Alana's Dharma Blog

OK, I was so going to quit while I was ahead, but one more observation is in order: WHY it is that things in this world won’t just follow my rules/expectation/concepts of what they are; man, I am  like a whiny child that can’t be mollified with a ‘just because’. “But why, but why, but why”… anyway, re-enter the snowflake.

Many years ago, I was at my favorite hot springs resort, on a Wednesday. Out of the blue, the distinct odor of shit came wafting my way, before long a riot of smell and loud sound was seriously cramping my vacation style. Turns out that every Wed. is the day they cleaned out the septic tank of my little paradise. And in just a few moments time, my great escape flipped into a place I was desperate to escape.

At the time, I considered the great lessons of impermanence and suffering that this little event could elucidate. Now though I understand so much more — there is a reason, a cause, a why, that my own prior ignorance of, my own wish it weren’t so, simply can’t trump.  A resort is a place many humans gather, they stay, eat, sleep and therefore shit. Of course the damn place, in the middle of the woods, unconnected to a city sewer has a septic tank. And of course it needs to be cleaned –how long would it be a successful hot spring bath if folks were literally bathing in shit. And, Wed, being the least busy day –furthest from the weekend — was the perfect time to clean the tank. No matter that I was there trying to enjoy the baths.

The thing is, once I understand the why, at least in this case, I wouldn’t really even want it another way. OCD Alana definitely doesn’t want to be taking shit baths.

Back during my initial rupa ruminations, we were back and forth on line, and you asked me something: ” Have you considered that this instability that you are adverse to might be part of the overall stability of the larger system?…And the world IS predictable in its way… only we dont understand or see the world’s rules because we are so focused on our own…because we think we are the world.” Yah, what she said ;).

Which maybe all does bring me just a little closer to an answer on why I am so easily deluded by sammuti — because I want to be. Because for all the suffering it causes me, it has a hidden benefit: It is a projection onto reality that lets me believe that reality is predictable and stable and subject to my rules. Now if only it worked…

In his Autobiography  LP Thoon explains, “The term moha, or delusion, is the mind that is deluded by sammuti (supposed form). Avijjā, or ignorance, is ignorance of these sammuti (supposed form).” this one line — and his explanation that sammutti operates hand-in-hand with the 4^th aggregate of immagination —  has really been weighing on me. It makes some sense though; for our imaginations to function, to fabricate imaginary futures, imaginary belongings, and imaginary identity — imaginary stillness in an actually ever-shifting world —  we need form to peg our concepts to. I need an Eric to peg my concept of partner to, and I need a Platonic Partner to peg my abstract ideals and imaginings of what a happy, meaningful, fulfilled life with some partner will be like.

As part of that larger, more systematic, consideration of sammuti, I did go back and plug-in my Ubai of bubbles and it proved to be deeply revealing: What we call a bubble arises when 4es come together in a bubble-y shape. There is a duration, where it maintains that shape that we continue to call it bubble –it has the sammuti of bubble. And then, the elements disaggregate and we can no longer credible call the thing a bubble, quite literally the sammuti bursts. The truth is, even when the bubble has its basic bubble shape, it is continually shifting and changing and sliding over itself. It isn’t really the same object from one instant to the next, it is just close enough –contiguous enough –that our minds can still it, fix it, with the name ‘bubble.’

Of course, bubble is a simple and straight forward thing. Most sammuti –mother, partner — are more complex, heaped with additional meaning and expectation. But mechanistically, they are the same: I want to fix things — make them still — hold them in a state I like, with characteristics that I like, even though they are ever-changing, multi valiant, arising/ceasing based on causes and acting in accord with those causes. Both the physical form of Mom, and Eric change, and their traits/characteristics (manifested through behaviors/actions that are physical), change and move outside my fixed supposition of what they should be.  Both sets of changes –when they get far enough outside of my standards of acceptable — are daggers through my heart. And let me tell you something, a sick, cancer ridden, dying Eric that is waaayyyy outside my standard of acceptable.

Why? Well, obviously, because I love him, because I have pegged the meaning of my life, and the future I imagine, to him as an embodiment of my Platonic Partner ideal. Seriously, I draw a big ole blank when I try and imagine a future without him: Proof that #4 and sammuti are peas in a pod.

What then does it precisely mean that the mind is deluded by sammuti? That ignorance is ignorance of sammuti? Stay tuned, because I am not ready to conclude yet, clearly this is some pretty nuanced shit. But –when I think of the delta between what Eric is, and how I view him, I can’t help but observe that the same exact mechanics are at work with Alana — a continually shifting heap of happenings and a form, that I clobber onto and use to try and fix, to define and hold onto. Ugh shifting sands (nama), set upon more slowly shifting sands (rupa), that I try to thingify… which brings me to the observation that  Atta has gotta be just one more glorified sammuti, and clearly that lil ole’ misconception there is at the heart of my super-delusion.

Anyway, to sorta end (more like till next time) this email where I began, there is suffering. Years ago, I asked Mae Yo the relationship between impermanence and suffering. Her reply, “suffering comes from something stopping..it’s anything that you need to tolerate. impermanence is continuous movement, not stopping. suffering is like you want it to stop but it moves. it’s putting a stick in the water and causing ripples.” Back then, the response was totally impenetrable. Frankly, it is still somewhat impenetrable, but one part is so very very clear: Through samutti, I am always trying to stop what keeps moving, and man oh man do I suffer every time that fucking stick fails to stop the river.

And so, my life is literally on a loop of dissatisfaction — I want things to be what they are not — I want to freeze them and hold onto the concepts I have supposed them to be. I either try and force shit to fit my concept (like my mom), or I endlessly chase down objects that, at least momentarily, align with my belief of what they ‘should’ be. And when those objects show themselves to be what they are, not what I want — sometimes through the inescapables of aging, disease and death –I am devastated. No object is what I think it is. No object is what my concept of it is.

The following is an email exchange with Mae Neecha on some of the details of my samutti contemplations. It is very long, so I will be breaking it up into a few entries for ease of reading.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Eric started peeing blood. Unexplained blood in the urine is cancer till proven otherwise (though in his case also very likely kidney stones given his history of them), we are waiting for all the tests and labs to get performed. Naturally, I am freaking out — Eric has always been so hale and hearty, a foil to my own flower-like fragility — it sounds silly, I know, but it has literally never meaningfully dawned on me that he may well die before me.

Now, as we wait for all the testing to commence, it dawns on me what a house of cards I have built my life on: My sense of self, my daily doings, my imagined future, all founded on something as flimsy and undependable as my body, and Eric’s. It takes so little to break. To change. For things to take a totally new, different, never before expected turn.

But let’s back-up, because the story really doesn’t start here, in this life, with this husband. It starts wayyyyyy before….

Years ago, when I watched a friend who was willing to break-off her happy marriage if her wife didn’t consent to having a second child, I saw the root issue: For my friend, her life was given meaning, purpose, by the role of motherhood. Since her own childhood, her imagination of a perfect, proper, meaningful life was one in which she had two children. It was non-negotiable. She did by the way get her wish, but along with a second child, her wife’s resentment seeped into their relationship. That and a whole lotta extra work were prices paid.

When I look at parallels in my own life, I see how deep the samutti of partner runs for me. Knowing to look for this concept, and I can see the frequency and mechanics by which it plays out in my life: Even as a child, I play-acted the role of wife. Each partner I have looked for has been the same –someone to care for me and support me. I believe such care and support confirms me as special, makes me worthy, that it will keep me safe in this world and that it is inseparable from having a partner. For Alana ‘Partner’ equals a whole ball of wax well above and beyond a monogamous mate.

All activities are sweeter with the presence of a partner, it is like just having Eric around makes the experiences real and meaningful. In his absence, I wait for him. The ideal future is one with Eric —  without him the future fantasy I have dies on the vine. Partner is what gives meaning and purpose to my being, just the way children is what give meaning and purpose to my friend’s.

I was born into this world with a partner shaped hole in my heart. With the idea that a particular form — a Platonic Partner (i.e. sammuti) — would make me fulfilled and a quest to find the person who fit my heart shaped ideal. Enter Eric, the most recent hole plug, who if I squint hard enough, adjust my hole (i.e. expectations) broadly enough, is a ‘perfect fit’.

In the abstract, the failings of this plan are twofold:

1) How do I expect an immaterial hunger, a desire to be/to have meaning, to be fulfilled by some form, even an imagined form? I am the one who carved the shaped hole in my heart: The form I choose is arbitrary, the traits I believe the form can/should posses is equally as arbitrary, there is no meaning in what is arbitrary beyond what I assign.

2) Even more clearly, how do I expect an actual rupa form will embody a set of traits that I have imagined up, and that only exist in my mind? In other words — by what mechanism can a physical object fill an immaterial hole?

