Alana's Dharma Blog

After Paris, Eric and I decided we really wanted to travel in Japan. Why not we figured, we had the time, the freedom, we always dreamed of a life of unfettered travel and now we can actually do it. We bought a one way ticket Paris to Tokyo and off we went.

In truth, we had already been on the road in France for 3 months. It had started to get a bit tiresome, but we did love Japan and at first, the thrill of a new place, the freedom to go, do, see, whatever we wanted outweighed the downsides.

But as the weeks drew on, us going from one town to the next, The glamour began to wear off. For me, with my asthma and environmental sensitivities, not every hotel will work. With my digestive problems, not every food is going to be OK. I started to become hyper-aware of how much of my time, every single day, my research, my stress, revolves around meeting basic needs – everyday I need to find safe shelter, food. I go to sleep, only to wake-up and need to do it all again.

The truth is this is the reality of life all the time. Meeting our basic needs is a daily struggle. It is hard. It takes time and care. It’s not ever guaranteed.  But when you are settled, in a home, and a daily routine, it is so easily obfuscated – the roof is already over our heads, we have a closet filled with clothes and a fridge filled with foods we enjoy. We forget that raw survival, just managing and caring for our body, is a chore to be endured.

On the road though it was so clear what a crushing burden this body, these needs, simple survival really is. And what is more, is how clear it is that this reality is the same everywhere; in each new place, the food may change, the language, the architecture, the customs, but in the end everyone everywhere is consumed with doing the daily tasks necessary to survive.  

Eric and I had dreamed so long of this early retirement. This period of our life when we could actually be free. We labored so long for that freedom, delayed gratification, did the hard stuff…now that I am here though I have to wonder, if each day is a struggle to meet basic bodily needs, is this really the freedom I had dreamed of?

The insurance on my condo building was coming due, but before our insurer would issue a policy renewal, they needed some information from each unit owner. Most of the owners replied immediately, but, as usual, there was one unit’s owners – we will call them ‘the trouble owners’ – who failed to respond.

Multiple times, the insurer, and other owners and I tried to reached-out to these people, multiple times they ignored communication. Finally, a day before our policy was due to lapse, I got a hold of the trouble owners and was able to get the information the insurer needed to prevent our entire building losing insurance.

I was so angry, these people are slum lords that regularly ignore their apartment, ignore their responsibilities as owners. The are constantly an obstacle: Delaying the entire building’s ability to react to emergencies, preventing routine maintenance, seriously, they  almost left all of us uninsured.

As I sat, trying to decompress after days of stress, worrying we would lose insurance, I decided to try using Mae Neecha’s technique of bringing everything back to nature, to the elements, to consider this situation.

 In fact, I had been using this technique a lot lately;  I have found it a very powerful way to think about anatta, because by realizing some situation is perfectly common in nature, it helps me see it can’t really be about me, it can’t confirm me. It proves that my views, my expectations, are against what is actually perfectly natural. It is my views that must be wrong.

I’m upset at the trouble owners because I believe there are appropriate behaviors – ways owners are SUPPOSED to act, responsibilities they are SUPPOSED to fulfill. They are an obstacle to the condo building running smoothly. But this theme, creating obstacles is a perfectly natural state: A lake creates an obstacle for a forest fire. Land creates an obstacle for the ocean. So it’s normal. I should feel better, right? But as I sat, still fuming, it’s clear, I don’t.

I thought about it more, these trouble owners aren’t just an obstacle to the building, they are an obstacle to something much dearer to me — my number 1 hot-button issue – these owners are an obstacle to my safety. Over and over, their behavior has put me at risk. Losing insurance, that’s just the most recent danger. I can’t help but think that these trouble owners are the one thing that stand in the way of my perfectly safe home. Without them, I would be happy, I would win. I could have my dream place, free of the dangers that come from delinquency and neglect.

But the truth is, if I am being clear-headed, the trouble owners are PART OF THE HOME. They were there before I even bought the place. They aren’t some obstacles to overcome, they are an actual part of the system. Now, I can feel my heart loose a little as I consider the absurdity of my hope that if I could just separate out this part of the home –a part that is obviously integral, these are neighbors in a condo building, that’s part of condos – I’d be ‘safe’.  

