YouSaid · the spoken record

Henry Shukman

lines on the record: 96
first: 2021-12-29
most recent: 2021-12-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That are encouraging this, and thanks to you very, very sincere thanks to you, Tim. It's great to connect with you. I hope you feel a bit better. How do you feel actually now?”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I might just mention we got another site originallove.org where we're running a program called Original Love, which is like a broad approach to meditation that includes approaches to awakening, but other stuff too. I think it's more attention to the sort of healing side of meditation, as well as the awakening side. So that's something that I could just mention. Thanks to Kevin again.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm truly humbled and honored and very, very happy to get this chance to talk with you again. And you're an exceptional conversationalist and interviewer, truly. I mean, I suppose that's no surprise to anybody. Really, you really are. It's wonderful. Thank you.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly, exactly. And, you know, to really have that as a vivid personal experience, it's just profoundly benevolent and sort of, I feel it's the sort of ultimate healing in a way. I don't mean that. Will be instantly healed by all our trauma and all our dynamics that are unhelpful, etc. But man, it'll move things along and give us. All kinds of help in our healing journey.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, it looks a bit different. You could walk 100 feet away, and again, it looks different, but you're still seeing it. This isn't like that. You can only see it when we discover we're part of it. And so that I find really Wonderful. In other words, in using Donald Hoffman's approach, we'd have to sort of say that if we're using that kind of a frame to look at what happens in Kenshov, it's discovering that we're made of the same code as everything else kind of thing. Whatever the raw data is, we're made of it too. You see what I mean? Do you get what I mean”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nice, nice, which is a sort of detailed dive. It's not too long. It's very readable. He writes well, it's a dive into that realm. And absolutely, I'll tell you though, the one thing that I feel I mean, that's a really helpful way to come at it. The only thing, though, that it doesn't necessarily sort of account for or quite cover is why does it feel so amazing? Why does it feel so good? You know, it's not just we see it differently. You see, the thing about this non-dual experience, and it does have different flavors, by the way, different comes in certain varieties. So the one that I described earlier, that's not the only way it can show up. It has this weird property, this kind of experience, that we are profoundly implicated in it. We don't just see it in a way. We can only see it when we discover that we're part of it. It's unlike other things we see. You can look at a tree from six inches away. You can take three steps back. You can still look at the tree.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big and fast, I gather, right? Man, well, I've never done it. But, you know, I think in Kensho, it's not like the practice is inducing an experience. I don't see it that way. It's more like the practice is allowing us to release something. And when that is released naturally, this other stuff becomes clear.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Seem to have, and that actually they're empty. And what that means, it can be understood in a number of different ways. I just feel convinced by now that these are real human experiences and they're not separately induced in each case. It's more like in each case what obscures them is somehow blown away or blown open or temporarily suspended or punctured. It's more like that. That's reality, oneness and emptiness of actual features of, I sort of think somehow the way things really are. And it's just obscured by our ordinary way of construing reality. And these practices, and be it something that pops in the middle of an ayahuasca experience or 5MEOD. MT or something, a couple of students might have done that and had something like this.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's another level of our reality where the somehow the separate self is inactive and we feel we're more part of what seems to be outside us, that we sort of belong to it and it belongs to us and we're not so separate from it. And it's a decisive shift. And I think it's sufficiently widely reported in the traditions and here and there in literature people getting to this level by one means or another suddenly dropping into it where they just feel not so separate from what would seem to be separate to them and external to them. Number one and number two it goes even deeper that there's underneath that there's this reality again of our experience that we can get to where we sort of somehow see that things don't have the solidity they”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'd say it's so beautiful. I mean, I think it's not that the thing is, it's not that, you know, we're each having our own experience and there's consistency among what those experiences are. It sort of sounds like that. But I actually believe there are kind of different levels of our experience. And I think many traditions seem to attest to the same kinds of thing. I'm not sure it's all one mountain. People say that. I think it's a mountain range personally. So to speak, so that different spiritual traditions have slight different emphases and stuff. But there's a lot of