#560: Zen Master Henry Shukman — 20 Minutes of Calm, Plus the Strange and Powerful World of Koans

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a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endocellary. Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show. My guest today is Henry Schokman. S H U K M A N You can find him on Instagram at

Mountain Cloud Zen Center. Henry teaches mindfulness and awakening practices to a wide range of students from all traditions and walks of life. Henry is an appointed teacher in the Sambo Zen lineage and is the guiding teacher Of Mountain Cloud Zen Center. He was introduced to me by my very close friend, Kevin Rose. That is how this came to be. He has an MA from Cambridge. and an Emlett from Saint Andrews, and has written several award winning books of poetry and fiction. His essays have been published in the New York Times, Outside and Tricycle, and his poem have been published in The New Republic Guardian Sunday Times, that's in the UK, and London Review of Books. Henry has taught meditation at Google, Harvard Business School, UBS, Esslane Institute, Colorado College, United World College, and many other venues. He has written of his own journey. In his latest book, one blade of grass, subtitle Finding.

The Old Road of the Heart, a Zen memoir. And that book was gifted to me by the aforementioned Kevin Rose, affectionately known as Kev Kev, on this podcast very often. The website is mountaincloud.org. You can find Both Henry and Mountain Cloud Zen Center on Instagram at Mountain Cloud Zen Center Facebook Facebook.com slash M T N CloudZen and you can find Henry on LinkedIn, LinkedIn.com slash IN slash Henry hyphen Shookman S H U K M A N. Henry, welcome back to the show. I promised everyone a round two. I promised myself a round two because I have all of these notes that we didn't even touch. in the last conversation, which was wide ranging. And I wanna focus on

Koans. And delve deeply into many Remaining questions about Zen. And

Practices and so on. And I thought we might start As I mentioned before we started recording. With a live. example, a real world case study. And that is I'm coming down with some kind of cold.

I've got a scratchy throat. I feel turbulent. in my internal state right now because I it was Feeling a little sick, also got agitated. earlier this morning and that has continued to the present moment. So I'm wondering

When you have a lot going on. Or life has thrown you a curveball, or who knows, you just wake up on the wrong side of the bed, assuming that still happens occasionally. What do you do? With your toolkit and training and so on. What happens?

Okay. Okay. Thank you so much for asking that. I like it a lot and it's dear to my heart because alas I do have to Deal with that. You know, it's not gone. As perhaps it ought to have in some marvellously, you know, awakened practitioner or something, but I'm evidently not there yet. So I can definitely I think I can

Offer a few tools. But actually I wanna just say I've gotta say this, Tim. Thank you. Very much for having me back. I'm kind of bowled over actually amazed. I mean I know you said it last time, but I thought somehow it'll just get postponed and won't happen.'Cause I mean You know, you have the people you have on are just so sort of amazing and I'm Unknown and and weird. So

You know, it's it's a real actually. But it's it's uh I kid I kid in part. It's it's great to have you back on and thank you for saying that. And uh had to have you back on. I promised it. Well man, I'm I really am sort of humbled and very grateful. So let's see. Yeah, so I can totally relate to your question about where you're at right now.

I mean actually to be honest I can relate'cause I've got I mean the situation I'm in right now, first of all, talking to Tim Ferris, my God. But then secondly, actually I've got to do a teaching tonight to something like four hundred people as a guest teacher. And so that's a little bit sort of In my system. And tomorrow morning

My wife and I are flying back to the UK for Just under two weeks. The first time in two years or more. To see uh Aging, aging parents uh who we haven't been able to be face to face with in person. And my system is uh is sort of

It knows all that's going on. Now you've got a cold or something coming on You had some kind of Should we call sort of a triggering event or some kind of activating event? Kerfuffle earlier today. Yes. Yeah, right. So the system got sort of A little bit riled up and hasn't fully settled down again. Has not settled down at all. At all.

Okay, well look, I mean first of all Let's acknowledge Clearly that that's the situation. There's a system here. With a little bit of

Upregulation. The sediment is churning. Yes. So that's the first thing is just to know it, to state it, to be clear about it. This is what I do.

And then the second thing I mean really the key to the whole thing Is letting it be that way. It's like Okay.

Here's a Highly sensitive creature. A human being. And Among human beings some

By temperament have more sensitivity than others. All of us have fluctuations in our levels of sensitivity. And some of us do I mean in a sense do The kind of inner work that leads to more sensitivity. Let's note that in a way to be sensitive to things is a good thing.

It means that we're more aware. Of Life Put very broadly. But with it comes the possibility of getting more easily riled up.

Those of us who've had For whatever reasons and whatever shape traumatic Elements in our childhoods. Especially also if we are of a Sensitive nature.

That sort of it comes into us. It's it's a wound. But you know, he's in us. So When we're allowing ourselves to be in Let's say an agitated or a

Somehow distressed. State when we're allowing that. It helps to also allow With compassion. But you know

Somehow things have made us Be sensitive like this. And we're still We still know we know that We still have wounds,

And maybe In some sense there's a Cool wound. And we don't want to close that off. And one way to not close it off is to be

Ready to accept and allow our states of agitation and distress. In the present moment. If we can do that. And see how in a way it's a kind of um If it's allowed.

It becomes a kind of Opening to perhaps a sort of deeper wound. At least there's some recognition that that's there too. And both are allowed to That we have

As well as having That stuff. We also have All of us come Pre-installed.

With access to a sort of wider More loving. In this case really meaning more self loving. Awareness.

Uh Have the capacity To love ourselves. And we need to tap into that. Henry, may I jump in for one second?

Please, please, please. I would love to be a dork. And ask some technical questions about this word allowing. So when you allow these feelings to exist or you allow yourself to recognize And accept your current state. So allow and accept. These are the two words I have questions about.

How would you describe How that manifests. For instance. Like What is The self talk.

Or What Do you do with the feelings? In other words, if you were to try to describe for someone what not accepting or not allowing

Looks like and what Allowing and accepting look like. What are the characteristics of those two things? Like practically for people listening, if they're like, great, I want to allow an accept, how do I do that? What does it look like? Again, I'll tell you what I do, but remember this is on the back of

Decades of Being still a bit each day. Because really the I'd say like the The ideal is like this that we can be still. We might close our eyes.

And be still. And First say Wow, I'm agitated. I'm distressed.

Maybe I'm a bit overwhelmed. If that's appropriate. Acknowledge it stated. To declare it. What do they say to name it is to tame it.

I've never heard that. I like that. Yeah, it it makes it a little bit easier if we can. Just Identify what's going on.

In a clear Kind, matter of fact, internal voice. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. I'm feeling a bit agitated. I'm feeling somewhat distressed.

Okay, so the first thing is stating it. No. There's forks in the road all the way along, so there are lots of ways of doing this. But Let's say

For somebody who's Somatic awareness, that's to say we can find feelings in the body. I've actually heard you on a podcast saying I don't know how old the Po cost was though, th like

You get the throat and not much else, kinda thing. So has that have you done work on the somatic stuff at all, like feeling things in the body? I have, I feel like for all the sensitivities that I have in so many other places I don't wanna say that I'm I'm physically insensitive, but when when I'm in, say, uh comi therapy session, which is really a s

If I could simplify it a somatic focused mindfulness practice. It's constantly answering the question, what are you feeling? But in great detail. And I don't

think I have a great vocabulary for it. Maybe that's part of the handicap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone could say, I feel Like My friend is being unreasonable. And it's like, Well, it's not really a feeling. What are the actual kinesthetic?

sensations, and I would say I'm probably a step broader than just tightness in the throat. There's more to it than that. But I wouldn't say I have seen group sessions. Where exercises are being done and someone can go on for five minutes in like a mini TED talk.

Of their Bodily sensations. I do not do that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well look, let's just see, like right now, and I don't know if you're if you would be happy to close your eyes, but it's usually a bit easier if you do. I will close my eyes, yes, I can I can comply with that.

This is very good. I hope everybody's Oh sort of okay with this. And if by the way, I suppose if anybody's driving, don't follow along, right? Yeah, I mean if we have to tell you that also, like seriously, be be careful with natural selection. But uh yes, if you if you're driving, don't close your eyes. If you're operating heavy machinery, don't close your eyes. In other words consult with your closest common sense PHD, please.

