Alana's Dharma Blog

All righty Dear Reader – I am once again going to mix things up and get a little out of order for this sorta-temporally-linear blog; I am adding in a contemplation from this past week, late Sept. 2024. Why? Well for starters, it is so clearly rooted in the topic of ‘the world offers no shelter’, it is almost a natural extension of the last blog. An extension that shows how my dukkha contemplations have progressed, and how the topic of dukkha continues to be a strong scaffolding for my post-dukkha-aha-moment contemplations.

But mostly, it is because while I spend a whole lotta time thinking, it’s a rare contemplation that really squeezes my heart, that feels as emotionally powerful as it does logical. This contemplation hit me hard and has prompted me to reconsider, and gain more clarity on another critical topic, karma…

I went to the spa today, mid-day on a Monday, I expected it would be quiet. Instead, it was a zoo. I did my usual dance to duck and dodge the crowds, aka the disease carriers, but it was impossible, there were too many people. As I sat in the sauna – vigilantly listening to detect any cough, any sniffle – I started thinking about how stressed out I am all of the time …

I have so much money, but I continually stress on how to keep it, whether it will be enough, how to invest and if we need more. I pour over spreadsheets, calculating, adjusting, making ‘sure’ we are on track. I fear every unexpected expense will push us out of budget. I wonder whether everything I buy is worth the risk to my bank account, to my future in which I need money to survive. In my mind, I am supposed to have this money to enjoy life with, to be safe, but it turns out to be a source of constant stress. And as for safety…despite all the money, I see peril everywhere. Proof: Here I am sitting in a sauna worrying about Covid instead of relaxing.

I have this lovely vacation home in Montreal, also something I bought to relax, enjoy, take refuge in to escape the Miami summers, but I worry about it constantly too. I worry about how to preserve it, about humidity levels, and floods when I am away. I stress when it breaks on how we can fix it rapidly enough to prevent it becoming damaged past the point it is habitable for me. I fear that that mold will be my evictor. Or the government will be my evictor; geopolitical instability could make American tourist visas scarce. Or the property taxes will become prohibitively expensive, and we will need to sell. And is someplace really a refuge if you worry about it being ruined, or it ruining you all the time? If at any moment you can be evicted — or at least denied pleasurable use — by the elements, or naughty neighbor, by governments and geopolitics?

I have this body – I am sitting here trying to give it sensual pleasure, to find relaxation at the spa, but here I am worried about disease. Continually, I worry about disease. I think this body is ‘my ticket’, to the future I imagine, to the freedom to do what I want to do, to go where I want to go, to write my unparalleled story of awesomeness and love and wealth and adventure. To prove and manifest who I am. But just look at Covid — I spent over a year isolated and alone, afraid to go out, to meet other people, to travel, to go the places I wanted to go and do the things I wanted to do, all to protect this body. Instead of being an instrument of my will, instead of being in service to my story or to my enjoyment, this body was something I felt intense need to protect, to preserve, even at the expense of my story or enjoyment. There was no pleasure from this body during that time, only constant stress.

I started thinking back to my contemplation of fear. How in the yoga room I came to realize if I could ‘breathe through’ fear, it must not be in a yoga pose, not in a situation, fear lies with me. Stress of course does too. Here I am at the spa, which in the past has been a place I go to decompress and relax, only the last few times have been overcrowded and stressful. The stress though isn’t in the situation, it’s not at the spa, it lives with me, in my heart. This is stuff I already ‘know’, its rote platitudes at this point.

I had left the sauna and was walking toward a cold pool when I saw a guy with a big wound on his leg – it really looked like a MERSA infection. Here he was, wandering around the spa, going in shared pools and saunas. At first, I wanted to get angry at him. At the woman who was coughing in the sauna too. At all the people who come to public places sick, endangering others. But are they really the problem? If I think these people are the cause of my stress, I am dead fucking wrong. This is a spa. A place humans go in droves, they intermingle, share water and facilities. This is a place where disease spreads.

Everyplace humans gather is a place disease spreads: A school, a hospital, a concert hall. Even my own home is a place disease spreads – I caught Covid from Eric at home, not some grand public gathering. Even in isolation, disease spreads, in my pandemic cottage – purchased to protect me from disease, away from all those covid spreaders – a bat put me at risk for rabies and sent me to the hospital, mid pandemic, for shots.

This is the nature — the fundamental rupa — of bacteria and viruses that consume human bodies and use them to replicate and spread. This is the fact of human bodies, that are subject to disease, to being consumed by these viruses and bacteria. That are consumables, that one way or another will become consumed, used up, changed past the point they can continue to support what I call an Alana, or the life I imagine she has/will have. I am getting stressed out by the WAY THINGS ARE, HOW THEY ARE MEANT TO BE, HOW THEY HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AND ALWAYS WILL BE.

In my head, I’m affronting these coughers and sneezers and open-wounders asking, “is the spa really a place for sick people?” But Alana,” is the spa really the place for people worried about being sick? Is this world? You seriously showed up to the wrong party girrrrlll, why the hell are you still here?”.

Fear, stress from the spa, that lies in my heart, but so too did the sense of relaxation and comfort I have gotten there in the past. Neither of these reflects a proper understanding of reality. To see this as a haven misses the danger innate in the circumstance, in the world. To see it as a continual threat misses something even more subtle –that being in this world, no matter where I am, is a risk. Threats abound ALWAYS. Whether or not this body is consumed, made sick, or dies in any given circumstance, by any given threat, is about whether the causes and conditions for this body being sick/consumed/dead have been met, not about whether someone sick comes into the sauna.

That right there is truth of karma, the truth I just don’t quite get. That right there is also the key to solving all this fucking stress: What the world is, karma, they are one in the same — shit that arises when the causes and conditions for arising are met and ceases when the causes and conditions for cessation have been met. My problem is that I want all that arising and ceasing to be on my terms. Clinging to the hope I can somehow achieve that (some people beat ‘the house’ some of the time after all), and resultantly to the things that have arisen, and that will cease, that is my suffering. I see the problem. I see the solution. And yet I still can’t seem to get there.

