A Path To Peace With Henry Shukman

23 Sep , 2024 podcasts

 

To become who you truly are, you must first find stillness. In this episode, Katherine Twells sits down with Henry Shukman—award-winning writer, poet, and Zen teacher—who shares his profound journey from suffering to peace. Henry opens up about his early life marked by challenges, the transformative power of meditation, and how finding moments of stillness can reconnect us to our essential love for life. We explore his latest book Original Love, uncover the role of community in spiritual growth, and discuss how mindfulness can help us navigate life’s obstacles with greater clarity and compassion. Ready to step into your authentic self? Tune in and find your path to peace.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

A Path To Peace With Henry Shukman

Greetings, friends, and thanks for taking the time to join me in the lab. I welcome Henry Shukman, a writer and wisdom teacher who serves as a gifted guide in a very complex world. You’re going to hear more of Henry’s story in our conversation, but he grew up in Oxford, UK where his parents were professors, and his early love of poetry led to an interest in Chinese Zen poetry and ultimately to becoming a writer and poet for many years to come.

He wrote his first book at the age of nineteen, and he went on to write several award-winning and bestselling books of both poetry and fiction. His poems have been published in the New Yorker, The Guardian, Sunday Times, and London Review, and his essays in the New York Times, Outside, Guardian, and Tricycle Magazine.

He’s written of his journey in his memoir, One Blade of Grass, Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen Memoir. He has earned a Master’s of Arts from Cambridge and a Master’s of Management from Saint Andrews. You’ll hear in our conversation that he does a beautiful job of taking all that he’s learned through his life experience to help us all, no matter where we are in our lives, to take some of these learnings so that we can find greater peace and greater authenticity for ourselves.

He’s also cofounder of The Way. It’s the first of its kind meditation app, and it guides the user on a single pathway of training toward the deeper possibilities of meditation. I’ve been using it, and it is a wonderful experience to be able to be guided in this way. Since he understands both business and the path of awakening, he has taught meditation at Google, Harvard Business School, the Eslan Institute, Colorado College, and many other venues. As you listen to Henry, you’re going to hear the poet within. He has such an artful way of leading us into a more expansive awareness as we all learn to reconnect with our true authentic selves. Please enjoy the conversation with the very wise, Henry Shukman.

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Henry, first of all, it is a total pleasure to see you again. I know we spoke. How long has it been? Was it a month or two months ago?

I think it was two months ago.

I think it was. The day is finally here for us to have this conversation. I am grateful for your time and grateful for the wisdom that you will be sharing over the next hour together. Welcome and thank you again.

I’m grateful too. I’m honored to have this time with you and quite happy as well that we’re getting to share whatever in whatever ways we do.

This is the best part of my job. Sometimes people think about podcasting or being able to be in conversation with people and this is this is our co-creation. Every time I get to have these conversations, I learn so much. It’s such an honor to be able to do it. Let’s launch right in. What I typically do is start at the beginning with your origin story because our life pathways are what lead us to the work we’re doing. It’s our destiny that’s unfolding. I know a little bit about your story from the book, which you’re going to be talking about the book a lot, but I would love to ground my audience on you and how you got to where you are now.

I’ll try to keep it brief.

I know it’s hard to do this with highlights. I like reel.

Henry’s Origin Story

I still like talking about myself. It’s terrible. I grew up in Oxford, England, where my parents were both professors in Russian studies. Here are a couple of salient things from my early life that were deeply influential on the path I followed. One was that they went off on an espionage mission. This is back in the ‘60s when I was born.

A lot of people in Russian studies in those days were recruited by MI5 and MI6 because the West was very short of Russian speakers. It was the Cold War. Anybody who was fluent in Russian was often collared, pinned, or whatever the word is, and brought into some level of work for those services. My parents were quite involved in those early years especially.

They went off to Leningrad for ten days, leaving me in the care of a nanny. I was six months old at the time. When they came back, I was completely covered in very severe eczema. From then on, throughout my childhood, I was periodically in hospital and out of hospital because my skin was afflicted. It was very traumatic. It was a significant marker and imprint on my early life.

When I was eighteen and I’d got myself an early place at Cambridge, I went away on a gap year. I went to South America and I worked on a couple of different ranches. One of my dad’s colleagues was Argentinian. He got work for me and a friend on these ranches. I backpacked with this buddy through Bolivia, especially.

It was an utterly transformative journey, six months long, and experiencing a different way or ways of life with all these people very close to the land and leading non-industrialized lives. My skin got better. I was relieved and happy to be healthy. It felt amazing. I wrote my first book while I was doing that. I had an aspiration to be a poet and writer in my teens. I also had a remarkable experience of a moment of what felt like discovering my ultimate belonging in the universe. It was an epiphany if you like.

