Alana's Dharma Blog

I have been thinking about atta a lot lately, using various angles, but especially considering it from the perspective of my body and belongings: How I ignorantly try and use rupa to reify my sense of self and the reality, which LP Thoon says so clearly, that “anatta is that nothing belongs to us, it is meaningless.”

I have been homing-in on the feelings I have gotten from objects which, in the past, I considered to be mine; I have been really trying to re-connect with the feelings, to understand what beliefs drove the feelings and when/if those beliefs were proven wrong.

First, I considered the Porche: When I learned of a lurking engine problem, which resulted in my needing to sell it for a fraction of what I had believed it to be worth, I felt brought so low. I was ashamed. How had I so sorely misjudged my own item? It was like someone who had believed themselves to be special because they were beloved of their lover, only to find they were one of many consorts.

The car had always made me feel on top and in control. An affirmation of the me I saw myself as, the me I wanted to be. I can remember long drives, hugging curves, the sense of elation. Sure, it was fun to drive, but so much of the fun was me feeling the rush of being confirmed while driving the car. Though the confirmation was just me imagining the qualities, that I imagined in the car, were being reflected back at me. It was a circle jerk, an ego stroke of my own creation. Fun though it was when I could imagine the car broadcasting my awesomeness, the cost was that later, when I went to sell it, I felt like it broadcast my foolishness. All I needed to do was to understand the car doesn’t broadcast anything about me, doesn’t reflect anything about me, and I would have been spared both the false elation and the deflation.

In the end, with the sting of the sale experience, the car showed me what it really was: A decaying 4e object, not the thing of my imagination. And it showed me the suffering of trying to locate self in 4e elements that will decay, will fail us, will part ways from us. Which never existed to prove me special in the first place.

I fed imagination with the object, got high on the thoughts of the imagination, then got low on the thoughts of the imagination…but it was all just an imagination trip: The car was just the 4e object it had always been.

I thought about my wedding dress. The elation of trying it on at the last fitting, feeling so beautiful. A shining object of desirability, a catch to be coveted by all I walked past on the aisle. But years later the same dress made me look like a cow. The dress, so clearly unchanged, proved my body –squeezed-in to a dress that now looked like it might burst at the seams, itself had changed. Both a former body I had been so proud of, and a dress that had once fit it light a glove, proved my failing: It proved my inability to maintain a body that was firm, peak.

As I looked at the fat body-self in the dress, I felt a moment of shame; it was the cost paid for the moment of pride I had felt on my wedding day, all those years ago. Like the car, in the end, the dress told me both what I was (not special, not in control, not on top of this world and my life), as well as what it was — a piece of cloth that was stitched together and would be unstitched by time, helped along by a fat girl trying to squeeze into it.

In the end, all these objects that I claim and cling to part ways with me and, often, before they do, I am forced to a reckoning: Since I let the object feed my imagination in a positive way, it will feed my imagination in a negative way. I get forced to admit this object was never what I imagined it to be, it never confirmed what I wanted it to confirm. And me, still hungry for confirmation, feel the sting of disappointment before I go out in search of some new object to try and feed my imagination with.

The question I have for myself is why not fast forward a bit? If I can see these objects for what they really are now, I don’t have to end up in the moment of pain when the object makes me feel small by proving it is not mine, it does not confirm who I am.

I started contemplating on a pile of clothes that I had set aside to sell at the consignment store. Each item had a story about why it no longer fits in my wardrobe, or my body, or my lifestyle: So many reasons I was parting ways with each item. Details. But the overarching story is the same – the item goes when circumstance changes. When the circumstances change, the item no longer hangs out with me.

I have long thought of my wardrobe as some testament to me. To my fashion, my aesthetic, each ornament there to make my snowflake body seem unique. Or at least to hide its fatness and failings. No single shoe or necklace was the one that conveyed my identity, but all together… I just can’t shake the idea, that these items that I pick and choose when and how to wear reflect who I am. Why though? Each dress or top is the same in form and function. Each is with me while the circumstances allow and then gone to the trash or the consignment store or the good will. Why would the whole wardrobe be somehow more meaningful than its parts? Why would a whole body be more meaningful than its parts?

Shit even the meaning I assign to each object, or the whole, changes: What identity I am trying to convey and confirm with a wardrobe? Once upon a time it was a pretty, but professional Sexy Librarian. Then there was the edgy but, still sophisticated, High Fashion Punk with her Moschino hearts and studded leather jacket.

And nowadays, I accept anything slimming and flattering — like he losers in high school using each other at the table – some outfit to make my body seem less little, less undesirable, less out of my control. The reality is the clothes don’t do that anymore for me than the other kids sitting at the table. The clothes just hang with me. The loser table kids, we all just hang together. Looking for solace and comfort and acceptance in things that don’t really give those, that just hang with you for a little due to their own reasons, their nature, their circumstances, convention.

I want my wardrobe to help me to be accepted, to be more than a same-same like every other body. To have some control, some autonomy over my body through how it looks, to dictate my identity through the ornamentation I choose for this body. With a wardrobe, I seek to convince the world, to convince myself that I am somehow special. With the shape of a body, and its ornaments, I seek to confirm that I am ON TOP AND IN CONTROL. But that pile of clothes heading to the consignment store, this body with its chub, this face with its sagging, they belie the truth that I am not in control, I am subject to karma, to conditions, to the changes that occur to objects and bodies and circumstance in the world. Too bad for me that uncontrollable objects can’t possibly confirm my control of all the other rupa, and nama, that I am equally not in control of.

I got to considering further examples of how all ‘my’ objects/people and I are only hangin’ temporarily: We are brought together by circumstance, and parting ways based on circumstances. I decided to dive a bit deeper into what this really proves. What it can show me about my continual exercise of identity building vis-a-vie ‘my’ objects. Let’s again review data of the wedding ring:

Before I had the ring, it meant nothing to me, it reflected no identity, meaning or value. Now that it is long gone, the same is true. So, what is so special about the short time it was with me that makes me believe that then, and only then, that elemental ring, could convey some aspect of my awesomeness? On my finger it means one thing, on another’s something else? That makes no sense, it basically proves that the ring never had any innate meaning, just meaning I read into it. Otherwise, it would have the same meaning before and after I had it on my finger, and on any other finger it was ever on.

It would have also conveyed that meaning to anyone seeing it, there would be no room for interpretation in the mind of the viewer: ring=beloved-special-alana would simply be true, a tautology. But that is clearly not the case, if it were, the person who found the ring would have returned it, it would have been useless to them: Who wants to claim an object that so clearly speaks to someone else’s identity?

No, what the ring points to is the truth I have been trying to convince myself of for so long: There is no meaning in a ring, meaning can’t exist in a 4e object, its only in my head. I read into it. And when you strip my beliefs, my imagination out of it, it’s so clear a ring just hangs with me while circumstances allow. Then it goes its way and I go my way. The end. There really is nothing to get bent out of shape about.

But mostly it is like with Abby, who used me when she needed friends, and tossed me when she found better ones: It was never about me. It is like all the losers in high school that hung together — looking for acceptance from each other because they need it from somewhere — as soon as they had better options to feel accepted, the opportunity to climb the social rungs, to sit at a more popular table, they took it. I did.

I used the loser ‘friends’ to feel less little. And they used me to feel less little. Any warm body would have done. We all just hung till circumstances changed. That ring would have hung with any ‘warm credit card’ what could take it out of the store. Even shit I make with my own two hands would hang with anyone who could make or take it. Even this body, which I hold so dear, take to be the most me of all of the things I consider mine, can be taken by any rapist, murderer, slaver, etc. who can overpower me.

I went to a beautiful public garden once, I met the gardener who was giving a talk. It was so clear that the garden was a source of pride for her, the hours and toil she put-in rewarded by a beauty she took credit for, she identified with. She let, in her mind, identify her. I remember thinking how odd her pride was, after all, the trees and flowers, if the circumstances were ripe for their growing, would have grown for anyone who planted and cared for them. Who really cares that the roses, situated 2 feet from the hydrangeas, the lilacs placed in alternating color bushes, reflected her ‘vison’ and aesthetic? We use the silliest things to fabricate our identities…Besides, wasn’t her vison constrained by the soil and space, her aesthetic shaped by other influences and conditions…everywhere, everything we claim and name as ‘ours’ is proving it’s just conditional.