In the more mundane, the problem with my plan is simple — my hole plug is flimsy. Just a single virus — imperceptible with the eye — can take him out. A single mutated cell can overwhelm his body and cause it to stop working. A bullet that fits in the palm of my hand can end his life, and all the meaning and imagination I had hung upon it.

A while back, Oat generously translated the forward in her chanting book written by LP Thoon. One part really struck me: LP Thoon talked about how even if we get the most luxurious and delicious food today, we need to seek out food all over again tomorrow. The effort never ends, because the food itself decays, and the hunger it fulfills is fulfilled only temporarily.

I think about Eric and I see I face the same dilemma; not only does his body decay, but the hunger he fulfills in me — my longing for the meaning I have imbued into having a partner — is only temporarily fulfilled. So soon, I will be hungry again, back on the long, painful, prowl to find a new partner plug to fill the partner shaped hole in my heart.

I love Eric, I really do. But if I am being honest, I love my idea of who Eric is (calling out samutti again to make this all very explicit), who he is to me. When he is gone, I will mourn not the loss of Eric, but the loss of what I imagine him to be, and of a fantasy future we shared together in my head alone.

What Eric actually is, is a mystery to me; he is a continual, shifting, array of thoughts and feelings and beliefs and ideas and a form. A form which I clobber onto, which I use to peg (in my mind) his continually shiftingness into something stable, fixed, able to be identified and loved and claimed by me.  And when his flimsy ass form is no more, when a body that is so clearly not him, ceases to be something I can credulously call Eric, my devastation will set in. I will lose that form I convinced myself gave meaning to my life. A meaning I myself arbitrarily created and peddled as valuable. Driven by hunger I will forage again and a new misadventure — marked by striving, disappointment, peril and loss (i.e. internet dating 😉 ) will  ensue.

Thinking further on bubbles and anatta…

I realized that with physical objects, I want to affix things  — make them still — hold them in a state I like, with characteristics that I like. But what is true of simple stuff, houses and cars and even faces, is true of what is more complex too, like mothers. The mechanics are the same. I create a concept — of something narrow and fixed — and I expect the world will oblige my supposition.   Mother is just a form I imbue additional meaning onto, something more loaded than bubble or than car (yes, even that sweet ass Porche). But like a bubble, my mother isn’t fixed, she keeps changing. Both the physical form changes and the traits/characteristics manifested through behaviors/actions that are physical, change and move outside my fixed supposition of what it should be.

The mechanics of both bubble and mother require a physical form. My concepts, my conventions, are pegged onto a physical object. In this case, onto a particular body, my mom’s.

With a body, on some level I know it isn’t me. Or it isn’t my mom. It is just a collection of parts and organs. But I also know that I require a physical form to fix a concept onto. I use a physical body to peg my idea of self onto, to fix the shifting changing aggregates into an identity, I peg them to shifting changing rupa. In both cases I simply gloss the change. I fixate on the sameness to pretend the object, and the concept/meaning I peg to the object, are unchanging. But they continually change. I depend on this body, so I claim it, I try and use the act of claiming to work the magic – transmogify a lump of 4e flesh and bones into some special form — the exceptional form that follows my rules — so I can depend on it.

Only,  nothing I do seems to work. Nothing fixes form, or the concepts I lay on it. What I claim, what corner of the world I try to cut-out, piss around, know and control, resists me. Why?  Because that claim of mineness  is only mine in my head. It is only me overlying a concept, an expectation, a supposition on something that doesn’t really contain that fixed unchanged supposition at all.

Annatta — self — is just a glorified sammutti.  Annatta is just a conventional form being mistaken for something solid, something unchanging, something capital T truth REALZ. Its just a bubble whose temporary spherical form fools us into thingifying it in our minds.

I had read a sermon and it said we are just witnesses of an arbitrary process, a process of aggregates, of cause and effect. But we take witnessing, proximity, and claim it, forge it into an identity.  The process is so clear when I consider my TV habits: As long as I am watching a show, I  become intimate with the characters, I feel invested in their lives. I want the characters I have become attached to, come to identify with, to be  healthy, successful, happy. Even characters with traits I don’t like, consider bad, still I come to identify with them, I become sympathetic to them, just because I am manipulated by the show writers to see the world from their perspective.  When the characters die, or the show ends, I just move on to a new show or character and get wrapped up all over again. Its the same with rebirth: new body, new life and suddenly –because of proximity, because of my tendency to identify with and claim — I get to become attached, invested, ultimately disappointed and faced with loss, anew. From one show to the next –struggle, strive, lose, rinse, repeat. Dukka

Dear Reader: The following post draws upon an old ubai, a bubble (like a kid’s bubble or a soap bubble), which had been a critical tool for my contemplations on physical form, samutti (supposed form or conventional form), and annatta (no self/ or the nature of everything in this world that aggregates to become disaggregated/ or the un-clumping of what seemed, or was temporarily, clumped) for years prior to the present contemplation.

As a reminder, an Ubai is a tool, an example we see out in the world, which we can use to internalize the truths of this world, to see dhamma (which after all, is just the truth of this world) more clearly, to draw parallels with so we can understand how these truths –which apply to our ubai –apply to everything including our so-seemingly-special-selves.  As a further reminder –here is a much earlier contemplation I had on bubbles and annatta. I suggest you go back and read that section of THIS BLOG HERE, before moving onwards.

All this samutti stuff from LP Thoon’s Autobiography brings me back to old ubai: Bubbles and annatta.

Its clear to me that bubbles are a perfect way to think of the most basic sort of samutti: A bubble is a constantly shifting array of  four elements, but as long as it maintains the bubble form we call it bubble. We superimpose a fixed concept onto an ever shifting 4e object and it adheres there, in our mind, until the bubble pops, at which point it strains credulity to keep calling it a bubble anymore.

From a strictly rupa perspective, we could use this as a simple way to consider ownership. For a constantly shifting set of 4es, which one moment, which state is ours? Clearly, an object needs to be a thing to claim it, enter samutti –the supposed form of the object is what we claim. If we want to say ‘all the states’ of the object are ours, then we need to accept those aggregates before they come together as well as after they disaggregate. We have to accept states of the object when we dislike it, when we are disgusted by it, when it is dirty and decayed, when it doesn’t any longer reflect whom we believe ourselves to be.

But it strains credulity to say our body is ours when it is a sperm and egg, or rotting in the ground. It feels off to claim the cancer cells are us, even though they are so obviously a part of our body. We don’t claim our poop, even though it is in us and comes from us. We don’t identify with disease states,  in fact, we feel assaulted by these states, they need to be fought off and ‘corrected’. This strain of credulity, the ‘extreme’ edges at which our claims clearly make no sense, is a way even simple physical objects can be used to make the truth known to us –the world doesn’t abide by our concepts of it, by the suppositions we superimpose.

Like a bubble, northing in this world can stay still. Nothing is fixed like the stagnant ideas of  things that we conjure up, and that we superimpose onto the world around us. No — objects change, they aren’t what we suppose — what we think they should be.

I claim items because I think my claiming them, “owning them”, can flip a magic switch and fix an item, freeze it from it’s continual shifting. I think my claim has the power to make my objects abide by my expectations of it, my supposition of what such-and-such a form will be and behave as. I think my claim means I can use this object to represent me, to prove myself, my self conceived identity, my control, my autonomy. With this claim I hope to upend the actual rules that govern the object –rules of rupa, of cause and effect, and substitute in my own expectations. But this doesn’t work, it can’t work. How do I know? Because every vial of botox and filler I inject into my face is a response to a body that keeps going ‘renegade’; it keeps sagging and wrinkling against my wishes, against my expectations of what an ALANA looks like, of who she is. This face is totally oblivious to, indifferent to, my claims of it.

The truth is: I am not attached to the object, I am attached to what I imagine it to be, to my fixed concept of it. That is why it is so painful when a face I claim sags and ages. This is why I can so easily move on to a new wardrobe when I feel like the style of the old clothes don’t reflect me anymore.  When I mourn a loss, it is the loss of the supposed form the object represented, not the object itself. Eric is not attached to me, he is attached to what he believes me to be. My mom is not attached to me, she is attached to the supposed form of me. Even I am attached to who I think I am –the supposed form of Alana.

Of course, I suffer! Of course my life is a series of disappointments and  dissatisfaction — I want shit to be what its not. I am attached to an idea of things, an idea that exists nowhere other than in my own mind.  And I scurry through this world trying to force items to align with my  ideas instead of accepting them for what they are. And when everything, eventually, shows itself to be what it is –at the latest when it goes all annatta and pops like a bubble — et voila, I have Dukkha.

In October 2021, Mae Neecha sent me a draft of LP Thoon’s Autobiography, that she had been working on, for my help with some editing. My reading of the Autobiography ultimatly spured me to do a deep dive exploration of Dukkha. But before that, it stirred-up, and casued me to revisit, a number of old contemplations, particularly on the topic of samutti – supposed form.

