It was the 2013 KPY retreat and LP Nut was leading some students through the forest on a hike/contemplation exercise.  Suddenly we came to a nice open patch, just in front of a Kulti (a small hut), and there on the ground was a sponge. The piece of trash was such a stark contrast to the beautiful pristine forest and immediately, in my mind, I hear my most  judgy voice saying, “What kind of an A****** would throw a sponge on the ground  in this beautiful unspoiled forest.”  Then I looked-up at the little hut in front of me and thought, if I had hiked all the way out here to clean this hut, and found I had forgotten my sponge, I would have thought,”what kind of an angel left me a sponge and spared me the hike all the way back-up to the main building to get one.“

In that moment I finally understood one of the most critical truths of my life: I am the judge, I am the one that sets conditions and defines the terms under which I will be satisfied with any particular person, thing or situation. And my terms, my judgements, they change, largely based on me, on what I want. The idea that there is some universal truth, some great moral compass, that underlies and dictates my judgements is a lie. It’s just me, that voice in my head,calling out A******* or Angel based on my interpretations and needs.

LP Anan had once given such a great example of setting conditions, but I really hadn’t understood it fully till this moment in the woods. He said, it was like being outside on a hot day and wanting an ice cold glass of water, but not wanting any wet condensation on the outside of the glass. But this is impossible, condensation is a result of outside heat meeting with the ice water on the inside of the glass. Still we set these conditions, I only want X and Y is totally unacceptable, or  I want X but only if Y, or I want X when its sunny and Y when it rains. We dictate the terms under which something is acceptable, desirable, and then we pretend they are real, fixed and that the world will simply abide by them.

I started seeing all the places in my life I set conditions: I want my husband to cook for me when I’m hungry, but when I’m not I wish he  wouldn’t so I didn’t need to eat it to be polite (I also wish he could just read my mind and know what I want to eat–what kind of man did I marry that lacks even the simplest mind reading abilities?). I want to chat with my co-workers and waste a little time, except when I’m busy and I wish they would just leave me alone. I want to live in a big city with lots to do, if only there weren’t so many people. I’m happy when it’s warm outside, somewhere between 75 and 85 degrees….

It was a little later in my practice that I really began to see that in setting these conditions I create not only the terms of my satisfaction, but, by definition I also set the terms of my dissatisfaction. In so doing, I am the one who lays the groundwork for my own suffering. I also came to see that the conditions I set were based on 2  deeply wrong views: 1) that I could control circumstances/events  in order to get the outcome that met my conditions or 2) that the world would operate as I expected it to (expectations built off of my prior experiences) so the conditions I set were likely to be met. But back in the early days after my forest sponge encounter the thing that I finally understood, the big pivot point for my practice, was that I play a starring role. Before, I kept thinking stuff is happening to me. I looked around the world and saw instances of impermanence, how my own views were misaligned with it, but I thought I was just getting really great seats for the show. There in the forest I started to see that my handwriting was all over the script.