Alana's Dharma Blog

When Eric and I decided to move down to Miami to be closer to my family, he made me promise one thing – we would buy a vacation home, someplace cooler, for the summers. Miami summers can hit 100 degrees most days, they are admittedly brutal.

Just before we left Connecticut, Eric and I took a road trip up to Montreal. We both loved it and decided it was the perfect place to buy a vacation home. I started doing some research, planning out a longer stay for the following summer, looking into neighborhoods, home prices, and the legalities of Americans buying property in Canada.

That is when I learned that Canada was changing their laws: As of the end of the year, there was going to be a multi-year ban on foreigners buying property. If we wanted a condo in Montreal, we had to move fast. We extended our vacation by a few days; after 5 days in Montreal, we were in contract for a condo, set to close before the end of the year, when the ban on foreign property purchases went into effect.

The following spring, we went to check-out the home we had shot gun purchased back in December. For months I had been worried we had made a rash decision. Afterall, backed up against a deadline, we had bought a place in a foreign country we had only ever visited once, for less than a week…

After we had settled into the new place, we were walking around the neighborhood, feeling very pleased with ourselves. We in fact loved the new place, loved the city, our calendar was already booked up with tickets to all sorts of concerts and festivals.

I commented to Eric about how lucky we were that everything had worked out. Eric replied that it wasn’t just luck –we knew awesome when we saw it, we are good judges of places and people, all it took us was one visit and our Spidey-Senses KNEW. We were smart for seizing opportunity.

I wasn’t so sure that I agreed with Eric’s assessment of our cleverness, or astute read on cities…I thought about our move to New York – when we decided to move there, we saw what was good about the relocation, we imagined even more good in the city and in the move, it was the bad parts we ignored. As my miserable life in NY proved, this is a really big problem: Seeing only the good and ignoring the bad till you are living with it, in it, till its just a step outside your front door every single day. Sure, things in Montreal were working out now, but a 50-50 record hardly confirms my decision-making skills.

Fortunately, though, Montreal is a city that we do like, at least our few weeks here have been pleasant enough. Way better than my first few weeks in NYC. I told Eric, Montreal’s bad parts, its downsides like the need for me to study a new language, needing to travel a large distance between homes, needing to hire a house sitter when we are gone in the winter, are within our range of acceptable. Score, win, sukkah,. Right???

When we got home, I thought more about our conversation. I realized this whole thing, Montreal, a city and a condo I like, are in fact yet another proof in my collection of evidence that everything is Dukkha. Afterall, it shows that what I like, what I enjoy, its just something that –at this moment, under these circumstances, for now – has downsides that seem hedged, acceptable, manageable in relation to the upsides. Unlike NY, the life/house/experience in Montreal fit my mind’s box of acceptable, normal.

Everything really is dukkha if even the good parts are just parts where the upsides outweigh the downsides. Everything is really really dukkha if downsides feel completely and totally normal. If I have a threshold I default to accepting, only stressed when the downsides exceed that threshold. And even then, pleasure is so tenuous – I loved San Francisco so much, but a change in the city –more crime, more drugs – and I didn’t love it so much anymore.

I had a dream I was fired from my job. At first, I didn’t quite realize I had been fired, I thought I was just retiring, like it had been my idea all along to go. But when I got to my goodbye party, the comments from colleagues made me suspect that maybe my leaving wasn’t quite solely my idea after all; many folks seemed delighted to see me go.

I asked my boss directly if I been fired and she said yes. She wanted to keep me, but her boss and several other directors thought I did more harm than good at the organization, they insisted I go. At first, I felt like a victim, I demanded my boss tell me why. After all, I had worked hard, long hours, overtime, I had forgone paychecks when the organization was short on cash. In my mind, I was a hero.

