Eric and I have been in negotiations to purchase a vacation home in Montreal. Finally, we feel like we are making progress on the two home dream; a winter home in Miami and a summer getaway in Montreal. Only this morning, we got news there might be a glitch in our plan, the deal on the Montreal place looks like it may fall through.

We don’t even own the Montreal apartment yet, but already we have built up this dream in our head of what life will be like there. The news this burgeoning dream might die in the cradle feels like a devastating loss. Eric and I are so depressed.

Isn’t it the same with my body? One of my big fears when I think about an impending auto immune disease, or covid, or cancer, is that with the death of this body –or its crippling frailty – my dreams of the future die too. I cling so tightly to the fantasy of a future life that I don’t even have yet. And even though I know that my future fantasy doesn’t dictate what happens, that the world doesn’t give a damn about my desires, I still do. I feel so stuck that I can’t get past this…

A major reason I cling to the body then is because I cling to the Alana story. The body is a necessary condition for an Alana future; only with this body can my Alana story persist. Memory is tied to the body. The body is how I am recognized by loved ones. The body is how I get the accompaniments that society has attributes to it — the degrees, bank accounts, resume, etc. The body is foundational to my imagined future –a happy 2 city retirement life with Eric, even as the second city, Montreal, seems threatened.

Without this body, there is no way to accomplish my dream. Without Montreal I’ll find another dream. I assume, without this body I will also find another dream, this I suppose is how rebirth happens. Still though, its so hard to see with bodies, that they are as fungible as cities and houses.

It has dawned on me that a huge question for me now is how to stop being attached to my body at a sotopana level, when the attachment to the future story that requires this body is so much deeper than a mere attachment to a physical 4e body-object. So how do I move past this?

Maybe it is gathering the evidence that this body is like every other, not at all special. There is no identity from it, or in it, it is a tool. One way it can function, a way I can use it, is to move toward and accomplish dreams/goals. But the accomplishment of those isn’t dictated by the body, that is driven by my karma.

Still, this isn’t quite enough…I still feel motivated to protect and preserve this body, I am overly concerned about it as long as I see it as a necessary tool for my dream fulfillment.

Or maybe this is 2 separate issues: One is to see the body is just 4e, subject to 3 common conditions, not special or unique, not under my control, and not who I am. But two is that identity, 3s and 4s, are also not under my control. These are also subject to the common conditions. The world is too, whatever circumstances arise — whether they align with my fantasies or not — are states, with state-dependent characteristics that I do or don’t prefer. That do or don’t align closely enough with my goals/dreams, they will arise based on causes and conditions and cease based on causes and conditions. They will be temporary, they will be dukkha, and there is nothing meaningful in them. They don’t prove anything about me, or my identity, they are, by definition, anatta -not self.

Or maybe it simpler than all this: Maybe I just need to see that even in the fulfillment of my dreams, even if I could ‘accomplish’ having exactly the future I imagine with this body, the duration will not be satisfactory. The details on the ground, that I face in reality, not fantasy, will always, only, be dukkha.