Alana's Dharma Blog

This blog is a continuation of the last, ‘Why The Hell AM I Still Here?.’ If you have not already done so, please go back and read it to better follow this contemplation.

My problem is that I want arising and ceasing – karma – to be on my terms. Clinging to the hope I can somehow achieve that, and resultantly to the things that have arisen, and that will cease, that is my suffering.  I see the problem. I see the solution. And yet I still can’t seem to get myself free. Over and over I come back to the ‘logic’ that some people beat the house some of the time, maybe this time that will be me.

I can’t get over the idea of my own power, my faith that my own abilities/actions will be the causes I want them to be, and manifest the effects I want to manifest. I mistake agency for control. I mistake the fact that of course I do have an impact on my life, on preserving my health, and my wealth, and my belongings as proof that the things I do at any given moment determine whether I get the outcome I want or not.

But, as Mae Neecha has said, and I still foolishly don’t believe, our actions now matter, but how much? Aren’t they just a small trickle of the whole gushing stream of causes, conditions and factors that come together to forge an outcome? Afterall, I bought a plane ticket to get to retreat in 2023, I took time off, I RSVPed, I mentally prepared myself. Then I caught Covid and couldn’t go. Later, when I talked to Mae Yo, she said something that I still can’t completely understand, but that is the crux of all of this: I didn’t have the causes to go to retreat.  I had factors — like sunlight and water and soil — but there was no seed, no cause, so no tree could grow. 

I spend so much time stressing and fearing, arranging and hoarding.  I cling not just to the things I love, but to this tendency for vigilance because of an over inflated sense of self, because I believe this trait gives me the power to keep the things I love. It doesn’t, but it sure makes me constantly stressed out.

I can’t put down the idea that this time might just be about me. I MIGHT, in any given circumstance, be able to do just the right thing to cause the effect I want. Be damned all those times that the opposite is true; I was a cause all right, in getting thing I definitely did not want (the root canaled teeth, the onset of rosacea, the garden dig that fucked the house foundation). And be damned the fact that what I want at any given time is sorta arbitrary: Like Sookie and Bill, something I imagine will fulfill a fantasy, and then which I build a fantasy around, clinging to, and getting saddened by losing the thing I imagined the value into in the first place. And be damned that all of this vigilance, the effort and stress of it, hurt me; I foolishly think it’s worth the cost to carry around a safety blanket, no matter how heavy, no matter how warm I get, just because one day it may help when I am cold. Even though — no matter what I believe –if the causes and conditions for my being cold, for my dying of freezing, get met, I will freeze with or without a blanket. 

Might is not an affirmation of anything except for the reality that there is also might not. A while back, when I was considering rupa, I told Neecha that the fact that my yellow purse SOMETIMES makes people think I am awesome is why I cling to it. But later I reflected, the only thing sometimes proves is sometimes not, ie NEVER ALWAYS. Clinging to a purse because I think it makes people think I am awesome sometimes is stupid; if the purse was a tool to make people think I am awesome it would work for everyone always.

Might/Maybe/Sometimes are symptoms of a world where the matrix is true. And why is the matrix true? Because everything is circumstantial, conditional, occasions when the proper causes/conditions/factors have been met for arising and occasions they have not. In this world, what happens proves the causes for it happening were met, and nothing more. It certainly doesn’t prove a purse will prove my awesomeness. It also doesn’t prove my awesomeness. It doesn’t even prove me.

Myopically, I measure my worth, the worthiness of my efforts, on a case-by-case basis. On those occasions that it doesn’t strain credulity to assume my vigilance gets me what I want, I put a feather in my hat, feel proud, confirm this idea that it tis I, Alana-The-Great, who maybe can’t pown the world, but can at least have dominion over what I have named and claimed as MY CORNER. In those cases, when circumstances land in the favorable corner of the matrix, I get the outcomes I want, so yay, a point for me and for vigilance. But before I tally my points, before I brush under the table all the stuff that didn’t land in the corner of the matrix I had hoped for, it’s worth asking another question: Are my victories really even victories? Am I really ever getting what I want? What I have come into this world to achieve? These crumbs that keep me hungry and willing to fight for more, what are they really?

