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Throwing Stones in Glass Houses

Throwing Stones in Glass Houses

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I was reading an article in The Atlantic, I have linked it here, but in short it was about how it is tempting to shame and blame individuals for their reckless actions in this pandemic (not wearing a mask, going to a crowded places, etc.) when we should really be a blaming the institutions that put us in this place: “Don’t blame people making bad choices, look at the fact that all they have are bad choices.” The pandemic creates psychological murkiness for humans and in the face of that murkiness the process of making ethical decisions, or judging risks, becomes murky as well.

Later in the article a point the author makes really hits home: “Most people congregating in tight spaces are telling themselves a story about why what they are doing is okay. Such stories flourish under confusing or ambivalent norms.”
I am the first to play the blame/shame game. I am so angry at all the folks out there whose action put me in danger, who are only prolonging this pandemic. And yet, if I am being honest with myself, a younger, healthier Alana –a collage or highschool version of myself — would be telling similar stories, making similar justifications for cramming into a club like a sardine: The government said this is ok…I am not breaking rules, if I am not breaking rules, my actions must be ok. 
This mentality, transcends pandemic logic, it  permeates my whole life: I like to think of myself as a ‘good Alana’, protected by my goodness from punishment and pain, from low births and hardships. In my mind, I justify all my actions, tell stories about how all I do is okay, how I maintain my Alana goodness. When I used to use people for sex, I told myself it was consensual, they agreed to keep it casual, of course what I did was okay. When I would emotionally cheat on partners, I would avoid physically cheating –there was a ‘line’ I wouldn’t cross (a line of my own creation and definition, but nonetheless a line)  so of course my behavior was okay. When I push Eric to endure his terrible jobs to support me, our lifestyle, I tell myself he is willing, or we all need to rely on someone, or its not using someone if you love them, so of course I am A-Okay. 
From my own side, my reasons are always justified. I am above reproach. But this world, it doesn’t operate according to my side, my stories and justifications are not the arbiters of consequence. Calling myself a ‘good Alana’ doesn’t protect me from the consequences of my actions any more than the stories those folks cramming themselves into small spaces tell protect them from catching Covid, or prolonging the pandemic for all. We all tell stories, but no matter the story we are subjects to karma, we are subjects of a world that offers no safety.
Delusion is in the Details

Delusion is in the Details

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Bored and restless in lockdown, I had started remembering old road trips to Napa, Vermont, Carmel, Northern CT –all the little towns I loved to go and visit before Covid. My imagination would take over and I would fantasize about going back to these places, plus other, as-yet-unexplored-hidden-gems, just as soon as Covid was over…

The more I fantasized though, the more I noticed that there was a pattern to what I remembered of my road trips, each was more or less, largely the same: I’d roll into some town, I jump out of the car so eager to explore. To find something new and exciting ( which, for a peril call out, is how I ended up in NY).

But every town is basically the same, a grocery, bank, shops that sell gifts/clothes, restaurants. I zoom in so hard to each town, I get lost in details, I get intoxicated by the promise of something new. When I get to the end of a main street strip, when the cookie cutter houses begin, I have this palpable disappointment –I want more. I wanted more from the town. Another block, another ‘find’, something new and different than the last town.

It dawned on me that a major mechanism my mind uses to keep deluding myself is distraction with the details. If the details were always the same, then I would be bored and burned-out by life and rebirth already. It would be 100% clear to me that I had already ‘been there done that” and I could simply give up the quest for something new and different, something truly satisfying and enduring in this world.

But it’s the slight variations –a different shop, unique architecture, some ‘special’ tourist attraction, that feed the desire to keep heading to little towns to find something new and different to entertain me. It is details that feed my hope that a treasure is just around the corner. Hope feeds desire to quest, and desire feeds the entire continual cycle of born, do, die, repeat.

Now though, I am bored, nothing changes in this Covidverse, where I do the same stuff, see the same 1 person, live in the same 4 walls day-in-day-out. Details here are all the same and I am ready to be done. But details of yesterday, of past trips and future plans – crumbs – are enough to continue feeding the hope that one day will be different. And even if today sucks, tomorrow will be new, it will be different, it is worth hanging on for. Delusion is in the details.

The Four Nobel Truths Again (and Again and Again and Again…)

The Four Nobel Truths Again (and Again and Again and Again…)

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I tend to like to keep my practice simple, basic even, but profound; In Buddhism, there is probably nothing more basic — foundational — than the 4 Noble Truths. I suppose that is why I return to them over and over again in my own practice, checking in with them, seeing what I have learned, what additional layers of meaning I can find in these simple but profound teachings. Sitting at home one afternoon, pandemic bored, restless, I decided to give them a re-read and re-exploration. I went to access to insight for translations, https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.than.html. At the time of this blog (Spring 2020), I saw 2 slightly different readings/interpretations/ ways to approach the path to enlightenment, and I will share them both below.

I do however want to note that by now, May 2022, I have a fresher take on the First Noble Truth, The Origination of Dukka: Recently,  I have come to explore the idea that everything is suffering, rather than that stress and enjoyment come as a pair or that life entails dissatisfaction. This is an evolution in my thinking that we will get to at a later entry in this blog. But I do want to mention it here, first off  to say that this entry is hardly the end-all-be-all of Alana’s deep understanding of the Four Noble truths (or anything at all for that matter). It exemplifies the fact that this blog, my practice, is a work in progress, it is shifting and growing, no entry is, or has been, the final say on a topic, especially not Buddhism’s first, most foundational, topic of the Four Nobel Truths.  Secondly, I wanna fess-up that present day Alana, reading these 2 year old notes, sees they are lacking a perspective that I have recently understood to be essential for practice — everything is stressful, the fact we don’t see it that way is a function of our delusion, not the nature of the world. It is a key culprit in our bondage.   Yet, I still want to share these older thoughts to reflect the stepping stone they are, and to as authentically as possible share the evolution of my practice. Afterall, I wouldn’t have gotten to today’s understanding without yesterday’s.

When I read the Nobel Truths now,  I see 2 possible readings at the same time, and with it 2 slightly different thoughts on how to approach enlightenment:

In the first reading/interpretation I see:

1. Life is stressful
2. Craving is the reason you have life, you crave the good parts, the things you want and so we are born and we perpetuate continual becoming for what we want. But, everything has 2 sides, which means the stuff you want comes with stuff you don’t want, and the don’t want part is super stressful.  In other words life itself, that folks desire so much, comes with stress baked-in.  If you want to avoid stress, you gotta give up the good parts, the stuff you want and like, in order to avoid their shadow side, the stressful parts you don’t want. Seeing the 2 sides, the tuk tok pie in all = getting exhausted by this crap and not wanting any more.
3. Get rid of the craving and get rid of the stress
4 Enter the 8 fold path. ie the tactics of letting go of stress
It is a fair assessment of course, straight forward; good comes with bad, if I don’t want bad forgo good. Done. But in practice, I see my own tenaciousness can be a trap with a perspective like this. The reason is that, even if I know something will be a  lot of work, may suck, may hurt, may cause suffering,  I will do it anyway to get the outcome I want. I don’t give up easily, I will take the bad with good. But as I reread these basic truths I saw a second option/ interpretation as well:
1) Life entails dissatisfaction. The un-satisfactoriness is woven into every aspect of life. Its a basic truth of this world.
2)The cause of dissatisfaction is desire for satisfaction in a world that is fundamentally dissatisfying. Therefore, the intermediary cause of dissatisfaction is the reason I want satisfaction to begin with; I have a wrong view that something I do will enable me to achieve satisfaction in a fundamentally unsatisfactory world.   I don’t understand truth 1 –dissatisfaction is baked-in — and so I have hope, born from my misunderstanding of the world. From hope springs desire. The desire for the illusive (actually impossible) white whale of satisfaction.
3) If I can change my view of the world, if I can understand those 3 common characteristics and give up hope for satisfaction I will give up desire for this world. Afterall, I never really hope for things that I believe to be utterly impossible. I only hope for thing I have seen glimmers of, or had momentary experiences with in the past (in other words, imagination relies on memory).
4) Enter the 8 fold path
With this reading of the Truths, my job is to kill the hope that I will be able to find satisfaction in a dissatisfactory world, I need to convince myself to stop striving for the impossible. Ultimately satisfaction is impossible because:
1: My desire changes — Example: First I wanted the NY home, and then, with more information  about what it was like to live in NY (terrible), I no longer wanted it but was burdened by it. It caused me dissatisfaction.
2: Objects change –Example: When it was working I wanted the Porsche, but when it had to sit in the garage for months and cost me a ton of money to repair I found it dissatisfying.
3: The circumstances change — Example: an SF apartment was great when I can go spend time there, but come the  pandemic and suddenly it was a stressful burden to get rid of.
At the end of the day all it takes is time, inescapable impermanence,  to move anything that is momentarily desirable into a state that is undesirable. And momentarily desirable is simple not satisfying.
Videos Sent By May Yo Part 7

Videos Sent By May Yo Part 7

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On May 25, 2020 Mae Yo sent over another videos for me to view. Unfortunately, the link to the video is no longer active so I will proceed to describe the video and the below will share my thoughts/comments back to Mae Yo:

The Video: The video was a short clip that showed folks using one of those aging apps for the first time. The app shows what the viewer’s face will look like as it ages, quickly fast forwarding from their present day self to an elderly version of themselves. Many of the people shown the app are in pairs, folks that look like couples, or relatives; something that stood out to me was how people as they watched themselves wither and wrinkle and age seemed almost subconsciously to move closer to the person they ere with, grab a hand or clutch an arm. I discuss this feature of the video in the second response.

