A story came to me: a simple enough story with no great wisdom attached unless one has eyes to see and ears to hear.

The story is this. One Sunday morning, an elder acquaintance of mine was on her way into the interfaith chapel where she worships weekly. Outside, in the parking lot, a homeless man dressed in rags, riding a battered bicycle 'round and 'round in aimless circles and calling out randomly to people as if he was mentally ill. Noticeably annoyed, she thought to complain but didn't know who would receive her complaint so she remained silent and proceeded to her seat for the service to begin.

Begin it did. In strode the homeless man, right down the center aisle of the chapel, straightaway to the altar. My acquaintance gasped with the shock as the homeless man stripped his rags of clothing and dropped them to the floor of the chapel...to reveal the figure of her minister.

Nothing further said.

The Buddhist nun Pema Chodron would call my friend's reaction her "shenpa," the stuff that hooks her into a morass of thinking and feeling that keeps her running around in circles inside herself with resentment. We all get hooked from time to time by people, events, things that catch us in a certain vulnerable place and won't let us go. In this case, it was my friend's tendency to judge another harshly, gently held up for her (who has eyes to see) to notice her own leaning into judgment of another because of how he was dressed and how he behaved. Telling me the story, contrite, she said how much appropriate shame she experienced when she realized what she had done.

The concept of "shenpa" is one that highlights for all of us those places where we are still caught in the maya, or illusion, that things are one way when, in fact, we might have pegged it entirely wrong.

I certainly have become more aware of my own hooks since hearing this story, and share it in the hope that you, dear readers, will too. How much more compassionate we might be with each other if each of us made more effort to become conscious of and clean up our "shenpa. "

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Meredith Jordan,