Embrace the Chaos: Finding Clarity Through Meditation with Henry Shukman (Part 1)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
When we combine the two some self development with self love.
The self love makes the self development so much easier.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
think ring true, and yet for many of us, our
thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't

(00:39):
have instead of what we do. We think things that
hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
After ten solid years of daily meditation, I found myself drifting.
My habit didn't fall off, but my why did so.
In this two part conversation, I turned to someone who's
helped thousands rekindle their inner fire, Zen teacher, poet and
friend Henry Shukman. In part one, we talk about why
effort can be the very thing that chases transformation away,

(01:25):
how structure can actually liberate, and how to navigate the
dance between ambition and acceptance. Henry is the creator of
the Way, a unique meditation app that's designed as a single,
unfolding journey. There's no skipping ahead. If you're looking to
reconnect with what matters without having to chase it, you'll
find something real here. I'm Eric Zimmer and this is

(01:48):
the one you feed. Hi, Henry, Welcome.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
To the show.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Hi. Eric, is really great to be with you.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
I'm very excited to talk with you. I always love
our conversations together. Paired very little for this one because
I remember when I saw you last year in New Mexico.
I was there to help you launch your book with
a book launch party. You and I went out to
dinner the night before, and the experience I had was
like of words just falling out of both of our

(02:16):
mouths for like two hours straight, with like no thoughts.
So I was like, all right, I think we'll be
fine just trying that approach again. So I'm really happy
to have you on for this two part conversation, and
we're going to be talking about things that are all
kind of tied together. You've got a wonderful meditation app
called the way we're going to talk about that. I

(02:37):
have a new project around the book, the Dowdey Ching
that we'll be talking a little bit about, and then
we'll obviously cover Zen because Zen is what happened when
Buddhism from India met Taoism in China, and Zen sort
of emerged from that. So I think there's lots of
crossover here, but I think we do need to start
the way we always do and give you a chance

(02:59):
one more time to answer the parable. So in the parable,
there's a grandparent talking to their grandchild and they say,
in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which
represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think

(03:20):
about it for a second. They look up at their
grandparent and they say, well, which one wins, And the
grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
start off by asking you what that parable means to
you in your life and in the work that you do.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Yes, thank you, And it's really nice to have another
chance to reflect on that, you know, and see how
it's changed. I'll tell you the thing that resonates most
for me at the moment is, you know, in Tibetan
Buddhism they talk about feeding your demons. And I feel
now that basically my as it were, the good wolf

(03:55):
is very very welcoming of the not so good wolf.
That's the whole thing is, like, what is it in
me that is totally capable of welcoming what is not
so easy in myself and in the world to be welcoming,
not in the sense of like letting it have free reiin,
but of giving it the home it's always needed, of

(04:17):
being that, you know, that warm, welcoming host that can
really accommodate all of me and all of this world,
you know. And that doesn't that it's not that we
want the wild wolf, the dangerous wolf, that the the
destructive wolf, just running havoc, reaking havoc and running wild.

(04:42):
But by actually loving it and giving it in a
sense to love it or it's always needed, really, it
becomes a source of goodness itself, you know, and it
opens us up more.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
That's where I'm at really with it. It's God to
love it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
I was reflecting on something the other day that's sort
of similar to this, and I was reflecting on my
relationship to certain parts of myself or internal voices, et
cetera that are just they've been around a long time.
I don't really have a whole lot of expectation that
they're going to completely disappear, but I relate to them

(05:22):
so differently, and I like that idea of like I
more or less can welcome, you know, I figured that
I finally figured that sort of balance out. I'm not
saying all the time and I'm perfect, but I've gotten
better at saying like, Okay, I'm not going to fight you,
come on in, but you don't have the run of
the house either, right Like, we got certain rules here
and within there you can you're welcome. And I heard

(05:45):
people say this for a long time that your experience
doesn't necessarily change, it's how you relate to your experience
that changes.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
I totally agree, and I think that's that's, you know,
a big part of this path of meditative development, you
know that I've been on for wow an awfully long time.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
Yeah, you know, but it's really it's really is about.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
That and and because we actually, at certain phases in
a meditation journey, we might think we're going to just
get to the mountaintop and rest there, you know, just
being blissed the rest of our lives. But that's not
a full human life, you know. And in my view,
you know, so actually having but having been able to

(06:26):
be with all of life, you know, and more and
more open and all of life, you know, both within
and without, you know, both inside us and outside us.

Speaker 4 (06:37):
That's really the richness.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
And indeed it means being able to relate to it
differently in order to have that kind of openness.

Speaker 4 (06:46):
Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
I remember Ayashanti Wants saying something. I think it was
in one of our conversations, but it could have been elsewhere,
I don't know. He was talking about freedom, and we
talk about you know, freedom and liberation and the spiritual
and all of that, but he said, it's not freedom
from things, it's freedom to experience things. And that was

(07:08):
a bit that really landed with me. I was like, Oh,
this isn't freedom from sorrow, this isn't freedom from difficulty.
It's that I can feel free to actually feel those things,
allow them to be, not fight them. Yes, and be
with more of my experience exactly.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
I'd say what I see in many people that i've
you know, I've been privileged to help guide a little
bit on their own paths. You know, there can be
these water shared moments, these thresholds that we can cross
where you know, some cluster of attachments you know, that
have been binding us and making us relate to the

(07:52):
world and experience in certain ways, they can fall away
and experienced. Days are same exactly like I just Chante
was saying. But but the way we respond is so different.
We're free now to respond to them our own way,
and we're not being we're not being sort of tethered
by the attachments that we've we've we've taken for granted

(08:16):
and in many cases not even recognized we have because
they're so ingrained in us and so conditioned in us.