congruence, you know, that I just think this is real, that we've got this level on which we normally experience things in which we're socialized into and conditioned into where we feel we are a separate self and the world is out there. And I just think that it actually is true that”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was head of Mitsubishi Securities with something like 30,000 employees under him and could do all that while practicing Zen very seriously and earnestly and deeply while having mind-blowing experiences or whatever, while doing a lot of Koan training, none of it. Interfered with his work life. In fact, he thinks it, he said he wasn't, he's a reasonably good student, he felt, but not the best. And he thinks the reason he had a very good career is his Zen. It gave him more balance, more clarity, more empathy, more compassion and more openness to seeing things from other people's points of view. you know, wisdom perhaps in how to approach things.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is in fact present in my everyday experience. That's what it's really trying to do is to help me to sort of less know it as this other weirdness, mind-blowing and lovely though it may be. It's other and to sort of actually wow I'm living this all the time and I didn't realize and it's not actually foreign and other. And that gives hope really that there is a way of integrating it. There's a way of having it be present in a very positive way in our ordinary life that's non-problematic quite the reverse. And I'm going to point to my master Yamada Roshi who is an extremely successful businessman.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That actually doesn't mean that it's an entity other than us that we've experienced. Now, it's more like my experience has shifted in a certain way, which is really opened up a different way of experiencing altogether. And These probing questions Allow me to inhabit This new way of experiencing more and they allow me or they help me to realize that this new way of experiencing is actually not contradictory to my ordinary way of experiencing. In other words, I can start to see that this mind-blowing sort of other dimension for want of better phrasing”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, first of all, let me just, how do I put this? So, I mean, I love what you're saying about the shared visions. I get that, actually. I really, yeah, it's fantastic to hear. Now, with, say, this sort of Kensho thing is it's actually the questions are doing, there's got a dual function. One is we will be able to answer these questions if we've had Kensho and especially if we've had it fairly recently so it's still kind of alive and vivid, say within a few months or even weeks or days or even hours if it happens on a retreat so They are number one, the way we respond to them will confirm that we've really experienced this thing. Secondly, they will somehow Help us. Explore it even more deeply. Now”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think as well, and Zen certainly does. And so the rogue teacher thing, I mean, it's always a hazard, isn't it? I don't think there's any total foolproof way, but I would think that things to watch out for would be, does somebody seem to have some kind of accountability to a wider organization? Do they have fellow teachers that they're in contact with? Sort of accountability, I think. So this is also a thing with the Koans. You see, they're trying to set up a system whereby there can be some shared sort of agreement about what this awakening experience is and the koans. Not knowing is most intimate and teacher handle that if they meet with that Koan? And they are also a way of checking that we're sort of on the same page”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way it's organized in Samsung would bring quite a few breaks on, would exert quite a bit of resistance on anybody who wanted to go rogue kind of thing. They've got some endorsement. I think it's a bit safer. They've got an organization that has a code of ethics. And I'm not saying at all that San Bozen's the only one like that. There's many other Zen organizations and non-Zen organizations that have this kind of some sort of levels of responsibility that are bestowed or whatever on their teachers. So it's not the teacher just setting themselves up and that have accountability to one another and to, of course, to students. And actually, I think there are many quite well-organized spiritual sort of institutions, organizations in the West today, which is just great. And, you know, Vipassana has a number of really big, really well-organized outfits, and that's fantastic. Tibetan Buddhism does.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just think if you do find somebody who's in that kind of realm, it's probably safer. Because for one thing, they will have been fairly closely vetted over quite a number of years by somebody else. Now, who that other person was and how reliable they were, who knows. But at least they've then further been sort of vetted by a number of people, by a sort of body of people. You know, that means that you feel, I mean, of course, we develop relationships with our peers, and I don't want to let them down by misbehaving, for example. You know, I feel that I have a real deep responsibility, obviously, to people who want to study with me, what an honor that anybody would, and also to my buddies, my friends, my colleagues who are other Zen teachers, and to my own teachers. I don't want to let people down. And so there's a sense of...”