It was such a surprise because I’d had zero interest in what we might call the spiritual side of life. I’ve grown up thoroughly rational logical, positivist, empiricist, and all the rest of it. Suddenly, this thing happened that was undeniable. In a certain way, I realized I was recognizing something about the nature of being alive that was more true than the way I ordinarily live. That was crucial but my later path, I’m nearly done.

I then come back to the UK after all of that. I have a hard time with the reentry into my old place and way of life. Going straight off to university, being back in the libraries, and the reign of England. I was unhappy for a while. I felt like I’d lost that marvelous freedom and belovedness that I’d found in that strange moment.

To cut a long story short, I started meditating in my early 20s out of desperation. Maybe that’s a little strong, but anyway, I felt that I needed something. I found a lot of help from it that calming of my nervous system daily. It was stressed in the system of meditation that I joined that you had to do it every day, or you didn’t get the benefits.

I guess I was eager enough that I did it every day. It was a life changer. I found that my skin had got much worse, by the way, when I got back to the UK at the age of nineteen. All the old sores and things that I’d had came right back. However, gradually, once I started meditating, my skin got better, my mental health started to improve, and I could recognize that I needed some help and at a certain point, I started doing some therapy. That was also helpful.

I picked up my life. I’ve been in graduate school. I didn’t want to be and maybe I was following my parents’ path. My first book was picked up. I went off and wrote another one and another one. I became a full-time writer. My path in life was beginning to form of writing, and meditating, and then at a certain point, I think I was well enough to then get curious about that strange moment that I’ve had when I was nineteen of great beauty.

I realized that some of the meditation traditions and deep wisdom traditions understood that experience of unity. I carried on and gradually I was able to get deeper and deeper on the path of exploration of what our life is and how to live essentially more wisely and more kindly. It’s an ongoing journey. I’m a work in progress for sure. Not any finished product but I’m still still working on it. The journey has basically tended to get better and better.

First of all, you did an exquisite job of telling that story because there is a lot of context to our life. There are a lot of things that happened to us that create the imprints of what’s going to happen in the future and some amazing things about what you said. The fact that your parents were in espionage and spy work, and that was amazing to me, unexpected, in your story.

Sometimes I think the universe has a sense of humor where you’ve got people who are dedicated to a spiritual path every day, trying to reach some state that in some ways you stumbled upon that day on the beach when you were nineteen years old. It was almost like a tap on the shoulder for you, like a call. We talk about the hero’s journey and the call to adventure that you were called to something that has manifested later in your life, which is pretty amazing.

I think that’s true. I feel that there’s a beginner’s luck that you sometimes read about in the legends, myths, and things. I seem to, in some way, have had that in that moment but I’ve also been the person who is devoted to a practice, hoping something is going to happen and because I longed to get back to that. It’s not like it just happened. It was a long and hard road to rediscover that in some form. I think in in a way, you don’t find it the same because it’s got different facets and dimensions to it but, certainly, over the long slog of it, I’ve been blessed with, great teachers and guides. The path has borne fruit for sure.

I’m very sympathetic to everybody who feels like they’re meditating and not getting the promised benefits. That is very common. I always feel that it’s worth doing it every day regardless. We may need to get different guidance or we may need to sample different approaches, but, in the long run, I think it will pretty much always pay off to have a bit of quiet time every day makes a real difference to whatever we’re engaged in in life.

It will always pay off to have a bit of quiet time every day. It makes a real difference to whatever we're engaged in in life. Share on X

I think more now than ever that because of the pace of our lives, the technology, and the distraction, we are missing places of stillness where we find ourselves again. There’s that saying, “It’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” You’ve touched that state now many times through your journey.

I think the fact that when you came back from the beach and you went through that time of depression, and anxiety again, and your skin condition returned, the body doesn’t lie. The body is telling us something very important that your journey tells us that there isn’t just this, “I’ve climbed the mountain, I’m on the top, I plant my flag and I’m done.” I do think some people achieve mastery to some degree. Do you believe there’s true mastery or do you believe we’re always ebbing and flowing with this?

I think for sure it’s ebbing and flowing. There may be something about letting go of the need to be in certain states of mind. That might be what mastery is. In other words, I sometimes wonder whether mastery would no longer need to be in state X rather than state Y. That we’re okay with all of it.

That the full range of human experience, we’re okay with it, and that we’ve achieved perhaps a real equanimity that doesn’t mean we’re constantly in bliss. It means we don’t mind very much. I remember hearing that there’s a mystic called Krishnamurti who said, “The only difference between me and other people who suffer a lot is that I don’t mind.” I remember when I first heard that, it was like, “What would that be like?”

Original Love

What would that be like? Michael Singer talks about life as an orchestra of notes. The high notes, the low notes, and all of it create the music and the song. Even heartbreak has a beauty. Not that we always enjoy feeling that but how do we get to that acceptance? I’d like to unpack that more as we talk about your book.

