This is a follow-on to the last post (#2) with a note from even more recent ‘today’s Alana’. It reflects more contemplations from just a few days ago (July 13, 2026) on this same idea– body as ticket to desired future – that has clearly been a recurrent, and important, theme in my practice over the years.

Since retreat, and at Mae Neecha’s suggestion, I have assigned myself the daily homework of evaluating the claims I make on objects, seeing the way the claim, not just the object, is anicca.

The basic model I had gotten to after a few weeks of contemplation went something like this: A claim is a 1-way contract I make with an object (i.e. the object certainly doesn’t sign my agreement, hence 1 way). I make-up ‘terms’ to the contract, ideas I have about how my object will act. For example, it will allow me unfettered access, it will act as I see fit, it will represent me, it will on a whole follow my rules and meet my expectations, etc. The biggest most important ‘term of the agreement’ that the object makes me or will help me achieve my narrative in the future.

But, of course, the stuff I claim is 4e objects, they change states continually and as states change so too does their ability to be used in various ways. I used to this body for yoga, then the hip got busted and so I had to find other workouts the body was able to do without constant pain.

I came to the conclusion that after I claim an object, I am continually renegotiating the terms of my claim. Accepting limitations and liabilities that arise as the object and circumstances shift. Since I don’t want to just give up the object, ITS MINE, I need to reconcile the contract with reality.

The thing is, I have been trying to nullify my claims to objects by seeing the anicca in my claim. That is the punchline of the homework. The main thing I am gathering evidence to support. But, even as I watch the slipperiness of my mind’s claims, the renegotiating of terms, the ridiculousness of this whole twisted plot, I still cling. Enter the cursed Montreal home as perfect example on this:

I mean really the frequent leak alarms are proof the thing doesn’t do my bidding. The frequent floods and the chemical intrusion from the basement waterproofing project, that had me out for months, mean it is frequently not usable. It causes me dukkha to no end. It should have all offered me overwhelming proof points to its not mine. Still I imagined a life with it, still I imagined the fun and joyous times it would bring once I could just block every possible path of water…

Eventually, it came to light that the waterproofing project had changed the way air moved in the house and the house now was making me sick. With my disease, I can NEVER live there again. I can NEVER build a story on it and a future with it. Only then did I give up the claim on the house.

 I really should have seen long ago that each proof point pointed to the same reality. The house is a 4e object ticking along according to the rules of rupa. And my diseased body, which is also ticking along by the same rupa rules, can’t live in the house without shifting into states unusable by me.

That there are trade-offs, choices to be made, some objects to be sacrificed for others proves that no one object, no one claim, is permanent. That house and body alike act in accord with the rules of rupa, not in accord with how Alana sees fit, should prove that my claim that an object is going to serve the alana identity project and my future is void. That I can only use the house and body some of the time, that the time has and will cease, should support my claim as anicca. And yet, even as I see the house and body are the same, I have relinquished the claim on the house, but the body, the ticket, that I cling to.

For all my evidence gathering and self schooling, I have been stuck on fact that my claims make allowance for the truth that my use of the object is not absolute. I don’t think I will always have it. I allow that it won’t always act as I see fit. This makes my ability to see impermanence of the claim fuzzy. It makes the actual notion of claim, what exactly it is I think the objects contract to do fuzzy as well. Frankly, its all too fuzzy: Even seeing that the claimed object I loved the most, my father, and I have parted ways, that his death clearly nullifies the claim, this is not really shaking my heart free. I am stuck. Or, I was.

A few nights go by and I couldn’t sleep (gotta adjust the progesterone dosage again). As I lay there, I kept looping back to an idea from my daily homework.

I used the body for yoga. The impermeant body changed and I could no longer use it for yoga. I could no longer use it to sustain an identity of Alana as Yogi. So I just swerve a little and come up with a new identity for this body. It’ll be Pilates Alana, yay. By doing this, I may nullify the claim on the yoga body, but the pilaties body just took its place. I am still claiming the same body all along. No wonder I can’t let go of that ticket…

But it dawns on me that something else way more subtle is actually going on here: I am not claiming the same body. The body that could do yoga died. The claim on the yoga body must die with the body. My claim on the new body, that I can use on different terms, is actually a new claim. I construct a new identity (pilaties alana) that takes into account the constraints of the new –now hip busted—body that I have newly claimed.

