The One You Feed - How to Find and Follow a Healing Path with Henry Shukman

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

In this Episode, You'll Learn: The importance of being with and opening up to pain to find healing Why working with a spiritual teacher can be an important part of a healing path How awakening experiences are doorways we must walk through to find spiritual growth The value of community in a spiritual journey How to discover the deep experience of life's ordinary moments What Zen and poetry have in common What it means to come home to and discover a deeper part of ourselves To learn more about Henry Shukman, click here!  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In case you're just recently joining us, or however long you've been a listener of the show, you may not realize we have years of incredible episodes in our archive. We've had so many wonderful guests that we've decided to handpick one of our favorites that may be new to you, but if not, it's definitely worth another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with Henry Shuckman. The path is about going deeper, and it's about integrating what we realize in these experiences. It's like a whole new life can open up. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.

Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure? And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead.

The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Henry Shookman, a poet, writer, and associate Zen master who lives in New Mexico, where he teaches at Mountain Cloud Zen Center.

He's published eight books to date of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and writes regularly for Tricycle, The New York Times, and other publications. In this episode, Eric and Henry discuss his beautifully written book, One Blade of Grass, Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen Memoir. Hi, Henry. Welcome to the show. Eric, thank you so much for having me. I am really happy to have you on. We're going to discuss your wonderful book called One Blade of Grass, Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen memoir, in a moment. But let's start

like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks up at his grandfather and says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It resonates very strongly with me. And I feel that there have certainly been times in my life

when I could sort of say I wasn't really feeding the right wolf. You know, when I got into places of despair and nihilism, and especially in my early adulthood, for me, you know, it was learning learning really to begin to realize that there were choices, deep choices one could make about how one lived one's life, how one experienced one's life. It began for me in my mid-20s, early to mid-20s, in a real way when I first took up meditation. It was then that I realized I didn't have to be entirely driven by the forces that seem to have been mostly driving me, especially in my early adulthood, which were really around, you know, anxiety and stress and craving for acknowledgement. And I had a lot of ambition in my early life. I was trying to be a writer from my mid-teens, actually. And all of it had led to a pretty unhappy life. And the moment I started meditating, meaning that on a daily basis, I was being still for a chunk of time each day,

I was being still for a chunk of time each day. It was as if the dial on my nervous system could turn down and it stopped being so hyperactive and so kind of overloaded and running so hot and hard. And as my nervous system settled down, I just started to realize that there was space to make choices, to make decisions, not out of impulse and a sense of need, but more out of, well, real choice. And, you know, gradually as my practice sort of evolved and went on, and I got into Zen and other kinds of Buddhism as well in time, you know, I realized when I hear that parable now,

it's like for me it's kind of describing practice because it says one wolf is about love and bravery and the other is about greed and hatred. And in the Buddhist view, all of us have what are known as the three poisons, which are greed and hatred or desire and aversion or desire and ill will and delusion. Three poisons. And to start practicing is to start recognizing them and to cease to be under their enchantment or under their spell. under their enchantment or under their spell. And so when I hear the parable, you know, to me, I want to say, yeah, absolutely. Feeding the wolf that is about growth and capacity and space and love, you know, always turning to where the greater love is. But at the same time, I kind of almost want to say, it's wise to make some kind of allowance for the other wolf. It's like,

like, you know, something in me says, it's good to know that I can slip into those old habits. And they're, they're not banished exactly. It's more that they're allowed for. I don't know whether that makes any sense. You know, I had wrestled with the negative side quite a bit in the course of my journey, and I feel that I don't really want to banish it. That hasn't worked so well as understanding it, acknowledging it, and allowing for it it and giving it some kind of space, but not letting it take over. Right. Totally makes sense. Two things there. I think, obviously, there's stuff to be learned from these so-called negative emotions, right? They're coming from something for some reason. So there's something to be learned. And then secondly,