Speaker 4 (08:23):
Yep, that's a great way to put it there.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
So this raises a question. I would like to talk
about your meditation app the way I think it's incredible,
by the way, it is so good, and one of
its defining features is that there is one path through
and you cannot skip ahead. You just have to go

(08:47):
one by one by one, and you were telling me
ahead of time that it's three you have, it's a
three year journey, and that you thought that was kind
of how long it would it took to sort of
set the baseline. And this got me thinking about a
debate that happens in spiritual circles sometimes between sort of

(09:12):
the epiphany, the satory, the instant enlightenment, and then this
really long gradual path. And you know, I've just got
done turned a book into my publisher that right now.
The title is how Little Becomes a Lot, So it's
about this gradual path. And yet Zen does prioritize to

(09:32):
some degree these Satori moments, these flashes of insight. And
I'd love to talk about how those two seem like
they're different, but on a deeper level they're actually not,
or at least it seems to me they're not. But
I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a great that's a great point.
I mean, his his one way that it's been talked
about traditionally is like, if you haven't got the gradual
slow a little bit every day, the little, the little
by little part, then if or when some major shift

(10:09):
or even even minor shift, you know, but a shift happens.
It's as if it's like a beautiful seed that's landed,
but it needs good soil to grow in, you know,
and that gradual cultivation is essential. And the way I
see it these days, there's something like this, like there

(10:31):
are there are many people, I think who and there's traditions,
you know that they're really only interested in the gradual cultivation,
and that's that's just fine. And you know, gradually, gradually,
you know, one whole branches en the Soto side of Zen,
you know they talk about Soto is the farmer. They're

(10:51):
gently you know, they're tilling the soil, they're pulling weeds,
they're really caring for the plot. They're like a farmer,
just tending to it, you know, day by day, you know, and.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
That's that's great.

Speaker 1 (11:05):
And gradually the invasive weeds get sort of weaned out,
and the beautiful flowers and crops that we can ease
and stuff, the nourishing stuff starts to grow and that
that can be just lovely. But on the other hand,
there are traditions that really are all about, Hey, just
realize what is what it's all about.

Speaker 4 (11:27):
Realize what's really happening.

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Non dual traditions like Advitivedanta and other side of en
rinse Zen, you know, puts more emphasis on that you know,
and that would be sudden discovery of a reality, an awareness,
a nameless, unnameable tao, a way you know that's actually

(11:49):
always here and can't not be here. That's somehow fundamental
to all of experience, perhaps to all of existence. But
you can't really get to it gradually because it's a
shift in perspective. It's a sort of it's a sudden
seeing things, not differently in that they change, but differently

(12:14):
in the advantage from which anything, everything is perceived has changed,
such that we've touched into something that's always been here
that you know, we could get into some of the
things that it doesn't do time. It doesn't do space.
It lets space happen unless time happen, but in itself
isn't sort of caught by them.

Speaker 4 (12:33):
You know.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
That has to be a sudden shift, because you can't
really cross the.

Speaker 4 (12:38):
Ravine in two steps.

Speaker 1 (12:39):
It's just a sudden sort of leap, you know, a
sudden shift in how we've seeing. But if that isn't
then landing in a life where we've got this steady practice,
it can be a flash in the pan that doesn't
actually get integrated and doesn't change how we live.

Speaker 4 (12:58):
Yep. You know.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
So it's critical, I think, to at the very least
we want the gradual side. But the gradual side can
be so enlivened and fructified, you.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Know, fructified. That's a great word. We got eight hundred
episodes plus. I don't know if anybody's ever used that
word fructified. Okay, carry on.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
You know, we could we can suddenly, you know, make
this discovery about the nature of our existence, the nature
of our life that we hadn't somehow noticed before, even
though it's always been here, and it will have the
possibility of actually changing our lives for the better, you know.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
So that's I think personally.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
I think it's it's really good that we know about
that as a possibility, you know, this sudden shift to
the non dual. But we don't want to be chasing
it too much because it'll it'll recede if we're pursuing it,
you know. But it's a cad of be aware that
it's a possibility. Meanwhile, we just do a steady practice,

(14:06):
you know and yep, if that call it a flash
of lightning, call it a fructifying seed, call it a fertilizer,
whatever it is. If it drops in, fantastic you know,
and it will sooner relate it because it's always here.

Speaker 4 (14:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
I think about it in a couple of different ways also,
and a few analogies that you use, right, Like you
can't jump the ravine into jumps, as you said, but
you got to be near the edge of the ravine
to jump it, right, which is what I think often
gets missed in the just you know, just wake up

(14:40):
now idea, Right, is that the people who tend to
wake up. I'm not saying it happens all the time.
You had an experience that came out of the blue
when you were a young man, and to your point,
it didn't really have a chance to land in any
sort of fertile soil at the time, so it can't happen.
But for most people it seems to be that they're
kind of at the edge to the ravine. They've worked

(15:01):
to get there. And then I also sometimes think about
it like a sort of like a baseball analogy, right,
which is like you could say to a kid like
all you got to do is put the bat on
the You've got a major league pitcher throwing at you,
and all you got to do is put the bat
on the ball, and it'll go out of the park.
But more often than not, that kid might end up

