Shenpa: The Internal Thought Tornado

It’s tornado season in the Midwest, and so it seems appropriate to ponder over a word that Sue’s Buddhist meditation group discussed recently: shenpa.


In Practicing Peace in Times of War, Pema Chodron writes that shenpa is a Tibetan word that points to the root cause of aggression and all craving and that is “at the root of all conflict, all cruelty, oppression, and greed.” The usual translation, she writes, is “attachment,” but she thinks of shenpa as “getting hooked,” or “the charge behind our thoughts and words and actions, the charge behind ‘like’ and ‘don’t like.’”


Once you begin to notice shenpa, which has a “familiar taste, a familiar smell,” we realize that “this experience has been happening forever.” That “sticky feeling,” says Chodron, “is shenpa. And it comes along with a very seductive urge to do something.” Something negative, like blaming others or the self, or wanting revenge, or, or, or. “Then you speak or act. The charge behind the tightening, behind the urge, behind the story line or action is shenpa.”


Chodron continues, “You can actually feel shenpa happening. It’s a sensation that you can easily recognize. Even a spot on your new sweater can take you there. Someone looks at us in a certain way, or we hear a certain song, or walk into a certain room, and boom. We’re hooked.”


If we can “catch” shenpa when it’s just beginning, Chodron says, we can simply acknowledge that it’s happening and live with the moment without having to act on it. There’s an “underlying insecurity of the human experience, the insecurity that is inherent in a changing, shifting world.” The antidote is to cultivate a loving kindness toward the self, and to observe, rather than act, on shenpa. If we can just observe, it will eventually pass.


Here are a couple of ways that we experience shenpa:


Sue: I can get very rebellious when someone assumes I’m ultra-religious just because Chuck is a Methodist minister. Indeed, I get that “sticky feeling” and then the “seductive urge” to say something mouthy, trying to prove that I’m not your typical minister’s wife – as if there really is such a creature, anyway – and that I’m curious about many faith traditions in addition to Christianity.


Chuck: Another way that Sue described shenpa to me was when she explained the concept was “button-pushing.” I must admit that my button gets pushed when I encounter the legalists of life, especially religious legalists, which can be a problem considering I’m a pastor. I flinch when I am reprimanded for not doing church the right way – in other words, in someone else’s way.


We take to heart Chadron’s four R’s for dealing with shenpa: “recognizing the shenpa, refraining from scratching, relaxing with the underlying urge to scratch, and then resolving to interrupt the momentum like this for the rest of our lives.” She says, “If we can learn to relax in the place where the urge is strong, we will get a bigger perspective on what’s happening. We might come to see that there are two billion kinds of itch and seven quadrillion types of scratching, but we just call the whole thing shenpa.”


Realizing that there will always be opportunities for the “sticky feeling,” can we learn to pause a moment next time, rather than spiral into the thought tornado known as shenpa? We’re going to try. Stay tuned.