Alana's Dharma Blog

I have been thinking about it: I am sick a lot. I have been sick a lot since I was a kid. I had bad stomach issues growing up, later the back issues, the allergies, asthma, mast cell disease. One way or another, I have almost always, in this life, been sick.

In addition to my actual sickness, how many times have I worried about being sick? All the cancers, the autoimmunity, the covid, bird flu. How is it that I can’t accept that that this body DOES get sick and die. That is its nature. Obviously, all my fear and hypochondria suggests I know it CAN get sick and die.  Logic tells me that eventually it WILL get sick and die. But I obviously think I have some measure of control, like the duration or the terms of sickness can be determined, at least influenced, by me.  

I can actually see my own thinking, the points I need to disprove:

• Sure, I’m sick, but not fatally so.
• I am not so sick I can’t accept it, at least I can continue to live-out my beloved story.
• I can prolong the duration of my health, or at least maintain todays’ or better level of health, till I die. 

But is this all even true? And to the extent that it is, does it even matter?

Sick, ok, but not fatally so…this time. Each time it seemed fatal in the past was clearly a false alarm. It was sick, but not terminally. But that’s normal. In a life,  everyone who survives long enough is sick many times; continually shifting aggregates, growing dis-eased until there is one final death is the nature of a 4e body. Eventually there will be a fatal illness. A fatal arrangement of the elements. How can I possibly take there not being one yet as any kind of confirmation about me? That I am special, that I am in control? It is crazy to think I am exempt from the fatal part when my elements show so clearly they are subject to the normal, like everything else, sick part.

Not so sick I can’t accept it, that I can’t continue to live out my story…I mean, what choice does anyone have but to accept their illness? People accept their handicaps, their pain, their cancer, their chronic diseases. Everyone accepts this stuff because there is no choice. The illness isn’t on our terms. We accommodate it. How can I take this universal fact, that we all bear the fruit of our karma, the limitations of a 4e body,  and interpret it to believe that enduring is equivalent to dictating?

I pretend that I can still live my story despite my illness. But its not true: I am not living ‘my story’, I am not executing on some great vison I had in the past for my present and future. No, I adapt, wiggle, adjust the story to fit the body, to accommodate my illnesses.  The proof of this is insanely obvious: My mast cell disease limits where I can go, what hotels I can stay at, the air quality my body can bear. I claim my story is me, it is alana, it is who I am, but the story is just my shifting narrative that recasts my hopes and dreams and sense of self in light of the actual facts this ailing, eventually dying body dictate.

I often think that the worst part of a terminal illness, what scares me the most, is I won’t get to continue to live, to create my story, it’ll just be over. Eric and I are always trying to imagine our future. We feel so restless when that totally fictious future seems uncertain. It seems so terrible to me to imagine something other than the future that my present-self desires. Afterall, the past is gone. The present is fleeting. I live for the future.

But is the end of my body the end of the story? Rebirth is driven by desire, by my craving to keep the fantasy, the story-of-self going. If the desire hasn’t died, the new birth is coming. It is just a different a body, a different name. A different fantasy that adapts to the limitations I face in the same exact way that right-now-Alana-story adapts to the limitations of body that I face.  

That I can prolong the duration of health, the duration till death. Duration is a bitch. The heart of my hope, what makes it so hard to smother my delusions. But, why should I believe I can prolong duration? Why do I feel like every time I haven’t died yet is on ALANA, as opposed to the causes and conditions of death not having yet been met?

If I really could control duration, wouldn’t I have been able to infinitely avoid covid? Sure I was able to lock myself away for 18 months. But does that prove I controlled duration? It was the fact that I had the karma –the resources, the will, the circumstances – that facilitated such a long period of isolation. And when it was exhausted, when I simply couldn’t endure isolation any longer, I promptly got sick.

I selectively remember the times, the places I believed I had some influence and I interpreted that to mean the power lies with me to delay illness and death. So while there is a duration of health, a duration of illness, a duration before death, this is not proof the power over that duration lies with me. Even if it did, is duration really satisfactory? No amount of healthy time, no amount of life while I am still so invested in the story of the future is going to be enough.

I lay hope for duration, for a duration that is satisfactory, for a story long enough to make alana true, on a shifting, dying 4e body I do not control. A body that has been sick, many times before.

I had sent a message to Mae Neecha about a contemplation I had on regret. Here I want to share the original email, and her reply, as it prompted renewed considerations of rupa, sickness and atta which I will delve into in subsequent blogs.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Original Email to Mae Neecha:

I wanted to do a quick write-up of a different regret contemplation I had begun considering on retreat. I have fleshed-it out a bit more, and thought I would share, since, why not 😉. But more because it brings me squarely to a topic I’m not sure I have closely considered enough, the dukkha specific to self-belonging. Or maybe just self belonging in general – with feeling this time.

The background: Back when I had covid, I took Paxlovid. I cleared the infection quickly and, per CDC guidelines at the time,  I exited quarantine/masking after I tested negative on day 5, took a second test 48 hrs later that was also negative. A few days later, I started having a sore throat and mucus again. I wrote it off as allergies. That night, I went to a concert, unmasked. The next day, still having symptoms, I decided to covid test again before some friends came over. I was positive. I had rebounded.

