Alana's Dharma Blog

After Several weeks of chewing on all the insights I had gained during and after my line Chats with Mae Neecha, I felt finally ready to send a synthesis of my thoughts and understandings to Mae Neecha and Mae Yo. Below is the email I sent. I have divided it into two parts/ blogs as it is quite long.

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Hey Mae Neecha — I sure do hope this email finds you well. It has been a few weeks, so I just wanted to share a bit about where my contemplation have taken me…its long, so I thought I would try email versus line. There has been so so much, so this is sort of high-level summary without a ton of details.  Mostly I have just been spending as much time as I can practicing; when I feel stuck or out of ideas I read a book from LP Thoon, or a Mae Yo Q and A or I just try to find examples of impermanence around me since that is something that comes easily. Most of all, I  just keep pushing.

I haven’t been deliberately systematic in my contemplations, but when I look back on them they do seem to be pretty well grouped around particular topics:

1. Going through my definitions of “ownership” and proving that my belongings or body don’t actually fit the definitions/that the definitions themselves don’t actually prove ownership/that rupa has another master.

• Command/Serve — A strong idea I have about what makes my shit mine is I either have the ability to command it (it serves me) or that I am able to/bound to care for it and serve it. So I  looked at the concept of serving/commanding using a fruit and tree as an ubai: I clearly saw that a fruit doesn’t command a grown tree to support it (i.e. the tree doesn’t serve the fruit); for a time a tree, if its conditions allow it, can direct nutrients toward a fruit and if that fruit is able to receive them (i.e. it is attached to the tree, the stem structure is healthy, etc) it does. But this happens only because it is a possible relationship between trees and fruits for a time. Eventually the tree dies or the fruit dies/falls off and it is no longer the case. Likewise with a tree commanding a fruit. I also used the same model of thinking to consider if a seeding fruit and the seedling tree command/serve each other and again realized in both directions all we had was a relationship of factors that could sometimes yield particular outcomes temporarily. The cause in all 4 cases (adult tree/fruit, seeding fruit/sapling) was that 4es are continually shifting as circumstances change; they have the ability to yield seedlings, saplings, trees and fruit, so the cause of all of them is in the nature of 4es themselves: the right conditions shifted into place temporarily and voila, trees and fruit. I then ran a bunch of my own belongings and body through the tree/fruit model to uproot the idea of mine based on serve/command.

• Represent — I tend to think my belongings represent me, so I went through all the ways my body and belongings fail to represent me. How I felt my post puberty body didn’t represent me. How I feel so tough, but on days I need to drop to my knees to do push ups and that doesn’t represent me. How my bladder peed myself in the middle of an important meeting and that doesn’t represent me. When my dad was dying I got sick and I had to wear a mask to visit him. I remember feeling so upset, like this weakened ugly state didn’t represent me at the moment in time I most needed it to, when I was facing someone so important to me for the last time. I was so pained and it didn’t matter, because the truth is my body doesn’t represent me.

• Movement/pain — I was feeling the burn after squats at the gym when I realized I took the fact that I could (sometimes) move my body and feel pain as evidence of mineness. So, I went through a ton of examples (finally landing on a barometer) to prove that the ability to move this body and feel pain did not prove they were mine. 

• Left Behind — I was thinking about one of the things that made me saddest when I went back and visited SF for the first time after I moved was seeing the city was just humming right along without me. I considered it my city, my home, but without me there is continued to grow and change and exist.  I realized the same is true of my body; once nama departs the body will burn or decay or organs will be transplanted — in all cases the 4es will change shape/form and keep on keepin on without me. My car, which will either be sold to someone new, or be chopped for parts, or melted for metal. Or my clothes, jewelry, etc.  How can I own something that leaves me behind, that doesn’t need me to keep going?

The truth is all 4es, after their rental period is up, eventually make their way back to this world, so this world must be their master/owner.  Shit can have only 1 master, so how can I say something is mine when it already belongs to the world? 

• You need a rupa suit to play in the rupa world: It dawned on me that nama can’t actually ‘touch’ the rupa world; it can’t collect, organize, build 4e arrangements on its own, that is why I am born with a body. It is like a video game player that enters a level, “rupa level” and finds there is no way to play or interact with the world until I done a special suit (body) that allows me to play, to talk to other characters, to pick up coins and to beat up baddies. This is why LP Thoon says if we are attached to our objects we will be reborn because of them — we will be reborn in rupa out of the drive to arrange rupa/items as we like; here is how form fuels rebirth.

The problem is once I am in a rupa suit that I can use to touch rupa, rupa items can touch me back. Its the rules of rupa that 4e objects can effect other 4e objects; it can eat them, arrange them, use them but it it can in turn be consumed by them, rearranged by them and used by them. This was the secret trade off I made when I jumped in the rupa suit. I was so unhappy when I got a huge infection on my face, but I signed-up for such risks with my body rental agreement — a bacteria, a 4e arrangement, can consume my 4es, it can rearrange them to create a sore on my face. My 4es can push the petal on a car and drive somewhere, but I can also be crushed by a car that rolls over me.

• 4th aggregate: imagination (#4) sells the ownership lie — I went to a historic house tour in SF. When I entered the house,  I couldn’t see the owner. I couldn’t tell get who they were based on their furniture or art. When I think of my own house, the only reason I believe the art on the walls or furniture says anything about me is because #3 (memory) and  #4 (imagination) tells backstories of each painting, each chair, how it got there, what it is “clearly” saying/proving. #4 ignores all the times mine doesn’t reflect me, it convinces me the times my kitchen is clean are normal and the dirty moments a fluke. The thing is, if #4 is the one doing all the work here then I, myself, clearly isn’t in the rupa, the arrangement isn’t the arranger.

• Compare it to kids — Never in this life have I wanted kids. I have always instinctively understood they are not their parent’s belongings. So I decided to use kids as a model to start running my other items through to disprove ownership.  Kids aren’t yours because they have their own fate, their own path in life that they will follow. They don’t become who you want them to become, they don’t do what you what you want them to do, they don’t reflect your ideas and values because they have their own. They don’t follow your rules. They are influenced by countless outside factors. You and they ride along the same bus for some time, but then you depart each other and go your own ways. You are really not on the same journey at all. I am, right now working to apply this logic to all my stuff. 

2. 2. Proving my rupa can and will break and/or change forms: 

• Internalizing breaks — I have been looking at actual examples of breaking and changing of my belongings and then internalizing them. Example: My tire got a nail in it last week and had to be replaced. I saw that the tire was subject to death because its arrangement of 4es was vulnerable to puncture, to having wind removed to the extent it was no longer a living tire any more. My body too is subject to puncture, to stabbing, to shooting. Such an injury can kill me too because it can change the form of my 4es to the extent I too no longer have liquid flow through my veins or have air move in my lungs.

 I have also thought about ways I am afraid of dying and have been proving those can happen to my 4es because I have seen similar causes of 4e deaths/changes in the world. So for example, I have thought about how infections can definitively spread and eat my 4es because I have watched magma flow from a volcano and seen a tree in my yard overtaken by blight (I have considered heart attack, shooting, stabbing, crushing, cancer, virus, etc.

• Examined my own 4es more closely — I have gone through every major body part and looked at its unique balance of 4es so I can think not just about my body as a whole, but about the arrangements of 4es for skin, lungs, hair, ears, etc.

• Bubbles and Anatta — I was thinking about bubbles the other day and realized that they are the perfect metaphor for the way the rupa world works. Their life/death cycle is so fast, it is so clear how they work. Bubbles are a 4e object born from pushing 4e soap solution through a 4e bubble wand. It seems like I am the great bubble master/creator because I blow the bubbles, but really anyone can blow bubbles, the wind can blow bubbles, the soap dispenser sometimes blows bubbles on its own.  Off bubbles go into world, some go high and some low, some are big and some small, some live a long time and others just a sec, but before long each and every bubble pops. For the time bubbles are in their bubbly shape, we call them bubbles (I finally understand what samutti is now), but if you look at a bubble, it is constantly shifting, it soapy, iridescent form changing, sliding over itself, moving. It is never just a single stable thing. Ultimately it pops, its form is decidedly not bubble any more, and its 4 eas return to the earth. I guess I am starting to see that all objects, ‘mine’ and otherwise are just like bubbles. I let duration and sammuti fool me into thinking they are otherwise and because I am fooled I cling to something that really can’t be clung to, that will definitely depart.  What is more, I use my objects to build status, to build wealth and pleasurable arrangements of 4es. But, ultimately bubbles tell the whole story. Up and down they float then die. Blow another round and the same thing will happen.

3. Testing if my rupa actually does what I think/imagine it does in relation to others. For how long/ under what circumstances:

• Porsche and on top and in control — even though I don’t even own that car anymore, I miss it. I viscerally remember what it felt like to be in the drivers seat; I felt like that car was the perfect image of an Alana who was on top of the world and in control of my life.  Except, of course when it wasn’t… when I pulled into a gas station in Soma (a bed neighborhood in SF) late at night and worried I was a target, when I tried to park away from the crowds at a work event so no one thought my organization was being excessive in their pay practices, when I went to retreat and  felt too flashy and conspicuous, but I only had one car to drive there… Only some of the time did it make me feel on top and in control then…

Even some of the time is hard to swallow when I think harder — one of the highest causes of death in my age group is car crashes. How can I feel like a car made me in control when statistically it is one of the most dangerous places in the world. Even if I was in total control, it just takes someone else who is not to hit and kill me. The idea of a car representing something it it is basically antithetical to is crazy.

• Virtuosi and its parallels in pretty and good — I went to the Symphony and they were playing with this super star mandolin player. He was amazing and got a standing ovation at the end. It made me realize, for some subset of people (like the classical music lovers in the hall), there was no denying that guy was a virtuosi. But, for all his effort and skill, for all the hours he spent honing his craft (karma) he was dependent on 4es to express his skill; an instrument, music, his hands. For some time, he could be amazing, but what happens when arthritis sets in or his mandolin breaks? In the concert hall he is the man, but what happens in the parking lot, at dinner, with folks who haven’t heard him play? He thinks his craft will yield a paycheck, but I am in the classical music business, I know that even the best of the best are having trouble selling tickets. The industry is dying, the audience aging — is this guy’s paycheck contingent on his playing alone, or does it need an audience and industry to support it (in other words factor or cause)?

My big identity issues are pretty and good. Both of these are traits, expressed via rupa, that I feel will get people to treat me well, to care for and love me and ultimately to help me build a perfectly arranged rupa world where everyone is living in Disney movie  peace and joy. But, what happens when my pretty fades (arthritis)? Even if I do something good and everyone who sees it thinks I’m awesome, what happens in the next scene with different people? What happens if folks also see me doing something bad like flipping off the honking cabbie in NY? Even if I were perfectly pretty or good, can it get me a ‘paycheck’, that thing I most want? I had a few guys I liked and persued before I met Eric. A few thought I was pretty and nice by their own admission, but that I was too much of a drama queen for their taste. In my mind, all these guys filled the care-giver/world builder hole in my heart, but I didn’t fit the partner shaped hole in theirs. My pretty/ good didn’t do what I wanted it to do.

