Yesterday I started thinking about how I can use a paradigm of ‘meeting the qualifications’ to think about dhamma (in particular self and self-belong). My goal is to reinforce the idea that Alana is not some special snowflake, she is just the same as everyone and everything else in the world — subject to causes and effects, to the rules of the world and to its common characteristics.

I need to prove to myself that all the objects, qualities, experiences or accomplishments that I claim, that I believe belong to and make me a special me, aren’t really proof of my exceptionalism at all.

Let’s take the example of being in a raffle: If I have a raffle ticket, that means I met the qualifications of being in the raffle. I was at the right place, at the right time, to buy the ticket. I had the desire to participate in the raffle based on whatever view I had that made me buy the ticket (for example I was doing it for charity or because I really wanted a particular prize). I had the money to buy the ticket and I was ready to assume the risk/reward of winning or losing.

If I do win the raffle, it is because I met the criteria for winning — a ticket plus karma/circumstance to win. But raffles are a dime a dozen, some you win and some you lose. Wining any one doesn’t make you a winner, it doesn’t confer identity. It just means the circumstances for participation, and then winning, in that particular case, were met.

Take another example — A dance competition like So You Think You Can Dance: To make it to the show you must qualify, based on skill. But you can end up voted off at any time, or you might leave due to injury or personal circumstance. The simple equation that winning proves skill, and skill proves identity, quickly breaks down when I watch seasons where the most skillful dancer has had to forfeit the competition because something, other than their ability, forces them to take leave from the show.

When I win a competition, I use that win to stroke my ego, to build an identity – Alana the Master Debater, Alana the Horseback Champion, Alana the Great Poet. But after binge watching many seasons of So You Think You Can Dance, I see there are winners each season, winning is not so unique. Nor is being a winner/loser a permanent state: Someone who wins once may lose another competition and someone who loses may go on to win later. How can a status (winner) that is not particularly unique, and that changes from one competition to the next confer identity?

Folks who don’t make it into the qualifying round of So You Think You Can Dance one year can then come back, try again, and make it in a subsequent year. There are folks who may still have the requisite skill, but stop being able to qualify for the competition because of the show’s age limit. In other words, someone can have the qualification for something and then lose those qualifications or they may not have qualifications for something but later be able to meet them.

Meeting the qualifications for something (as well as winning/losing), is bound-up with circumstance. It is not absolute. What is circumstantial doesn’t point to the innate exceptionalism of anyone/thing, it is just the result of all the requisite causes coming together temporarily.

It is like getting a drivers license, I had friends who failed the first test. I passed. But after another shot they passed too. In the end we were all qualified to drive, we met the qualifications.  Later some of those friends lost the qualification – one drank and drove, loosing her license, another developed a disability and could physically no longer operate a car.

I had the qualifications for a Porsche. I had the money, I found the car, I had a license, a garage, I lived in an environment suitable to driving a little low sports car. But then the qualifications ended — I moved somewhere snowy, since I was raised in Miami I was incapable of driving in the snow and needed an 4w wheel drive that made it easier to navigate icy roads.  So, I no longer had the skills/knowledge – the requisite qualifications – to drive the Porsche; the circumstances changed.

I loved that Porsche, I believed it was mine. When I drove it down the winding highways, I felt like it proved I was loved by Eric who bought me the car. I felt like its fanciness, the way it hugged curves and performed, proved I was on top of the world. But I went in and out of having the qualifications to have/use it as the circumstances of my life changed. So how could it be mine, how could it be there to represent me and prove something about me? It only proved that for some time, the qualifications were met.

I have started thinking everything in the world is like this, it is circumstantial; the appropriate elements – be they for a raffle, competition, license or item we claim (but really just use) – come together, for a time, and provide the qualifications for a certain status, right, access, ‘ownership’. But then the circumstances change, and just like with the Porsche, you can no longer claim an item, or status, right, ability, access, etc. These things hinge not on ourselves, our exceptionalism, but upon the qualifications being temporarily met.

Lately, I have been contemplating on karma and I feel so stupid, so stuck, the topic feels so impenetrable and impossible that I just want to quit. Frankly, I feel like such a failure of a practitioner, I rather just give up than forge ahead, it truly feels like I will never get ‘there’, never be a person worthy of seeing the truth, worthy to become enlightened. So why work so hard, why bother to try.

But what if the path, and its fruition, is just like getting a license or winning a show, its not about exceptionalism, or being super special –its just that pieces need to come together, the proper circumstances must arise. If that is the case, enlightenment –whether I can achieve it or not – isn’t really about being a bad or good alana, its just about meeting the qualifications. And just because I don’t meet the qualifications for something today, it doesn’t mean I won’t meet them tomorrow; there is no reason to quit, to pre-empt my inevitable failure by throwing up my hands in submission, when instead I can work on building the requisites I need and waiting for the circumstances to shift.