Alana's Dharma Blog

I was watching the trees outside my window, now that it is nearly winter, and the leaves mostly fallen, the evergreens seem more exciting. Just a few weeks ago, when most of the other trees were in the full glory of their fall colors, I maligned those same evergreens, boring trees, that wouldn’t change color and that blocked the view of all the splendid foliage across the lake. Now though I am grateful to have the evergreens…

It made me see, these rupa items, they really don’t bow to me. Considering the trees, MY TREES, it is so obvious that none of the rupa in this world exists to give me satisfaction or do what I like. Even if I buy them, or care for them, or plant them with my own two hands, these trees — if they take a form I like — do so only because it is in their nature to do so, not because either my effort or desire rule them. And trees will change to a different form, according to their nature, I can neither prevent this nor force it to happen more quickly/slowly than their nature allows.

I got to considering dukkha: I want an evergreen tree to become orange, or at least to get out of the way of all those other pretty trees putting on a show. Then I want those once-pretty-tress to go from being brown back to having leaves and colors. I see a single state of trees, possible for just a moment when the conditions are ripe, and I get attached. Even intellectually understanding that seasons change, trees change, I still find myself hoping for a little more, a late start to winter this year…it’s the old search for sukkah by clinging to duration. A search which will end in dukkha, now or later, either way.

I had recently purchased a face tightening machine that uses ultrasound technology; the company that makes it claims it will help regenerate collagen and diminish sagging. I used it and I gave myself a painful, ugly fat lip. Even this body, the most mine of all my belongings, does not exist to give me satisfaction. Despite my efforts, in fact sometime because of my efforts, it takes on shapes I despise. It transforms according to its nature, which in this case, was to get battered and bruised and to start swelling on account of the ultrasound waves. With evidence like this, why the hope? Why the continued obsession with dragging duration — just a bit more beauty, a fresh face a few years longer than my peers? Even if the suffering of sagging is coming for me one day or another… can’t I just be pretty today?

And why is pretty so important that I am willing to endure the painful treatments, the deprivation diets, the hardcore workouts? This is just a small slice of the suffering that arises from calling something mine. This is the effort to avoid the unavoidable: The devastating disappointment that comes from my preference for, identification with, one state of an object – a face, a tree – that by its nature continually shifts through changing states. Seasons always change…

Recently, I have been trying the technique of ‘disowning and not claiming’ that LP Thoon recommended to his student Singh. The advice is to see objects as not mine, existing for the communal use of my family, something I will depart the world and leave behind for my heirs. But as I worked on the technique, I came to see that claiming, ‘mining’, these are just one variety of misunderstanding rupa.
When I consider those trees, I see that my error is about more than just what I call mine. Deeper is that I don’t really understand what physical objects are, how they behave, how no amount of claiming them, or trying to control them, is going to make them fundamentally different than what it is their nature to be. Like my now bruised lips, I don’t have a full picture of how they will change in the future, what the causes and conditions that influence them are, and what the ensuing result will be. Otherwise, obviously, I would never have used ultrasound on my lips.

Try as I might to use objects to bring me satisfaction, to define me, that is not in the end what they do. Objects are impervious to me. No matter how enamored I am with them, they do not love me back. This makes me start to understand why Mae Neecha once described being a sotapanna to me as understanding the world doesn’t revolve around me. How could it, objects –both those I claim and those I acknowledge are ‘of the world’ – don’t do my bidding.

I was thinking about the Mahājanaka Jataka again: In it, The Bodhisattva is a king who, strolling through the royal gardens comes to two mango trees, one with fruit and the other barren. He pulls a mango off the fruited tree and eats it, it was delicious, and he made a note to himself to hit-up the tree again after his walk so he could have some additional fruit before he headed back to the palace. At the end of his walk, the king comes to the same trees only now, the barren tree remains pristine and green, but the fruited tree has become battered, leafless, broken and devoid of all fruit. He asks the Royal Gardner what happened, and the Gardner explains, out of respect, village folks wait for the king to eat the first fruit of a tree, but after that has been had, it’s a free-for-all. The once fruited tree had been damaged by the villagers coming to pillage the fruit. The barren tree, with no fruit to be taken, remained undisturbed. The king, seeing this decides to renounce the world: If you don’t have shit to take, you don’t have to worry and stress about your shit getting taken.