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It totally does. It's kind of got at least two meanings. One would be, yeah, somebody really gets it. They really get the Dharma. They really get what this is all about. And they do it in conjunction with their teacher. And that is a kind of Dharma transmission in a sense. But it's not really that there's anything transmitted because you're realizing that it's all one. So nothing can be transmitted. It's like you're truly discovering that we're all one thing. It's no distance, no space, no time, no separation. That all is clear and it's clear here and now. It's clear in the company of a teacher of another. And maybe... In some sense, the teachers help that become clear.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. Oh my god. But one of the most frightening things I've done really was have to give, I've done it twice now, give a talk to, you know, 80, 90 Zen teachers. Oh my God, all my seniors. And anyway, in other words, it's totally not down to me to say I'm a teacher. In fact, it's rather carefully titrated over the years. You get more and more responsibility as you're ready for it. If you see what I mean. So that's how we do it. Now, those quote-unquote masters, they get this formal, old-style Zen authorization called Dharma Transmission, which is, you know, it's very moving to get that because it, you know, really means the whole body is really trusting you. And why would they do that, but they've decided they do. And so you just accept it and you hope you'll do your best. And it's a very moving thing. What do you mean?”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's hard to be perfect about this, to be honest, but if somebody is needing the affirmation of being a teacher, you know, and after all it's kind of, whoa, you're a spiritual teacher, that's pretty exalted, right? If somebody's needing that kind of affirmation, they're probably not ready to do it. And we just wait. And every year, all the teachers of all levels and all the senior students who their teachers have thought this person might be ready to start training to be a teacher, they all gather, we all gather for a week-long retreat and workshop, and we do a lot with a Koans and people have to give talks in front of the others. It's pretty terrifying. Because, I mean, one of the most frightening things, more frightening than being on the Tim Ferris podcast, actually, which, by the way, I'm finding very enjoyable, it's not as frightening as I thought.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sambo Zen teachers so they can sort of appoint people in the name of the lineage. And there aren't many of them. Going to appoint people. So, in other words, there's quite a, I don't know if it's elaborate, but there's a certain sort of careful system for who gets what level of responsibility as a teacher. Now, I feel that I'm happy that it's like that because it means that at every step of the way there's some accountability. It's not just I tell everybody I had this awakening experience, I'm an awakened master, I want to be a teacher now. In fact, in Sambo Zen, there's almost a bit of a view that if somebody wants to be a teacher, they may not be ready yet. If they're going to get something out of being a teacher,”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, in San Bozen, somebody called it a sort of equal hierarchy kind of thing. Everyone is equal, but there are grades of responsibility. So there's an assistant teacher, there's an assistant. An assistant teacher can do, usually they work with a Zen teacher as an assistant to them, and they can do a certain amount of things as the teacher wants. Zen teacher can do everything. meaning they can give talks they can use the koans they can meet with students and they can sort of run a zendo completely you know then there's so called associate masters and this is all within sound ozen i'm just giving you sort of a framework so you can get some sense of how it works and these associate masters can appoint a personal teacher they can't appoint a sambo zen teacher and then there are so-called sort of they're called authentic masters or just masters and they can appoint”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is somehow absorbing and relaxing perhaps and cast a kind of little bit of a spell over their meditation and they find this really deep. And that's lovely. No problem there. And I think this Kensho businesses and the real deep contradaining is not for everybody”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Into meditation, really, not everybody is. And it's, you know, it's quite, I don't know if I'd say it's demanding, but it's the main method here. I don't teach just Hey, let's talk about CONs. No, I teach meditating. And one of the ways I teach meditation is meditation with koans. It's not the only way, but for those that are inclined, we can do that. But also, like I said, there's a large number of people, I think, getting interested in koans who don't really feel the need to engage with the teacher. And that's okay. They find their meditation is deeper if they've got a koan, that they're touching, they're repeating or thinking of a little bit while they meditate, it's just sort of enriches the meditation. Some people have reported to me just having really deep sits, peaceful, lovely, deep, joyful, peaceful sits when they bring a kayan in. They have no idea really what the kayan's kind of saying or what it's about or what no interesting how it might lead to kensho. They just sort of find the phrase.