When I zoom out, it gets even more clear: Land isn’t an obstacle to the ocean, look at the globe and there is water and land. Both are part of topography. Sometimes water overcomes land, like in a flood, and sometimes land pushes back water, like in a land slide, in either case, these are both just temporary states in a system. What is consistent is there is always both. Wishing for only one part of a system, the one I like better, is holding a fool’s hope. There is nothing there but suffering.

More broadly though, I always want safety. I want an environment that is safe, so that I can protect this body. I want a home that is safe so I can protect this body, and not endanger the resources I use to protect this body i.e. I don’t want a total loss of a home without insurance coverage as that would be financially devastating. I want Eric to have a job that is safe, so I have the resources to project this body. I want freedom from disease, so I can protect this body. I want a society that is predictable, polite, stable, because I associate those things with safety for my life, for my body. I struggle with lack of safety, loss, insufficient resources. This is over and over again my theme.   

Taken to the logical extreme, on some level I think I can be safe, avoid loss of life, of belongings, like there is actual some move I can make, some state of affairs in which I can finally one up this whole system that is shifting states, impermanence loss. But dropping dead is part of life. Losing is part of having. It’s not a thing anyone can just overcome or escape. I can’t be alive and then just ‘be safe’ from those states, they are part of life. Being ‘safe’ from those things is meaningless. Me, I am holding a fool’s hope. There is nothing there but suffering.

On another level of course, I know all of this. We all know all of this. Which is why we are all playing for duration. Just a little longer with what I ‘have’, with what I love. A little more heath, a bit better functioning. Just slightly more responsible neighbors.  I want a little less suffering, or to only have the kinds and degree of suffering I feel I can carry and accept. I want a little more water, or a bit more land. Enough to create an environment that suits me. I want that, hope for that, try to optimize for that. I try to navigate in tiny wiggles against the forces of this world’s currents  without actually having any final say, any true control, of floods or landslides, ocean currents or volcanos.

 Knowingly, I came into a world of suffering, of loss, of impermanence betting on the fact that I can ‘beat the house’. Such a fool’s errand just to try to have as much comfort/time/safety as I can, as long as I can. Lifetime after lifetime I get myself re- born trying to ‘solve’ the wrong side of the equation. I spend so much force, karma, efforting, just to get a little more – a little more time, a little more pleasure, a little more stability. This is stupid. The best way to avoid suffering, loss, instability is to get out of situations, out of a world in which those features are woven into the fabric of the place. At least, its not hopeless, an impermanent  world offers a gift –the fact that I don’t have to stay here for ever.

After my first, and to date only, battle with covid, I suffered long covid for around 8 months. The infection itself wasn’t bad, but I rebounded and simply never really recovered. In the wake of the infection I had extreme fatigue, dizziness, post exertional malaise. For someone who had been strong and fit before, it was a blow.

 I was, as I always am, impatient to heal. I did some research and decided, based on a few case studies and my own medical history with allergies and asthma, to try high dose antihistamines. I had started these about a month post infection, and they were clearly helping, but then the fires came, and with them an exacerbation of my asthma and environmental sensitivities that made it feel like I was backsliding in my recovery. Worried that I had inflammation that was going to worsen, I contacted my doctor and she agreed to put me on steroids.

Two days into my 5-day steroid pulse I knew I had made a big mistake. I felt floored. What had before been easy exhaustion before, turned into total couch-lock. There was no mistaking the fact that I had made my situation much worse. I quite the steroids, with my doctors blessing, before I finished the box. I waited, but the new worse baseline seemed like my new normal.

And then, a few weeks later, after doing more research, I decided to try taking the antiviral medication Valtrex. This is a common medication for cold sore outbreaks and I had a stash that my dermatologist had written for me just in case I felt a cold sore coming on. I took the drug and within minutes started feeling better. It wasn’t a full recovery, but it was noticeable. After trialing the Valtrex a few times a day, I spoke with my GP –shared my experience and research — and she agreed to write me a prescription for a high dose protocol that I had found in a  trial study for patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. She simply required me to keep up regular blood work to keep an eye on my kidneys.