Below are some of my initial thoughts on sumutti, which I shared with Mae Neecha. More in depth contaplations will follow in subsequent blogs:

One thing that sorta hit me from the get-go of reading through LP Thoon’s Autobiography was the concept of samutti. Before the autobiography itself, in the translators notes, Mae Neecha chose the example of ‘mother’ to demonstrate the concept and – perhaps cause I have mama issues – it hit me hard; I started thinking about all the ways the word (concept) mother is loaded to me and all the suffering it has caused, also how the word daughter is loaded in my mom’s mind and the suffering it has clearly caused her — how our differences in definitions and expectations give rise to the conflict and disappointment in our relationship. I have been plugging in other words and examples because this little exercise actually shows a big  part of the mechanics on how suffering arises vis-a-vie how our memory’s and imagination’s twists and contorting of rupa.  One example that is particularly clear is the word home: I applied it to lots of my past homes, but it was pretty shocking when I considered my little CT apartment.

We have lived in this CT place for years now, we got rid of the SF place during the pandemic, so it is our only ‘home’ — ‘the place we reside’. What is more is since the pandemic, we spend a ton of time here, more than in most other places we have called home in the past. The thing is, I don’t really think of this place as home…

Don’t get me wrong, I like the apartment, it is a fine place to live, I have no hates or complaints about it like I did the NY place, which was definitely ‘not home’. I simply think of this place as TEMPORARY, a solution to my need for a safe and convenient place to lay my head. It works, for right now, but I don’t imagine a future here. It isn’t some cornerstone of my retirement fantasy life the way some unbought property in Carmel was, or a ‘safe nest’ to launch my adventures the way I imagined the NY loft (before I hated it).

I don’t really imagine it reflects me either. It certainly doesn’t reflect my wealth or my status, it is a modest little 2 bedroom walk-up. I decorated it, but it doesn’t capture my aesthetic –my sense of myself as someone who values beauty and taste — the way my dream home does. It’s not just the home that doesn’t capture ‘me’, neither does the town it is situated in. Greenwich isn’t ‘who I am’ the way SF was, I don’t share its values and it doesn’t reflect those values back on me. I feel no sense of being ‘confirmed’ here in Greenwich, or of belonging, again it is just a perfectly fine place to reside temporarily. I have no deep attachments here, when it makes sense to leave, I will do so with little suffering — not the agonizing departures of SF and the Texas houses before.

The thing is, this is all correct, this is what a home and a town is — temporary places we reside. But what is so marvelous is that of all my homes past, and imagined future places, the more-or-less correct view one here in CT is the one that feels most strange/ most ‘off’ to me. And here we have a big and important clue that I need to look inward for the mechanisms by which my (deluded) views of reality arise and the way those views are implicated in my suffering.

Which helps bring me to a sorta backdoor way into an interesting observation: My mind (memory and imagination in particular) is in a constant process of overlaying my beliefs/concepts onto rupa objects. As I have noted before, it gives them meaning that does not exist within the objects themselves. But this process slips below consciousness, I forget these sammuti are my own creation and I start to expect objects in the world will actually adhere to my concepts of them. I use my mind to try and fix ever shifting, multi-valiant, changeable, shit in the world into a stagnant/ one-sided/ limited view mould my mind has made for them. And then, when the objects (and people and situations) fail to fit my fixed concept of them (which they ALWAYS will since NOTHING is fixed) I suffer. Over and over. I am the architect of my own suffering, and summutti is my scaffolding.

Anyway, more to consider on this topic, but this book has really made me think it is time to dig back up another old ubai — bubbles and sumutti — and have a closer look…

Recently, I had been having a Line conversation with a Dharma Friend. She asked for some practice advice and I kept emphasizing to her how critical it is to identify our wrong views. This is, after all the heart of practice, but it is also something I see my friend struggle to do time and again. I get the struggle, frankly, its easy to get caught up just analyzing a story or a situation, while missing the wrong view.  I decided to follow my own advice and to test myself. Could I go back to an old story of my own and identify the wrong  view.. This is the story that came to mind:

Years ago, I was getting ready to leave KPY and Mae Yo was standing nearby. She came over to my dustyass car and began to dust it off. She wouldn’t let me go till she had finished. I felt sheepish standing there with my teacher cleaning my car for me. As I drove down the mountain it became clear to me why she did it — the glare was strong and if there had been dust it would have been hard to see. It would have been dangerous.

It would be easy to say I was being lazy. Laziness is dangerous. Don’t be lazy, case closed . But that misses the nuances and it misses an opportunity to really see how my mind/heart ticks.

The truth is, I am not lazy — I regularly work hard at shit: My practice, Thai, fitness, beauty, health. I work hard on things that I view as important. I saw the dirt on my own car, I didn’t clean it because I didn’t view it as important, I thought it was trivial. Even seeing my teacher do it, I still thought she was doing something trivial, a kindness, I didn’t understand the importance (that there is proof of how damn deep the wrong view runs).

To be explicit here: The wrong view is that what is important in the world is what I judge as important. What is outside of my beliefs, values or concerns is trivial. There is an implicit permanence that my limited view/understanding/beliefs and preferences are universal, that there is a law to the universe, and it is the law of Alana.

So lets challenge that view: Am I the arbiter of all things important? Do only the actions/rupa I assign meaning to have value? Do only the actions/rupa I assign meaning to have consequence? At the bottom of my action is a deeply skewed vision of the world: I believe the world revolves around me. That what I think is important IS important, to the exclusion of everything else. That if I can’t envision or imagine a particular effect then I am immune from it, like a get out of jail free card for not knowing the law. But is that the way the law works –exempt in ignorance?

From here it is easy to consider the Ttuktokpie starting with the very real situational example of getting in an accident. But it also is easy to consider all the places my core belief that I am the arbiter of importance in this world screw me in my daily life (hint hint the belief my priorities are more important that other peoples’ is the basis for every fight/disagreement and every self entitled, judgmental and cunty behavior and the antecedent consequences). And the super scary perils, like hell births, that come from views like this. Seeing the specific behaviors of course give me the opportunity to change them.

Ultimately though, when I talk about changing a behavior, my real goal is minimizing the stresses of living in this world. It is important, but no matter how good I get at living in this world, I am still in this world. Ideally, practice leads you out of this world. That there is why it is so critical for me to understand, deeper and deeper, my views. To evaluate them and truth test them . Those views are the reason I get born. The views are the reason I act. They are the reason I reap consequences and the reason I suffer with the experience consequences I don’t like.

This is a very very very long way to stress this most critical of point: everything boils down to view. It is why it is the first of the 8 fold path, everything else follows. Id one can fix their views the rest will follow naturally without effort. It is a prime cause.

It is now early 2024 and Eric and I have spent the last few months doing some extensive traveling.  As I write these blog on my old snowflake ubai, I can’t help but see new evidence of the sameness of snow all around me. Here, I want to again break with the orderly chronology of the blog and share a few of my current thoughts on that old ubai — there is no such thing as a special snowflake, snow is just snow…

Eric and I are finally living ‘the dream’: After years of hard work, saving and planning, we have embarked on our grand tour of the world. We are wandering, unfettered, across counties and continents, currently in our 3rd week in Japan having arrived after 3 months in Europe. This is the fruit of our effort, this is just the kind of life we imagined; we are always so eager to explore what is new, to experience what is different.

The problem is, the more we travel, the more different places I go, the more I am struck by how life everywhere is basically the same. Life is the same and it is un-fucking-believably hard…

When I am at home, a lot of the mundane details of my life, of what life actually is, are easily ignored. With a fridge filled with my favorite foods, its easy to ignore that I a a slave to eating, that nourishing this body is a chore. With a comfy bed, and a safe place to sleep, it is easy to take for granted that having shelter is a  privilege, not a given. With all my belongings stored away in a closet, I forget that to enjoy the comforts, utility and safety these belongings bring, I am forced to bear their burdens as well.

Now though, on the road, I see just how much of my life revolves around meeting my most basic needs. I get up and I begin my day by planning how/where I will go for food. What can I find to eat that is healthy, that agrees with me, that isn’t just junk restaurant fare. Here in Japan, the sugary diet is hard on my blood sugar, it takes time, and lots of google translate, to find ingredients that suit my health.

Once I have food solved, I need to ensure I will have shelter; in Japan, mold is a problem at many hotels and I am severely allergic to mold. After the first few times I woke-up in the night unable to breath from mold, I realized I could no longer just book hotels ahead of time. Instead, I have been researching online to find possible places to stay and then showing up and asking to see a room before I book. Sometimes it takes half my day just visiting hotels and checking them out; my standards for shelter have gone from seeking comfort to being willing to settle for safety rather quickly.