Alana’s Response to Mae Yo: Since I was a kid, I liked to watch those “makeover” shows: a makeup job, a cosmetic procedure, a haircut or weight loss that makes people look younger/prettier/ thinner. When the before/after pics are dramatic I ooh and ah. I feel satisfied. On some level, it gives me hope of “beating” decline myself. But this video shows the opposite: the before and after shows the aging and decline. I watch each couples’ face– the shock and pain that seems to register–I feel it myself: disgust.

My satisfaction, my belief in what is acceptable only goes one way. I desire one side (youth and beauty) not aging and uglifying. But the reality of this world is the aging video: that is the direction that everything ultimately moves in. Those makeover moments are, just that, moments: small “battles won” in a “war” none of us can ever hope or expect to actually prevail in.

Here in lockdown for 3 months already, my Botox has worn off. I have always taken for granted I can just keep subjugating those wrinkles — a smooth forehead as “proof” that I have this aging thing under control. But I have been focusing on the wrong side — the momentary ‘wins’ — instead of seeing the bigger picture: If I have to keep fighting, if I am constantly plucking and plumping, only to lose ground and sag and wrinkle again, if just a few months kicks me back to the beginning, doesn’t it prove the opposite –I am not in control. I am always just reacting. I am forced to cling to small moments of “hope” instead of zooming out and seeing the truth — I am aging. Everyone of the people in that video aged. Northing I do is going to give me a “pass” or make me an exception. I am just clinging to little blips upwards, single makeover snapshots, to ignore the general trajectory of the line — downwards.

A Second Response From Alana: Same video, different topic — protection from a partner: In the video, I noticed that the pairs, when they see the aging set-in, seem to cling to their partner for support  and comfort in the face of a reminder of their inevitable decline.

When I feel vulnerable, I turn to Eric for support. I call him when I get dressed-down at work. When I feel guilty for losing my temper with my Mom. When I am afraid I am sick. On some level, I think he can save me.

But the truth is, when my Dad died Eric could do nothing to save me. He wasn’t even there since he had to be at work. Back in March, as Covid spread, Eric kept having to go to work in Manhattan. Training in. I was terrified he would get me sick. Why do I think Eric, can save me when he hasn’t before? When in some cases he is a risk?

Could any of those couples spare their partner aging? Then why do I think Eric can help save me?

Videos Sent By May Yo Part 6

Videos Sent By May Yo Part 6

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On May 20, 2020 Mae Yo sent over another videos for me to view. Unfortunately, the link to the video is no longer active so I will proceed to describe the story and the below will share my thoughts/comments back to Mae Yo:

The Story: The video was a comic clip about two friends who while walking down the street see  a wallet fall out of a a guy’s pocket. Friend A picks up the wallet and catches up to the guy who dropped it to give it back. But Friend had wanted to keep the wallet for himself, so Friend B scolds Friend A for returning it to the owner. He says tells him that there is no need to return something that is found, its finder’s keepers, and that he should have kept the wallet.

A few minutes later Friend B is ready to head home but when he looks in his pocket for the keys to his motor bike they’re no where to be found. He asks Friend A for help and together they push the bike many miles, on a dusty road, on a hot day, uphill to get home. After they arrive Friend A reaches into his pocket to get something, and Friend B’s motorcycle keys fall to the ground. Friend A had found them earlier in the day when they had fallen out of Friend B’s pocket.

Friend B starts scolding Friend A, asking how he could have kept the keys the whole time they were walking the bike all the way home. Friend A looks at Friend B and said he thought Friend B had said “finders keepers”, he didn’t want to be scolded again, like he had been with the wallet, so he followed Friend B’s advice and kept the keys for himself.

Alana’s Response to Mae Yo: The story is a classic double standard: in one case (or for a certain person) a behavior, like returning a lost item, is desirable. But in other cases that same exact thing is undesirable.

The other day, I was craving attention from Eric. He was busy working, and I was upset I was being ignored. We ended up having a conversation about it. A few days later, Eric, trying to be a better husband and improve his behavior, was fawning over me. Only then I had work to get done and I felt annoyed to get too much attention.

It got me thinking about why Dukka is inescapable in this world ( I have been doing an exercise every night before sleep where I think of examples of suffering in my day and try to understand the cause). I realize impermanence is key. Things can never be ultimately satisfying because:

1) My desire changes — first I want Eric’s attention and then I don’t. First that guy in the clip wants his friend to keep lost items then he wants his friend to return lost items. If our desires keep changing, how can we stay satisfied in this world?

2) The objects themselves change, when it was working, I loved  the Porsche, but when it had to sit in the garage for months, costing me thousands of dollars in repairs,  I wasn’t so keen on that car. But items themselves break and change, why do I expect to stay satisfied in them?

3) The circumstances out in the world change — having an SF apartment was something I took joy and comfort in just a few months ago, because it made me feel free, I could come and go as I pleased.  But come pandemic time and suddenly it is a stressful burden, it is a shackle not freedom. It is something I had to figure out how to rid myself of, lest I keep paying and paying a monthly rent for a place I can’t even safely get to and use.

At the end of the day all it takes is time to pass and what is satisfying will become unsatisfactory.

What is more, my desires are always limited to one side, to one snapshot of what something is: I want a body, but only a young one, a healthy one. Not a sick or aging one. I want a kitchen, but only in a clean state, not when it is a mess. I want a partner, but only when he is paying attention to me not when I need to pay attention to him. But there is no way to only get one side in this world, both come together. So again, how am I going to ultimately find satisfaction?

I realize everything I do in this world is a quest for satisfaction. So to stop, I think I need to kill the hope that satisfaction is something I can own and achieve.

A Second Response From Alana: Another angle on the same story: The thing that does stay the same is “what’s good for me”. In the video, keeping is good if it’s good for the guy. Keeping is bad if it is bad for him. Eric’s attention is good when it is good for me, bad when it annoys me. The Porsche was awesome when it ran smoothly for me, and it sucked when it broke and I had to pay money and take the bus everywhere while it took months to repair…

But each story is proof the world doesn’t revolve around me. Eric gives attention on his time, for his reasons, in accordance to his ‘rules’ . The Porsche worked not when it was convenient for me, but according to the rules of its rupa, when the parts were all in a state that made the car run. In the video, the guy’s friend returned according to his own beliefs and understanding, not in accordance with what the guy thought was best.

If ‘satisfaction’ equals ‘ what works for me’ where can it be found in a world that doesn’t operate on the rules of what works for me?

A Third Response From Alana: One more thought on this topic: if “what is good for me” is my definition of satisfaction, and this world is not going to just do “what is good for me” then, on some level, the ME is the source of my dissatisfaction.  Me/mine is the standard that keeps being the cause of my disappointment. Put more succinctly: if Alana wants what Alana thinks is good for Alana all the time. All the suffering that comes when Alana doesn’t get what she thinks is good for her is Alana’s fault. The cause of my suffering is me.

A Forth Response From Alana:   Ok one more one more, but on a totally different topic: unintended consequence monster –when the guy scolds the friend for giving back the cash he obviously thinks he is doing the right thing, the best thing for himself and his buddy. But then, the unintended consequences monster rears its ugly head when his friend doesn’t return the keys.

This monster plagues my life — in small stuff: the face product that was great till the breakout, the car that was great till the garage bill, the chairs that were great till they required an entire room resign to fit. The monster comes with the big stuff too — a move to NY that was so great, so ripe with promise and adventure till I was utterly miserable.

I’m always acting. Always calculating the best outcome for Alana. But the problem is I don’t ever see the shadow side of my choices till the unintended consequences monster comes along. Even if I had the absolute control I dream of, I couldn’t escape the unpleasantness that comes along with getting exactly the thing that I want.

 



							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Videos Sent By May Yo Part 5

					

				Videos Sent By May Yo Part 5
			

		
				

			
 
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About a month and a half into Covid lockdowns Mae Yo again sent over a series of videos/images for me to view. I will once again share the media she sent (or descriptions in cases  I am unable to find the videos again) as well as my thoughts and replies.