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I know. I mean, I can think of one clear time it did, actually. There was somebody who wanted to come on a retreat. And, meaning myself and the little team at the Zendo was a little bit wary because of some of the things she said and we asked about her psychiatric background. And there were some things she told us. And then she came and it was clear that she really was in much worse shape than she had led on. And one guy who was part of the Zenda team then who was a therapist, he sort of spent some time with her and then actually he decided that she really needed to be taken to the psych ward for an evaluation. So that was what we did there and she was compliant with that. But usually people know that there's kind of whatever exactly role I'm in is I teach meditation. And so you kind of got to be in.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Waking out of the dualistic separate sense of self into a much more inclusive kind of awareness that is deeply beneficial to experience in principle because it shows our infinite connectedness. And if trauma is about ultimate separation and isolation, you know, the poor child with an overwhelming emotions totally alone can show, if we call it that, using Japanese terminology is exactly the opposite. It's about infinite connectedness. And that is the most wonderful thing to discover. It cannot but flood us with love at least briefly. And if we're then really freaked out, I want people to know that it's okay. You haven't gone. Mad, you've in fact discovered something really beautiful and real about your human nature. And there is follow-up. There are ways of gradually integrating it. And hallelujah. Amazing. And okay, I'll pause there.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here anyway, kind of thing. So the more that people are aware of this, and the more it becomes part of the conversation, the public discourse, the better. And, you know, so far in the world of meditation, a lot of the public discourse around meditation, most of it, has been about the nervous system calming benefits of mindfulness. Absolutely right on. It's great that that's happening. And then you got people like Sam Sam Harris who are bringing this experience of waking up.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Are places you can reach out, people you can reach out to, and you don't have to be doing coans for this, by the way. The Koan method, I think, is a beautiful thing because it makes it more accessible to more of us. It's not a freak thing if somebody has that kind of experience with the Kan. It's still by no means totally predictable or reliable or something, but it's not a freak thing. And it also, the Koan training subsequently is exactly a sort of way of grounding it, integrating it, getting more familiar with it, probably deepening it, clarifying further, and learning how to just effortlessly live from it in your normal life and not feel you've got to do, you know, you got to quit everything and go and live on a mountaintop or something. You don't have to. You know, the mountaintops are right.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Graver than that. And if somebody is already perhaps traumatized anyway, as so many are, it might initially be a very benevolent thing, but then there's no container, there's no understanding, they're completely alone with it, and it could be really scary and it could become another traumatizing factor. I think that happens. And it's very sad. And I feel part of what I want to do is get the word out widely that this is a feature of human nature. It is something we're built with the capacity to have these kinds of experiences. And they are vastly benevolent in the end. And they may also be really pretty fucking weird at the beginning. And so I want people to know, you know, that this is a feature of human nature. And therefore,”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think it's quite possible that that's the case. Tragically, I do. Quite a number of people that have reached out to me report having had something like this earlier in life. I can think of several people who did as teenagers and had no idea. They somehow in the depth of the experience, they felt this was a kind of vastly benevolent thing to perceive, to undergo, to experience. And then afterwards got terribly scared and didn't know what was going on, what had just happened to them, were they going crazy? And in some cases got unhappy, got depressed, anxious for some years. And I think that it could be that in some cases it could be...”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the checking questions were what John started to ask me about Moo that enabled him and me to meet more thoroughly and to know more deeply basically what experience had just happened in this student, me. They're questions like, actually, I don't know how much of this I could sort of reveal, but yeah, I think I can, you know, they're things like, well, show me Mu, what is Moo? How old is Moo? How tall is Moo? How would you show Moo to a baby? They're weird questions like that. But after that experience, they're easy. They're easy. So they're kind of, yeah, this is a system for sharing. What we mean by awakening, right? As sort of being able to As in the sort of legal precedent, sort of to kind of meet in the same place, so to speak.