When I began my travels, I had a big bag and a little bag, filled with all that I thought I would need to ensure my safety and comfort. Quickly I came to see that dragging a big bag onto trains, and subways, through streets to different hotels, its a burden. I winnowed myself down to one tiny carry-on –filled with medicine and 2 changes of clothes, cursing the fact that my health and warmth prevented me from getting rid of anything more.

I  always loved to travel because I crave what is new. In my heart of hearts I believe that lurking, just around the corner, just at the next street, just at the place I haven’t gone before, is something exotic and exciting, something that will bring me joy and satisfy me. But what is over there is just the same as what is over here, and if what was over here were so satisfying, why would I be so eager to go explore elsewhere?

Now that I am traveling so extensively, I see that outside the frame of the Instagram shots, past those few moments taking in the sites, day-to-day life is the chore of survival. It may be croissants in Paris, or rice in Japan, but everyone, everywhere, is slave to food. Simply put, snow is snow everywhere. And me, everywhere I go, its guaranteed to be more snow.

Lately, I have been super stressed about going to get a Covid booster shot; I don’t technically fall under the immune compromised category of folks currently eligible, but in light of the autoimmune blood markers I have, I worry I am at increased risk of bad Covid outcomes. When I spoke to my doctor, he agreed, and thought a booster was a good idea. Still, I feel bad going to take one, like I shouldn’t do it because not everyone is eligible, and technically, under the strictest definition of immune compromised, neither am I. I was thinking a bit about why I feel so guilty/stressed about getting a shot and it reminded me of another time I felt similarly…

At the last Katina I was at, there was bad air quality in SF due to fire. I made it to the event, but I felt like, because of my asthma, I couldn’t go early to help set up as it left me exposed to the smokey air too long. I felt bad though, like I should be helping out more, after all, other people were. I realize that when I look at both situations, I am benchmarking myself against an imagined standard of ‘normal’, what ‘those other people’ do, and assuming what applies to that imagined ‘normal’ group must also apply to me. I don’t see how we aren’t the same –how those snowflakes are shaped differently than me — how there are different causes and conditions that gave each of us our unique crystalline structure, our characteristics, our physical abilities and diseases.  I don’t see that really no one is the same, that there is no actual ‘normal’ group, that both the benchmarking and the standard to which I benchmark myself are both entirely in my head.

What is more, is that I am choosy with the way I interpret details. I look at ‘others’ and I see ‘healthy’ as normative. Of course when I see this it is me looking with half closed eyes, certain people, at certain times, not knowing their full pictures or histories. Still — healthy is what I choose as the ‘should state”. I should be that, others are. I should act that. I should live my life as though it were true, ignoring the actual differences — the diseases — at play.

The irony of course is that I am focusing on what I ‘imagine’ is similar, instead of seeing what really is the same.  What is the same is that we are all subject to disease, to illness and breaking. These circumstances — air quality to my asthma, Covid to my potential immune system issues, are just the details of ways I am subject to the common experience of breaking. Death and disease, that is snow, the specific illness, that’s just a particular snowflake’s structure.

Years ago, I complained to Mae Neecha  about hating a world that felt unstable and unpredictable. She asked me if I ever considered that the instability I hate might be part of a larger system of stability, in a world that was predictable in its way. She suggested I just didn’t see it that way because I am so focused on my rules I miss the world’s rule. As I consider snowflakes again, I am coming to understand just how right she is: There is an order to this world, there are rules that govern snow and reason’s for each individual snowflakes unique structure. I just don’t always see them, I don’t always like them and in the delta between my expectations/desires/shoulds and reality lies all my fears, anxieties and suffering.

But wait….there is more…

How I use details like those little horse blinders — zooming me in, myopic in sight, fixated on moving forward in the world.

Lately I have been considering another problem of my details-fixated view: It keeps me myopic, zoomed-in, constantly engaged with/dazzled by what is right in front of me.

Last week — as Eric and I were talking about if we have enough money for him to retire soon (again) — I was considering a tendency I have to over-value being prepared, of ignoring both the costs and risks of preparation because I idolize it as always good and right in all circumstances. In my mind, if I am prepared, I am in control, and if I am in control shit is bound to turn out better than if I am not. Preparation, control, are proxies of safety for me. My recent blog post goes into some of the details of considering the wrong views that underlie my beliefs about preparedness ( this blog here), but  as I was thinking about it, I realized the reason I get my panties in a knot in the first place is my myopic, little zoomed-in view.

When I fixate, narrowly looking at each instance/occasion with blinders on, I believe I can see all the ingredients that get a particular outcome on a case by case basis. When I get outcomes I want, I take away the lesson that I prepared correctly — amassed the right mix of knowledge, skill, relationship, money, influence and try to do it all again next time. When I get unwanted outcomes, I try and learn/amass/prepare for next time. Case by case this long, arduous methodology sorta works because results arise based on reasons, and we can absolutely be part of the mix of reasons that give rise to certain results. And, while no two sets of circumstances/events are exactly the same, the world has a way of churning out circumstances that are similar enough, some of the time, to allow preparation based on past learnings to apply to new circumstances. So I spend lifetimes trying to get the circumstances just right for the crystal configuration I want –dazzled by each special snowflake.

Zoom out though and I get a picture of endless snow. Like a video game : you can prepare — amass life, power, energy and weapons to beat the big baddie you are stuck on. Only winning just means you need to face the next bigger baddie. This is a video game that there is absolutely no way to win. With details I distract myself, convince myself that this game is fun and different each time, worth playing instead of seeing the truth: Endlessness of the same-ole-same-ole bs.

But wait, there is EVEN more…

I use a curated selection of details to affirm my own warped, personally preferable view of the world is the correct one; I use the details I like to strengthen my wrong views.

Here in CT we have a mask mandate in effect, this morning I was silently fuming at the asshole that couldn’t follow the rules and keep his damn mask on at Whole Foods. I get so angry, I think to myself, “how hard is it to wear a mask, look at all these other people wearing one.”  I am focusing on some people, some details, some snowflakes wearing masks and trying to use them to derive a rule for all people; it is the sometimes, plus my own beliefs/biases/desires (i.e. the meaning I imagine into the rupa of masks), that get me to the ole’ royal SHOULD.

Should is a dangerous beast, it becomes the implicit correct, the way the world –if only it was just cleared of its ugly adulterations –is meant to be.  Alana of course sees the correct and proper should-world-order and takes it upon herself to try and enforce, at least in whatever small corner of the world I claim as my own. What can’t actually be enforced can at least be hoped for, worked towards, expected, because in my own weird circular logic, could proves should (some folks wear masks so everyone could, which means they should) and should by definition proves could, since only a crazy person (hint hint Alana) would say everyone has to follow a rule that can’t be followed.

The problem of course is that this is total nonsense. I took some details — some people masking, and with a flick of my imaginary wand, turned that into “proof” that all people could mask, they should mask, we are just one asshole away from being my perfect paradise of masking!!!!  But the fact that some snowflakes have rounded points doesn’t =  all snowflakes must have rounded points. I curate the details I like into ‘proof’ because I don’t understand that sometimes never magically transforms into always. Especially not simply because I want it to.

The real truth is there are reasons some people wear masks, just like there are reasons some people don’t wear masks; people act in accordance with the causes and conditions that shape their actions. The expectation that all people are going to mask the same way ignores the differences in causes and conditions that impact each behavior, in each moment, by each continually changing aggregate process (i.e person). People will act in accord with their causes and conditions independent of my preferences or beliefs about what is ‘true’ and ‘right’ and ‘should’. Just focusing on the details I like/want, and ignoring the others, doesn’t change this one bit. All it does is reinforce my wrong view that Alana rules are universal ones. That and it makes me an angry, bitter, judgmental bitch.

Final Thoughts for Now

I know there is still more to glean from these snowflakes, and I am thinking that for next steps I will turn my attention back to self and self belonging (particularly body and rupa)– with this new context in mind — and see what new I can shake loose on that front.

There is still work to do, more persuasion needed, but I am starting to be way more suspicious that my mind is constantly doing a snow job on me. It tricks me (I trick me) to build an identity, a specialness and safety with details, to be distracted by them and to interpret them wildly in support of a fantasy-funhouse-mirror version of the world. But, if I take-off the crazy glasses and put on clear ones, I can use details to demonstrate that not only does this world not act in accord with my preferences/rules, but it never can/will. What needs to adjust isn’t this world, it can’t, it is already governed by a perfectly functional, logical, necessary set of rules. What needs to be adjusted is my expectations/view.

In fall 2021, I had been digging deeper on an old Ubai: The special snowflake. Below is a synopsis of my thoughts on this topic that I shared with Mae Neecha. As it is a fairly long synopsis, I will divide this into several entries.

