A while back I went to visit a 6.5 acre sculpture called Opus-40. The artist, Harvey Fite, spent 40 years living and working at the sculpture site, hewing stones from the land, carefully carving them and laying them into a massive, towering labyrinth. It was his life’s work, a reflection of his artistic vision, his sense of himself as an artist. It was also his death: At 72, Harvey, fell into a quarry while trying to haul up more stones to expand his work.

The story really got me thinking about the seeming irony that ‘our objects’ can kill us. My dad died of pancreatic cancer, his own cells consumed him. My doctors told me I have blood markers for an autoimmune disease, my body, at any time, can literally begin attacking itself. Cancer, autoimmune disease, really those are just details, particular ways particular bodies kill people. By definition though, every body will kill everyone.

Death is a direct result of birth into this body (and as a happy bonus it also guarantees aging and sickness along the way); every body is anatta, cessation is fundamental to its nature, as soon as a form aggregates it begins its continual, shifting march toward disaggregation; the seeds of destruction arise with arising.

Whatever entity/identity I think Alana to be, I certainly don’t imagine she just anticlimactically –pointlessly – ends. The last thing that my sense of self, that came into this world to spin the tales I believe allow me to be/become, wants is anatta/entropying/de-clumping/shifting outside a state I can still credibly call myself a ‘me’.

And yet, this body, by design, promises that ending. How is it I mistake my body as a tool to become, the scaffolding upon which I can build a me, when its true nature is to cease. Its true nature is to 100% ensure the cessation of any story I graft onto it because it is a fragile, shifting, breakable, 4e form crumbles. Isn’t it better to reject this thing as me and with it reject all the disappointment that arises each and every time it proves damn well not to be me, not to have my interests, agenda, stories, at heart? Probably, and yet, I cling, and invite the world of dukkha that comes for the clinging and inevitable disappointment…

My mind needs further evidence that this body is not mine:

Its not mine because it defies my sense of who I am:

I was a yogi, but my SI joint kept coming out of place, causing me intense pain and eventually forcing me to quit yoga. For so long, I felt like practice was disciplining my body, forcing it to take a form, to have characteristics and abilities I wanted. It was proof I was in charge. That if I set my mind to doing something I could do it, I could force rupa into my control.

But ultimately, the very forms I forced my body into caused it to hurt, to break, to prevent me from continuing the activities I had used to shape and define it–to define myself, to prove my supremacy of my will. In the end the body defied my sense of self. It destroyed the identity of Alana the yogi and undermined the very supremacy of will over body I was trying to prove with that identity/set of activities.

Because of the body I had to quit the activity, loose the shape I loved, felt was ‘me’, leave the community I had grown close to. In almost no time, the body lost the ability to perform the poses, it lost the strength and flexibility that I had put so much effort and practice into. Wasn’t all that work meaningless if the results I identified with faded as soon as I stopped?
I claimed to be yogi-alana, I used the shapes I meticulously trained my body to make as the proof that I was diligent, in control, supreme in my force of will. But can my body ‘prove’ that meaning when my will/my control could be overridden by something as trivial as a little joint? Isn’t this body meaningless if by dying it erases the entire narrative I think is me, my Raison d’être to write?

Its not mine because it shames me:

After walking a whole summer, my first real foray into ‘fitness’, I thought I was so fit, invincible, I had a new power, a new ability and I was proud. Right until I was in Africa, fresh off my summer of walking, and we got to the sand dunes. All my friends poured off the bus, and a few of the fitter ones went to run straight up the dune rather than walk with the older, weaker folks up the meandering path. I ran to follow the fit folks, I identified as a fit Alana, only to quickly begin slipping and sliding in the sand, unable to make it to the top. I was so embarrassed. My body had failed me.

The ability I had been so proud of was no match to the dune. Instead of just walking up the meandering path, which would not have drawn attention, I got stuck in the sand and had to backtrack, making my humiliation deeper. Worse than the body not sustaining my identity privately, it shamed me publicly.

I think body is a reflection of self, a physical manifestation of the traits I ‘own’, that I define myself with. So how do I reconcile that with regular humiliation? Humiliation of farting, smelling. Humiliation of cold sores. Humiliation of sunspots and red spots. Humiliation of fat. Humiliation when I can’t keep up on a run in a group fitness class. Humiliation of my jowls and double chin. Doesn’t humiliation prove my body isn’t reflecting the self I imagine, that it doesn’t perfectly embody some traits, like fitness or beauty, that I ‘possess’, better yet the meaning I ascribe to these traits?

It’s not mine because it changes into states I hate:

Before I gave it away, I tried on my wedding dress one last time. A dress that 15 years before had made me look thin and fit and radiant, didn’t zip. It made me look like I was bulging in all the wrong places, soft and doughy.

I had been so proud of the figure I cut in that dress, I so keenly remember my sense of satisfaction and accomplishment when I looked in the mirror at my final fitting and imagined my big day, everyone looking at me, seeing in that dress – that figure that I had worked out hard to achieve – what a catch I was. Women would be envious of me, men jealous of Eric. I believed that figure/dress proved something about myself, my value, my desirability.

I have always imagined beauty to be a physical reflection of value, a proof of goodness, the great sign of special. And for a moment, my body had taken a shape I thought of as beautiful, and I had used that shape as evidence that I myself had a particular meaning — valuable, good and special.

But here I was, in a dress unchanged, that now made this body look ugly and undesirable. If old body proved my greatness, then new body must — by extension — prove my failure, my lack of value, naughtiness showing in my ugliness.

Of course, that not what I thought: Sure, I was a little disappointed, but I quickly comforted myself with the logic ‘no one’s body stays the same over 15 years’, ‘ compared to my peers, I still look good’. I let the benchmarks slide, re-defined my standard for beauty enough that I could retain my sense of self as valuable. One day, when no stretch of the imagination will allow me to call myself beautiful, I will just change the ‘rules’ again, find some other characteristic to attach my sense of value to.

If I were being honest, I would have to ask myself how 2 totally different bodies, forms of radically different shapes, can both be a confirmation of the same value and specialness? The answer is they can’t be. But I am stuck with this body, and my need to define myself with it means I need to make allowances, shifts in expectations, excuses. But these shifts, they betray the truth that this body’s continually shifting states, that its ultimate cessation, is antithetical to having some special meaning or identity. This is just ideas I project onto them.

Its not mine because it can go from tool to liability:

For my whole life I have identified as a traveler, an adventurer, an explorer. I crave seeing what is just beyond the horizon, I want to explore what is new and different; not just to amuse myself, but to be, to become, to find new things and places to identify with. Where I am has never been enough, part of my story –the narrative I envision for myself – is something new, something better, ‘over there’.

My life has been punctuated by moves to new cities, vacations to exotic locations, even just explorations of new cities, new neighborhoods. And then the lockdowns came. Suddenly, a life punctuated by exploration was confined to my tiny Greenwich apartment. For 18 months I was grounded. The body that was a tool to explore the world, to find new details of the narrative of self and future, was suddenly not a tool. It was a liability. The body that ventured out could be stricken by a new mysterious disease.

To accommodate risks to my body, I had to stop doing what I loved, I had to stop being the me I wanted to be. For most of my life, the meaning I have assigned to this body is an instrument of my will. It is there to be used as I see fit, to actualize the story and self I imagine. This is body as tool. But that a single change in circumstance –a pandemic –can make this same 4e a liability proves the meaning isn’t in the rupa.