Alana's Dharma Blog

I kicked off the new year of 2023 with a bad case of strep. Given the ‘tripledemic’, the myriad of flu-covid-strep plague of diseases the news says is going around, it really shouldn’t be a huge the surprise that I got sick. The problem is, it was….

A few days into the new year my throat started to really hurt. Naturally, I took a PCR test, it was negative. Since I didn’t have any other respiratory disease symptoms –no runny nose, aches, or fever — I decided it must be acid reflux from a particularly indulgent New Year’s meal. To be fair, I do get acid reflux on occasion, it has in the past involved a sore throat. But even as my symptoms grew worse, and I started getting tell-tale signs of infection (ie. a swollen throat, raised lymph nodes, fatigue), I continued to go about my day-to-day, taking Tums and waiting for the effects of a meal, now well in the rear-view mirror, to subside.

Finally, when I woke-up feeling like I had been swallowing glass, I decided it could be something other than reflux. I took another covid test, negative. Flummoxed how it was possible that I could feel so sick and not have Covid, I decided to seek out a strep test. The thing is, for no particular reason, I was super ‘sure’ it wasn’t strep; still I wanted to be a ‘responsible’ adult, get treatment quickly if it was bacterial so it didn’t cause further complications, and stop exposing others in the case I had a contagious disease. Put another way, I got tested to BE something –a good alana, a responsible adult — not to find out if I had strep, which ‘clearly’ I didn’t have.

Even as I awaited my results, I was making my evening plans, so sure nothing would need to be put on hold. When I got my results ( positive obviously) my first thought –despite my burning throat — was to check the false positive rates of the test. In the face of clear evidence, both symptomatic and empirical, my mind wouldn’t readily accept the truth. I was so committed to my own beliefs, to my alternative theory of reflux, I couldn’t quickly pivot and face a reality different than what I assumed.

Eventually, I yielded, I called my doctor and got a prescription for antibiotics. Even on my way to the pharmacy I had called my mom explaining how ‘good’ I felt, how normal everything was, save for the sore throat.

Within a day, on the antibiotics, I started feeling better. In fact, I suddenly realized it hadn’t ‘just’ been the extremely painful throat, I had been fatigued, lethargic –twice I had nearly fallen asleep in public places — but my denial of my disease, of a possibility that I had anything other than reflux, was so strong I was able to fool myself about symptoms I was actually, physically, experiencing.

I realized, all of this is a as a powerful analogy for all my births and becoming — My power of self deception is so damn strong, I can block out pain, suffering, dukka, in the service of preserving my view of myself, the world, and what is actually going on. The situation is actually pretty scary, it is such a red flag to the extent of my own self-delusion.

But it also brings up a big question –why? Why was I so attached to 1 version of reality over another, what was my view/beliefs that blocked my ability to assess evidence in a balanced way, to pivot when it made sense to do so?

Years ago, I left this journal entry standing with this open question. Now (July 2025) when I think on it again, I think I have an answer. In short, I have an over-inflated ego, I am so sure the world will act in accordance with my views and expectations, I can’t even entertain another possibility, even faced with overwhelming evidence.
The issue isn’t just about clinging to the identity of a healthy alana, or being in denial that I am subject to sickness, after all, I tested for covid several times. Back in early 2023, when I wrote this blog, this was a sticking point for me that I couldn’t see past. Now though, I realize I had resolved myself to covid, I was willing to “accept it” as a reality. Strep however, that was something different. For whatever reason I had arbitrarily decided what kind of sick I can get, completely denying other possibilities. Completely denying that the world doesn’t give a damn about what illnesses I can accept, what circumstances I believe myself to be subject to, or not.

Even as I acknowledge my powerlessness in this world to avoid sickness, I still am blind to the fact that any sickness, at anytime, can fell me. Sickness, in my mind, happens on my terms. Of course, this is not the truth. When the causes and conditions for a particular sickness, whatever it is, are met I will be subject to just that sickness. The surprise I felt, this is a failure to see impermanence of the world–that I am subject to any illness anytime. It is a failure to see the permanence of my views – that what results, in this case an illness, that I am subject to are not conditioned by my beliefs, my preferences, my expectations of outcomes.

