Still in Miami, caring for my mother, I was unable to attend the 2022 retreat. I did however follow along as much as I was able with webcasts and recordings. I decided to try my hand at one of the Retreat HW assignments, to explore our sandans or our deep personality traits/habits. Below is the homework assignment I ‘turned-in’ to Mae Neecha via email. The next few blogs will cover our back-and-forth conversation.
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I have been following the broadcast parts of the retreat and decided to try my hand at the homework assigned the other night to explore our sandans. Obviously thats sorta a massive topic to cover in a short HW, but I wanted to touch a bit on some of the patterns of behavior, as well as the traits, beliefs and deeper drives I have come to recognize in myself over the course of my practice. No surprise spoiler alert here: I can trace so many of my actions, as well as the personality traits I seek to build/solidify/become (here-in dubbed ‘virtues’ since that’s how I one-sidedly view them) to a core drive for safety. I lead with that fun factoid because to me, it is one of the most interesting nuggets about myself I have come to recognize over the years, mostly because it is actionable: I love to lead my dhamma contemplations with the simple question, “what is my goal and can I really get that/do that/accomplish my goal?” Can I really hope to find safety in this world? And if the answer is no (it’s always no btw, but I like to prove it to myself), it adds context to consideration of the costs/risks/dukka. Afterall, it’s one thing to suffer to actually achieve something, it’s entirely another to suffer with no hope of ever achieving that thing; the only reward for my efforts being a path to more suffering (everything is dukka afterall). Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself here so below are my thoughts. Sorry too if it’s a bit half baked, I wanted to be timely sending it.

I started by thinking of something small — how I used to think it was such BS to line up the yoga mat precisely when I practiced yoga. Just a trivial detail, not the meat of practice. I almost willfully refused though teachers pestered me. I dismissed it as trivial because it was trivial to me. To exert control of my self/body by mastering yoga, that is important. That is beyond important actually, it is ‘virtuous’ in its demonstration/manifestation of my extreme will power, diligence, persistence and skill. To waste time on arranging a mat, that’s just missing the ‘point’ of practice, it is beneath me. Only after years of practice did I see that an aligned mat helped foster an aligned body, it helped protect from injury and create a proper foundation for poses and practice. It was important, I just didn’t see it at the time. These days I don’t do yoga anymore, I busted up my hip too badly, it still hurts regularly. Of course a crooked matt isn’t THE ONE CAUSE of a busted hip, and yet I do consider it to be one factor. There are consequences for my views.

My failure to position my mat correctly, this seemingly tiny quirk, actually reflects a deeper pattern of behavior and an indication of what I value/what I seek in the world/who I want to be. The pattern is that I prejudge what is important, and based on my arbitrary, oft ill informed, always deeply biased assessment of what is important — generally defined by what I see as virtuous, good and/or safe — I snap judge what to pay attention to, what is worthy of my efforts, who should be heeded. If something is “important” to me I will apply herculean efforts (extreme workouts, careful management of my health, excelling in school, learning Thai, showing my compassion through diet, etc), but if I see it as trivial, I write it off even if doing so creates a world of hurt, be that a hip injury, or a a long and troubled relationship with my mom because I felt her terms of engaging were silly and should be subservient to my own, clearly superior, terms (the positive shift last year in our relationship actually arose when I understood my own foolishness in believing my terms were somehow superior, or could protect and define me, and my subsequent ability to stop dismissing her terms as trivial).

If something is important to me, like getting hugs as a way to feel loved and accepted, I assume it is important to everyone, and it’s hugs for the homeless whether they like it or not. As a noteworthy aside, what I call ‘important’ behaviors/actions are those that I believe manifest more abstract ideals I value; to hug a homeless person is not just to “share’ a token of love and acceptance, it is to show I love and accept the outcast, it is compassion ‘enacted’. If something is important to me, I assume it is normative; sometimes I get an ugly surprise when I expect, but don’t get, folks following my norms. It is why I am so trusting and easily taken advantage of –I just think that because I would be honest, or follow rules, so too will my financial advisors or employees, and I have been burned before by failing to put in place the checks and safety measures I had dismissed as trivial, unimportant, in a world where these folks, my folks, would so clearly be honest like me. More often though, I just become angry and bitter that the world — that those fucking loud dirty ass NYers — aren’t behaving as they SHOULD (there is a whole multi-blog saga on the extreme pain of my burning hatred of NY, just another dukka call-out here).

