Alana's Dharma Blog

…Interruption in our regulatory scheduled program:

I know, I know, Dear Reader, you have gottta be thinking I am the worst, most scatter-brained narrator ever. I just got back to the program, and here I am with yet anoooottthhhheeeer interruption. Ugh, I know, but I promise its just a short reflection. One and Done…

The other day, a friend (who incidentally is Buddhist-curious, but not a practicing Buddhist), asked me what my musings were during these crazy Covid times. When I re-read the email I wrote her, I decided I wanted to share it here, on my blog. Now. While this whole pandemic thing is still  a fresh,  shared reality for all of us. I want to share it because, it is not at all technical, there is no Pali jargon, no difficult Buddhisty concepts. This is just the raw, real, reflections of scared-as-shit-there-is -a-fucking-pandemic-Alana…

Blah blah (personal conversation with a friend)…I am bored and edgy though for sure, given that health anxiety and hypochondria are my native fears, a pandemic is definitely a hot button issue to say the least. But, as you have guessed, its certainly a time and a topic ripe for musing…

As a little recap: Buddhism 101: Everything in this world is impermanent, things arise based on causes and when those causes are exhausted, those things cease to exist. Suffering arises because our understanding of the world is misaligned with this truth of impermanence. We don’t understand the nature of this world, so we are constantly hoping and expecting that we can somehow keep what we love forever and avoid what we hate forever. We don’t see that the cycles of arising and ceasing are the law of the land, we are mere subjects, not all powerful sovereigns.

In general,  I like to think I can control my life; with enough gym time or diet restraint I can guarantee my health,  with enough hard work, or money or intelligence I can perfectly plan my future. But a  pandemic is one hell of a bitch slap to my control. The truth is, as a human, I am subject to viruses — their physical nature is to consume humans and my physical nature, as a human, is to be consumed. In fact, the nature of all things in this world is to consume and be consumed, this is one of the faces of impermanence.  Of course, some humans have circumstances that make them more prone to being consumed and to suffering worse health outcomes — there are health considerations, economic considerations, livelihood considerations — but at the end of the day, all humans are subject. The lie I tell myself, that I am special, that some quality or behavior will make me exempt, is laid pretty bare by the fact that I have to be locked down, going stir crazy, in my fucking apartment.

This, of course, is not the future I foretold back when I started planning out my year in Jan. I felt utterly blindsided by this mess. I feel sorrow and horror and fear when I read the news, when I hear about neighbors who have fallen ill and so many friends who have lost jobs and businesses — it all seems wrong and unfair.  But the misconception that lurks beneath these feelings is that this world was going to continue the way it had been going. That April 2020 was going to be, more-or-less, like April 2019, and 2018, and 2017 and 2016…I was lulled by relative repetition (or rather scenarios similar enough that my mind easily glossed the differences and paid attention only to similarities) into forgetting the true ruler of this world — impermanence. All of my consternation is because on some level I feel like the world is broken, like it needs to ‘go back to the way it was’, to be fixed. But this isn’t a state of brokenness at all, this is exactly how and what the world is. What is broken is me, with my hope and expectation that it should somehow be different.

(This friend of mine has to move for work a lot and…)on one of our last outings in SF, you pointed to the unkempt sidewalk and some of the dilapidation in our old hood and you shared that one of your tricks to preparing your heart to leave a place/ to letting go of an old home, was to start paying attention to the negatives. This little trick of yours, bringing balance to your view so as to lessen your attachment, is 100% the same method that practitioners use to achieve Nirvana (freedom from all future rebirths).  Everything in this world has 2 sides (this is another face of impermanence). We humans are generally conditioned to notice the side we like and ignore/forget/minimize/justify the one we don’t.  We fool ourselves into thinking that the side we like is the  ‘normal’ state and that which we don’t is the outlier…if only we plan or control or hedge we can avoid such outliers all together. This hope is the fodder for desire to be born into this world. Gathering evidence to see the full picture, that what we love comes hand and hand with what we hate, is the fodder for freedom from this world. I love community, connection, togetherness but it comes hand in hand with contagion and disease…

So, just a few of my thoughts on all this crazy shit. Lets just hope this global pandemic is my (rude) awakening indeed ;).

This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Interruption Part 16’.

My Dear Reader, I thank you for bearing with me on this looooonnnggg interruption in our regularly scheduled program (an orderlyish, linearish blog tracing my meandering dhamma path), this will be the last posting in our Post-Retreat Interruption Series. It is simply a brief reflection of what I have come to understand my path to be.

A long time ago, I asked Mae Neecha what it really meant to eliminate sakkāya-diṭṭhi (first fetter – self-view – necessary to be eliminated in order to become a sotapanna). She replied, “I would define sakkyaditthi as the view that you are at the center of the universe and understanding/conquering sakkyaditthi is understanding that you alone are the cause of your suffering and wrong perceptions. Eliminating the sakkyaditthi fetter is seeing that there’s a huge difference between your perception of the truth and the actual truth.”

Now, years later, this answer is starting to make more and more sense to me.

We inhabit a rupa body in a rupa world. In this world, elements are constantly interacting. They are shifting. They are decaying and building new forms. They consume and they become consumed. There are predictable patterns, a balance that exists in a world where things arise from the earth and return to it, a zero-sum equation. There are rules, and to be born into this world is to be subject to these rules. I go through life pretending my objects will obey me, my body will obey me, but there is no amount of effort/ self-deception, that will ultimately make me master of this world( not even my little corner of it). The world simply does not revolve around me.

Even more years ago, Mae Yo taught me about the nama aggregates — especially memory (3) and imagination (4). She checked my homework, she drilled me continually, she made sure I was fluent in how they work. Now, I am starting to understand why.