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They can open us up to this boundless reality. But ongoing beyond a first experience, they train us more and more in realizing that our ordinary life and that mind-blowing reality, they're not separate. And that's a very hard thing to understand. But that's why so many comes are about things. I want to talk about koans are about things and coans love the world. so much and they love us they want us to share in it and basically of course they don't really but the masters the practitioners who created the kinds they're deeply compassionate and they wanted to share somehow what they had realized and it's pretty amazing so checking questions so when i”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Reality of our existence, and how can it do it? I mean, I still don't really understand how it can do it. I can sort of piece it together a little bit that, so yeah, Joshu knew this world incredibly well. He was accustomed to it. It becomes second nature to him. He was at ease in it, and he knew that this sort of normal way things are and this mind-blowing way things also are not in the end separate. That's the point of the training ongoing in Cohen's is to go beyond this either life is this mind-blowing, boundless oneness, emptiness thing, or it's my ordinary life. But the point of training, damn, am I getting, am I going ahead? Can I just finish that thought?”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so then, you know, two weeks later or something, I get to visit with John, a teacher, and I tell him this thing. And he says something like, ah, so Moo has paid you a visit or something like that. And I thought, what's he talking about? How could Moo have anything to do with that? But suddenly the penny drops and I realize, oh my God, this is what a Koan is for it's for precipitating, it's for sharing this fucking reality. Excuse my Greek. It's a Koan isn't an annoying boring little pointless thing. It's got an incredible purpose, which is sharing this sort of deepest.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of overwhelming gratitude and love. And it's like somehow this empty space that everything's in is just so overwhelmingly beautiful and it's just like a huge love. And I'm overwhelmed. I can't believe how fortunate it is to be a human being. You know, it's like, it's just indescribable. And this is all coming out of this little word moo. I've been sitting assiduously with moo. And at the time, I didn't even realize it had anything to do with Moo. You know, it was just like this mind-blowing experience. So I go downstairs, I sort of, you know, I think I'm better sit and light a stick of incense and maybe I'll just kind of calm down. And I don't, I'm supremely happy. I'm overwhelmed with happiness. Tears are flowing down my cheeks. And it's just so beautiful.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a fantastic film, I thought. At least that's the last time I saw it 20 years ago, whatever that was. And I was watching that scene and it just suddenly seemed just so funny. And then all of a sudden this crazy sort of like a cyclone energy sort of whips up through my body and blam, it's really like a sort of blackout. I'm on my feet and everything's disappeared. Everything's just gone. It's just a empty vast empty space that's so beautiful and nothing there. And then I sort of come back. I realize I'm sort of standing in this room holding a plate which somehow I haven't dropped. And it's like the house is still here, but it's sort of not really made of anything. It's totally discombobulating and marvelous. And I'm just trembling with some.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bringing a plate of food upstairs for Claire, my wife, the boys have already eaten. They're watching who framed Roger Rabbit, that great movie, you know, on a video with Bob Hoskins. And I bring in Claire's play to food. And I think I'm still holding mine. And I'm watching this scene on the movie where Roger Rabbit goes whirring round around a kitchen while his rear end is on fire. I don't know if you've seen it. Oh, I've seen it.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anybody wants And I'm truly going to the checking questions. Truly, it's a long journey together, a long and winding road, two checking questions. So this is also just to exemplify how much this can happen in the midst of ordinary life. I was busy as a writer and as a poet. I was doing lots of readings. I was working on my next book. I just sold a book and working out the contract with my agent. All of that stuff going on, you know, busy and kind of productive. And I've got a fellowship in poetry at Oxford Brooks University at the time. And one day, and I've been sitting with Moo. And often when I'm writing my bike to the office and in the college, you know, I'm using Moo. And as I'm riding along, just comes to mind. And I said, what is this thing? Just doing it. And then one day I'm home. I've just made dinner and our two boys are young and they're watching a movie.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In a way that, I mean, I certainly, coming back to when I was working with Matister John, when I went in to see him after I'd had some experience with Moo, I don't know if there's any interest, but I could tell you what that was like.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you're usually just sort of repeating it softly, you sort of add it to your breath meditation usually, just softly voicing the sound moo with each breath. And you just sort of patiently do it. The more patiently you do it, The better because you'll be more comfortable, and it starts to just sort of sort of in a way take over your sitting in a very nice, gentle kind of way kind of thing. It's a little bit like a mantra, you know. A little bit like that, but anyway, so it's a little unlike other kinds in that regard because you use it that way. Let's say something happens. When you go to see the teacher, you both sort of light up in this other dimension kind of thing. I'm sorry, I'm not expressing.