On the tale of considering the shifting meaning in rupa, I started considering where exactly my sense of identity comes from anyway. In Buddhism the answer is given to us practitioners to back solve for: The 5 clinging aggregates. Below are some of my contemplations on this topic from the time:

Being a cause isn’t proof of self: I have often reflected that I use being as cause of something, whether it is baking a cake, getting ripped, or writing an award-winning essay, as an ego puff, proof of who and what I am. But, by that logic, effects are just the bitches of their cause. Born of, powned, driven and defined by their cause. The problem is: What cause is there that isn’t also an effect?

I tried to give this consideration more structure in my mind by using an example, a tree: A seed causes a tree to become. But then the seed is gone, so what is the cause of a tree to be sustained? Itself. The particular arrangement of rupa that is a tree causes its own sustainment –the roots draw nutrient from the soil, the leaves photosynthesize energy from the sun, the sap moves the nutrients around the tree.

And what is the cause of its cessation? That too is in the tree: The breakdown of the tree state elements, the way 4es shift and destabilize as they interact with themselves and the environment. That is the cause of the tree’s cessation. It’s so clear with the tree, this is all in rupa. So isn’t my body the same? The elements of my parents cause the body. Then the arrangement of the body itself sustains it, and the cessation arises when the elements shift out of a state that maintains a body shape. What is the cause of my ability to utilize the body? The duration and terms of usability? That is my karma. My actions past and present. 

I think of an apartment for further clarity: What is the cause of getting to utilize the apartment? I sign a contract. Of my continued occupancy? I pay the rent. Paying the rent is a now thing, but having the resources to pay the rent, that is longer term. The apartment can burn, and I no longer can use it–it departs me. But I can also be evicted, I depart the apartment.

Even with the body, it seems like it is always the body departing me that ends its use. But isn’t there a vegetative state? The body ticks along –sustained by elements, but I am evicted, my karma is such that I can no longer use it. In reality, I can no longer use the body as I see fit even while I am here and conscious. Can I work out the way I used to with this busted hip? Can I sit in a moldy room given the immune disease I have? Always the body is showing me that I don’t drive. I use, in accord with the body’s terms and conditions. Terms and conditions enforced by rupa, dictated by karma, that are the nature of the object, and the aggregates, themselves.

What is circumstantial, conditional, can’t be self: I was also thinking about how what is circumstantial can’t be self. A while back, I had contemplated on the fact that my view, that a fit body = identity of someone with self-control, was incorrect. For more on that contemplation check out this blog. The first step is to see that a fit body is circumstantial, its conditional. Its fitter at different ages for example –the same activity level at different ages yields different body shapes. That already shows that it can’t prove who I am, it can’t prove my willpower.

The same willpower can after all yield different results. What is more is the idea that a fit body was going to prove this abstract trait –willpower — was an arbitrary selection by me. I could have chosen taking up an instrument, getting a PhD, any number of things that take diligence and effort. I chose fitness because I was already precluded to it. In other words, this choice was conditional too, based on my sanna and sankhara, my predisposition, the resources available to me, etc. Furthermore, even the trait I wanted to prove –willpower– that too is arbitrary. Why choose that to represent ‘myself’? Its conditional, its circumstantial; again 3s and 4s dictated that I chose to identify with that trait. My past experiences with fitness made me think it was utilitous and admirable.

 I tried to back it up further –How is the building of identity itself –not just the particular traits also circumstantial? This was harder –but I realized I need to go the other way: To build the identity I need circumstances that dictate the specifics of what I want to be, the characteristics I want to have –like willpowered. And I also need the circumstances, in rupa, that I think allow me to prove and assume those traits. Afterall, what is an identity without traits? What would I be? And don’t I come into a rupa world specifically because I think the rupa world is necessary to prove and build who I think I am?

Anyway, I already know the answer –what I mistake as identity is just the shifting aggregates. Which by definition shift based on causes and conditions. Which therefore are also conditional. I don’t need to fully understand what the self is to know that is true.

Curation is a silly way to prove self: I also got to thinking about building a wardrobe. How I don’t identify with any one article of clothes, but the wardrobe –that I imagine I curated. When I almost lost that wardrobe in a move, I was crushed, afraid to lose such an integral part of what is mine and makes me who I am. But how could a collection of the same 4es be different that a single 4e dress? Why would one build my identity when the other doesn’t? Isn’t body part versus body the same logic? Isn’t a trait versus many traits the same? One moment, one situation, versus the collections of curated moments and situations I commit to sanna?

Something about collecting, curating — the whole, even though it is a continually shifting whole– is where I imagine myself to lie. Of course, the wardrobe is also circumstantial –what pieces I have access to, my budget, style dictated by body type, age, influences. How can that really reflect who I am? It just at any moment reflects the influences and allowables. If it could have been something else. I it was (sexy librarian, hippy), if it will be again, then how is it who I am?

Getting the future I dream of isn’t self: I thought too about Clementine from Westworld. I, like her, live for the dream of tomorrow. She suffers whoring because she imagines one day a quiet life on her own farm, that she can afford with her whore proceeds. Of course –she lives in Westworld, we already know she will never get that farm. That is not what Westworld allows. I was so stuck on the fact that sure, I can be like Clem and end up never getting what I hope for. But I also have the chance to get what I want. To realize dreams and goals. Afterall, we ca set in place causes and conditions, we can build karma.

 So in my mind, my situation was different. Now though, when I think about the future I live for. The story I am so attached to. The story I imagine I need this body to achieve, even if I do achieve it, am I happy? Am I satisfied? I

 Just look at Eric and I living the travel/retirement ‘dream’ that is so fucking stressful. Do I want the dream for itself? No I want it because I think it will make me satisfied. Sukkha. But is this world any different than Westworld? Is sukkah something to be found here, whether the future looks closer or further away from my dreams? What is stressful, what doesn’t satisfy, it can’t be me or who I am. It can’t prove me or who I am. It just proves the nature of the world –dukkha, meaningless. The whole thing about thinking there is a self, that there is a me and mine, is that  it requires objects, and the world, to behave according to my rules rather than their own. And ais certainly not in accord with my rules and wishes.