(15:23):
with like a you know, a traumatic brain injury versus
a home run because he's he hasn't practiced and so.
And then the last thing I'll say on this topic
is I've joked before that if you put the twenty
four year old version of me in my brain right now,
he would think he was enlightened. He would because the
shift would be so dramatic to him. And so I

(15:45):
think that's the other thing that sometimes can happen to
us on the gradual path is we have shifted. We've
had big shifts, we just haven't noticed them in the
same way because they came about gradually, whereas the moments
we're talking about are very sudden and dramatic.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Yes, yeah, I love that analogy that the idea actually
bringing in. You know, I think of my own younger self,
you know, seventeen year old or something, putting him inside
this experience.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
Now, he would be astonished.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
By the peace, the quietly ease the energy that's sort
of smooth, not frantic. Yeah, you know, it's a really
it's a really nice point, and I totally agree. So
we've got to be we've got to be careful about,
you know, how change happens. That it can be very
subtle and gradual and powerful nonetheless, and sometimes it can

(16:40):
be yeah, blazing revelatory epiphany and that you know, of course,
well that'll.

Speaker 4 (16:45):
Really impress us, you know, like, wow, this is really.

Speaker 1 (16:49):
Man, I didn't know this was possible to see things
so differently, and it's I feel like I've understood everything
now and you know, but actually that also has to
be backed by such integration and on all of that.
So it's it's really just I believe great to be
kind of open to both.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yeah, I agree. So I'd like to talk for a
second about why to engage in a meditative or spiritual practice.
I think it's gotten to the point in our culture
and certainly people who would listen to this show where
most people would say, well, I should be meditating, and

(17:30):
that's not a very useful framework anymore. Right, should be
is not really motivating. And this is actually relevant to
me because after a decade or so. I mean, I've
been meditating on and off for thirty years. But after
a decade of really solid practice, I've noticed my practice
get very wobbly. And I know all the stuff about
getting a habit back on track, right like, that's what

(17:52):
I teach. It's kind of my bread and butter. And
what I've realized recently is that's not the problem. The
problem is back to motivation, and motivation has gotten a
little bit of a bad word in the behavior change
habit space because you don't want to rely they say,
you don't want to rely on motivation, which is true

(18:15):
if we use motivation to mean whether I feel like
or not feeling like doing something in the moment. But
on its deeper level, motivation is why. And so I've
thought we might talk about why practice because I think
I need that refresher after having a really clear why
on it, I think it's gotten obscured for me.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful, thank you. I you know, it's
it's a really good thing to come back to. I
think quite regularly is why am I doing this? If
I have got a whatever I might be doing long term,
why am I doing it?

Speaker 4 (18:52):
You know?

Speaker 5 (18:52):
Right?

Speaker 1 (18:53):
A couple of reflections pop up right away. I mean
the first actually is to the point about some kind
of ebb and flow in enthusiasm for it and commitment
to it. I think that's a given. There's just gonna
be more enthusiasm and motivation and.

Speaker 4 (19:10):
There's going to be less. I feel that too, you know.
I get at times when ah.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Wow, I kind of just I want to be a
different me that doesn't meditate for a little bit, you know,
just give me a little break. And to be able
to accommodate that without having a stop would be my formula,
you know, like, how do I accept it quite rightly?
I kind of ten years of this, I need, I need,

(19:38):
I need a little breather. I'm just not so into
it right now. How do we accommodate that while not stopping.
But to get to that, we've also got to have
established why we're doing it in the first place, what
the longer term picture is. And I would say that
on that side, there's there's a couple of different things
also that come up. One is the basic idea in Buddhism,

(20:02):
and probably I would guess most spiritual traditions, if not
all spiritual traditions and it's really actually the heart of
your podcast name is that you know, we need some training.
We humans just need a bit of training, because we
can be quite destructive if we don't have it. You know,

(20:24):
all the research on the ancient evolutionary wiring that we've
still carried for being able to dehumanize other people. We
can be very compassionate in a circle of concern, and
that circle of concern can be made to have a
really hard border, and the people that are outside it,

(20:45):
they're not only undeserving of our compassion, they're undeserving of
our wrath and our hatred and our aggression and our violence.
A lot of research pointing to that is not really cultural.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
It's human.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
That dehumanizing potential that we have. It's part of our makeup,
and it can be so damaging and destructive. And of
all the creatures that have been dangerous to human beings
over the last million or two million years, none has
been so dangerous as human beings. Right, you know, it's
all very well to feel good and say no, I'm

(21:21):
immune for my Actually we carry wiring that can be
turned on that dehumanizes other human beings. So what can
we do to diminish the power of that to get
a handle on, you know, if it's developing, how do
I manage that and not have it turn into vengeful destructiveness?

(21:44):
You know, that's part of it, to recognize there's stuff
in me that needs training, you know. And I always think,
you know, I remember learning this in anthropology when I
studied it, that indigenous cultures generally are kind of better
at understanding and regulating and taming the negative side of us.

