holidays | Luminous Heart

Photography as Meditation: The Friday Flower returns! Sometimes just photos. Sometimes with writing. Appearing on Fridays.

I’m finishing this first day of the new year as I finished the last day of the old.

Prayer Dance is what it sounds like, spontaneously arising dance for the purpose of healing and blessing. It’s not something I was ever taught, yet I suspect it’s pretty universal in practice.

Sometimes I move in silence. Other times I blast music as loud as I can. I don’t know why it works, but intense sound creates a cocoon rather than overwhelming my circuits.

Much of the music I’ve been playing these two days comes from Yungchen Lhamo, a courageous Tibetan woman with a voice that is beyond imagining. If you ever have an opportunity to hear her in person, you must go. Aside from her astonishing voice, I am absolutely certain she is a Bodhisattva walking among us.

Here is her song, Tara, from her album Ama. About this song she says:

Thematically , it is about Tara, the female Tibetan deity exemplifying feminine dignity, unselfishness, strength and compassion. Redemptress. When I was very young, I thought I wanted to be a man so that I could help more people. But my grandmother and my mother said you don’t have to be a man to help people.

They used to say “You pray to Tara.”

Now I understand what they meant by that.

Turn your speakers up!

Prayer Dance is beyond words. When I sat down to write afterward, here is some of what was in my heart.

Prayers
to love and feel loved
to belong
to know our inseparable connection to all beings
for suffering to lead to compassion until the world is free of suffering
to have blessing in our lives and be the source of blessings for others
to be free of doubts, fear, and ignorance
to trust
to value diversity
to honor our interdependence
to have all that we need
to practice generosity
to know our inner strength
for our love to be received
for the best parts of us to come forward
for happiness, laughter, and time to play
for freedom
for kindness wherever we turn
for stillness
to have enough and to be enough
to have equanimity, free of bias
for discernment
for beauty, meaning, and purpose
for comfort
for magic and dreaming
for healing
for understanding
for grace
for dedication and devotion
to heal the war inside us
for peace to prevail
for Bodhichitta to arise where it has not been born
for Enlightenment

What would you add to this list?

May 2010 be a year of abundant happiness for you, your loved ones, and for all beings. I’m grateful to have you in my life.

There’s a Buddhist practice I’ve been working with a lot lately. The Tibetan word for it is shenpa.

Most of the time shenpa is translated as “attachment.” Pema Chodron translates it as hooked, or how we get hooked. She compares it to an itch we can’t help but scratch.

Here’s a basic example of shenpa: Somebody makes a comment that rubs you the wrong way and something inside you tenses. That’s shenpa, you just got hooked.

But it doesn’t stop there. It works like a chain reaction. You get hooked and then you start running a little story in your mind. Maybe you put yourself down. Then you blame the other person. You ask yourself why you even care what they say. You wonder why you haven’t learned, why set yourself up for this all the time. Then you think more bad thoughts about the other person. The narrative just hums along and the next thing you know you’re eating a pint of ice cream without even tasting it. Or shouting or withdrawing or whatever your automatic fallback response is when you’re heading for your comfort zone.

Unless you’re familiar with shenpa, it can be pretty subtle most of the time. You get hooked, you run your usual habitual responses without even noticing, and you carry on with you day

That is, until Shenpa hits a powerfully sore spot and you experience hook after piercing hook.

This is why holidays hurt. They’re practically shenpa symposiums. During holidays and special occasions there’s zero subtlety. Expectations are hyped and energy is overextended. Old family patterns are in full swing. Insecurities are running wild, with the people who push your buttons in hot pursuit.

Suddenly Shenpa is like getting stung by a scorpion. You know exactly why you’re having another drink. You know exactly why you feel like crying. You know exactly why you’re sneaking off to spend time on the computer. The narrative in your head is non-stop and you are likely to be running it for the next 24 hours if not the next 2 weeks.

This is hard. It’s miserable. It’s something too many of us experience when every (shenpa) advertisement, expectation and made-for-tv movie tells us we’re supposed to be feeling comfort and joy. Lots of joy.

Let’s try something different this holiday season. Let’s see if we can learn to spot it as it’s first arising, and stop the shenpa chain reaction before it starts, before things blow up and people get hurt.

Join me for a special program, Surviving Celebrations: Getting through the holidays with your (mental) health and happiness.

I’ll have full details for you next week. For now let me say it’s going to be a combination of recorded and live calls, and maybe a bonus or two.

I’m completely enamored with the idea of sharing some tools and practices to help you make it through to 2010 with your happiness intact.

[Registration is closed. Program is expected to open next year in early November. While you're waiting, you may want to read this post Develop Self Compassion: Meditation instructions for working with the breath. It will help you work with shenpa when it arises.]

Tag Archive: holidays

Prayer Dance

Shenpa: Why Holidays Hurt & What We Can Do About It