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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4017, Saturday, September 18, 2010, Editor: Mark
Even if bandits were to sever you savagely limb by limb with a
two-handled saw, those who give rise to a mind of hate toward
them would not be carrying out my teaching.
- The Buddha, The Sutra to Kakacupama, posted to
DailyDharma
It is natural that we should recoil from the tragedy and pain in
our lives. These difficult experiences challenge our
understanding of the larger benevolence of Reality.
And, yet, at the same time, their inevitability drives us into a
recognition of a Reality far larger than our individual pain and
suffering.
Beyond and within the immediacy of this moment lies the Infinity
of Truth. This Reality will never die. How can we ever despair
knowing that Truth is also supremely Real?
- Metta Zetty
Learning to Stay
This is a teaching on a Tibetan word: shenpa. If I were
translating shenpa it would be very hard to find a word, but I'm
going to give you a few. One word might be hooked. How we get
hooked.
Another synonym for shenpa might be that sticky feeling. In terms
of last night's analogy about having scabies, that itch that goes
along with that and scratching it, shenpa is the itch and it's
the urge to scratch. So, urge is another word. The urge to smoke
that cigarette, the urge to overeat, the urge to have one more
drink, or whatever it is where your addiction is.
Here is an everyday example of shenpa. Somebody says a mean word
to you and then something in you tightens - that's the shenpa.
Then it 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. This is a mean word that gets you, hooks you.
Another mean word may not affect you but we're talking about
where it touches that sore place - that's a shenpa. Someone
criticizes you -they criticize your work, they criticize your
appearance, they criticize your child - and, shenpa: almost
co-arising.
At Gampo Abbey it's a small community. We're thirty monks and
nuns there. You have a pretty intimate relationship there, living
in community. People were finding that in the dining room,
someone would come and sit down next to them and they could feel
the shenpa just because this person sat down next to them,
because they had some kind of thing going about this person. Then
they feel this closing down and they're hooked.
If you catch it at that level, it's very workable. And you have
the possibility, you have this enormous curiosity about sitting
still right there at the table with this urge to do the habitual
thing, to strengthen the habituation, you can feel it, and it's
never new. It always has a familiar taste in the mouth. It has a
familiar smell. When you begin to get the hang of it, you feel
like this has been happening forever.
Generally speaking, however, we don't catch it at that level of
just open space closing down. You're open-hearted, open-minded,
and then... erkk. Right along with the hooked quality, or the
tension, or the shutting down, whatever... I experience it, at
the most subtle level, as a sort of tensing. Then you can feel
yourself sort of withdrawing and actually not wanting to be in
that place.
It causes you to feel a fundamental, underlying insecurity of the
human experience that is inherent in a changing, shifting,
impermanent, illusory world, as long as we are habituated to want
to have ground under our feet.
So someone says this thing, which obviously triggers our
conditioning and so forth. We don't really have to go into the
history of why it happens so this is not self-analysis of why, or
what the trauma was, or anything. It's just, "Oh." And
you feel yourself tightening. Generally speaking, it's more
common that you are already well into the scratching by the time
you notice it.
In terms of shenpa itself, there's the tightening that happens
involuntarily, then there's the urge to move away from it in some
habitual way, which is usually initially in the mind, and it's
something you say to yourself about them. Usually it's
accompanied by this bad feeling. In the West, it is very, very
common at that point to turn it against yourself: something is
wrong with me. Maybe it's still non-verbal at this point, but
it's already pregnant with a kind of little gestalt, little
drama.
Mostly we don't catch this. First of all, we don't catch shenpa
at all until you start hearing teachings on it and start to work
with it although you may have been working with it from different
disciplines. But, mostly, you're already scratching.
Maybe you've already said the mean word. Or you've already said,
"No, you can't have that last piece of bread," which
are just words, but they're charged with a whole. . . panic,
really. The urge to move away from that place. That's all I can
say. Move away from that insecure... let's just call it that bad
feeling.