When the pandemic started, vigilant monitoring of the news got me lots of masks and toilet paper ahead of lockdowns. I patted my own back for my prowess staying informed, for my power to protect myself, I called this victory to justify further vigilance.  I used it to fuel my hope that I might just be able to effectuate the outcome I want, some of the time. Enough of the time to make it worth it… but masks and toilet paper is a pretty shitty prize. What I really want is a world without disease, where I don’t have to worry about viruses or bacteria consuming me. A world where I need masks and toilet paper hoards at all is a world that is not going to let me win. I am not going to get what I want here, or at the spa, or in the cabin in the woods, they are the same, there is disease here, there is decay.

When I got long covid, I patted myself on the back for doing all the research that helped me isolate the likely cause, and the right drugs to cure me. Never mind btw the crumb I brush under the table, that I figured it out on my second guess, after the first guess led me to take medication that made me much worse. Right alongside my research/preparation prowess, I credited my bank account balance with being able to afford the drugs (off label) and the doctor willing to prescribe them.

Sure I had become subject to disease, but I kicked it right back in the hole, by bringing the brute force of ALANA to bear on the situation. Here was proof the tools I had amassed could protect me. But really — what I want most in this world is to be safe. All the preparation, all the knowledge, all the willpower, all the wealth, these are what I have cultivated as a means to the end of being safe. Is a world where I got sick in the first place — where my stressing at the spa shows that I am fully aware could happen any time again — actually safe?

And if wealth and qualities could really have kept me safe why didn’t they prevent me from getting covid? Or at least long covid? All that I claim and then cling to –physical and nama — because I hope they will protect me, can’t. How can I be protected in a world that offers no shelter? That something –a quality, a belonging, a person — helps some of the time isn’t a reason to cling to them. An object that proves helpful in protecting me sometimes proves it can’t help all the time. It just proves that helpful, like everything else, is conditional. And what is the condition that ultimately decides on if I am able to be helped at all? That My Friends is karma.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Mae Yo sent me a picture to contemplate, it was a prize fighter holding his hands up in victory, but his face was all swollen and bruised. The text below said something like if this is the winner, imagine the loser. It made me reflect: Here I was a Covid lockdown winner, I had a cushy job I could work from home, a bank balance that allowed me to get everything delivered, a ton of toilet paper and masks…but then is that really winning? Nothing about my life in lockdown felt like a win. Sitting in the spa today, in my ‘post pandemic’ life doesn’t feel much like a win either. Whether you are up or down, if you are in a dukkha world, what you get is dukkha. The degree, the kind and the duration, that is karma.

Here is the part that fools me: I do get wins, some of the time. As I said before, clearly my actions/abilities have a palpable impact and sometimes that impact is in accord with my wishes, with what I envision myself/ my life ought to be. For years I had both the sheer force of will, plus the financial wherewithal, the general circumstances to covid isolate. Because I was never exposed to covid, I never caught it in that time. But as soon as I came out –felt like I had to come out and live — covid got me.  Actually, to be more specific, on our first trip Covid got Eric. And then my partner, who in my mind exists to keep me safe, ended up getting me sick. 

And another example: For years I worked-out vigorously, I brought the sheer force of my will to the task of being fit and supremely fit I was. I trained my body to control it, to force its shape to my will, to prove to others I was on top and in control. To prove it to myself so I could convince myself I had a modicum of safety. Afterall, I can’t control everything, but at least myself, my body…if I can’t master that what can I expect to have mastery over? What can I depend on? What will be the proof of my exceptionalism, or of the qualities I value and identify with? For all those years of training, for all the crazy fit shit I could do, 1 bout of covid gave me long covid, it literally laid me out flat.

