So…we again have a mighty important, but mighty technical blog before us here. I will issue my standard caveat  that I share some of these wonkier contemplations not to mess with your mind, nor as a model for anyone else’s practice to follow. They are here because they played a formative part in my own path, my evolution of thought, so I feel like I can’t really leave them out of a blog about my path…though seriously, I wish I could, I have no idea how I’m going to write this one. Yikes!.

Do Note: This blog will draw heavily off my earlier contemplations on the 5 Aggregates of the Self. In case I haven’t lost you yet, and you need a little refresher on those aggregates, you can head back to these 2 blogs here for a review: Alana’s 3s and 4s and Alana’s Seemingly Impossible HW.

Alright, having overcome a warning and a homework assignment, you, my truly hard core Dear Readers have but one more obstacle to surmount. Ya gotta watch the following two youtube videos before you read any further:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uYne5ezkfw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heMgid4rkzU

So my select few remaining Dear Reader(s?). Here is the story:

Back at the 2014 retreat Neecha showed me those sand painting videos and they really stuck with me. They shook me, hard. I kept going back and watching them over and over till one day it was crystal clear — the sand paintings are a model of how we interact with the world, for how everything ticks (an Ubai). All that  we see and hear (i.e. our experiences) gets filtered through our aggregates. Our aggregates interpret our experiences and give them meaning. In the words of the Buddha, because seriously, who could put it better, the aggregates “Construct conditioned form as form”( SN22.79). And what the hell does that mean…well, let’s consider the sand paintings.

The scene opens and there is sound, phone, music, already I have an idea. A sense of what is going on and how I should feel. From seemingly nothing comes a form, a woman, then a belly, I assume a conditioned form — baby. I assume her baby. Now another form, I assume conditioned form –father. I assume conditioned form — family. Conditioned forms are supposed forms, things we believe are really real based on our experience and imagination. It is like the way we assign value to money that is just paper. The way we assign an identity and a set of roles and responsibilities based on relationship in family.

 And we are, my own memory of what a family is has kicked in, imagination #4 has already begun to run. I  am dragged along. As the story unfolds, I  imagine being in it. Sometime I’m the  parents. The child. I am determined to do better with my family, my relationships.

But if I stop running, following, getting swept-up… something else is happening. It’s just sand, Rupa (form). It is just shapes in contrast against the backdrop. Its just a sequence of sand shapes moving.  My own memory of certain elements, taking different forms, is what tells me to think woman, man, baby. Seriously, seriously, it’s just sand.  My imagination gives meaning to shifting sands. Because really, the story is only a story because I fill-in the gaps, allow each scene to have a meaning that drives the meaning for the next scene. It is conditioned, supposed form being misinterpreted as real form by my distracted running mind. It is a sequence of isolated moments that feel like they create a  real story, have real solid forms, real solid identities as mom, dad, child, in relations to each other, only because they happen serially, so quick, one after the next. That my mind can take sand particles and get to forms and then get to identities and then make-up a story and then think it has something to do with me and my family, it’s kinda fucked-up no?

And here it is folks…that Ubai I promised. Isn’t everything just bits of form. Elements that take shapes like people, houses, cars. Just like the sands they shift and change. Just like watching the story, I get engrossed. I buy that house or car, marry that person and now they are mine. And I imagine responsibilities that go with those things that are mine, tethers that keep me tied, promises they will stay with me, help me, do my bidding. I am caught-up. Each scene of my life gives shape to the next, gives it meaning, makes me and that car and house and husband seem solid and unchanging  just because they have been around for a series of clips.. Isolate instances, momentary placements of different forms against different backdrops  are now a story, I have interpreted them, made them my story. I am swept-up, trapped, so engrossed I can’t step back and see the particles, the shifting, the process.

This is the trap. So hard to see in my life. But the sand paintings gave me a glimpse. A look behind the curtain of just how my mind works, convinces me that little shifting specs of matter that compose me make me immortal, invincible, a real solid self. Just because one scene blends to the next. Because my imagination fills the gaps.  

This contemplation gave me an ubai –a real solid image for the aggregates and self. In the next Chapter of this blog we will get more deeply into self and these sand drawings lay a foundation.