Rerun

I am in love with a buddhist nun.  I think I have listened to Pema Chodron's audiobook Getting Unstuck more times than I have fingers and toes.  A chief concept in this series of lecture recordings is a Tibetan word called "shen-pa", which translates as attachment but really is more about how we get stuck in knee-jerk reactions to uncomfortable emotional triggers.  It's the basis of addiction and judgement, of ego and longing and buddhists believe it underlies universal human suffering.  

Letting go of shenpa is about finding out how to experience and enjoy the world exactly as it is in every moment.  That seems simple but if you try it for a whole day or even a few minutes, it can be profound to recognize that it is actually next to impossible. It's also, interestingly, not the same thing as resignation. Many buddhists are activists; what they train in is in seeing the world with clarity and compassion, which makes it easier, actually, to effect change.  

For me, the concept of shenpa dovetails with a "win-win" negotiating strategy I first read in the book Getting to Yes.  Rather than setting yourself up as an adversary in conflict - say peace talks, or commerce - you invite the other party to find the most mutually beneficial way forward.  This requires setting aside preconceived notions about how to meet your needs.  The premise is that most problems can be solved in many ways; if you go into the negotiation focused on interests rather than a particular position, you can come up with solutions that satisfy everyone.

Which is the scenic route to my current circumstance.  I woke up into a "shenpa attack" - a feeling of panic and dread that seemed to precede consciousness.  And though I could feel the pressure of all the dreams I'd had pushing against my eyelids, trying to get out, I couldn't remember anything.

You might think this is going somewhere didactic or anecdotal about how I solved the "problem" of forgetfulness or got "unstuck" from my anxiety but really I have no point; it's just what I was thinking about when I first woke up and started writing. 

Nonetheless it is true that I have nothing to report from last night's dream festival.  Instead I post this dream, from a few weeks before the blog began, when I woke into a similar state of panic but actually did remember what I was experiencing beforehand.

 8/22/2010

My neighbor’s tv woke me.  At first, in the 5am dark I was so confused and wracked with guilt I put my ear to the soft glow of my laptop battery status light, thinking the noise might be coming from inside there, that my computer had failed to put itself to sleep, that I had left some youtube clip running.  Then I remembered cracking my window before bed to let in some air.  Actually it was my wife who did this.

I had been dreaming that ice cream is too expensive.  A lot of other things happened first of course, including meeting up with a friend from high school in a giant warehouse that was New York city after driving a robot on stilts through the underground subway system and never finding the right elevator floor to take me to good parking on the lower east side, but the take home message was that soft serve, even gourmet and hand dipped in chocolate, should not come to six  dollars.

The receipt was a two page zine written by the artist-turned-cone-operator with elaborate math on the cover indicating that she had given me a two dollar discount.  She had been friendly, informative, and respectful.  I hesitated for so long over my visa receipt trying to decide if I should tip that I woke up.

Art imitates life.  Last night my wife went for a walk with me.  It cost nearly eight dollars for us each to have one scoop of Baskin Robbins in waffle cones.  Butter Pecan (for me).  Hawaiian chocolate (for her).  I wasn’t sure what made the chocolate Hawaaian other than the presence of macadamia nuts.

I also spent some significant dream time trying to find my therapist, thinking about what I would say to him, speed walking in a sweat through long corridors that ended up not containing his office.  I also spent time in a classroom, and more time in transit agonizing about the homework, not being sure if I should work out a quadrilateral equation or write a philosophical treatise.  At one point I was the instructor which was worse because I could not remember if I had prepared a lecture or not.

My room is cold now.  I drank some water, and peed.  I shut the window. 

Maybe I’ll sleep.