But my boss started sharing reasons, examples of my behavior and I began to see that these did reflect my personality traits. I could see how they could translate into folks not wanting me to stay at the organization. As she spoke, I began to see that even though I had my reasons for my behavior, even though I thought I was doing what was best for the organization, my actions did damage. Maybe I wasn’t the hero of the story after all…

In one example, I had not realized other folks were on the phone when I complained to my boss about them. In my mind, I was trying to make sure my boss had “all the information” to make the best decisions with, sill, I can understand how those colleagues I talked about might be rooting for me to be fired. In another story, I had a project that I was being a bulldog to defend, I was so sure it was right for the organization, but in the process I was angering other employees who did not agree. I was stepping on toes trying to force activity in other departments that aligned with my plan. I did not handle my colleagues’ resistance diplomatically. In a final example, I had been part of an interview panel for a new CEO, and I had harsh criticism for all the candidates. In my mind, I was protecting the organization from a bad hire, but fellow panel members though I was being too critical and I was getting in the way of hiring a new, desperately needed, CEO. I will note that, while examples were in the dream, they do in fact reflect a number of actual situations that were pretty close at my job in real life.

The firing showed that even as I took pride in my job, my role, how good I was at it, other people thought otherwise. When I heard their reasons, saw the very same events and behaviors I had used to imagine my awesomeness, from their perspective, I saw I had fooled myself. I had constructed a story in my mind of Alana the martyr employee, willing to do whatever it takes, bulldoze whoever stood in the way, of doing what was best for the organization. But in the end was what I thought was best really best? Is behavior that erodes a team best for an organization?

In my dream, as I would be in real life, I was devastated by being fired. I worried about the financial repercussions. I criticized myself for having grown complacent in my long tenure, allowing my networks, professional contacts, certifications and skills wither. I wondered about ‘WHO I AM’, without a job I had identified myself with and by for so long. I felt deep discomfort at something that had seemed so steady and stable –my job – coming crashing down and ending.

But most of all, I felt deep shame: I thought I had been an awesome employee, that the way I did my job, with such steadfast commitment to my organization, was a point of pride. Now, facing what I suddenly understood as justified firing, I felt small. If being a good employee can prove how great I am, doesn’t seeing I was actually a bad employee prove how terrible I am? Or maybe, the deeper lesson here is that job doesn’t prove who I am at all…

I had arbitrarily chosen the definition of “good employee” – someone who does what is best for the organization, and I had arbitrarily decided what actions are “best”. And then, I started building up myself –an identity of alana a hero employee – using these arbitrarily chosen traits, and behaviors. I looked at every action and interaction for evidence it fell into my rubric of good employee/what is right for the org behaviors, I remembered those and used them to bolster my sense of self. I conveniently forgot or downgraded all the others.

But this doesn’t really make me a thing does it? Randomly chosen ideas, randomly chosen actions to prove the ideas, carefully curated and interpreted set of stories that I tell myself. As much as an ego pump it is to feel like I am being a good employee, and as much of an ego hit it as it is to suddenly feel like I am bad employee, I am the one making up the rubrics. I am the one identifying this them. This is identity in my mind only.

In truth, I had a role – I worked at an organization doing a job. Each day I performed different tasks, I interacted with different people. I impacted the organization and those people in different ways. Each of my actions had different consequences. Some consequences pleased me – like when I was paid or praised or felt good about myself and the work I did. Some consequences displeased me, like when I got reprimanded or, in the end, fired. But this is not an identity. It is a series of discreate moments that I interpreted as good or bad, success or failure, and ultimately a source of some identity.

Now, being dream-fired, I am no longer affiliated with the organization, and I can no longer use it to define myself by. In truth, if I can’t use it at the end, it was never actually a marker of some fixed identity to begin with.

When a friend at the temple reached-out to me to ask if I was going to attend the 2023 retreat, I said yes. Even as I was typing my reply to her, I was already thinking about my preparations, buying the tickets, what to pack, what it would feel like to see all my temple friends again after a Covid-filled-world had kept me away for so long….

And then, I caught Covid. Even as I sat at home, bored in quarantine, I thought about how lucky I was to have caught Covid when I did, with weeks to heal-up before the retreat…

And then, after feeling better, testing negative for 5 days, I rebounded. Even as I lay in bed, feeling crappier than I did with the first round of Covid, I kept thinking I still had 10 days before retreat, it should clear up just in time…

And then, I just kept getting sicker and sicker, still showing a bright red line 10 days into my Covid rebound, I finally gave-up, canceled my plane tickets and told my teachers I couldn’t make it to retreat.

