Hey buddy, Kevin Rose here. Welcome back to another episode of the Kevin Rose show really excited that you hit play on this one because it's a really deep dive into zen zen koans, which of these fascinating little riddles that are used in Zen these secret little riddles that are used that can sometimes trigger Enlightenment. It's kind of a question and answer type Riddle That I think you're just going to find a really curious and fascinating. It was it's actually how I first
Heard about Henry who is our guest today Henry shook men. I was on Sam Harris is meditation app called waking up and there was a new course about the Zen koans the seven or eight part course and I drove into it and the really short run 10 minutes in length, and I just listened to every single one back-to-back found them really fun little brain teasers, but but they're not they're really difficult to describe. So I guess what I'm saying right now doesn't make a whole lot of sense but stick around for that part of the conversation. We also go really deep on in
Enlightenment trying to Define it the best we can what is Enlightenment? What is this state of mind that certain people achieve and I think Henry does a great job at explaining that for those of you that don't know Henry. He is an associate zen master at the mountain Cloud Zen Center based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He's also the author of a new book one blade of grass finding the old road to the heart, which I have started to listen to and I think it's just fantastic. It's really an honor and pleasure to have them on the show. This is Henry Shipman.
I've been reading your book. I'm about three quarters of the way through it now and I found it's funny. Our paths to meditation are actually very similar. I started with Transcendental Meditation as well. And then I went on to study at the San Francisco Zen Center over on Page Street. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that location. Shul. She won't be nice. Yeah. Yeah. So that was just a few doors down from my house. I was very lucky to live so close and it's
it's shortly thereafter. I didn't keep up the practice and only returned to it more recently, but I'd love to kind of how your book covers. I'd love to talk about the path that led you to meditation.
I like many what really got me meditating in my early to mid-twenties was sort of misery. You know, I was a PhD student at the time and I kind of wasn't getting anywhere with my thesis and and I also had had a life.
long chronic ailment of the skin eczema and you know, it hadn't actually since I was 6 months old and I had brief respite but you know, basically it hadn't really left me since then and I was just getting more and more unhappy really and feeling, you know, just sort of more and more hemmed in by life and unable to kind of figure out how to how to live productively which I
I knew was possible because I had done it times in my life in my early life, you know, but anyway, I decided through essentially the encouragement of a couple of friends to try meditating and it was TM. That was the primary game in town in London back back in back then in the mid late 80s, and the Beatles had made that pretty powerful there, right? That
was like they're known for doing.
Transcendental Meditation is exactly that was that was I think probably in America was I don't know Deepak was famous by that. But you know, he was one Flagship early TM or I think in America and in and worldwide The Beatles were yeah like Rihanna, they went to rishikesh and three months or something and mid late 60s live with Maharishi there and you know, they it had it was
kind of legitimised as a thing to do. They actually at the time they were selling it as a the tagline was it's a life tool for the busy. So it really wasn't about sort of, you know, being a flake and dropping out and stuff. It was it was more like how to be more efficient in your life. And so, you know, and I being a sort of had a complex psychology, I think you know with a lot of Shame and stuff probably in
Out of that whole eczema experience chronic, you know trouble of that kind can do
it. When you when you say that I will because I want to stop you for a second because in your book you go into great detail about when people think about axum I think a lot of people think. Oh, he probably just have like a hand rash or something. Like, you know, you you had full-on like whole body face like bleeding Knuckles like it was really really quite bad. Was it not?
Yes, correct. I mean I was in and out of
spittle as a kid. It was it was really it was when I think about it, you know from the perspective of not having really touch wood had it for quite a while II sort of, you know, it's there's a lot to ponder like why how come that's what my first two and a half decades, you know, we're really marked by and what did it do? And I mean, I think that that is certainly one of the drivers of why I got into meditation and
The the psychology associated with it as well, you know, and it was almost immediately apparent that doing diligent daily regular meditation had a huge impact by the time I actually was started starting to see regularly like that. I had no idea how exhausted rattled. I was and how almost sort of, you know worn out my nervous system.
I was and I just slept in a literally the first week. I did it I slept 20 hours a day and that that's just no exaggeration. I thought I must have flu or something. But actually I felt fine and after literally seven nights of you know, I would I would go to bed and you know 10 or something normal kind of our and sleep all the way through tonight 8:00 a.m. Get up get dressed get ready to go out.
College, you know studying and stuff and I've just get slammed by this wave of fatigue and sort of stagger at back up to bed think I need a little nap. I'm gonna have to miss classes or whatever and the next thing I know be one o'clock, you know and lunchtime and I had I had a series of days like this and then and then finally, you know on the seventh day, whatever it was I got up and I
I did my sit and have breakfast and I felt clear as a bell. I felt like I had lost some number of years and I was I was like a, you know, I don't know it like a kid again and everything was so fresh and Alive sweet it even in London, you know, like the city streets that were just so fascinating and and and like as if they're just been created or mess it was It was a
A marvelous thing and I you know, I took I need this and I'm not going to stop and you know, and and so I didn't and actually gradually myxedema started to unwind it was you know, expose a complex condition is not just it's certainly not just sort of psychological is not just psychosomatic but it has there's a stress factor for sure in it. There's
Probably dietary, there's allergens. There's it's a complex web of things but taking out the stress piece or at least the you know, the overactivated nervous system and the exhausted nervous system in a taking that out of the equation was an opening for a kind of domino effect. I guess of you know, just learning how to relax learning how to be in the moment with
out anguish and that somehow changed the kind of environment in which the excimer had previously flourished, you know, it's sort of you know, I think it would almost like an ecosystem the by changing the ecology, you know in one major Zone other pieces changed and adapted and one of them was accent that just kinda sorta became less relevant or something and it and
it sure enough. It just started to get better. It wasn't like a straight line graph. But you know over the next 10 years. It was substantially
gone. How do you deep did you go with Transcendental Meditation? Because you know when I took the course, it's like a 3-day initial course, you know, it's a decent amount of money. I think at the end of it it I thought it was worthwhile. But at the same time the concept of just repeating a mantra is it's pretty easy to grasp.
And I kind of went off and just practice, you know, they tell you do 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the evening. I did that but then they started offering and pitching you, you know more advanced classes. And did you go deeper with the TM organization or was it just that kind of initial training that you
did? Yeah. I just did the initial one thing that made it easier for me to do it was that they were offering a tremendous discount for graduate students.
I wouldn't if I think I probably wouldn't have done it if it had been, you know, really expensive as it I know it commonly is but I was really, you know dogged about it 20 minutes morning 20 minutes evening. They really drum that into us like if you weren't doing that you weren't doing it and so I just I just sort of did it religiously but I didn't ever you know upgrade I was getting what I felt I needed so to speak, you know know.
I once went to do a weekend sort of retreat. They had a series of sort of grand old country houses around Britain because they were tremendously wealthy organization as far as I could gather. So I went down to one of these places and they were talking about some of the theory behind it different levels of consciousness and stuff. And I just actually I just wasn't interested and when I look back on it is it seems a little odd in a way that I wasn't interested.