I want to mention to our audience that your latest book is called, Original Love. What is amazing about this book, I told you before we hit record that you are a beautiful writer. For those who are tuning in to this conversation, reading this book is nurturing not just from the content but it’s beautiful in its words.

Thank you for your gift of the book. I want to read this piece because one of the things that we attempt to do in the Compassion Lab is to be a bridge from some of the wisdom traditions and the things that we’re talking about today into the business world, into ordinary life, which you do talk about in this book.

Maybe not everyone is a seeker on the path to awakening, but maybe they are simply seeking more peace or to what you said, “Just to not bind existing in the way they exist.” You write this and I think it’s an example of your beautiful writing. You say, “Who is this book for?” I would say, “Who is this conversation for?” It’s for everyone. Parents who ache for their children’s well-being. Some of them may have come to dread the telephone because they know the news that can bring.

Young people are quietly traumatized by the lifestyle displayed on their social media, and hardworking families longing for a break. Caregivers offer their hands and hearts day after day, hoping to stave off a burnout they fear may be coming. Anyone alone and isolated in the heart of a teeming city, anyone facing a major diagnosis, and we all face the ultimate diagnosis, though it may feel remote.

Who among us would not benefit from a little pause, a little peace, and a taste of boundless love that asks nothing of us, no beliefs, no dogmas, but offers itself freely if we just learn to sit still and release ourselves into silence, which is beautiful. Before we dig into the components of the book, Henry, why anchor in the title of love? Why did you choose to anchor in ordinary love?

Truly, I think the great project somehow is to learn to love life. When we’re kids, sometimes we may well feel that we do love life. We have that excitement, that innocence, that sense of adventure, and that sense of appreciation can be more alive in us. Tragically, it’s easy to lose that, and we often lose that. We get caught up in our projects of all kinds. Relational, as well as business and work and so on.

I believe many in the meditation world might not fully agree with this, but I think if we can learn to love being, in other words, learn to unplug from our busy lives. We’re not saying don’t have a busy life. We’re saying learn to have moments of unplugging, truly unplugging from it, where I can let it go. That’s one of the hazards of all our devices that they make it much easier to never unplug.

If we can learn to unplug and be in a condition of non-doing. It may be fleeting at first, little glimpses of it but I think everyone can develop the capacity to have access to that state of non doing and just being. I think it brings tremendous gifts and very deep help for how we navigate all the busyness of life. One of those deep gifts is that we can find, there’s a way in which we’re somehow, again, without any belief system, somehow we are already in some state of belovedness and of lovingness that’s not conditional.

I call it original. I think it’s deep down inside all of us. A love that isn’t like our ordinary love that is like, “I love French fries” or something. It’s without condition. It’s in our very being that there is peace that we all have. It’s not some mysterious thing that is only found in faith traditions or something. It’s a real part of our human nature, I believe.

Maybe many faith traditions tap into that. I’m sure they would do but people without faith traditions can get this as well. It comes out of our very being. I dream that more of us might learn to, if it’s five minutes or ten minutes a day, be still and be quiet. We will gradually tap into that more. In time, it can reorient our lives and subtly change our priorities.

Again, it doesn’t mean I have to quit my job and have a whole different life. It doesn’t need to mean that. One of my great masters who I’ve trained with for years called Yamada Roshi. He’s a Japanese Zen master who’s an extremely successful businessman. He was one of the top three in Mitsubishi Securities and has been chairman of a large office furniture company in Japan called Itoki for the last fifteen years. He thought he was retiring. They headhunted him and he went right back in.

With 3,000 employees, and he had a team of 30,000 under him at Mitsubishi. He never missed a day of sitting since the age of sixteen. That going to that place of stillness and quiet every day. He says that’s why he had the successful career he’s had. He wasn’t the brightest, he says, and most talented, but he did very well because he could come from this very clear, open place throughout his workday.

I believe that to be true. I think about my practice. There are days that I miss it for all kinds of reasons. The difference that I noticed over time is the more that I build the stillness, the more of an observer I can become. The stimulus comes in something that might be a trigger. We all have different capabilities on different days to handle those things based on our state of mind and our state of body. I noticed on the days when I’ve practiced, I’m more able to create that space of awareness and curiosity versus going straight into reaction.

The days when I go into reaction, I have the opportunity to reflect on why that happened. It might’ve been due to over-scheduling or not having that piece. However, the dream you have of everyone finding that essence that does live here is a beautiful one and an important one in a world of division, in a world of pace, like what we are seeing happening around us in the year 2024. This is needed more than ever, which is why we do the work we do in the Lab to start bringing these things into a normalized setting in business, much like your teacher who understood this the whole time.

I think it’s fantastic that you’re doing that work. I think it’s tremendously important because much of modern life is structured in the world of business. Especially business leaders can model it and share it with their teams. There’s a contagion in a positive sense that can happen when regulated nervous systems are felt by others in the room.