• Is my goal even possible?  My great dream is some perfect harmony world, but it it even possible. I remember trading food bowls at retreat one year — a perfect meal for someone else was disgusting to me. It was the same story over and over from other participants. In my perfect world, everyone is happy and agreeing on my particular perfect arrangement of 4es, but it seems like everyone actually has their own preferred arrangement — how will everyone be happy with mine?

Eric and I went o this wildlife refuge where a bunch of animals roam free together in a vast nature park. But…its only herbivores, all the predatory animals live in separate enclosures elsewhere in the park. It seems like a predator free paradise at first, but because space is limited and there are no predators to control populations, forced birth control is used — do none of these animals want babies? They had a rare goose species so they were allowed to breed and then the goslings were taken away to populate other zoos. Each year when the goslings were taken the parent geese shriek and cry. Is it really a paradise? Can it be? Rupa is a closed system I think — some have to die/ be consumed to make room for and fuel what is new. How can I ever have a paradise where no one is hurt or dies?

•  Using Rupa to communicate with others is like a very fucked up game of telephone — as a kid we played this game, someone would whisper a phrase to the person next to them and the whisper would go down the line to the last person. It was always funny to hear how different the original phrase was from what came out at the end of the line. It seems to me that me using rupa to convey the identity that my #4 cooks-up is likely going just as sideways. The rupa, as we have already discussed is a rather imperfect representative, and then it needs to be sensed by others and run through their own 3s and 4s and then I need to read their response through different rupa…Its telephone — I really can’t ever trust that my messages have been absolutely received and they they will continue to be with every round.

•  No one else’s reaction to me proves anything innate about myself.  So this is a biggie which I understand is a little beyond the Sotapana contemplation, but it really needed to be dealt with because it was getting in the way…I was thinking about a time in high school, I was at a party and members of rival gangs where there and a fight broke out. Several members from both sides had been trying to date me, so I walked over, batted my eyelashes and broke up the fight. At the time I thought it proved I was good, I was pretty –I was in control and creating my Disney world– after all, those guys all did what I wanted. But when I think about it, those guys had their own agenda. They did what they wanted. Just like I was using those guys to confirm my special self, they wanted to date me, to use me, to confirm their own specialness. Can I really say that someone acting according to their own beliefs and desires proves something innate about me? I was not the cause (factor again).

When the people I love, Eric, my dad, love me back and care of me I take it as a sign that I am worthy of love and care, that I am a special person. The thing is, love is a whole lot like hunger; everyone who is hungry needs to eat. Sure, certain food is more palatable than other food, sure there is a range for people based on what they are used to, but at the end of the day, those starving will eat anything. I can’t know the state of hunger of those who care for me, so how can I assume that ‘my fulfilling them’ (i.e. getting them to love me) is some great commentary on me?

What I do know from Eric’s Japanese cooking kick is that the palate begins to crave what it is already used to. It becomes easier and easier to cook recipes and food types you are already cooking, techniques to make it delicious are on the brain, ingredients already in the cabinet. Momentum is strong to keep filling oneself with the same food type. But, back to the bubble — am I really still the same type of food as I was back when Eric and I started dating? Married? Just last year? How is it I am taking his love to reflect something steady and stable and awesome about me?

Several weeks after I had closed-out my exchange with Mae Neecha I went back to review our Line chat and see if I could squeeze any more wisdom juice out of it. I saw the following exchange:

A: I still think I can use my cute yellow purse to convince people of my awesomeness even if I don’t really control the bag itself.  Actually, I think I can convince some people some of the time. But that is enough…

MN: If its only true some of the time, then is it true?

And then it hit me…

Everything that is true in this world ( lowercase true not universally true i.e 3 conditions) is true some of the time.

I have been stuck thinking that because the yellow purse makes some folks think I’m awesome some of the time it proves something special about me. It proves I am a master of the universe, albeit in some limited and temporary way.

But, even stuff I think of as super true and widely accepted is still only sometimes true. My family and I all thought my Dad dying was bad. If we could undo we would. But does the person who got his job after he died think his death was bad? Bad was true, some of the time ( or in this case for some subset of folks).

If some of the time/in some ways/ for some people is a truth about the world, it doesn’t actually prove anything special about me. At most, I am a factor in buying the purse, a factor wearing it, a factor putting myself in an environment with folks likely to share my view it is cool, a factor in selling the message as part of a wider package( wardrobe, facial expressions, word choice, etc.) such that in any given case some folks might see purse and think awesome Alana for some moment in time. But I was never the cause. The cause is in impermanence/ two sidedness. So sometimes can’t be taken as evidence that I am avoiding the rules of the world some of the time. It isn’t evidence that with more effort/time/ tries I am going to finally succeed in making this world my bitch. It is evidence that my ‘success’ is just one, temporary, possibility of the world.

Actually, I can take the opposite perspective and see all the times my stuff proves I am not awesome/ special and master of perpetually arranging Rupa as I desire( i.e. this world is not my bitch): example– I think my apartment in SF proves I can control my life and arrange it as I want it to be, where I want to be. But, the only reason I have that apartment is my old SF life that I loved so much is gone. I chose to leave and ended up miserable. So how can the tool I am using to allay some of that misery and loss (not even all of it) prove I am master of my life and universe?

So I guess the simple answer to Mae Neecha’s question is that if something is true some of the time, it is not true some of the time. Which is actually proof that impermanence is the real master of this universe, not me. Just need more evidence…

A note from present day Alana — writing this now I see an additional angle that I missed so here are a few more thoughts on the ridiculousness of using a ‘sometimes success’ to prove a permanent Awesome Alana…Spoiler alert, the endeavor is built on a foundation spoiled at the core by a wrong view.

Over the summer, back when my contemplation were fast and furious (that is the period this ‘Interruption’ series is covering) I kept getting stuck on the fear that because of my practice I was going to loose something important to me — my life with Eric. I was looking at a picture and I realized that my ‘life with Eric’ was an idea, a film reel in my head of he and I driving, top down, along the California coast, listening to music, holding hands and laughing. It was a compilation of several trips, several memories we had together. As I laid in bed in Connecticut I realized that the life that I am so afraid of losing is already gone. The car is sold, the towns we drove through fire ravished, the joke we laughed at long ago forgotten. My fear of ‘loosing’ began to ebb as I understood that what I clung to was just a memory of the past and a hope for a future that looks the same way. What I came to understand is that the particulars of the past can never ever be the same in the future; causes, conditions and circumstances are continually changing.

The exercise of using a purse to prove Awesome Alana, even just some of the time, suffers a fundamental flaw at the root — what I believe ‘proves’ awesomeness now is based on what I perceived to have worked in proving awesomeness in the past. The problem (which is clear in my imagined life with Eric) is that the future arises from different causes than any instance in the past and yet I expect exactly the same results. This is why there are never any guarantees about what the future holds.

Circumstances are always changing, arrangements in the past can’t ever be the exact arrangement again..and yet that is what I depend on to defend my notion of my identity. Alana is built on an already shifting, crumbling, changing foundation and yet I expect her to be steady state.

A Post ‘Course Correction’ Plan for Further Progress

A: I think I have a plan for right now:

1) look for evidence that shit doesn’t turn out like I expect and see both sides/full picture more clearly ( example: the restaurant we are on last night had good food, but the seat cushions were all stained and it disgusted me).

2) look specifically at my belongings. What are their nature (4e) where do they come from, go, how do we depart from each other.

3) In what circumstances and for how long can I use these items? How am I a factor in relation to them and how are they factors in determining my beliefs and actions.

4) Can I prove my perception of an item (as pretty/ making me pretty) is not universal. Even in the subset of people who seem to share my perception does it have the effect I want( just because someone sees me as pretty are they nice to me, do they want to care for me, are they moved to hold my hand and join me in creating a stable harmonious environment?)

5) Since I am so good at seeing what problems an item solves (sometimes) can I see the problems it creates and their connection. This one I think may be a biggie. I am watching a show and there is a character who has been kidnapped to be part of a military test because she has a rare Gene mutation. One of the soldiers tries to save her because she is cute and looks like his daughter. Typical Alana would see this as proof the  cute works to protect and is necessary. But  last night I started thinking — how did she get into the kidnapped situation that her cuteness got her out of in the first place? Genetic condition, Rupa. The downside proof is literally in the pudding, Unjust never look.

Anyway, I’m just going to keep pushing, especially on the sotapana stuff. If it’s ok, I’ll reach out if I get stuck.

Right now just trying to hit self and self belonging hard. I feel it is doable. With the 4elements piece I am truly starting to understand.

Before, I could say shit wasn’t mine till the cows came home, but it didn’t help. I assume because I didn’t actually understand why. Now though, I am starting to see that shit can’t be mine because it had its own rules that it follows, they aren’t mine. Shoes, food, my body, same basic composition, same basic rules ( change form when the causes for for changing have been met). Under certain circumstances, for some period, I can be a factor and possibly get an outcome I want ( imagine) from them. But I have been mistaking my plants perking up when I water them as a sign they somehow respond to me, grow because of me, worship me. But it’s just a factor, sure plants need water, but they need so much more. And sure I can water them, but some can the sky, or someone else. Their little perking up is not a confirmation that they love/need/ worship/ prove specialness in me.

Plus, ultimately like two travlers on the same bus for a bit, I’ll go my way and my shit will go its way. I

MN: Im happy to hear that your practice is balancing out. This is why Luang Por told Mae Yo, “rupa and nama, 50/50” once we understand the tangible and intangible, we’ll have the whole picture

This blog is a direct continuation of the 6^th, so if you haven’t covered it yet, please head back there to read that one first. In that blog we explored how rupa forms the foundation for concepts like love, hate, goodness, cleanliness, etc.  We left off with a simple question I had for Mae Neecha: What is the rest of the story?

Here we will recap a bit and then launch into ‘the rest of the story’, which really amounts to the way these contemplations about the relationship between rupa and nama tie back into my broader practice that focuses on the 3 common characteristics (suffering, impermanence, no self) and the eradication of wrong views. This blog here is the culmination of the  ‘course correction’ Mae Yo and Mae Neecha felt I needed; an equilibrium between Nama and Rupa, the inside world and the outside world, from the perspective of my practice.

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A: Ok, I see that we love in a Rupa world. Rupa is the foundation for the world, the things I do in it and what I believe. As a resident in the Rupa world I am at most a factor, causes are in the Rupa itself.

But that isn’t the whole story…if I get a hot meal it is the hot meal that triggers my view/belief that I am loved and cared for. I use the Rupa as proof…

But then, I don’t think the cause of my view is the Rupa, I think the Rupa is a factor. If it were the cause, my views would be born out in the real world and I think we have established they’re not, after all I hate NY because it exposed a rendition of Rupa I don’t and to see/believe exists.

What is the rest of the story?

MN: The rupa/tangibles serve as “proof” of that “love.” The “hot meals” represent being cared for. However, there is actually nothing other than the 4E in that rupa of “hot meal.”

The stimuli (“hot meal”) being processed in the #2, #3, #4, #5 intangible nama factory is how the label/identity/notion comes about.

MN: Cause and foundation are different, yes?

Rupa is at the foundation, not the cause, of view. Rupa doesn’t actually do anything. The intangible nama is where the cause is generated.