But, like a garden, that perks with a little water and fertilizer, my wrinkled face will perk up from a syringe of Botox and fillers that are shot into it. Anyone with a needle and some training can have this effect. I don’t even have the training to acquire this effect on my own, just the credit card and the delusion-seeded vanity to find a dermatologist…how silly is it that I would identify with the freshly perked-up face?

I didn’t cause the face, nor did I cause the sagging. And even if I did cause any part or moment of this face, it is just a 4e face that passes through a series of states, changed by circumstance beyond my control. Like that woman’s garden my face is constrained by bones and sinews and skin, it is shaped by conditions from my genetics, to my human form and the shared samutti of such a form, by its necessary functions, by environmental impacts over the years. I am a fool in finding this face some point of pride. By identifying with it. By –in my mind—letting it identify me.

These objects –gardens, and rings, and faces – don’t confirm us. We seek identity in the shit that hangs with us as circumstances allow. Always seeking to control the circumstance, or at least effect them, or at the very very least trying to extend the hang time with states, objects and people we love. Or to shorten the hang time with states we despise, making sure that dermatology appointment is on the calendar well before the botox wears off.

I am always seeking to change circumstances, to order and beautify my objects, so they better reflect my imagination of who I am. But just like a firm body doesn’t prove my extreme will power, the perfectly manicured garden, or face, just reflect the efforts born from the delusion that these things somehow prove something about me. The mistaken view that they are more meaningful, more important, than objects that hang with others, or that hang with me for a little time while circumstances allow.

I have frequently contemplated on people who have kids. I look at family members with children and the evidence is so clear to me, their kids can’t be theirs because those children are constantly failing to do what their parents want. So how do the parents persist in their belief that the kids, their kid’s behaviors, reflect them? Kids reflect themselves, their own influences and circumstances. I watch the adults in my fam get so upset when their kids embarrass them, or don’t live up to their expectations of who they will be. But what they are really upset with is being confronted with evidence of the truth that was always true — these kids aren’t theirs, they don’t bow to parental control, they don’t represent their parents, they don’t prove what a great or bad parent they are. Kids have their own karma, their own agendas and influences. Parents are just one of those influences.

Physical objects are the same as kids: They have their own influences, their own shifting of their elements, they follow their own rules based on the nature of their 4es in their environment. They don’t confirm me as their ‘owner’, they don’t obey me, they have their own path and nature. They hang with me for a little while as circumstances allow and then everything goes their own way. A face the sags is the ultimate proof, pulled down by gravity over time, how can I believe this reflects me any more than those kids do their parents. My botoxing and facercizing, its just one influence. An influence that weakens as I age anyway.

A ring that I buy and that sits on my finger for a while is the same way, it was just hanging there till circumstances changed and it moved on. A house I rent, or buy, is with me till circumstances change. An outfit till it wears, or I change body shape, it was never a thing that lauded or lionized me, it was something that hung, that I could use, till circumstances change. And circumstances always change.

I was in Zumba class, and I heard a song about a guy peering in the window of his ex's house; he was heartbroken that she was busy fucking someone new now. As I danced along, I started to think, “if someone can fuck someone new, was them fucking you ever really saying something about you? Did it make you special?”

I continued contemplating after the class ended. I landed on my beloved wedding ring, which I had lost decades ago: It ran off on someone else’s finger, so how is it that I ever thought, while it was sitting on my finger, it was saying something about me? About how loved I was? How precious? 

Obviously, on the new person's finger it didn't continue to attest to my beloved status. And, in my mind, sitting-on the founder’s finger, it attested to a morally degenerate person without the decency to turn in a found ring. The ring was a marker of ‘thief’ on the new owner’s hand. How can the ring mean different things depending on whose finger it’s on?  In short, it can't.

I have thought before about how people wanting me for sex didn't really prove anything about me, it proves only their own needs and desires that they are trying to fulfill with me. They are using my body. They are assigning their own meaning to it. 

It’s not just this physical body either: In the past I have watched Eric dotting on our little nieces. It has made me reflect that he, by his nature, is a caregiver, so naturally he wants someone to care for. I take it as some marker of my excellence, my worthiness, my specialness, that he has chosen to care for me. But this is temporary, when we part ways, he will likely find someone new to take care of. 

I had a friend, Abby, in our first year of high school, we were inseparably tight. But after a summer away from each other, I returned to her hanging with a new group of girls, not having the time or desire to spend time with me anymore. She had hung out with me because of circumstances, her wants and beliefs, what she perceived me to be -- at a given time. When circumstances changed, so did her attention and affection.  

Everything in our life just hangs with us due to circumstances: My ring hung with me due to circumstances, and when my finger shrunk in the cold, circumstances changed, and off it fell. My beloved Porshe, was my sweet, sexy ride in Cali, but when circumstances changed, and I moved to a cold climate, I felt like I had to sell and it no longer hung with me. My SF home, when I moved to NY, no longer hung with me...my money, once spent, no longer hangs with me. 

Its not just the fact that stuff that is with us can only be 'ours' temporarily. That is true, but it doesn't clear up the misunderstanding that shit can temporarily say something about us, it can confirm us at least for a little while. Like while I have the ring it says “I am beloved”. While I drive the Porsche it says “I am on top and in control”, while someone is fucking me it says “I am so hot and awesome.” And then it all changes and dissipates.  But what that assumes that even for a moment these things are ‘about me’, speak to me, rather than speaking to the circumstance in which we are able to hang out together temporarily.  It never was, and never is, actually about me; it is always that circumstances lets these objects, and people, be part of my life and then circumstances dictate the time and ways in which we part. 

Because I am attached, temporary though it may be, to the benefit these items accrue to me. Because I believe I can control the duration during which that benefit is accrued. Because I imagine the benefit outweighs the cost, or portends some desirable future.  I am stuck in an endless cycle of trying to obtain and replace. The result: Endless rebirths of dukkha. 

And if these things convey some identity unto me while they are temporarily there, their departure must also be an ego blow, a loss of the value and identity that I believe they confer. More dukkha. But if we are just hanging out, based on temporary circumstances, then no dukkha needs to ensue when circumstances change and we part ways. Coming together was meaningless, and so too is drifting apart.

I have been thinking more about being a woman. It is a characteristic, a state, that I identify with deeply. However, if didn’t have a vagina I would struggle to claim the identity of ‘woman’. For me, the meaning I give to a particular body part, vagina, is so strong, its absence would create too much mental discord for me to also claim the identity of woman.

Of course, this isn’t some universal truth – many cultures, across history, have assigned gender identities not tied to penises and vaginas. Plenty of trans folks are born with a penis or vagina and still have a sense of identity different than my own tightly coupled vagina=woman. This all begins to hint at the deeper reality that no matter how profoundly I ascribe meaning to particular 4es, no matter how much I may feel those meanings are supported by social convention, the meaning really never is in rupa.

Still though, I use rupa to build identities. I may only have this body temporarily, it may change states continually, but I cling to it because in my mind, my body is the scaffolding, the substrate, for the story of self I tell. I am woman-alana. You want proof? Check-out between my legs…

I had been watching a TV show, in it a main character is a successful editor. She is also a woman, in a time that few woman were successful anythings, better yet editors at important NY publishing houses. For the character, being an editor is her life – no family, few friends, few hobbies, just professional success. And then, her vision starts to fail. Just like that, her career –her identity—is ruined by something as small as inoperable cataracts. You can’t BE and editor if you don’t have eyes that can read.

Me, the editor, we rely on our bodies to build our identity. As I have said before, I cling to this body precisely because I view it as the necessary condition –the scaffolding – upon which I build my sense of alanahood. But if I rely on a body to build my identity, and the body isn’t under my control, the identity cant be under my control either. I can say, think, wish, imagine, that I am fitness alana all I want, if asthma prevents me from running more than a few steps then I can’t BE fit alana, at least I can’t anymore.

A body that can run, or read, or even have a vagina, these are states. This is not what bodies ARE, it is what they can do/the shape they can have, under certain circumstances. Can I run? Only if the pollen count is sufficiently low. If I am on my meds. If I haven’t been sick. Etc. If it depends on a bunch of stuff that I can’t force, or count on, that depend on a bunch of other factors and conditions beyond me, then why do I imagine that these states are going to prove who I am?

