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20,000 Leagues to Sotapanahood

20,000 Leagues to Sotapanahood

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Following my retreat, I sent a few updates to Mae Neecha about my contemplations, progress and ongoing work; here is a recap of those messages.
Part 1 — First Email
Last night I was thinking back to a very strong childhood memory: as a young kid, my parents would take me to Disneyworld and I would rush to my very favorite ride –20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was a Jules Verne themed ride where you got into a ‘submarine’ and got to see some of the best adventure scenes from the book play out. I so loved that ride!
I went back to Disney in high school, it had been many years since my last visit, and I again rushed toward my favorite ride. Only this time, I saw something different as I waited in the interminably long line: I saw a pond of polluted water, with trash floating in it. A ‘submarine’ that was just a toy on a track visible from the surface. Once I got in I noticed the ride was filthy and the great adventure scenes I remembered so vividly from my childhood were just plastic panoramas. Honestly, I was crushed with disappointment.
After that trip, my little teenage mind derived a ‘lesson’ from the experience — don’t look back, don’t revisit things you enjoyed in childhood because you are setting yourself up for disappointment when it is not what you remember. Obviously, this was an idiot’s lesson, that I should nourish my delusion just because I don’t like what I see when I face it head on.
Later in my life, during a dhamma contemplation, I looked back at this and realized it was proof of the problem with #3 (memory), even if that very selective curator remembers the truth, it does nothing to guarantee that it remains the same now or in the future. Which is a fine lesson, but it misses the extremely important and extremely obvious…
My change in perspective was literally nothing more than seeing the rupa for what it really is. As a kid, the rupa of the ride was so tied up with my memory and imagination, my fantasies. As a teen, going back, I couldn’t help notice the rupa for what it was and I became disillusioned; there was no way to unsee what I saw.
 I now understand that this 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea experience has to be a parallel for the process of becoming a sotapanna.  It is so clear what my path is now. I need to see rupa for exactly what it is and understand that it is not some medium/manifestation for my fantasies. It’s not mine. Even when it takes the form I want, such that it seems to confirm something I believe about me or mine or this world, that form is so so so friggen temporary – it is a sometimes. But like a fool, I pay attention only to the sometimeses I like , and ignore all the sometimeses I don’t like.
I have started thinking about each and every rupa object as a bundle of elements that come together and then start their march through shifting states/elemental arrangements. Rupa objects interact with each other, with the environments, and they can alter course (though never go backwards) — Alana can use her rupa body and rupa objects to poke and cause course alterations (though I have had 1 too many Korean beauty product breakouts to think that I can ensure that my causing/poking guarantees the result that I desire) —  but the final destination is always the same, disaggregation or consumed (or some combination of the two).
That is sorta all there is to it, arising, marching, ceasing. There are reasons why I believe there is more to it. Reasons I believe some shit is mine or not mine. But all my reasons in the world don’t actually change the basic truth of what shit is — I will never find ‘meaning’ or ‘value’ hidden somewhere in the ingredient list of earth, wind, fire and water. It is just not there.
I have long mistaken utility for value. I have fooled myself into thinking I can buy something with this money, I can drive somewhere with this car,  so these things have an innate quality –a value. But if I look again, I realize the truth is, in some circumstances I can use the money to buy things, use the car to go somewhere; all it takes is a currency collapse, or a dead battery, or countless other changes in circumstances for these things to be useless. Value is like pregnancy — you are or you aren’t — if changing circumstance can change the value of a car or money, than it pretty much proves that all I can assign to these items is utility (Alana, or any other rupa being, can use in some cases for some of the time).
The one that really gets me, isn’t my body per se, it is the samutti my body supports. I have gotten so stuck on this idea that I need my body to build the life/trappings of an Alana — an education, credit rating, professional experiences, friends and family who recognize me, the kit-n-kiboodle of ‘recognizable identity’ upon which I build this Alana life.  Then I realized, just as I use this samutti, so do others: Eric to recognize me, the bank to check my credit record, etc. The fact that others people use it makes it so clear, the body and the sammutti it supports, are both just usable things (utility = temporary versus value which = innate/permanent).
Like a credit card, I can use this body and this samutti for all sorts of stuff, but if I loose it, it is gone, no matter what use I have put it to in the past and no matter what I imagine I will be able to use it for in the future. This idea that the body is mine because it supports a ‘life’ I want and ‘need’ is as crazy as saying a credit card is mine because I want and need it. It doesn’t make it less losable, or stealable, or cancelable.  My mind just likes to but, but but… excuses to confuse me in the face of such a glaringly bald truth.
Anway now my singular mission is driving this home. I am contemplating death often: mine, others, past, future, human, animal and object,  not simply as a fact, but in intricate detail vis-a-vie the dissolution of an elemental aggregate. I think about how we all part ways with each other. How I play a role and when that role is done, it is over and done.
None of this is new. But what is new is exactly how sure I am about all this: what the path is, what the endpoint is and how to traverse it. I refuse to keep waiting in interminably long lines, to get on crappy rides that ultimately disappoint me,  just because I turn a blind eye to the difference between what the ride is and what I want it to be. It is enough already.
Part 2 – Second Email
I wanted to follow-up on my email yesterday with just a little more deep dive on 1 issue that has been weighing on me –the idea that because I can be a cause I am somehow special, or my objects (especially body) represent me, or something I cause in the rupa world otherwise proves something innate about me. Here are just a few of my thoughts on this and how I have/am going about attacking this particularly stubborn issue:

1) Beaver Dam and my Finger on the Scale Deciding What Causes Mean Someone is ‘Valuable‘ and What Causes are Insignificant  — a while back I came across a beaver dam hiking. It was a good looking dam as dams go, and that is when it dawned on me: The beaver causes the dam, but I am never super impressed with the beaver. I think nothing of it. Which was my first glimmer into the problem that my nama is a choosy narrator. I select which causes to ‘pay attention to’ and interpret as somehow meaningful/indicating some deep or great quality that exists in the  causer. I don’t care about sports, so I am not super impressed with a basketball player causing a score, but I love art, so the painting an artist creates makes that painter a great artist. The truth is, the world is full of beings who are causes, that isn’t something so special. But I choose which beings, which causes to assign value to. This was really my awakening that my finger is on the scale.
2)  Rosacea Flare-up and the Difference Between Being a Cause and Guaranteeing a Result:  My rosacea  was flaring (a  4 e process) and I wanted to ‘fix’ my skin, so I exerted my control — I called my doc and got her to prescribe a cream that ended up helping. As I was standing in front of the mirror I started to feel proud, of my skin and of the results I got in my fixit attempt. I realized though, that this time around, I put in place a cause and got a result I wanted. But there have been other times I called the doc and got a script that did, seemingly, nothing at all, times I have called the doc and got a script that made the rosacea worse, and 1 time that I got a script that made the rosacea better, but it had horrible side effects and I had constant headaches. It made me see that I can absolutely be a cause — I can change the course of my 4-e body’s march through shifting aggregated elemental states — but I can’t guarantee that I am going to get the results I want. At the end of the day, it is really the results I care about. Continuing to build identity around being a cause, or believing that because I can be a cause for my objects they will represent me, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given that I can’t control the effects that my causes help to put in place.
3) Fit or Flabby, Alana has to Die — I know that rupa may only contain 4es, but its particular state does reflect the causes that brought it to that state –so boiling water does reflect the process of heating that brought it to the boiling state.
This got me very stuck on how a particular state of my body does in fact reflect something about the Alana nama that brought it to be in that state. I was thinking about a time when I was super fit. In my mind, that level of physical fitness reflected my extreme will power –to manage my diet, to manage my exercise –it made me proud. Though that level of fitness is long gone (showing its impermanence already), in my mind, I can’t help feel like, even if just for a moment, my body represented something important about me, a trait that I so deeply associate with myself. That with enough effort (which is always what I think I can bring to the table), I can at least momentarily get this body to represent me.
Honestly, I got so stuck on this I almost reached-out for help, but I gave myself another week to figure it out before I bugged you. Then Chadwich Boseman died (Black Panther actor). That dude was beyond fit (not to mention hot, talented and successful), but he died anyway. I imagine that his body, his career, all reflected his discipline, but it didn’t keep him for death, and death at a young age to boot. Somehow, this made me see that these brief moments of arrangement I fight so hard to obtain, so I can reflect something about myself, are sort of dwarfed by the end state we all come to. Its not exactly a perfect fix for this issue of body representing me, but it is the reason I have started thinking more ardently about death — the end, the fact that no matter what, I part ways with this body, is sort of the most persuasive argument I can come-up with that it is not really mine, it can’t be depended on, and if it isn’t mine or dependable, it is hard to make it  reflection of myself. Anyway, this is still a work in progress, but at least I think it is moving.
4) Wrong View as The Cause — A friend was talking to me about her many issues at work, and she didn’t even know where to start fixing them. But when I looked at her list of stuff — not speaking up, asking the same questions repeatedly, not leading — I realized that while I didn’t know her exact underlying wrong view, it sure looked like her issues were arising from one wrong view, or a wrong view and its kissing cousins. It made me remember something I somehow had lost sight of — all of our behaviors arise from our views (ahh the ole 8 Fold Path).
It got me to consider my own fit body represents ‘extreme willpower’ view.  I have already spent so much time contemplating how I don’t control my body (nothing like pissing myself to really drive that point home) and it is pretty clear that extreme willpower is a kissing cousin of control. When I think about it this way, it seems hard to ignore the causality chain — if fit body represents what I perceive to be its cause, my extreme willpower, doesn’t it also need to represent the cause of that cause — Alana’s wrong views about control and my body?
 If my behavior represents who I am, and my behavior is driven by my views –many of which practice has helped me understand are wrong — than am I not saying that who I am is a bundle of views, many being wrong? Is that really the me I want to be/claim? And if I am my views then how do I reconcile being a fixed me with clear evidence those views are continually changing?
I know this one maybe a little past the rupa basics — proving rupa can’t reflect the nama not just because rupa changes, but because nama is so changeable too, both sorta changing at their own rates, marching off in their own directions.
But, all together it gives me a real check at the door, for the belief that some physical trait, that my own choosy narrator has decided to elevate, that can be a cause but can’t guarantee a result (I mean seriously I have so many fitness injuries), that is temporary and can’t defeat death, and that has a shadow cause I may not really want to claim as  the ‘me I want to be’, is going to represent a good/special Alana.
Anyway, all a work in progress, but I wanted to send a deeper drill-down on this particular topic because it has been a bit of a hang-up for me.
Bite Me

Bite Me

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I had an adorable pair of socks, they had a little cartoon apple on them and below the smiling apple face, they said  ‘bite me’. When I saw those socks in the store, they made me chuckle aloud; I bought them imagining all the platies and yoga classes I would attend, where everyone could see my socks and laugh along with me, basking in my cleverness and my rye sense of humor.  Now, the socks were starting to become threadbare, in the months since the pandemic had begun, no one but Eric and I had seen those socks, there was no one else to laugh at them, to affirm me in relation to them.

I began to consider the socks more closely, I asked myself: “Do these socks prove who I am?” I bought them because I thought they expressed my sense of humor, they affirmed this important aspect of my personality. I bought them because, according to me, at that time, in that fresh-new-sock-state, I believed they reflected something about myself.  Now though, they just look like sad, worn out socks. Now, unseen by anyone else, they don’t even have the opportunity to affirm me at all. So can these socks, that wear out, that depend on circumstances in which they are seen, really prove anything about me? Do they prove my value?

I thought more about what it is those socks are able to prove and suddenly I realized: These socks, sitting in my laundry pile, prove  that, at least at the moment I bought them, I believed they proved something about me. Having these socks today prove that once upon a time, when I pulled my credit card out in the store, I believed these socks could represent me, affirm me, prove my humor and cleverness.  These socks prove nothing but the fact that I held a delusion about them, at least long enough, to buy them, to claim them, to make them ‘mine’.

Its true, that in the store, all those years ago, as I gazed at the socks, imagining our future together, I claimed them as mine, as representatives of my humor. They were my statement to this world — a cute, clever, ‘bite me’. Now though, as I see them all ratty and tattered, I had to ask myself: “Does claiming an object actually change the reality of the object I claim?” I mean, if it did, would these cute, once beloved socks be so beaten-up, would they be on lock-down in my house along with me, rather than out there –virus be damned– broadcasting my awesomeness to the world? No, claiming an object doesn’t seem to change the object at all, the only thing claiming an object seems to change is me.

Claiming an object changes my expectations of how an object will act; my socks will act in my service, bring me satisfaction, go out into the world, lookin good, and represent me. Claiming an object changes my behavior. I need to figure out how to clean the socks, stitch the holes; I use rupa thread and rupa detergent to manipulate rupa socks, trying to bring them to, and help them sustain, a state that I like, a state I imagine will bring me satisfaction and will affirm my sense of who I am to the world.  But, independent of my expectations, independent of my efforts, I have a worn-out pair of tattered socks, cowering in my laundry basket, avoiding the world. I have socks that prove what they are –4e objects subject to rips and tears and degradation — not who I am. I have socks that prove my beliefs — the ignorance with which I bought them hoping they would somehow be more.

The Poison Pill of Sometimes

The Poison Pill of Sometimes

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After days using the exercise from the Anatta-Lakkhana sutra to contemplate my belongings and my body it started to become increasing clear to me that each object I contemplated on –every object in the world — is just marching through the shifting states of rupa. Clearly it isn’t you, you cant say that any of the 4 elements in any given combination, that will definitely disaggregate, is you. It isn’t representative of you either — it represents its march – its process of entropy, its process of shifting, the object represents the nature of rupa itself to move toward, and ultimately arrive at, the cessation of any given form. I can use rupa objects to interact with other rupa objects, possibly causing them to change, within the scope of rupa rules; but that doesn’t make something mine, it doesn’t mean it reflects me, these objects are simply acting in accord with their nature, not affirming me. And yet, sometimes, the states they achieve seem to align so closely with my desires it almost seems they affirm me…
Previously, I had spent many months caught up on the idea that by being a cause, by being able to use one rupa object to change another rupa object, I was special, or unique or that I could get what I wanted. But now I see, what I want is a result, I couldn’t care less about being the cause. But even when I am the cause, no particular result is guaranteed. Its just that sometimes the result I want does in fact happen, and when it does I assign meaning, presume power, to myself as the cause.

Recently my rosacea was flaring, my skin was red, burning, I had pimples and pustules galore. This is a 4e process.  My nama wants to ‘fix’ the skin, bring it back to a less inflamed state that I prefer, that better ‘represents’ beautiful me. Immediately I get to imagining ways to fix. My memory of my Dr. helping in the past prompts me to give her a call. She prescribes a cream and ‘voila’, it helps. Why? Because in this instance, the 4es of the cream interact with the 4es of my skin and calm the redness and pain.

The thing is, there have been sometimes I called the doc and got a script and it made the rosacea worse. There have been sometimes I called the doc and got a script and the rosacea got better, but I had horrible side effects from the drugs and had to stop using them. So sure, I can be a cause, sometimes that cause achieves a desired result, but there is no way I can guarantee a result. Without guaranteeing a result –without ALWAYS — I can’t possibly claim control of this world, or ‘my objects’: I can’t rely on them to take shapes I believe reflect me, I can’t depend on them being there for me, they can’t affirm I am some special-exceptional-master-of-the-universe because they don’t act in accord with my wishes or rules, they simply act in accord with their nature –shifting when the causes for a shift have been met, with total disregard for my desired result.

Even when I am able to cause an object to change into a state I desire, it remains in that state only temporarily. This was not my first rosacea flare, in the past I had flares that I had tempered with  meds. The problem was, the meds had stopped working. Nor was this the first time a med had stopped working; countless times I had a flare, cleared it with a drug, and then had the drug stop working. Flare, new drug, remission, flare, new drug, remission, flare, new drug, remission, flare. Each time I  manage a remission, I feel victorious, in control, I have forced my skin back to the state it is ‘supposed’ to be in, the state I imagine my skin looks. But the truth is it is a momentary state, it is only a SOMETIMES STATE. And as much as I only want the sometimeses that I like to represent me — the young, the pretty the less red and bumpy and itchy — I can’t just isolate those states and claim them; my face is the whole path, the whole march, all the states that particular 4e object shift into before its cessation.

As much as I love the sometimes states when they mean a clear skinned remission, I am starting to see that the SOMETIMES STATE is actually a poison pill in a candy’s wrapping because sometimes is  the root of my dissatisfaction/why there is no satisfaction to be had in this word:  I want always (things I love) and never (things I hate). But the alignment of circumstances, factors and causes are always changing — rupa objects are always marching along their shifting states till they reach disaggregation —  so there is never a way I can convert sometimes to always, and disappointment will rush in as soon as the balance of 4es in my skin change and the drug stops working.

Still, those moments when my skin looks great, those sometimeses, are what feed my hope. The sometimes remission is what motivates me to keep calling the doc and trying new drugs whenever a flare comes. Sometimes  is what motivates each new effort, new birth, new becoming to get it ‘right’, to finally force all the arrangements into states that I want, that confirm me, and hold them there forever. This view, this hope, can never happen, and it will always lead to rebirth and more suffering.

