Alana's Dharma Blog

I finally rescheduled my visit down to see My uncle in New York. As I waited in line to cross the border from Canada into NY, I started thinking: This line, with all these fences and guards, it’s an arbitrary line, a conventionally agreed upon demarcation that makes one side America and one side Canada. Of course, those lines weren’t always there, once the land was open, roamed by people and animals that migrated place to place. It won’t always be there either, countries change, borders change, one day there won’t even be humans at all…

This is the kind of evidence I look for to help myself consider impermanence — borders can change, or along a border there is one thing on one side and another on the other. But this is all just evidence, SYMPTOMS. What is the evidence really showing me…?

The truth here is that what I construe as permanent: An identity, of a place, a person, or thing, exists only in the mind. Its arbitrary — though conventionally agreed upon — to call one side of a line Canada and another America; those clumps aren’t really real. Over and over it is becoming clear that fixation is happening with me, in my heart, perhaps in our collective hearts, but not in the world.

And yet, for something not even really real, nor actually out in the world, I suffer real pain. I suffer when my friends leave early. I suffer when I can’t go see family. I suffer when I can’t work out anymore post covid — losing part of the fit alana identity I have clumped up over so many years and given so much meaning to. I suffer when I am too sick to do the things I wanted/planned, the stuff I clumped up in my imagination as the fun future I would have.

Early on in practice I learned to see things aren’t as certain as I thought — hugging a homeless person doesn’t necessarily mean swine flu, and then death. Even if what I worry about comes true, it may turn out for the better. Or at least for the different. This is all true. But back then I felt like part of the puzzle was missing, these were half measures to sooth, they weren’t full understandings. But now I sense I am getting closer to seeing the bigger picture. All the clumps — the worries and the hopes, the imagined future and the curated past –they aren’t how the world really is. All my worries and all my hopes, are based on a fabrication, not on reality.

I spin, I suffer because I cling and fixate, but that’s on me –that isn’t how things actually are., I want things to be fixed when I like them, or to hurry up and un-clump, to move along, to flow away, when I don’t like them. But this isn’t how the world works. The world won’t change, so the only choice is for me to figure out how to.

For weeks I had planned a trip to drive down to visit my uncle at his cabin near Lake George. With Covid, I had locked down so tightly, refused to travel, I had missed seeing so many family and friends. This was my favorite uncle, and I delighted in the idea that, after so many years, we could reconnect. Then, the fires in Quebec broke-out, air quality all the way from upstate NY to Manhattan was in the red, with my asthma, and now long covid, I feared the car, and then an old cabin in the woods, would not give me enough protection from the smoke. In the end, super disappointed, I canceled my trip.

Stuck at the Montreal home, in a small windowless room, with an air purifier going full blast, I started thinking – just like with retreat, I had made plans, fixed them in my head and my heart, gotten excited and then, bust. Something as small as airborne particles, as viruses and ash, could dictate my life.

Weeks ago, when I made these plans, the idea of a wildfire on the East Coast of Canada, effecting air quality down into the US didn’t even cross my mind –in fact, this is not something that had ever happened before. But here I was, facing conditions not just outside of my control, but outside of my wildest imagination, that had ruined something I had so deeply wanted to do.

I have reflected before that the past is gone, I never really ‘live in the moment’, for me my whole life comes down to living for my future. That isn’t just what I want, what I look forward to, it is a critical part of the story I curate about WHO I AM. Alana atta is deeply bound-up with the story I tell myself about my past and the fantasies I have for my future. The future that I will plan and then manifest, through the force of my will, my effort, my preparation. I will forge my destiny, achieve my goals, fulfill my desires…except when I can’t. Except when the unimaginable, when the microscopic, when the seemingly trivial conditions force a totally different outcome…

The fires continued several days and we get a call from 2 very dear friends: Greg and Ellen’s flight back from their honeymoon in Japan was scheduled for a short layover in Montreal, but with the fires, their connection back to Virginia had been delayed for 3 days. I was delighted when, out of the blue, t they show up at our door to stay with us. Finally, the fires had given me something instead of just taking away…

It was Sunday night, when they showed-up and Greg, a chef, and Eric were already planning-out all our meals we were going to have, all the markets they would go to. And then, Monday morning their flight was rescheduled again for later in the afternoon. Again, I found myself disappointed.

Even through their visit had been a complete and total surprise, even through I hadn’t planned it at all, my mind quickly fixated on them being there for 2 days. Then, when things shifted and changed, it made me sad to loose the imagined future I had made solid and real in my mind. But the irony is, it is the very flux, changeability, that landed them on my front steps in the first place. To then be surprised, upset, that they were ‘taken from me early’, is crazy.

I pretend to be the architect of my life, but in fact, I am just responding, yielding, caving, replanning and rehashing in response to a reality I can’t change. Reality doesn’t adjust to me, I must adjust to reality. Sometimes, that adjustment is a happy one, like when friends turn up at my door, and in those cases, I am quick to claim victory, to unthinkingly add this latest twist to my narrative about my life and who I am. But frequently, I face disappointment, and in those moments, I react, try to recover, try to make the best out of the cards I am delt. I wiggle within the confines reality has dictated. But never do I stop and reflect on what these unexpected deviations from my plan are actually telling me about the nature of the world and who I am.

If I live my life reacting to the world, subject to circumstances, battered about by conditions, then I am not the master of my destiny. And this brings me to a question that really gives me pause: Is there self without self-determination? Or maybe more practically, is it worth being born if I don’t have self-determination? Without self determination, how can I use my experiences, or objects, or skills, or story to prove who I am? How can I expect that I can navigate a world filled with perils in order to find pleasure? Should this not be grounds for disillusionment?

When Eric and I decided to move down to Miami to be closer to my family, he made me promise one thing – we would buy a vacation home, someplace cooler, for the summers. Miami summers can hit 100 degrees most days, they are admittedly brutal.

Just before we left Connecticut, Eric and I took a road trip up to Montreal. We both loved it and decided it was the perfect place to buy a vacation home. I started doing some research, planning out a longer stay for the following summer, looking into neighborhoods, home prices, and the legalities of Americans buying property in Canada.

That is when I learned that Canada was changing their laws: As of the end of the year, there was going to be a multi-year ban on foreigners buying property. If we wanted a condo in Montreal, we had to move fast. We extended our vacation by a few days; after 5 days in Montreal, we were in contract for a condo, set to close before the end of the year, when the ban on foreign property purchases went into effect.

The following spring, we went to check-out the home we had shot gun purchased back in December. For months I had been worried we had made a rash decision. Afterall, backed up against a deadline, we had bought a place in a foreign country we had only ever visited once, for less than a week…

After we had settled into the new place, we were walking around the neighborhood, feeling very pleased with ourselves. We in fact loved the new place, loved the city, our calendar was already booked up with tickets to all sorts of concerts and festivals.

I commented to Eric about how lucky we were that everything had worked out. Eric replied that it wasn’t just luck –we knew awesome when we saw it, we are good judges of places and people, all it took us was one visit and our Spidey-Senses KNEW. We were smart for seizing opportunity.

I wasn’t so sure that I agreed with Eric’s assessment of our cleverness, or astute read on cities…I thought about our move to New York – when we decided to move there, we saw what was good about the relocation, we imagined even more good in the city and in the move, it was the bad parts we ignored. As my miserable life in NY proved, this is a really big problem: Seeing only the good and ignoring the bad till you are living with it, in it, till its just a step outside your front door every single day. Sure, things in Montreal were working out now, but a 50-50 record hardly confirms my decision-making skills.

Fortunately, though, Montreal is a city that we do like, at least our few weeks here have been pleasant enough. Way better than my first few weeks in NYC. I told Eric, Montreal’s bad parts, its downsides like the need for me to study a new language, needing to travel a large distance between homes, needing to hire a house sitter when we are gone in the winter, are within our range of acceptable. Score, win, sukkah,. Right???

When we got home, I thought more about our conversation. I realized this whole thing, Montreal, a city and a condo I like, are in fact yet another proof in my collection of evidence that everything is Dukkha. Afterall, it shows that what I like, what I enjoy, its just something that –at this moment, under these circumstances, for now – has downsides that seem hedged, acceptable, manageable in relation to the upsides. Unlike NY, the life/house/experience in Montreal fit my mind’s box of acceptable, normal.

Everything really is dukkha if even the good parts are just parts where the upsides outweigh the downsides. Everything is really really dukkha if downsides feel completely and totally normal. If I have a threshold I default to accepting, only stressed when the downsides exceed that threshold. And even then, pleasure is so tenuous – I loved San Francisco so much, but a change in the city –more crime, more drugs – and I didn’t love it so much anymore.

I had a dream I was fired from my job. At first, I didn’t quite realize I had been fired, I thought I was just retiring, like it had been my idea all along to go. But when I got to my goodbye party, the comments from colleagues made me suspect that maybe my leaving wasn’t quite solely my idea after all; many folks seemed delighted to see me go.

I asked my boss directly if I been fired and she said yes. She wanted to keep me, but her boss and several other directors thought I did more harm than good at the organization, they insisted I go. At first, I felt like a victim, I demanded my boss tell me why. After all, I had worked hard, long hours, overtime, I had forgone paychecks when the organization was short on cash. In my mind, I was a hero.

But my boss started sharing reasons, examples of my behavior and I began to see that these did reflect my personality traits. I could see how they could translate into folks not wanting me to stay at the organization. As she spoke, I began to see that even though I had my reasons for my behavior, even though I thought I was doing what was best for the organization, my actions did damage. Maybe I wasn’t the hero of the story after all…

In one example, I had not realized other folks were on the phone when I complained to my boss about them. In my mind, I was trying to make sure my boss had “all the information” to make the best decisions with, sill, I can understand how those colleagues I talked about might be rooting for me to be fired. In another story, I had a project that I was being a bulldog to defend, I was so sure it was right for the organization, but in the process I was angering other employees who did not agree. I was stepping on toes trying to force activity in other departments that aligned with my plan. I did not handle my colleagues’ resistance diplomatically. In a final example, I had been part of an interview panel for a new CEO, and I had harsh criticism for all the candidates. In my mind, I was protecting the organization from a bad hire, but fellow panel members though I was being too critical and I was getting in the way of hiring a new, desperately needed, CEO. I will note that, while examples were in the dream, they do in fact reflect a number of actual situations that were pretty close at my job in real life.