Example: We are built out of the 4E so we are subject to the birth, aging, sickness, and death of all 4E. In an effort to live in comfort and safety (to protect our 4E body and our 4E belongings), we desire shelter. Figuring out that we want security and shelter is a nama process (cold or hot being a negative feeling and being covered/sheltered being a positive feeling, sanna: memory of having shelter or being taught the necessity of shelter, sankhara:  imagining shelter solving discomfort, vinnana: seeing a structure and processing it a candidate for shelter, etc).

But the embodiment of that shelter is a 4E structure. Without the rupa, there would be no shelter. But the rupa doesn’t cause it. It is only the medium for the desire to come to fruition.

This of it like this, rupa is money. Paper money doesn’t actually cause anything. But it is the foundation for everything: love, happiness, survival, sadness, grudges, appreciation, etc

A: All of this makes sense…but what is the cause of a wrong view?

MN: Permanence in the process of the intangible aggregates. Not seeing the entire picture, being limited to only our own views

A: Got it nama is the cause, but how does my imagination get me so far from the Rupa rules? That I think I can keep my kitchen perpetually clean when it goes through cycles of clean and dirty as part of it’s function?

Do I just take one snapshot –clean — and imagine it is possible to will it (cause it) to remain?

Crap, I think I am so busy hoping/wanting/ willing/ working to uphold  my vision of the world that I just pretend the real version doesn’t exist.

I now see the rules of 4 Es (that everything is subject to decay, changes, arising and ceasing) governs the Rupa of my. Body, belongings and other physical stuff in the world.

I guess I am trying to square all this with my own views (slightly more clear) and then how I interact with other peeps who have their own views.

Where should I go from here?

MN: I think, go back to our conversations since your being in the zone and see if there’s anything that still isnt clear to you. See whether you still think the same way, or if anything has shifted, and if so, what and why?

A: (Here it is Dear Reader – a neat little tie-up of what I had learned thus far/ the culmination of my much needed course correcting) Well one thing that has definitely shifted is I see the real world and my cartoon overlay are connected, not separate, so I am a factor in my Mom’s feelings. Also that  exactly what configuration of 4es I call pretty and the meaning I assign it may be in my heart, but the configuration itself and my ability to sense it and the perceptible range for a human and the real world experience that acclimate me to a certain arrangement over another are all in the Rupa.

I do see more clearly now why the backpack on the floor is real and made of 4e, but the designation of mine is in fact in my heart. Just starting to feel like if the bag is made of 4e and has to follow the 4e rules and not my rules, it can’t really belong to my heart world (nama).

My heart actually depends on the Rupa of the bag to “claim it” but the bad doesn’t depend on my nama to have an identity or to operate as bags operate.

I suppose someone’s nama somewhere came up with the idea to arrange the 4es of a bag as a bag, but they could only do it because it was within the scope of allowable arrangements of 4es.

I want to say now that Rupa isn’t in nama and nama isn’t in Rupa. But nama uses Rupa to enter this world and spin it’s tall tales. Maybe more clearly Rupa is not controlled by nama and nama is not controlled by Rupa (otherwise all views would be aligned with the actual Rupa world). But nama uses Rupa to feed itself and to reinforce it’s own version of ‘reality’.

I guess I am seeing the rules of Rupa quite clearly now:

• All Rupa is made of particular arrangements/ proportions of 4e
• 4e can act within the boundaries its particular configuration allows and some adaptation, within limits, is possible. So a bird can fly, a fish can swim, a human can hold their breaths and can practice to lengthen exactly how long they can hold it for.
• ultimately all 4es change configuration/proportions. Or they die or decay or get reconfigured or absorbed by other 4es.

A: But what are the rules for nama? So far I can guess —  nama relies on 4 Es to activate and feed it. Nama must be subject to change because my thoughts do change.

What else am I missing here???

MN: Everything in this world is subject to suffering, impermanence, and non-self – including nama. Our suffering comes from not wanting it to change or not allowing it to take its natural shifting course.

A: I feel like maybe if I can see the whole picture more clearly I can start understanding karma ( which I am guessing is the umbrella rule for everything) . There is definitely a massive hole in my understanding of karma.

If I were to diagnose my most basic problem right now, it would be that I have seen folks be nice to me because they like my stickers or boobs or purse. I have been able to buy comfort and safety with money. I’m not dumb, I know it doesn’t work every time, but I feel without these things it can’t ever work at all. And I want to be liked, to have comfort and safety.

Some little wisdom angel on my shoulder is whispering, “Alana if you want to be liked and to have comfort and safety all the time, you are in the wrong world”.

But ignorant Alana can’t get past the fact that  it works some of the time ( with a fat helping of 3s and 4s to add a dash of cover-up and lipstick to all the situations)  and since I am a factor maybe I can get it to work more of the time. If I just bring the massive force of my will to bear…

Crap, not sure yet how I am going to get out of this mess. Maybe if I understand karma? The fact that I am a factor throws me…after all, if it never worked this would be game over.

Or maybe I just need more evidence that shit won’t turn out how I want it to. After all, the past is gone, I am living for the future and only if that future is within the bounds of what I want will accept it to be.

But, anything is possible (need more proof) and even if my factorness is powerful enough to  get what I want my desires and the situations and objects keep changing.

MN: Anumodana with your progress, especially over the past couple of days.

I’d suggest looking for concrete evidence, coming up with more questions and answers, and testing theories.

Keep in mind to incorporate rupa into your nama-heavy contemplations, and to keep it simple and straightforward (illiterate villager level)

So, a little warning Dear Readers: This next blog is a bit our of order. It is a continuation of the Part 5 blog and will start out exactly like that blog and then go in a completely separate direction. So, if a few sentences in you have that creeping deja vu feeling, please press-on my friends. “How can this be?” you may be asking… “I thought you were trying to give a blow-by-blow as close to real action report as possible –liar.” Please recall my friends that this contemplation unfolded as a Line conversation, so there were different threads that were simultaneously unfolding. Plus, this contemplation reflects my own thinking process and there are frequently branches in my thought, new topics that arise and which I circle back to address at a later time. Hang in there, I promise the  next blog will continue on from where we ended in Part 6 and incorporate thoughts from here as well.

By way of content introduction, this fragment of the conversation is an exploration of the difference between being a factor and being a cause.

Please do note, my early contemplations on this topic didn’t get it all exactly correct: After many more months of contemplation, I now understand how Nama can be a cause of things in the Rupa world (my original conclusions assumed otherwise). But, these first contemplations, though not entirely on the mark, helped me begin to floss out the topic of control in the context of my new understandings around rupa and that is the most important part for now.

MN: The thing that most practitioners don’t understand is that even when you get the outcome you expected, it is still an impermanent outcome.

A: Of course! I think each time I get an outcome I want it confirms my control. Like picking heads or tails in a coin toss correctly. But if I were in control the evidence would be replicability and the ability to preserve. I suppose this is one way that nama and rupa’ interact. Rupa’ stirs my imagination to self-lie, with the agenda of selling my personal fairytale of Alana the in-control hero who accurately guesses coin tosses.

MN: I really like what you’ve said here. If you always believed successes are fully attributed to your amazingness and your amazingness is no longer the cause, what can you attribute them to now?

A: My amazingness isn’t the cause of heads/tales in a coin toss, the cause is the 4es of a coin, meeting the 4es of a hand, meeting the 4es of the air and the surface it lands on.

MN: So what is the cause for situations that seemed safe to you, or the cause for whenever you’ve thought yourself to be good or compassionate?

A: Back-up a sec, I have a qq: take the situation that my bra strap breaks midday. The cause is the erosion of the 4Es of the bra band. But if I saw a thinning bra strap this AM when I put the thing on and I ignored it, I have some fault that it broke midday and I had to run around with lopsided boobs. So the coin is obvious, but this example seems like a mix of the bra 4e and my own actions (and the beliefs that led to those actions).

MN: If you remove your behavior and it happens anyway, what is the true cause? Have you ever bought something and never used it and it still broke?

There are causes and factors. Causes are crucial to the result, factors contribute and magnify but on their own cannot cause the result

A: If I remove my choice to wear a thinning bra this AM then the cause of breakage is the seed of change/cessation/breakage innate in the 4es of the bra.

The factors though? I suppose I put it in the dryer and heat has the ability to expedite breakage, or my boobs are extra big and the pressure can expedite breakage?

But what about my behavior? I suppose wearing it, the friction, the heat, the sweat that the bra was exposed to because I chose to wear it are also factors for it breaking today.

But how do I see my choice to wear it? A factor? And if so, a follow-up possible conclusion is I am not ever a cause in this world, but a factor. Yes? If causes are in the Rupa?

MN: This is worth proving or disproving

A:  Wait, one thing I do cause…my birth. Wait, if after birth I am no longer the cause for anything in this world…how can I be a lord of my stuff? Of my body? Not cause =no control.

Am I a queen if ‘my’ subjects don’t actually subject? If they don’t follow my rules at all? If the actions I read as adulation (confirmation of my awesomeness like heads on a coin toss) is not something I am the cause of?

A: Ugggh…I still think I can use my cute yellow purse to convince other people of my awesomeness even if I don’t really control the bag itself.

Actually I think I can convince some people some of the time. But that is enough…not enough suffering maybe?

MN If it’s only some of the time, then is it true?

A: I wish I could believe that some of the time is untrue… I can’t even control my own delusions all the time.

A: (reply several days after the previous exchange) To answer an earlier question  — if I do something and my mom is unhappy I am a factor not a cause. The cause is her view/expectations about how daughters act, I and my actions in the Rupa world are magnifiers. Moreover, the magnitude of my factorness varies across time/situation, so if my brother and her are on the outs for example it can magnify my factorness.

This all brings me to self and self belonging. I (wrongly) view myself as lord of my belongings. They follow my rules, they are subject to me, they representative me by singing hymns of my glory in all directions. Except…

Except that in a Rupa world causes must lie within Rupa (excepting birth, delusion, the elimination of delusion and possibly karma???). So really I am subject to my shit. I have to follow its rules. I suppose I’m the one that must be singing praises to its glory. I am testing as I am able. Brush my teeth, service to Rupa. Put in contacts, service to Rupa…store glasses, service to Rupa. Shower, dress, eat, caffeinate. Even this vacation is so Eric and I can survey Portland and Seattle as possible future homes — I am taking Rupa and using it to feed my imagination about possible future rupa. Back and forth to SF is in service of spending time in MY job, the one that represents me. The time I spend in the north east is in service to my bank account, Eric still needs this job. Ugh, it’s kind of sad actually…

I misunderstood factor and cause. So I thought every cavity free dentist visit, every pound lost, every wrinkle frozen, every slimming outfit, every lifting bra, every complimented hand bag, were all victories. Now I am starting to see that, at best, they are moments that I am a factor in staving-off the ‘losing’/decay/aging/ dirtying/ change that is caused by the 4es of the body and objects themselves… All this before I even start really considering 2 sides and cost… More thinking to be done on this front for sure.

But before our last few days in Rupa mode I knew the conclusion –I don’t control my belongings. Now I actually understand why.