Because the one thing I haven't mentioned yet about how and why I got into meditation was also something else which was when I was 19 years old during one of the brief sort of lulls in a customer when I was away far away from home. I share took a kind of Gap year between school and college and I went and worked on a couple of farms and then I traveled back packed and I wrote my first book and at the end of that
Journey, I underwent suddenly randomly out of nowhere, you know, quite a kind of powerful. What I would Now call Awakening experience at the time. I had no idea what it was. I just knew that somehow mad amazing way. My life would suddenly being fulfilled was what it felt like that guy discovered this whole other side to my existence that had not been at
At all apparent before and which I had not really in a sense any interest in you know, it wasn't like I've been looking. I just suddenly sort of kind of just entered this completely different sort of sense of things where it was all just one it was it was a single marvelous fabric, which was what I really was like I was
Inextricably pain back and you know, this happened just really just out of nowhere
in this was premeditation and right you had meditated yet. And and you were I believe from his book you were on a
beach at a time, right? Yeah. That's right. That's right. I was I was actually I was so studying I would see you know, I grew up kind of a somewhat of an academic and sort of literary aspirational guy, you know, maybe
My parents were both professors at Oxford and which is where I grew up and I was into poetry. That was my kind of thing that I latched onto and and literature, you know languages as well. And and I was I was just studying so I like kind of looking at stuff I guess and I was studying the movement of the sunlight over the water as it was kind of late afternoon on this beach and I was I was noticing these scales of you.
You looked at it in a Flash. I would have said wow, you know, there's a kind of part of bright light underneath the sun on the water. But when I really look closely I saw well no, it's these moving scales of light that are really really bright. But anywhere that the scale a scale is not so to speak the water is totally black and now it just did a sort of surprise me to see them thinking. Well, what color is the
The water is it is it really bright. Is it really black? I'll know Waters transparent actually isn't any color and I was kind of just sort of processing this reality that I was staring at, you know, and I think it will hold on water is transparent but so is are so this surface is just we're too weak kind of invisible mediums or media meet its, you know, Clearwater clear air and yet it looks
Back in it's blindingly white what's going on? You know and who am I seeing it and I was just sort of, you know, investigating the the immediate experience in just you know, as a I don't know sort of interested party, you know sort of and suddenly it stopped being something I was looking at instead.
I became it. I mean, I know it sounds weird talking about this stuff, especially so early in our conversation careful. Guess I've gone off the deep end already. I hope that hold it back a bit. But anyway, the, you know, suddenly basically it was like finding what I was looking at wasn't separate from me. It was as if
we would just one phenomenon and when that suddenly shown himself that way almost immediately it was as if everything was this one for Nolan and you know what that was seemed to be basically made a nothing it was you know, it was it was it was really a very powerful moment, you know for
Me
it's crazy that this happened you without any because at this point you hadn't really had any proper discipline experience in any type of meditation or any really spiritual type of venture at this point. Is that is that accurate to
say
totally? Yeah, and I 0:19 of the time is that right?
Yeah. I was 19. I
wasn't wondering mushrooms or anything like that.
Absolutely not I I had
No ads I drank some beer, you know, I mean not then I mean in my life, I was great. You know, I'm a basin and I had no experience of significant intoxicants. I had had no interest in anything kind of mystical spiritual I was you know, I said I was a rationalist and but why did this happen? I don't know. I mean I felt I had finished my book, you know, I've actually written a book and I was 19 years old.
Old and that was pretty thrilling and there was definitely a kind of peak experience element here of a sense of accomplishment. And I think I also had this unbelievable relief of not having excellent. You know that it was it was amazing to me just to look at my hands and and they were healthy and they had such beautiful smooth skin. It was my body all over with smooth. It was you know, that in itself was a kind of deep deep.
joy, and massive relief and somehow, you know, this this was some kind of I mean again when I look back on it, I don't I don't really understand quite how you know, and why whatever course I don't but I do know that in the role that I'm now in you know, as a meditation teacher, especially in the school of meditation that acknowledges this kind of
Terrence I know that it happens, you know, I it's not that I think is especially common to have kind of a somewhat deep experience like this, but it's not it's not as rare as one might think and it's just that for a lot of people who do happen to have some random Moment Like This somehow and this is actually what happened to me their life doesn't help them know what to do about it.
You see what I mean, you know and I was in that category work. I know you know, you know, I've read like Eckhart Tolle. He's sort of experience on a bench in London.
And yeah, his is another great example of someone that really didn't have well was close to Suicide had this Epiphany breakthrough experience and then had to spend kind of years figuring out asking like what the hell just happened to me, you know, and how do I reckon with what this is?
this you know Revelation was if fascinating how how that can be a path as well like it seems like the most common path you read about is people that have dedicated their lives to a really strict discipline of some type of meditation or contemplation and and then eventually they get to glimpses of this but then there's the other side of the coin that is just these spontaneous moments and then you know, and I think an egg hard
Case it's more last or less lasted for for quite a while and he's been able to hold on to that. Not that he's trying to hold on to it. But it seems like it's stuck stuck around in your case. It was a couple weeks, right and then things more or less went back to normal
you have little it was worse than that. It was a couple of weeks or maybe a little longer, but then I went home and I completely tanked. I had a minor breakdown and
so then it was you know several years before I whatever, you know five years maybe before I found my way to a regular part of practice that that didn't really address that moment, but it is certainly addressed a lot of their suffering and it probably could have addressed that moment, but I was
Apparently interested until a little bit later when I was you know, several years of regular TM as kind of you know, my life was kind of on an even Keel. I had a career going and I was you know, sort of steadier happier human being at that point. I kind of bumped into zen actually and
And just happened to hit Zen has certain angle where it was clear. Somehow the traditional said understood exactly what an experience on the bench and that was very exciting because it was the first time I realized wow, it wasn't random, you know, there's other people who've known about this whatever that was and there's not only that but there's people who know about it and who have dedicated themselves to
Is kind of getting to know it better and it maybe even learning to live it and you know, that's what I apparently needed was a disciplined part of training that could allow me frankly to experience more, you know to have more experiences that were in some ways, you know deeper they wasn't so that was only a starting point really a gateway.
And there's more and and to but but more importantly fast to learn how to actually integrate this kind of thing. So, you know, it's not just a flash in the pan but it's something that can become, you know place we sort of live from and and you know, that's that's why I
I got I trusted then you know, then that became my primary not my only way of primary part of practice.
Hmm before we get into zen because I really want to dive in and go D buns and I did want to touch briefly on Auntie Em again tiem. I would say as an organization. So I when I started practicing they don't know if they did this back when when you first started learning TM, but they had this, you know kind of ceremony and the secret word.