Over and over, I try to use the body to prove my identity, but in fact, the body dictates the limits of the identities I can ’build’. The rupa I cling to so tightly as a necessary condition for me telling the alana story, creating self, is a condition I must yield to; my story is at the mercy of this body, which makes it a pretty crappy tool with which to build identity. In short, it doesn’t do what I want, so how can it prove I am who I want to be?

This body — the state it was in, is in, it will be in — is just one of many circumstances that dictate the self I can imagine. What is circumstantial, conditional, can’t be who I am. The body’s states are conditional, so they aren’t who I am. But the identity I imagine, that is conditional too; the identity I imagine can’t be who I am.

Eric and I have been in negotiations to purchase a vacation home in Montreal. Finally, we feel like we are making progress on the two home dream; a winter home in Miami and a summer getaway in Montreal. Only this morning, we got news there might be a glitch in our plan, the deal on the Montreal place looks like it may fall through.

We don’t even own the Montreal apartment yet, but already we have built up this dream in our head of what life will be like there. The news this burgeoning dream might die in the cradle feels like a devastating loss. Eric and I are so depressed.

Isn’t it the same with my body? One of my big fears when I think about an impending auto immune disease, or covid, or cancer, is that with the death of this body –or its crippling frailty – my dreams of the future die too. I cling so tightly to the fantasy of a future life that I don’t even have yet. And even though I know that my future fantasy doesn’t dictate what happens, that the world doesn’t give a damn about my desires, I still do. I feel so stuck that I can’t get past this…

A major reason I cling to the body then is because I cling to the Alana story. The body is a necessary condition for an Alana future; only with this body can my Alana story persist. Memory is tied to the body. The body is how I am recognized by loved ones. The body is how I get the accompaniments that society has attributes to it — the degrees, bank accounts, resume, etc. The body is foundational to my imagined future –a happy 2 city retirement life with Eric, even as the second city, Montreal, seems threatened.

Without this body, there is no way to accomplish my dream. Without Montreal I’ll find another dream. I assume, without this body I will also find another dream, this I suppose is how rebirth happens. Still though, its so hard to see with bodies, that they are as fungible as cities and houses.

It has dawned on me that a huge question for me now is how to stop being attached to my body at a sotopana level, when the attachment to the future story that requires this body is so much deeper than a mere attachment to a physical 4e body-object. So how do I move past this?

Maybe it is gathering the evidence that this body is like every other, not at all special. There is no identity from it, or in it, it is a tool. One way it can function, a way I can use it, is to move toward and accomplish dreams/goals. But the accomplishment of those isn’t dictated by the body, that is driven by my karma.

Still, this isn’t quite enough…I still feel motivated to protect and preserve this body, I am overly concerned about it as long as I see it as a necessary tool for my dream fulfillment.

Or maybe this is 2 separate issues: One is to see the body is just 4e, subject to 3 common conditions, not special or unique, not under my control, and not who I am. But two is that identity, 3s and 4s, are also not under my control. These are also subject to the common conditions. The world is too, whatever circumstances arise — whether they align with my fantasies or not — are states, with state-dependent characteristics that I do or don’t prefer. That do or don’t align closely enough with my goals/dreams, they will arise based on causes and conditions and cease based on causes and conditions. They will be temporary, they will be dukkha, and there is nothing meaningful in them. They don’t prove anything about me, or my identity, they are, by definition, anatta -not self.

Or maybe it simpler than all this: Maybe I just need to see that even in the fulfillment of my dreams, even if I could ‘accomplish’ having exactly the future I imagine with this body, the duration will not be satisfactory. The details on the ground, that I face in reality, not fantasy, will always, only, be dukkha.

A while back I went to visit a 6.5 acre sculpture called Opus-40. The artist, Harvey Fite, spent 40 years living and working at the sculpture site, hewing stones from the land, carefully carving them and laying them into a massive, towering labyrinth. It was his life’s work, a reflection of his artistic vision, his sense of himself as an artist. It was also his death: At 72, Harvey, fell into a quarry while trying to haul up more stones to expand his work.

The story really got me thinking about the seeming irony that ‘our objects’ can kill us. My dad died of pancreatic cancer, his own cells consumed him. My doctors told me I have blood markers for an autoimmune disease, my body, at any time, can literally begin attacking itself. Cancer, autoimmune disease, really those are just details, particular ways particular bodies kill people. By definition though, every body will kill everyone.

Death is a direct result of birth into this body (and as a happy bonus it also guarantees aging and sickness along the way); every body is anatta, cessation is fundamental to its nature, as soon as a form aggregates it begins its continual, shifting march toward disaggregation; the seeds of destruction arise with arising.

Whatever entity/identity I think Alana to be, I certainly don’t imagine she just anticlimactically –pointlessly – ends. The last thing that my sense of self, that came into this world to spin the tales I believe allow me to be/become, wants is anatta/entropying/de-clumping/shifting outside a state I can still credibly call myself a ‘me’.

And yet, this body, by design, promises that ending. How is it I mistake my body as a tool to become, the scaffolding upon which I can build a me, when its true nature is to cease. Its true nature is to 100% ensure the cessation of any story I graft onto it because it is a fragile, shifting, breakable, 4e form crumbles. Isn’t it better to reject this thing as me and with it reject all the disappointment that arises each and every time it proves damn well not to be me, not to have my interests, agenda, stories, at heart? Probably, and yet, I cling, and invite the world of dukkha that comes for the clinging and inevitable disappointment…

My mind needs further evidence that this body is not mine:

Its not mine because it defies my sense of who I am:

I was a yogi, but my SI joint kept coming out of place, causing me intense pain and eventually forcing me to quit yoga. For so long, I felt like practice was disciplining my body, forcing it to take a form, to have characteristics and abilities I wanted. It was proof I was in charge. That if I set my mind to doing something I could do it, I could force rupa into my control.

But ultimately, the very forms I forced my body into caused it to hurt, to break, to prevent me from continuing the activities I had used to shape and define it–to define myself, to prove my supremacy of my will. In the end the body defied my sense of self. It destroyed the identity of Alana the yogi and undermined the very supremacy of will over body I was trying to prove with that identity/set of activities.

Because of the body I had to quit the activity, loose the shape I loved, felt was ‘me’, leave the community I had grown close to. In almost no time, the body lost the ability to perform the poses, it lost the strength and flexibility that I had put so much effort and practice into. Wasn’t all that work meaningless if the results I identified with faded as soon as I stopped?
I claimed to be yogi-alana, I used the shapes I meticulously trained my body to make as the proof that I was diligent, in control, supreme in my force of will. But can my body ‘prove’ that meaning when my will/my control could be overridden by something as trivial as a little joint? Isn’t this body meaningless if by dying it erases the entire narrative I think is me, my Raison d’être to write?

Its not mine because it shames me:

After walking a whole summer, my first real foray into ‘fitness’, I thought I was so fit, invincible, I had a new power, a new ability and I was proud. Right until I was in Africa, fresh off my summer of walking, and we got to the sand dunes. All my friends poured off the bus, and a few of the fitter ones went to run straight up the dune rather than walk with the older, weaker folks up the meandering path. I ran to follow the fit folks, I identified as a fit Alana, only to quickly begin slipping and sliding in the sand, unable to make it to the top. I was so embarrassed. My body had failed me.

The ability I had been so proud of was no match to the dune. Instead of just walking up the meandering path, which would not have drawn attention, I got stuck in the sand and had to backtrack, making my humiliation deeper. Worse than the body not sustaining my identity privately, it shamed me publicly.

I think body is a reflection of self, a physical manifestation of the traits I ‘own’, that I define myself with. So how do I reconcile that with regular humiliation? Humiliation of farting, smelling. Humiliation of cold sores. Humiliation of sunspots and red spots. Humiliation of fat. Humiliation when I can’t keep up on a run in a group fitness class. Humiliation of my jowls and double chin. Doesn’t humiliation prove my body isn’t reflecting the self I imagine, that it doesn’t perfectly embody some traits, like fitness or beauty, that I ‘possess’, better yet the meaning I ascribe to these traits?

It’s not mine because it changes into states I hate:

Before I gave it away, I tried on my wedding dress one last time. A dress that 15 years before had made me look thin and fit and radiant, didn’t zip. It made me look like I was bulging in all the wrong places, soft and doughy.