I love what you said about the stimulus and response piece. I think that’s right where our practice is the rubbers hitting the road. That’s exactly where it is. It’s like can we get triggered and recognize it? Not immediately go into reactive mode and lash out or whatever we withdraw, whatever we do commonly when we’re triggered?

Can we instead find a way to be kind to ourselves, to be aware of what’s going on within, and to offer it some space? A lot of my practice has been about I’m overwhelmed suddenly. Multiple factors may be at play. How can I pause and recognize what’s going on? What are the sensations in my body? What’s going on around me? Come to a wider awareness that can hold what’s going on.

I often think that we, speaking for myself, and I know many people that I’ve worked with and met with, it’s very common that when we start feeling bad in whatever way, we want to change it. We want to get rid of it. That is very understandable, but it tends to intensify it. They say what we resist persists. A counterintuitive intervention is to try to go to a place of allowing, non-resisting, and being aware of what’s going on without trying to change it.

What we resist persists. Share on X

I know it’s not easy, but we can learn to do that. If I can bring it back to what I was saying earlier, we tune into that state of being, which I believe is always here. We don’t we may very rarely experience it, but it is always here. If we can get a little more practice of tapping back into it, that state of being, it’s an awareness that’s somehow a little wider than our ordinary awareness.

It can hold what’s going on and then we don’t have to be trying to get rid of it. We shift a little tiny shift to this larger awareness that can hold the difficulty we’re having. We’re anchored in two places. We’re not caught up only in what we’re troubled by. We’ve also got this larger sense of things. We’ve also got a foot in that.

When we do, we’re not trying to get rid of something. We’re recognizing that there’s also this state of being that can hold, embrace, and allow whatever is going on. It changes our emotional state without having to get rid of it. We’ve also got a broader patience. I would say, to me, it has a flavor of love. We’re okay if we’re sensing that. Some call it loving awareness. If we’re tapping into that a little bit, it changes everything.

Cultivating Stillness And Equanimity

I feel like what you’re saying, the meditative practice or other things to bring us into stillness is how we cultivate that strength even before we need it, like cultivating the tools. I’ve experienced that shift, but I’d like to talk more to those tuning into this conversation about how to get there. I’ll share a real-life example this week, I dropped my son off at college and saw him working through this adjustment to a very foreign environment.

As a parent, I feel out of control to make it all comfortable, fine, and well. Knowing in my wiser self that it’s not supposed to be comfortable because it is a time of growth but when our bodies go into, fear might be a strong word, but heavy anxiety, can’t control what’s happening, can’t fix something maybe for somebody else personally or professionally.

We have physiological fight or flight, heart racing, nervous system, gripping things that are happening to us. How would you guide someone other than what we’re going to talk about in this whole conversation about cultivating these practices all the time when they’re in that moment to try to find that shift to that expansive awareness?

First of all, there’s a lot of wisdom in the old adage, “Take three deep breaths.” A momentary pause that will produce can break the cycle. It can give a little bit of a gap, that pause, that gap between stimulus and response. It can open it up a tiny bit and then we can tune into what’s happening. You said it well, my heart is racing. There’s a flood of feeling. If I can just sense the in-breath filling my chest and then the out-breath leaving and do three of them, we might already get a little more space, and then be aware of the circumstances.

This is a huge transition not just for your son but for you too. There’s going to be all that anxiety and there’s going to be sadness too. You mentioned heartbreak earlier. I couldn’t agree more. Life will have heartbreak in it. I think it’s supposed to and if we can allow heartbreak and not fight it, it is one of the fastest paths of growth because heartbreak is the path to an open heart, and an open heart is a path to a whole heart. Most of us, myself included, spend a lot of time with a tightened heart. Naturally, we don’t like heartbreak.

Heartbreak can be an accelerated path of personal growth, meaning growth into the capacity to hold what’s difficult in life, including all our triggers, difficult transitions, and so on. Essentially, a broken heart is the path to an open heart. An open heart is the path to a whole heart, a full heart. When we don’t fight it, I’m very sympathetic to the impulse to fight it. I don’t want to feel bad, but it’s part of the natural human condition to grieve the big transitions we go through when life changes.

Heartbreak is one of the fastest paths to growth because heartbreak is the path to an open heart, and an open heart is a path to a whole heart. Share on X

Our children go away, and our children are outside our scope of control. When it’s a baby, a toddler, youngster, there is more control we have. The whole rearing of a child is a part of losing control and it’s more and more scary, then they go far away and it’s even less control. It’s heartbreaking for us parents but it is the natural course of things. Our elders die. We hope it’s our elders. Sometimes it’s not. Our contemporaries die. Sometimes even if it’s more tragic, still younger people die.