 

2020 Retreat Part 8– A Ring/A Body That I Am Forced to Part Ways With Against My Will Can’t be Mine

2020 Retreat Part 8– A Ring/A Body That I Am Forced to Part Ways With Against My Will Can’t be Mine

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Day 8: Part 1: Wedding Ring
My wedding ring is not under my control (it was not mine, I had to part ways with it ‘against my will’).
If my wedding ring were under my control, it would have never gotten scratched, or dull or dirty and dead skin never would have caked-up on the inside making it feel sticky.
If my wedding ring were under my control, I would never have had to worry about it sliding down the drain when I did dishes. I would have never had to worry about it getting stolen when I walked through rough neighborhoods. Most of all, if that ring were really mine, I would still have it today, it would have never gotten lost, we would have never had to part ways.
But the very fact that my ring defied my deepest desires — for it to stay shiny and stay clean and stay pristine and, most importantly to stay with me — absolutely proves that ring is not, and never was, under my control.
When the ring rubbed against other solid objects — tables and weights and steering wheels — it scratched. When the ring was exposed to minerals in water, dust in the house, and liquids in food it became dirty and dull. When the skin on my hand got wet and rubbed against the inside of the ring, dead skin would build up and get sticky. When the elements in  the ring’s environment interacted with the ring in such a way that the causes of scratching, dirtying, dulling and skin build-up were met,  scratching, dirtying, dulling and skin build-up ensued.
Moreover, because that ring was never under my control, when the reasons for our separation arose, the result was our separation.  When cold weather caused my fingers to shrink, my fingers shrank. When the friction of my gloves against the ring caused the ring to slip over my shrunken fingers, the ring slipped off.  No matter how dear it was to me, no matter how much I wished it were otherwise, the ring went its way and I went mine.
“Alana, howz about we do the questions?” “You got it Great Dharma Lord.”
1) Is that ring of yours permanent or impermanent?  Clearly Lord, the ring is impermanent. The ring itself is impermanent, with changes in shine and cleanliness and shape. My relationship with the ring is also impermanent, with us having come together, stayed together for a few years, and then the ring getting lost and parting ways with me.
2) Is the impermanence of the ring something that causes you stress or ease? Lord, it was something that was so deeply stressful. As soon as I got the ring, I worried about it constantly, I wanted it to always stay looking clean and shiny and new. Even more, I worried about losing the ring, about it falling off or getting stolen. When it finally did get lost, it broke my heart. I cried and cried. In my mind I  had lost not just a ring, but a symbol of my specialness, my value and my lovableness.
 Now I understand that my pain and stress in relation to the ring was also impermanent: Before I got the ring, I never stressed about it. Now, years after it was lost I am also completely ‘over it’. My stress had a fixed duration  — it lasted only as long as my imagination was wrapped-up with how that ring defined me, and the future that we would have together.
3) So Alana, do you think it is fitting to regard what is impermanent, stressful and which you need to part ways with as: “This is me.” “This is my self.” “This is what I am.”?
Honestly Great Lord, the fact that I lost this ring, that I was forced to part ways with it against my will, is a very persuasive point for the ‘no column’. While I had that ring, I definitely believed it to be mine. Now that the ring and I have been separated for a time, it is so obviously not mine. If it were really mine, shouldn’t it’s mineness continue even after we had parted ways? But the truth is, it didn’t. The ring, undoubtedly continued on being a ring; its elements continued their ever-shifting-arrangement march towards their ultimate consumption or disaggregation. Yet, after a time, I stopped considering it mine. This proves to me that ‘mine’ is in me and not in the ring.
But we have already seen that rings and shoes and plants and retainers and even my body are all going to act in accord with their nature, shifting into various arrangements of elements before ultimately disaggregating and/or being consumed. I will be forced to part with all objects. If I don’t regard them as mine after we part ways, and I don’t regard them as mine before we come together, why should I regard them as mine for the finite period we are together? What is so special about that time — especially when, as we have established, during that together-time I don’t actually control the object?
I chose  to call that ring mine because I believed it would ‘prove’ a set of qualities about myself — that I was valuable and lovable. But how do I really expect a changeable, losable ring to reflect  a set of qualities in myself that I believe are permanent (I know they are not, but that is a contemplation for another day)? Perhaps that is why I am on the endless, exhausting, soul crushing, anxiety provoking, sorrow inducing, treadmill of acquisition; I need more objects to replace ever changing/losing/dying objects to prove ‘who I am’.
When I claimed that ring as mine, I didn’t just try to possess an object, I tried to possess a particular future that I believed the ring could help guarantee — a long marriage, a continued state of being valuable and lovable.  The future I imagined definitely had the wedding ring in it. Real future did not. So doesn’t that prove that the ring was incapable of bringing about the future I envisioned? Without that power, to bring about the future I want, do I really consider it mine? Lets face it, as soon as I stopped imagining a happy future in NY, the house I owned there, which I had bought feeling so sure would be the home-base for a fabulous NY adventure, stopped being ‘mine’ in my headheart even if it was still mine on the deed.
So if an object can’t stay with me, if it can’t eternally reflect a set of characteristics that I believe are eternal and it can’t guarantee my future, what is the point of regarding the object as mine at all? What is the point of being overly concerned with these objects?  How do I justify the particular pain and stress, that arises only in relation to objects I think I own (ie. I don’t feel particularly crushed when someone else’s wedding gets lost), when the objects don’t even do what I think they do and then disappoint me every time?
Day 8: Part 2: My Body is Like My Wedding Ring
My body is not under my control (it is not me, it is not mine, I will have to part ways with it, even if it is against my will).
If my body were under my control it would never get blemishes or lesions, it would never look dull or get dirty and it would never feel sticky or pained.
If my body were under my control, I would never have to worry about catching Covid when I am around others. I would never have to worry about it being taken, raped, when I walk through rough neighborhoods. Most of all, if this body were mine I could guarantee I will have it for as long as I want it,  it would never die, we would never have to part ways.
But the very fact that this body, on a regular basis, defies my deepest desires — for it to stay unscraped and unscathed, clean and pristine, never sick and never pained — absolutely prove that this body is not and never was under my control.
When this body’s elements are caused to rearrange in ways that result in it being scraped or dirtied or aged or sick or pained, scraped or dirtied or aged or sick or pained will ensue. Because this body is not under my control, it can catch Covid if the conditions for catching Covid are met. Because this body is a physical object, it can be taken and used by others when who are  physically capable of taking it and using it. Because this body is not under my control, no matter how desperately I cling to it, no matter how hard I try to take care of it, my will and my actions are incapable of keeping it with me forever.
“Alright Alana its qq time.” “Lets do this Great Dharma Lord.”
1) Is that body of yours permanent or impermanent? Clearly Lord, it is impermanent — I have seen sores arise and heal, I have had joints get torn, teeth get pulled, skin sag and wrinkle, cholesterol go up, blood sugar go down, breathing become labored muscles strengthen and atrophy. I go through states of dirty and clean, hungry and full, tired and alert, healthy and ill. The body’s external form changes, just as its internal organs and other components change. It gets older and it gets sick and eventually it will die.
2) Is the impermanence of the body something that causes you stress or ease? Oh Lord, on a stress scale of 1 to 10 this body is like a friggen 11. I worry about it constantly, I worry about how it looks, how it feels, how it sounds and how it smells. I worry about ageing, I worry about disease and I worry most of all about death.
3) So Alana, do you think it is fitting to regard what is impermanent, stressful, and which you will ultimately need to part ways with as: “This is me.” “This is my self.” “This is what I am.”?
Alright Great Lord, on this one I really hear you. The fact of the matter is that this body is exactly like my ring, I will be forced to part ways with it one of these days , whether I like it or not. How do I know that with such surety you may ask? I know it because this body is made of the exact same stuff – fire/water/wind/earth –  as my ring and as each and every object in this world. The only difference between this body and everything else is simply the proportion of these elements. Because all rupa arises from an aggregation of elements, marches along shifting and changing the arrangement of elements, and then disaggregates or become consumed, it is absolutely certain that this body — a particular aggregation of elements — which has already arisen, will keep shifting its arrangement of elements and will ultimately become disaggregated or consumed.
At the end of my body’s march, its form’s heat, movement, liquids and solids will have to separate and return to the earth; as such they will separate from me for sure. So is something of this world, that follows the rules of this world, and that ultimately separates from me and returns to this world really me or mine?
The truth is I have bound my sense of self up with this body; I depend on it to ‘hold’ together this Alana life — the family, the friends, the belongings, the ideals and values — but this body is not a dependable thing; its continual shifting makes for fragile grounds upon which to build a life, and whether I like it or not, its dissolution is imminent.
When I rent a car, I sign a contract and I know from the get go that I will part ways with it. Sure, while I have it I care for it, but I am not overly concerned about the thing. While I have it I can use it in my travels, I get to drive it from point A to point B. But when the contract is up, and I have to return it, there is no wailing and gnashing of teeth. One time, I rented a particularly fancy car and as I jumped out at the service station someone waved me down to compliment me on my bad ass car. I thanked them, but the comment didn’t stick, it didn’t puff me up,  I knew in my heart the car was a rental — it wasn’t me, it wasn’t mine, it was just something I was driving for 5 days between Orlando and Miami. So how about this body, isn’t it a loaner too? Something I drive between point A and point B, only to return when the contract comes due?
2020 Retreat Part 7 — Fancy Shoes/A Body That Inevitably Decay and Break, As Part of Normal Use, Can’t be Mine

2020 Retreat Part 7 — Fancy Shoes/A Body That Inevitably Decay and Break, As Part of Normal Use, Can’t be Mine

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Day 7: Part 1: Louboutin shoes
My louboutins are not under my control (they are not mine, their fading, decaying, breaking and eroding are inevitable — a normal part of their use).
If my louboutins were under my control they would not scuff, the leather would not sag, they would never smell or get sticky and wet inside.
If my louboutins were under my control their shiny red bottoms — the feature that makes them so special and unique — would never fade or scuff or scratch or erode. At the very least, the bottoms wouldn’t rub off so quickly, their razzle dazzle would last for at least a dozen wears, they would carry me through all the galas and parties and work events I imagined wearing them to when I bought the things.
If my louboutins were under my control I could just say, “sweet bottom shoes, stay sexy and non smelly and sleek and new looking, keep flashing a little red to the world.” They would listen to my pleas when I say “please, at least, just hold on a little longer before you lose your red-bottom shine, wait until after my next work event before you breakdown and look so worn.”
But the reality is that those sweet little shoes are not under my control. Although I watch where I walk in them, polish them regularly and wipe them down whenever I finish wearing them , after just a few wears, I see the scuff marks, scratches and chips, wrinkles at the toe, and a faint odeur de’foot is wafting up from their storage box.  This is because the shoes travel through an environment where solid objects — the street and other shoes and rocks and dirt — rub against them causing scuffs and scratches and chips. The shoes spend time on my feet where pressure causes them to stretch and wrinkle, and bacteria and sweat from my body create smell.
This is all normal. When the causes for scuffs and scratches, sags and wrinkles, smells and worn bottoms have been met, these shoes will have scuffs and scratches, sags and wrinkles, smells and worn bottoms. My desire for them to be different, my expectation that they will last a certain amount of time, my imagination of their presence at future events, is all irrelevant.
“Alright then Alana, lets do the questions.” “Alrighty-O Great Dharma Lord.”
1) Are your shoes permanent or impermanent? Clearly Lord, they are impermanent. The way they look now is totally different then how they looked when I pulled them from their box the first time, in fact, I can see new marks and shape changes after each and every wear. It doesn’t matter that these shoes have a feature that makes them special — cool bottoms — they seem to wear and break down like every other shoe. It doesn’t matter that I take extra special care of them, they break down nonetheless. It doesn’t matter that when I bought them, I had a vision for these shoes, special outfits and special occasions where I was sure they would join me, they still breakdown, on their own timing and not on mine.
2) Is a pair of shoes that is impermanent, that you so hoped would last and didn’t, something easeful or stressful? Lord, it is so stressful to watch something I care about, I enjoy, I worked hard to buy, and hard to preserve, just breakdown and change. It is disappointing when my fantasies about where I will wear them to, and how I will look in them, are dashed.
3) So is it at all sensible to say that a pair of shoes you don’t control, that change and that cause you stress yours? Can you count on those sweet-bottomed shoes to actually represent you?
Getting to ‘no’ is a work in progress Lord, but here are my observations about those shoes: The nature of all objects is to break down and decay — when their elements have met the causes of their disaggregation or consumption, they will disaggregate or be consumed (or some combination of both). The function of shoes is that they are worn on my foot, out in the world, that they are eroded by, and changed by, both foot and world is a product of their function. When I bought those shoes, I knew all of this already.
But when I saw those sweet shoes, with their o-so-special red bottom, I was wooed. My mind got to fantasizing our future together –at least a dozen wears — and when a little corner of my brain reminded me, ” Alana, just remember those shoes, red-bottomed or not, are going to go the way of all shoes, they will erode and decay as part of their ‘daily life.’ Buy them if you want to buy them, use them if you want to use them, but don’t count on them to be there for you just because you want them, even if you have built your whole outfit on the basis of those shoes, even if you RSVed to an event thinking both you and the shoes will make it, even if you take super good care of them, know those shoes will break down and get busted”.  And then I said to that little corner of my brain, “yah, yah, yah” and pulled out my credit card to buy them anyway.
When I pulled out my credit card, I was fixating on the the newness and shininess and red-bottomedness of those shoes. I wasn’t thinking about their future-worn-out-selves.  When I pulled out the credit card I knew damn well any shoes ( better yet ones that I perceived of as valuable precisely because the area that touches the street most was painted red) would get ‘sick’, but I figured that was a tomorrow problem, I was focused only on enjoying the shoes today.
When I thought about how those red bottomed shoes would represent me, prove my stylishness, I was thinking about the shoes only in their newness and shininess and red-bottomedness state. Never in their worn out and scuffed and smelly state. But both states are native to the shoe. The broken state was already inevitable in the arrangement of the shoe.
When I bought those shoes, I had in mind a certain number of wears, a minimum number of events, and I determined their ‘worth-it-ness’ accordingly. But their final wear came long before my mind’s minimum and I suffered disappointment accordingly.
A part of me now wonders if I would have actually been satisfied if those shoes made it their dozen wears, or if I always want more? Either way,  I know that I made my own, allowed to represent me, something that in the end proved totally dissatisfying. So maybe a different framing of this question is: If I only claim things as mine that I hope will give me satisfaction, and it is questionable if any object at all can ultimately give me satisfaction, should I in fact be claiming anything at all as my own?”
Day 7: Part : 2My Body is Like  My Louboutin shoes
My body is not under my control (it is not mine, its fading, decaying, breaking down and eroding are inevitable — a normal part of its use).
If my body were under my control then my lungs would not scar, my skin would not sag, my moles would not change, my joints would not erode, I would never get sweaty or stinky or feverish.
If my body were under my control the face and the figure — the features I think make me so special and unique — would never fade or fatten or wrinkle or stretch. At the very least, this body would carry me through all the workouts and events and travel and gatherings – the sheer number of years — I imagine it will.
If my body were under my control I could say, ” sweet body, stay sexy and sleek and not smelly. Please, at the very least stay strong and healthy and pain-free” and my body of today would oblige, forever.
But the reality is, this body is not under my control. Although I wash it, work it out, feed it, medicine it and take generally good care, in just 40 years it has scars and torn joints and sagging skin and dark marks and diseases and regular hip pain.  This is because this body travels though the world — encountering other objects and environmental features that heat it and cool it, abrade it and saturate it, push and pull and stop it in this way and that, consume it and alter its balance of elements.
This is all normal. When the causes for scars and torn joints and sagging skin and dark marks and diseases and regular hip pain have been met,  scars and torn joints and sagging skin and dark marks and diseases and regular hip pain will ensue. My desire for a body that is different –unchanging and unimpacted, my expectation that it will last a certain amount of time, my imagination of its presence at future events, is all irrelevant.
“Alright then Alana, here we go with the questions” “Ask and I will do my best to answer Great Lord”
1) Is that body of yours permanent or impermanent? Oh so clearly Lord it is impermanent. The way it looks, feels, smells, sounds, and behaves is totally different now than it was when I was a kid. In fact I can see new marks, feel new sensations, watch how it moves differently each and every day. It doesn’t matter that this body has a face, a shape, that make it different from other bodies, that make it seem special and unique, it seems to wear down and break like every other body.
It doesn’t matter that I have a vision for this body — how it will look, how it will feel, how fit it is, how smooth the skin, how easily it breaths, how healthy it is — it still goes right on breaking down, according to its timing and not my own. I may have imagined a clear faced body at the last gala, but zits still popped up. I might have imagined a perfectly back bending spine, but I never was able to fall into a backbend from standing even after years of doing yoga hours a day, I may have envisioned getting through this pandemic without a hospital visit, but a rabies shot seeking Alana had to go to the ER a few weeks back.
2) Is a body that is so important to you, that you hoped would last but is already wearing, that shows signs of further aging and decaying with each day, something that is easeful or stressful? Nothing causes me greater stress than this body Great Lord. It is utterly depressing, soul crushing, to watch something I care about so much, something I love and depend on, something I work so hard to preserve just break down and change.
I feel disappointed when my fantasies about what this body will do and how it will look and feel are dashed. I feel extreme fear every time there are signs this body is decaying further, sickening and eroding, I live in anxiety of its illness, pain and death.
3) So is it at all sensible to say that a body that you don’t control, that changes and causes you stress is yours? Can you really count on it to represent you?
Getting to ‘no’ is a work in progress Lord, but here are my observations about this body: The nature of bodies is to break down and decay, when the causes for breaking down and decaying (shifting of elements) have been met. The function of a body is to carry me through this world, that it changes and erodes in relation to objects/environments in this world is natural, expected, it is a product of its function. The world makes no secrets about these facts, it is clear and plain to see.
At some point, I must have surveyed these facts and said, ‘yah, yah, yah, to the part of my brain that so obviously observed the ‘full package’ I was signing-up for when I entered a physical form a form that, through its very function, is exposed to the causes that result in its decay.
When I claimed this body, started calling it my own, I must have thought I could count on it, at least for some minimum amount of time, that whatever percentage of the time it satisfied me would be enduring, that it would make the whole body trip worthwhile.
When I am enamored with this body, fantasizing ways I will use it to build a life, feed an Alana identity, move through and enjoy this world, and represent me, I think only about a ‘snapshot Alana’.  A snapshot that is healthy and beautiful and pain free; I don’t think of the ageing, sickening, dying body that inevitably comes about, lying in the frames before and after that snapshot state.
Last night, when a headache and some sniffles had me worried illness might be on the way, I said to myself, “despite your yah, yah, yahing, you must have known this body came with illness, that that was contract you signed. Now when there is illness, how can you be surprised? Why do you feel afraid, disappointed, by something that you knew was coming all along? If this body decays against your wishes and your imagination, in its own time and according to its causes, why would you count on it to represent you? If this body’s sickness and cessation, is not satisfying to can you really claim it as your own? Do you ever really claim things you know won’t be to your liking?
2020 Retreat Part 6 — A Freezer/Lungs That Shift According to Their Elements Instead of My Wishes Can’t be Mine

