I would like to preface this blog by telling you upfront, you have heard it all before.  It is on a theme you may have noticed already —  Ideal/ Good Alana versus Normal/Bad Alana. You can see it in the prelude to this blog (Super Buddhist versus Everyday Alana), in the Homeless Alana story, In the Compassionate Alana story, spoiler alert : in an upcoming blog about mooching friends and in the last blog of this section about fearing my practice progressing.  I am not so clever … it has taken me 6 years to truly see how deeply this wrong view, and its close cousins — Good Alana versus Bad Other Peeps and Bad Alana Versus Way Holier than Me Peeps — runs.

It has caused so much havoc in my life, just read the stories, they speak for themselves. It’s a real danger because, among other things, it builds my ego; Good Alana is a judgey, entitled, thankless, witch, but even Bad Alana is egotistical (little heart variety), she thinks she is soooo exceptional (after all, she is the worst of the worst… so unworthy of enlightenment she barricades her own path).  It’s a hindrance to my practice, to my relationships, to my sense of wellbeing. The weird thing is, this duality that underpins my views, this belief that I can separate one side from another in neat bundles and still retain the whole …it’s not even possible. You know how I know that ? I spent time staring at a potted plant. Yup, there is wisdom to be found in the most unlikely places; all around us in fact. One of the reasons I am sharing this particular story is to highlight another one of my superduper all time favorite dharma techniques…cue ooohhh ahh soundtrack flash a few lights…

Ubaitam

An Ubaitam is essentially an external stimulant that helps us apply the truths we see out in the world to ourselves. It is a tool for internalizing ( which we will talk about even more in a future blog), for drawing parallels that show us the way in which we, just like everything else, are subject to the basic conditions that govern this world (they aren’t called the 3 common characteristics for nothing). The belief that we are so special, so exceptional, is the source of many of our wrong views; actually, thinking we are so special is a major foundation for our entire wrong view of self. Ubaitam can be  really really  helpful to show how all of us are like plants (which have two sides), and cell phones (which break), and umbrellas (which decay).

The Story: We had a group of nuns visit the temple and I was speaking to one (Mae Toy) about my difficulty accepting my faults. When I was a Bad Alana, someone who made mistakes at work, lost my patience with my family, even just skipped the gym for a day, I would feel guilty for weeks. Really, I would think over and over again about my shortcomings, about my failures, about how far I was from being the ideal Alana I wanted to be. This was not a productive assessment of my mistakes and a consideration of how to avoid them in the future. This was just rolling around in my self-hate.  

The Nun went to a table and picked-up a potted plant and asked me what I saw. I went on and on about how green and lush the plant was. About its beauty and the beauty it offered to its surrounding. When I was done she pointed out that I had forgotten some stuff. The plant sat in, was in fact nourished by, dirt. Almost half the plant, with its root structure, sits in darkness and dirt below the base of the pot. Just like us humans, just like everything in the world, the plant has two sides. There is the lush green part but there is also the dirty roots –you can’t have one without the other. Anything less is not a plant.

This was my first mini understanding, tiny glimmer, that my flaws, my shortcomings and all my mistakes are part of who I am. In fact, many of the same causes of attributes which I consider virtuous in some situations, end up manifesting as faults in other situations. Deeper still, who is judging which Alana, Good or Bad, is playing the starring role in any given situation (if I am being a ‘considerate Alana’ and letting the car in front of me enter a lane, the car behind me may think I am slowing them down) ?

Bad Alana exists as part of the same package as Good Alana –they don’t come apart (actually, the whole package is a continuously changing bundle anyway, not static good or static bad).  There really are two sides to every coin — it’s never just heads or just tails — I  however get so distracted by what I am focusing on (green leaves), I forget about the other side (the dirt).

For years, actually, for all my lives,  I have been in denial about the basic nature of this world, with its two sidedness and about my own nature as a being that is in and part of this world. With this story, I got the first tiny shards of awareness (it was super early in my practice, 2011 maybe), the first bit of evidence that I am not really special at all, that I can compare myself to the things around me to give me the perspective I need to fix my wrong views and lower my ego. 

The awesome thing is, years later, this Ubaitam keeps giving. Each time (and clearly there are many many many times) that I begin to sense the Good/Bad duality wrong view is lurking, I imagine the plant. The image, it’s like a shortcut, some quick reference that can keep me focused, can help recall the contemplations I have had on the plant theme, i.e. two-sidedness, over time.

I love, love, love, Ubaitam. You will see them all over my practice because for me they are like video game powerups, or  like finding a secret warp to a new level. They are shortcuts to big understanding. So Dear Reader…can you spot all the Ubaitam so far 😉 ?