Browsed by
Author: alana

Daily Evidence Exercises: Impermanence, Control and Special — September Part 2

Daily Evidence Exercises: Impermanence, Control and Special — September Part 2

Comments 0 Comment

This blog is part of a series where I will share a selection of the daily dhamma data collection/ exercises, which I committed to for the 2018 Vassa period.  Today’s selection will all be highlights from the month of September, 2018. For more details on the exercise and commitment, please see this blog.

Impermanence

  • I had a particularly difficult client for my business and I decided I was going to ask them for a higher fee because of their added demands and time requirements. I spent hours prepping and rehearsing my ask, only to get an email that the client decided they no longer wanted my service. On one hand, I was relieved not to need to work with them further, but on the other I was annoyed that I had wasted so much time preparing to ask for a raise for a job I no longer had.

 

  • I was shocked to learn a restaurant I was trying to get reservations for closed at 7:00 PM. I couldn’t believe a restaurant would close at ‘prime-time’ dinner hour. But I realize that the restaurant has their reasons, they don’t follow my expectations or scheduling needs but rather follow their own.

 

  • I went to Pilates today and got on a machine. I saw there was something strange about the machine I chose, a strap laying on it I had never seen before. Even still, it took me about halfway through the class to realize the strap on the machine, that I had tossed to the floor, was actually the shoulder strap necessary for all the hand/arm exercises. So, once we got to an exercise that required the strap, I had to change machines. Even with the evidence in front of me (weird strap on the machine) it took me a while to understand that the machine was broken. That is because I expect it to work as it has in all other classes before.  Plus, it worked for some exercises, so I didn’t even think it was broken for others. It is so clear I filter data through my own experiences and expectations. Why else would I have chosen to ignore a random strap just laying on the machine?

 

  • The realtor came over today, while I was out, to take staging pictures of our NY home. He asked if he could move things and I said, “no problem.” When I got home, I saw he had put a Buddha statue in the bathroom as decor. I was aghast – in my mind, it was such an insult to the Buddha to put his image in the bathroom, who would do such a thing? But it made it so clear –what is obvious, even insulting to me is not necessarily the same for others. I take for granted that everyone shares my view/beliefs, but clearly this isn’t so.

 

  • I was so worried about a long line for the shower at the gym this morning, this particular studio is always so busy at this time. I snuck out of class early to get a good spot in the shower line and there was nobody there, I really wish I hadn’t cut my workout short.

 

  • I got the hotel bill for a few days stay and it was 3 times more than it had been the last time we stayed there. New dates =new rates.

 

  • I overheard a gala volunteer explaining they couldn’t do the job they had done –greeting folks at the door – for decades, their knees had grown too weak to stand for so long. I have known this person so long, I still think of them as hail and hearty, it broke my heart to hear –to realize –they were growing so weak and frail in their older age. I thought, he used to be able to stand and now he can’t. I think about the clothes I used to be able to fit into, but now I can’t. Yoga poses I used to be able to do, the languages I used to be able to speak, the phone number I used to be able to call and hear dad’s voice…So many ‘used tos’ have gone way. Its not only the things I loved either — I used to be bullied by the other kids in middle school, now I am not. I used to have gallbladder pain, but since the surgery I don’t.  I used to feel devastated and trapped in the NY, but I don’t so much anymore. Those things have passed too. Everything moves along. I am the one who gets stuck, thinking what I love will stay and what I hate should be gone long before the causes for it going have been met.

 

Lack of Control

  • I had started using a new facial massage tool to help me look younger. I was so pleased with how it improved my jawline, until I noticed that it was making my nasal labial folds worse.

 

  • I jumped out of bed this am with the telltale cold sore itch. Sure enough, despite pills, creams, the light devices, and patches, this cold sore keeps growing and growing. None of my efforts are helping at all and I am so embarrassed.

 

  • Eric had bought me a gift –a pair of Bose nose masking sleep headphones, but they broke within a few days of arrival. I was calling customer service, waiting on hold, thinking to myself these weren’t even an item I wanted, I never searched for them or imagined getting them, they were a surprise. But now, since they are mine, I have a responsibility to them. I have attachment. In just a few nights of use, I already worry about how I will sleep without them. My reliance grew so quickly. The headphones became a new sleep normal. Then they broke and I worried about repairs, replacement, dealing with customer service. I think these belonging are all under my control, that they make my life better. I don’t see they have 2 sides. I don’t see that if I become dependent on them, they control me not the other way around. And because of it I suffer in service to them.

 

  • Last night I realized I had forgotten my purse and ran back to the office, as quick as I could, praying there was someone still there to let me in. As I ran, I thought about how much of my life is controlled by the contents of one little bag — without it, I can’t get into my house, I can’t pay for anything, or prove who I am with an ID, or use my phone to ask for help. I think I control my bag, but if I did, how is it left behind when I need it. I think I control my life, but if that were true, how is it so many critical things –lifelines – can be lost in a second with a bag.

 

  • On my way to a meeting downtown my stomach began to hurt and I had to run and find a public bathroom for explosive diarrhea. As I think about all the evidence I have gained over this exercise I am starting to see: Each of these ‘freak’ one offs – sagging face lines, lost purses, cold sores, diarrhea, tooth pain, hearing sounds I don’t like, smelling smells I don’t like, not sleeping, over sleeping, weird dreams, trouble breathing – they are not one offs at all. They are not freak at all. These are totally regular things. My breaking, discomfort, body not as I want, changing, all daily events. How am I ignoring them? When will be the asthma attack that means I can’t breathe again forever? When will the tooth infection spreads? The pain become unbearable? Difference of degree is the delta between what I experience every single day and the day I die, or get a terminal diagnosis, or hit chronic unbearable pain. The difference is not kind at all. Why do I think I am able to control this body, this world, when everyday I encounter ample evidence to the contrary?

 

  • I checked my credit score and found it had gone down. I racked my brain and I couldn’t figure out why – I had changed nothing, bought nothing new, and there appeared to be no fraud or other issues with the account. Despite my best efforts, entirely independent of my knowledge, my score had changed.

 

  • Years ago, I used to do yoga everyday, my body was a yoga machine. But after an injury, I stopped doing it so much and began mixing-up my workouts. I went to a yoga class tonight and I felt like an amateur, so many poses I just couldn’t do. Despite years of work and discipline, my body had so quickly lost all the yoga abilities and movements it used to have. If I can’t force the effect of my efforts to endure can I really say I control this body?

 

  • Eric made black beans and had me taste them for spice. They were amazing. Perfect. But, I told him, I didn’t think he made enough since we have guests over, so he dumped another can in. But, the second can changed the flavor and in the end it wasn’t as good. I can absolutely impact the black beans, but there is no guarantee I will make them better.

Not So Special Now Are Ya?

  • I was visiting my brother and sister-in-law shortly before their second child was born – they were in the process of converting their office to a room for the new baby because it was the only spare room available in their house.  It made me remember so clearly that when I was a kid, shortly after my brother was born, my parents moved me to the guest room. I was so excited, thinking I was a ‘big girl’ now, getting the big room with the queen-sized bed. I thought it meant I was so  mature, special. Now, seeing my brother make space for his new kid, I realize that getting that guest room when I was young  wasn’t about me being special, it wasn’t about me at all,  it arose based on circumstances, on the space available in my parents’ home. So the question is, how many other things do I mistake as being about me –evidence of my specialness – when they are just arising based on the circumstance at hand.

 

  • I saw a homeless woman standing on the street this morning, she was stopping folks walking by and asking them if they would sign her dad’s obituary. I remember how much it meant to me, when my dad died, that folks had written things for him on his obituary site — confirming my dad was someone special ( and by extension, so was I). I am always mentally distancing myself from the homeless people, thinking how I a different, safer, un-addled by drugs or mental health issues. I have skill, a safety net of savings, and loved ones to help keep me off the street. But, here she and I both are, the same, united in our loss of the people we love, desperate to try and prove our own value/identity in the face of that loss.

 

  • Last night a friend had come over to hang out at my apartment. In the morning, I noticed a splotch of blood in the sink. I was so friggin grossed out, figuring it was my friend’s blood. But I clean up my blood from the sink all the time. Why do I think my mess is cleaner, less disgusting than someone else’s? Isn’t blood just blood no matter who it belongs to?

 

  • I walked into a nick-nack store in today and they had a bunch of clocks for sale on the wall. Each one a little different then the others. I thought, “why is there so much selection, so many cups, dresses, blankets when they are all functionally the same” I see it is about making its buyer feel special, giving the illusion of special. If was all just had the same clock, no one would imagine it was anything more than a device to keep time. But the flourishes, the slight differences, this is something people can build a ‘unique’ identity upon. With this device, this style clock, or dress or blanket, I can be different than everyone else that uses these items. With this set of small details, I can use these everyday items to prove something special about me.

 

  • I went to my favorite consignment store today. I love to go there and ‘troll’, scouting for clothes that are ‘me’, my style, that will make me feel sexy and beautiful — special. But, these very clothes used to belong to someone else, if they had the power to bestow specialness, why have they been tossed from some other woman’s closet? And what about all the clothes I have rid myself of? Thousands of articles by now, I keep looking for special, but if it were to be found, wouldn’t I have located it in one of those outfits already? What about the white fur cape, that I bought last year because I imagined how fab. I would look wearing it to the gala this year. But now, my body has changed and when I try it on it looks ridiculous. I use these objects to fuel my imagination of what I am, what I will be, and it doesn’t even come true.

 

 

 

Daily Evidence Exercises: Impermanence, Control and Special — August Part 1

Daily Evidence Exercises: Impermanence, Control and Special — August Part 1

Comments 0 Comment

This blog is the beginning of a series where I will share a selection of the daily dhamma data collection/ exercises, which I committed to for the 2018 Vassa period.  Today’s selection will all be highlights from the month of August, 2018. For more details on the exercise and commitment, please see the previous blog.

Impermanence

  • Expected a friend to meet me for dinner but she canceled last min. At first, I was a little sad, but then Eric unexpectedly got of early, so I was happy when he cooked me an awesome homemade meal instead

 

  • I bought a pair of pants at the store. I liked the fit so much I bought a second pair, in a different color, online. When they arrived, I was shocked and disappointed they didn’t fit at all –they were supposedly the same pants

 

  • I walked into my local grocery store where I have been shopping for a long while. I hadn’t been in for a few weeks and this time the store was totally rearranged and half of it had become a sweets shop. I worried they had gotten rig of the fish section, but I learned it had just been moved.

 

  • I didn’t check the train schedule and just assumed there would be a 12:40 train because there has been one before. This time, I was right, there was train and I made it to Thai class on time. But I started thinking how what I am used to/have experienced before is the foundation of expectations. After all, a friend who is always late, is in fact late, I don’t fret — in fact I plan for it, arriving a few minutes late to meet her myself. But a train, that I expect to be on time, I plan for it, when the train is not timely my disappointment sets in. The thing is… Impermanence is a pattern –that is the point of these exercises — it’s what happens all the time, so why am I upset by it?

 

  • Eric started making me morning tea, out of the blue. The first day I was so happy and surprised the second day too. By day 3, I was less surprised but still happy. On day 4, when he again made me my tea I realized I had been expecting it. It had quickly turned from a flattering surprise to an expectations. How long till I think it is an entitlement? And the, do I become upset when Eric stops making me tea for some reason?

 

  • I went to the bathroom before Thai class, as I flushed I got to thinking, “how did I get in here, I don’t remember grabbing the key?” Before I leave the restroom, I look everywhere for the key so I can return it to the language school, but it is nowhere. After class I asked the front desk person about the bathroom key. He told me the bathroom door had broken a few months ago (I had been using a key the whole time without needing it). He said he didn’t report it to the building because it is so much more convent for him now to not need a key. *present day note: This particular example is one that really hit me hard. My level of confusion at being in the bathroom without the key, my fear I had lost it, was so extreme the example hit home. I clearly saw that I can be totally wrong about the circumstances of the world. Fooled by what had been, and what I think continues to/should be.

