““The discomfort associated with groundlessness, with the fundamental ambiguity of being human, comes from our attachment to wanting things to be a certain way. The Tibetan word for attachment is shenpa. My teacher Dzigar Kongtrül calls shenpa the barometer of ego clinging, a gauge of our self-involvement and self-importance. Shenpa has a visceral quality associated with grasping or, conversely, pushing away. This is the feeling of I like, I want, I need and I don’t like, I don’t want, I don’t need, I want it to go away. I think of shenpa as being hooked. It’s that stuck feeling, that tightening or closing down or withdrawing we experience when we’re uncomfortable with what’s going on. Shenpa is also the urge to find relief from those feelings by clinging to something that gives us pleasure.””