I think what you said was so important is that when we just feel bad about ourselves for having them, we just compound all the problems. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I've found that in my journey, being able to see that underneath a lot of that negativity I wrestled with in early life, there were just some wounds, you know, there's some basic pains and griefs and things that somehow I had missed in growing up. And, you know, there's stories about that I certainly have worked with in therapy. But, you know, to be able to open to what is painful, for me, has been part of my journey into greater wholeness and greater well-being. Rather than sort of banishing pain, learning how to open up to it and sort of be with

it and offer it some kind of space, that's proven to be a wiser path of growth and healing for me. Yeah, I agree completely. One of the things in your story that I resonated kind of throughout it was you talked about since early on in life, you had mild, low-grade sort of depression, dysthymia. Is that how you pronounce it? Dysthymia? Yeah, I've heard it, dysthymia. Dysthymia, yeah, yep.

You know, you've had that, and it was your companion for a long time, even as you journeyed deeper into your spiritual life, even as you had some pretty profound awakening and opening experiences. And that describes me pretty well. I've had some tremendous opening and awakening experiences. tremendous opening and awakening experiences. And to find myself a little bit later, like, oh, there's my old friend again. Low-grade depression, here he is hanging around. And I just thought we could talk about that a little bit because I really resonated a lot with it. And I think that that was part of your story that I kept really resonating with, which you kept growing spiritually and yet didn't make everything better. And I don't think your message is like, oh, you hit a point where it all goes away, but you do have a message of a certain peace eventually coming.

For me, it was like a kind of a seesaw for a long time really between, you know, really finding deep, deep peace and a great sort of intrinsic love in every moment, you know, at times, and then just being sort of triggered right back into old contraction into depression or mild depression, and, you know, the same old habits. But there was a point in my, I would say it was my long training under certain Zen teachers, you know, who were very kind of patient and kind with me. And there was a moment in time when, on a retreat actually, I just had a really, you know, for me, it was a very deep experience where just everything, really everything, just sort of fell away. And there wasn't anything left. And instead of it being like really a nihilistic kind of experience it was the

exact opposite it was the cure for all nihilism I felt and after it everything sort of came back in a new way in a and like there was nothing more precious than this moment whatever it might be and that was over 12 years ago now. And really something has been different since then. It's not that I'm perfectly blessed and marvelous or anything like that, but because I still have habits that I wish I didn't have, you know, but it has been really different. It's a real different orientation kicked in where I just didn't get so caught by my sense of me. You know, I couldn't sort of say that it's vanished entirely forever. You know, I think it still comes back at times, but it's not a problem, you know, and I haven't had depression like I used to in quite a long time,

like I used to in quite a long time, not really since that moment. And I'm not claiming any great, you know, achievements spiritually or anything. It's just that things have been remarkably easier and in a way that I never would have expected. You know, I always thought basically, no matter what others may sort of find on this path, I'm not cut out for that. You know, I can do a certain amount, I can get a certain way down a path of spiritual growth, but I'm always going to get knocked back by my psychology. You know, it's never going to really relinquish its hold. But I was wrong. There was something really unexpected did happen. And again, I don't want to make it sound like I'm claiming, you know, some exalted status or anything at all. And it's certainly not like I'm, you know, my wife knows, you know, perfectly well that I can

get a bit down, I can get a bit grumpy. But it's so much less of a problem. Right. And I guess my question for you would be, you'd had several of these sort of, you know, in Zen, we call them Kensho moments, right? These big awakenings, where even your sense of self did fall away. But then it seems to, you know, it seems to sort of come back and reconstitute itself in a more durable form. Do you think it was the fact that as you matured in your Zen practice, you had a better container for those things and that you were better able to take those experiences and integrate them and live them? Or was there something about the depth of that other experience that was deeper and more final? depth of that other experience that was deeper and more final? I'm kind of curious what you attribute to that sort of that turning point, because you'd had other pretty profound awakening experiences. That's a great question. I'm honored that you would even ask it. But I think the answer

is both. Definitely, the container was being expanded and made healthier through my training. And a lot of, I mean, that really all goes down to my teachers who, who were just, you know, really wise and kind and patient with me. So I think there was really as the container, let's say, you know, was more and more ready, you know, it allowed actually possibly I'd say it allowed for something deeper to happen you know letting go thoroughly is really sort of difficult for us I think when I was uh 19 actually I had a sort of random awakening experience out of nowhere without any interest in that kind of thing I wasn't I wasn't into spirituality at all I was like a I'd grown up in Oxford, England, son of academics. And I was, you know,