All this got me thinking about impermanence and I realized that I would be well served not to just collect examples of impermanence, but to zoom-out and weight what those examples actually tells me about myself and the nature of the world.

Still feeling Covid-crappy, I was binge watching more Walking Dead shows. In one episode, Carol, who in the show has turned-out to be a bad-ass, machine-gun toting, zombie slayer, had gotten dressed-up in a super preppy outfit, rockin’ a cardigan, acting the part of a sweet soccer mom. I laughed out loud, the outfit and mannerisms seemingly so discordant with the Carol ‘I knew’.

And then I asked myself, “why am I so amused?” It’s because I have a permanent idea of what a badass-zombie-killer should look, act and dress like. In that one scene, and my laugh, I saw so clearly that it is me, my concepts that become fixed. The flaw is with me, not with reality. In the end, why do I think I know what badass zombie killers dress like? Zombies aren’t even real, so how would I know…

With the retreat, I was so sure I would make it. Just like with Carol, my idea was fixed. My plan was fixed. My sense of the future was fixed. But, despite my fixation, this isn’t how the world works; the world flows. It changes based on causes and conditions. When the causes for a particular outcome –like getting to go to retreat – are met then I get to go to retreat, but when they are not, my plans have to change whether I like it or not. This is natural, flux and flow. But I foolishly suffer over what is natural: I cling to my fixed notions of what things are, how they should be, what the future will look like. Laying on the sofa, longing for retreat, I was stuck, suffering, as the world and retreat flowed on.

I started considering a bigger picture, my overarching dreams for my alana life. My fantasies about my relationship, time with Eric, all the plans I build in my mind. The plans for a fun NY life that in the end wasn’t fun at all. The plans to globe trot ruined by covid. The plans to move back to SF ruined by wildfires and my asthma. Plans and the pain that arises when I get stuck on particular dreams, the effort and disappointment from trying so hard to make solid, to make real, to affix these things in reality.

I clump, I cling, like trying to compact balls of sand or silt in my hands. This is how suffering arises from tanha, craving, clinging. It is the balling-up and attempt at affixing what is always in flux. Trying over and over, becoming over and over, just to try and force flux into a single shape, for some small duration of time. Pretending that some small moment where things align into a state I like will somehow make me satisfied, till – duh — it doesn’t.

So many births, and yet I have not learned what it so obvious in front of me: Everything arises and ceases based on conditions that are not in my control. Going on retreat, that was only ever fixed in my mind.

And there is no greater fixation, nothing I attempt to clump and then cling to more tightly than atta. I take belongings and I try and arrange them, hold them, squeeze them. I see things that travel together for some time –like a group of leaves drifting on a river — and I mistake that as a clump, something that will hold together, something I can claim. But its just certain circumstances that allow those leaves to float together for a time. When wind, or currents change, when there is a waterfall that disbands them, they float apart. The idea that these collections of things, traits, people, that I float along with for a time, could be an identity, could be something permanent, this is the ignorance that has me trying to hold the clump together, tightening my grip. But the notion that these are me/mine, that’s just a superimposition.

I am so sure I know what zombie slayers look like. So sure I know what my future holds. So sure I know who and what I am. I laugh, or cry, when, over and over, I am proven wrong.

Years ago, I asked Mae Yo to explain the relationship between dukkha and impermanence. She said, “suffering comes from something stopping..it’s anything that you need to tolerate. impermanence is continuous movement, not stopping. suffering is like you want it to stop but it moves. it’s putting a stick in the water and causing ripples.” All these years later and I am only now beginning to understand her answer, in my own terms, everything flows…but me, I suffer because I want to affix.

Story 2) In a class, Mae Neecha told a story from when she was on swim team. She was the best swimmer on the team, so when it was time to vote for a captain she was certain she would be elected. But in the end, the other teammates chose a girl who was more popular, albeit a worse swimmer.

As I considered her story, it was very clear that if being captain were really about her, then there is no way she would not have been elected. It would have been in her control. Something she did would have been able to change the outcome of the vote, or guaranteed that it went her way. In fact, the outcome of the vote wasn’t up to her, it wasn’t dictated by the swim skills she had built. There were causes and conditions –namely the other teammates, the presence of a popular girl, etc, that dictated the outcome.