2020 Retreat Part 6 — A Freezer/Lungs That Shift According to Their Elements Instead of My Wishes Can’t be Mine

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Day 6: Part 1 My Freezer

My freezer is not under my control (its elemental composition shifts in accord with its nature, and not necessarily in accord with my actions nor my desires).
If my freezer were under my control food particles would not clog the drain line, water would not pool and harden at the bottom, gashes and marks would not be left by accumulated ice, and the door would always be easy to pull open.
If my freezer were under my control, it wouldn’t shut off just because the power went out in the house or the landlord unplugged it. It would be something I could always rely on, mine to use whenever I needed it.
At the very least, if my freezer were under my control, it would wait for a convenient time to clog, or be unopenable, or power off — a time when no pandemics or hurricanes threatened my food supply.
If my freezer were really under my control, my panicked cries of, “please don’t clog, please please open, whatever you do don’t go out,’ would have moved my freezer to leap into action, and its thermostat to stay at a safe zero degrees, if not forever, than at least in the times I felt like I needed it the most.
But the reality is, my freezer is not under my control. Multiple times in the last few months, my freezer has broken or shut off, independent of my action, independent of my ‘need’ for it to work.
The state of the freezer changes in accord with its elements, and in the process of interacting with elements in its environment. A crumb of food (4 e) can move into the drain line and, at a certain temperature, cause the water that flows through the line to freeze/harden and block further movement though the pipe. Water can  move onto the freezer floor, solidifying at a certain temperature and blocking the door from moving/opening.
A storm, or an individual, can remove the freezers’ requisite — electricity — and it will cease to function all together.
“So Alana, is that freezer of your constant or inconstant?” “Oh great Dharma Lord, I have a trash bag full of melted food that proves it is inconstant — temperature changes, tubes clog, door opens only sometime and when the conditions for complete shut-off are met, it shuts off entirely.”
“And is a freezer that is inconstant the cause of suffering or ease?” “Lord, it causes stress and suffering by the boatload as I worry about the food inside, and how I will get it fixed and if it is even fixable at all.”
“Alana, if you don’t control the freezer, it is inconstant and it causes you suffering, does it make a ton of sense to call the thing ‘yours’?”
“This contemplation is a work in progress Great Lord, but I can say this: my freezer has proven to me that it acts in accordance with its nature — when elements in the environment, like food particles in drain lines, cause it to shift, its composition shifts and, in the case of my freezer it shifted enough  that its function was altered.” When the freezer was deprived of its requisite — power (heat) — it ceased functioning all together. Though I want to rely on this freezer, it is unreliable. Do I really want to call something I can not rely on my own?”
Day 6: Part 2: My Lungs are Like My Freezer

My lungs are not under my control (their elemental composition shifts in accord with their nature, and not necessarily in accord with my actions nor my desires).
If my lungs were under my control particles of pollen or dust would not cause my airways to begin to close, mucous would not pool and harden in them, scars would not be left by the process, and the lungs would always be able to inhale and exhale smoothly.
If my lungs were under my control, they wouldn’t just stop oxygenating my body because they weren’t getting sufficient air. Obviously, if my lungs were under my control, I could always rely on them, they would be mine to use anytime I needed them.
If my lungs were really under my control, the sound of gasping, the feeling of panic and weakness and lightheadedness, would act as their command — I wouldn’t even need to say, “breath damn it, breath”, before air was smoothly flowing again.
But the reality is, my lungs are not under my control, during countless asthma attacks my lungs have broken or shut off, independent of my action and independent of my desperate ‘need’ for them to work.
The state of my lungs change in accord with their elements, and in the process of interacting with other elements in their environment. A bit of dust or mold or pollen (a 4 e object) can move into my airways and, even at normal body temperature, cause mucus to flow and harden/thicken to block further movement of air to my lungs. In the absence of my lungs’ requisite –air– they can cease to function all together and are unable to oxygenate my body.
“So Alana, are those lungs of your constant or inconstant?” “Great Lord, every single asthma attack proves they are inconstant — I can be rolling along, minding my business, lungs breathing perfectly well and then suddenly they are struggling to function.”
“And is a set of lungs that is inconstant the cause of suffering or ease?” “Great Lord, the throws of an asthma attack are extraordinarily stressful, panic sets in at being unable to breath. Even when I am not suffering the stress of an actual attack, I have to worry about attacks, worry about carrying medicine, worry about going to the doctor and making sure I am prepared for any attack that may occur.”
So Alana, if you don’t control your lungs — an organ lodged at the center of our body, and organ utterly essential to your body’s continued function, those lungs are inconstant and cause you stress, does it make sense to call the things ‘yours’?
“I can’t say with certainty they are mine, unfortunately I still can’t pinky promise, with absolute certainty, they aren’t mine either, my mind requires more convincing. What I can say though is that these lungs, over and over, have proven they act in accordance with their nature — dust, pollen, mold, or smoke have all caused the composition of my lungs to shift and their functioning was altered. When the lungs are deprived of their requisite –air (as well as food and water and correct temperature) — they can cease functioning all together. No matter how much I want to rely on these lungs, no matter how much that I value and hold dear (my very life) rides on them, I know that I  can not count on them to be reliable. So the real question is whether something that I can only use some of the time, when it’s own nature and conditions permit it, is something I can rightfully claim belongs to me? Perhaps it makes more sense to say I can use it for a little while…
2020 Retreat Part 5 — A Peace Lily/Body That Are Reliant on Their Requisites Can’t be Mine

2020 Retreat Part 5 — A Peace Lily/Body That Are Reliant on Their Requisites Can’t be Mine

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Day 5: Part 1: My Peace Lily (Plant)

My peace lily is not under my control (it is not mine, it is reliant upon its requisites).
If my peace lily were under my control its leaves would never yellow and get brown spots, its stems would never become flaccid and sag. If my lily were under my control it would always be perky and erect and bright green and smooth, the way it looks when it is well watered and getting a good amount of sun, when the soil is packed with nutrients and at the right level in the pot.
If my plant were under my control, I wouldn’t need to find it a plant-sitter when I travel, it would just patiently wait for me to return, still healthy and perky and bright. And at the least, if my plant does need a plant sitter, it wouldn’t look even better, with new buds and new leaves, after leaving it in someone else’s care than it looks when it is in my own care.
If my lily were under my control when I talk to it (and yes, I do talk to it) and gently say,”Hey there little peace lily, you are looking sad and saggy and brown today, how about you perk up for me and look all green and fresh blooming today?” And, silently (because duh, plants can’t talk back) my little lily would go full, thick, foliaged bloom.
But the reality is that my little lily is not under my control. The lily is dependent on its requisites — water and sunlight and soil nutrients — in correct proportions to live and thrive and grow. Any imbalance of these has an effect, sagging stems and un-greening leaves and thinning foliage, too much imbalance and the plant will die.
The lily is affected by other 4e objects in its environment, bugs can attack it and consume the leaves, fungus can attack it and consume the stems. A plant-sitter can change its environment or proportion of requisites and it can bloom and grow in response, even if I think, “its not fair my plant thrives so fully when someone else cares for it.”
The lily’s own, internal composition of 4es — its nature — drive it to form flowers at a certain stage of its life, to bloom, to wither and eventually to die, independent of how much I (or my so slightly-too-skilled plant sitter) provide it with its necessary requisites.
“OK Alana — lets do the questions then”. “I’m ready to go Great Lord”
1) Is your little lily changeable or unchanging? “Lord, the way may little lily changes –not just every day, but even over the course of a day — are plain for anyone to see. I can watch it droop when it needs water and perk up again within a few hours after receiving it. I see leaves grow through phases of green and yellow and even brown, I see soil levels decrease and the plant grow taller and wider. I see new leaves form and fall off, new bugs grow and wither.
2) Is a plant that changes stressful or easeful? ” Here is the thing Lord, I love that little plant, it makes me so happy when it looks full and fresh and healthy. When it begins to sag though, as it changes, it makes me depressed to see a limp brown thing sitting on the corner of my desk. But, as it freshens and perks again, I am happy (though a little less happy if it perks under my plant sitter’s care instead of my own) — my emotions are dragged around, pulled-up and down, by this little plant, that is the most stressful part of all.
3) Is a plant that is not under your control, that is changeable and causes stress something you ought to, something that you logically are able to, call your own?
“I hear you Lord, it’s a great qq that I still can’t give a flat-no to yet, but I can say this much:  That lily ticks along, growing, blooming, sagging, perking, yellowing, greening all according to its nature rather than my wishes. It is dependent not on me, but on its requisites. It lives and thrives dependent on these requisites and it ultimately dies independent of  how perfectly or thoroughly it has acquired them.

 Day 5: Part 2: My Body is Like My Peace Lily (Plant)

My body is not under my control it is not mine, it is reliant upon its requisites.
If my body were under my control my hair would never gray, my skin would never get red and brown spots, my muscles wouldn’t go flaccid and my skin wouldn’t sag. If my body were under my control it would be perky, bright and smooth, the way it looked back when I was fit and firm and radiant at 25.
If my body were under my control, I wouldn’t need doctors to prescribe meds, stylists to cut my hair, facialists to clear my acne, parents to care for me when I am young, or Eric to care for me when I am sick. This body would not rely on no one but myself.
If my body were under my control, my will would be its command. The word — the mere thought — to be perky, bright, fit, healthy, alert, strong, raring to go, would result in perkiness, brightness, fitness, health, alertness, strength and ability to go go go till the cows came home.
But the reality, that I so hate to face, is that my body is not under my control. My body is dependent on consuming requisites — food, water — in correct proportions to live, thrive and grow.
My body is affected by other 4e objects in the environment, bugs can attack it and consume its blood, fungus can can attack it and consume its skin. Animals can eat it, cars can crush it,  bacteria and viruses can enter it and shift its state and composition creating illness.  Excess cold can freeze tissue causing frostbite and excess heat can raise body temperature causing brain damage.
The body’s own, internal composition of 4es — its nature — drive it to grow, to go through puberty and menopause, to deplete collagen and sag, to age and wither and eventually die, independent of how much I offer it requisites or protect it from other 4e objects in the environment. When the conditions for gray hairs, skin spots, flaccid muscles, fractured bones, brittle nails, wounds, reflux, worn joints, thickened arteries and altered hormones have been met, gray hairs, skin spots, flaccid muscles, fractured bones, brittle nails, wounds, reflux, worn joints, thickened arteries and altered hormones will ensue no matter how much I don’t want them to.
Are there things I can do to alter the arrangement of 4es in my body? Sure, I can pluck gray hairs, bleach skin spots and moisturize dry skin. But these alterations do not prove my control — if I were in control my hair would not gray, my skin would not spot or dry in the first place. And at least, if it did, my fixes would be permanent, not temporary, and I could ultimately decide and dictate the fate of this body.
“OK Alana — lets do the questions then”. “Copy that Great Lord”
1) Is your body changeable or unchanging? Clearly this body changes Lord. Not just every day, but even over the course of the day, I can watch skin get dry and flaky and then plump and moisturize after I apply cream. I can feel alert in the morning and unable to fight sleep that same night. I have watched it change from child to teen to twenties, 30s, and now 40s: weight has changed, body shape has changed, face sagged, joints have stiffened, sun spots have darkened and esophagus has eroded. Change has been unceasing.
2) Is a body that changes stressful or easeful? My body is my number one cause of stress My Lord. I love it so much, I depend on it, it brings me such joy when it is pretty and fit and healthy — when the skin is spotless and the hair all brown, when the muscles are taunt and the fat at a minimum, when the joints don’t catch and the brain feels alert and awake. When it sags and fatigue and grows blotchy or feverish though it makes me so depressed and afraid. I feel loss. I feel anxiety about future loss. But after I lose weight from a diet, after my rosacea meds heal skin spots, after biopsies return normal, my sense of elation and ease soar. I live  a painful  emotional rollercoaster because of how I react to this body.
3) Is a body that you clearly don’t control, that changes and stresses you the hell out something that you  ought to, something that you logically are able to, call you or your own or representative of you?
I desperately wish I could just say no and be done already, but I know I can’t deceive either you Great Lord nor to myself. Here however is what I can say:
This body ticks along, growing, blooming, sagging, perking, coloring, thickening, thinning, fatiguing, waking, pained and sickening and healing all according to its nature rather than my wishes. It lives and thrives dependent on requisites, its form depends on elements. Nothing about this body exists ‘outside the system of the world’, there is no way to exempt it from being impacted by the process of shifting and changing configurations. Even if I could guarantee optimal nutrients and environment for this body it will die. Its journey ends in the same exact termination point as plants and cars and clothes and homes and every other body.
2020 Retreat Part 4 — A Cabin/Body That Doesn’t Keep Me Safe Can’t be Mine

2020 Retreat Part 4 — A Cabin/Body That Doesn’t Keep Me Safe Can’t be Mine

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Day 4 Part 1: My Vacation Cabin is Not Mine 

My Vacation Cabin is not under my control (it is not mine, it cannot guarantee safety or protection).
If the cabin were under my control, I would feel comfortable there all the time — there wouldn’t be dust everywhere, the hot water wouldn’t take forever to heat, the pipes wouldn’t creak and there wouldn’t be mold that aggravated my asthma.
If my cabin were under my control the power wouldn’t just spontaneously go out, especially not when I am busy and need it to work and get stuff done.
Most importantly, if the cabin were under my control it would do the ‘job I hired it for’ and keep me safe, away from people, socially distanced and guaranteed covid free.   There would be no incidents or accidents — like rabies exposure from bats in my bedroom one night — that forced me out into the scariest of places in a scary covid world: The ER for rabies shots.
If that cabin were under my control I would be able to say: “Damn it cabin, be the cabin I thought you were from the listing photos — all clean and modern and convenient. Have easy hot water and no dust and shouldn’t there at least be power? Cabin, oh cabin, even if you can’t keep me comfortable do your most critical job and keep me safe!” And of course, if the cabin were mine it would brightly, cleanly, comfortable and safely reply, “Your wish is my command.”
The fact that the cabin is not mine to control is plainly evidenced by the dirt and the creaking and the mold induced coughing and, above all else, by the 6 hours I spent in the emergency room last week for rabies shots post bat exposure.
“So Alana, is that cabin of yours constant or changing.” Well clearly it is changing My Lord — the dust seems to get thicker, the power flickers and the bats just  appeared out of no where.”
“And Alana, is something that keeps changing stressful or un-stressful” “Lord, the lights and the dirt and the cabin noises, those are a little bit stressful, they are not the peaceful vacation ‘add-ons’ I would have chosen. But going to the ER during Covid was one of the most stressful experiences of my entire life: I have been so careful, so disciplined about Covid, I hadn’t seen a soul up-close, besides Eric, in months and there I was in an ER where ever patient could have been the vector of the covid infection I had worked so hard, sacrificed so much, just to avoid.”
Before I signed the lease, I looked at the pictures, I visited the cabin, I read reviews online. By all the evidence I could uncover this looked like a comfortable and safe place to ride out a covid summer. After all, I did all my home work, I was prepared, I KNEW exactly what to expect once we arrived. The problem, the root of  my suffering, is in the vast difference between my cabin expectations and my cabin reality.
 “Alright then Alana, do you think it is sane or rational to call a cabin that you don’t control, that is changeable and stressful and precipitated a trip to the ER during a pandemic ‘yours’?
Lord, I do admit that I am still TBD on this question, but ere is what I do know and can say so far:
Rupa is constantly changing. If there had been a bat in the house on the day of my viewing I would have never rented the place. I became attached to the idea of a bat free house, but the situation changed, the arrangement changed and voila, enter bat.
What is more is that over and over I have proven myself to be piss poor at ‘interpreting the rupa’ . I look at an arrangement of rupa and I start reading tea leaves — well decorated means clean and comfortable, remote means safe. But the truth is, time and again my ‘rupa predictions’ fail and I am left with the disappointment, dangers and consequences of living in a rupa world that reflects the nature of rupa itself  (impermanent, stressful, not self) not the meaning I assign it.
I know cabins can be dirty, and not comfortable, and not safe. That is a normal part of the world. But once that cabin became ‘mine’, at least for a little while, I thought it would be a super cabin, special and different and, at least, free from danger. The fact that my cabin is just like every other cabin in its inability to keep me either safe or comfortable does make me question the grounds on which I go about claiming it as mine.
  Day 4 Part 2: My Body is Like My Vacation Cabin.