I know this world is perilous, on some level, we all know this. But part of my hope, the way I justify accepting the risks of birth in a perilous world, the way I offer myself false comfort that ‘I got this’ I can ekk out safety and comfort here, is with the delusion that I can know what is coming, I can prepare. I prepared for covid, but not for strep. I can accept illness –I have learned to self-talk my way into accepting this as normal, but unexpected illness, proof that I can’t really prepare, that I can’t ‘beat the house’ of this world, that is too much for me to bear. Better to deny…

Better to deny my physical pain. Better to suffer longer than necessary and subject the people around me to the suffering of a communicable disease. All better then facing a very dark truth: I am not the architect of my fate, there is no amount of planning or preparation that is going to save me. I am, like everyone else, a subject of cause and effect. All I can do in this world is wiggle, react to the cards I am delt. And those reactions are even more limited by my wrong views, by my denial that I am subject to this world, not –not even in a little and limited way — a master of it. All I did was compound the dukkha of illness with the dukkha of extra pain, delayed treatment, and karma of getting others sick while I tried to fight reality with nothing but my mind.

Recently, I had been re-watching the show The Wire. In it, there is a character Bubbles who is a drug addict. Bubbles suffers for his addiction, he lives in poverty, he is estranged from his family, he faces danger and violence, a part of him wants to quit, but over and over, the drugs draw him back in.

In the show, there is a scene where Bubbles and his friend are getting high. A smile of intense pleasure crosses his face as the drug needle slides into his arm. Sure, he experiences that as pleasure, but when you look at the whole context, it is so clear that it is nothing but dukkha. The malcontent of his life that led to wanting drugs in the first place, the daily craving to get them, the striving and scheming and scamming to afford them. The toll it takes on his body, on his life and relationships…even he wants out.

And still, that moment seems like such pleasure. It is moments like that that lead all of us to believe there is pleasure, but no matter how we feel, no matter how we perceive those moments, the case of Bubbles and the high make it so clear it’s just dukkha that we misunderstand to be delight.

It wasn’t terribly long ago that I had done my big write-up on Everything is Suffering. As I was watching this scene in The Wire, I realized that I had actually missed this really big point about suffering: The moments that I think of as delight are actually dukkha too; it’s just my delusional thinking –myopic blindness that comes from being too zoomed into a single moment, when the needle slides into my vein – that allow me to see what is actually dukkha as sukkah.

A little later, I had finished a particularly hard workout and noted that after doing something so difficult, I felt proud, accomplished. I felt delight. The truth is, I do hard shit all the time, extreme fitness, fasting, throwing big events for work. Neither the effort, nor the result is particularly delightful, and yet I take delight in completing these tasks. Like Bubbles, I hone-in on a particular moment and think sukkah instead of looking at the struggle so apparent in the bigger picture.

The truth is though that I train myself, I trick myself into this. This is a technique I use to convince myself to do what is hard in the first place. But why…

It dawned on me that I foster this delusion, that doing hard things, things that are actually dukkha, is sukka because I believe that doing hard shit is virtuous. So by doing hard things, I am virtuous. I use these acts to prove myself, to build identity, and as a result, I see them as worth it. I convince myself that doing these things is in some way delightful in order to convince myself to do these hard things. Never mind that doing hard shit to prove something about myself only proves my ignorance. It proves my myopic delusion.

Long ago at KPY I found a perfect bench, in the perfect balance of sun and shade, at the perfect time of the day to yield a perfect temperature. I sat there feeling delight. But it wasn’t long before the sun shifted in the sky and I found myself having to move the bench, or put on/take off a jacket. I considered that if I sat there long enough, it would grow too hot, no shade to be had at high noon and if I sat even longer it would grow too cold, no sun to warm me at night.