MN: I like this. This is how incorporating rupa and the 4E into dhamma contemplations balances everything out.

You can believe in whatever fiction, but the rupa will be an undeniable, straightforward truth that either proves or disproves it.

Factor vs cause is key in dhamma contemplations. Understanding the differences can make all the difference

On to the Hard Stuff…This blog is a direct continuation of the last, so if you haven’t covered it yet, please head back there to read that one first.

As a recap: the last few blogs have pivoted off of questions Mae Neecha had asked me early in our conversation:

“Is hot and cold generally the same for humans? For instance, desert temperatures are hot, arctic temperatures are cold? Is human hot and cold the same is kangaroo hot and cold? Or penguin hot and cold? If it is indeed only in our minds, then if we don’t think it, then it won’t exist?”

As you may recall, my first ah-ha/zone/retreat night contemplation had left me too nama-centric; taken to an extreme, but logical, conclusion, the view was that my mind/ my thoughts/ my beliefs alone govern my experiences of this world. All the work, till this point, has been about balancing out that view. Developing a rather nuanced understanding of rupa so that I could see what it is, how it functions in this world, and how my nama relates to it.

In the last blog I got as far as seeing how the fairly straightforward ideas of hot/cold are grounded in form: both the form of the temperatured object and the form of the beings that perceive the temperatured object. And then that particularly tempetured objects, like hot food, can have a meaning I assign (being cared-for or loved) based on my experiences and imagination.

Here we will start digging a bit deeper. I use literally the same model of how hot/cold work to begin to dissect even more abstract, and for me emotionally loaded, topics like good, pretty, safe, etc. So here we go…

A: I have figured out a few more: strong/weak, loud/quiet, delicious/yuk, dark/light, rich/poor.

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NOTE: This part was not in the original conversation, it was implied. But I will fill it in here so you can trace my thinking process a bit more clearly.

Strong/Weak — Based on the 4es of an object, it can exhibit a particular hardness or weight. Based on 4es of a human, humans can have the ability to exert a certain amount of power or strength on physical objects. There is variability within species because I can regularly weight lift, thereby altering my own 4es to become stronger. Moreover there is natural difference in 4es of muscle across our species, across sex and age.

Delicious/Yuk – The 4es of a particular food give it a taste. The 4es of a human enable us to register taste. There is some consensus across the species – most poisonous plants taste bad. Sugar tastes sweet. But if I find a food too bitter or too sweet can be based on what I am used to, based on what my palate has been trained for. So, a Japanese person who has spent their whole lives eating Japanese food will have a different palat then an American person. I used to find certain Japanese foods too fishy, but as I ate more Japanese food my palat was trained and I no longer found I so fishy.

Rich/Poor – quantity of goods is something that can be measured for 4e objects. Humans can use our own 4es to sense and therefore quantify objects. But the amount of an object that constitutes a lot can depend on the context of an individual. A lot of money in India may be less then a lot of money in America based on what I am used to and what a single dollar can buy. Moreover, a lot can depend on what I had in the past.

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But I am stuck on ones like good and pretty because I see that what something is used to/adapted to has a role in all of this, but I can’t see the purely Rupa role for clean or pretty or good.

Let me share how far I have gotten on clean and maybe you can help from there…

I was thinking about light and dark and remembered an art exhibit I saw in Japan; people in a group go into a pitch-black room and sit. Then about 15 min later I started to see a light. Everyone else saw it too. I thought something had turned on but the docent explained nothing in the room changed, our eyes simply adapted to the darkness and we could see. This is how I know adapted/used to plays a role here and I saw it in rich/poor, strong/weak, etc.

For a dirty room, I see the 4es can accumulate and there is some quantity at which humans 4Es can experience it. So dust for example, a certain quantity interacts with human eyes and is visible, it can interact with lung 4es and effect breathing. I know dirty for a dust mites or mole must be different than for humans. I also know my own personal 4Es play a role–as an asthmatic it may take a lesser quantity of dust to begin a 4e coughing reaction in my chest than yours.

My problem is, I know dirty in India is different than dirty standards in SF. I also known when I take my SF self to India it is really troubling to be in a society where the clean standards are so different than mine. For Innuits vs Miami folk and temperature I can clearly see the Rupa reason why we would call different things cold, but I can’t see it for dirty.

Also for things like good/bad, lovable/hateable I am having an issue. I can see how what I am used to plays a role: so if I wasn’t used to SF I don’t think I would hate NY so much. I also see not everyone and not every species hates it. But I can’t break it into Rupa, it seems so personal preference. I see love is something that exists across humans and across species, but I can’t see how I love Eric but my brother loves his wife is something that is deeply rooted in the Rupa realm other than on each of our individual interpretation of it based on our own 3s and 4s. Struggling with beauty too.

Thank you!!!

A: Ok on clean maybe I am closer than I thought. In Mexico, Mexicans drink the water and don’t get sick, but my Dr. warned me not to drink water when I went cause Americans are more likely to get sick. So fine I see the Rupa in clean.

But how is love or goodness broken into elements…hard ☹️ Wait..does good have to do with karma? Ugh hard

MN: You’re making good progress! (good)

Here’s the answer to back solve for – Every intangible quality has rupa and the 4e at its core. Without rupa and 4e, those qualities wouldn’t be able to be seen or proven.

For love, what is it that you love? How do you perceive that love? What tangibles prove Eric’s love for you? What physical things prove your love for Eric?

Let’s get the rupa and 4e cleared away before we dive into karma. That’s also important and seems that karma’s role in everything is missing from your in the zone realization

A: Ok I got beauty/ ugly is just an arrangement of 4Es that is pleasing/displeasing to my the senses (more 4es).

I think I have figured out hate too ( I’ll get love on my own as an extension). I’ll start with the punchline: for me hate is about stability and I can clearly find a 4E basis for stability.

I used to keep fish tanks and you are not supposed to empty all the water out of a tank to clean it, only some. The water has its own unique temp, pH, boom and if you change it all at once it can shock the fish to death, they need stability.( 4Es of fish need a particular arrangement of 4 Es in the environment that can’t change too quickly).

I hate NY, it is loud, dirty, overcrowded, people speak harshly, body language is harsh, movement is fast. Alana’s 4es was used/ adapted to an SF arrangement of 4es and NY 4Es shocked my system. It was unstable.

I hated my mom as a kid; when she flipped out for seemingly no reason she would flail, yell, withhold food, clothes, shelter, physical affection and attention and isolate me so no one else could provide these. The 4es of my environment registered as unstable to my 4es.

There are 4 E reasons a Bedouin would register a certain arrangement of 4Es as more or less stable than a Midwestern kid who has never left their hometown. But there is a range for humans. There is also a different range for cockroaches than for ( the super sensitive) Mandarin Gobi.

Moreover(I’m still testing) if temperature is in the 4e of water and registering it is in my 4e than feeling heat is a symptom of the interaction btwn the water 4e and my 4e. Just so, stability is in the environment and my ability to register more or less is based on my 4 es. Hate is a symptom of the interaction between the 4es in the environment and the 4 es in my self.

Zooming out of Rupa world for a sec: To this day my Mom’s voice, word choice perfume, face, all prickle me. It is old memories and my storyteller self (4) smoothing over all that has changed and selling the lie that my mom and I and the situation are still the same. That she is still a much weightier factor in my stability/instability than she act is in the current circumstances I.

Also, as long as we are zoomed out here: I spend most of my life chasing shit I love and trying to avoid what I hate. If hate is just instability, and instability is (increasingly obviously) the rule of this world…that is a pretty clear path to help me loosen my attachment.

Anyway, next needs to be good/bad. I have saved it because it is crazy hot button for me, but I will try. My instinct is to start with worthy of reward/punishment. Or worthy of safety/ unsaftey. Any thoughts?

Thank you!!!

MN: The 4E are the basis for everything. Our feelings of like or dislike are represented by things, tangible physical objects.

If I am pleased after a meal, that pleasure is based on the 4E of food my 4E has just consumed.

If I hate someone, that person is the 4E that I hate, the subject of the things we disagree on are all 4E. Our clashing values are represented by 4E – the greedy take and the non-greedy pass… on what? On a tangible thing like a dress, a car, a meal, etc.

If I am annoyed at someone driving slowly, what are they being slow about? Driving a 4E car on a 4E road at a rate that makes 4E me think I’ll be late for my appt with my 4E doctor at the 4E medical building.

A: I see how the 4Es serve as a base. I do have a question though: For hot and a group of humans from Miami there is general consensus on a hot or cold day.

For hate though, it seems harder. When I really push I see that everything I hate is wrapped up with Rupa that  makes me feel like the world around me is unstable/unsafe/ unpredictable. This then gets to a core wrong view of mine– that a stable predictable world is achievable and preferable and that if I just make the right tweaks I can get there.

For you, it seems like the 4es you hate are different things because you read the rupa to mean different things. Yes?

Is this all part of how rupa and nama interplay?

MN: When it comes to hate, there has to be an object for that hate. Whether it is a person, place, or thing.

If you hate hot weather, a high pitched voice, a fussy baby, being low on gas, cars honking, dishonesty, etc … each instance of hate is embodied by something tangible. Without that object of hate, the feeling of hate wouldn’t be triggered.

Have you considered that this instability that you are adverse to might be part of the overall stability of the larger system?

And the world IS predictable in its way… only we don’t understand or see the world’s rules because we are so focused on our own…because we think we are the world.

A: Ok, I see that we love in a Rupa world. Rupa is the foundation for the world, the things I do in it and what I believe. As a resident in the Rupa world I am at most a factor, causes are in the Rupa itself.

But that isn’t the whole story…of I get a hot meal it is the hot meal that triggers my view/belief that I am loved and cared for. I use the Rupa as proof…

But then, I don’t think the cause of my view is the Rupa, I think the Rupa is a factor. If it were the cause, my views would be born out in the real world and I think we have established they’re not, after all I hate NY because it exposed a rendition of Rupa I don’t and to see/believe exists.

What is the rest of the story?

Alright Dear Reader, this is our pausing point. We will return to this question in an upcoming blog, but this has already run quite long.

Rupa Beyond the Basics – How Rupa Lies at the Foundation of Concepts Like Safe, Clean, Good, Etc. 

If I understand what rupa is –alternating, shifting, decaying arrangements of 4es – and I am still consumed by desire for it, it points to another problem: I am dazzled by what I think rupa represents, what it MEANS, or what it guarantees. That, and I don’t truly see its shadow side, the pain and suffering it delivers to my life. I don’t yet feel exhausted by its impermanence, its unreliability…Ugh, clearly, I still have a lot of work to do…  

But, as a starting point, I needed a bridge, an understanding of how rupa and nama interact. How lil’ ole’ rupa, just a collection of those 4es, ends up providing a foundation for absolutely everything: love, safety, goodness, etc.  

Rupa is just like soil, it is the medium through which our desires are nourished and then born out. Rupa is the building material our nama uses to build itself and its vision of the world. It drives us, but only because of the meaning we assign to it, because of what we believe it means or what we believe it will help us achieve/become.   

This next contemplation takes a little to warm up, but it is a biggie –it is where I start actually seeing the way rupa provides a foundation for all those concepts that rule my life: Safe, good, clean, pretty, etc.  