I can’t get over the idea of my own power, my faith that my own abilities/actions will be the causes I want them to be and manifest the effects I want to manifest. I mistake agency (that I can act in ways I think will impact my future positively) for control. I mistake the fact that of course I do have an impact on my life, on preserving my health, and my wealth, and my belongings, as proof that the things I do at any given moment determine whether I get the outcome I want. But, as Mae Neecha has said, and I still foolishly don’t believe, our actions now matter, but how much? Aren’t they just a small trickle of the whole gushing stream of causes, conditions and factors that come together to forge an outcome?
Afterall, I bought a plane ticket to get to retreat in 2023, I took time off, I RSVPed, I had a body, I mentally prepared myself. Then I caught Covid and couldn’t go – going to retreat was not within the scope of ‘permitted activities” for this body at that time. Later, when I talked to Mae Yo, she said something that I still can’t completely understand, but that is the crux of all of this: I didn’t have the causes to go to retreat. I had factors — like sunlight and water and soil — but there was no seed, no cause, so no tree could grow.

I have spent many hours over the years contemplating the Four Dhamma Summaries, I have read and re-read the Ratthapala Sutta, which goes into a beautiful explanation of the summaries. These short, pithy truths have always deeply resonated with me. None more so than the second Dhamma Summary – The world offers no shelter, there is no protector.

The truth is, I am desperate for shelter, for protection. When I look at my sandan, those niggling tendencies, beliefs and resultant behaviors, that continuously underpin my stories, there is probably none more prevalent than my desire for safety. I come into this world seeking shelter. But over and over I have been disappointed. Over and over I find insecurity and danger.

The world offers no shelter … nothing made this more clear than covid, after all, where could I hide from disease? Believe me, I tried, I holed myself up and used my massive resources to stay safe: I worked from home, had everything delivered, avoided all human contact, till a medical emergency sent me to the hospital, ground fucking zero for sick people, in the middle of a pandemic.

As covid progressed, and I watched governments repeatedly fail to pass policies that kept people safe, my mind just kept coming back to the words there is no protector, there is no one in charge.

Later, once I had emerged a bit from my bubble, I would go to the store and see all the anti-maskers, defying the law, endangering everyone around them. Ensuring there was no shelter, no safety, even in a state that had mask ordinances. There was a law, but no one was able to enforce it… The world offers no shelter, there is no protector.

Before Covid, I truly used to think there were things – states, institutions, law enforcement, social norms, human decency – that could be counted on to protect people, but Covid, people’s behavior during Covid, decimated that belief. It showed me that there can be places of relative safety, of temporary comfort, but those can change at anytime.

An apartment that once gave me a quiet space turned into a construction zone. A city – SF –that once made me feel emotionally whole, became a smoke ridden health hazard to my asthmatic self. A relaxing day at the spa became a hellscape as I watched my beloved collapse to the ground from overheating and I feared for his life. I may not have been an essential worker, forced into the world during lockdowns, but my time for risk of illness and danger still came. It will keep coming right up until the time my death comes.

There is no place to hide from these things, there is no one who will avoid them or make it so that I can avoid them. The world offers no shelter. There is no one in charge. One morning, while I was chanting the Dhamma Summaries, it dawned on me – A world where there is no shelter and where no one is in control must be a dukka world.

A long time ago, my old Vajrayana teacher was visiting San Fran. We were walking in Golden Gate Park, on a beautiful day and she smiled and said, “the Bay Area is the peak of samsara”. It is a comment that has really stuck with me over the years and it came back to me again recently.

When my teacher made her comment, my mind focused immediately on the ‘peak’ part — SF was tops of this world for pleasure/ comfort — and I was inclined to agree. Now, with the lengthening fire season, and increasing homelessness, with my weakening ties and lessening emotional attachments to the place, I think SF has passed its peak.

A troubled SF however proves more than just that peak states pass their peak; by their passing that peak they also prove that even peakiest moments of this world are still peaks in this world. After all they are acting in accord with the  NATURE of this world, which is to shift/cease.

If you are on the top of a mountain or in the bottom of a valley, you are still on earth. If you are in the front of the bus or the back of the bus you are still on the bus. If you have a peak life, or a peak moment in life, you are still trapped in samsara–in this world of rebirths. And what is this world? I am starting to see with increasing clarity that this world is dukkha.

As my winter in Miami was winding down to an end, I started to think ahead about my return to Greenwich. In my mind, homecomings should be happy occasions, but in this case, I feared disappointment: For my last 5 months in Greenwich, I would wake-up every morning, save Sunday, to a cacophony of construction so close it sounded like there were bulldozers in my bedroom. When I left for Miami, the work was not even halfway done, I considered the fact that I would  likely be going home, to continued construction.  Going home, my home, my space,  but a place I could find no refuge or peace.

Of course, it wasn’t always this way, when we got the Greenwich place it was cute and quiet; I signed the lease because it seemed like  the perfect refuge from Manhattan.  But then, zoning laws changed, and the row of charming historic homes across the street were demolished to make room for a mega condo. Now, the Greenwich place is far louder and more uncomfortable than the NY loft ever was.

Beyond the sheer physical suffering, the problem here is that circumstances are always changing (again with the impermanence) and the changes occur in accord with the causes and conditions for change, like new zoning laws, and CLEARLY not in accord with my personal wishes. Now, there are times when the world happens to be in states that align closely enough with my wishes that I feel comfortable, after all, my Greenwich flat was, more or less, a fine home for years. But my own comfort at certain circumstances can’t possibly confirm that the world bows to my wishes, or that changes that occur do so in accord with those wishes, otherwise those zoning laws never would have changed.

Frankly,  if even my own home, my own ears, won’t bow to me, my rules or my control, I am not sure what hope I can have that anything at all in this world will yield to my wishes/rules/control. Disappointment (anger as well) arises because shit isn’t the way we want it to be, it  doesn’t follow our hope, our standards, our expectations. In other words, it doesn’t follow our rules. But by its fundamental nature this world doesn’t follow my rules, so doesn’t that make it definitionally disappointing? How can I not count disappointment as one of the many faces of dukka?