It is because memory and imagination are integral to the process by which I concoct the delusion that the world revolves around me. With nama’s help, in my head, I reshape the world: I substitute reality with my ‘shoulds’/ notions about how things ‘ought’ to be, and I turn a blind-eye to what the world actually is. Nama is the blinders I put on that help me drown out the ugly bits of this world that lurk just outside my rose-colored glasses. Nama is the elixir I take that gets me believing a lovely single-snapshot-moment can be had and kept and repeated forever.

This path is the process of opening my eyes and seeing the world for what it actually is, not for what I want it to be. I suppose I am also understanding why Mae Neecha told me, “This is why Luang Por told Mae Yo, “ Rupa and Nama, 50/50.” Once we understand the tangible and intangible, we’ll have the whole picture.”

This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Interruption Part 15’.

In this blog, I will begin just after the last blog left off and end with a much more recent contemplation, from 6 months later, when I circled back to the topic of meaning in rupa and found a new depth and clarity.

If you recall, in the last blog I came to realize a big mistake: All this time, I looked at arrangements of 4es and knew they reflected something, so I just assumed that something was meaning. But it’s not meaning at all, it’s just a collection of reasons reflected in results.

But how did I get to such a mistaken view in the first place? It is that I see some of reasons, reflected through rupa, and my nama monsters kick-in. When I see a form that seems familiar, pattern recognition (memory) “informs” me of what is likely to come next. I hit a button; I get an Amazon box. I hit a button; I get an Amazon box. I hit a button; I get an Amazon box. Imagination now has all the ammo it needs to run wild: Rupa of button = guaranteed future box. And since, in general (when I close one eye and selectively ignore evidence to the contrary), the items I buy from Amazon make my life more convenient, I begin to believe Amazon box means convenience.

For some amount of time this ‘pattern recognition” can be close enough to predictive that it not only imparts ‘meaning’ in those buttons and boxes, it feeds my ego too. It reinforces the 3s(memory) and 4s (imagination), makes them believe they are omniscient. I hit the button I get the box. Because I don’t see all the interworking between button and box, suddenly I think I am the cause, or at least a partial cause, or at least that I know what the world will bring – a box.

My mind has become so convinced of my Amazon Narrative that even when I hit the button and don’t get a box, I can convince myself these instances are anomalies. I never stop to gather all those never received boxes up as evidence of my flawed vision of the relationship between button and box or my incomplete understanding of the Amazon supply chain. I have rigorously trained myself to ignore each and every glitch in the matrix.

Now the world is faced with a global pandemic. A shift, a new world order that is, in just a few short weeks, so radically different in so many ways. Suddenly, I find that more and more of those Amazon packages are coming late, or not coming at all. Now, in every part of my life, the patterns I was that I was confident in, have shattered, so much is unrecognizable and unpredictable.

Back at the retreat, Mae Neecha offered a re-framing, of a wrong view —  she called it a case of “incomplete information.” This pandemic has made me see that all my expectations, all the meaning I read into rupa, the outcomes I expect, are based on incomplete information. They are based on the past. The past however is over, the future will always be something different than the past, this is the law of impermanence. The world has not been fooling me. Rupa has not been fooling me. I have been fooling myself.

This a continuation of the last blog. If you haven’t read previously then please go back and read ‘Interruption Part 14’.

As a recap: My contemplations had landed me in another ‘stuck spot.’ Namely, I had come to recognize that every arrangement of rupa contains only 4 elements. But, somehow, I still believed that there was a deeper meaning — loved/just/fair/safe/etc. — reflected by rupa. Moreover, it seemed like rupa could portends the future, if only I could ‘interpret’ it correctly…

Of course, logic dictated I must be mistaken. Its not like meaning is a 5^th element after all. But to make my heart see the truth, I had to start dissecting my mistaken beliefs more closely. I had to consider why I was fooling myself and how I was continually ‘finding’ meaning and guarantees in rupa that simply couldn’t exist.

For months, I collected evidence (some of which was shared in the last blog), I kept turning the question over in my head, trying to find an angle of attack. But, in truth, it was slow going.

I was looking at a painting one day and started analyzing the marks. In painting, every time a brush hits a canvas it is called a ‘mark’; it is a term used to describe different lines, patterns, textures, etc. that are made manifest by the artist.

It dawned on me that each mark has its reasons (aka causes) for occurring. There are rupa based reasons –the 4es of the paint, the canvas, the hand of the painter, the training to become an artist. There are reasons in nama: The desire that made the artist want to paint this picture, the things their imagination conjured up to paint. There are reasons behind these reasons, how the artist was born a human, how and why they trained as an artist, their memories and beliefs about art. While there is no possible way for me to see/understand each and every reason that resulted in a mark, those reasons are all there, reflected in each brush stroke as well as the painting as a whole.

My mistake: All this time, I looked at arrangements of 4es and knew they reflected something, so I just assumed that something was meaning. But it’s not meaning at all, it’s just a collection of reasons reflected in results.   

But wait there is more: When I dissect any arrangement of rupa down further, it becomes clear that each reason just backs up into further reasons. Let’s take a very simplified look at the purchase of my favorite green purse as an example: When my favorite green purse wore out, I went on a scavenger hunt in order to replace it. Why? Because I thought it meant that I was special to my husband. Why? Because one time he made a sweet comment about recognizing me from miles away if I was wearing the purse. Why? Because the purse was bright green and easy to see. Why? Because bright green was the color of choice the season I bought it. Why? Ask the fashion industry. Why did I buy a purse that season? I had started going to the gym over lunch and needed a big bag to carry my shoes. Why? I used to go to the gym in the morning before work, but I had started doing yoga in that time slot. Why…

I could go backwards forever and ever and all I would find is an infinite current of reasons. A current is always moving, it is my mind that ‘freeze frames’ a form at a particular moment in time and begins reading the bits of its history that I can see into a meaning and a future. Stay tuned, next time we will peak at the little gears in my brain to see how this all happens.

