#531: Henry Shukman — Zen, Tools for Awakening, Ayahuasca vs. Meditation, Intro to Koans, and Using Wounds as the Doorway

Henry Shukman — Zen, Tools for Awakening, Ayahuasca vs. Meditation, Intro to Koans, and Using Wounds as the Doorway | Brought to you by Allform premium, modular furniture; Pique Tea premium tea crystals (pu’er, etc.); and You Need A Budget cult favorite budgeting app. More on all three below. Henry Shukman (@mountaincloudzencenter) 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 Sanbo Zen lineage and is the Guiding Teacher of Mountain Cloud Zen Center. He has an MA from Cambridge and an MLitt from St Andrews and has written several award-winning books of poetry and fiction. Henry’s essays have been published in The New York Times, Outside, and Tricycle, and his poems have been published in The New Republic, The Guardian, The Sunday Times (UK), and London Review of Books. He has taught meditation at Google, Harvard Business School, UBS, Esalen Institute, Colorado College, United World College, and many other venues. He has written of his own journey in his memoir One Blade of Grass: Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen Memoir. Henry has also recently created a new meditation program, Original Love, which aims to provide a broad, inclusive path of growth through meditation. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by Allform! If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about Helix Sleep mattresses, which I’ve been using since 2017. They just launched a new company called Allform, and they’re making premium, customizable sofas and chairs shipped right to your door—at a fraction of the cost of traditional stores. You can pick your fabric (and they’re all spill, stain, and scratch resistant), the sofa color, the color of the legs, and the sofa size and shape to make sure it’s perfect for you and your home. Allform arrives in just 3–7 days, and you can assemble it yourself in a few minutes—no tools needed. To find your pe