By the end of 2019, my contemplations around rupa that had begun during the retreat, had grown increasingly more refined. While at times those contemplations seemed stunted or fragmented, I had moments where they really began to gel into a cohesive understanding. Though self and self belonging –grounded in rupa — are a prevalent theme of the time, I also began to expand my considerations and explore the role of nama, particularly imagination, in bolstering my wrong views of ownership.
In early December Mae Neecha asked for my help editing the translation of a sermon LP Thoon had given at a retreat in Virginia in 1998. The process naturally provoked a lot of Dhamma contemplation for me and was a catalyst for my beginning to be able top piece some disparate angles into a more comprehensive understanding around the relationship between desire, clinging, my sense of self, and the objects I use to bolster that idea of self.
I had an exchange with Mae Neecha when I returned my first bunch of edits that really captures and synthesizes many of the themes and ideas I had been contemplating on around this time. In the next few blogs I will share that conversation and some of the other thoughts I had around the time I was helping edit the sermon.
Hey Mae Neecha — Happy Thanksgiving! Attached here are the first round of edits on the revised sermon docs you sent over this morning. Mostly it is in good shape, I had just a few changes.
I had actually started on the sermon edits last week when I was visiting with Eric’s parents in Chicago, and you were right, it was a good nudge to my practice to read these; actually it made me realize I wasn’t quite as stuck as I thought I had been …I have been contemplating a lot lately, trying to tie back to the topics I covered over the summer, it just hasn’t been quite as orderly and tight, so it feels more scattered and less like ‘progress’. I’m starting to think though its just stuff waiting to gel further when the time is right.
In Chicago we went on this historic mansion tour and it threw me back to some contemplation I had had, about two weeks before, on the topic furthering my summer contemplation of rupa as ‘props’. The mansion had this antique inkwell, covered in precious stones and metals, originally owned by Louis the 14th; the docent joked about being able to see how the king had bankrupted a nation and got himself overthrown. I laughed, but then I thought about something that LP Thoon had said in the sermon, that its not enough to see the truth, you need to see the downside of the stuff you hold dear. It struck me its not just a king bankrupting a country. Supporting me is one of the reasons Eric works so hard, doing something he hates, assumes professional risks (there is some legal nonsense going on with him that I can’t talk about but brings this real risk thing very much to the fore), its a high cost , a ton of stress for me and suffering for the person I care most about, for the fine things and lifestyle I enjoy.
Anyway, as long as I have you on the other end of the internets-ether, I thought I would send along some of these ‘less polished’ thoughts continuing on the topic of rupa as props.
Overview of the Relationship Between Desire, Clinging, Mine and Self: I have been thinking about, and trying to clarify, the relationship between desire, clinging, making something mine and self. In a nutshell, it all seems to start with a story about who I AM: Alana as unique/special (particularly vis-a-vis my favorite traits, good and pretty), whose specialness makes me an author of this universe, someone that can make shit follow my will as opposed to being subject to the “will” (ie the 3 common characteristics) of the universe. An Alana who is safe because the world bends to me, I am in control, I am good and deserve good things. Then I scan the world for rupa that I can use to bolster this story, to make it feel more real, to convince others it is true ( so they in turn can help me believe it even more thoroughly via the ego stroking cycle). When I see something that fits the bill I desire it. Desire+ some rationalization for mineness( see more on this below) enter the picture and then my mind makes it mine. Mine then means I cling. Mine means I start believing that the thing I mine-ify will act differently than other things, it will have a meaning –assigned by me — that is somehow different and better than the meaning of like objects that aren’t ‘mine’: This is why I get so surprised when my phone breaks, when my body ages — on some level I believe the fact that because something is ‘mine’ it is exempt from impermanence or suffering, or at least that they will occur on my timing and terms. It is why I believe my purse brings status but someone else’s purse, assuming that I I don’t identify with it in any way is just a bag.
Guessing everyone has the same basic story plot ( special/hero/in control), but our different 3s (memory), 4s (imagination) and karma mean we have different meanings for, and access to, differing rupa props. It is why my co-worker carries on about how adorable his dog looks after a shaving, but I am so much less interested in it when it is no longer fluffy.
