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Conversations on Karma Part 7: Some Further Guidance and Tips from Mae Neecha

April 28, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

AD: OK, another qq from Eric — are you manifesting the specific punishment? If so how, how do you control someone else to poison you because you previously poisoned someone? MN: You don’t. it’s like a job opening. it doesn’t even have to necessarily be that specific person coming back to poison you. If you have a karmic opening for “being poisoned” then whoever can fulfill that job (to fulfill their own karma) can do it. But you know you’ve…

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Conversations on Karma Part 6: My Trouble With Tit-For-Tat, This for This, That for That Karma

April 21, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

Mae Neecha sent a few more resources, additional Buddhist stories of past lives, to help educate my karma contemplations further. I am linking the stories she sent here as they are salient to the conversation below, so please check-out the stories before reading on: https://www.wisdomlib.org/buddhism/book/the-great-chronicle-of-buddhas/d/doc365081.html https://www.tipitaka.net/tipitaka/dhp/verseload.php?verse=133 AD: the Kāḷavaḷiya story is simply that the tendency of the wife is bravery (in all this the husband benefits by association, which also makes sense to me). It takes bravery to give up…

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Conversations on Karma Part 5: Mūgapakkha Jātaka and My First Inkling Karma May Not in Fact be About Me.

April 14, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

Eric and I had recently watched the Wonder Woman movie. I mentioned to him how much I liked the film, how much I got out of it: The idea that getting what we desire has 2 sides. That once we know the truth of the cost of our decisions, we can make better decisions. In reply, Eric poked fun of me, he asked why it was that a hit-you-over the head morality tale, like Wonder Woman, was something I could both…

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Conversations on Karma Part 4: Some Advice Brings Some Clarity and Motivation

March 31, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

MN: The main thing is the normalization of certain behaviors/ways of thinking/views – this is what we act out day to day without stopping to question ourselves – this is at the foundation of karma/deeds. Like you mentioned, once you do it once, the second time is easier. Then you keep doing it until it becomes who you are, until you don’t even see that there are other options to choose from. We aim to satisfy our desires, but don’t…

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Conversations on Karma Part 3: What a Murderer Can Teach Me About Karma

March 24, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

AD: I was able to find and read stories of most of the Angulimara births you mentioned, though I couldn’t find the tortoise story anywhere, I have heard it before and I just wanted to share a few thoughts: — For you Dear Reader, in the story, Angulimara is born a giant tortoise who comes upon a sinking ship filled with 1000 people. He takes mercy on them and saves them from drowning by carrying them all on his back…

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Conversations on Karma Part 2: Looking for Clarity from the Classics like Isidasi, Angulimara and Nucky Thompson (from HBO’s Boardwalk Empire)

March 17, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

MN: Not magic, just the result of karma. Maybe think small scale first, then expand the same concept to bigger scale. Isidasi, Khujjutara, all the others in the Jatakas – their actions led to karma. Try looking at the result of karma in terms of the five precepts. That might be a good start. What happens (short term) to people who lie? Steal? Kill? Commit adultery? Spend their days intoxicated? What happens (long term in this lifetime) people who lie?…

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Conversations on Karma Part 1: Some Rambling and Blind Stabbing

March 10, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

Dear Readers, as I explained in the intro to this blog ‘chapter’, near the end of 2020, the topic of karma came crashing into my contemplations, and I decided that rather than my usual M.O. — box it up and bury it for later — I would finally take the topic of karma on head-on. Once again, Mae Neecha was a massive help to me: She was a guide, a teacher, a sounding-board, a conversation partner, and a ‘fact checker’…

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Introduction: Karma’s a Bitch

March 3, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

Karma is the law of the universe – it is cause and effect – and as such, it is basically the foundation of Buddhism and all the Buddha’s teachings. You would think any ‘good Buddhist’ would have a good grasp of karma, or at least try to consider it, and mind it on occasion… So, I will begin this blog chapter with an honest confession… until rather recently, I just ignored karma. Yup, alana-the-striving-to-be-good-Buddhist, came-up against questions of karma and…

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Something of A Sum-Up: A Note to Mae Neecha Part 2

February 17, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

This blog post is a direct continuation of the last, Something of A Sum-Up: A Note to Mae Neecha Part 1, if you have not already done so, please go back and read the last post before continuing here. Anyway, one more contemplation set from yesterday that considered the suffering that arises because of my chain’o’crazy. I was online shopping for a new rug (to solve the problem BTW that the old one, did as rupa shit is wont to do, and…