The scratching itself is part of the shenpa, too, although we're
beginning to move out further. It's all part of a chain reaction
that starts with a tense tightening when they say that word, or
they say that thing.
What's very interesting is 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 - you're not quite sure what it is you just
said, or maybe you know what it is you just said, it doesn't
necessarily have to be mean, or anything - 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. From your side, you can, at
that point, just keep going and get into it with them, but with a
kind of prajna, this clear seeing of what's really happening, not
involved with your story line and trying to get ground under your
feet. You see that happening to them.
There's some kind of basic intelligence that we all have. If
you're really smart and you're not too caught in your shenpa, you
somehow give the situation some space because you know that
they've just been triggered, they've just been hooked. You can
just see it in their eyes or their body language, maybe nothing
even verbal yet. And you know that if you're trying to make a
point about something that needs to happen in the office, or
trying to make a point with one of your children or your partner,
you know that nothing is going to get through at this point
because they're shutting down. They're closing off because of
shenpa: they've been hooked.
Your part of it could be completely innocent. You didn't really
do anything wrong, but you just recognize what's happening there.
This is a situation in Buddhist meditation where you can actually
learn how to open up the space. One method is to be quiet and
start to meditate right on the spot, just go to your breath and
be there openly with some kind of curiosity about them and
openness to them. You might have to change your way of talking at
that point and say, "How do you feel about that?" And
they may curtly say, "It's fine... No problem." But you
just know enough to try to shut up and maybe say, "Let's
talk about it this afternoon or tomorrow, or something, because
now is not the time."
If there's someone who's a practitioner and they're working on
themselves, such as at the monastery, we have a wonderful
situation, because everybody is working with this. You don't have
to say, "I see your shenpa !" In which case, they'd
probably sock it to you. No one particularly likes to have it
pointed out.
Although some people would start, they'd say, "When you see
it in me, just pull your earlobe, or something" - and often
partners will do that with each other - "and if I see in you
I'll do the same. Or, if you see it in yourself, and I'm not
picking it up, have some little sign so that we know that maybe
this isn't the time to continue this discussion." You don't
always have this luxury to not continue the discussion, but at
least you have some prajna, some clear seeing that's not ego
involved, about what will heal the relationship and open up the
space.
Habituation, which is ego-based, is just the opposite. It makes
matters worse. This is one of the definitions of ego: it makes
matters worse. Because you feel a compulsion in your own
particular style to fill up the space, and either push your point
through, or my style is that I would try to smooth the waters,
and everything makes it worse at that point, usually.
Somehow, learning how to open up the space without putting
particular form of scratching into the equation is important.
That's why I think this shenpa is really such a helpful teaching.
It's the tightening, it's the urge... it's this drive, too. This
drive. It really shows you that you have lots of addictions, that
we all have addictions. There's this background static of slight
unease, or maybe fidgetiness, or restlessness, or boredom. And
so, we begin to use things to try to get some kind of relief from
that unease.
Something like food, or alcohol, or drugs, or sex, or working, or
shopping, or whatever we do, which, perhaps in moderation would
be very delightful -like eating, enjoying your food. In fact, in
moderation there's this deep appreciation of the taste, of the
good fortune to have this in your life. But these things become
imbued with an addictive quality because we empower them with the
idea that they will bring us comfort. They will remove this
unease.
We never get at the root, which last night I was calling the
scabies. The root in this case is that we have to really
experience unease. We have to experience the itch. We have to
experience the shenpa and then not act it out.
This business of not acting out I will call refraining . It's
also called "renunciation" in the spiritual teachings.
It's interesting because the Tibetan word for renunciation is
shenluk and it means turning shenpa upside-down. Renunciation
isn't about renouncing food, or sex, or work, or relationship, or
whatever it is. There's this term: not attached to this life, not
attached to worldly things. It's not really talking about the
things themselves, it's talking about the shenpa . What we
renounce or what we refrain from is the shenpa.
