From Shenpa to Happiness

Shenpa is a Tibetan word which is closely similar to the emotion of getting hooked and stuck to the very beginning of a disagreeable thought, action of another person, or circumstance that rubs you the wrong way. It pushes your button. It occurs so deep and early in the irritation that you are not even aware of your internal reaction until it is too late and you have lost it.

The bliss, peace, contentment or even just a sense of getting by is gone. It is immediately replaced by your fuming response of lashing out in an almost uncontrolled rubber-band-snap-back to whatever it is that caused your button to be pressed. Shenpa is the very urge to scratch an itch when you first feel the bite of a mosquito. Sometimes your hand is scratching even before you are aware of doing it. The longer you wait and the deeper you get into the reaction is like adding multiple rows of velcrow tightening shenpa’s grip and making it harder to break free.

It can be as simple as watching television and seeing someone eating potato chips.  Your thoughts slosh up and back, chips or no chips. Without making a conscious decision shenpa strikes and at the next commercial you find yourself munching on a bag of chips you just took out of the pantry.

The opposite of shenpa is freedom. The path from the sequential stress of shenpa towards freedom begins with a simple practice. We all have routine itches that spontaneously appear. Keep an eye out for one to show up and resist the urge to scratch. Okay, you have probably already scratched that one. The next one or the one after that you will catch and be able to make a conscious choice to scratch immediately or not. That is great progress. As you continue you may start to notice a pattern that causes some of the itches; but that is a subject for another blog.   Another practice is to eat only one potato chip and sit with the urge to take another. Or to see how long you can eat a pistachio nut or a raisin as if they were a hard sucking candy without chewing.

With practice you will gradually start to notice the urge of shenpa to react to routine circumstances that set you off both at home and at work. As you catch yourself earlier in the downward spiral of over reacting you will be moving towards freedom. You will be able to avoid stored up habitual reactions that in the past led to the wish that you had not reacted in that way.

The next blog will continue with shenpa’s opposite  — the freedom of the Flowstate.