Good morning. Today I am
going to be talking about my understanding of the Tibetan Buddhist word shenpa, its many unfolding layers and
how this small word has swung my spiritual pendulum into a new paradigm. I will
share with you a little of what I have come to know about shenpa, not as an
authority on the subject but as a fan of Buddhism and as an earnest follower of
The Way. I follow it flawed, getting it wrong, figuring it out, shutting down
and opening up. I am not a master
practitioner; in fact I don’t even practice well. I cling to love, the future,
I judge, sometimes I am unloving and most of all I am desperately afraid of
imperfection and being forgotten. My ego aside, and with the broadest of brush
strokes, I will do my best to explain shenpa as I know and use the term in my
life.
As a side note I often
will say “you” but I mean people in general, not you specifically.
Last spring I began
listening to the lectures of Alan Watts, a British religious scholar of the
hippie generation who was fascinated with the philosophies of Taoist Zen
Buddhism. His insights opened me to the possibility that this reality can only
ever be experienced half way.
Using the analogy of
embroidered fabric, Watts demonstrates how there is always a side that we are
meant to see (hold up fabric art - good
side); it is the story we tell to the world and to ourselves. Isn’t it brilliant? But if you were to peek
behind the fabric, (turn over to show
back side) you would notice that the other side reveals something very
different. It is full of short cuts and mix ups; a cluster-mash of knots and loose ends; the very stuff
we prefer to leave tucked between the peering eyes of others and the brick
wall.
(back) On one side we see process;
(front) on the other we see results.
On one side we see (front) our projections;
(back) on the other we see the void.
(front)
Our confidence and
(back) our insecurity;
(back) sub conscience;
(front) conscience;
(front) ego and
(back) id.
The key to Watts’
interpretation is that no matter what side of the fabric we choose to look at,
we can only pay attention to one at a time.
There will always be something missing, something discarded, something
left in the dark.
Shenpa is what it feels
like to be hooked, to get caught up in our ego reactions. It is our reaction to
the world around us. Our shenpa is activated when we feel a threat to the survival of our self-importance.
It is all the stuff we start thinking and saying in our minds when something
has happened, something that touches our vulnerabilities, our insecurities; our
own personal soft spot.
I might add that no one
is free from the grips of shenpa. Even a monk on the side of the mountain in
deep meditation will experience shenpa in one way or another. Since this is not
the side of a mountain, and as far as I know, none of us present are monks, I
can safely say that each of us has experienced this feeling here at church. In
fact, if this church does what it is intended to do, then we can count on
shenpa as part of our profound religious experience.
Perhaps a member on your
committee passionately reveals a conflicting opinion to yours; perhaps someone
changes the date or time for an upcoming meeting without running it by you; what
if someone is more educated, talented, eloquent in a field you have always
dreamed of entering but for whatever reason did not; maybe your name is not
called out or noted in recognition of the work you put in over the year; maybe
the order of service is altered and the hymns are unfamiliar, perhaps you live
in Montreal and there is a picketer outside every Sunday who publicly
challenges the integrity of the very institution you hold so dear; maybe
someone just makes you feel stupid or ugly, inadequate, just by standing next
to you, without even saying a word.
Recall one of these
moments. Can you remember your tummy
tightening? Is it tightening now? Can
you remember shutting down, or feeling a kind of resistance? There is an unease of sorts, an uncomfortable
tension inside, pain even. Maybe your
mind wouldn’t stop racing to defend your hard earned viewpoint, and you may
have even raised your voice or changed your tone in the conversation; perhaps
you called your friends or talked about it all the way home. And with good reason! How dare they? Who
doesn’t like Unitarians?! And the rest of a peaceful Sunday is spent in this
loop, hooked.
American born Buddhist
Nun Pema Chodron explains it this way, and I quote, “Perhaps it is a mean
word that hooks you. Another mean word may not affect you but we're talking
about where it touches that sore place— that's shenpa. This starts to spiral
into low self-esteem, or blaming them, or anger at them, denigrating yourself. And
maybe if you have strong addictions, you just go right for your addiction to
cover over the bad feeling that arose when that person said that mean word to
you. You begin to notice it really quickly in other people. You're having a
conversation at work with somebody. Their face is sort of open and they're
listening, and you say something but you see their eyes cloud over. Or you see
their jaw tense. Or you can feel them... you know you touched something. You're
seeing their shenpa, and they may not be aware of it at all.” End quote.
Peeling back another
layer of Shenpa, we find perspective. Shenpa is our inherited ancestral
thoughts and our orientation to the fabric around us. Shenpa is the entire body
of the constructs of our mind that we use to help filter reality and to deal
with the goings on of everyday living. We cannot look out from two sets of eyes,
two frames of reference. We only have our own, and we can only choose to see half at any given moment. This is our
perspective, this is our shenpa.
