Alana's Dharma Blog

I started contemplating on a pile of clothes that I had set aside to sell at the consignment store. Each item had a story about why it no longer fits in my wardrobe, or my body, or my lifestyle: So many reasons I was parting ways with each item. Details. But the overarching story is the same – the item goes when circumstance changes. When the circumstances change, the item no longer hangs out with me.

I have long thought of my wardrobe as some testament to me. To my fashion, my aesthetic, each ornament there to make my snowflake body seem unique. Or at least to hide its fatness and failings. No single shoe or necklace was the one that conveyed my identity, but all together… I just can’t shake the idea, that these items that I pick and choose when and how to wear reflect who I am. Why though? Each dress or top is the same in form and function. Each is with me while the circumstances allow and then gone to the trash or the consignment store or the good will. Why would the whole wardrobe be somehow more meaningful than its parts? Why would a whole body be more meaningful than its parts?

Shit even the meaning I assign to each object, or the whole, changes: What identity I am trying to convey and confirm with a wardrobe? Once upon a time it was a pretty, but professional Sexy Librarian. Then there was the edgy but, still sophisticated, High Fashion Punk with her Moschino hearts and studded leather jacket.

And nowadays, I accept anything slimming and flattering — like he losers in high school using each other at the table – some outfit to make my body seem less little, less undesirable, less out of my control. The reality is the clothes don’t do that anymore for me than the other kids sitting at the table. The clothes just hang with me. The loser table kids, we all just hang together. Looking for solace and comfort and acceptance in things that don’t really give those, that just hang with you for a little due to their own reasons, their nature, their circumstances, convention.

I want my wardrobe to help me to be accepted, to be more than a same-same like every other body. To have some control, some autonomy over my body through how it looks, to dictate my identity through the ornamentation I choose for this body. With a wardrobe, I seek to convince the world, to convince myself that I am somehow special. With the shape of a body, and its ornaments, I seek to confirm that I am ON TOP AND IN CONTROL. But that pile of clothes heading to the consignment store, this body with its chub, this face with its sagging, they belie the truth that I am not in control, I am subject to karma, to conditions, to the changes that occur to objects and bodies and circumstance in the world. Too bad for me that uncontrollable objects can’t possibly confirm my control of all the other rupa, and nama, that I am equally not in control of.

I got to considering further examples of how all ‘my’ objects/people and I are only hangin’ temporarily: We are brought together by circumstance, and parting ways based on circumstances. I decided to dive a bit deeper into what this really proves. What it can show me about my continual exercise of identity building vis-a-vie ‘my’ objects. Let’s again review data of the wedding ring:

Before I had the ring, it meant nothing to me, it reflected no identity, meaning or value. Now that it is long gone, the same is true. So, what is so special about the short time it was with me that makes me believe that then, and only then, that elemental ring, could convey some aspect of my awesomeness? On my finger it means one thing, on another’s something else? That makes no sense, it basically proves that the ring never had any innate meaning, just meaning I read into it. Otherwise, it would have the same meaning before and after I had it on my finger, and on any other finger it was ever on.

It would have also conveyed that meaning to anyone seeing it, there would be no room for interpretation in the mind of the viewer: ring=beloved-special-alana would simply be true, a tautology. But that is clearly not the case, if it were, the person who found the ring would have returned it, it would have been useless to them: Who wants to claim an object that so clearly speaks to someone else’s identity?

No, what the ring points to is the truth I have been trying to convince myself of for so long: There is no meaning in a ring, meaning can’t exist in a 4e object, its only in my head. I read into it. And when you strip my beliefs, my imagination out of it, it’s so clear a ring just hangs with me while circumstances allow. Then it goes its way and I go my way. The end. There really is nothing to get bent out of shape about.

But mostly it is like with Abby, who used me when she needed friends, and tossed me when she found better ones: It was never about me. It is like all the losers in high school that hung together — looking for acceptance from each other because they need it from somewhere — as soon as they had better options to feel accepted, the opportunity to climb the social rungs, to sit at a more popular table, they took it. I did.

I used the loser ‘friends’ to feel less little. And they used me to feel less little. Any warm body would have done. We all just hung till circumstances changed. That ring would have hung with any ‘warm credit card’ what could take it out of the store. Even shit I make with my own two hands would hang with anyone who could make or take it. Even this body, which I hold so dear, take to be the most me of all of the things I consider mine, can be taken by any rapist, murderer, slaver, etc. who can overpower me.

