This next ‘chapter’ of my practice begins with a bang: A trance-like state that struck me, seemingly outta nowhere, on the last night of the 2019 retreat. As I tried to make sense out of what I had learned from the state afterwards, Mae Yo and Mae Neecha sent me on a course correction — a series of contemplations meant to round-out my practice by helping me understand rupa (the form aggregate), and its relationship to nama (non-form aggregates of vedena, sanna, sankara, vinnan). As Mae Neecha told me much later, Luang Por Thoon told Mae Yo rupa and nama 50/50 — half rupa, half nama, that is the way to practice, this was the little formula that could serve me till the end of my path.

The thing is, for that formula to be helpful, I had to understand rupa first. What the earliest ‘course correcting’ contemplations proved was that I had absolutely no idea what rupa really is, or how to use it in the context of my practice. Sure I had given rupa lip service for years — this body will get sick, that purse is going to break, so they aren’t mine — but on some level, if I am being honest, I thought of rupa as the red-headed stepchild, the less interesting, less sexy side of practice. This next phase of my practice is defined by a shift toward rupa-centric/ rupa-grounded contemplations that radically altered my course.  Frankly, with hindsight, it is no wonder that my practice didn’t feel like it was getting anywhere quickly before, I had literally been missing half the picture.

It quickly became clear to me that I had no hope of releasing attachment to ‘my’ belongings, if I didn’t even really know what those belongings were– I don’t know how to let go of something I didn’t even understand.  I could say shit wasn’t mine till the cows came home, but without understanding WHY shit wasn’t mine, how was I really going to be able to believe it? Only after a radical rupa reexamination did I start to understand the incontrovertible rules of the world that govern rupa  and that preclude rupa from abiding by Alana’s rules.

Over time, I have come to see the more subtle reasons understanding rupa is absolutely critical to practice. In a rupa world, rupa is the substrate through which our kilesa (defilements) are fed, and in which they play out. We don’t have hate or craving or ignorance in a vacuum; we hate a physical person and their physical behaviors, we crave a physical object, or bodily sensation, or a concept demarcated/measured/referenced by a form.

As for ignorance, in his Autobiography  LP Thoon explains, “The term moha, or delusion, is the mind that is deluded by sammuti (supposed form). Avijjā, or ignorance, is ignorance of these sammuti (supposed form).” It makes sense really, for our imaginations to function, to fabricate imaginary futures, imaginary belongings, and imaginary identity — imaginary stillness in an actually ever-shifting world —  we need form to peg our concepts to. We are in a constant process of overlaying our beliefs/imaginations/concepts onto rupa objects and then fooling ourselves into believing that the objects will actually follow our view of what they are, our constructed rules and expectations for them. Sammuti, supposed form –which relies on actual form — lays at the heart of our delusions; after all, what is atta (self, self-identity) except for one more glorified sammuti.

Anyway, I am getting a little ahead of myself here, so for now, without  further ado, rupa, again, but for realz this time…