(22:06):
They don't just think, let's propitiate the good. There's a
great god up there, let's propitiate him or her or whatever. No,
there's actually there's other forces that aren't so good. Let's
also propitiate them, you know. And that's really wise to
be again, coming back to that feed your demons thing,

(22:26):
to not be just splitting off the dark side and
say it doesn't exist, or you know, we're not interested
in that. Much better to be interested in it, to
be aware of it, and to be you know, recognizing
the shadow and young terminology and working with it. Otherwise
it can be destructive. So that's a whole training side, right,
And I just think that meditation is you know, there's

(22:50):
many other ways, of course, but meditation is a really
good way for that because it's cheap and it's easy
to do. You don't need a lot of equipment. You
just need a chair or a cushion, you know, and
you need not a lot of time. Really, you know,
even twenty minutes a day is going to I mean,
I think even five minutes a day, if you've never
done it before, will change things for you.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
You know.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
It's good on that school. But also aside from that,
the sort of training and taming kind of side, there's this,
you know, there's this big matter of us being so
engaged in our busy lives, in our activities. And they
may be great ones, you know, there may be projects
that we love, relationships we love, and all the rest

(23:33):
are good good stuff, or they may be not so
good doesn't but either way, we're so invested in, you know,
our outward lives that we miss I mean, I'm talking
about myself as well. You know, it's so easy to
miss this really important underlying fact of being alive, being

(23:53):
able to just recognize the gift. Yes, of course it
has lots of challenges, but the gift of having this
experience called life and to be able to unwrap that
gift and receive it, yes, with its difficulties as well,
but I mean it's incomparable from my point of view.
You know, there's no gift possibly greater than it, but

(24:17):
if we never recognize it, it's kind of a shame.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
I heard you say something along those lines somewhere else,
which is, you know, it's about being able to really
receive the gifts of life, and that's that's quite something,
as you're saying to like really put a point on that,
because I don't know that most of us would experience
life as a gift. And to your point, if this

(25:14):
is not like Pollyanna like everything's always great kind of thing,
but there is a there is an experience of being alive,
and if we can receive the gift of it is
a really powerful and transformative thing. I've also heard you
talk about meditation as a way of accessing an underlying

(25:36):
well being that's not contingent on circumstances. And we'll talk
about the Doo in a little bit, but the I
was exposed to both Zen and Taoism around the same
time in high school. I don't think I understood a
lot of it, but I somehow intuited that what you're
saying there. I intuited that this was a system of

(26:00):
being okay, having some degree of okayness in a world
that many times did not feel okay to me as
a seventeen year old. And I think I that made
it great sense to me because I was like, well,
it's obvious to me bad things happen in the world,
and they happen to everybody, Like it's pretty You don't

(26:21):
have to be paying too close of attention to get that.
You know, maybe I was more attuned to it than
your average seventeen year old, But that idea that there
could be a way of being okay even when things
from a surface level weren't okay, I think is what
got me into all of this and probably keeps me

(26:43):
in it.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
That's absolutely beautiful, Actually, you put it so beautifully. I
think that's that's in a way, that's the heart of
what I was trying to get at with that second
why for meditation is exactly that.

Speaker 5 (26:57):
That we can grew greatly cultivate and develop our access
to a fundamental okayness, you know, which, which it.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
Might sound like something I've got to create. I've got
to develop a way of being okay, regardless of conditions.
But I think I think you've you've already just been
nodding to this. That in the idea of the Tao
and of the Way, as it's often translated in the
Buddhist world, same concept basically is that actually it's always

(27:32):
already here.

Speaker 4 (27:33):
So it's not something that we develop, but we might.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Develop our access to it, you know, we might get
more open to it, might get might get more skilled
at sensing it. So so I always think like, yeah,
I mean, you've helped me talk like this before. But
I sort of think there's two sides of meditation practice.
One is kind of more conditional. It is developing ourselves
and getting more mindful, getting more able to hold you know,

(28:01):
our difficult emotions, our stress, our anxiety, our sorrow and
grief and loss and fears, and you know, and also
our joys when they come, you know, being getting better
at sort of appreciating them and being with them. That
can happen. But at the same time, on another hand,
really it's it's actually more about uncovering and okayness. It's

(28:25):
hard to say this because I can think of many
times in my own life when I would never possibly
believe this, but in a sense, even in the worst
of conditions, it's still present, you know. And I think
of one Zen teacher, Blanche Hartman, and she was in
the in the late sixties, you know, she was she

(28:47):
was in an anti Vietnam riot and she was right
somehow got pushed right to the front line, actually up
against the riot shield of the riot police who were
banging on their shields, yelling and screaming, and she found
herself suddenly right in front of one of these policemen,

(29:08):
you know, yelling in her face, beating his riot shield,
pushing against her, and she's jammed there at the front
and you know, there's a very intensely difficult, you know,
situation that could have been highly traumatic. Somehow, at that moment,
she just got this flash there's no separation between me

(29:31):
and him, and and there's no separation because we're all
part of one unfolding. We're part of one reality that
I don't normally see and now I'm.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
I'm seeing it.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
And so that was, you know, that was a satory moment.
You know, that was hers an important step on her
Zen path, a Ken show, you know, and it happened
in very difficult circumstances, you know. And I'm very moved
by really that we have that offered to us, and

(30:03):
we have that capacity as humans to taste a fundamental wellness, okayness,
well being. Yeah, And I sometimes call it love, you know,
because it is like a love to discover that level
of belonging, you know, regardless of conditions. But I also
think it's really important that we don't sort of neglect conditions.

