Speaker 1: In case you're just recently joining us, or however long
Speaker 1: you've been a listener of the show. You may not
Speaker 1: realize we have years of incredible episodes in our archive.
Speaker 1: We've had so many wonderful guests that we've decided to
Speaker 1: handpick one of our favorites that may be new to you,
Speaker 1: but if not, it's definitely worth another listen. We hope
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy this episode with Henry Schuckman. The Path is
Speaker 1: about going deeper, and it's about integrating what we realize
Speaker 1: in these experiences. It's like a whole new life can
Speaker 1: open up. Welcome to the one you feed throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Henry Shukman,
Speaker 1: a poet, writer, and associate zen Master who lives in
Speaker 1: New Mexico, where he teaches at Mountain Cloud Zen Center.
Speaker 1: He's published eight books to date of fiction, poetry, and
Speaker 1: non fiction, and writes regularly for Tricycle, The New York Times,
Speaker 1: and other publications. In this episode, Eric and Henry discuss
Speaker 1: his beautifully written book One Blade of Grass, Finding the
Speaker 1: Old Road of the Art a Memoir. Hi, Henry, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Eric, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I am really happy to have you on. We're going
Speaker 1: to discuss your wonderful book called One Blade of Grass
Speaker 1: Finding the Old Road of the Heart as zen memoir
Speaker 1: in a moment. But let's start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with a parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery in love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred. And fear, and the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: he thinks about it for a second, and he looks
Speaker 1: up at his grandfather says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says that the one you feed. So
Speaker 1: I'd like to start off by asking you what that
Speaker 1: parable means to you in your life and in the
Speaker 1: work that you do. It resonates very strongly with me,
Speaker 1: and I feel that there have certainly been times in
Speaker 1: my life when I could sort of say I wasn't
Speaker 1: really feeding the right wolf, you know, when I got
Speaker 1: into places of despair and nihilism, and especially in my
Speaker 1: early adulthood. For me, you know, it was learning really
Speaker 1: to begin to realize that there were choices, deep choices
Speaker 1: one could make about how one lived one's life, how
Speaker 1: one experienced one's life. It began for me in my
Speaker 1: mid twenties, early to mid twenties in a real way,
Speaker 1: when I first took up meditation. It was then that
Speaker 1: I realized I didn't have to be entirely driven by
Speaker 1: the forces that seemed to have been mostly driving me,
Speaker 1: especially in my early adulthood, which were which were really around,
Speaker 1: you know, anxiety and stress and craving for acknowledgment. And
Speaker 1: I had a lot of ambition in my early life.
Speaker 1: I was trying to be a writer from my mid
Speaker 1: teens actually, and all of it had led to a
Speaker 1: pretty unhappy life. And the moment I started meditating, meaning
Speaker 1: that on a daily basis, I was being still for
Speaker 1: a chunk of time each day, it was as if
Speaker 1: the dial on my nervous system could turn down, and
Speaker 1: it was. It stopped being so hyper active and so
Speaker 1: kind of overloaded and running so hot and hard. And
Speaker 1: as my nervous system settled down, I just started to
Speaker 1: realize that there was space to make choices, to make
Speaker 1: decisions not out of impulse and a sense of need,
Speaker 1: but more out of well real choice. And you know, gradually,
Speaker 1: as my practice sort of evolved and went on, and
Speaker 1: I got into Zen and other kinds of Buddhism as well.
Speaker 1: In time, you know, I realized when I hear that parable,
Speaker 1: now it's like for me, it's kind of described having practiced,
Speaker 1: because it says one wolf is about love and bravery
Speaker 1: and the other is about greed and hatred. And in
Speaker 1: the Buddhist view, all of us have work known as
Speaker 1: the three poisons, which are greed and hatred or desire
Speaker 1: and aversion or desire and ill will and delusion, three poisons.
Speaker 1: And to start practicing is to start recognizing them and
Speaker 1: to cease to be under their enchantment or under their spell.
Speaker 1: And so when I hear the parable, you know, to me,
Speaker 1: I want to say, yeah, absolutely, feeding the wolf. That
Speaker 1: is about growth and capacity and space and love, you know,
Speaker 1: always turning away the greater love is. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, I kind of almost want to say, it's
Speaker 1: wise to make some kind of allowing for the other
Speaker 1: wolfing like, you know, something in me says, it's good
Speaker 1: to know that I can slip into those old habits
Speaker 1: and that they're they're not banished exactly, it's more that
Speaker 1: they're allowed for. I don't know whether that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: You know, I had wrestled with negative side quite a
Speaker 1: bit in the course of my journey, and I feel
Speaker 1: that it's I don't really want to banish it. That
Speaker 1: hasn't worked so well as understanding it, acknowledging it and
Speaker 1: allowing for it and giving it some kind of space,
Speaker 1: but not letting it take over, right, totally makes sense.
Speaker 1: Two things there. I think Obviously there's stuff to be
Speaker 1: learned from these so called negative emotions, right, They're coming
Speaker 1: from something for some reason, so there's something to be learned.
