Dear Reader – I write and introduction to this blog to warn it’s a mash-up: It is the bones of a contemplation from back in July 2024, rehashed now, in Aug 2026, when I am in the throws of contemplations on the 5 aggregates. This hybrid nature of this blog make it decidedly NOT part of the orderly telling of my practice that I set-out to create with this blog. And yet now, I can’t unsee what recent considerations have prompted. I can’t help but clarify and hone previously muddled half thoughts so that my own process and practice to continue to unfold. So I add new, slightly less muddled half thoughts here, with the frank admittance that this is what it is: A very new take on an old reflection…

I had been thinking more about the moments I am happy. I see so clearly, they are the moments where I interpret rupa as confirming my story – the story of who I am and what my happy future will be like. It is the moments I feel desire, not aversion, for the mental processes rupa sets off in my head (aka nama). The moments where I perceive the rupa aligns closely enough with memory, with the mind objects I have of those rupa objects, that the fabrications of the imagination are pleasurable.

I am happy the moments I think I am safe, that my story is safe, my future is safe, the things I love and claim are safe. Or even better, my future Is heading in a new exciting direction that I want it to head in. Or when it feels like rupa is confirming me. I remember so clearly the moments the porsche made me feel alive, so on top, so loved and beautiful. Right up until I sold it and the dealer pointed out an unknown mechanical problem that dropped its value, and left me feeling super NOT in control and on top; I couldn’t even control my car, getting sick without my even knowing it. Proof that happiness is just delusion about the nature of an object, delusion dashed when the object eventually reveals its nature so forcefully the ignorance addled mind can’t deny it any longer. But, I get ahead of myself here…

For so long, I have been stuck, unable to truly see the dukkha everywhere because there really are moments I enjoy things. The car for example: Hugging the curves of the road, top down, wind in my hair, the imagined stares of the people I passed nodding in agreement that the car proved my status. But now I see the memories that I cling to –the joy– was the moments I thought that car was confirming me. That’s what sticks. In truth, the car was stressful. Stressful to buy when I worried we couldn’t afford it. Stressful to maintain and  hella stressful to part with.

Why did I see, why do I remember, moments of sukkha then? Because the habit of self construction is so strong that it continually directs the mind to curate the memory of experiences to prefer those that confirm ‘me, myself, who I am’ and ignore/filter out the rest.  I see moments the car confirms me, forwards my story as the more real memories, prefer and gravitate towards what brought me sukkah, even if it was totally based on delusion.

That’s all. Its nothing more. These moments of joy are just moments of max delusion. Max belief that I, my story, my mental objects and suppositions are being confirmed. And what was the story at the end of the car? The shattering of that delusion via the revelation the car was secretly sick, defying my identity as on top and in control. And if at the end the car didn’t prove my story in the end –did it prove it in the beginning or the middle? Or had I been wrong all along?

Like one woman who doesn’t know she is 1 of 100 of her partner’s lovers. Feeling so unique and special only to realize all the evidence she took of her specialness is just lies. She is just one in a number. Not confirmed. Happiness is when she believes the self-narrative is confirmed. Sorrow when, scorned, she believes her self-special-narrative is crushed.  Happiness and sorrow are just the products of mental processes, the degree to which rupa and reality don’t strain the credulity of pleasant fabrications.

I think back at the image of myself in my beautiful red wedding dress. How happy and satisfied I felt as I looked in the mirror at the final fitting — Here was a body looking ideal, beautiful to my eyes, reflecting my desirability, my goodness/worthiness to have such a beautiful form, my prowess in powning this body into a perfect shape. Mind you I ignored that it was a compromise shape form the get go: Body builder fit since dancer sleek was contrary to my ectomorph physic. Evidence even in my glory moment –my beauty peak– that I had to adjust my story to reality, to the rupa I am delt, not that rupa that adjusts itself to be a perfect prop in my story.

Still ignoring this, ignoring the suffering to get to such a state, ignoring my stress with every bite of food that such peakness would be lost. I felt joy. I imagined this body telling my story and there was the sukkha. Sukkha is just the moment my lies seem truest. Later, the same dress made a mockery of my 40 something body. Bulging in all the wrong places when I tried it on. Later, that memory of peak body became tinged with sorrow, regret, self-indictment  when it had lost a peak that, by definition of peakness, could never ever have been held onto.  

And yet still, I persist in claiming this body. I take those happy memories– those points that the rupa was close enough to my story to feel affirmed –as evidence I can do it again. All I need to do is change the story slightly, to accommodate the 40 something body… But what’s the truth here, what is actually happening? The truth is that bodies are just shifting 4es, changing states over time. Sometimes the states align with ‘my story’, with the mental objects I cling to, and sometimes they don’t. In order to keep using the shifted (i.e. 45 year old) physical object to fuel the aggregate process, imagination and fabrication must shift too.

Returning to happiness then, it is the rare occasions I can convince myself the object confirms my story. Rare why? Because it actually doesn’t, because the nature of shifting decaying bodies is not to confirm peak and always desirable states. The nature of 4e bodies isn’t actually to confirm anything at all: Meaning, identity, hides no where in the midst of elements.  More often than happiness, I find stress. I stress because the body is continually either shifting into undesirable states, or threatening to do so.  Aging, illness, lurk around every corner. No story, no matter how beautiful and elaborate, no body-mind object, can stand up to actual elemental decay and win.