Shenpa Reveals the Seeds

The seeds of what I
Feel are WAY underneath what’s
In my life today.

Choose Stillness and Remember

I hold you and we
Sit still together as we
Let those seeds burn up.

Haiku’s generally come to me when I walk in the woods. Sometimes I have my phone with me and am able to record what comes. When I don’t, the challenge is to remember. The other day I had my phone and recorded these.

They came after listening to a lecture by Pema Chodrun. She has been a quietly profound boon throughout my life. And what struck me the other day was her wisdom about not repeating old patterns.

Shenpa is, very loosely, a trigger or a hook. The old patterns are habitual responses to these hooks. The Shenpa can be thought of as a seed and responding habitually means you water the seed. And that, in turn, means that the seed grows.

NOT responding habitually means NOT watering the seed the way you always have. And it leaves you feeling uncomfortably at loose ends. You’re not doing the usual. And Chodron describes this as a feeling of choosing to sit in the midst of fire.

It’s hard.

But what struck me in her description was that the fire burns up the seeds. This feels like a very positive thing — incremental, concrete progress.

It’s another way of describing the process of not continuing to travel old, well-worn, neural pathways. What I find especially helpful is the fact that we’re talking here about lots and lots of seeds. This certainly matches my experience of hooks. And the hopeful part here is the fact that burning a seed actually gets rid of it.

There will always be more seeds, and not following the chain reaction that shenpa tempts is very challenging.

But choosing to sit in the fire yields real, concrete results. It is always worth doing!