I went to a beautiful public garden once, I met the gardener who was giving a talk. It was so clear that the garden was a source of pride for her, the hours and toil she put-in rewarded by a beauty she took credit for, she identified with. She let, in her mind, identify her. I remember thinking how odd her pride was, after all, the trees and flowers, if the circumstances were ripe for their growing, would have grown for anyone who planted and cared for them. Who really cares that the roses, situated 2 feet from the hydrangeas, the lilacs placed in alternating color bushes, reflected her ‘vison’ and aesthetic? We use the silliest things to fabricate our identities…Besides, wasn’t her vison constrained by the soil and space, her aesthetic shaped by other influences and conditions…everywhere, everything we claim and name as ‘ours’ is proving it’s just conditional.

But, like a garden, that perks with a little water and fertilizer, my wrinkled face will perk up from a syringe of Botox and fillers that are shot into it. Anyone with a needle and some training can have this effect. I don’t even have the training to acquire this effect on my own, just the credit card and the delusion-seeded vanity to find a dermatologist…how silly is it that I would identify with the freshly perked-up face?

I didn’t cause the face, nor did I cause the sagging. And even if I did cause any part or moment of this face, it is just a 4e face that passes through a series of states, changed by circumstance beyond my control. Like that woman’s garden my face is constrained by bones and sinews and skin, it is shaped by conditions from my genetics, to my human form and the shared samutti of such a form, by its necessary functions, by environmental impacts over the years. I am a fool in finding this face some point of pride. By identifying with it. By –in my mind—letting it identify me.

These objects –gardens, and rings, and faces – don’t confirm us. We seek identity in the shit that hangs with us as circumstances allow. Always seeking to control the circumstance, or at least effect them, or at the very very least trying to extend the hang time with states, objects and people we love. Or to shorten the hang time with states we despise, making sure that dermatology appointment is on the calendar well before the botox wears off.

I am always seeking to change circumstances, to order and beautify my objects, so they better reflect my imagination of who I am. But just like a firm body doesn’t prove my extreme will power, the perfectly manicured garden, or face, just reflect the efforts born from the delusion that these things somehow prove something about me. The mistaken view that they are more meaningful, more important, than objects that hang with others, or that hang with me for a little time while circumstances allow.

I have frequently contemplated on people who have kids. I look at family members with children and the evidence is so clear to me, their kids can’t be theirs because those children are constantly failing to do what their parents want. So how do the parents persist in their belief that the kids, their kid’s behaviors, reflect them? Kids reflect themselves, their own influences and circumstances. I watch the adults in my fam get so upset when their kids embarrass them, or don’t live up to their expectations of who they will be. But what they are really upset with is being confronted with evidence of the truth that was always true — these kids aren’t theirs, they don’t bow to parental control, they don’t represent their parents, they don’t prove what a great or bad parent they are. Kids have their own karma, their own agendas and influences. Parents are just one of those influences.

Physical objects are the same as kids: They have their own influences, their own shifting of their elements, they follow their own rules based on the nature of their 4es in their environment. They don’t confirm me as their ‘owner’, they don’t obey me, they have their own path and nature. They hang with me for a little while as circumstances allow and then everything goes their own way. A face the sags is the ultimate proof, pulled down by gravity over time, how can I believe this reflects me any more than those kids do their parents. My botoxing and facercizing, its just one influence. An influence that weakens as I age anyway.

A ring that I buy and that sits on my finger for a while is the same way, it was just hanging there till circumstances changed and it moved on. A house I rent, or buy, is with me till circumstances change. An outfit till it wears, or I change body shape, it was never a thing that lauded or lionized me, it was something that hung, that I could use, till circumstances change. And circumstances always change.

I was in Zumba class, and I heard a song about a guy peering in the window of his ex's house; he was heartbroken that she was busy fucking someone new now. As I danced along, I started to think, “if someone can fuck someone new, was them fucking you ever really saying something about you? Did it make you special?”

I continued contemplating after the class ended. I landed on my beloved wedding ring, which I had lost decades ago: It ran off on someone else’s finger, so how is it that I ever thought, while it was sitting on my finger, it was saying something about me? About how loved I was? How precious? 

Obviously, on the new person's finger it didn't continue to attest to my beloved status. And, in my mind, sitting-on the founder’s finger, it attested to a morally degenerate person without the decency to turn in a found ring. The ring was a marker of ‘thief’ on the new owner’s hand. How can the ring mean different things depending on whose finger it’s on?  In short, it can't.

I have thought before about how people wanting me for sex didn't really prove anything about me, it proves only their own needs and desires that they are trying to fulfill with me. They are using my body. They are assigning their own meaning to it. 

It’s not just this physical body either: In the past I have watched Eric dotting on our little nieces. It has made me reflect that he, by his nature, is a caregiver, so naturally he wants someone to care for. I take it as some marker of my excellence, my worthiness, my specialness, that he has chosen to care for me. But this is temporary, when we part ways, he will likely find someone new to take care of. 