 

  • I went to tour the oldest African American church in the country today. Such a beautiful bright yellow space. They had restored it in the 70s and one part of the wall was left behind in its original condition… Crumbling and dilapidated, framed behind glass. It was so shocking to see what it was versus what it is now.

 

  • Our Airbnb has a mold problem and my asthma is so triggered I have to sleep outside. It caught me unprepared, off guard, but the truth is, this has happened before: In Japan, in Miami, at a hotel in Sonoma. Over and over I have had asthma issues at hotels. But I conveniently ‘forget’, get surprised every time I think the pictures look so fancy, the ratings are good, that must mean it is the perfect place.

 

  • I saw 1 tree starting to change color even though every other is still green. It really struck me, the outlier tree, the “freak” the thing that seems unnatural. But if it exists in this world, in nature, it is natural –why do I think my judgment and expectations will predict and govern the world?

 

  • I started really noticing more trees changing. Just a few, or maybe a few leaves. I internalized. Though of how these trees, with just a few reddening leaves are like me. The age spots on my nose that were really bothering me this AM. The veins on my face like the ones coming through on leaves. Skin more brittle, more prone to splotching. The sagging breast, face, like the stems of these fall trees weaken, sag, begin to fall. So much sensitivity in my body now, not so vibrant and resilient. Like a simple breeze that begins knocking down fall leaves. And the smell, must, mold, like my own body odor changing Impermanence in the world and impermanence in my own form.

 

Lack of Control

  • I caught a whiff of my armpits and I smelled so bad. I realized I had forgotten to put on deodorant this morning. Just one day without it and this is how I smell – do I really control this body?

 

  • I leaned down to put on shoes and I hear a rip, my new pants, that I like so much, tore. I’m so sad, now I need to figure a way to fix or replace them… Why was this so unexpected? Why don’t I see my pants are subject to rip just like all other pants. I don’t control these pants.

 

  • I put a pair of spanx on to go out, looked in the mirror and thought of how pretty I looked. I had wrangled my fat, squeezed it in, got it so the dress would zip. But then I thought ahead, to later that night when I would peel the spanx off again. It this temporary taming of fat really control? If I had control would I be fat in the first place?

 

  • I got to the train station and GPS kept talking even though I had arrived; I was rushed and so annoyed with the thing even though it was actually doing what it’s supposed to do-give directions. I want it to talk when I’m lost, and shut up when I’m found. Even my things working, perfectly well, I’m not pleased with 100% of the time. I don’t control the phone and I don’t control my feelings about it.

 

  • I had gone on a trip with my Mom and suddenly I realized I didn’t have control of even the most basic aspects of my daily life. When to eat, where to go, how long to stay. Suddenly these were joint decisions. Thigs negotiated with my mom. Things I often found myself yielding to avoid a fight. All it takes is one trip, one change of circumstance and the most basic aspects of my life –the things I so deeply believe are mine to control – are not.

 

  • I sat in my seat at Amtrak train. I want quiet, but can’t control guy next to me taking long, loud call

 

  • I was cleaning house and trying to put bottles away. Eric got annoyed because he uses them for cooking, but I like a clean house. Who really controls the space?

 

  • My phone is losing juice fast and I worry I won’t make it home before the charge runs out. I have to stop what I am doing and head home early to charge the battery. I think this phone is under my control, but it literally forces my behavior

 

Not So Special Now Are Ya?

  • I was in yoga class this morning and as I tried to get into a pose, my knees started hurting. I remember a few times I went to classes when I was younger, fitter, I had thought critically about all the beginner students and the older folks that couldn’t get into the poses well, that needed special props. But today is my turn to struggle. As Neecha said, the reason I feel special/ exempt/ like bad things won’t befall me is I don’t have enough evidence. I just don’t see that it has happened, that it will. But here is evidence with my own body, my yoga practice, that I already am facing an end to my exemption/exceptionalism. Ageing and loss of skill is happening to me.

 

  • I was reading the news and saw a story about Trumps neweffort to prevent legal migrants from getting citizenship, my heart lurched and I felt hate for him. I started thinking, my usual response to bad news is how I’m special/ exempt/ safe. Bad shit is what goes on over there, to someone else. But here in America shit is getting scary: Intolerance, bigotry, the erosion of democracy. Why should I believe here, where I live is special? Why believe I am safe? Once Germany was a Golden Age democracy and then Hitler rose to power. What about America? American? History shows changes, swings, and now I see one on my own yard. Just like with the yoga classes, it was just a matter of time before it was my turn, my country’s turn for decline.

 

  • Today is my birthday, a day where I feel extra special, expect others to treat me special. But when I think about it, how special is a birthday when everyone has one? I only think I’m special bc what I think I’m exempt from/ hadn’t happened yet, or it’s happened and I forget. Kind of like a birthday — I zoom in to one day, one moment and in it I am special, but if I zoom out I see birthdays happen every day and for everyone.

 

  • Last night, walking home from the theatre, I saw a couple: The woman was laying down on a bench, with a blanket, like she was camped for the night. She was touching the knee of a man sitting, wearing a dirty business suit. It really struck me, way more than the homeless folks I normally see, it made me want to help, to do something. I realized it was the guy in the suit, the lovingness of their gestures toward each other — it felt relatable to my life, made me see that even happy couples, young folks, people once successful enough to wear a suit, can fall on hard times too.  The suit reminds me of my dad, or Eric, a rupa form to say, “buttoned-up, professional, financially stable.” But here was a man in a suit on the streets, unable to shelter himself or partner. I started thinking about if suits really mean success. Can they make someone successful, protect them from falling from that state? Clearly no, this is evidence in front of me. And can successful men protect their loved ones? Was this guy? Did Dad protect me from abuse? From bullies? Did Eric protect me from losing Dad? From losing SF? In reality it was following him that destroyed a life I loved so much. These things(money) and the people who I think keep me safe, exempt, special, they don’t do their job. They didn’t for the couple on the street and t they won’t for me.

 

  • I got into a fight with my mom on our trip. I tried so hard not to, but she interpreted something I said badly, then she had a screech-yell-fit. I couldn’t stay calm, fought back. I feel terribly now. But I started thinking, why did I agree to come on a week long trip with my mom? I know she can be difficult. I know she pushes my buttons? After 40 years, how have I not learned?  I realized, I feel I’m so special I can be a saint – muster-up boundless equanimity, adjust to anything, always behave in the ideal way I want to, even though over and over I have proven this untrue. I think I can have the results of ‘perfect’ behavior –mustered by will alone, when I don’t have the causes for it. Who needs causes when I’m this special yo?

 

  • Over and over on this trip, I kept seeing how I am so much like my Mom, how I have so many of the qualities that annoy me about her. The whole trip I felt force marched, dragged from site to site, with no regard for my need to rest. But don’t I do the exact same thing to Eric when we travel together? I felt like she didn’t listen when I said I was hungry, but what about the recent trip to Philly when Eric was so upset when I ignored his requests to stop and eat. I think I am so great, so special, but I have the same unlikable traits as my Mom.

 

  • Went to a public garden and Eric read me the story of the old owners from the back of the brochure –they had been rich, childless and built the place together. But the wife got sick and her medical bills bankrupted the couple and forced them to sell their property. I think I am safe because of my wealth, being beloved by eric in our happy, childless, relationship, but I can suffer the same exact fate as this woman? I have asthma, I have joint issues and stomach issues. I have a body, that has already begun to break. That will keep breaking. Why do I think I can’t have medical bills? Why do I think I will always be able to pay them? Always be able to preserve the items I hold dear? There is no difference between us.

 

 

2018 Vassa Commitment and the Beginnings of Daily Evidence Gathering Exercises

2018 Vassa Commitment and the Beginnings of Daily Evidence Gathering Exercises

Comments 0 Comment

For the 2018 Buddhist holy period (Vassa), which lasts 3 months, a number of folks from my community were making commitments to engage in their practice — or other personal development behaviors — on a consistent daily basis. I had already begun doing the daily impermanent exercises Mae Neecha had recommended to me (see the last blog for further details on this), so as part of my Vassa commitment,  I decided to take it a little further:  I committed to continued impermanence exercises, plus some self-assigned home work that I though might address issues I was seeing coming up in my practice at that time –namely on the inter-related topics of being a special Alana and being in control.

Ultimately, I found these exercises so helpful that I continued them long after the 3 month Vassa period ended. In fact, this commitment laid the foundation for a habit I continue to this day — setting a single topic or 2 and making sure I contemplate 3-5 examples, from my daily life that help me understand/shed light on that topic each day. It is a trick that keeps me engaged, moving forward, and staying on topic.

Obviously, with months worth of logs, I can’t possibly share each and every entry in the limited real estate of this blog. But because this set of exercises was deeply important –both in dealing with the critical topics of impermanence, control and special, and setting a habit that has propelled my practice forward — I do want to share a good chunk of the entries. I am creating a new ‘Chapter’ for the next few blogs in which I will share some of the highlights of these daily exercises.

Alana’s 2018 Vassa Commitment 

I, Alana Denison, will promise to myself in front of the KPYUSA Group and its teachers that I will strive to: Practice the Dhamma every day and train my mind to use wisdom and truth to overcome the lies I tell myself.

1 Each morning I will set my focus on being mindful of my thoughts and heedful with my words and actions for the day.

2 Everyday I will observe and record 3 examples of impermanence in the outside world.

3 Everyday I will observe and record 3 examples of how I do not control my body and/or belongings.

4 Everyday I will observe, record and contemplate on 1 instance where I believe myself to be special or better than others.

5 Before sleep I will set my goals and intentions for my practice.

…

Read More Read More

That Was Then and This is Now: Contemplations From the 2018 Retreat Part 3 — Mae Neecha’s Reply

That Was Then and This is Now: Contemplations From the 2018 Retreat Part 3 — Mae Neecha’s Reply

Comments 0 Comment

Dear Reader, below I have shared Mae Neecha’s reply and suggestions to my email to her about my contemplations form the 2018 retreat. If you have not already done so, please go back and read the last 2 blog entries that share my original email to her.

