Following my retreat, I sent a few updates to Mae Neecha about my contemplations, progress and ongoing work; here is a recap of those messages.
Part 1 — First Email
Last night I was thinking back to a very strong childhood memory: as a young kid, my parents would take me to Disneyworld and I would rush to my very favorite ride –20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was a Jules Verne themed ride where you got into a ‘submarine’ and got to see some of the best adventure scenes from the book play out. I so loved that ride!
I went back to Disney in high school, it had been many years since my last visit, and I again rushed toward my favorite ride. Only this time, I saw something different as I waited in the interminably long line: I saw a pond of polluted water, with trash floating in it. A ‘submarine’ that was just a toy on a track visible from the surface. Once I got in I noticed the ride was filthy and the great adventure scenes I remembered so vividly from my childhood were just plastic panoramas. Honestly, I was crushed with disappointment.
After that trip, my little teenage mind derived a ‘lesson’ from the experience — don’t look back, don’t revisit things you enjoyed in childhood because you are setting yourself up for disappointment when it is not what you remember. Obviously, this was an idiot’s lesson, that I should nourish my delusion just because I don’t like what I see when I face it head on.
Later in my life, during a dhamma contemplation, I looked back at this and realized it was proof of the problem with #3 (memory), even if that very selective curator remembers the truth, it does nothing to guarantee that it remains the same now or in the future. Which is a fine lesson, but it misses the extremely important and extremely obvious…
My change in perspective was literally nothing more than seeing the rupa for what it really is. As a kid, the rupa of the ride was so tied up with my memory and imagination, my fantasies. As a teen, going back, I couldn’t help notice the rupa for what it was and I became disillusioned; there was no way to unsee what I saw.
I now understand that this 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea experience has to be a parallel for the process of becoming a sotapanna. It is so clear what my path is now. I need to see rupa for exactly what it is and understand that it is not some medium/manifestation for my fantasies. It’s not mine. Even when it takes the form I want, such that it seems to confirm something I believe about me or mine or this world, that form is so so so friggen temporary – it is a sometimes. But like a fool, I pay attention only to the sometimeses I like , and ignore all the sometimeses I don’t like.
I have started thinking about each and every rupa object as a bundle of elements that come together and then start their march through shifting states/elemental arrangements. Rupa objects interact with each other, with the environments, and they can alter course (though never go backwards) — Alana can use her rupa body and rupa objects to poke and cause course alterations (though I have had 1 too many Korean beauty product breakouts to think that I can ensure that my causing/poking guarantees the result that I desire) — but the final destination is always the same, disaggregation or consumed (or some combination of the two).
That is sorta all there is to it, arising, marching, ceasing. There are reasons why I believe there is more to it. Reasons I believe some shit is mine or not mine. But all my reasons in the world don’t actually change the basic truth of what shit is — I will never find ‘meaning’ or ‘value’ hidden somewhere in the ingredient list of earth, wind, fire and water. It is just not there.
I have long mistaken utility for value. I have fooled myself into thinking I can buy something with this money, I can drive somewhere with this car, so these things have an innate quality –a value. But if I look again, I realize the truth is, in some circumstances I can use the money to buy things, use the car to go somewhere; all it takes is a currency collapse, or a dead battery, or countless other changes in circumstances for these things to be useless. Value is like pregnancy — you are or you aren’t — if changing circumstance can change the value of a car or money, than it pretty much proves that all I can assign to these items is utility (Alana, or any other rupa being, can use in some cases for some of the time).
The one that really gets me, isn’t my body per se, it is the samutti my body supports. I have gotten so stuck on this idea that I need my body to build the life/trappings of an Alana — an education, credit rating, professional experiences, friends and family who recognize me, the kit-n-kiboodle of ‘recognizable identity’ upon which I build this Alana life. Then I realized, just as I use this samutti, so do others: Eric to recognize me, the bank to check my credit record, etc. The fact that others people use it makes it so clear, the body and the sammutti it supports, are both just usable things (utility = temporary versus value which = innate/permanent).
Like a credit card, I can use this body and this samutti for all sorts of stuff, but if I loose it, it is gone, no matter what use I have put it to in the past and no matter what I imagine I will be able to use it for in the future. This idea that the body is mine because it supports a ‘life’ I want and ‘need’ is as crazy as saying a credit card is mine because I want and need it. It doesn’t make it less losable, or stealable, or cancelable. My mind just likes to but, but but… excuses to confuse me in the face of such a glaringly bald truth.
Anway now my singular mission is driving this home. I am contemplating death often: mine, others, past, future, human, animal and object, not simply as a fact, but in intricate detail vis-a-vie the dissolution of an elemental aggregate. I think about how we all part ways with each other. How I play a role and when that role is done, it is over and done.
None of this is new. But what is new is exactly how sure I am about all this: what the path is, what the endpoint is and how to traverse it. I refuse to keep waiting in interminably long lines, to get on crappy rides that ultimately disappoint me, just because I turn a blind eye to the difference between what the ride is and what I want it to be. It is enough already.
