JordanCornblog

Shenpa is the path
To my freedom if I let
Each seed just burn up.

Walking in the woods this morning I let myself realize how afraid I am of each trigger (each Shenpa) that brings up feelings (seeds that want to sprout).

Is it the feelings or the triggers I fear? They are so tightly twined. A part of this work is to create space so I can see that they are different. The space of a breath — enough space to make the choice to NOT water the seed but to let it burn up.

And to just sit with the feeling is to know (as Blake said) that the feeling is in me. I am not in the feeling, though when I water the seed it surely feels that way.

No, the feeling is in me and therefore I am bigger. I don’t need to be afraid. I can let each seed just burn.

PS I am a fire sign! 😉

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!

The trillium and
Lady slippers are almost
Gone. Poppies come soon…

Lady Slipper

It’s okay if you
Don’t show your flower today.
Perfect either way.

And…

Meanwhile Trillium
Blooms with abandon on the
Woodsy, twisty path.

Dark death then dark nights.
Kiss outside the library
Echoed down the years.

Just now…

Something old came clear
And there’s no question and no
Ambiguity.

So…

If I really stop
Repeating old patterns I’ve
Indulged, what remains?

Every ‘hook’ is an
Opportunity to pause
And choose something new.

How could I not have
Made unwise choices in life?
Accept, love, and learn.

Accompanied by two salient quotes from Adrienne Rich:

• “The moment of change is the only poem.”
• …our need mocks our gear.”

And just because, here’s the whole wonderful poem by Adrienne Rich that I lifted that last line from:

Double Monologue

To live illusionless, in the abandoned mine-
shaft of doubt, and still
mime illusions for others? a puzzle
for the maker who has thought
once too often too coldly.

Since I was more than a child
trying on a thousand faces
I have wanted to know one thing: to know
simply as i know my name
at any given moment, where i stand.

How much expense of time and skill
which might have set itself
to angelic fabrications! All merely
to chart one needle in the haymow?
Find yourself and you find the world?

Solemn presumption! Mighty Object
no one but itself has missed,
what’s lost, if you stay lost? Someone
ignorantly loves you–will that serve?
Shrug that off, and presto–

the needle drowns in the haydust.
Think of the whole haystack–
a composition so fortuitous
it only looks monumental.
There’s always a straw twitching somewhere.

Wait out the long chance, and
your needle too could get nudged up
to the apex of that bristling calm.
Rusted, possibly. You might not want
to swear it was the Object, after all.

Time wears us old utopians.
I now no longer think
‘truth’ is the most beautiful of words.
Today, when I see ‘truthful’
written somewhere, it flares

like a white orchid in wet woods,
rare and grief-delighting, up from the page.
Sometimes, unwittingly even,
we have been truthful.
In a random universe, what more

exact and starry consolation?
Don’t think I think
facts serve better than ignorant love.
Both serve, and still
our need mocks our gear.

It’s not essential
To figure anything out.
Just let it all go.

…or as Rumi says:

All theologies are straws His sun burns to dust;
Knowing takes you to the Threshold, but not through the Door.
Nothing can teach you if you don’t unlearn everything
How learned I was, before Revelation made me dumb.

• Jalal-ud-Din Rumi