 




Thoughts on the Fighter: Even at the top of the worldly conditions, life is a struggle. A struggle to get to the top, a pain to be there and a struggle all over again at the next round of fighting.


Just yesterday I was contemplating that during this pandemic, I have it “as good as it gets” — Eric and I have jobs we can safely do from home, we are financially secure, we aren’t trying to care for small children or deal with too many additional health issues. Still, I live in fear that I will get sick. Fear that Eric will need to go back to work in Manhattan and get sick. Daily errands have become a struggle. I am stressed, restless at home, feel helpless to support my friends and family in their struggles. And this is ‘ as good as it gets’.


I have persisted to this point. Where is success? Where is a world, even a little corner of it, that will bow to my control?


Which brings me to the oxen: It seems to be strolling along easy, painted beautifully, but it is still clearly tethered, leashed or nose ringed, bound by someone outside the video frame.


It makes me think of my own subject-hood. The fact that I am bound by the rules of Rupa, even if those are outside of the “frame” I pay attention to on a day-to-day basis.


As a human, I am subject to viruses. To disease and death. Even at the top, striding easy, or beautiful, I am still bound. None of these things protect me from the rules of this world.


For lifetimes I have worked to get to the top. To have ease, to have beauty, to have success. What measure I have of those things, temporarily, is still not a refuge from disease and death.


Mae Yo’s reply: Excellent Alana! Keep thinking along these lines. Look outward and internalize inward. Scold and teach yourself, but also comfort yourself that being born a human it is the only realm where we have a choice. Having already been born in the human world, take advantage of it.




							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Pandemic Ponderings Remix

					

				Pandemic Ponderings Remix
			

		
				

			
 
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The blog below was published back in May 2020. I did however want to re-publish it here, in the correct chronology of this blog. I hope that being contextualized in time with its contemporary contemplations offers a fresh perspective on this remix…




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


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


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


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


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


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


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


							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		The Incredible Mrs. Fix-It

					

				The Incredible Mrs. Fix-It
			

		
				

			
 
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I walk into the kitchen to grab a snack and notice a puddle on the floor. Not thinking too much of it, I wipe it up and go on with my day. A few hours later, I head to the kitchen again and once again, there is a puddle on the floor. This time, a quick investigation reveals the puddle-making culprit – the freezer is leaking…


In ‘normal’ times, I would have just called my landlord and waited for her to schedule a repairman. But this is Covid times, when I have a stockpile of emergency food I don’t want to risk melting. When the idea of a repair person in my safe-covid-free home conjures up images from Outbreak. No…in these crazy times, I am going to try to fix the fridge myself.


Armed with youtube, duct tape and a tool kit, I got to work. Much to my surprise, a few hours later, I had actually fixed the fridge. I was elated. CRISIS AVERTED! I felt like The Incredible Mrs. Fix-It. I grabbed a nice, cold, snack out of the fridge to celebrate my victory.


Later that night, while I was lying in bed, I began to consider the broken fridge situation further. I was so happy that I was able to fix it. I felt so relieved, empowered, that I had been able to keep myself and my stuff safe. Frankly, I felt like a badass, like an on-top-and-in-control Alana, who is a crafty, prepared, master of her own universe, that can stay a step ahead, that can stay safe.


But these feelings, they belie a glaring truth: If I was so on-top-and-in-control, of my life, or my stuff, how on earth did my fridge break in the first place? If I am so special, badass, if my skill or preparations or craftiness really kept me safe, why am I cowering at home afraid of a tiny virus?


I use my small victories – moments where circumstances align with my wishes, moments where I ‘fix’ things or force them into states I want – as proof to sell myself the lie that I am somehow special, that the world, or at least my corner of it, will obey me, confirm me, keep me safe. But I am taking the wrong message away from these instances: In a world that bowed to me, the fridge never would have needed fixing because it simply wouldn’t break (and it sure as hell wouldn’t break in the middle of a pandemic, when I rely on it most, when fixing it involves such peril).  In a world that bowed to me, I wouldn’t need to avoid a virus because my body would remain unbroken.


The real message should be that there is no safety being dependent on things that are unreliable. There is no mastery or greatness in having to duck and dodge the impermanence and danger inherent in this world.  I am vulnerable, like all people, like all objects. Crap I need failing me, leaving me hanging, does not a badass make.


							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Amazon Oh Amazon Please Don’t Be Out Of Stock, If I Can’t Depend on You I am Totally Fucked

					

				Amazon Oh Amazon Please Don’t Be Out Of Stock, If I Can’t Depend on You I am Totally Fucked
			

		
				

			
 
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I was trolling on Amazon, hoping to find those precious pandemic goods — toilet paper, disinfectants, hand sanitizer — to add to my stash. Out of stock, out of stock, out of stock, is all I kept encountering. Frustrated that good ole’ dependable Amazon just couldn’t be depended on anymore to bring me the stuff I want, the stuff I NEED, I got to thinking about an old Amazon inspired contemplation I had had years ago that really helped me understand that I have no control in this world; I simply have the illusion of control (here is the blog entry if you want a look:  Amazon oh Amazon Bring Me My Box).






The issue I came to recognize in that old contemplation was rearing its ugly head again:  I see particular reasons, manifest through rupa, and have pattern recognition — X set of reasons will likely yield Y set of results. The problem is that this equation is born out in/processed through my memory and imagination, not in reality. For some amount of time this ‘pattern recognition’ can be close enough to predictive that it feeds the ego. It reinforces my memory and imagination and makes me believe that I am omniscient.




I hit the order button I get the Amazon box. I hit the order button I get the Amazon box, I hit the button I get the Amazon box… Because I don’t see all the innerworkings between button and box, suddenly I think I am the cause, or at least a partial cause, or at least that I know what the world will bring – a box. Even when I didn’t get a box, I considered it an outlier, not evidence of my flawed vision of the relationship between button and box.. Not of my incomplete understanding of that supply chain, of its vulnerability, of the tiny discrepancies that occurred each time.










Now we are in a pandemic. A shift, a new world order so drastically different than what I remember came before simple isn’t  all that predictive at all; now it is becoming more common that when I hit the button I don’t get a box. That something is out of stock. That transport is delayed. Suddenly the patterns I thought I recognized deviate so much from my past experience that it lays bare the truth that I can’t possibly control this world, it isn’t going how I want it to, hell, I couldn’t even have predicted it going the way that it has. How do you prepare for the unpredictable? And if you can’t prepare, what hope is there for control?






When I consider the pandemic more broadly I realize there are reasons in the 4e virus and human bodies, reasons for government response, reasons for healthcare abilities and limitations. So many reasons that come together to result in this pandemic and its effects on society. I don’t want to be locked at home. I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want other folks to suffer. But how on earth can I expect to overcome all the reasons that led to these results? I can’t even create the reasons to acquire the toilet paper I need — I keep trying to hit a button, but Amazon has no boxes to bring me.




 Before this pandemic, my contemplations had started gelling around the idea that the past is gone. The particular alignment of reasons that brought about the past are gone. I am imagining the future, hoarding and relying upon particular objects I believe will help bring the future about, or make me better prepared for it, all based on pattern recognition ( memory) of the past. In theory I understood that the whole enterprise relied on the future being like the past. But this pandemic situation is theory turned big hairy undeniable reality. The world is different. Mundane shit I took for granted a few weeks ago is gone. It’s making me reevaluate everything I think is dependable. All the “facts” I take for granted.




It’s playing out in the littlest details of life … I thought the new makeup I bought before all this was so valuable, makeup has served me well in the past. But haha, how could I have possibly planned to be banned from seeing other people for weeks on end. Guess that makeup just took up space I could have used for toilet paper in my shopping cart. It’s playing out in the big stuff too… I tend to think of Eric as someone who protects me, that is a fundamental quality of a partner to me. But at the beginning of this thing, Eric was still going into work in Manhattan: He was doing the opposite of what I think a partner does, in this new world order, he was putting me at risk. It’s a daily barrage of shit I thought was true turning out to be totally different then what I thought.






 All that, and the innate suffering of trying to rely on what is, by nature, not reliable, I’m pointing a finger at you here Amazon, but I am also pointing a finger at me: I peg my whole hope of Alana-the-identity on a physical construct, a body, that is subject to being consumed by viruses. The pandemic has a way of proving that if I am hoping to rely on this body, I am totally fucked.


















							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Pandemic Ponderings

					

				Pandemic Ponderings
			

		
				

			
 
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I want to introduce a new chapter in this blog, Pandemic Ponderings, that began from around February 2020, when Covid-19 really burst on the scene.  It isn’t so much that my contemplations on rupa had wound themselves to an end. Rather it was that a huge ugly monster –a global pandemic — had entered, stage left, and there was no possible way for it not to have a huge impact on my dharma contemplations, including those specifically on form.