Heard and that they would give you that was your Mantra and I would later go up on the internet and find out that everyone secret word is the same based on your birth year and I looked it up online and sure enough there. I found out my friends secret word. I told him his you're not supposed to tell anyone. Yeah, and and there was actually a documentary on TM that I saw that is since been banned in the United States. They threatened lawsuits to block it. I'll link to it in the show notes if anyone wants to try and find it in order.
It overseas but I watched that documentary and the organization itself. Well, I'll say two things one. I think that the practice of Mantra meditation is obviously a sound one and it's one that has existed way before TM. So the idea of using a mantra to meditate with obviously works, but the organization itself TM. I have a little you know, I kind of pause around some of the things in that I've I've heard is it is TM something that you still recommend.
Certain people have you heard similar things that well, what are your thoughts on? I mean, we don't have to go bad-mouthing an organization. But did you ever have any concerns around that at all?
You know, I I left it before gum anywhere near the harbor for Harbor heart of it if you know what I mean, so I kind of but when I what I know about it now, you can do Zen for nothing literally nothing you can do.
Welcome to show up at an intro class and you leave five bucks if you want, you know, but you don't have to and the to put this High bar there of you know, you can't do this unless you pay X and what happens to all that money, they're collecting and I don't know I I have a just a little bit of a visceral sense of unease, you know around too much money. I mean, I didn't know what I didn't know what to say exactly.
You know, should we be making money from from spiritual things? I mean, you know, it's happened a lot in human history of the power and wealth of the Catholic church. And you know, you can any any I suppose spiritual organization that gets scaled up is probably going to going to have to reckon with money, you know, one way or another so it's not intrinsically bad, but there's something about I don't know.
There was a there was an opacity about the organization as well that you know who has this all organized and it was so
so I got to send you the documentary you have to watch it. Yeah, great. It's definitely something that is really eye-opening. And I mean in the in the more advanced it sounds like you dodged what they were trying to invite me into which was the more advanced training which on the Advanced Training side. They literally try to teach you how to like levitate and fly.
Yeah, I know about that. Yeah Hood
Yeah, and there's it's just it's definitely something to watch. But yeah, I'm on the Zone the Zen front how you know so many things everything every every Whole Foods T aisle has the words and plastered over. You
know,
it's such a common word these days. It's just like, you know it people don't even most people I'm sure don't even think of it as a practice that think of is just like describing relaxation, you know.
Can you describe to people you know what Zen is how it was founded how you got involved in it? Like I think just a little overview would be
great. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean in terms of what we know in the west, let me just start there. I would I think we have to point out right off the bat that there are different kinds of Zen practice and there's two main different kinds I'll get that moment. But basically, you know broadly speaking Zen is a strand of good.
ISM most people would agree and that that emerged in its particular shape or form that we still know really today in China, you know, roughly 1st to 5th Century BCE and it's it's simplified compared to many other forms of Buddhism. It's simplified in the sense that actually you don't have to really believe anything you say. You certainly don't have to believe in Pantheon.
Tons of different gods you don't have to believe in any God at all. It's very sort of stripped down Bare Bones. It's really about the sitting but it's also about I mean again here this is where the two main forms are slightly different to one another one main form, which actually is the San Francisco Zen Center would be in is Soto which tends to be a bit more ritualistic and liturgical and you know, the
The way you comport yourself and the way you sort of do things in the Zen don't wear the row.
Yeah. I remember I had to enter with my right foot. Is that right? When you step into the zendo like you had there's a foot you have to enter with and it's very formalized in that
way. That's right. That's right. And and then there's another line known as rings I which that that may be quite liturgical in some cases, but
In the line that I'm in which is called sambo Zane is actually sort of a hybrid in a sense of both of them in a way but really what it is is kind of even more stripped-down. It's sort of secular doesn't really think of itself as religious but it has this big piece in the training for those that wanted which is on the Rings icons from the Rings ISO, which is about coax and this is where
You know, it really goes pertinent to what we were talking about a moment ago about waiting and all that stuff because currents are there are really, you know, sort of weird and unusual and strange but brilliant method for helping us come to glimpses. Like I had when I was 19, but in a more deliberate and you know likely to happen not just the kind of random thing.
But you know really training with a Cohen can bring on this kind of thing. Not only that there are even more valuable in a sense perhaps for certainly for me was that they offer a training beyond that it's all about what do you do then? You know, do you just kind of go back to because most usually for people these experiences they happen and they kind of recede, you know the kind of close up again and we're back.
Man, I seen this unbelievable reality. But now I'm back in my normal way.
Yeah, this is what worries me about psychedelics to be honest. I have so many friends that I know it's not the same but I have so many
friends have done Ayahuasca, but
I like no you don't understand what I've seen I gotta go back in. I'm like you can go back in every couple weeks I needed. How about you sit this one out, you know?
Yeah. Yeah, I know. Well, well, I actually I totally agree with you and I think you know, there can be value. I think this
it looks like there's a lot of deep therapeutic value in psychedelics. That's emerging in the research right now, which is fantastic. Yeah, but as for the Awakening piece, I mean, you know, honestly, I think a lot of it comes through sitting grinding out the hours patients developing more and more exceptions more and more openness to just being me, you know to just coming to terms with myself.
ask that as that grows the possibility of the
World of Awakening so speaker. Whatever that is that we glimpse of that actually coming into our daily life that grows. It doesn't it's not it's a gradual thing. You know, the Zen way really is like, yeah, you can have a sudden experience of this moment experience in a very different way you can is real you can and it's actually I mean, I think that alone is valuable to acknowledge that it is.
Real, you know, this is not another another thing with psychedelics is like well are these are these really just a chemically induced moments that don't really have an intrinsic sort of value based on how real they are if it's killing me, but when you have a when you have a set of natural experience with you can't really deny its veracity and you know, my standard isn't like if we're trying to measure.
The value of a moment of Awakening in terms of how real or not it is. My view is that it only has to be a little bit more real than our ordinary way of seeing things and I think it can it can be shown that it is more real because if you just think about what sensory experience is, you know, for example, I mean, we think we're somehow it's in the intuitive sense that we're sort of the eyes are windows. You know, we're
Out of the world like the light of the world is coming into our skulls that intuitive sense. It's obviously completely wrong, right, you know, no lights coming in and you know, if you can cut those amazing research now and people wearing sort of tactile vests that created stimulate the optic nerve. So getting a sense of sight through touching. Anyway, the fact is in powerful moment of Awakening ordinary way of accepting senses.
Appearance is really subverted. But I think we sort of I think we drop down deeper into what is actually happening in any moment of Consciousness, you know where we're closer to, you know, somehow sort of the Neurology of it where with the illusion the optical and and auditory Illusions created by our sense equipment.
We're kind of seeing through it then you know that that's why we you know, we Buddhism we took about emptiness because you know to have I mean for example in that first experience I had at sort of you know, it was it was like everything became transparent and I could in that transparency. There was no distance and you know, I remember feeling like
I could the farthest reaches of the universe with it of immediately present and on that level.