I had been contemplating for a long time on how everything is suffering, so I decide to flip the issue a bit and ask a new question — what do I think happiness is?

At some point it dawned on me that sukkah arises from a wrong perception of what things actually are. Happiness is just a misunderstanding.

Back when I had my Porsche, it frequently made me happy. Cruising along, top down, wind blowing in my hair, I felt so alive, so on-top-and-in-control of my life.  Because I was so sure that car confirmed me, my power, my worthiness, it brought me joy. I can still recall those moments of electrifying pride. Happiness.

But, when I went to sell the car, the dealership found a mechanical problem. I ended up having to sell it for so much less than I had paid, so much less than I thought it was worth, so much less than I thought it proved I was worth. Standing in the dealership that day, I felt deceived by the car; all those years I thought it had proven my awesomeness, my control, but now it made me feel a fool. Someone so ignorant, I didn’t even know my own car was sick. Someone so not-on-top, that I let something precious go to shit.

On the way home from the dealership, I mourned. I also contemplated. I likened the situation to a woman who felt so affirmed, so loved, by their lover only to realize that he was cheating. That she was one of many of his women. And, I put myself in her shoes, feeling that, in that moment of realization, all the sense of special that lover had imbued me with was drained away, leaving me feeling crushed, used.

The point here is that I read ‘special’ as the message of my objects — cars, lovers — and it makes me happy. But what if I later learn that those things never made me special at all? Doesn’t it follow that my happiness was based only off a misunderstanding of what I think things are/mean.

When I was moving from SF to NY, Eric and I took a 3 week vacation between departing California and arriving in NY. For those few weeks, as I lay on the beach soaking up the Mediterranean sunshine, I fantasized about the exciting new life waiting for me in NY. I was happy, for a brief moment, till I landed at JFK and the rude, filthy, loud reality of New York intruded on my happy imaginings.

Happiness is born when my imagination interprets some ‘signs’ I see right now as proof that I am the Alana I want to be, and the future will be the future I want it to be. But this is like reading tea leaves; I fantasize some meaning into something that can’t really hold or fulfill that meaning at all. It’s just a tea leaf. It’s just a car, it’s just a lover, it’s just a place that I live. The future will be whatever it will be without regard to either what I want it to be, or what I imagine it will be. Sukkha is just a side effect of my misreading reality.

I was in the midst of planning a little getaway for Eric and me. As I picked activities, restaurants, fantasized about future fun, I stopped to consider my homework: Prove everything is dukkha. That is when it hit me — times of enjoyment are just times I ignore the suffering that is always there. Vacation is just a short while when I don’t let the reality of suffering intrude upon my fantasies.

When I go on vacation, I simply ignore my to-do list of burdens;  I put stress aside and try to relax. But the reality is that none of my responsibilities, none of the things that weigh and stress me really disappear. In fact, when I return from a trip, that same to-do list is there to greet me, as well as a pile of new worries and responsibilities that stacked-up in my inbox while my out of office message was on.

I obsess about my body, my fitness, my weight. But on vacation, I tell myself to worry about it later so that I can indulge and enjoy. All while engaging in the very eating that will cause me shame and stress later. That will require vigor and effort and sacrifice to take off.

Since the tasks required to tend to a breakable, decaying, body are endless and routine, there always seems to be a mammogram, or broken crown, or some other painful, anxiety producing procedure/ appointment to tend to just after I get home. All through the trip I put it out of mind, tell myself to worry later about the worrisome things that are just around the corner.

Looming over every trip from the get go is it’s end. No matter the fun, the enjoyment, the lessening of stress and suffering, the short reprieve a vacation brings, each day of it brings me closer to it’s end. The suffering of loss is built in and pressing closer each day.

Of course a trip has its own dissatisfactions and discomforts. But usually I can put my routine- daily-big-hairy-stresses aside for a little while, look away towards the distraction that a trip brings. There are periods I ignore suffering, even as it lives, thrives and compounds. But whether I look at it or not, dukka is always there. Everything must be suffering because the highlights of my life are periods I try to distract myself and turn a blind eye to the suffering that is still so clearly there.

I came across an Atlantic article today, the upshot of which was that the secret to satisfaction has nothing to do with achievement, money, or stuff –the secret to satisfaction is wanting less.

As I was reading, I stopped to look out the window at the sunlight so beautifully shimmering over the water in the bay below. I took a deep breath, enjoying the view and then realized that this thing — this view – that I enjoy so much has already caused me a world of suffering…

Eric and I had been spending a few months in Miami. We were staying at a bay front property, an Airbnb, in the same apartment building my dad used to live. I loved the building, especially the view. But it isn’t enough to just enjoy this view, this experience of living in Miami again, while I have it. No! I want to claim it, I want to guarantee more of it in the future. So, I have already started hunting for real estate in this building, I have already had a ton of drama and fights with Eric over it too. Now, realizing that having what I have just makes me want more, I see that even if I get an apartment I want, I will find a way, a thing, to want all over again.

The truth is, I don’t even need to want MORE necessarily, sometimes it’s just the desire to keep what I have. The problem is, trying to keep what I have is more work, more stress, more sorrow when inevitable loss comes. I already have this view right in front of me; what I have already is clearly a burden.

Long ago LP Nut talked about a hike with LP Anan where he was asked to carry along a chair. The hike was long, arduous. The chair made it a terrible struggle. At the end, LP Anan asked –why didn’t you just put down the chair? Why is it I can’t put down my burdens?

I’m so afraid of loss, but gain is also a problem. Having is a problem. They are both burdens — the burden of acquiring, the burden of keeping, and the burden of loss only arise as a result of the burden of having. If having hurts and not having hurts then where is Sukka?

Sometimes I feel stuck, don’t know how to proceed, but I sort of do– look at the sing story. What is the point? That I never really have anything to begin with. It is just an illusion that it is mine. I struggle and fight to acquire and maintain simple to feed my illusion. A body , belongings are means not ends. What I use to move through this world.