(30:25):
We need to work on the conditions as well.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
You know, we're talking about these what we could think
of as dualities. We've talked about them a little bit here.
We've talked about the gradual versus sudden. We just talked
about being okay in any kind of condition and yet
really caring about conditions. And there's another one that you
point out and you talk about it when you talk

(30:48):
about the fruits of being present and you talk about
self improvement as one outcome of that and self love
as the other. And I just got done writing my book,
as I told you, and as it went on, it
became clearer to me that that's a lot of what
I was talking about about. How we want to be

(31:11):
The books about change, right, We want we change because
we want to be better, different, et cetera, and how
valuable and important that is. But at the same time,
there's an equal tension on that of allowing ourselves to
be just as we are in this moment, allowing this
moment to be just as it is. And I think
that's the same thing you're pointing to here about the

(31:33):
fruits of being present, self improvement and self love.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yes, yes, yes, that's a great point, Eric, exactly, because
on the one hand, there is some self improvement that
we can work on, and even while we're doing that
with more or less success, there's also opening up to
more self love. And the paradox is that somehow the

(31:58):
self love accept ourselves as we are can actually lead
to more change, right, yes, even though we're not asking
for change, you know, yeah, you know, if you see
what I mean. And so when we combine the two,
some self development with self love, the self love makes

(32:19):
the self development so much easier, you know, and the
self development may open up more self love or self
we could call it also, I guess self acceptance, you know, right,
but it's sort of deep, a warm self acceptance, not
a not a kind of neutral while I accept it,
but actually really I accept it, you know, there's a

(32:41):
there's a tender warmth in that, Yeah, some sort of
some kind of I always think there's a little bit
of surrender. It's like I I surrender to the fact
that you know, I am the way I am. It's
I'm not fighting it. So that's like then the love
can flow, you know.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
I find that that balance such a important one in
my own life, and I look at it even beyond
like self improvement. Like a given example, So I am
a guitar player, and I play guitar at this point
for no possible reason. It's not going to give me

(33:21):
anything else in life except what it gives me, which
is to play music. And yet I find myself wanting
to get better. And so there's a part of me
that's like, ah, you shouldn't. You shouldn't do you shouldn't
want to get better, you should just enjoy it. But
then I came back, I come around to but it
feels good to get better, right, like the actual practice

(33:44):
of improving, of mastering. I'm nowhere near mastering anything in
that department, but that point, and so even in there,
I find that I've got the blend. Right, there's the
I'm just doing this because I want to do it,
end I also want to get better at it. And
for me, the thing I've been able to see the

(34:08):
guardrail between the two, if there is one at all,
is the one of frustration, Meaning if I suddenly am
upset or mad or frustrated because I can't play a
certain passage, okay, I feel pretty certain I've crossed the
line for me, my line of Okay, now you're into

(34:30):
the sort of self improvement that isn't actually helpful and
it is not very self accepting. But as long as
I'm on the other side of that line and I'm
still kind of playing yes, then that desire is. I
feel like it's part of me and I want to
let it be.

Speaker 4 (34:46):
Yes. I love that. I think that touches on a
little bit.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
You know what We're talking earlier about the different relationship
to experience, and I was saying, you know, we can
have some some of our attachments can in the course
of practice or release that that will be one of those.
There's like, oh, maybe that this relates to that.

Speaker 4 (35:06):
You know that.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, I do enjoy seeing improvement in my guitar playing
speaking for you, but I haven't got this attachment lassued
around it like it must I must be getting better.
Then the frustration kicks in if I don't I think
you put it. I think it's beautiful what you're saying there, Eric,
I really do. And I think that's a kind of

(35:27):
in my mind, that's the sort of that's like an
X ray of healthy, happy, wholesome life that you know,
I'm not too demanding on myself or on life.

Speaker 4 (35:39):
Yeah, And you.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Know, and I'm appreciative, appreciative of it sort of happening
at all, and I love seeing it get get better.

Speaker 4 (35:51):
Yeah, for me and for others, you.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
Know, hey, friends. After over a decade of talking with
world class teachers and trying just about every meditation app
out there, I finally found one that actually takes you
somewhere deeper. It's called The Way. Unlike other apps that
might offer a large variety of meditations, The Way was
designed by zen master Henry Shukman, and it leads you

(36:15):
along a clear, step by step path. Each session builds
on the last, gently moving you towards something real, peace, clarity,
even awakening. Because you're part of the one you feed community,
the Way is offering you thirty free sessions. To get started,
just go to one you feed dot net slash the way.

(36:36):
It is truly the best meditation app I found, and
Henry is the best teacher I know, and I don't
say that lightly. Thousands of others feel the same. So
feed your good wolf and join me on the way
by visiting one you feed dot net slash the way.
I think if we want to reference the DOO here

(36:57):
is also this is a time to do it. And
we're talking about your meditation app the way. And then
this project that I did with an organization called Rebind,
where I created my own interpretation of the dow from
about fifteen different sources and then I teach about it
and via ai, you have a conversation with me about
the dow would be like sitting down and having a

(37:18):
conversation with me about the dow. One of the things
in the dow that shows up again and again is
a concept of wu wai, or more accurately translated, is
effortless effort. And I think that's partially some of what
we're talking about here too. And it's paradoxical right on
its surface, like well, it's effort, but it's effortless. It's

(37:40):
you know, so, I think, but I think it kind
of ties right in here.

Speaker 4 (37:44):
I totally agree. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
And by the way, Eric, I've you kind of sent
me a sort of you know, a beta or sort
of working progress of that, and it's absolutely beautiful. I
just love it, and I want to have more time
digging around in it.

Speaker 4 (38:02):
But what I've already seen.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
Was just marvelous because you're you're really very steeped in it,
so it's second nature for you to be talking about
it and reflecting on it, and you very quickly clarify
concepts that that I've had some exposure already myself in
my life to the Dow and the Dow to Jing.
But man, you really were clarifying things even even though

(38:25):
I was getting oh yeah, yeah, lovely, that's that, and
that just that with hearing you talk about it.