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Something of A Sum-Up: A Note to Mae Neecha Part 1

February 10, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

By Mid-November 2021 I had begun to feel like my rupa contemplations, spurred on by pandemic living, were gelling into a more comprehensive understanding. I reached-out to Mae Neecha to give her an update which I will share here. Given the length, I will divide my note to her, as well as her reply, into a few blogs for ease of reading. Hey Mae Neecha– I sure do hope this email finds you and Mae Yo well. I really just…

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One of Those Big Aha Moments: Apparently, a Fit Body Doesn’t = Extreme Willpower

February 3, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

OK, so a little background first…over the years of my practice I had repetitively returned to one of those crazy pervasive wrong views that I just couldn’t shake: A fit body = extreme willpower. Of course, I knew it was a wrong view, that it was permanent; I had done countless exercises gathering evidence of all the times a fit body doesn’t equal extreme willpower (how easy was it to be fit without trying in my teens, how much more…

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Tickin’ On Without Me

January 27, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

I was in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror, doing my usual morning beauty routine — lotions, positions, facercize, hair removal — and going through my usual mental exercise as well. Regularly, as I attend to my body, I try and remind myself that the reason I labor, I suffer, so meticulously beautifying and grooming is because of my delusion that this face, this body represents me, it is who I am. This morning though, my mind wandered a little…

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Sand to Make A Fool of Me

January 20, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

I had been reading the NY Times and I came across an article that completely blew my mind: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/science/what-makes-sand-soft.html — it was about sand. Apparently, this seemingly simple, everyday substance poses one of the deepest challenges to physics, so much so that despite the efforts of some of science’s greatest minds, there exists no ‘general theory of sand’. Even in a closed system, like an hourglass, where you know the shape and size of the particles encased, the variables of how…

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Lessons of the Leaves 2

January 13, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

In the fall of 2020, with Covid still raging, and Eric and I still ‘sheltering in place’, we decided it was time to rent a country home — at least if we were going to be isolated, we could do it with plenty of space to spread out in. We found a nice sized home in Northern CT and signed a lease. Suddenly, all of my thoughts were consumed with the stresses of moving (in a pandemic no less);…

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A Hotel Room and Its Accompaniments

January 6, 2023 alana Comments 0 Comment

I started thinking that this Alana life — the body and the samutti that is Alana — is like a hotel room. While I am a guest, I get all the accompaniments to the rooms: I can use the pillows, robes, slippers, objects that ‘belong to the room’ (i.e self belongings) and I receive the status of being a guest at the property with the accompanying treatment (the way I get treated as Alana the degreed professional, or Alana the accomplished yogi)….

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There is Nothing Special About Being a Cause

December 23, 2022 alana Comments 0 Comment

Following my retreat, I sent a few updates to Mae Neecha about my contemplations, progress and ongoing work; this is the second blog recapping those messages Part 2 – Second Email I wanted to follow-up on my email yesterday with just a little more deep dive on 1 issue that has been weighing on me –the idea that because I can be a cause I am somehow special, or my objects (especially body) represent me, or something I cause in the rupa world otherwise…

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20,000 Leagues to Sotapanahood

December 16, 2022 alana Comments 0 Comment

Following my retreat, I sent a few updates to Mae Neecha about my contemplations, progress and ongoing work; here is a recap of those messages. Part 1 — First Email Last night I was thinking back to a very strong childhood memory: as a young kid, my parents would take me to Disneyworld and I would rush to my very favorite ride –20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was a Jules Verne themed ride where you got into a ‘submarine’ and got…

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Bite Me

December 9, 2022 alana Comments 0 Comment

I had an adorable pair of socks, they had a little cartoon apple on them and below the smiling apple face, they said ‘bite me’. When I saw those socks in the store, they made me chuckle aloud; I bought them imagining all the platies and yoga classes I would attend, where everyone could see my socks and laugh along with me, basking in my cleverness and my rye sense of humor. Now, the socks were starting to become threadbare, in…

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The Poison Pill of Sometimes

December 2, 2022 alana Comments 0 Comment

After days using the exercise from the Anatta-Lakkhana sutra to contemplate my belongings and my body it started to become increasing clear to me that each object I contemplated on –every object in the world — is just marching through the shifting states of rupa. Clearly it isn’t you, you cant say that any of the 4 elements in any given combination, that will definitely disaggregate, is you. It isn’t representative of you either — it represents its march – its process of entropy, its process of…

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