I had all the will in the world to exercise, to get back to who I had been, but my body simply wouldn’t obey, it just kept collapsing in exhaustion. So did all this fitnessizing of my body prove my control — if it did I would have been able to actually control it. It couldn’t have been circumstantial, conditional, dependent on a disease-free state that vanished after just a week battling a microscopic virus.  

Duration is yet another way I fool myself: I take a duration of time that I seem to be effectuating outcomes, more-or-less in line with my desire/imagination, and I think it proves me, proves my efforts, proves my control. Again, this is myopic. The big picture is any ‘victory’ in this world is a pyrrhic and temporary one best. All I need to do is peek at the time outside of the duration I am focused on–a duration btw that I don’t dictate –and I will see the truth:  If some shit I did actually controlled, it would control ever fucking time, forever. But every object, every effort, everything I do is just like that yellow purse; if it in and of itself had the power to control some outcome, it would do so all the time. If it proved anything, it would prove it all the time.  And actually, it does prove something, the thing I quickly brush under the table, that I desperately want to ignore. It proves that everything in this world is conditional, arising only when the causes are ripe. Causes are ripe some of the time. All of the time they become exhausted. Even when I put in place causes, it doesn’t mean I  get the outcomes I want. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean I get them for the duration I want.

The truth here is that none of the causes I put in place, my temporary victories, all those times that shit goes the way I want it to, even the times I am able to force it to be the way I want it to be, prove anything about me. It just proves the nature of the world: Subject to causes and conditions, arising, momentarily enduring and then ceasing. This stuff is really not personal. Being able to be a cause is not personal. Being an effect is not personal. Participating in the continual snowball of causes and effects creating more causes and then more effects is just participating in the world. It’s meaningless. And it’s also shifting so quickly, in such continual flux, there is nothing to identify with or hold onto here. Not when I zoom out and see the whole picture.

 And yet, in my ignorance, I think moments and states I call ‘success’ proves that my vigilance, my efforts are worthy, that there is hope, that if I can just adjust and recalculate and figure out how to do better next time then I can find my refuge, then I can have the life and be the me I want to be. But this thinking  will never ever EVER get me that happy haven I desire. That is literally not the nature of the world, that is not the nature of the body I use to be in this world.

What this thinking does get me however is suffering: More rebirths, more tries to try and accomplish what is impossible. In the end, there is only duration because there is arising and ceasing. What arises and ceases, all of it, is conditional, and what is conditional can’t prove me. It can’t be me. Its just what arises based on circumstances, circumstances that arose based on other circumstances, ad infinitum. This isn’t special, no part of it, no moment, no cause and no effect, its just the mundane process of the world. 

I went to the spa today, mid-day Monday, I expected it would be quiet. Instead, it was a zoo. I did my usual dance to duck and dodge the crowds, aka the disease carriers, but it was impossible, there were too many people.

As I sat in the sauna –vigilantly listening to detect any cough, any sniffle — I started thinking about how stressed out I am. I have so much money, but I continually stress on how to keep it, whether it will be enough, how to invest and if we need more. I pour over spreadsheets, calculating, adjusting, making ‘sure’ we are on track.  I fear every unexpected expense will push us out of budget. I wonder whether everything I buy is worth the risk to my bank account, to my future in which I need money to survive. I am supposed to have this money to enjoy life with, to be safe, but it is a source of constant stress. And as for safety…despite the money, I see peril everywhere. Here I am sitting in a sauna, ‘relaxing’, worrying about getting sick after all.   

I have this lovely vacation home in Montreal, but I worry about it constantly too. I worry about how to preserve it, about humidity levels and floods when I am away. I stress when it breaks on how we can fix it rapidly enough to prevent it becoming damaged past the point it is habitable for me. That mold will be my evictor. I stress that it will become prohibitively expensive, that further nonresident taxes will apply and we will need to sell. This place that is supposed to bring me pleasure, be a refuge and getaway, ends up creating no end to labor and stress. And is someplace really a refuge if you worry constantly about it being ruined, or it ruining you all the time? If at any moment you can be evicted — or at least denied pleasurable use — by the elements, or naughty neighbor, by governments and geopolitics? 