Yes, I will I will close my eyes and share my experience with the audience. So we'll keep we'll keep it to that. So let's see, so we're sitting You can feel the seat of the chair. Let yourself just feel that. Let yourself feel your feet on the floor. Whatever your hands are doing, just feel them as well.

It doesn't matter whether they're free floating or holding each other or resting on the thighs or something, it doesn't matter. Resting on a desk. Just feel them. And again feel the feet. And again feel the seat.

See if you can feel all three of it. Zones at once and Feet. And seat. And you don't have to do anything special, it's just

Just kinda recognizing that they're there. As sensations. And Just let me check in is that is that sort of working for you? Are you feeling them? I am, and I I should probably clarify.

That's One thing I feel very I have a lot of sensitivity for the is feeling different parts of my body. So if if I wanted to take the kind of locus of my conscious awareness and put it in my like right big toe or in my left Achilles tendon, this type of practice that we're doing right now, I am very

comes very easily to me. Okay. And I don't want to interrupt the flow, so please keep track, but when people usually ask in a therapy session What are you feeling in your body? They're wanting to sort of tie it to some emotional tenor, and that's where I have A harder time. But yes, I can feel

I can easily pay attention to the sensation of my hands on the table. my feet on the ground and my ass on this very, very hard white chair that I'm sitting on. Okay. Well that's I mean honestly that's probably nine tenths of the battle, so to speak. Sweet. That's the key thing. So we got See

We got hands, we got seat. If you've got any back to the chair, maybe your your lower back or something is just touching that as well, just feel that. If it is, it's fine if it is or isn't. Now let's go to the shoulders, just feel them. Let them settle a bit. Let them kind of uh

As it were, sort of slump on their sockets kind of thing. Let's feel the jaw now. So here's a key thing, it's really great. To slacken the jaw. There's a common thing in in our

Sort of fast paced world or sort of hasty world. To have tightness in the jaw. So See if you can let the jaw sink. About an eighth of an inch.

Probably forward and down. And see if that at the same time brings Some kind of softness into the throat. And you might also just Bring your attention to your tongue.

'Cause the tongue is, you know, it's a massive muscle that's incredibly it's full of micro muscles, it's incredibly busy. Let it rest right now. I know you're gonna have to be talking shortly, but it's okay to rest it. That it? Settle on the floor of your mouth.

And maybe you get a sense that it sort of lightly expands. Like a if you're camping and you leave your down sleeping bag in a Sunny tent all day it kind of inflates. Let your tongue do that just for a few seconds. Maybe you're getting a sort of

Little enveloping kinda just little taste of softness, like almost a soft cloud. Around tongue, around throat. Що All of them easing, becoming easier. So I'm just gonna check in, are you getting anything like this?

Yeah, I'm following along. Definitely. Okay, so we're still with our softness in that area. Now we're gonna let it melt down. So melts down into the shoulders.

And the arms, by the way, become really limp. And it melts on down into the upper chest. Middle chest, lower chest. And then right through and around the midriff, kind of the The solar plexus area, right in the middle of the body.

Either side of it and whatever to some extent through it. Down into the upper belly. Middle belly. Lower belly. Seat.

Upper legs, lower legs, feet all becoming quite kind of Maybe a bit warm and soft. So now Already Where

Getting a bit more balanced in ourselves. Probably already a little bit calmer. Likely. We hope? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Bit more sort of easy. And in this state of mind where We've managed to sort of diffuse a certain ease all through the body and we you know, under other conditions we might take longer with this and go a little more minutely just to Really Tasting the quality of ease.

And now We can bring our attention. Two Sort of the whole th Atmosphere.

around the heart. Don't don't go for the Middle of the heart. The whole Area. around the heart. If the chest was a kind of snow globe,

You know, and the heart was A little structure in the bottom in the middle of a snow globe. We want to be aware of the whole snow globe. You know, those little things you shake and so forth. You know what I mean?

I do. Hope you do yeah, good. Okay, so that whole area. Yeah. So just feeling How is

This whole area. And it might be that Much of it is relatively sort of clear. Maybe sort of spacious. And that parts of it are a bit contracted and tight.

With some tension in them. Could be that there's also if we go a little lower in the body Like the solar plexus, like right in the middle. Above the belly and below the chest kind of thing.

Around there. There's often some tightness, some contraction. So we're gonna be aware of any tension contraction we're finding. And we're not gonna try to change it. Instead we're gonna be soft around it.

We're just gonna let A real kind of sense of the body. the fabric tissue of the body actually softening. To the sides. of the chest, the sides of the flanks.

And whatever. There may be by way of tension. More in the middle of the body, in the middle of the trunk. The intention is To allow it to be there.

This is the allowing In a slightly more somatic sense. We're softening around it. And welcoming it. And allowing it meaning.

Yes. You're welcome. You're welcome to be here. That's the kind of vibe. I welcome you.

I want to treat you tenderly. I want to be kind to you. I know that I'm a sensitive creature. I know that I'm a suffering being. And my intention isn't to try to

Eradicate that or Deny that or Banish that. Exile. No, or reject that, no.

My intention is to welcome this. And I know I'm maybe imperfect at it, but I'm trying. And I want you Little tension, little Tightness, little contraction.

To know that. I'm welcoming you. And Mm. Maybe there's just a little more ease.

In Finding That at least there's a kind of sense of vague possibility. Of doing this. In other words, you don't have to be

Rejecting. Your feelings. Now we're looking at feelings right now. In a very somatic way. We're not so interested in

Any of the storylines Any of the cognitive side of emotion where Really just Feeling it out in the body. Okay, now Tim, I've been going on quite a while. How's this going? You can stay in it as you're reporting or you can just pop out, whichever you prefer. Oh, it's great. It's like a therapy.

Session that I don't have to pay for. It's fantastic. And without the cognitive overlay of the story. So this is I imagine We're about twenty minutes in.

This is twenty minutes that I could listen to very regularly and I could use your It's the right word. Malefluus. Malefluus? What is it? Malefu hold on. This is a word I have to find. This is a word that my fancy GRE friend used once. Millif Mallifluous. Yeah, mallifluous. Yeah, I think you nailed it. That's the one sweet or musical, pleasant to hear. The voice was mellifluous and smooth. So as I was saying.

Without any type of hesitancy in my vocabulary. listening to your mellifluous voice for twenty minutes. But moreover, the Kinesthetic. Focusing and relaxing without story is actually

really effective for calming my system. And it's a contrast to what I struggle with which often exacerbates the situation which is For instance, perhaps I'm asked like which of the five dominant emotions are you feeling? Joy, anger, sadness, et cetera. And and there's a list. Now where are you feeling that emotion?

Those are questions that are The second in particular very hard for me to answer. But The sequencing, this like sort of boot up or boot down. or scanning sequence that we just did.

Really call my system without Any Labeling. Of Emotion.

Right. Well I mean, you know, part of me wants to just say sort of welcome to the male gender. I mean we're sort of notoriously Poorly socialized in or poorly educated in our socialization. In having any emotional literacy at all. I feel it.

By the time I was Cognizant that there was such a thing as emotion. All I knew was kind of I'm feeling okay. And I'm feeling awful. I couldn't pause out whether I was whether it was

I I like like mad, glad, sad, afraid. I find that very easy to remember. Yeah. Right. As four primary emotions. I don't know. I know people have different lists. I think four is quite good'cause It's just so easy to remember. Mad, glad, sad, afraid. And I wouldn't have a clue. Well, I mean of course if I was feeling glad, I'd sort of

I'd know that I wasn't feeling awful. I think for many. Guys. I hope it's okay to to talk like this. It's a journey.

Well, I'll I'll take this episode and I'll put it on my new podcast, which is actually called Poorly Socialized. So it'll be okay on that podcast. Please please continue. So you know, it's it's not surprising for many of us that we We really have to go on a journey uh that might take some time to start to understand. In any sense really understand our emotional life. And it's it's so critical because

What can you do with emotions? Negative emotions, difficult emotions. If you don't know what they are. Other than try to banish them. And you know, if we try to banish them we're sort of

Inevitably we're banishing part of ourself. Or parts. It just doesn't work and it's The type of realization that I would have thought by now I would have translated to Consistent reliable.