Desire — A Deep Dive:
In the sermon, LP Thoon said we should consider the cause of birth so, sitting on the flight home yesterday, I got to thinking that maybe I could think about birth like taking a trip…. The plane was one of those small ones that feel like you are stuck in a sardine can in the sky, I could barely move without bumping my neighbor, and thanks to a winter storm, it was so turbulent I felt sick and I had to pee so bad but the seat belt sign was on the whole time. Plus I was anxious because, despite the fact that I fly all the time, I seriously hate it and thoughts of a fiery death falling from the sky do run through my head when the plane is bobbing around like dingy during a hurricane. Every time the plane takes off, every little noise makes me jumpy, and once it levels I feel the discomfort of a tiny seat and my neighbors breathing down my neck, and I curse myself and ask why the fuck I am on yet another flight? But the thing is, when I plan a trip, I just gloss over how unpleasant I find the flight to be. I focus my attention on what is around the flying and till I am soaring through the air in that creaky tube, I ignore the part that I despise. Life is similar. I surely didn’t get born to age, get sick or die. That’s the stuff I gloss over to convince myself to get on the “flight” in the first place.
Of course, there is always a reason I fly and I see it is 1 of 3 things:
A) I actually want to fly: Being airborne, in and of itself, was a thrill back when I was a kid. I really didn’t care where I got to go, just the flight was a joy (clearly those days are gone).
B) I want the result and accept the flight as part of the experience as little as I enjoy it. It is my imagination of the thrilling trip that drives this. It is the imagination of what the trip/the place I go will make ME. So being back and forth to SF mean I can still keep the identity of an SFer, at least not have to fully assume the East Coast Identity I find so loathsome.
C) Both a and b are my choice. But I was thinking how I can be compelled, as Mae Yo says karma that compels is a final way we are brought back to a life. A few weeks ago I accompanied Eric on a short trip to SF to deal with his legal thing. We didn’t want to go, but it was a consequence, the karma arising from a past job he had there that compelled us back. We desired the positive fruits of the job — money and career progression — but we had to pay for it post-facto with a trip, mental and physical, to deal with the consequences.
Which brings me to the commonality of all these. Desire. In each case I wanted something and the wants drove me to an action. This is Noble Truth number 2. Thinking about it now, it is finally clear to me how desire and wrong view relate. And how wrong view and birth relate. Because all of my travel desires are based on a wrong view. The view that the flight itself is fun, which I only had as a kid before I had a sense of risk and discomfort. The view that whatever is on the other side of the plane ride will be the fun-filled delight I imagine when in reality I have had trips that are anything but fun (Rhino Rundown Adventures in Kenya). The view that if I can just go a little further, find a corned of the globe I haven’t yet trotted, something better something is over there, something that will satisfy me and not change and never suck. The blindness to costs later that can arise from things I do or enjoy now. Or the view that what is over there (like SF) can make me a thing/identity ( a cool, easygoing, adorable person) as long as I can make it my own, my home.
The Desire Causality Chain:
To be a little more nuanced in the steps in the desire causality chain here I want to go back to some observations about the house we toured in Chicago. Or to houses I have had of my own.
1) It starts with a story (#4 imagination that is fed/stimulated by rupa): On the house tour the docent was talking about the second owners to buy the place. Apparently they walked in to purchase just a piece of furniture but were so overcome with the house they decided to just buy the whole thing. I thought back to the moment Eric and I walked into the Manhattan loft we ended-up buying. It was supposed to just be a viewing to get a sense of what was on the NY market in case we did end up moving (we went to see it when Eric interviewed), but we fell in love. It was so us. Suddenly, our imaginary new Manhattan adventure, that we had begun to concoct as soon as Eric got the interview call, felt even more ‘real’, guaranteed, based on four walls and furniture (furniture that we could never even buy). The problem, that I so clearly learned from that damn loft, is that it’s a wrong view that this world will conform to what I want. That the future was going to be the great NY adventure I had imagined. Sure, sometimes my imagination, momentarily, comes close enough to what happens that, if I shut one eye, I can almost believe I have some predictive or controlling power. But, that belief is so clearly a lie when I think about how this whole game actually works — imagination is based on memory and the circumstances that brought about memory are already long gone, the result I imagine, based on the memory of something long gone, can’t possibly be a guaranteed future.