I have this body — I am sitting here trying to give it sensual pleasure, to find relaxation at the spa, but I am worried about disease. Continually, I worry about disease. I think this body is ‘my ticket’, to the future I imagine, to the freedom to do what I want to do, to go where I want to go, to write my unparalleled story of awesomeness and love and wealth and adventure. To prove and manifest who I am. But just look at Covid — I spent over a year isolated and alone, afraid to go out, to meet other people, to travel to the places I wanted to go and do the things I wanted to do, all to protect this body. Instead of being an instrument of my will, instead of being in service to my story or to my enjoyment, it was something I felt intense need to protect, to preserve, even at the expense of my story or enjoyment. There was no pleasure from this body during that time, only constant stress.

I started thinking back to my contemplation years ago on fear. How in the yoga room I came to realize if I could ‘breathe through’ fear, it must not be in a yoga pose, not in a situation, fear lies with me. Stress of course does too. Here I am at the spa, which in the past has been a place I go to decompress and relax, only the last few times have been overcrowded and stressful. The stress though isn’t in the situation, it’s not the spa, it lives with me, in my heart. This is stuff I already ‘know’, its rote platitudes at this point. 

I had left the sauna and was walking toward a cold pool when I saw a guy with a big wound on his leg –it really looked like a staph infection. Here he was, wandering around the spa, going in shared pools and saunas. At first, I wanted to get angry at him. At the woman who was coughing in the sauna. At all the people who come to public places sick, endangering others. But are they really the problem?

If I think these people are the cause of my stress, of my dukkha, I am dead fucking wrong.  This is a spa. A place human-animals go in droves, they intermingle, share water and facilities. This is a place where disease spreads. Everyplace humans gathering is a place disease spreads. A school, a hospital, a concert hall. Even my own home is a place disease spreads –I caught Covid from Eric at home, not some grand public gathering.

Even in isolation, disease spreads; in my pandemic cottage –purchased to protect me from disease, away from all those covid spreaders — a bat put me at risk for rabies and sent me to the hospital, mid pandemic, for shots. This is the nature — the fundamental rupa of bacteria and viruses that consume human bodies and use them to replicate and spread. This is the fact of human bodies, that are subject to disease, to being consumed by these viruses and bacteria. That are consumables, that one way or another will become consumed, used up, changed past the point that can continue to support what I call an Alana, or the life I imagine she has/will have. I am getting stressed out by the WAY THINGS ARE, HOW THEY ARE MEANT TO BE, HOW THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE. This is fucking idiocy.

In my head, I’m affronting this coughers and sneezers and open wounders asking, ” is the spa really a place for sick people”. But the better question is, “Alana, is the spa really the place for people worried about being sick? Is this world? You seriously showed up to the wrong party girrrrlll, why the hell are you still here?”.

Fear, stress from the spa, that lies in my heart, but so too did the sense of relaxation and comfort I have gotten at the spa in the past. Neither of these reflect a proper understanding of reality. To see this as a haven misses the danger innate in the circumstance, in the world. To see it as a continual threat misses something even more subtle –that being in this world, no matter where I am, is a risk. Threats abound ALWAYS. Whether or not this body is consumed, made sick, or dies in any given circumstance, by any given threat, is about whether or not the causes and conditions for this body being sick/consumed/dead have been met, not about whether someone sick comes into the sauna. That is right there is truth of karma, the truth I just don’t get. That right there is also the key to solving all this fucking stress: What the world is, karma, they are one in the same — shit that arises when the causes and conditions for arising are met and ceases when the causes and conditions for cessation have been met.

This here marks the beginning of renewed contemplations on karma. In the next blog – which is a continuation of this one, we will explore the topic in more detail.