This is great progress, really sharp observations about causality. Overall, your plan seems to be on track. If there was only one thing I could recommend, it would be to focus your energies on impermanence, maybe even doing daily impermanence exercises to see what happened as expected and what didn’t happen as expected. For example:
Expectation: The train will arrive on schedule
Reality: It arrived on schedule
Expectation: If the train is on time, I will get to my appointment on time
Reality: The train was on time, but I was late to my appointment
Expectation: If I am late, I will feel uncomfortable
Reality: I did feel uncomfortable
Expectation: If I am late, I will feel uncomfortable
Reality: I was late, but not asuncomfortable as I thought, because others were late as well.
The reason for this daily impermanence exercise is that it forces you to compile instances of impermanence in a clear and detailed manner.  It helps to see all the little permanent thoughts we hold onto in addition to the bigger ones (that you have already identified as problematic).  Right now, you might have a lot of Alana-impermanence examples, but you need to see how pervasive impermanence is in the world in general. A personal/limited view of impermanence may not enough to break through. Ultimately, these daily observations will end up power boosting your weaker contemplations…the ones that you understand but still seem to linger.
Other pointers: 
Beware of acceptance and anatta
People say, “That was then, this is now. There’s nothing that can be done. Just accept it and move on.” Easy to say, but so so so difficult to accomplish. You can’t force acceptance! So what can you do?
The past that has completely changed is now anatta… it no longer exists in the form you once knew it to exist in. But why does your heart still reject this change? Why do you still want the past to be true? Why do you reject the present? You cannot contemplate if you look at it from the “now” – you have to reach back into time and make the impermanent permanent, in order to contemplate its impermanence. While you know it has already changed, you have to go back to “before change” and think about how the three common characteristics apply to it.
Three common characteristics
You mentioned trying to understand the rules that govern the world. What are they? The three common characteristics. Namely, everything in this world, tangible and intangible, shares the three common characteristics of impermanence (anicca), suffering (dukkha),  and cessation of existence in a conventional form (anatta). Our job is to recognize how they apply to every situation.
Anicca covers arise-cease, it covers the fact that all things must end/die, that change is normal, change is natural. To see this truth more clearly, you need to rack up more examples of impermanence to see how impermanence governs everything.
Dukkha covers that stick in the river. Anything that resists the law of change is called “suffering.” Suffering comes with a timeline: immediate suffering, the harmful consequences that will follow, and dangerous perils off in the horizon. Your contemplations need to span the entire timeline in order to be comprehensive.
Anatta covers the fact that change can reach the end, that you cannot exert control to revert back to what once was, that we cannot control or own anything in this world. Anatta doesn’t need to be contemplated, it is a result of impermanence.
Truly feel and become what you see
The reason that you see rapes or bombings and still feel exempt or special is because your mind doesn’t have enough evidence to see that you have been in that position, that you can definitely be in that position, and that you will be in that position. It isn’t enough to recognize the factors and causes behind the situation in the news, but you really need to feel the emotion of the situation. It is like when you become the character you are reading about in a novel – you feel the pain, the delight, the conflicts, etc. This is a key skill LP Thoon emphasized as necessary for dhamma practice.
If you contemplate on impermanence enough, there will be no doubt left in your mind that you are definitely subject to those dreadful circumstances. You have to force yourself to see how it has happened or will happen to you.
All four quadrants must be filled in!
When it comes to the four quadrants in the matrix, don’t neglect quadrants just because they are similar. For instance, if your matrix is
Skilled/Unskilled leading to Rich/Poor, you have four topics for which you need to compile good examples.
If you are skilled, then you’ll be rich
If you are skilled, then you’ll be poor
If you are unskilled, then you’ll be rich
If you are unskilled, then you’ll be poor
A key point that is often missed is how “skilled” doesn’t necessarily mean “not unskilled” and how “unskilled” doesn’t necessarily mean “not skilled.” Similarly, “skilled means rich” is not the same as “unskilled means poor,” just as “skilled means poor” is not the same as “unskilled means rich.” They are separate topics that all need to be addressed. If you miss any of the four quadrants in the matrix, your contemplations will be left hanging, you won’t be able to draw a conclusion and close the file.
Conclude
Dhamma contemplations go through phases similar to a science experiment. And after all the testing and observation, you need to conclude in order to make sense of the work and move on. In the conclusion, we go back to the original permanent thought, review information that proves/disproves it, hit on the main why and how, form the new viewpoint, and propose an action plan. In dhamma contemplation conclusions, we often have to incorporate suffering, harmful consequences, and future perils in order to hammer the fear into our hearts. Otherwise, we won’t stop doing what we’ve been doing that causes us pain.
That’s pretty much it. You’re on the right track, just need more impermanence.

 

That Was Then and This is Now: Contemplations From the 2018 Retreat Part 2

That Was Then and This is Now: Contemplations From the 2018 Retreat Part 2

Comments 0 Comment

Dear Reader, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous, if you have not already done so please go back and read Part 1.

Where I am planning to go/have already begun going from here:

That all basically covers the contours of the great retreat contemplation. I was talking to LP Nut about some of this and he offered a suggestion. He said, I should see there are many mes in my mind, skillful and unskillful and I needed to confront the unskillful ones with the Truth. I know, I know, I have heard the same idea over and over, but somehow, this time, it really hit home. Now I feel like boldly speaking truth to my lies is my mission of utmost importance.

Tactically, the direction that is taking is 5 fold:

  1. Proving I don’t control and my body/stuff –I clearly see that essentially, my body and stuff – because they are both subject to rules of rupa — are fundamentally the same ( at least for the purposes of this exercise). My car, and my skin and bones suit, each operate according to their factors, their abilities, changing with time/circumstances and environment. Neither body or car operate the same at 25 degrees as at 100 degrees, they are both limited in their function by what they are physically designed to do, subject to break, subject to change, etc. So I am just trying to mentally catch as many instances I can that prove I don’t control them.

 

I have had some luck actually getting a few of these to hit my heart. I was at the hotsprings and there was loud construction harshing my mellow. I thought to myself, if I control my body, why can’t I just stop hearing this annoying sound, why don’t my ears auto filter stuff I don’t like? I pressed and pressed and finally said it, my body doesn’t belong to me! In a few instances I am going on to step #2

  1. Digging more deeply into the rules that govern the world (mostly Rupa, a little everything else) – For some of my I don’t control body/stuff observations, I am digging a little deeper to try and see some of the factors involved in a change, a decay, a limitation of my control (damn those ears that hear all sounds they can hear and not just the ones I want). So, like with my body and puberty (or the raging yeast infection I have right now), there are clearly physical conditions (hormones, vaginal PH, etc) that must be ripe for any change to occur and there are factors that must be present (having a female body, having a vagina), that are innate in the objects, that precipitate a change. I know, even for something as simple as a rash under my wedding ring, or a yeast infection, I can’t possibly see all the ingredients at work in creating the effect, but it is clear that cause and effect are real. They are understandable as such. I can’t shake the craving to understand cause and effect (then and now) further.

 

  1. Does my body/stuff even do what I think it does? I started thinking about my old houses, my old apartments and how I feel differently about them though all served their function of sheltering me. Or the fact that, legally, technically, I own the NY place, but I hate it, I don’t think of it as mine at all, I crave the day when, practically, I can be rid of it.  Then I moved on to the Porsche, sold before I moved, and sold with great disappointment in the selling process and price. Long and short (thought this is its own very detailed contemplation) I saw that I thought that car showed I was rich, classy, fun, awesome in someway, but when I sold it for pennies on the dollar I bought it for I felt a fool, I felt like my car deceived me (I know, I deceived myself). But it begs the question, does the car do what I thought it did for me (even less so now that I don’t own or drive it anymore)? The house? I’m just starting to make-out that there are car and house ( and husband and father and body, etc.) shaped holes in my heart. My #4 creates the holes and when something comes close enough to fitting the particular shaped hole my #4 has imagined, #4 grabs that thing and stuffs it in the hole — it makes it mine. But since nothing stays the same shape (i.e everything dies and decays and changes), the hole will eventually come unfilled and my heart gets broken every time.

 

  1. Prove I am not special in 3 parts: A few weeks before retreat I was listing to NPR news podcast and story came on about a woman who had been raped. As the story unfolds, I think how I’m not like the victim; she got in the car with a stranger, a drug dealer, looking for a fix. Stupid right, I’m better than her, I’m safe. Next news article, bombings in Yemen, but I don’t live in some war-torn place, I’m better, safer. A few more stories before I notice the game my mind is playing with me: ‘proving’ I am special, different than people who suffer misfortune, I am safe. Needless to say, this does not serve me as a practioner and makes all my internalizations limited in their impact so a fix in 3 parts:

 

  • Case by case, when I put up the shield of special, I am challenging it with facts, truth. For the rape victim: I have done plenty of drugs in my life and, as a teen, I got into cars with plenty of strangers…frankly, the only reason I wasn’t raped is that the many rando guys I ran off with were not inclined to rape me at that time, or the circumstances for some other reason were not conducive/ripe…I opened-up plenty of opportunity. Not special. I may not live in war torn Yemen, but I was in NY during 9-11 and now I live a few blocks from the trade center. Not special. Etc.

 

  • Even if I am ‘special’ does it keep me safe? The other day, I was (I thought) driving perfectly well. Then I heard a honk. I realized even if I was being a perfect driver (i.e being special through the power of my awesomeness, in driving in this case) I wasn’t protected from honks. I may have been the target, or I may have just been in the vicinity of someone else getting honked at. But, shootings are much the same, you can be a target or a rando in the line of fire. My definitions of special (good driving, good decision making about random men, good luck in where I live) don’t do anything to actually keep me safe.

 

  • Which brings me back to…cause and effect: My being a victim of rape, bombings, honking or shootings, follows the same rules as everything else: It arises based on factors coming together, factors of the environment, the people in it, of myself and my own actions/proclivities and karma. To the best of my ability I am trying to flesh-out cause and effect, arising and ceasing, now and then, so that I can kill this special nonsense once and for all.

 

  1. Thinking about duration –I heard news the other day that my ex boyfriend’s wife just died, suddenly, young, of a heart attack. It really struck me, the difference between her and I – duration. A long time ago Mae Yo told me to think about duration; I am like that super slow kid in the class that has a 5 minute lagtime before catching the punchline of the joke…finally, I see why I need to really consider this further.  Some girls begin menstruating earlier, some later, but all girls (who live long enough and have a healthy reproductive system) eventually succumb.

 

Final Thoughts

My ex boyfriend and I have stayed friends over the years, so I reached-out to him to offer my condolences and support at the loss of his wife. This is someone I once loved deeply, I am still fond of, if there was anything at all I could do to ease his suffering I would, of course I would. But I see so clearly I can’t. His pain arises in his heart, its where it will cease.  Then I started thinking, I love myself 1000 times more than I loved him and it is in my power to ease my own pain…suddenly I have so much conviction to stop, stop the fucking delusion that is so obviously the seed  of my suffering, of my becoming.

I was in bed the other night, recapping all the ways the day proved I don’t control my body and then I had a further thought (many actually, but this is condensed)…Back when I had been in NY only a few months, I was devastatingly depressed, I felt so so terribly trapped. The thing is, I had all the merits I would think would give me control, would allow me to get unbound. I had plenty of money, Eric’s support, a family and some real friends who would give me shelter or assistance, I have an education, I’m at the peak of my career with great references and experience. It should have been simple, just me exerting my will, but I was frozen. I couldn’t move, or make a change, or escape, not until the circumstances for such movement where ripe. Even if I don’t control my crap, my body, my peeps, I feel like I should control my own life, like my life is mine, but that early NY experience made it so clear that it is not…

The thing is, I would never drive a car I knew I had no control over, the brake lines cut, the steering wheel broken. I would never take a pill a rando gave me on the street if I had no idea what it was/effects. The idea of such things is ridiculous…so why the hell do I keep pushing for new rebirths, in bodies I don’t control, in lives I don’t control? Delusion is totally not my friend…

That Was Then and This is Now: Contemplations From the 2018 Retreat Part 1

That Was Then and This is Now: Contemplations From the 2018 Retreat Part 1

Comments 0 Comment

Dear Reader, here we have the contents of an email I sent to Mae Neecha rehashing my contemplations during, and just following, the 2018 retreat. This is looooonnnggggg, and made longer by a rather generously portioned ‘later day note’, so I will divide it into 2 blogs.

A little background:

LP Anan was telling stories about the Buddha’s wife and before he really got started he said something that set me off – Siddhartha abandoned his family just after the birth of his son. I caught that judgey voice in my head instantly, “abandoning your infant is sorta a dick move.” “Uggh, come on Alana, judging the soon-to-be-Buddha…I’m riding my high horse but he is already enlightened, so who gets the last laugh here?”

Rewind a little…the night before LP Nut had been talking about Angulimala’s enlightenment and that teaching popped back into my head.  As always when I hear that story, I had found myself wondering how exactly a mass murderer (another pretty dick move), who had tried to kill the Buddha, heard the words “I have stopped, it is you who keeps going” and became enlightened. As I re-read. I mean what does that even mean?

Something between what LP Nut actually said and what I realized upon hearing it started gnawing at me: It was that Angulimala saw that he couldn’t change the past. His murdering arose based on specific factors and circumstances (the karma from when he was a giant turtle, the bidding of his teacher and countless other things I will never have a way of knowing) and, in light of those, it couldn’t have been different than it was. But, those circumstances/factors were done, new ones had already emerged. He was a person who murdered and then he stopped.  Like a bolt of lightning it hit me with such crazy clarity: That was then and this is now.