The firing showed that even as I took pride in my job, my role, how good I was at it, other people thought otherwise. When I heard their reasons, saw the very same events and behaviors I had used to imagine my awesomeness, from their perspective, I saw I had fooled myself. I had constructed a story in my mind of Alana the martyr employee, willing to do whatever it takes, bulldoze whoever stood in the way, of doing what was best for the organization. But in the end was what I thought was best really best? Is behavior that erodes a team best for an organization?

In my dream, as I would be in real life, I was devastated by being fired. I worried about the financial repercussions. I criticized myself for having grown complacent in my long tenure, allowing my networks, professional contacts, certifications and skills wither. I wondered about ‘WHO I AM’, without a job I had identified myself with and by for so long. I felt deep discomfort at something that had seemed so steady and stable –my job – coming crashing down and ending.

But most of all, I felt deep shame: I thought I had been an awesome employee, that the way I did my job, with such steadfast commitment to my organization, was a point of pride. Now, facing what I suddenly understood as justified firing, I felt small. If being a good employee can prove how great I am, doesn’t seeing I was actually a bad employee prove how terrible I am? Or maybe, the deeper lesson here is that job doesn’t prove who I am at all…

I had arbitrarily chosen the definition of “good employee” – someone who does what is best for the organization, and I had arbitrarily decided what actions are “best”. And then, I started building up myself –an identity of alana a hero employee – using these arbitrarily chosen traits, and behaviors. I looked at every action and interaction for evidence it fell into my rubric of good employee/what is right for the org behaviors, I remembered those and used them to bolster my sense of self. I conveniently forgot or downgraded all the others.

But this doesn’t really make me a thing does it? Randomly chosen ideas, randomly chosen actions to prove the ideas, carefully curated and interpreted set of stories that I tell myself. As much as an ego pump it is to feel like I am being a good employee, and as much of an ego hit it as it is to suddenly feel like I am bad employee, I am the one making up the rubrics. I am the one identifying this them. This is identity in my mind only.

In truth, I had a role – I worked at an organization doing a job. Each day I performed different tasks, I interacted with different people. I impacted the organization and those people in different ways. Each of my actions had different consequences. Some consequences pleased me – like when I was paid or praised or felt good about myself and the work I did. Some consequences displeased me, like when I got reprimanded or, in the end, fired. But this is not an identity. It is a series of discreate moments that I interpreted as good or bad, success or failure, and ultimately a source of some identity.

Now, being dream-fired, I am no longer affiliated with the organization, and I can no longer use it to define myself by. In truth, if I can’t use it at the end, it was never actually a marker of some fixed identity to begin with.

When a friend at the temple reached-out to me to ask if I was going to attend the 2023 retreat, I said yes. Even as I was typing my reply to her, I was already thinking about my preparations, buying the tickets, what to pack, what it would feel like to see all my temple friends again after a Covid-filled-world had kept me away for so long….

And then, I caught Covid. Even as I sat at home, bored in quarantine, I thought about how lucky I was to have caught Covid when I did, with weeks to heal-up before the retreat…

And then, after feeling better, testing negative for 5 days, I rebounded. Even as I lay in bed, feeling crappier than I did with the first round of Covid, I kept thinking I still had 10 days before retreat, it should clear up just in time…

And then, I just kept getting sicker and sicker, still showing a bright red line 10 days into my Covid rebound, I finally gave-up, canceled my plane tickets and told my teachers I couldn’t make it to retreat.

All this got me thinking about impermanence and I realized that I would be well served not to just collect examples of impermanence, but to zoom-out and weight what those examples actually tells me about myself and the nature of the world.

Still feeling Covid-crappy, I was binge watching more Walking Dead shows. In one episode, Carol, who in the show has turned-out to be a bad-ass, machine-gun toting, zombie slayer, had gotten dressed-up in a super preppy outfit, rockin’ a cardigan, acting the part of a sweet soccer mom. I laughed out loud, the outfit and mannerisms seemingly so discordant with the Carol ‘I knew’.

And then I asked myself, “why am I so amused?” It’s because I have a permanent idea of what a badass-zombie-killer should look, act and dress like. In that one scene, and my laugh, I saw so clearly that it is me, my concepts that become fixed. The flaw is with me, not with reality. In the end, why do I think I know what badass zombie killers dress like? Zombies aren’t even real, so how would I know…

With the retreat, I was so sure I would make it. Just like with Carol, my idea was fixed. My plan was fixed. My sense of the future was fixed. But, despite my fixation, this isn’t how the world works; the world flows. It changes based on causes and conditions. When the causes for a particular outcome –like getting to go to retreat – are met then I get to go to retreat, but when they are not, my plans have to change whether I like it or not. This is natural, flux and flow. But I foolishly suffer over what is natural: I cling to my fixed notions of what things are, how they should be, what the future will look like. Laying on the sofa, longing for retreat, I was stuck, suffering, as the world and retreat flowed on.

I started considering a bigger picture, my overarching dreams for my alana life. My fantasies about my relationship, time with Eric, all the plans I build in my mind. The plans for a fun NY life that in the end wasn’t fun at all. The plans to globe trot ruined by covid. The plans to move back to SF ruined by wildfires and my asthma. Plans and the pain that arises when I get stuck on particular dreams, the effort and disappointment from trying so hard to make solid, to make real, to affix these things in reality.

I clump, I cling, like trying to compact balls of sand or silt in my hands. This is how suffering arises from tanha, craving, clinging. It is the balling-up and attempt at affixing what is always in flux. Trying over and over, becoming over and over, just to try and force flux into a single shape, for some small duration of time. Pretending that some small moment where things align into a state I like will somehow make me satisfied, till – duh — it doesn’t.

So many births, and yet I have not learned what it so obvious in front of me: Everything arises and ceases based on conditions that are not in my control. Going on retreat, that was only ever fixed in my mind.

And there is no greater fixation, nothing I attempt to clump and then cling to more tightly than atta. I take belongings and I try and arrange them, hold them, squeeze them. I see things that travel together for some time –like a group of leaves drifting on a river — and I mistake that as a clump, something that will hold together, something I can claim. But its just certain circumstances that allow those leaves to float together for a time. When wind, or currents change, when there is a waterfall that disbands them, they float apart. The idea that these collections of things, traits, people, that I float along with for a time, could be an identity, could be something permanent, this is the ignorance that has me trying to hold the clump together, tightening my grip. But the notion that these are me/mine, that’s just a superimposition.

I am so sure I know what zombie slayers look like. So sure I know what my future holds. So sure I know who and what I am. I laugh, or cry, when, over and over, I am proven wrong.

Years ago, I asked Mae Yo to explain the relationship between dukkha and impermanence. She said, “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.” All these years later and I am only now beginning to understand her answer, in my own terms, everything flows…but me, I suffer because I want to affix.

Story 2) In a class, Mae Neecha told a story from when she was on swim team. She was the best swimmer on the team, so when it was time to vote for a captain she was certain she would be elected. But in the end, the other teammates chose a girl who was more popular, albeit a worse swimmer.

As I considered her story, it was very clear that if being captain were really about her, then there is no way she would not have been elected. It would have been in her control. Something she did would have been able to change the outcome of the vote, or guaranteed that it went her way. In fact, the outcome of the vote wasn’t up to her, it wasn’t dictated by the swim skills she had built. There were causes and conditions –namely the other teammates, the presence of a popular girl, etc, that dictated the outcome.

Over and over we think that our successes –like getting voted a captain, getting promoted at work, getting asked out by the hot guy – prove something about who we are. But if we don’t actually dictate these outcomes, if they arise based on a conglomeration of circumstances beyond our control, do they real prove US? No, they prove a particular state of affairs that arises based on causes and conditions. A state that will shift and change as those causes and conditions change.

Present day alana is going to zoom-out here and simplify this concept a little bit: For every outcome—say a vote – there is a vast number of causes/factors/conditions (which I will simply refer to as ‘reasons’ for the sake of clarity in this discussion) that combine to give rise to the outcome. So many in fact that taking personal pride, or shame, in that outcome, i.e. pretending it is about you, is senseless.

In Mae Neechas’s story, there are each of the voting teammates, who have their own relationships, cliques, views on the qualities and role of a team leader, etc. There is also the characteristics of the competition for captain, who else is running for the role, what are their relationships like? With so many reasons at play, we can’t point to one of those –Neecha—and say this vote proves something definitive about her. All it proves is that the causes and conditions for her being swim captain were not met at that time.

Moreover, each of these reasons is itself conditioned – each teammate has their own past experiences and beliefs that color their relationships, that shape their views on the role of captain. Each competitor for the role has skills, relationships, behaviors that were conditioned by their past environment, opportunities, practice, etc. The truth is, these conditioned reasons extend infinitely into the past, each having been conditioned by countless other past reasons. You can see that the argument for any particular outcome reflecting who or what ‘I’ is getting weaker and weaker…

Ah you say, but what if I am actually the cause of an outcome? Say like a parent is the cause of a child, an artist the cause of a painting, the builder a cause of the house? In other words, what if ‘my’ role in an outcome was so strong that without my involvement the result would not be born? Even still, that cause is conditioned – what is my training that lets me paint? What is my beliefs that make me feel painting something is valuable? And besides, even if we cause something, as soon as it arises that thing has its own karma, it is continually acted upon by forces outside of its cause. As soon as a seed grows into a plant that plant’s existence is shaped by wind and rain and sun. The seed –the cause – doesn’t control it.

This is all what I mean when I say that everything that arises does so based on conditions. Conditions that are based on other conditions long before it. And conditions that will give rise to new conditions to continue the chain of causes yielding effects yielding new causes yielding new effects. There can’t be identity here because identity is fixed and this process is continual flow.

There also can’t be identity here, even momentary identity, or shifting identity, because all outcomes arise based on the reasons that proceed it and immediately take on new shapes and new directions as new reasons move it forward. No one is in control of this. No one is the author of this. And for me, most significantly, there is no self-determination in what is entirely subject to conditions. And it’s very hard to talk about a self without having self-determination. When I think about “who I am” its inextricably linked to the idea that I shape both my identity and my future. Without self-determination, an ‘I’ would just be batted along by the tides of conditionally arising events to which even its reactions are conditioned.

Aside from all of this, there is the question of uniqueness, specialness, that is deeply bound to our sense of identity. I have reflected on my Ubai of snowflakes before: I try to identify as a special little snowflake — the unique crystalline shape that is me and mine alone. But each snowflake just reflects the circumstances (aka the karma) of its arising, not the force of my will, not my self-determination, not any particular meaning or import I superimpose on it. A snowflake’s unique structure is conditional, shaped by the humidity and wind patterns and temperature in which it arises.