Speaker 1: And then secondly, I think what you say we're so
Speaker 1: important is that when we just feel bad about ourselves
Speaker 1: for having them, we just compound all the problems. Yes, exactly, exactly,
Speaker 1: And I've found that in my journey being able to
Speaker 1: see that underneath a lot of that negativity I wrestled
Speaker 1: with an early life, there were just some some wounds.
Speaker 1: You know, there's some basic pains and grieves, griefs and
Speaker 1: things that somehow I had missed in growing up. And
Speaker 1: you know there's stories about that I certainly have worked
Speaker 1: with in therapy. But you know that to be able
Speaker 1: to open to what is painful for me, it's been
Speaker 1: part of my journey into greater wholeness and greater well being.
Speaker 1: Rather than sort of banishing pain, learning how to open
Speaker 1: up to it and sort of be with it and
Speaker 1: offer it some kind of space that's proven to be
Speaker 1: a wiser path of growth and healing for me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree completely. One of the things in your story
Speaker 1: that I resonated kind of throughout it was you you
Speaker 1: talked about since early on in life, you had mild,
Speaker 1: low grade sort of depression dysthemia. Is that how you
Speaker 1: pronounce it? Yeah, I've yeah, dys thymia. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know that you've had that, and it was your companion
Speaker 1: for a long time, even as you journeyed deeper into
Speaker 1: your spiritual life, even as you had some pretty profound
Speaker 1: awakening and opening experiences. And that describes me pretty well.
Speaker 1: I've had some some tremendous opening and awakening experiences and
Speaker 1: to find myself, you know, a little bit later, like oh,
Speaker 1: there's my old friend again, you know, low grade depression.
Speaker 1: Here he is hanging around. And I just thought we
Speaker 1: could talk about that a little bit because I really
Speaker 1: resonated a lot with it, and I think that that
Speaker 1: was part of your story that I kept really resoning
Speaker 1: with which you kept growing spiritually and yet didn't make
Speaker 1: everything better. And I don't think your message is like, oh,
Speaker 1: you hit a point where it all goes away, but
Speaker 1: you do have a message of a certain piece eventually coming.
Speaker 1: For me, it was like a kind of a see
Speaker 1: saw for a long time really between you know, really
Speaker 1: finding deep, deep peace and a great sort of intrinsic
Speaker 1: love in every moment you know at times and then
Speaker 1: just being sort of triggered right back into old contraction
Speaker 1: into depression or mild depression, and you know, sort of
Speaker 1: same old habits. But there was a point in my
Speaker 1: I would say it was my long training under certain
Speaker 1: Zend teachers, you know, who were very kind of patient
Speaker 1: and kind with me, and there's a moment in time
Speaker 1: when on a retreat, actually I just had a really
Speaker 1: you know, for me, it was a very deep experience
Speaker 1: where just everything, really everything just sort of fell away
Speaker 1: and there wasn't anything left. And instead of it being
Speaker 1: like really a nihilistic kind of experience, it was the
Speaker 1: exact opposite. It was the cure for all nihilism, I felt.
Speaker 1: And after it, everything sort of came back in a
Speaker 1: new way in a and like there was nothing more
Speaker 1: precious than this moment, whatever it might be. And that
Speaker 1: was over twelve years ago now, and really something has
Speaker 1: been different since then. It's not that I perfectly blessed
Speaker 1: and marvelous or anything like that, but could I still
Speaker 1: have habits that I wish I didn't have, you know,
Speaker 1: but it has been really different. It's a real different
Speaker 1: orientation kicked in where I just didn't get so caught
Speaker 1: by my sense of me. You know, I couldn't sort
Speaker 1: of say that it's vanished entirely forever, you know. I
Speaker 1: think it still comes back at times, but it's not
Speaker 1: a problem, you know. And I haven't had depression like
Speaker 1: I used to in quite a long time, not really
Speaker 1: since that moment. And I'm not claiming any great, you know,
Speaker 1: achievements spiritually or anything. It's just that things have been
Speaker 1: remarkably easier and in a way that I never would
Speaker 1: have expected. You know. I always thought, basically, no matter
Speaker 1: what others may sort of find on this path, I'm
Speaker 1: not cut out for that. You know. I can do
Speaker 1: a certain amount, I can get a certain way down
Speaker 1: a path of spiritual growth, but I'm always going to
Speaker 1: get knocked back by by my psychology. You know, it's
Speaker 1: never going to really relinquish its hold. But I was wrong.