I think somehow that's true because you know, we've dropped into a realm or a level of experience Here and Now where we have we're no longer sort of functioning. Our Consciousness is no longer functioning with ideas of distance. For example, hmm, you know, you can it's possible to get to the
under that presupposition of distance.
I'm curious how much of this you think is can actually be explained with language. I've read a lot about how you know words are just you know, they're just symbols there. They don't actually they're just signpost to something but not the actual thing. Do you find because I'm always trying to rationalize and intellectually figure out what
Lightman actually is and then I just you know, it's like something you could never grasp. I Feel Like You Could Read 50 descriptions of it and be like, oh, it's probably a little bit of this and a little bit of that and but it doesn't seem like you can ever kind of rationalize your way into an understanding. Do you think that's accurate?
Well, I would say that it's I would agree with that definitely in the sense of like the the only sort of value is in the experience.
Because that's where we change that's why the possibility of growth lies is in the experience of it. But I do think that there are some commonalities that can be pointed to like, you know, many might agree this something to do with discovering that my sense of me has been an idea. It hasn't been
Six solid real thing the way I thought it was, you know, I think many many my Converge on that and many might convert on say a sense of non separation, but somehow, you know, the the idea that you know, I am the subject and everything experiences that object is an object that can
disappear. I'd love to unpack that a little bit. I think that one of the things that I've been fascinated with for at least the last few years
Years is just this idea of understanding that everything that we experience be it emotionally physically visually anything that we look at is actually just being rendered in our brain, right? Like that's the actual display of that information is somehow happening in neurons in our brain. It's not happening out there in the world.
So I am actually creating this entire environment in my brain. So what does that make me in a sense? And then how deep does that go eventually, when does it stop and what's left when it all goes away does any of that make sense to you? I mean, that's
it. Does it does I mean, I mean, I think it's I do think that is possible through you know, it's a guided part of the practice to come to see
To not not just think that through but really experienced that the and then and then you know, they that's what they talk about with this word. Shunyata or Emptiness is actually you know, really see that that you can somehow they can still be some sort of awareness but there's just
nothing question about that now that I'm really curious about emptiness. So yeah, I've had moments in my practice.
What I would call like a state of just having a non-active mind. Okay, but I don't feel that's the same. I feel like emptiness at least in my head is is a couple different things one. It's you know, can I calm the monkey mind whatever one talks about in terms of just like being able to tame that a bit, but also I feel there is a weight an unseen kind of subconscious way.
Weight and burden of years of life that is like this.
Constant kind of heaviness and the only time I can really experience that going away. It's like it's like a deep state of meditation brings about what is almost like a just like a beautiful exhale like a release of that and a lightness that comes from detaching from that subconscious wait and so in my mind, it's like okay thoughts. No thoughts. Great.
- Wait Detachment, like I feel like I'm getting closer to those those things help me understand those things. Is that make any
sense? Yes, it totally does. I mean one one way that I've heard it passed out is I mean, yeah, I think you're right like this this of course, this is a sort of primary foundational level of meditation where we're we're we are becoming less identical.
But with us thoughts and then thought of settling down and we can write actually, you know, yeah, we can have beautiful Stillness
magic you get relaxation out of that like I come out of my meditation that's like that in my God. I feel very relaxed didn't hit Enlightenment, but I feel pretty relaxed.
Yeah, no exactly and then but then we get these you know, and then and then you're right. I mean that sort of existential wait, that's that's part of
The actively having a sense of self and to get relief from that is is just is just marvelous. But there's I mean I would take it. Maybe maybe we could if we want take it one more little Shuffle which is other please do. Well, you know, I'd say that essentially the experience of emptiness is to see either that the sense of self has simply been an idea.
It's been no more than that. And but you have to experience it to get that. I think it's very very hard to realize how pervasive the sense of self is until it's somehow gone. And it's there's one thing as you know, those activities were the sense of self gets very quiet. Like if you're in a flow State, you know, you know, one of the characteristics has his selflessness in a when you're writing your mountain bike or play music.
Or play basketball or whatever, you know great perfectly early performers will enter flow States where there's just much less sense of self. That's great. But that's not the same as actually seeing through that the sensor self has been I mean in the end release been in Usery. It's been something that I just Ian. I conjured myself is like a it's a thing. It's sort of a little bit like a sort of Genie that I've
Of candid myself and and actually when I see that that's what I've done it breaks the spell. Hmm. So that's one side mention is that I think the other side is even hard for people to accept which is that the whole world that we experience on some level is just a kind of mirror image and I'm going to have to have gone in so deep. I'm sorry Kevin but but you know the caution here is that that doesn't
Doesn't lead us to nihilism went because when we actually experience this when we really sort of drop into this, you know, boundless empty, you know, it's actually it's the opposite of nihilism because it's so beautiful that everything appears. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter, you know, we in the end we just come back we treat everything just the way see
Cena we have to but it's so transformative to have seen that the whole thing has been a dream. I mean, I think that's why they call it wait Awakening because it's it really is like as if my whole life has been a dream, but I don't wake up and ignore the dream, you know, I I now have to
tend it the best I can I mean theres one Japanese master and the 20th century who's sort of one of the figures in the organization's history that I'm part of you know, who he said. Well this life may all be a dream, but we must work to make it a happy dream.
And that sort of expressive now, you know, I don't know how this is landing this this. Like I said we come about as deep as I know how to go but it's and it's weird and it may not be very helpful to people this here this emptiness stuff because how does it help me lead my life. Well, you know, I would say it's not for everybody and it's not the only level of meditation practice that we need to work on we weave
Got to do the you know the personal healing and the interpersonal healing and develop more compassion and you know in a kind of dualistic way. That's an absolutely essential part. I think there's a real danger actually and people going too far over the sort of I want me Enlightenment thing, you know, and not not not dealing with my marriage, you know, which is coming apart, you know, and I really got to my kids that I think I think we have to work on multiple.
Doesn't I certainly know that I hate.
Well, it's interesting because you mentioned earlier that part of the practice is not just the sitting but the integration piece like right like how do you take some of this and incorporate it in something that you walk around with and live
right exactly exactly zits how to I mean what can be a great blessing is to be able to tap into a kind of sense of
Wow, there's a sort of something almost like a set of infinite well-being in the heart of every month. And if I can just remember that, you know, it changes my orientation greatly and my practice is to try to remember a more consistently and to be as helpful as I can be really
Coming. Yeah, okay related to the integration piece actually, very important, you know is that we're breaking through through seeing through the self breaking some of the the inclination to work on behalf of self-protection self-promotion, but breaking that and coming to this life, you know in with a really different orientation of wanting to
help when you first
Started getting into zen for you know, I realized just realized we didn't really describe to people what that practice looks like. Like your you said, it's sambo. Is that right? Yeah. What does that look like for someone that is curious like okay is in sounds really interesting all these things some wonderful. How do I get involved? Like what steps do I take to create my own practice in
Zen? Yeah. I mean, well it starts out with you know, really watching the breath in a simple breath practice.
This with you know is a whole kind of world unto itself of helpfulness. So there's on that level. There's that there's just learning to sit with the breath and patiently just, you know, getting more and more in a state where it's enough just to be breathing, you know, and how beautiful that can be but in the world of Zen if you really want to get into this sort of deeper stuff that I've been talking about.
You pretty much have to have a guide, you know, and that's a whole deal as well. How do you find a reliable guide? Do you want to have a guide? I mean that was that was actually a big issue for me. I had a lot of Suspicion of
As well especially male authority figures generally made from my parents had a difficult parental situation my childhood as well. You know that left me kind of like not really trusting male authority figures essentially and really even not so much female ones either and gradually I couldn't really get the real purchase in this training until
I found somebody that I could I could really trust because he said manifestly didn't really have anything to gain from what he was doing. You know, he was he was kind of busy running to Charities for severely disabled people and teaching Zen and he really he really wasn't sort of, you know, he wasn't kind of gaining anything from his zen teacher manifestly and just just love.
And I wanted to share it. What
is one learn when they have a guide like what are the some of the is it going deeper on some of the Coen side of things? Like how does that differ than just a regular sitting
practice? Yeah. That's a good question. I mean, I think you know, there are lots of different levels of meditation that we might want to do for, you know be equivalent to say running, you know, some people just want to jog twice a week for 20 minutes and do they need a coach now?
No, probably not. They might just you know, watch a couple of YouTube time jobbing something, you know, but then if you want to be a you know, an ultra Runner or you want to you know train for the Olympics or something, you got to have a coach and I think it's like that with meditation that all depends, you know, in a sense how far you want to go because for the great majority of people who are interested in getting a practice together, you know, and by the way, I mean I
Spect is kind of reached saturation at this point, you know, there's the numbers of people who have tried some meditation or who are interested in doing so is staggering, you know, it's over 50% if you total and I think that's probably more than really neat meditation. I don't I don't necessarily think that everybody needs it, you know, I know some do but I'm not so sure but you know on for the great majority, it's just going to be
You know a maintenance piece of my well-being, you know that, you know, if maybe therapeutic and moving into maintenance like a you know, I need my exercise three times a week or whatever and I need my little dose of meditation 10 minutes a day or something like that. And I don't think you really do need the whole lot of Coach if that's the situation, but if you're moving into this territory where
Meditation becomes a vehicle for a deep exploration of deep inquiry to what is this life? What is what am I? You know, what what where do I really find sort of a deep purpose and meaning to the whole thing if you're kind of on
In though in the weeds of those deep existential questions, I think and you want to use meditation as a path.
Then then there really is a place for a guide for a coach who's somebody is really just someone who's kind of you know, who's who's on the part two and hopefully just a few, you know hilltops ahead of us. So speak if you feel I mean,
yeah that makes a lot of sense. I may I think I know a ton of people that that love, you know their app experience. And actually I found I found you through Sam Harris has waking up app. You have a fantastic course they're on
Ones and I think you know samsa a great example of someone that has put together a great collection of both talks and you know formal training but in a lightweight fashion that almost anyone can jump into and spend, you know, 10 minutes a day on I would say his is on the definitely on the more advanced side, you know, there's a lot of meditation apps out there that offer prescriptive meditation, you know Anxiety Relief fear of flying things of that nature. Yeah, and I think that's
you're right for the majority of people that is going to be the path. It's like I have an SOS moment. I need to go in and dive in and take something to to help with that.
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and I don't think this kind of this real deep expiration thing is for everybody and for those that are curious and that kind of level whether their ways meditation or something else, you know, it's also up for grabs, but what's what I really value I think about
This and that I've been trained in is that it's really a very good shot kind of changing for the better. It really is because it's you know, you have somebody that you can meet with his checking in on your practice and your life and you know, it's kind of a put a reference point for you as you're going through this over years. So and then you know
deep changes may happen in the way you experience things are the kind of we've been talking about in and to have somebody who can recognize. Yeah. This is real, you know, and you then it just tell you that you feeling that you feel and I remember when I first, you know, I was met this teacher John Gainer. He was going to look absolutely loved him and still do and he he's part of this same in the lineage organization and and he
I just told him about that moment on the beach, you know, and actually one other than that subsequently had and immediately. I just knew that he'd been there to wasn't just that he said oh, yeah, you know I actually could feel this was a human being who recognized what I was talking about and and then he gave me a car the first kind of sit with us at with it for a long time suddenly something.
Totally unexpected happen one evening. You know what I was bringing supper up to her to my wife and our kids, you know who are watching a movie and on TV and I just suddenly I was standing there giving them the food and you know, just this really shocking thing just happened. I knew I had to go and see him so I you know the next time you I could I saw him.
And and he said oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah great. You know, he he knew exactly he understood and he knew and he recognized what had happened and they're feeling of being met in such a you know, kind of column of a wild place and that there was a path and that I was honor past that had been kind of handed down over Generations. That was pretty amazing. You know, that that they're really
have been people who've taken care of this aspect of human development.
That is so you know, so not really where we normally go Unum in at the huh. I can Vayner how it just seems so incredible to me that that this was not random that this was everything to do with the co and I've been singing with and
I was meeting somebody who was part of some sort of weird world of people over the centuries who'd known about this and he said he knew how to help a human being discover this and then live, you know, I just found that amazing.
Yeah, I I'm all about these types of experiences. I think that in my life at some point I
Realize that there are the kind of early doors and moments that you have in life that are that are truly going to transformational and you know life will never be the same. Once you kind of grasp what you've gone through and I think part of that is like that change from adolescence to adulthood and realizing that you're on your own and you're capable and you're your own person. That's a big one, you know having a child for the first time and feeling that unconditional love that.
At all these parents talk about and when you don't have a kid you like. Yeah. Yeah, it gives you sound great. They cry, whatever and then you experience that love for the first time and you're like, wow, there is a door in whole world that I opened that I read about on paper, but I never really knew what it was about until I went through it right precisely and I feel that there's a few of those. You know, I've had some psychedelic experiences.
With the same thing. I'm a little bit more on the skeptical side in that. I do think there's therapeutic benefits as you said, but I just know that these states of Consciousness can exist and why not go and explore them because they're here for us. The question is do we want to take the trouble to try and open up other doors and see what's behind them actually step through them rather than just reading about them. And so that that's what gets me excited. Anyway,
yes, I couldn't
I'm right with you and somehow this sort of a incrementally getting clearer and clearer going further and further and also being able to bring it back into how we live in our ordinary life. I mean, you know one that's one of the things maybe in the end of most grateful for insane is that it values the ordinary, you know, we you know, there's that I guess it was a book or there's a phrase, you know little catch phrase after the enlightenment the laundry or something like that after the exercise.
Laundry, well, I used to take that to mean a little bit of a downer like you might have some exalted experience, but you got to come back to the you know, your normal humdrum. We're experiencing things, but that's wrong. I now know it's saying, you know, the laundry is the miracle.
You know when you've when you've when you've got clearer.
you know, you can sit you can put a tea bag in a cup and pull the cattle into the cup and watch the Steam and
You know, it's like nothing could be more beautiful. Nothing could be more fulfilling. You know, that's what after the enlightenment the laundry means it means.
There's simple Act of scrubbing out of pan at the sing. You know, it's it's the whole that that you know, some other the whole world is present. If we really experience it, you know, it's we couldn't ask for more so being able to more and more experience each moment, you know, just sitting at the table and
You know sitting in front of the computer they like, you know, just the ordinary ordinary.
Is so marvelous in a ight to me. That's the sort of real gift of this kind of training is to be able to you know, in some sense get a bit closer to living as if this day were my last and as if this day will my first you know, and I can't imagine a greater gift than that.
Yeah. How do you take those experiences?
Which you described I think by Nature. Those are those are pretty mellow chill moments to have how do you how do you
take politics like the world that we live in
today? Like, you know all the chaos with the coronavirus and everything else is going on. This is something where I have a hard time. My wife is very she does practice meditation and she's a fan more in the kind of like, you know, prescriptive kind of casual.
Practice. I think that she has a really deep concern and and Fascination and you know politics just wrap her up like you know in it'll get your brain going and gets you amped up and you know, how does one?
Deal with this. How do you how do you handle this atmosphere?
What can you do? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up. I mean, you know, let me just sort of back up just a moment. If I may and like this time of coronavirus, I mean the way I would see it. I mean a lot of people in communities that I'm working with, you know and in a suffering a lot.
not with loss of livelihood and in a real really deep anxiety about putting food on the table and paying the rent so on but there's also people who are you know, more privileged and who were appreciating this sense of breathing space, you know, the whole planet is taking drawing a breath and slowing down CO2 emissions are down and you know, you don't hear planes criss cross in the sky, so
And you know, you know what I mean. There's that's another narrative that you hear the state sure. We generally take it. I mean, it's amazing to me how this works the in the port's, you know, what should come up but this this dire need for a new moral Awakening in the u.s. You know, and and then Britain to where I'm from, you know this out of the Stillness come.
Comes a whole new moral Awakening about my racist past and present, you know, and I find that just kind of well, it's interesting that Stillness which something I you know, as a meditator, I deeply believe in should be producing that and what do we do about it? What house meditation have a part to play? I mean one thing that's
There's so many ways but one is just like if we think in terms of these different sort of levels of practice, you know tuning into well, one of the things that meditation can do is all about trauma held in the body.
And I don't know whether you've tuned in to this work going on with racist and racial trauma in the body. There's a whole new exploration of that that seems to be going on. There's a great guy Charisma medicham and if you've come across him.
No, I have not. It's fantastic. It's got a book called my
grandmother's hands and it's all about how we hold racist trauma, you know way to cite white supremacy White
Each over multiple Generations, you know white people have it in their bodies black people have it in their bodies and different ways and and law enforcement have it in their bodies. And you know meditation is can be a great arena for somatic release, you know sitting with with trauma in the body and releasing it but, you know above all it's like we are
Hope that as meditators were more open to.
new education when needed you know and and calls to action stepping up and they see then is got a quite a history of being
Engaged in social activism more so perhaps than some other meditation
Traditions, I could never figure out how active to be in that world, you know, like for me when I think about politics and you know, the corruption on that comes with power and money in, you know, regardless of
party. Yeah.
I kind of throw my hands up and say is this a space that I want to dabble in in trying to you know, quote-unquote help.
side or pick a winning side or whatever it may be or do I just you know opt out and that's that's hard for me to kind of wrap my head around, you know, sometimes I think that
these negative things that are happening in the world are a push and a direction that may seem harsh but they're jolting and Awakening and kind of slapping the opposite side in the face to wake up and kind of come back and have a response that hopefully creates some place in the middle. That is a better outcome.
Because of that does that make sense? Yes in so when you think about some of these really harsh crazy things that are happening change doesn't happen due to complacency. It happens when there are these big bold moments that that shocked us into action. So on in some sense, they're they're needed. So, you know, all these things go through my head. I'm like
Okay. Now what do I do? It's like a if they're if they're needed in a sense. Do I try to stop them or do I just let the world unfold you know?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they can't be stoked I think but I think they you know, I would imagine that there's I think there's a this is a difference, you know between Europe and America that there's much more political engagement. There's much more Civic engagement in Europe. Its I don't know whether it's because the country is a smaller, you know, the
Up to maybe 60 70 million at the biggest, you know, maybe Germany's 18 out and shove it anyone most of this, you know, small smaller scale societies where you know on the whole people feel they have a stake in the political processes and it's that's been one of the big things for me coming. You know, I'm not an American citizen as well. But you know, we've been here I've been here nearly nearly.
Getting onto the Earth close to 30 Years anyway, and my wife about 20 and you know, it's it's really different here that there's a sense of what's the word not not exactly apathy but like powerlessness like I can't really engage with the political process because it's it's all stitched up. Anyway, you know and the lobbyists and the corporation's of have bought everything. So what am I supposed to do?
right, but but I really think that somehow we got to try and do something, you know, then there's some old zen guy who just said always, you know, make it positive step toward the good so however, small makes a step toward the good and
I don't think we can just throw up our hands and say leave it to the back guys, you know, we got to somehow try to stand up for what we can demonstrably see as wrong as it were the other way around, you know, hmm and as her, you know, and and we also we don't know what the effects of our actions are going to be. We one of the you know, the the concept of the bodhisattva somebody is working on behalf.
The well-being of others is that they do it without attachment to the result. Hmm. But even in a trying to help and serve they're going to do it. Anyway, whatever the result, you know, they're not there. They're helpfulness isn't contingent on a known positive result. You see what I mean? You know if that's good sir. Maybe that's a spirit which we might be called on to.
To you know, just Hey Kevin. Are you important? I am yes. Yeah, so you're right in the thick of all that the with the federal agents coming in and all that
stuff. Yeah. I'm very lucky in a sense that I'm about 15 to 20 minutes outside of that you have drive so I don't I don't hear a see a lot of it but it's been yeah, it's been definitely a few months of chaos for sure.
Right? Right,
right one thing. I wanted to cover that you touched on earlier, but I
That was just so beautiful. Is that the cohens because they are they are really
cool. Do you want to
describe what they are and and kind of explain a couple of the the
ones that you you teach and in Sam's course. Yeah, I mean by and large Cohen's a little things that was said or done by some awakened practitioner a long time ago whether in India and
The early days of Buddhism or in China in the early days of Chinese Buddhism and you know, usually they don't make any sense. They if you try to unpack them rationally your hidden and past usually at some point and the idea is that in a sense. They these little actions or sayings, you know from these great Old Masters they sort of
They're an expression of the way. They saw things in their enlightened state. So they they don't make sense to our ordinary dualistic way of seeing things. But the moment you are you open to the non-dual, you know to non-separateness or to know self to emptiness the moment we taste that they make sense. I mean, that's that's a sort of
Other schematic description what they are but there's great ones like, you know, there's one where this master was asked. So what is Buddha or what is awakened - any answers a dried shit stick a shit stick with something. They used in the toilet in medieval China and ride shit stick. That's good. You think we'll what what what what what why you know so that you might be
Think it through but and come up with some way of rationalizing it. But when when you what we do with the cone as we sit with it, and then we come to the teacher in in a private little meeting one-on-one and we have to actually do something in a physical we have to physically present the cover. It's called demonstrate present the coin, you know, and so the idea is that there's ways of responding physically.