In one way, of course, Covid was a huge change; before the end of 2019 Covid 19 hadn’t been an infectious disease in the human population, and then suddenly it began to spread, and with that spread there was a huge shift in this world, in our collective existence and in my own personal life. In another way though, the world hadn’t really changed at all — a rupa world is one in which rupa is constantly shifting, decaying, consuming and being consumed — this was never a world where I, as a rupa being, could be safe. It was never a world I could depend on. The pandemic simply made what was already true glaringly obvious.


This next chapter represents my ponderings in the shadow of the Covid Pandemic. To kick us off, I will share a short Line chat with Mae Neecha from February 26th, 2020.




MN: Maybe focus on the four elements and decay? If your attachment to your body is a big issue, then understanding the truth of the 4 elements and rupa could be the key.


AD: I think you are correct. 4es, decay and duration seem to be most helpful for me in loosening stuff right now.  I have also been trying to train myself to see the relationship between cause and effect more clearly, but it is less organic. Maybe I will set that aside for a little and really ground myself in Rupa and impermanence…those two topics feel very strong to me.


MN: I like rupa contemplations because they are super straightforward and factual. What you see is what you get. There isn’t so much room for interpretation


AD: Well…no time like a global pandemic to contemplate on the 4es and decay. The nature of this world is seriously laying itself bare right now. Needless to say pandemic illness is a real hot button for me…as I follow the news I can’t help but feel like for all the meaning I lay onto things in my life, the bottom line is every thing in this world, things I hold dear and things I despise, they are all made up of the same 4es. Constantly shifting, decaying, consuming and being consumed. That is the world I am so enamored with. These are the things I depend on to build a life…things that are fundamentally not dependable.


MN: This lovely world can turn into a nightmare overnight. Pollution or corona virus like epidemics can turn all those lovely things into death and nightmares. There is nowhere to hide for those of us comprised on 4es


AD: I hear you. It is true…and I’m starting to feel it. Nothing like a disaster to hammer it home I guess.


MN: It’s a major disaster… an undeniable danger. But we are living in a nightmare every day, corona virus or not. Only, we don’t realize it


AD: Years ago, I talked to you about a book — A Thousand Splendid Suns… mainly about the shit-show life of 2 women in Afghanistan married to an abusive guy. A sticking point in that book has stayed with me…one of the women, Laila had a perfectly good life, a supportive liberal family, an education, till the war broke out. A bomb killed her parents and that is how she found herself in the situation of needing to marry the abuser.  I was struck that it didn’t seem right/fair/ it scared me that everything could be A ok and then go south so fast. Obviously it’s a huge fear of mine. The thing my Alana-made-up-exceptionalism is seeking to hedge against. But … when I am being honest with myself ( rare moments indeed) the world, with it’s virus or pollution or war, make it clear there is no true hedge.


I love to get sidelined with the “but, but, but”. With the ways I am different, with how I can control, or build good karma or manage my body, or be mindful of the circumstances I put myself in. But these ‘buts’ take me further from the ultimate truth. They are places my mind likes to hide and I think sometimes I even use my Dharma practice as a but. That is why I think your recommendation of 4es and decay (plus my duration and impermanence add on) is so powerful — so there is no but to hide behind. I can wash my hands religiously, keep a stock of masks and hand sanitizer, stay fit and take those vitamins, but in the end there are no guarantees.  If the folks closest to me get sick, if I am exposed, if my immune system sputters, if all the ifs that need to come together to get sick in my case do in  fact come together, I’ll get sick. The reason is simple…a 4e virus is capable of traveling via air and water, existing for some time on solids, active at the right temperatures. My 4e body is susceptible to that 4e virus. It can move (wind) through my blood, attack the solids in my lungs, raise my temperature, shift the balance of my own 4es such that I get ill. In this world there is consuming and being consumed. A 4e body is ripe for consumption and a virus is a formidable consumer.


MN: Yes, exactly! This is why LP Thoon emphasized the need to spend 50% contemplation time on rupa and 50% on nama. We need the undeniable rupa to bring home the truth. To ground our nama fantasies.


AD: Well pandemics seem good for my practice…after all h1N1 homeless Alana story was what kicked off my path ..so keep your fingers crossed for me…


							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		There is Nothing Satisfying About a Glass House

					

				There is Nothing Satisfying About a Glass House
			

		
				

			
 
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Eric and I decided to take a day trip up to the ‘country’; we went to visit a little town in Northern Connecticut where a famous Manhattan architect, Philip Johnson, had built his getaway home, The Glass House. The home, as the name suggested, was a midcentury style glass box,  surrounded by other architectural marvels, nestled in lush woods. The place was stunning — a home, and a setting, on which fantasies are built.


We joined a tour to learn a bit more about the architect and the history of the home. The docent explained that Johnson would spend 3 days a week at The Glass House and then return to Manhattan for the other 4 days to live in his NY apartment and work. When visitors to The Glass House asked about how he could ever want to leave, he explained he was always ready to go back to NY because the boredom of the country was too much by day 3, and always ready to head to the country because the stress of NY was too much by day 4.


On the face of it, it seemed like this architect had the prefect arrangement, he had managed to build himself a perfect life. In my own plans, I was working toward a similar arrangement: Eric and I want to retire with a country home and a city home, we want to split our time between two places that stimulate us in different ways. This is what drives us, it is the reason we endure Eric’s abusive jobs, why we scrimp and save and endure living arrangements and cities we hate.


The more I thought about it though, the more troubled I was by Johnson’s reply: If the country home had been satisfying why did he feel compelled to rush off to the city just days after getting there? If the city were satisfying why was he eager to escape to the country in another few days time? This wasn’t the perfect life, it was a life filled with longing, with restlessness and boredom — a life that wherever you are, somewhere else soon seems better. Is this really a life I want to emulate?


In my imagination, if I just have 2 homes I can travel between them and find fulfillment.  But the fact I always want more, to seek out new places, to have second homes, to move and travel, is a pretty big hint —  what the pattern tells me is I’m not satisfied. None of the many particular living arrangements I  have had to date, (one of which actually included 3 homes) has managed to satisfy me, so why would they start to be satisfying at some future fantasy date?


 


							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		So is it MINE?

					

				So is it MINE?
			

		
				

			
 
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Seeing a homeless person on the street on my way to work, I decided on a different path, one that let me steer clear of the guy and his panhandling. It annoys me so much to feel pressured to produce change, to give just because I am asked; the truth is, I don’t think those random homeless folks  deserve my money. Of course, this begs another question — why do I feel I deserve my money?  Is the money even really ‘mine’?


When it comes to money (or stuff, or good fortune, or love, or success) I know I deserve it because I have it.  That part is pretty straight forward and clearly true: If you experience a result, the causes for that result have  been put in place, in other words,  I ‘deserve’ the result.  But the problems begin when I see the reasons, or the results, of my getting money as proof it is mine. This ignores that reasons — causes — are always changing. Just because today reflects yesterday’s causes it doesn’t guarantee a particular future. If the future is uncertain, if my state and my stuff can change, can leave me, at any time, can it truly be MINE?


A few weeks ago, Eric was negotiating to get his contract at work renewed, there were a few days when it looked like terms might not be settled on and that Eric would end-up out of a job in 2 weeks time. For those few days,  I stressed and worried over our money and financial security. I realized if it can be gone tomorrow, disappear at any time irrespective of my needs or desires, it was never really something I could rely on at all. So is it MINE?




I think money will save me. Keep me safe. Buy me a future. That is why I desire it. It is why I seek to own it. The belief that once it’s ‘mine’ it will act as I want. It will stay with me.  But does it act as I want simple because I say I  own it? I worry constantly about my investment accounts ,or inflation, or not having enough in retirement, if my money was actually going to do what I wanted I wouldn’t need to worry about it at all. Does it make me safe? Did my move to NY –which certainly made me richer — make me better off and happier? Does money protect against disease? Death?




The money I have I certainly deserve, but it doesn’t mean or do what I want it to. It can’t buy me a future, I don’t even know if I will have it in the future,  all  the causes that give rise to my wealth can become exhausted at any time. Everything and every cause eventually becomes exhausted. Money also doesn’t do what I think it does –it doesn’t buy safety, or security, or happiness, it is simply a currency with which to pay for worldly objects and experiences. I can’t depend on money to be there for me, nor depend on it to do what I want it to do: In the end, if I can’t depend on something, is it really mine?