Self relating. Do you know what I mean? Like I I know that divorcing a part of yourself and stuffing or refusing feelings doesn't work. I know it just leads to more

Problems and yet. Here we are again. You know? The dog chasing its tail once again. Once again. Right, but you know, we have to sort of compassionately bear in mind

What happened to us? In childhood because For many of us that lays down some kind of a template So how we're gonna handle Difficult emotions. And if we have

Things that are Really? Basically too much for us to handle. In childhood. And we're alone trying to

Handle these difficult feelings. Without support, without met by anybody without connection to anybody. It's overwhelming and

There's kinda no choice. It's like Either I Die and often for an infant especially it seems like it is life or death. Alright. Somehow

Have to Make it so I don't feel this. Somehow. Then we may have Caregivers who

Chastise us for showing emotion. We may have stress parents who just can't handle it. They don't need another screaming. Toddler or infant. They've got so much on their plate already.

And who knows what? And so I think it's it's not surprising that That we would Ongoingly Have to be working on this stuff.

But I mean the good news as far as I'm concerned is that Inside of these difficulties I think there's ways to access Well, I don't know, God, we're gonna I'm going off the deep end again. Like last time. But um I think that's why I'm having you back on, so

Okay. I guess so. Okay, I'll go all in. Inside of many of us, I believe there's some kind of deep primordial wound. There's some deep Ancient grief. I don't know. part of the human race and all the things it's been through over thousands of generations and Well the killing and famine and slavery and and th the most painful things that have gone on.

Endless loss of children, so many difficult things human beings have been through. But somehow I think most of us probably I mean uh I don't know. I don't know whether you could have a scientifically prove this, but I suspect that anyway, a lot of us have got some Deep grief inside us. And actually

There are various methods, I think a lot of good therapies somehow. tap into that or can find ways. To kindly, gently Give us opportunities to sort of open up. To that.

And it can be incredibly cathartic. And incredibly healing actually. To open in that kind of way and find that grief Is not an enemy. Personally I feel that some of the most significant

Most important Sort of pivot points in my My growth so far. As a fallible, ailing, fucked up human being. Has been

Has been through things like that. Suddenly a gate of my heart opened and I could feel all this grief. But somehow in that grief I could also feel Just great love. And I don't know how this works exactly, but my hunch is that

Grief. And love and hurt and love and pain and love. They're joined at the hip somehow. And so Uh acts I mean, I've I've gone deeper than we with like how to handle and know emotions, but yeah, it all relates, really.

If we allow our emotional challenges and tightness and And reluctance and To feel if we're given a supportive framework where We can open to that. Then we might open to this sort of deeper

Well of grief and It's so beautiful because Then we find wow In the depths of this somehow I don't feel so alone.

There's a truth in this that somehow Joins me to the human race, or something like that. I don't know, maybe I'm getting off the rails here. Not only off the D ban, but off the rails. But but there's there's something here, you know, for for us. I really think this is a part of our healing. That's been

Anyway, my experience And so Not being afraid. Of Feelings.

Is A really important starting point. And That is I think part of the Allowing peace, said

You know, is the Instead of feeling this way being wrong and bad and I gotta not feel this way. Kinda flip it. I'm gonna allow this to teach me something.

I don't really know what it is and it's probably quite hard for me to believe it could teach me anything, it just seems like wrong, but Actually maybe it's not wrong. Maybe it's just the My map of myself is Go.

A lot of terror incognita. Unknown lands in my map of myself. Hey, why didn't I Allow myself to be on a journey of discovery. Of not knowing

All of who I am. And being willing to let Parts of myself show themselves a I didn't think I wanted to though. Or didn't even think were there to be no.

But maybe they are. Yeah. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. Today, many small business owners like me. are busier than ever. Time spent searching for and interviewing candidates can take time away.

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So Try it out. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash Tim. T I M. That's LinkedIn. dot com slash Tim

To post your job for free. Terms and conditions do apply. You know I was Listening to you, of course.

One would hope. And what I heard you say was Given your More than Sophisticated.

Accent the Queen's English and such. I heard terror. Incognita. And I thought to myself, you know, that's actually then I realized, of course, that you're saying Terra Incognita, as I would say it. And I was like, Well, maybe to get to the Terra incognita, the undiscovered territory or the unexplored territory. Where one reaps the rewards, you have to go through the terror incognito. Just the fear in the middle. But I'm starting to really I'm grasping at straws here. So let me

Try to land this plane, if that's okay. Just Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. Just so we can pile on as many mixed metaphors as possible.

Mm. This has been extremely helpful. I wanna sit with this. We may come back to it. But I want to make sure that I cover a topic that is of great interest to me. It is of great interest to our mutual friend Kevin Rose. And

There are a number of words that you brought up that led me to think about it. Framework. Truth. Especially framework. is not something that most people would associate with.

Call on. The word co on or the What people might think of as co ons. And I think we should start from scratch because not everyone will have heard the first episode. But Before ever Speaking to Kevin about

Some of what he's learned. I didn't know that Koans which we'll define in a minute, have checking questions that there may be such a thing as passing or not passing a co on. Which kinda blew my mind because for me, and perhaps you could give an example, but you what is the sound of one hand clapping

That may or may not be a real example that there may be some some nuance to To that or one that I had kind of booked marked for myself, which is is somewhat different, maybe, which is not knowing is most intimate. Which again may or may not be a real coin. You could You can certainly clarify. But these are

Statements of paradox that are intended to be meditated upon as a way of Perhaps stepping outside the confines of logical rational hyper intellectualized. Existence. Maybe that's how I would look at these types of things.

What is a con? Proper definition. Well I'll try my best. Okay, so a Koan. Is a phrase

It may be A few words or it can be a few lines long. It may even be the longest Two that I know are about a page long each, but even in those ones We just kinda pull out A phrase here and a phrase there. And that's really the heart of the what the coan really is. And these phrases

Generally. They sort of don't make sense to our normal Rational mind. And it varies a bit. I mean like Not knowing is most intimate but it is a but by the way, it's a totally bona fide cohen. Yeah, absolutely. Coen.

It's with this master called Hogan. It's supposed to be the moment he had a great awakening, actually. When he heard another master tell him that. And um I maybe I'll come back to the story in a moment. That's almost a bit more

You could kinda wrap your head around some idea of Not knowing his most intimate well actually it's a little bit hard, but you could sort of think, Well, actually Tim and Henry were just a moment talking about Not knowing like going into unknown land. As a sort of

Reclaiming parts of the self. by recognizing that there's limits to what I know of myself So maybe there's some aspect of not knowing that's connected with Personal growth of some kind.

And I and actually I I think t Tim, your comment about terror. Yeah. Ter terror. That was great. That was great. Because actually we know that we're moving into not knowing if we get a little bit afraid. Fear is a hallmark of that because it sort of is scary.

Nearly always. But so You could Kind of maybe think about not knowing his most intimate as Well not knowing will help me know something about myself that I don't yet know, or something like that.

You could sort of th rationally approach it a little bit, but what about this sound of one hand? Actually the The real So really I don't know, the the old formulation of that hand of that cohen is like this. You know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand?

In other words You know what Two hands clapping. Sounds like. What is one hand

Sound like Do you know? What The sound of one hand. Is

That's kind of meaningless. Really, isn't it? I mean some people try that I've had people sort of snap their fingers or something, you know,'cause there's only one hand, you know, to make a noise. No, no, no, no, no. It's not The basic thing with comments is It's the frame I think I've got to give to understand

What uh sort of fool. And why the beautiful and why the Not just Often in seemingly infuriating little In riddles that can't be unpuzzled out.

They're not Just that. In almost I think in every single case. It's something.

That One of these Deeply awakened. Masters. Said

Or in some cases did. Some kinds of somebody Just does something weird. And Most of the people doing

Or saying the things in them. Uh These Zen practitioners Perhaps we should say Chan. Practitioners'cause

Zen was called Chan. In China where it really comes from. And the Japanese kind of took it on about a thousand, eight hundred years ago and And did a great job of sort of Conveying it and and practicing with it and

Passing it on, so to speak. The original practitioners Mm. Gave us a lot of the comments. Most of them were Chinese and they were mostly

In this period of Chinese history called the Tang Dynasty. Which was Six hundred to nine hundred approximately. And that's when Zen is sort of said to have had its first real flourishing. There were just a lot of people around, apparently.

