I was re-listening to a retreat talk on the 3 common conditions and an offhand comment from Mae Neecha really hit me. In response to a student asking which branch of a decision tree she should choose, Mae Neecha replied it wasn’t about choosing, it is knowing that any possible branch ends the same way, happiness or suffering. Which, of course I know, is just code for more or less suffering.

She also said that when we suffer it is because we have an inflated sense of self: We think we are so important that our actions, the choices we make along a decision tree, dictate the result. But it’s not true: For example, we can study a lot for a test and still fail, there are always all these possible outcomes we ignore, possibilities we can’t even fathom to consider. Then we suffer the stress of making a decision thinking we can control the outcome and we suffer the stress of outcomes we don’t like because we think they reflect us. Of course, for outcomes we do like, our ego gets puffed, and we get the delayed suffering that comes the next time that extra inflated ego goes pop.

This all struck me because the other day I was thinking: I want this country home in Connecticut that I am staying in right now. I know just because I enjoy it now, it doesn’t mean I will later. In fact, I KNOW Circumstances ARE CHANGING — one reason Eric is reluctant to purchase the house is climate change: Will summers, which are getting hotter by the year here, still be enjoyable in CT in 10, 20 years? And what if Eric dies and I am left with a remote country home, won’t I be lonely then? So much can and will change, those changes will affect my enjoyment. But still I’m unconvinced. Still, like this student I am weighed down by the stress of making a purchase decision. I am weighed down by the stress of wanting a particular outcome because I imagine what it will be, what it will make me.

I realize when I want something, when I want to cling to it/own it, it is because I want the ‘option value’. The house may or may not give me happiness in the future, but if I don’t have it there is no way I can get the happiness that I hope it provides the future. It is a necessary ingredient in the cake I want to bake later. Even knowing I may not bake a cake, or the cake may not be delicious, or it may come with bad parts, or I may not even want it later. None of that is enough right now to let go of my clinging. I want the option value of future cake.

Then I thought more on it and realized that I have moved so much and it hasn’t ever been the way I expected. I clung to the house in Houston, was devastated to leave it, but it was moving on that gave me my life in SF. My wealth. the job I enjoy. So much stuff I now consider ‘better’ required the loss of the home I had clung to. I want option value, but I never consider the cost of holding the option.

I feel I must cling, collect, hold onto the things I need for the future I imagine (never mind the world doesn’t give a damn about whether I actualize my fantasy) without ever considering that some other future may be preferable. Or, that I don’t need to cling or fixate in order to manifest a future, a future will manifest with or without me, the causes I put in place will have effects, but not necessarily the ones I intend. And other causes, past causes put in place by past ‘selves’, also do the steering, not me, not my wishes or intentions.

The stress really is an over inflated sense of my importance; of the belief that my vision, my direction, my future fantasy is what SHOULD manifest and everything else is less preferable. And that what is ‘less preferable’ to me is SHOULDN’T. I get the stress of that belief, without even the benefit of a guarantee that my vision will manifest anyway. And with the guarantee that even if it more or less does, it will still always be, as may Neecha pointed out, different degrees of dukkha.

I really did for a second see so clearly how ‘I’ is just my obsession with self, that brings me the suffering of stressing about how a situation unfolds. Or the stress of what to cling to and claim to try and get the self/future I want. And how, this is a version of atta, a sort of solidifying or clumping together –a solid version of the future. Anatta goes hand-in-hand with realizing that the future isn’t solid at all.