Because this is super long, I am going to divide it into 2 blogs. In the first I look at a rather simple concept: hot/cold. In the next blog you can see how I used what I had figured out from the relatively easy concept of ‘hot/cold’ to work through way tougher topics like love/ hate, clean/dirty, good/bad.  

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MN: The thing that most practitioners don’t understand is that even when you get the outcome you expected, it is still an impermanent outcome. 

A: Of course! I think each time I get an outcome I want it confirms my control. Like picking heads or tails in a coin toss correctly. But if I were in control the evidence would be replicability and the ability to preserve. I suppose this is one way that nama and rupa‘ interact. Rupa’ stirs my imagination to self-lie, with the agenda of selling my personal fairytale of Alana the in-control hero who accurately guesses coin tosses. 

MN: I really like what you’ve said here. If you always believed successes are fully attributed to your amazingness and your amazingness is no longer the cause, what can you attribute them to now?  

A: My amazingness isn’t the cause of heads/tales in a coin toss, the cause is the 4es of a coin, meeting the 4es of a hand, meeting the 4es of the air and the surface it lands on.  

MN: So what is the cause for situations that seemed safe to you, or the cause for whenever you’ve thought yourself to be good or compassionate? 

A: Is it really the same as a coin? The cause of a hotel room I think is safe is the configuration of the 4es? 

MN: What is safe, in terms of 4e. What 4e cues indicate safe or unsafe 

A: Cues of safe: clean, orderly, kempt… 

But what is clean on 4E terms?  

OK I’ll try: safe in 4e terms concerning cleanliness is non decayed? 

MN: What kind of configuration signals safe or clean or good? 

MN: What is safe on safari? Safe at the temple? Safe at the grocery store? All in rupa/4e terms? 

For instance, safe can be where you are far from harm (harm being another living being) or safe from predators. Or safe being enough food and water and warmth and shelter. See how it is physically based? 

A: So I tend to focus on cleanliness as safe from disease. But there was a decent looking cafe “fooled” me into thinking it was nice and clean and safe till I saw the filthy bathroom; a part of me wants to file this under incomplete view, once I saw the bathroom I had more info on the rupa to feed through my nama. 

But, I freaked out because I thought that dirty must = diseases. That is what started me down the Homeless Alana rabbit hole…. 

I’m still not totally clear though, is it that cleanliness is based in the form but I interpret the acceptable degree and the imagined outcome via memory and imagination? 

MN: What is dirty? What is cleanliness? It is totally related and contingent upon rupa. What is disease if not the 4es? 

A: I guess disease is an arrangement of the elements I don’t want? Diseases are an arrangement of rupa that results from, and leads to, further decay. 

MN: What kind of diseases are there. Can you name some? 

A: Cancer, diabetes, flu, cold 

MN: What is cancer? What is the flu? What is diabetes or a cold? In a strictly physical sense? 

Isn’t the flu a virus? What is a virus? What is it made of? How does it come into existence, live, multiply, decay, and die? 

A: Virus is also 4es has liquids that are encased in a solid cell wall it is able to move, more freely than in heat than in cold. It requires liquids to spread and replicate, etc. 

MN: Viruses are alive, living things that require liquid blood, air, solids, heat. They eat our 4e to survive. So if dirty means diseases like viruses, then is dirty based on the 4e? 

A: Definitely 

A: Which brings me to the question of how a group of peeps can all agree water is hot… Fire can act on water and make it hot. It is in the Rupa. 

But you and I can have a different view on the desirability of hot; if I am trying to make coffee it is great, if you are trying to wash salad greens you may think not so great. 

It also acts on my Rupa differently than yours. So If I was just in a cold pool and jumped in a hot one than the hot water will cause a greater change in my Rupa than in yours and that is perceptible to me. 

MN: Go back to what I asked about humans and animal species and living beings perceiving hot, and consensus among a species. Why would that be? How is that explained by 4e composition?  

A: Humans, kangaroos, snakes are all types of 4e arrangements. When water of a certain temp interacts with our type-similar 4es it has a similar effect. But not exactly the same either because of variation within the 4es amongst humans or amongst snakes. 

MN: What is the lowest and highest temp humans can tolerate vs lowest and highest temp penguins can tolerate? Why is it similar across species? What is the basis for this tolerance? Physical make up or mental makeup? 

A: Physical makeup is the foundation of tolerance. Similarities arise because we all share the same shit. Differences because proportions are different and the threshold in which disease/imbalance sets in for a human versus a snake. 

MN: Yes. For bison with thick wool, whales with blubber, they can tolerate colder temperatures than humans. So human cold, something all humans would not survive, is still tolerable to these animals. They wouldn’t say it is deathly cold. 

MN: So is hot and cold in the physical make up? Some insects can even freeze and unfreeze back to life. So our human perception of universally freezing cold is nothing to these insects. 

Some animals in the desert can survive just fine in temperatures in which humans would be burnt to a crisp. Again, the difference in the 4e make up is at the root of this difference. 

A: OK –temperature is in the physical properties of water. What temp is hot or cold will depend on the 4es of the type swimming in it. 

A: I understand hot and cold clearly. Based on the 4es of an object, it can exhibit a particular temperature. Based on 4es of a human, we can register that temp as hot or cold. There is variability within species because the 4Es of water can act on the 4Es of my body and so I can actually experience a certain temp as hotter than you because I just jumped out of a cold pool which changed the state of my own 4Es and causes me to experience temp different then say you, coming out of a sauna. 

I can also have a preference and/or assign particular meaning to hot/cold and that is where 3 (memory) and 4 (imagination) comes in. I associate a hot meal with care. My mom rarely cooked and from very young, before I could use a stove on my own, I had to figure out how to ea. So now if Eric serves me hot food, versus cold food I feel more loved and cared for. 

MN: Ok so if hot and cold are determined by physical make up, can you apply the rest of your safe/clean/good qualities list to this concept, to see how they have 4e rupa at the foundation?  

Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here.

A little summery/context/extra info:  The dialog below essentially captures the process through which I began to understand how the 4 elements work to make up every physical form in this world. Truth be told, for a long practicing Buddhist, I had a really poor grasp on this ‘101 topic’ prior to this contemplation. After I started really understanding the 4 elements I came to see my practice had no chance of success without this key understanding –how can I expect to become unattached to my possessions if I don’t even understand what they actually are? How will I stop believing the things I call ‘mine’ are subject to my rules until I understand what the actual rules of the world that govern all forms are?  How  am  I supposed to internalize the decay/death of objects when I don’t see the fundamental building blocks of those objects are exactly the same as my own?

I spent an entire day just trying to understand the way 4 elements come together into particular forms and then dis-aggregate, feed and rearrange into other forms. I started with simple objects, coins and coffee and went on to trees, bees, and then compound objects like cars and cows.  For example:

A Tree: arises from the earth, is nourished by water and solid minerals and requires heat to synthesize nutrients and circulate (wind) those nutrients through the tree and grow (wind). The solid of the trunk , protects and provides channels for the sap (liquid) to move (wind) up to the leaves so they can effectively capture sunlight (fire) to photosynthesize nutrients. A shift in the balance of the elements creates change in the tree and if the shift is sufficient it causes death.   If there is insufficient water in the earth to move up the roots (solid) of the tree, it will die and its elements will go back to the soil.  An absence of heat causes sap (liquid) to flow (move) less freely  and the solid of the leaves  becomes more fragile and wind  blows them from the tree where they decay and nourish the bugs.  If a rot softens the solid trunk of a tree it can no longer protect the softer inner layers and it is prone to being consumed by insect. A tree requires wind to carry the seed to the ground where it grows, but a hurricane can uproot and kill it.

Several weeks later I came back to this topic and did a little exercise in which I analyzed each of my body parts to understand it in terms of 4 elements. I then considered how imbalances in each of these parts, and then ultimately my body as a whole would lead to sickness and death.  So For example: my lungs are solid tissue requiring a certain body temperature to move and blood to be nourished so that it can move air through my body. As an asthmatic, I know that solid particles (dust) can move into my airways and cause a liquid to form in my lungs that creates greater resistance to solid tissue’s moment and makes it hard to move the air I need to survive through my body. I have had fish tanks and seen the little air hoses become clogged, start filling with water, cracking and ‘die’ because they can no longer move air into the tank. So can’t I also die if my balance of elements becomes sufficiently  changed?

In addition to softening my belief that I am somehow  exempt from death and decay this exercise also helped bolster my understand of exactly why all form is temporary (impermanent). The elements are constantly shifting and changing balance and effecting each other. The introduction of a particle of dust can shift the 4es of my lungs. No 4e object is a closed system in and of itself, the interaction with other objects, and the shifting that comes with changes in the environment, and the  propensity for each element to erode back to the earth  is the REASON they will never be stable. They will never be ‘mine’ forever.

But…I am way way ahead of myself here. So, if you want the nitty gritty of how I got here, see below:

How the 4 Elements Work –The Basics

A: I don’t understand the 4 elements. Can you perhaps give me an example of how you would use them to talk about a tree or fish or bird?

MN: Everything is made up of the 4 elements. A tree requires sunlight to grow, needs water to live, breathes in air, and draws from minerals in the dirt and it has a solid form.

Fish require water to live, air to breathe and internal air pressure to tolerate various depths, heat to stay alive and moving, and is comprised of solid matter. A larger fish eats a smaller fish, and in doing so absorbs the smaller fish’s 4 elements. When the big fish poops, it releases some of those 4 elements back into nature. When it dies and decomposes, its 4 elements return to the earth.

MN:  Try to see how all things are comprised of the four elements. For instance, like the tree we consume the 4 elements: we need air to breathe and air pressure to function, water to drink and blood to flow through our veins, solid foods (made up of 4 elements, as well) to build up and sustain our own solid bodies, and heat to stay warm and flexible. An imbalance of any of these, we get sick and die. Absent any of these we instantly die. When we die, the four elements return to the earth – our corpses fertilize the earth and plants and animals eat our discarded 4 elements.

Try to understand the role rupa and the 4 elements have in defining particular qualities in order to understand whether these qualities truly *only* exist in the mind.

–How do “hot” or “cold” relate to the tangible form and the four elements?

— How are “safe”/”unsafe” or “good”/”bad” or “skilled”/”unskilled” determined by the tangible form and the four elements?

–How can we feel the same things, have a general consensus of what is “tolerable”/”intolerable” among species? Why is it different from humans to various animal or plant species? What is the role of rupa here?

—What is the role of rupa in shaping view? What is at the foundation of view?

—What is the relationship between reality and view? Is there overlap or are they mutually exclusive?

A: QQ: just once– how would you think about the elements of a coin in a toss?

So the coin is solid, its toss depends on air, where are liquid and heat in a coin? Does every item need to have all 4 of the elements?

A: Wait maybe when fire is applied to a coin it becomes liquid. So heat was actually required to take the original metal, liquify it, and turn it into a coin shape?

MN: Yes. Like you said, in forming the coin, there are solid metals forged in heat, cooled with air, shaped while in liquid form.

A: So do you need to see all four elements in every object

MN: Yes

A: Is it because everything is all 4 elements in different proportions?

