a show called The Witcher. In it, there is a powerful sorceress, but she is young, untrained, her family doesn’t see her potential and they abuse her, force her to sleep and eat out in the pig pen. One day, another magician sees the girl and recognizes her potential. This magician goes to the girl’s family and offers them a few cents to buy her and take her away. The father accepts the offer. The young sorceress, named Yennifer, cries and cries at being taken away. Incidentally, years later, thanks to the training of the magician who bought her, Yennifer becomes a rich, beautiful and powerful sorceress, heir to a life seemingly much better than what she had left behind in the pig pen.

The scene of her crying, it struck me so hard – why wouldn’t she want to leave such a shit show life? I couldn’t identify any reason other than that it was ‘hers’. It was all she knew, it was who she considered herself to be. In her mind, it was a foundation of the future she imagined.

No matter how pathetic, painful and meager her life was, she clung to it. Am I doing the same? By clinging so tightly to who I am, to the story I want to write, I accept dukka, I grow content to just have a little less of it, rather than leave a dukka world. Leaving means giving up what I have, who I am.

There is this bias of clinging to what we have. I did it when we left Texas, even though in the end I loved California so much more. I did it when I left California, and I ended up hating NY so much more. But I still ask myself how much of my hate was just resistance to something new, to the loss of what I had identified with before. Did my much beloved California, my SF identity, set me up for NY suffering? And was NY really so bad? Anyway, even if it was, life has moved on, there are new places, new imaginary futures I cling to now.

I consider this lake house we are staying in now: I rented it just a few months ago to solve a problem — my own house was evicting me with chemicals and toxins from the construction project across the street. This house was an emergency solution (there it is again, always solving a problem), a temporary arrangement. But just having it, enjoying it for this moment, and suddenly I am clamoring for more. Willing to suffer, to take on a burden, the stress of a purchase, for more. Why the fuck can’t I just be here now and enjoy the enjoyable parts?

I already have the data on this after all, the future is not what I think it will be: I wanted longer in Miami, and I got it after my mom’s accident forced me back, but it was so stressful, the house was uncomfortable, the weather too hot, Eric testy. I so looked forward to coming home, to enjoying the comforts of my apartment for a little while before we moved, only it was literally making me sick, it was the source of tremendous stress –not the imagined relief –to figure out what to do and where to go. I imagined bad outcomes, needing to find a new place so quickly, and ended-up at this lovely lake house. I was in Manhattan, enjoying it, and realized that when we had moved there I had been so excited about it till we arrived and it wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t San Fran, didn’t feed my SF identity, so I ended up hating it, making myself miserable, massively adjusting (“fixing”) my life in response. Why — because I couldn’t just accept it for what it was, I had to imagine what it made me.

Like Miami, or Greenwich, or NY, I imagine what it would be like to have the lake house. I can’t just be, I have to imagine, and with imagining there is clinging, and with clinging there is so much suffering. Why not just enjoy what is enjoyable and suffer what is sufferable without worrying how to cling to what is enjoyable, which will inevitably change, or try to avoid what is undesirable, when those circumstances too are bound to change. Clinging (both to what we want and to the hope of escape for what we prefer to avoid) is the bearer of burden, the enemy of equanimity, and yet I seem ceaselessly addicted to it.

The craziest part is, when I really think about the stuff I used to cling to, the things, like Yennifer and her childhood home, I didn’t want to part with, now I don’t care. Sometimes I even feel better off without them: I clung to SF, I’m over it. Clung to the old Houston house, feel lucky at the better life I was afforded because we left and Eric went to Google. Clung to the apt in the Miami, but I have moved on to a better house. Won’t I feel the same about a lake house? Won’t I feel the same about this body and this life? It is so serious, so stressful, while I cling to the things I will inevitably loose. And then I move on, clinging and stressing over new things. New glitzes that glamour me into accepting, clinging to, what hurts me.