I was, I was all set to be an academic myself, if anything. And then suddenly, I just had this random moment of utter union with the world. And it was, it was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to me. And it came out of nowhere. And it was a profound sense that I was just inseparable from the fabric of the universe, really was what it felt like. And that the whole of creation was sort of immediately present right in the moment where I was. It was all me and I was all it. And there was no separation of any kind anywhere sort of thing was what it felt like. And then it sort of faded. And I walked around and kind of blissed for a few weeks. And actually, I was away from home at the time. And I went home. This is when I was 19. And within half an hour of walking into my dad's house, I was broken.

I was just a wreck. I had a very, in some ways, you know, very privileged, culturally privileged, you know, childhood with my parents both being at the heart of the university and all that. But it had also been difficult because we had a really difficult divorce situation when I was young. And I'd had really bad eczema from the age of six months, right the way through childhood. And so when I came home at that time after this opening, I was really open. And all the unhappiness of my childhood that I had kind of fended off and found ways not to feel in order

to function as a child, it all just sort of landed on top of me then. And I had a kind of breakdown, actually. At the time, I thought, oh, no, this is kind of the end of the world. Whatever's going on is a disaster. When I look back on it, I realized, well, no, this was the other side. This was like, got to reckon with the wounds. And to only be sort of having a great expansive moment, I mean, that's lovely and wonderful. And some ways, you know, there's some deep truth in that kind of experience. But to have that without, in my own case, anyway, also learning how to be with my pain and wounds and, you know, and grow in that way as well, you know, it was it just somehow in in my biography i had to do

both in a way what happened then was like the the back and forth between oceanic expansiveness that i'd sometimes taste especially when i started training in zen and you know real contracted anxiety and pain and depression which i'd also experienced and finally i think you know through different kinds of work not just meditation by the way you know dream work and other kinds of therapy and a lot of yoga and things i think it all helped to reach a point where i could let go more thoroughly of the whole system is what it felt like and no longer needing to sort of go back and forth really in the same way. I've heard it referenced by Ken Wilber, there's waking up, but there's also growing up and cleaning up. There's more to a well-lived,

robust life than just awakening experiences. There's a lot of other stuff we have to work our way through. At least that's been my experience. I agree. There are people like, you know, one or two of my teachers who don't seem to have needed to go through so much on the healing side, but I think they just had happier childhoods. It could be. I think some people are more damaged than others. That's just a reality. Yes, I think so too. And at a certain point, I had this notion that, you know, maybe people who are real deep seekers are more damaged. They're carrying more trauma, you know, more traumatized, and that's what makes them want this grand liberation of awakening. But actually, I don't believe that anymore. I think because the people I see, you know, my colleagues in the world of meditation and

awakening, you know, there are some who just didn't seem to have the same kind of need for so much healing work. I don't know. I guess we're all different. And so it's hard to lay down rules. But it seems smart to acknowledge that, like you said, that we're multidimensional. We've got different facets and different aspects. And to only work on one, like, you know, this sort of deep kind of spirituality, it might be an unbalanced thing for some of us. I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you

and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really.

No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In your epilogue, you tried to sort of summarize the book in a number of points. And that was the second point. You said some of us are going to need other kinds of help along with meditation.

And the more that those different approaches understand and respect one another, the better. So that might lead me just maybe to go to three, because I think some of these points were a good summation of things. And the third point you said, one common misunderstanding of meditation in the West is that it's an individual undertaking. I fell for that and fell foul of it. In fact, it's collaborative and relational, at least if you want to make real progress. Could you share a little bit more about that and why that's the case? Okay, thank you. I mean, I would say like in my early years as a meditator, you know, basically I was kind of given instructions and told to go and do them. And I did it primarily alone. I had a couple of friends who also did that kind of meditation. It was TM, by the way, which was really popular back in, you know, late 80s in London. It was more or by the way, which was really popular back in the late 80s in London.