Recently, I had moved to a new place in CT, only it hadn’t worked-out and I quickly moved out. It had been so difficult, a short-succession move-in/move-out, and it made me start considering this Jataka, considering the worry and care I have for my belongings and how that stress could be solved by not having, not wanting, belongings at all.

For a moment, I really thought about the relief it would be to just walk on all of my stuff. The freedom it would be to not worry about rupa anymore. Then, for a second, I understood that you don’t need to walk from the stuff. You just need to stop being attached to it. This, I understood, is the letting go, the becoming a Sotapana. Knowing the costs of the stuff. Knowing what it is, and what it does, doing your duty by it and not being overly concerned.

I thought back to a trip I took to Hawaii decades ago…back them was my fashionista days, I dressed to the 9s each morning, boots and belts and hats galore. But in Hawaii, it was just shorts and a tee, and after a few days I started fantasizing about a move to Hawaii: I was desperate to escape the self-imposed burden of needing to dress-up each day. I had the keen sense that I couldn’t escape that burden of that self-created identity as long as I lived in SF. I feared what the people who knew my fashionista-self might think of me, the status I would lose. In Hawaii, where no one dresses-up I could be ‘free’. This of course is not freedom: This is just binding myself to a new identity I imagine will be somehow better and easier. Another becoming…

Years ago, at a retreat, Mae Yo and Neecha had a session on becoming a sotapanna. Something they taught came to my mind again, it got much clearer: They were saying that if you aren’t really a sotapanna, you can be not greedy all your life, but if circumstances change, you are greedy again. Like someone who has plenty of food, and is always willing to share, but then famine strikes and they stop sharing. The cause for greed is not uprooted, its just that the circumstances don’t support the manifestation of the greed, at that moment. Circumstances change, and back comes the greed, because the seeds of it had been there all the time.

As I considered the new house again, I considered the stress: Stress over moving to it. Stress over decorating. Stress over having it too long. Stress over maintenance… I realize I am so absorbed, so stuck on my stuff, it is a source of unbounded stress. I say I understand these things do not belong to me, do not define me, but I obsess over them. All to make an environment I like. For sensual pleasure. Even despite the temporariness, the accompanying pain. This is the stress of greed.

The Mahājanaka Jataka is actually the story in which the Bodhisattva perfects the parami of renunciation. In truth, I am not much of a renunciation fan (I do like my creature comforts after all) and this particular story has always felt a bit uncomfortable, like an indictment of my own insufficiency. Still though, the sense of it, the allure, the promise of less suffering by going the way of that barren tree has begun to weigh on my mind a bit. Perhaps renunciation is less about sacrifice and more about freedom.

Years ago, I was watching a TV show: There was a monster had taken over the town. She excreted a venom that lulled the whole town into a mass delusion; instead of seeing her as the monster she was, they were deluded into seeing her as a beautiful and benevolent ruler. Everyone was happy and got along, but the venom was just to pacify the people, a drug to keep them mollified while she ate them one by one. Only 2 characters in the show, who by virtue of having been exposed to her blood, a sort of antidote to her poison, saw her for the monster she truly was and were able to ultimately escape.

That story has stuck with me many years now, an ubai for how I see the world. I imagine my old car, my wedding dress, as these beautiful things, because of how I imagine them, I feel happy, I am lulled by delusion to believe they make me special. But in the end, I feel wounded by these objects. Why? Because like the town’s folk, I am blind to what these things really are; I have intoxicated myself and in self-inflicted blindness I put myself in peril, I endure suffering.

For a long time, I have done the exercise from the Anatalakata Sutra (link here): All the evidence I have gathered that shit is inconstant, that it doesn’t obey me, that it causes me suffering, it has softened my heart, sure, but it has never been the final blow to claiming these items are me/mine. Now I understand why it has failed to sufficiently touch my heart: It’s because the evidence that these objects change and cause me suffering is insufficient to convince myself that these objects aren’t mine.