[Present day note 12-2-2020 I have recently revisited the Angulimala story and the stories of his past births. I do want to add a few points here: The first is that he was not enlightened instantly upon meeting the Buddha, that came later. But he did see the truth of the path and put his old life behind him; I think the core learnings from this old contemplation — that what is to come is different than what was before, that factors and circumstances change, and that we can too – are still applicable. In fact, more than ever, I see that the promise of salvation, escape from suffering, that Buddhism offers hinges upon the reality that everything changes. That by changing our views, and deeply understanding the changeability and consequence inherent in the world, we can end the habits/repeated mistakes/wrong views that bind us to the cycle of rebirth.

My recent re-readings have also brought to my attention a number of prior rebirth stories in which pre- Angulimalas were a human eating ogre and then a king turned cannibal. In both of those lives, he killed and ate people and then he was persuaded by the Bodhisattva to turn away from killing. Which is to say that just as past factors and circumstances shaped Angulimala the murder, they also shaped an Angulimala primed for wisdom and the ability to see the truth of the path.  From this I reflect that though new factors and circumstance are always shaping us, and allowing us freedom to change, we are also shaped by our past tendencies. If everything that arises does so based on a cause, then cause for our enlightenment – the work we do to plan, prepare, acquire the right tools, skills and knowledge for our escape – must also have been put in place if we hope to be successful leaving this world’s cycle.

Upon reviewing, now, it seems my past contemplation told half the story really well, but was incomplete. Nonetheless, this blog is a recap of my path, and it is a one-step-at-a-time sorta thing, so without further ado, back to the original contemplation we go.]

That was then and this is now (more commonly called arising and ceasing; but that was then and this is now was the lightbulb phrase for me):

I remembered a long time ago, I asked Mae Yo about the relationship between impermanence and suffering. She replied, “suffering comes from something stopping, impermanence is movement. Suffering is like you want it to stop but it moves. Its like putting a stick in the water and causing ripples.” For years, I have had no friggin clue what this meant. But, now I see: That was then and this is now (arising and ceasing).

Then: Angulimala was playing the role of murder based on all the factors/circumstances that made him murder. Now he stopped because new factors/circumstances had arisen. Then Siddhartha was in the role of a householder and Now he was in the role of a renunciant. Neither were ever a fixed thing, both were dependent on factors/circumstances. They saw it (duh, enlightenment and all) but I thrust a stick in the water, I got stuck on a fixed idea of “father” or “murderer.” I took a snapshot of 1 moment’s Siddhartha, 1 moment’s Angulimala and so I suffer when these aren’t fixed, I am perplexed by how someone could be a murderer and then an Arahant. And worse, because I let myself get fooled by the rupa, the form of an Angulimala who I couldn’t see change from then to now, I am like the asshole villager throwing stones at an Arahant, judging the soon-to-be Buddha as a dick.

Bringing it back to me:

I basically started pounding out examples of that was then and this is now in my own life, in my own body. Finally I hit on one that was so clear: When I started noticing the effects of puberty — boobs, hips — I was devastated. I cried and cried, I was so embarrassed I refused to leave the house, to see my friends, decades later and I still remember the pain so clearly. I didn’t want my body to change, I wanted the beanpole figure I had for as long as I remembered; that was my body. This new curvy thing I saw in the mirror was ugly, contorted, fat, it was unrecognizable. I suffered because I didn’t understand that was then and this is now.

I was born a girl, the seeds of a female form, of puberty and menstruation, were always there, just waiting to be germinated, to be triggered. I don’t know the exact thing/ mix that threw my body over the puberty edge — diet, sleep, genetics, hormones, environmental chemicals. But I do know that before (then) my shape was based on a certain set of circumstances/factors (diet, genetics, activity, etc.) and when those new factors and hormones kicked in (now) the only possible result was the figure change that ensued.

It is like rupa (and probably everything else, but I haven’t thought about it as hard) has rules. Rules of rupa, and even for my own body, all the desire and discipline can’t change the rules. When the conditions for a change of form (like puberty) have been reached, the change will happen. Before that point, it won’t happen (i.e. that was then and this is now). When the conditions for sunspots, sagging boobs, grey hairs have been reached, I get sunspots, saggy boobs and grey hairs. Before there are none of these things, just the seed, the propensity for decay/change that lives in each object (that would definitely be a rule of rupa).

My suffering arises based on a cause (I feel like I have heard this one before…)

You are getting the very condensed version of this contemplation, but after hours of just looking at how many times my life has shown me that there is then and there is now (i.e. arising and ceasing or cause and effect), they each have a cause and couldn’t have been other than what they are/were based on those causes, I realized something…

I was on the topic of how I used to fear the dentist: I worried that my new experiences (now) would be like the abuse I suffered at the hands of my childhood dentist (then). The Rupa  “proved” it, that chair, the drill, the chemical smells… It was only when I considered all the ways that that was then and this is now (different dentist, adult Alana versus kid Alana, different technology, different pain tolerance, etc.) was I brave enough to go get my teeth taken care of. I saw that all of my fear, my worry, its based on not understanding that was then and this is now.  In fact, all my standards and judgments (like of the Buddha and Angulimala), my guilt, anger, hate, my fucking desire…basically, all of my suffering, arises because I don’t understand then and now. Or, I suppose (and will get back to in a sec.) that what will be will be.

This NY life shit is still raw, so I started thinking about it more carefully. Though there are a ton of things I don’t like about NY, one thing really hurt me more than others: I felt like chill, sweet, expansive, laidback, considerate SF Alana was under attack. The Alana that had served me so well for so long, that I identified with and wanted to be, simply couldn’t survive in NY. You can’t walk slow and chill in Midtown or you will get runover. You can’t take time for niceties in a coffee shop or the person in line behind you will claw your eyes out. I started to hate the place, the people,  in order to protect myself from becoming a ‘New Yorker’ –because hate is such an effective way to avoid becoming something 😉 (I wonder if I can just hate getting fat or old and avoid it all together…). But the thing is, all that angst and hate, its because I didn’t see the simple truth that that was then, an SF Alana shaped by SF circumstances to be appropriate in an SF environment. But this is now, new environment, new New York circumstances, new me.

What will be will be:

From that was then and this is now, my mind made a leap that felt logical to me: What will be will be.

I think about my fantasies(‘plans’) for the future: I imagine Eric and I retired, in a lovely mid-sized town, or maybe with a city place and a country place, traveling, being together all the time. I think about the dog (a goldendoodle) and the long walks we will all take on the beach. I think about koi pond and the flower garden that will be in my yard…you get the point.

But…here is the thing, before I moved to NY, I imagined it would be a fun new adventure. I would get to be a sleek, sophisticated Manhattanite, going to shows and gallery openings, meeting the coolest, most interesting peeps, etc…That is not my Manhattan experience. And the reason is 1000% clear — what I want, what I imagine, is totally not the determinant of what actually will be. Instead, what will be (just like then and now) is shaped by factors and conditions way beyond my control. It has rules that govern it.

Manhattan may be a lot of things, but with 8 million people on a small island (1 of many factors), it is loud, it is crowded (result). And, with all the competition for resources, for fame, recognition, etc.(1 of many factors) it is fast and aggressive (result). And Alana (at least the Alana that moved to NY) seriously hates loud, crowded, fast and aggressive. Since my happiness depends on being in an environment I like and, at least at this moment in time Manhattan is an environment I dislike, it is not ( and couldn’t have been based on the factors at play) a “fun adventure”, no matter how hard my #4 worked to make it that way ahead of time.

Stay tuned: Next blog will be where I plan to take my contemplations from:

Farewell Ukiah Gardens

Farewell Ukiah Gardens

Comments 0 Comment
 Taking a break from the hot springs, we decided to head over to our favorite restaurant in town to grab some lunch — Ukiah Gardens, here we come!!!
Eric and I have been coming to the hot springs in Ukiah for years. We have a routine, a favorite cabin we always stay in, a favorite coffee place, a few shops downtown that we like to stop into and — above all else — Ukiah Gardens. Everything there is done with love, the food perfect, the staff friendly. My mouth was watering as we pulled into the parking lot and images of their crispy golden mozzarella sticks filled my brain. And then we we saw the sign … “Ukiah Gardens is closed. Thank you for your decades of patronage and support…we are retiring.”
My heart sank. I loved that place so much. Out of my control, outside of my knowledge, based on its own circumstances (owners retired), a restaurant I associated with me — my memories, my vacations, my happy spot — was spontaneously closed.  It was gone. No warning. No final farewell, just gone.
Just like that I was just a little less enamored with Ukiah. A little less thrilled with the idea of coming back to what was supposed to be my favorite vacation town. Is Ukiah now really the same city? I don’t exactly see it the same way, something I desire about it, fantasize about it is gone. But still, its called an Ukiah, everyone, mostly, acts like its the same. But what if more and more businesses closed, people left, the weather changed, fire came raging? When exactly would I stop wanting to come here? When exactly would it stop being what I call Ukiah at all?
Alana’s Present Day Note: The truth is Rupa is constantly changing.  Each and every form, each environment filled with forms, continually shifting, aggregating, disaggregating. Usually, I don’t notice. I don’t pay attention and I gloss over the changes in my mind, focusing instead on the similarities. But what if I payed closer attention to each shift in an environment, in an object? What if I realized that every new state, no matter how small or subtle meant the former state was poof, popped, gone. Each charge cycle on my phone, changing the balance of the elements of the battery, bringing it closer to failure.  Each thread loosened from my sweater creating a subtle rearrangement of the form that changes the fit and thickness. Each meal digested, changing the balance of nutrients, and toxins, in my body both taxing and feeding systems, organs and cells. When exactly does the battery stop being a battery, or the sweater a sweater, or the body a body? What lost feature stops Ukiah from being Ukiah?
If I really understood that with each and every change, the former state of a 4 element object was gone, never to return, would I really believe I could count on those objects to be there for me, to behave just as they did before? With a new balance, a new aggregation, are the form and features and functions I have come to expect from past elemental balances really guaranteed? And if continual shifting makes an item unpredictable do I believe I can control it? Do I believe I can use it to control the world? How could I have control when I don’t even know for sure what something is going to do,  or better yet, the shape/function/features of the entire environment or body I find myself in? Just one shattered windshield forcing a glass shard to my jugular, just one errant cell that starts growing and spreading unchecked, just a few breaths of wildfire smoke to deprive my lungs of oxygen, so many shifts that can render this body out of my control, utterly useless in efforts to control other objects, or to represent (manifest) me. Poof. Popped. Gone.
And if I really understood that each aggregation of an object is continually shifting like sand, could I really cling to it? What exactly can I hold onto in something that is always changing? It is only my illusion of sameness from one moment to the next that allows me to cling.
A restaurant I loved, that had been around for decades, that I counted-on and that I saw as a fixed feature of a place, a special spot, that was MINE — from my perspective — disappeared over night. Poof. Pop. So gone it was impossible not to notice. But what if I noticed all the poofs and pops of every object, at every moment, their flux, would I really even bother to make it mine in my heart when it was going to chameleon out on me almost instantly? The perception of duration in form, the duration of perceived form — this is the willful blind spot that I continually nourish because it allows me to claim rupa as mine.
A Less Than Relaxing Day at the Hot Springs

