When a friend at the temple reached-out to me to ask if I was going to attend the 2023 retreat, I said yes. Even as I was typing my reply to her, I was already thinking about my preparations, buying the tickets, what to pack, what it would feel like to see all my temple friends again after a Covid-filled-world had kept me away for so long…. And then, I caught Covid. Even as I sat at home, bored in…
Story 2) In a class, Mae Neecha told a story from when she was on swim team. She was the best swimmer on the team, so when it was time to vote for a captain she was certain she would be elected. But in the end, the other teammates chose a girl who was more popular, albeit a worse swimmer. As I considered her story, it was very clear that if being captain were really about her, then there is…
A note from present day Alana: Back in April 2023, a notion was just beginning to take shape in my mind: That which is conditional can’t be about me, it can’t be who I am. At that time, the concept was pretty blurry, and the contemplations, frankly, half baked. But –spoiler alert – over the last few years, this idea has become central to my contemplations on Anatta. Now, whenever I ask myself the core questions: Why is this situation…
I have been watching the show The Walking Dead. For those of you who have not seen it, it is a zombie apocalypse show: The premise is simple, if you get bitten by a zombie, you turn into a zombie. The show follows the humans who are still left, as they try to navigate a world with more and more Zombie (and fellow human) perils. This whole season has followed a main plot point: Sofia, one of the children of…
Eric and I stayed in a hotel that, despite a high price point, and a luxury brand, was truly a dump. Throughout my stay, I reflected on the business practices that I observed that clearly led to such crappy customer service, crappy maintenance, crappy follow-through on promises made. The cause and effect was so clear. I didn’t particularly enjoy the stay, but when I considered the property and the guest experience as a whole, I didn’t really take it personally,…
I got lip fillers. Afterwards, I bruised and got weird little bumps I worried would take months to go away. I get the fillers to control my body, to prove that I can force it into a shape I find aesthetically appealing. But what does it say that, in the act of getting these fillers, I actually trigger the opposite effect than the one I desire? Thanks to the fillers, now I end up with bruises that are outside of…
A few days after I began the antibiotics for strep, my angry, red, raw throat began to subside. Now it was my vagina’s turn. Ugghhh, the familiar burning, itching, angry pain of an antibiotic triggered yeast infection was upon me. As I waddled over to the Walgreens to get myself some Monistat, I started thinking… Even when I can take actions to seemingly control this body, i.e. take antibiotics to cure strep, there are consequences, in this case a yeast…
I kicked off the new year of 2023 with a bad case of strep. Given the ‘tripledemic’, the myriad of flu-covid-strep plague of diseases the news says is going around, it really shouldn’t be a huge the surprise that I got sick. The problem is, it was…. A few days into the new year my throat started to really hurt. Naturally, I took a PCR test, it was negative. Since I didn’t have any other respiratory disease symptoms –no runny…
Recently, I had been re-watching the show The Wire. In it, there is a character Bubbles who is a drug addict. Bubbles suffers for his addiction, he lives in poverty, he is estranged from his family, he faces danger and violence, a part of him wants to quit, but over and over, the drugs draw him back in. In the show, there is a scene where Bubbles and his friend are getting high. A smile of intense pleasure crosses his…
Recently, I finalized my move down to Florida. In Connecticut, there are still some people who choose to be Covid cautions and when I go to the grocery, or the salon, or the theatre, I am not the only person there wearing a mask. Florida is different, no one else seems to mask here and when I go out I feel super self-conscious. It doesn’t help that I can see the stares, have heard the murmurs, have actually been directly…
Recently, I had an old friend reach-out to me, she emailed –knowing I am a practitioner– looking for ‘Buddhisty advice’ on her troubled marriage. I did my best to help her in accordance with the dharma. And in my explaining it to her, in recounting a number of my own old ah-ha moments, I was able to see a few points so much more clearly. Here I will recount a bit of what I wrote her, and then my re-reflections…
Recently, I had an old friend reach-out to me, she emailed –knowing I am a practitioner– looking for ‘Buddhisty advice’ on her troubled marriage. I did my best to help her in accordance with the dharma. And in my explaining it to her, in recounting a number of my own old ah-ha moments, I was able to see a few points so much more clearly. Here I will recount a bit of what I wrote her, and then my re-reflections…
I was watching the trees outside my window, now that it is nearly winter, and the leaves mostly fallen, the evergreens seem more exciting. Just a few weeks ago, when most of the other trees were in the full glory of their fall colors, I maligned those same evergreens, boring trees, that wouldn’t change color and that blocked the view of all the splendid foliage across the lake. Now though I am grateful to have the evergreens… It made me…
I was thinking about the Mahājanaka Jataka again: In it, The Bodhisattva is a king who, strolling through the royal gardens comes to two mango trees, one with fruit and the other barren. He pulls a mango off the fruited tree and eats it, it was delicious, and he made a note to himself to hit-up the tree again after his walk so he could have some additional fruit before he headed back to the palace. At the end of…
Years ago, I was watching a TV show: There was a monster had taken over the town. She excreted a venom that lulled the whole town into a mass delusion; instead of seeing her as the monster she was, they were deluded into seeing her as a beautiful and benevolent ruler. Everyone was happy and got along, but the venom was just to pacify the people, a drug to keep them mollified while she ate them one by one. Only…
I have been thinking about atta a lot lately, using various angles, but especially considering it from the perspective of my body and belongings: How I ignorantly try and use rupa to reify my sense of self and the reality, which LP Thoon says so clearly, that “anatta is that nothing belongs to us, it is meaningless.” I have been homing-in on the feelings I have gotten from objects which, in the past, I considered to be mine; I have…
I started contemplating on a pile of clothes that I had set aside to sell at the consignment store. Each item had a story about why it no longer fits in my wardrobe, or my body, or my lifestyle: So many reasons I was parting ways with each item. Details. But the overarching story is the same – the item goes when circumstance changes. When the circumstances change, the item no longer hangs out with me. I have long thought…
I got to considering further examples of how all ‘my’ objects/people and I are only hangin’ temporarily: We are brought together by circumstance, and parting ways based on circumstances. I decided to dive a bit deeper into what this really proves. What it can show me about my continual exercise of identity building vis-a-vie ‘my’ objects. Let’s again review data of the wedding ring: Before I had the ring, it meant nothing to me, it reflected no identity, meaning or…
I was in Zumba class, and I heard a song about a guy peering in the window of his ex’s house; he was heartbroken that she was busy fucking someone new now. As I danced along, I started to think, “if someone can fuck someone new, was them fucking you ever really saying something about you? Did it make you special?” I continued contemplating after the class ended. I landed on my beloved wedding ring, which I had lost decades ago:…
