I have recently been introduced to the Tibetan word shenpa. Pema Chondron does a fantastic job of describing shenpa: Someone criticizes you. They criticize your work or your appearance or your child. At moments like that, what is it you feel? It has a familiar taste in your mouth, it has a familiar smell. Once you begin to notice it, you feel like this experience has been happening forever.
The Tibetan word for this is Shenpa. It is usually translated as “attachment,” but a more descriptive translation might be “hooked.” When shenpa hooks us, we’re likely to get stuck. We could call shenpa “that sticky feeling.” It’s an everyday experience. Even a spot on your new sweater can take you there. At the subtlest level, we feel a tightening, a tensing, a sense of closing down. Then we feel a sense of withdrawing, not wanting to be where we are. That’s the hooked quality. That tight feeling has the power to hook us into self denigration, blame, anger, jealousy, and other emotions which lead to words and actions that end up poisoning us. [...]
Shenpa thrives on the underlying insecurity of living in a world that is always changing. We experience this insecurity as a background of slight unease or restlessness. We all want some kind of relief from that unease, so we turn to what we enjoy–food, alcohol, drugs, sex, work or shopping. In moderation what we enjoy might be very delightful. We can appreciate its taste and its presence in our life. But when we empower it with the idea that it will bring us comfort, that it will remove our unease, we get hooked.
When we don't get hooked, our possibilities for moving forward are limitless!
It has become increasingly obvious, that our society is one where people are not prepared to work constructively with shenpa. As a result, most work and life situations ‘hook’ the people involved and the downward spiral continues. If a different result or a different way of being is desired, then people have to be taught how to recognize and constructively embrace shenpa.