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it is. Yes. Basically, the principle of what I was calling non-duality, which also happens to be empty, the principle of total oneness, which is also empty. That's always here. So when Joshu says, he's expressing that in his way. Just then. He's expressing it. And so a student sits with this question, Mu, if and when they have an opening with sitting with Mu.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All the time, right here, right now. It's always present, this so-called principle. You know, it's always present. It's always here. It's just we're not conditioned to know it clearly.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's it. I mean, it has a little background story among us Joshu, this great master, Zhao Zhou, Joshu in Sino-Japanese, Does a dog have Buddha nature, Buddha nature meaning this awakened nature or principle as it was referred to earlier? Does a dog, even a dog, have that? he asks. And Joshu answers moo, which ostensibly means not. It does mean not, literally, but it's sort of a principle of Buddha nature that it's everything. So how could a dog not have it sort of thing? And yet Joshua says, Moo. So we don't worry about that. We just sit with Moo. We just sit with Moo. We could almost take it like when Joshu says Moo, he's sort of just dismissing the whole question. I'm not going to deal with that. Something like that. But he's also presenting that very reality in that little word moo. Because actually that very reality is showing up.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talk about in my book, I had a couple of these, what I felt to be very powerful experiences of non-duality, and they were slightly different, each one, prior to connecting with a teacher. I'd been trying to find a teacher, actually, but sort of wasn't ready. But then eventually when I did connect with the first teacher that I really engaged with, John, in the UK, John Gayner, I got my first comment from him, which was this often is the first coin, which is, it's so inscrutable. I mean, it's just sort of damnable. I mean, I'm embarrassed to even say it, but it's Coan that a lot of people start with, which is Moo, M-U, Moo.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there are different ways of working with them, but this way whereby you have sort of decided to engage a teacher with them, if you have this Kensho experience, I mean, in a way, the very point of the koan is it's a meeting place where two people, two practitioners, one more experience than the other can actually meet through the koan in the very reality they've awakened to. I mean, to me, that's the most precious and amazing thing about it is that far from this sort of awakening thing, you know, this awakening to non-dual being just a personal experience, of course it is that, but actually through co-ans, you can meet in it. You meet in the boundless wonder of this other dimension of our experience. I think I said last time we were talking.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of training, you can actually, I mean, like on Sam Harris's app, for example, we got these Koan meditations and you just sit with them. And it's a bit like, for example, in the Zendo, when we're open or even when we're, I mean, in live, but when we're on Zoom, people come and they just, you know, they hear a talk on a Koan. They get to sort of bask in the weird waters of a Koan for a while while the teacher's giving a disquisition on a koan. It may be opaque and yet there may be moments when suddenly they feel some weird movement inside a stirring of something within and some weird little pool of limpid clarity opens. What the hell is this? But it's beautiful. Limpid clarity.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, it all ties into what you just said. It's your word against somebody else's as to whether you've had Kensho. That's the point, really. It's not. It's not. It's really not. And the reason it isn't is that if somebody's had Kensho, oh my God, the way they Experience the Koan will have changed utterly, and the way they are if they meet with a teacher, if they do, I mean, we've got to bear in mind that this is not the only way of working with coanz, actually. There's nothing wrong with somebody just deciding they want to sit with a co-an. Fine. I've got a friend who doesn't even sit with them. He likes reading them. Fine. There's no ban on that. That's totally up to you. But this system.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then I did another go through all of them with my teacher, Reuben Habito, Roshi, who's a professor of comparative religion at SMU in Dallas. A fantastic guy, they're all fantastic, fantastic people, by the way. And also, I've done many with my current teacher, Yamada Roshi, and I've also done, I mean, I've done a lot of them at least three times. I'd say hazard that I've done just about all of them three times, but definitively probably three and I don't know, three quarters of them, two and three quarters of them, I don't know, three times.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so I can modestly and humbly say that I have been passed on all of the ones that we do, the 420, at least two at the minimum times, in some cases multiple times. The reason I say multiple times is because I first went through them all with one teacher and then actually my teacher, John Gainer Roshi in the UK. And then I moved to New Mexico and picked up with my teacher, Joan Rick Roshi, and sort of carried on with her. And so between those two teachers, I did one go through them all.”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, kind of got a steady meditation practice and they have found ways to get to the point where they kind of like meditating”
2021-12-29 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT