Most Recent Post – Page 12 – Alana's Dharma Blog

That Was Then and This is Now: Contemplations From the 2018 Retreat Part 1

January 8, 2021 alana Comments 0 Comment

Dear Reader, here we have the contents of an email I sent to Mae Neecha rehashing my contemplations during, and just following, the 2018 retreat. This is looooonnnggggg, and made longer by a rather generously portioned ‘later day note’, so I will divide it into 2 blogs. A little background: LP Anan was telling stories about the Buddha’s wife and before he really got started he said something that set me off – Siddhartha abandoned his family just after the…

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Farewell Ukiah Gardens

December 25, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

Taking a break from the hot springs, we decided to head over to our favorite restaurant in town to grab some lunch — Ukiah Gardens, here we come!!! Eric and I have been coming to the hot springs in Ukiah for years. We have a routine, a favorite cabin we always stay in, a favorite coffee place, a few shops downtown that we like to stop into and — above all else — Ukiah Gardens. Everything there is done with…

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A Less Than Relaxing Day at the Hot Springs

December 18, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

I was at my favorite hot springs, lounging in one of the bathtubs, warm water and blissful serenity washing over me. Then suddenly, I heard the roaring sound of a jackhammer in the not distant enough distance — goddamn construction totally fucking with my chi . So annoying!!! Out of nowhere, it hit me — if I actually controlled my body, I wouldn’t hear the noise. I could just shut it off at my ears, or in my head. If…

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The Cost of Special

December 11, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

As I was listening to NPR podcasts, a story teaser came on about a woman who was sexually assaulted and her journey navigating the justice system to bring her attacker to trial. I was interested, so I clicked the button to ‘hear the full story now’. The woman’s story began with a night she was drunk and decided to try and buy drugs from a stranger. She went for a ride in his car to go and pickup the drugs and…

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The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

December 4, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

This contemplation is one of the first times I really considered the cost and suffering of building wealth. It is not that I didn’t understand that money, like everything else, has two sides previously, I did. But this was the first time I viscerally understood that a dominant pattern in Eric and my life — sacrificing now to create savings that would bring us future happiness — might actually be delusional on many levels. First off, there is no guarantee…

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8 Precepts

November 20, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

Having recently signed a 1 year-long contract to consult with my old company, I got to thinking how strange it is to have a deadline to my commitment. For 9 years, I had worked at the same company as a regular employee, but somehow, now, having a time-specified contract, felt different. It got me to start considering how fixed my view of commitment is in general. I mean sure, I had left jobs, ended assignments and called off relationships in…

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When is Enough Enough?

November 13, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

As I sat on the floor of my Manhattan flat, the same thought kept circling in my brain “I’m stuck. I hate my life, I regret having come to this place, I am suffering here and now. How is this not enough to convince me of the suffering in this world? How is this not enough to motivate me to let go of my clinging?” The answer is simple, hope is fucking me. I keep hoping I can somehow get back…

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It’s Always Temporary

November 6, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

Back when I was a teenager, I refused to wear control top pantyhose when I had to go to an event, I felt like sporting the slimming-squishing-tummy-effect was fraudulent somehow. It was a cheat, not my body. I felt like because the effect was temporary, I shouldn’t try and pass it off as mine. That is the first time I can clearly remember the use of ‘the formula’ in my life: temporary = not mine. Fast-forward 30ish years: I was…

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A Little Here and a Little There

October 30, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

Eleven months after my ill fated move to New York, a few months after opening my own consulting business, I got a call: My successor at my old company had up and left, my old boss wanted to know if I could help fill in for a little while until they found someone else. I loved my old job and all the folks I worked with, I need new clients for my new business anyway, so I said, yes. I committed…

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Redux: Odds, Ends and some final thoughts on Hate

October 23, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

So Dear Reader, as a re-cap, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and interrupting this nice, orderly, temporally linear(ish) blog about my practice with an intrusion from the present day…. inspired by the filth, noise, overcrowding and rudeness of NYC…I bring you part four in my blog about hate. Last week, we left off with a real shift, a lightening of my hate load brought about by my seeing it for what it really is —…