In the wake of my cake baking contemplation and seeing the extreme limits on my control/tendency to use rupa arrangements to define who I am, I had gone to get my nails done. About a week later, looking down at them, I caught myself feeling surprised that the polish had started chipping so soon. At lightning speed, I caught myself thinking, “I have been being so careful with them.” Then it hit me– it’s not about me. My actions are a single, small factor, in nail polish staying. It is chipping because that is what happens to polish left alone for a while.

My mind went immediately to Dharma Meltdown 2.0,  when I panicked that I got my light colored  pants dirty, that I could never keep white clean, that it was a sign I was a bad Buddhist. For the first time I clearly saw it — dirt on white is not an indictment of me, it isn’t about me, my ego is lying. White gets dirty, that is a natural, expected state of white cloth over a long enough life cycle. At most, I am a factor in temporarily keeping white clean. I am reading meaning into Rupa that simply isn’t there.  There is no innate meaning that lives inside of 4es that is just waiting to be penetrated by me, Alana the Great Rupa Whisperer.

I started collecting evidence to prove that I am the one who reads meaning into rupa. Because if the meaning of an arrangement doesn’t live in the arrangement itself, can the arrangement create meaning (i.e. identity) in the arranger?

1) The meaning I assign to things keeps changing thanks to new information or new beliefs. So my ex-boyfriend’s emails used to mean I was special, loved, that someone so smart must see that same intelligence in me. Now when he emails I feel little, he is my ex after all. My NY home was supposed to prove I had a nest from which to build my NY fabulousness, but then I decided I didn’t want to be NY anything and that same home became a burden I struggled to sell. My car used to make me feel so on top and clever and then, when I went to sell it, at a huge loss it made me feel foolish and duped (here is the car story).

2) I don’t even consistently apply meaning to like objects. I was thinking about a fancy car I rented for some vacay. I remember someone complemented me on it as we pulled out of the gas station. Out loud, I said “thanks,” but in my head I was thinking I don’t own this car, it is a rental, it’s nothing for me to be proud of…and yet, when someone complemented my Porsche, my heart swelled with pride. But wasn’t the Porsche on loan too? Something I used for a time and then parted ways with. Simply the act of believing something is mine changed my meaning of it. The reality however is the only difference between that rental can and ‘my Porsche’ was the duration of use. That, and my imagination.

3) Even if there is some characteristic ‘proven’ in an arrangement of Rupa I help create, it doesn’t adhere to me, it is literally over once the arrangement ends. That mandolin player played a concert virtousically, he created a sound that the people in the room found beautiful. But then as soon as it was done, it was done. He likely took it home – that ego puff – took it to mean something about him later, but how could some past arrangement say something about present him? It literally exists nowhere but memory, so how could meaning in the rupa carry forward?

4) There are times that ostensible meaning of rupa remains, even when the person it is supposed to point to, to define, is already gone. I had recently gone to a museum that has an extensive collection of Sol LeWit wall paintings and something struck me hard – a number of the paintings were dated after he had died. I wandered around till I found a plaque that explained, LeWit left intricate instructions for his paintings, but by design they were meant to be able to be replicated on walls by other artists on his team. He insisted the date written on paintings was not the day they were created by him, but rather the day they went up on the wall. The result is that  the date of his creation, the object that proves his skill and artistry, was posthumous. It is not like the painting happened and then he died, rather he died and then the painting happened, so how could the painting create an identity in him? The only answer possible is that it can’t, it never does.

When I started thinking about my husband, Eric, I started to see the mechanics inside the clock – the way that my own aggregates clobber onto form, assign it meaning, and then reflect that meaning back onto myself.

I take Eric’s sammuti (supposed form) and give it a meaning: special, discerning, generous, good, handsome, mine and then I use the object and the meaning I create to build and define me. Wife, beloved of someone so great, worthy of treatment so kind. This is the way my mind uses rupa; gives it meaning and then reflects the meaning back to reference me, to build me.

The other night I was watching a show and the Golden Gate Bridge flashed on the screen — immediately I thought “mine” and ‘home” and I wanted to be there. As I reflected on my feeling, I realized this moment sort of summed-up a place I have been stuck: I know a bridge is just rupa, there is nothing in it except for 4es, and yet it seems to say more. It seems to have meaning, where meaning is an abstract ideal like loved, or just, or home and/or to offer  some guaranteed future outcome — like crossing the Golden Gate, in my fancy car, with the top down, holding Eric’s hand, laughing at some joke, as we embark on happily ever after adventure.

Stay tuned…in the next blog we will look at how I started to un-stick this very stuck point.

After all of my contemplations I was beginning to see that there was nothing innately special in my objects or my body. Just varying, shifting arrangements of 4 elements. I knew I was not my arrangements, and yet, I couldn’t shake the belief that those arrangements, and my ability to bring them about, must prove something about ME. Alana the great arranger!  I knew I had a huge wrong view remaining – that because I am a partial cause for an outcome, that outcome must prove my identity. What follows is a synopsis of some of the discrete contemplations I used to attack this view.

Beaver dam:

I was out hiking and came across a beaver damn. The dams are quite common out here in Connecticut and after seeing the zillionth one, I was hardly impressed. But…shouldn’t I be? I mean here was Beaver the Great Arranger of Dams: the little animal worked hard to cause its dam, this one indeed did look a little bigger and more symmetrical than the rest I had run into. But, in my mind a dam is just what beavers do, there is nothing special – no identity that I assign a beaver – because of its dam.

So, why do I look at things I build/cause, the particular arrangements of my wardrobe, my home, my body, and feel they make me special? Isn’t all this shit just stuff humans do? That’s when it hit me – I am the one assigning value – identity bestowing meaning — to some results/arrangements while ignoring others. A beaver dam is just what beavers do, but my elaborate wardrobe makes me a fashionista. My greatness only exists (in my own mind) because I am self-selecting the qualities with which to build my identity.