To these cards that allow them to be embodied in US rather than thought through by
us. What do you mean by present them physically?
Yeah. Well, like for example with that coin, you know, I would go in and I've actually got to do something or say something. You know, that is not explanatory back to the
teacher. You see a response back to the teacher.
Yeah, they'll say Okay, so
So what about this coming, you know, and I'm expected to show it, you know, there's another ones like make Mount Fuji take three steps.
What am I supposed to do? You know, right am I suppose but there's something there like little
puzzles and away right? But but they're not ones that can be
explained. That's right. They sound like cousins or riddles, but they're not because when you've had clear experience of you know, this, you know world of Awakening or whatever, you know clear experience of Awakening.
The suddenly the con is sitting with it in your meditation and baffling of what the hell you know, but then all of a sudden oh, yeah. Yeah, of course because they're expressing this world of boundlessness, you know this experience of emptiness experience of Oneness. They're actually expressing that and so you just do something, you know what to do. There's a another one's stop the sound of the distance.
Now what what am I what am I supposed to do with that? You know, well you just we just run it through the mind and again if we've by the way typically, you know, somebody wouldn't really sit with these ones until they've had till they've been working on one of various early cohan's and have had a kind of braking experience with one of the early
ones. Let me guess your question. This is going to be this could be completely wrong and you can be like that's totally wrong if it is.
So I you know, I'm a computer science guy. I think of like execution of code, right like you might run some windows code through a Macintosh and the machines like I have no idea what you're talking about output is garbled. But if you run it through like Enlighten code through an enlightened being then the response that comes out is going to be in a light response and you're like, ah that checks out your code compiled correctly.
Graduations like is that what we're talking about? Here? Are we talking about like you kind of have to like be in a certain state to understand? What is the code that you're receiving? And then you will give an appropriate response. Once you're in that state,
I like that and that is your look. I mean, I've maybe a little close with me to say just this just a slight adjustment. Would you have to have experienced it?
Right, you don't necessarily have to be in it right. Now. You have to have experienced it fairly recently. Okay, let's say that because for example when I started Cohen study, you know and had the kind of experience that they're person too long ago. And and I'm I sort of as it were had to have a fresh experience with the first kind of sitting with because then then it said of alive in me, you know when you
These six minutes is like we're saying that they tend to happen and then kind of fade but there's actually a there's a period when they may not be vividly going on still, you know, a few weeks later or something but their recent enough that they're still alive in us and that's when you get in with a you start working with the cohens, you know, you may have been working with on and had an experience. Then you start working with subsequent ones and they allow that experience to grow and spread.
Ed and broaden and he started you know in the long the long-range goal is that the world of that awakened experiencing a and this Ordinary World. They stop being separate. Hmm. That's that's really and the color in law. What a Nicole tool. Well, I know and the currents there there the means because you know, they're they're all ordinary. I mean like like another one is like, you know again what's Awakening some variant of that?
A student in the master answers the oak tree in the garden.
The oak tree in the
garden. And so okay. Let's take that one the oak tree in the garden right now. You know, I could be obviously explain to you that's not going to do anything do it. What do I say when you see you sit with this. Are you repeating it over and over in your mind with but but not through the lens of trying to figure out trying to figure out trying to figure out you just like almost like Mantra like where you don't have any meaning behind it, but you're just using it over and over or how do you sit with it?
Yeah. Yeah the quick question. I mean it's
More or less Mantra like but actually I hate to put more wrinkles and complications in but typically the first kind that people sit with is either going to be who is this? Who am I? What is this something like that or it's going to be this baffling little worm that mu mu and there's a little story Among Us this master Zhou shoe does a dog
dog have put a nature is even a dog part of this awakened reality and you know, the natural answer actually to that question would be of course, of course in its everything's part of it, right but junsu says moo which means not so we've doesn't really make sense. So I'm going to come back to the question kind of so what you typically do is you sit with this move.
If that's still killing, that's a you'll sit with that usually for a long long time mattress style. You literally try to repeat it on every exhale. Now.
Do you say mu or do you say the meaning not because like mu would not be our language, right? So that's right. That's
right. No, you stay move because we're not interested in the meaning. I mean, I just told the meaning that but it's not actually relevant. Okay. What's what's what's rather than is that somehow Joe shoes the master.
his expression mu
is
even that single syllable sort of if I can put it this way contains or expresses his experience of Awakening. So anyway, so, you know, it's it's not magic. Actually it really isn't it somehow.
I don't know what the mechanics are but there's some you know kind of mechanical process here. Where in the so you just keep repeating move and you know, it can be very challenging and lots of things could come up with anyone on Earth. Am I doing this? This is crazy and you know, what a cut and far rather explore sense that sense experience or brass or whatever and I'm stead I got this stupid little syllable at the don't even know what it means, you know, a lot of resistance and come up, but we just if we
If we're really committed to we just sit through all that resistance, and I probably that's very valuable in itself breaking things down stuff and learning to surrender more and eventually mu is particularly tried and tested actually triggering.
A random disappearance, you know, I mean that's what is not random with me sitting with mooc and you know, once something has happened once there's been some breakthrough experience which seems to you know, it's not like it happens with predictable regularity but it does happen just by sitting with that little syllable weirdly, but it does thereafter. We start sitting with other cohan's and there's like a
Treecko and is actually from one of the classic collections called the gateless gate, which is a book of 48 cards. So we were at that point we would you know, we would either be maybe still sitting with mu as a kind of Baseline practice and or one of the other ones one of the other early ones or we might just be sitting with brass or we might be doing the practice known as just sitting and we'd be running the new
Uh kind through our mind now and then, you know wouldn't need to be mattress style but now and then we go there. Why is this the the oak tree in the garden tree in the garden? What's what's that about you know, and and you know with subsequent kinds is not like we're going to get and we're not expecting to have a set of you know, massive Awakening experience every time the course not but what they do is they they sort of they bring us in
Link back to that initial breakthrough experience we've had with the first card and they they allow it to sort of somehow start to spread through our being and through our lives subtly. It may be and you know often will get a little hit a little shift and stuff is happening. Anyway, as we keep on practicing with growing in all kinds of ways, you know, and
so I you know, even though you know, I know I've talked a lot about Awakening but practice is a multi-dimensional thing. I think, you know, especially the sort of long-term training. We're not only growing in in one way where you know, lots of things are going on.