Eric and I were spending 3 months in Miami to pass the winter and be close to my family. I was delighted, having the time of my life; I wanted to stay longer, to settle down, Eric who was not quite as enamored, was unsure.  Still, because he loves me, Eric offered to buy me a place in Miami. He offered to commit to several months a year there. I, however, wanted more.

I was upset, snippy with Eric, his compromise wasn’t enough for me. He was giving part, I wanted all. He was begrudging, I wanted enthusiastic. It wasn’t enough that Eric was willing to do all this for me – I wanted him to want the same thing as me.

Eric pointed out how unreasonable I was being, how poorly I was treating him when he as so willing to meet me more than halfway. He was right of course, I apologized, felt contrite.

Later in the car I was still feeling guilty for my treatment of Eric and got to thinking about the whole issue more. Here, I had such an amazing husband, a partner really and willing to give and to compromise, but I was still dissatisfied. I wanted more. But even as I craved more, demanded more, behaved poorly doing so, I felt burdened by the debt I owe to Eric, for being such an attentive partner, for taking such good care of me, for giving me everything in his power to give me even when, reflecting on my behavior, I feel I don’t deserve it.

If I have, but I want more, this is dukkha.  If someone can have as much as I do, and still there is ALWAYS ROOM FOR MORE, there is always dukkha. And if having, getting, creates a weight of debt, a burden to pay back, this too is dukkha. Where does dukkha end if craving continues in such a peak life?

I had been reading and editing the second part of LP Thoon’s Autobiography and I ended up going back to the first part to look more closely at the Ubai that ultimately helped him become enlightened: It was about a Skunk Vine. He had cleared a path for walking meditation, but the very next day a new skunk vine had begun to grow where it had already been cleared before. He saw that the cause of the skunk weed growing is in the bulb itself. Once the cause for becoming exists it is only a matter of the right circumstances — water, soil, sun, etc — for it to begin growing. Unless it is fully uprooted ,and the bulb destroyed, it will keep growing back anytime the circumstances for growth align. For him, he saw that this is the same with rebirth/becoming. As long as the root cause exists –desire — rebirths will occur when the circumstances are fertile. Only uprooting and destroying desire, the cause for becoming, is going to lead to cessation.

I think until I had my own snowflake realization, I couldn’t quite register the import of this Ubai. Now though, I see it much more clearly: The cause of a snowflake is the nature of water itself. All it takes are for the right conditions to come — temp, humidity, wind, etc and you get snow. Over and over the same drop of water can cycle through freeze and thaw. The particular shape of the snowflake depends on the environmental conditions that give it shape, but the tendency to arise as a flake–ceaselessly — is in the water.

The other day I was doing some volunteer work at a food bank. I started considering why some folks were on the receiving side of the line and others on the giving side. Fresh off of re-reading the skunk vine story, I began thinking in terms of core causes:

Why was there a food drive at all? Because 4E humans need 4e food to survive. This is common to all humans. Frankly it is common to all 4es, they tend to degrade and disaggregate and need continual ‘re-feeding’ to sustain a shape for any duration.

Why are there embodied humans in need of food? Because each of us was born from the desire to be/become, from our craving for satisfaction, from our belief that said satisfaction is to be found in the rupa world.

Already it was clear that the volunteers and the folks needing donations share fundamental core causes, though the details of their circumstances differed, so I pushed more on how these differences arise. I thought about the 8 worldly conditions. Now I have pushed on this topic a lot over the years and I have already considered how both impermanence, and the relativity of experiences, make these conditions a basic truth of the world. This basic nature of the world then is yet another shared core cause — if you are in this world, you are subject to this up/down, up/down cycle. Givers and receivers are just at different points in the cycle. My mom (who I was there volunteering with me) actually helped a lot calling out clear evidence of this shifting state; she commented, a bit critically, at folks driving through in fancy cars to pickup food and I saw that just because you could afford a Lexus yesterday it doesn’t mean you can afford groceries today.

Though in a single instant the givers and receivers may look worlds apart, the truth is we are sharing the same core causes of being there — we all keep becoming, and once we have become we need food, and upon becoming we will cycle between states of abundance and scarcity. What we share –whether we are in a high point, or at a low point – is the cycle of being and becoming in this world. What motivates becoming, hunger (desire). Hunger is dukkha. Once we become, we must labor for survival. Labor, struggle, is dukkha. What is the cycle of abundance and poverty, just states where there is more and less dukkha. What do we all share? We share the truth of this world, we share dukkha.

It looked like Eric’s job was going to be fully remote. Besides, his contract was coming to an end in the next few years, and we hoped we would have enough it retire. It was time to consider where to put down roots and build a life. Connecticut, which neither of us were particularly fond of, was always meant to be temporary, just a place close to Eric’s office.

We decided we would try out Pittsburgh – it was a mid-sized, affordable city, and it let us be closer to Eric’s family. When we visited, we fell in love with a house there and inquired about a purchase. The place was in default – bank owned – so there was to be an auction to determine the buyer. Eric and I signed-up to join the auction, scheduled for several months hence, and waited.

While we waited, we let our imaginations run wild: We considered the renovations we would make. The time we would get to spend with family. Life in our new neighborhood. With each passing day, our excitement, our delight rose to new heights.

When the auction day came, the home was already ours in our heads, we just needed to finalize the formalities. We were so sure we would be the highest bidders, there was only one other person signed-up for the auction and they didn’t seem all that serious. But at the last second, a dark hose bidder showed-up. A deep-pocked developer who convinced the judge to allow him to be part of the bidding, even though he had not followed procedure and signed-up in advance. Yup, you already know where this is heading — we lost the bid. We lost our house. We were crushed.

A few days later, I was thinking more about the course of events, about my disappointment, and it dawned on me – I was sad about loosing something I didn’t even have yet. Something I never had, and never will have.

The house was supposed to solve a future problem – giving us a place to live, a new life. My hunger is so pervasive, I am so use to it, that I don’t even need to relieve it to feel joy, just the belief I might relieve it later is enough to provide momentary contentment. But the other side is also true, just fantasy was enough to crush my heart with disappointment.