Of course, one of many huge patterns/consequences of all this is that I am unbelievably –painfully– judgmental (of myself and of others); even Eric, who looks at me with super ‘soft eyes’, frequently tells me I’m harsh. Seriously though, with this personality type, how could I not be? I use these self-created standards of what is important as metrics I expect to be followed (which is totes delusional since the world follows its metrics — thats the whole 3 common conditions thing– and doesn’t give a fuck about mine, so a little delusion and ensuing dukka call out here). There is no better example than my old best frenemy Kim: Kim and I were close, but at the same time, I constantly judged her life choices (job hopping, randomly deciding to go to law school but then choosing a middling program and then not bothering to try very hard, getting into the burning man party scene at 35), mostly because I felt like she didn’t have her shit buttoned-up, she was totally out of control (and I so deeply value self control, not just as part of my identity, but as a ‘moral virtue’–we’ll get to this). One time, she told me she didn’t bother using birth control, though she adamantly didn’t want kids. When I heard this one I was actually ANGRY she hadn’t gotten knocked-up, it seemed an unjust turn of the world that someone could do something I view as so irresponsible without terrible consequence. After years of my getting burning indictment in my heart every time we hung out until it finally hit me — I set Kim up as a foil to myself, some ridiculous exaggerated antagonist to my self as protagonist; the more harshly I judge her for traits I hate and fear, the better/safer/ more self assured I can feel about the self I am in contrast. A buttoned-up-on-top-and-in-control- Alana, a total opposite of can’t-get-your-shit-together-Kim, thats the me I wanna be. A me who judged my way out of that friendship long ago.

Its also worth a little aside to note where Kim is now: She used that middling law degree and her connections to burning man to set-up a super successful business importing costumes and clothing for the festival. Her behaviors and choices I trivialized ended up being ‘important’ after all, at least in helping build a business that now I see and respect. Impermanence call out too btw–I had written her off as a career failure years ago.

The ‘virtue’ of self control, of being a buttoned-up Alana, is as fine an entree as any into a bit more fundamental bit of my programing: The values on which my judgments of importance are made. Over and over in my stories I see a few defining hero traits: Someone who is in control of themselves –their body and their behaviors– this is virtuous. Someone who is compassionate, who is a good ____ (fill in the blank with the role de’jour important to me/that I want to define me. i.e. good Buddhist, good daughter, good wife, good sister good employee, good friend. Note as well that I know damn well each of these roles wasn’t always important to me, once I was a good Jew not a good Buddhist, prior I didn’t bother being a good sister, my belief I was being a good friend when Kim was not ultimately ended the relationship, and is so much judgment really the attribute of a good friend?). Someone who has extreme willpower, after all only the extremely willed could endure the hardships and risks of being good like hugging homeless folks in a pandemic and long suffering my impossible to please mother. Someone who is dilligent, skilled, cautious, able to problem solve and delay gratification, keeps their word to themselves and others. Who has a strong sense of morality (even though I was the one constantly making up the rules of what constitutes moral or not). And of course, someone who is considerate, who lets traffic enter, and says please and thank you and despises all the rude ass New Yorkers who don’t take time to greet their baristas. I collectively call this set of traits “Good” through frankly, if I am being honest, the definition of good sorta floats a bit to suit my agenda. Which brings me to the fact that “goodness” is not an end to itself, it has utility…

Though, before I move on to the utility I see in my ‘virtues’ and ‘goodness’ I think it is worth explicitly calling-out that it is unbelievably ridiculous, one-sided, one-eye squinted-and-closed, to call these sets of traits – particularly how I seek to define and then embody them — ‘virtuous/good’. We have already talked extensively about ‘compassionate alana’; is it really compassionate to go around groping homeless folks and rewarding them for acquiescing with sandwiches? My stepmom regularly reminds me of what a pain-in-the-ass compassionate vegetarian Alana was to make a special meal for every time I was over. What about the extreme willpower I used to force myself to endure my mother for years? I would will my way through family time, being a total bitch to everyone because I was so miserable, stirring shit with my mom, never actually solving the root issues in the relationship (my views), why –because I was being a self-righteous virtuous cunt gritting my teeth and willing myself to bear it. What about the ‘virtue’ of my consideration, chit chatting with my NY barista — out of spite for the long line of huffing rushers behind me — to prove what a warm, gracious, thoughtful person I am? Or, as we already noted, the simple fact that if I run-around framing my own, arbitrarily chosen, set of ‘important’ traits as ‘virtuous’, it only fuels and feeds the villainization of anyone who doesn’t happen to value and exhibit those same traits at a given time (which FYI, I can’t even exhibit all these traits all the time, attests the slowly creeping up scale repudiating my self control); if I were an angel, I’d clearly be one of those vengeful fiery sword ones.