2) The imaginary future/story is really just a proxy for an even deeper desire, to be satisfied. I have a house shaped hole in my heart (and a partner shaped hole, dad shaped hole, job shaped hole, etc.), an existing belief about what a item ‘means’, what it should look like/how it should act, what type of fairy-tale fulfillment my life will have once I acquire the right shit to fill my heart holes. Now thought I am starting to understand my the Buddha put so much emphasis (like truth numero uno) on seeing that life is unsatisfactory…if my SF house/life was so satisfying why in the hell did I leave? If any of the places I had traveled to were so satisfying why am I always planning a new trip to a new place? And one more thing — that I know needs more thought, but if the heart holes arise in my imagination can rupa (something so clearly with its own rules that operate in the world and not according to my imagination), actually fulfill them? I’m starting to think I am constantly setting myself up for disappointment…
3) But deeper still is the underlying belief that filling those holes is going to make me a thing. That it can at last guarantee me the identity I want. If I have those Z Cavaricci pants all the girls at school do, I can finally stop being a loser and be popular. And if I am popular people will love me and want to take care of me and I will enjoy a comfortable, easy and safe life. If I have the perfect house it shows I am blessed, special, deserving of good things and therefore (in some seriously ass backwards ‘logic’) will get even more good things going forward. Each imaginary future, each becoming, is driven by the belief that with some tweak I can become the me that finally wins the game, that I can fill the hole, and will get the rewards and happiness I believe filling the hole brings. For me that always comes back to special/safe. I use objects to “confirm” or deny my progress on this path to ‘winning’. I assign them meaning and then have that meaning reflect back onto me as a brick in the identity building.
Back to Those Objects…So How do Clinging and Mineness Begin in the First Place?
For a long time I have wondered what makes something MINE (and therefore something I cling to), after all it is clear that this idea lives no where in the 4 elements of the object. But every time I think I figure it out, it seems like the criteria changes; its mine because I legally own it, only that Manhattan loft felt like ‘not mine’ long before I actually sold it. It is mine because I pay for it, but what about the outfits that feel like mine in the dressing room before I hit-up the cash register? It is mine because I have had it, because it is my birthright, but how do I reconcile that with a body that keeps getting older and fatter and sick, is it really expressing my will, acting like my ‘rite’? I realize now the problem…delusion is a slippery fuck, in truth, mine=desire+some arbitrary rationalization I use to justify/claim mineness in my mind. Its just a ratinalization that changes to suit my needs, all it needs to be is ‘defensible’ to my warped brain and its good enough to go on. Interestingly I realize this is how a slaveholder could call a slave ‘mine’ (their 3s made it defensible where as in this day and age my own 3s think its insane to own another human.) How missionaries could use their treatment of the non-Christian natives. How wars over disputed territory start. Some seriously ugly ass shit in this world is born from this here process of mine-ification.
A little real-life personal story of the pain of mine-ifying: When we got engaged, Eric bought me this super expensive wedding ring, a ring that is now long ago lost. When I think about the ring, I realize that before I owned it I didn’t give a shit about it and now that it is long gone I am equally as indifferent. But for that temporary period I had that ring I was constantly worrying about the thing. I would freak-out every time I did dishes that it would wash down the drain, I had to be so careful in the gym and worried when work took me to rough neighborhoods that it might be stolen.
We went right from my wedding venue to our honeymoon and I had a dilemma –I wanted to wear/show off the ring at the ceremony but didn’t want to haul it backpacking across Latin America. So, I asked a friend if he would take it from the ceremony and hold on to it till we got home; I should have expressed gratitude that he was willing to do me this favor, but I am so fucking ashamed now that instead I gifted him with a way too stern warning/threat that he should keep it safe… I acted like a monster to a friend for that ring (this is literally one of the moments in my life I feel the deepest regret/shame for).
A few years later, while Eric and I were vacationing with my Dad and Stepmom in Washington I lost the ring. I was so devastated. I woke with a start, dreaming it was gone, and when I saw my naked finger I had a moment of visceral horror. I searched high and low, so fucking angry, cursing the person who ‘must have found it and kept it for themselves –thief’, I made what turned out to be the last trip I ever took with my dad, miserable for all. I pretended then, in apology for my crying, that I thought the ring symbolized my marriage and I worried its loss was a bad omen. But in truth, now I see that really I saw that ring as the proof, that I could show everyone, that I was loved, that I was valued so highly that someone would buy me something so precious. To no longer have it was a loss to my value since I could no longer ‘prove’ it with the ring.
