The insurance on my condo building was coming due, but before our insurer would issue a policy renewal, they needed some information from each unit owner. Most of the owners replied immediately, but, as usual, there was one unit’s owners – we will call them ‘the trouble owners’ – who failed to respond.

Multiple times, the insurer, and other owners and I tried to reached-out to these people, multiple times they ignored communication. Finally, a day before our policy was due to lapse, I got a hold of the trouble owners and was able to get the information the insurer needed to prevent our entire building losing insurance.

I was so angry, these people are slum lords that regularly ignore their apartment, ignore their responsibilities as owners. The are constantly an obstacle: Delaying the entire building’s ability to react to emergencies, preventing routine maintenance, seriously, they  almost left all of us uninsured.

As I sat, trying to decompress after days of stress, worrying we would lose insurance, I decided to try using Mae Neecha’s technique of bringing everything back to nature, to the elements, to consider this situation.

 In fact, I had been using this technique a lot lately;  I have found it a very powerful way to think about anatta, because by realizing some situation is perfectly common in nature, it helps me see it can’t really be about me, it can’t confirm me. It proves that my views, my expectations, are against what is actually perfectly natural. It is my views that must be wrong.

I’m upset at the trouble owners because I believe there are appropriate behaviors – ways owners are SUPPOSED to act, responsibilities they are SUPPOSED to fulfill. They are an obstacle to the condo building running smoothly. But this theme, creating obstacles is a perfectly natural state: A lake creates an obstacle for a forest fire. Land creates an obstacle for the ocean. So it’s normal. I should feel better, right? But as I sat, still fuming, it’s clear, I don’t.

I thought about it more, these trouble owners aren’t just an obstacle to the building, they are an obstacle to something much dearer to me — my number 1 hot-button issue – these owners are an obstacle to my safety. Over and over, their behavior has put me at risk. Losing insurance, that’s just the most recent danger. I can’t help but think that these trouble owners are the one thing that stand in the way of my perfectly safe home. Without them, I would be happy, I would win. I could have my dream place, free of the dangers that come from delinquency and neglect.

But the truth is, if I am being clear-headed, the trouble owners are PART OF THE HOME. They were there before I even bought the place. They aren’t some obstacles to overcome, they are an actual part of the system. Now, I can feel my heart loose a little as I consider the absurdity of my hope that if I could just separate out this part of the home –a part that is obviously integral, these are neighbors in a condo building, that’s part of condos – I’d be ‘safe’.  

When I zoom out, it gets even more clear: Land isn’t an obstacle to the ocean, look at the globe and there is water and land. Both are part of topography. Sometimes water overcomes land, like in a flood, and sometimes land pushes back water, like in a land slide, in either case, these are both just temporary states in a system. What is consistent is there is always both. Wishing for only one part of a system, the one I like better, is holding a fool’s hope. There is nothing there but suffering.

More broadly though, I always want safety. I want an environment that is safe, so that I can protect this body. I want a home that is safe so I can protect this body, and not endanger the resources I use to protect this body i.e. I don’t want a total loss of a home without insurance coverage as that would be financially devastating. I want Eric to have a job that is safe, so I have the resources to project this body. I want freedom from disease, so I can protect this body. I want a society that is predictable, polite, stable, because I associate those things with safety for my life, for my body. I struggle with lack of safety, loss, insufficient resources. This is over and over again my theme.   

Taken to the logical extreme, on some level I think I can be safe, avoid loss of life, of belongings, like there is actual some move I can make, some state of affairs in which I can finally one up this whole system that is shifting states, impermanence loss. But dropping dead is part of life. Losing is part of having. It’s not a thing anyone can just overcome or escape. I can’t be alive and then just ‘be safe’ from those states, they are part of life. Being ‘safe’ from those things is meaningless. Me, I am holding a fool’s hope. There is nothing there but suffering.

On another level of course, I know all of this. We all know all of this. Which is why we are all playing for duration. Just a little longer with what I ‘have’, with what I love. A little more heath, a bit better functioning. Just slightly more responsible neighbors.  I want a little less suffering, or to only have the kinds and degree of suffering I feel I can carry and accept. I want a little more water, or a bit more land. Enough to create an environment that suits me. I want that, hope for that, try to optimize for that. I try to navigate in tiny wiggles against the forces of this world’s currents  without actually having any final say, any true control, of floods or landslides, ocean currents or volcanos.

 Knowingly, I came into a world of suffering, of loss, of impermanence betting on the fact that I can ‘beat the house’. Such a fool’s errand just to try to have as much comfort/time/safety as I can, as long as I can. Lifetime after lifetime I get myself re- born trying to ‘solve’ the wrong side of the equation. I spend so much force, karma, efforting, just to get a little more – a little more time, a little more pleasure, a little more stability. This is stupid. The best way to avoid suffering, loss, instability is to get out of situations, out of a world in which those features are woven into the fabric of the place. At least, its not hopeless, an impermanent  world offers a gift –the fact that I don’t have to stay here for ever.