Alana's Dharma Blog

This is a follow-on to the last post with a note from ‘today’s Alana’. It reflects more recent contemplations on this idea– body as ticket to desired future – that has been a recurrent theme in my practice over the years. While the contemplations in the last  blog helped soften me, it remains hard for me to let go of the ticket because I am still attached to the trip. Because, definitionally, I need an Alana body in order to have the next moment with an Alana body. The other day Eric said something that really hit me, “sure you need an Alana body to continue a story with that Alana body, but so what?” My want for the story doesn’t dictate my getting it. That I can’t continue a life with something once conditions dictate I part ways from it doesn’t change the reality that I will lose it.

We had gone to see Cirque de Sole the other day. And I considered the precarious situation of the performers; they have built a life, a livelihood, an identity by honing their bodies. But all it takes is a fall, a break, an injury and their career is over. The identity of themselves as an elite athlete, honed over years, is over. It’s just further evidence this body can’t really be who we are.

I internalized this and considered my own body more closely. Lately I have needed to go on hormones for perimenopause. Without them I couldn’t sleep and I was anxious and depressed; my entire outlook on life, my way of behaving and being in the world had changed. I like to think these behaviors and outlooks are core parts of ME, who I am, but clearly these traits are super dependent on a little hormone. Now, I am so dependent on the little hormone pill that makes me ‘normal’ again. For the performances and myself, the circumstances of the body dictate how and when we can use it. Our bodies’ are only usable by us, in the ways we want to use them, when circumstances allow.

 I thought on it more and realized that for the performers, what a career ending injury really means is an end to their story. An end to the narrative they tell themselves about what tomorrow will be. My attachment to my body, to this life, is exactly the same. I want this body for a story that happens next: To help me continue to be, to prove who I am. But it is just as subject to breaking as these circus performers’ hanging on bars and balancing on poles. And if it is subject to something so little to destroy my whole dream and sense of self, is it who I am?

It is easy to look at the performers and see the body forces us to alter our narrative of who and what we are in this life. But as I think on it, I see the same thing plays out over multiple lives: I cling to this body because it is essential to my Alana story, I need it for what happens next. With an injury, I adjust, accept limitations, recast the story under the new terms the body allows — I can’t be a yogi, but I can do pilaties. I can’t do pilaties as I have long covid, but at least I’m alive, I can figure a new story. But death is the same, I just accept the limitations, find a new rebirth to recast the story in terms the new life allows. This, zooming-out, to see what is true in one life is true across countless lives. 

A few days later I was again considering the idea of the body as the ticket. In other words, I can say the body is the tool that allows me to write my story. I thought about  slaves –for them, the body is actually their bondage. Because of their blackness, their being owned in a society that allowed ownership of them, their body guaranteed their story, their lives, weren’t theirs to tell, to create. I considered someone with trapped-in syndrome, completely conscious but paralyzed; their body isn’t a tool to the fantasy life they imagine, it is a cage. I considered a friend who recently committed suicide when he got a cancer diagnosis, suddenly his body was forcing a turn in his story he couldn’t abide by and so he killed the body to avoid the new imagined future. To avoid a new identity as sick, out of control of a body he had honed and prized for years (he was the friend who taught me about body building).  

When my house in Montreal flooded, I considered how the house wasn’t a shelter. It can, at times, in certain forms, be used as shelter. But that can change so quickly. It proved shelter is not what a house IS. It’s just what it does some of the time, when the circumstances are right. I can use the house as shelter when it is in a 4e arrangement that protects my 4e body. When it is moldy, in a 4e arrangement that endangers my 4e body I can’t use it at all. It is in fact anti-shelter.

When a 4e body is in an arrangement that doesn’t strain credulity for me to keep using it as a prop, an actor, to tell myself the fantasy story, then I can use it to imagine all sorts of futures. When it has died, de-formed, disaggregated enough that it is no longer a credible prop, a leading actor, for the story I imagine I can no longer use it at all.

When I claim these objects, in truth I am only claiming one state, one side, of them. Once they shift to become traps, poison, I want nothing more than to renounce my claim. My friend committed suicide to renounce his. Because these objects shift through many states, ones that are helpful, ones that are harmful, ones in which we drift out of each other’s stories (karma), the claim is also anicca. The claim is something that I will ultimately renounce when the state of the object is no longer desirable to me. When it strains credulity for my own mind to use it as a prop to further the fantasy that pre-exists the object or my claim on it. Not only are these objects conditional, my claim on them is as well. And what is conditional has to be anatta. Arising based on causes, existing based on causes, ceasing based on causes that prove absolutely nothing about me

I have been thinking more on how to dig up this attachment to rupa. I see my problem: Even if I know what a belonging is, a 4e object, I cling to it because I think I need it for my future fantasy. The parallel is a plane ticket — I know it’s just paper, but I cling to it because I desire the trip. I desire the future I imagine and that ticket is a critical tool to achieve that future, to have fun on that trip.