At that time. Doing this practice and Go. Kind of really helped by it and

clarified in in s in certain key ways. And the key way That cans Sort of. Pass on.

or allow us to maybe taste is A dry way of putting it is we could say non dual experience. That's sort of a bit boring really, to put it that way. It's to realise Through personal.

Experience. Yeah. There are actually sort of Other dimensions. To our experience.

than we normally Experience. And what they are like Is A kind of

Incredible. Overwhelming sense. That somehow Everything is one thing. That's one

Common Experience. That Koans are trying to convey. Yeah. All these separate things.

In this world just like they seem to be. There's a table, there's Does that. Cup, there's a tree outside, there's Tim and

Are you still on the east coast, Tim, somewhere? Yes. Mm. So Tim on the East Coast, Henry in New Mexico, Santa Fe.

And Yeah, that obviously Quite separate. But at the very same time there is actually Also

A level of our experience of our reality W Nothing is separate. And

This isn't an idea. It's an actual experience. That quite a number of people Through the ages. And today still

A test. To Being Something they've discovered and found to be Real.

That does not in any way impair their functioning. As a normal human being. So it's not Psychotic. And it's not delusional.

It doesn't generally sort of take us off into Dysfunction. Quite the reverse. It can Actually lead to Better mental health than we've had before.

And It's kind of good for us, apparently. To find this. And Commons.

Uh Little invitations. Two That Side of things.

No. How they work is Actually shall I shall I give you a chance to To say something and not just rant away. But

Is there anything so far, I know, that sort of doesn't make sense or anything or or am I going in a direction that's sort of Of interest, do you think? Let me let me just share a f a few things that may be of interest to folks and I want you to bookmark you were just about to get into the way they work, which is a hell of a cliffhanger. So I want you to remember that that's that that's where you are. I was I had a a B in my bonnet about the actual term Koan and I had to look it up because it was really bothering me because the Characters are super strange.

for the association that I have with the meaning Uh Call. And I pulled it up.

On Wikipedia and the etymology. If you look at it, the origin, as you mentioned, of this expression is Chinese Gong An Gong An that's the The two

Or depending on whether it's first or fourth tone on the second syllable. And then Koan are the same characters in the Onyomi in Japanese. But it literally could be translated as public case. Yeah.

Like Con I guess this would be gong an. Yeah, fourth tone. But if you had like gong an First stone, it would be like public safety, like public security. Public.

Like you would see that on the people's liberation jackets in Beijing. These huge green jackets. that in in some cases you would see that. So I was looking at this and I was just like, what the hell does this mean? Because it's public And then case or plan. And I was just like, where does that come from? And so It turns out

That that is exactly According to Wikipedia. what it is, it's referring to a public Record. And the terminology came from the

the Tang dynasty in China. And thus the Koan serves as a metaphor in reading directly for Wikipedia for principles of reality beyond the private opinion of one person, and a teacher may test the student's ability to recognize and understand that principle. That is the thing I really want to dig into. But uh but But the suffice to say As stated here in Wikipedia, Zen Koan collections are public records of the notable sayings and actions of Zen masters.

And disciples attempting to pass on their teachings. Right. So whether or not we agree a hundred hundred percent with that, I just had to get a better understanding of why these characters are used for this, because it it is not obvious at all why they're connected. So let's jump back to where you were. In terms of How they work.

And I just want to tease this for people and that is and I I I am going into the abyss here because I don't know the answer, but the idea that a teacher may test the student's ability. to recognize and understand that principle. Seems to be a little bit more. On its face, just absurd. Right.

I it just does. Uh so I can't wait to hear you tie together. I will also say That this experience of unity or non duality All is one, et cetera. Sounds really abstract. And

I suppose it is. for those who have not experienced it. These are experiences that can be captured. Or reflected at least in On some level.

Functional M RIP. Scans. with the administration of something like psilocybin at a sufficiently high dose. So you see And it's much more complex than this, but some down regulation of Or decrease in activity and what

People might consider the default mode network this constellation of Neural components. thought to be associated with Among other things, conception of ego. and self referential thinking and so on. So even though it sounds very woo woo and how would anyone ever document this, this is a phenomenon that is

Routinely document. And assessed with questionnaires at places like Johns Hopkins when they're working with psychedelic compounds. Not to say that the experiences are identical, but it's just to point out that It's not. Completely outside the reach of

Experience and observation. Although Zen or Chan Buddhism had a a head start of a few thousand years. Nice. No, look, all of that is fantastic. I'm so happy to hear you say that. Both parts'cause Yeah, my own little sort of hobby horse these days kind of thing is that I'm so happy about the psychedelic research.

Because it's giving us New tools For once again. resuming the study of meditation at deeper levels. Yeah.

Because a lot of the study of meditators' brains over the last thirty years or whatever it's been has been about mindfulness. It's been about Yeah. Quieting the default mode network And just getting into maybe more compassionate states of mind or just more equanimous states of mind, but it hasn't really tapped into

The capacity Oh it's in it's minimally tapped into the capacity. of meditation to yield to bring us to these non-deal states, which are really what the heart of the matter. And so now the psychedelic research is opening that up again and it's creating new ways of measuring Longevity of change. in people who've been through experiences like this, you know, which was so hard to do before because you couldn't

You can't really. Get somebody in in an MRI and say Have Ken Show You know, Kensha being the Zen name for you know awakening to the principle, which is non-dual. So Psychedeline research is really helping with that. And it's actually it's funny that

Zen, you know, had a real popularity in the West Back in the fifties, sixties, seventies. Eight is even still. in the kind of heyday and then aftermath of psychedelic culture. People recognized

Wow, Zen seems to know about what I tasted on that last acid trip. It seems to have some congruence. With that. And maybe Meditation is a way

To sort of get there in a more stable way, kinda thing. And without having to take a substance. And maybe that's the case, you know, really. So I think now Zen got a little bit sort of. I mean it was k almost kind of mainstream, really.

For a while. Yeah. Uh you had uh like JD Salinger, Alan Ginsburg, Jack Kerouac. I mean. And uh I mean not not to mention, you know, Alan Watts and so on, right. So it was in the it was in the zeitgeist for sure. And I think it maybe it's due for a a reappraisal at the moment, and and maybe

Cards can be a part of this. I'm so convinced because because No, okay. Public case That's exactly right. No.

One interpretation that I've heard of What the public the term public case means. Is that actually it was taken from Tang Dynasty.

Legal processes. So essentially a public case Was a public record. Of some point of legislation. Or some

What we would call a legal precedent. To take case record of a public law court, at least according to Wikipedia. Mm-hmm. Right, okay, great. So I'm not off track. So basically meaning that You could point to Actually it was a master called

At you. He was a an amazing master in The late seventh, early eighth century, if I remember right. Who said

The single hand doesn't sound Without reason. That was what he said, the single hand sounds. You know, so that's a little obscure. Of course it's very obscure. But Actually He was trying to s

Express. His experience of Quote unquote. Awakening. In other words, he's trying to use language

To convey. What is basically a non linguistic experience And even an experience that we don't really have language for. But it's a very vivid and real experience.

The sense of self. has been swallowed up by everything. Kind of thing. And so what we feel we are Is everything.

And coans are Records. Of that, in a sense, they like It's a great practice in a Expressing

Through words. What he or she Has realized Therefore The idea is

The ordinary way of constructing reality where I am a self in this body and everything else is outside of me That way of constructing reality won't understand the cohen, can't get at what the cohen is getting at.

The Koan is a little Drill bit. There's drilling into the wall of my house of self. So to speak. It's trying actually.

Puncture The membrane of my sense of self. Switching metaphors. You know, it's trying to I I sometimes I've talked to them of like they're like uh They're like little explosives. We take them into the psyche. By sitting with them.

You kinda do best with them if you have a meditation practice. You let them sort of somehow simmer away inside you. And they will Possibly. Do something.

To deep assumptions that I have. And one of those deep assumptions is that I'm me in my body, in my mind. And I'm not

Was outside. Of me. And that's That's a deep assumption. And the coan.

Can kinda blow a hole in it. In the assumption. And and suddenly I discovered That's not true.