What’s more is I have a tendency to get caught-up in details, to use small differences to further sell myself the identity lie. So humans have all figured out how to use bags/baskets/trays to carry stuff, but my LV bag versus your Gap bag is what makes me so special. But the thing is, some beavers have access to better wood, better location, they have more strength or less human encroachment and can build a better dam. So? That is normal. As is the fact that that very same beaver can lose their dam, a forest fire or a building project can make wood scarce, etc. That some humans, some times, can have LV bags and others can’t, that is normal too. Normal and subject to change. So how am I using it to prove something special, something meaningful, something ME, about me?

My friend the baker:

A friend of mine went to culinary school and I always think of him as ‘the baker’. Even when he hasn’t cooked for me in a while, even after he got a job doing something totally unrelated, he remained “a baker” in my mind. But how does an action, done at distinct points in time bestow an identity?

I suppose I could justify a fixed ‘baker identity’ if a  cake he made, even once, stayed steady-state forever… but, without fail, each and every baked item gets consumed, or goes stale, or ends up in the compost bin. I started thinking hard about why that is, why no cake ever just keeps its perfect, post oven, glory and I realized it is in the nature of the 4 elements itself.

Left uninterrupted things that are hot, like cakes out of the oven, tend to cool. Wet/moist things tend to dry. Solid things tend to disintegrate. Movement comes to a halt. In time, all arrangements tend to go back to the states indigenous to their elements. So how can the identity of the arranger stay the same when the arrangements themselves keep shifting, decaying, following the rules of rupa rather than the rules of the arranger. What baker wouldn’t bake the ever-perfect cake if they could?

A trip to the eye doctor:

I was on my way to the eye doctor the other day and got to thinking about the suffering in my day so far. I realized that since I had awoken, I had been at low level stress trying to get to the appt on time. I felt rushed, worried. I realized the suffering wasn’t just my desire to make the appointment, it was arising because of my belief that being on time to the appointment proves what kind of person I am: If I am on time, it proves I am a considerate person, someone good, someone who cares about the life and time of others. I want desperately to be that kind of a person and I can’t face an identity as an inconsiderate bad person, as a late patient, that would disprove who I believe I AM.

The problem is, I use Rupa world shit, stuff I seriously don’t ultimately control, to prove this great considerate identity. I am bound to ultimately fail sooner or later. Trains are late all the time, alarms don’t go off, emergencies happen. In truth I am regularly late, even when I take preparations and precautions, to be on time. When I am late I suffer a terrible pain, a hit to my identity.

But even when I manage to be on time I suffer too. I suffer stress, like I did getting to the appointment. I suffer the preparation time and worry. But when I am on time, I excuse it, gloss over the stress because I think it is worth it, I get to be the me I want to be!

But this is like winning small battles, at high cost, in a war I can never ever win.

Why can’t I win? Because I am trying to derive identity based-off of things that I can only arrange when all the stars align, partially to my liking but always with consequences I don’t like, some of the time, temporarily.

Another day, another cake:

All of this brought me back to the original problem:  Even though I know I am not my arrangements, I couldn’t shake the belief that those arrangements, and my ability to bring them about, proves  something about me. I.e. since I can cause a cake to be baked that cake defines Alana the Baker (baker pronounced ‘Alana the organizer and controller of all Rupa in the universe’).

But after considering beaver dams, my friend the real-life baker and a trip to the eye doc, I realized I can arrange a cake, if:

1. The circumstances and Rupa allow it. I.e. Eric didn’t use the last egg, the weevils didn’t eat the flour, the landlord fixed the oven, etc. In reality this isn’t some fine print asterisk of “conditions may apply”. In everyday life there are countless ways and circumstances that don’t allow for cake baking.

2. Some of the time, ie even if the circumstances allow me to bake a cake it still may go flat or turn out crappy

3. Partially, there are always 2 sides so even if I get a cake that I want, I get a huge stack of dishes I hate

4. Temporarily ie I can bake once, but not necessarily a second time

5. Plus once that cake comes about it is not subject to my rules but the rules of Rupa, so rot, decay, consumed, etc.

When I put it that way…it doesn’t exactly have the same ‘Alana, high and mighty, ruler of the universe ring to it.’ So much for Alana the Great Arranger.

This blog is a direct continuation on the previous blog, “Interruption Part 11: A Major Breakthrough Part 1”. If you have not read that blog yet please go ahead and read it first before you continue on with this one.

4. Does rupa do what I think/ want/imagine in an absolute sense or in relation to myself? 

• Is a quality fixed/innate in myself — Again I started thinking about beauty. I realized that if my 20 year old self saw my 40 year old self in the mirror she would freak the hell out. The only reason my 40 year old self sometimes (good haircut, lost weight, botoxed) can look in the mirror and give myself the pretty thumbs-up is that my nama has change the standard. Rupa may nourish nama, but it is also a limit setter/backstop. When it tells an irrefutable tale, like that I am 40 not 20, then Nama is forced to adjust its standards to cope with the reality of the situation.

The problem is that my nama is a lot like a teacher who grades on a curve. If each year her class gets dumber and dumber, being in the most recent class and get an A doesn’t really prove I am some sort of genius. It doesn’t prove the quality of smart lives in me. Just so, my curve grading nama doesn’t mean that beauty lives in me.

Each object is just an arrangement of 4es. Over the course of its life its arrangement of the 4es change over time/situation. Every object will have a peak/pinnacle look, like all fruit will have a peak ripeness. It doesn’t require any nama observer for this to be the case. This body had a peak arrangement that I would call max beauty. But it was momentary, every other arrangement before and after was sub-peak. And in fact, even at peak, it was just peak for my body arrangement: Across all time and all like objects there will be arrangements that are prettier/thinner/richer. So what this means is that even my ripeness/pretty is retaliative. Its not absolute. I am constantly working so hard, suffering so much, choosing this world over and over for a quality in rupa that is not even absolute and is definitely not permanent no matter what my curve-grading-nama-liar is trying to say.