Heartbreak is part of our human journey. Somehow it’s not being okay with it. That’s not right but to be open to learning from it and growing through it. The big learning is that the heart wants to be open. Life is much richer when the heart is open. Heartbreak is an accelerated moment of heart needing to be open. I’m not diminishing the pain of it.

I know that you’re not. It is a tough spot to be in but yet you mentioned sadness and grief. On the other side of that coin, the reason we feel sadness and grief is because we love so much. We all may know people who have closed down because they were hurt to a level that they felt was intolerable and they closed down.

When you’re in that state, you might not feel great pain, but you also don’t feel great joy because you’ve become in a flat line. I’ve been fascinated by the state. You mentioned equanimity earlier. The word in your way is more well-versed in talking about equanimity than I am, but I always understand it to be in a state of balance.

Good things happen, okay. Bad things happen, okay, but that’s very different than being in a state of non-feeling. That’s maybe being in a state of open acceptance. Can you talk about that because I’ve gotten a little bit stuck in, “If I’m practicing equanimity, then I shouldn’t feel this. I should be steady Eddie all the time.”

I do think that’s a very common misconception. I had it as well for a long time. I thought equanimity meant this almost dull balance and steadiness, but I don’t think it is. I think it’s much more like this condition of allowing that I was talking about where we’re non-resisting. We’re not pushing away what’s hard and we’re not grasping for what feels good. We’re open to it all.

I think I associate that with open-heartedness and wholeheartedness. I do think that it is a rich place for us is where we can be like that. Once again, I want to say that I don’t see that as some remote goal that only adepts, living on a mountain top get to. I think all of us can get hits of that and can encourage that deeper allowing the fullness of life amid our ordinary lives.

What we don’t need to be thinking, maybe I’ll get to that someday when I’m not busy. It’s actually in the midst of a busy life. It takes those moments or little spells of just being without doing the best we can, and then little incremental shifts can occur through our day with little hits of certain tools, the little reminders.

I felt that moment of tension, that’s a moment now to check in. Not to say, “I’m going to close that off. I don’t want to feel that.” It is counterintuitive. I’m going to do the opposite. I’m going to let it be there and I’m going to notice that there is a capacity that I have to allow it. That brings compassion toward myself and then that leads to compassion toward others. A view of a whole situation.

Path To Greater Presence

I think what you’re saying is important because what I see in the Compassion Lab, we have our refresh sessions. We have conversations about all kinds of different things on this pathway. Our internal voices are not very kind. I’ve even found myself, “I meditate and I study this.” If I have a reaction or a bad day, I don’t tend to be kind. I tend to judge that.

I think what you’re saying about accepting that this is a part of this beautiful experience of being human. We are human. If we were a robot, we wouldn’t have these things happen, but that’s not who we are. It is a part of the beauty of who we are. If I come back to your book, you take us on a journey and you call it the four Inns, like stops along the way. They are mindfulness, support, absorption, and then ultimately awakening.

In the book, you talk a lot or frame it around the meditation practice on the road. These are concepts that those of us who have lots of opportunity to practice because we’re being triggered all the time, every day through our work lives and our personal lives can benefit from. I want to touch on a few of them. We’ve already been weaving through some of them, but I want to dig deeper into a couple of them because there’s no time to go through all of them.

That’s why you need to go get Henry’s book you can fully immerse yourself, but I want to spend a moment on both mindfulness and support because something we talk a lot about on this show and in the lab, and we’ve touched on it already, is the ability to be present because when we’re in these spinning out moments when I’m dropping my son off and I’m projecting into the future what-if scenarios, I’m not present to be there for him and what he’s experiencing or at work if we have a challenge, can I be present? How would you guide people listening into greater present-moment awareness, which is where life is? It’s right here.

One thing I’d say is that it’s for sure not only in significantly large moments. It’s also in the ordinary day-to-day that we can fairly soon after waking up, we get picked up by that current, the ticker tape of thoughts around the coming day, and associated feelings start going. For many of us, we don’t recognize that it’s happening and that we’re being called about all through the day. There’s a good patch, and then there’s a harder patch. Email comes in and it’s difficult or Slack message comes in and it’s good.

We’re weaving back and forth through these feelings and we’re trying to stay busy with the things we got to do. Our to-do list is long, and we’re trying to work through it. A lot of that’s all good. It’s good that we’re being constructive and creative and bringing positive things into the world and all of that. It’s about caring also for ourselves. Having compassion for ourselves is important, and a lot of us don’t want to do that. We might think it’s selfish. It’s a common thing I find.

However, a lot of people can be very caring for all kinds of other people, close family members, colleagues, friends, and stuff but somehow leave themselves out of it and out of that circle of concern. I think almost the most important step in mindfulness is learning to do that because when we can include ourselves in our compassionate circle, our circle of compassion, then we’re more able to check in with how we are.

