Story 2) In a class, Mae Neecha told a story from when she was on swim team. She was the best swimmer on the team, so when it was time to vote for a captain she was certain she would be elected. But in the end, the other teammates chose a girl who was more popular, albeit a worse swimmer.

As I considered her story, it was very clear that if being captain were really about her, then there is no way she would not have been elected. It would have been in her control. Something she did would have been able to change the outcome of the vote, or guaranteed that it went her way. In fact, the outcome of the vote wasn’t up to her, it wasn’t dictated by the swim skills she had built. There were causes and conditions –namely the other teammates, the presence of a popular girl, etc, that dictated the outcome.

Over and over we think that our successes –like getting voted a captain, getting promoted at work, getting asked out by the hot guy – prove something about who we are. But if we don’t actually dictate these outcomes, if they arise based on a conglomeration of circumstances beyond our control, do they real prove US? No, they prove a particular state of affairs that arises based on causes and conditions. A state that will shift and change as those causes and conditions change.

Present day alana is going to zoom-out here and simplify this concept a little bit: For every outcome—say a vote – there is a vast number of causes/factors/conditions (which I will simply refer to as ‘reasons’ for the sake of clarity in this discussion) that combine to give rise to the outcome. So many in fact that taking personal pride, or shame, in that outcome, i.e. pretending it is about you, is senseless.

In Mae Neechas’s story, there are each of the voting teammates, who have their own relationships, cliques, views on the qualities and role of a team leader, etc. There is also the characteristics of the competition for captain, who else is running for the role, what are their relationships like? With so many reasons at play, we can’t point to one of those –Neecha—and say this vote proves something definitive about her. All it proves is that the causes and conditions for her being swim captain were not met at that time.

Moreover, each of these reasons is itself conditioned – each teammate has their own past experiences and beliefs that color their relationships, that shape their views on the role of captain. Each competitor for the role has skills, relationships, behaviors that were conditioned by their past environment, opportunities, practice, etc. The truth is, these conditioned reasons extend infinitely into the past, each having been conditioned by countless other past reasons. You can see that the argument for any particular outcome reflecting who or what ‘I’ is getting weaker and weaker…

Ah you say, but what if I am actually the cause of an outcome? Say like a parent is the cause of a child, an artist the cause of a painting, the builder a cause of the house? In other words, what if ‘my’ role in an outcome was so strong that without my involvement the result would not be born? Even still, that cause is conditioned – what is my training that lets me paint? What is my beliefs that make me feel painting something is valuable? And besides, even if we cause something, as soon as it arises that thing has its own karma, it is continually acted upon by forces outside of its cause. As soon as a seed grows into a plant that plant’s existence is shaped by wind and rain and sun. The seed –the cause – doesn’t control it.

This is all what I mean when I say that everything that arises does so based on conditions. Conditions that are based on other conditions long before it. And conditions that will give rise to new conditions to continue the chain of causes yielding effects yielding new causes yielding new effects. There can’t be identity here because identity is fixed and this process is continual flow.

There also can’t be identity here, even momentary identity, or shifting identity, because all outcomes arise based on the reasons that proceed it and immediately take on new shapes and new directions as new reasons move it forward. No one is in control of this. No one is the author of this. And for me, most significantly, there is no self-determination in what is entirely subject to conditions. And it’s very hard to talk about a self without having self-determination. When I think about “who I am” its inextricably linked to the idea that I shape both my identity and my future. Without self-determination, an ‘I’ would just be batted along by the tides of conditionally arising events to which even its reactions are conditioned.

Aside from all of this, there is the question of uniqueness, specialness, that is deeply bound to our sense of identity. I have reflected on my Ubai of snowflakes before: I try to identify as a special little snowflake — the unique crystalline shape that is me and mine alone. But each snowflake just reflects the circumstances (aka the karma) of its arising, not the force of my will, not my self-determination, not any particular meaning or import I superimpose on it. A snowflake’s unique structure is conditional, shaped by the humidity and wind patterns and temperature in which it arises.

I get so caught up in the uniqueness of a particular snowflake shape, that I ignore the basic sameness of all snowflakes which arise when the right combination of temperature and water and pressure combine and melt when the temperature gets too high. But identity requires differentiation, if we were all the same, there would be nothing to mistake as ‘me’, so I fixate on the little differences. I identify with what is conditional, pretending it can prove a me, an I. That it can prove anything at all other then that the circumstances for arising that give rise to a momentary state, some brief duration, before it ceases. It is truly amazing feat of mental gymnastics that I can find a me in any circumstance, better yet in a story of circumstances I have curated from arbitrarily chosen moments, at all…