After having such a perfect moment, I found myself working/striving/chasing to extend that moment, and as soon as I got too hot or too cold, I was laboring, wiggling to get back to that perfect temperature state again. Now I had a problem to solve: I was subject to less than perfectly comfortable states as soon as circumstances shifted. I needed to figure out the effort, resources, patients, that would allow me to win back such a comfortable moment again. In that brief moment of perfection hope was born. Turns out, hope is a hell of a burden…

Thinking back on this little example now I see how it really catches this angle of everything being dukkha, even the things I find pleasure in and convince myself are sukkah. The comfortable moments in my life, they have consequences. In this case, me striving, working to achieve it again, acting as the seed of my struggles and efforts. In Bubble’s case, Striving, working to achieve each high again, no matter the costs, the fall-out that comes from being a drug addict. For both of us, these brief moments of comfort would have us endure even more hours of stress and pain. It’s a long and cold night I would need to wait on that bench before the sun came-up to warm me again.

Zoom-out and my moment of pleasure, its dukkha. Dukkha that I am in a body that is comfortable only in such a narrow temperature band. Dukkha that once I experience a taste of delight I must strive to keep it and ultimately find it again. Dukkha to lose the paltry moments of pleasure sitting out in the elements can bring. Dukkha needing to wait out even the possibility of getting that moment again. Only myopathy would have me mistake a warm sunny moment on the bench as delight. Only delusion would have me believe that what arises from dukkha, and leads to even more dukkha, could possibly be sukkah.

Recently, I finalized my move down to Florida. In Connecticut, there are still some people who choose to be Covid cautions and when I go to the grocery, or the salon, or the theatre, I am not the only person there wearing a mask. Florida is different, no one else seems to mask here and when I go out I feel super self-conscious. It doesn’t help that I can see the stares, have heard the murmurs, have actually been directly confronted by anti-maskers demanding I answer them, complete strangers, for my choice.

Last week, I had an appointment to get my hair cut at a fancy salon in Miami. I dug a good-looking outfit out of my closet, and I put on fancy jewelry as well. I wanted to look nice, like I fit-in, like I belonged. I wanted to use my clothes to define myself, to express the me I want to be; I wanted the clothes to be an offset to my mask.

The mask after all isn’t who I am, it doesn’t speak for me or announce my values, when I am accosted in the streets or in stores about my mask, my first thought is “you don’t know me, my life, my health, who I am trying to protect. This mask isn’t a political statement, I don’t want to wear it, it’s just what I need to do to be safe”. The mask is a practically, nothing more. It is meaningless…

A few days later, I got to thinking about LP Thoon’s definition of annata: “These things don’t belong to you, they are meaningless.” I was thinking of examples in my day-to-day to prove it and the mask/outfit came to mind.

What is a mask? It is a piece of cloth I wear over my face to protect this body. I completely reject the idea that it reflects me, that it has some deep meaning, in fact I feel wounded when others, who presumably read meaning into it, accost me. Aren’t clothes — the fancy outfit I picked for the salon, the same? Clothes are just pieces of cloth I wear over my body to protect it from elements, from insects, from the consequences of nudity in our society. I am so frustrated with the meaning folks around me read into my mask, but I read meaning into my clothes. How do I not see these too are meaningless like the mask?

The cloth of a mask, the cloth of my favorite outfits, they are the same in both form and function. How can I understand one to be meaningless, a practicality I use, and not see the same is true for the other?

A long time ago, I was talking to Mae Nee about rupa and I used my favorite yellow purse as an example: I loved it so much because I thought it made me look cool, I thought it made other people look at me and think I was cool. Every time I got a compliment on it, I took it as affirmation that the purse had the desired effect. In my mind, the function of my purse was to make me look cool.

But Mae Neecha asked me if it worked all the time? Later I reflected and realized it worked only some of the time, and the only thing that something that works some of the time proves is it doesn’t work all the time. If there were actually meaning in the purse, in the mask, in the clothes, that meaning would be plain and true, for all to see, all of the time. But this is not the case.