I had been so proud of the figure I cut in that dress, I so keenly remember my sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when I looked in the mirror at my final fitting and imagined my big day, everyone looking at me, seeing in that dress – that figure that I had worked out hard to achieve – what a catch I was. Women would be envious of me, men jealous of Eric. I believed that figure/dress proved something about myself, my value, my desirability.

I have always imagined beauty to be a physical reflection of value, a proof of goodness, the great sign of special. And for a moment, my body had taken a shape I thought of as beautiful, and I had used that shape as evidence that I myself had a particular meaning — valuable, good and special.

But here I was, in a dress unchanged, that now made this body look ugly and undesirable. If old body proved my greatness, then new body must — by extension — prove my failure, my lack of value, naughtiness showing in my ugliness.

Of course, that not what I thought: Sure, I was a little disappointed, but I quickly comforted myself with the logic ‘no one’s body stays the same over 15 years’, ‘ compared to my peers, I still look good’. I let the benchmarks slide, re-defined my standard for beauty enough that I could retain my sense of self as valuable. One day, when no stretch of the imagination will allow me to call myself beautiful, I will just change the ‘rules’ again, find some other characteristic to attach my sense of value to.

If I were being honest, I would have to ask myself how 2 totally different bodies, forms of radically different shapes, can both be a confirmation of the same value and specialness? The answer is they can’t be. But I am stuck with this body, and my need to define myself with it means I need to make allowances, shifts in expectations, excuses. But these shifts, they betray the truth that this body’s continually shifting states, that its ultimate cessation, is antithetical to having some special meaning or identity. This is just ideas I project onto them.

Its not mine because it can go from tool to liability:

For my whole life I have identified as a traveler, an adventurer, an explorer. I crave seeing what is just beyond the horizon, I want to explore what is new and different; not just to amuse myself, but to be, to become, to find new things and places to identify with. Where I am has never been enough, part of my story –the narrative I envision for myself – is something new, something better, ‘over there’.

My life has been punctuated by moves to new cities, vacations to exotic locations, even just explorations of new cities, new neighborhoods. And then the lockdowns came. Suddenly, a life punctuated by exploration was confined to my tiny Greenwich apartment. For 18 months I was grounded. The body that was a tool to explore the world, to find new details of the narrative of self and future, was suddenly not a tool. It was a liability. The body that ventured out could be stricken by a new mysterious disease.

To accommodate risks to my body, I had to stop doing what I loved, I had to stop being the me I wanted to be. For most of my life, the meaning I have assigned to this body is an instrument of my will. It is there to be used as I see fit, to actualize the story and self I imagine. This is body as tool. But that a single change in circumstance –a pandemic –can make this same 4e a liability proves the meaning isn’t in the rupa.

LP Thoon’s definition of anatta: “Nothing belongs to us. Everything is meaningless.” Had really stuck with me and I once again turned my attention to trying to prove my items don’t belong to me. I figured the more clearly I could see that, the more clearly I could also answer his question, “meaningless how?”.

I got to thinking back to an old contemplation on puberty. I was so disturbed when I hit puberty and my body started changing, I was not at all keen on trading my stick figure for curves. I realize now that the root of my deep despair was that I didn’t feel like the new body was mine, it didn’t reflect me, it didn’t align with my vision of myself.

Of course, after a few weeks moping (eternity in teenage time), I ‘got over it’; I accepted my body changing by adjusting my sense of who I was, my future expectations, to fit this post-puberty body, and I was back to worrying over normal teeny-bopper dramas, rather than having extreme body distress. In fact, now that I am edging toward the peri-menopause years, oh what I wouldn’t do to cling to this post-pubescent-pre-menopause body just a little longer…

The truth is, over and over again, our bodies (and other belongings) don’t just fail to live up to our expectations, they actually defy our sense of who we are.

Another example: When I was first diagnosed with asthma, I was at my peak fitness level — I worked out 4 hours a day, obsessed over my reps and maxes, I lived and breathed to be fit — and yet there I was huffing and puffing 5 minutes into a light run. For all my efforts, for all my self-proclaimed fitness, my body was non-compliant; this body didn’t care what I wanted to be, who I thought I was, or even the work I put into promulgating that identity, its elements shifted into a state of disease and all the training/willing/imagining in the world wasn’t allowing me to finish my run.

If possible, I try and ‘fix it’, to force my body into states that feel reflect who I think I am: I buy spanx for the muffin top, botox to the brow, engage in extreme workouts and diets, take those daily asthma meds, even knowing full well how painfully temporary these ‘fixes’ are. Often though, like with puberty, or disease, there is no ‘fix’, and I have to go through the agonizing process of shifting my sense of self to align with reality.

Why not stop to ask myself the obvious question: If my body can defy my sense of self, sabotage my dreams for the future, can it really be mine? Or how about the question: How can a body be ‘who I am’ if it doesn’t actually reflect who I think I am, or who I want to be?

At the end of the day, I want to be born in this world to actualize the story of self. The desire to be and become is what drives me forward. But even my body, the thing closest to me isn’t, actually actualizing my story of self. If it were, then all the efforting, all the imagining, all the curating of a fit-alana wouldn’t be gasping for breath 5 minutes into a run.

I curate memories of past, solidify current characteristics that I value, and imagine future fantasies, to create a continuous narrative I can claim as ‘me’. I use rupa as props, to sell my story to myself, to augur signs of my success/ failure meeting the benchmarks of ‘the me I want to be’. If an object, a body, can undermine my story, if rather than confirming me it shouts the erroneousness of my assumed identity, that object isn’t me, it is ‘against me’.
The objects can’t be mine because they don’t do what ‘I hired them to do’, what I so desperately want and need them to do –these objects don’t confirm me. These objects don’t buy me the future I imagine. I cling so tightly to them, I suffer for their ‘option value’, but over and over they prove that having them doesn’t get me the future I want. In the case of a body, having it gets me a future I decisively don’t want: Aging, sickness, death.

What is more is the very fact that I need to re-adjust my sense of self, as I did with puberty, proves that my identity isn’t inherent in the body at all, it’s just a self-created construct I overlay onto the 4e object. The fact that my muffin top pops back as soon as the spanx come off and that botox wears off in lockdown, is a blatant testament that my ‘fixes’ are temporary, ‘my objects’ are like every other object, bound by the law of impermanence. And maybe this is part of what LP Thoon means when he calls these objects ‘meaningless’ – if the only meaning in an object is the one that we superimpose onto it, that shifts as we shift, isn’t it devoid of any inherent meaning. Meaningless.

And how do I reconcile the idea that I am ‘author’ of my story, master of myself and my narrative, when I can’t even force my body to be what I want it to be? Instead, the body forces me to adjust, I had to adjust my imagined sense of self with puberty, I had to adjust my workouts to asthma. Since Covid began, my whole life revolves around protecting and preserving this body. Instead of being a tool to actualize myself and my dreams, to maximize my pleasure and satisfaction, this body is a hindrance to me doing what I want to do; it is the cause of story-interruptus, my 18 month lockdown devoid of humans, and hobbies, and the fulfillment of my dreams.

It’s not just that this body isn’t me, does not affirm me, if I look closely this body betrays the idea of the free and powerful me I want to be. On this body I am reliant, I am bound, I am forced to yield and to compromise, and with its cessation, this chapter of the story I so carefully curated, was born and suffered to write, comes to a whimpering close.

I was driving from Connecticut to NY to get a laser treatment for my rosacea. The day before I had put the new luggage box on the car roof. Now the car drove sluggishly, lagged, gas mileage was way down. When I got to NY, I couldn’t find parking, the box meant I didn’t fit the overhead clearance in most garages. Clearly there were some serious downsides of the box I bought while imagining all the convenience and extra room it would bring me. Always there are unintended consequences that come with any benefit I receive.

I got to thinking about my rosacea, what if it is the same way? The unintended consequences of some benefit I chose, some circumstance I worked towards?  Rosacea after all is part of the ‘allergic trinity’, folks who have diseases like asthma, allergies, skin conditions because they are overly sensitive to their environment. But aren’t there boons of being extra attuned and sensitive to my environment? Isn’t that a way to ‘stay safe’, tune into dangers before they are perceptible to others? Isn’t my sensitivity a strength for my dharma practice?