Speaker 1: There was something really unexpected did happen. And again, I
Speaker 1: don't want to make it sound like I'm claiming, you know,
Speaker 1: some exalted status or anything at all, and it's certainly
Speaker 1: not like I'm you know, my wife knows, you know
Speaker 1: perfectly well, that I can I can get a bit down,
Speaker 1: I can get a bit grumpy, but it's so much
Speaker 1: less of a problem, right, And I guess my question
Speaker 1: for you would be, you would add several of these
Speaker 1: sort of you know in Zen called Kenchow moments, right,
Speaker 1: these big awakenings where even your sense of self did
Speaker 1: fall away, but then it seems to you know, it
Speaker 1: seems to sort of come back and reconstitute itself in
Speaker 1: a more durable form. Do you think it was the
Speaker 1: fact that as you matured in your Zen practice, you
Speaker 1: had a better container for those things, and that you
Speaker 1: were better able to take those experiences and integrate them
Speaker 1: and live them. Or was there something about the depth
Speaker 1: of that other experience that was deeper and more final.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious what you attribute to that sort
Speaker 1: of that turning point, because you'd had other pretty profound
Speaker 1: awakening experiences. That's a great question. I'm honored that you
Speaker 1: would even ask it. But I think the answer is
Speaker 1: both that definitely the container was being expanded and made
Speaker 1: healthier through my training and a lot of I mean
Speaker 1: that really all goes down to my teachers, who who
Speaker 1: would just you know, really wise and kind and patient
Speaker 1: with me. So I think there was really as the container.
Speaker 1: Let's say, you know, was more and more ready. You know,
Speaker 1: it allowed actually possibly I'd say it allowed for something
Speaker 1: deeper to happen. You know, letting go thoroughly is really
Speaker 1: sort of difficult for us. I think when I was nineteen,
Speaker 1: actually I had a sort of random awakening experience out
Speaker 1: of nowhere, without any interest in that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I wasn't I wasn't into spirituality at all. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'd grown up in Oxford, England, son of academics, and
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I was. I was all set
Speaker 1: to be an academic myself, if anything. And then suddenly
Speaker 1: I just had this random moment of utter union with
Speaker 1: the world and it was it was the most beautiful
Speaker 1: thing that had ever happened to me. And it came
Speaker 1: out of nowhere, and it was a profound sense that
Speaker 1: I was just inseparable from the fabric of the universe.
Speaker 1: Really was was what it felt like, and that the
Speaker 1: whole of creation was sort of immediately present right in
Speaker 1: the moment where I was. It was all me and
Speaker 1: I was all it and there was no separation of
Speaker 1: any kind anywhere. Sort of thing was what it felt like.
Speaker 1: But and then it sort of faded and I walked
Speaker 1: around and kind of blissed for a few weeks. And
Speaker 1: actually I was away from home at the time, and
Speaker 1: I went home. This is when I was nineteen, and
Speaker 1: within half an hour of walking into my dad's house,
Speaker 1: I was broken. I was just a wreck. I had
Speaker 1: a very in some ways, you know, very privileged culturally privileged,
Speaker 1: you know, childhood with my parents both being at the
Speaker 1: heart of the university and all that. But it had
Speaker 1: also been difficult because we had a really difficult divorce
Speaker 1: situation when I was young, and I'd had really bad
Speaker 1: exemo from the age of six months, you know, right
Speaker 1: the way through childhood. And so when I came home
Speaker 1: at that time, after this opening, I was really open
Speaker 1: and all the unhappiness of my childhood that I had
Speaker 1: kind of fended off and found ways not to feel
Speaker 1: in order to function as a child, it all just
Speaker 1: sort of landed on top of me then and I
Speaker 1: had to kind of breakdown. Actually at the time, I thought, oh, no,
Speaker 1: this is kind of the end of the world. Whatever's
Speaker 1: going on as a disaster. When I look back on it,
Speaker 1: I realized, well, no, this was the other side. This
Speaker 1: was like got to reckon with the wounds and to
Speaker 1: only be sort of having a great expansive moment. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's lovely and wonderful and some ways, you know, there's
Speaker 1: some deep truth in that kind of experience. But to
Speaker 1: have that without in my own case anyway, also learning
Speaker 1: how to be with my pain and wounds and you know,
Speaker 1: and grow in that way as well, you know, it
Speaker 1: was it just somehow in my biography I had to
Speaker 1: do both in a way. What happened then was the
Speaker 1: back and forth between oceanic expansiveness that I'd sometimes taste,
Speaker 1: especially when I started training in Zen, and you know,
Speaker 1: real contracted anxiety and pain and depression, which I'd also experienced.
Speaker 1: And finally, I think, you know, through different kinds of work,
Speaker 1: not just meditation by the way, you know, dream work
Speaker 1: and other kinds of therapy and a lot of yoga
Speaker 1: and things, I think it all helped to reach a
Speaker 1: point where I could let go more thoroughly of the
Speaker 1: whole system, is what it felt like, and no longer
Speaker 1: needing to sort of go back and forth. Really in
Speaker 1: the same way I've heard it referenced by Ken Wilber,
Speaker 1: there's waking up, but there's also growing up and cleaning up.
Speaker 1: There's more to a well lived, robust life than just
Speaker 1: awakening the experiences. There's a lot of other stuff we
Speaker 1: have to work our way through. At least it's been
Speaker 1: my experience. I agree. There are people, like you know,
Speaker 1: one or two of my teachers who don't seem to
Speaker 1: have needed to go through so much on the healing side.
Speaker 1: But I think they just had happier childhoods. Actually it
Speaker 1: could be. I think some people are more damage than others.
Speaker 1: That's just a reality. Yes, I think so too. And
Speaker 1: at a certain point I had this notion that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe people who are real deep seekers are more damaged.