MN: Yup

A: I like this hot and cold game 😉… Do the proportions dictate the particular rules of each object? So if a really coin has a particular proportion of solid such that when flipped the air acts on it to give a probability of getting heads 50 Percent of the time. But…a false coin, which has a different proportions of solid could interact with air such that it flips heads at a much higher percent of the time?

MN: When it comes to a coin toss, whether metal coin, plastic coin, or glass coin, the probability of heads or probability of tails is contingent on what?

A: The interaction of the solid and wind elements I think?

MN: The coins are forged in different ways, combining different proportions of the 4 elements. There is so much impermanence involved in this process, even when the same type of coin is replicated in a single factory’s assembly line. Each coin is the same, yet unique in terms of its composition.

Then when the coin is tossed, those slight discrepancies in the four elemental composition will factor into the conditions that cause it to show heads or tails. For instance, a coin that is “heads” heavy may be more likely to show heads. But ultimately chances are it will end up with a mostly random combo of heads and tails.

And yes, the physical conditions at the time of toss also factor into the results. The wind element, the moisture in our fingers and the air, the weight of the coin and the surface it lands on, the heat and how it reacts to that particular material.

So, how do the 4 elements factor into probability and impermanence? How do we use tangibles and the 4 elements to determine, value, and define things?

A: How about something like coffee? In its liquid state fuels my solid forms movement through a solid worlds

MN: Coffee is also 4 elemental, once in our body, the 4 elements of coffee break down and travel to their respective teams… liquid from coffee feeding liquid in our body, solid feeding solid, air feeding air, heat feeding heat

AD: Ok so a diamond with higher clarity and shine is more highly valued because it is more rare. Can we say that the heat and pressure in the earth acted upon a particular diamond of a particular proportion of the elements and resulted in more shine and clarity? How do I get more nuanced?

So, we need to think about not just the elements in the current state of the object but also in the process of forming and the process of dissolution?

Is it possible to understand the proportions of say one diamond versus another is a nuances way or is it sufficient to see they are different?

So if diamond a has more clarity than diamond b than do I need to understand what element and in what proportions cause clarity? Is it even possible? Or is it sufficient to see the difference and understand there is an elemental cause?

Can I go a step further and see that whatever elemental difference causes great clarity in diamond A, that difference began in the formation. Creates a different perception in a human in it’s current state and will solve in a different way/ proportion of elements back to the earth? All along it will act differently RE; shine?

So there is however only so clearly or cloudy a diamond can get.

MN: Just a basic understanding is fine. For instance, if the diamond has more or less clarity, it could be due in part to the pressure (wind element) where it was forged, the mineral composition in the ground, as well as the moisture and heat in that location. You don’t need to know precise scientific reasons, just the trends the elements follow. Wind element contributes to___ features, water element contributes to…

The differences appear in all stages: birth, aging, sickness, death

A: So maple syrup (yes I’m at a farmers market) has liquid but it flows which is viscosity, a combo of it’s water and air. Or it’s water and earth spectrum which is influenced by current heat and air. It has solid elements and it changes from liquid to solid at certain heat leveled so in the bottle I see it has a level of heat in it that is responsible for it’s current viscosity. It has a flavor that that is derived  of it’s solid parts and liquid parts…what else?

MN: Maple syrup is tree sap and part of the tree, the tree grows by eating minerals in the dirt and increasing its solid form, by drinking water, by breathing air, and by being warm enough to survive. The syrup is made by boiling and cooling, all of which depend on liquid, heat, air, and earth elements

A: So it’s like a paint pallet. An artist will know a color and oil versus water type, thickness, the ratios of paints together and the type of canvas you put it on will all determine the characteristics of the final painting?

MN: Yeah –Even paints are 4 elemental. Colors, as well. We are each a piece of 4 elemental art. Only there is no “final”, we are living art, shifting and changing all the time

A: QQ: am I right that it is impossible to think about just the elements in an object without considering how the elements and elements in other items  have acted on the object and how the object will act on the elements and elements in other objects in turn:

Example fish doesn’t just have blood it needs water in ocean and it acts on the ocean by peeing.

Or tree had air that allows roots to spread that act upon the movement in the soil? I ask to be sure I am correct in thinking about the whole picture bc I am having trouble isolating a fish without thinking about ocean

MN:  All interrelated, not isolated.

Everything feeds off of everything’s four elements. We eat certain meats bc we cant get those nutrients (aka 4 elements) on our own. We eat cow meat to get grass nutrition  (our 4E eats cow 4E), eat nuts from trees for certain vitamins (vitamins=4E), mosquitoes eat our 4E in sucking our blood, flies eat our 4E in eating our skin. Goats lick the mineral salts from rocks to get their 4E, leopards eat those goats, leopards 4E back to earth when they poop and pee and after death.

We are all connected. Like that pocahontas song!

A: I will say rupa is a straight forward contemplation, but pretty powerful too…I generally think the world is so exciting, but today I started thinking it’s not as alluring as I thought, it’s just the same shit mixed up in different mold.

Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here.

A Roundabout Way to Discovering I Need to Understand Rupa+Nama

MN: What do you feel about this?

https://youtu.be/bMYGYY-WunE

A: So on the video I feel nothing extreme. But the reason is I don’t, in my heart, view eggs as babies so no fodder to excited my heart. But I have had a pretty big breakthrough on the birds already. Punchline: just because I don’t see a cause it doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist.

MN: Love this

A: Very briefly, on another note: I really saw quickly I cried about the birds because I see myself in the birds. I have known for a while there is hidden little Alana that feels like a victim of the world whose suffering seems causeless, and so not fair (she is in homeless Alana story too). At least in this life I think it all starts with my some childhood abuse, from a care giver who would be fine one sec and then freak the next, for what seemed like no reason at all. I spent most of my childhood in terror for myself and then trying to protect my brother. Now though I know this person has has been diagnosed with a disease that is at least a factor in this behavior, so it’s not without cause.

Deeper: Take the mammogram story, I saw my picture was incomplete (thought only possible outcomes were macrocalcifications that were worse or stable) because I was bound to imagine (4) outcomes in only the limited way my picture allowed (based on memory, 3s). When another outcome happened, I saw it is not just that anything can happen, but that the reason I don’t understand that fact is because my view of the world is so limited.

Now, though I see I can apply the same lesson to causes (since causes are just past effects) all  my assumptions that abuse/suffering is for ‘no reason’ versus abuse/suffering for being for a reason arise from my limited picture (permanently stuffed with my standards, shoulda and colored by my Alana colored glasses) versus complete picture of the world.

MN: I like this about seeing that your view is limited

A: I am watching for changes since the contemplation (which as a reminder to you readers, was something Neecha asked me to do at the end of the last post so she could help me further) and feeling 100 percent sure on freeing-up my ideas around worthy and good; at the wat this AM I did not think “not worthy” when a friend  anamodannaed with me and I did not think everything LP said in his teaching this morning was a personal commentary on my moral failings.

MN: This is good, can you pinpoint why though?

A: On good, the uproot came from contemplating on my need to be ‘good daughter’ by always making my mom happy: I see that I made-up the standards of being a good daughter someone who always makes mom happy (because I think by making her happy I can be protected from her wrath) and then kept trying to live up to my imagined standard, suffering because Inevitably failed since her happiness is in her heart.

A: Deserve was easy, I didn’t think I deserve a bed at retreat, but I got one so clearly my concept of deserve does not govern the world.

MN: If you see that your mom’s happy is in her heart, do you feel unable to make your mom happy, then?

MN: Inevitably failed, so does that mean you’ll always fail?

MH: So what does govern the world?

A: I Inevitably fail because I can’t always make my mom happy and there is an unspoken always in my belief that a good daughter makes her mom happy.

I sometimes make mom happy, but not because of my standards of good daughter. But because my form + my actions, in certain environment/ circumstances, meets the standard for ‘happy’ that my mom has in her own heart.

This l think is one angle of how my heart world and the real world are connected.

To answer that question more broadly…rupa’ (real world) is like food pellets in a video game. My character (memory and imagination, 3&4) eats them to get bigger and to get powers to win the game. It is like rupa is some conduit material in which signals run 2 ways. I want to make mom happy so she loves me and I feel like a good daughter. So l use rupa to transmit the message. I buy her gifts, I take her on trips, I do shit in the real world. This is food pellets for influencing my video game. Then I read the rupa she ‘gives back’, a smile, a frown, a gift and word and use it to confirm my success making her happy and therefore being a good daughter. This is food pellets making me big. If I feel like either I lack the rupa tools to make  my Mom happy (and thereby convince myself of my goodnes), or that the rupa of her response ( facial expressions for example) don’t signal my success then shit isn’t how it “should be” and I get angry. Something like this is how the heart world and the real one connect. Still need time to clarify a bit more

A: I don’t yet know exactly what governs the world. But I suspect it is something like that video game world where everyone is trying to collect food pellets (rupa’) to get bigger and have powers and then prove just how big they are by testing their powers in interaction with other players.

MN: You’re on the right track with the rupa and nama connection. Rupa is tangible form, nama is the intangibles: feeling, memory, imagination, sensation . Just have to sort it out a bit more.

A: Anyway, all this is part of what governs connection between heart and real. What governs real I know the answer is Karma, cause an effect, arising and ceasing, that was then and this is now, but my heart isn’t fully convinced. I know I need more evidence

A: On the topic of watching for changes since the contemplation:

1) I am less likely to get runaway imagination with Eric and talking about our future. Example, he said our fantasy dog was a bread I don’t care for and I didn’t even bother to argue because I saw so clearly what idiot would argue over a fantasy dog.

2) Seeing other conditions like what to eat where to go lessen but not sure because could be post retreat daze, it happens to me sometimes. I’ll keep you updated I feel like I need to test in the wild not my imaginations.

3) I am seriously less sure what I believe is really true. Not 100 percent yet, but last night we went to a dinner and a flickering neon was hurting my eyes so I asked to change tables. The waiter pointed to one just a foot or so away and said it was the only one so we could move there. My first though was it’s still so close to the light it won’t make any difference. Immediately, before I spoke, I saw it might. So I said we would try it. In truth, it was a little better, but still hurting. But it wasn’t the same…

A: Overnight, I decided to revisit the topic of good because it feels a little murky and I suspect it’s a huge key for me. The thing is, I know it is not in a situation, but in my heart…When LP moved his hand and asked where slow was I saw that if it couldn’t be found in a hand. It arises in my mind based on my own interpretation which is based on context and a multitude  of things that move faster and slower.

Even though I see good lives in my heart, not the situation, I still feel there is some judgement in my heart that is correct. And even if I see that my changing picture of the world (like geese, more info) changes my judgement, I still believe there is a complete picture that exists that if I saw would allow me to judge. And I still feel that judgement could be correct even if it is different from what happens in the actual world. And even if I see the same judgement isn’t appropriate in all circumstances because causes and conditions are different I feel that case by case I can make a correct one in my heart.

I suspect it is because I don’t really understand where the judgment comes from. Or I know it is me but I don’t clearly see the mechanics. Resultantly, I don’t really see the connection between the heart world and the real world.