If I insist cloth in one circumstance has some meaning, but in a different circumstance it has none, all it proves is some of the time, to some people. All of the time, cloth, whether on my face or on my body, holds no innate meaning at all. Its just something I use. And one of the ways I use it is to demarcate meaning, to define myself with –or against. And just like I can use it, so too can others. I call my cloths mine, think they can say something about me, but the very fact that everyone is pouring their own meaning into the same object proves this is not what these objects do, not the meaning they have at all.

Recently, I had an old friend reach-out to me, she emailed –knowing I am a practitioner– looking for ‘Buddhisty advice’ on her troubled marriage. I did my best to help her in accordance with the dharma. And in my explaining it to her, in recounting a number of my own old ah-ha moments, I was able to see a few points so much more clearly. Here I will recount a bit of what I wrote her, and then my re-reflections and deeper understandings of the stories I shared:

In my response to my friend, I also emphasized LP Thoon’s teaching on yielding, and re-told a story Mae Yo had offered me:

“The wife came to the wat distressed about her relationship, she and her husband were always fighting, divorce seemed near. Mae Yo told the woman to go home and, for a week, say absolutely nothing to her husband when he spoke to her except คะ (ká); that’s it, no reply, no fight, no self defense, just a super polite yes. Apparently the marriage was saved.

For the longest time, I didn’t really understand that story, or how just a polite yes to every comment or question could have such an impact; nowadays I am starting to see how much our egos, our need to self defend, our inability to yield, challenges our relationships. Obviously, again, I don’t know the particulars for you guys, but I do know the power of yielding can go a long way in our relationships”

Having retold this story to my friend, I understand it so much more deeply now; it is a permanent view that someone else SHOULD act as I think is best, that the world follows my terms, and it is also a misunderstanding that when it does follow my terms it turns out for the best. This wrong view is why yielding is so hard, and the correction of this view makes it so much more natural a response to conflict or differences of view.

I thought about my relationship with mom, the turning point at that concert where I saw there is no reason to expect mom should follow my terms for appropriate Covid precautions (see this blog). Everyone has their own levels of precautions and comfort, I know that, I grudgingly accept it. But I saw it is because she is mine -my mom– that I think she will/should be abiding by my terms.

I think about a story of a woman at KPY that started pruning trees to her view of perfection with a chain saw. How ultimately, she stopped when she looked up and realized there was no way she could prune the whole forest. That story always touched me. Now I see we all understand the whole world can’t bow to us or operate on our terms. That is why we minefy– we seek out some small corner of the forest and try to control that, we seek out a few belongings, a few loved ones, a few hobbies and roles to identify with/by – just a few trees that can affirm me, can be asked to/coaxed into operating on my terms. We get so myopic, it’s the only way we can delude ourselves as to our own impotence. Why not see the truth: If I have to eke out a few trees, a little plot of forest to call my own, to be my stomping ground for proving myself, I have already lost. The very act of carving out ‘mine’, my little sphere of influence, is a concession to the truth that the world doesn’t follow my bidding or act on my terms.

But, instead of just admitting that truth, that the very act of a carve out was an admission of my failure, I get so sad and angry when the trees over here in my plot act exactly like the rest of the trees in the forest. They also fail to do my bidding or act on my terms. I look to what is mine to affirm me, but what I call mine and what I consider other are all exactly the same. I know other won’t affirm me, so why expect it of “mine” when what I call mine is the same in both form and function as other? Why get so stressed when my face sags, my garden gets overgrown, my body exhibits symptoms that portend disease? It doesn’t bother me when these things are happening to you/yours after all.

I was writing a Dhamma blog about trees. How in one autumn I had been so excited for the leaves to change I had maligned the evergreens and still greens for holding up the show. Then after everything had gone brown I was so happy to still have the evergreens to add color to my landscape. It was so clear from the example these trees don’t follow my terms, they act according to their nature and that nature is not to bring me enjoyment or satisfaction. And yet I constantly look for that in rupa objects when that is not their nature or job to do.