Before now, I saw clearly that when I consider the fact that each snowflake is special and unique in small ways, I miss the greater commonality — that all flakes arise when water reaches a certain temperature and melt when it heats over 32 degrees. In the most fundamental way, independent of their slight crystalline differences, snowflakes are the same. Bound to arise and cease according to the rupa rules that govern snow. Just as this body of mine, despite the detailed differences I tend to dwell on, is the same as all bodies around me. Arising and ceasing when the physical conditions for arising and ceasing are met.

What I didn’t quite see before however is the fact that each snowflake having its own unique crystal form isn’t some wacky coincidence, best off ignored to fully understand the nature of the world, it is, in and of itself, an affirmation of the nature of this world and the rules that govern it.

The crystalline form a water droplet takes at the moment it becomes a snowflake — based on all the unique causes and conditions of that moment — is precisely why each snowflake has a specific, and unique shape. In other words, the difference in fine details between every snowflake affirms the full truth of cause and effect giving rise to the nuanced differences of this world. Different causes, different circumstance = different effects, and as the stream of time moves, there will never be the exact same set of circumstances/ causes, so there can never be the same effect.  Hence, there will never be the exact same snowflake crystal structure twice.

Differences in bodies, differences in nations, differences in personalities, all these arise simply because of differences in karma (cause and effect). This is just normal, the way the world operates, there is nothing special about the process and, surely noting special about the products of the process. Just because a snowflake is unique, arising from its own unique set of causes, it doesn’t mean it is special. It’s just one more snowflake churned out by the process by which all snowflakes arise.

Difference/details isn’t an exception, it isn’t an abrogation of the dhamma, it is actually manifest proof of it. I am a fool for trying to use difference to find evidence of exception, or exceptionalism, in myself or anything else, when the true lesson of the snowflake is that everything is the same — subject to the governing rules of this world, aka karma and the 3 common conditions, WITHOUT EXCEPTION. There are no special snowflakes, just flakes that have unique shapes based on the conditions that gave rise to them.

The snowflake tells the whole truth of this world –not just the truth of rupa that I originally saw, but the truth of karma as well. {{{And — modern day Alana (Feb. 2024) really wants to add that, most critically, snowflakes, in their total lack of specialness, tell the truth of anatta as well, but more on this later.}}}

Why is this anything other than an overly academic observation of snowflakes? Because Alana has a disease of delusion by details.  Rather than taking details, and nuanced differences that exist in this world, are evidence that the laws of karma are working A-OK all the time, exception free, I twist and warp those differences and details to be ‘evidence’ that supports my wrong view of how the world is. Or rather, how the world, according to Alana, should be: How I can force it to be (or at least my little corner of it) if I can just control and whip up the precise set of circumstances I need to manifest the effects I like.

{{{And again, modern day Alana wants to interject to point out how this belief that I am special, different, helps feed an even deeper delusion, that I am atta, I have an abiding self. Atta requires differentiation. If everything, everyone, is the same, with what will I build an identity? What will justify my belief in, my hope for, a world that will act in accord with my rules and standards rather than its own? Afterall, to get different effects, for different rules to be in effect, there would need to be something different about the cause, there would need to be something different –special — about me… }}}

All the while, as I am dazzled by each little snowflakes’ grooves and ridges, picking out the ones that ‘prove’ my version of reality, I am missing the nature of both the snowflakes and the snow. The nature of arising in a particular form, and then ceasing, in accord with causes and conditions.

Ugh….I so should have known before that the whole part of the Ubai that felt a little shady/sketchy to me — the fact that snowflakes are the same and different — was manifest evidence of the blind spots of my view.   But, at least it isn’t too late, so here are just a few more detailed examples of the lessons I can learn from the uniqueness –the detail — part of snowflakes. Seriously, I will say ahead of time this won’t possibly be everything I have or can learn, but it’s a start:

How I find false specialness and safety in details when really they are showing me that we are all subject to our karma, I can’t possibly be ‘safe’ from the effect of causes I put into place:

I hide special in the details, this is an old ‘ahha’ that I have shared before. I hear a story on NPR of a rape victim and immediately perk my ears to find the reasons why she is not like me — how the circumstances are different, the country, the age, the use of drugs, whatever the dumb ass shit she did to put herself in the situation to get raped –that obviously I would never do (even though I promise I  have done plenty of dumb ass shit that could have gotten me raped before) — any/every detail I can cling to to justify why she is not me. And more importantly, why I am not her.  Here is the big punchline: She is actually not ‘me’ (she is her own unique –always shifting –snowflake), but that doesn’t mean anything about me (different circumstances give rise to a different –always shifting — shaped snowflake), especially not that I am safe (all snow melts).  Let’s drill down a little further to look at why my crazy ass mental gymnastics to prove my specialness and safety with details are bald-faced wrong views. Let’s start with the easier of the two and work our way to more complicated:

1) All Snow Melts: This is the easier truth to see — already at the heart of my original snowflake contemplations — but obviously still not 100% clear to me (or I would be a Sotapana), so let’s re-look:

This morning I was chanting, and after reading the parts of the body bit, I thought to myself how damn unreliable bodies are. My mind strongly flashed to a memory I had of the first person I met with MS. I was in my 20s, she in her 30s, and we were volunteering at the same organization. She was wheelchair bound. So many years ago now, and I so clearly remember thinking how happy I was not to be her. Fast forward to present day; I got a blood test result recently that indicates I may be developing/am at risk of an autoimmune disease. Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Connective Tissue Disease — no doctor can tell me what, or when or even if. As I was considering the unreliableness of bodies, this woman and her autoimmune disease, me and my blood tests, I thought about one of those stories where the Buddha basically tells a woman in mourning that “everything that is subject to break will break.” It made me pause, because in truth, I don’t really care which disease I get, how I break — I just don’t want to break.

My mind does mental gymnastics to prove who I am not, what I am not (as well as what I am, but that is for a different day) –not the raped woman, not the MS woman — and it is correct, I am neither of these women.  Then, my mind stops, not taking the thought to completion. Because the complete thought is that it doesn’t matter one bit to me how I break, not really, what I am desperate for is to not break at all, or at least not for a very long time, or to be as unbroken as possible. But that I am unbreakable, or bound to be lesser broken, or longer unbroken, is not what the details and differences between these women and I “prove” at all. No amount of detail disguises the similarity; snow is snow, breakable things break, all people (including alanas) are subject to cessation (i.e. impermanence) and suffering along the way. And as we shall get to below, we are all heir to our karma.

Mechanistically, what is happening here is my imagination is seizing on some bit of rupa –details — that I use to ‘prove’ or mark the differences between these women and I, so I can imagine-up a different story for myself. A different identity. All so I can feel safe, sleep at night, convince myself to keep going. But imagination is, by definition, not reality. Which is to say, all the meaning I imagine into details really doesn’t protect me from squat. No imagining a long healthy life will keep me from getting an autoimmune disease. No imagining I am ‘better than’ a rape victim will keep me from being raped. All that imagining meaning (where meaning is based on memory/ pattern recognition) into the differences and details does is make me feel better for one hot second. Feel better till new details arise, that I imagine new meanings for, and I ping pong between being comforted and feeling terror (two sides of this capability of imagination) based on the rupa details I see, and the stories I use them to curate. All independent of well, you know, actual reality.

So, if the details don’t prove I am safe, exempt from misfortune, what exactly do they prove? Karma of course!

2) Snowflakes are unique cus karma is for real:

So the super subtle truth, alla unique snowflakes, is in fact that in any/every detail I am not those other women and they are not ‘me’. We can never be, have been, nor ever in the future will be the same; Each rape, each disease, each woman called a ‘me’ or ‘she’, arise based on totally different sets of circumstances, brought about by a different sets of reasons (i.e. effects caused by past and current behaviors and views).  Just like each snowflake has slightly different crystalline structures that arise based on the exact circumstances of their freezing.

So, back to chanting here: This morning I was reading that bit, “I am owner to my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my action and live dependent on my actions”. Now, normally, that part makes me a little squirmy, you know, I got karma issues. But this morning, my little inside voice said, “well duh, who else would be heir to my action, who else’s actions would I be born of?” That would be like a snowflake taking on a shape completely independent of the circumstances that mold it into its precise crystalline structure, it would be impossible.

Now, none of this is to say  Alana hasn’t been, or can’t be, or won’t be raped or diseased, quite the opposite actually; after all in a rupa world, where we all share the same basic elemental forms, disaggregation of those forms (i.e disease) and forced taking of those forms (i.e. rape) are extraordinarily common/normal/necessary events. And in a world each of us enter in the first place striving and feeling entitled to/ be/become/ fulfill our desire, depriving or using others to benefit ourselves is an extraordinarily common behavior, with common results. And, skipping ahead to a topic we will address in the next section — this continual process of cause and effect, arising and ceasing, births is basically endless (save for enlightenment) — across near infinite time, of course I’ll face many permutations of rape and illness, each one a bit different, but common in their total suckiness.