Now…back to… Goodness has utility…

Goodness has a utility, namely safety: A good alana ( especially one with the effort and willpower to pwn my body and life) gets cookies instead of whammies. She is loved and cared for. This is the trait that makes her special, and therefore exempt from the lows of the world. Each of the virtuous traits contributes to my safety in some way: Afterall, an alana that puts the work in, that problem solves, that mitigates risk, that has the sheer force of will to bring so much into existence, must be safer than a willy-nilley-go-with-the-flow-out-of-control Kim. Abstract goodness and its associated virtues obviously must have physical markings — enter beauty, a reward deserved by the good, a fit and healthy body honed by willpower and effort, a Porche the pinnacle on top and in control of the world car. It also must have behavioral manifestations — a compassionate vegetarian, a warm and considerate SFer in NY, an attentive and valued family member and student and employee. And standing alongside the goodness traits, I have a few others that follow a similar pattern and aim for the end of safety; short callout that cleanliness which I don’t necessarily see as good, is another super important trait for me in the service of safety. Wealth and financial stability are rupa I seek to acquire to help guarantee safety. There are so many facets of my life, and personality that I fixate on this goal of being safe. There is my crazy fear and hypochondria, which is actually a twisted effort at staying safe–if I can catch the signs of disease early enough, be proactive enough I can save myself. Safety is the goal, it is the drive, the characteristics and behaviors that support it are what is important. Those same characteristics are the ones I have ever-so-pragmatically reified as who I am ( biggest strengths and identity). After all what hope do I have of sustaining a good/ on top badass self, without a safety net in this super cruel and risky world?

Now having gotten this synopsis of core traits and tendencies out of the way, I want to point out the most obvious problem: It doesn’t fucking work. At the most basic level it doesn’t work because what do I really think I can be safe from? Do I think any measure of goodness, any type of safety, lets me escape illness, aging and death? As I said before, building good karma (which is hit or missish what I think my ‘virtuousness’ has aimed for, though I have often ended up creating bad karma instead ) certainly gives one a turn at a better life. Hell it is quite clear when I look at my very charmed life, it has worked to some degree, this is certainly a pretty good turn. But here I am still in line, and if you are in line, you are always just waiting your turn to suffer. I pinkie promise we will return to the dukka issue in depth momentarily, but first, let me offer a slightly more nuanced version of why this crazy scheme doesn’t actually work:

Years ago I was hiking and I came across a beaver dam. They are common in Connecticut, and as I looked at it it dawned on me it was a pretty well constructed beaver dam as beaver dams go. Beavers are these master builders, but I am never super impressed with the beaver. I think nothing of it because beaver life and talents are totally unimportant to me. Contrast that with a master painting, or a virtuosic symphony, the constructor of those I celebrate, I value, why –because I love art, I love music. These are things in this world I associate with myself, I build my identity with (beauty>good>safe), hell, I went so far as to create a career that I can use to identify myself with the arts. The more I considered the dam, the more clearly I understood that I am the one who selects what to ‘pay attention to’, what to value, what to interpret as meaningful. It is truly arbitrary. All the qualities I have chosen to call virtuous, all the behaviors that exemplify them, it is arbitrary, based on my own 3s and 4s, my bias. The reality is they are as meaningless as a beaver dam, to the world they are as meaningless a beaver dam, but because I am blinded by my delusion, by myself, to me these are significant and so I gather them up and use them as the building blocks of my atta mountain. But, to make this explicit –how in the hell can I expect to use an arbitrarily chosen set of actions, which I arbitrarily assign value/import to based on how well they align with an arbitrarily chosen set of traits I call virtuous, to keep me safe in a world that so clearly has no shelter? Where there is no one in charge?

And now, as pinkie promised, let’s talk a little bit about dukkha… with the caveat that there is no way I can cover all the sides and facets and levels of dukka bundled in with this nonsense even if I had 100 emails to write to you. This will be some highlights…

Starting with the fact that idolizing these traits, and then trying to ‘live-up to them’, is dukka: Let us remember, I kicked-off this practice, wailing, in the middle of a room filled with strangers about the the ‘epic struggle of trying to be safe versus trying to be compassionate’. 5 years after H1N1 was passed, long after Shak had disappeared from his usual corner in front of CVS, there I am crying about my failure to be the compassionate me I want to be. If that is not dukka I don’t know what is (actually, I do know what is…everything…). My body is plagued by physical injuries born of the extreme willpower and the extreme workouts I used to ‘prove’ it. My hypochondria, and the stress and pain it causes to both Eric and I, was born out of my futile drive to control my body. My need to apply untempered diligence to my studies wracked me with anxiety and nervousness for over two decades, from kindergarten through grad school, pushing and pushing, fearing failure not just of a test or a topic but of myself and my virtue/value as a human. By idolizing these arbitrary traits, and yoking myself with the obligation to try and manifest/embody them, I have the constant struggle to act, the continual fear of failure, and the crushing ego blow when I judge my actions fall short of the standards I have arbitrarily set for what A or B or C virtuous trait should look like. For what an Alana should look like. And since no act persists, and these virtues don’t actually inhere (that self I try to build up all solid isn’t actually solid at all), its insufficient to pass 1 test, to be fit one time, to act kindly or considerately on an occasion, no I must continually run, chase, I am on an endless treadmill to sustain my image of self.