Speaker 4 (38:30):
And I threw a few questions at you, Hey, hi, Eric,
I love How did the answer? They were great? You
you were great. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
The minute they gave me the thing to test out, like,
because what you can do is you can read the
Dow and then you can ask it a question like
I did. The minute I got it, I was like,
all right, I want to make sure, this thing can't
go off the rails. So I'm like, does Eric Zimmer
have a secret love child? Does Eric Zimmer run a
termite farm?

Speaker 4 (38:59):
Is?

Speaker 3 (38:59):
You know, just all all the crazy questions I could
come up with, and it stays in its lane. It's like,
I'm sorry, I'm not going to speculate on Eric Zimmer's
personal life, but it is uncanny to me that this
thing answers as I would. Now there's a reason for
that because I probably recorded about twelve hours of me

(39:21):
talking about the doo that got fed into this thing.
So there's a reason it sounds like me. It's learned
a lot about me, But nonetheless it's still really fascinating
to the whole AI thing is. This was my attempt.
I'm a big believer like technology never goes backwards, no
matter how much we might want it to. And so

(39:41):
if AI is here, what are its possible good uses?
And I felt like this is one of them. Right.
The ability to engage with teachers and education that you
normally don't have access.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
To, that's a fantastic point. Yeah, I wanted to ask
you what would be your dream user of it or
your dream reader, you know, would it be because I
can imagine little chunks, a little chunk of day, you know,
like I mean, somebody might want to devot the whole thing,
but you know, like with a Cohen in Zen, yes,

(40:15):
you might just take a nugget and chew, would chew
that for a day and then another nugget or something
like that.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
Do you have any thoughts on that? I do.

Speaker 3 (40:24):
I mean, the ideal person would probably just be somebody
who's been interested in The Dow and has maybe even
picked it up and been like, what am I reading here?
Because it's a strange book. You know, it's much more
a collection of poems than it is anything else in
a certain degree. And in the same way with poetry,

(40:48):
you don't I mean, you can just read one poem,
then the next poem, then the next poem, then the
next poem. But it's the slowing down that allows the
poem to work on you. And so the way that
I've engaged with The Dow over the years, and that's
why I chose that book. It's probably my longest most
true book companion for the last thirty years. Like it's

(41:11):
probably the book for me that I've you know, gone
back to most often over the years. And that's how
I use it is I just pick it up and
I read a verse or you know, you could call
it a verse, you could call it a chapter, you
could call it a poem, but it's you know, it's
anywhere from like anywhere from like thirty words to two

(41:31):
hundred words, I don't know, something like that, and then
read it and yeah, just kind of sit with it.
So I think it can be used as a daily
reflection type of thing if you want. It can be
used as a I'm struggling with something right now. Let
me pick this thing up and see if it has
anything to say to that, and then there is a
way I think that you can appreciate the thing as

(41:52):
a whole and what it actually is. But I think
that's probably the best way I would approach it. I
approach it like a poem, yes, because it is so poet.
I mean, that's part of why I wanted to do
an interpretation of it. And I use that term clearly,
not translation, because there are probably at this point I
have one of the largest collections of Dow translations, probably

(42:17):
in the in the country. I mean, that sounds ridiculous,
but I'm sure there are some scholarly places that have
a lot, but I've probably got fifteen of them or
twenty of them. There's so many of them and you
read them and they can be very different from each other.
And so this one was just my version. Yes it's
not correct. It's just my version, and I certainly lean

(42:39):
on trying to keep the poetic where I can.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
The doo if you want to check it out for yourself,
you can grab the interactive dow experience Eric built with
rebind at oneufeed dot net slash doo. That's one you
feed dot net slash tao. It's a really interesting way
to actually talk with the versus and with Eric as
you read.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Hey, I just had a thought. Did we get to
wu Way? You brought it up beautifully a little earlier
in our conversation, and I think you you you know,
you invited a response for me, and I'm not sure
did I ever give a response to to the Wuwe matter?
Did I do you think?

Speaker 4 (43:20):
I did?

Speaker 3 (43:21):
I know? I think we kind of pivoted into the
book and what it is. So I'd love to hear
your your thoughts on wu We for sure.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah, I mean, I think because it's very central to
Zen this effortless effort. In fact, there's a great you
know these just a reference a Cohen right now that
talks about it, talks to it, to that topic. By
the way, for people who might not know, a Cohen
is a little phrase or a little dialogue or a

(43:49):
little action that's come out of the biography of some
zen adept usually in Tang dynasty China, which was six
hundred to nine hundred approximately in China. Some cases they
come out of very early Buddhism in India. They are
kind of an integral part of the sort of law
of zen or chan as it was called in China.

Speaker 4 (44:12):
And there's one of them.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
A famous Zen teacher called Joo Jo in Tang dynasty China.
He was when he was a young new student talking
to his master. He asked him what is the way?
And his teacher was called Nanchuan. He said, ordinary mind
is the way, your ordinary life, your ordinary experience, that

(44:36):
is the way. And then jo Jo, he was said
to be eighteen at the time of bright young guy,
he said, well, well should I should I turned towards it?
In other words, should I try to be Should I
be trying to find it? Should I be looking for it,
trying to find it, and his teacher says, if you

(44:57):
try to find it, you go against it. So then
jud Jo says, well, what should I do? How will
I ever know if I have find it found it?
And the teacher says, it's not about knowing or not knowing.
It's beyond either having it or not having it, knowing
it or not knowing it. And so that's actually that

(45:20):
little dialogue is really nice illustration of WU way. He
doesn't say give up, don't be here, don't be practicing,
don't be on a path of meditation training. He just says,
don't be trying to find it. Yeah, because you know,
if you do, you're going against it. You're sort of
automatically in a sense pushing it away, or you're automatically

(45:42):
looking the wrong way if you're trying to find it.
And so I think this almost ties together like the
WU way as an approach to effortless effort. We're not
really trying, but we're not disregarding either, you know.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
And it also.