I had been struggling to understand how the terms of my object-agreements could keep getting violated. An object could continue to refuse to act as I see fit, could change, and yet my mind persisted in the claim, I believed the claim itself persisted despite the changeability of the object because I had already allowed the objects some wiggle room, I already knew the claims weren’t absolute.

Now I see a super deep truth: Nothing persists. The body changes, the claim changes, the claimer changes. This is how all three are actually anicca. But my aggregates work so fast in imagining sameness in an obviously changed body, in claiming that body, that I smooth all the impermanence over.

This actually happens a lot. Because an object changes forms a lot. And so its utility changes a lot.  A circus performer who gets injured and needs a career change actually has a different body after the break. They are forced to abandon an old identity they tried to use the body to build and to find a new one using the new body as a tool.

We don’t see we are doing this though. We see the bubble (this blog here: which now I realize wasn’t entirely correct – there is naming and THEN there is the laying on of sammutti — but it was headed in the right direction) and assume we are laying a new identity on the same body. Because we have named, we ‘solidify’ form. We assume the same claim, the same contract is operating. We assume the same claimer is claiming. None of this is true. We simply see sameness where there is anicca. This is the deep wrong view of permanence pervading our mental process. It is the deep wrong view of permanence that is central to our delusion.

So flash back a little here:

A few days before all of this, something was niggling me, I had written a blog post and in it I realized I wasn’t quite sure if my claim on an object made it permanent in my mind or if I already believed it was permanent and therefore I claimed it. I remembered I may have covered this topic in a recent conversation with Mae Neecha and I went back to my line chats to review. Sure enough, in black and white I read:

AD: “It is our claiming that leads us to believe something would act in accordance with our will rather than in accordance with its karma. This is the mega permanent view”

Mae Neecha actually corrected me. She said:

MN: It is because we think it is permanent that we claim it in the first place. It is because we perceive that things can be permanent in general”

I realized after that I had struggled with causality on this topic, usually, my understanding of causality is pretty strong. Weakness on this front poins to some pretty deep and clouding delusion on the topic. Now, reading Mae Nee’s response, I saw it must be the case that first is the delusion an object is permanent, or at least long living enough for my purposes. There is the delusion I will be able to control it. The delusion it will build and sustain my identity. And then there is the claim. With reflection, it makes perfect sense: The cause of claiming is delusion. The root delusion is the denial of the 3 worldly conditions (including anicca). It’s so logical its weird I couldn’t get there on my own…

Here now I can understand the mechanics, the WHY, of why delusion of permeance precedes a claim, not just see the logic that it must always be so.  The mechanics:

With a circus performer’s body breaks, it is so fast and impactful it is easier to see but this happens all the time. My own body’s shape is shifting. Shifting according to the elements. Excess food of certain types. Decreased hormones. Decreased exercise. Increased sun. It is not the shape it was before. But I still view it as the same body.

Even as I account for changes to it, I believe it is the same thing physically. I believe it has the same meaning and the same identity. Even as it changes it is monolithic in my mind. Something that is here and then, at some future state that I make so remote in my mind I can’t even deal with it, gone. But the truth is it is shifting all along.

But, I don’t see the shifting as the constant, pervasive, nature of the object. And because I don’t see the 4e process that governs it, I also can’t see that process will always defy my control because it is already controlled by the rules of rupa. And so I also don’t see that my claims on the object are dying with each shift in the form, with each death of a particular arrangement that I identified with or was able to use in the past. I don’t see any identity I imbue an object with, and any identity I believe the object imbues me with, requires control I clearly don’t have. All the identity building, and therefore the claiming, is meaningless drivel.

I am skipping around a bit, for the sake of clarity, but a few days later, I realized that a new definition of impermanence was clearing up my misunderstandings. It was getting the contemplations on claiming to start hitting the heart: Anicca is flux not fixed. It is shifting. The ticket, the body, the claim the claimer, all in flux. And my claim on that ticket starting to see the good kind of fuzzy –the kind where the delusion is weakening…