I have always thought of disease as some kind of punishment. Karma whammies for being a bad person. But what if this view is overly simplistic? What if disease is just a consequence, a downside paired with an upside? I result of a choice or action we made? Isn’t this the truth of the world, two sides, causes and results, not Alana’s simplistic good/bad, naughty/nice, cookies/whammies.

Everyone has disease after all, its the human condition, only timing and details diverge. So how can I call health ‘proof of goodness’ and illness ‘proof of badness’?

Anyway, part of what triggered my rosacea was my brief obsession with 12 step Korean beauty regimen. Products that maybe in moderation help beautify, but which can sensitize as well. And is it this consistent with my gung-ho personality: When I do something I do it fully, moderation isn’t really my thing.

But is this bad or is this just consequential? The results I don’t like that I trade-off for ones I do? Maybe  my simplistic calculations of cookies and whammies don’t really reflect the world.

I was re-listening to a retreat talk on the 3 common conditions and an offhand comment from Mae Neecha really hit me. In response to a student asking which branch of a decision tree she should choose, Mae Neecha replied it wasn’t about choosing, it is knowing that any possible branch ends the same way, happiness or suffering. Which, of course I know, is just code for more or less suffering.

She also said that when we suffer it is because we have an inflated sense of self: We think we are so important that our actions, the choices we make along a decision tree, dictate the result. But it’s not true: For example, we can study a lot for a test and still fail, there are always all these possible outcomes we ignore, possibilities we can’t even fathom to consider. Then we suffer the stress of making a decision thinking we can control the outcome and we suffer the stress of outcomes we don’t like because we think they reflect us. Of course, for outcomes we do like, our ego gets puffed, and we get the delayed suffering that comes the next time that extra inflated ego goes pop.

This all struck me because the other day I was thinking: I want this country home in Connecticut that I am staying in right now. I know just because I enjoy it now, it doesn’t mean I will later. In fact, I KNOW Circumstances ARE CHANGING — one reason Eric is reluctant to purchase the house is climate change: Will summers, which are getting hotter by the year here, still be enjoyable in CT in 10, 20 years? And what if Eric dies and I am left with a remote country home, won’t I be lonely then? So much can and will change, those changes will affect my enjoyment. But still I’m unconvinced. Still, like this student I am weighed down by the stress of making a purchase decision. I am weighed down by the stress of wanting a particular outcome because I imagine what it will be, what it will make me.

I realize when I want something, when I want to cling to it/own it, it is because I want the ‘option value’. The house may or may not give me happiness in the future, but if I don’t have it there is no way I can get the happiness that I hope it provides the future. It is a necessary ingredient in the cake I want to bake later. Even knowing I may not bake a cake, or the cake may not be delicious, or it may come with bad parts, or I may not even want it later. None of that is enough right now to let go of my clinging. I want the option value of future cake.

Then I thought more on it and realized that I have moved so much and it hasn’t ever been the way I expected. I clung to the house in Houston, was devastated to leave it, but it was moving on that gave me my life in SF. My wealth. the job I enjoy. So much stuff I now consider ‘better’ required the loss of the home I had clung to. I want option value, but I never consider the cost of holding the option.

I feel I must cling, collect, hold onto the things I need for the future I imagine (never mind the world doesn’t give a damn about whether I actualize my fantasy) without ever considering that some other future may be preferable. Or, that I don’t need to cling or fixate in order to manifest a future, a future will manifest with or without me, the causes I put in place will have effects, but not necessarily the ones I intend. And other causes, past causes put in place by past ‘selves’, also do the steering, not me, not my wishes or intentions.

The stress really is an over inflated sense of my importance; of the belief that my vision, my direction, my future fantasy is what SHOULD manifest and everything else is less preferable. And that what is ‘less preferable’ to me is SHOULDN’T. I get the stress of that belief, without even the benefit of a guarantee that my vision will manifest anyway. And with the guarantee that even if it more or less does, it will still always be, as may Neecha pointed out, different degrees of dukkha.

I really did for a second see so clearly how ‘I’ is just my obsession with self, that brings me the suffering of stressing about how a situation unfolds. Or the stress of what to cling to and claim to try and get the self/future I want. And how, this is a version of atta, a sort of solidifying or clumping together –a solid version of the future. Anatta goes hand-in-hand with realizing that the future isn’t solid at all.

I was walking around the mall yesterday and I went to the American Girl store to look around. For those of you, Dear Readers, who don’t know what this is, google it. Seriously, it’s amazing, a vast store with nothing but huge, pricey dolls and doll accessories. There is even a salon and make-up counter where your doll can get a makeover. Each doll comes with a book, a story about who they are, and a starter kit of accessories unique to her – an equestrian set for the cowgirl, a surfboard and lay for the Hawaiian girl, Native American ritual objects for the American Indian Girl. Add on items at a charge, of course.

I marveled about how these pieces of plastic were given these elaborate identities. How it’s so natural to build identities with objects that little kids who get these dolls instinctively believe. Become invested. Are able to build ever more stories, with ever more accessory packs.

Its easy to wistfully shake my head at the naivete of children, but doesn’t adult Alana do the same? With just a few wardrobe adjustments didn’t I sell myself the ideas of being (and try to broadcast to the world) Free-Love-Hippy-Alana in college. Smart-Sexy-Professional Alana at my first job, then there was Early-SF-Hipster-Alana, followed by Aspiring-Wealth-Designer-Alana…More recently, this tendency of clothes for identity has loosened a bit. Maybe I have come to understand a little mor clearly, maybe I’m just getting older and it feels harder. But isn’t my body just the same?

For my whole practice, its been easier to consider the clothes, the homes, the car, and see how I use those 4e objects to tell my story. They are the accessory packs. But the body, that seems so much more me, who I actually am. It’s still there when I strip off the clothes after all.

But after seeing Dark Sister abandon her lightsaber (see the last blog post), a new perspective is dawning on me: The body is like the lightsaber, its just something I pour meaning into, and the meaning I pour into it is self –Alana. Since the body stays with me for the entire course of my memory, for one life, it seems more permanent than the clothes and books and homes that come and go. It seems more basic and primal. But the truth is they are the same: Same 4 es, same process of meaningfication.

I imagine my body to be what holds together my narrative, my identity, my imagined future. But are those things in this alana body any more then those storys and narratives are in the doll bodies? If they were, we sure as hell wouldn’t need accessories and books to sell the tale –it would just be who we were.

Meanwhile, if Dark Sister had understood the lightsaber didn’t mean anything, she could have just used it practically for as long as circumstances allowed her to use it. It wouldn’t have to have the heavy, aching meaning, we assign things. It wouldn’t hurt to have, to use and then to loose. But weighing 4es with meaning, it makes them extra burdensome. Even as I sit on a plane, typing this blog, I stress about every sniffle and sneeze I hear, the threat of illness to this beloved body. This is the dukkha my ignorance of objects causes me.

Back at the American Doll store, I had looked at the Hawaiian doll and wondered, with her whole story built around being Hawaiian, what happens if she had to move to New York, who would she be then? Who was I when SF Alana left for NY? Not knowing, feeling lost, it crushed me. Made me hate my new NY life. Over and over I am building my identity off where I live. A New Orleans Alana, an SF Alana, A Miami Alana. Like knowing the streets, or feelin the vibe, or having the neighbors know my name really proves something about myself. Then I have to move. So many times, like 15+ I have moved. Each time has sucked, each left me with a sense of losing my narrative, myself.

It’s not just my attachment to the objects I use to tell my story that pains me, it’s my attachment to the story, the self, that is the root of all this dukkh. Over and over I build identities, and then they are torn down. Never do I stop to consider these identities are fabrications, like the stories crafted by the doll company, to sell the product, get us invested in the tale, claim it, own it, want more of it.

And because I want more, I want to be and become, I am always building anew. New stories, new objects to sell those stories, fresh losses when it falls apart. And the clincher is, its totally arbitrary. I tell the story of an SF Alana because my life circumstances brought me to SF. If I had moved to Hawaii, I would have just as easily become a Hawaiian Alana.

What is arbitrary, what is circumstantial, can’t be who I am. Because what is arbitrary and circumstantial arises based on conditions, sustains based on conditions and ceases based on conditions. And if I am only ever, at most, one in the sea of conditions; part of, and shaped by that sea of conditions; arising, sustaining and ceasing based on a sea of conditions; subject to, not in control of that sea of conditions, than what is conditional can not be me, myself or who I am. This last thought however is a current day reflection. Keep on reading to see how I got here…

I have been watching the new Star Wars spinoff, Obi Wan. In it, heroes and villains alike use lightsabers, the only difference seems to be which color they glow. It’s classic Hollywood dramatic effect.

