Big Lesson From a Little Red Dress

Maybe the red dress was too much. I wanted to look good, but not stand out too much. I mean, I was going to stand out enough already: a young black woman with a soft afro holding hands with a somewhat older white man, in a members' only dining club.  Oh yes, I was going to stand out.  But I didn't want to stand out more.

So even though I looked great in the red dress, I took it off. 

Put the black one on instead. 

I chose not to stand out. 

I chose not to be present.

* * *

Over these past few months "presence" has been one of my daily intentions. In these instances I thought of "presence" as the focus of attention on the current moment. Of making sure that I paid attention to my children when they spoke. To take note of emotions that arose during the day. To notice when the itch* came and to stay with it.

But never had I thought about my physical presence. 

About the space I occupy on this earth, in my city, in my home, in this chair. 

I had not realized that even though I was spending all of this time trying to be emotionally and mentally "present" that I still wanted to shrink. 

That I still wanted to make myself invisible.

To make my presence unknown.

(How present are you?)

*This is a teaching on a Tibetan word: shenpa. The usual translation of the word shenpa is attachment. If you were to look it up in a Tibetan dictionary, you would find that the definition was attachment. But the word "attachment" absolutely doesn't get at what it is. Dzigar Kongtrul said not to use that translation because it's incomplete, and it doesn't touch the magnitude of shenpa and the effect that it has on us.

If I were translating shenpa it would be very hard to find a word, but I'm going to give you a few. One word might be hooked. How we get hooked.

Another synonym for shenpa might be that sticky feeling. In terms of last night's analogy about having scabies, that itch that goes along with that and scratching it, shenpa is the itch and it's the urge to scratch. So, urge is another word. The urge to smoke that cigarette, the urge to overeat, the urge to have one more drink, or whatever it is where your addiction is.

Here is an everyday example of shenpa. Somebody says a mean word to you and then something in you tightens— that's the shenpa. Then it starts to spiral into low self-esteem, or blaming them, or anger at them, denigrating yourself. And maybe if you have strong addictions, you just go right for your addiction to cover over the bad feeling that arose when that person said that mean word to you. This is a mean word that gets you, hooks you. Another mean word may not affect you but we're talking about where it touches that sore place— that's a shenpa. Someone criticizes you—they criticize your work, they criticize your appearance, they criticize your child— and, shenpa: almost co-arising.

                                                                                   - Pema Chodron