I have already tried to attack this belief from multiple angles: Just cuz you have a ticket Alana, it doesn’t mean you can go on the trip – look what happed when you had a ticket to go on retreat but got Covid and couldn’t attend.”  Or,  “you can go even without a ticket Alana, the train station is across the street”. Or, “How many time Alana have you gotten a ticket, taken a trip and had it be a total disappointment?” I even tried reasoning that the trip I imagine is just more of the same daily life, after all, what is over there is what is over here; trip after trip I have observed that in Japan, or Italy or Israel, there is need, work, stress, impermanence. Still, none of this self-talk is working, my heart is still attached to the ticket.

I tried another tactic: Sookie(yes, back to True Bloods) clings to Bill. Why? He is the ticket to the future she always wanted — a normal domestic life, a partner. Because she can’t read his thoughts, he is able to fil the hole in her heart, take on the leading lover role in her domestic future fantasy. She already had the fantasy. Then, meeting Bill, she ‘minifies’ him, clings to him, she sticks him in the partner shaped hole in her heart and adjusts the details of her fantasy to be Bill-centric.

So of course, she needs Bill to get that future, she literally designs the future, or at least tweaks all the details of the pre-existing future lover fantasy, around him. Somehow, this softens the body as ticket issue for me a little. I see the dynamics of how a body, a ticket, is not some a priori attachment, instead any particular body/ticket is just the object I plug into the fantasy that preexisted and paint some details around it. As I do, the painting, the detailifying, I claim the body/ticket, become attached, lay meaning and samutti upon the thing. In truth, each ticket, each body, is interchangeable, when this one is used-up, I will keep seeking and claiming a new one so that I can keep taking these ‘fun’ lives/trips.

I consider how Eric is my Bill. The type of relationship we have – so close, partners in everything, constant companions that face the world together -- is already my fantasy, it pre-exists Eric, I was just looking for a leading lover to fill the role. Then, I met Eric. He and I naturally fell into lockstep with one another, and so I placed him in the hole in my heart. He was acceptable, so I claimed him to forward my future fantasies. In so doing, the fantasy  took on an Eric shape, an Eric hue.  

The issue is twofold: The first is that Eric, who I think is so special, who I cling to so tightly, actually is not. He is in fact one in a string of folks –in this life and in past ones – that I have claimed, and lost, as I try to use them to fulfill my dreams.

The second is I really am setting myself up for sorrow by naming, claiming, clinging to this ingredient, this particular prop that I attach to in service of my fantasy. By saying to myself, “that person/thing there is my ticket” I have now invested in, become hooked by, a changeable object that I don’t control and will definitely lose. Who creates my sorrow other than me? And why? For some arbitrary fantasy of my own making. For the contours, the props, the leading players, the interchangeable bodies and lovers and tickets that I convince myself I ‘need’ mostly based on the fact they were there and I believed I could claim them, use them, in the first place.

The truth is, if the fantasy calls for a partner, shouldn’t any partner do? If the trip calls for a car shouldn’t any car do? If I need a body, shouldn’t anybody do? And if I saw this really, that none of these are special or unique, would I claim them as mine, as who I am?

But I don’t see that, instead I look at every detail about how the snowflakes I love, I call my own, are incredibly special, rather than see that they all share the fundamental nature of snow.  The reason why is that I can’t really build a fantasy that way.  I need to personalize, to make it unique.  Not all dresses will work, I like the one with the frills that reflect who I think I am. Not every body will work, or is ideal, I need the one with details I think reflect me. That I think will advantage me. And if I can’t have that body, if karma prevents it, then I at least need to pay attention to the details of the body I have, zoom in on features I think are different –like a snowflake’s crystalline structure. There is no identity in sameness. I need details, differences, that uphold that I’m unique. That seem specific to the Alana I curate. 