I get so caught up in the uniqueness of a particular snowflake shape, that I ignore the basic sameness of all snowflakes which arise when the right combination of temperature and water and pressure combine and melt when the temperature gets too high. But identity requires differentiation, if we were all the same, there would be nothing to mistake as ‘me’, so I fixate on the little differences. I identify with what is conditional, pretending it can prove a me, an I. That it can prove anything at all other then that the circumstances for arising that give rise to a momentary state, some brief duration, before it ceases. It is truly amazing feat of mental gymnastics that I can find a me in any circumstance, better yet in a story of circumstances I have curated from arbitrarily chosen moments, at all…

A note from present day Alana: Back in April 2023, a notion was just beginning to take shape in my mind:

That which is conditional can’t be about me, it can’t be who I am.

At that time, the concept was pretty blurry, and the contemplations, frankly, half baked. But –spoiler alert – over the last few years, this idea has become central to my contemplations on Anatta.

Now, whenever I ask myself the core questions: Why is this situation not me/ about me? What proves this can’t be who I am? How do I know these belongings are not mine? How can I be sure this person does not confirm me? Where can I look in a given situation for proof of anatta? Why don’t I have control? Why is there no meaning in my being a cause/a curator/an arranger of traits/relationships/belongings? The answer always comes back to ‘this is conditional and what is conditional can’t be about me.’

In short, my view of anatta, the core concept I use to understand it, comes back to the idea of conditionality.

Now, this is some deep shit. And, I know its not quite fair, throwing it out there with no context and with no lead-up in the contemplations that got me there. And yet, I don’t know how else to lead into the next 2 blogs below.

The following two blogs then are each simple stories, from teachings I heard from LP Anan and Mae Neecha, on 2 occasions in April 2023. They capture some very early notions of this topic of conditionality and anatta. And my hope is that they will give a little context on the import of this topic, which takes center stage of my practice today. It will be quite hard to separate my very early (2023) understanding to all that has been layered on in more recent considerations. Especially as more recent contemplations provide a clarity I want to share with you readers. So consider these next two blogs a little flash back and a little flash forward…

Story 1) LP Anan was teaching a class that I tuned into. There was some scenario he shared, someone getting super upset at a comment made online. He asked the question, “What is a comment?”, and I started thinking in these terms:

An online comment is something that arises based on a particular arrangement of causes and conditions. It is much like a phone call. A phone call requires the functionality of hardware and software of a phone, the proximity to a tower, the battery life, the characteristics — voice, skillfulness in using technology, etc. — of the caller. If any of these factors change — say proximity to a tower — the quality and characteristics of the call change. Too far from the tower, and the ability of the phone to produce the characteristic of calling is lost all together.

A comment arises based on the particular arrangement of experiences and circumstances that create someone’s point of view and allows them to express it in a certain way, using a certain format. The comment, like the call, is just a manifestation, an arrangement, of factors that create a view/expression.

These characteristics of calls or comments, they are just the natural product of a particular state. A state of a phone that allows calls. A state of experiences and imagination that creates particular views and the comments that ensue.

But states change. The phone runs out of batteries or gets a software update and the details, the characteristics of a call change. A view gets updates based on new information, new imagination, and the comments change. State changes result in characteristic changes. This is evidence there is no identity that can be defined by characteristics arising from states – states are always in flux, not fixed. Characteristics are always in flux, not fixed. The particular arrangements that create states are also changing and not fixed.

You can observe changes in a call to prove change in a phone or use change in phone to prove a change in a call. This works from both directions. Looking at cause will illuminate that there are effects and looking at effects will illuminate that there is a cause.

There is no identity in a state because the state will change and so too will all the characters we assume (samutti) to be the markers/ building blocks of identity. A phone is something that makes calls — till it’s not – and then state changes, and the defining characteristics of a phone’s identity, are over.

For a long time beauty has been a trait I have deeply identified with. Alana is beautiful, alana’s beauty proves other aspects of her identity –namely goodness. And when I look in the mirror and see my beauty fade, I think it is a personal defeat. I feel like my physical form doesn’t correspond to the me I want to be, to the person I imagine I am and that I want to project to the world. I botox, and filler, pluck and diet, all to try and force my body to reflect an identity that entails/embodies/includes the characteristic of beauty.

And yet, beauty is a characteristic of a particular state. It is a physical manifestation of rupa (4es) in a particular, peak, arrangement. And then –as I so clearly see in the mirror, that arrangement shifts, ages, sags, fattens, changes. Rupa is in flux, not fixed. Its shifting is dictated by causes and conditions in rupa. How can I use the product/characteristics of a shifting state to prove who I am? How can I use a state that arises and ceases based on causes and conditions beyond me, my control, my imagined identity, to prove anything about myself?

I have been watching the show The Walking Dead. For those of you who have not seen it, it is a zombie apocalypse show: The premise is simple, if you get bitten by a zombie, you turn into a zombie. The show follows the humans who are still left, as they try to navigate a world with more and more Zombie (and fellow human) perils.

This whole season has followed a main plot point: Sofia, one of the children of the group whose stories we are following, has disappeared. Her mom, the fellow adults in the group, all fear the worst – but still with no body to prove her zombification/death, everyone holds out hope and tries to find her. In the final episode of the season, she zombie-walks out of a barn a townsperson has been imprisoning zombies in. From her state of decay, it is clear she has been dead/zombified a long time, possibly the whole time/season her group has searched for her.

As she zombie-walked out of the barn, it had the sudden thought that hope and fear arises in, and exists in us; these are not in the world, and they are not strictly correlated to the actual facts/circumstances of the world.

In the show whenever something looked ‘promising’ there was hope – when her doll was found her mom took it as a sign she was still alive. When a group member found a hideout, that looked recently inhabited, small enough for a kid, they had hope –they came to believe –the kid who had been hiding there was Sofia. Even a flower growing in the field, associated with a native American myth of a lost and found child, was given meaning that Sofia would be found. There was hope.

Whenever signs seemed to point to not finding the girl, there was despair: When the first 72 hrs passed the policeman in the group assumed the worst because that is the police ‘rule’ of when you start looking for a body not a child. When a zombie seemed to be coming from an area the girl might have gone, the group feared it had eaten the girl and gutted it in search of her remains.

The season is a rollercoaster of emotion –fear, hope, fear, hope, fear, hope – and then the big barn reveal, and the realization that all the fear and all the hope didn’t correspond to reality: In fact, the girl had been dead the whole time. The emotions, the meaning read into all the ‘signs’ the group found, didn’t change the reality, it just drove the rollercoaster of emotions. It became clear to me that the whole emotional rollercoaster, even the moments of hope, is actually dukkha.

Us humans cling to hope, we are led to believe it iso great, it, it is what makes even the shittiest situations bearable. Hope is why we are born. I have often reflected that the past is gone, the present flits by so quickly I can’t even cling to it, what I live for is hope of the future. Hope that the story I imagine up for myself – that sail-into the sunset retirement with Eric, 2 homes, travel galore — is coming my way, making all the moving, his crap jobs, the time apart all ‘worth it’.

But when I zoomed-out in this season’s storyline, I thought again about the story of the drug addict Bubbles (blog here): Hope is like the moment he gets high, that hit of drugs, or of imagination, seems so pleasurable for a second, but it is actually poison. Hope drives the cycle of striving, of enduring, of laboring. Hope is how we are reborn. It is how Eric and I tolerate his terrible/ stressful jobs that keep us constantly moving, how my mom, writhing in pain in the hospital, endured for the ‘cure’ on the other side.

Hope seems so sweet, something so other than hopelessness, loss, fear. But as I watched episode after episode of reading tea leaves—group members finding signs to fuel hope, all while also finding signs that fuel despair, it as clear hope is as bad as fear, it is just the high to fear’s low. There is no way to separate the two, and the whole rollercoaster we all ride through our lives is dukkha. The striving for highs in a world in which we can’t separate them from lows is dukkha. The fact that we need hope at all, the belief that things will be ok, be better, in a world that is constant struggle and danger, proves the dukkha nature to the whole thing.

I realized that just like getting high, hope itself arises from hunger. It is the desire that things will go as you want, the desire to get what you want, to avoid what you fear. It is the craving for a particular future. And we already know, hunger is dukkha. Hope gets such a good rap, but it is really a Hallmark of our desperation.

Because of hope, the characters in the show risk their lives, endure injury and pain, to look for Sophia. Hope drives them forward, the way seeking the next fix drives Bubbles.

A long time ago, LP Nut taught about dhamma practice as ‘killing the hope’. When I watched the show, I saw the wisdom there: When we kill hope we kill the suffering of the rollercoaster. We kill the effort. We kill the disappointment when it is crushed. We kill the hunger for one future, one outcome, above others.

In LP Nuts exercise, he talked about how everyone gets sick sometime. He went around a group of people and asked everyone if they had managed to avoid illness: Of course, everyone, be it the cancer survivor or the diabetic, answered with a list of their ails. His teaching was for me — my hypochondria, my fear of illness, it was actually fed by the hope that I could have a different outcome than sickness. That I was somehow the exception. Ironically, I now see killing the hope, not trying to control my body in order to stave off every disease I think is coming for me, is actually the anecdote of fear. With acceptance of the inevitably of sickness, with understanding that its timing and type align to my karma, there is at least the opportunity for equanimity to arise.

I have been thinking a lot about karma these days, it is in the blog chapter I just finished writing. I have been considering how everything that happens, it couldn’t have been any other way. When there is a result, it is the exact manifestation of the exact causes they were in play to give rise to it. I just think it could have been different. I have incomplete views that leave me shocked by outcomes, which if I really saw all the causes in place wouldn’t be shocking at all.

A long time ago, Mae Yo was talking about the practice of female genital mutilation. Mothers would take their daughters to be circumcised. They would tie their ankles to theirs, to spread their legs apart and then a midwife with rusted razor blades would cut the girls’ clitoris off and sew their labias together. On their wedding night, a new husband would cut the girls open. Girls often got infections. Some died. I struggled to understand how any mother that loved their daughters could do this to them.