My Body is not under my control (it is not mine, it cannot guarantee safety or protect me).
If my body were under my control I would feel at ease, pain free and comfortable in it all the time. There wouldn’t be dirt and filth that accumulate on my skin, my  joints would never feel stuck and would always feel ready to move, my body wouldn’t make annoying sounds like farting and burping and I wouldn’t have microscopic bugs that live in my skin and cause rosacea.
If my body were under my control, it wouldn’t just stop from exhaustion, it wouldn’t need rests and sleep and breaks, especially not when I am busy and need it to get stuff done.
Above all, if this body were under my control it would keep me safe, it would shield me from stabs or gun shots or car accidents or falls, bacteria and viruses and parasites and animals that seek to consume me,  and it would absolutely not begin attacking itself with cancer cells and autoimmune diseases and allergies.
If this body were under my control I would simply be able to say, body, body, please don’t get hurt, please don’t get sick, be comfortable and clean, be quiet and stop embarrassing me with your sounds or worrying me with your growing moles or forcing me to sleep when I feel so desperately that I need to stay awake.  And my body, clean and firm, silent and alert, pain and disease free would say, ” Your wish is my command!”
But I know for a fact my body is not  under my control because it couldn’t repel bats in my sleep. I needed emergency care and shots because the body’s elements on their own are unable to repel rabies, they require the consumption of a 4e rabies vaccine in order to shift into a form that will prevent the rabies virus from consuming me. A body I control would be absolutely self protecting, always able and prepared to fight off disease.
I know this body is not mine to control because sounds and scents and stiffness and pain that I do not want plague me constantly. I know this body isn’t under my control because I can’t count on it to protect me and to keep me safe, not just from outside forces, but even from itself — I know my own skin cells may have turned cancerous and be trying to consume me. I know my body is not under my control because it follows its nature, shifting and decaying, dirtying, expelling waste and getting sick instead of following my rules and desires about what my body should be.
“So Alana, is that body of yours changing or unchanging?” “Clearly Lord it is changing all the time. It goes through cycles of dirty and clean, of pain and no pain, of sleep and waking.” With age my joints have stiffened and my movement restricted in ways unimaginable in my youth and with passing years new illnesses arise, or threaten to arise, that reduce my sleep even further.”
“Alana, would you say a body that keeps changing is stressful or un-stresful?” ” Great Lord, this shifting, changing, body is a world of stress. There are small annoyances like increased flatulence and filth and there are panic-attack or pain inducing changes like asthma attacks and mole growth. I have spent my life working so hard to take care of my body, to keep it healthy and safe from harm, but for all of that effort, decay and disease keep stepping in, trumping all my will and intention and sovereignty over this body. It makes me so sad and scared. I feel helpless.”
‘Alrighty then Alana, do you really think it is sane or logical to say that a body you don’t control, that is stressful and changeable, that gets dirty and tired and worst of all sick, is something that belongs to you?
Well Great Lord, I still can’t issue that super solid no that the text books tell me is correct. But this much I can say –On some level I realize that I must just expect that if my body was healthy yesterday, it will be healthy today and tomorrow, because each new illness or new pain is a shock and surprise. I think, no not me, it simply couldn’t be… But the truth is that  rupa is constantly changing. Skin that was healthy before can become irritated or cancerous when the conditions for irritation or cancer have arisen in its arrangement of the 4es. This is normal.
What is more is that over and over I have proven myself to be terrible at  ‘interpreting the rupa’ . A lifetime of hypochondria tells me that just because I think new lumps mean cancer and chest pain means heart attack these things can be, and have been in the past, fungus and acid reflux. Just because I thought the new spot on my foot was a wart it doesn’t mean it is not skin cancer.  Knowing I am so terrible at ‘reading the rupa’, makes me suspicious that my reading of the rupa of this body as ‘me’ or ‘mine’ may in fact be incorrect.
I know other human bodies get dirty, flatulent, tired, pained and diseased. I read the news, I see the lives of folks around me, this is normal, common, everyday  stuff.  But  when it comes to my body, I seriously think things will be different, it will stay young, it will stay fresh and it will stay healthy. My body, at least in my mind, is special and different, it is safe and comfortable. The problem is that all the evidence in my real life refutes this idea of specialness that exists in my mind — my body acts like every body, aging, changing, causing stress and pain. If my body is exactly the same – in substance and behavior — of absolutely every body, then what is the logic, or the use, of claiming this particular one as mine?
2020 Retreat Part 3 — That Pair of Jeans/Face That Change in Accord with Their Nature, and Can’t Be Stopped From Disaggregating, Can’t Be Mine

2020 Retreat Part 3 — That Pair of Jeans/Face That Change in Accord with Their Nature, and Can’t Be Stopped From Disaggregating, Can’t Be Mine

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This contemplation is part of a series of exercises, derived from the Anatta-Lakkhana Sutra, that I did during my 2020 personal retreat. For more details please see the blog  titled Introduction to Contemplations From 2020 Personal Retreat.

Day 3: Part 1: My Jeans 
My jeans are not under my control (they are not mine, they change in accordance with their nature and not my rules, no alteration I make to them will  avoid their final state of disaggregation).
If my jeans were under my control they would never get thinning spots or areas that become piled and bumpy. If my jeans were under my control they would stay that same smooth, tough, easy to care for fabric that they were when they were new.
If my jeans were under my control they wouldn’t have started sagging, stretching and loosening, especially not when when I use them according to their purpose, without being particularly rough or abusive to them.
At the very least, if my jeans were under my control they would accept the repair patches I apply without complaint. They would stay repaired, at least a little while, before starting to abrade and errode again, or tear in some new spot.
If my jeans were under my control, I could curse them, or coax them, or implore them or berate them, some word or action of mine would convince them to stop wearing and tearing. And, if they insisted on wearing and tearing, at least honoring my repairs and giving me a little while before I needed to worry about patching again.
But the reality is that my jeans are not under my control. The texture and shape change because the nature of the fabric makes them susceptible to texture and shape changes. Dirt and particles and surfaces in the environment or my body that come in contact with my jeans can shift the composition (the balance of 4es) of the jeans — they can become abraided, piled or stretched. Spills, or wash water, or detergent that come in contact with the jeans can also change their texture making them feel stiffened and thickened rather than the smooth they were when I bought them. Heat from my body or the dryer or the air can weaken the fabric of these jeans (again, shifting the balance of the 4es of the threads) making them even more susceptible to texture change or stretching/saging.  This is normal.
Now, to be clear, I can definitely apply a patch to these eroding jeans.  I have done it before, used my 4e hands to apply a 4e patch, altering the 4e balance of the  jeans (by adding new 4e material) and achieving a repair. But soon after, my patch began to fray and peel up, so I know the repair is temporary.
So long as it is within the nature of the object to be repaired, it can be repaired. But because the nature of these jeans is ultimately to disaggregate, no effort on my part will ever, ever ever ever ever, ever prevent their ultimate demise because that demise is in their nature. So much for control Alana!
When the causes and conditions for this abrading/sagging/stretching/ stiffening/ patching/ patch peeling have been met,  the jeans will shift and change no matter what my preferences, no matter how embarrassed I may be that my butt is hanging out..
“OK Alana, are your jeans constant or inconstant?” “Lord, they are clearly inconstant, they have a totally different fit/look/feel now then they did when I got them.”
“Alana, is something that is inconstant, as you described, satisfying or dissatisfying?” “Lord, I gotta go with dissatisfying on this one. I really would like for my jeans to stay in the like new state — that was the state I bought because that was the state I believed would be satisfying. To have it change like it has, is super disappointing, it makes me feel a little angry, a little bait-and-switched, I am not at all satisfied.”
“So Alana, if you don’t control your jeans, you can alter them temporarily but sure as heck can’t alter their march toward their final destination of demise, they are inconstant and unsatisfying, does it make logical sense to call these jeans ‘yours’? Are these jeans who you are? Are these jeans something you can count on to represent you? I mean really Alana, does your butt hanging out really represent you?”
“OK Lord, I swear I am working on getting to firm no. In the meantime, I will say this: These jeans are just a collection of elements, they aggregate into the shape of jeans, they change and shift their arrangement in accordance with their nature and then they ultimately shift into the state of jean demise. I can use these jeans for some period of time, I can alter them within the limits of their nature, but I have no hope at all of forcing them to alter beyond the bounds of their nature. I have no hope of keeping them. I will admit, to call something I can’t hold on to, I can’t control and I can’t ultimately rely on ‘mine’ is growing a bit challenging.
Day 3: Part 2: My Jeans are Like My Facial Skin
My facial skin is not under my control (it is not mine, it does not represent me, it changes in accordance with its nature and not my rules, no alteration I make to it will avoid its final state of disaggregation).
If my face skin were under my control I would not have rosacea. My skin wouldn’t get thin and crepey in some areas and thick and bumpy in others. It wouldn’t turn red or itch or burn. My skin would be smooth and pretty and perfect like it was when I was younger.
If my face skin were under my control, it wouldn’t sag or wrinkle, it wouldn’t stretch or loosen, especially not when I am diligent about facial exercises and sunscreen and moisturizer and facials.
At the very least, if my skin were under my control, my ‘fixes’ would actually ‘fix’ not temporarily patch, or do nothing visible, or make things worse. One botox shot would last forever, that pricey new moisturizer would have gotten rid of that under eye bag that is driving me nuts, and that first med my doc prescribed for rosacea wouldn’t have made the peeling and burning worse.
But, alas alack, I cannot prevent my skin from assuming arrangements I despise, and I cannot ultimately keep those arrangements, and far worse, at bay. At best, maybe, sometimes, possibly (with the risk of making stuff worse),  I can temporarily alter the state of my skin — within the bounds of its nature — to sometimes/temporarily achieve a look/feel that runs closer rather than further from my imagination/desire. To call such temporary-maybe-sometimes-better-sometimes-worse alterations ‘control’ would idiotic: At the end of the day, no matter my will, my action, my speach or my desire, my facial skin’s elements will shift and adjust in accord with it’s nature and not according to my rules.
Therefore, it is totally normal when my rosacea flares up and my skin looks like a bumpy beat and burns. Afterall, microscopic insects that live on my skin (4e objects) can absolutely consume my skin and alter its balance of elements such that the resulting state is dry, burning, bumpy and red. Gravity and sun and the natural tendencies of aging and shifting in my own body can cause and contribute to my skin shifting shape and becoming saggy and laggy and droopy.
When the causes and conditions for this burning/red/bumpy/thinning/sagging/stretching/wrinkling/peeling and at last, total decay or consumption have been met, Alana can bet her booty (that is hanging out of her patch peeling jeans) that burning/red/bumpy/thinning/sagging/stretching/wrinkling/peeling and at last, total decay or consumption will ensue.
“OK Lady, lets do the questions then”. “You betcha Great Dharma Lord”
1) Is your face skin constant or inconstant? Oh its so obviously inconstant. I had the best skin as a kid, even a teen, no acne, smooth and pretty. Trouble didn’t start till 20, when the acne began, and then the rosacase, and then the eczema, and then the aging. And even each of these things are sometimes a little better and sometimes a little worse. My skin reflects its changing and changeable nature.
2) And is changing and inconstant skin satisfying or unsatisfying?  I am so so so so deeply dissatisfied with my skin. I loved it when I was younger, but each change — in the direction I consider ‘wrong’ is a deep disappointment. It is an embarrassment. I look in the mirror and I cry sometimes at the loss of youth, at the unwillingness of my skin to cooperate. I itch at it and I ice it in the hope to reduce the pain.
Any, momentary satisfaction I had in it when I was younger is now long gone. Any satisfaction I feel when something ‘works’, the rosacea calms or the lotions and potions smooth, is just the grounds for future dissatisfaction when the skin again shifts out of an arrangement I prefer. More sorrow, more drama, more disappointment when what worked for 1 moment fails to work for 2.
3) If you don’t control your skin, it is inconstant and totally unsatisfying, can you really say that it is ‘you’ or ‘yours’ or ‘represents you’? This is a work in progress My Lord, but here is where I am at:
My Jeans, my skin, and every object in this world is just a bundle of elements marching through shifting states of rupa. Rupa objects interact with each other, with the environment, they can shift course (though never go back), but the final destination is always the same, disaggregation or consumed (or some combination of the two).  When the arrangement of skin necessary to manifest rosacea arises, rosacea will arise. I (my nama) can scheme a plan to call the doc, get a script, and my hands can apply the meds (another 4e object). In this regard I can be a cause for a change in my skin, but I can not guarantee a result.
I have used rosacea drugs that didn’t visibly do crap . I have used rosacea drugs that helped and I have used rosacea drugs that made my skin worse. Because any cause I put in place does not ensure the result I want, I am not in control.
The problem is, when I sometimes get a result that is more, rather than less, in line with my imagination/desires, I convince myself I am lord and master of my skin. It is those moment, when the med actually works (at least temporarily) and my skin looks clear and smooth, that I preen in front of the bathroom mirror thinking that there is me, it is mine, it represents me, its current state is in line (ore or less, with one eye closed if I squint kinda hard since 41 is clearly not 21) with who I think I am (ohh the me I wanna be). Unfortunately, it is also those moments that feed both the delusion and the hope and set me up for a world of hurt later on.
Later on will come. A few days after I achieved ‘clear skin’ from my latest meds, I was greeted in the morning mirror with a big new bump. Suddenly my skin wasn’t me, it didn’t represent me, it was aberration — an alteration away from what my mind, in just a few days’ time, had convinced me was normal. But the real normal is 4e skin shifting according to its nature, changing form when stimulus for change has been reached.  Sometimes that is bumpy form. Sometimes it is smooth form. Always its end form is disintegration.
So I guess the real questions for me to consider are these: Can I really find anything of substance in a shifting mass of elements that inevitably, ultimately, c
ease that I can call ‘me’? Especially when I actually only want to call certain states along that shifting set of elements me/represent me/mine? At the very least, I should claim the whole thing in all its states.
And if an object, or my skin, or my body, is just a shifting mass of aggregated elements does it really represent anything other than itself — either its momentary trail marker or perhaps its entire march along the entropy parade path?  I know, I know, my mind likes to imagine that I can superimpose myself, my reflection, onto that shifting mass, but  the efforts seem a bit hollow when I can’t, not even temporarily, guarantee it’ll assume or hold that shape I am seeking (out damned spot).  I mean I would never send my crazy, loud mouthed, unpredictable, totally disobedient, employee to represent me at a conference…
As for something being mine, I’ll admit this is the hardest for me to see right now. Afterall, objects have utility, I can in fact sometimes use them…until I can’t. Which brings me to the question of whether or not I can claim an object that, by its very nature, is a ‘loaner’? Each and every item, even my body, has a rental period when it is up, it is up, whether I want it to be or not.
 A part of me just wants to admit that I can call something mine, or I can call it “Bessie the Cow” , but at the end of the day each object and I will part ways, march away from each other on separate courses. Now, or sooner, or later my time with my skin will come up. Now, sooner or later, my time with my body will come up. Despite all I imagine this body to be, despite the future I have fantasized for it, despite how desperately I feel/think I need it, we will part ways.
2020 Retreat Part 2 — A Fish Tank/Body That Doesn’t Conform to My Expectations Can’t Be Mine

2020 Retreat Part 2 — A Fish Tank/Body That Doesn’t Conform to My Expectations Can’t Be Mine

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This contemplation is part of a series of exercises, derived from the Anatta-Lakkhana Sutra, that I did during my 2020 personal retreat. For more details please see the blog  titled Introduction to Contemplations From 2020 Personal Retreat.

Day 2: Part 1: My Fish Tank 

My fish tank is not under my control (it is not mine, it does not conform to my view of it, it doesn’t act in accordance with my imagination or fantasies).
If my fish tank were under my control the glass would not be so fragile — it wouldn’t so easily scratch or chip and I wouldn’t have to worry about it shattering.
If my fish tank were under my control then I could just set it up and it would be easy to maintain–  a little cleaning, a little feeding, and it would keep a steady state equilibrium where the PH and the lighting and the plant load and fish load existed in perfect balance.
If my fish tank were under my control one fish would never attack another, the plants would never grow unchecked, and an algae bloom wouldn’t starve the fish and plants of oxygen. At a minimum, that fish tank would accept and appreciate all my ‘fixes’ and ‘maintenance’ without creating further problems in return.
If that fish tank were actually under my control, I could say, ” Oh fish tank, when I bought you I imagined you would be just an easy, pretty thing. Please be the tank of my imagination and stop being so fragile. Stop with the algae blooms that kill the plants and the PH adjustments that harm the shrimp, and the aggressive fighting catfish and please, please, please just stay in a balanced state so that I can sit back, relax and enjoy you.”
Alas, my fish tank was never the fish tank of my imagination. Dozens of scratches and huge chip in the corner prove it was never under my control. Glass by its nature is fragile, easy to scratch or chip or shatter when a solid of sufficient force encounters it.
Keeping my tank maintained and in balance was a fight of epic proportions. When I went too long without changing the water, ammonia levels rose and my test strips condemned me with dire warning akin to:  ‘Red alert you fish murderer.’ When I changed the waster too frequently chlorine levels rose and my test strips condemned me with dire warning akin to:  ‘Red alert you fish murderer’.
Just a slight excess of food, the same amount that had worked fine for weeks, led to decay that led to bacteria that deprived the tank of oxygen that started killing my plants.  When algae became a problem I bought a ‘cleaner catfish’ to eat the algae, only the catfish was super aggressive and started attacking my other fish. When I put rocks in the tank so my other fish could hide from the bully cat fish the rocks changed the tank PH and my test strips condemned me with dire warning akin to:  ‘Red alert you fish murderer.’
I thought that tank would be a fun toy, but in reality tanks are a complex, interdependent system where components continually shift and impact one another. This is natural — four element objects continually shift and change, they interact with each other and the environment precipitating further change. They act in accordance with the rules of rupa, not the fishtank fantasies of Alana.
“So Alana, is your fish tank constant or inconstant?” “Great Lord, that darn tank was constantly inconstant: chemical balances changing, fish dying, shrimp breeding, plants spreading…what worked perfectly to care for it one day lead to massive disaster and die off the next.”
“And Alana, is something that is inconstant stress full or easeful?” “Stressful!  The irony Great Lord, is that I was so sure that my tank was going to ease my stress, that it would be the relaxing ‘moving picture’, that all the tanks in the mall and the fish store looked to be. But those mall/ fish store moments were just that — brief moments — where tanks appeared to be balanced and harmonious. Once I got the tank home the full picture became clear, constant work to upkeep, continual fear that any given shift –totally out of my control– would destroy the thing I loved.
“Alright Alana, here is the biggie question — do you really think it is fitting to be calling something you don’t control, that is inconstant and stressful ‘you’ or ‘your’ or representative of you’?
Well Great Lord, I still can’t give you a firm, exuberant ‘hellz no’, but I will say this…When I desire something, and therefore seek to claim it as ‘mine.’ I am only really seeing one side of it. I want the pretty, flashy, relaxing, fun bits. I either ignore the ugly, stressful, difficult, decaying parts or I ignore the pain and suffering that getting those ‘dark-side’ parts will bring me. But with glass I get breaking. With fish I get death and loss. With a mini ecosystem I get a ton of upkeep and work. If something is ‘mine’ it has to be mine in all its states, not just the ones I want.
Day 2: Part 2: My Fish Tank to My Body