It was pretty quickly obvious the protocol worked. Over the course of weeks, my symptoms got better and better and I was ultimately able to fully titrate off the medication after 7 months. My chemical sensitivities, environmental illness and asthma remained much more easily triggered, but overall –as long as I could avoid environmental toxins – I was able to get back to a full life, including exercise. Considering where I had started, and how many folks simply never recover from long covid, it felt like a small miracle.

I say that ‘miracle’ part mind you, but in reality I felt a lot like I had won, like my research, my quick action, my retaining such a flexible and open-minded doctor, my diligence in doing all the right labs and self-care, had been rewarded. While it was never a given in my mind that I would recover, I definitely took a lot of credit for the ultimate recovery. I wasn’t just relieved, I was proud. Sure the world had walloped me with disease, but I brought the force of my resources that allowed me to wiggle out of it. Overall, it was a point for Alana.

But now, sitting in my Paris apartment, worried that I might have again been exposed to Covid by one of those sneezers or coughers in my French class, I got to thinking about my long covid misadventures again…

With the long covid, I am so self-congratulatory I ‘got on it’ self-medicated with the antihistamines and the Valtrex, used my research ability, my stock piling meds, to ‘win’, to persevere. But I ignore the part that the same tendencies, the same exact set of traits and biases and resources is what got me to take steroids that made my situation worse, requiring the Valtrex in the first place.

A few more thoughts on what I can learn from my covid misadventures:

1) Even if everything is ‘perfect’ and I can p’wn, and I am able to bring a ton of resources to the table to effectuate outcomes I want, all I buy is a little duration. During early covid times, I brought my wealth, my willpower, to the table and with endured strict isolation, measures that allowed me to I avoid covid longer than most. But after 3 years. that life was unsustainable and ultimately I did get covid. All I bought was duration, not the ability to avoid decay and disease altogether. Here I am, worried about again catching covid a second time and it is obvious that even after so much work that went into recovery, all I have bought was some duration of health before sickness comes again. This frailty, this susceptibility to disease is the unavoidable nature of bodies.

2) When I had covid, I brought years of prep and research to the table. I had stockpiled every preventative drug and supplement that modern science had credibly hypothesized might help battle infection and prevent long covid.  I had a plan, nose sprays, hot baths, sleep schedule, post care, Paxlovid, Metformin, vitamins, herbs, etc. I did everything ‘right’ to avoid long covid. I got it anyway. Why? Because all the preparation in the world doesn’t guarantee the outcome I want. Preparation isn’t some salve that protects me from what the world is, or from the karma I have built. Sickness, death, hell states and suffering are not just possible, but guaranteed no matter what preparations take place ( save those that prevent rebirths).

In fact, some part of my  ‘preparation’ may well have contributed to my getting long covid. Its really hard to say if the Paxlovid rebound, which can entail higher viral loads than initial infection, may have tipped me into LC.

3) That in the very same incident, ie getting long covid, the tendencies and resources I relied on to ‘beat’ the disease ended up both helping and hurting.  The Valtrex and antihistamines made things better, but the steroids made things much worse. In a single instance, all the tools in my tool bag were able to both get me ahead and behind, so doesn’t it mean the tools are not really tools of advantage? All these lives I have built these tools, collected traits and resource I think will keep me safe. But can they possibly be the tools of safety when they are equally capable of putting me in harms way? And if the tools I have believed in, invested in for so long, don’t do what I think they do, don’t keep me safe, what will? Where is safety in this world?

4) Which brings me to a final question: Who is Alana without the possibility of safety? Afterall, this is such a deep sandan for me, coming into this world, winning, proving my prowess/ power/worthiness, by finding the ever-elusive safety. In my mind, a good Alana is a safe Alana. A beautiful Alana is a safe Alana. A prepared/virtuous/willful/wise/etc. Alana is a safe Alana. But what if there is no safe Alana at all? What does that mean about who I am?

I pretend being a good alana, amassing what I believe to be good karma, got me these advantages. That these advantages prove who I am. But if these advantages can turn disadvantage based on the situation, can I still use them to prove my goodness, my safeness, my worthiness.

Maybe an even better insight is this: All my advantages, or disadvantages, prove my past actions, prove that the causes of those things I see as advantage/disadvantage were put in place. But this is just conditionality, the arising of effect based on cause, there is no identity here. There is just the flow of karma, the flow of this world. Nothing is identified. Nothing is proven. Nothing is portended. This is meaningless (this last remark is also an addition of a 2026 Alana, getting here took some time).