Speaker 1: They're carrying more trauma, more traumatized, and that's what makes
Speaker 1: them one this grand liberation of awakening. But actually I
Speaker 1: don't believe that anymore. I think because the people I see,
Speaker 1: you know, my colleagues in the world of meditation and awakening,
Speaker 1: you know, there are some who just didn't seem to
Speaker 1: have the same kind of need for so much healing work.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess we're all different, and it's
Speaker 1: hard to lay down rules, but it seems smart to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that, like you said, that we're multidimensional. We've got
Speaker 1: different facets and different aspects, and to only work on one,
Speaker 1: like you know, this sort of deep kind of spirituality,
Speaker 1: it might be an unbalanced thing for some of us.
Speaker 1: In your epilogue you try to sort of summarize the
Speaker 1: book in a number of points, and that was the
Speaker 1: second point you said, some of us are going to
Speaker 1: need other kinds of help along with meditation, and the
Speaker 1: more that those different approaches understand and respect one another,
Speaker 1: the better. So that might lead me just maybe to
Speaker 1: go to three because I think some of these points
Speaker 1: were a good summation of things. And the third point
Speaker 1: you said, one common misunderstanding of meditation in the West
Speaker 1: is that it's an individual undertaking. I felt for that
Speaker 1: and fell foul of it. In fact, it's collaborative and
Speaker 1: relational at least if you want to make real progress.
Speaker 1: Could you share a little bit more about that and
Speaker 1: why that's the case? Okay, thank you. I mean I
Speaker 1: would say, like in my early years as a meditator,
Speaker 1: you know, basically I was kind of given instructions and
Speaker 1: told to go and do them, and I did it
Speaker 1: primarily alone. I had a couple of friends who also
Speaker 1: did that kind of meditation. It was TM, by the way,
Speaker 1: which was really popular back in late eighties in London.
Speaker 1: It was more or less the only kind around. I
Speaker 1: did it in the late eighties myself in Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: of all places. I still can't believe one existed. There
Speaker 1: was a TM teacher in Columbus, Ohio. Well, they were
Speaker 1: tremendously successful, you know. Yeah, Maharishi Mahas really was brilliant
Speaker 1: sort of marketing and giving it a great image and yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, it was the first big form of meditation
Speaker 1: in the West that really got scaled up to a
Speaker 1: high degree, I think. But once I stumbled into Zen,
Speaker 1: and by the way, the reason I got into Zen
Speaker 1: was that I recognized that it understood you know, that
Speaker 1: random moment I mentioned when I was nineteen years old,
Speaker 1: I knew when I read some Zen writings, I just
Speaker 1: could sense that it understood what I'd experienced then, And
Speaker 1: luckily enough, I think I was right. But once I
Speaker 1: got into Zen in a serious way, I kind of
Speaker 1: got this sense that you're supposed to have a teacher.
Speaker 1: The way I'd grown up and the character I had,
Speaker 1: I just didn't really trust anybody, not really, and I
Speaker 1: certainly didn't trust some trumped up would be spiritual teacher,
Speaker 1: you know, zen or otherwise. So I wasn't prepared to
Speaker 1: entrust myself to a teacher. So I'd go and do
Speaker 1: a lot of retreats, and I went to lots of
Speaker 1: different centers of different kinds of meditation actually, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'd listened to the teachers talked, you know, they'd resonate
Speaker 1: to some degree or not. But the idea of actually
Speaker 1: becoming a student just I was too independent, and you know,
Speaker 1: I just didn't trust people enough. And I had a
Speaker 1: career by then as a writer. I was you know,
Speaker 1: I was lucky in that regard. I got to work
Speaker 1: as a writer full time from fairly early in my life.
Speaker 1: And there was a reason I had a career like that,
Speaker 1: which was that I just wasn't prepared to put myself
Speaker 1: under somebody else's authority if I could avoid it, and
Speaker 1: so I couldn't. I couldn't see my way to having
Speaker 1: a teacher until finally, somehow I was just kind of
Speaker 1: ready and met a wonderful teacher actually funny enough, in
Speaker 1: my hometown and started studying in a serious way with him,
Speaker 1: and that was when suddenly the whole thing just went
Speaker 1: into a whole different gear because I realized, Man, it's
Speaker 1: not just about meditating. There's a path here. You know,
Speaker 1: things can happen whatever I have been experienced by then,
Speaker 1: and by way of the occasional I think by then
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of strong sort of awakening or opening
Speaker 1: experiences that was in a way only the start. Like
Speaker 1: what this teacher John, he was called John Gayner. What
Speaker 1: he represented was that those were like doorways, and beyond
Speaker 1: them there's a path, and the path is about going deeper,
Speaker 1: and it's about integrating what we realize in these experiences,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's like a whole new life can
Speaker 1: open up. So just sort of having the experiences is
Speaker 1: only step one kind of thing, and that that path
Speaker 1: couldn't be embarked on without a guide. And you know
Speaker 1: that that was a huge thing for me to first
Speaker 1: of all, to realize that, and second to realize that
Speaker 1: I wanted it. That was like a huge kind of
Speaker 1: crumbling of defenses in my psyche in a beautiful way
Speaker 1: to open up that, Wow, somebody might help me in
Speaker 1: this way. That matters so much to me, But but
Speaker 1: I'd never known where to turn. Really was it was
Speaker 1: an awesome, or I'd known where to turn, but not
Speaker 1: turned wholeheartedly enough, and suddenly to realize that I could,
Speaker 1: it was a wonderful thing. It was. It was really
Speaker 1: like scales of armor falling off my heart. And so
Speaker 1: the teacher was a big part. How important was the
Speaker 1: community around the teacher for you early on? Well, that
Speaker 1: took me longer to realize, actually, because I was definitely
Speaker 1: not somebody who sort of terribly liked institutions. You know.