My body is not under my control (it is not mine, it does not conform to my view of it, it doesn’t act in accordance with my imagination or my fantasies)
If my body were under my control it wouldn’t be so fragile — my skin wouldn’t scratch, my joints wouldn’t chip and bones wouldn’t break.
If my body were under my control then I could just do the basic care and feeding, add in a little working out and sleeping, and I would be good to go. This body would just hit a stride of steady state equilibrium — my blood sugar, cholesterol, vitamins and hormones all in perfect balance.
If my body were under my control I would never worry about cancer cells attacking healthy cells, about a mole growing unchecked or that a fungal infection that would kill off my ‘good bacteria.’ At a minimum, my body would let me ‘fix’ it without spiraling into further diseases and decay.
If my body were under my control, I would damn well know it by now because I have spent many nights pleading with it. I say, “body, please just be the thing I imagine you to be, be healthy and dependable, be beautiful and ageless, be mobile and fit and pain free. At least, be a little more like the body I had in my 20s, or I’d even settle for 30s…”But alas, my body doesn’t respond, it is not the body of my imagination.
Instead I live with constant fragility — nails that chip and hair that breaks. Joints that are already wearing down and a fractured toe that will attest to the fact that with sufficient force, a hard jagged pavement can break a bone.
Keeping this body maintained and in balance is literally a struggle for my life. I started taking green coffee supplement to manage my blood sugar but it irritated my bladder, causing incontinence. I started eating meat to manage low blood sugar, but the saturated fats have made my cholesterol too high. I apply sunscreen to protect my skin but as a result my vitamin D levels are too low. I use a steroid inhaler to keep my airways from constricting, but the very same chemical that opens my airways leads to fungal overgrowth in my mouth. I took up running to increase my cardiovascular health, but stripped my hip joint in the process. I await lab results from every check-up with bated breath — always afraid I will find some new, lurking, imbalance that endangers my life.
From my perspective, it feels like my body is constantly faltering and breaking, but in truth its behavior is completely natural, not broken. This body is a complex, interdependent system where components continually shift and impact each other. In this body, the 4 elements are constantly shifting, interacting with each other internally and with other 4 element objects externally: Aggregating, re-aggregating/shifting/changing proportions, disaggregating, consuming and being consumed. This is the cycle of Rupa. No matter how much I fantasize it were otherwise, this is the cycle to which ‘my’ rupa body is enslaved.
“Allrighty Alana, you know the questions by now.” “Yes, Great Dharma Lord, shoot”
1) Is that bod of yours constant or inconstant? — this body is constantly inconstant. Every year, every day, hell every minute is something new. Last year my cholesterol was alright, now it is through the roof. A few months ago my rosacea was fine and then suddenly I had a horrible flare. I go through cycles of hot/cold, hungry/satiated, tired/alert. It changes so frequently, and sometimes so subtly, I can’t keep up, I’m not even fully aware, even if it is something like a growing cancer or blood clot that imperils my very life. Above everything, I wish I could go back to a time when I was healthier and prettier. At least I would feel at ease if I could ‘keep what I have now’, but my body keeps changing.
2) Is something that is inconstant stressful or easeful? I could literally write volumes about my fear, stress, sorrow and loss — just focused on my body — and still it wouldn’t cover the half of it. Right this moment I await results of a skin biopsy, nervous that my long standing ‘spot’ morphed before my eyes, unbeknownst to me creeping from benign to malignant. The thing is, My Lord, in those moments I get a clean bill of health, in those moments I feel fit-as-a-fiddle and oh-so-pretty, I relish in this body: I primp it, preen it, travel in it and peacock around, and all the stress and anxiety of its sick/aging/loss side are nearly forgotten…
3) Drum roll please….Is something that is clearly not in your control, mega inconstant and epicly stressful fitting to be called ‘you’ or ‘yours’ or ‘your representative’? I don’t know Great Lord, it’s my body, it is so so so damn hard to see it as anything but ‘self’ or ‘mine’ or ‘me’. But I will share this…
The other night I was in the shower, looking down at a body that, let’s face it, has seen fitter and perkier days. It made me depressed to think about the loss of that old body and even more depressed to know that this new one –assuming I live long enough– would likely give way to something even more atrophied.  Sure I had a few good years of being at a physical prime, but relative to sub/post prime years how many were truly prime? How did I agree to sign-up for this sometimes-satisfactory-form, but more-time-unsatisfactory-form? And even if I signed-up for a ‘body rental’ for utility sake, why did I grasp at this body, and claim it ,and mine-ify the thing? Why did I get so bound-up, make it the foundation of a ‘fit/hot’  identity that couldn’t possibly last? If I am going to claim this body as mine, I should at least be claiming it in all its shifting, decaying, disaggregating states. If I am healthy Alana I am sick Alana. If I am pretty Alana I am ugly Alana. If I am baby Alana and teenage Alana and 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, …..Alana, don’t I also have to be corpse Alana? Maggot eaten Alana? totally disaggregated Alana?
2020 Retreat Part 1B — A Body that Disregards my Rules, like My Night Guard and Like My Teeth, Can’t be Mine

2020 Retreat Part 1B — A Body that Disregards my Rules, like My Night Guard and Like My Teeth, Can’t be Mine

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This contemplation is part of a series of exercises, derived from the Anatta-Lakkhana Sutra, that I did during my 2020 personal retreat. For more details please see the blog, Introduction to Contemplations From 2020 Personal Retreat.

To ‘celebrate ‘ my first day of retreat and to really make sure I had a through grasp on my homework assignment, I decided to do a little bonus work: In addition to comparing my bite guard to my teeth — 1 part of my body — which we saw in the last blog, I decided to also compare my bite guard to my whole body. So below is my HW from Day 1 Part B: My Body is Like My Bite Guard 

My Body is not under my control (it is not mine, it doesn’t act according to my rules and desires).
If my body were mine it would not become filthy and grimy or begin to smell. I wouldn’t need to spend a ton of time showering or brushing my teeth or washing my hair, I would simply always be clean.
If my body were under my control it wouldn’t soften and loose its shape, my skin would be firm, my body would be taunt my muscles wouldn’t atrophy and my boobs wouldn’t sag. Especially not from regular daily life, when I watch my diet and keep active and wear sunscreen.
If my body were under my control, my esophagus wouldn’t erode from reflux, I wouldn’t attract insects and viruses and bacteria that lead to my decay, the cartilage around my joints wouldn’t tear and crack. At the very least, my body would ‘hold-on and hold-out’ as long as I think I need it, so long as I want it, so long as I hope and expect to have it live.
If this body were under my control I could simply say, “body, please stop with the sagging, the smelling, the dirtying, the fattening, the atrophy — you are embarrassing me and taking up so much of my time with care and maintenance.”And upon saying that –upon ordering that– every part would be perfectly perky and clean and the right kinda plump. If this body were mine, it would listen when I implored it, “please, at the very least, live — don’t break, don’t die, don’t leave me high and dry. The least you can do is survive, if not thrive, given all the fitness and feeding and care and medications and vitamins…”
Body however is all, “Honey Badger Don’t Care…”, body makes it abundantly clear it is not under my control. My body requires regular washing because it lives in an environment filled with dust and dirt. My skin and body have begun to sag because the tissues of the body, can shift in composition (they can become more rigid/ softer, they can become more bloated and wet/drier, they can become hot and inflamed/they can cool, they can become more flexible and fluid/ fixed and immobile), change form, in this case becoming less solid and taunt.  This body is subject to being consumed by viruses, insects and bacteria because all four element objects are subject to being consumed. My esophagus can erode and my joints can tear all because the  the force of the liquids in stomach acid, a solids in bone can act on, and break, body parts. This is all totally normal.
“So Alana, is your body there a ‘forever-fixed-steady-state-kinda-thing’ or does it change and dis-aggregate and degrade?” Obviously Great Dharma Lord, it changes and dis-aggregates and degrades, if I just open up a photo album, or my medical chart, it has all the evidence I need.”
“And Alana, is something that changes and dis-aggregates and degrades stressful or easeful?” “So, so, so stressful My Lord. The care and feeding is time consuming and unpleasant. The sagging and the aging and the de-conditioning is an embarrassment. I stand in front of the mirror and lament the loss of my plump skin and thin/fit bod. I work to cover it up with clothes and make-up; I try to regain what I lost with workouts and botox and facials. Whatever small gains I can make give me momentary pleasure– hope– that is dashed when, inevitably my body shifts again. “
“The worst though is the fear, and the pain, and the fear of pain. I live in fear of the day that, just like my night guard, my body will break beyond repair. That a the force of a car bumper will crack open my body as the force of my jaw has the guard. Or that a bullet will pierce my body, as bone already has done to my joint.  I worry that a day may come that the tissues in my body shift into a cancer. Or that the plaques in my arteries block blood from flowing to my heart and cause a heart attack. I worry and worry, all while I hurt from the injuries already there. Hurt from the investigative colonoscopy and the mole biopsy. Fearing more hurt is to come.
 ” OK Alana, the qq I know you have been waiting for, ” If something is so clearly not in your control, if it is a changing, dis-aggregating, degrading, dying thing, if it is the source of your greatest suffering, can you actually regard that thing as ‘you’, or ‘yours’ or representative of you’? Seriously, can you say that body is what you are?”
 I’m sorry Great Lord, I’m still not totally at the ‘no’ yet, but I will say this much…This body doesn’t dirty or sag or break or die when I desire it to. It dirties or sags or breaks or dies when the conditions for dirtying/sagging/breaking/ dying are met. The result is that I suffer the pain of losing something I desire or the pain of getting something I don’t desire. The more I desire the harder I cling. The more I cling the harder I suffer. So perhaps it sin’t super smart to continue to cling so hard to something I clearly cannot keep. And in truth, I am clinging to a four element object, a composite of shifting components that, like all four element things with die and decay and return to the earth. How can I regard something empty of all but elements as me, as who I am, of representative of me, or anything else at all?
2020 Retreat Part 1– A Disobedient Bite Guard/Teeth That Disregards my Rules Can’t be Mine

2020 Retreat Part 1– A Disobedient Bite Guard/Teeth That Disregards my Rules Can’t be Mine

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This contemplation is part of a series of exercises, derived from the Anatta-Lakkhana Sutra, that I did during my 2020 personal retreat. For more details please see the prior blog, Introduction to Contemplations From 2020 Personal Retreat.
Day 1: Part 1: My Bite Guard
My bite guard is not under my control (it is not mine, it does not obey me, it doesn’t act according to my rules and desires).
If my bite guard were under my control it wouldn’t get thick with slime, or get plaque stuck in it, or begin to smell. If it were under my control, it would simply stay fresh and clean and I wouldn’t need to slave away, scrubbing at it each day.
If my bite guard were under my control it wouldn’t  have begun to soften and to loose its shape, structure and fit, especially not just from ‘normal and prescribed use.’
If the bit guard were under my control,  it most definitely wouldn’t abrade and crack. At the very least, that bite guard would wait to crack at a convenient time, not during a pandemic when going to the dentist to fix it is so hard and dangerous.
If that thing were under my control, I could just say, ‘listen up bite guard, do my bidding already” and it would stop with the slime and the smell and the loosening, abrading and cracking. It wouldn’t be so darn impervious to my pleading, “just hold together a little longer before you break please please (seriously, pretty please with sugar on top)”.
But the reality is that bite guard isn’t under my control. Every morning I pull it from my mouth and, no matter how deeply I wish it weren’t so, it is stinky and slimy. Because it ‘lives’ in an environment –my mouth — that make it prone to have the bacteria and plaque stick to it.
It is abraded and saggy and it has a crack that continues to grow and  spread because it is a object that, when exposed to a certain combination/amount of heat from my body and saliva from my mouth and rubbing from my teeth and  pressure from my jaw will begin to wear and stretch and crack. Its normal.
When the causes and conditions for this abrading/sagging/cracking have been met, it will degrade no matter how darn inconvenient the timing is for Alana.
“So Alana — is your bite guard permanent or impermanent?” ” Obviously, Great Dharma Lord, the thing is impermanent: I remember when it was clean and shiny and new with absolutely no sign of cracks or abrading. Now, it is clearly decaying and eroding. Frankly I think the thing is about to split in half.”
“And Alana, is something that is impermanent, like you described, stressful or easeful?” “Oh Great Lord, I am hella stressed! I feel like I need this guard to protect my teeth, to prevent them from cracking and eroding. At the same time, I am so afraid to go to the dentist right now and have it replaced — I don’t wanna catch covid. I have taken such good care of it, used it as prescribed, all I want is to be able to depend on it when I need it and here it is breaking when arguably I need it the most (to stay out of the dentist’s –during covid — needing a root canal for cracked teeth).”
“Alrighty then Alana, do you think it is fitting to call something that is out of your control, changeable and stressful ‘who you are’, ‘yours’ or ‘representative of you’? “
“Honestly Great Lord, I ‘know’ the correct answer is supposed to be ‘no’, but the truth is, this is something I struggle with. I suppose though, when I think about it, it is clear that I can’t rely on this bite guard. It is not dependable because it doesn’t subject itself to my rules and my commands. It acts in accordance with its nature (4 elements), shifting in response to its environment and its interaction with other objects  — like my teeth and my saliva and bacteria (other 4 element objects). It does not act in accordance  with my desires or my ‘needs’, not even during a freaking pandemic. So I suppose it is in fact hard to claim this thing as my own.

Day 1: Part 2: My Teeth are Like My Bite Guard

My teeth are seriously not under my control (they are not mine, they do not obey me, they don’t act according to my rules and desires).
If my teeth were under my control they wouldn’t get grimy, they wouldn’t get covered in plaque, they wouldn’t get food in them,  and they wouldn’t smell. If they were under my control I wouldn’t need to brush them and floss them and get special cleanings at the dentist, because they would simply be, and stay, fresh and clean.
If my teeth were under my control they wouldn’t soften from decay, losing enamel and loosening in my mouth. Especially not when I take care of them and use them in a ‘normal’ way to chew on food, not anything crazy like wood or metal.
If my teeth were under my control they wouldn’t be worn down and for sure they wouldn’t be cracking. At the very least, they could wait to crack and break for when I am not on vacation, traveling away from home, or afraid to go to the dentist because of a pandemic.
If my teeth were actually something I could control, they would listen to me when I asked them to stop dirtying and decaying and breaking and hurting. At least, they would take into account all the hard work — brushing and flossing and oil pulling — I do to care for them and return the favor by waiting to break for a time that wasn’t an inconvenience to me. “I mean seriously, come on teeth…”
But the truth is, my teeth quite simply aren’t under my control. My teeth decay and stink because they hang out in an environment — a mouth — where bacteria, that cause odor and decay, fester and grow on anything they can find to consume (like teeth and bite guards).
My teeth are weakened, eroded and cracking because they are an object which, when exposed to the right combination/amount of heat from my body and food/drink, saliva and imbibed liquids, crunching and friction against solid foods and one another, and pressure from my jaw or from food or foreign objects, will begin to wear and crack. It is normal.
When the causes and conditions for decay or cracking or falling out or pain have been met, decay or cracking or falling out or pain ensue. My teeth clearly don’t give a darn that I may be busy, or on vacation, or afraid to go to the dentist.
“So Alana, are those teeth of yours steady-state or are they changeable?” “Obviously Great Dharma Lord, they are changeable — they go through states of dirty and clean. They have had states of being less decayed and more decayed. There was a time when they weren’t worn or cracked at all,  but these days it’s crown city up in my mouth.”
“And Alana, is something that is subject to change, like your teeth, stressful or easeful?” Seriously Great Lord, almost no body part has caused me more stress over the years than my teeth. For decades I was afraid to go to the dentist, so I worried constantly what would happen if a tooth broke and needed care. When my teeth did break, I was in terrible pain, because of the lack of dental care. I have had teeth break at the worst possible times, had to drop everything and rush to the dentist. I literally have nightmares about my teeth falling out. Teeth for me are like the definition of stress.”
“Soooo, do you think it makes a whole lotta sense to call something that you don’t control, that keeps breaking and decaying and that is super stressful ‘who you are’, ‘yours’ or ‘representative of you.'”
“I don’t know Lord… But, I guess, when push comes to shove, it is pretty clear, that for all of my hope and all of my effort, my teeth ultimately do not bow to my bidding. Even though, under the right circumstances, I can cause my teeth to be brushed and fluorided and crowned, I can’t guarantee that I will achieve the results I want for my teeth. Even when sometimes an intervention can help, there are times when that same intervention fails (I have had some crowned teeth get ‘saved’ and others get ‘killed by the crowning process), underscoring the truth — I am no master of my teeth.
My teeth break and erode and decay in accordance with their nature (4 element objects). Any influence I have over them is bound  by their nature, which — like all 4 element objects — is impermanence. To think I can possess/hold onto/keep an impermanent object is pretty  fishy thinking…by that logic, I guess I can say these teeth do not belong to me.
Introduction to Contemplations From 2020 Personal Retreat

Introduction to Contemplations From 2020 Personal Retreat

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In August 2020 I decided to do a personal, self-guided, week-long retreat because I was unable to join the Temple’s Zoom retreat several weeks prior. I had learned from a friend about one of the exercises taught at the temple retreat and it deeply resonated with me, I decided to focus my own contemplations for the week on doing a deep-dive into this same exercise.

The exercise was quite simple, a series of questions, framed as a conversation between the Buddha and the practitioner, to guide contemplation on the nature of self in regard to our bodies and our physical belongings. The contemplation begins by taking an object that we own and considering whether or not that object is really under our control. It then imagines the Buddha asking the following questions to which one must formulate a reply:

  1. “Alana, is your ____ (object chosen for contemplation) constant or inconstant?”
  2. “And Alana, is something that is inconstant stress full or easeful?”
  3.  “Is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: ‘This is mine’. ‘This is my self’. ‘This is what I am’?”

The same considerations and questions are then internalized and applied to one’s body. Rinse and repeat.

I had already been hot and heavy on the topic of the 4 elements, self and self belonging for over a year, so this new ‘take’ on my old contemplations was deeply appealing. But what really moved me about this ‘exercise’ is that comes straight from the Anatta-lakkhana sutra (literally translated the characteristics of not-self sutra): These are teachings straight from the Buddha’s mouth, and damn are they juicy ones!

The Anatta-lakkhana sutra  methodically and brilliantly lays out the evidence for why the 5 aggregates are not ourselves; each of the aggregates are subject to dis-ease, they do not abide by our orders/rules, they continually change, and they cause a shit ton of suffering, so what business do we have regarding these as self? Each aggregate, is subject to the 3 common conditions (suffering, impermanence, no-self), what we regard as ‘self’ (i.e. the 5 aggregates) is not exempt, not different or special.  At least for the OG listeners of this sermon, when they really saw these aggregates –everything in the world — for what it was (suffering, impermanent and not-self) they became disenchanted. “Disenchanted he becomes dispassionate. Through dispassion he is released.”  This sutra is literally a how-to-guide for enlightenment!

The first level of enlightenment deals specifically with correcting our wrong views vis-a-vie rupa, the aggregate of physical form. This is the focus of the exercise,  a deep dive into the nature of rupa/4 elements to understand whether or not objects can really be ours. Can they follow our rules and meet our expectations if they arise and cease based on, and are bound to follow, the rules of rupa (the rules of the world, i.e. the 3 common conditions)? Can things made of elements, that predictably come together and then disintegrate into their elemental parts, be with us forever?  Will they be there when we want/ or need them? If not how do we justify calling these items ours? Doesn’t the indisputable nature of these objects (to change, to not do our bidding) stress us the fuck out? Don’t we feel loss, disappointment, pain, distress and despair on account of the nature of these objects (or rather on account of our desire for them to be other than what they are)? Can we really say that something that causes us suffering and stress is us/ours/represents us? Spoiler alter here: The answer of course is NO, the sutra tells us as much. But the exercise is about more than just saying no, it is about PROVING NO, to ourselves, finding no in our hearts. That was my goal for my retreat, and the next few blogs will share my own efforts at the exercise from the Anatta-lakkhana sutra to get there.

Afterall, when in doubt, the Buddha’s own words are the perfect guide to practice!

 

Video Sent By Mae Neecha Part 8

Video Sent By Mae Neecha Part 8

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In July 2020 Mae Neecha sent over a video for me to view to aid my practice and fuel my contemplations. I am going to share the video below as well as  and my reply to Mae Neecha (edited a bit for clarity) and her comments back to me. Though this video came from Mae Neecha, as opposed to Mae Yo, I am going to use the Mae Yo  sequencing and tag in order to enhance searchable and organization of these blog types.

The Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnshlMG6eBI

Alana’s Response to Mae Neecha: Unusual beauty: As the video went through the series of beautification practices across the world, it felt like the message was ” look at these freaks, doing these extreme, painful, frightening (using traditional tools, no anesthetic, etc) things to achieve a look that, from a western perspective, isn’t even beautiful at all” when my mind followed that narrative, I came to the conclusion that it is so much pain for nothing, it is crazy.

But then, none of beautification rituals we do here in America, ones I have certainly done, show up in the show. Botox, surgery, fat loss machines and dermarolling. Even less invasive — how about ‘stinging lip glosses that make your lips plumper, diet pills that make you feel like a pixie on crack but make you thin, extreme workouts, starvation diets…These things are so painful, some dangerous, hard, time consuming. But these, familiar Western beauty rituals, to achieve Western beauty standards, these I think are “worth it” somehow. At least these make sense to me, they don’t seem freakish or grotesque like the rituals shown in the video.

But what is the difference really? If those folks filing their teeth or putting rings on their neck are crazy for their beauty enhancements, so am I for my botox and fillers and extreme workouts. It is my delusion, my desire to achieve some ideal, identity, advantage that I think a particular look will provide for which I so freely suffer. The kicker of course, which the video makes clear is the ideal –like beauty standards across cultures — is constructed anyway. Not absolute. And certainly not enduring because time will undo any efforts anyway.

Sometimes it’s longer duration, but sometimes it is sudden or unexpected duration…all it took was a lockdown order and now my botox has worn off; wrinkles I never thought I would need to contend with, never thought I would need to face, are appearing on my forehead. Why can’t I put down this obsession with beauty? What is the benefit I think is so great that I am willing to keep enduring my own beauty rituals for? Enduring when their effect is only temporary anyway.

The other night a scene from a show I was watching popped into my head: In the show, an adult son, is literally being whored out by his parents for money. The son is given an opportunity by a friend to leave, he would be given a job and a home and a new life away from his crazy parents that whore him for money. But the son won’t go. He says he can’t leave his folks because they can’t make it without him.

It was a scene that really bothered me, I couldn’t figure out why the hell the son wouldn’t just leave — I would. I contemplated on it for a while and finally I realized for the son, the identity of being the person who was needed, depended on, was the reason he endured actual torture, even when given a way out. That is why he didn’t just put down his old life and leave. Same as I can’t put down my own torturous beauty rituals and be done.

Even when there is a steep cost, the need to affirm ourselves, who we think we are, is so profound we persist in the arbitrary activities we believe will affirm us. Even through the dividends I get from any painful efforts are temporary, I persist. So the question is – how do I stop? How do I stop if I already know climbing up the mountain sucks, being on top is short ( and distracted by thoughts of preservation of the high and climbing higher next) and the down sucks even more?

Response from Mae Neecha: More Tuk Tot Pie (suffering). Stopping comes from seeing enough Tuk Tot Pie, in both the worldly and dhamma senses

Further thoughts on the topic of beauty and self: I realized the other night that the reason I care about beautifying the body so much is because it is a litmus test for my desirability. Like a fish tank strip — the strip itself isn’t acidic or basic, it doesn’t have an innate acid/base quality, but it ‘proves’/reflects those qualities in the water. It is what makes them visible and knowable.  So I know  I am not my body, but the body –all my belongings– are a required tool to prove something about myself.

At the end of the day, for something to reflect me I need to be able to control it don’t I? How can I take pride in and depend on something like a body to represent me if I can’t even make it do what I want? If my ability to mold it is constantly superseded by reality, time, rupa rules and circumstance?



							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		No More Than The Sum of Its Parts

					

				No More Than The Sum of Its Parts
			

		
				

			
 
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I had been watching the Marvel movie, Dr. Strange: At the start of the movie, he is a sucessful surgon –he has status, respect, fame, wealth — he is on top of the world and its worldly conditions. But then he is in an accident, he injurs his hands and he is unable to continue performing surgery, he loses his fortune, his fame, status and respect, he falls low in the world. When he was at the top, he collected watches and though he sells most of his stuff when finances get tough for him, he holds onto a single watch that holds meaning to him.  One day, he is attacked in the street and the attacker tries to steel his watch, Dr Strange cries out that it is “all he has left”, and though he is able to fend off the attacker, the watch is broken in the process. Dr. Strange’s heart is clearly broken as well.


This one scene, it deeply moved me. Afterall, I can relate — just like Dr. Strange, I assign meaning to my objects. For him, that watch was more than glass and gears, it was an object that represented his whole past life, his former fame and fortune, it was part of an identity that he had lost, though continued clinging to it nonetheless. But the truth is, a watch is just rupa, there is nothing more to it than its parts, there is no meaning tucked in and hidden amongst the springs. The meaning, the value, is something external, something that we apply, the meaning isn’t in the object, it is in our heads alone.


When I consider my beloved stuffed animals, I can see the truth that their value is not innate: These objects, so precious to me becasue they were gifts from Eric or my dad, wouldn’t raise more than a few bucks at a garage sale. Afterall, objects are only 4 elements that, in certain states, under certain circumstances, and for certain times, have utility, not value, not meaning.  But me, I am moved by each item in my home, by the stories they conjur in my head. I am moved by mineness.


The real question is, why am I so moved minenss? Isn’t claiming (the process of making something mine) just the process of arbitrarily picking an object to be me/mine/represent me? It could be a watch, a house, a city, a car — it really doesn’t matter what bundle of 4es I choose– I assign value to them, value and meaning, that I use to curate my sense of self, just like Dr. Strange’s watch represented his identity as the prodogy surgon.


When I watched Dr. Strange, I got myself carried along by the story, began to identify with the character, the meaning that watch held, it felt real and relatable. But when I stepped back, I saw it is simply not true, a watch can’t possibly be all you have left of who you are, becasue a watch is not in any part who you are. A watch is no more than the sum of its physical parts, there is no identity to be found there.


Our beliefs about these objects may be untrue, but the dukka we experience over them is still vivid and real.  As those robbers came creeping onto the screen, I felt fear; as Dr. Strange cried out when his watch broke, I felt his shattering loss. But just like meaning, the pain of loss is not in these objects, it exists only in our hearts and our hearts are in our power to change.


 






							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Some Final Thoughts on Everything is Dukka –The Cause of Suffering

					

				Some Final Thoughts on Everything is Dukka –The Cause of Suffering
			

		
				

			
 
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After I had sent Mae Yo and Mae Neecha my uber-long synopsis on everything is suffering, they send back a reply that had a  a simple question: “The Buddha said that there are two kinds of suffering – physical suffering that we cannot avoid and mental suffering that we can avoid. In order to avoid that suffering, we need to know the cause of it. Mae Yo asked, do you know what the cause of suffering is?”


On the tail of so much in-depth investigating into the whys of suffering, its fundamental presence in this world, the answer to its cause, at least in my own life, was immediately clear to me — I am the cause of my own suffering.  Here is my reply to Mae Neecha:




In short, I’m the cause of my suffering. My desire for the world to be how I want it to be ( as opposed to how it actually is) and then my continual schemes and efforts to force it to be as I want. To try and force it to confirm who I think I AM.




 The cause of my desire however is ignorance; I don’t REALLY understand what the world is, so I don’t really understand the impossibility of trying to force it to follow my rules (instead of its own, the rules of cause and effect, the 3 common conditions). I am so blind, that my imagination  takes the isolated moments the world is sorta-kindda-if-you-squint-real-hard close enough to my desire/view as ‘evidence’ that all I need to do is hang on to what I have,  try harder/more/luckier/better and maybe this time ( or at least some time soon)  I will finally pwn the world. So more “turns”, and the accompanying dukka, ensue.




This is why the heart of the 8 fold path — the way out of suffering– lies in changing my view. So I can align my understanding with the reality of the world ( since the reality of this world is sure as hell not going to be the one to align to my understanding/ imagination). Only when the cause for desire, ignorance, is removed can desire be removed. Only when the cause for suffering, desire, is removed can suffering be removed.




But seriously, thats all a little technical. Watching my 3 year old niece have a tantrum because shit isn’t the way she demands pretty much exemplifies the cause of suffering — the world doesn’t revolve around her, but she thinks it does. It doesn’t revolve around me when I think it does, when I so desperately want it to: So it’s all sorrow, lamination, pain, distress and despair till we stop expecting this world will confirm us, be as we imagine, or give us what we want. Till we stop clinging to the hope that we can keep what we love, avoid what we hate and have everything ( or even just most things, or enough things) as we want it to be.




 I am the cause of my suffering, not just because I want the world to be how I want it to be, but because I want myself to be what I want to be — I want to become. Not only am I ignorant of what the world is, I am also ignorant of what I –self — is. I suspect this ignorance is actually more primary –first I need to misunderstand self before I can believe there is a world that will somehow obey and conform to self. I think this is why the rest of that passage from the morning chanting , after re-articulating the noble truth of dukka, continues on to speak specifically about the aggregates and what they are — stressful, inconstant and not self (subject to the 3 common characteristics like everything else). If ya wanna fix stressing ya gottta fix ignorance of self.




The more I considered my reply, the more I realized it may be time for me to turn my attention to the last of the 3 common characteristics,  annatta, or no-self; if belief in a self is fundamental to causing my suffering — for motivating and propelling my births and becoming — then understanding the truth of no self, of the inevitable cessation of all forms and processes, of the illusion of identity I imagine in the aggregates, seems like a natural next step in my path to eliminate my suffering (aka Buddhist practice). Plus, I started this practice with impermanence, dug deep on dukka, it seems only fair to give the characteristic of no-self a little air time. That all brings me to my practice today.  Right now, annatta is a slow faucet drip, I grope around, feeling mostly lost. But I have been here before, I have a plan: Each day I try and find a few examples of annatta, I gather evidence, I analyze to try and begin seeing patterns from the evidence, try to begin to consider the why everything in the world must be annatta (just as everything is impermanent and dukkha). Slowly, I suspect it will come…if and when it does, perhaps you Dear Reader will get yet another interruption in our regularly scheduled program. Till then though….I end will draw this little side-track to a close and return us to our Regularly Scheduled Program with the next blog.


							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 3

					

				Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 3
			

		
				

			
 
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Dear Reader, this blog is a direct continuation of the last two, Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 1 and Part 2: Seriously, this is not one of those to try skipping ahead to get to the punchline. If you haven’t already done so, go back and read the last two blogs prior to reading the continuation here.


Just a a little refresher for those of you who have read the past blogs, below is yet more evidence to support my contemplations on the topic that everything is dukka. The evidence is organized into themes, based around the best examples I found to help prove to myself an assertation I had heard many times from my teachers — that everything is suffering. Moreover, I sought to understand not just the conclusion, but the WHY: Why everything in the world must be suffering, what it is about the nature of the world and everything in it that guarantees that every leaf I turn, every rock I look under, every new corner I turn, I will always find the suffering innate in this world.




    

  • If the things we love are the source of dukka, where can we possibly hope to find sukka? : A few years ago, my friend’s husband gave him an ultimatum: Adopt the kid they had always planned on or divorce so that he could find another partner to raise a kid with. My friend was torn, he really didn’t want a child, but to save the life he had and loved with his husband, he acquiesced. Fast forward a few years and this friend is quite unhappy, the child he adopted has developmental issues, and has been a huge burden, especially during the pandemic. Watching him it is so clear that we invite, and then endure, tremendous suffering for what we love. In fact, nothing else other than what we love could possibly motivate us to endure the kind of suffering we do, if we didn’t love the thing we ‘do it for’ we would say “fuck it” and be done. If I didn’t love Eric I would have said fuck it and left NY. If Eric and I both didn’t love the life we imagine money will buy we would say fuck it and be done with his abusive jobs. It’s not only present suffering either — how many times do folks commit crimes to give their kids a better life, kill to protect themselves, seek revenge to protect a wounded ego — we regularly invite future suffering for the stuff we love.  Just imagining that we have something we love, even for a moment, is the seed for all the suffering we endure in this world as we seek to cling to that thing.  But if the things we love are what brings us dukka, where should we look to find sukka?
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  • The only thing keeping me here is my bondage — I was watching a play about slavery and in it a slave man decides he is going to runaway. In a scene where he goes to tell his sister about his plans he says, “out there is freedom, the only thing for me here is my bondage, there is nothing else keeping me here.” He invites his sister to join him in the escape, but she refuses, she has two young children –too young to be on the run– and she feels she can’t leave them. Her children are her bondage. In that moment, I got a brief understanding that the things and people we love are our tether to this world; it is because of Eric, my family, friends, enjoyments of various hobbies and places, my comforts and the joys I take in being loved, having the things I believe make me a me, that I can’t just flee to freedom like that sister in the play. The thing is, if all that is here is my bondage isn’t everything dukka? Just because someone with Stockholm syndrome begins to empathize with, love and depend on their captors, it doesn’t mean they aren’t in captivity. Any “sane” person looking at someone with Stolkholms realizes the patient is just deluded, that in fact they are in bondage,  and of course bondage is dukka.
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  • Waiting to suffer is suffering — My mom was hit by a car and my brother was so angry at the man who hit her. He said it wasn’t fair that man walked away with just a ticket while my mom had to endure so much injury and pain, while the family had to suffer to help her. I told him it was fair, the world is fair, everyone has to suffer injury, death, struggle for their families; the only difference was the timing and the details. We take turns, this was my family’s turn to struggle, another time will be that man’s turn. The more I think about it though, the more I see that waiting for a turn at suffering is suffering in and of itself. Afterall, I started this practice motivated by the deep distress of being a hypochondriac: Even when I wasn’t ill, I was stressed and afraid of my eventual illness, of “my turn”. Though we can sometimes ‘put it out of our heads’, ignore impending suffering, on some level we all know it is coming. The thing we don’t necessarily notice is that it is already here. It is here because if everything were candy canes and rainbows, we wouldn’t need to do so much ignoring and fantasizing and hoping and striving and planning for something better. It is here because the fear and stress of waiting to suffer is just another kind of suffering, a suffering that differs only in degree, not kind.
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  • There are no happy endings in this world, only stories that haven’t finished yet: I was rewatching Westworld and I came to an episode where some of the characters –bandits — have successfully stolen a safe and are trying to get it open. Here is the thing, in this show, the characters are reborn countless times, each life is just a variation on their last, small differences, but for these bandits the story line, the thing that drives them, is always the same, get and open the safe. This life, they are finally able to open the safe, inside it is empty. The scene hit me really hard, and I realized it is a powerful ubai for life: So often we struggle, labor, fight for what we want and we fail to get it, it is instant tragedy, spending lifetimes trying to crack a safe only to have it be empty. Of course, there are times the safe is full –we strive and struggle and are ‘rewarded’ with just what we want, it’s a happy ending with boku bucks. The problem though is that the story isn’t over; with a bunch of money, a host of new problems arise. For bandits, there is the consequences born of stealing money. Even if it was well gotten, with money (with anything) comes the fear of loosing it, the need to protect and preserve it. Ultimately it will be used up, and then there is the need to find at least as much as you had before to keep up the lifestyle that you had become comfortable with. When you play it forward –past the fake happy ending — it seems like whether the safe is empty or full, it is functionally the same;  neither temporarily getting ,nor not getting, quenches my thirst or stops the efforting. There is no happy ending, there is a pause –at best — and then more struggle. Stories without happy endings are called tragedies (no matter how many comic relief moments they have), and this world is an endless story without a happy ending, it is a tragedy, it is dukka.
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  • The world doesn’t give a fuck about what I want or ‘need’: Long ago I was reading one of the Buddhist comics and there was a single line in one that hit me: Ananda and his pals decide to leave behind their worldly life and join the Buddha. On the way, they take off their finery and leave it in the woods because they “won’t need it anymore”, which got me thinking what it really means to ‘need’ something: When we say we need something, what we really mean is that without this object, our imagination of what the future will be can’t come to pass. Since those pals envisioned a future as monastics, they didn’t ‘need’ finery. When I envision a fun road trip, I ‘need’ a car. When I imagine the delicious cake I will bake, I ‘need’ flour. Because my deepest desire is a long, happy life with Eric I ‘need’ Eric, I ‘need’ this body and I ‘need’ all the other ingredients I think will make life long and happy. The problem is that the world doesn’t give a fuck about what I need.  Every object I think I “need” is the same as every other object –it dies/decays/fades/parts ways  — and yet time keeps ticking, the future keeps coming.
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The truth is that what I don’t have I clearly don’t ‘need’ for what happens next: If I don’t have a car, I simply don’t get a road trip, I do something else instead. If I don’t have flour, I don’t get a cake, I eat something else instead. If I don’t have an Eric, or an Alana, I don’t get an Eric/Alana happy future, I get some other future instead.  My future doesn’t depend on  what I think I “need”, or want, therefore nothing obliges the world to deliver these things to me (i.e. they are necessary in my mind alone). Over and over the world proves it doesn’t pander to me, it doesn’t care what I want; How can a world that doesn’t bend or bow to me, that doesn’t give a damn about my ‘needs’ or wants be anything but a continual source of pain and disappointment –i.e. dukka — to me?