Throughout the series one of the characters, a hero-turned-villain named Dark Sister, struggles with her decision, with her life choices, with her identity. By the end of the series she decides to abandon her life on the darkside and return the light. In a dramatic moment, she shows her resolve to turn to the good by throwing her lightsaber on the ground and walking away.

As she walks away, the main good guy in the show, Obi Wan, tells her, “Now you are free.”

The scene really moved me, and I immediately thought to myself, “Clearly she is not free, she just wants to become something else, something good.”

I was surprised how naturally this thought came to me. But it was so obvious: Perhaps she is free from one old identity, but she is already building another in opposition. If she were really free, she would pick-up that light saber –a super practical tool in the Star Wars universe – put it in her pocket and keep rolling. She would understand the lightsaber is meaningless, a tool that’s pretty practical to keep around to get shit done, not proof of her hero/villain identity. But the meaning she assigns to the object is too strong. Even as she walks away from it, she is still using it to build herself, to build her narrative as a freshly minted hero.

A long time ago, at a retreat, Mae Yo held up a vase to a student who had been assigned to contemplate on the object. I don’t remember the exact details of the contemplation he shared with her, but it was about becoming enlightened. She asked him what he would do with the vase (presumably a metaphor for his body in this conversation) if he became enlightened. He said smash it, and I remember so clearly the way she shook her head. No she said, why would you do that? You can just put it back on the shelf. Eventually impermanence will kill it.

I’m gonna be honest here: When I was listening to that retreat discussion, I immediately thought the same thing as that other student–smash the vase. Some dramatic, forceful show. When Maw Yo shook her head with disappointment, I was so relieved she hadn’t called on me. Whew, my smart student identity could stay intact for at least one more discussion…

It’s only now, all these years later that her answer came back to me and makes so much more sense: Its just like with the lightsaber, if you know what the item is (a worldly tool), you don’t have to wildly, stressfully, dance around trying to use it to build identity (which it not actually a tool for). You can just use it for useful shit till it can no longer be used. That right there is freedom.

A few bits from some sermons from LP Thoon have really struct me lately. The first was in a sermon on how to get to heaven. He basically said you could do good deeds and not get to heaven. Why? Attachment. You cling to things from this life and then you end up reborn with them. If you want to go to heaven, the way to do it is to relinquish attachment.

In a second sermon on the 3 common characteristics, he explained Annata as, “Nothing belongs to us. Everything is meaningless.” Then he asks how is it meaningless? Leaving the question open for the listener to answer for themselves.

I started thinking along these lines: How nothing belongs to me, how to stop clinging, how to understand the idea that everything is meaningless. The next few blogs will cover some of these contemplations.

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I was thinking about the new house I recently purchased in Miami. I realized that it is only convention that makes it mine. By law, I hold a deed, I have a right to use it. But despite the law, it can be taken from me at any time. In this world, it is normal for there to be floods, fires, thieves, civil unrest, imminent domain confiscations, etc. These things don’t give a damn about my deed. The law can’t make the home truly mine if it can be taken away at any time.

What is more is that by law, I also have rights to an Airbnb I rent for a week, or my old Greenwich rental apartment — there is some legally binding contract letting me stay for a time. So why do I imagine so strongly that the home is more ‘mine’ than the rentals? These are all just places I can lay my head while circumstances allow. Places the norms, laws and conventions of our society govern the use of, to the extent they are able.

In my imagination, the home becomes something I will use on my terms, whereas the rentals I must use on someone else’s. But is the house really usable ‘on my terms’? Do my terms dictate if and when I can use the house? In the case I am forced out by a flood –is that really my terms? What about needing to leave because of bankruptcy or rezoning? Shit, this has already happened to me once before: Construction and asthma forced me out of an apartment I had rights to, a contract I had dutifully upheld with monthly rent payments. Why do I imagine the house to be different?

Even while I am able to use the house, can I use it entirely on my terms? Aren’t there already limitations, by city ordinance, by neighbors, by the physical realities of the construction, by my budget, that all govern its use? In the end, the house is something I use temporarily, no more mine than other places I use temporarily. A deed — a legal document, only confers any meaning in conventional, societal terms.

Yesterday, Justice Clarence Thonmas started talking about appealing abortion rights. For decades, women in America have had the right to an abortion –to dictate how we use our body vis-a-vie pregnancy. Now, in one court ruling, decide by 9 total strangers, my body rights, the body rights of all American women,
can be limited.

The rallying call of the pro-abortion movement has long been, “my body, my right”. But when I really consider it, I see a thinly veiled truth behind these words: These aren’t really my rights. If they were my rights, they couldn’t be denied by a law, or by society. They would be a matter of fact, not circumstance and convention. And if I don’t actually have rights to this body, if it is controlled –ALL THE FUCKING TIME –by the state, by social norms, by viruses, by aging cells, by the constant, exhausting, need for food and sleep and shelter, is it mine?

In a context where I don’t control the use of something, when I am bound to interact with it on someone/thing else’s terms, where I have no actual rights to it, when even my ‘reasonable expectations’ for use can be dashed by a construction project, a court ruling, a medical diagnosis –anything, anywhere outside of my control – I’m not so sure I should be calling that mine. Mine is conventional, like a deed. Truth is that convention is ultimately meaningless, a hurricane doesn’t give a damn whether both myself and the state call the house mine.

I was watching a show called The Witcher. In it, there is a powerful sorceress, but she is young, untrained, her family doesn’t see her potential and they abuse her, force her to sleep and eat out in the pig pen. One day, another magician sees the girl and recognizes her potential. This magician goes to the girl’s family and offers them a few cents to buy her and take her away. The father accepts the offer. The young sorceress, named Yennifer, cries and cries at being taken away. Incidentally, years later, thanks to the training of the magician who bought her, Yennifer becomes a rich, beautiful and powerful sorceress, heir to a life seemingly much better than what she had left behind in the pig pen.

The scene of her crying, it struck me so hard – why wouldn’t she want to leave such a shit show life? I couldn’t identify any reason other than that it was ‘hers’. It was all she knew, it was who she considered herself to be. In her mind, it was a foundation of the future she imagined.

No matter how pathetic, painful and meager her life was, she clung to it. Am I doing the same? By clinging so tightly to who I am, to the story I want to write, I accept dukka, I grow content to just have a little less of it, rather than leave a dukka world. Leaving means giving up what I have, who I am.

There is this bias of clinging to what we have. I did it when we left Texas, even though in the end I loved California so much more. I did it when I left California, and I ended up hating NY so much more. But I still ask myself how much of my hate was just resistance to something new, to the loss of what I had identified with before. Did my much beloved California, my SF identity, set me up for NY suffering? And was NY really so bad? Anyway, even if it was, life has moved on, there are new places, new imaginary futures I cling to now.

I consider this lake house we are staying in now: I rented it just a few months ago to solve a problem — my own house was evicting me with chemicals and toxins from the construction project across the street. This house was an emergency solution (there it is again, always solving a problem), a temporary arrangement. But just having it, enjoying it for this moment, and suddenly I am clamoring for more. Willing to suffer, to take on a burden, the stress of a purchase, for more. Why the fuck can’t I just be here now and enjoy the enjoyable parts?

I already have the data on this after all, the future is not what I think it will be: I wanted longer in Miami, and I got it after my mom’s accident forced me back, but it was so stressful, the house was uncomfortable, the weather too hot, Eric testy. I so looked forward to coming home, to enjoying the comforts of my apartment for a little while before we moved, only it was literally making me sick, it was the source of tremendous stress –not the imagined relief –to figure out what to do and where to go. I imagined bad outcomes, needing to find a new place so quickly, and ended-up at this lovely lake house. I was in Manhattan, enjoying it, and realized that when we had moved there I had been so excited about it till we arrived and it wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t San Fran, didn’t feed my SF identity, so I ended up hating it, making myself miserable, massively adjusting (“fixing”) my life in response. Why — because I couldn’t just accept it for what it was, I had to imagine what it made me.

