Years ago, I was watching a TV show: There was a monster had taken over the town. She excreted a venom that lulled the whole town into a mass delusion; instead of seeing her as the monster she was, they were deluded into seeing her as a beautiful and benevolent ruler. Everyone was happy and got along, but the venom was just to pacify the people, a drug to keep them mollified while she ate them one by one. Only 2 characters in the show, who by virtue of having been exposed to her blood, a sort of antidote to her poison, saw her for the monster she truly was and were able to ultimately escape.

That story has stuck with me many years now, an ubai for how I see the world. I imagine my old car, my wedding dress, as these beautiful things, because of how I imagine them, I feel happy, I am lulled by delusion to believe they make me special. But in the end, I feel wounded by these objects. Why? Because like the town’s folk, I am blind to what these things really are; I have intoxicated myself and in self-inflicted blindness I put myself in peril, I endure suffering.

For a long time, I have done the exercise from the Anatalakata Sutra (link here): All the evidence I have gathered that shit is inconstant, that it doesn’t obey me, that it causes me suffering, it has softened my heart, sure, but it has never been the final blow to claiming these items are me/mine. Now I understand why it has failed to sufficiently touch my heart: It’s because the evidence that these objects change and cause me suffering is insufficient to convince myself that these objects aren’t mine.

Whether I claim objects, or not, their changing and dukka is simply their nature. I mistake ‘my’ objects as having some other nature, or at least, some additional nature; I think they hold the meaning I impart on them and that, in return they can impart the meaning I desire on myself. Even if they change. Even if I hurt myself with them. Even still, I cling to the notion that at least for a little while, despite the suffering they cause, they are an instrument I can use in my mission of making myself, telling my story, of self-becoming. My imagination has made me intoxicated with these objects, intoxicated by the feelings I have as a result of what I imagine these objects mean about me.

Which is, I think, LP Thoon’s point when he defined anatta as, “these things don’t belong to us, they aren’t meaningful.” That is the last part of their nature (3 common characteristics) there is nothing meaningful about these objects, they don’t confirm or affirm me as the me I want to be, they don’t confirm or affirm anything at all about me – or anything else – they are meaningless. They march along their entropy path, holding a named form till the causes and conditions for their exiting the named state arise. Then they disaggregate, un-clump, anatta. Thats all.

And that’s the final clincher — long lasting or short lasting, fun or suffering, it doesn’t really matter how I imagining these objects, because its not my imagination of them that matter. They are what they are and that is decidedly not me, not a secret coded confirmation of me that only I see. They are just 4es. Shifting through states according to causes and conditions. Atta is my mistaken belief that the car, the dress, prove something about me. That they can help make the me I imagine myself more solid and real.

I started considering my old Vajrayana shawl , a wrap that my former teacher had instructed all his followers to wear when they mediated. It had given me a sense that I was connected to the community, to my teacher. I felt such pride putting it on for the first time, I basked in a sense of my own piety and buddhistiness. And then, how it became just a cloth when I quit the religion. All these secret meanings of these objects eventually dissipate as we disassociate from them, they just become more of the junk we used to hang-out with while the circumstances allowed.

Of course, just cause I separate from shit, it doesn’t mean I immediately disassociate. And there is the crux of the suffering of parting ways with what I hold dear. Sometimes, like with the shawl, I stop holding dear and then part ways, sometimes, like with the Porche, I part ways and only later stop holding dear. And it does seem there is extra dukkha when I am confronted with the fact –like I was with the Porsche – that the car can’t be both evidence I am on top and in control and also be sold at a deep discount because I didn’t even recognize the item I claimed had engine issues. The delusion about it meaning something about me holds strong, even when I need to go from believing it says something good to something embarrassing and painful.

Still, for me, I continue the cycle of delusion. Why? Because I still foolishly believe it is worth it to hold onto the idea that some object can say something about me that I want, can help me build the future I want, tell the story of the me I want to be and become, rather than just admit that none of these objects ever say anything about me at all.

When I considered the scarf more closely, it dawned on me the traits I thought it proved –piousness, connection to a community I no longer give a shit about, a good student to Rinpoche — aren’t even traits I am consistently trying to prove. I considered different objects more closely and found even more evidence: A little Chevy Cavalier to prove I wasn’t just a rich trust fund kid. A not-fit body in high school to prove I was more invested in my mind. An apartment in SF to prove I was an SFer even if my driver’s license was from NY. It became obvious, I am not actually even trying to prove one thing, or the same thing; like everything, the me I want to be changes…

No, objects don’t prove some specific Alana, I use them to reify the alana de jour. I don’t even care about being pious, or a leader in the Vajrayana community anymore. It’s just some arbitrary identity I wanted one day, some arbitrary trait, proven by some arbitrary action and object. Today, tomorrow, as the stream (of causes and conditions and their ensuing effects) shifts, I want to be and become something else. In the end, all I consistently want is to be, to become, to feel me, even though what that me is is even more slippery and changeable than the objects I try to use to prove that identity.

It’s funny, a while back, when I was thinking about what justifies my making something mine, back then I reflected:

“For a long time, I have wondered what makes something MINE (and therefore something I cling to) after all it is clear that this idea lives nowhere in the 4es of the object. But every time I think I figure it out, it seems like the criteria changes; Its mine because I legally own it, only that Manhattan loft felt like ‘not mine’ long before I actually sold it. It is mine because I pay for it, but what about the outfits that feel like mine in the dressing room before I hit-up the cash register? It is mine because I have had it, because it is my birthright, but how do I reconcile that with a body that keeps getting older and fatter and sick, is it really expressing my will, acting like my right? I realize now the problem…delusion is a slippery fuck, in truth, mine=desire+some arbitrary rationalization I use to justify/claim mineness in my mind. Its just a rationalization that changes to suit my needs, all it needs to be is ‘defensible’ to my warped brain and its good enough to go on.”

The me that I think something mine makes me is as arbitrary as the process by which I claim that thing in the first place. Just some justification that a certain identify can be claimed –an activity I do perhaps, a belief I hold, a group I belong to, a future I imagine, a relationship I assume. Minenes, as it turns out, is just a concept in support of an agenda: The agenda to be, to become, to forge the story of self that I endured rebirth to try and tell.