And the dukka is not only limited to those things I call virtues, in what I find important, there is dukkha by treating stuff as trivial too… Had I not trivialized my teacher’s advice to straighten my yoga mat I might have spared my hip? Had I not trivialized Kim’s behaviors, might I have saved our friendship? Just one sentence I said to Eric a few years ago — It was less the words, “whats so wrong with finding another job later?”, it was more the tone– but he was despondent, said I was trivializing his dreams, his aspirations for an early retirement. I have rarely seen him so crushed, he cried and cried. I watched, helpless, what could I say?That was probably the moment our relationship came closest to divorce. The thing is, I’m sure I did trivialize his dreams, I trivialize his thoughts and preferences so often. It is the main source of conflict in our relationship. What about my dhamma practice -I know there are topics I have turned from, considered less important or worthy of my time– till recently dukka was one of them — how much time have I wasted by not giving these a fair or timely think? A while back, you offered an alternative explanation of a wrong view (its just a different articulation of impermanence, but it resonated): You called it having incomplete information. When I cut off a large portion of information, by trivializing it and therefore ignoring (or worse despising) it, I am binding myself to a wrong view
and we all know wrong views are the root of suffering big and small. But this pattern of mine, it is particularly insidious because by carving out the world into what is worthy of my attention and what I will turn a blind eye to, I leave myself so little wiggle room to see another side, the rest of the picture. Its not just instances of suffering, it is a big’ole trap for continued ignorance.

And now, a dukka reflection a wee bit more subtle: By defining myself, and the actions I partake in as virtuous, I shut my eyes to their peril, I act heedlessly because I believe I am exempt from negative consequence, afterall –I’m a good Alana. So now some personal history I’m not super proud of, but I really used to be a player. I had rules to my playin of course, after all I am someone with a strong sense of morality, but my rules were totally arbitrary (imagine that). I had ‘lines’ I wouldn’t cross, I told myself it was only cheating or wrong if it crossed this line –it wasn’t cheating without penetration, it wasn’t cheating if it was emotional not physical. I made sure everyone consented, “knew ahead of time” that my flings weren’t serious, there was no feeling involved –if my partners got attached that must have been their faults, after all, I so honestly and morally articulated my playerhood, my rules, before the relations. Besides –they were flings, their feelings were trivial just based on the context. Now, I look at this behavior and I am appalled –do I really think I didn’t hurt people, that there won’t be consequences to my actions just because I had ‘lines’, because I called myself a moral person following some rules? Of course that is crazy, but what it does let me see so clearly is the way my mind uses these totally made-up virtues to justify, to let me turn a blind eye to, my own actions, to be heedless while pretending I’m ‘covered’. Zoom out a little and I see this nonsense everywhere: The folks violently storming the Capitol, they were ‘protectors of democracy’, that guy who shot-up a Tops grocery in a black neighborhood in Buffalo was just, ‘defending the white race”, the Taliban is just ‘upholding the faith’.

OK , I think I have rambled long enough, and my little brain feels like it may pop, so I’ll stop here. Thank you so much, to you, Mae Yo, and LP for teaching at this retreat. I do have to say I got a ton out of the session on the 3 common characteristics. I had recently listened to the translated sermon clip on the same topic and had been powerfully stuck By LP Thoon’s speaking particularly on Anatta there, in this particular instance he uses a definition so palpable and accessible to me: Anatta as there is nothing that belongs to us, it is all meaningless. And then he asks –how is it meaningless? I have really been thinking about that one question a lot. I guess you can see echos of the answer in my assessment of arbitrary here. It was interesting to shift the focus again and think about Annatta in terms of clumps, in terms of mountains, in terms of what we solidify. It seems to me clinging and solidification go hand-in-hand;clinging is what turns the aggregates to stressful poison (Sankhittena Pancupadanakkhandha duffka), and the stuff we cling to most basically is what we think belongs to us. Wonder what happens if we stop clinging …Anyway, this topic is a lot deeper, I need more time to consider, but stay tuned, Im sure I’m going somewhere just not quite sure where yet …

Warmly,
Alana