I was so revolted. It took years actually for me to even begin contemplating this gruesome custom in any meaningful way. I had thought it was just SO WRONG I wouldn’t get anywhere. But as my practice progressed, and I started thinking about how conditions of this world shape us, our choices, our lives, then I started making some progress…

It dawned on me that, considering the circumstances, what else could mothers do really? In a society where women depend on husbands for sustenance and husbands reject wives who aren’t circumcised, isn’t a mother just helping protect her child? It’s a wiggle, a move to keep the girls as safe as they can be within the constraints provided by their culture. By the constraints faced in their actual lives. In the end, this only ‘freedom’ this world affords us.
Because I don’t understand karma, I am indignant when mothers circumcise their children. When seemingly nice John Wicks get beaten, when sick people expose others –me – to their illnesses. When illness threatens me and the body I love, I worry about, I fear falling into (conditioned) states that kill my hopes for a long, happy, healthy life: That pie-in-the-sky, kinda amorphic 2-home-travel-filled-retirment-happily-eever-after-with-Eric.

But just like with my mom, when she came to visit after lockdowns, promising to be super covid cautious and then dancing with a germy toddler…Like all the antimasker, the less than 6-feet gatherers, the antivaxxers…we all have our own reasons, out own education, our own beliefs, our own health profiles and risk profiles and backgrounds and politics and new sources and experiences. There are always reasons that forged the results. But me, I don’t see all the reasons, I ego-centrically believe every reason for everyone and everything is the same as it is for me, and so I struggle to accept things as they are. I have the cray cray belief that not only should things be different, the can be different.

And so, hope is born. Hope I will be different, I can avoid sickness. Sofia will be different, she isn’t subject to death, at least not yet, not when none of the adults in her group could see any reason her time might be up. And with each ‘sign’ I can auger from the tea lives, like finding some flower from Native American mythology, hope is nourished, it swells and grows, independent of the reality of circumstances.

My wrong views, my belief that things can be different then they are, can be in accord with my rules, can be as I hope them to be, can at least be brought to pass with the strength of my supreme effort and willpower, block my acceptance of reality. And so, in ignorance, I fight, fight, work, stress, endure. I normalize dukkha.

Eric and I stayed in a hotel that, despite a high price point, and a luxury brand, was truly a dump. Throughout my stay, I reflected on the business practices that I observed that clearly led to such crappy customer service, crappy maintenance, crappy follow-through on promises made. The cause and effect was so clear. I didn’t particularly enjoy the stay, but when I considered the property and the guest experience as a whole, I didn’t really take it personally, this is how a company with this particular set of practices treats all customers.

But when I wrote an honest review of my terrible stay, so others could steer clear, I was surprised when the company wrote a personal reply back that clearly missed the point and reflected, once again, the terrible communication and customer service that had led to such a bad stay in the first place. In truth, I wasn’t just surprised, I was indignant.

As I sat and fumed at, feeling unheard and disrespected by this company, I got to thinking… why should I have expected anything different? Why was I so much angrier, now, weeks after the stay, when the reply I got to my review was totally consistent with every other aspect of my experience with the company?

I realized that before, I had more or less made abstract observations of the business. But when I got the reply, it felt personal, it was directed to me, it felt like it was about me…

On some level, I think I am exceptional. That is a known blind spot for me. Alana the special snowflake — I have studied and observed it over and over. Now, in this context, it is a barrier to my seeing the complete picture. The natural effects that arise from the causes this business put in place in this situation.

Secondly, I believe things should operate according to my standards. I believe that things will behave according to my expectations, my past experiences with this very hotel brand. But the truth is, everything is exactly as it should be, results arising in accord with the reasons that put them in place.

Not understanding karma is just one more, albeit exceptionally deep, wrong view, because it is a failure to see that everything is exactly as it should be. Anytime I feel insulted, indignant that shit isn’t how it should be, I have a wrong view that things could be any other way. Even just shock, mild surprise, arise from this common wrong, incomplete view, that things will happen according to my expectations, my limited experience. It’s a hope that shit in this world can ever be other than what it actually is. Just because I don’t see all the causes and conditions that give rise to something, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist, or they could yield a different outcome. Ego is blinding me.

A while back, I had seen the first movie in the John Wick series. It opens with a guy, living a quiet suburban life, mourning the loss of his wife, clinging to hope and comfort in a new puppy she had bought for him before she died. The set-up is so tender. The guy seems so sweet. So when thugs come to his house and beat him down, kill his puppy, it felt so unfair. A random act of violence a guy like this doesn’t deserve. Fast forward a few minutes into the movie and we learn Mr. Gentle is a retired hitman…

The story and set-up has really stuck with me over the years. I was so sure someone didn’t deserve bad stuff they got, but I made that judgment before I had all the facts. Once I knew he was a hitman, his fate didn’t feel so unfair. But this is a core problem for me – I believe karma has to follow my beliefs, shaped by my own ignorance and lack of seeing the whole picture, but the world, it doesn’t revolve around me. Karma works just fine whether or not I approve, my terms are not relevant at all.

If shit happens, it should. If someone gets something, they deserve it. There is only dukkha and disappointment for me in expecting anything else. In expecting my preferences to ‘be heard’.

I got lip fillers. Afterwards, I bruised and got weird little bumps I worried would take months to go away. 

I get the fillers to control my body, to prove that I can force it into a shape I find aesthetically appealing. But what does it say that, in the act of getting these fillers, I actually trigger the opposite effect than the one I desire? Thanks to the fillers, now I end up with bruises that are outside of my control, embarrassing ugly little bumps that surely do not reflect how I want my body to look. alana the ugly duck(ling) lips… ughhhh… 

Of course the bruises are expected to fade, the bumps, fingers crossed, go away; these are a short-term side effect I trade-off for the fuller lip look, a little dukkha hump I accept to get me to what I imagine will be the sukkha of a perfect pout. A pout that, ironically, is also temporary (6 to 9 months says the dermatologist), just a little longer lasting than the side effects. I hope. 

For every cosmetic procedure, I dismiss the side effects. I ignore, I normalize, I just put on a little cover-up and move on. But why ignore this aspect of cosmetic procedures that clearly tells me something: Even in the act of trying to force, mould, control, the signs of the futility of this effort are manifest. As soon as the needle slides into my lips, and the bluish bumps start to form, the truth I don’t control the lips is on full display.

The truth that these lips, that I claim and identify with, are 4e lips that behave like every other 4e lip is abundantly clear. 

The fact that, these 4e lips, which I have attached so much meaning to, fell into states I find ugly/ don’t feel represent me, to begin with prove this body doesn’t reflect me, or who I am. All I can do is react to the lips, to the body, to the world -- fillers and patches – all of which belie the true ‘problem’ that the world won’t abide by my imagination of what it is or what it should be. All I can do is wiggle within the confines I am delt. Only a fool can pretend this is mastery.

Lips are just 4 e objects, they will become plumper when a gel is injected, they will also bruise when pierced with a needle. This is a normal way that 4e lips respond to 4e stimulus. I use a particular look, a 4e arrangement to define myself, reflect myself, prove something about my mastery of my body, my life, this world. But does a 4e object doing what any 4e object does --with aspects I find appealing and aspects I find unappealing --really prove or say anything about me? How can it? 

It doesn’t prove I am special --this is how any 4e lip responds. This doesn't prove my control, duh, bruises. It doesn't prove anything about my nature as master of a body-look. It only proves the nature of the 4e lips in reaction to 4e gel and a 4e needle. Just because I find the short-term results displeasing, the long-term results pleasing, does that say anything about me other than my arbitrary beliefs --3s and 4s --that give rise to certain forms registering as pleasurable? Where is the identity in that? What does it prove other than my preferences and pleasures and the fact that sometimes 4 e objects in this world pass through states that align with those preferences and pleasures. Other times --more frequent times -- they pass through states I find displeasurable.

Which brings me to the fact that if I zoom outwards it is clear that the reason I am in this situation in the first place of needing to fill my aging, wrinkling, wizen lips, is that this body --against my will, my preferences, my self-imagination -- is shifting into arrangements I find displeasurable. I feel such a sense of accomplishment, victory, when I look in the mirror and I see a thin alana, a pretty alana, a full-lipped alana. I weigh the results of my efforts to diet and primp and inject, and I am proud. But needing to get fillers should prove my defeat, not victory; it is the result of my inability to stop the ravishes of age and time, my inability to keep this form I claim into shifting into unpleasant states in the first place. 

Plus, even if I can imagine this as a victory, it is a pyrrhic one at best --like a tent continually collapsing in the wind -- all I need to do is wait and the lips deflate again. 

Why do I want these plump lips in the first place? It is my arbitrary notion of what is beautiful. Why do I want to be beautiful? It is how I see myself, an arbitrarily chosen 'essential' trait that reflects the Alana I imagine myself to be. 

All of us try to build identity by trying to shape the world (trying is the operative word in this sentence): A musician shapes sounds, a writer stories, a politician their civic body, a parent their children, etc . A beautiful body represents me, it is the physical manifestation of my abstract sense of identity. It is one of the things alana sees as critical to shape.  And if I can’t even shape this one, most intimate object, what does that prove about me? That’s the dumb question I ask myself, staring in the mirror at sunken lips, a sagging face, feeling low and defeated. That’s the question that keeps me trying to “solve” the problem of fading beauty, to primp and lip plump. 

The smart questions however are these: Is there any hope I can shape the world, that it will ultimately bow to my efforts? 

Why should I place so much value in the small, temporary, influence I have – sure someone can smack at the waves on a beach with a stick, sure some of them will break a few seconds short of the shore, but is this really making any meaningful impact on the ocean? 

Why should I value the shapes I make? Does this body, or any shape, really say anything about me? Do 4e objects, marching through various states/shapes, brought about by shifting arrangements of the elements, actually reflect any meaning at all? Better yet the meaning ‘alana’? Is there identity in conditioned physical clumps? 

And what can I glean from the fact that the shapes I choose to value, and the meaning I assign them, are totally arbitrary? There was an experiment where kids were told those with brown eyes were smart and blue eyes dumb, then the kids started believing it, brown eyed kids bullied blue eyed peers, blue eyed kids developed inferiority complexes. The trait of eye color is real, but the trait was arbitrarily given some meaning it clearly doesn’t have. And yet, the children acted-out based on the belief alone. Am I similarly deluded by the meaning I have assigned arbitrary traits/ arrangements of rupa?

And of course, what’s the cost of my inevitable failure to shape the world, to shape even just a single body in it? Am I really going to find sukkha somewhere in my endless struggle to create and maintain arbitrarily chosen arrangements, just for them to come crashing down and me needing to start anew. Work to build, to tend, sorry to lose, work to build again. Dukkha. 

