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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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