It was more or less the only kind around. I did it in the late 80s myself. In Columbus, Ohio, of all places. I still can't believe one existed. There was a TM teacher in Columbus, Ohio. Well, they were tremendously successful. You know, Maharishi Mahesh really was brilliant at sort of marketing and giving it a great image. Yeah.

Yeah. It was the first big form of meditation in the West that really got scaled up to a high degree, I think. But once I stumbled into Zen, and by the way, the reason I got into Zen was that I recognized that it understood. You know, that random moment I mentioned when I was 19 years old, I knew when I read some Zen writings, I just could sense that it understood what I'd experienced then. And luckily enough, I think I was right. But once I got into Zen in a serious way, I kind of got the sense that you're supposed to have a teacher. The way I'd grown up and the character I had, I just didn't really trust anybody. Not really. I certainly didn't trust some trumped up would be spiritual teacher, you know, Zen or otherwise.

So I wasn't prepared to entrust myself to a teacher. So I'd go and do a lot of retreats. And I went to lots of different centers of different kinds of meditation, actually. And, you know, I'd listen to the teachers talk, you know, they'd resonate to some degree or not. But the idea of actually becoming a student, it just, I was too independent. And, you know, I just didn't trust people enough. And, and I had a career by then as a writer, I was, you know, lucky in that regard. I got to work as a writer full time from fairly early in my life. And there was a reason I had a career like that, which was that I just wasn't prepared to put myself under a teacher until finally somehow I was just kind of ready and met a wonderful teacher actually funny enough in my hometown and started studying in a serious way with him and that was when suddenly the whole thing just went into a whole different gear

because I realized man it's not just about meditating there's a path here you know things can happen whatever I have experienced by then and by way of the you know occasional i think by then maybe a couple of strong sort of awakening or opening experiences that was in a way only the start like what what this teacher john he was called john gainer what he represented was that those were like doorways and beyond them there's a path and the path is about going deeper and it's about integrating what we realize in these experiences and you know it's like a whole new life can open up it's so it's just sort of having the experiences is only step one kind of thing and that that path couldn't be embarked on without a guide. And, you know, that was a

huge thing for me to, first of all, to realize that, and second, to realize that I wanted it. That was like a huge kind of crumbling of defenses in my psyche in a beautiful way to open up that, wow, somebody might help me in this way that matters so much to me, but I'd never known where to turn, really. It was an awesome, or I'd known where to turn, but not turned wholeheartedly enough. And suddenly to realize that I could, it was a wonderful thing. It was really like scales of armor falling off my heart. And so the teacher was a big part. How important was the community around the teacher for you early on? You know, I grew up admiring Peter Tosh and Che Guevara, and most institutions were things that ought to be torn down as far as I was concerned.

So even when I went to Azendo, which is a pretty radical kind of institution in the West, at least in those days, even then I didn't really think of it as a home. You know, I thought of somehow something intrinsically threatening about any institution almost, you know. And gradually, gradually, I just got softened by sitting with people. I think it was mostly just sitting in a lot of company of other people, being silent in a room. I think it just kind of taught me that I'd had human beings wrong. me that I'd had human beings wrong. Whatever assumptions and feelings and attitudes I'd had a long time, unconsciously and maybe also consciously towards others, they were pretty much all wrong. And sitting in silence with others, I think was the thing that allowed me to open that up. And I started to just sort of fall in love with, not exactly

literally, but, you know, kind of feel like I was falling in love with the room, with the people in the room. It's a beautiful idea. And I think that's kind of been me most of my life. I've been like, I'll figure this out. I'll read about it. I'll meditate. I'll do all this stuff. And it's been in the last, you know, several years where I've really went, A, I think it's time to pick a path, pick a community, like try and ground myself and stop being the lone wolf in that regard. Yes, that's a phrase I think I use in my book here and there. I was like a snarling lone wolf. Well, there's the wolf again. the loner yeah the wolf yeah thinks he's got to do it alone and must do it alone and and everybody else is like keep them at your distance you know this is something else that resonated throughout your book you said fourth well for some it may be helpful to find a live-in community we don't have to do that and further we don't have to go to a community that that is very

