In October 2021, Mae Neecha sent me a draft of LP Thoon’s Autobiography, that she had been working on, for my help with some editing. My reading of the Autobiography ultimatly spured me to do a deep dive exploration of Dukkha. But before that, it stirred-up, and casued me to revisit, a number of old contemplations, particularly on the topic of samutti – supposed form.

Below are some of my initial thoughts on sumutti, which I shared with Mae Neecha. More in depth contaplations will follow in subsequent blogs:

One thing that sorta hit me from the get-go of reading through LP Thoon’s Autobiography was the concept of samutti. Before the autobiography itself, in the translators notes, Mae Neecha chose the example of ‘mother’ to demonstrate the concept and – perhaps cause I have mama issues – it hit me hard; I started thinking about all the ways the word (concept) mother is loaded to me and all the suffering it has caused, also how the word daughter is loaded in my mom’s mind and the suffering it has clearly caused her — how our differences in definitions and expectations give rise to the conflict and disappointment in our relationship. I have been plugging in other words and examples because this little exercise actually shows a big  part of the mechanics on how suffering arises vis-a-vie how our memory’s and imagination’s twists and contorting of rupa.  One example that is particularly clear is the word home: I applied it to lots of my past homes, but it was pretty shocking when I considered my little CT apartment.

We have lived in this CT place for years now, we got rid of the SF place during the pandemic, so it is our only ‘home’ — ‘the place we reside’. What is more is since the pandemic, we spend a ton of time here, more than in most other places we have called home in the past. The thing is, I don’t really think of this place as home…

Don’t get me wrong, I like the apartment, it is a fine place to live, I have no hates or complaints about it like I did the NY place, which was definitely ‘not home’. I simply think of this place as TEMPORARY, a solution to my need for a safe and convenient place to lay my head. It works, for right now, but I don’t imagine a future here. It isn’t some cornerstone of my retirement fantasy life the way some unbought property in Carmel was, or a ‘safe nest’ to launch my adventures the way I imagined the NY loft (before I hated it).

I don’t really imagine it reflects me either. It certainly doesn’t reflect my wealth or my status, it is a modest little 2 bedroom walk-up. I decorated it, but it doesn’t capture my aesthetic –my sense of myself as someone who values beauty and taste — the way my dream home does. It’s not just the home that doesn’t capture ‘me’, neither does the town it is situated in. Greenwich isn’t ‘who I am’ the way SF was, I don’t share its values and it doesn’t reflect those values back on me. I feel no sense of being ‘confirmed’ here in Greenwich, or of belonging, again it is just a perfectly fine place to reside temporarily. I have no deep attachments here, when it makes sense to leave, I will do so with little suffering — not the agonizing departures of SF and the Texas houses before.

The thing is, this is all correct, this is what a home and a town is — temporary places we reside. But what is so marvelous is that of all my homes past, and imagined future places, the more-or-less correct view one here in CT is the one that feels most strange/ most ‘off’ to me. And here we have a big and important clue that I need to look inward for the mechanisms by which my (deluded) views of reality arise and the way those views are implicated in my suffering.

Which helps bring me to a sorta backdoor way into an interesting observation: My mind (memory and imagination in particular) is in a constant process of overlaying my beliefs/concepts onto rupa objects. As I have noted before, it gives them meaning that does not exist within the objects themselves. But this process slips below consciousness, I forget these sammuti are my own creation and I start to expect objects in the world will actually adhere to my concepts of them. I use my mind to try and fix ever shifting, multi-valiant, changeable, shit in the world into a stagnant/ one-sided/ limited view mould my mind has made for them. And then, when the objects (and people and situations) fail to fit my fixed concept of them (which they ALWAYS will since NOTHING is fixed) I suffer. Over and over. I am the architect of my own suffering, and summutti is my scaffolding.

Anyway, more to consider on this topic, but this book has really made me think it is time to dig back up another old ubai — bubbles and sumutti — and have a closer look…