The thing about imagination is that, unlike reality, it is boundless. If I don’t even need to have to lose. My wants are infinite, my imagination on how to solve those wants, also infinite. So how can my dukkha be anything less than infinite as well?

I wake up, notice the silence in my bedroom, and breathe a sigh of relief – thank god its Sunday.

For months, there has been a massive construction project going on across the street from my house. Everyday, I wake up to the sound of jackhammers, earth-movers and dynamite. Sunday is my one day of reprieve and, as I close my eyes again, to relish a few more minutes of quiet lazing, it dawns on me that this warm, comfortable feeling isn’t really good at all, its just less bad. My comfort is just relatively less suffering. Sukkha really is just dialing down dukka, for a little while…till Monday.

I have already established that my base state –hunger, desire, is a state that is dukkah. Then I relieve it, make it less, for a short time. That is just less of the pervasive state of hunger, turning down the dial. Soon enough, hunger will arise again. Why — because I am hungry by my nature, it is an inevitable aspect of desire. Hunger is both suffering in and of itself, and the motivation for further efforting and stress as I try to ‘solve’ the hunger, i.e. even more dukkha.

But here, in my quiet Sunday morning, is a further nuance to the reality of suffering: If good is just a temporary reprieve of bad, a little quiet in a noisy world, would I even feel good, or happy, or fulfilled, without the bad? If my apartment were not so unpleasant almost all the time, would Sunday be a relief?

In truth, I wouldn’t even appreciate or enjoy the quiet without the shitty foil of constant noise. So isn’t that all dukkah? If I literally need the suffering to have the un-suffering? If Un-suffering is born of suffering: Born in contrast to it, born of the effort to achieve that state? And any moment of relief exists hand-in hand with fear of loosing that relief. Struggle to hold onto it just a little longer. Knowledge that Monday always follows Sunday…

I was so stressed out trying to get to Pilates on time this morning: It felt like the red lights were conspiring against me, forcing me to stop at every block. Ensuring I would be late, would have to awkwardly disrupt the class when I arrived.

During class, I kept fidgeting with my mask, worried some pose, some deep breath might have dislodged it, left room for virus laden air to seep though.

After class, I was reading the news, more covid, worse surge, Omicron…I worried again about this new wave, about how I would stay safe and still get to see my family in Miami.

As I sat there, worrying, I realized that it was only 10 AM, but I had been in a state of low-level stress since I woke-up. It was unrelenting. I had been trying for weeks to prove all of life is dukka, but had I really considered the pervasiveness of this unrelenting, low grade, background stress? What was it? Where did it come from? How does it prove not just that everything is dukkha, but WHY everything is dukkha.

I see as long as I have desire, the stress comes right along with it. I desire to do Pilates, to be liked by the instructor, so I stress about being on time to class, about how that will effect my ability to practice, my likability to the instructor. I desire to have a healthy body, so I stress about catching Covid. Of course, I also desire a life, a chance to spend time with loved ones, so I stress about how to go on a trip to Miami while stressing about avoiding Covid. I have an agenda –a story I tell myself, a story I want to actualize, and so I desire all the elements of that story. All the elements I think I need to bring that story about.

All of life is a rat race. Trying to acquire what we desire, and protect what we desire to keep, while trying to be free of what we desire to be free of. Dukkah really is a direct result of craving; after all, if I don’t want, what do I care if shit goes this way or that, if shirt changes and shifts like the sands. Its my desire that things be one way or another –that I am on time and not late, that I am a good and attentive family member not bad, that I am healthy not sick, that provokes my caring, it provokes stress.

As long as there is craving, there is Dukkah — the two go hand-in-hand. And, for me, there is always desire. We are literally all born of desire, driven by desire, continue because of seeking to quench desire, desire undergirds everything we do or experience in this world. Therefore everything is Dukkha, because everything is tinged by desire.

I woke-up the day after thanksgiving to news of Omicron. I was devastated: Just as I had begun to taste a little post-vaccine freedom, I was now imagining a newly locked down life.

One of the things stressing me out the most was that I would need to cancel an upcoming trip to see my family in January. I have barely seen them since the pandemic began, particularly my brother and his family. I feel not just disconnected, but derelict — I knew they had already returned to basically normal life, and I felt embarrassed, like my not yet having done so was being judged by them, and that my absence was being read as a lack of care. I worried about the toll of my absence on our relationship. So, though the timing was tough, the pricing extremely high, I started hatching plan to fly down to Miami, via charter, and see them all the following week.

I sent a group chat to Mom and Seth and asked their availability. Mom was free, Seth said he was busy, but he is always busy. So I booked the flight. Over the next day or two though my brother kept sending more messages about his business, about how he doesn’t have time, he went so far as to send over a text with his day-by-day commitments so I could figure out if I could ‘squeeze’ myself into his free time. It seemed clear to me Seth didn’t want me to come, that I was an interruption in his busy life, that I was an intrusion and a burden. I was hurt. I would have canceled, but I didn’t want to disappoint my mom, to make her feel the same level of unvalued as my brother was making me feel.

As hurt as I was, I started thinking about my wrong views:

In my egotism, I believed my brother and his family were pining away for my company. I felt like I was disappointing them by not seeing them for so long. I thought the visit would be a boon, a favor for them. But here it was the opposite, my brother made it clear my visit was a burden. The proof was right in front of me that the world –even my little corner of it, even the people I loved and identified with the most – doesn’t revolve around me, doesn’t affirm me.

I knew that Seth didn’t see risk in Omicron, and I suspected he believed my own risk calculation was overblown to the point of being crazy. I guessed that he felt now like my ‘crazy’ was a reason he had to ‘drop everything’ and accommodate me. Even knowing/suspecting all this, I still believed my brother would want to see me if he understood that it could be the last time for a long time. I believed he would prioritize time with me, no matter the circumstances, even if he didn’t agree with the reasons or urgency behind the visit. But why?

