Each morning for the last two weeks I have woken up to sit in meditation, participate in other practice routines, and get ready to go out to Kantolomba. This morning I am sitting on a plane in Washington D.C., snow falling, waiting to take off for San Francisco to make the final leg of the long journey home.
As we sat on the tarmac in Ndola yesterday afternoon, I saw a conditioned process begin… “Oh, shoot. I won’t be going to Kantolomba tomorrow morning.” Suddenly, even while still in Zambia, looking out the window of the plane at the very familiar Ndola airport, the team in Kantolomba seemed thousands of miles away. It hit me—wait! That’s an illusion. That is conditioning attempting to attach time and space to an experience that is not temporal.
The great privilege of spending time participating in the transformation of the work in Kantolomba is heart-opening, expansive, joy-producing. It seems clear that this is the point, if there were one! To attach those processes (heart-opening, expansive, joy-producing) to the content of Kantolomba, to the conditions of being physically present in Kantolomba, would be a coup for conditioning. It seems that is the coup conditioned mind is constantly attempting to talk us into. We are meant to experience a life process (unconditional love, joy, presence, equanimity… the list is infinite) and to immediately assign it to a place, a person, a particular content. The separation is created and the door to suffering wide open.
Catching conditioning in the act is one of my favorite parts of practice. I smiled broadly as a near miss with longing and sadness turned into gratitude, love, and marvel that Suffering is Optional!
In Gassho,
Jen