A further note on this topic: Though the world doesn’t necessarily give me what I “need”, I suffer continually to try and get it, and I suffer when I don’t get it or I lose it, because I predicate my happiness on the stories I tell myself coming true. At my last mammogram, I felt such relief (lessening of dukkha) when I got an all clear. But then I considered why I felt that way, what a clear scan had really bought me, and I realized it was just a longer time clinging to my imaginary future that “needs” this body. It’s not real happiness at all, it is just another moment in which my dream goes un-dashed. I get to live another day, to stress more about how/if/for how long I can wrangle that future I strive for. If the shit I think I  need so much could really give me sukka, how is it I am not happy now? I still have this body, I still have Eric, I have money, health, so many ingredients I imagine necessary for that happily ever after, and yet I live in a state of perma-stress only momentarily lightened (not eliminated) by an all clear scan.  Getting to that happy ending I want isn’t the way to eliminate dukka (because there is no ending, there is always just some further future fantasy), giving up my obsession with how the story ends, with chasing one ending or another, that is the way to eliminate dukka.












    

  • If getting what I want really made me happy, why the hell am I so damn stressed and sad: Back in early April, when it was time to head home from a fairly pleasant winter in Miami, all I wanted was to stay and enjoy more time here. As we were driving home, my mom got into an accident and I turned right back around and have been in Miami to help care for her since. I got my wish, more time in Miami with family, but this has been one of the saddest, scariest and most stressful periods in my life. It got me thinking that I frequently get exactly what I want, and yet, rather than being satisfied, I am stressed. Foundational to birth and becoming, to every action, is want, followed by belief that fulfilling said want will lead to sukka. But over and over I get what I want, and I suffer just the same. In fact, in many cases I suffer because of getting what I want…
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Back, after we left SF and before we touched down in NY, Eric and I took 3 weeks off to travel Europe.I remember, we were so happy, excited, planning our new NY life and all the fun adventures we would have. I had wanted to move, and that brief period of relish in having gotten what I wanted, plus the fantasy of what it would be like, was joy. But as soon as we landed at JFK — with the noise, filth and smog — my imagination was forced to face the reality on the ground, and stress (that eventually turned to crushing anxiety/anger/depression) arose.  When my heart concots its wants, it consults imagination rather than reality. But I live in a world of reality, wants are fulfilled (or not) in the world of reality: In reality everything has two sides, there are always consequences and trade-offs,  I don’t see the whole picture, everything shifts and changes, tomorrow doesn’t look like yesterday or today. Even when I get what I want in reality, it isn’t the way I imagine it ( often, if it had been, like with  NY, I never would have wanted it, worked so hard, uprooted my life, made irreversible changes to get it  in the first place).  The delta between imagination and reality is an endless well of disappointment and pain, and there will always be a delta between imagination and reality, so there will always be dukka. The belief that satisfying my wants will satisfy me leads me to perpetuate a cycle where I invite even more dukkah chasing wants and dealing with the disappointment and consequences of sometimes getting, sometimes not getting, them.










    

  • A world where every activity is a risk is a world of dukka — I was getting ready to go meet my brother and some family friends for dinner the other night. It was a gathering I was really looking forward to, a way to destress a little from a very intense week dealing with mom stuff. In the shower, I did the quick ‘new normal’ risk calculation: These friends had recently recovered from Covid, so the chance they were carriers was low, my brother and his wife tested that AM. It was safeish; I could enjoy. Then I thought more about it and realized that everything I do, all the activities I enjoy, the stuff that brings me comfort and delight, it comes with risk. Covid makes this so clear, but its always been this way, it is a product of having a fragile body, clinging to breakable things, of everything we do having 2 sides, coming with unforeseen consequences. I read about a study that shows that the human brain actually tries to shield us from the reality of our deaths, categorizing information about death as something that happens to others, but doesn’t relate to us. The researchers hypothesis that humans need to be desensitized to our own mortality to function in life. Folks are hardwired to to ignore risk and to believe it doesn’t apply to them. If we were truly cognizant of the risks of an activity, it wouldn’t be fun anymore; enjoyment requires ignoring, closing our eyes to ever present risk, or assuming a situation –a life –that is safe and comfortable now will continue to be so as long as we are in it. But just because we ignore stuff it doesn’t make it untrue, just because we believe we are exempt from mortality, risk, it doesn’t mean we are. We live in a world of omnipresent risk, and omnipresent risk is just another way to define dukka.
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  • Easier doesn’t mean easy, it proves degrees of hard: I was reading the news and there was an article about a study that concluded that having more money makes people happier in their day to day life. There is no threshold either, more money = more day-to-day happiness. The reason being that money tends to solve problems, it makes life easier. The story hit me because I so obviously agree, money makes life easier in many ways. Which got me thinking… Since my mom’s accident, having money has certainly made stuff easier; I have a flexible salaried job (and savings), I don’t have to worry about lost wages taking care of her. I have used money to free up time on day-to-day stuff, a meal service so I don’t need to worry about cooking, a laundry service so I don’t need to worry about cleaning. Mom has a concierge doctor, so she got immediate referrals for a pulmonologist when lung issues arose last week and the doc was super fast communicating prescription and med history to the hospital and rehab facilities. Money has definitely made some stuff in this situation easier, but  things are still exceptionally hard. Now, finally I understand your answer so many months ago, ” hot and cold are on opposite ends of the same temperature scale. Or how 0 and 100 are on opposite ends of a number scale”. If you need to demarcate stuff on a scale of how hard they are — if sometimes it is relatively harder/easier — it doesn’t mean stuff is easy, it actually proves that degrees of hard/difficulty are what define living in this world. It can be more hard, it can be less hard. But the scale is the scale of struggle, degrees of dukka is what the world slides along.
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Anyway, as I said, this isn’t exactly done, but it has certainly gelled into a pretty comprehensive contemplation. What is crazy to me is that when I started this line of thinking it was such a struggle, I really had to do some serious mental gymnastics to see how examples of suffering or stress from my daily life actually proved everything is dukka. At the start, I think this may have been the most difficult contemplation I have ever undertaken. But I kept on, collecting 5 examples a day and considering what each could tell me about the why question –why everything must be dukka. Soon it went from being a faucet I struggled to get a few drips from to one gushing so hard I couldn’t turn it off. I guess that is why this took me so long to finalize to send –the evidence of dukka as the nature of this world is everywhere I look now.




Recently, my contemplations have taken a bit of a turn/flip –I have been evaluating what I think happiness is. Afterall, this email is filled with data points that just because I find something pleasurable, it doesn’t mean it isn’t dukka. Pleasurable stuff is hard to get, stressful to keep and worry about loosing, comes with risk as well as after effects I’m not so keen on…At some point it dawned on me that what I call sukka may just be a misunderstanding of the world, arising from my imagination of what things are and what they will be, versus the reality of what things are and what they will be. I suppose that is what I am  considering now. That and the fragility and suffering that comes with a body, which is so front and center as I watch my mom struggle to recover post accident.




My mom by the way, despite some snags and scares, is doing pretty well.  Considering how terrible the accident was, everyone is talking about what a miraculous ‘happy ending’ this is all likely to have; it really is so easy to mistake an easing of dukka for sukka if you aren’t paying attention. It is so easy to forget what just happened and pretend that the happier, brighter future we imagine is what is actually ‘normal’ . I am not ignoring or forgetting so easily though, there is still plenty of struggle and stress to be had, and the memory of her crying out in the hospital bed that first night I arrived still feels pretty raw to me. And hey, the ‘good news’  is if I do forget, all I need to do is live long enough, and I’m bound to get a refresher soon enough when I face something similar — or worse — with her again, and/or Eric, and/or Seth…my beloved toggle bolts.








							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 2

					

				Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 2
			

		
				

			
 
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Dear Reader, this blog is a direct continuation of the last, Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 1: Seriously, this is not one of those to try skipping ahead to get to the punchline. If you haven’t already done so, go back and read the last blog prior to reading the continuation here.


Just a a little refresher for those of you who have read the past blog, below is yet more evidence to support my contemplations on the topic that everything is dukka. The evidence is organized into themes, based around the best examples I found to help prove to myself an assertation I had heard many times from my teachers — that everything is suffering. Moreover, I sought to understand not just the conclusion, but the WHY: Why everything in the world must be suffering, what it is about the nature of the world and everything in it that guarantees that every leaf I turn, every rock I look under, every new corner I turn, I will always find the suffering innate in this world.








    

  • Where there is desire/craving there is stress and there is ALWAYS desire: I had read the news about Omicron and I was stressed (another word for suffering), specifically I was stressed because I so desperately desired to go on a planned trip to see my family, but I also desperately desire to stay healthy and avoid Covid. So I stressed to come-up with a plan where maybe I could do both, private flight, driving to Miami, better masks, etc. All this stressing going on in my mind on my drive to Pilates class, where I paused my family/omicron stress, to stress about hitting each red light and getting stuck behind a slow driver because I was also stressed about making it to class on time. Stressed about what the teacher would think of me if I was late, etc.
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I realized I live in a state of constant stress and the reason is my constant desire.  Afterall, if I didn’t give a damn about seeing family, or protecting this body, or what folks think of me, I wouldn’t care about canceled trips or Covid or being late to class. The continually shifting sand of this world (impermanence again) wouldn’t bother me at all.  But because I do want to acquire what I desire, protect what I desire, and avoid what I feel threatens those things I desire, I live under constant stress. Everything in this world is bound-up with desire, it is literally the cause of my entering this world and remaining in it. Therefore everything in this world is also bound-up with dukka –so long as my heart desires, there is absolutely no freedom from stress.




    

  • A burden is a burden, even when you pick it up without noticing its burdensomeness, or are reluctant to put it down: Recently my employee quit and I have been covering his administrative tasks, tasks that I hate, tasks I find stressful and burdensome. As I was dreading another day ‘at the office’, I considered the fact that this is just my duty, my responsibility, the obligations that come with my role. What else is a job after all, but a duty, an obligation? For years, I have focused on the benefits I enjoy from my job –enrichment, mental stimulation, a sense of belonging, a building block of my identity. Distracted by these benefits, I shut my eyes to what a duty/role really is — a responsibility, a commitment, a burden that I have assumed. But it is only a matter of time, a shift in circumstance, before the dukka side of each role/object/relationship show themselves and by then, both worldly norms and my own imagination/ sense of self/sense of obligation make it difficult to put them down. I would like to quit my job, but I feel like I ‘owe’ my employer. I feel like I would be a bad employee, create bad karma by quitting now when they are so understaffed. Plus, I worry about who an  Alana without a title, a job, would be, where my value would come from, how hard it would be to find a new job that allowed me so much flexibility. Everything I take up in this world is a burden, a tether, an obligation –no matter the benefits I perceive myself to enjoy from it — and burdensomeness is just another word for dukka.
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  • There is no such thing as a happy memory: After several months of lockdown I had noticed I was beginning to have intrusive memories of bygone times. I would be doing zoom pilates and have an image of my last pre-pandemic vacation in Japan. Walking around the block and recalling a time I ate with friends in a restaurant. Reading emails and recalling an amazing concert I had attended. These were all happy memories and one day I started considering them more closely. I evaluated dozens of happy memories–trips, meals, times with family and friends and I watched my heart as I recalled each one. I realized that when I recalled happy times, there was always a sensation of nostalgia that arose. And what is nostalgia but longing? Missing something that is already gone, that can’t be retrieved. The happier the memory, the more tinged it was with nostalgia. If happiness now is the cause of suffering later, isn’t it just delayed suffering? When we ingest poison, even if it tastes delicious going down, don’t we still call it ‘poison’ based on its harmful effects?  It seems to follow that even happy times are dukka.
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  • Imagination is how you end up in bed with a vampire: At the start of one of my favorite shows, True Bloods,  the main character, Sukkie, has never had a boyfriend because she is psychic and can hear everyone’s thoughts, she knows exactly how sleezy all the men in town are and she has no interest in dating them. Then she meets Bill, whose thoughts she is unable to read because he is a vampire, and she quickly falls in love. It’s not that Bill is so great, it’s just that she can imagine him to be whatever she likes because she can’t read his thoughts. The reality of dating a vampire though is a life –or at least 8 seasons –of constant struggle, disappointment, death and danger. Imagination lulls Sukkie, it lulls all of us, into danger; we willingly march toward dukka because imagination feeds the hope that we will get sukka. But the real story of this world is a reality of dukka while chasing the fantasy of sukka. This world, like Vampire Bill, isn’t so great, but because we imagine it to be whatever we like, we just keep diving in –this imagination we love so much, identify with so closely, is our all-you-can-ride ticket on the dukka rollercoaster that is this world.
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  • A body that facilitates pleasure is the source of all pain: After my mom’s accident I walked into the hospital to find her moaning in agony, a drip of opiates doing little to numb her pain. The problem with having a body is its a guarantee to pain: Sometimes its the little stuff: lungs aching from asthma, eye burning from allergies, the continual throb from a nagging shoulder injury. Or just the daily discomforts: Hunger, too cold/ hot, enduring unpleasant sounds and smells, even just sitting still too long makes me uncomfortable. But one way or another bodies are the root of all physical suffering, suffering that simply ebbs and wanes by degree. Which made me stop to consider why anyone would sign-up for a body in the first place… at least part of the answer is pleasure of course (the other part is our belief that rupa can help us build and prove our identities  –we long ago established you need a rupa suit to play in a rupa world).
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Back when I was contemplating on the 4es a lot, I came to realize pain is mostly excess pressure (though at times it can be too little/much heat). The problem, that any massage shows us, is that it is a fine line between pleasurable pressure and pain. We come into this world to experience worldly delights, but the same mechanism by which we experience pleasure (an arrangement of 4es that can sense pressure or heat) ensures we will inevitably experience pain. The organs we use to hear/smell beauty guarantee we will hear/see things that make us uncomfortable. But this body is not just a mechanism by which we experience physical pain, it is the cause. Physical pain is a result of embodiment. Having a body is painful, having a body is dukka.














    

  • If not having is dukka, and having is dukka, where is sukka? Eric and I are in Miami seeing family for 3 months and we are staying at a lovely Airbnb overlooking the ocean. Waking up to such beauty is so delightful and after a few days being here I already began to worry about going home, about losing the experience of such beauty. A few days after that, a super stressful quest to buy a condo in the same building had commenced (there were fights with Eric, a bidding war, a super shady realtor, etc.)Ultimately, I decided a home in Miami, particularly when we need to get back to CT when Eric’s office opens in April, is not worth the stress. It isn’t worth the burden of buying, or caring for it, or worrying about during hurricane season when we can’t even use it right now.
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Still though, as I looked out at the ocean again this morning it got me thinking: Not having something is suffering, otherwise we wouldn’t chase, we wouldn’t work so hard to aquire. Desire is deep and the urge to fulfill it is primal. Hunger, as we have already established is dukka. But having this ocean view is suffering too. Just as enjoyment dawned, so too did the impulse to keep and preserve what I already have. The fear of loss, the effort and drama to make it mine, just so I can buy the option of an (imaginary) future with this ocean view.  But what I leave out of that future vision is the truth that even when I have something I need to work to preserve it (dukka), and I will fear losing it (dukka), and I will ultimately actually lose it (more dukka)  — a deed won’t change that anymore than a 3 month rental agreement.  Which brings me to the point that if having something is suffering, and not having something is suffering, isn’t everything Dukka?






    

  • Things that shift out of states I want are stressful, and everything shifts out of states I want: Yesterday I went to pick-up a special sweet treat to give to my brother for his birthday. The treat had both hot and cold components, so once I left the restaurant with the to go order, I felt like I was ‘on the clock’ to get over to Seth’s house. I was looking for shortcuts, trying to get ahead of traffic, speeding a bit –I didn’t want the treat to either get too cold or to melt. It dawned on me that this treat, that was supposed to bring enjoyment, was bringing me stress, and I got to thinking about why. The answer is that while perfectly warm and cold may be  the peak state for the desert, I know damn well that the desert can’t possibly stay in that peak state for very long. The reason for this is that the perfect balance of crispy fried bits and frozen custard are not the NATURE of the desert, it is just a single state. The actual nature of the dessert is an arrangement of 4es that continually shifts according to the causes and conditions of this world — custard exposed to Miami sun melts and fried bits exposed to ambient temperatures cool.
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Of course, this phenomenon doesn’t end with sweet treats. Everything has a peak state, and nothing ever remains in that state, because the nature of this world, and everything in it, is flux. The problem is more than just the fact that I want ice cream, but have to accept that it melts because there are two sides (that was my old conclusion that life entails both sukka and dukka and they come together). The deeper problem is that the very NATURE of ice cream is meltability, but I falsely imagine its nature to be my preferred perfectly frozen state. Blindly I seek satisfaction in objects and circumstances because I don’t understand what they are, but the length of time they remain in states that I find satisfactory is brief (or at least it is never long enough), and even while they exist in that state I stress over the impending shift. No matter how delicious a perfectly peak desert may be, it is clearly stressful, because what shifts and fades and moves out of states I like is stressful and disappointing.  But the nature of everything in this world is to shift and fade and move out of states I like, therefore everything in this world is stressful and disappointing (aka dukka).