Speaker 1 (46:01):
Ties in the enjoying the guitar playing and enjoying getting general.

Speaker 3 (46:06):
Yes, I don't know how you say this word. I've

(46:35):
never heard it said I've only seen it written sinologist
for somebody who studies ancient China.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Do I have that?

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Yes, I've heard it as sinologist.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
I'm not even going to pronounce his French name. Bilitar
is the last name. He says. Wu Weei is a
state of perfect knowledge of the reality of the situation,
perfect efficaciousness, and the realization of a perfect economy of energy.
Now I don't love the word perfect in there, because
I don't I don't I don't know that such a

(47:05):
thing exists. But I love this like it's you know,
the reality. You pick the most effective approach and the
one that uses the least amount of energy.

Speaker 4 (47:17):
That is beautiful.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
And I got to say that that went deep into zen.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
That that's what you said.

Speaker 1 (47:24):
I've actually never heard that put so perfectly in that
particular formula. But it reminds me of a story of
one zen master who was women women Wikei.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
He was.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
He was he was asked there was a severe drought
in a region of China, and he was invited to
come and when it was actually hired to come and
help with this drought situation, and he was supposed to
do what a sort of spiritual guy would do at
that time, which was kind of chance certain sydance dance,

(48:00):
the rain dance, you know, and he instead of just
sat there and the people who made him, you know,
brought him all this way to help them, you know.
So what are you doing? You're just sitting here, And
he said, I'm busy, not influencing anything.

Speaker 4 (48:18):
So that's that's exactly.

Speaker 1 (48:20):
It's he's he doesn't think he's sort of just idly
wasting his time. He's not doing anything, and that is
his doing. So it's also sort of woo way. That's
deployment of perfect or minimum energy. Yeah, total assessment of

(48:41):
the situation in his mind anyway, he knows what he's
vibing into, let's say, or something climato logically or whatever,
and it's the most efficacious thing. It's like, I don't know,
if I know, it sounds a little bit definitely weird
and abstruse, but actually I think he felt he was

(49:02):
doing those three things at that time.

Speaker 4 (49:04):
The efficacy, the.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
Noloyment of energy, and the understanding the knowledge of the
situation is all right there just in his being.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
Right.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
Yeah, I think there's this other element of wu way,
in a more direct way of thinking about it, which
is around recognizing that we often make things worse. Listeners
have heard me joke before that if I was going

(49:38):
to market what I do in its most honest form,
it might simply be how to not make things worse,
which I'm not sure is a good selling point or not.
But when you realize our infinite capacity to make things worse,
you'll actually go, well, that's actually kind of a big deal.
And so I think of that as wu way also
as recognizing that sometimes the act we're going to take

(50:00):
is going to make things worse, and in that way,
this can be a way of just holding that back
a little bit.

Speaker 4 (50:08):
Yes, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
I'm reminded of some of the recovery you know, mottos
and slogans like I'll never miss an opportunity to keep
my mouth shut.

Speaker 4 (50:19):
Yes, and stay in my lane. You know.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
Yeah, I think I think that's absolutely right very often.
I mean, I'll tell you this is one thing that
was a big part of my early training in Zen. Actually,
I remember feeling like somehow, I mean, my life was
a mess when I first got into this stuff. You know,
I was really depressed, I was anxious. I was doing
something that I was. I was doing a PhD that

(50:44):
was I didn't want to be doing, and it was
really sort of an enormous task. It was beyond me.
And I also had really bad exemo that I'd had
it right through my child and and sort of came
back and you know, while I was at college and
postgraduate and the moment I started meditating almost to the day,
you know, Actually the first thing that happened was I

(51:06):
slept a lot, an awful lot for a week, clearing
off of kind of sleep debt. But I could almost
feel life subtly rearranging itself around me. It's just because
I was being still, you know, twice a day for
a period of meditation. Gradually I started to see life

(51:30):
more clearly and I could see, Man, this is not
the right thing for me to be doing, you know,
I need to get my emotionality under control and need
to get more regulated. It just sort of shut subtle
shifts compared to the obvious big elements in their life.

Speaker 4 (51:48):
They just started presenting themselves either happening or needing to
be brought about by me.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
In generally in the way of just dialing things down,
you know, and dying things back and so that was
a kind of discovery. I would never have named it.
I mean, you know, at that time, I didn't even
know the term wou weigh. And even if somebody said, hey,
you're getting a little bit of familiarity with effortless effort,
I said, what are you talking about?

Speaker 4 (52:16):
I don't know what that means.

Speaker 1 (52:17):
But actually I can see a reflection. It was getting
a little more open to that. It was it was
coming to a place where it's not so much the
doing that sorts things out. It's actually a reorientation, you know,
within that changes attitudes, that changes perspective, and then what

(52:44):
one does then do is actually more efficacious and beneficient.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
Beautiful, beautiful. We're near the end of time. But what
I'd love for you to do for us now is
talk about effortless effort in the context of meditation, and
maybe if you want to reference the way your app
But because I think this is another of those paradoxes

(53:12):
that we sit with, Like we show up at meditation
for some kind of reason, we want to do our
best with it. And as you as we've sort of explored,
sometimes that grasping at the thing chases it away. So
how can we apply this WU way to our meditation practice.