Whether I claim objects, or not, their changing and dukka is simply their nature. I mistake ‘my’ objects as having some other nature, or at least, some additional nature; I think they hold the meaning I impart on them and that, in return they can impart the meaning I desire on myself. Even if they change. Even if I hurt myself with them. Even still, I cling to the notion that at least for a little while, despite the suffering they cause, they are an instrument I can use in my mission of making myself, telling my story, of self-becoming. My imagination has made me intoxicated with these objects, intoxicated by the feelings I have as a result of what I imagine these objects mean about me.

Which is, I think, LP Thoon’s point when he defined anatta as, “these things don’t belong to us, they aren’t meaningful.” That is the last part of their nature (3 common characteristics) there is nothing meaningful about these objects, they don’t confirm or affirm me as the me I want to be, they don’t confirm or affirm anything at all about me – or anything else – they are meaningless. They march along their entropy path, holding a named form till the causes and conditions for their exiting the named state arise. Then they disaggregate, un-clump, anatta. Thats all.

And that’s the final clincher — long lasting or short lasting, fun or suffering, it doesn’t really matter how I imagining these objects, because its not my imagination of them that matter. They are what they are and that is decidedly not me, not a secret coded confirmation of me that only I see. They are just 4es. Shifting through states according to causes and conditions. Atta is my mistaken belief that the car, the dress, prove something about me. That they can help make the me I imagine myself more solid and real.

I started considering my old Vajrayana shawl , a wrap that my former teacher had instructed all his followers to wear when they mediated. It had given me a sense that I was connected to the community, to my teacher. I felt such pride putting it on for the first time, I basked in a sense of my own piety and buddhistiness. And then, how it became just a cloth when I quit the religion. All these secret meanings of these objects eventually dissipate as we disassociate from them, they just become more of the junk we used to hang-out with while the circumstances allowed.

Of course, just cause I separate from shit, it doesn’t mean I immediately disassociate. And there is the crux of the suffering of parting ways with what I hold dear. Sometimes, like with the shawl, I stop holding dear and then part ways, sometimes, like with the Porche, I part ways and only later stop holding dear. And it does seem there is extra dukkha when I am confronted with the fact –like I was with the Porsche – that the car can’t be both evidence I am on top and in control and also be sold at a deep discount because I didn’t even recognize the item I claimed had engine issues. The delusion about it meaning something about me holds strong, even when I need to go from believing it says something good to something embarrassing and painful.

Still, for me, I continue the cycle of delusion. Why? Because I still foolishly believe it is worth it to hold onto the idea that some object can say something about me that I want, can help me build the future I want, tell the story of the me I want to be and become, rather than just admit that none of these objects ever say anything about me at all.

When I considered the scarf more closely, it dawned on me the traits I thought it proved –piousness, connection to a community I no longer give a shit about, a good student to Rinpoche — aren’t even traits I am consistently trying to prove. I considered different objects more closely and found even more evidence: A little Chevy Cavalier to prove I wasn’t just a rich trust fund kid. A not-fit body in high school to prove I was more invested in my mind. An apartment in SF to prove I was an SFer even if my driver’s license was from NY. It became obvious, I am not actually even trying to prove one thing, or the same thing; like everything, the me I want to be changes…

No, objects don’t prove some specific Alana, I use them to reify the alana de jour. I don’t even care about being pious, or a leader in the Vajrayana community anymore. It’s just some arbitrary identity I wanted one day, some arbitrary trait, proven by some arbitrary action and object. Today, tomorrow, as the stream (of causes and conditions and their ensuing effects) shifts, I want to be and become something else. In the end, all I consistently want is to be, to become, to feel me, even though what that me is is even more slippery and changeable than the objects I try to use to prove that identity.