Or it's part is it's true, but it's not the whole truth. There's another reality. That is Real. I mean it is a dimension of our reality. Where

There isn't separation between things. There isn't distance between things. Somehow there's one Fabric, one sort of tissue. That's what they mean, by the way, in when you were quoting the word principle.

That's what it means. Tissue, a single fabric. Yeah. is what everything's made of. Henry, may I jump in here for one second? Please, please, please. I No no because I

I have a tendency of saying no, no, no, and what I really mean is yes, yes, yes. So some psychoanalyst or therapist can really uh do a deep dive on that, I'm sure. But returning to the The There are no doubt gonna be people listening who are like, What the fuck are these people talking about? So What I'd love to do.

because they might assume you have to do a lot of drugs or like lock yourself in a room in a robe until you basically go crazy for any of this to make sense. Let me ask some super specific questions and if you wouldn't mind I think this would be a way'cause this this is the itch that I wanna scratch for myself also. And it's related to To the extent that one exists the system

Around Or that includes colons. So one of the questions that Kevin wanted me to ask you. Is how many calls are there and how many have you passed? So give me the short.

Answer to that and then we can We can go from there. Because I think it people will be like, What? Okay. And it might pull it might pull people in. So w how how many con are there that you're aware of and how many have you passed? Okay, I'm aware that I've read that there are seventeen hundred that are kind of

classically recognized coans. Nearly all from that Tang Dynasty period and a few from Way earlier. Actually a few have come out of the Indian phase of Buddhism, you know, w way back. In the

four third centuries B C E So Apparently seventeen hundred. But

In practice what happens is there are these different sort of schools of Zen The Will use certain collections. So no not to my knowledge. No school uses seventeen hundred comments.

No training. Involves that many. In the school that I'm part of call, Sambo Zen. We use something like I believe it's around Four hundred and twenty is what I've heard.

Fairly recently actually from one of our One of my colleagues had sort of counted it up. And they're in five collections of coins. So these coins got collected. Mostly in Sung Dynasty China. That's around. Eleven hundred, twelve hundred. And these sort of classic collections were compiled.

And There are several of them. There are maybe three really major collections. The earliest was put together in ten twenty eight. Called the Blue Cliff Record.

And that has a hundred koans in it. And then there's another one called The Book of Equanimity that's also got a hundred. And there's another one called The Gateless Gate that has forty eight. And Actually there's quite a bit of overlap among those volumes. And then there's another volume that we use and there's a preliminary kind of volume

Of just the sort of pot of commands that One of a Teachers in the lineage put together. call the miscellaneous coins,'cause they are just miscellaneous. And so what we do okay, so this is how it works, is that If somebody's really kind of

Gotta steady meditation practice and they have found ways to get to the point where they kinda like meditating. Henry, hold your hold your thought. But If I had to answer Kevin's question, is there Maybe it's a bad question. I don't know,'cause I don't know what I'm talking about. But how many of those

Seventeen hundred or four hundred and twenty have you passed,'cause I think that's a concept that is gonna be interesting to people. Okay, so I can modestly and humbly say that I have been passed on All of the ones that we do, the four hundred and twenty At least Two at the minimum times in some cases

Multiple times. The reason I say multiple times is uh I first went through them all with one teacher and then actually My teacher, John. Gain a 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. Then.

I did another go through all of them. With my teacher Ruben Habito Roshi. Who's a professor of comparative religion at SMU in Dallas. A fantastic 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 I've also done I mean I've done a lot of them

At least three times. And I probably 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. Okay. Three times. You know, I thought that I would have a set A finite list of questions, but now I just have more questions about questions of all things. So If I may.

Just dance with me here a little bit. There there are these many cons, but there is for practical purposes, subsets that are practiced by different schools. You are In the sample

I guess Sambo Kyodan, right? Sambo School, the three treasures, is that right? Something like that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And You have been past And we haven't yet Explain what that is. On these various.

Co on some of them two or three times. Now in my head I'm thinking like once you have an answer, don't you just kinda have the answer? What does it mean? to be past two or three times. And then I'm gonna give you another question from Kevin and then I'm gonna let you run. Wild.

Okay. And that is what are the checking questions. What are the checking questions? Because when I First. I thought to myself, Well this is interesting because in my head I'm imagining this Koan.

Using Your earlier description as this Sort of Trojan horse software that puts a little snippet of code in your head. Uh Your computer can't run the program.

So you basically just like beach ball your way into giving up on rationality and then somehow poof you have this Ken show. Unity experience because you break your computer. Uh. Whether that happened or not is kinda your word against somebody else's word, right? Uh so the idea that there there is there are checking questions and passing. I'm like, okay.

I wanna know all about that. So with that, please Go crazy. Yeah, well that it all ties into what you just said. It's your word against somebody else's as to whether you've had kind of That's the point really. It's not. It's not

It's really not. And the reason it isn't Is the If somebody's had Ken Show. Oh my god, the way they Experience the coa.

Will have changed utterly. And the way they are if they meet with a teacher We've got to bear in mind that this is not the only way of working with coins, actually. There's nothing wrong with somebody just deciding

They want to sit with a comment. Fine. Well I've got a friend who doesn't even sit with'em. He likes reading them. Fine. Th there's no ban on that, you know? It's that's totally up to you. But this system

Of training. You can actually, I mean, like with on Sam Harris's app, for example, we got uh 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 even when we're on I mean in live, but when we're on in on Zoom People come and they just you know, they hear a talk on a coin. They get to sort of Bask in the

Weird waters of a clan for a while. While the teachers Giving a disquisition on the coin. 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. They don't what what the hell is this? But it's beautiful. Limpid clarity. That's my third podcast. Poorly socialized. And then to offset the damage from that podcast, I have to do it. Limpid clarity. Please continue.

So there are different ways of working with them, but this way whereby You Decided to engage a teacher with them. If you have this Ken Show experience, I mean in a way

The very point of the con Is it's a it's a meeting place. Where Two people, two practitioners, one more experienced 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 and nondual. Being

Just a Personal experience, of course it is that but But actually through comments 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 and I Talk about in my book. I had A couple of of these.

what I felt to be very powerful experiences of non duality and they're slightly different each one Prior to Connecting with a teacher. 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, and John Gaynor. I got my first comment from him, which was

This Often is the first kind, which is It's so inscrutable. I mean it's just sort of damnable. I mean I I'm embarrassed to even say it, but it's this coen that a lot of people start with, which is moo. MU Move That's it.

That's the whole thing. That's it. Move. I mean it's has a it has a little background story. Among Us Joshu, this great master, Zhaojo. Joshua and Sino Japanese. Does a dog have Buddha nature? Buddhate meaning this awakened nature.

Or principle as it As it was referred to earlier. Does a dog Even a dog have that. he asked.

And Joshua. No. Which Ostensibly means not.

It does mean not, literally. Uh It's sort of a Principle of But a 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 mo it's we could almost take it like When Joshi says moo He's sort of just dismissing the whole question. No.

I'm not gonna deal with that. Yeah. Something like that. But he's also presenting. That very reality in that little word move. Because actually that very reality is showing 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. What you mean by that is the principle of not or the principle of emptiness. Is that what you mean? Is that what you're referring to? 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 Joshua says Moo he's Expressing that.

In his way. Move. Just then. He's expressing it. And so A student sits with this question, M.

If and when They have a An opening. You know, with this with sitting with Moo. And to be clear, that is not

Done by thinking about it. No, it's not. You're not reflecting and ruminating. You're just kinda sitting there with this Software this code that's been installed. Yeah. And

Okay. All right. Yeah, you're just you're usually just sort of repeating it softly, you sort of add it to your breath meditation usually. Just softly uh voicing this sound moo. With each breath. And you just sort of patiently do it. The more patiently you do it

The better.'Cause 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. It's a little bit like that. But anyway, so it's a little unlike other kinds in that regard,'cause you use it that way.

Let's say something happens. When do you go to see a teacher? You both sort of light up. in this other dimension kind of thing is I know I'm sorry, I'm not expressing it very well. You meet In a way. That

I mean I certainly Coming back to when I was working with My teacher, John. When I went in to see him. After I'd had some experience with Move.