Over and over we think that our successes –like getting voted a captain, getting promoted at work, getting asked out by the hot guy – prove something about who we are. But if we don’t actually dictate these outcomes, if they arise based on a conglomeration of circumstances beyond our control, do they real prove US? No, they prove a particular state of affairs that arises based on causes and conditions. A state that will shift and change as those causes and conditions change.

Present day alana is going to zoom-out here and simplify this concept a little bit: For every outcome—say a vote – there is a vast number of causes/factors/conditions (which I will simply refer to as ‘reasons’ for the sake of clarity in this discussion) that combine to give rise to the outcome. So many in fact that taking personal pride, or shame, in that outcome, i.e. pretending it is about you, is senseless.

In Mae Neechas’s story, there are each of the voting teammates, who have their own relationships, cliques, views on the qualities and role of a team leader, etc. There is also the characteristics of the competition for captain, who else is running for the role, what are their relationships like? With so many reasons at play, we can’t point to one of those –Neecha—and say this vote proves something definitive about her. All it proves is that the causes and conditions for her being swim captain were not met at that time.

Moreover, each of these reasons is itself conditioned – each teammate has their own past experiences and beliefs that color their relationships, that shape their views on the role of captain. Each competitor for the role has skills, relationships, behaviors that were conditioned by their past environment, opportunities, practice, etc. The truth is, these conditioned reasons extend infinitely into the past, each having been conditioned by countless other past reasons. You can see that the argument for any particular outcome reflecting who or what ‘I’ is getting weaker and weaker…

Ah you say, but what if I am actually the cause of an outcome? Say like a parent is the cause of a child, an artist the cause of a painting, the builder a cause of the house? In other words, what if ‘my’ role in an outcome was so strong that without my involvement the result would not be born? Even still, that cause is conditioned – what is my training that lets me paint? What is my beliefs that make me feel painting something is valuable? And besides, even if we cause something, as soon as it arises that thing has its own karma, it is continually acted upon by forces outside of its cause. As soon as a seed grows into a plant that plant’s existence is shaped by wind and rain and sun. The seed –the cause – doesn’t control it.

This is all what I mean when I say that everything that arises does so based on conditions. Conditions that are based on other conditions long before it. And conditions that will give rise to new conditions to continue the chain of causes yielding effects yielding new causes yielding new effects. There can’t be identity here because identity is fixed and this process is continual flow.

There also can’t be identity here, even momentary identity, or shifting identity, because all outcomes arise based on the reasons that proceed it and immediately take on new shapes and new directions as new reasons move it forward. No one is in control of this. No one is the author of this. And for me, most significantly, there is no self-determination in what is entirely subject to conditions. And it’s very hard to talk about a self without having self-determination. When I think about “who I am” its inextricably linked to the idea that I shape both my identity and my future. Without self-determination, an ‘I’ would just be batted along by the tides of conditionally arising events to which even its reactions are conditioned.

Aside from all of this, there is the question of uniqueness, specialness, that is deeply bound to our sense of identity. I have reflected on my Ubai of snowflakes before: I try to identify as a special little snowflake — the unique crystalline shape that is me and mine alone. But each snowflake just reflects the circumstances (aka the karma) of its arising, not the force of my will, not my self-determination, not any particular meaning or import I superimpose on it. A snowflake’s unique structure is conditional, shaped by the humidity and wind patterns and temperature in which it arises.

I get so caught up in the uniqueness of a particular snowflake shape, that I ignore the basic sameness of all snowflakes which arise when the right combination of temperature and water and pressure combine and melt when the temperature gets too high. But identity requires differentiation, if we were all the same, there would be nothing to mistake as ‘me’, so I fixate on the little differences. I identify with what is conditional, pretending it can prove a me, an I. That it can prove anything at all other then that the circumstances for arising that give rise to a momentary state, some brief duration, before it ceases. It is truly amazing feat of mental gymnastics that I can find a me in any circumstance, better yet in a story of circumstances I have curated from arbitrarily chosen moments, at all…

A note from present day Alana: Back in April 2023, a notion was just beginning to take shape in my mind:

That which is conditional can’t be about me, it can’t be who I am.