    

  • A no-win world is a dukka world: I was listening to an NPR story about the obesity epidemic, about how even smaller amounts of excess weight, particularly around the midsection, are bad for our health and it dawned on me: Back in the day, food was often scarce, so humans evolved in order to store fat. Fat storage enabled humans to survive for hundreds of thousands of years. But today, in our society, food is abundant and the very mechanism –fat storage — that enabled us to survive for so long, is now a physiological feature that puts us at risk for death and disease. Again here, the problem is circumstances are always changing, there are so many angles and aspects to life’s complex processes, the very same thing that is a blessing in one circumstance is a liability in another. There are always two sides. My apartment in San Fran that brought me so much joy when I was traveling for work, was the source of extreme stress when I had to either keep paying the rent, or figure out how to organize a long distance move during the pandemic lockdown. My old Porsche made me feel awesome in Carmel, but super scared in Soma. With the basic truth of continual change, it is hard not to see that there is really no way to win in this world, because all you need to do is wait and a win will become a loss. Worse, the very quality/object/trait that helped you win will become what ensures your loss. Take it from a former Candy Crush Master, something may be fun for a while, keep you busy, makes you feel clever, but ultimately (in my case at about level 900), playing a game there is no way to win comes to feel like sheer torture. Isn’t an unwinnable world a world of dukka?  My only problem is persisting in the delusion I can win.
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  • The things I love are like toggle bolts — They go in so smoothly, but it’s all sorts of hell when it is time to pull them out.  A friend did something that deeply hurt my feelings. As I was contemplating on the situation it dawned on me: This friend and I weren’t always close. We were as students, but we drifted apart as adults. It wasn’t until in my 30s, after I decided I wanted to BE a better friend to my old cohort, after I decided there was virtue to be had in the identity of being a good friend to this group, that I embarked on acting, and eventually feeling, the part. I used my friend, our relationship, to bolster my identity, but doing so was a double edged sword — as our relationship came to symbolize my virtue, his disapproval/rejection took on the power to deflate me. The pain I was feeling was something I did to myself, it was a consequence of the satisfaction I seek in the identities I  build.
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The problem is we hunt for sukka in the identity we build with relationships, jobs, stuff, but when we lose these things –or they behave in ways we view as an affront to the identities we cherish — we suffer a massive gut punch. As soon as we fall in love with something (the instant desire turns to clinging), that thing sinks little claws under our skin, claws that go in smooth, almost unnoticed like a toggle bolt into drywall. But when that thing is yanked out, its hooks catch, pulling against the grain and it is sheer suffering to have them removed. Suffering that we welcomed with open arms by letting those claws sink in in the first place.




There is an old song about a woman who sees a sick snake on the side of the road and decides to nurture it back to health. She feeds it, warms it, loves it and then is shocked when, fully recovered, the snake bites her. The song ends with the snake saying, “you knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in”. These things we seek sukka in, props for our identity and imagination, aren’t actually sukka, they are toggles waiting to be ripped out, snakes waiting to bite…a coiled cobra waiting to strike looks a lot like dukka to me.




    

  • Everything nama touches turns to dukka: Eric and I were driving down to Key West and it was a beautiful day — the perfect mix of humidity, wind, warmth from the sun — as I soaked it in, I realized there really is comfort in this world, i.e. there are physical circumstances a 4e being, with a particular 4e arrangement, finds comfortable. Just so, there is beauty, deliciousness, etc. The problems however arise as soon as Nama enters the scene: The moment Nama senses something, it goes into overdrive, if it likes it it clings and begins to scheme ways to maximize, to prolong, it plots to recreate and obtain more, it stresses over loss, it is saddened by loss and the future imagined without what we claimed/cling to. If nama dislikes it rejects, schemes ways to avoid, to disclaim and disassociate with what it doesn’t like and stresses to be near that thing, enduring suffering until it can disassociate. Nama is basically a dukka factory, it consumes everything around it and regurgitates dukka. Nothing is left unconsumed and unturned. So no matter what is actually in the world, as soon as our nama touches it, it turns to suffering. And there is nothing we experience untouched by nama, so functionally (at least till we stop craving and clinging) everything must be dukka.
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  • Enjoyment is just turning a blind eye to suffering:  I was thinking about my love of travel and realized that one of the things I love the most about it is that I see vacation as a time when I can put aside my daily worries and burdens a bit. I can relax, enjoy, de-stress. The thing is, just because I put aside my to-do list for a bit, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there; in fact, it seems to grow with every email that piles up while my ‘out of office’ is on. With vacation there is food indulgence which I tell myself to  ‘worry about later’,  all while engaging in the very eating, and weight gain, that causes me shame and stress and that will require vigor and effort and sacrifice to ‘repent from’ when I get home.  Since the tasks required to tend to a breakable, decaying, body are endless and routine, there always seems to be a mammogram, or broken crown, or some other painful, anxiety producing procedure/ appointment on the calendar for just after I get home. All through the trip I try to put it out of mind, tell myself to worry later, though the worrisome stuff lies in wait for me upon my return. When I look at my vacation habits, I see that enjoyment requires, in fact may fundamentally be, the act of closing my eyes tight and pretending –pretending what is effortful is fun, pretending the world will go as I want it to, pretending that struggle/burden/difficulty isn’t always lurking. Enjoyment is just times suffering doesn’t intrude on my imagination. Which must mean that suffering is the ever-present reality of the world — it never disappears — my imagination just lulls me into a fantasy world, and I shut my eyes,pretend, at least until that ever-present dukka intrudes forcefully enough for me to notice.
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Once again, I am going to cut this off at a somewhat arbitrary point. There are just so many examples/themes and thoughts it feels like cutting it up into more ‘bite sized chunks’ is the best approach for this blog. So stay tuned till next time …








							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 1

					

				Yet Another Interruption in Our Regularly Scheduled Programming — Everything is Dukka Part 1
			

		
				

			
 
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Well Dear Reader, it has been a while since I have interrupted this here nice, orderly(ish), temporally linear(ish) blog, meant to chronologically share highlights of my dharma practice. Things have been going so well, staying on course, so naturally, I am thinking, “what better way to celebrate my birthday than to fuck-up this whole regularly scheduled programing with — yup, you got it — yet another intrusion of contemplations from the present day.”


Kidding aside, I do like to share this blog in order because contemplations build on each other; growth, though meandering, happens in linear time, there is an order to practicing and to deepening my understandings through practice. And yet, sometimes there are just those mind blowing realizations, the kind that shake and shape my practice, and I feel the deep desire to share those ‘real time’. This here is one of those contemplations, which was summarized and written-up to send to my teachers Mae Neecha and Mae Yo, so hopefully, you will indulge the birthday girl and forgive me for skipping ahead, and sharing this while it is hot off the press.


In reality, while this topic is certainly ‘deep’, it is also surprisingly simple and straight forward, after all it is just a super sobering investigation of 1 f the 3 Common Characteristics of the world (suffering, impermanence, no-self) . I think it can stand on is own without all the backstory of how I got here. So, without further adieu, everything is dukka ( in 3 parts, because it is super-duper loooonnnnggg and dense).




For years, when I considered the first noble truth, I translated it as ‘life entails suffering’. This shaped my view of the world, of practice: Life has joyful parts, but it also has suffering parts. You can’t have one without the other. Case closed. But after reading LP Thoon’s biography, I was struck by how often he said “Everything is suffering”. I had heard this in Phra Arjan Dang’s sermons too. I realized how different these takes were from my own, which basically sees happiness, delight, and joy, abundant in the world, just with a “side” of suffering.  I asked Mae Neecha about it and she said:










” Happiness is relief from suffering, or just less suffering. They are on different sides of the same scale… the scale of suffering. Just like how hot and cold are on opposite ends of the same temperature scale. Or how 0 and 100 are on opposite ends of a number scale.”






I “heard” her reply of course, but my heart really balked at it , so I realized that I needed to really consider this issue. I set about gathering daily evidence in my life, not just of instances of suffering (which I have done for years), but evidence from these instances that everything is suffering. Moreover, I began considering what this evidence illustrated about WHY everything is suffering. What it is about the nature of the world that means it is, and always will be, suffering?




I quickly realized that I was getting tripped-up on the word suffering, I had a fixed, narrow view of what constitutes “suffering”. But the word dukka itself has a very broad meaning and lots of possible translations. I started by trying on different words, and the examples and dynamics of dukka became much more clear quickly. Afterall, I certainly feel stressed out a lot, I get disappointed and anxious. I can see how any satisfaction I get from a meal quickly fades, or how if  a vacation were truly satisfying I wouldn’t be planning a new one as soon as I get home. And then there is burdensomeness, the weight of my obligations and belongings as well as the effort I put into gaining and maintaining them.




So, at long last, after many many months of consideration (I spent over 8 months fixating on this topic),  I am ready to share just a bit of the evidence I have collected and some of my thoughts on this topic of everything is suffering. Over the months I have been weighing this topic, I have noticed there have been themes –basic types of suffering and reasons for its existence — that keep coming up. So my examples will be the best ones I can come up with to demonstrate the specific ‘themes’/types of suffering/reasons everything is suffering. This contemplation is clearly not done. For starters, new themes, nuances, examples just keep coming the more I consider this topic, this just seemed like as good a point as any to sum-up and share. Also, obviously, I don’t yet really fully believe or understand the deep truth that everything is dukka or I would just give up the gun and lay down my burden already. But, I see the contours of this truth, I am not just smiling and nodding when I hear folks like Mae Neecha and LP Thoon say “Everything is Dukka”; this is an assessment of my own now, something I believe and understand I need to grow in my conviction/clarity of more deeply. In other words, this is all a work in progress, but at the same time there has been real progress. My examples/themes are below:




    

  • Enjoyment is just the temporary relief of suffering: I was on a 5 day fast (recommended by my doctor), looking forward to getting to finally eat the next day, and I realized that pleasure was just a relief of deprivation. If I wasn’t already hungry –if suffering wasn’t a preexisting state — there wouldn’t have been extreme delight at the prospect of eating. This is true not just of physical needs/comfort, but of non-physical craving as well. I am happy to have found a husband only because of the pre-existing husband shaped hole in my heart. I was already uncomfortable, I already felt something missing.
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The truth is hunger, craving, these are uncomfortable states –dukkah in and of themselves. If they weren’t we wouldn’t always be running around, exerting so much energy trying to ‘solve’ them. Relief of hunger, and the ensuing sensation of relief — which we register as happiness —  is just the temporary dampening of our hunger (after all, I get hungry again soon after I eat. Thanks impermanence.) Dukka is the foundational state. All we need to do is wait for any comforts, any sense of fullness, to pass and we return to the base state of dukka.




    

  • We are never actually satisfied/there is no satisfaction to be had in this world: When I sent a short Line to Mae Neecha a ways back, with a bit about my progress on this everything is suffering topic, part of her reply made me start thinking of a different angle. She said, “if while you feel happy, it could still be better somehow (if only _were here, if only there was_instead) that already indicates it is suffering not happiness.” This got me to begin considering a different definition for dukka — ‘dissatisfaction/not satisfactory’; no matter how much I am enjoying something, in the back of my mind I am always thinking of the thing that could make it better, or the way to repeat it, or how to enjoy it for longer. Implicit in that thinking is a basic truth — the thing I am enjoying is not satisfactory. If it really were satisfactory, I wouldn’t be trying to change it. If it really were satisfactory, I wouldn’t need to find a way to prolong or repeat it. I would simply be satisfied with what it was. But every single vacation I have ever been on, no matter how magical, left me wanting more vacation time. Never have I finished a trip and said, that is it –I never need to travel again. That was perfect, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I always want more/different. We are born into this world desiring satisfaction. We are born to satisfy desire. But this is impossible because impermanence dictates any delight we get is fleeting. So yes, we can enjoy a trip, we can momentarily fulfill our desire to travel or see a beautiful place, but there is no endurance in that delight. Instead, like the hit of a drug, the tiniest bit of enjoyment leaves us craving for more –worse, it feeds the hope that we can have more/better — and I am already calculating and planning and efforting my next trip. Why? ‘Cause everything in this world is unsatisfactory i.e. dukka.
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  • If you have to pick your poison then you get poison either way. I was dragging myself out of bed for an early workout. I didn’t feel like working out, I don’t really enjoy the process, but I do it to try and stay healthy. I hedge, trying to endure what I see as the smaller suffering of working out now to stave off the bigger suffering –heart disease — that can come later from a sedentary life.  Or, another example: I was sitting at a restaurant the other night, a toddler next to me screaming. I considered my options, moving to a table closer to road noise or staying with the screaming child. I moved, trading off what I considered the greater discomfort for the lesser discomfort.
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The truth is, no situation is perfect, there are always these compromises, trade-offs. The reason is that there is always dukkah, just in different shapes (toddler versus road) and in different degrees (workout versus heart attack). I like to think to myself, “yes, life entails suffering, but I got this, I can try and control my life, my fate,  by picking the suffering I prefer, that I think I can live with.” Of course, there is no guarantee I can get my wish –that workouts will stave off heart disease. There is no guarantee that even if I do get the ‘lesser evil’ it really IS the lesser evil — traffic noise may annoy me less than a toddler, but road smog can irritate my asthma. The only real guarantee is that when you have to pick your poison you get poison –dukka — either way, so of course everything must be dukka.  In fact, even the act of picking my poison –the effort, the sense of uncertainty — is in and of itself dukka. So I guess I get a dukka shot with a dukka chaser.


    

  • 

    If a little less sucky feels like sukka, I must be livin’ in a dukka world. Just as I started my dukka contemplations, Eric began pissing blood. Blood in urine is presumed cancer till proven otherwise, so I was deeply afraid (dukka). A CT scan showed kidney stones and the doctor recommended surgery to remove them, but no sign of cancer. Suddenly I was overwhelmingly relieved –my mind registered this less bad news as sukka even though, lets face it, needing surgery is certainly not good news. Happiness in this case was just less suffering, less of a bad outcome than I had feared.
    

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The problem with this situation is that in order to really feel happy, we are required to know sad; any sukka I experience is really relative to the dukka I suffered before/after it.  The pandemic isolation is another perfect example: For almost a year, Eric and I remained quite locked down. We avoided any indoor activities, even having groceries delivered. I was so lonely during that time, I longed for a return to ‘normality’, to the simplest things I had known and done before. After I got vaccinated, my first trip to Whole Foods felt like ecstasy, but I needed the extreme loss and isolation of my long lockdown to have the extreme joy of that first trip to the store.


We have already established that the world is unsatisfactory, continually stressful, that dukka is in fact the pre-existing/foundational state. Which means that it can’t be  that ‘suffering is just less happiness’ –life doesn’t bear this out: I would never say my dad’s death, or my move to NY, or my fear of Eric having cancer is ‘less happiness’. So it must be that happiness is just less suffering. Everything is just more or less dukka.


    

  • Comparison is the thief of joy (i.e even a little less sukka feels like dukka, which means I live in a super sucky world) . Throughout most of my life, a trip to Whole Foods was just a chore, but after my looooonnnnggg lockdown, my first Whole Foods adventure was a slice of heaven.  With each subsequent shopping trip, as I returned to more and more pre-pandemic activities, my delight waned, until a few weeks later when the grocery store became just another chore again. The reason for this loss of enjoyment in the same exact activity is that enjoyment is not in the activity, an object, another person or a situation. Enjoyment exists in my heart. And my heart is always changing, judging what meets the threshold of enjoyment using past experiences and my own fantasies as a benchmark. So Whole Foods may have been pinnacle joy at one point, but  once I had started doing more and more public stuff again, including museums and outdoor concerts –which I like way more than the store– Whole Foods felt lackluster and boring.
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The problem is that if what I find to bring me joy is relative, based on standards derived from past benchmarks, I need to at least  maintain the same “level” of everything, preferably “level-up” to feel a sense of sukka. Eric often reflects on this with coffee drinking: Back when he started drinking coffee, a cup of joe from anywhere would do. But over time his tastes became more refined and he needed finer and finer roasts to drink. Before it was easy, everyplace has a gas station to grab a coffee, but once it had to be fancy we had to hunt down a rarefied coffee shop each AM. And when there really is no choice but the gas station, Eric suffers, finds it bitter and terrible on his new pallet even though back in the day gas station coffee was the norm. In other words –the very things that cause momentary happiness — like a fine cup of coffee– end up causing even more dukka, dukka to maintain according to that standard, dukka to preserve/repeat and, worst of all, dukka when you have to suffer something lesser. And the higher you go, the more there is in the world that is ‘lesser’ and the harder it becomes to find what is equal or greater than that super fine thing you are used to. Today’s joy becomes both tomorrow’s taskmaster and joykill, which makes every bit of joy I feel the seed of later dukka.




    

  • Entropy is the law of the cosmos and entropy makes life HARD: I was reading an article that was explaining the second law of thermodynamics, entropy. To illustrate the concept in simple terms there were 2 little pictures embedded in the text: The first was a wall of bricks and then an arrow, labeled “time”, that pointed to a disorganized pile of bricks. In a closed system, what is organized and orderly becomes less organized and orderly over time. In the second picture there was a jumbled pile of disorganized bricks and an arrow, labeled “work”, that pointed to a constructed wall of bricks. In an open system, things can move from disordered to more ordered, but only with the introduction of energy, work.
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 A few days later I was shaping my eyebrows, frustrated at how quickly they grow, at the time, and painful plucks, and effort it takes to keep them in a particular shape and I realized entropy rules my life, rules this world, and it makes everything so damn hard. Left alone, buildings will crumble, eyebrows will grow bushy, rooms become dirty, bodies and objects will decay. Orderly arrangements of 4es will naturally shift, eventually disaggregating altogether. To build an orderly state, to maintain that state — even just temporarily — in the face of entropy (aka anatta) requires work, it requires effort. This effortfulness, this continual need to exert energy to obtain and maintain, this is the cause of dukka and it is literally a consequence of the law of the universe. Simply trying to live in this world, at the most basic level trying to provide requisites to a body, to acquire things and maintain them, requires herculean, regular, daily effort, not to mention overwhelming, omni-present risk (thanks Covid for making this one so obvious). For all that effort, all we buy is a little time because ultimately the law of impermanence reigns supreme. What is hard is dukka and life in this world is hard, therefore life is dukka.


This is already a lot to read and consider so more examples to come next week…to be continued…








							


	

			




						
							
	
					
					

				


				


			

			
             
        

        
	

	
	


		                   
		

		
			
		
	
        
        
        		
		
			
			
	     	
     		
				
		
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