I don't know if there's any interest, but I could tell you what that was like. Sure. Yeah, please. And then I'm not gonna let go. I'm like a dog with a bone on this check in questions thing. I'm not gonna let that go. But please But yes, I I would love to hear about the experience. And I'm truly going to the checking questions. Truly. This is It's a long journey together. We're a long and winding road to 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, as doing lots of readings, I was Working on my next book, I just sold a book and working out a 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 riding my bike to the office in the in the college, you know I'm using Moo and as I'm riding along just comes to mind and And I said, What is this thing, you know? Just doing it.

And then one day I'm home. I've just made dinner and uh two boys are young and they're watching a movie and I'm bringing a plate of food upstairs For Claire, my wife who's Is the boys have already eaten. They're watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit. That great movie, you know, on the video.

With Bob Hoskins. And I bring in Claire's plate of 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 seen it. I've seen it more times than I should probably admit. It's it's been a w it's been a while, but yes, I've seen it. It's a fantastic film, I thought. Well at least th that's the last time I saw it. Twenty 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 Plam. It's really like

I said a blackout. I'm on my feet. And everything's disappeared. Everything's just Gone.

Empty. Vast empty space that's so beautiful. And nothing There, and then I sort of come back, I realise I'm sort of standing in this room holding a plate. Which some of 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 d I'm just trembling with some 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 a huge love. And I'm Overwhelm. 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 the this little word moo. I've been sitting assiduously with moo. And At the time.

I didn't even realise it had anything to do with Moo. You know, it's just like this mind blowing experience. So I go Downstairs I sort of. You know, I think well I better sit and light a stick of incense and maybe I'll just kinda calm down

And I don't just um Supremely happy. It's it's I'm overwhelmed with happiness, tears are flowing down my f cheeks and It's just so beautiful. And so then, you know, two weeks later or something I get to

Visit with John the 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? W how could Move.

Have anything to do with That But suddenly The penny drops. And I really

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 it's It's it's n Coman. Isn't An annoying, boring little Pointless thing.

It's got an incredible purpose. Which is sharing this sort of Deepest. 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 He was accustomed to it, it becomes second nature to him.

He was at ease in it, and he knew that you know, this sort of normal way things are, and this mind blowing way things also are. Are not in the end separate. That's the point of the training ongoing in Cohen 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

I might go ahead. Let me can I just finish that thought Finish the thought, yes, please. Wow, God, Kevin, I I I I hope this isn't too much for everybody listening, man. No, it's not. And I also like being Kevin, so please continue. God, you can tell how my mind is blown. I'm sorry. I think Boo's got a hold of you right now. You've got to be careful. Oh my God. Yeah. So that is why we sit with cards is because they can open up 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 that's a very hard thing to understand. But that's why so many comments.

Are about things. So no okay. I want to talk about coens are about things and coens love the world. So much. And they love us, they want us to share in it.

And basically'cause they don't really But the masters that Practitioners. Who created the cards? They're deeply compassionate and they wanted

To share. Somehow. Well, They had realized. And It's pretty amazing.

So checking questions. So when I Yeah. Okay, okay. He's on it. He's on the central. Oh my God. It this is gonna be a bit of a letdown probably when it's climate when we finally get there. I'll be the judge of that. Okay. Well the checking questions were What John started to ask me about

No. The Enabled Him And me

To meet more thoroughly. And To know more deeply. Basically what Experience had just happened in this student.

Me. The question's like Actually I don't know how much of this I could sort of reveal, but the Yeah, I think I can you know, the the things like well Show me Moo, what is Moo?

How old is Moo? How Tool is move. How would you show moo to a baby? They're weird questions like that. But after that experience they're easy. They're easy. And

They're so they're kind of Yeah, this is a system for Sharing What we mean by a weakening. Right, as sort of a

Being able to As in the sort of legal precedent sort of to To kinda meet in the same place, so to speak. All right, I have so many follow ups. So I wanna preface all of the follow ups by saying I am

Genuinely fascinated by all of this. Simultaneously, I have to act as a stand-in for the audience listening. So you can understand. I have to both be enthusiastic. I don't have to, but I am enthusiastic, and I have to present. Or I should ask questions on behalf of the audience who might be thinking to themselves, at least a handful of them. What the hell is going on? Yes. Yes. So uh this is great. This is great. We're getting I I like it. We're we're rolling in the butt here. It's good. So The first question that hopped to mind for me Is

Related to Uh sure an observation that many people had or a thought that occurred to them, which is if you were to go to a psychiatrist to describe your experience with your dinner plate, There's a very good chance they would consider that a psychotic break or label it a delusion of grandeur and and prescribe medication for you.

That would be one very likely psychiatric Treatment response, right? And and what I'm curious to know is Or to just to get your opinion on and this is by by no means meant to imply that people who have

destabilizing experiences shouldn't seek professional help. I think they should, but Do you think that these types of experiences can show in the benefit or detriment of an experience like that is dependent on the container. And

framework that you have within which to try to metabolize that And Building on top of that. And I've wondered this quite a bit, because with psychedelic experiences you come to have Over time, I think tremendous

empathy for people who appear to be suffering from mental illness. say homeless people who seem disconnected from reality. In your opinion, right? This is not medical advice. It's just curiosity. Do you think that

Some subset of people we view as completely mentally detached are just people who had experiences of Ken Sho, perhaps identical to what you experienced. But have no means for trying to make any sense of it and therefore become lost at sea. I think it's quite Possible that that's the case. Tragically, I do.

Quite a number of people that You know, who've 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 depths 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 it could be

Graver than that. And if somebody Is already Perhaps traumatized, anyway. As so many are.

It might initially be, yeah, 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 it's very sad and I feel part of what I wanna do

Is get the word out widely that This is a feature of human nature. It is something we we're built with the capacity To have these kinds of experiences and the They are

You know, vastly benevolent in the end. And they may also be Really pretty fucking weird at the beginning. And so I want people to No, uh you know, that this is a feature of human nature and therefore

There are places you can reach out. People you can reach out to. And you don't have to be doing koans 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 a cone. It's still By no means.

totally predictable or reliable or something, but it's not a freak thing. And it also the Coan 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 gotta do you know, you gotta quit everything and go and live on a mountain top or something. You don't have to. You know, the mountain tops right 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. 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. Waking out of The

Dualistic separate sense of self into a much more inclusive kind of awareness. The is Deeply. Beneficial to experience.

In principle because It shows are Infinite connectedness. And if trauma is about Ultimate separation and isolation, you know, the poor child with the overwhelming emotions

Totally alone. Ken show, if we call it that, using Japanese terminology. Is Exactly the opposite. It's about Infinite connectedness.

And that is a It is the most wonderful thing to discover. It's 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.

If In fact Discover something. Really beautiful and real about your human nature.

And there is Follow up. There are ways of Gradually integrating it. And hallelujah that you've seen this. It's amazing. And

Okay, I'll pause it. Uh I would imagine though that this puts you in sometimes a very tricky position where you have an audience now. You're On a larger platform, you're on podcasts like this. And People must reach out to you.

Some percentage of which Describe an experience that they have interpreted. As Kenshaw and for people who are interested. Kensho is actually written in a really cool way. It's Kensho, which is like seeing nature. Yeah.

Essence and it's a cool combination of characters, which does make a lot of sense. Unlike the my original exposure to Koan. And I would suspect that you have some Subset of people who come to you who really should have psychiatric

Treatment just like out of the out of the ether, right? Kind of over the transom from the public. And I would expect that puts you in a tricky situation because Having spent time around people who are having

break downs and maybe not break throughs, sometimes one and the same, but not always. Yeah. Is that something that has been challenging for you when someone who is perhaps going through a manic episode or having some type of

potentially destructive experience. That is quite isolating for them, right? It's kinda separating. Yeah. perhaps reaches out to you to validate it as Kensho and therefore Something that does not require intervention.

So far it's been comparatively rare. And I think the reason is that um That's good. Yeah, I know. I mean I can think of one clear time it did actually, that somebody who wanted to come on a retreat. And

We will We meaning myself and the little her psychiatric background and There were some things she told us and then she came and

It was clear that, you know, she really was in much worse shape than she'd let on. And one guy who was part of the Zender 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 it's is

I teach meditation. And so You kinda gotta be into meditation. Really? Yeah. And not you know, not everybody is and it's you know, it's quite I 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 comments. No, I teach meditating. And and one of the ways I teach meditation is meditation with commands.