I had a friend, Abby, in our first year of high school, we were inseparably tight. But after a summer away from each other, I returned to her hanging with a new group of girls, not having the time or desire to spend time with me anymore. She had hung out with me because of circumstances, her wants and beliefs, what she perceived me to be -- at a given time. When circumstances changed, so did her attention and affection.  

Everything in our life just hangs with us due to circumstances: My ring hung with me due to circumstances, and when my finger shrunk in the cold, circumstances changed, and off it fell. My beloved Porshe, was my sweet, sexy ride in Cali, but when circumstances changed, and I moved to a cold climate, I felt like I had to sell and it no longer hung with me. My SF home, when I moved to NY, no longer hung with me...my money, once spent, no longer hangs with me. 

Its not just the fact that stuff that is with us can only be 'ours' temporarily. That is true, but it doesn't clear up the misunderstanding that shit can temporarily say something about us, it can confirm us at least for a little while. Like while I have the ring it says “I am beloved”. While I drive the Porsche it says “I am on top and in control”, while someone is fucking me it says “I am so hot and awesome.” And then it all changes and dissipates.  But what that assumes that even for a moment these things are ‘about me’, speak to me, rather than speaking to the circumstance in which we are able to hang out together temporarily.  It never was, and never is, actually about me; it is always that circumstances lets these objects, and people, be part of my life and then circumstances dictate the time and ways in which we part. 

Because I am attached, temporary though it may be, to the benefit these items accrue to me. Because I believe I can control the duration during which that benefit is accrued. Because I imagine the benefit outweighs the cost, or portends some desirable future.  I am stuck in an endless cycle of trying to obtain and replace. The result: Endless rebirths of dukkha. 

And if these things convey some identity unto me while they are temporarily there, their departure must also be an ego blow, a loss of the value and identity that I believe they confer. More dukkha. But if we are just hanging out, based on temporary circumstances, then no dukkha needs to ensue when circumstances change and we part ways. Coming together was meaningless, and so too is drifting apart.

I have been thinking more about being a woman. It is a characteristic, a state, that I identify with deeply. However, if didn’t have a vagina I would struggle to claim the identity of ‘woman’. For me, the meaning I give to a particular body part, vagina, is so strong, its absence would create too much mental discord for me to also claim the identity of woman.

Of course, this isn’t some universal truth – many cultures, across history, have assigned gender identities not tied to penises and vaginas. Plenty of trans folks are born with a penis or vagina and still have a sense of identity different than my own tightly coupled vagina=woman. This all begins to hint at the deeper reality that no matter how profoundly I ascribe meaning to particular 4es, no matter how much I may feel those meanings are supported by social convention, the meaning really never is in rupa.

Still though, I use rupa to build identities. I may only have this body temporarily, it may change states continually, but I cling to it because in my mind, my body is the scaffolding, the substrate, for the story of self I tell. I am woman-alana. You want proof? Check-out between my legs…

I had been watching a TV show, in it a main character is a successful editor. She is also a woman, in a time that few woman were successful anythings, better yet editors at important NY publishing houses. For the character, being an editor is her life – no family, few friends, few hobbies, just professional success. And then, her vision starts to fail. Just like that, her career –her identity—is ruined by something as small as inoperable cataracts. You can’t BE and editor if you don’t have eyes that can read.

Me, the editor, we rely on our bodies to build our identity. As I have said before, I cling to this body precisely because I view it as the necessary condition –the scaffolding – upon which I build my sense of alanahood. But if I rely on a body to build my identity, and the body isn’t under my control, the identity cant be under my control either. I can say, think, wish, imagine, that I am fitness alana all I want, if asthma prevents me from running more than a few steps then I can’t BE fit alana, at least I can’t anymore.

A body that can run, or read, or even have a vagina, these are states. This is not what bodies ARE, it is what they can do/the shape they can have, under certain circumstances. Can I run? Only if the pollen count is sufficiently low. If I am on my meds. If I haven’t been sick. Etc. If it depends on a bunch of stuff that I can’t force, or count on, that depend on a bunch of other factors and conditions beyond me, then why do I imagine that these states are going to prove who I am?

Over and over, I try to use the body to prove my identity, but in fact, the body dictates the limits of the identities I can ’build’. The rupa I cling to so tightly as a necessary condition for me telling the alana story, creating self, is a condition I must yield to; my story is at the mercy of this body, which makes it a pretty crappy tool with which to build identity. In short, it doesn’t do what I want, so how can it prove I am who I want to be?

This body — the state it was in, is in, it will be in — is just one of many circumstances that dictate the self I can imagine. What is circumstantial, conditional, can’t be who I am. The body’s states are conditional, so they aren’t who I am. But the identity I imagine, that is conditional too; the identity I imagine can’t be who I am.