Like Miami, or Greenwich, or NY, I imagine what it would be like to have the lake house. I can’t just be, I have to imagine, and with imagining there is clinging, and with clinging there is so much suffering. Why not just enjoy what is enjoyable and suffer what is sufferable without worrying how to cling to what is enjoyable, which will inevitably change, or try to avoid what is undesirable, when those circumstances too are bound to change. Clinging (both to what we want and to the hope of escape for what we prefer to avoid) is the bearer of burden, the enemy of equanimity, and yet I seem ceaselessly addicted to it.

The craziest part is, when I really think about the stuff I used to cling to, the things, like Yennifer and her childhood home, I didn’t want to part with, now I don’t care. Sometimes I even feel better off without them: I clung to SF, I’m over it. Clung to the old Houston house, feel lucky at the better life I was afforded because we left and Eric went to Google. Clung to the apt in the Miami, but I have moved on to a better house. Won’t I feel the same about a lake house? Won’t I feel the same about this body and this life? It is so serious, so stressful, while I cling to the things I will inevitably loose. And then I move on, clinging and stressing over new things. New glitzes that glamour me into accepting, clinging to, what hurts me.

A while back I had gone to visit a famous home in rural Connecticut called The Glass House. The home tour highlighted not just the architectural elements of the building, but shard the life story of Philip Johnson, the architect who built and lived there. Johnson spent part of his week at the house in Connecticut and part of his week in an apartment he owned in NY City. He always joked to friends that after 3 days at the Glass House he was tired of the country and needed the city, but after 4 days in Manhattan he was tired of the city and craved the country.

At first brush, it seemed to me that Johnson had ‘gamed life’ he had the perfect solution to restlessness, to boredom, to the limitations of just one place. Badass victory! This is what I want too –for years Eric and I have scrimped, saved, slaved, all for the 2 house solution: A little city, a little country. A winter place and a summer place. Action for me and peace and quiet for Eric. With two homes, we could have it all…badass victors who had pwn’d this life, this world, worked out solutions to all the limitations…

But I thought about it more, considered the question: Beyond the glitz and the glitter, what is really going on here? And I arrived to the conclusion that what a 2 home life really says is that neither place is satisfying, that both places are lacking, that in either place Johnson and I both find restlessness and discontent. That having something doesn’t mean my craving stops, in fact I just end up craving something more, something different.

So what is the nature of these places and homes? Their nature isn’t to satisfy, even if temporarily I enjoy them, their nature is dissatisfying. Or maybe it’s just my nature to always be dissatisfied. Either way, a temporary enjoyment of something doesn’t make it satisfying, just like temporary enjoyment of eating doesn’t make it not a burden.

Currently, Eric and I are staying at a lake house, a country place we are considering purchasing as a second property away from a new city home we recently bought in Miami. Just like Johnson, neither place alone satisfies, so I imagine going back and forth to be a better option. And truth is, maybe it is (in some ways) a better option, maybe it is less dissatisfying than being in one place alone. Just like moving from one position to another is sometimes less painful than holding still. But in either case, the ‘solution’ proves the problem, the discomfort innate in this world. On the scale of dukkha I constantly slide on, I find comfort in those moments of less painful, less burdened, less boring, less stressful. And those moments motivate me to try and seek more moments of less dukkha, rather than motivating me to get out of a world where everything is always just more or less dukkha. It dawned on me, maybe I am laboring towards the wrong ‘solution’.

Intellectually, I understand this. Yet, a big part of me still wants the lake house. That part of me wants the future I imagine my life will be with it. It wants what I view as an ‘easy/known’ solution to the problem of needing a place to go in Miami summers, a quiet place for Eric, a country getaway.
The lake house ‘solution’ arose from a problem: We needed a home and we chose Miami…too hot in the summer, too hectic for year-round life. I still really don’t know what to do –buy the house and be done? Hold out for something better?

I worry about the fact that a lake house bought today cuts off future options… Afterall, just the other day when I went to much-despised-Manhattan, I considered how much I enjoy a walkable city, how nice it would be to live in one (versus in Miami or the country where you have to drive everywhere).

I also worry about not buying the lake house today, will it be a future regret of the missed opportunity to have it, it is so lovely and peaceful after all…just the other day some other potential buyers came to visit, I felt jealous, worried I might loose out. Suffering, not just in having and not having, but even in the imagination of having and not having. That is what these objects are to me – the fodder to fuel dukka.

I am fasting again, day 3, I’m hungry of course, a bit weak. As I made my fast drink — put minimal energy into what I will consume for the day — I did think about how fast periods really are a break from the burden of needing to prepare food, decide what I will eat, planning the day around meals. Eating, as delicious as food is, as much as I enjoy it, is a burden, it is an obligation.

It’s so easy to miss because, duh, eating is normal, and also, more or less, pleasurable. But just because something is normal or pleasurable, it doesn’t mean it’s not a burden: This is the perfect example of something I wrote in my dukkha write-up: “A burden is a burden, even when you pick it up without noticing its burdensomeness, or are reluctant to put it down:”

This here is how the mistaken identity happens…Everything we take-up in this world really is a burden, as soon as we claim, we are obligated. We grasp at shit we imagine will benefit us, will give us the future or identity we desire, but in the moment of seizing we assume a burden, from the get go we are forced to exert effort into trying to keep something continually shifting, marching toward cessation, in the state that we want.

Once we claim something, we are weighed by our own imagination of obligation to it, to our beliefs about what our actions in relation to that object mean about us: I am not responsible for other people’s bodies they are not ‘mine’, but how much shame do I feel when my body gets fat? What dose the sagging drooping chubby figure in the mirror that say about ME?

Once we claim something we are also bound by convention, by the responsibilities that are foisted upon us by society: I may be ready to divorce my spouse, in my mind they are no longer mine, but I am still obligated to alimony payments. I may be ready to walk away from all the shit piled in my storage unit, but I still need to empty it, hire movers, find places to donate it, because I signed a contract and the storage facility holds me liable to deliver back an empty unit at the contract’s end.

Once we claim something, we contend with the expectation others have around our behavior, and the consequences of falling short of those expectations: Won’t a spouse or children I walk away from want to extract some vengeance for my neglect, even if in my own heart I have reconciled to them not really being mine?

It is so easy to be distracted by the “normal”, and by the moments we enjoy, by the conventions that we accept and that are foisted on us, so we don’t really see what things are. But even food, this body, the need to eat is a burden – something so basic and its basic nature is burdensomeness.

In fact, so much of my life is about trying to ‘fix’ things, responding to problems that arise, relieving my burden, mitigating the burdensomeness of my objects. Then, when I have some limited and momentary success getting shit to a state I want, I see it as victory, of some affirmation of self, power, control. I use it to fuel hope that I can find satisfaction in this world, that I can beat the house, control my destiny, be and become…

During the lockdown, my fridge broke. I had stockpiled so much food for just this emergency and I was so, so careful, I was afraid to have a repairman in my home. So with youtube, a toolbox and the ingenuity that can really only arise from need, I fixed the fridge on my own. I felt like such a badass – I can manage my things, protect myself, rise to the occasion. I am good enough, smart enough and doggonit people like me!

But is that really the message of a broken fridge? Look a little deeper and the “solution to problems” actually prove that the innate state of this would is problematic, at least from my standpoint (I.E. ever changing, ceasing, not holding states we want, not abiding by our hopes/rules/expectations/desires) . A broken fridge proves breakability is the nature of belongings. Needing to acquire ingredients, prepare and plan for meals, being forced by my body to eat, it doesn’t prove food is yummy, it proves needing to eat is a burden.

All this made me start considering that it would behoove me to consider –beyond the glitz and the glitter –what things really are. What do I mistake as delicious, desirable, delightful that is really burdensome, or breakable, or disappointingly fleeting?

I was thinking further on how states are annata. About how they are simply a momentary circumstance, a ‘shape’ arising based on causes and conditions. Shifting in accord with causes and conditions as well. But in the moment a state adheres – in the duration between arising and ceasing – the potential for clinging arises.

I get attached to states. I get attached to ice cream when it is cold, to this body when it is healthy, to a peach at perfect ripeness. Actually, as I think of it further, its not really the states I am attached to; I get attached to the characteristics that arise when 4es (intangibles are for another day) are in certain states.