It's not the only way, but For those that are inclined to We can do that. But also, like I said, there's there's a large number of people I think Getting interested in current.

You don't really feel the need to engage with a teacher, and that's okay. They find their meditation is deeper if they've got a Koan that they're Touching. Uh repeating or thinking of a little bit while I meditate.

It 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 car in, they've no idea really what What the coin's kinda saying, what it's about.

What either there' no no interesting how it might lead to Kensha. They're just They just sort of find the phrase is somehow absorbing And Relaxing perhaps and

Casts 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 Kento businesses and the real deep commenting is it's not for everybody. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, true of a lot of things. So let me follow up with a couple of Exploratory points. I'm gonna Get into some of the the weirder stuff. In a minute.

Let's start with the assumption. That The experience as you described it. Is Absolutely true.

This is where I wanna start just as a basis for the the question I'm gonna ask you. In other words That This experience of Ken Show Is Not an everyday by all people thing, but it is not a freak thing. Another way to put it would

It's been reasonably common for hundreds or thousands of years. There are shared characteristics And it kinda takes one to know one. If that makes any sense, right? Like one Obi Wan can kinda look at another Obi Wan. in training and the the the force is strong with this one.

You have passed. You have passed this call. So after asking the checking questions, right? I mean I'm I'm obviously joking around a little bit, but let's just Take it. As true that that exists as an experience, as a phenomenon, as a training. How does someone

Who is brand new to Zen. Separate someone who is legitimate as a teacher from a charlatan because I have been exposed and overexposed to the Let's just call it the uh you know, the so called self development fields, the personal development fields to the medical fields to the medical and quotation marks fields.

for decades and All of them. are rife with Charlatans or people who claim to have A set of expertise.

and skill that they do not, or people who make promises they cannot deliver. And I have to imagine on some level There are people running around claiming to be Masters or experts in Zen who aren't. How can one who hasn't had these experiences

Assess who is real. And who is not? If I just s describe a little bit how it works in Sambo Zen, that would be a starting point. Great. Let's do it. Okay. In Sambozen

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 zen 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. A Zen teacher can do everything. They can Meaning they can give talks, they can use the coans, they can Meet with students and And they can sort of run Azendo completely, you know? Then there's so called associate

Masters and This is all within Sambo Zen. 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.

Then there are circle sort of They're called authentic masters or Just masters. And they can appoint Sambo Zen. Teachers.

So they can sort of appoint people in the name of the lineage. And there aren't many of them And they tend to do it sort of collaboratively if they Going to appoint people. So In other words.

There's quite uh 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.

No. 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's end 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 gonna get something out of being a teacher 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 a 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 so 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 the coans and

People have to give talks in front of the others, it's pretty terrifying'cause 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. Terror incognita. Exactly. Oh my God. But you know, 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, eighty, ninety

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 okay, so that's how we do it. Now Those quote unquote masses. 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, it really means your your your 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 it's a very moving thing. What do you mean by the whole body? If I heard you correctly. I guess I mean like the whole Organization of sambo's and now is the dharma transmission, so I've heard transmission used in yogic practices and very specific ways. Is that a promotion effectively, or is it a transmission that that sounds

Really crass, I know, but i in other words, is it a like a titler, if that's the right way to pronounce that titler. I don't you get the idea. Involving titles. Honor that is bestowed upon you. And it's m it's sort of a formal recognition, or is there an actual transmission from one person to another? Does that make sense? It totally does.

It's kinda go 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 the teacher, and that is a kind of Dharma transmission. In a sense, but it 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

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 a of another And maybe in some sense the teachers help that.

Become clear. So is the moral of Your description. Or the lesson, the take home lesson from your description of how Sambo Kyodan handles

Structure of the organization, responsibilities, In essence to say beware of rogue. Zen Masters running around? That is to say, like that you should look for A recognized

organization with some type of self governance and So on the yeah. As a starting point. 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. And

Yeah, that means that you feel and of course we develop relationships with our peers and I don't wanna let them down. By misbehaving, for example. I have a real deep responsibility, obviously, to People who want to study with me.

What an honour that anybody would. And also to my my buddies, my friends, my colleagues who are other Zen teachers who And to my own teachers. I I don't wanna let people down and So there's a sense of The way it's organized in Samsung would bring quite a few breaks

On what exact Fine 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 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, Vapasana has a number of really big, really well organised outfits and that's fantastic. Tibetan Buddhism does, 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 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 coins, you see, they're trying A system. Where by

There can be some Shared sort of agreement. About what this awakening Experience is And the coans.

Themselves They are sort of checking points. Not knowing his most intimate. How might a student and teacher handle that if they meet with that co and and They are also

A way of Checking that we're sort of on the same page. So let's talk about that page. And this is a good segue to Strangeville. So let's do that because I'm always eager to take a My you know, my occasional jaunt into strange villa. And uh I want to preface

This exploration by saying. That I pay a lot of attention to Two ends of a spectrum. When it comes to

I know people will dispute this word. They're not gonna like it because I'll say the plural of anecdote does not equal data. But when I'm considering the potential veracity of something. On one end you have randomized control trials. Fantastic. I'm highly supportive and engaged with a lot of studies and clinical trials and so on. This is really, really important. Very, very

Powerful. Framework. That's scientific method as implemented in RCTs for Asking questions of nature, testing hypotheses and getting answers back. Fantastic.

But there are limited researchers limited funding for studies, not everything is going to be studied. So we have to make decisions Or Interpret reality. By and large, in the absence of R C T's. So on the other end of the spectrum, you have direct experience.

So if if I trust The Fidelity of my own senses. What have I experienced? And Would have experienced multiple times over and over again.

What patterns have I identified? I pay a lot of attention to those things and testing. And you know, for our body, actually, my second book is a good example of this. There are many things in that book that Were Highly controversial. Seemingly highly speculative, but Tested and measured.

multiple times across multiple people and Many of those particular items now have more and more Widely accepted. Scientific support. It can start off with an N of one, is what I'm saying. But

I wanna dig into this checking question business and I will offer something on my side just so I it doesn't seem like an inquisition. So On my side, I will say something that I have observed and experienced and also Compared

With dozens at least of other people at this point. Apparent phenomenon of shared visions on certain types of psychedelics. And what that means is

People are seeing Hearing. Or feeling the same thing simultaneously. And By any kind of secular scientific

Stretch of the imagination or assessment. These are hallucinations. But Even if they are hallucinations. It's interesting to me that consistently Shared visions. Let's just use visions for the s the time being.

seem to be a common reported characteristic of certain psychedelics like ayahuasca going back hundreds of years. These are in fact so consistent that they are relied upon. In certain implementations and usages of ayahuasca in South America. Okay. Putting aside whether that is true or not, it is widely reported and experientially

It appears to be a real phenomenon. That's what I would say. Can I prove it? No, I can't prove it. Just like You can't Stick me in a or anyone for that matter, you into an MRI machine and be like, Okay, three two one and Ken Sho, right? It just doesn't doesn't seem to work that way. And I recognize all of the criticisms that could be kind of levyed against What I'm describing, so I'm well aware of it.

And moving on. When you talk about This experience of Ken's show. And Then having the checking questions.

How tall is Moo? How would you introduce it? a baby to move. These types of questions and I'm probably not phrasing them exactly correctly. That sounds super bizarre. Right. I mean, to anyone listening who's never experienced something like this, it sounds super strange, even to me, where I like I spent a lot of time in some pretty

unusual spaces and uh It still sounds pretty strange. So What do you think is happening there? Because to me

There have been surveys Guess you could look at them as observational studies, but surveys performed by different universities looking at so called entity encounters with Compounds like N N DMT. So when I hear you talk about these questions, like how tall is Moo, it sounds like we're

Describing an entity or something that exists independently of the Observer or the experiencer. In this case you. How would you

Explain what the hell's going on. Or describe the describe this further. Okay, first of all. Let me just uh how do I put this? So I mean I I love what you're saying about the shared visions. I I get that actually. I I really Yeah, it's fantastic to hear.

Now with say this sort of Kencho thing Is It's Actually The

Questions are doing they've got a dual function. One. Is We will be able to answer these questions if we've Had

Kensha. 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

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. All together. And

These probing questions Allow me to Inhabit This new way of experiencing More

And they allow me. Or they help me To realise that this new way of experiencing is actually not contradictory. Two

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. is in fact Present. In My everyday

Experience. That's what it's really trying to do is to help me Less. Now it has this.