Last night Eric and I were talking about health, strategizing our fasting and longevity plans going forward. I told him long covid had really shifted my view: Before I thought I could optimize my body, my health, that this body was something for me to p’wn with my will. But once I had LC, my goals became more modest: I just hoped for a body that would let me function, that would allow me the ability to do at least some of what I wanted to do.

In effect, ‘I had settled’. Now, I feel sort of like it’s hard to decide what to do, where to push and where to simply accept that I live in a breakable body that limps along till it dies. Not to be fatalistic, just to understand that I can’t just enforce my will. And that even if I can, the effects are limited. Plus, there are always unforeseen consequences: Helping one thing may hurt another.

This new view of my body though, it feels a little like giving up. Like a self-betrayal given that  I have always had a bias towards acting. I will do, I will fix, I will pre-empt and prepare. Clearly this is my MO, or I wouldn’t have been having a conversation with Eric about my fasting and longevity plans to begin with. And nowhere is this tendency, to plan, to act, to do, more obvious than with my body. And yet, this tendency has had a number of unintended and undesired consequences. My health is ripe with examples:

I had a leep procedure back in my early 20s to remove precancerous cells from my cervix.  When the cells were discovered, I was given a choice, wait and see if the dysplasia goes away or have the surgery. The idea of waiting, doing nothing, was unbearable, I wanted to act, to do, not ‘sit around a wait’ to get cancer. But the surgery left a scar and I have had cervical issues since. Ironically, now adays, guidelines have changed and women under 25 aren’t even recommended to get screenings– apparently dysplasia at a young age is super common and generally goes away on its own. If only I had ‘done nothing’ and waited…

Then of course was the case of the unbroken teeth that I decided to have crowned in order to prevent future cracks. The procedure itself cracking a tooth that ultimately needed a root canal and worse, exposing me to mercury that is likely at the heart of many of my current breathing issues and environmental sensitivities.

Even with long covid, I couldn’t just wait, give myself time to heal. In fact, I had been getting better, but not fast enough, not the NOW I wanted. I was worried I shouldn’t just wait and let the disease take its course, I worried I had excess inflammation I should SOLVE. The steroids I took to solve it ended up making things much worse and were really what kicked me into LC as opposed to just prolonged healing times. 

Eric pointed out that I am an anxious person. Acting NOW sooths, me. It is an outlet for my anxiety. I pointed out however there is a deeper underlying view, otherwise I wouldn’t just find the act of acting soothing. The fact that I do points to my belief that my actions will effectuate good outcomes, at least better ones than doing nothing at all. At the heart of it is a mistaken belief of my own control, my own prowess, my own ability to p’wn — if not the universe than at least my own body.

Its hubris, grounded in my blind faith in myself, in my belief that I am special and that I can bring some resource –smarts, money, will, preparation, knowledge –to the table that gives me an advantage, that lets me one-up the world. One-up this breakable 4e body.

Yesterday, I was reflecting on how easy it is to see other people’s blind spots, the places they lock themselves in, put boxes on their head, trap themselves with their own beliefs. Isn’t this yet another example of my own? I am so convinced my actions have the power to bring about good outcomes, so convinced that not acting is a risk, that I trap myself into acting without regard for the consequences and risks. I almost always see waiting, not acting, as the worse option even though my own life shows me ample cases where waiting probably would have had better outcomes. This is again me, locking myself in, my sense of identity, the need for control, throwing away the key.

Why do I do this? Why am I so deeply uncomfortable with uncertainty, with the wait and see, with the actual nature of the world, that I am always trying to get ahead of it, find some way to mitigate the impacts of uncertainty, of impermanence that I find unpleasant. The real reason is that I fail to understand karma. I have the mistaken belief that it is somehow I, The Great Alana, that is in the driver’s seat of this body, this life, this ‘fate’ (i.e. continual stream of happenings) I call my own. Until I see karma for what it is, the absolute law of this world, I will always be trying to beat it. Afterall, I believe it is something beatable. And so, whether it is with action, or inaction, I will always be trying to game, to win, to fix a world that isn’t broken anywhere but in my own mind, expending energy and suffering trying to force that which will never yield to me.