It’s funny, a while back, when I was thinking about what justifies my making something mine, back then I reflected:

“For a long time, I have wondered what makes something MINE (and therefore something I cling to) after all it is clear that this idea lives nowhere in the 4es of the object. But every time I think I figure it out, it seems like the criteria changes; Its mine because I legally own it, only that Manhattan loft felt like ‘not mine’ long before I actually sold it. It is mine because I pay for it, but what about the outfits that feel like mine in the dressing room before I hit-up the cash register? It is mine because I have had it, because it is my birthright, but how do I reconcile that with a body that keeps getting older and fatter and sick, is it really expressing my will, acting like my right? I realize now the problem…delusion is a slippery fuck, in truth, mine=desire+some arbitrary rationalization I use to justify/claim mineness in my mind. Its just a rationalization that changes to suit my needs, all it needs to be is ‘defensible’ to my warped brain and its good enough to go on.”

The me that I think something mine makes me is as arbitrary as the process by which I claim that thing in the first place. Just some justification that a certain identify can be claimed –an activity I do perhaps, a belief I hold, a group I belong to, a future I imagine, a relationship I assume. Minenes, as it turns out, is just a concept in support of an agenda: The agenda to be, to become, to forge the story of self that I endured rebirth to try and tell.

I have been thinking about atta a lot lately, using various angles, but especially considering it from the perspective of my body and belongings: How I ignorantly try and use rupa to reify my sense of self and the reality, which LP Thoon says so clearly, that “anatta is that nothing belongs to us, it is meaningless.”

I have been homing-in on the feelings I have gotten from objects which, in the past, I considered to be mine; I have been really trying to re-connect with the feelings, to understand what beliefs drove the feelings and when/if those beliefs were proven wrong.

First, I considered the Porche: When I learned of a lurking engine problem, which resulted in my needing to sell it for a fraction of what I had believed it to be worth, I felt brought so low. I was ashamed. How had I so sorely misjudged my own item? It was like someone who had believed themselves to be special because they were beloved of their lover, only to find they were one of many consorts.

The car had always made me feel on top and in control. An affirmation of the me I saw myself as, the me I wanted to be. I can remember long drives, hugging curves, the sense of elation. Sure, it was fun to drive, but so much of the fun was me feeling the rush of being confirmed while driving the car. Though the confirmation was just me imagining the qualities, that I imagined in the car, were being reflected back at me. It was a circle jerk, an ego stroke of my own creation. Fun though it was when I could imagine the car broadcasting my awesomeness, the cost was that later, when I went to sell it, I felt like it broadcast my foolishness. All I needed to do was to understand the car doesn’t broadcast anything about me, doesn’t reflect anything about me, and I would have been spared both the false elation and the deflation.

In the end, with the sting of the sale experience, the car showed me what it really was: A decaying 4e object, not the thing of my imagination. And it showed me the suffering of trying to locate self in 4e elements that will decay, will fail us, will part ways from us. Which never existed to prove me special in the first place.

I fed imagination with the object, got high on the thoughts of the imagination, then got low on the thoughts of the imagination…but it was all just an imagination trip: The car was just the 4e object it had always been.

I thought about my wedding dress. The elation of trying it on at the last fitting, feeling so beautiful. A shining object of desirability, a catch to be coveted by all I walked past on the aisle. But years later the same dress made me look like a cow. The dress, so clearly unchanged, proved my body –squeezed-in to a dress that now looked like it might burst at the seams, itself had changed. Both a former body I had been so proud of, and a dress that had once fit it light a glove, proved my failing: It proved my inability to maintain a body that was firm, peak.

As I looked at the fat body-self in the dress, I felt a moment of shame; it was the cost paid for the moment of pride I had felt on my wedding day, all those years ago. Like the car, in the end, the dress told me both what I was (not special, not in control, not on top of this world and my life), as well as what it was — a piece of cloth that was stitched together and would be unstitched by time, helped along by a fat girl trying to squeeze into it.

In the end, all these objects that I claim and cling to part ways with me and, often, before they do, I am forced to a reckoning: Since I let the object feed my imagination in a positive way, it will feed my imagination in a negative way. I get forced to admit this object was never what I imagined it to be, it never confirmed what I wanted it to confirm. And me, still hungry for confirmation, feel the sting of disappointment before I go out in search of some new object to try and feed my imagination with.

The question I have for myself is why not fast forward a bit? If I can see these objects for what they really are now, I don’t have to end up in the moment of pain when the object makes me feel small by proving it is not mine, it does not confirm who I am.