							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Rupa+Nama =Atta

					

				Rupa+Nama =Atta
			

		
				

			
 
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Eric and I decided to do a spa day at a fancy hotel in Miami. As we entered through the spa doors it felt like we were transported to a Spanish palace garden– a candle-lit courtyard dotted with lush trees, surrounding a fountain. A deep wave of relaxation washed over me, I hadn’t even had a spa treatment yet and I was already feeling as pampered as royalty. And then, suddenly I “sobered-up” and realized we were still indoors. My mind recoiled a bit, everything about the scene was so familiar –reminiscent of the perfect Spanish garden — even though I knew we never walked out of the building, I had mentally processed the place as being outdoors. I had processed it as a place of luxury and comfort and royal pampering, like the countless historic castles I had visited in Spain. My eyes saw familiar trappings– rupa — and my memory and imagination (nama)  filled-in “realities” that weren’t actually real. I had literally caught my mind in the act of  manufacturing meaning in my surroundings, and then getting me to swallow my made-up fantasy, even with abundant evidence  (like never leaving the building) that proved those fantasies as false.




All this got me to think about some of the other places I manufacture meaning in rupa:  I convince myself cleanliness =safety even though plenty of dangerous things can happen in a clean place. I convince myself that being fed hot food means someone loves me, even though every restaurant is in the business of serving up food not love. And then of course is the issue of this body — a shifting aggregation of elements that somehow I have pegged as “me” and “mine” despite all evidence to the contrary.






For months now I have tried to ‘sober-up’ my mind , to understand this body isn’t mine. That it is a 4e object that belongs to this world. That it is not special, that it can’t prove I am special. That I don’t control it, that I can’t rely on it, that ultimately it will go its way and I will go mine. Still, despite all this evidence, I cling to this body and I can’t even figure out exactly why I do. It is a body that causes pain, that embarrasses me, that I worry about and stress over constantly, still I can’t divorce skin suit from the identity of Alana. Now, though, upon seeing the way my mind manufactures meaning in/from objects I am starting to understand why I can’t just ‘let go’ of the body– this body is part of the Alana construct. I need the body for the meaning I overlay onto it. No body, no Alana.




 For so long I have thought about rupa and I have thought about nama, but separately. Now I see that that it is nama and rupa together that create atta, they create my sense of an Alana self. More specifically, nama, overlays the Alana identity onto this body. So of course I want it to be pretty, healthy, alive — the body it is bound to the construct of who and what I think I am. Because I love “Alana” I cling to this skin suit.




Once I assume a body is Alana, or at least the scaffolding that holds an Alana together, I have to start assuming that body is somehow special. My mind uses mental gymnastics that I have seen play out again and again (See Past Blog on The Relationship Between Desire, Clinging, Mine and Self for a more in-depth dive of the mechanics) whereby I claim this as mine, or in this case sorta ‘me’, and with that label I ‘read’ in a meaning of special so that I can conveniently ignore the evidence that this body, like every other body, will decay and decline and is liable to disappear at any moment. Afterall, no one wants an object –better yet one they build an identity off of –that can just up and  leave them  at any  moment.








All this special-bull-shit-delusion is to make this entire endeavor of being and birthing and becoming seem like it has a point, like it isn’t just futile. But no matter what my mind reads into the body, into the world, the efforts to become really are futile because the reality I am choosing to ignore is the reality of annicca (impermanence) .  This body is subject to impermanence, to dissolution and decay —  it is in fact the ticking timebomb that insures that my carefully curated Alana construct will one of these days implode. Rupa+Nama may= Atta, but the truth of this world is anatta. The truth in an indoor room, an uncertain future, no matter what meaning my mind manufactures, no matter what illusions my imagination cooks up. I just need to keep pushing my mind to sober-up.






							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		The Peril of Being Born for What I Love

					

				The Peril of Being Born for What I Love
			

		
				

			
 
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I was on vacation in Japan, sitting in a hot spring bath and thinking about something LP Thoon said in the sermon I was editing — he said we are reborn for the things that satisfy us, that we love and are enamored with. I realized that my own experiences clearly bear this out, that even in this life I can find the proof that this statement is true, that I really do keep coming back to/for the things I love, that I think will satisfy me. My relationship with San Francisco is the perfect example:




After I moved away to NY I longed for my old life back in San Francisco. I suffered miserably from my loss and plotted ways to get back.  First I took a job that allowed me to spend frequent time there. Then I pushed Eric to begin to interview with Bay Area companies to get a job that would allow us to move back again. I searched and worked, I leveraged knowledge and relationships, I allocated money and resources, all in an effort to be “reborn” back in SF –to return to a life that at one point I felt had satisfied me, that I had loved.




But when I look at the San Francisco example, the problems of craving particular ‘rebirths’ based on what once satisfied me, and what I am enamored with, quickly come into focus. The first problem is that just 3 short years after I left San Francisco, it is already clear that the city has changed drastically. Fires have become more frequent and ruined the air quality, costs have gone up, crime and homeless problems  have grown worse, many of my friends have gotten fed-up with it and have left. The thing that I long for, that I am enamored with, doesn’t even exist anymore: It isn’t San Francisco of today that I love, it is some idealized form –from my memory– of past San Francisco.  If I really were to start a new life in San Francisco now, it would be a different, and much more difficult, one than what I had left. So much so that frankly, I don’t even want it any more.




The second problem is that if I am being honest with myself, I left San Francisco originally because I wanted something more. I wanted new and different. I already saw the problems of cost and homelessness and crime and I thought I could do better elsewhere. The San Francisco I swear up and down satisfied  me, that I would be happy in if I could just get back there, really didn’t satisfy me, otherwise I never would have left in the first place. I am chasing, being reborn for, a fantasy –the false memory of satisfaction in a place that doesn’t even exist anymore.




As I sat in that hot tub, that 30 minutes ago had felt like heaven, I noticed I was starting to get uncomfortably warm. I realized that the seeds for my discomfort, getting too hot, were built into the experience of crawling into the tub seeking comfort in the first place. Any comfort I did find was inseparable from the discomfort I was now feeling, at issue was simply a question of when exactly that discomfort would show up. Any comfort I had had in my San Francisco life came with the discomfort I had when I left it, when I longed for it, when I compared NY to it and found NY so deeply disappointing. The comfort was the cause of my hard work, and squandering of hard earned resources and relationships, as I tried to orchestrate a return/rebirth. It was the reason I suffered when I was there again, caught in a fire during a work trip, and left struggling for months afterwards (even after returning to the North East) with out of control asthma and breathing issues. Any pleasure I got from my SF life is hopelessly intertwined with the suffering it caused; just like with the hot tub, all I had to do was wait and the suffering side inevitably showed-up.




What LP Thoon said is true, I am reborn for the things I think satisfy me, that I love. But that rebirth doesn’t guarantee I will be reunited with what I love, that thing has already changed and so have I. It doesn’t guarantee I will be satisfied, if SF had really been so satisfying, why did I leave in the first place? What it does guarantee however is suffering: The suffering to acquire that new life, the suffering that I find in it, the suffering to maintain it, the suffering worrying about loosing it, the suffering when I lose it, the suffering of the standards it sets –driving me to get it again in a new place, with a new life, that starts the cycle all over again. Any comfort I have must go hand-in-hand with suffering.




My problem is I discount the suffering, fixating instead on what I find enjoyable. Mae Yo once asked how I ignore the background noise (which in this case I take to mean the suffering) and it is a question I come back to over and over again. I suppose, I just ignore it. I tune it out because I am so used to it that the suffering has become  normal. The moments of pleasure (or extreme loss) are the things that stand out, they are the change in tune.




Now, years later, Feb 2022 (this original contemplation was end of 2019) I have spent months contemplating on the topic that everything is suffering. Not just that suffering goes hand-in-hand with pleasure, but that everything is really suffering. We live in a noisy world, there is constant noise, sometimes less and sometimes more. Tune, pitch, quality of sound may change, but there is , as Mae Yo says, always noise. We simply learn to tune it out much of the time. Just so, we live in a dukka world, there is constant suffering. There is change in type and intensity, but it is always there, even if we choose to ignore it, even if we come to think of it as normal.  No matter the satisfaction we imagine awaits us, birth into this world is birth into a world of suffering and so we suffering accordingly. This is the peril of birth for what I love.




							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		The Precarious Tower to No Where

					

				The Precarious Tower to No Where
			

		
				

			
 
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I had a dream/vision –one of those almost asleep , but still awake and thinking states that can be a real boon to practice. In it I saw a huge tower of stuff –my stuff– piled high, like bricks, but precariously balanced. I felt like it might topple at anytime. There were physical items like clothes, cars, pictures, people, jewelry, money, my body. There were also items that represented more abstract stuff, my college diploma that stood in for my knowledge and skills, office items that stood in for my career experience, all sorts of workout equipment for my physical training  and prowess. Each layer was set upon the one below it, dependent on what was below for stability. The tower was wobbly though, and I found myself running around trying to patch holes and make repairs; I felt panic knowing that it was so fragile, tired out by the unending need to  patch and fix.