A Less Than Relaxing Day at the Hot Springs

Comments 0 Comment
I was at my favorite hot springs, lounging in one of the bathtubs, warm water and blissful serenity washing over me. Then suddenly, I heard the roaring sound of a jackhammer in the not distant enough distance — goddamn construction totally fucking with my chi . So annoying!!! Out of nowhere, it hit me — if I actually controlled my body, I wouldn’t hear the noise. I could just shut it off at my ears, or in my head. If I did control this body, all manner of sensations could swirl around me, but I would be like a radio, able to tune my senses to pleasant sensations and tune away from unpleasant ones.
The self — with my wants, aversions and desires — is so clearly not the body (rupa) vessel.  The body is impervious to my wants and desires. The self is so clearly not the owner of the body; the body bows to the rules of the physical world, it doesn’t oblige the standards or rules of the self. A jackhammer is too loud. It is definitely too loud for a hot springs resort where I am trying to vacation. And yet, here we are, a physical environment I don’t control effecting a body that I clearly also don’t control. Why would I — they are both made of the same stuffs.
Sure, I am a factor, a force that can use one form to act on another form, but I am bound by the rules of form. I can act only in accordance with what those rules will allow. And all the appropriate physical conditions need to be met  in order for me to obtain the effect I want. In other words –I am one factor in shaping the physical world. I am subject to it, not sovereign.
A bird cant soar without wind despite having a physical body conditioned for flight. A fish can’t swim without water. An Alana cant shut off a sound at my ears without an implement, like earplugs to block the sound. A fatso Alana can’t will herself thin, the required changes and conditions for thinness must be met in the body. An Alana cant halt aging and time at all. Nothing can.
Moreover, the impact I am able to have on this form may or may not yield the effect I want. All last week, I kept putting Chapstick on my dry lips to help them heal them and the result I got was a terrible breakout. Clearly, I don’t control my body or I could avoid the unintended consequences that came with my efforts to manipulate it. Guess I’ll be tossing that lip gloss…
The Cost of Special

The Cost of Special

Comments 0 Comment

As I was listening to NPR podcasts,  a story teaser came on about a woman who was sexually assaulted and her journey navigating the justice system to bring her attacker to trial. I was interested, so I clicked the button to ‘hear the full story now’.  The woman’s story began with a night she was drunk and decided to try and buy drugs from a stranger. She went for a ride in  his car to go and pickup the drugs and ended up being raped.

In the first 3 minutes of the story, my mind was saying, “duh lady, of course you got assaulted.”  I wanted to sympathize, to be that compassionate Alana, but in my mind, I  immediately go to excuses — the reasons why this would never happen to me. I’m different. I wouldn’t put myself in that kind of a position. She is stupid, and I am better than that.
But here is the thing, in college I went to plenty of parties, I did drugs, I got into strangers’ cars, and hooked-up with tons of random people. If I am being honest with myself, I put myself in equally as compromising and dangerous a position as that woman in the story many times over. I am lucky I was never raped.
More stories came on NPR… bombings in Yemen, and I’m thinking, “not my problem I’m not Yemeni.” An Alzheimer’s disease story, and I’m thinking, ” I’m young, I’m safe from that being my problem (though ironically my grandpa passed from it, so it has touched my life).” Immigrants being torn from their families at the border, and I’m thinking,  “I’m a US citizen, I’m safe.”  In each case, when I hear about misfortune my thoughts immediately go to all the reasons I’m different, safer, better. My mind is literally doing extreme gymnastics just to prove my different-ness, only its all going on in the background, subconsciously…that excuse, that justification, jumping to mind as automatically as breath moves into my lungs.
 The truth is, there are plenty of  differences between me and the people I hear about on the news: differences in age, health, location, nationality; there is no end to the details that differ. But the bigger picture is one of sameness — like them,  I’m a person, with desires, who is subject to karma and change and decay and loss. And in the end, isn’t that what I really care about? Isn’t that what I spend my whole life trying to fight (vitamins and gym) to ignore ( travel and TV) to disprove ( picking up skills and doing a ‘good job’ at work, in my community and at home)?
Ohhh and then there is the cost of selling myself this lie…there is the labor of accessorizing, the money spent on cars and furniture that make me special, the pain spent on beauty and workouts to make/preserve my fit and beautiful body, the time digging for the right outfit, building and maintaining the right skills and relationships. The disappointment when I fail, not thin enough, pretty enough, smart enough, not a perfect partner or child or sibling or employee. Not special enough to be exempt from failure and decay.
But wait, there is more! There is the pain of hate and judgment of what doesn’t fit my little narrow criteria of acceptable. Because I’m special, of course, my rules need to govern. My normal needs to be ABSOLUTE normal.  And my heart literally explodes with rage on a NY street because NYers can’t act like my normal SFers.
In fact, when I think about it, almost all the pain in my life is really about being constantly disappointed when the truth of my sameness, my not-specialness comes crashing in. I was so shocked that I couldn’t thrive in NY. But look at an orchid flower, it is so dependent on its environment to thrive or die. Su-fucking-prise Alana, your no different than an environment-dependent little flower. With each wrinkle, sag, cellulite, I feel like such a failure I couldn’t prevent it or fix it…how exactly is it a personal failure that I’m subject to the same rules of  aging and decay as everything else in this world? When my ex and I split up I cried and cried and cried. But breakups happen everyday, illnesses, deaths, losses. Somehow it’s a gut punch, it feels different, when it’s me and mine, but its the same, cessation and suffering that everyone faces at one point or another.
Still, I build, build, build my little life, my precise environment, my careful standards -like a beaver that spends most of their lives building and protecting that nest, eating, sleeping,  procreating, and building…it seems like such a pathetic life when it is a beaver’s. But look at me crafting the body, acquiring/maintaining the clothes/house/stuff, building the skills and education, feeding the relationships. Sure, it looks a little more complicated than the beaver, but is it really? So much toil. Worse than a beaver really, the beaver needs a nest to survive. Do I need fine furniture and clothes? I labor to refine, to curate, to have precisely what I want in all cases in my life, down to the fucking detail. And so there is insane work and compromise and cost to me and to Eric to have the place and life I want. There is wailing and gnashing of teeth when I’m not getting the particular nest I want.
And here’s the kicker: If all this shit worked, I think it would be worth it. But it doesn’t. Not really. Even if I avoided rape, being an immigrant, devastating disease, it’s just a matter of time. My grandfather had a fine life, was a good guy, but then he got Alzheimer’s. My Dad, same story, but it was cancer that killed him. I have friends who were in love, then divorced, who were doing great at their jobs but got layed-off, who were rich and hit financial struggles.
And me, I had a life that was happy (mostly anyway) in SF and I lost it. Actually, I left it, it was my fault, my decision. How do I think I can avoid misfortunes of chance (like illness and layoffs) when I cheerfully skip towards misfortunes that I had some choice in, like this move?
This specialness lie I build like a beaver’s nest with such care and precision, with so much work and cost, it is the reason I hurt. At the end of the day, when the work is paused (never done really) and I ache from the labor, it was me who caused the pain, the suffering. I choose this. I do it to me. There is no outside force compelling me. And this I suppose is the only good news. The pain is on me, but the solution is with me too. I can stop. I want to stop. Right now it feels like inertia is carrying me on, its too fast. But I’m applying the break. I am trying to stop letting the lie be on autopilot. I dedicate this blog to my practice. To the ability to take the wheel. To stop.
The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

Comments 0 Comment

This contemplation is one of the first times I really considered the cost and suffering of building wealth. It is not that I didn’t understand that money, like everything else, has two sides previously, I did. But this was the first time I viscerally understood that a dominant pattern in Eric and my life — sacrificing now to create savings that would bring us future happiness — might actually be delusional on many levels.

First off, there is no guarantee that it would work, i.e. we might not be able to raise the money. Second off,  it dawned on me that even if we could acquire it, it might not make us happy. Finally, I got to the question of even if we could raise funds to retire early, and we were happy, it could only last for a finite period. Plus, of course, there was the weird world view lurking beneath the whole endeavor– if money was supposed to make us happy, why on earth were we so damn unhappy in the journey to try and acquire it? Why had the money we had  failed to make us happy already, when we needed it to the most, upon our  move to New York?

I am going to go ahead and keep this entry as close as possible to my own contemplation notes from the time. I will however make a few adjustments for readability and add some notes for understandability.

Last night Eric again suggested we pack-up and leave NY and he look for a job elsewhere. I don’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what to do. We are so unhappy here. I started thinking what were the mistakes that got us here, to NY, to this point, in the first place? Two came to mind:

1) We didn’t consider the costs of uprooting our lives and moving. We didn’t accurately weigh the downside, instead choosing only to imagine the positives of an enriching job, a fun adventure, an opportunity for newness.

2) I believed that the happy, balanced, chill Alana I felt myself to be in San Fran was a fixed thing. That the qualities I loved about SF Alana abided in me. That those qualities, and my generally good fortunes, would follow me along to NY. I suffered a delusion of permeance that quickly came to bite me in the ass in my new NY life.

Now that I understand the wrong views that brought us here so clearly, now that I am suffering the costs, why do we stay? Why do we keep doing something that is causing us suffering? The answer is so clear — we want the pot of gold at the end of the journey (for you Dear Reader: literally, we want money. Enough money to fulfill our dream of early retirement. It is still, even now, 3 years after the initial contemplation, a hazy imaginary future, but it involves travel and lots of time together and n assortment of hobbies we enjoy. It is, in our minds, freedom). The path to our goal was taking too long in SF (Uber didn’t look like it was going to be the payday Eric had expected when he took the job), other options we had considered, a job in the Valley or at Microsoft, seemed like less lucrative than Eric’s current NY gig. Clearly, the singular root source of the problem here is gold/goal (to achieve that gold and the imaginary future we thought it would bring).  With this clarity, it seemed we had  two choices:

Option 1: If the goal is the gold than we go for it. “Chin-up Alana, stop whining, you choose gold, so no reason to fixate on happiness, health or anything else.” Those are all just distractions from the goal. There is no reason to whimper or wallow. It really is time to suck it up and go for it because, in theory at least, it is what we want. No one is forcing us toward this goal. There is no reason we can’t quit it. So if we don’t quite then might as well be all in. (Note to self: I can’t help notice the irony here –the goal/gold is supposed to make us happy, but the  path to obtaining it certainly does not. And once we have it, do I know for sure it will buy me what I want Do I know that once I have what I want I will be happy? After all, I thought NY was what I wanted and I am miserable here. Even if it does make me happy, for how long? Even ‘happily ever after’ is temporary, dashed by death or illness or calamity.

Option 2: Change the goal. Apply wisdom to undo the desire for the gold.  Below are my considerations aimed at option 2:

Let’s pretend we reach the goal; we have all the money we need for early retirement. So…

For how long will we have it? Where is my evidence from this world that prove duration can be short? Far shorter than what I want or what I imagine this ‘happily ever after’ to be. Two stories, that over the years have really hit my heart, come to mind:

1 — Eric had a co-worker at Google, she worked so hard and was so happy when finally, she had made enough for her own early retirement. Her husband and she bought a beautiful home down in Carmel and moved there. Six months later he died of a heart attack.

2 — The actor in Spartacus was just 40years old. He was beautiful, talented, after years of effort, he had finally landed a starring role in a hit series, his career was taking off. After the first season he was diagnosed with a rare cancer. Only months later he was dead.

Will I think it’s worth it later? What are the seeds of hurt that it causes?

Back when I was at my fittest, I was working out 17+ hours a week. My whole body hurt, I was itching to find more time in the day to have other hobbies besides just working out, I missed eating non-performance food. Even my blood work showed liver enzyme elevation from working out so much and eating so little. Still, I thought it was worth it for ‘the look’. In my head, I still remember the event where I put on an outfit and looked my best, possibly ever. That night I felt so proud and good. Now, years later, it makes me sad to look at those event photos and realize how hard I worked for a body hat I lost already. That I am unlikely to ever have back. What seemed worth all that sacrifice at the time sowed the seeds for future pain and shame and loss.

When I reach the goal will I even like it?

How many ebay boxes have I opened to find exactly what I ordered and to just not really like it? What about NY – it’s just what I ordered, the city, the house, but I am utterly miserable in both.