In the original contemplation I had been comparing the stress of decorating of the Redding house ( which ironically I didn’t even keep) — the arranging of rupa to create some little micro environment of comfort when the whole fucking world — the forest outside my patch — was a deeply uncomfortable cesspool of Covid disease and risk. Somehow though I realized I wasn’t really convinced of the parallel — with trees changing color, I really have no hand in their change, but a home, I can arrange and decorate. But I thought on it more, what if I could use some fertilizer, hell a magic wand, to change the rate of trees doing their autumn thing. Even still, in the end the ones with a nature to be green would be green and the ones that go brown would go brown.

Long ago Mae Yo had talked about the imagination process that created refrigeration, the ability to see there is duration of a particular form and there are interventions that can effect duration. Still though, in the end, food we put in the fridge spoils. And shit — from the very beginning, the refrigerator was the solution to a problem, food spoils.

We take so much pride in the in between spaces — the duration a grape goes unspoiled if we fridge it, the time we could fix the broken fridge, the temporary arrangement of a room that suits my tastes — I let these things affirm me, build my sense of ego and accomplishment. But, it’s just like looking only at a single patch of forest — it misses the bigger truth plain to see, the world doesn’t follow my rules it’s not about me. Impermanence reigns supreme and the ego boost I get from intervening in duration, or ‘temporarily solving’ problems that arise from the nature of this world –its dukka and impermanence– is delusional.

From the start the world shows what it is: Why do I feel so happy at a new dress? With the new dress, I imagine I –at least temporarily – solved a problem: The need for clothing to protect a fragile body. The need for something new because what I had before was worn, or my body got fat and it didn’t fit, or style changed I must be a slave to craving what is new and fashionable to maintain my identity as a fashionista. The need to have a body that is beautiful, represents me, takes a shape that is in alignment with how I see myself and want to be seen.

If it is a struggle to maintain the body-look I desire from the start, a struggle to protect myself from the elements, a struggle to preserve the fabric of a beloved skirt, to preserve a body that fits into that dress, to keep up with ever-changing-fashions, then the truth of the world is struggle, not my self-imagined victory at the moment I bring home a new dress home.

If it is like food in the fridge and it goes to decay. Then the world is showing me it’s annica.

Whether or not I have a fridge, or a dress, or a body that fits into a dress/looks a certain way is entirely dependent on conditions: Do I have electricity to run a fridge or is the power out? Did my cat pee on the dress and ruin it? Did famine cause body to go thin or endocrine disruption cause fatness? If something arises based on conditions beyond my control, it endures based on conditions beyond my control and ends when conditions for cessation are met independent of my action/wish/desire then it proves that everything in the world is conditional (put another way, it is subject to karma). What is conditional is not about me, it can’t prove self; the world is showing me anatta.

If every tree, both insider and outside the patch of forest I claimed, acts the same then it proves the world is always acting according to it’s nature, in all places, impervious to my terms and claims.

Just zoom out and it becomes so clear there is nothing here to confirm me. I am settling for identity built in the hot fucking second between solving a problem that arises from the nature of this world and the cessation of the solution, according to the nature of the world, that I ignorantly take such pride in.

There is just arising and ceasing, the only question is duration. If I am locked into finding identity in duration, I am screwed before I start because identity requires staying power and I can only, at best, influence duration. And even then, that influence is predicated on circumstance, conditions, constraints set in place by rupa, by the common conditions, by society, by my karma. Is there really anything for me to claim here? Anything that proves me, my self-determination, my story, when even the imaginary identity I craft is shaped by wiggling within all these constraints?

Now I understand why LP Thoon says we are deceived by duration: Its just a state, like a bubble of anatta, held long enough for us to name and claim. That we can influence it, sometimes and for a short while, are the seeds of hope, of delusion, that this world will obey us. That this world – with just brief moments of sustained states –can identify us. That the state itself is our identity.