Now a days, I am over it. So much suffering for an object. For an idea of what an object meant. I have no ring shaped hole in my heart anymore because I no longer believe that rings prove my value. Now I have a simple band on my figure to prove to roaming eyes that I have a husband and am not ‘on the market’. Mind you, I am hardly free of the belief that objects confirm/ build my worth…I have just found other objects/ideas of objects to meet the need.
So why do I make something mine if it is so much fuss? I mine-ify to puff myself up.To sell the original story of my specialness, which enables me to be in control/ exempt from the common characteristics, which in turn makes me ‘safe’ from pain, loss decay and suffering( damn…even writing this out makes me see what total bullshit it is.) Back when I did yoga 3 hrs a day, I had constant pain from a hip joint I busted doing yoga (it still hurts years after the yoga hobby is over), but I did it because I needed to prove that I am master of my body. Why did I wear a ring that had me continually paranoid I would lose it — I had to prove someone I valued (Eric) valued me. Why do I keep flying back and forth to SF –I have to prove my life has meaning, that I am professionally valuable to an organization I value and that I am still ‘a cool Cali Gal.’
I can sometimes feel the puff so acutely, can watch it come on in slowmo: it is that moment I have in the dressing room when I look in the mirror and I feel like I look so good, like the outfit is just me, like if I take it home I will pown the world and everyone who sees me in it. But, just looking in my closet proves, it doesn’t even last. Its not just my body changes or my style or the circumstances I need to wear something, or the clothing item itself…it is that, even if nothing else changes, that puff is like a drug high; it goes away on its own and then I need to find more. Leading to even more work. But here is the kicker…
The ego puff only happens because I believe the story I told myself… which brings me to…
How Clinging Can End: Another Story About Purses: Long before the sweet yellow purse, I used to to carry fancy purses, prada, LV, Goyard. Then I stopped. In part I stopped out of practicality (a hip injury making it hard to carry, me tired of needing to take such care of expensive shit), but really the main reason I stopped is my view of the bags and the meaning they had changed: I used to think they proved my wealth, but, at that time my $ kept growing, the bags stayed the same. Also, I started seeing all these designer bags on deep discount on ebay. On some level, I lost interest because — independent of what society/norms said — I realized the bags did not prove my status/wealth. When I had the evidence they didn’t do what I previously thought/didn’t have the meaning I thought they had, I became unattached. (I want to interject with a quick note here that I am trying to use this ‘meaning reality check’ process alongside of the process by which I consider the temporary nature of my relationship to my crap. Its sort of a 1,2 punch I am trying-out to beat the idea of ownership out of my brain.)
So..enter practice, if I can convince myself my objects don’t do what my imaginary heart versions of them do, and have a pretty steep cost for something ineffectual, maybe I will lose interest. Or better still, I can just see that I myself am not the special/safe/exempt from worldly conditions me I want to be, and no object is going to make a lick of difference. Ultimately, I figure to stop clinging I need to truly understand that whether I call something mine, or I call it George, it simply doesn’t make me any different. My rupa is subject to rupa rules. My nama too is subject to the 3 characters. Everything is just a momentary result of the chain of reasons that lead up to it. Sure, I can be a reason, I’m a reason all the time (Alana the great arranger)…but literally so is everything else in this world… all back to proving I am not a special little snowflake at all.
Anyway…this is a very long reply to send along my edits. Like I said, work in progress, but I just really felt compelled to write it out even though so much is in the taking shape process right now…
Mae Neecha’s Reply:
I agree with your analysis of how you come to cling to an idea or an object, and I agree with your plan to end clinging. One thing I noticed is that it seems you are somewhat Alana-centric in your contemplations. You may benefit from looking outward, as well. If you can use external examples and other people as proof, it’ll help move the contemplation along when you don’t have that particular personal experience. That’s why we watch various YouTube clips and scour newsfeeds everyday – it’s like an abbreviated bhava (becoming, existence) where you can see how something would play out without having to experience it in real life. Seeing the consequences that other people have to deal with – for a cause you’d likely or already have put into play – can be good for fast-forwarding your own situation.