Does the goal/gold even get me what I think it buys? Will an early retirement feel like an eternal vacation? The gold was supposed to get me a comfortable NY life/adventure, but I’m not happy here at all. If we get in an RV and travel everywhere wont I miss home just like I miss SF now? In fact, right now the experience I want most is to go back to the past. It felt like we were super close to ideal, only Eric had to work so hard, at a company he didn’t like. Did chasing the goal actually bring me further away from the happiness and life I actually want?

When I consider what the gold actually buys other folks, I can’t ignore that even the wealthiest, seemingly happiest folks I know met with illness and death. My dad and stepmom were well off, in love, enjoying their retirement.

Another couple I know from work, also very much in love, enjoying their wealth and retirement, till the wife got cancer. Sure, she lived another 7 years, but in constant pain and in -and -out of the hospital. That also isn’t the ‘happily ever after’ I envision.

Even if I do get the gold, it doesn’t mean I will get the fantasy I think the gold will buy . In other words, even if I love the ebay dress, it doesn’t mean that when I walk into a room wearing it, everyone thinks I’m pretty and rich and fashionable.

I came to see that in my mind, the ‘happily ever after equation’  me+ eric+ money, that’s the fantasy. But we already have all three, so why am I not sitting in this New York loft feeling happy?

And how much do we hurt each other for the gold? For the imaginary fantasy we think it brings for us?  Eric’s jobs over and over dragging me away from friends and communities and homes I love. Me making him work to buy me more, to satisfy the expensive overlapping venn diagram of lifestyles we both enjoy. He ignoring me, deprioritizing our relationship, all the missed birthdays and holidays because of work. Me unwilling to settle for the quieter life he might enjoy and pushing for a city place as well.  We hurt each other today to have this fantasy life together in the future.

It is so clear to me now, money is a tool that could have never have made NY comfortable. Before we moved, we knew it was a dog-eat-dog city, a place that was a struggle to live. Both of us had lived there before in our 20s. But we believed this time would be different. We believed that money would insulate us, make a NY life more comfortable, hat it would buy us enjoyment.

But even Bill Gates, with his great fortunes, could not make the city clean and quiet. He could not make people less cold and rude. He could not make the city scape something other than its bleak, green less, concreate jungle.  These are things I hate. How could I think money was going to ‘solve’ them?

The house we bought was something we wanted and then it quickly became a burden. We were so irresponsible, we didn’t do enough due diligence buying the house because we had money, we felt like it didn’t matter because we could afford it. Money made us reckless.

Fear of not reaching the gold is why we didn’t take the alternative jobs that would have portended a different scenario for us – that now, in hindsight, with IPOs already done,  would have made us even more money. All our planning and fretting doesn’t guarantee us the us money we seek.

The questions to continue considering:

1) what about the cost of money –getting it and keeping it? Also losing it? I wouldn’t miss SF so much if I never had it. Right now, I wish I had stayed in Texas so that I didn’t have to continually compare SF to NY and find NY so lacking.

2) Duration – even if I do get the gold, and I get everything I want from it, for how long?

3) Do I even want what I get once I have gotten it? Eric and I so wanted the NY loft before we moved here, now we are struggling to get someone, anyone to take it off our hands for us.

4) Does it get us what we want?

5) What do we really want? ??? It’s some image of a nest, of us together, with pieces  from our memory. Ironic so many of them come from the SF days we just blew up… Can money get us there? It got us further away. Greed got us further away.

8 Precepts

8 Precepts

Comments 0 Comment

Having recently signed a 1 year-long contract to consult with my old company, I got to thinking how strange it is to have a deadline to my commitment. For 9 years, I had worked at the same company as a regular employee, but somehow, now, having a time-specified contract, felt different. It got me to start considering how fixed my view of commitment is in general.  I mean sure, I had left jobs, ended assignments and called off relationships in the past. And yet, right up till the last, I had always had a sense of permanence around those things in my heart. Like if you do, you do for life, unless there is a damn good reason otherwise.

It was then that my mind turned to the 8 precepts. Or, more specifically the issue that gnawed at me every year at retreat…everyone else seemed to be taking the precepts, all my friends, all the people I look up to and think ‘good Buddhist’, but I didn’t want to. In fact, even considering taking the precepts made me feel like a fraud. I take commitments seriously, I wont make one till I  believe I can do it totally. Till I feel it is honest. For me it seemed honest, in part at least, equaled forever.

I felt like I wasn’t ready to ordain. I like my lay life, I don’t want to commit myself wholly and completely to my practice to the exclusion of that life. If I commit to the whole precept thing, it should be something I am ready to make permeant, or at least something my heart can accept at any time.

But, to be a bit elementary here — is a permanent view a right view? Really, life is filled with short term commitments. Contracts. Things we agree to, for a time, and then move past. If I am really being honest, isn’t everything in life that way? The idea that I can’t carve out a few days for precepts just because I am not willing to do it for life seems a bit specious.

Of course, there is that second, deeper, issue beneath the nagging feeling, something I wasn’t actually able to overcome, and take the precepts, until quite a few years after this original contemplation (2020 actually): The symbol of wearing white scared me, I didn’t want to need to be so careful with my actions, I feared I couldn’t avoid stains or sins, and I feared everyone could see both in/0n me. I didn’t want to dress the part when I am not the part.

I felt a fraud not just because I couldn’t commit my life to ordination, but because I did not feel like a ‘good Buddhist’, like the kind of person who deserved to be allowed to take the precepts.  I am vain, I am stubborn, I speak harshly, fight with folks I care about, create discord at work, I drink, I swear, I am selfish, wasteful and greedy. I assure anyone reading this post that I am not a perfect person. I am not what I imagine (for what my imagination is worth) a perfect Buddhist to be. But sometime after my contemplations in the 2019 retreat , I began to have confidence in my practice, to clearly see the path and to know that I am on it– if that is not the definition of a Buddhist, I am not sure what is.  I also started training my mind to consider cause and effect more carefully. It was only then that I fully understood the deep flaw in my reasoning: I had cause and effect completely reversed.  My logic was that if I don’t have the effect (ie being a perfectly refined in body speech and mind) I am unworthy of the cause of such an effect (walking the path to becoming enlightened, including taking precepts as I see fit). Putting the cart before the horse isn’t likely to get anyone where they  want to go quickly…

 

When is Enough Enough?

When is Enough Enough?

Comments 0 Comment
As I sat on the floor of my Manhattan flat, the same thought kept circling in my brain “I’m stuck. I hate my life, I regret having come to this place, I am suffering here and now. How is this not enough to convince me of the suffering in this world? How is this not enough to motivate me to let go of my clinging?”
The answer is simple, hope is fucking me. I keep hoping I can somehow get back to the life I had before I moved. Or I hope that the next thing will be better — I imagine some life after NY, after the here and there, a time when Eric and I are ‘free’, when we can retire, when we can go where we please, travel, spend limitless time together. I know there is no happily ever after. But I am holding-out for happily for a little while after.
The problem is, I already know there is no going back to what I had before. Before is in the past, it is gone. And besides, if I am being totally honest, San Francisco was already on the trouble bus before I left — rampant homelessness, drug use on the streets, increased crime and sky high cost of living — that is part of why I decided to move away in the first place.  The truth is, the thing I want to go back to — SF circa 2009 — doesn’t exist anywhere anymore.
“But, but, but” my little heart insists, “hold on and hold out, what comes next will be better.” But will it, really? Where do I hope to go where I will be free from suffering? What corner of the world do I think is exempt from the drudgery of daily life, from the uncertainty, from the loss of things I love and expose to shit I hate?  And besides, even if such a time/place exists, what on earth makes me think I am some expert at finding it? If nothing else, my choice to move to NY proves I am a crappy judge of homing-in  on what is ‘better’.
Up and down, round and round, my life, or at least my feelings about it, are like a rollercoaster. I am tired, I don’t really want to keep riding, and yet, I can’t seem to get off. In the blog I had just finished,  Wrong Views on Suffering and Happiness, I feel like I summed-up my brand of crazy perfectly: “I will trade X days of unpleasant regular life for X days of enjoyable life” and I suppose I still feel like I’ve got enough days of enjoyable life ahead to make holding out  worth it. If that is the case, if this is my view, I really am stuck…not in NY, but in continual becoming, continual rebirth, always willing to tolerate the intolerable for just a little nugget, or even just the promise of a little nugget, of joy. Fucked by hope.
But, is this really true? Just this last month, I finally changed my diet, even though it sucks and it is hard, I quit gluten and dairy.  I am doing an elimination challenge to see if food may be causing my myriad health issues. For years I have had stomach issues, but I have resisted the sacrifice of the foods I love.  The pain, the cramping and the diarrhea, was not enough for me to change. The asthma, the allergies, even the eye issues, still I wouldn’t alter my diet. But now, I have rosacea, my face itches, it is red and patchy and ugly. I am vain, this is my Kryptonite. Finally, I found my ‘enough point’, finally I am doing the diet.
So maybe, this is the answer. Fucked by hope, but not perpetually. I just need to keep building evidence, find the thing that finally makes me fed-up, that finally makes me hit my ‘enough-point’, with this world and with becoming.
 
It’s Always Temporary

It’s Always Temporary

Comments 0 Comment

Back when I was a teenager, I refused to wear control top pantyhose when I had to go to an event, I felt like sporting the slimming-squishing-tummy-effect was fraudulent somehow. It was a cheat, not my body. I felt like because the effect was temporary, I shouldn’t try and pass it off as mine. That is the first time I can clearly remember the use of ‘the formula’ in my life: temporary = not mine.

Fast-forward 30ish years: I was in the Uber coming from SFO on my first work trip back to San Francisco. I was scheduled to be around for a few weeks. Back when I used to live in SF, leaving the airport felt like coming home. But now, that same trip felt like a prelude to something temporary. As I crawled into bed that night, I looked around the room — white sheets, white walls, white furniture — everything felt so impersonal, so different than my old, colorful Victorian home that sat, filled with a new owner and a new owner’s stuff, just a few miles away. Here, everything around me seemed to shout, “temporary, not yours.”

Of course, I had noticed this equation (temporary = not mine) before. When I would travel I knew the hotel rooms, the airbnbs, the villas, the apartments,  were all not mine. I knew, without a doubt that I checked-in, used the space for a time, and would check back out again. No matter how nice, or how crappy, the place was, I never got attached. I knew I would leave soon. It was temporary and therefore not mine.

I remember a particular road trip — 5 days driving from Orlando, along the Florida coast, till I got to Miami to visit my family. Eric and I decided to rent a fancy car, a little Corvette convertible,  for our trip. Pulling into a service station, the folks next to us rolled down heir window and shouted ,”Nice Ride!” With my mouth, I thanked them, but in my head a little voice refused the compliment, it said, “5 day road trip, temporary rental, not mine” and the compliment failed to puff my ego at all. Of course, had it been MY PORSCHE, I’m sure I would have felt differently.

When I lived in San Francisco, I was so sure the city was mine. The house was mine. The job was mine. The life was mine. But here I am, back again, and suddenly it is clear that they were all temporary. My time living in the city was temporary. My visit back is temporary too. The only difference is duration.  Actually, the real difference is the way my mind chooses to interpret duration.

But, if impermanence is the master of this world, then the real truth is that everything is temporary. If everything is temporary, what can really be mine? How long will I continue to fool myself with the flimsy, arbitrary, justification of duration?

A Little Here and a Little There

A Little Here and a Little There

Comments 0 Comment

Eleven months after my ill fated move to New York, a few months after opening my own consulting business, I got a call: My successor at my old company had up and left, my old boss wanted to know if I could help fill in for a little while until they found someone else. I loved my old job and all the folks I worked with, I need new clients for my new business anyway, so I said, yes. I committed to arrange a big campaign for them remotely and offered to return to San Francisco for a few weeks when it was all prepped to help out with its launch in person.