When I got myself back to being fully awake, I thought about the tower more. I realized my whole life is like this –continually building and acquiring, in order to support this body, to have enjoyment, to become the alana I want to be. But if any object, if any layer of my past accomplishments fail, the whole structure I have built is at risk.  It is so stressful to worry about the inevitable collapse. It is so exhausting to tend and to build. And as soon as my body dies, the tower will crumble to the ground in an instant, no matter what height it had soared to before.


Once this body is gone, all I worked so hard for, the objects, the degrees, the professional skills, the relationships I have nurtured, the fitness and beauty, it is just gone. My accomplishments are useless in my next endeavor, I am unrecognizable to friends, my savings are left behind. When this body dies Alana is game over and I need to start the tedious, exhausting process of building it all from scratch over again.  This is the problem with relying on rupa –rupa is unreliable.


I saw from this dream how burdensome it really is to build the life I do, how stressful and, brief, the fruits I enjoy from my labors really are. It was a little spur, a motivation to keep pushing on my practice so I don’t have to persist in building precarious towers to nowhere only to watch them collapse over and over again.


 


 


							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Don’t Need it Any More

					

				Don’t Need it Any More
			

		
				

			
 
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I was reading a comic book version of the story of Ananda. In it, he and a number or his noble friends decided to depart from their worldly lives and go ordain as monks to follow the Buddha. Heading out into the forest to find the Buddha they stop along the way and decide to disrobe of all their finery. In the story it says that since they are going to become monks, they don’t need these things any more.  That moment, the giving up of what is not needed any more –without any pain, or anguish, or fuss — really struck me. It got me to start thinking about what it means when I think I still need something versus don’t need it any more.


Again, I thought of that Corvet I rented on my road trip to Florida. I had planned to drive it from Orlando to Miami and when the trip was done I returned it without a fuss. I felt no sorry, no regret, because my trip was done, I didn’t need it anymore. Why didn’t I think I needed it anymore? Because I imagined no further continuation of my journey; my vacation was over, my plane tickets to fly home from Miami already purchased, my mind was already spinning a new story. Just as Ananda and his cohort had already imagined up a new future for themselves in the monkhood.


On the other hand, when I think I still need something –when my mind is still wrapped up with a future I imagine with it, when it is still MINE — there is tremendous suffering when I part ways with it. When I lost my wedding ring, I was inconsolable, after all, I still NEEDED it. I needed it to prove my status, to prove I was someone beloved and cared for, to prove my worth and my specialness. After the ring was lost though, after the thing I NEEDED left me, life went on.  The world kept turning,  I remained beloved to my husband and my marriage kept-on-keeping-on.


I get so obsessed, open myself up to the pain of loss, because I imagine future needs. But in truth, once something is no longer with me, how can I possibly need it anymore? Not having that thing simply means there will be a different future, one in which, by defection, I can’t possibly need the thing I don’t have any more in order for it to occur. What I mourn isn’t an object, it was the future I imagined I would have with it: I mourn the loss of something I never actually had.


Years later, I don’t actually miss my wedding ring at all. Not only has life moved on, but my imagination has too: I built a new imaginary future, using new objects (like a Porsche) to ‘prove’ my specialness and worth.  And while I go about claiming new things, things I NEED to populate my new imagined future, I am laying the groundwork for new pain and despair when those new things inevitably leave me as well.   Maybe it is time to re-think what it is I actually ‘need’.




							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		Overly Concerned. AKA the Dis-Ease of Ownership

					

				Overly Concerned. AKA the Dis-Ease of Ownership
			

		
				

			
 
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In the sermon I was editing for Mae Neecha, LP Thoon says: “When we are at home, we are concerned about our home; but we are overly concerned. Our concern for our children and grandchildren is also in excess. The same goes for just about anything else we are concerned about. Our soul is tied up with concerns and worries, and the soul that is to assume a life-form or birth goes straight to the thing it cares most about. The same goes for this present lifetime.”


This concept, of being overly concerned, it really struck me. Afterall, I can see just how much suffering I experience becasue of  excessive concern. I am constaintly stressing over and struggling for shit that I call my own. But, does it really need to be this way — dis-eased by excessive concern all of the time? Obsessed and obsessive? I decide to consder a simple example, my use of several rental cars, to test out what it might look like to live in this world, use things, function in day-to-day life, without the added stress of being ‘overly concerned’.




A few years ago Eric and I rented a bright yellow convertable Corvet to drive down the West Coast of Florida. The car was fancy, flashy and hella fun to drive, but its primary purpose was to get me from pont A to point B. When it has acomplished that task, I returned it to the rental center with no regrets or hesitations. I knew the car wasn’t mine. MY HEART KNEW THE CAR WASN’T MINE.  In fact, at one point, we were pulling out of a gas station, top down, and a guy in the car next to me shouted out, “Nice car!”; I thanked him of course, but I was fully concious of my little inside voice saying “the car is just a loaner, not mine” and my ego failed to puff up accordingly.




 I compare that to the old Porche, which I was so sure was mine, and to the deep ego bruising I got on the day I sold it –for a deep discount — it having lost value due to unseen engine problems.  When I sold that Porche, I felt betrayed, slighted, like it had decived me about its value, like it had made a fool of me for being decieved and not knowing of the silent engine issues brewing. Afterall, how could On-Top-of-The -World-and-in-Control-Alana (which was an ideentiy I felt was bolstered by my fancy car), really be so on top and in control if I let my own car decay, loose value, silently breakdown without my even knowing? I cried and raged on the way home from selling that Porche. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just drop it off at the counter the way I did the Corvet. Afterall, the Porche too had gotten me from point A to point B. A fixed journey for a finite time. But me, I was overly concerned.




 What about my body? Isn’t its job to get me from point A to Point B in this world? A body is just a vessel that I use from birth to death. So why do I obsesse over it, why am I so afraid of the day I need to’return’ it and move on? So much of my daily life stress, years of hypocondira, each darkened mole and off cycle period, each high choleserold test or proximity to someone else’s sneeze, workouts and diets — constant fear and Dis-Ease– becasue I am overly cocnerned.




On a diffrent trip, I rented a car to drive along the California Lost Coast. About halfway through the trip, the maintnace light started flashing on the dashboard and I dutifully took the car to the next Enterprise Rental Agency I could find. As I waited in the lobby while their mechanic had a look, I figured there were just 3 possibilities:






1) it was something not immediately repairable, but the car could limp along for the rest of the trip


2) it needs surgery/repair


3) its dead and I need a new car






Of course this was an inconvience, not what I wanted, and yet I was no overly concerned. The car afterall was not mine. If the mechanic had told me the issue wasn’t fatal,  it was safe to limp along for the rest of my journey, I would have continued the trip without feeling wounded, ‘lesser’, the way I would feel if I were crippled or had a serious disease. If  the car completely died, even if it cut my trip short, I would have been disapointed but not devestated. Contrast that to how crushed I would be at the news of a terminal disease. My body afterall is ‘mine’.




Then there was that trip to Italy, when I backed the rental car into an old city wall and I left a huge and ugly dent/scratch. I called the rental agency, but they said insurance covered it, I could keep the car and keep driving it to the end of my trip. Battered and bruised, super uglified, I drove that car another 2 weeks without second thought. But when it is  my body, my face, that is blemished or mishappen, the shame is so profound I hesitate to leave the house.






The thing is, all cars, all objects, all bodies — they bruise and break, they disease and they decay. But only when I claim something as mine do I suffer the accordant dis-ease. There is no way to treat the objects, they are not sick, their impermanence is completely normal. The only way to end the dis-ease is to treat the mind, to cure myself of the belief that these objects are me/mine, so that I don’t have to be overly concerned all of the time.










							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		The Relationship Between Desire, Clinging, Mine and Self

					

				The Relationship Between Desire, Clinging, Mine and Self
			

		
				

			
 
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By the end of 2019, my contemplations around rupa that had begun during the retreat, had grown increasingly more refined. While at times those contemplations seemed stunted or fragmented, I had moments where they really began to gel into a cohesive understanding. Though self and self belonging –grounded in rupa — are a prevalent theme of the time,  I also began to  expand my considerations and explore the role of nama, particularly imagination, in bolstering my wrong views of ownership.


In early December Mae Neecha asked for my help editing the translation of a sermon LP Thoon had given at a retreat in Virginia in 1998. The process naturally provoked a lot of Dhamma contemplation for me and was a catalyst for my beginning to be able top piece some disparate angles into a more comprehensive understanding around the relationship between desire, clinging, my sense of self, and the objects I use to bolster that  idea of self.