• Whose fault is it when I need to endure a 4e arrangement I hate (spoiler alert –it is mine)? I  was thinking about a few times when I knew stuff wasn’t really really mine, I was using it temporarily, but I got ticked as hell they were taken from me, to the point of hate/vengefulness and I started trying to figure out why. The examples were:  1) I was in Zumba one day and this chick just came, stood in front of me and took my dance spot.  2) A plane trip where I paid extra for premium seats in front of the bulkhead, but because of where the bathrooms were arrange people kept using it as an aisle and stepping on me; 3) My neighbors hogging the washer.

I realized when I was thinking about taking a body and entering the ‘rupa level’ that the reason I was so angry in these cases is they made me feel like a fool for not reading the fine print. I signed the contract, I get a rupa body yay! I can arrange rupa objects according to my liking as long as it is within the acceptable arrangements of the 4es in a particular circumstance at a particular time. Fine print, there are times the rupa can’t be arranged to your liking, rupa has its own rules, you have to deal with it. You get ears to hear pretty music, but you are also going to get honking Lady. No one wants to feel a fool, no one wants to feel a chump, so I got angry , I felt belittled. In reality I took home the wrong message: the right message is “you need to stop looking to rupa to prove your ability to be master of this world. You are not. You get the power to play within this world, you don’t have super worldly abilities. I am afraid that if the washing machine is being used, you can’t wash your clothes…

• Alana the special snowflake — In winter, I love standing out and catching snowflakes when it snows. Each one has its very own unique crystal structure. They are all special snowflakes. But, each and every snowflake is a 4e object subject to the rules of rupa. They are formed at a certain temp and melt at a certain temp, living a life cycle of vapor to solid to water and back to vapor again. Sure each one is unique, but not in the critical ways that govern their nature, life and death. I realize that I use my crap to try and make me a special little Alana. The body, the clothes, that car — all accessories of my uniqueness. But, really, I am just like those snowflakes..in all the ways that matter most, in the rules that govern my 4es, I am just like every other person, every other 4e object. I have to stop thinking I am some kind of special snowflake, they don’t exist.

5. My belongings don’t have the power to always create or sustain an arrangement of rupa I want, so I suffer.  My shit is like props in a play: 

• The 4es of the actual object (prop) are always changing: My body will go through states of health and states of illness. My bath will go through states of warm and states of cooling. Since I don’t like all the arrangements (not fan of sick Alana or cold bath) I suffer.

• The scene is always changing: I liked the porsche when I was driving the back roads of Napa, but wasn’t a huge fan when I had to stop for gas in Soma. I liked my fav ring on my 30 year old hand, on my 40 year old hand it draws attention to my wrinkles. I liked my wedding ring and then I developed an allergy to the metal and stopped liking it because it caused burning rash/pain. Same objects, but in a new scene, don’t create the arrangement of rupa I want. Since  the scene is always changing, the ability to create the exact arrangement of rupa I want can’t be in the objects .

Further example: In SF life money seemed to make me happy, to continually create an arrangement of rupa I found favorable. So, I dumbly believed that money would do the same thing in NY and, even though I clearly saw when visiting I didn’t like the sounds/smells/ density/etc I believed once I threw money at the problem I would be able to arrange the form to my liking. Duh, it didn’t work and actually money made it worse: we moved for more money, so acquiring this item I thought would guarantee me a favorable arrangement of rupa got me a more unfavorable one. The reason, at most money is a factor in getting an arrangement I want but if it is a factor in getting an arrangement I want than it must also be able to be a factor in getting an arrangement I don’t want as well (I’m going to look more at this point tomorrow).

• The audience changes: I loved that NY house when I first saw it. I bought it. But then my feelings as an audience member, my feelings about NY changed. So then I didn’t like the house any more. Same object, same scene, but my feelings changed. Then, I had to suffer having the object and having to get rid of it.

• I always seem to need new props: Based on how good the last production was, I need new props to make the new play as good as or better than the last. If I had a Porsche, I can’t have a BMW or I am a loser producer.  If I had Goyard, I can’t have gap or I am a loser producer. If I am judged (by myself and others) by the quality of my play, by the successive arrangements of rupa that create a story line of my life, then the next scene, the next play has to be better than the last. But the nature of the world is that things can go up or down (ahh the bubble dilemma). Its impossible to always have better props. It is impossible to keep the props I have pristine. So, I suffer.

Anyway, there is more, but this is the basics. I have had to hack at a few hydra heads along the way, wrong views that were really delaying progress. But otherwise, I am trying to stay on the program — self and self belonging and its many facets. I realize now how much missing the 4e piece was hurting my practice. Even worse though was not understanding the difference between cause and factor; this whole dharma thing is just the truth of cause and effect in this world. To be unclear on this topic, to constantly think I am a cause where I am merely a factor (of various strengths and durations) is like wrong view quicksand — so fucking hard to escape this world when stuck in it…After all, if I am a cause, I can just try harder, work more, do better to get the effect I want since a cause always brings about an effect. But, by definition, a factor is something that ‘works’ some of the time, under some circumstances. All it takes is to see that circumstances are constantly changing, bubbles always shifting and popping, to start easing my gripping heart….

After Several weeks of chewing on all the insights I had gained during and after my line Chats with Mae Neecha, I felt finally ready to send a synthesis of my thoughts and understandings to Mae Neecha and Mae Yo. Below is the email I sent. I have divided it into two parts/ blogs as it is quite long.

Hey Mae Neecha — I sure do hope this email finds you well. It has been a few weeks, so I just wanted to share a bit about where my contemplation have taken me…its long, so I thought I would try email versus line. There has been so so much, so this is sort of high-level summary without a ton of details.  Mostly I have just been spending as much time as I can practicing; when I feel stuck or out of ideas I read a book from LP Thoon, or a Mae Yo Q and A or I just try to find examples of impermanence around me since that is something that comes easily. Most of all, I  just keep pushing.