Part 2 – Second Email
I wanted to follow-up on my email yesterday with just a little more deep dive on 1 issue that has been weighing on me –the idea that because I can be a cause I am somehow special, or my objects (especially body) represent me, or something I cause in the rupa world otherwise proves something innate about me. Here are just a few of my thoughts on this and how I have/am going about attacking this particularly stubborn issue:
1) Beaver Dam and my Finger on the Scale Deciding What Causes Mean Someone is ‘Valuable‘ and What Causes are Insignificant — a while back I came across a beaver dam hiking. It was a good looking dam as dams go, and that is when it dawned on me: The beaver causes the dam, but I am never super impressed with the beaver. I think nothing of it. Which was my first glimmer into the problem that my nama is a choosy narrator. I select which causes to ‘pay attention to’ and interpret as somehow meaningful/indicating some deep or great quality that exists in the causer. I don’t care about sports, so I am not super impressed with a basketball player causing a score, but I love art, so the painting an artist creates makes that painter a great artist. The truth is, the world is full of beings who are causes, that isn’t something so special. But I choose which beings, which causes to assign value to. This was really my awakening that my finger is on the scale.
2) Rosacea Flare-up and the Difference Between Being a Cause and Guaranteeing a Result: My rosacea was flaring (a 4 e process) and I wanted to ‘fix’ my skin, so I exerted my control — I called my doc and got her to prescribe a cream that ended up helping. As I was standing in front of the mirror I started to feel proud, of my skin and of the results I got in my fixit attempt. I realized though, that this time around, I put in place a cause and got a result I wanted. But there have been other times I called the doc and got a script that did, seemingly, nothing at all, times I have called the doc and got a script that made the rosacea worse, and 1 time that I got a script that made the rosacea better, but it had horrible side effects and I had constant headaches. It made me see that I can absolutely be a cause — I can change the course of my 4-e body’s march through shifting aggregated elemental states — but I can’t guarantee that I am going to get the results I want. At the end of the day, it is really the results I care about. Continuing to build identity around being a cause, or believing that because I can be a cause for my objects they will represent me, doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given that I can’t control the effects that my causes help to put in place.
3) Fit or Flabby, Alana has to Die — I know that rupa may only contain 4es, but its particular state does reflect the causes that brought it to that state –so boiling water does reflect the process of heating that brought it to the boiling state.
This got me very stuck on how a particular state of my body does in fact reflect something about the Alana nama that brought it to be in that state. I was thinking about a time when I was super fit. In my mind, that level of physical fitness reflected my extreme will power –to manage my diet, to manage my exercise –it made me proud. Though that level of fitness is long gone (showing its impermanence already), in my mind, I can’t help feel like, even if just for a moment, my body represented something important about me, a trait that I so deeply associate with myself. That with enough effort (which is always what I think I can bring to the table), I can at least momentarily get this body to represent me.
Honestly, I got so stuck on this I almost reached-out for help, but I gave myself another week to figure it out before I bugged you. Then Chadwich Boseman died (Black Panther actor). That dude was beyond fit (not to mention hot, talented and successful), but he died anyway. I imagine that his body, his career, all reflected his discipline, but it didn’t keep him for death, and death at a young age to boot. Somehow, this made me see that these brief moments of arrangement I fight so hard to obtain, so I can reflect something about myself, are sort of dwarfed by the end state we all come to. Its not exactly a perfect fix for this issue of body representing me, but it is the reason I have started thinking more ardently about death — the end, the fact that no matter what, I part ways with this body, is sort of the most persuasive argument I can come-up with that it is not really mine, it can’t be depended on, and if it isn’t mine or dependable, it is hard to make it reflection of myself. Anyway, this is still a work in progress, but at least I think it is moving.
4) Wrong View as The Cause — A friend was talking to me about her many issues at work, and she didn’t even know where to start fixing them. But when I looked at her list of stuff — not speaking up, asking the same questions repeatedly, not leading — I realized that while I didn’t know her exact underlying wrong view, it sure looked like her issues were arising from one wrong view, or a wrong view and its kissing cousins. It made me remember something I somehow had lost sight of — all of our behaviors arise from our views (ahh the ole 8 Fold Path).
It got me to consider my own fit body represents ‘extreme willpower’ view. I have already spent so much time contemplating how I don’t control my body (nothing like pissing myself to really drive that point home) and it is pretty clear that extreme willpower is a kissing cousin of control. When I think about it this way, it seems hard to ignore the causality chain — if fit body represents what I perceive to be its cause, my extreme willpower, doesn’t it also need to represent the cause of that cause — Alana’s wrong views about control and my body?
If my behavior represents who I am, and my behavior is driven by my views –many of which practice has helped me understand are wrong — than am I not saying that who I am is a bundle of views, many being wrong? Is that really the me I want to be/claim? And if I am my views then how do I reconcile being a fixed me with clear evidence those views are continually changing?
I know this one maybe a little past the rupa basics — proving rupa can’t reflect the nama not just because rupa changes, but because nama is so changeable too, both sorta changing at their own rates, marching off in their own directions.
But, all together it gives me a real check at the door, for the belief that some physical trait, that my own choosy narrator has decided to elevate, that can be a cause but can’t guarantee a result (I mean seriously I have so many fitness injuries), that is temporary and can’t defeat death, and that has a shadow cause I may not really want to claim as the ‘me I want to be’, is going to represent a good/special Alana.
Anyway, all a work in progress, but I wanted to send a deeper drill-down on this particular topic because it has been a bit of a hang-up for me.