I’m not a Buddhist but I’ve discovered they do have a lot of good techniques to defeat the bad mojo in life. Partisan politics runs on a gas tank full of bad mojo. The Buddhists have some interesting concepts on how to deal with life’s badness. It’s a little like when your parents said to ignore mean kids who called you names at school.
Shenpa can be directly translated as “attachment” (in the Buddhist sense), but the true meaning is somewhat more nuanced than that. It is really that feeling of tightening in your mind/body when something a negative reaction in you. It’s not the thing itself, but rather the mind/body’s reaction to it – the sudden grip
Another analogy from Recovering Dharma: Shenpa is the ignition point of our distraction. Then it can progress to all the different ways that distraction manifests itself. Full-blown shenpa- let’s say- would be when you are in a fight with someone you love and suddenly you are clinging naked on the hood of their car as they drive away, begging them not to leave (wait, has this not happened to you?).
From The Pillbug: Fear Caution and Shenpa
Shenpa is the instant you choose blindness, for fear of seeing fear. The instant you look inside at familiar nightmares and cannot see outside, cannot see a way ahead to hope and life and unthinkable love. The instant a mob-like debate in your head, a debate you’ve heard a thousand times, deafens you to hope and life and love calling to you from nearby, from just an arm’s length away. Shenpa is your chance to catch fear at its beginning, at its smallest, when you can still roll it back, when you can still unclench the jaw, the eyes, the fingers, and look around again, and reach out again. But we can train at Shenpa, at seeing and catching its fluttering thread. That thread unravels the shroud of fear. That thread leads out of the maze.
Dealing With Insults, Refuse the Gift
One day Buddha was walking through a village. A very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting him. “You have no right teaching others, he shouted.” You are as stupid as everyone else. You are nothing but a fake.” Buddha was not upset by these insults. Instead he asked the young man “Tell me, if you buy a gift for someone, and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong?” The man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, “It would belong to me, because I bought the gift.” The Buddha smiled and said, “That is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you have done is hurt yourself.” “If you want to stop hurting yourself, you must get rid of your anger. When you hate others, you yourself become unhappy.”