At that time, the concept was pretty blurry, and the contemplations, frankly, half baked. But –spoiler alert – over the last few years, this idea has become central to my contemplations on Anatta.

Now, whenever I ask myself the core questions: Why is this situation not me/ about me? What proves this can’t be who I am? How do I know these belongings are not mine? How can I be sure this person does not confirm me? Where can I look in a given situation for proof of anatta? Why don’t I have control? Why is there no meaning in my being a cause/a curator/an arranger of traits/relationships/belongings? The answer always comes back to ‘this is conditional and what is conditional can’t be about me.’

In short, my view of anatta, the core concept I use to understand it, comes back to the idea of conditionality.

Now, this is some deep shit. And, I know its not quite fair, throwing it out there with no context and with no lead-up in the contemplations that got me there. And yet, I don’t know how else to lead into the next 2 blogs below.

The following two blogs then are each simple stories, from teachings I heard from LP Anan and Mae Neecha, on 2 occasions in April 2023. They capture some very early notions of this topic of conditionality and anatta. And my hope is that they will give a little context on the import of this topic, which takes center stage of my practice today. It will be quite hard to separate my very early (2023) understanding to all that has been layered on in more recent considerations. Especially as more recent contemplations provide a clarity I want to share with you readers. So consider these next two blogs a little flash back and a little flash forward…

Story 1) LP Anan was teaching a class that I tuned into. There was some scenario he shared, someone getting super upset at a comment made online. He asked the question, “What is a comment?”, and I started thinking in these terms:

An online comment is something that arises based on a particular arrangement of causes and conditions. It is much like a phone call. A phone call requires the functionality of hardware and software of a phone, the proximity to a tower, the battery life, the characteristics — voice, skillfulness in using technology, etc. — of the caller. If any of these factors change — say proximity to a tower — the quality and characteristics of the call change. Too far from the tower, and the ability of the phone to produce the characteristic of calling is lost all together.

A comment arises based on the particular arrangement of experiences and circumstances that create someone’s point of view and allows them to express it in a certain way, using a certain format. The comment, like the call, is just a manifestation, an arrangement, of factors that create a view/expression.

These characteristics of calls or comments, they are just the natural product of a particular state. A state of a phone that allows calls. A state of experiences and imagination that creates particular views and the comments that ensue.

But states change. The phone runs out of batteries or gets a software update and the details, the characteristics of a call change. A view gets updates based on new information, new imagination, and the comments change. State changes result in characteristic changes. This is evidence there is no identity that can be defined by characteristics arising from states – states are always in flux, not fixed. Characteristics are always in flux, not fixed. The particular arrangements that create states are also changing and not fixed.

You can observe changes in a call to prove change in a phone or use change in phone to prove a change in a call. This works from both directions. Looking at cause will illuminate that there are effects and looking at effects will illuminate that there is a cause.

There is no identity in a state because the state will change and so too will all the characters we assume (samutti) to be the markers/ building blocks of identity. A phone is something that makes calls — till it’s not – and then state changes, and the defining characteristics of a phone’s identity, are over.

For a long time beauty has been a trait I have deeply identified with. Alana is beautiful, alana’s beauty proves other aspects of her identity –namely goodness. And when I look in the mirror and see my beauty fade, I think it is a personal defeat. I feel like my physical form doesn’t correspond to the me I want to be, to the person I imagine I am and that I want to project to the world. I botox, and filler, pluck and diet, all to try and force my body to reflect an identity that entails/embodies/includes the characteristic of beauty.

And yet, beauty is a characteristic of a particular state. It is a physical manifestation of rupa (4es) in a particular, peak, arrangement. And then –as I so clearly see in the mirror, that arrangement shifts, ages, sags, fattens, changes. Rupa is in flux, not fixed. Its shifting is dictated by causes and conditions in rupa. How can I use the product/characteristics of a shifting state to prove who I am? How can I use a state that arises and ceases based on causes and conditions beyond me, my control, my imagined identity, to prove anything about myself?