I had a dream the other night. In it I met-up with an old lover. He still looked good and we started making out. As we undressed, he said something like, “you still look good, but not as good as I do.” Still though, he accepted my advances and we ended up having sex.

When I woke-up, I considered the dream more:  Does his desire, or rather acquiescence to sleep with me, really prove what I want it to prove about me? I want to be sexy. I want, when I meet an old friend/lover, to seem the same. Or at least as well preserved as possible for my age. I want to use the state of my body to prove control over my life, over the world. But in the dream, I was lesser than my peer. We had sex, but it didn’t really make me feel the thrill of being affirmed, of being desired. The ex accepted my advances for his own reasons. I mean he wouldn’t be the first man to sleep with a naked woman because she was there and willing. Does it prove anything special about me?

I am still re-watching True Bloods. In it, so many characters are having sex. But there is a bit of a twist to the story: Drinking a vampire’s blood makes a human sexually attracted to them. Meanwhile the smell of a fairy, which the main character Sookie is a partial human/fairy hybrid, is a sensual pleasure to vampires. The characters, human/fairy/vampire are all deriving a sense of self worth by being the object of desire of others, of being loved by them, but is anyone in the story actually loved and desired for who they are or is it just chemical – the smell/taste of their blood – that gets their lovers hooked?

The more I thought on it, the more I started wondering if the things from which I derive my sense of self-worth, my sense of identity and pride, actually confirm anything about me. Or is it just that I am running around reading meaning into states of rupa, fooling myself into finding affirmation in things that aren’t about me at all?

I thought about my garden, it has been a huge boost to my ego how everyone in the neighborhood complements it. Still, as much work as I do on it, it is always changing, shifting, moving toward wildness. That is the nature of gardens, of plants, as is their receptiveness to being pruned, fertilized, responding to interventions that –temporarily –effect their shape and growth. But is this, the nature of plants, something I should take-on as a personal success, an affirmation of greatness? This is nonsense.

The signs of this being nonsense are everywhere: For start, come winter, no matter what care I give these plants, they will all go brown, shrivel and die. And, without any intervention from me, in spring, many of them will revive again and turn green. It was like this before I bought the house and it will be like this after I sell. This is the truth of gardens, the truth of the world. To take small, temporarily, alteration in the garden’s state as a point of pride is to miss the forest for the trees. It shows I will grasp at any small and insignificant thing – a few extra flowers on the hydrangea, a well-shaped peony, a carefully located rose bush – as a source of identity. All while the bigger story – arising, shifting, ceasing with the seasons – is as impersonal as stories get.

What’s more is that there is ample proof that this great gardener identity is totally arbitrary. When we first moved into the house, there was so much work to be done, I left the garden to grow wild. In fact, I thought, the garden is outside, it’s the inside that is important, that reflects me. Only after the inside was ordered in a way I liked did I extend the identity building quality of the house to the garden as well. Once I did, there was no end in the delight I would take in the shapes of plants. All the toil felt like play as I imagined the way I was shaping myself, the way the neighbors viewed me, through the garden.

This is all bullshit. A garden that takes one shape or another proves the circumstances necessary for plants to grow into certain shapes has been met. That I direct my efforts at crafting and curating those states proves the circumstances for my own desire to exert such effort have been met. Namely, the circumstance of starting to view the garden as the grounds to grow not just flowers, but identity was met, so suddenly I turned attention from inside the house to outside and started gardening. The plants, the effort, both are circumstantial, conditional. And what is conditional is, of course, not me.

With both the house and the garden I used arrangements, ornamentation, decoration, trivial details of difference to all other homes and gardens as affirmation of myself. When the states please me, I feel ego puffed, joyful, successful. But the joy, and the effort to try and arrange states, arise only from the mistaken belief that these things prove something about me. In truth, they prove only that I am deluded enough about the meaning I put into states of rupa, deluded by self-fabricated identity I build through ‘self-belongings’ , that I am willing to spend hours under the beating sun, knee deep in dirt, bloodied from thrones, trying to arrange the perfect flower bed.