I have already gotten to the fact that possible is an important condition for my idea of goodness. And my idea of possible comes from memory. It is why before I saw heard a story about a Thai lute maker generously giving free music classes and helping feed and educate kids in his village, I never thought I had to do that to be good, but after I heard about it I felt burdened by ‘one more good I had to be now that I saw that good was possible’. But I can’t seem to get further than this. I can’t quite see exactly how imagination works with this.

MN: Why do you think the lute maker is a good person, or what do you think that what he was doing was good?

MN: And when things exist in your heart, is there any overlap with the real world? Or are your views and reality mutually exclusive?

MN: The more I think about it, the more I think that what is missing is the conclusion.  It is like you’re saying:

I thought qualities like “safe,” “good,” or “worthy” were determined by tangible, worldly cues – but now I realize that those qualities are defined in my mind, they don’t exist in those tangible things in an absolute way.

So if your initial assumption is incorrect, then what is correct? That everything exists in our minds? But if that is absolutely true, how is it that we feel can similar things (disgust over a dirty cafe bathroom, touched by generosity, etc), and how can we feel dissimilar things (you are afraid of A but I am not, I find B useful but you do not)? What is the relationship between reality and view? Is there overlap? Or is it really mutually exclusive, as it seems you’ve found it to be?

A: It is because cold does exist and so does hot. But where on the spectrum I find any particular cup of water is based on my own interpretation of the temp of that water in the moment. Which arises based on my experience and perceived needs. Someone else can think that same cup is cold or hot based on their own relative situation. But in no case will their assessment and mine be exactly the same ( because we are each subject to different factors and conditions from which we make the judgment,). But the sammutti of the words hot and cold has something to do with why it may feel the same or different as mine????? Reaching here

So in sum we can all read rupa’, but our thresholds are what is different. My threshold is what is in my heart and that changes based on circumstances. Or rather it is not that hot exists and cold exists, but that temperature exists and it exists on a graduated scale. This is impermanence.

MN: Keep thinking about this. Because if everything is in each of our individual minds and it doesn’t really exist elsewhere, why can we have consensus on the moment when water turns “hot” or “warm” or “cold”?

And what is “hot” or “cold” or “clean” or “dirty”, really, if it doesn’t exist how you once thought?

A: Because we can have similar enough causes and conditions in a particular moment that for that time our thresholds across individual more or less agree. Hot or cold or clean or dirty is a relative term I suppose…

I’m stuck…

A: It is something that changes. It changes in the world and it changes in my heart. In the world it changes based on the rules of rupa’. So it will freeze at 0 and boil at 100, in my heart it changes based on my personal particulars.

So If I just jump out of the hot spring that is at 102 degrees into water that is 99 degrees the new ware is cold, If I jump from the snow into 99 degrees water it is hot.

MN: Is hot and cold generally the same for humans? For instance, desert temperatures are hot, arctic temperatures are cold.

A: I suppose it is in that we all have a body

MN : And the thresholds for human bodies…?

A:  And like water boiling at a certain temp, there is certainly a temp where we humans will experience hot or cold

MN: Is human hot and cold the same is kangaroo hot and cold? Or penguin hot and cold?

A: But if I am an Inuit I might have a different threshold for cold than a Miami person. Penguin and python definitely have different thresholds, not just for what is comfortable but what is actually livable

MN: Agreed. So what does this tell us? In terms of “hot” and “cold” What is the basis for determining these sammuti conventions?

A: Our experiences, our needs, our form

Try again: our types

No, I’m not yet sure what that means

But types feels right

MN: Is “hot” for humans a mere arbitrary definition, relatively defined? Is “hot” for penguins, monkeys, snakes, turtles, whales, lions a mere arbitrary definition, relatively defined?

Is there really nothing in “hot”? Does it really not exist? Does it only exist in the mind?

If it is indeed only in our minds, then if we don’t think it, then it won’t exist?

A: Fuck thanx. Ok it does exist and our rupa’ as humans defines it somehow

But what exact degree is comfortable or desirable is in my heart?

That degree I would actually call hot arises on my experiences

That somehow is not clear…But I know we are bound by rules of rupa

MN: Focus on rupa, the 4 elements. Rupa versus nama. Dont limit yourself to humans. Look at all living things, like how I asked about different animals. Humans have too many layers to see through in order to get to the raw truth. But with animals it is more factual and straightforward

A: Any other tips on exactly what the Four elements means?? Can I think in terms of atoms and laws of physics and chemistry?

MN: Atoms and molecules are too complicated! They didn’t need that for enlightenment during the Buddha’s time, or in the Thai back country, so we don’t either.

Try to see what role the 4 elements play in defining a thing or a concept. How does it work with the mind? How does it work apart from the mind?

Alternate ways to see the elements

The earth element – solid matter

The water element – liquid

The wind element – movement, pressure

The fire element – warmth

A: Thank you

MN: The more I think of it, the more you’re just lacking a conclusion, and that’s probably because the rupa was sacrificed for the focus on the nama intangibles. But they must go hand in hand. My assessment is that if you can understand rupa’s role in your newfound understanding, it’ll balance out.

Dear Readers, this blog is a direct continuation of the previous so, if you haven’t read last week’s entry then please do head back there and read it before you continue here.

Following my big retreat contemplation, Mae Neecha was a massive help ‘course correcting ‘ and rounding out my contemplation. For the next  week  or so she was my  virtual sherpa, helping prod me, guide me and answer questions through an ongoing Line Chat. There is so much content in this Chat, I am going to do my best to break it into ‘bite-sized’ portions over the next few blogs at natural breaking points. I am also going to edit and trim a little bit in the interest of space/time and add a few highlights/headers if I think something needs to be particularly called-out. But, though it is quite an unusual format for this blog, I am going to keep as much intact as possible and share a transcript of our conversation.

I am choosing to go this rout for a few key reasons: 1)  I believe the thinking process –the getting stuck, and lost and needing to pivot and try a new line of thinking and  little-by-little discovering — is just as revealing as the ultimate conclusions; 2) I was so in the ‘zone’ for the few days after retreat, this line conversation, and my practice,  was essentially continual — I thought, I reached-out when I had either a question or thought I had an answer. As a result, this transcript is pretty unique in my own notebook because it is a ‘real-time’ record of wisdom dawning, not just a recording of what I remembered and wanted to write down at a later time.  So,  even though it makes for a not-so-easy read,  I want these blogs to preserve the dialogue and not just be a neatly summed-up conclusion (although I will offer a synthesis of all of this and where it took me towards the end of this chapter if you do just prefer to wait).  So buckle-up…its another Buddhisty ride ;).

My Guess on The Origin of the Contemplation and the Need to Test/Observe Myself to Explore It’s Implications

MN: Upon reviewing what you’ve written here (and not what i interpreted from what you told us today) my question is – is it really as absolute as you think it is? That it is all in your heart?

It seems that before, you thought your thoughts and the world were one, inseparable. But now that you’re seeing the separation between reality and your reality, is it a complete separation?  Entirely different? Wholly unrelated?

A:  Thank you … I guess  maybe went too far in the other direction…

On the birds — there is still an Alana that feels a victim/sorry for myself that  the birds brought out. Testing my feelings and thinking more about this, I think I actually uprooted 2 Biggie’s for me:goodness and deserve.  The rest I will work on in the context of bringing a bit more balance to my view. I was in such a deep contemplative  state (never had that happen before) it’s like a dream where more stuff is coming back to me in pieces. There is way more here–like for the first time I was actually able in my mind to share my merit and to take joy in other people’s accomplishments, I guess because I wasn’t worried they would take away from my worthiness or add to my pile of good mountains I needed to scale. Anyway, I am going to keep at it. For a few hours there I felt so free and eyes opened. It was nice and a good motivator to keep on keeping on. I will consider the connection between my reality and outside reality as clearly there must be one or karma wouldn’t exist. Any tips on where exactly to start?

MN:  You’re already on the right track – it seems that you just need to shake it a bit so everything settles. I’d think more about the birds, as that is clearly a point that needs a bit of adjustment. Whatever snags tells us that there needs to be some balancing.  See if you can apply your new understanding to various past issues, and present issues. I’m interested to hear about the progress and any changes you notice.

MN: Before that night, did you have any outstanding phobias to fix? How do you feel about your phobias now, compared to before

A:  On phobias, none that were that extreme…But, I think I know what may have kicked all this off…last week I had to go in for a ‘you turned 40 mammogram’ and I was anxious. Back story is I had a mammogram in my 30s for boob pain. The scan showed no problem with the boob that hurt but microcalcifications in the other breast.

Usually they are benign, not always. I followed them with regular screenings for a few years when my doc and I decided they looked stable so should stop mammograms due to risks and wait to go back till now. But when I went to make the appointment I got scared I had made the wrong decision about not keeping up with annual scans. The mammogram was fine and I asked the radiologist about the calcifications. She said they had all but disappeared, that it was normal for that to happen sometimes.

Before the scan I had been reminding myself of the impermanence of the outcome. I thought, very binary, the calcifications can be stable or be worse. I was stuck on that view. But after the radiologist told me the calcifications disappeared I immediately realized my real wrong view. I never imagined these calcifications disappearing. In my picture of the world I didn’t even know that was a thing. But when I heard the results it was the first time I truly had my heart touched by the fact that absolutely anything can happen.

I don’t know why I think that was the catalyst of the zone, but somehow it feels right.

MN: Was it something that hit you especially hard, realizing that the option that actually happened was not one of the 2 options you were prepared for?

A: Yes. I have been trying to collect evidence on this idea of really honestly anything is possible. But nothing stuck like the mammogram. So so clear. Since my picture was incomplete, I was bound to think about outcomes in only the limited way my picture allowed. When another outcome happened I saw it is not just that anything can happen, but that the reason I don’t understand that fact is because my view of the world is so limited.

That I think is why when you tell me to connect my heart to the world I agree. I still have two big weakness on this:

1. That like those geese in the nature video we watched (where baby geese had to jump off a cliff and some of them die), everything has a reason (in the video it is clear the geese nest on high to avoid predators that eat eggs but when the eggs hatch the babies, yet unable to fly, must jump from high cliffs in order to head down to the beach were their food supply is found, with these habits at least some of the geese in a litter live thought some die). But since I don’t see those reasons, I feel it is unfair, unjust, indignant SHOULD. That is part of why the birds in the park hit me. I still don’t understand my secret shoulda. The ones that seem ok, that seem compassionate. I only hit on the seemingly negative ones.
2. I spend so much time on my inside stuff, I am blurry on consequences and karma. I don’t think about it much. Which makes sense because I have been so afraid if I look too close it will be even more discouraging and I might just quit, which I have worried about a long time now. After the contemplation though I suddenly feel less trepidation about looking at karma and consequences. It started this morning.

MN: And now what is your view of the world and its possibilities?

MN: Karma in its simplest definition is just cause and effect

A: As far as my view on possibilities, I would say that  I am seriously getting there, but not there fully.

Re karma –yes, but I have been so colored by moral goodness by Alana’s definition, and my endless mountains to climb to be as good as other people, that in my mind it has been a scary monster of judgment and consequences for all of my wrongs and imagined wrongs. So I couldn’t really look at that monster

MN In terms of possibilities, I’d consider situations in which you don’t already see all the possibilities and reasons – whether or not the result seems compassionate or fair – how do you see them now?