I haven’t been deliberately systematic in my contemplations, but when I look back on them they do seem to be pretty well grouped around particular topics:

1. Going through my definitions of “ownership” and proving that my belongings or body don’t actually fit the definitions/that the definitions themselves don’t actually prove ownership/that rupa has another master.

• Command/Serve — A strong idea I have about what makes my shit mine is I either have the ability to command it (it serves me) or that I am able to/bound to care for it and serve it. So I  looked at the concept of serving/commanding using a fruit and tree as an ubai: I clearly saw that a fruit doesn’t command a grown tree to support it (i.e. the tree doesn’t serve the fruit); for a time a tree, if its conditions allow it, can direct nutrients toward a fruit and if that fruit is able to receive them (i.e. it is attached to the tree, the stem structure is healthy, etc) it does. But this happens only because it is a possible relationship between trees and fruits for a time. Eventually the tree dies or the fruit dies/falls off and it is no longer the case. Likewise with a tree commanding a fruit. I also used the same model of thinking to consider if a seeding fruit and the seedling tree command/serve each other and again realized in both directions all we had was a relationship of factors that could sometimes yield particular outcomes temporarily. The cause in all 4 cases (adult tree/fruit, seeding fruit/sapling) was that 4es are continually shifting as circumstances change; they have the ability to yield seedlings, saplings, trees and fruit, so the cause of all of them is in the nature of 4es themselves: the right conditions shifted into place temporarily and voila, trees and fruit. I then ran a bunch of my own belongings and body through the tree/fruit model to uproot the idea of mine based on serve/command.

• Represent — I tend to think my belongings represent me, so I went through all the ways my body and belongings fail to represent me. How I felt my post puberty body didn’t represent me. How I feel so tough, but on days I need to drop to my knees to do push ups and that doesn’t represent me. How my bladder peed myself in the middle of an important meeting and that doesn’t represent me. When my dad was dying I got sick and I had to wear a mask to visit him. I remember feeling so upset, like this weakened ugly state didn’t represent me at the moment in time I most needed it to, when I was facing someone so important to me for the last time. I was so pained and it didn’t matter, because the truth is my body doesn’t represent me.

• Movement/pain — I was feeling the burn after squats at the gym when I realized I took the fact that I could (sometimes) move my body and feel pain as evidence of mineness. So, I went through a ton of examples (finally landing on a barometer) to prove that the ability to move this body and feel pain did not prove they were mine. 

• Left Behind — I was thinking about one of the things that made me saddest when I went back and visited SF for the first time after I moved was seeing the city was just humming right along without me. I considered it my city, my home, but without me there is continued to grow and change and exist.  I realized the same is true of my body; once nama departs the body will burn or decay or organs will be transplanted — in all cases the 4es will change shape/form and keep on keepin on without me. My car, which will either be sold to someone new, or be chopped for parts, or melted for metal. Or my clothes, jewelry, etc.  How can I own something that leaves me behind, that doesn’t need me to keep going?

The truth is all 4es, after their rental period is up, eventually make their way back to this world, so this world must be their master/owner.  Shit can have only 1 master, so how can I say something is mine when it already belongs to the world? 

• You need a rupa suit to play in the rupa world: It dawned on me that nama can’t actually ‘touch’ the rupa world; it can’t collect, organize, build 4e arrangements on its own, that is why I am born with a body. It is like a video game player that enters a level, “rupa level” and finds there is no way to play or interact with the world until I done a special suit (body) that allows me to play, to talk to other characters, to pick up coins and to beat up baddies. This is why LP Thoon says if we are attached to our objects we will be reborn because of them — we will be reborn in rupa out of the drive to arrange rupa/items as we like; here is how form fuels rebirth.

The problem is once I am in a rupa suit that I can use to touch rupa, rupa items can touch me back. Its the rules of rupa that 4e objects can effect other 4e objects; it can eat them, arrange them, use them but it it can in turn be consumed by them, rearranged by them and used by them. This was the secret trade off I made when I jumped in the rupa suit. I was so unhappy when I got a huge infection on my face, but I signed-up for such risks with my body rental agreement — a bacteria, a 4e arrangement, can consume my 4es, it can rearrange them to create a sore on my face. My 4es can push the petal on a car and drive somewhere, but I can also be crushed by a car that rolls over me.

• 4th aggregate: imagination (#4) sells the ownership lie — I went to a historic house tour in SF. When I entered the house,  I couldn’t see the owner. I couldn’t tell get who they were based on their furniture or art. When I think of my own house, the only reason I believe the art on the walls or furniture says anything about me is because #3 (memory) and  #4 (imagination) tells backstories of each painting, each chair, how it got there, what it is “clearly” saying/proving. #4 ignores all the times mine doesn’t reflect me, it convinces me the times my kitchen is clean are normal and the dirty moments a fluke. The thing is, if #4 is the one doing all the work here then I, myself, clearly isn’t in the rupa, the arrangement isn’t the arranger.

• Compare it to kids — Never in this life have I wanted kids. I have always instinctively understood they are not their parent’s belongings. So I decided to use kids as a model to start running my other items through to disprove ownership.  Kids aren’t yours because they have their own fate, their own path in life that they will follow. They don’t become who you want them to become, they don’t do what you what you want them to do, they don’t reflect your ideas and values because they have their own. They don’t follow your rules. They are influenced by countless outside factors. You and they ride along the same bus for some time, but then you depart each other and go your own ways. You are really not on the same journey at all. I am, right now working to apply this logic to all my stuff. 

2. 2. Proving my rupa can and will break and/or change forms: 

• Internalizing breaks — I have been looking at actual examples of breaking and changing of my belongings and then internalizing them. Example: My tire got a nail in it last week and had to be replaced. I saw that the tire was subject to death because its arrangement of 4es was vulnerable to puncture, to having wind removed to the extent it was no longer a living tire any more. My body too is subject to puncture, to stabbing, to shooting. Such an injury can kill me too because it can change the form of my 4es to the extent I too no longer have liquid flow through my veins or have air move in my lungs.