Renunciation, shenluk, means turning shenpa upside-down, or
shaking it up. The interesting thing is that there is no way to
really renounce shenpa. Someone looks at you in a certain way or,
let's just face it, you hear a certain song, you have a certain
smell, you walk into a certain room and boom. Especially
trauma-based. And you know it has nothing to do with the present.
Nevertheless, there it is: it's involuntary.
In the Buddhist teachings, it's really not about trying to cast
something out but about seeing clearly and fully experiencing the
shenpa.
If there's the willingness to see clearly and experience, then
the prajna begins to click in. It is just innate in us. Wisdom
mind is our birthright. It's in every single living being down to
the smallest ant. But human beings have the greatest chance of
accessing it.
There's this prajna so then you don't have to get rid of the
shenpa. It begins to see the whole chain reaction. To use modern
language, there's some wisdom that is based on a fundamental
desire for wholeness or healing- which has nothing to do with
ego-grasping. It has to do with wanting to connect and live from
your basic goodness, your basic openness, your basic lack of
prejudice, your basic lack of bias, your basic warmth. Wanting to
live from that. It begins to become a stronger force than the
shenpa and itself stops the chain reaction.
Those of you who have had, or still have, strong addictions and
are working all the time with that urge, with that craving, with
that drive to do something self-destructive yet again, you know
that there has to be the willingness to fully acknowledge what's
happening. Then there is the willingness to refrain from having
just one more drink, or refrain from binge eating or whatever it
is.
It has to be done in some way that you equate it with loving
kindness towards yourself, friendliness and warmth towards
yourself, rather than equating it with some kind of straight
jacket that you're putting on yourself, because then you get into
the struggle.
You do know that if you're alcoholic, or have been alcoholic or
are a recovering alcoholic, you do know that you have to stop
drinking. In your case, one little sip doesn't quite do it in
terms of ending the cycle. There are different degrees to how
much you have to refrain. There has to be something, some pattern
of habituation of strengthening the ignorance around shenpa and
the ignorance that the chain reaction is even happening, the
ignorance that you're even scratching, the ignorance that it's
spreading all over your body, the ignorance that you're bleeding
to death.
You know when addiction gets really strong. My daughter-in-law...
at the age of thirty-five, they gave her two months to live from
alcohol poisoning, cirrhosis of the liver. She was here last
night. She lived. She's sober. It's five years later. But, she
had to really hit bottom. And, I'll tell you, she was blown up
like a blimp. She was this horrible yellow-green color, and her
eyes were bright orange, and she would not stop drinking. I would
get her to the hospital and they would drain her fluid - bottles
and bottles and bottles of fluid - and soon as they would allow
her to go, she'd go home and drink again.
Sometimes people never pull out of it. Why do we do those things?
We all do those things to that degree or lesser. Why? It's
stupid. But the reason we do it is because we imbue that drink or
that scratching in whatever form with comfort. In order to move
away from the basic uneasiness, we find comfort in certain
things, which in moderation could enhance our life, but they
become imbued with addictive quality. Then what could have
enhanced our life, or brought delight to our life - like a taste,
or a smell, or an activity, or anything - begins to make our life
into a nightmare. All we're getting is this short-term symptom
relief.
We are willing to sometimes die to keep getting short-term
symptom relief. That's what it came down to [with my
daughter-in-law], short-term symptom relief even when she took
those sips, even though her life was more out of control every
day and she was dying. But when she got paralyzed so she couldn't
move and they took her child away, then she changed. And she had
some friends who were there for her through the whole thing and
that was helpful too. For her AA has been a savior. It doesn't
work for everyone, but for her it's been a savior.
That's the story of how you are so habituated and the habitual
pattern of imbuing poison with comfort. This is the same thing.
It doesn't have to be substance abuse. It can be saying mean
things. Maybe you never say mean things, but you think them all
the time.
- Pema Chodron, Berkeley Shambhala Center
Pema Chodron:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7qFi52FX1Q