Anyway, what is beauty-what is any shape we make? It is just a particular state, an arrangement, that 4e objects (and nama too) pass through for a time. Think of a flower -- beauty is just the peak of the flower arrangement, plus some number of clicks of the arrangements before and after peak state. A green bud, not beautiful. A rotting wrinkled petal, a wizen stalk, not beautiful. If beauty is just a state can it bestow an identity? Worse – If I choose an alana body to identify with, to claim as representative of me, how royally fucked am I that I don’t even want to identify with all of its states? Only the peak ones will do…

And so, I ice my lips. I hope the swelling goes down, the lumps disappear. For the latest slug of pain, I hopefully get 6 to 9 months of worrying about my next biggest problem, some other aspect of this body’s shape –this life’s shape -- that blatantly defies my will. Like a scarlet letter testifying to me, to the world, of my failures to keep this aging, decaying lump of flesh in line.

A few days after I began the antibiotics for strep, my angry, red, raw throat began to subside. Now it was my vagina’s turn. Ugghhh, the familiar burning, itching, angry pain of an antibiotic triggered yeast infection was upon me. As I waddled over to the Walgreens to get myself some Monistat, I started thinking…

Even when I can take actions to seemingly control this body, i.e. take antibiotics to cure strep, there are consequences, in this case a yeast infection. So…is that control?

I take so much pride in the moments I can make this body do, or look, as I see fit. How much joy did I take in the shapes I could make in yoga? Oh how my pride swelled looking at my beautiful self in the mirror on my wedding day. And boy-oh-boy is there sorrow, despair, embarrassment and disappointment when the wrinkles and sagging defy my botox and filler regime. Would I take such joy, or suffer such embarrassment, if I actually understood this body wasn’t in my control?

Only an idiot tethers their sense of pride to an object they can’t actually control. There is no way to build identity in something that is, for all intensive purposes, random*; wayward; that we ought to have no belief can readily show our will. It’s nonsensical. Over and over I gather evidence I don’t control this body. First strep, now yeast infection. Why don’t I learn?

As I consider this question of not learning now, in Aug. 2025, I see more clearly that I mistake influence, the ability to be a condition –even sometimes a cause – as an affirmation of self. Sure, I don’t control – I covered that topic years ago, but OBVIOUSLY, LOOK AT REALITY, I INFLUENCE. I can take antibiotics and clear an infection. Shoot shit in my face and combat wrinkles and sagging. I can work out and practice yoga everyday and the progress, the increase of strength and flexibility, is undeniable. Can’t I take pride in that? Isn’t that WHO I AM –the woman who wiggles within constraints, who overcomes obstacles, who can’t p’wn the world, but maybe can briefly hold back the ocean of entropy in my little corner of the forest?

I allow having these effects on objects to act as evidence to feed the delusion of mine-ness. But, let’s look closer about the reality this yeast infection actually illustrates: The infection is evidence that even as I am a condition effectuating an outcome I want from my body, i.e. eradication of bacteria, I still don’t control. Even as I influence, I am still subject to the nature of bodies, i.e. killing bacteria in bodies, while a boon for strep healing, leads to overgrowth of fungus and the curse of a yeast infection.

No matter what stories I tell myself about the “deep meaning” of influence on these objects has, the reality is ultimately lack of control. No matter what delusions of grandeur I allow being a cause of these objects, or the direction they take, to stir in me, reality IS cause and effect, everything is always the product of cause and effect, the seeding of further causes for further effects. This is not special, this is not identity, this is just the mundane fabric of this world. This is karma. It is meaningless.

“NOTHING BELONGS TO US EVERYTHING IS MEANINGLESS.” THIS IS HOW IT IS MEANINGLESS.

Back in the early days of contemplating self and self belonging, I stumbled upon a bit of language, a parallel I really liked: For every object I had, I claimed, there was always fine print. There were limits and liabilities. I can use this body –but it is limited by breakability, by being subject to infection. I can take antibiotics, but the script comes with liabilities, a yeast infection. Limits and liabilities are part of a contract that dictate the use of an item. I have a rental car, I can use it within the limits and liabilities the company sets-out. I have an apartment, I can use it with the limits and liabilities my lease sets out. If every single object has these fine print limits and liabilities, then it really is like LP Thoon says: The objects are here for use, I borrow them. This is not ownership, this is a rental bound by time, bound by rules.

And of all the rules (i.e. common conditions)these objects are bound to, the most relevant here is dukkha. An angry red throat, followed by an angry red vagina, this is dukkha. The stress of illness. The stress of spreading illness. The stress that illness interferes with my life, my plans. The stress that this illness portends the next, that it proves the vulnerability of this body. Dukkha, dukkha, dukka.

I run around claiming objects I don’t control, that cause me stress, that disappoint me, just for the ‘feel-good-hit’ that I get from influence. From deluding myself that influence is meaningful, that because I can be a condition or a cause, that condition-setting/causality can prove who I am, that it allows me to be, to become. This is a fool’s trade Alana: What is conditional is not self, it is not who I am. And yet I somehow think that BEING a condition can prove who I am? Being a condition is after all, in and of itself conditional. For this flimsiness I accept, invite, wallow in life-after-life of dukkha.

LOOK AT REALITY: I can be a condition, or a cause, to the extent that karma – other and past conditions and causes allow. This is the limitation in use. This is my ability to use antibiotics to treat if I can access them, if the bacteria isn’t resistant. This is my ability to heal my body, if its elements are in an arrangement where the particular antibiotics I have will return it to an arrangement that is strep infection free. And even if I am a condition or cause of getting the strep healed, I face liabilities of the cause I set to heal the body – antibiotics can trigger yeast infections. Just as there is no ownership, there is no owner either.

*I say “for all intensive purposes random” because, of course, nothing is random, everything arises based on causes. Karma is real. But from my deluded perspective, the direction objects take SEEMS random in that they don’t adhere to my desires or expectations. They don’t affirm my control

I kicked off the new year of 2023 with a bad case of strep. Given the ‘tripledemic’, the myriad of flu-covid-strep plague of diseases the news says is going around, it really shouldn’t be a huge the surprise that I got sick. The problem is, it was….

A few days into the new year my throat started to really hurt. Naturally, I took a PCR test, it was negative. Since I didn’t have any other respiratory disease symptoms –no runny nose, aches, or fever — I decided it must be acid reflux from a particularly indulgent New Year’s meal. To be fair, I do get acid reflux on occasion, it has in the past involved a sore throat. But even as my symptoms grew worse, and I started getting tell-tale signs of infection (ie. a swollen throat, raised lymph nodes, fatigue), I continued to go about my day-to-day, taking Tums and waiting for the effects of a meal, now well in the rear-view mirror, to subside.

Finally, when I woke-up feeling like I had been swallowing glass, I decided it could be something other than reflux. I took another covid test, negative. Flummoxed how it was possible that I could feel so sick and not have Covid, I decided to seek out a strep test. The thing is, for no particular reason, I was super ‘sure’ it wasn’t strep; still I wanted to be a ‘responsible’ adult, get treatment quickly if it was bacterial so it didn’t cause further complications, and stop exposing others in the case I had a contagious disease. Put another way, I got tested to BE something –a good alana, a responsible adult — not to find out if I had strep, which ‘clearly’ I didn’t have.

Even as I awaited my results, I was making my evening plans, so sure nothing would need to be put on hold. When I got my results ( positive obviously) my first thought –despite my burning throat — was to check the false positive rates of the test. In the face of clear evidence, both symptomatic and empirical, my mind wouldn’t readily accept the truth. I was so committed to my own beliefs, to my alternative theory of reflux, I couldn’t quickly pivot and face a reality different than what I assumed.

Eventually, I yielded, I called my doctor and got a prescription for antibiotics. Even on my way to the pharmacy I had called my mom explaining how ‘good’ I felt, how normal everything was, save for the sore throat.

Within a day, on the antibiotics, I started feeling better. In fact, I suddenly realized it hadn’t ‘just’ been the extremely painful throat, I had been fatigued, lethargic –twice I had nearly fallen asleep in public places — but my denial of my disease, of a possibility that I had anything other than reflux, was so strong I was able to fool myself about symptoms I was actually, physically, experiencing.

I realized, all of this is a as a powerful analogy for all my births and becoming — My power of self deception is so damn strong, I can block out pain, suffering, dukka, in the service of preserving my view of myself, the world, and what is actually going on. The situation is actually pretty scary, it is such a red flag to the extent of my own self-delusion.

But it also brings up a big question –why? Why was I so attached to 1 version of reality over another, what was my view/beliefs that blocked my ability to assess evidence in a balanced way, to pivot when it made sense to do so?

Years ago, I left this journal entry standing with this open question. Now (July 2025) when I think on it again, I think I have an answer. In short, I have an over-inflated ego, I am so sure the world will act in accordance with my views and expectations, I can’t even entertain another possibility, even faced with overwhelming evidence.
The issue isn’t just about clinging to the identity of a healthy alana, or being in denial that I am subject to sickness, after all, I tested for covid several times. Back in early 2023, when I wrote this blog, this was a sticking point for me that I couldn’t see past. Now though, I realize I had resolved myself to covid, I was willing to “accept it” as a reality. Strep however, that was something different. For whatever reason I had arbitrarily decided what kind of sick I can get, completely denying other possibilities. Completely denying that the world doesn’t give a damn about what illnesses I can accept, what circumstances I believe myself to be subject to, or not.

Even as I acknowledge my powerlessness in this world to avoid sickness, I still am blind to the fact that any sickness, at anytime, can fell me. Sickness, in my mind, happens on my terms. Of course, this is not the truth. When the causes and conditions for a particular sickness, whatever it is, are met I will be subject to just that sickness. The surprise I felt, this is a failure to see impermanence of the world–that I am subject to any illness anytime. It is a failure to see the permanence of my views – that what results, in this case an illness, that I am subject to are not conditioned by my beliefs, my preferences, my expectations of outcomes.

I know this world is perilous, on some level, we all know this. But part of my hope, the way I justify accepting the risks of birth in a perilous world, the way I offer myself false comfort that ‘I got this’ I can ekk out safety and comfort here, is with the delusion that I can know what is coming, I can prepare. I prepared for covid, but not for strep. I can accept illness –I have learned to self-talk my way into accepting this as normal, but unexpected illness, proof that I can’t really prepare, that I can’t ‘beat the house’ of this world, that is too much for me to bear. Better to deny…

Better to deny my physical pain. Better to suffer longer than necessary and subject the people around me to the suffering of a communicable disease. All better then facing a very dark truth: I am not the architect of my fate, there is no amount of planning or preparation that is going to save me. I am, like everyone else, a subject of cause and effect. All I can do in this world is wiggle, react to the cards I am delt. And those reactions are even more limited by my wrong views, by my denial that I am subject to this world, not –not even in a little and limited way — a master of it. All I did was compound the dukkha of illness with the dukkha of extra pain, delayed treatment, and karma of getting others sick while I tried to fight reality with nothing but my mind.