Speaker 4 (53:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Thanks, it's a great it's a great question. It's kind
of at the heart of what meditation might be all about,
you know. So I'll speak a little bit about the
way actually because it's it's very relevant here.

Speaker 4 (53:45):
You know.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
We we've we were finding in our research before we
build this app that, of course, we know, you know,
millions of people want to meditate, millions of people try
and whatever the number of millions is that have t
it's a much smaller number that actually stick with it
in a consistent way. And one thing we also found

(54:07):
is that a lot of people are finding that the
meditation apps were overwhelming in their choice. They have tons
of micro courses you can do, and how do I
know is what I'm supposed to do?

Speaker 4 (54:20):
You know?

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Some of them have an introductory course and then they
throw you throw you out to find your way through
a huge library of content at different teachers, different different topics,
you know, different courses and so on. So we said,
let's just let's just strip away any choice. We're just
going to make it really easy. You don't have to choose,

(54:42):
We're going to guide you. And the principle of that
was kind of taking out the effort of choosing. You're
just going to show up, you know. The effort is
that you will show up. The effort list is you
don't have to choose. And so it's some you know.
So there's a topic. There's a word here that I

(55:05):
brought it up earlier. I think that is renovant. Which
is that little piece of surrender? Yeah, that or little
piece of trust? I mean trust and surrender, almost two
sides of a coin, you know, I say, okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
The thing that makes me think of is a phrase
that I've always loved, which is that structure can liberate.
Structure liberates, right, that structure can't. We think of it
as confining, but in many many ways it's liberating. And
I think that's what your app offers. It's the same
thing I would get if I went on if I
go on a week long zen retreat aseschine right. One

(55:40):
of the things that is great about it for me
is if when I to the extent that I can,
I just relax into the form. I don't have to
decide anything.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
I just do that.

Speaker 3 (55:52):
You're supposed to do this, then you do this, then
you do this, then you do that. And I'm not
saying that's what I would want for my entire life,
to have all my choices made for me, but in
certain areas it's a lovely thing to just have those
choices make and I think this is one of them.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
Yes, thank you, that's that's exactly right. I could totally
totally resonate with the session experience. There's Zen retreats where yeah,
every minute basically you know, you're just surrendered to it
and it carries you if you just surrender. So this
is a little bit like that in slow motion, stretched
out by you know, little activity day by day.

Speaker 4 (56:29):
It's also.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
It's also the you know that you can leave it
to us, so to speak, to to have set out
a path that's going to take you through all the
primary things that you can. Really it's best to know
and have some familiarity with and have some yeah, skill

(56:52):
with in a meditation training. You know, one of the
things is that there's a lot of a lot of
these there's a lot of different traditions and and typically
they're strong in a certain area.

Speaker 4 (57:06):
Those traditions, you know, but.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
Actually there are several key areas that I believe you
need to practice in meditation or at least have some
awareness of and openness too, in order to have it
be maximally helpful in your life. And I've trained primarily
for sure, in Zen, but also in Terravada and in
modern mindfulness and transcendental meditation some advitor as well. So

(57:33):
I kind of I feel that I've got a fairly
well rounded grounding.

Speaker 4 (57:39):
In the possibilities.

Speaker 1 (57:40):
And so we lead you through a sort of a
program really that is introducing you to different concepts, different skills,
different experiences. So you're going to get you know, by
by releasing into the program, you know, letting it take you.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
You know, you will be.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
Cultivating that ground we talked about at the start, for sure,
and you'll also be inviting certain openness to fertilization, you know,
in unexpected ways. And the WU way is letting that happen,
doing it, but you let it happen, yep.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
And I think, you know, shows like the one You Feed, uh,
provide a service to the world. Obviously, I love what
I do, and I do it for a reason, and
we make certain things more difficult. And one of the
things that shows like the One You Feed in the
fact that there's a lot of other ones, just like
it is that you can be exposed to every spiritual, psychological,

(58:39):
philosophical tradition under the sun lovely, except when it comes
to having a path to follow, in which case you
can get very confused. I get myself confused. It's why
I years ago decided to really focus in on zen
because I was just like, well, I'm going to do this,

(59:00):
I could do that. Well should I do this? What's
you just lost? You know? And so having a path
I think is enormously, enormously valuable, and your app does that.
We're at the end of our time for this session.
We're going to have another conversation, and in that conversation
I want to come back to the way because despite
having been meditating for thirty years, taking all kinds of

(59:24):
meditation courses, I a couple weeks into your app had
you said something that I had never heard said in
this way, and it opened a big door for me.
So in the next conversation we're going to talk about
what that door is. But for now, Henry, thank you
so much. It's always a pleasure.

Speaker 4 (59:44):
Erica.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
I'm just thrilled, delighted and honored to get this time
with you.

Speaker 4 (59:49):
Thank you. So much.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
Thank you so much for listening to the show. If
you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I'd
love for you to share it with a friend. Share
from one person to another is the lifeblood of what
we do. We don't have a big budget and I'm
certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better,
and that's you. Just hit the share button on your

(01:00:12):
podcast app or send a quick text with the episode
link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means
the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode
at a time. Thank you for being part of the
one you feed community.

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Host

Eric Zimmer

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Embrace the Chaos: Finding Clarity Through Meditation with Henry Shukman (Part 1)