Speaker 1: My main experience with them was in education, and I
Speaker 1: was kind of rebellious, you know. I grew up admiring
Speaker 1: Peter Tosh and Shakeavara, and most institutions were things that
Speaker 1: ought to be torn down as far as I was concerned.
Speaker 1: So even when I went to a zendo, which is
Speaker 1: a pretty radical kind of institution in the West, at
Speaker 1: least in those days, even then I didn't really think
Speaker 1: of it as a home, you know. I thought of
Speaker 1: somehow something intrinsically threatening about any institution, almost, you know,
Speaker 1: And and gradually, gradually I just got softened by sitting
Speaker 1: with people. I think it was mostly just sitting in
Speaker 1: a lot a company of other people, being silent in
Speaker 1: the room. I think it just kind of taught me
Speaker 1: that I'd had human beings wrong. Whatever assumptions and feelings
Speaker 1: and attitudes I'd had a long time unconsciously and maybe
Speaker 1: also consciously towards others, they were pretty much all wrong.
Speaker 1: And sitting in silence with others I think was the
Speaker 1: thing that allowed me to open that up and I
Speaker 1: started to just sort of fall in love with not
Speaker 1: exactly literally, but you know, kind of feel like I
Speaker 1: was fall in love with the room, with the people
Speaker 1: in the room. It's a beautiful idea. And I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of been me most of my life. I've
Speaker 1: been like, I'll figure this out, I'll read about it,
Speaker 1: I'll meditate, I'll do all this stuff. And it's been
Speaker 1: in the last you know, several years where I've early
Speaker 1: went a I think it's time to pick a path,
Speaker 1: pick a community, like, try and ground myself and stop
Speaker 1: being the lone wolf in that regard. Yes, that's a
Speaker 1: phrase I think I used in my book here and
Speaker 1: there I was a snarling lone wolf. Well then the
Speaker 1: wolf again, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the bad wolf, the loaner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the wolf. Yeah. I thinks it's got to do it
Speaker 1: alone and must do it alone and and everybody else
Speaker 1: is like keep them at your distance. You know. This
Speaker 1: is something else that resonated throughout your book, you said. Fourth,
Speaker 1: While for some it may be helpful to find a
Speaker 1: live in community, we don't have to do that. And further,
Speaker 1: we don't have to go to a community that is
Speaker 1: very non Western. We doesn't have to be These teachings
Speaker 1: don't have to be presented as exotic. That we can
Speaker 1: a be a lay person, a person in the world
Speaker 1: and work within our cultural trappings to some degree, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel that quite strongly. I think that we have
Speaker 1: that choice, you know, from my point of view, sort
Speaker 1: of like the deep teachings of Zen. They don't have
Speaker 1: to be conveyed in robes with a lot of ritual.
Speaker 1: You know, I actually have and have pretty short hair,
Speaker 1: but you don't really have to have a shaved head,
Speaker 1: you know. And really the deep teachings are about what
Speaker 1: we humans are and how we could best live or
Speaker 1: how we can live good and helpful lives, and how
Speaker 1: we can tame our harmful impulses, and how we can
Speaker 1: grow in hopefully in wisdom of different kinds, you know,
Speaker 1: one kind of wisdom being how to live less harmfully
Speaker 1: to ourselves and to others, how to love ourselves and
Speaker 1: others more and another kind of wisdom being this more
Speaker 1: like deep experiential openings to the nature of the present
Speaker 1: moment that you know, on one level, this present moment
Speaker 1: is just as it appears. There's you know, things in
Speaker 1: front of us, like right now, there's a computer screen
Speaker 1: and Eric's on the other end of the line, and
Speaker 1: I know it's Henry sitting here in the sitting room
Speaker 1: in his home and salafe and there's a little wind
Speaker 1: outside and the bare early spring trees are stirring slightly
Speaker 1: in the grasses, you know, and all that's just as
Speaker 1: it is. But at the same time, there's an infinite
Speaker 1: expanse right here, you know, and there's a boundlessness that's
Speaker 1: utterly beautiful. There's a level of total intimacy that you know,
Speaker 1: even in an ordinary moment, if we're open to it,
Speaker 1: we can sense that, you know, we're just part of it.
Speaker 1: We're part of one hole which is presenting itself in
Speaker 1: just this way, just now. And you know that's always available.