The truth is, everyone in this world, operates under conditions. Even love, which we tend to pretend is so absolute, is conditional. Both the feelings we feel, and the priority – measured by actions – we give to our loved ones is done with terms and conditions. With fine print. Under specific circumstances. To simply believe that Seth, in every circumstance and under all conditions, would want to see me is a deeply wrong. To believe that just because I weigh a situation as sufficiently important to ‘drop everything’, he would as well, is crazy. His conditions for love, for attention, are shaped by his life, his beliefs, his priorities, not by mine.

I thought more about my suffering and realized too how I was ultimately its author. Seth and I weren’t always close, for many years in my 20s we were basically estranged. But we became closer after my dad’s death and when his Seth’s first child was born.  At that time, I decided I wanted to BE a better family member. I decided there was virtue in the identity of good sister, good auntie, and I embarked on acting the part. I used my brother to create a particular identity.

But using him to create my identity was a double-edged sword — as our relationship came to symbolize a facet of my virtue, his disapproval/rejection took on the power to deflate me. I realized everything we use to build our sense of self is like this — money, partner, clothes, job — as long as I have these things I can see them as aggrandizements to Alana. But once they are lost, once they turn on me, or fall out of favor of either myself or those I seek to impress, I see them as ego blows. It is two sides of the same coin. And because of impermanence I am bound to lose these things and suffer the inevitable blow. But in truth, I don’t have to, that blow is my choice. Just like with Seth, I chose to use him, to imagine him making me the me I want to be. The choice was both mine and arbitrary. And had I not chosen him, had I not given him that ‘power’ I wouldn’t have felt so pained when I felt rejected by him.

As I contemplated, an image popped into my mind. It is like taking on something we love, we feel boosted by, and in that moment it sinks little claws under our skin, like a wall anchor, going in smooth – as long as it is going with the grain – painless and unnoticed. But when it is time for that thing to come out, the hook catches, pulls against the grain, and we suffer such pain with the separation. Pain I allowed by letting it sink in in the first place.

After some of my initial contemplations on everything is suffering, I reached-out to Mae Neecha via Line with an update. I want to share that conversation as her response — particularly her comment about how our desire to maximize, even when we are already happy, proves dukkha — helped guide my investigation into considering increasingly  subtle forms of suffering.

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Alana:  I have been thinking a lot about this idea everything is suffering, turning it over in my mind and I now see it crystal clear:

I have been on a 5 day modified fast that I get to break tomorrow( it is a program recommended by my Rheumatologist to help modulate the immune system and try and prevent autoimmune issues, I do it every 4-6 weeks now) . Anyway,  I am so excited to eat tomorrow, thinking of how great it will feel. But it makes me see my joy is just a relief from deprivation. Of course everything is suffering if happiness is just a temporary relief from a state of longing/craving/ hunger/ suffering.

I have had more in depth and technical contemplations around this topic, but this one example just drives the point home. Just wanted to share since we talked about this recently.

MN: The other day, I was thinking about how suffering and happiness are different points on the same scale. And how if while you feel happy, it could still be better somehow (if only .. were here, if only there was … instead) that already indicates that it is suffering and not happiness.

Alana: Or how when you feel happy, in the back of your mind, you are always wondering how to preserve that happiness and afraid of losing the situation that makes you happy.

Then there is the poison that losing something that made you happy before creates longing to have it again. Hunger, craving, is dukka.  After all, what is craving but trying to satiate dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction is the primal state. It is why we become in the first place… Dukka is there from the beginning.

MN: Dukkha is all there is. We just give it different names. But it doesn’t change the fact that it is all the same – dukkha.

Alana: Fair. Part of my efforts to understand were in fact to try out different translations: suffering, dissatisfaction, stress ( I got the most out of that one), hunger, disappointment, etc…

MN: It isn’t supposed to be easy for us to see that everything is suffering. We are born for all the different variations and names of suffering that we think are everlasting happiness. Once we can see that everything is suffering, and that there is nothing other than suffering, that is when we will be on our way out of the cycle of rebirth.

Alana: That is definitely a work in progress!

I was watching a bird yesterday struggling to fly in the wind. I realized it puts so much effort into just getting where it wants to go. A place it only stays a little while before needing to struggle to get somewhere new.

To achieve just temporary enjoyment, the bird has to struggle. Which is to say, enjoyment is born of struggling. No struggle no enjoyment. On some level, we all know this: If you want a delicious meal, you need to cook it. Or you need to work hard, to make money, to pay someone else to cook it for you. Enjoyment is the fruit of a poison tree.

One way to look at this of course is to confirm my old beliefs –there is struggle and there is enjoyment. Dukkha and sukkah, they go together. Struggle enough and you get to enjoy plenty.

But here is another way to consider it: My desire for enjoyment, for that tasty meal, is the cause of the suffering and struggle I endure to bring that meal about.  And where did the desire for a tasty meal come from? From the memory of the last delicious meal I had, from my wanting to repeat the experience again. The tasty meal, my desire to repeat it, plants the seed for my struggle, it causes me to struggle, just to enjoy the next tasty meal.

And isn’t the stuff that causes you to suffer –even if it is momentarily delicious – actually suffering in and of itself? If I drink something that tastes awesome, but then a few hours later I am writhing in pain from drinking it, I would say I had been poisoned. The drink is poisonous. And poison is definitely dukkha.

 

A while back, my rheumatologist recommended I go on fasting cycles to help regulate my immune system; every 4 to 6 weeks I have been doing 5 day modified fasts. On the final day of my most recent fast, I started contemplating on my hunger, my joy at getting to eat the next day, and how to consider all of this in terms of the topic that ‘everything is suffering.’

As I fantasized about my break-fast meal, I felt a surge of joy, excitement and anticipation. And that’s when I realized my joy at getting to eat again arises because it will bring me relief of deprivation. This is already evidence that what Mae Neecha said is true – happiness is just less, i.e. a relief from, suffering.