Other weirdness. Mind blowing and lovely though, maybe. 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 mean I'm on a point to My master Yamada Roshi, who is an extremely successful businessman. He was head of Missive Issue Securities with with uh something like thirty thousand employees, you know. under him and and could do all that. Wild

Practicing Zen very seriously and earnestly and deeply, while having mind blowing experiences or whatever. While doing a lot of co and training. None of it. interfered with his work life. In fact he thinks it he said he he wasn't

He was a he's a reasonably good student, he felt, but not the best. And He thinks the reason he had a Very Good career.

Is this in? It gave him More balance, more clarity, more empathy. More Compassion and more

Openness to seeing things from other people's points of view. And Yeah, I sort of You know, wisdom perhaps. In how to approach things.

May I hop in for a second, Henry? Yeah, please. Yeah. Okay. Alright. I absolutely agree that Zen practice. There are many practices that might be thought. to be antithetical or somehow

Compromising. To your normal waking reality, let's just say. And so I I certainly don't think Zen practices. incompatible, right? It seems highly compatible. And if if Kevin's

experience, limited as it may be, is any indication. That's certainly True, right? It's it's been nothing but an enhancer for him. And I wanna come back. Just for a second. Again, not to beat a dead horse, but to these

Checking questions. And to Also clarify for people listening that When I asked about the entity.

sort of the relating to these questions and to moo. And whether or not there was the perception of independent entity. It's not so much that I'm saying There is an independent entity because that's not the part that I find. Interesting. If we're just looking at the perceptual experience of multiple people.

What I find so Bizarre and tantalizing at the same time. Is it Whether or not these things are happening for the reasons We believe them to be happening. Whether or not the explanations are accurate.

Yeah. If we take it. It's true for now that You and many other people are having consistent enough experiences in this non-dual state. In this experience that

is labeled Kenso with within Sambo Kyodan, right? That you can Consistently answer similarly answer the questions. How tall is Moo? How would you introduce Moo to a baby? And so on. Yes. Is uh Fucking weird, right? And and and and and that's not to say it's untrue. I want to be super clear here.

But I want to hear like if if if you had had three drinks and we were just at a steakhouse in uh In London. And I was like, Henry What the fuck is going on here? What do you think is happening here? Like why how is it?

That multiple people Could answer these questions. With similar or the same answers with respect to this. Go on. What is happening here? Like what the what would you s what would you say? Well, I'd say I think it's so beautiful. I mean I think

It's not that The thing is It's not the 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 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 socialised into and conditioned into where We feel that we we are a separate self and The world is out there. And I just think that it actually is true. Yeah.

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 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. Th there's Underneath that there's This reality again of our experience that we can get to

Where we s sort of somehow see that things don't have the solidity they 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.

These are real human experiences. And then 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 that's reality.

Oneness and emptiness. Uh actual features I s 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 Five M T or something, a couple of students might have done that and

It's a big big gun, that one. Right. Right. Big and fast, I gather, right? Yeah. Yeah. Man, I well I've never done 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.

Yeah, it's Yeah, it's a it's an observation. Well, the not the last part, but I think what you're in some respects alluding to this idea that

our realities are Constructed in a way. Bye. Everything. Around us, this reality being

Filtered through A reducing valve. Yeah. And This seems like some

Hand wavy Or it might seem like some really hand wavy spiritual stuff to A lot of people listening, but there's actually a great TED talk I want to recommend from A cognitive scientist named Donald Hoffman, H O F F M A N. He is faculty at U C Irvine and a recipient of the Trolland Award of the U S National Academy of Sciences. So this is a legitimate scientist. He has a TED talk called

Do we see reality as it is? And I high highly recommend it to folks. I put it in my newsletter in Fible Friday and gave some time code points for people. You can kinda hop ahead, I want to say 10 minutes or so to get to the the meat and potatoes of it. But He makes a very similar point. And he's running computer science simulations and using a totally different

Toolkit. For inquiry. But arriving at perhaps what is a very, very similar conclusion, and that is like we are operating within a construction. And these things that we think of as solid, these things that we think of as

Real. are more like ic on a desktop computer. They're representations that allow us to interact with something far. Different. So it makes sense to me that one way

one explanation or description of these kind of shows experiences would be. Okay. This is kind of just what naturally happens if you temporarily remove The gating mechanisms of your perception so that more of the raw data hits you. In a sense.

I think that's very good. I I just recently read his book, The Case Against Reality. Nice. Which is a sort of detailed Dive. It's not it's not too long. It's very readable. He writes well, you know. 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 A really helpful way to 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 flavours, 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 discovered it 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 still look at the tree, of course it looks a bit different.

You could walk a hundred feet away and it again it looks different. You're still seeing it. This isn't like that. You can only see it. When we discovered

We're part of it. And so that I find really Wonderful. Approach. Say that

If we're using that kind of a frame to look at what happens in Kinshaw. 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.

If you see what I mean. Do you get what I mean? Like Oh, I totally do. No, no, you're you're you're you're one and the same. Yeah, I I totally. Totally understand what you're saying. Absolutely. Yeah. You're not

looking at the ocean, you're one of the drops in the ocean, so to speak. Yeah, 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 this sort of ultimate healing in a way. I don't mean that we'll be instantly healed by it of all our trauma and all our dynamics that are unhelpful, et cetera.

But Man, it'll move things along. And give us All kinds of help. In our healing journey.

Here here. Well I think that is a Beautiful. Place to begin our Initial descent.

Since uh you also have a a big evening ahead of you and A big day. Tomorrow. This has been so much fun. I expected it would be, and I'm glad

That's You were so game. Two to to go into uncharted waters uh with me. So thank you for for playing along. You know, I wanted to share something super random with you also because you mentioned Pardon my Greek.

So You know how we say in English, it's all Greek to me. Well I was in Greece at one point. And I asked them, I said, What do you say?

When you want to use an expression like that because you can't say it's all Greek to me because you speak Greek. And they go, Oh yes. We say After Yemena Ina Kinesica, which means it's all Chinese to me. So in Greece. They say it's all Chinese to me, and apologies to any Greek friends if I screwed up that pronunciation. But I feel like all of this is much less Greek to me after Getting your help.

Walking through a lot of it. mystery and many, many questions, but Very grateful. that you were willing to take the time to dance this dance with us again. Well, I'm I'm uh truly humbled and honoured and very, very happy to

get this chance to talk with you again. And You're an exceptional conversationalist and interviewer, truly. I mean, uh I suppose that's no surprise to anybody. Yeah. Really, you really are. Thank you. I only I only see the warts. That's my own work. That's my own work to do. So I appreciate you saying that and it really means a lot. And I encourage people to go to mountaincloud.org. That is uh good jumping off point, I I suppose for

many, many resources and many things that you're up to. So mountaincloud.org. We'll link to all these in the show notes. And Henry's memoir which describes his own journey in detail is one blade of grass. Subtitle Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen memoir. Henry, is there anything else that you would like to mention? Instagram is at Mountain Cloud Zen Center if people want to check that out. Anything else that you would like to suggest people check out Or anything at all that you'd like to say. Or suggest or ask before we close up.

I might just mention we got another site, original love dot 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

has 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 and Than Kevin again for Encouraging this and Thanks, Steve. Very, very

Sincere thanks to you, Tim. Great to connect with you. I hope you feel a bit better. How do you feel actually now? Thank you. emotionally much better. My throat is super sore, but I'm uh I'm welcoming the the throat soreness.

More than I was more than I was two hours ago. So that's a step in the right direction. And uh think I'm just gonna take a hot bath and watch some Disney shorts or something. I really need one of those nights, I think. Uh and uh I'm looking forward to it. And Original love.org.

People should check it out. We'll put it right at the top of the show notes. So Tim dot blog slash podcast if you just Search Zen or Shuman, S H U K M A N or Henry for that matter, I'm sure they will pop. Right up. And Henry, once again, thank you so much for taking the time. I really, really appreciate.

Ah well not at all. Huge thanks to you. And to everybody listening. Until next time. Thank you for tuning in.

Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out. every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash.

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