Speaker 1: It's always right here and right now and learning, I mean,
Speaker 1: the training, and I would call that another level of
Speaker 1: wisdom so to speak. We are humbled by it because
Speaker 1: it's just awesome to be part of one enormous reality,
Speaker 1: you know, and we're inextricably part of it. It's it's
Speaker 1: an amazing thing to realize and to sense. To have
Speaker 1: the kind of training that can allow us, first of all,
Speaker 1: to discover that for our selves. I think that's an
Speaker 1: incredible thing. But then to go on, you know, and
Speaker 1: it's not that easy, I would say for most of us,
Speaker 1: but you know, hopefully eventually just be able to sort
Speaker 1: of sense it, you know, maybe not all the time,
Speaker 1: but often, and you know, whenever we kind of remember
Speaker 1: to oh, yes, you know, just coming back and realizing
Speaker 1: this is here, this is you know, this, this whole
Speaker 1: is here right now and all is one and you know,
Speaker 1: but it's also just each thing exactly as it is.
Speaker 1: And I find that just so beautiful and it fills
Speaker 1: my heart with love whenever I remember, you know, And
Speaker 1: to have the possibility of growing in those kinds of
Speaker 1: ways just doesn't seem to me to need elaborate foreign
Speaker 1: costumes or elaborate foreign rituals. It just doesn't seem necessary
Speaker 1: to me. I know that there are other form of
Speaker 1: Buddhism in the West that are much more traditional and
Speaker 1: follow you know, the customs and the litages of Asian forms,
Speaker 1: and I respect that deeply and personally. I'm just glad
Speaker 1: that that's not the only way. Something you just were
Speaker 1: saying reminded me of a couple of lines you wrote,
Speaker 1: and I did want to get a couple of lines
Speaker 1: of the book in because you're such a beautiful writer.
Speaker 1: You said, you're talking about training as a lay person
Speaker 1: or a person who doesn't join a monastery. You say,
Speaker 1: it's not like a monastery. This kind of training. Life
Speaker 1: goes on. You have to keep making sense of the
Speaker 1: ordinary daily grind, but the training starts to infiltrate normal life,
Speaker 1: and odd moments of joy and minor revelation fall on
Speaker 1: us as we push the toddler on the swing, or
Speaker 1: step off a cold street into a warm shop, or
Speaker 1: get into the car and listen to the choking of
Speaker 1: the starter motor. Everyday sights and sounds start to hit
Speaker 1: us in a more immediate way, and we meet them
Speaker 1: with appreciation. Well, I'm glad I said that. I agree
Speaker 1: with that. Yeah, yeah, I could pull out hundreds of these,
Speaker 1: but this is a good pivot point because you're also
Speaker 1: a poet and you are interested in poetry from very
Speaker 1: early on, and you talk a little bit about why
Speaker 1: zen and poetry have such a close affinity with each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think that bit you just read
Speaker 1: speaks to that, thank you, because it is it seems
Speaker 1: to me it is about cherishing the every day, cherishing normal.
Speaker 1: Like a moment a guy is talking pretty sort of
Speaker 1: cosmically about the you know, the vast boundless moment or whatever.
Speaker 1: But actually, however cosmic it may be, it's showing up
Speaker 1: as just this table cloth just as it is, you know,
Speaker 1: and the lamb and the folded sweater and the water bottle,
Speaker 1: you know, and each thing is so precious. So this
Speaker 1: level of appreciation maybe you know, we could call that
Speaker 1: another facet of wisdom, to be able to appreciate our
Speaker 1: life in the moment. And that means, I think, well,
Speaker 1: that's so amplified when we see that all things are
Speaker 1: just sort of freely arising in one great boundlessness. It's
Speaker 1: it's so beautiful, and you know, we don't have to
Speaker 1: maybe open up to that boundlessness to even just get
Speaker 1: the sense that whatever arises, we know it's going to
Speaker 1: pass away, and it's therefore so precious. And to be
Speaker 1: able or to be encouraged to find beauty in the
Speaker 1: most ordinary things is definitely part of the Zen tradition.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons I love it. Other forms
Speaker 1: that Buddhism maybe have less concerned with externals, you know,
Speaker 1: they're more about internal experience. But Zen really loves to
Speaker 1: turn the lens outward and to explore our relationship with
Speaker 1: the world and to see the world as our ultimate teacher,
Speaker 1: because in the sense, you know, the deepest level, it's
Speaker 1: it's part of us. It is us, you know, in
Speaker 1: a sense. I mean I don't want to sound too
Speaker 1: spooky to the listeners, but there's a level where we
Speaker 1: can discover that, you know, in awakening experience and so on.