How we are is going to have a big influence on our interactions and our relationality with others. Learning to create those pauses where it doesn’t have to be a big pause. It can be mid-conversation and it can be, if we’re in a meeting, we’re probably not going to be presenting the whole time. Even in busy important meetings, we can be checking with, how am I doing? How’s my heart rate?

 

Am I able to hit a little bit of awareness? Present moment awareness or being here. Little tricks that can help with this are things like, “I’m going to feel the soles of my feet.” There’s some sensation down in the soles of my feet. Can I somehow shift the focus of my vision so that I’m aware of the whole room? I’m not checking out. I’m not doing something weird, closing my eyes, and going to meditate, in a trance or something. I’m aware of the room.

If I’m conversing with somebody, how about I notice the color of their eyes? Just little things of sensory input in the immediate moment can make a big difference because they interrupt the way that we get locked into our tussle with life, being caught up in this turmoil. It’s like a raging river that we’re in.

It is raging for sure.

Just these modes or feeling my seat in the chair. Something that is a real-life sensation in the moment here and now. There’s another level of awareness that is running. I just wasn’t tuned into it. It can be running, I can be aware of it, and I can be engaging with what’s going on without being so caught in it.

I feel that way even sometimes when maybe I’m at a business dinner with a customer and I am in a state of mind of hosting and caring for them. What do they need? It’s a very outward focus. Sometimes, I’ll pause and think, “Wait a minute. Let me check in with where I am at this moment. Am I caring for myself in this moment so that I can care for them?”

It’s very unnatural. Tell me this, Henry. I find this interesting because we talk about this a lot and we’ve all heard, “Put your oxygen mask on first on the plane right before helping others.” When you share this concept with people, “If you aren’t taking care of yourself, you can’t take care of other people.” We intellectual, I get that. I 100% understand that.

However, in the course of life, we don’t always act that way. There’s some belief system that’s running us that says, “I don’t have time because I’m not being productive. This person’s needs are more important. If I don’t do this, I won’t be accepted.” A very long list of beliefs. That might be a lifetime of therapy, meditation, or discussion. How do you start to uncover the whys that we don’t do what we know we should do? That’s a hard question, I know. Do your best.

I think the wiser that we get caught by our engagement with life, where we get caught by our thought stream and we get caught by all the things we’re engaged in. We don’t realize that we will probably do all of that better if we have those little moments of disengagement where we can become aware, and feel present moment experience physically. Hearing sounds, traffic goes by, there’s weather, or there’s air conditioning running. Just hearing these basic sensory inputs that are happening can be enough to disengage us a little bit.

What people, myself included, can easily not recognize is that we’re going to engage more productively if we’re coming from a slightly wider place of awareness. We’re going to be clearer-headed and we often think there isn’t time for that. I think we’re wrong. There’s this famous story about Gandhi, the great Indian leader of independence. He meditated every morning for an hour. There’s a famous story that one morning, he told his team, “It’s such a busy day and I’m not going to meditate for an hour.” They were shocked because he always meditated for an hour. He said, “No. It’s such a busy day. I’m going to meditate for two hours.”

 

I’ve heard that story. It’s amazing.

He achieved so much. If we were prepared to kick back a little bit, we might achieve far more outwardly. It’s a reminder that this isn’t about reducing productivity. It might be exactly the opposite. There’s research these days that teams that work 4-day a week are more productive than teams that work a 5-day week. That is mind-blowing for most people to hear. They think that it’s not possible but quality of attentiveness matters.

It’s easy to get into a mildly workaholic cycle where we think more time and more work. I’ll get this thing done better. Again, it’s one of these counterintuitive things. The step back, the break might mean, “I come back to it with a different energy that gets things done better and faster.” There’s research also on holiday, time off, and vacation time and how valuable that is. I don’t know quite how the numbers work but, in Europe, typically, people have 4 to 6 weeks a year. I don’t think there’s any evidence that they’re less productive for it. I think the reverse, if anything.

It’s to say we should question our conviction that more is going to be better. It probably won’t be. That’s one thing on a cognitive conceptual level, getting a little bit of disengagement, mini downtime, and even three minutes of disengagement might allow us to come back more effectively with more productivity is important. What tools do we have for that? There’s a whole range of them.

Some of those I was already talking about, the little hits of immediate sense experience bring us back. It’s a small way of getting a little bit of a taste again of the state of being rather than the state of doing. If that’s backed by a little bit of regular being time every day, where even if it’s only five minutes, so much the better. It’ll have more force.

Obstacles As Strengths

I agree so much with what you’re saying. I think you can also tell when you walk into a room, whether it’s virtual or you’re there, where someone’s energy is. If someone’s in this spin cycle or whether they’re truly there and present for you and able to respond to the situation skillfully. I think we all feel and notice that.

I think it’s important. The other piece that I’m noticing in the corporate world, not just our company, many companies have gone through changes in restructures. We’ve reduced the workforce and there’s been a contraction in the marketplace, which means individuals have to do more. The new skill is discernment.