Years ago I had gone to the famous Thomas Keller restaurant, Ad Hoc, in Napa. Above the door read a sign “ For the temporary relief of hunger”. The sign had really struck me. When I consider my joy at breaking fast, I realize it too is just a temporary relief of my deprivation: All I have to do is wait another 4-6 weeks and, with my next fast, the deprivation will return.

But the truth is, if I were to wait even a few hours, hunger would already set-in. It’s just that, when I’m not fasting, I simply go to the fridge and pull out something to eat – the relief comes so quickly that I barely notice either the suffering or the soothing. But fullness is always a temporary state, what exists before –what will exist again just a little bit later – is hunger.

Hunger is the native state, the baseline, that is what I am continually striving, eating, to fix. Striving for food, eating to temporarily relieve hunger, this is how I (and all embodied beings) adapt to this world. Adapting, ‘fixing’ — the fact that I need to do this at all —  proves what is there to start with: A problem, dukkha.

Hunger is just a type of dukkha. Hunger is the baseline state. Therefore dukkha is the baseline state. Fullness is temporary, it is just a temporary relief of hunger.

From the beginning of my practice, the former abbot of Wat San Fran, Phra Nut, has been a true teacher and dear spiritual friend (kalyanamitra) to me. In 2021 he decided to leave his role as abbot at Wat San Fran and return to Thailand. Before he left the US, he took a trip to a sister temple in New York to participate in a Kathina ceremony. I feel deeply fortunate that I had the opportunity to visit with him while he was in New York.  Below are my notes that I recorded just after my time speaking with him:

LP and I had a chance to catch-up today, we both shared where we were with our practices, what we had been contemplating most on recently. LP told a story that had resonated with him and it really resonated with me too. It was about a woman whose baby dies 15 minutes post birth. She wasn’t upset, and the nurses asked how it was she stayed so calm. She explained she wanted to be present for the child she had for the few minutes she had her. Getting upset about the future, imaginary child makes no sense. The future child after all wasn’t hers at all.

LP then talked about how his own practice has been to try and be more mindful. To actually watch his mind. When the imagination starts stirring our suffering, to go ahead and fact check it: Is this thing I imagine actually true? Is it as I imagine? How certain is it really? The gift of this contemplations is in short, a balm to anxiety. But in long, it helps train the mind to watch the mind, to understand the origination of suffering is in the mind alone.

We talked through a simple example on my mind a lot lately — my anger and anxiety at folks who don’t mask, who I believe endanger me and my health. This is a throwback to Hypochondria Alana, an old contemplation of mine that I hadn’t revisited in quite a while. But the punchline is there is no necessary relationship between what I stress about and what actually happens. Sometimes I worry about getting sick and I get sick. Sometimes I worry about getting sick and I don’t get sick. Sometimes, when I’m not even worried about getting sick, I get sick. And of course, sometimes I don’t worry about getting sick and I don’t get sick. All these are always possibilities, even when I stress and worry that for sure those anti-maskers will be my covid downfall. To prove the point: A sneak-peak years into the future when my covid downfall actually did come, it was not due to some anti masker in the store, but my very own beloved, masking, deeply careful husband.

Meanwhile, LP made the poignant point: All my stressing when I walk into a store with anti-masker doesn’t guarantee my sickness, but it sure does guarantee my mental anguish. If something bad happens I will have to deal with it, that is my karma. But if not, then I just worried for free. That too is my karma I guess, a suffering born so obviously from my wrong views.

I shared with LP the very beginnings of my contemplations on Everything is Suffering.  I told him that I was trying to prove this assertion of Mae Neecha and LP Thoon and Phra Ajarn Dang.   I wanted a comprehensive understanding of suffering. In some way I couldn’t yet articulate, I knew in my heart I needed a comprehensive understanding.

LP stopped me and issues a warning: That folks like he, and I, we tend to be such elaborate and comprehensive thinkers. But folks have become enlightened on so much less. He suggested I drill down and ask myself if this is truly what I need? If so, why. I talked more, strung together the bits and pieces of observations I had so far. My evidence for suffering and how this helped establish the whys of suffering. LP just pressed me further with a simple question, “so what?”.

I couldn’t really answer at the time, but as I got into the car and drove home I considered the point blank “so what?” more closely. LP Nut’s teachings always struck me with their simplicity, with the utility of asking simple questions to really watch our minds, trace our beliefs, get at our core tendencies and views. I got to thinking about one of LP’s first teaching I had heard, a technique he called  ‘Killing the Hope.’

At one of my first retreats, LP had emphasized the need to kill the hope that we are special, that we are different, that the world will obey our rules. A group of students had gone for a hike and we took a break during which LP taught. Those days were my hypochondriac days and LP called me out on whatever impending disease I was fretting about in that moment. He went around a circle of 20ish students and asked each of them if they had been ill? Had they lost people to illness? Did they have illnesses from which they hadn’t recovered? One person had had cancer, diabetes, many had lost family to disease, or struggled to care for the diseased. In the end, he asked me why I was so worried about illness? Just look at the evidence around me, everyone suffered illness, if I could simply kill the hope I would be exempt from it I wouldn’t need to worry about it so much any more. I would begin to understand the nature of my body, that like every body, was subject to disease and to breakage.   If I could kill the hope that I was so special, that my health could be eternally preserved –or at least preserved on my terms, on my schedule and agenda — I could pull off major blinders that blocked a clear understanding of the world. A world that doesn’t bow to my body, or my imaginations of what a future with that body ‘needs to’ looks like.

Hope, this is what we are born for. Killing the hope, that is the way to exit, release, cessation of rebirth.

That’s when it struck me and the direction of my suffering contemplations took real shape: I realized that my project, the path forward for me had to be not just ‘proving’ that everything was suffering, but understanding the WHY. WHY is it that everything is suffering? With the causes in play, could I realistically expect a result other than suffering?

Afterall, I have contemplated on suffering before. I know damn well its part of this world. But by calling it a part of this world, in my mind, I leave a part that is sukkha. I have a part that I can chase, that I will keep trying to squeeze and hold and maximize. Spending each life cultivating knowledge, qualities, skill, karma that I need to chase the last little bit of sunlight on a darkening porch. No, to truly convince myself that EVERYTHING IS DUKKHA I seriously had to see WHY. I needed to prove to myself that this world doesn’t allow things to be any other way.  That is the path to killing the hope for a world that is anything other than Dukkha.

