This blog is a direct continuation on the previous blog, “Interruption Part 11: A Major Breakthrough Part 1”. If you have not read that blog yet please go ahead and read it first before you continue on with this one.

---

4. Does rupa do what I think/ want/imagine in an absolute sense or in relation to myself? 

• Is a quality fixed/innate in myself — Again I started thinking about beauty. I realized that if my 20 year old self saw my 40 year old self in the mirror she would freak the hell out. The only reason my 40 year old self sometimes (good haircut, lost weight, botoxed) can look in the mirror and give myself the pretty thumbs-up is that my nama has change the standard. Rupa may nourish nama, but it is also a limit setter/backstop. When it tells an irrefutable tale, like that I am 40 not 20, then Nama is forced to adjust its standards to cope with the reality of the situation.

The problem is that my nama is a lot like a teacher who grades on a curve. If each year her class gets dumber and dumber, being in the most recent class and get an A doesn’t really prove I am some sort of genius. It doesn’t prove the quality of smart lives in me. Just so, my curve grading nama doesn’t mean that beauty lives in me.

Each object is just an arrangement of 4es. Over the course of its life its arrangement of the 4es change over time/situation. Every object will have a peak/pinnacle look, like all fruit will have a peak ripeness. It doesn’t require any nama observer for this to be the case. This body had a peak arrangement that I would call max beauty. But it was momentary, every other arrangement before and after was sub-peak. And in fact, even at peak, it was just peak for my body arrangement: Across all time and all like objects there will be arrangements that are prettier/thinner/richer. So what this means is that even my ripeness/pretty is retaliative. Its not absolute. I am constantly working so hard, suffering so much, choosing this world over and over for a quality in rupa that is not even absolute and is definitely not permanent no matter what my curve-grading-nama-liar is trying to say.

• Whose fault is it when I need to endure a 4e arrangement I hate (spoiler alert –it is mine)? I  was thinking about a few times when I knew stuff wasn’t really really mine, I was using it temporarily, but I got ticked as hell they were taken from me, to the point of hate/vengefulness and I started trying to figure out why. The examples were:  1) I was in Zumba one day and this chick just came, stood in front of me and took my dance spot.  2) A plane trip where I paid extra for premium seats in front of the bulkhead, but because of where the bathrooms were arrange people kept using it as an aisle and stepping on me; 3) My neighbors hogging the washer.

I realized when I was thinking about taking a body and entering the ‘rupa level’ that the reason I was so angry in these cases is they made me feel like a fool for not reading the fine print. I signed the contract, I get a rupa body yay! I can arrange rupa objects according to my liking as long as it is within the acceptable arrangements of the 4es in a particular circumstance at a particular time. Fine print, there are times the rupa can’t be arranged to your liking, rupa has its own rules, you have to deal with it. You get ears to hear pretty music, but you are also going to get honking Lady. No one wants to feel a fool, no one wants to feel a chump, so I got angry , I felt belittled. In reality I took home the wrong message: the right message is “you need to stop looking to rupa to prove your ability to be master of this world. You are not. You get the power to play within this world, you don’t have super worldly abilities. I am afraid that if the washing machine is being used, you can’t wash your clothes…

• Alana the special snowflake — In winter, I love standing out and catching snowflakes when it snows. Each one has its very own unique crystal structure. They are all special snowflakes. But, each and every snowflake is a 4e object subject to the rules of rupa. They are formed at a certain temp and melt at a certain temp, living a life cycle of vapor to solid to water and back to vapor again. Sure each one is unique, but not in the critical ways that govern their nature, life and death. I realize that I use my crap to try and make me a special little Alana. The body, the clothes, that car — all accessories of my uniqueness. But, really, I am just like those snowflakes..in all the ways that matter most, in the rules that govern my 4es, I am just like every other person, every other 4e object. I have to stop thinking I am some kind of special snowflake, they don’t exist.

5. My belongings don’t have the power to always create or sustain an arrangement of rupa I want, so I suffer.  My shit is like props in a play: 

• The 4es of the actual object (prop) are always changing: My body will go through states of health and states of illness. My bath will go through states of warm and states of cooling. Since I don’t like all the arrangements (not fan of sick Alana or cold bath) I suffer.

• The scene is always changing: I liked the porsche when I was driving the back roads of Napa, but wasn’t a huge fan when I had to stop for gas in Soma. I liked my fav ring on my 30 year old hand, on my 40 year old hand it draws attention to my wrinkles. I liked my wedding ring and then I developed an allergy to the metal and stopped liking it because it caused burning rash/pain. Same objects, but in a new scene, don’t create the arrangement of rupa I want. Since  the scene is always changing, the ability to create the exact arrangement of rupa I want can’t be in the objects .

Further example: In SF life money seemed to make me happy, to continually create an arrangement of rupa I found favorable. So, I dumbly believed that money would do the same thing in NY and, even though I clearly saw when visiting I didn’t like the sounds/smells/ density/etc I believed once I threw money at the problem I would be able to arrange the form to my liking. Duh, it didn’t work and actually money made it worse: we moved for more money, so acquiring this item I thought would guarantee me a favorable arrangement of rupa got me a more unfavorable one. The reason, at most money is a factor in getting an arrangement I want but if it is a factor in getting an arrangement I want than it must also be able to be a factor in getting an arrangement I don’t want as well (I’m going to look more at this point tomorrow).

• The audience changes: I loved that NY house when I first saw it. I bought it. But then my feelings as an audience member, my feelings about NY changed. So then I didn’t like the house any more. Same object, same scene, but my feelings changed. Then, I had to suffer having the object and having to get rid of it.

• I always seem to need new props: Based on how good the last production was, I need new props to make the new play as good as or better than the last. If I had a Porsche, I can’t have a BMW or I am a loser producer.  If I had Goyard, I can’t have gap or I am a loser producer. If I am judged (by myself and others) by the quality of my play, by the successive arrangements of rupa that create a story line of my life, then the next scene, the next play has to be better than the last. But the nature of the world is that things can go up or down (ahh the bubble dilemma). Its impossible to always have better props. It is impossible to keep the props I have pristine. So, I suffer.

Anyway, there is more, but this is the basics. I have had to hack at a few hydra heads along the way, wrong views that were really delaying progress. But otherwise, I am trying to stay on the program — self and self belonging and its many facets. I realize now how much missing the 4e piece was hurting my practice. Even worse though was not understanding the difference between cause and factor; this whole dharma thing is just the truth of cause and effect in this world. To be unclear on this topic, to constantly think I am a cause where I am merely a factor (of various strengths and durations) is like wrong view quicksand — so fucking hard to escape this world when stuck in it…After all, if I am a cause, I can just try harder, work more, do better to get the effect I want since a cause always brings about an effect. But, by definition, a factor is something that ‘works’ some of the time, under some circumstances. All it takes is to see that circumstances are constantly changing, bubbles always shifting and popping, to start easing my gripping heart….