A few weeks ago,  Eric considered quitting his abusive job. I encouraged him to, said we would figure it out. But he wants this to be his last job pre-retirement and thinks we don’t have enough savings to retire now without compromising our lifestyle. He candidly told me that in the past ( like when we moved to NY) , me compromising on where we live hasn’t worked well. I don’t exactly suffer silently and he doesn’t want to be miserable because I am. It really hit my heart, even if I could promise “I have changed, this time will be different, I have corrected some views (which is a matter of debate for another time)”, he wouldn’t believe me, he said as much.

There is no way to avoid the consequences of my past behavior; I now see there are inescapable results of being picky, difficult, hard to satisfy. It’s not about good Alana/Bad Alana, it’s just about the way crystals form. My persnicketiness and low forbearance threshold isn’t a ‘victimless’ personality trait. It hurts me and the folks who love me and try and care for me. In the short term, I have to deal with a strained husband, a strained relationship, and feeling trapped in CT; In the longer term, there is no denying the guilt in my heart that needs repayment. The thing is, it is so clear how long and self perpetuating this trait and its consequences are, I can see that from my lifetime trying desperately to satisfy my difficult, needy relatives. This is all to say, the causes I seeded yield the effects I reap; even if today’s Alana ‘disowns’ the past behaviors, even if I change, consequences follow me.

Here is the issue with details then: My mind is a slippery beast, I use partial truth — that all snowflakes really are unique, to obfuscate the whole of the truth — that other people deal with the consequences of their actions, and I will deal with the consequences of mine.  I can imagine all the ways I am not that, I am this, I don’t deserve that, I deserve this, but in reality there is  no ‘safety’ in being ‘not them’, it doesn’t free me from my own burdens born of greed, or from ignorantly being born to live in a world of impermanence and suffering.

And there is no special, no identity in not being them/being who I imagine/having the future I imagine, because we are all just subjects, utterly unexceptional, always moving/shifting/changing based on the causes, cogs to the fundamental laws that govern all of us just the same. The details are just momentary shapes, resulting from the forces that moulded them before, already changed/changing to some new shape.

Recently I thought back to my days as a Candy Crush addict. For over a year, I played in much of my free time. I wasn’t just good, I was great. I grew-up playing puzzle games as a kid and with Candy Crush, I felt like a natural. Of course, lots of bucks that I could spend on extra lives, 99 cents at a time, helped as well. In time, I reached level 900+ and then, suddenly, I grew bored.

When I hit such a high level, it became obvious that my success or failure we predetermined by the starting board the computer delt me. If the board was favorable, I could play it out and had a chance to win. But many of the boards I was delt were impossible from the get go, no amount of skill was going to allow me to win. Early levels were easy, lots of moves/few pieces, and so when I won, I took it as an affirmation of me –my smarts, my abilities. But statistically, as more pieces entered the game, it was less and less likely I would be delt a hand that was even winnable. One day, seeing how the odds were stacked against me,  I felt like the game didn’t affirm me anymore: I quit cold, feeling slightly cheated by an endeavor I had spent so much time and money on.

In fact, I felt manipulated, because if the computer’s deal was manipulating my success at the end, it was doing it at the beginning as well. Every step of the way in fact I saw I was being ‘tricked’ — I given easy wins, like hits of a drug, at the start to boost my ego, to make me feel the thrill of success. Over time, I was given the chance to build skill, so I could peg my sense of self, my awesomeness to my abilities to win. Now it wasn’t just luck, it was the work and ability I had –that were me/mine. Only when it became clear the computer was sometimes letting me win, and sometimes handing me failing boards from the start was I able to uncouple my sense of self from the game. Only then did I begin to think –hey, this isn’t about me, its about the hand. And, naturally, what isn’t about me, what isn’t proving I’m a winner any more isn’t fun at all.

I realized in many ways, candy crush is a lot like karma: I build my sense of identity from my successes and failures, but the board was set up by past actions and beliefs, by past alanas that I don’t even really consider alana anymore. Still, I take the wins as affirmations of WHO I AM, and I ignore the loses, pretending that if I just build more skills, the game of life is beatable, never considering the world is rigged against my most basic goal — becoming, controlling, avoiding loss and impermanence and suffering –from the start.

Moreover, I feel cheated, tricked by the Candy Crush makers, who ‘lured’ me in with all the early ego stroking. But isn’t it really me who tricked myself? Me who said there is some value to being a ‘winner’ at this game. Me who let myself feel special that I was able to win? Me who built an identity off of a skill, when a skill is just the sum of the experiences, the practice, the values, the opportunities, that shape it? Me who is so easily dupped because I want to be? Because I want to believe there is something that makes me special and good, even if it is just a stupid game

Me who uses the same methods to fool myself all the time –gathering the easy wins, giving them meaning, and then using them as ‘evidence’ of my awesomeness, while ignoring all the data points to the contrary. Pretending winning a few rounds can make me a ‘winner’ when there is no possible way to win every round.

And so, as quickly as I became enamored with Candy Crush, I became disillusioned.  A small joy in my life lost. Me wondering at how foolish I had been to allow all those new and exciting candy shapes and colors to amuse me for so long.

I opened the news today and read that the CDC is not likely to approve boosters for the general public in September. Rage began to surge in my heart. I am furious! In my mind, over and over throughout this pandemic, the government has failed to keep peeps safe, to keep me safe. The CDC has lied, covered up information, been too slow to adapt and to act. And their ineptitude, it effect real people. It effects ME, my life.

I am beyond stressed: I have been contemplating whether or not to just cross state lines and get an illicit booster regardless of the government guidelines. The research certainly supports this, and the government supply is more than ample, in fact they have been throwing out unused vaccines sitting on the shelf too long. But I resent feeling ‘forced’ to choose between dishonesty and crawling back under a rock for years just to stay safe (the fact that this polarized decision set exists in my mind alone is a topic for another day).

But, what about the other side – what about folks in countries that don’t even have one shot available, aren’t they looking at booster campaigns in the US and feeling that those decisions are affecting them, endangering them, by limiting vax supply. What seems right to me is what effects me, what reinforces what I already believe. But isn’t it the case that what seems right for other people is what effects them and what they already believe. What dictates that my ‘right’ the real RIGHT?

When there was an initial rumor of a widespread booster campaign I felt safe, and now that the CDC is re-evaluating, I am afraid again. Why, what has really changed? Clearly it is my expectations of the future that are shaping my feelings. This latest announcement made me want to give up hope. To give up on this world. Before, when vaccines came out, when it looked like boosting would work, when I thought there would be a booster for me, I felt so close to being safe, to getting back to a life I had before. Now I feel like my chance is being taken from me by a government agency that doesn’t give a fuck about me.

It feels not right, not just, not fair. It is what it is though because, in the end, c’est la vie (this is life). This is simply more evidence that the world doesn’t operate according to my rules, to what I think is right and fair and just, or in accord with my hopes and expectations.

The CDC has their reasons. If I go get an illicit shot, I have my reasons. All through this pandemic, I have seen the cautions rule followers and the fucking anti-maskers, everyone has their reasons. And reasons, in general, are folks scrambling to look out for #1 (themselves), following their beliefs, their expectations, trying to get the world to align with what they think is right and fair, at least for themselves. But, clearly, we don’t all agree with what is right and fair. The result is that baked into this world is conflict, stress and strain, winners and losers. This world is a zero sum game and as a result it will always be ridden with strife. There will always be times each of us doesn’t get what we want, or think is fair and right. That is simply the nature of the world that I have chose to be born in.

I was making some plans for a day trip, doing the research, the leg work, the planning, all the while imagining what a fun time I would have. Just as I caught myself looking forward to my trip, I realized that all the ‘looking forward to’ things that I do, all the effort I put into making them happen, relies on a pretty faulty assumption: That what I imagined will happen is what will actually happen. That the world will look the way I want it to, the way I have prepared for it to look. That if I push and pull the ‘right’ levers, accumulate the right resources, do the right planning, bring the right skills and smarts to the table, I can bring the outcome I envision to fruition. This is why I plan, and this is why I look forward to my plan, because in my mind, every trip I am planning is a fun filled, but safe, adventure that goes off without a hitch.

The problem of course is I really can’t know what the future will be. The evidence of this is abundant – no trip I have ever gone on, no matter the care or the planning – has unfolded without at least a few challenges and unpleasant surprises I needed to adjust to and navigate around. Sure, sometimes it’s just a matter of switching hotels, or rebooking a canceled tour. But there have also been dangers, injury, an unpleasant run-in with a rhino in Kenya…

If I had known I was going to get run down by a rhino in Kenya, if I had imagined that my safari adventure would have included a near death experience and the potential need for medical care in the middle of the African savannah, I obviously would have planned a different trip. At a minimum, I sure wouldn’t have spent all those months of safari planning looking forward to my trip.