The new skill is like Gandhi. I need more practice to meet this greater demand because there will be some things that I must do with excellence and other things I might need to let go of and to know the difference that because that is the world we’re living in now and it’s complex. I want to ask you this, pin it with mindfulness, and then I want to move on to support in the time we have left, which is winding down quickly.

Time is crazy when I’m in these conversations because I feel like we just start talking. I look at the clock and I’m like, “How have we been talking this long?” This is amazing. One of the things under the mindfulness chapter and stopping at that end is this whole idea of obstacles and hindrances. We’ve already touched on it but I want to revisit it one more time before we leave it. In the book, these are around the meditative practice, but true for all things. Obstacles around desire, aversion, dullness, restlessness, and doubt. We’re not going to dig into each for time, but as we touched on a minute ago, how do you we’ve heard the obstacles away? How do we take these obstacles and use them to make us stronger in life and our practice?

That’s a beautiful question. Thank you. The thing is that these wise old traditions figured out that there are certain common obstacles to finding that state of being that we’ve been talking about. Truly, there are obstacles to finding peace and energy in life. The calm, current of powerful, creative, and constructive energy.

We all want to be riding through our workdays. These obstacles you listed are craving or desire, aversion, or hating. I can’t remember them all. Dullness, restlessness, doubt, and self-doubt especially. All of them, again, our tendency when they come up is to not want to know, to suppress them, to not feel them, and to try to ride over them because they don’t feel good but the ancient wisdom traditions are the opposite.

If we can pause a little bit and recognize that one of them may be present, maybe is craving or drive like, “I got to get this thing done, I want to finish it now, and I want to do it perfectly,” or whatever. That tightness and tension around something, if we don’t recognize it will tend to be there anyway and will tend to skew our efforts and our productivity.

It gets louder and louder because we’re trying to ignore it. It’s like, “Hello?”

Exactly. On the other hand, if we can learn to allow it, to let it be present, and to have a welcoming attitude to it, we are growing. We’re growing in our capacity to be more open to more of life. The very thing that we found unpleasant, distasteful, and didn’t want to experience can become strangely sweet. We recognize it as a beautiful thing that this state of mind was coming up. We got larger in our capacity. I’m phrasing it like that, but it’s not quite accurate. It’s not so much that we get larger in our capacity. It’s more that we make a tiny little micro shift that reveals we already have a larger capacity to hold these things and let them do their thing, and we’re not driven by them.

That’s the shift. If I’m locked into this state of mind of restlessness is a great example. It’s uncomfortable to be restless. The last thing we want to do is rest when we’re restless. We’re driven to get up and anything but this thing. We want to be out of the state we’re in. What happens if we hit pause, “I’m experiencing restlessness.” Stating that and being aware of that will make a huge difference.

To name it is to tame it. Naming it then, what does that feel like in my body? It’s this yucky sensation in my diaphragm, in my chest, or whatever it is. I’m going to let that be there. I don’t want to let it be. It’s horrible. I want to stop it. Anything to end it. No. I’m going to be counterintuitive and stay steady.

This little micro-shift can happen to a state of allowing. That state of allowing is nice. It’s loving. It’s peaceful. It’s very clear. It’s very energized. It can hold this thing going on in me. I realized that I got to be nice to this. We’ve shifted beautifully. I’m not talking about major seismic shifts in our state of being. It’s a little shift that has a big impact.

The subtle shifts can indeed, especially over time, change things. What I love about everything you talk about is at its core, it’s about us remembering who we are. Getting back to the essence of who we are because we get very covered up and all these things, expectations, belief systems, what we have to do, and versus this lovely state of peace that is inside us all if we take the time to find it, which is powerful.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s becoming in a certain sense, we could say more authentic. Whereas, you’re becoming more authentically aligned with who we are.

Very much so which makes life so much more beautiful. I have one last question I want to ask you before we close. I want to talk about your app because it’s amazing. Before we go into the app, one last question on our journey. I’m looking at my list. I only got through half. I need to invite you back so that we can keep talking because there’s much more to unpack here.

I’d be happy to.

Power Of Connection

Thank you. One of the ends we get into support and there are many areas of support that we have in our lives but one of the things that resonates so powerful with me, maybe because much of the Compassion Lab within the company is about creating a community on the path. We’re not doing this alone. We’re not in this by ourselves. Can you comment as we start to close this out on the power of our connection with others and trusting the process that we’re on?

I think it’s very important because this is a time when mindfulness has gone exponential. I’ve watched it over the decades of my practice change from being a fairly fringe thing that was getting some major endorsement, but still fringe to suddenly becoming, 170 million people have downloaded the Calm app, for example.

We would never have been doing the Compassion Lab 5 to 10 years ago. We weren’t ready for it. It’s changing.