I had an exchange with Mae Neecha when I returned my first bunch of edits that really captures and synthesizes many of the themes and ideas I had been contemplating on around this time. In the next few blogs I will share that conversation and some of the other thoughts I had around the time I was helping edit the sermon.


















Hey Mae Neecha — Happy Thanksgiving! Attached here are the first round of edits on the revised sermon docs you sent over this morning. Mostly it is in good shape, I had just a few changes.










I had actually started on the sermon  edits last week when I was visiting with Eric’s parents in Chicago, and you were right, it was a good nudge to my practice to read these; actually it made me realize I wasn’t quite as stuck as I thought I had been …I have been contemplating a lot lately, trying to tie back to the topics I covered over the summer, it just hasn’t been quite as orderly and tight, so it feels more scattered and less like ‘progress’. I’m starting to think though its just stuff waiting to gel further when the time is right.


In Chicago we went on this historic mansion tour and it threw me back to some contemplation I had had, about two weeks before, on the topic furthering my summer contemplation of rupa as ‘props’.  The mansion had this antique inkwell, covered in precious stones and metals, originally owned by Louis the 14th; the docent joked about being able to see how the king had bankrupted a nation and got himself overthrown. I laughed, but then I thought about something that LP Thoon had said in the sermon, that its not enough to see the truth, you need to see the downside of the stuff you hold dear. It struck me its not just a king bankrupting a country. Supporting me is one of the reasons Eric works so hard, doing something he hates, assumes professional risks (there is some legal nonsense going on with him that I can’t talk about but brings this real risk thing very much to the fore), its a high cost , a ton of stress for me and suffering for the person I care most about, for the fine things and lifestyle I enjoy.




Anyway, as long as I have you on the other end of the internets-ether, I thought I would send along some of these ‘less polished’ thoughts continuing on the topic of rupa as props.






Overview of the Relationship Between Desire, Clinging, Mine and Self: I have been thinking about, and trying to clarify, the relationship between desire, clinging, making something mine and self. In a nutshell, it all seems to  start with a story about who I AM:  Alana as unique/special (particularly vis-a-vis my favorite traits, good and pretty), whose specialness makes me an author of this universe, someone that can make shit follow my will as opposed to being subject to the “will” (ie the 3 common characteristics) of the universe. An Alana who is safe because the world bends to me, I am in control, I am good and deserve good things. Then I scan the world for rupa that I can use to bolster this story, to make it feel more real, to convince others it is true ( so they in turn can help me believe it even more thoroughly via the ego stroking cycle). When I see something that fits the bill I desire it. Desire+ some rationalization for mineness( see more on this below) enter the picture and then my mind makes it mine. Mine then means I cling. Mine means I start believing that the thing I mine-ify will act differently than other things, it will have a meaning –assigned by me — that is somehow different and better than the meaning of like objects that aren’t ‘mine’: This is why I get so surprised when my phone breaks, when my body ages — on some level I believe the fact that because something is ‘mine’ it is exempt from impermanence or suffering, or at least that they will occur on my timing and terms. It is why I believe my purse brings status but someone else’s purse, assuming that I  I don’t identify with it in any way is just a bag.




Guessing everyone has the same basic story plot ( special/hero/in control), but our different 3s (memory), 4s (imagination) and karma mean we have different meanings for, and access to, differing rupa props. It is why my co-worker carries on about how adorable his dog looks after a shaving, but I am so much less interested in it when it is no longer fluffy.




Desire — A Deep Dive:


In the sermon, LP Thoon said we should consider the cause of birth so, sitting on the flight home yesterday, I got to thinking that maybe I could think about birth like taking a trip…. The plane was one of those small ones that feel like you are stuck in a sardine can in the sky, I could barely move without bumping my neighbor, and thanks to a winter storm,  it was so turbulent I felt sick and I had to pee so bad but the seat belt sign was on the whole time. Plus I was anxious because, despite the fact that I fly all the time, I seriously hate it and thoughts of a fiery death falling from the sky do run through my head when the plane is bobbing around like dingy during a hurricane. Every time the plane takes off, every little noise makes me jumpy,  and once it levels I feel the discomfort of a tiny seat and my neighbors breathing down my neck, and I  curse myself and ask why the fuck I am on yet another flight? But the thing is, when I plan a trip, I just gloss over how unpleasant I find the flight to be. I focus my attention on what is around the flying and till I am soaring through the air in that creaky tube, I ignore the part that I despise. Life is similar. I surely didn’t get born to age, get sick or die. That’s the stuff I gloss over to convince myself to get on the “flight” in the first place.




Of course, there is always a reason I fly and I see it is 1 of 3 things:




A) I actually want to fly: Being airborne, in and of itself, was a thrill back when I was a kid. I really didn’t care where I got to go, just the flight was a joy (clearly those days are gone).




B) I want the result and accept the flight as part of the experience as little as I enjoy it. It is my imagination of the thrilling trip that drives this. It is the imagination of what the trip/the place I go will make ME. So being back and forth to SF mean I can still keep the identity of an SFer, at least not have to fully assume the East Coast Identity I find so loathsome.




C) Both a and b are my choice. But I was thinking how I can be compelled, as Mae Yo says karma that compels is a final way we are brought back to a life. A few weeks ago I accompanied Eric on a short trip to SF to deal with his legal thing. We didn’t want to go, but it was a consequence, the karma arising from a past job he had there that compelled us back. We desired the positive fruits of the job — money and career progression — but we had to pay for it post-facto with a trip, mental and physical, to deal with the consequences.




Which brings me to the commonality of all these. Desire. In each case I wanted something and the wants drove me to an action. This is Noble Truth number 2. Thinking about it now, it is finally clear  to me how desire and wrong view relate. And how wrong view and birth relate. Because all of my travel desires are based on a wrong view. The view that the flight itself is fun, which I only had as a kid before I had a sense of risk and discomfort. The view that whatever is on the other side of the plane ride will be the fun-filled delight I imagine when in reality I have had trips that are anything but fun (Rhino Rundown Adventures in Kenya). The view that if I can just go a little further, find a corned of the globe I haven’t yet trotted, something better something is over there, something that will satisfy me and not change and never suck. The blindness to costs later that can arise from things I do or enjoy now. Or the view that what is over there (like SF) can make me a thing/identity ( a cool, easygoing, adorable person) as long as I can make it my own, my home.




The Desire Causality Chain:


To be a little more nuanced in the steps in the desire causality chain here I want to go back to some observations about the house we toured in Chicago. Or to houses I have had of my own.




1) It starts with a story (#4 imagination that is fed/stimulated by rupa):  On the house tour the docent was talking about the second owners to buy the place. Apparently they walked in to purchase just a piece of furniture but were so overcome with the house they decided to just buy the whole thing. I thought back to the moment Eric and I walked into the Manhattan loft we ended-up buying. It was supposed to just be a viewing to get a sense of what was on the NY market in case we did end up moving (we went to see it when Eric interviewed), but we fell in love. It was so us. Suddenly, our imaginary new Manhattan adventure, that we had begun to concoct as soon as Eric got the interview call, felt even more ‘real’, guaranteed, based on four walls and furniture (furniture that we could never even buy). The problem, that I so clearly learned from that damn loft, is that  it’s a wrong view that this world will conform to what I want. That the future was going to be the great NY adventure I had imagined. Sure, sometimes my imagination, momentarily, comes close enough to what happens that, if  I shut one eye, I can almost believe I have some predictive or controlling power. But, that belief is so clearly a lie when I think about how this whole game actually works —  imagination is based on memory and the circumstances that brought about memory are already long gone, the result I imagine, based on the memory of something long gone, can’t possibly be a guaranteed future.




2) The imaginary future/story is really just a proxy for an even deeper desire, to be satisfied. I have a house shaped hole in my heart (and a partner shaped hole, dad shaped hole, job shaped hole, etc.), an existing belief about what a item ‘means’, what it should look like/how it should act, what type of fairy-tale fulfillment my life will have once I acquire the right shit to fill my heart holes. Now thought I am starting to understand my the Buddha put so much emphasis (like truth numero uno) on seeing that life is unsatisfactory…if my SF house/life was so satisfying why in the hell did I leave? If any of the places I had traveled to were so satisfying why am I always planning a new trip to a new place? And one more thing — that I know needs more thought, but if the heart holes arise in my imagination can rupa (something so clearly with its own rules that operate in the world and not according to my imagination), actually fulfill them? I’m starting to think I am constantly setting myself up for disappointment…




3) But deeper still is the underlying belief that filling those holes is going to make me a thing. That it can at last guarantee me the identity I want.  If I have those Z Cavaricci pants all the girls at school do, I can finally stop being a loser and be popular. And if I am popular people will love me and want to take care of me and I will enjoy a comfortable, easy and safe life.  If I have the perfect house it shows I am blessed, special, deserving of good things and therefore (in some seriously ass backwards ‘logic’) will get even more good things going forward. Each imaginary future, each becoming,  is driven by the belief that with some tweak I can become the me that finally wins the game, that I can fill the hole, and will get the rewards and happiness I believe filling the hole brings. For me that always comes back to special/safe. I use objects to “confirm” or deny my progress on this path to ‘winning’. I assign them meaning and then have that meaning reflect back onto me as a brick in the identity building.