non-western it doesn't have to be these teachings don't have to be presented a community that is very non-Western. These teachings don't have to be presented as exotic. That we can, A, be a layperson, a person in the world, and work within our cultural trappings to some degree. Yeah, I feel that quite strongly, I think, that we have that choice. From my point of view, sort of like the deep teachings of Zen, they don't have to be conveyed in robes with a lot of ritual. I actually happen to have pretty short hair, but you don't really have to have a shaved head. And really the deep teachings are about what we humans are and how we could best live or how we can live good and helpful lives and how we can tame our harmful impulses and and how we can grow in

hopefully in wisdom of different kinds you know one kind of wisdom being how to live less harmfully to ourselves and to others, how to love ourselves and others more. And another kind of wisdom being this more like deep experiential openings to the nature of the present moment that, you know, on one level, this present moment is just as it appears. There's, you know, things in front of us. Like right now, there's a computer screen and Eric's on the other end of the line. And I know it's Henry sitting here in the sitting room in his home in Salafi. And there's a little wind outside and the bare early spring trees are stirring slightly

and the grasses, you know, and all that's just as it is. But at the same time, there's an infinite expanse right here, you know, and there's a boundlessness that's utterly beautiful. There's a level of total intimacy that, you know, even in an ordinary moment, if we're open to it, we can sense that, you know, we're just part of it. We're part of one whole, which is presenting itself in just this way, just now. And, you know, that's always available. It's always right here and right now.

And learning, I mean, the training, and I would call that another level of wisdom, so to speak. We are humbled by it because it's just awesome to be part of one enormous reality, you know, and we're inextricably part of it. It's an amazing thing to realize and to sense, to have the kind of training that can allow us, first of all, to discover that for ourselves. I think that's an incredible thing. But then to go on, you know, and it's not that easy, I would say for most of us, but, you know, hopefully, eventually just be able to sort of sense it, you know, maybe not all the time, but often. And, you know, whenever we kind of remember to, oh, yes, you know, just coming back and realizing this is here. This is, you know, this whole is here right now. And all is one.

And, you know, but it's also just each thing exactly as it is and i find that just so beautiful and it fills my heart with love whenever i remember you know and to have the possibility of growing in those kinds of ways just doesn't seem to me to need elaborate foreign costumes or elaborate foreign rituals. It just doesn't seem necessary to me. I know that there are other forms of Buddhism in the West that are much more traditional and follow, you know, the customs and the liturgies of Asian forms. And I respect that deeply. I'm personally, I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, no really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com.

And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something you just were saying reminded me of a couple of lines you wrote, and I did want to get a couple of lines of the book in because you're such a beautiful writer. You said you're talking about training as a layperson or a person who doesn't join a monastery.

You say it's not like a monastery, this kind of training. Life goes on. You have to keep making sense of the ordinary daily grind, but the training starts to infiltrate normal life, and odd moments of joy and minor revelation fall on us as we push the toddler on the swing, or step off a cold street into a warm shop, or get into the car and listen to the choking of the starter motor.

Everyday sights and sounds start to hit us in a more immediate way, and we meet them with appreciation. Well, I'm glad I said that. I agree with that. Yeah, yeah, I could pull out hundreds of these. But this is a good pivot point, because you're also a poet, and you were interested in poetry from very early on. And you talk a little bit about why zen and poetry have such a close affinity with each other yeah you know and i think that bit you just read speaks to that thank you because it is it seems to me it is about cherishing the everyday cherishing the normal like a moment ago i was talking pretty sort of cosmically about, you know, the vast boundless moment or whatever. But actually, however cosmic it may be, it's showing up as just this