Speaker 1: But even without that, just to sense the wonder of
Speaker 1: the ordinary, Like if you just think, if you just
Speaker 1: look at a you know, something simple like a glass
Speaker 1: of water, whether you know, maybe standing in a bar
Speaker 1: of sunlight coming through an open window, what an amazing
Speaker 1: thing it is to take a step? Well, actually, that's
Speaker 1: a really amazing thing. You know. There's one famous Zen
Speaker 1: story where as Zen Master is walking with some other
Speaker 1: kind of practitioner who's maybe sort of more like a
Speaker 1: sort of magical practitioner. And they come to a river
Speaker 1: and this other practitioner just walks across it, you know,
Speaker 1: he can walk on water. And the zen practitioner wades
Speaker 1: across the river, and it said something like, you know,
Speaker 1: you rascal. If I had known you could do that,
Speaker 1: I'd never have walked all this way with you. Like
Speaker 1: there's something sort of wrong with valuing superhuman powers because
Speaker 1: it distracts us from the miracle of this moment just
Speaker 1: as it is. You know that actually we should really
Speaker 1: be appreciating the miracle of just being able to sit
Speaker 1: here and chat. One of the things that draws me
Speaker 1: to Zend the most is that I'm always pointed back
Speaker 1: to my immediate experience, Like I don't have to be
Speaker 1: somewhere else, I don't have to go somewhere else, I
Speaker 1: don't have to do something. It's always pointing me back
Speaker 1: like it's right here, right here, right here, right over
Speaker 1: and over and over and and for someone who's spent
Speaker 1: a lot of his life thinking that it was always
Speaker 1: somewhere else, it's a great constant reminder, No, it's right here.
Speaker 1: It's really good for me. Yeah, I'm sure it's good
Speaker 1: for all of us, you know, and I think that's
Speaker 1: you you sort of talked about. That's what poetry does, right.
Speaker 1: Poetry is is the practice of really paying very close
Speaker 1: attention exactly. I'm so I just going to come around
Speaker 1: to that. Forgot exactly. Poetry has that in common, you know,
Speaker 1: that real close attention and being able to render it
Speaker 1: in hopefully beautiful speech, you know, beautiful words. You know,
Speaker 1: similar probably to somebody who draws. You know, an artist
Speaker 1: who draws, and they're just giving so much attention to
Speaker 1: you know, the medium they're working in and to what
Speaker 1: they're seeing, you know, and whether it's you know, in
Speaker 1: the mind or in the imagination or in front of them,
Speaker 1: if it's representational art, that kind of deep attentiveness, when
Speaker 1: that expresses itself on the page, you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: a like I said, whether it's an art, visual art,
Speaker 1: or poetry or even great prose. You know, when that
Speaker 1: kind of attentiveness is expressed, I think we can't help
Speaker 1: responding to it. You know, our hearts are touched by it,
Speaker 1: and we it wakes up in us our own capacity
Speaker 1: to be that attentive and to appreciate what is before us.
Speaker 1: So I think that's one of the functions of art
Speaker 1: is that it sort of opens our hearts and our
Speaker 1: eyes to our own life, you know, good, great, yeah, great.
Speaker 1: Art sort of centers us back in the middle of
Speaker 1: our own life where we can appreciate it more fully.
Speaker 1: And so does meditation practice for sure. So the other
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to talk about was there was a
Speaker 1: point in your life where you know, you felt like
Speaker 1: your marriage was a little bit in trouble, you were
Speaker 1: feeling drawn in other directions, And I just want to
Speaker 1: read what you wrote. I really love this because it's
Speaker 1: it's something that comes up in my mind a lot. Also,
Speaker 1: and you said, self help gurus might say get on
Speaker 1: with it, do what you want. You don't live forever,
Speaker 1: you know, basically encouraging you, like, chase whatever it is
Speaker 1: you want, chase your your dreams. But Zen said, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, check out who is calling the shots, Who
Speaker 1: is the tyrant declaring what must and must not be,
Speaker 1: what we must and must not do. See the bigger picture,
Speaker 1: who else is involved, who has the most at stake?
Speaker 1: And will this situation lead to more suffering? All told,
Speaker 1: or less. And I just love that idea because I
Speaker 1: do think in the self help world, which is a
Speaker 1: world I sort of travel in this show, is in
Speaker 1: that area. There's a lot of that sense. It's a
Speaker 1: There's another phrase that irks me a lot that I
Speaker 1: hear often, which is like, let go of what's not
Speaker 1: serving you, as if the point of everything is to
Speaker 1: serve us. And I love that you sort of pivoted
Speaker 1: here and Zen said, slowed down and be more present
Speaker 1: and think more deeply, and it turned out to be
Speaker 1: the right thing for you. You're still, as far as
Speaker 1: I can, as far as I know, at least the
Speaker 1: end of the memoir is still a very happily married man.
Speaker 1: But I just thought it was really fascinating the process
Speaker 1: you went through there. Yes, yes, thanks for bringing that up.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do feel that there's discovery that we
Speaker 1: can make in you know, deep spiritual or contemplative training,
Speaker 1: that our sense of self is actually an illusion. That
Speaker 1: it's not that you know, we're not somebody. We you
Speaker 1: know we are. I'm Henry born and such and such
Speaker 1: a time, living in such and such a place, doing
Speaker 1: certain things. But the sense of me that is a
Speaker 1: kind of like a certain sort of contraction in that
Speaker 1: I sense in the middle of my being somehow, some
Speaker 1: kind of core or kernel or nugget, that is the
Speaker 1: me that I've always been. If we go deep in
Speaker 1: meditation and really examine it, we find that it's not
Speaker 1: really there. It just appears to be, and so it
Speaker 1: feels like it is. So with that in mind, when
Speaker 1: we serve ourselves, we're probably likely serving, in a sense,
Speaker 1: the wrong thing, because it's not really there to be
Speaker 1: served in the way we thought, if you see what
Speaker 1: I mean. But I think it's a tricky point actually
Speaker 1: because because at the same time, I really think a
Speaker 1: lot of us in the West need more self love.