That is fantastic. At the same time, it’s quite easy to think that the project of mindfulness is a solo one. In the same way that I go to the gym to do reps, I got to sit and do my breath reps, following the breath, counting the breath, or whatever. There’s a side to it that if we want to be on the meditation path, some self-discipline or some habit formation is important.

The whole thing, the whole project is to discover that truly we’re not alone. We are connected to every other human being. We have the same bodies, minds, hearts, and emotional equipment. We share a lot of that with every mammal. There are seven kinds of emotional states that all mammals have. That’s mind-blowing to me.

Whether it’s a bat, a dolphin, or a human, we share the same emotional system. Bats go through panic and grief when a loved one is lost. They go through the joy of seeking and they like going out hunting when the evening comes and they go off. We share these things. We’re not alone. The more we get into the space of being, we tap into a sense of connectivity when we go there. We’re finding that there’s a connectedness that we are all already part of. That is a crucial part of what I call the non-intuitive path of allowing.

The path back to our true selves.

Yes. I like that.

I think about that day on the beach when you were nineteen. Not only did you find this place of peace, but you knew you were a part of it all.

That’s a North Star we can steer by.

I think in the business climate, we understand that we’re a part of a company and that our actions are affecting the company and the team. We know intuitively that we’re always a part of a system but at the deeper level, we’re a part of an ecosystem, much as nature. We are nature. We are all a part of all of it. It’s sad when, and this is not uncommon, someone feels alone and apart from everything that they don’t belong. When in truth, we all belong to this exquisite, magical journey that we’re on together, which is pretty cool.

There’s one biosphere on this planet. We are one form of it.

I have kept you slightly over our time. I want to be respectful of you. I want to close not only with my gratitude because I have grown from this conversation. I know that it will serve those who tune in to it with everything that you have shared, but there’s another way to interact with you. I said before we hit record, I feel like you’re a part of my day because you’ve created this wonderful app called, The Way. I’d love for you to share what that is because it is unique and different from some of the other apps, and it’s a great way to go on a journey with you. Can you share a bit about that?

The Way

The Way is a meditation app, and it’s unique in one particular way that there’s no choice in it. Most meditation apps have vast libraries of different courses and things you can do, which is fantastic. Sometimes people get a decision fatigue, “Which one should I do?” Our research showed us that there might be a place for an app without choice. We went all in. We’ve created this single pathway, and it unlocks as you go. You never have to decide what to do next.

You do one button and you’re into the next sit that follows from the one you did before. Ten minutes a day is enough to follow the journey of The Way. I believe it leads the user through all the main bases that we need to get some tools in, some skillset going in on the path of meditation, which are the same four inns that are in my book. The book is a companion to the app and the app is a companion to the book for those who want to use it that way. Kathy, I was thrilled to hear that you’re quite well on in it.

I am. I’m on retreat 9, and everyone can hear from this show. You have this soothing voice. I sit down and be like, “Alright, Henry.” It’s like having a master teacher at your fingertips, but it is. I love some of the other apps if I want to listen to certain music. I love it. It’s a different way of doing it but with all the things going on in our lives, I love that I can open it and be like, “What am I going to experience today?” I don’t have to do anything but hit play. It’s fantastic. Thank you.

I’m glad to hear it.

We talked about the app, but how else can people find you? Share your website. Anything else you want to share about how to find you, work with you, or engage with you in other ways?

On my website and also, in the app, there’s a list of live events that we do. Some of them are online, and some of them are IRL these days. We’re doing some exciting ones in different parts of the world where we have a chance to gather and unlock pathways to our more authentic selves through being together and following practices that have come way down, in ancient traditions. It’s a lovely thing to gather and no experience is necessary. They’re very approachable, at all our gatherings, both online and in person.

That’s fantastic. Wonderful. Henry, your work in the world is making an impact and we’ll have a ripple far and wide as all of us find that essence of who we are so that we can live in a space of peace, live in a space of connection. Thank you for your time. Thank you for the book. Thank you for the app. Thank you for the wisdom and all that you are. I’m very grateful.

Thank you very much for having me.

 

Important Links

• Henry Shukman
• One Blade of Grass, Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen Memoir
• The Way
• Original Love

 

About Henry Shukman

Henry Shukman is a poet, author and Zen master in the Sanbo Zen lineage, founder of the Original Love meditation program, and spiritual director emeritus at Mountain Cloud Zen Center. He has taught at Google and Harvard Business School, and is the author of several award-winning books of poetry and fiction.

His poems have appeared in the New Yorker, Sunday Times, and Financial Times, and his most recent books are the Zen memoir One Blade of Grass and Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening (HarperOne). He is co-founder of the single-path meditation app The Way, and has an M.A. from Cambridge and an M.Litt. from St. Andrews.

 

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Meditation, Mindfulness, Original Love, Peace, presence, Stillness

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