Back to Those Objects…So How do Clinging and Mineness Begin in the First Place?




For a long time I have wondered what makes something MINE (and therefore something I cling to), after all it is clear that this idea lives no where in the 4 elements of the object. But every time I think I figure it out, it seems like the criteria changes; its mine because I legally own it, only that Manhattan loft felt like ‘not mine’ long before I actually sold it. It is mine because I pay for it, but what about the outfits that feel like mine in the dressing room before I hit-up the cash register? It is mine because I have had it,  because it is my birthright, but how do I reconcile that with a body that keeps getting older and fatter and sick, is it really expressing my will, acting like my ‘rite’? I realize now the problem…delusion is a slippery fuck, in truth, mine=desire+some arbitrary rationalization I use to justify/claim mineness in my mind. Its just a ratinalization that changes to suit my needs, all it needs to be is ‘defensible’ to my  warped brain and its good enough to go on. Interestingly I realize this is how a slaveholder could call a slave ‘mine’ (their 3s made it defensible where as in this day and age my own 3s think its insane to own another human.) How missionaries could use their treatment of the non-Christian natives. How  wars over disputed territory start. Some seriously ugly ass shit in this world is born from this here process of mine-ification.  




 


A little real-life personal story of the pain of mine-ifying: When we got engaged, Eric bought me this super expensive wedding ring, a ring that is now long ago lost. When I think about the ring, I realize that before I owned it I didn’t give a shit about it and now that it is long gone I am equally as indifferent. But for that temporary period I had that ring I was constantly worrying about the thing. I would freak-out every time I did dishes that it would wash down the drain, I had to be so careful in the gym and worried when work took me to rough neighborhoods that it might be stolen.




We went right from my wedding venue to our honeymoon and I had a dilemma –I wanted to wear/show off the ring at the ceremony but didn’t want to haul it backpacking across Latin America. So, I asked a friend if he would take it from the ceremony and hold on to it till we got home; I should have expressed gratitude that he was willing to do me this favor, but I am so fucking ashamed now that instead I gifted him with a way too stern warning/threat that he should keep it safe… I acted like a monster to a friend for that ring (this is literally one of the moments in my life I feel the deepest regret/shame for).




A few years later, while Eric and I were vacationing with my Dad and Stepmom in Washington I lost the ring. I was so devastated. I woke with a start, dreaming it was gone, and when I saw my naked finger I had a moment of visceral horror. I searched high  and low, so fucking angry, cursing the person who ‘must have found it and kept it for themselves –thief’, I made what turned out to be the last trip I ever took with my dad, miserable for all.  I pretended then, in apology for my crying, that I thought the ring symbolized my marriage and I worried its loss was a bad omen. But in truth, now I see that really I saw that ring as the proof, that I could show everyone, that I was loved, that I was valued so highly that someone would buy me something so precious. To no longer have it was a loss to my value since I could no longer ‘prove’ it with the ring.




Now a days, I am over it. So much suffering for an object. For an idea of what an object meant. I have no ring shaped hole in my heart anymore because I no longer believe that rings prove my value. Now I have a simple band on my figure to prove to roaming eyes that I have a husband and am not ‘on the market’. Mind you, I am hardly free of the belief that objects confirm/ build my worth…I have just  found other objects/ideas of objects to meet the need.






So why do I make something mine if it is so much fuss? I mine-ify to puff myself up.To sell the original story of my specialness, which enables me to be in control/ exempt from the common characteristics, which in turn makes me ‘safe’ from pain, loss decay and suffering( damn…even writing this out makes me see what total bullshit it is.) Back when I did yoga 3 hrs a day, I had constant pain from a hip joint I busted doing yoga (it still hurts years after the yoga hobby is over), but I did it because I needed to prove that I am master of my body. Why did I wear a ring that had me continually paranoid I would lose it — I had to prove someone I valued (Eric) valued me. Why do I keep flying back and forth to SF –I have to prove my life has meaning, that I am professionally valuable to an organization I value and that I am still ‘a cool Cali Gal.’




I can sometimes feel the puff so acutely, can watch it come on in slowmo: it is that moment I have in the dressing room when I look in the mirror and I feel like I look so good, like the outfit is just me, like if I take it home I will pown the world and everyone who sees me in it.  But, just looking in my closet proves, it doesn’t even last. Its not just my body changes or my style or the circumstances I need to wear something, or the clothing item itself…it is that, even if nothing else changes, that puff is like a drug high; it goes away on its own and then I need to find more. Leading to even more work. But here is the kicker…




The ego puff only happens because I believe the story I told myself… which brings me to…


 


How Clinging Can End: Another Story About Purses: Long before the sweet yellow purse, I used to to carry fancy purses, prada, LV, Goyard. Then I stopped. In part I stopped out of practicality (a hip injury making it hard to carry, me tired of needing to take such care of expensive shit), but really the main reason I stopped is my view of the bags and the meaning they had changed: I used to think they proved my wealth, but, at that time my $ kept growing, the bags stayed the same. Also, I started seeing all these designer bags on deep discount on ebay. On some level, I lost interest because — independent of what society/norms said — I realized the bags did not prove my status/wealth. When I had the evidence they didn’t do what I previously thought/didn’t have the meaning I thought they had, I became unattached. (I want to interject with a quick note here that I am trying to use this ‘meaning reality check’ process alongside of the process by which I consider the temporary nature of my relationship to my crap. Its sort of a 1,2 punch I am trying-out to beat the idea of ownership out of my brain.)








 So..enter practice, if I can convince myself my objects don’t do what my imaginary heart versions of them do, and have a pretty steep cost for something ineffectual, maybe I will lose interest. Or better still, I can just see that I myself am not the special/safe/exempt from worldly conditions me I want to be, and no object is going to make a lick of difference. Ultimately, I figure to stop clinging I need to truly understand that  whether I call something mine, or I call it George, it simply doesn’t make me any different. My rupa is subject to rupa rules. My nama too is subject to the 3 characters.  Everything is just a momentary result of the chain of reasons that lead up to it. Sure, I can be a reason, I’m a reason all the time (Alana the great arranger)…but literally so is everything else in this world… all back to proving I am not a special little snowflake at all.




Anyway…this is a very long reply to send along my edits. Like I said, work in progress, but I just really felt compelled to write it out even though so much is in the taking shape process right now…




Mae Neecha’s Reply:


I agree with your analysis of how you come to cling to an idea or an object, and I agree with your plan to end clinging. One thing I noticed is that it seems you are somewhat Alana-centric in your contemplations. You may benefit from looking outward, as well. If you can use external examples and other people as proof, it’ll help move the contemplation along when you don’t have that particular personal experience. That’s why we watch various YouTube clips and scour newsfeeds everyday  – it’s like an abbreviated bhava (becoming, existence) where you can see how something  would play out without having to experience it in real life. Seeing the consequences that other people have to deal with – for a cause you’d likely or already have put into play – can be good for fast-forwarding your own situation.




							


	

			




						
							



	
		
	
	
	
		A Video of My Own

					

				A Video of My Own
			

		
				

			
 
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Around the time Mae Yo was peppering me with video clips, I saw something of my own that really pierced my heart. I had started watching True Bloods on HBO and the opening credit sequence just blew me away. I have attached the video here for reference:


While many of my contemplations are technical: An exploration of worldly or mental processes, or cause and effect, when I saw this video my response was  just visceral. This is how the world really looks without ‘make-up-on’ and it is not pretty. I watched it again and again, sometimes pulling out a piece of paper and making a list of what I saw, or calling out loud what the video demonstrates this world really  boils down to: Desire, delusional hope, violence, desire, violence, hate, aging, death, desire, decay ,hate, delusional hope, desire, decay, violence, delusional hope, birth, delusional hope, birth.


I could clearly see that the images were changing in their details, but the world is just on a loop. Same shit, different day. Desire, delusional hope, violence, desire, violence, hate, aging, death, desire, decay ,hate, delusional hope, desire, decay, violence, delusional hope, birth, delusional hope, birth. Each time I watched it I wondered how this is what I keep coming back for.


 




 


							


	

			




						
							
	
					
					

				


				


			

			
             
        

        
	

	
	


		                   
		

		
			
		
	
        
        
        		
		
			
			
	     	
     		
				
		
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