Speaker 1: So it sounds contradictory, but it's really not. It's just
Speaker 1: that there are sort of different levels of growth and
Speaker 1: different levels of love, and on one level, loving ourself
Speaker 1: is sort of learning to deeply accept ourselves. And that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean just really nearly doing whatever we want and
Speaker 1: trying to gratify all our winds and desires. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that at all. It means discovering that there's a
Speaker 1: place within where we're really at home with ourselves, and
Speaker 1: if we act from there, it's so much easier to
Speaker 1: act in loving and helpful ways. And actually when we're
Speaker 1: not there, when we don't know how to be there,
Speaker 1: we're much more likely to be driven by impulses and
Speaker 1: desires that are only really there to try to fill
Speaker 1: the whole because we're not in the middle, you know.
Speaker 1: So there's a play for really coming home to ourselves
Speaker 1: and learning self love and self compassion. But there's also
Speaker 1: a place for discovering that our sense of self has
Speaker 1: been very very limited and that you know, we belong
Speaker 1: in a much greater way to a much greater whole,
Speaker 1: and that too is a source of ould sort of
Speaker 1: in sense, even deeper love that we can open up to.
Speaker 1: So if we're stuck in the mindset that kind of
Speaker 1: trying to make ourselves feel okay by managing what we
Speaker 1: get and what we don't get, we really are going
Speaker 1: to have a harder time in both those projects, because
Speaker 1: you know, coming home to ourselves and just being all
Speaker 1: right and peaceful and content just being me, that's a big,
Speaker 1: beautiful thing to find we can do in itself. And
Speaker 1: then you know, if we're curious about this, that are
Speaker 1: deeper discoveries of who am I and what is this
Speaker 1: world or what is this life that these deep contemplative
Speaker 1: paths offer. Then we may find, wow, I'm not even
Speaker 1: what I thought I was. Instead, I'm part of a
Speaker 1: much greater whole. You know that that's even more marvelous
Speaker 1: to discover, you know, And neither of them is going
Speaker 1: to be helped by a life that is driven by
Speaker 1: trying to gratify some imagined self. I think the tricky part,
Speaker 1: of course, is sometimes our outside conditions should be changed,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes we do need to change our outside conditions,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we need to change our inside conditions. And
Speaker 1: I think that's what can be tricky. But I think
Speaker 1: that I hear a lot of encouragement, a lot of
Speaker 1: what feels spiritual to me these days, which is very
Speaker 1: much feels like the spiritual imperative that's being given is
Speaker 1: please yourself. And and I just I'm just not sure
Speaker 1: that's really the masage the right message. At your point,
Speaker 1: what is self? Anyway? That that is that that is
Speaker 1: the deeper obvious question they are waking in is driving
Speaker 1: at Yes, that's right, and you're absolutely right to bring up,
Speaker 1: you know, like sometimes we're in situations that are that
Speaker 1: are abusive or that are really harmful and not wholesome
Speaker 1: at all, and and something needs to change externally. I
Speaker 1: totally agree with that, and I'm sorry that I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to suggest that that's not the case, that it's
Speaker 1: only about sort of deep inward discovery. I think you're
Speaker 1: absolutely right, and in fact, you know, again, this is
Speaker 1: another face of where we really want our practice to
Speaker 1: be manifesting in the way we live. You know that
Speaker 1: if it's not being expressed in a wholesome life that
Speaker 1: is wholesome meaning really harmless to others and to self,
Speaker 1: If it's not being expressed in that way, you know, well,
Speaker 1: we just keep working at it. And you know, we
Speaker 1: acknowledge it may take a lot of work, and it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of practice, and we're not really seeking
Speaker 1: to get it perfect. We're just doing the best we
Speaker 1: can and hopefully getting a little better and being more
Speaker 1: and more helpful and more and more fulfilled along the way.
Speaker 1: Totally agree. I think that's a great place for us
Speaker 1: to wrap up on that beautiful idea. You and I
Speaker 1: are going to talk some more in the post show
Speaker 1: conversation about working with Cohens, which is a fascinating subject
Speaker 1: and one close to my heart so listeners. You can
Speaker 1: get access to the post show conversations, ad free episodes,
Speaker 1: and all kinds of other good stuff at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash join Henry. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on. I can't recommend your book highly enough
Speaker 1: to listeners. It's a beautiful, beautiful read and it's one
Speaker 1: of my favorites I've read in quite some time. So
Speaker 1: very wonderful, and thank you for your time. Well, thank
Speaker 1: you Eric so much. I'm really honored to be on
Speaker 1: the show. I'm very grateful for this chance to connect
Speaker 1: with you and learn all the listeners, and thank you
Speaker 1: so so much. Thank you. If what you just heard
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