Working remotely was easier than I had expected, and when I did arrive back in San Francisco to help with the final launch, it felt so amazing to see all my old colleagues again.  My old boss and I had a wild idea…what if I could stay-on, in some semi-remote capacity, and keep working with my old organization? I agreed to a one year contract, after all, I did need the business, and I did love spending time at my old job. And so began a brand new, jet set, phase of my life, and this blog: A Little Here and a Little There.

On my flight back home, I got to reflecting: Obviously, there was no escaping the fact that I was still a New Yorker. My husband, his lucrative job, my other big client and my home were all there. And yet, it felt like something had shifted, like the darkest-of-dark days in Gotham were behind me. I realized that when I was at my most devastatingly depressed, I  believed that the terrible NY life I had would never change. Now, I understood, that why there is no going back to the life I had before, it was equally insane to believe that I wouldn’t move forward either, that nothing would ever budge, that there was no out, no escape, no reality aside from my depressed stuckedness. So here it is, a new door, a new chapter, and, as we will see, a new set of challenges and suffering to go along with it. Delta Million Miles Club here I come…

 

 

 

 

Redux: Odds, Ends and some final thoughts on Hate

Redux: Odds, Ends and some final thoughts on Hate

Comments 0 Comment

So Dear Reader, as a re-cap, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and interrupting this nice, orderly, temporally linear(ish) blog about my practice with an intrusion from the present day…. inspired by the filth, noise, overcrowding and rudeness of NYC…I bring you part four in my blog about hate.  Last week, we left off with a real shift, a lightening of my hate load brought about by my seeing it for what it really is — a feeble, delusional, poorly functioning, attempt to hide my own ugliness by  distracting myself with the ugliness of others.. Somehow, just seeing hate for what it is took away the sting. This then will be the last instalment in my ‘Hate Interruption’, I will share just a few more follow-up thoughts directly from my notebook.

On Karma:

For the last year or so I have been caught by a simple paradox: Everyone reaps the fruit of their own karma, so I know moving to my own hellish NY arose from my karma. But, I just didn’t get-it — how did I end-up in a city filled with such ugly,  angry, vengeful, inconsiderate people? How did I come to occupy a ‘ hell’ for these types? Maybe karma is broken….

After my hate contemplation I understood: I sometimes behave in ugly, angry, inconsiderate people ways, I am one of  ‘those’ people too . My karma drew me here just like it drew all of ‘them’. Karma worked just as it should, my own delusion is what kept me from understanding the cause of my experiences.

On Alana the Avenging Angel:

In my mind, the violence I would bestow on the honkers and litterbugs and shovers was justice. It was punishment that they deserved and it was my job to make sure they got it. But, even if someone ‘deserves’ punishment, is it my role to dole it out? Is this how the world works; if there is an injustice done, Alana needs to be there to avenge it or else the law of karma will break and people won’t experience the effects of their actions?What does this really have to do with me anyway?

Clearly, at the heart, this is about me only because I make it about me. I have rules, standards, I create and then in my own mind I judge people according to them. Since they are mine alone, who else would enforce but me. But that is not really karma, karma is a universal law, the law of cause and effect, and it operates just fine without me.

And in so far as any ‘punishment’ is due to all the ugly, angry, vengeful, inconsiderate people out there (myself included), aren’t we already experiencing the some of the effect of our hating? I know the burning, searing pain in my heart that comes when anger and impatience arise, I am guessing the honkers and huffers and pushers and shovers feel the burn as well. Does Alana really need to do anything to help someone else have their moment of hell? The only one  my hate and my vengeful is ‘paying back’ is myself.

On Compassion:

When I get frustrated and speak harshly to Eric, I want to be forgiven. When I am inattentive to my mom and  Seth, I want them to give me a pass. When I am a neglectful student, I want my teachers to still teach and believe in me. When I am ugly, I want my friends to still support me. Each of these times, I want my loved ones, everyone really, to see these moments are not who I am. I want another shot, a redo. And, surprisingly, I so often get them. Despite so many flaws, I still have folks who love, care for, believe in and teach me.  

So why can’t I give a pass to the honkers and pushers and eyrolles and litterbugs? If I don’t believe my ugly moments are me, if I think I should get a pass, forgiveness, why am I so fast to want to punish these transgressors? Why do I think I am so special, so much more deserving?  In fact, doesn’t my harshness make me a little less ‘special’ and worthy in the end?

Final Thoughts:

So much of my energy is spent trying to confirm my goodness, i.e. the qualities I value. When it comes down to it, these are really just qualities  I  value because I have been taught them or they have been useful to me. My friends and family help affirm my goodness, my lovableness. My job affirms my usefulness and skill, my city (SF) affirms my chillness, my clothes and body affirm my beauty and in-controlness, my wealth affirms my safety. So much effort and does it work? If SF could really affirm my chill, how in the hell did I find myself Alana- Angry-Avenging-Angel of Fire and Doom?

Redux Part 3: Why Ya Gotta Be Such a Hater 2.0

Redux Part 3: Why Ya Gotta Be Such a Hater 2.0

Comments 0 Comment

So Dear Reader, as a re-cap, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and interrupting this nice, orderly, temporally linear(ish) blog about my practice with an intrusion from the present day…. inspired by the filth, noise, overcrowding and rudeness of NYC…I bring you part three in my blog about hate. We left off last week with a moment of realization: Hate is not built into the situations where I feel hateful,  the seed of hate lies in my heart. So, the question DeJour is a repeat of last weeks question, asked again, with greater wisdom, as the starting place:

If it hurts so bad, why do I gotta be such a hater?

Once I saw it was me, myself, that was creating the hate, it was time to go back and re-ask, why oh why do I do this hating when it hurts soooo bad? What are the hidden benefits?  What is my self thinking?

So, one of the problems of getting all out of order in this Interruption of Our Regularly Scheduled Program is we have skipped over a few big contemplations that serve as building blocks for this hate clarifying moment. So we do need a little pre/re-cap:

A while back I was contemplating a question: Why do I create a self anyway? What does it accomplish? I decided that my sense of self helps me sell a lie, smooth the narrative of this world over a bit, it whitewashes, chooses what  facts to include and which to ignore.  The self is like a storyteller, and it is usually telling stories where I am the hero…

How is my storyteller self making me a hero this time?

I started thinking about those stories you hear sometimes — about gay people who are homophobic, black people who are racist; I feel like they must hate something in themselves to tell these types of stories. I live in this city, I am a New Yorker, but I hate New Yorkers. I am in the same boat. Maybe something I hate in myself is at the root of my hate for this city and its inhabitants.

I see this city, and its people, as rude, careless, inconsiderate, violent, vengeful, self absorbed. All those traits on clear display at just one traffic light, with 100,000 horns a’blaring. But what happens if I look inwards? If I internalize?

The truth is I am way worse than those honkers.  Honkers hurt strangers and passerbyers, for a fleeting moment, with their carelessness, inconsideration, violence, vengefulness and self absorption. I have been careless and inconsiderate with my flesh and blood (see blog about my brother or this one about my Mom ), family who feel the sting of my actions so acutely. I have been violent to neighbors (I once locked my nextdoor neighbor in a rabbit’s cage for trying to steal my brother as a playmate, blog to come) and vengeful with friends (see this story about Candy and our cycle of abuse), people who have cared for and supported me. I have been too self absorbed to see the pain of people in my own community (see this blog about a store owner in my old hood), shirked responsibility in the most intimate corners of my life (see blog about my ex lover).

This is my darkside, the Alana I don’t want to be, the stories I rather not tell myself. So I tuck these personal tidbits away and I do the easy stuff from day-to-day.  I act cool and friendly in shops, always give cars ahead the right of way, I never ever honk; self ignores the little nasties and builds ‘evidence’ of that sweet, kind, go lucky Alana, the hero I want to be.   Hero needs an anti hero, and who better than the pushers, honker, litterbugs, ya know all the stuff I’m not. They are the monsters — the careless, inconsiderate, violent, vengeful, self absorption fuckers out there. No need to look inside, to scratch the veneer off Hero Alana.

But this city puts a spotlights on those traits in myself, the dark ones I hate. When I am in SF, surrounded by warm, considerate, easy going people, it’s easy to be those things myself. That is the Alana I want, so I act the result, put myself in circumstances where I can be hero Alana. But here in NY, with  each shove, honk, sneer and eyeroll — each perceived slight —  my heart burns with thoughts of vengeance, destruction, and punishment. And as I imagine publicly whipping the the offender, it’s hard not to catch glimpses of carelessness, inconsideration, violence, vengefulness and self absorption in myself.

The mechanics are so simple really, how could I have hidden the truth from myself for so long? I create standards of hero-ish behaviors that flatter myself at the expense of others. But, my storytelling self needs more punch to sell the hero alana pitch. Enter hate, to really punctuate the difference between myself and the villains, to make sure I don’t become one of those villains myself. But, don’t my murder/whipping/fire from the sky fantasies prove I have become the villain? No, no, my mind, my self, can’t handle that story, so I add another dash of hate, it has worked before. Then I  add a pinch of delusion, that my rage is righteous, to protect the city, and others, I am a punishing angle not a violent, shoving thug…

As much as it hurts, hate’s deep, dark, hidden benefit is that is hides the truth about myself, of my own darkside that I don’t want to see. But, I do see. Like a bully that has been stood-up to, like a night light to illuminate the shadows, somehow with just a glimpse of the truth, my chest became lighter and I could literally feel the weight of my hate beginning to subside.

So is it over? Hate-filled alana dead and gone? I don’t know, really only time will tell. I still want to go home to SF, I still rather not live in NY, but the hate, for the moment anyway, seems to have lost its bite.  Afterall, even if I have a long way to go, I actually do want to be a ‘good person’, and in the cold, harsh, light of day, can I really believe being a hater is going to get me there?

Redux: Why Ya Gotta Be Such a Hater?

Redux: Why Ya Gotta Be Such a Hater?

Comments 0 Comment

So Dear Reader, as a re-cap, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and interrupting this nice, orderly, temporally linear(ish) blog about my practice with an intrusion from the present day…. inspired by the filth, noise, overcrowding and rudeness of NYC…I bring you part two in my blog about hate. We left off last week exploring all the pain and suffering that comes with being a hater. So, the question DeJour:

If it hurts so bad, why do I  gotta be such a hater?

I’m going to give a shout-out to LP Nut. At the last retreat he gave me a new tool, a new question to ask myself to help me better penetrate my wrong views: If I know a belief  is grounded in a wrong perception already, if it causes me pain, why do I do it? What do I gain? And is that perceived gain actually real –i.e. do I get what I want from the wrong view I cling to? If so, to what degree and at what cost? Whats the data points that the view is helpful/true? Here we go…an insight into my stream of consciousness dharma practice…

1) I hate to protect my self: I need to draw a line in the sand, between things that I hate (that’s you fucking litterbugs) and me, my self-righteous self.  I am a woman of boundaries, of strong standards (see the last blog on this), there is right and there is wrong. To protect my values, my sense of self as a person who maintains those values, I hate. To ensure that I never accept the standards of NYC (the filth, honking, rudeness), I never become a New Yorker, I put up my magical shield of hate.

Where is this self I am so busy protecting? Is it homeless alana self or compassionate alana self? Is it SF alana self or NY alana self?  When I was vegetarian alana I had one set of moral standards and as meat eating alana I have another. So both self and standards changed. And…once I changed from vegi to meat eater shouldn’t old vegi Alana hate new meat-eater Alana?

What are the mechanics by which hate protects me anyway?  Perhaps it is like how I saw fear (see blog Killing the Crazy): Hate motivates certain protective actions, teaches me what to avoid and what to embrace. But, if it worked, how did I end up in a place I hate anyway? If hate really worked to protect me, surround me with things that I value, — why do I have to keep flying back to NYC and facing a place I hate — why don’t I live safely back in SF already? F-You Hate, you are doing a piss-poor job at  keeping me safe!

