Finally, after over a year of strict isolation, I got vaccinated and was ready to burst out of my bubble and embrace the world again. But, before I could bask in the joys of my newfound freedom I had responsibilities to attend to. First and foremost, a shit ton of doctors appointments I had put off far too long. Of course, I don’t really want to go to the dentist, GYN, eye doc, etc. These things are not fun, these things…
At my first visit, my new rheumatologist asked some questions about my symptoms (I had none save the one time blue finger) and ordered additional labs. When all the results came back, I had a second appointment and the Dr. basically told me that I had markers of a possible, future autoimmune disease, but in the absence of symptoms, there was nothing to do but wait and see. I pressed her for solutions, things I could do to keep the…
Waiting for more information from the doctors, waiting for a diagnosis, waiting for the symptoms of illness to set in, waiting to get sick and die, I got to thinking more about what exactly autoimmunity is and how it is an illness that fits my own brand of crazy… What is autoimmunity — it is my own body attacking myself. It fits. It fits my personality. I am so harsh and unaccepting, of others, but especially of myself. It is part…
Suddenly, my finger turned blue, and with a momentary sting, a shock of color, my whole life changed. The pain was over in a flash. The fingers back to their normal pink within 2 days. But the Drs visit, and the subsequent lab work, uncovered abnormalities –markers of autoimmune disease — with a lingering effect. I was referred to a rheumatologist, and as I waited for my appointment with the specialist, I started down the google-rabbit-hole to try and self…
A note from present-day-alana (April, 2023): In recent years, the concept of ‘arbitrariness’ has, over time, become a core point of contemplation in my practice. As I consider the idea of ‘identity’, where it arises from, and, ultimately its hollowness, considering arbitrariness has been a key tool for me. Afterall, if the characteristics we choose to build our uniqueness – our identity— from are just arbitrarily selected, could have been anything, THIS OR THAT depending on the circumstances, can we…
I recently had begun making chanting a daily practice and, after enough rote repetition, I stated getting curious…I started reading the English, considering the meaning of the passages more closely. There were a few that really struck me, but over and over I kept coming back to a part of the morning chanting that talk about the five aggregates of clinging. Per the Buddha, those bitches bring about a whole world’o’suffering. Its all “sorrow, lamentation, pain distress and despair ……
During my daily doom-scrolling of terrible world news, and troubling medical studies, an article had popped into my feed talking about a new study establishing the link between walking speed and longevity. A few days later, Eric and I were out for a hike –I was rearing to go for an uphill sprint, Eric however was, as usual, ambling along at a snail’s pace. Recalling the recent article I had read about longevity and walking speed, a pang of dread…
With that tooth pain gone, I got to thinking more clearly, and I couldn’t help think more about what it was that tooth could teach me. Specifically my mind turned toward the relationship between form and imagination. You see, in the weeks prior to the tooth extraction I had begun to consider the question of where my stress in life comes from –what exactly is the cause of my dukka? With the extraction, it was so clear that the cause…
Yesterday, I finally had my long-suffering, cracked tooth extracted. It had been all panic leading up to the extraction: I feared the pain, I feared infection, I feared catching covid all masks-off-vulnerable in the dentist’s chair. But the tooth had reached the end of its life, and an infection of a top molar could endanger mine, so it was, at long last, so long tooth. After she had pulled it out, the dentist asked if I wanted to see the…
I was sitting in the kitchen while Eric was preparing lunch, watching as he tossed the shrimp peels, the lemon rind, the parsley stems, into the trash. Eric loves to cook. He derives so much of his value — his sense of identity — from his ability to feed and nourish others, to prepare food as delicious as it is wholesome. Cooking isn’t just what Eric does, Eric IS A COOK. The scampi was, as most of Eric’s meals are, delicious….
It was early 2021, vaccines came on the scene, and a faint light at the end of the Covid tunnel came into view. For over a year, I had almost totally isolated myself, I had practiced will, patients and fortitude in the name of protecting and preserving my health. Just as the world was starting to seem like it could be a safe place once again, I got quite a rude awakening; it turns out that even with isolation, even after vaccination, safety was nowhere to…
As promised at the start of this blog chapter, we will not be closing this part of my story with Alana the Great Understander of Karma. The truth is, the more clearly I understand karma, the more I suspect that a complete understanding of how karma operates is synonymous with enlightenment. That’s because, my most recent contemplations (March 2023) have helped me realize that not understanding karma is just one more, albeit exceptionally deep, wrong view; it is a failure…
AD: So I just finished reading LP Thoon’s sermon Line of Practice for Developments — in it he talks about how being born in a human body is like building a house. When the time is right, when you have sufficient materials, you will be born/ build a house. If you have lots of assets, it’ll be big and fancy. If you have little, it will be modest. The ‘materials’ are your karma in this analogy huh? I have been…
MN: I like this! And yeah, there seems to be an issue with how you define “bad” and “good”. Do you use the same standards to judge others as well? Or is it more about beating up Alana? AD: I am judgmental as hell on if people are being good/bad (by the ole’ alana standard) although my practice has minimized this greatly (mostly by my finding evidence I am no better than those I judge, I have double standards. This…
AD: Alright – I decided to change tactics and to see if I could make better headway coming from the karma as cookie direction instead of the karma as whammy direction. I am starting to understand how tit-for-tat would makes sense, how the debt cycle doesn’t need to be paid directly to the one who you incurred the debt with, how debts are settled in kind or degree and how the circumstance of such can arise. I have considered wider…
Yesterday I started thinking about how I can use a paradigm of ‘meeting the qualifications’ to think about dhamma (in particular self and self-belong). My goal is to reinforce the idea that Alana is not some special snowflake, she is just the same as everyone and everything else in the world — subject to causes and effects, to the rules of the world and to its common characteristics. I need to prove to myself that all the objects, qualities, experiences or accomplishments that…
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…
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…
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…