But I did do the planning for the Kenya trip — I chose the destination, the guide, I spent the money to make my trip a reality, I assumed that as I pulled those levers, I was in control, I was shaping the future I had looked forward to. Clearly, I was deeply mistaken. I don’t actually know shit about how the future is going to be. Everyday things turn out differently than I thought they would, then expected. So why this confidence in my version of the future? Why allow myself to get wrapped up in fantasies of how thing will be, of what I look forward to, when all those fantasies do is keep me struggling for what’s next while enduring the suffering of what is here and now?

I caught myself sitting around and daydreaming; thinking of all the places Eric and I had traveled, back before covid, when we used to travel, thinking of all the places maybe we might be able to go again if its ever safe enough to get on a plane…

I have all these memories of vacations, a collection of recollections of moments I had planned, experienced, fixated-on and identified with in the past. Over and over, I seek to arrange and build just such experiences – trips, events, adventures – that I think will bring me joy and satisfaction. This is literally what I live for, what I toil for, what I patiently waited out covid for, lonely and longing in my isolation.

The problem is that when I comb my memories, when I really pay attention, I can’t find happiness there at all. Mostly there is indifference, some shame/regret. But the memories I call “happy”, are all nostalgic; when I evoke them, they are tinged with longing and loss. Over and over during covid I observed this: I thought of a place I used to go, something I used to be able to do, a person I used to see. In each case, the overwhelming feeling I had was one of longing mixed with loss.

As a specific example, I considered one year where Eric and I spent New Years in Japan. We awoke before dawn to watch the sunrise over the Setto sea, it was magnificent and it stands out strongly in my memories of all our New Years together. The thing is, as I recall that beautiful sunrise, I experience deep craving. I miss that place. I miss that moment. I miss being able to travel. I want that again.

Of course, mixed in with the longing is also a sense of warmth, a fondness, a familiarity: This is a memory that is a cornerstone of my sense of relationship with Eric. The problem is, I already know these warm cornerstone memories, can end up being the most painful when we loose the person/thing we remember: When my dad died, it was these cornerstone memories, the fondest and warmest ones of our time together, that brought me the deepest pain of loosing him. Sure, I had a sense of the comfort I had felt on those special dad-daughter trips, but once he died, and still to this day, they became tied up with a loss and craving that tightens my chest.

I look for happiness in these ‘happy memories’ but to me they seem just like wine or vinegar or something else fermented. You know that once upon a time, there must have been sugar in that liquid, it is a necessary ingredient to create the ferment, but now there is just a trace of it left, it is barely a flavor in the final product.

What is especially crazy is that in memories of moments I was truly terrified, like Eric passing out at the cedar baths, I can still evoke some of the terror clearly, dampened but still present, but the same just is not true of joy.

This then is what I am living for, this is what I spend most of my life planning and enduring for, moments that are hit or miss, but always fleeting. Moments that when ‘happiest’ are the seeds of my future longing and sense of loss.

I was listening to LP Anan teaching and in a class he called out a fellow practitioner who continually has trouble with her mother-in-law. Specifically, she is jealous of the attention and financial support her husband bestows on his mother. LP asked her –if your husband were to leave you, but leave behind millions of dollars, how sad would you really be? She admitted upset, but that the money would certainly temper the emotion. LP called out the issue with the mother-in-law as clearly one of self and self-belonging; the worry that another person would challenge her supremacy, and the material support it provides, in her relationship with her husband.

What is worse, is that this view, it breeds so many negative feelings, negative behaviors and then resulting negative karma. And for what really? We don’t know the future, the mother-in-law could die tomorrow and no longer be a threat, but the negative karma created with her just lives on. Or, they win the lotto and there is more than enough resources to go around, or the practitioner ordains and doesn’t need money anymore, or the world economy collapses and all the money is worth nothing anyway…the point here is, the practitioner, all of us, are so greedy –and stir so much shit resultantly– for a future with an item/person that is totally uncertain.

This got me thinking about Eric and I…

I rely on Eric for his financial support, I encourage him to remain at abusive, but high paying, jobs for “just a little longer”, “for just a little more”, so that we can have the life we dream of. So that I can have the thigs I want and that make me comfortable. So that I can have the money I ridiculously believe will make me safe. But, because I am so picky, the band of conditions I find comfortable, and acceptable, and safe is so narrow. It is so damn expensive. And because he loves me, because he sees it as his job, he keeps working. And I, despite seeing the pain it causes him, end up encouraging him, or at least not discouraging him, because I want the dollars it brings.

I feel guilty about all this, I have the sense that it is wrong, that it is hurtful, worse yet hurtful of someone who does so much for me, who I love so much. Still, I persist because I am greedy. And why am I greedy? Because I don’t understand the true nature of what I am ‘getting/winning’ and I don’t understand the costs. In fact, I pretend there are no costs. This is foolish; I know by now, at least intellectually, that there are costs to everything.

Last night I told Eric to just finish up at his current job and be done. To stop the new job hunt I had been pressuring him to embark on. I told him I didn’t want to keep donkey whipping him anymore, I don’t want the negative repercussions of such behavior and I could learn to live with what we had already.

Eric thanked me, but said that the trick wasn’t in eliminating the desire for money at the earning phase, but at the spending phase; As long as my band for what is acceptable is so narrow, it will be pricey to try and maintain. As long as I view money as a safety net, and I continually feel unsafe, I will need significant financial resources to feel comfortable. My situation moving to NY is the prefect example — what wouldn’t necessarily be a big deals to others, or what would be a strong preference to live elsewhere, became a ‘need’  for me– I was becoming physically ill, depressed, emotionally unstable in NY because I found that arrangement of rupa uncomfortable/unsafe physically and emotionally. A second home, a sudden move to Connecticut, these were ‘solutions’ only available to us because we had the money for them.

This is my need to stockpile, to squirrel and prepare, to be sure I am alright when the time comes  — to be sure I have the resources to effectuate the changes I want, to be safe and comfortable to my standard of both. It is the wrong belief money ‘fixes’ all problems, it doesn’t create them. Money keeps me safe in a world where ‘unsafe’ is a normal part of its nature.

This all got me thinking:

1) Wrong view #1 –I don’t understand the costs: There is a huge cost that I haven’t really considered deeply to having such a narrow band of acceptable, in a world that rarely falls into that band of acceptability. In a world that continually moves and shifts out of states I find acceptable, even if momentarily such states could be found. I think my bad of acceptable keeps me comfortable, keeps me safe, but it is because of these standards that I suffer profoundly — either by not having a set of circumstances that fall into my persnickety bounds of acceptable, or by the sorrow of losing such states when they go, or by the work I do to get to such states, or by the karma I incur trying to force others, like Eric, to help me acquire these states.

I remember the Temiya Jataka, in which the Bodhisatva pretends to be dumb/cripple so as not to have to take on royal duties, and their ensuing consequences. He is tortured to snap him out of it, but he forbears. I always did hate that jataka – in my warped mind, I took it as a personal indictment of my own lack of forbearance. But now I understand: The Bodhisatva, he remembers his past hell births as a result of princely duties in former reincarnations. It was to avoid worse discomfort in the future that he endures some discomfort in the present. This is less saintly perfection and more just good ole’ common sense; it is something even I – a bad and non-forbearing alana – would do if I only had the same level of clarity about where my behaviors have gotten me in the past and where they are likely to get me again in the future. Its not that I am fundamentally and forever lacking in some saintly qualities. Its not that there is no escape from my narrow band of acceptability. Its just that I don’t yet understanding the consequence of my preferences. I prefer them precisely because I don’t see their tradeoffs.

2) Wrong View #2 –I think I am in control: Another wrong view here is that I believe I can effectuate an outcome I want; I have the power, and control, and good karma, and the superhuman will power, to force the world into the states that I want it to be in. At least my little corner of the world. At least for long enough to make all that exertion of effort worth it…

I have recently been rewatching the HBO series Westworld. In it, many of the characters are robots, given a backstory by their creators and programmed to live in loops. Over and over they are killed and then put back into their world where they enact the same basic story with only small variations.  Its sorta a lot of food for Dharma thought.

One particular set of characters and their storylines had really struck me: There is a band of thieves who over and over play out the theft of a safe, living for the promise of the money inside and the imaginary future it will buy them. At one point, they finally get it open only to find there is nothing at all inside the safe. The scene hit me really hard because it is such a powerful ubai for life:

Maybe, with the force of my will, with my good karma, I am able to get my own life’s safes open. How often is it empty inside? Eric had a colleague years ago who worked so hard to become an executive and finally earned enough money to fulfill her dream – an early retirement at a cottage in Carmel with her beloved husband. The husband who died 6 months after the retirement, crushing the dream that had just opened for her. Her story haunts me to the core, for fear something similar could happen to me.