There has been instances though of this type of other Cohen being told from a teacher to a student that will shock them. Is that still a cone like this kind of idea of being like shocked into an enlightened State through a
I meant is that a corn as
well? Well, yeah, I mean it could well be that a lot of the Cones were kind of born that way, you know that they are a record of a moment when you know a student ask something in the Masters response was, you know battling and shocking, you know, like them dried shit stick won't you know, and it's somehow jolt either an unwary student enter into a spiritual
awakening. I find that just
Fascinating because that could be like you'd mention. I think it had bug like that can be like the tug of us jacket or sleeve. It can be a rock hitting a piece of bamboo like yes that that's that's crazy. So it's just like they're they're sitting on the edge but it's this last little Tipping Point that jolts them into the state is is that
accurate? Yes. I think that's a very good way of putting it exactly that the it's like the way I think about it. Sometimes is that the veil gets thinner and thinner
But as long as it's there at all the you don't see through and then there's just one last thread snaps and there's a gap, you know all it's like, you know, I think of it like a the way we normally experiencing stuff is so convincing and yet it's like if you imagine like an image on the surface of a pond, you know satre opposite. This looks so real, you know, but it just takes one little Pebble and suddenly the finished.
The image is disrupted, you know and like that. Yeah, I think I think I'll practice gets us so that the another leg the the rug gets very threadbare and you start to see The Weave underneath the text are you know, and then one last footstep booms and a hole is made, you know,
can you mention the kind about the was it a monk that was kind of done with meditating and decided to venture out and stubbed his toe.
You can he tell us that when I thought that was
great. Yeah. Yeah. This is a guy who's grown up as a fisherman and actually had seen his father died in a fishing accident. He found in Raging River and drown and he was you know, his he'd gone off to join a monastery of the young man being there certain amount of time kind of nothing had happened. He hadn't he felt he wasn't getting anywhere in his practice and he decided to leave and he went off he put on his traveling.
Pack and his sandals and headed off up the Hillside and hadn't been gone long when he stubbed his toe apparently really bad on a rock and it was that moment that precipitated somehow in the pain among the you know, he had a Great Awakening experience and went right back to the monastery and they sort of said, what are you doing back here? You know, we thought he'd left and he said well
Another step was taken with what he says. So he you know, he had that we take that Express not a step was taken to me and he's tasted this world of emptiness of Oneness were in some sense. You can't go anyway. Hmm. Yeah. It is just hitting just that that shocking that pain. But by the way, it doesn't have to be shocked. Sometimes it's like, you know, it's just like putting the key in the car duel.
You know bringing in the shopping putting it on the kitchen counter
suddenly the world changes. Well, this has been great. I don't want to take up too much of your time. But I would love to chat about your book because I've been listening to it and in getting through it and it's been a great story so far. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and and what people can expect from
it? Yeah. I mean the book is, you know, it's basically a memoir and it's about how I found here.
through from from Maximo and you know certain amount of depression and anxiety and kind of low-grade mental health issues, you know through meditation practice and then how you know how Zen how me personally go much deeper into the realm of sort of deeper examination of what we are and how
you know, you can any of us really if we want to we can go deeply into profound, you know, really profound experiences about the nature of our life and the nature of reality kind of Consciousness and it's not out of reach the way we might think it is, you know, it's I mean, I wasn't like a, you know, like a sort of gifted men.
State or anything like that, you know and I had a lot of kind of ordinary. Like I said moment mental health, you know, sort of low-grade mental health challenges. It wasn't like I was, you know, some tool cools reincarnated Lama returning just utterly ordinary troubled guy. And so, you know, I hope that the book is interesting in just showing how past
Can really really helping really profound
ways. That's great that the book is called one blade of grass. It's available on Amazon. I got it on Audible because you read it, which is great.
And he just I was actually had a big at
a long car trip to take to visit a family friend. And yeah, I put it on and it just was able to listen Audible and I thought it was fantastic. So thanks for for sharing today. And then also, you know, I would love to
Is there anywhere online that people can find out what you're up to? I mean you're in Arizona.
Correct, New Mexico,
New Mexico. Sorry new. Yeah,
so yeah. So yeah, there's a Zen Center that I'm the guiding teacher at called Mountain Cloud Zen Center. And we also have a mindfulness Institute there the Rio Grande mindfulness Institute and that's in Santa Fe Co director off and so that's online, you know Mountain Cloud dot o-- r-- g-- it's on.
Twitter it's on Facebook. It's on Instagram and you can keep up we have Retreats once a month on Zoom at the moment and vote for yeah. We have a talk every Thursday night. You have a class every Tuesday night. We have two sets a day have me on Zoom. So actually, you know, actually for us this this the coronavirus crisis has as really sort of changed things that we've been, you know people as
Coming in from all over the world for our events, you know missionary Norway Philippines, you know, really and everywhere in between and so it's really cool. Actually that it's bringing people together that it would be much harder to have gather. You
know, that's fantastic.
So not that's all ongoing. Yeah. That's yeah.
Yeah, cheers. So anyone can just sign up for a retreated are these like single day Retreats? Are they in introductory kind of?
Intro to Zen Retreats, like what type of Retreats are you doing?
Yeah. Thanks for watching. We have them most of them a multi-day and they're not they'll there's n is Zen is kind of on the menu, but there's it's more General mindfulness and meditation practice. Hmm. But the talks will usually lean a little bit in the sense side, but they're typically four days and you kind of choose how much you want to do. You know you we have a main
From 9 a.m. To 3:30 p.m. But there's also early block from 6:00 to 8:00 a.m. And late block and evening and you just you just do what you want. So people the the attendance fluctuates because you know the tends to kind of concentrate more around the morning talk time 10 a.m. And then there's a Q&A time in the afternoon 2:00 p.m. That's all mounted time by the way, and you know, definitely a tendency to sort of gather up.
A bit around those times but you know, they're there it's a free-for-all you come and go as you like and you pay what you like. We have a suggested donation, but basically anybody can come and contribute whatever they
can. That's great. And that's all at Mountain Cloud
dot-org. Yes, correct.
Excellent. Well Henry, thank you so much for being on the show. This was like super fascinated. I'm excited to get through the rest of your book and I actually what we were chatting.
I bought that that book of Cohen's so I've been like you have me like she let me go my recent orders right now. As you were mentioning things. I was like taking notes. So I got the gateless gate coming. That's
okay. Oh when the hey, can I recommend another book? Yes, please do it's called Zen the authentic gate by llamada co-own KO un and that is a superb sort of introductory book to a lot of what I've been talking.
I'm from that's a map of training in sambo sound
fantastic. That's what I'm looking
for. Look at that that will be the best one again as the first one.
Okay, great. Well, thank you so much.
Oh man kind of thank you so much is I'm really honored and thrilled and excited and you know humbled to have been on your show, which I really think is terrific. By the way. Thank you. You just have incredible people and I'm really
honored to be among them than thank you. Thank you.
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