The next few blogs — written as in the days I awaited my cervical biopsy results — are a return to an exercise, from the Anatta-lakkhana Sutra, that I had been doing during my 2020 personal retreat. As a little reminder, the exercise was a series of questions, framed as a conversation between the Buddha and the practitioner, to guide contemplation on the nature of self in regard to our bodies and our physical belongings. The contemplation begins by taking an object that we own and considering whether or not that object is really under our control. It then imagines the Buddha asking the following questions to which one must formulate a reply:

“Alana, is your ____ (object chosen for contemplation) constant or inconstant?”

“And Alana, is something that is inconstant stress full or easeful?”

“Is it fitting to regard what is inconstant, stressful, subject to change as: ‘This is mine’. ‘This is my self’. ‘This is what I am’?”

The same considerations and questions are then internalized and applied to one’s body. Rinse and repeat. So hi ho, hi ho, its back to rupa we go…

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This Computer is Not Mine

This computer is not my own. If it were mine it would not be showing signs of aging in just 3 years. The screen would not be covered in crust and dirt, the keys wouldn’t be sticky and crumb filled. The period key wouldn’t be sunken and weak, hard to press and use. If this computer were actually mine it would glisten and shine and be a reflection of my “clean, crisp, in control self, whose belongings prove to the world just how clean and crisp and buttoned up I am.”

If the computer were truly mine, the storage space would not be filling-up, it would be more ample — there would always be capacity to hold onto and save everything I need. The computer wouldn’t be slowing and stalling, hanging on sites when I want to move faster. If this computer were actually mine it would bend to my desires, it would function as I believe a computer should –as I “know” for a fact this very computer should, because that is how it acted in the past.

If this computer were truly mine, I wouldn’t be looking at its worn down shell, I wouldn’t be registering its symptoms of declining battery life, and slow processing and worry to myself, “I may not be able to count on this computer much longer, I may be left high and dry when I need it most for work, or when we don’t have as much money that I can easily replace it”.

If my computer were truly under my control, I could shut my eyes, click my heels three times and say be back to new, be back to shiny and speedy and new and when I opened them the computer would have its just out of the box luster back again. Honestly, if it were truly mine to control, it would never have lost that luster to begin with.

So is the computer constant or inconstant — Clearly Great Lord, the computer is inconstant: It started sleek and shiny and clean. Now it is dull, dinged, dingey and dirty. It started speedy, with long battery life and full of space. Now it is slower, needs more frequent charging and is running out of room.

And is that which is inconstant easeful or stressful?  It is quite clearly stressful My Lord. I look at the accumulation of dirt and I feel disgust. I try and use the period key and I feel inconvenienced when it doesn’t work. When the computer freezes and slows, I feel annoyed it is not going at the speed I want, it is slowing me down. And I am continually taking the time, tinkering with the memory, trying to preserve it, to get a little more space out of it so I can hold onto more of the files I want to keep. Most of all, there is the low level stress of worry that eventually, I will lose this computer. I will need to find a new one to replace this one. I worry that when it finally does break Eric won’t have a job and buying such an expensive item will make me stress about money.

Is it fitting to regard what is inconstant and stressful as “this is mine”? Probably not My Lord because the changes I see in this computer, the things that stress me out, are the necessary consequences of this computer’s nature and use. The computer was not/could never have been designed to go unchanged and to meet my expectations all of the time. It follows its own rules, takes its own path from newness to worness to breaking.  It does not follow my rules, it does not progress on its path according to my desires, my timeline or my needs. Ultimately its path and mine will diverge and we will part ways from each other. Only the question of duration remains open.

When I think about it, I see I use this computer every single day. I bring it to the kitchen and bathroom, I use it while I eat. Of course it is going to get crusty and dirty: physical objects exposed to dirt get dirty. I use it all day long, day after day, it makes sense, the battery, which has a finite number of charge cycles, is going to become depleted with heavy use. I store files for work, files for play, and files for life in general on this computer, continually downloading and saving. Because it has finite space, of course it will fill up. I surf the web, I download many files and click into spam pages, of course this computer when exposed to viruses and adware –designed specifically to infect computers –will catch some of these bugs and exhibit symptoms of infection like slowing down.

What is more surprising than all this wear is that I expect anything different. That as I type along with sticky fingers I wonder at how the computer gets sticky. Why would this object be any different than any other in this world? It is only because I title this mine that I suddenly have special hopes/demands/ expectations for it.