Or maybe there is money in the safe. Something to use for a little while. Yes, you get the money, but you get the problems that come with it. The jealousy, the getting used to a new standard that you need to upkeep, the fear of loss, the dependence. Like with living in SF; I got an amazing city I loved for 10 years, but then it set my standards to a place where New York disappointed me. Angered me. Where I missed my old life and now I keep searching and working to get back what I lost.

In fact, San Francisco makes it so clear that even if I could have stayed, I could have kept my circumstances the same, the city itself is changing. It has become uglier, less safe, less fun, it has slipped outside my standards of acceptable. Because of impermanence, even if the safe is full, the money you get, the stuff it buys, those change and slip away too.

Plus, once those robbers get the money to buy up the things they dream of, won’t they just dream up new things to want?  Eric and I have made so much money in this life, we have been getting richer and richer for years. But for every dollar we make, we have time to use it, or save it, before we start imagining new wants and new needs and where we will get new money to pay for those in the future.

Is any of this really control? Is this a world that I can force? That I can bring all my resources and will to bear on and make even a meaningful dent on? It’s more like hitting waves washing up on the beach with a stick and pretending I am meaningfully changing the shape of the ocean.

3) Wrong View #3 – I don’t actually understand what money is: I believe money is a tool for comfort, safety and satisfaction, despite so much evidence to the contrary; I completely ignore all the ways/times that money is a tool for my discomfort, danger and dissatisfaction. We moved to NY, we did it for money, but instead of bringing me satisfaction, that move brought me stress and depression. And while I credit money with helping solve the problem –a second home in CT – that view sorta ignores the glaring truth that the rat race for $$$ was what got me into trouble in the first place.

This pattern plays out over and over — I lust after rupa arrangements, and the money to buy them, but it is precisely rupa’s sucky nature I am trying to fix with money in the first place. Always trying to solve a problem, that should tell me what the world I lust to buy really is (obvi a problem).

And when money does buy a shortly satisfying arrangement or circumstance, I just need to go back to the robbers and the safe to know that, along with an assortment of pretty things, the money in the safe also buys strife and worry and standards that just make things harder going forward. Empty or full, ultimately the safe is the same – stress, not satisfaction is what will be found there.

Furthermore, having money now doesn’t mean I will have it later. It doesn’t mean that if I do have it, I am safe. Illness and death strike rich and poor alike. I hear Eric — I may face a problem later, that if I just had more money, more stuff, more people, more skill, more whatever I could overcome. But I will definitely face a situation that, no matter what I have, it is not enough to overcome the obstacle before me. The reason for this is simple –stuff is finite, money is finite, karma and still and relationships are finite. Dukkha however is endless.

In this way, it’s a lot like a video game: If one baddie doesn’t get you, the next one will. Only unlike a video game, it goes on forever…this is what I cause Eric suffering for? This is what I am greedy for? Still, I am always building, squirrelling more, clearly convinced on some level that if I can just have enough, whatever next time brins, I can game the system and win. Or maybe I just willing to try and extend my game as long as possible, no matter the cost, somehow convincing myself a little longer is all I want when in reality no about of win, of play time, of being on top, of being in a life we love, is ever enough.

In many ways, this life – my very blessed alanahood, is to date, as close as one can get to being able to game the system: I have been well cared for, mostly comfortable, mostly healthy and safe. But is it satisfactory? I live in fear all the time that I will loose what I have. I squirrel and skimp and ask Eric to work so I can stockpile – this peak life is a life of fear, work, greed and task-mastering. And what do I really hope for the future? What are the great aspirations I think I can realistically hope for with this peak life? A house or two. A few years with Eric to travel, after covid, before the next global or personal catastrophe? A ripe old age for both of us, which is max only another 50ish years.

My problem is, I am always zoomed in. I worry about having enough resources to take on one problem at a time; enough money to weather a pandemic, enough nutrition and medical care and strength of body to weather an illness. I worry about each moments’ arrangement being comfortable and satisfactory. Such myopia breeds greed, because greed is born from not really understanding the thing we are greedy for, from not understanding the costs of clinging to that thing.

Zoom out and it is clear I can’t have enough forever. Resources diminish, situations change and what works one time fails the next. Ultimately this body craps out and there goes everything I built in this life.  Zoom out and it is clear if I get past one obstruction, I will just meet the next. Zoom out and I can see birth, age, sickness and death are the mile markers of this life, even a peak life, with suffering all on the road.

As part of my efforts to stave-off an autoimmune disease, my rheumatologist had recommended a regular program of 5 day fasts to help renew and regenerate immune system function. The fasts allow for a small amount of pre-allocated food – around 600 calories a day of bars and powdered soup – enough to make unsupervised fasting safe, but certainly not enough to feel close to full. On a recent fast, I woke up on day 4, out of 5, and simply didn’t want to get out of bed; all I had to look forward to was another day of hunger. On this fast, I find myself rationing food, licking the last bit out of every container of what meager crumbs I am given. Flash dried soups and rancid nut bars that in any other circumstance would be torture are my cravings and delights. I just can’t wait for the fast to end, a few more days and I’ll be in heaven, free to eat as I may.  That is the thing that keeps me going, taking satisfaction in the thing that comes next. Or, the imagination of that satisfaction anyway…

This week, the power went out for 2 days after a storm. It was such a pain in the ass, no lights, no TV, no computer, starving in the dark, carefully rationing the phone lest we be out of battery in an emergency. About a day and a half into the blackout the lights flickered on, for just a minute. Eric and I were in the middle of a little-happy-dance-we-have-power-again, when suddenly everything went back to blackout. We bitched and moaned about the inconvenience; we were so excited when the power company posted a schedule to get the lights back on. When they did finally come back, it was a moment of relief and then back to life as normal. That and the fear that tomorrow’s storm could bring a whole new set of outages.

The truth is when I have ‘the basics’ — food and power — I don’t really relish these things, they aren’t the cause of celebration or deep satisfaction, they are just there. Only in their absence do they become the fodder of hopes and dreams. Obviously, power is a significant convenience, and food a basic need, I don’t deny the value in having these things. But the idea that they bring satisfaction, beyond their temporary fulfillment of physical needs, is undermined by a basic truth: That satisfaction arises from a former state of deprivation. 

Satisfaction, happiness, Sukkah – the great goal of my life – doesn’t exist in a vacuum, it requires states of not having, of longing, of dukkah. I have to feel hunger to feel satisfied by eating. I have to deal with darkness to be dazzled by lights.

What is more, is that the satisfaction doesn’t last. This is my second fast: A day or two of normal eating after the last fast and basic food like an apple or oatmeal felt like a given, something I take for granted, it was no longer an orgasm in my mouth the way it had been when I broke that fast. To get excited, I needed the promise of more, something fancier or novel, a special dinner out, an exotic ingredient imported from Japan or Italy, or some other land far away.

In fact, if I am being honest, the greatest joy came in anticipation of my first post fast meal, not from the meal itself: The smell of the fruit as it was sliced, the tantalizing twirl of the blender blade, as it whipped-up my post-fast smoothie. Even that first sip didn’t taste as good as I imagined it would, as the smoothie of my mind; by 4 or 5 sips I was already full, the elation I had dreamed about as a reward for 5 days of self-imposed deprivation come and went in an instant. But while the satisfaction was fleeting, what remained was the dread of next month’s  fast. Dread of the next storm’s potential power outage. Which brings me to truth number two: The satisfaction that arises from states of deprivation may be fleeting, but the fear of loss, of repeat suffering, that arises from deprivation, that manages to endure.

The goal of my life, the thing I plot and plan and prepare for, that I hoard possessions and qualities, people and skills for, the dazzling future I cling to hope for, basically boils down to a “happy life”, a good life, a life where I am free of excessive suffering and satisfaction is bountiful. Details of exactly what this looks like may change, but the essence is the same. Each becoming, each birth, is a refinement, a chance for a different path, a different ending, when I can finally get what I want. The problem is, what I want is inextricably bound to what I don’t want. The satisfaction of fullness exists hand-in-hand with hunger.

I blindly strive for satisfaction and I don’t even notice where it really comes from – deprivation. Or where it leads to – fear and loss.

A long time ago, LP Anan and Mae Yo read me a quote from the Buddha. It hit me so hard, it burrowed into my brain, the meaning crisp and clear, but the words morphed into “Alana speak”. It went something like this:

If I, the Great Dhamma Lord (i.e. the most-awesome-crazy-badass-ninja-ever), could separate sukkha from dukkha, I would have used my powers and merit to do so and gone right on merrily living in this world. But because, I could not separate sukkha from dukkah I returned sukkha to its rightful owner –dukkha — and peaced-out.

The question for you Alana is this: If even the Buddha could not separate suffering and satisfaction, what hope exactly do you keep clinging to?