Mae Neecha’s reply to my question how everything could be suffering:

Yes, it’s the feeling of relief (that you’d call happiness) over Eric’s kidney stones that embodies the concept of everything is suffering.

Happiness is relief from suffering, or just less suffering. They are on different sides of the same scale… the scale of suffering. Just like how hot and cold are on opposite ends of the same temperature scale. Or how 0 and 100 are on opposite ends of a number scale.

It is like how sometimes people enjoy doing yoga, traveling the globe, talking to friends, or cooking dinner. The physical act itself is suffering, because you are exerting energy and working. Physical and mental exertion is suffering. Just because we tell ourself that it is fun and doesn’t feel like suffering doesn’t mean that it really isn’t suffering.

Alana’s reply with further thoughts on how everything could be suffering and the starting point for my Everything is Suffering contemplations;

Alright — I need to think on this more, but it does make sense, especially the part of suffering being a continuum we are always on, a scale we move up and down, but never get off of.  I think, on some level, I have always thought of suffering like landmines — if I can just tread carefully, chart the right course, it can be more or less avoided. But this I am starting to see isn’t right at all. Suffering is just the land itself. It has peaks and valleys for sure, but as long as you have two feet on land you have two feet firmly planted on the suffering scale.

We are up in VT for a few days checking out the leaves. We are staying in an air bnb and it is dirtier than I want. When Eric and I dirtied it even more, just by living in it, last night I started thinking…People are dirty, they do dirty things, they act in ways that dirty the environment around them. Here I am wanting to travel, but needing to stay in places where people are, places that naturally go through cycles of dirty and clean. I spend so much time stressing about cleanliness, trying to make my environment clean. Ridiculously believing that if  an environment looks clean, then it is clean, and if it is clean then it is safe (compounded wrong view obviously).  I have these rigid standards of cleanliness that are totally out of whack with reality. I have an expectation the world will bow to my standards, at least the air bnbs I ‘own’, that I use my money and effort to arrange, that I need to be in. But there are perfectly good reasons that my standard of cleanliness simply is not possible all of the time. It is my standard, not some rule. The more I considered this impossibility, and the suffering and discomfort I feel when I am places not perfectly clean, the more my heart eased up a bit.

I got to thinking suffering is like cleanliness. It too exists on a scale; like dirt, it is innate in this world, that is the part I never deeply considered before. I put myself in this world filled with dirt (suffering), I want to go places where there will naturally be dirt there (again suffering), I want to enjoy activities that create dirt (suffering). The idea that I can avoid suffering –keep from sliding up and down the scale that I literally live on–is as crazy as the idea that I can avoid dirt by never sliding off of a state of cleanliness. Now I am starting to see it — I don’t understand what this world actually is.  The belief that it is possible to make the world bow to my standards and expectations clearly underscores this deep misunderstanding.

Anyway, like I said…still thinking. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

Mar Neecha’s Reply to my reflections on Sammuti: 

The idea is, sammuti starts out arbitrary and then we build on that arbitrary until it feels permanent. Where initially we recognize the arbitrary nature of sammuti, after growing used to it, it becomes real and permanent for us. So much so that after we are removed from the situation we persist in seeing things according to that sammuti. Even being told or seeing for ourselves how something has completely changed doesn’t change how we view it in our minds. Because we feed off of that sammuti. It gives us identity.  It gives us worth. Not universal, but subjective. And even in our subjective view of that sammuti, we are inconsistent – bending our own rules to please ourselves.

As long as it is sammuti, as long as it isn’t a universally accepted notion, it cannot be true.

And once you’ve supposed something to be sammuti, what is “wrong” in terms of that sammuti or “right” in terms of that sammuti – if not just another sammuti concept?  Aka meaningless?

If we can see through this sammuti, we will see its flimsy nature, and all the Tuk Tok Pie it causes us. And we will accept that there is nothing pleasing or attractive in this world. Only suffering.

Alana’s Reply –The Initial Question of How Everything Could Be Suffering:

I have given it some thought and I think I understand, all save the last line which I am struggling with a bit. So I am just going to ask — what is the bridge that gets you from the flimsy nature of sammuti and the suffering it causes (which is obvious to me when I think about my own sammuti for mother and partner) to the nothing pleasing in the world, everything suffering

I see this statement a lot actually — ‘everything only suffering’ and I balk at it because it doesn’t exactly feel true; probably because I also see pleasure in the world — it exists, it is what we are born for, it certainly seems real. It is just that it comes along with suffering, no way outta that. I always sorta figured practice was about laying down both.

Little personal example I have long thought of as a parallel to practice.. When I was young, I used to do ecstasy with my friends — it was a blast for a few hours, that was undeniable, but the lows afterwards were horrible, just days of depression. The reason is simple, the very thing that makes the drug fun — it flooding your brain with dopamine and serotonin –means your stores of these essential brain chemicals are  used up and it takes days to replenish them. You are miserable until the replenishment happens.  One morning, after a fun night on drugs, I woke up so deeply depressed, and in that moment I decide “not fucking worth it.” And that was the end of my ecstasy use — it’s not that it was ‘all suffering’ it was just that it was a shit ton of suffering for a few hours of pleasure and the math didn’t make sense to me. Never was I even the slightest bit tempted again.

So maybe that is what it is and ‘everything is suffering’ is just short hand for ‘ no possible way to disaggregate suffering and pleasure so either pick them both or leave them both behind’. That I totally get. Or maybe there is something I am missing? Some self deception so deep it makes what is  unpleasurable a delight?

On another note, Eric got a CT scan yesterday; no sign of cancer, lots of kidney stones. It’s a relief of course, but it is sorta funny — it’s bad news, he likely needs surgery, but it sure seems like great news because it could be so much worse …ah, maybe that is the trick to seeing everything as suffering, when less bad turns into awesome…