If I were being intellectually honest, I should be thanking the gods for all the problems I see in this world, no matter the suffering they cause me, because to feed the delusion of atta I require an ‘enemy’, impermanence, to slay with my great problem solving skills. I need confines to wiggle within and define myself by. Otherwise I would just be, like everything else, subject to the endless flow of cause and effect. I am clearly a dukka junkie…

Recently, I had an old friend reach-out to me, she emailed –knowing I am a practitioner– looking for ‘Buddhisty advice’ on her troubled marriage. I did my best to help her in accordance with the dharma. And in my explaining it to her, in recounting a number of my own old ah-ha moments, I was able to see a few points so much more clearly. Here I will recount a bit of what I wrote her, and then my re-reflections and deeper understandings of the stories I shared: 

First, in the context of suggesting the practical value of trying to fix ourselves –our views, our actions – rather than trying to fix our partners, I shared one of my own early dhamma stories about my relationship with Eric as an example. Here is an excerpt from my email to her: 

“I know in my own relationship, this idea of fixing myself and stopping my effort to fix Eric has been a huge boon. For me, it started with changing a particular view...here is a story: years ago, I had a birthday coming up and I asked Eric to plan a murder mystery party for me It was no big deal --order the game  (it comes in a box) and invite over 8 friends, just 4 couples, to play. I asked him, I pestered him, I begged him, but in the end he didn't do it, I did not get a murder mystery birthday and I was super angry/hurt. Afterall, this was not the first time I asked Eric to do something really important to me, and that he ignored me/failed to do it.
 
I went to talk to my teacher, Mae Yo, about it. She asked me to consider what my wrong views were in the situation --the ideas/thoughts I thought were permanent /absolute/unchanging that lay at the heart of my being so upset about not getting a murder mystery party (FYI: our wrong views are always our beliefs that things are permeant/1 way/ 1 sided/unchanging because the TRUTH of the world is อนิจจัง, anicca, impermanence). I thought on it for a while and I realized a few core permanent beliefs: 
 
•	If Eric doesn't plan a party for me, he doesn't love me. This is permanent. Afterall, it is also totally possible that someone who doesn't plan parties for you still loves you. Or someone who plans parties for you doesn't give a shit about you
•	I believed that because I would plan a party for someone I loved if they wanted one, they/he SHOULD (anytime you think should, look for a permanent thought) be willing to do it for me. In other words, my way is the only way (permanent) what I would do is the rule, it is what everyone should do (permanent).
•	That the way I express love --doing what my beloved asks -- is the only way to express love ( permanent  ) and if someone doesn't express it in my way than they don't feel it (compounded permanence)

The more I thought on it, the more my heart softened and I realized how silly I was being: Eric does all sorts of things to ‘prove’ he loves me: He cooks for me, he supports me financially, he encourages me to learn and grow, he emotionally supports me in pursuing what is important to me, he buys me pretty things, he listens to me and tolerates me, he spends time with me, etc. Because my view was so fixed –do what I ask or you don’t love me –I ignored all the other ‘proof’ of love. I realized then that love didn’t have to be expressed on my terms to be expressed and to exist in Eric’s heart.

 My anger basically ceased as soon as I saw this and my behaviors changed too: I stopped pestering Eric to do all sorts of stuff I had wanted him to do – no more laundry lists, errands, etc. I would ask, if he didn’t get to it, it was fine, because I knew it didn’t say anything about our relationship, or if he loved me or not…” 
 
Now, years later, after sharing this old story with my friend, I see a much deeper element: Eric not doing the party planning was never about me. It was about his priorities, his personality, his beliefs about what actions do and don't prove love. Afterall, if Eric loved me, and he thought it was important to show that love, and he thought planning a party would show that love, then he would have planned the party. And that party would have been planned not because of me, or my wants, but because of him and his wants. 

Or alternatively, he could have planned it just because he knew I wanted, and he believed that doing what I wanted, what I asked would express his love. This was what I had hoped for years ago. But in truth, even this rational for planning -- because I wanted – would still only proven something about him: He values/identifies with/ expresses love to someone by trying to fulfill their wants.  

Over and over I seek validation, reification, from the way other people behave towards me. But in truth, other people’s actions never really prove anything about me. Other people’s actions just prove their views and values