tablecloth, just as it is, you know, and the lamp and the folded sweater and the water bottle, you know, and each thing is so precious. So this level of appreciation, maybe, you know, we could call that another facet of wisdom, to be able to appreciate our life in the moment. And that means, I think, well, it's so amplified when we see that all things are just sort of freely arising in one great boundlessness. It's so beautiful. And we don't have to maybe open up to that boundlessness to even just get the sense that whatever arises, we know it's going to pass away. And it's therefore so precious. And to be able or to be encouraged to find beauty in the most ordinary things is definitely part of the Zen tradition. It's one of the reasons I love it. Other forms of Buddhism maybe have less concern

with externals, you know, they're more about internal experience. But Zen really loves to turn the lens outward and to explore our relationship with the world and to see the world as our ultimate teacher. Because in a sense, you know, at the deepest level, it's part of us. It is us, you know, in a sense. I mean, I don't want to sound too spooky to the listeners, but there's a level where we can discover that,

you know, in awakening experience and so on. But even without that, just to sense the wonder of the ordinary, like if you just think, if you just look at a, you know, something simple like a glass of water, whether, you know, maybe standing in a bar of sunlight coming through an open window. What an amazing thing it is to take a step. Well, actually, that's a really amazing thing. You know, there's one famous Zen story where a Zen master is walking with some other kind of practitioner who's maybe sort of more like a sort of magical practitioner, and they come to a river, and this other practitioner just walks across it. You know, he can walk on water. And the Zen practitioner wades across the river,

and he says something like, you know, you rascal. If I'd known you could do that, I'd never have walked all this way with you. Like there's something sort of wrong with valuing superhuman powers, because it distracts us from the miracle of this moment just as it is, you know, that actually we should really be appreciating the miracle of just being able to sit here and chat. One of the things that draws me to Zen the most is that I'm always pointed back to my immediate experience.

Like, I don't have to be somewhere else. I don't have to go somewhere else. I don't have to do something. It's always pointing me back. Like, it's right here, right here, right here, right, you know, over and over and over. And for someone who's spent a lot of his life thinking that it was always somewhere else,

it's a great constant reminder. No, it's right here. It's really good for me. Yeah, I'm sure it's good for all of us, you know. And I think that's, you sort of talked about, that's what poetry does, right? Poetry is the practice of really paying very close attention. Exactly. I'm sorry, I was going to come around to that. I forgot. Exactly.

Poetry has that in common, you know, that real close attention and being able to render it in hopefully beautiful speech, you know, beautiful words, you know, similar probably to somebody who draws, you know, an artist who draws and they're just giving so much attention to, you know, the medium they're working in, and to what they're seeing, you know, and whether it's, you know, in the mind or in the imagination, or in front of them, if it's representational art, that kind of deep attentiveness, them if it's representational art that kind of deep attentiveness when that expresses itself on the page you know whether it's a like i said whether it's a art visual art or poetry or even great prose you know when that kind of attentiveness is expressed i think we can't help responding to it you know our hearts are touched by it and we it wakes up in us our own capacity

to be that attentive and to appreciate what is before us so i think that's one of the functions of art is that it it sort of opens our hearts and our eyes to our own life you know good great yeah great art sort of centers us back in the middle of our own life where we can appreciate it more fully. And so does meditation practice, for sure. So the other thing I wanted to talk about was there was a point in your life where, you know, you felt like your marriage was a little bit in trouble. You were feeling drawn in other directions. And I just want to read what you wrote. I really love this because it's something that comes up in my mind a lot also. And you said, self-help gurus might say, get on with it. Do what you want. You don't live

forever. Basically encouraging you, like chase whatever it is you want. Chase your dreams. But Zen said, wait a minute. Check out who is calling the shots. Who is the tyrant declaring what must and must not be, what we must and must not do? See the bigger picture. Who else is involved? Who has the most at stake? And will this situation lead to more suffering, all told or less? And I just love that idea because I do think in the self-help world, which is a world I sort of travel in, the show is in that area. There's a lot of that sense. There's another phrase that irks me a lot that I hear often, which is like, let go of what's not serving you as if the point of everything is to serve us. And I love that you sort of pivoted here and Zen said, slow down and be more present and think more deeply.