Recently, I had been re-watching the show The Wire. In it, there is a character Bubbles who is a drug addict. Bubbles suffers for his addiction, he lives in poverty, he is estranged from his family, he faces danger and violence, a part of him wants to quit, but over and over, the drugs draw him back in.

In the show, there is a scene where Bubbles and his friend are getting high. A smile of intense pleasure crosses his face as the drug needle slides into his arm. Sure, he experiences that as pleasure, but when you look at the whole context, it is so clear that it is nothing but dukkha. The malcontent of his life that led to wanting drugs in the first place, the daily craving to get them, the striving and scheming and scamming to afford them. The toll it takes on his body, on his life and relationships…even he wants out.

And still, that moment seems like such pleasure. It is moments like that that lead all of us to believe there is pleasure, but no matter how we feel, no matter how we perceive those moments, the case of Bubbles and the high make it so clear it’s just dukkha that we misunderstand to be delight.

It wasn’t terribly long ago that I had done my big write-up on Everything is Suffering. As I was watching this scene in The Wire, I realized that I had actually missed this really big point about suffering: The moments that I think of as delight are actually dukkha too; it’s just my delusional thinking –myopic blindness that comes from being too zoomed into a single moment, when the needle slides into my vein – that allow me to see what is actually dukkha as sukkah.

A little later, I had finished a particularly hard workout and noted that after doing something so difficult, I felt proud, accomplished. I felt delight. The truth is, I do hard shit all the time, extreme fitness, fasting, throwing big events for work. Neither the effort, nor the result is particularly delightful, and yet I take delight in completing these tasks. Like Bubbles, I hone-in on a particular moment and think sukkah instead of looking at the struggle so apparent in the bigger picture.

The truth is though that I train myself, I trick myself into this. This is a technique I use to convince myself to do what is hard in the first place. But why…

It dawned on me that I foster this delusion, that doing hard things, things that are actually dukkha, is sukka because I believe that doing hard shit is virtuous. So by doing hard things, I am virtuous. I use these acts to prove myself, to build identity, and as a result, I see them as worth it. I convince myself that doing these things is in some way delightful in order to convince myself to do these hard things. Never mind that doing hard shit to prove something about myself only proves my ignorance. It proves my myopic delusion.

Long ago at KPY I found a perfect bench, in the perfect balance of sun and shade, at the perfect time of the day to yield a perfect temperature. I sat there feeling delight. But it wasn’t long before the sun shifted in the sky and I found myself having to move the bench, or put on/take off a jacket. I considered that if I sat there long enough, it would grow too hot, no shade to be had at high noon and if I sat even longer it would grow too cold, no sun to warm me at night.

After having such a perfect moment, I found myself working/striving/chasing to extend that moment, and as soon as I got too hot or too cold, I was laboring, wiggling to get back to that perfect temperature state again. Now I had a problem to solve: I was subject to less than perfectly comfortable states as soon as circumstances shifted. I needed to figure out the effort, resources, patients, that would allow me to win back such a comfortable moment again. In that brief moment of perfection hope was born. Turns out, hope is a hell of a burden…

Thinking back on this little example now I see how it really catches this angle of everything being dukkha, even the things I find pleasure in and convince myself are sukkah. The comfortable moments in my life, they have consequences. In this case, me striving, working to achieve it again, acting as the seed of my struggles and efforts. In Bubble’s case, Striving, working to achieve each high again, no matter the costs, the fall-out that comes from being a drug addict. For both of us, these brief moments of comfort would have us endure even more hours of stress and pain. It’s a long and cold night I would need to wait on that bench before the sun came-up to warm me again.

Zoom-out and my moment of pleasure, its dukkha. Dukkha that I am in a body that is comfortable only in such a narrow temperature band. Dukkha that once I experience a taste of delight I must strive to keep it and ultimately find it again. Dukkha to lose the paltry moments of pleasure sitting out in the elements can bring. Dukkha needing to wait out even the possibility of getting that moment again. Only myopathy would have me mistake a warm sunny moment on the bench as delight. Only delusion would have me believe that what arises from dukkha, and leads to even more dukkha, could possibly be sukkah.

Recently, I finalized my move down to Florida. In Connecticut, there are still some people who choose to be Covid cautions and when I go to the grocery, or the salon, or the theatre, I am not the only person there wearing a mask. Florida is different, no one else seems to mask here and when I go out I feel super self-conscious. It doesn’t help that I can see the stares, have heard the murmurs, have actually been directly confronted by anti-maskers demanding I answer them, complete strangers, for my choice.

Last week, I had an appointment to get my hair cut at a fancy salon in Miami. I dug a good-looking outfit out of my closet, and I put on fancy jewelry as well. I wanted to look nice, like I fit-in, like I belonged. I wanted to use my clothes to define myself, to express the me I want to be; I wanted the clothes to be an offset to my mask.

The mask after all isn’t who I am, it doesn’t speak for me or announce my values, when I am accosted in the streets or in stores about my mask, my first thought is “you don’t know me, my life, my health, who I am trying to protect. This mask isn’t a political statement, I don’t want to wear it, it’s just what I need to do to be safe”. The mask is a practically, nothing more. It is meaningless…

A few days later, I got to thinking about LP Thoon’s definition of annata: “These things don’t belong to you, they are meaningless.” I was thinking of examples in my day-to-day to prove it and the mask/outfit came to mind.

What is a mask? It is a piece of cloth I wear over my face to protect this body. I completely reject the idea that it reflects me, that it has some deep meaning, in fact I feel wounded when others, who presumably read meaning into it, accost me. Aren’t clothes — the fancy outfit I picked for the salon, the same? Clothes are just pieces of cloth I wear over my body to protect it from elements, from insects, from the consequences of nudity in our society. I am so frustrated with the meaning folks around me read into my mask, but I read meaning into my clothes. How do I not see these too are meaningless like the mask?

The cloth of a mask, the cloth of my favorite outfits, they are the same in both form and function. How can I understand one to be meaningless, a practicality I use, and not see the same is true for the other?

A long time ago, I was talking to Mae Nee about rupa and I used my favorite yellow purse as an example: I loved it so much because I thought it made me look cool, I thought it made other people look at me and think I was cool. Every time I got a compliment on it, I took it as affirmation that the purse had the desired effect. In my mind, the function of my purse was to make me look cool.

But Mae Neecha asked me if it worked all the time? Later I reflected and realized it worked only some of the time, and the only thing that something that works some of the time proves is it doesn’t work all the time. If there were actually meaning in the purse, in the mask, in the clothes, that meaning would be plain and true, for all to see, all of the time. But this is not the case.

If I insist cloth in one circumstance has some meaning, but in a different circumstance it has none, all it proves is some of the time, to some people. All of the time, cloth, whether on my face or on my body, holds no innate meaning at all. Its just something I use. And one of the ways I use it is to demarcate meaning, to define myself with –or against. And just like I can use it, so too can others. I call my cloths mine, think they can say something about me, but the very fact that everyone is pouring their own meaning into the same object proves this is not what these objects do, not the meaning they have at all.

Recently, I had an old friend reach-out to me, she emailed –knowing I am a practitioner– looking for ‘Buddhisty advice’ on her troubled marriage. I did my best to help her in accordance with the dharma. And in my explaining it to her, in recounting a number of my own old ah-ha moments, I was able to see a few points so much more clearly. Here I will recount a bit of what I wrote her, and then my re-reflections and deeper understandings of the stories I shared:

In my response to my friend, I also emphasized LP Thoon’s teaching on yielding, and re-told a story Mae Yo had offered me:

“The wife came to the wat distressed about her relationship, she and her husband were always fighting, divorce seemed near. Mae Yo told the woman to go home and, for a week, say absolutely nothing to her husband when he spoke to her except คะ (ká); that’s it, no reply, no fight, no self defense, just a super polite yes. Apparently the marriage was saved.

For the longest time, I didn’t really understand that story, or how just a polite yes to every comment or question could have such an impact; nowadays I am starting to see how much our egos, our need to self defend, our inability to yield, challenges our relationships. Obviously, again, I don’t know the particulars for you guys, but I do know the power of yielding can go a long way in our relationships”

Having retold this story to my friend, I understand it so much more deeply now; it is a permanent view that someone else SHOULD act as I think is best, that the world follows my terms, and it is also a misunderstanding that when it does follow my terms it turns out for the best. This wrong view is why yielding is so hard, and the correction of this view makes it so much more natural a response to conflict or differences of view.

I thought about my relationship with mom, the turning point at that concert where I saw there is no reason to expect mom should follow my terms for appropriate Covid precautions (see this blog). Everyone has their own levels of precautions and comfort, I know that, I grudgingly accept it. But I saw it is because she is mine -my mom– that I think she will/should be abiding by my terms.

I think about a story of a woman at KPY that started pruning trees to her view of perfection with a chain saw. How ultimately, she stopped when she looked up and realized there was no way she could prune the whole forest. That story always touched me. Now I see we all understand the whole world can’t bow to us or operate on our terms. That is why we minefy– we seek out some small corner of the forest and try to control that, we seek out a few belongings, a few loved ones, a few hobbies and roles to identify with/by – just a few trees that can affirm me, can be asked to/coaxed into operating on my terms. We get so myopic, it’s the only way we can delude ourselves as to our own impotence. Why not see the truth: If I have to eke out a few trees, a little plot of forest to call my own, to be my stomping ground for proving myself, I have already lost. The very act of carving out ‘mine’, my little sphere of influence, is a concession to the truth that the world doesn’t follow my bidding or act on my terms.

But, instead of just admitting that truth, that the very act of a carve out was an admission of my failure, I get so sad and angry when the trees over here in my plot act exactly like the rest of the trees in the forest. They also fail to do my bidding or act on my terms. I look to what is mine to affirm me, but what I call mine and what I consider other are all exactly the same. I know other won’t affirm me, so why expect it of “mine” when what I call mine is the same in both form and function as other? Why get so stressed when my face sags, my garden gets overgrown, my body exhibits symptoms that portend disease? It doesn’t bother me when these things are happening to you/yours after all.

I was writing a Dhamma blog about trees. How in one autumn I had been so excited for the leaves to change I had maligned the evergreens and still greens for holding up the show. Then after everything had gone brown I was so happy to still have the evergreens to add color to my landscape. It was so clear from the example these trees don’t follow my terms, they act according to their nature and that nature is not to bring me enjoyment or satisfaction. And yet I constantly look for that in rupa objects when that is not their nature or job to do.