 I have also thought about ways I am afraid of dying and have been proving those can happen to my 4es because I have seen similar causes of 4e deaths/changes in the world. So for example, I have thought about how infections can definitively spread and eat my 4es because I have watched magma flow from a volcano and seen a tree in my yard overtaken by blight (I have considered heart attack, shooting, stabbing, crushing, cancer, virus, etc.

• Examined my own 4es more closely — I have gone through every major body part and looked at its unique balance of 4es so I can think not just about my body as a whole, but about the arrangements of 4es for skin, lungs, hair, ears, etc.

• Bubbles and Anatta — I was thinking about bubbles the other day and realized that they are the perfect metaphor for the way the rupa world works. Their life/death cycle is so fast, it is so clear how they work. Bubbles are a 4e object born from pushing 4e soap solution through a 4e bubble wand. It seems like I am the great bubble master/creator because I blow the bubbles, but really anyone can blow bubbles, the wind can blow bubbles, the soap dispenser sometimes blows bubbles on its own.  Off bubbles go into world, some go high and some low, some are big and some small, some live a long time and others just a sec, but before long each and every bubble pops. For the time bubbles are in their bubbly shape, we call them bubbles (I finally understand what samutti is now), but if you look at a bubble, it is constantly shifting, it soapy, iridescent form changing, sliding over itself, moving. It is never just a single stable thing. Ultimately it pops, its form is decidedly not bubble any more, and its 4 eas return to the earth. I guess I am starting to see that all objects, ‘mine’ and otherwise are just like bubbles. I let duration and sammuti fool me into thinking they are otherwise and because I am fooled I cling to something that really can’t be clung to, that will definitely depart.  What is more, I use my objects to build status, to build wealth and pleasurable arrangements of 4es. But, ultimately bubbles tell the whole story. Up and down they float then die. Blow another round and the same thing will happen.

3. Testing if my rupa actually does what I think/imagine it does in relation to others. For how long/ under what circumstances:

• Porsche and on top and in control — even though I don’t even own that car anymore, I miss it. I viscerally remember what it felt like to be in the drivers seat; I felt like that car was the perfect image of an Alana who was on top of the world and in control of my life.  Except, of course when it wasn’t… when I pulled into a gas station in Soma (a bed neighborhood in SF) late at night and worried I was a target, when I tried to park away from the crowds at a work event so no one thought my organization was being excessive in their pay practices, when I went to retreat and  felt too flashy and conspicuous, but I only had one car to drive there… Only some of the time did it make me feel on top and in control then…

Even some of the time is hard to swallow when I think harder — one of the highest causes of death in my age group is car crashes. How can I feel like a car made me in control when statistically it is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Even if I was in total control, it just takes someone else who is not to hit and kill me. The idea of a car representing something it it is basically antithetical to is crazy.

• Virtuosi and its parallels in pretty and good — I went to the Symphony and they were playing with this super star mandolin player. He was amazing and got a standing ovation at the end. It made me realize, for some subset of people (like the classical music lovers in the hall), there was no denying that guy was a virtuosi. But, for all his effort and skill, for all the hours he spent honing his craft (karma) he was dependent on 4es to express his skill; an instrument, music, his hands. For some time, he could be amazing, but what happens when arthritis sets in or his mandolin breaks? In the concert hall he is the man, but what happens in the parking lot, at dinner, with folks who haven’t heard him play? He thinks his craft will yield a paycheck, but I am in the classical music business, I know that even the best of the best are having trouble selling tickets. The industry is dying, the audience aging — is this guy’s paycheck contingent on his playing alone, or does it need an audience and industry to support it (in other words factor or cause)?

My big identity issues are pretty and good. Both of these are traits, expressed via rupa, that I feel will get people to treat me well, to care for and love me and ultimately to help me build a perfectly arranged rupa world where everyone is living in Disney movie  peace and joy. But, what happens when my pretty fades (arthritis)? Even if I do something good and everyone who sees it thinks I’m awesome, what happens in the next scene with different people? What happens if folks also see me doing something bad like flipping off the honking cabbie in NY? Even if I were perfectly pretty or good, can it get me a ‘paycheck’, that thing I most want? I had a few guys I liked and persued before I met Eric. A few thought I was pretty and nice by their own admission, but that I was too much of a drama queen for their taste. In my mind, all these guys filled the care-giver/world builder hole in my heart, but I didn’t fit the partner shaped hole in theirs. My pretty/ good didn’t do what I wanted it to do.

• Is my goal even possible?  My great dream is some perfect harmony world, but it it even possible. I remember trading food bowls at retreat one year — a perfect meal for someone else was disgusting to me. It was the same story over and over from other participants. In my perfect world, everyone is happy and agreeing on my particular perfect arrangement of 4es, but it seems like everyone actually has their own preferred arrangement — how will everyone be happy with mine?

Eric and I went o this wildlife refuge where a bunch of animals roam free together in a vast nature park. But…its only herbivores, all the predatory animals live in separate enclosures elsewhere in the park. It seems like a predator free paradise at first, but because space is limited and there are no predators to control populations, forced birth control is used — do none of these animals want babies? They had a rare goose species so they were allowed to breed and then the goslings were taken away to populate other zoos. Each year when the goslings were taken the parent geese shriek and cry. Is it really a paradise? Can it be? Rupa is a closed system I think — some have to die/ be consumed to make room for and fuel what is new. How can I ever have a paradise where no one is hurt or dies?