It has been weighing so heavily on my heart that I went out, unmasked, and exposed all those folks in the concert hall.  I blame myself for writing off those early symptoms as allergies.  Especially because Eric had a Paxlovid rebound as well and that is when he got me sick. It wasn’t just some abstract possible statistic risk out there, it happened to me. Ironically, part of my reasoning when I started getting symptoms again was, “2 super ‘rare’ Paxlovid rebounds in one house, what are the chances?”…

Of course, in my heart, I know that if I knew I was sick, I would not have gone to that concert and exposed others. But still, I was blaming myself for not having a high enough level of suspicion of symptoms. I blamed myself for not knowing. And I felt especially sheepish because all pandemic long I had been throwing shade, wondering why the hell it was so difficult for folks to just stay home and keep others safe. And here I was doing exactly the thing I despised.

As I was turning this all over in my mind, an old, different story I had already contemplated on popped into my mind. It was when I sold the Porche. The short version of it was I was super upset when I went to sell the thing and it was worth way less then I had expected. Turns out, there had been engine trouble brewing. Sure, I had felt a little bit of kickback when I drove, but I thought nothing of it, it was so subtle. But the dealership mechanic said it was a symptom of a very sick engine.  I was so hung up, I felt like this car, I thought was valuable, proved my value, had deceived me. I felt foolish. One of the things I felt especially foolish about was that I felt like I SHOULD HAVE known it was sick. Here I was using this car to help prove my self image of a buttoned-up, on top, in control Alana and I didn’t even know there was engine trouble. I felt so irresponsible. The opposite of in control. Of course, the punchline there was that the car never did prove anything about how in control and buttoned up I am (and lots  of other stuff, that’s actually a pretty elaborate contemplation for another share).

But when I considered this SHOULD HAVE KNOWN issues in the context of the covid story, I realize I have a pattern (there is other evidence I won’t bore you with) – I consider knowledge of something as a marker of mineness. It’s a trait I have (arbitrarily) chosen to prove to myself that something belongs to me.  Because I consider this body (and the car) mine, I should have known it was sick. And I am so addicted to the idea that this body is mine, I rather take on heavy guilt for not knowing it was sick, rather than just admit the more obvious truth: The fact that I have no idea what is brewing in this body — that it is happening without my knowledge, better yet my direction/control – is pretty strong evidence that it isn’t mine at all.

The funny thing is, this same wrong view of ownership cuts another way – I suspect it played a part in my slowness to suspect that I had rebounded despite symptoms. Again, another contemplation from a while back helps elucidate:

I had gotten strep years ago. I had a sore throat, but I felt like I was just run down. Like I had talked a lot the night before…it took 2 days before it even dawned on me to test for strep. Sure enough, positive. I considered at the time why I was so reluctant to admit, to myself, I was sick. I realized that I was slow to admit illness at the time, because I considered myself healthy, that was the self-vision I had. On some level, back then, I thought I was exempt from illness, it couldn’t be happening to me. Just like rebound couldn’t be happening to me. Because I view this body as mine, who I am, I struggle to accept it is the same as every other person, every other 4e, subject to shifting states, to imbalance, to decay. Surprised when it happens against my will, not on my schedule. That and, of course, the knowledge trap –if it were really sick, wouldn’t I know? Afterall, its mine.

The irony of course hasn’t escaped me that I try and use this body to prove what a kind, compassionate Alana I am, and here it is exposing others to illness. Because I claim the body, treat it as a tool for self-actualization, I bear the burden of guilt for it. I bear shame and embarrassment, when I smell, when I sag, when I wrinkle.  When this body doesn’t match my self-image.  I bear physical pain trying to push it to do my will, to fit into the slinky gala dress or to stay in places in which I am struggling to breathe. I live with constant fear and stress trying to protect it, because in my mind I need it to keep being me, to keep becoming, to have the future that exists in my mind. Afterall, self is meaningless without an imagined future.

With the Eric story, self belonging played a star role as well. I think it is ok to whip Eric, I expect a certain set of actions and availability to me, precisely because he is mine…

I guess this is a round about way of saying, I really had to go a ways before I could come back to this idea of mineness and really see the burden of it. To really see just how it sneakily flies under the radar. Such a huge wrong view that has been hiding in plain sight.

Anyway, I am back to self and self belonging. I am also going to dig into this idea of comfort. There is some real magical thinking required to believe that standards that lie with me –my rupa, my nama – are going to be pandered to by the world. Just a wild guess…its also going to require a delusion of self and self belonging.

Thanks again and I’ll keep you posted.

———————–

Mae Neecha wrote me back the following: 

“It is so interesting because you get sick very often, like all kinds of sick, for someone who works so hard to be healthy and thinks “It couldn’t be happening to me”… at this point, shouldn’t you be convinced it IS happening to you AGAIN? The body is doing what it always does, what it is supposed to do…age and die.”