And it turned out to be the right thing for you. You're still, as far as you know, deep spiritual or contemplative training, that our sense of self is actually an illusion. That it's not that, you know, we're not somebody. We, you know, we are. And I'm Henry, born in such and such a time, living in such and such a place, doing certain things. I'm Henry, born in such and such a time, living in such and such a place, doing certain things. But the sense of me that is a kind of like a certain sort of contraction that I sense in the middle of my being somehow, some kind of core or kernel or nugget that is the me that I've always been. If we go deep in meditation and really examine it, we find that it's not really

there. It just appears to be and sort of feels like it is. So with that in mind, when we serve ourselves, we're probably likely serving in a sense the wrong thing because it's not really there to be to be served in the way we thought if you see what i mean but i think it's a tricky point actually because because at the same time i really think a lot of us in the west need more self-love so it sounds contradictory but it's really not it's really not. It's just that there are sort of different levels of growth and different levels of love. And on one level, loving ourself is sort of learning to deeply accept ourself. And that doesn't mean just willy-nilly doing whatever we want and trying to gratify all our whims and

desires. It doesn't mean that at all. It means discovering that there's a place within where we're really at home with ourself. And if we act from there, it's so much easier to act in loving and helpful ways. And actually, when we're not there, when we don't know how to be there, we're much more likely to be driven by impulses and desires that are only really there to try to fill the hole because we're not in the middle. You know, so there's a place for really coming home to ourselves and learning self-love and self-compassion. But there's also a place for discovering that our sense of self has been very, very limited and that we belong in a much greater way to a much greater whole. And that too is a source of, I would sort of in a sense, even deeper love that we can open up to. to have a harder time in both those projects because you know coming home to ourself and just being all right and peaceful and content just being me that's a big beautiful thing to find

we can do in itself and then you know if we're curious about the sort of deeper discoveries of who am i and what is this world and what is this life that these deep contemplative paths offer, then we may find, wow, I'm not even what I thought I was. Instead, I'm part of a much greater whole. That's even more marvelous to discover. more marvelous to discover, you know, and neither of them is going to be helped by a life that is driven by trying to gratify some imagined self. I think the tricky part, of course, is sometimes our outside conditions should be changed. You know, sometimes we do need to change our outside conditions. And sometimes we need to change our inside conditions. And I think that's what can be tricky but i think that i hear a lot of encouragement a lot of what

feels spiritual to me these days which is very much feels like the spiritual imperative that's being given is please yourself and and i just i'm just not sure that's really the message the right message and your point what is self anyway? That is the deeper, obvious question that awakening is driving at. not wholesome at all, and something needs to change externally. I totally agree with that. I'm sorry to, I didn't mean to suggest that that's not the case, that it's only about sort of deep inward discovery. I think you're absolutely right. And in fact, you know, again, this is another face of where we really want our practice to be manifesting in the way we live, you know, that if it's not being expressed in a wholesome life, that is wholesome meaning really harmless to others and to self.

If it's not being expressed in that way, you know, well, we just keep working at it. And, you know, we acknowledge it may take a lot of work and it takes a lot of practice. And we're not really seeking to get it perfect. We're just doing the best we can and hopefully getting a little better and being more and more helpful and more and more fulfilled along the way. some more in the post-show conversation about working with koans, which is a fascinating subject and one close to my heart. So listeners, you can get access to the post-show conversations, ad-free episodes, and all kinds of other good stuff at oneufeed.net slash join. Henry, thank you so much for coming on. I can't recommend your book highly enough to listeners. It's a beautiful, beautiful read. And it's one of my favorites I've read in quite some time.

So very wonderful. And thank you for your time. Well, thank you, Eric, so much. I'm really honored to be on the show. I'm very grateful for this chance to connect with you and all the listeners. And thank you so, so much. Thank you. If what you just heard was helpful to you,

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