For instance, news stories about a society’s customs that seem odd or are incomprehensible to you.

In order for me to better understand your realization and its implications, I have to understand the changes that followed… what those changes are, what else needs addressing or scrubbing. So right now it is experiment/test mode.

Test your triggers, situations that would normally rub you the wrong way, things that you typically enjoy/detest and ask how you felt about it before and how you feel about it now. And what changed?

A: I see. I am still trying to find the changes myself. I will test for them and see what I can glean stay tuned…

Hello Dear Readers – If this blog looks familiar that is probably because it is; this, and the next few blogs, are republications of posting from early 2020. Here I will put these blogs back into chronological order, nestling them into the linear(ish) progression of my practice that this blog aims to capture. While the content may be old, I hope that now, with the context offered by the contemplations that served as a foundation for these entries, these posts take on new life and offer new insights. Happy re-reading.  ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

On the last night that I was at the 2019 retreat I had one doozy of a contemplation. It felt like it burst-up outta no where and it really knocked my socks off. In this blog, I am sharing the ‘content report’ about that crazy contemplation that I sent to Mae Neecha the following day and her reply . IMPORTANT: This contemplation was a starting place, but when I shared my report with Mae Neecha and Mae Yo they suggested I needed some serious ‘course correcting’ to round these thoughts out and to keep my practice on track; the course correcting conversations and contemplation will unfold over the next few blogs.  So these next few posts really will need to be read as a series to get a comprehensive pic. Yay for sequels and cliff hangers, its like a real TV program after all.

The Original Contemplation Sum-up

Hey Mae Nee,

I wanted to thank you and Mae Yo so much for all your help and support for so so long. I have had a really big breakthrough in my practice and I want to offer it to you both in gratitude.

Really long I’m afraid so a little hard to cover it all here, but I’ll give you the punchline first and then share a bit about the journey to get there:

Punchline: I clearly understand that my emotions, my imagination, my hopes and my beliefs and my sense of belonging arise in my heart and is separate from what exists in the world. I am also damn sure that I suffer because what I think the world should be and what it actually is are different things and that there is literally no way for my heart to control the world.

It all started last night, LP Nut was teaching a group and ask Ora where her need for her mom’s approval lived? She didn’t quite get the question so I started asking where various objects in the Wat lived, table, stove etc.  Finally LP Nut waved his hand and asked where slow lived… It hit me so hard that it lives in my heart. I closed my eyes and started thinking… I went through a bunch of ideas — good, safe, control, mine, value, hope, want and systematically asked where they all lived. I used my own experiences and past contemplations to test and confirm they are all in my heart.

Some highlights:

— Control: the first place I looked was in my body, but I can’t even control my body, I have asthma I can’t breathe without meds. I peed myself from supplements to make me healthier. If my own body can’t control itself there is no way control exists outside my heart.

–Safety/comfort – I tend to ‘read the rupa’ in an environment to gauge safety comfort. A few weeks ago we were at a Hotspring and the rupa was just right, nature, Zen gardens, etc. But after getting out of the bath Eric passes out. I had never seen someone faint before and the horror is still fresh. I was splashing Eric’s face, yelling for 911, afraid he was going to die. After he woke and I calmed I saw it, if this place, this rupa, were really safe and comfortable how could Eric have “almost died” ( which I know now he didn’t but at the time it felt so real).

Belonging — I started thinking about my bag on the floor. I saw in my mind clearly the rupa was on the floor, but the “my” was in my heart.  I thought about that NY house and how before I bought it, when I had a fantasy of how great it would make my new NY life it was already mine in my heart and how even before I sold it, when I was over the whole thing and hated it, how it had stopped being mine. If mine was really in the house how could my sense of it change so drastically. It has to be in my heart.

Hate– I remembered a day I was practicing Dharma hard sitting in a cafe in NY. I practiced all day contemplating on the topic of my hatred of the city, and I was so absorbed in it I noticed people were honking and it wasn’t bothering me. Usually honking is trigger number 1. Of NY hatred, but I saw on that day that not having it arise in this circumstances meant the hate didn’t live in NY it lives in my heart.

Hope– I thought about Eric and my retirement fantasy, our Koi pond and camper van and travel and I asked where it was? It clearly doesn’t exist anywhere outside me so that hope/fantasy can only live in my heart.

Value– I thought about how when my dad was alive I truly believed my values was in him, in being his daughter and in his approval. But he died and in my mind I searched his corpse for the value but I didn’t find it there, I see I still feel valuable, so it can’t have been in him but in my heart. More specifically in my heart lives my imagination of what value is and it changes based on circumstances. What I value when I am in CT and NY is different. What I value in my job has changed. I thought about my money and in that minute I saw it has no value in itself, it only buys me things I think I will want in the future, things I think will make me a certain thing even though, punchline again, the qualities I imagine in the things I buy –fashionableness, beauty, impressiveness are in my heart. And since everyone else’s version of these things are in their own hearts how can mine possibly have the effect I desire?

At which point it became clear to me that there is no magic wand that allows me to take what is in my heart and exert control on the outside world with it, the two must be separate.

Then I contemplated on should, this was a biggie , I thought about a trip to Japan where we got lost. I was so upset because we weren’t where we were supposed to be. But I saw that should is in my heart and it is not what happened in the real world. I thought about politics and how viscerally I feel like this shouldn’t be our democracy, but it is so should doesn’t live in the world it lives in my heart. Then I thought about my Dad dying. I didn’t think I should lose a father when I was so young or so fast, but I did. Then I remembered I thought it wasn’t fair my dad, who I loved died when it should have been someone else, that I hate, and that is when I saw that all my suffering comes from the difference between the should in my heart and the reality on the ground.

I considered my body and asked why I think it is so special. I internalized my dad’s corpse. Genes, blood, facial features, elements like my own, but he is dead and gone. Plus he was so special to me and yet he is gone. How will my own beliefs in my specialness save me, how can it make me different from him and the hundreds of other corpses I recalled seeing on the news.

I thought about my body, clothes and special more. I remembered my wedding dress fitting, about the shape of my body in the dress, about how special and loveable I felt when I looked in the mirror and then I remembered the dress of no value to me anymore, torn and in the back of my closet, how can special or loveable be in the dress I asked? Then I thought more about some specific clothing moments some outfits that made me feel so special. But then I thought of all the clothes that I tried on in the same store over the years and how they felt like an indictment, of my fatness of my saggingness, of my aging.  I think about the truth that get dressed pains me, makes me self-critical about style about weight. I thought how it like playing Barbie with myself and it’s not really that much fun. Barbie and her outfits are nothing without my imagination to animate them. The meaning can’t be in the clothes or the body, it must be in my heart.

Finally I touched on worthy. I didn’t feel worthy to get so many anamodanas and a thank you card from the kids for the school donation, but I did. I didn’t feel worthy to get a bed those retreat when everyone else slept on the floor. When the last fires struck I got out day one and when I heard about all my office mates suffering with the smoke I felt unworthy to have been free while they suffered. But I saw if what I believed worthiness is dictated these things then they wouldn’t have happened so, guess what, my concept of worthiness must be in my heart .

I have started thinking how sad/scary the world is that it works this way. I went to the park and all the birds ran as I walked by and I thought I mean you no harm, but because you birds act on your own imagination that lives on your little hearts you don’t know, you scurry in fear. How many times have I suffered because what I imagine I need to be scared of will come true? How many days has my heart hurt over my mother and how many times have I hurt her because of it? How sad is it that I have been part of pushing Eric to work so hard to we can have the things and future that lives only in my heart?

Anyway there is more, topics but this gets across the main gist.

I then when back and started parsing a little today. Seeing that I need to use this technique/ weave the fact that my crazy lives only in my heart with a bit more evidence on my imagination of the future lives only in my heart and that it also can’t magically change what happens in the real future/outside world.

When I contemplated I saw a clear Ubai ( well clear to me anyway). That it is like those animation screens that are popped over a real world image. Before, it looked so much like those cartoon characters are actually in the world, but now I see the top screen is just an overlay that can be popped off, my inside heart’s crazy crap was just overlaid on the world, but now I see it is a separate screen.

Anyway really long here so I will sign off after one more though.

Ok now my warm wishes,

A

This next ‘chapter’ of my practice begins with a bang: A trance-like state that struck me, seemingly outta nowhere, on the last night of the 2019 retreat. As I tried to make sense out of what I had learned from the state afterwards, Mae Yo and Mae Neecha sent me on a course correction — a series of contemplations meant to round-out my practice by helping me understand rupa (the form aggregate), and its relationship to nama (non-form aggregates of vedena, sanna, sankara, vinnan). As Mae Neecha told me much later, Luang Por Thoon told Mae Yo rupa and nama 50/50 — half rupa, half nama, that is the way to practice, this was the little formula that could serve me till the end of my path.

The thing is, for that formula to be helpful, I had to understand rupa first. What the earliest ‘course correcting’ contemplations proved was that I had absolutely no idea what rupa really is, or how to use it in the context of my practice. Sure I had given rupa lip service for years — this body will get sick, that purse is going to break, so they aren’t mine — but on some level, if I am being honest, I thought of rupa as the red-headed stepchild, the less interesting, less sexy side of practice. This next phase of my practice is defined by a shift toward rupa-centric/ rupa-grounded contemplations that radically altered my course.  Frankly, with hindsight, it is no wonder that my practice didn’t feel like it was getting anywhere quickly before, I had literally been missing half the picture.

It quickly became clear to me that I had no hope of releasing attachment to ‘my’ belongings, if I didn’t even really know what those belongings were– I don’t know how to let go of something I didn’t even understand.  I could say shit wasn’t mine till the cows came home, but without understanding WHY shit wasn’t mine, how was I really going to be able to believe it? Only after a radical rupa reexamination did I start to understand the incontrovertible rules of the world that govern rupa  and that preclude rupa from abiding by Alana’s rules.

Over time, I have come to see the more subtle reasons understanding rupa is absolutely critical to practice. In a rupa world, rupa is the substrate through which our kilesa (defilements) are fed, and in which they play out. We don’t have hate or craving or ignorance in a vacuum; we hate a physical person and their physical behaviors, we crave a physical object, or bodily sensation, or a concept demarcated/measured/referenced by a form.

As for ignorance, in his Autobiography  LP Thoon explains, “The term moha, or delusion, is the mind that is deluded by sammuti (supposed form). Avijjā, or ignorance, is ignorance of these sammuti (supposed form).” It makes sense really, for our imaginations to function, to fabricate imaginary futures, imaginary belongings, and imaginary identity — imaginary stillness in an actually ever-shifting world —  we need form to peg our concepts to. We are in a constant process of overlaying our beliefs/imaginations/concepts onto rupa objects and then fooling ourselves into believing that the objects will actually follow our view of what they are, our constructed rules and expectations for them. Sammuti, supposed form –which relies on actual form — lays at the heart of our delusions; after all, what is atta (self, self-identity) except for one more glorified sammuti.

Anyway, I am getting a little ahead of myself here, so for now, without  further ado, rupa, again, but for realz this time…