I have watched the shenpa
rise like steam while Unitarians face totally frustrating standstills in heated
or open conversation. Are we a real church? Do you believe in God? Can I use
the word God? Where do you stand in terms of euthanasia, abortion, poverty,
prison farms, prostitution, certain members of the congregation, Hamas, the
Canadian Unitarian Council, Christ, lying, democracy? These confrontations with others or within us
are really just differing shenpas wanting to be right. How badly do we want to prove to ourselves
that we chose wisely? That the storyline
of Unitarianism is really all it’s cracked up to be? In this way, we can get hooked when our
shenpa is different from someone else’s.
When we are hooked, we permit
ourselves to look out from our perspective so we don’t have to look deeply at the
situations that scare us. More
importantly, when we are hooked, we
don’t have to look at the parts of ourselves
that scare us; the parts we keep on the back of the fabric, safely protected
from the perfection of our story, unknowingly separating us from the
interdependent web of which we are all a part.
Shenpa guides us like a
white wolf in the wilderness, helping us to navigate the present moment,
directly into the heart of our suffering so that we may release ourselves of
the attachment that causes us to be trapped in the first place.
The gift of shenpa is
that simply recognizing its existence within us and others can literally
dissolve the shenpa itself. It bonds us, knowing that we all have our little
shenpas; we are all wrestling with vulnerability.
Using shenpa as a guide,
we can let go of the tense narrative loop, just by stepping back and noting to
ourselves, “Hey, I have shenpa. This situation is digging up an old wound.” Or,
“Hey, I think I might have triggered their shenpa. It’s not about me, but I can
understand that they are struggling.”
It helps us to be
accountable for our own feelings, to not take anything personally and to boldly
speak from the self. “You don’t make me feel inadequate, ugly
or stupid, forgettable, but there is something right here and now that is
activating my shenpa.” Or, “Oh, I
have shenpa; I feel inadequate, unaccepted just the way I am.”
Can you feel a weight
being lifted? It’s just shenpa!
Shenpa helps us to recognize
that there is a wound in the first place.
Its trigger is our mirror. This is where we acknowledge the wretched
bits of our existence, the deep cuts; the messy chaos below the surface.
It gives us a chance to
ask ourselves, “I wonder what that wound is, where did it come from?” allowing
us the opportunity to lean into our fears, look behind the fabric and breathe,
knowing that we are not alone. It requires the hardest work to stay put, to not
escape and avoid the pain that pours out from our feathery heart.
So where does this shenpa
wound really come from?
In his book The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman explains that we all need to be loved in different
ways. He concludes that within each of us, there lies a love tank, waiting to
be filled with that unique love that only you can name. He has broken down the millions of dialects
of love into 5 categories or languages:
Words of Affirmation
Acts of Service
Receiving Gifts
Quality Time
Physical Touch
While we all benefit from
exchanging all 5 of these expressions, Mr. Chapman writes, there is only one
language that, if left unspoken, will dry our well and leave us going hungry
for love.
This empty tank, the void,
is what the wound actually is; it is the specificity of the way we need to be
loved. Shenpa comes from not getting loved in that special way we need it, to be accepted just the way we are. It
comes from the need and it comes from our attachment to what we desire.
Shenpa
is the white wolf bearing her teeth at the void.
Naturally, we all love in
the language we know best from the examples provided to us in the earliest days
of our lives. It is no surprise then, that when we give, we also leave
inevitable deficits. Through default our children learn to pay attention to a
specific love language and ignore the other ones. From one generation to the
next we blindly pass on love and the void at the same time, over and over
again. This creates the chasm between two sides of the fabric.
Love is whole. But we can only
pay attention to so much at one time.
Ignoring those other
kinds of love causes us to discard the parts of ourselves that we feel or were
taught are unlovable, forcing them underground and creating the wound we fear
the most. Shenpa is our resistance to accepting the kinds of love that we really need to feel whole, but did not
pay attention to growing up.
Shenpa is what cracks our
souls wide open, helping us to see where we are stuck and how to get unstuck. Our
pain is the source of our greatest growth.
The final test of shenpa
is forgiveness. Forgiving is really a matter of just letting it go, laying down
your shenpa. To forgive someone what we really need to do is understand and love
them in the way they require, because not getting love in the way they need is what causes them to act in
a way that seeks forgiveness in the first place. I know that by simply
suggesting this form of forgiveness I have activated some shenpas right now.
Why? Lean into it.
The road to gold is paved
through the heart of the lion. It takes courage like that of a lion, the
courage not to fight, to lay our shenpa down in order to leave the past where
it belongs and allow our vulnerabilities to quiet since they did not kill us. In
fact, if I sit long enough with my white wolf, I come to realize that my
vulnerability is what makes me a more loving and compassionate person.
When we achieve love all
ways, we blur the lines between the two sides of the fabric and the white wolf
can sleep easy. In this way, we fill our tanks from the inside out, directly
from the dark places we fear the most.
Just like the monk on the side of the mountain. Just like a picketer, and our mothers. Just like those committee members and our fathers. Just like your brilliant best friend, just like our spouses and children. Just like me. Just like you.
Love All-Ways, Amen.`
AmberDawn
Bellemare
Jan,
2012
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