2) I hate to keep my body safe. At least hate can help keep my physical body safe right? To be a warning against things and people that might do me harm, Rupa (form) I have learned is dangerous.

But, here is the crazy thing, just the other day I read an article about how NYC is actually the safest city in the country. My belief, that all the things I hate here are a big warning sign to run for my life, is contrary to all actual evidence.

3) I hate to protect my karma. I seek to surround myself with good rupa (form), good people, good circumstance to prevent getting used to, learning to accept, lower states. But the hate, the anger, the standards I use to build my bubble world of ‘good’ are actually making me murderous (see the last blog for details). And  seriously, can I really prevent lower rebirths with hate? I don’t need a Buddhist book to tell me the answer to this one — if hate actually worked to keep me from hell states, from circumstances I find repulsive, I could leave NY for good. Trust me, I have enough hate in my heart, if it were the ticket to escaping my NY hell, I would be outta here already!

The Money Moment

I was deep in thought  when something happened, I notice that despite being on the streets of NY, with filth and blaring horns, I wasn’t feeling hateful. But, as I started thinking more about my hate of NY, that hate began to grow again in my heart. Just like with fear (again see the blog Killing the Crazy ), in that moment I saw the truth: Hate is not fixed, it can come and go, it is not built into the situations where I feel hateful.

I know I have said it 1000 times, I am the cause of my hate. But, for the first time since I moved to NY I finally got it. If the hate were outside me, built into a walk on the streets, I wouldn’t have had a moment of freedom from that hate. Moreover,  the fact that the outside circumstances remained the same, but my own thoughts turning to hate caused hate to arise point to the TRUTH: the seed of hate lies in my heart. A lightning strike only starts a fire when there is something on the ground to burn. All the lightning in the world, all the honking, all the filth, can only set my heat on fire if the the fuel is already there waiting to burn. Obvious right? I knew that already, but my heart only believed  after I watched lighting strike.

And so Dear Reader, with a moment of clarity, a penetrating understanding of the truth, it was time to play my favorite dharma game: Lets do the same thing over and over again — Stay tuned for next week’s blog  Why Ya Gotta Be Such a Hater? 2.0. Where I go back and ask myself the same question again: Since it is clearly me, why exactly do I do it?

Redux: Yet Another Interruption in our Regularly Scheduled program Part 1: Haters Gonna Hate

Redux: Yet Another Interruption in our Regularly Scheduled program Part 1: Haters Gonna Hate

Comments 0 Comment

Well Dear Reader, it is once again that time when we need to put some of our ‘Interruption In Our Regularly Scheduled Program” Blogs — entries that were written’ real time’ and out of the order of this orderly (ish) blog that tracks the progress of my practice since its inception — back into their chronological place. The next few entries will be about my big ah-ha moments surrounding the cause and costs of my hate for New York. 

It is funny, at the time I had these very powerful, very raw, contemplation, it felt like, BAM, they came from nowhere. I remember, just walking down the street and feeling like a ray of Dharma clarity had struck me from above. Now, with several years of time and distance between myself, and these very emotional contemplation, I see so much more clearly the progression of practice –of contemplation and understandings — that led me to these BAM-AH-HA moments. Perhaps you, Dear Reader, will see it too? The traces of my Bubble World understanding, the analysis of hidden costs and beliefs, the more nuanced rendition of rupa, that underpin these thoughts that ‘fell from the sky.’

Hate Hurts Me and the People I Love: For any of you who have ever experienced all-consuming-rage-induced-murderous-hate, you know, it’s not really a walk in the park. Seriously, the feeling of burning hate is its own kind of suffering. I want to be a joyful person. I at least want to be a calm, content person. I want to be the person I feel like I am when I walk down the streets of San Fran, all chill and positive vibing, but this hatred is getting in the way.

And as I ball my fists and huff and puff at the driver who honks, my husband, standing next to me also feels my rage. He sees a hate-filled wife so different than the woman he loved  back in San Fran and he hurts. I grow short, raise my voice, lose my temper so easily when I am already so angry, and who else but the folks close to me, like Eric, is there to get the brunt of my attacks?

But I can’t help it … NY is filthy, loud, people are inconsiderate and self absorbed. I have standards, rules, for how cities and people in them should be. If a standard is failed, a condition of mine goes unmet, I don’t like it. When I encounter a beast like New York, which violates every one of my standards to the extreme, I have hate hate hate. Humm…maybe it’s my standards that cause hate not the city…maybe my standards hurt me and the people I love…

My Hate Inducing Standards are Risky Business: I have such tight standards, rules and a need for order, it bears asking the question –what happens when those standards don’t get met? What happens when Alana moves to NYC? Clearly, as we saw before, one unpleasant consequence is hate. But what risks come along with that?

When someone throws trash on the street (i.e. every 2 minutes) an image flashes in my mind of my murdering them by  tearing open their jugular. Of course,  I would never actually kill, of course, of course, right? But I have hurt people before — when they erode my happy world, fail my standards, take whats mine — as a kid I locked my neighbor in a rabbit cage because he took my little brother away from me as a playmate. I have left spiteful reviews on yelp,  thrown away valuable belongings of an ex, ‘accidentally’  elbowed or stepped on feet in a subway.

Each of these acts is different from murder in their degree or severity not in their nature or kind.  The cause, the hate/need to ‘defend’ myself, remains, and the risk of ‘karmic crime’ lurks with it. I am just waiting for a breach in standards big enough, a violation unforgivable enough, to turn my murder fantasy into reality. Where oh where did compassionate alana run off to?

But wait, there is more. These standards have perils on both sides. When someone is on the ‘wrong’ side of my standard I hate them, I want to punish them. But I use these same standards to shelter my own guilt, to cloak my wrong behaviors and call them  ‘right’ just because they fall on the ‘right’ side of my standards line. When I was in highschool, I had a ‘rule’, I would never mess around with someone else’s boyfriend. There was a guy I liked, already dating another girl, I didn’t ‘mess around’ with him, that would have been wrong. But I flirted, almosted, made him desire me so ultimately he broke-up with the other girl. Still, I did no wrong, I never broke my rule or my standard.  

The honking here is by far the worst offence in my mind. Honkers allow their frustration to drive them to hurt everyone around them, to wildly assault thousands of ears just because their commute takes an extra 2 minutes. I quietly seethe. I plot my imaginary revenge in  my head. That driver and I actually have a lot in common — anger and hate, frustration and broken expectations are what animate us both. But I am on the side of right. I am good, I keep it to myself. I don’t hurt thousands of people around me… I hurt just me, and the people I love, with my hate.

Arbitrary Standards: Clearly, not everyone hates Manhattan. If they did, this city would clear-out and I would finally have some peace and quiet. But alas, it is me. There is something in me that is ruffled by NY. Something about the rupa, the way the form of this place is arranged, that pushed my particular buttons. It violates my particular standards and rules. But here is the thing — these rules and standard are arbitrary. Why is making-out with someone else’s boyfriend wrong, but flirting is ok? Why is littering wrong but getting my stuff from Amazon, which over packages everything, ok? Why is hurting 1000s wrong but hurting 1 or 2 ok? Why is piles of trash on the sidewalk wrong but a messy underwear drawer ok?

In the end, I make my rules, based on what I value, and then I use them to  carve up the world and my own behaviors into rights and wrongs. But these rules, are not the rules that govern the world. If they were, Manhattan would be ¼ the size, sparkling clean, quiet enough to hear a pin drop. Shit as long as I’m at it, fluffy friendly dogs would roam the streets here just waiting to be pet…I make rules that will always be broken and then I suffer the hate, the perils, the misery when things are not the way I want. It begs a question, to be explored in next week’s blog — if it hurts so bad,  why do I gotta be such a hater?

A Topic That Never Gets Old — Me and Mine, Again…Revisited (Again and Again it Seems)

A Topic That Never Gets Old — Me and Mine, Again…Revisited (Again and Again it Seems)

Comments 0 Comment

Immediately after I wrote the blog post, A Topic the Never Gets Old — Me and Mine Again,  I wrote the following journal entry which I will share in full (with a few modifications for clarity) here:

I was working on a blog about self and self belongings. It is so clear that I collect items, claim them as my own, in order to reinforce my sense of identity, to prove my Alananess to myself and the world.  But a deeper question keeps nagging me — why do I create the sense of self (that owner/claimer of belongings) in the first place?

Obviously, as a practitioner looking to escape continued re-birth, I am, at least somewhat, concerned about the high costs of self and self belonging — it is a daily exercise for me to recognize the work of collecting (bot identity and belonging), the work of maintaining and the inevitable pain of loss that come along with this self and these items I claim. Still, despite the suffering that the concepts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’ cause me I persist building up my Alanahood.

Maybe I should try looking at this through the lens of LP Nut’s hidden beliefs and benefits. If I know it hurts why do it? What benefits do I think this self brings me? Is it actually true?

Now I’m still not clear on all the details, but my first impulse is that I think myself protects me. All those years I used to fight unyielding with my Mom about the terms of our relationship — how often to call, frequency and length of visits, allowable topics and presumptions of closeness —  I did it with a sense that I had to “hold the line”,  “protect my boundaries”. The more she pushed me, the more I felt like I had to dig-in and not budge: my sense of self felt like it became firmer in the face of attack, I needed it to protect me.

Now, here in NY, again I feel like I need MY STANDARDS, MY SENSE OF RIGHT AND WRONG, MY INDIGNATION. When someone honks, or liters, I need MY ANGER, something that I can hold onto, a sense of who I am and what I am willing to accept in the face of attack. I make the situations and environments around me, about me, and myself grows in the process. But without this sense of self, in this case who I am not and what I won’t accept, how can I keep myself safe?

But if this self of mine is so fragile that it needs the rigid packing materials of standards and indignation and anger, wouldn’t I be better served –safer –if I had a more yielding sense of self? If the self I have chosen could bend like a reed in the wind rather than snap like a tree, wouldn’t that protect me better?

Without a sense of self what is it, who is it, that Eric would love? Like me without a green purse, would I be recognizable to him? So self is necessary to be loved. But, does Eric really love me, or does he love his own idea of who I am?  I already know the answer to this (see Livin the Single Life Blog) — what Eric and I really love is the future we imagine we share together. A future we don’t even know will be real. This is no reason to cling to a self.

Good person Alana, the Compassionate Vegetarian, the Hugger of the Homeless, The Super Buddhist, she clearly needs a self.  How else can I make myself the ‘right’ kind of person, the collector of good qualities and traits. And if I am not a good self, how can I escape negative karma? How can I guarantee good rebirths and fun-filled lives? Self must exist to create standards of behavior and then evaluate (with one eye closed) whether or not I meet these self-created criterion for karmic cookies. But does this really even work? If so, why is this Alana suffering so deeply in this NY re-birth?

My whole existence seems to be about trying to confirm some set of qualities/characteristics that I dub, ‘Alana’. Qualities that will protect me by defining the bounds of what I think are acceptable, and therefore keep me safe from the dark forces of ‘the unacceptable’. Qualities that will make me loved and, by extension, protected by those who love me.  Qualities that  keep me squarely on the side of righteousness, so that I have a life of good stuff that I am so convinced righteous individuals deserve. But, this all does beg yet another question – if I am really looking to avoid suffering (the suffering of the unacceptable, the suffering of being unloved, the suffering of being unsafe and the suffering of having a crap life), shouldn’t I be trying to end the self that brings me into this suffering-filled-world  instead of trying to ‘game the world, on my terms, once I am already here?

 

 

RSS
Follow by Email
Facebook
Facebook
Google+
https://alana.kpyusa.org/author/alana/page/11/
Twitter