In the original contemplation I had been comparing the stress of decorating of the Redding house ( which ironically I didn’t even keep) — the arranging of rupa to create some little micro environment of comfort when the whole fucking world — the forest outside my patch — was a deeply uncomfortable cesspool of Covid disease and risk. Somehow though I realized I wasn’t really convinced of the parallel — with trees changing color, I really have no hand in their change, but a home, I can arrange and decorate. But I thought on it more, what if I could use some fertilizer, hell a magic wand, to change the rate of trees doing their autumn thing. Even still, in the end the ones with a nature to be green would be green and the ones that go brown would go brown.

Long ago Mae Yo had talked about the imagination process that created refrigeration, the ability to see there is duration of a particular form and there are interventions that can effect duration. Still though, in the end, food we put in the fridge spoils. And shit — from the very beginning, the refrigerator was the solution to a problem, food spoils.

We take so much pride in the in between spaces — the duration a grape goes unspoiled if we fridge it, the time we could fix the broken fridge, the temporary arrangement of a room that suits my tastes — I let these things affirm me, build my sense of ego and accomplishment. But, it’s just like looking only at a single patch of forest — it misses the bigger truth plain to see, the world doesn’t follow my rules it’s not about me. Impermanence reigns supreme and the ego boost I get from intervening in duration, or ‘temporarily solving’ problems that arise from the nature of this world –its dukka and impermanence– is delusional.

From the start the world shows what it is: Why do I feel so happy at a new dress? With the new dress, I imagine I –at least temporarily – solved a problem: The need for clothing to protect a fragile body. The need for something new because what I had before was worn, or my body got fat and it didn’t fit, or style changed I must be a slave to craving what is new and fashionable to maintain my identity as a fashionista. The need to have a body that is beautiful, represents me, takes a shape that is in alignment with how I see myself and want to be seen.

If it is a struggle to maintain the body-look I desire from the start, a struggle to protect myself from the elements, a struggle to preserve the fabric of a beloved skirt, to preserve a body that fits into that dress, to keep up with ever-changing-fashions, then the truth of the world is struggle, not my self-imagined victory at the moment I bring home a new dress home.

If it is like food in the fridge and it goes to decay. Then the world is showing me it’s annica.

Whether or not I have a fridge, or a dress, or a body that fits into a dress/looks a certain way is entirely dependent on conditions: Do I have electricity to run a fridge or is the power out? Did my cat pee on the dress and ruin it? Did famine cause body to go thin or endocrine disruption cause fatness? If something arises based on conditions beyond my control, it endures based on conditions beyond my control and ends when conditions for cessation are met independent of my action/wish/desire then it proves that everything in the world is conditional (put another way, it is subject to karma). What is conditional is not about me, it can’t prove self; the world is showing me anatta.

If every tree, both insider and outside the patch of forest I claimed, acts the same then it proves the world is always acting according to it’s nature, in all places, impervious to my terms and claims.

Just zoom out and it becomes so clear there is nothing here to confirm me. I am settling for identity built in the hot fucking second between solving a problem that arises from the nature of this world and the cessation of the solution, according to the nature of the world, that I ignorantly take such pride in.

There is just arising and ceasing, the only question is duration. If I am locked into finding identity in duration, I am screwed before I start because identity requires staying power and I can only, at best, influence duration. And even then, that influence is predicated on circumstance, conditions, constraints set in place by rupa, by the common conditions, by society, by my karma. Is there really anything for me to claim here? Anything that proves me, my self-determination, my story, when even the imaginary identity I craft is shaped by wiggling within all these constraints?

Now I understand why LP Thoon says we are deceived by duration: Its just a state, like a bubble of anatta, held long enough for us to name and claim. That we can influence it, sometimes and for a short while, are the seeds of hope, of delusion, that this world will obey us. That this world – with just brief moments of sustained states –can identify us. That the state itself is our identity.

If I were being intellectually honest, I should be thanking the gods for all the problems I see in this world, no matter the suffering they cause me, because to feed the delusion of atta I require an ‘enemy’, impermanence, to slay with my great problem solving skills. I need confines to wiggle within and define myself by. Otherwise I would just be, like everything else, subject to the endless flow of cause and effect. I am clearly a dukka junkie…

Recently, I had an old friend reach-out to me, she emailed –knowing I am a practitioner– looking for ‘Buddhisty advice’ on her troubled marriage. I did my best to help her in accordance with the dharma. And in my explaining it to her, in recounting a number of my own old ah-ha moments, I was able to see a few points so much more clearly. Here I will recount a bit of what I wrote her, and then my re-reflections and deeper understandings of the stories I shared: 

First, in the context of suggesting the practical value of trying to fix ourselves –our views, our actions – rather than trying to fix our partners, I shared one of my own early dhamma stories about my relationship with Eric as an example. Here is an excerpt from my email to her: 

“I know in my own relationship, this idea of fixing myself and stopping my effort to fix Eric has been a huge boon. For me, it started with changing a particular view...here is a story: years ago, I had a birthday coming up and I asked Eric to plan a murder mystery party for me It was no big deal --order the game  (it comes in a box) and invite over 8 friends, just 4 couples, to play. I asked him, I pestered him, I begged him, but in the end he didn't do it, I did not get a murder mystery birthday and I was super angry/hurt. Afterall, this was not the first time I asked Eric to do something really important to me, and that he ignored me/failed to do it.
 
I went to talk to my teacher, Mae Yo, about it. She asked me to consider what my wrong views were in the situation --the ideas/thoughts I thought were permanent /absolute/unchanging that lay at the heart of my being so upset about not getting a murder mystery party (FYI: our wrong views are always our beliefs that things are permeant/1 way/ 1 sided/unchanging because the TRUTH of the world is อนิจจัง, anicca, impermanence). I thought on it for a while and I realized a few core permanent beliefs: 
 
•	If Eric doesn't plan a party for me, he doesn't love me. This is permanent. Afterall, it is also totally possible that someone who doesn't plan parties for you still loves you. Or someone who plans parties for you doesn't give a shit about you
•	I believed that because I would plan a party for someone I loved if they wanted one, they/he SHOULD (anytime you think should, look for a permanent thought) be willing to do it for me. In other words, my way is the only way (permanent) what I would do is the rule, it is what everyone should do (permanent).
•	That the way I express love --doing what my beloved asks -- is the only way to express love ( permanent  ) and if someone doesn't express it in my way than they don't feel it (compounded permanence)

The more I thought on it, the more my heart softened and I realized how silly I was being: Eric does all sorts of things to ‘prove’ he loves me: He cooks for me, he supports me financially, he encourages me to learn and grow, he emotionally supports me in pursuing what is important to me, he buys me pretty things, he listens to me and tolerates me, he spends time with me, etc. Because my view was so fixed –do what I ask or you don’t love me –I ignored all the other ‘proof’ of love. I realized then that love didn’t have to be expressed on my terms to be expressed and to exist in Eric’s heart.

 My anger basically ceased as soon as I saw this and my behaviors changed too: I stopped pestering Eric to do all sorts of stuff I had wanted him to do – no more laundry lists, errands, etc. I would ask, if he didn’t get to it, it was fine, because I knew it didn’t say anything about our relationship, or if he loved me or not…” 
 
Now, years later, after sharing this old story with my friend, I see a much deeper element: Eric not doing the party planning was never about me. It was about his priorities, his personality, his beliefs about what actions do and don't prove love. Afterall, if Eric loved me, and he thought it was important to show that love, and he thought planning a party would show that love, then he would have planned the party. And that party would have been planned not because of me, or my wants, but because of him and his wants. 

Or alternatively, he could have planned it just because he knew I wanted, and he believed that doing what I wanted, what I asked would express his love. This was what I had hoped for years ago. But in truth, even this rational for planning -- because I wanted – would still only proven something about him: He values/identifies with/ expresses love to someone by trying to fulfill their wants.  

Over and over I seek validation, reification, from the way other people behave towards me. But in truth, other people’s actions never really prove anything about me. Other people’s actions just prove their views and values 

I was watching the trees outside my window, now that it is nearly winter, and the leaves mostly fallen, the evergreens seem more exciting. Just a few weeks ago, when most of the other trees were in the full glory of their fall colors, I maligned those same evergreens, boring trees, that wouldn’t change color and that blocked the view of all the splendid foliage across the lake. Now though I am grateful to have the evergreens…

It made me see, these rupa items, they really don’t bow to me. Considering the trees, MY TREES, it is so obvious that none of the rupa in this world exists to give me satisfaction or do what I like. Even if I buy them, or care for them, or plant them with my own two hands, these trees — if they take a form I like — do so only because it is in their nature to do so, not because either my effort or desire rule them. And trees will change to a different form, according to their nature, I can neither prevent this nor force it to happen more quickly/slowly than their nature allows.

I got to considering dukkha: I want an evergreen tree to become orange, or at least to get out of the way of all those other pretty trees putting on a show. Then I want those once-pretty-tress to go from being brown back to having leaves and colors. I see a single state of trees, possible for just a moment when the conditions are ripe, and I get attached. Even intellectually understanding that seasons change, trees change, I still find myself hoping for a little more, a late start to winter this year…it’s the old search for sukkah by clinging to duration. A search which will end in dukkha, now or later, either way.

I had recently purchased a face tightening machine that uses ultrasound technology; the company that makes it claims it will help regenerate collagen and diminish sagging. I used it and I gave myself a painful, ugly fat lip. Even this body, the most mine of all my belongings, does not exist to give me satisfaction. Despite my efforts, in fact sometime because of my efforts, it takes on shapes I despise. It transforms according to its nature, which in this case, was to get battered and bruised and to start swelling on account of the ultrasound waves. With evidence like this, why the hope? Why the continued obsession with dragging duration — just a bit more beauty, a fresh face a few years longer than my peers? Even if the suffering of sagging is coming for me one day or another… can’t I just be pretty today?

And why is pretty so important that I am willing to endure the painful treatments, the deprivation diets, the hardcore workouts? This is just a small slice of the suffering that arises from calling something mine. This is the effort to avoid the unavoidable: The devastating disappointment that comes from my preference for, identification with, one state of an object – a face, a tree – that by its nature continually shifts through changing states. Seasons always change…

Recently, I have been trying the technique of ‘disowning and not claiming’ that LP Thoon recommended to his student Singh. The advice is to see objects as not mine, existing for the communal use of my family, something I will depart the world and leave behind for my heirs. But as I worked on the technique, I came to see that claiming, ‘mining’, these are just one variety of misunderstanding rupa.
When I consider those trees, I see that my error is about more than just what I call mine. Deeper is that I don’t really understand what physical objects are, how they behave, how no amount of claiming them, or trying to control them, is going to make them fundamentally different than what it is their nature to be. Like my now bruised lips, I don’t have a full picture of how they will change in the future, what the causes and conditions that influence them are, and what the ensuing result will be. Otherwise, obviously, I would never have used ultrasound on my lips.