Perhaps you, Dear Reader, will recall a reflection from the dukkha days: I bought a special dessert –with both hot and cold components –to give to my brother. I stressed as I drove home with it that it would get too hot and the ice cream would melt, or too cold and the toppings would lose their crisp. It really made me see the nature of the treat was not its state at a particular temperature, the nature of the treat was flux, but I stressed to try and keep it in a state I felt was ideal for deliciousness. I stressed at its very fluxalicious nature.

Now I see further that what I want, what I love, isn’t the state – it’s the characteristics, in this case of deliciousness, that a particular state imparts. There are qualities that arise during particular states, but they don’t inhere. Its not like that sweet treat IS DELICOUS. Or IS DELICOUSNESS. No the treat I bought was just a treat in a particular state, at a particular temperature, as soon as state shifts, the qualities change, as does the desirability of the treat.

I get attached to characteristics, I tend to imagine a clump, a state, as defined by its qualities. I use qualities/characteristics to identify something, mark it as special, desirable, mine. In the absence of traits identity is meaningless. This then is a double-edged sword, fleeting characteristics of fleeting states trigger craving in me, and I use these fleeting characteristics to deceive myself about the nature of object, as something special, unique, desire-worthy.

But all it takes is for a shift in state and then a subsequent shift in qualities occurs. Supposed identity of any object, and the supposed identity I believe it imparts on me, is gone in an instant. That is because nothing is intrinsically aggregated, or clumped together as Mae Yo says, it is just aggregated momentary into a named state. Then, what is aggregated disaggregates when the causes and conditions shift. In every state, in every phase of a state, there are always the seeds of disaggregation. Everything’s nature is to disaggregate. This is why everything is actually anatta.

In a video on Anatta, Mae Yo talked about a mango seed, how while it is still a seed it is not yet anatta, but when it is planted and becomes a tree then it is anatta. I was able to follow her description, but something about it troubled me…

The starting point of my practice had been impermanence – anicca – the first of the 3 common characteristics. With just a little consideration, it quickly became clear that everything was anicca, nothing was ever fixed or permanent.

The second common characteristic, dukkha, took a whole lot more contemplating. I had been so convinced that there was dukkha in the world, of course, but also sukkah. It wasn’t until my dukkha deep-dive (see the last chapter of this blog, ‘Everything is Dukkha’) that I was able to understand that everything is dukkha. Just more or less dukkha. The problem was that my mind created a blind spot, refused to see dukkha, even mistaking it at times for sukkah. But my wrong view, my misunderstanding, didn’t change the truth –everything is always dukkha.

Now, as I turn my attention to the last of the common characteristics, anatta, my impulse is that it must be the same as anicca and dukkha: Everything is always anatta. My task then is testing this theory, gathering evidence to prove (or disprove it). How can I start understanding this most tricky, slippery, subtle worldly condition? That was the task I decided to work on.

I though more about Mae Yo’s mango seed: How can I prove that even when it is in the seed state, the seed already has the nature of anatta? How do I understand anatta in terms of seeds, or any other rupa object?

I considered a past contemplation: Bubbles and anatta. I find the bubble to be the perfect physical illustration of anatta in rupa terms: The nature to pop is the nature of the bubble, it was always anatta. While it exists, it isn’t even one thing, it isn’t a solid ‘mountain’, it is a constantly shifting-changing-slipping-sliding over itself form, it’s never a fixed thingified thing. But we zoom in on the part that stays fixed, the vague dominess, a shape that allows us to assign it a fixed identity, to name it, to give it sammutti, a supposedly fixed form we call a bubble. The truth is, the bubble is always shifting as it marches along toward manifesting its nature of ultimate cessation, but the continuity of 1 aspect of its form is enough for us to call it bubble.

In fact, its actually somewhat arbitrary — bubble has many aspects after all — but we choose the outside shape, the thing that in rupa persists over time, to define and name that thing. Just as I use my body, the shape that persists over time, to define and name an Alana identity.

I watched Mae Yo’s video on Anatta again, this time with Eric: Eric said that what he understood was that things do clump into form, but there is nothing intrinsic, no identity in that form. It’s just a phase through which something passes.

His take really resonated with me. I can call something a chair, a house, an Alana. But those things have no inherent meaning or value, they are just temporary states through which the 4 elements (and in the case of an alana, the 5 aggregates) pass through before disintegration. A state is not an identity, it can’t be, it arises and ceases subject to causes and conditions. Where would a fixed identity lie in all that flux? How can I assign identity to something conditional? If its conditional it proves only the conditions that led to arising –conditions that shift, change, disappear — it can’t prove a master, a controller, a thing that exists beyond the process of causes and effects, arising and ceasing. When I really think about it, identity is kind of a stretch in the absence of both permanence and autonomy.

The problem is that I imagine there is identity in a state. Just the way I imagine there is sukkah in less dukkha. My imagination obscures the truth and the more permanent a state appears –the more solid, the longer it stands, the more easily I can imagine its fixedness — the more easily I can super impose identity. No self admits there are states, temporary clumps; the mango seed has a seed state, the bubble has a spherical state, in this lifetime my body facilitates and alana state. There is just no identity. No atta.

A few nights in a clean hotel had proven to me that it was time to figure-out a new living arrangement: Construction across from my apartment was making me sick. As I considered my situation, my mind just kept coming back to the topic of self and self-belonging: The apartment that I had considered mine till just a few days ago was something I was now eager to ‘dis-own’. It was literally making me sick, it was unlivable, assaulting my body. How did something mine turn on me like this?

I expected to be able to rely on my apartment, but here I am essentially out on the street, needing to find a new place to live that will support my body’s breathing pronto. Could this home really ever have been mine if it was able to fall into this unlivable state? If the building itself could essentially evict me, toss me out on its terms, not mine? If I controlled my home, I would, by definition, control it all the time, the fact that I so clearly don’t control it now means I was never really in control – the house was always just waiting to shift into a state that was uncomfortable, unlivable to me. Not a single one of the photos, the decorations, the ‘personal touches’ I used to lull myself into forgetting the not-mineness of that house changed its nature in the end. The house looked alana-picture-perfect, only alana could no longer survive in the house.

My body too was betraying me, my own lungs simply refusing to draw breath. I expect to be able to rely on this body to carry me through the world, but it takes so little — just some construction toxins across the street — to make me feel sick, to hurt, to prevent this body from functioning the way I think it “should”.

The problem is not the body though, the problem is that I have a misunderstanding (a permanent view) about the “way I think a body, my body, should act.” It should be healthy. It should support my continued alana-existence in this world. It should be habitable to me, a tool for my continuing the story I have imagined for both the body and the life. That’s a whole bunch of shoulds, but in reality, the body is acting exactly as it is: The causes and conditions, in this case construction toxins meeting my already diseased lungs, for illness and asthma attacks have been met so illness and asthma attacks ensure. This misunderstanding of how a body ‘should act’ arises from a deeper misunderstanding of what the body actually is —I think it is mine, an instrument of my will, a representative of me, a tool to force about my imagined future, my imagined identity. But this isn’t what the body is at all…

Long ago I read a story about the Buddha, details a bit fuzzy, but I recall a woman who was despondent that a number of her grandkids had died, she sent word to the Buddha for some ‘solution’ to her sorrows and got back a simple message: “Everything that is subject to break will break”. And everything in this world is subject to break. This is the nature of all 4e objects, breakability. They may travel through numerous states before arriving at that point, but they will always arrive at the point of breaking because it is not the various states that are their nature –these are just transitory arrangements shaped by shifting causes and conditions — their nature is breakability.

The nature of ice cream is not its perfectly frozen delicious state, the nature is meltability. The nature of this body in not health, it is not the ideal state I imagine a body that represents me will have, it is not a future state that aligns with my own aspirations for the future. The nature of this body is breakability. And just to be crystal clear, breakability is unclumping, annatta.

Before something has broken, it is usable to those with the causes and conditions to use it. I signed a lease and paid rent on the apartment, so for a time, it was usable by me. Causes and conditions have changed –now there is a construction project spewing off chemicals that aggravate my lungs, so it is no longer usable by me. It was never mine, it was just temporarily usable by me.

This body is something I was born into, as long as it works sufficiently to remain alive, it is something I can use to move through this world (it is also something that, in my ignorance, is usable to build a false identity and imaginary future, to act as a prop in the narrative of self that exists only in my head). When it can no longer sustain life/support consciousness, it is no longer usable by me. Like the apartment, it was never mine, it is just temporarily usable by me.