What is more is that I can’t abide by a fantasy in which I don’t control the object. In which I have no say in its preservation. Its direction. In which I can’t depend on it. I know this, so I claim object in the hope my claim means they will act as I see fit. Or maybe I claim and as a result assume the object will act as I see fit. Or more likely there is a cycle, a pre-existing delusion the object will act as I see fit and a claim that reinforces this view. Regardless of the order one key  truth is the same — each object is like every other one. Interchangeable. It hurts to admit it, puts a chink in my story, introduces a whole lot of ‘risk’ I am not comfortable with. But, regardless of my claim, my body and some other body are exactly the same 4e object. My claim exists only in my head. The nature of the object exists in the object. 

When reading Mae Neecha’s autobiography, I had been deeply struck by her description of a life as a swan in which she saw her swan lover die before her. I started crying when I read that short paragraph and I knew it had struck a chord.

Eric is my beloved swan mate. I love him so, I am so attached. I am a person who wants a swan mate, someone with whom I share every moment, side-by-side, always together. That love ideal is not the same for everyone. But it is overwhelmingly meaningful for me, and has been since I was a kid, that I reason it must be based on my past experiences, based on what has arbitrarily happened to me before, based on what I am used to. I came into this life with a swan shaped hole in my heart and my entire existence has largely centered upon filling it. Life without a swan love is a life that is empty and meaningless for me.

I chose Eric as my swan love. And when I did, I started grasping at him, clinging to him. I placed him in my story and started writing my story around him. Now I am stuck, attached, with all the dukkha that ensues. But when I consider the mechanics here, I realize it is pretty dumb to get so attached to Eric that I cry over random swan deaths, because I  can’t imagine a future without him, when it was me that made him some critical ingredient to my future in the first place.

It’s like painting a picture with a bowl of fruit in the center. Then stressing that the bowl of fruit may be cut out somehow. Worrying the picture will then be incomplete. But I am the painter, I put the fruit bowl in the picture to begin with. The object itself has no meaning, no significance. I just place it there, claim it as mine, and as a result I became attached. Then I suffer the idea that it could disappear. That the story, the image, will be incomplete. This is my situation: I wanted a swan partner, someone who I believed would care for me, keep me safe, affirm me. Eric fit the bill so I claimed him, I created a story –a future fantasy of our life together — and because of the story, not because of Eric, I am attached.

For the story I stress, I work, and most of all, I worry if the ingredients I believe I need for the future story are in jeopardy. I need this body, I need Eric, I need money. But the only reason I ‘need’ these things, is for the story I myself made-up. The story, that is self. ME. MY NARRATIVE. This is atta – I , others, belonging are something meaningful because they mean something in my narrative. I am the story I tell myself.

The thing is, that story is totally conditional. I ended-up with Eric because my ex had decided to go to Oxford and leave the country. Otherwise, I might well have married him. Eric’s ex had dumped him just before we started dating, if not, Eric would not have been available just as my prior swan flew the coop. Its circumstantial that Eric and I ended up together and what is circumstance can’t prove ME, it just proves the circumstances in which something arose.

I was watching a workout video, the instructor shouted encouragingly, “control your body, control your movements.” Even as my body was doing the moves, my brain started to consider my bias to pay attention to, draw evidence from, the moments I think I am in control. Right now, as I haul this heavy weight, feeling tough, on top –controlling my body, controlling my movements – I am considering how many times my workouts have led me to injury. Usually though, I edit those moments, where I am not controlling my body, not controlling my movements, out of my memory, like those moments don’t even count.

Back when I was yoga-alana (before the yoga-induced hip tear that ended my yoga career), I took so much pride in controlling my body, my movements. It was like every pretzel shape my body could make affirmed me, my practice. Like each asana, if perfectly performed, could showcase my extreme willpower.

But now, as a considerably less strong, less toned, less flexible alana hauls todays’ weights around, I think about the truth: A body can be trained. A muscle strengthened. Practice can hone skill to make certain shapes. That’s not control. That’s just terms of a 4e body. It is  just effects that the set of causes and conditions of my practice manifested. Its normal.

If I controlled, I would not have had to quit that yoga practice due to injury. I would not still hurt today. I would not have had to change my story, limited the kinds of activities that present Alana can do to try and re-claim that feeling of control. I would not be stuck doing this boring workout, struggling under weights that used to feel light, as I try and regain a body, a feeling I once had before.

How is it that I fool myself so thoroughly? I puff up my ego, feel so affirmed as I do the exercise in front of me, believing I am controlling my body and movements exactly as the instructor says. When the very fact that I am hauling these baby weights, doing this less strenuous non-yoga workout is already perfect proof that I wasn’t in control in the first place. This is a compromise workout, for a compromised body, that is showing me with each labored, pained movement that I am not in control at all.