•  Using Rupa to communicate with others is like a very fucked up game of telephone — as a kid we played this game, someone would whisper a phrase to the person next to them and the whisper would go down the line to the last person. It was always funny to hear how different the original phrase was from what came out at the end of the line. It seems to me that me using rupa to convey the identity that my #4 cooks-up is likely going just as sideways. The rupa, as we have already discussed is a rather imperfect representative, and then it needs to be sensed by others and run through their own 3s and 4s and then I need to read their response through different rupa…Its telephone — I really can’t ever trust that my messages have been absolutely received and they they will continue to be with every round.

•  No one else’s reaction to me proves anything innate about myself.  So this is a biggie which I understand is a little beyond the Sotapana contemplation, but it really needed to be dealt with because it was getting in the way…I was thinking about a time in high school, I was at a party and members of rival gangs where there and a fight broke out. Several members from both sides had been trying to date me, so I walked over, batted my eyelashes and broke up the fight. At the time I thought it proved I was good, I was pretty –I was in control and creating my Disney world– after all, those guys all did what I wanted. But when I think about it, those guys had their own agenda. They did what they wanted. Just like I was using those guys to confirm my special self, they wanted to date me, to use me, to confirm their own specialness. Can I really say that someone acting according to their own beliefs and desires proves something innate about me? I was not the cause (factor again).

When the people I love, Eric, my dad, love me back and care of me I take it as a sign that I am worthy of love and care, that I am a special person. The thing is, love is a whole lot like hunger; everyone who is hungry needs to eat. Sure, certain food is more palatable than other food, sure there is a range for people based on what they are used to, but at the end of the day, those starving will eat anything. I can’t know the state of hunger of those who care for me, so how can I assume that ‘my fulfilling them’ (i.e. getting them to love me) is some great commentary on me?

What I do know from Eric’s Japanese cooking kick is that the palate begins to crave what it is already used to. It becomes easier and easier to cook recipes and food types you are already cooking, techniques to make it delicious are on the brain, ingredients already in the cabinet. Momentum is strong to keep filling oneself with the same food type. But, back to the bubble — am I really still the same type of food as I was back when Eric and I started dating? Married? Just last year? How is it I am taking his love to reflect something steady and stable and awesome about me?

Several weeks after I had closed-out my exchange with Mae Neecha I went back to review our Line chat and see if I could squeeze any more wisdom juice out of it. I saw the following exchange:

A: I still think I can use my cute yellow purse to convince people of my awesomeness even if I don’t really control the bag itself.  Actually, I think I can convince some people some of the time. But that is enough…

MN: If its only true some of the time, then is it true?

And then it hit me…

Everything that is true in this world ( lowercase true not universally true i.e 3 conditions) is true some of the time.

I have been stuck thinking that because the yellow purse makes some folks think I’m awesome some of the time it proves something special about me. It proves I am a master of the universe, albeit in some limited and temporary way.

But, even stuff I think of as super true and widely accepted is still only sometimes true. My family and I all thought my Dad dying was bad. If we could undo we would. But does the person who got his job after he died think his death was bad? Bad was true, some of the time ( or in this case for some subset of folks).

If some of the time/in some ways/ for some people is a truth about the world, it doesn’t actually prove anything special about me. At most, I am a factor in buying the purse, a factor wearing it, a factor putting myself in an environment with folks likely to share my view it is cool, a factor in selling the message as part of a wider package( wardrobe, facial expressions, word choice, etc.) such that in any given case some folks might see purse and think awesome Alana for some moment in time. But I was never the cause. The cause is in impermanence/ two sidedness. So sometimes can’t be taken as evidence that I am avoiding the rules of the world some of the time. It isn’t evidence that with more effort/time/ tries I am going to finally succeed in making this world my bitch. It is evidence that my ‘success’ is just one, temporary, possibility of the world.

Actually, I can take the opposite perspective and see all the times my stuff proves I am not awesome/ special and master of perpetually arranging Rupa as I desire( i.e. this world is not my bitch): example– I think my apartment in SF proves I can control my life and arrange it as I want it to be, where I want to be. But, the only reason I have that apartment is my old SF life that I loved so much is gone. I chose to leave and ended up miserable. So how can the tool I am using to allay some of that misery and loss (not even all of it) prove I am master of my life and universe?

So I guess the simple answer to Mae Neecha’s question is that if something is true some of the time, it is not true some of the time. Which is actually proof that impermanence is the real master of this universe, not me. Just need more evidence…

A note from present day Alana — writing this now I see an additional angle that I missed so here are a few more thoughts on the ridiculousness of using a ‘sometimes success’ to prove a permanent Awesome Alana…Spoiler alert, the endeavor is built on a foundation spoiled at the core by a wrong view.

Over the summer, back when my contemplation were fast and furious (that is the period this ‘Interruption’ series is covering) I kept getting stuck on the fear that because of my practice I was going to loose something important to me — my life with Eric. I was looking at a picture and I realized that my ‘life with Eric’ was an idea, a film reel in my head of he and I driving, top down, along the California coast, listening to music, holding hands and laughing. It was a compilation of several trips, several memories we had together. As I laid in bed in Connecticut I realized that the life that I am so afraid of losing is already gone. The car is sold, the towns we drove through fire ravished, the joke we laughed at long ago forgotten. My fear of ‘loosing’ began to ebb as I understood that what I clung to was just a memory of the past and a hope for a future that looks the same way. What I came to understand is that the particulars of the past can never ever be the same in the future; causes, conditions and circumstances are continually changing.

The exercise of using a purse to prove Awesome Alana, even just some of the time, suffers a fundamental flaw at the root — what I believe ‘proves’ awesomeness now is based on what I perceived to have worked in proving awesomeness in the past. The problem (which is clear in my imagined life with Eric) is that the future arises from different causes than any instance in the past and yet I expect exactly the same results. This is why there are never any guarantees about what the future holds.

Circumstances are always changing, arrangements in the past can’t ever be the exact arrangement again..and yet that is what I depend on to defend my notion of my identity. Alana is built on an already shifting, crumbling, changing foundation and yet I expect her to be steady state.