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Redux Part 3: Why Ya Gotta Be Such a Hater 2.0

October 16, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

So Dear Reader, as a re-cap, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and interrupting this nice, orderly, temporally linear(ish) blog about my practice with an intrusion from the present day…. inspired by the filth, noise, overcrowding and rudeness of NYC…I bring you part three in my blog about hate. We left off last week with a moment of realization: Hate is not built into the situations where I feel hateful, the seed of hate lies in my heart. So,…

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Redux: Why Ya Gotta Be Such a Hater?

October 9, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

So Dear Reader, as a re-cap, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled program and interrupting this nice, orderly, temporally linear(ish) blog about my practice with an intrusion from the present day…. inspired by the filth, noise, overcrowding and rudeness of NYC…I bring you part two in my blog about hate. We left off last week exploring all the pain and suffering that comes with being a hater. So, the question DeJour: If it hurts so bad, why…

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Redux: Yet Another Interruption in our Regularly Scheduled program Part 1: Haters Gonna Hate

October 2, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

Well Dear Reader, it is once again that time when we need to put some of our ‘Interruption In Our Regularly Scheduled Program” Blogs — entries that were written’ real time’ and out of the order of this orderly (ish) blog that tracks the progress of my practice since its inception — back into their chronological place. The next few entries will be about my big ah-ha moments surrounding the cause and costs of my hate for New York. It…

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A Topic That Never Gets Old — Me and Mine, Again…Revisited (Again and Again it Seems)

September 25, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

Immediately after I wrote the blog post, A Topic the Never Gets Old — Me and Mine Again, I wrote the following journal entry which I will share in full (with a few modifications for clarity) here: I was working on a blog about self and self belongings. It is so clear that I collect items, claim them as my own, in order to reinforce my sense of identity, to prove my Alananess to myself and the world. But a deeper…

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Sand Drawings Revisited

September 18, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

Immediately after I wrote the blog post Sand Drawings I wrote the following journal entry which I will share in full (with a few modifications for clarity) here: After I wrote the sand drawing blog I started thinking — how am I changing, decaying, just bits of matter, aggregated together, subject to decay like other bits of aggregated mater that exist in the world? Don’t my teeth wear away like kitchen knives? Doesn’t my skin dry and crack and sag like the…

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On a Rupa Roll

September 11, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

I already had rupa on the brain, so it wasn’t surprising that I found myself on a bit of a rupa roll. Sitting in my apartment one day, I started looking around at my stuff and I asked myself, “Do you really understand these items? Do you know what they are and what they do?” My eyes fell on my favorite stuffed animal — Grux — a real fur bunny toy that Eric had bought me, for a small fortune,…

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A Bubble World Filled With Stuff

September 4, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

In all my contemplations about my ‘shield of special’ and my little bubble world — fabrications of my mind that let me imagine an Alana who is safe and comfortable and exempt from the suffering of the world — it was hard to ignore the obvious: My bubble world is full of stuff. I pin my ideas of what is ‘safe’ in my environment, on my belongings like houses and money and a husband that will shield my from unwanted…

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My Shield of Special

August 21, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

I was at the hot springs and there was this woman there who was so obese. I tried to internalize what it would be like to be so fat, but my heart refused to accept it. The contemplation was shallow, going through the motions, but feeling nothing. I realized the reason why: I don’t believe I can ever be that fat — I am different, I work-out and mind my diet, that won’t happen to me. But the truth is,…

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Striving for the Impossible

August 14, 2020 alana Comments 0 Comment

One of the key themes the exercises on uncovering hidden benefits and beliefs kept coming back to was that I continually quest for/seek to build a ‘bubble world*‘ — the kind of place where everyone lives in harmony, according to the rules and standards I think are ideal. In my bubble world, people are respectful and considerate, they are laid-back and peaceful, they are community-oriented and friendly. After living in Cali, fairly happy, for so long, my bubble world had…

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