Try as I might to use objects to bring me satisfaction, to define me, that is not in the end what they do. Objects are impervious to me. No matter how enamored I am with them, they do not love me back. This makes me start to understand why Mae Neecha once described being a sotapanna to me as understanding the world doesn’t revolve around me. How could it, objects –both those I claim and those I acknowledge are ‘of the world’ – don’t do my bidding.

I was thinking about the Mahājanaka Jataka again: In it, The Bodhisattva is a king who, strolling through the royal gardens comes to two mango trees, one with fruit and the other barren. He pulls a mango off the fruited tree and eats it, it was delicious, and he made a note to himself to hit-up the tree again after his walk so he could have some additional fruit before he headed back to the palace. At the end of his walk, the king comes to the same trees only now, the barren tree remains pristine and green, but the fruited tree has become battered, leafless, broken and devoid of all fruit. He asks the Royal Gardner what happened, and the Gardner explains, out of respect, village folks wait for the king to eat the first fruit of a tree, but after that has been had, it’s a free-for-all. The once fruited tree had been damaged by the villagers coming to pillage the fruit. The barren tree, with no fruit to be taken, remained undisturbed. The king, seeing this decides to renounce the world: If you don’t have shit to take, you don’t have to worry and stress about your shit getting taken.

Recently, I had moved to a new place in CT, only it hadn’t worked-out and I quickly moved out. It had been so difficult, a short-succession move-in/move-out, and it made me start considering this Jataka, considering the worry and care I have for my belongings and how that stress could be solved by not having, not wanting, belongings at all.

For a moment, I really thought about the relief it would be to just walk on all of my stuff. The freedom it would be to not worry about rupa anymore. Then, for a second, I understood that you don’t need to walk from the stuff. You just need to stop being attached to it. This, I understood, is the letting go, the becoming a Sotapana. Knowing the costs of the stuff. Knowing what it is, and what it does, doing your duty by it and not being overly concerned.

I thought back to a trip I took to Hawaii decades ago…back them was my fashionista days, I dressed to the 9s each morning, boots and belts and hats galore. But in Hawaii, it was just shorts and a tee, and after a few days I started fantasizing about a move to Hawaii: I was desperate to escape the self-imposed burden of needing to dress-up each day. I had the keen sense that I couldn’t escape that burden of that self-created identity as long as I lived in SF. I feared what the people who knew my fashionista-self might think of me, the status I would lose. In Hawaii, where no one dresses-up I could be ‘free’. This of course is not freedom: This is just binding myself to a new identity I imagine will be somehow better and easier. Another becoming…

Years ago, at a retreat, Mae Yo and Neecha had a session on becoming a sotapanna. Something they taught came to my mind again, it got much clearer: They were saying that if you aren’t really a sotapanna, you can be not greedy all your life, but if circumstances change, you are greedy again. Like someone who has plenty of food, and is always willing to share, but then famine strikes and they stop sharing. The cause for greed is not uprooted, its just that the circumstances don’t support the manifestation of the greed, at that moment. Circumstances change, and back comes the greed, because the seeds of it had been there all the time.

As I considered the new house again, I considered the stress: Stress over moving to it. Stress over decorating. Stress over having it too long. Stress over maintenance… I realize I am so absorbed, so stuck on my stuff, it is a source of unbounded stress. I say I understand these things do not belong to me, do not define me, but I obsess over them. All to make an environment I like. For sensual pleasure. Even despite the temporariness, the accompanying pain. This is the stress of greed.

The Mahājanaka Jataka is actually the story in which the Bodhisattva perfects the parami of renunciation. In truth, I am not much of a renunciation fan (I do like my creature comforts after all) and this particular story has always felt a bit uncomfortable, like an indictment of my own insufficiency. Still though, the sense of it, the allure, the promise of less suffering by going the way of that barren tree has begun to weigh on my mind a bit. Perhaps renunciation is less about sacrifice and more about freedom.

Years ago, I was watching a TV show: There was a monster had taken over the town. She excreted a venom that lulled the whole town into a mass delusion; instead of seeing her as the monster she was, they were deluded into seeing her as a beautiful and benevolent ruler. Everyone was happy and got along, but the venom was just to pacify the people, a drug to keep them mollified while she ate them one by one. Only 2 characters in the show, who by virtue of having been exposed to her blood, a sort of antidote to her poison, saw her for the monster she truly was and were able to ultimately escape.

That story has stuck with me many years now, an ubai for how I see the world. I imagine my old car, my wedding dress, as these beautiful things, because of how I imagine them, I feel happy, I am lulled by delusion to believe they make me special. But in the end, I feel wounded by these objects. Why? Because like the town’s folk, I am blind to what these things really are; I have intoxicated myself and in self-inflicted blindness I put myself in peril, I endure suffering.

For a long time, I have done the exercise from the Anatalakata Sutra (link here): All the evidence I have gathered that shit is inconstant, that it doesn’t obey me, that it causes me suffering, it has softened my heart, sure, but it has never been the final blow to claiming these items are me/mine. Now I understand why it has failed to sufficiently touch my heart: It’s because the evidence that these objects change and cause me suffering is insufficient to convince myself that these objects aren’t mine.

Whether I claim objects, or not, their changing and dukka is simply their nature. I mistake ‘my’ objects as having some other nature, or at least, some additional nature; I think they hold the meaning I impart on them and that, in return they can impart the meaning I desire on myself. Even if they change. Even if I hurt myself with them. Even still, I cling to the notion that at least for a little while, despite the suffering they cause, they are an instrument I can use in my mission of making myself, telling my story, of self-becoming. My imagination has made me intoxicated with these objects, intoxicated by the feelings I have as a result of what I imagine these objects mean about me.

Which is, I think, LP Thoon’s point when he defined anatta as, “these things don’t belong to us, they aren’t meaningful.” That is the last part of their nature (3 common characteristics) there is nothing meaningful about these objects, they don’t confirm or affirm me as the me I want to be, they don’t confirm or affirm anything at all about me – or anything else – they are meaningless. They march along their entropy path, holding a named form till the causes and conditions for their exiting the named state arise. Then they disaggregate, un-clump, anatta. Thats all.

And that’s the final clincher — long lasting or short lasting, fun or suffering, it doesn’t really matter how I imagining these objects, because its not my imagination of them that matter. They are what they are and that is decidedly not me, not a secret coded confirmation of me that only I see. They are just 4es. Shifting through states according to causes and conditions. Atta is my mistaken belief that the car, the dress, prove something about me. That they can help make the me I imagine myself more solid and real.

I started considering my old Vajrayana shawl , a wrap that my former teacher had instructed all his followers to wear when they mediated. It had given me a sense that I was connected to the community, to my teacher. I felt such pride putting it on for the first time, I basked in a sense of my own piety and buddhistiness. And then, how it became just a cloth when I quit the religion. All these secret meanings of these objects eventually dissipate as we disassociate from them, they just become more of the junk we used to hang-out with while the circumstances allowed.

Of course, just cause I separate from shit, it doesn’t mean I immediately disassociate. And there is the crux of the suffering of parting ways with what I hold dear. Sometimes, like with the shawl, I stop holding dear and then part ways, sometimes, like with the Porche, I part ways and only later stop holding dear. And it does seem there is extra dukkha when I am confronted with the fact –like I was with the Porsche – that the car can’t be both evidence I am on top and in control and also be sold at a deep discount because I didn’t even recognize the item I claimed had engine issues. The delusion about it meaning something about me holds strong, even when I need to go from believing it says something good to something embarrassing and painful.

Still, for me, I continue the cycle of delusion. Why? Because I still foolishly believe it is worth it to hold onto the idea that some object can say something about me that I want, can help me build the future I want, tell the story of the me I want to be and become, rather than just admit that none of these objects ever say anything about me at all.

When I considered the scarf more closely, it dawned on me the traits I thought it proved –piousness, connection to a community I no longer give a shit about, a good student to Rinpoche — aren’t even traits I am consistently trying to prove. I considered different objects more closely and found even more evidence: A little Chevy Cavalier to prove I wasn’t just a rich trust fund kid. A not-fit body in high school to prove I was more invested in my mind. An apartment in SF to prove I was an SFer even if my driver’s license was from NY. It became obvious, I am not actually even trying to prove one thing, or the same thing; like everything, the me I want to be changes…

No, objects don’t prove some specific Alana, I use them to reify the alana de jour. I don’t even care about being pious, or a leader in the Vajrayana community anymore. It’s just some arbitrary identity I wanted one day, some arbitrary trait, proven by some arbitrary action and object. Today, tomorrow, as the stream (of causes and conditions and their ensuing effects) shifts, I want to be and become something else. In the end, all I consistently want is to be, to become, to feel me, even though what that me is is even more slippery and changeable than the objects I try to use to prove that identity.

It’s funny, a while back, when I was thinking about what justifies my making something mine, back then I reflected:

“For a long time, I have wondered what makes something MINE (and therefore something I cling to) after all it is clear that this idea lives nowhere in the 4es of the object. But every time I think I figure it out, it seems like the criteria changes; Its mine because I legally own it, only that Manhattan loft felt like ‘not mine’ long before I actually sold it. It is mine because I pay for it, but what about the outfits that feel like mine in the dressing room before I hit-up the cash register? It is mine because I have had it, because it is my birthright, but how do I reconcile that with a body that keeps getting older and fatter and sick, is it really expressing my will, acting like my right? I realize now the problem…delusion is a slippery fuck, in truth, mine=desire+some arbitrary rationalization I use to justify/claim mineness in my mind. Its just a rationalization that changes to suit my needs, all it needs to be is ‘defensible’ to my warped brain and its good enough to go on.”

The me that I think something mine makes me is as arbitrary as the process by which I claim that thing in the first place. Just some justification that a certain identify can be claimed –an activity I do perhaps, a belief I hold, a group I belong to, a future I imagine, a relationship I assume. Minenes, as it turns out, is just a concept in support of an agenda: The agenda to be, to become, to forge the story of self that I endured rebirth to try and tell.