Bob Thurman Podcast: Buddhas Have More Fun! · Robert A.F. Thurman

A Tibet House US Menla Conversation with Henry Shukman – Ep. 336

July 7, 2024·1 hr 18 min·6 clips

Henry Shukman recounts receiving a stone from the Sobibor camp memorial, triggering a flood of warmth and forgiveness for lost relatives.

1. Bob Thurman's podcast episode 336 features Roshi Henry Shukman discussing his book 'Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path to Awakening' and his broader Zen practice. 2. Henry Shukman, 62, is a poet, author, and Zen master in the Sanbo Zen lineage, spiritual director emeritus of Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, and creator of the meditation app The Way. 3. The episode's core thesis is that 'original love' — a non-conditional, boundless sense of connection discoverable through meditation — is a more useful foundation for practice than original sin, and that even extreme suffering can dissolve in its presence. 4. Shukman describes spending years distrustful of spiritual organizations before finding his first real teacher, John Gaynor, a retired English lawyer who held Zen sessions at cafes and a bus stop in Holland Park, London. 5. Shukman explains the five hindrances from Theravada Buddhism — desire, aversion, dullness, restlessness, and doubt — and argues that rather than suppressing them, practitioners should 'love them to death' by thoroughly allowing the underlying sensation. 6. In response to Thurman's challenge about whether this approach can work for extreme trauma, Shukman discloses that 42 relatives with his surname lived in a Polish village and all perished at Sobibor extermination camp — one of the earliest camps, which used truck exhaust fumes before Zyklon B. 7. A Polish translator of 'One Blade of Grass' recently sent Shukman a small white stone from the Sobibor memorial field; Shukman wept before he understood what it was, experiencing 'a great flush of warmth.' 8. Shukman recounts that about 12 years ago his teacher Yamada Ryo-un insisted he go to Germany to teach, despite Shukman's inherited British-Jewish avoidance of all things German; saying a few words in German to his first German audience — acknowledging being half-Jewish — loosened 'a whole cluster of unforgiveness' he had been carrying. 9. Shukman explains the title 'Original Love' as a deliberate response to two concepts: original sin, which he believes has infiltrated Western culture with a sense of unworthiness, and the Zen koan 'original face' — what you were before your parents were born. 10. Thurman asks Shukman to define love; Shukman frames it as 'a wide and intimate connection — not resisting it, giving oneself to it' — and describes it as showing up in multiple flavors, all of which are the same original love in different aspects. 11. The conversation distinguishes Greek eros (self-centered, acquisitive, risking becoming a malady) from agape (altruistic, wishing for the beloved's happiness) and maitri in Sanskrit, etymologically linked to both mater (mother) and mitra (friend). 12. Thurman reads aloud the kensho passage from Shukman's memoir 'One Blade of Grass': a dharma talk by teacher John causes 'a thunderbolt on the crown of my head,' Shukman falls off the cushion weeping, and experiences 'nothing — not even a witness, the ultimate joke.' 13. Shukman reflects that after this event, his entire Zen training retrospectively felt like 'a game of hopscotch that pretended it was going somewhere' but had always already arrived; the phrase he endorses for the state is 'utter simplicity.' 14. Thurman and Shukman discuss shunyata (emptiness/voidness), with Thurman noting that shunya is the Sanskrit root for the mathematical zero, invented in India for handling astronomical numbers before being transmitted through the Arab world to Europe. 15. Shukman's current main teacher is Yamada Ryo-un, now 84, son of the influential Yamada Kou-un; he is still vigorous, running a company and teaching approximately 100 Zen teachers worldwide. 16. Shukman and Thurman discuss Mark Epstein — a psychiatrist who lives near Thurman in the Catskills and has written 'The Zen of Therapy' — as an example of how Buddhist frameworks are entering Western psychotherapy. 17. Thurman references Richard Davidson (neuroscientist) telling Shukman that Zen has dzogchen — referring to the Tibetan practice of releasing into open awareness — as a point of convergence between the two traditions. 18. The conversation is warm, intellectually discursive, and occasionally tangential, with both participants freely admitting when they lose the thread; the tone is collaborative philosophical inquiry rather than formal teaching. 19. The episode is best suited for meditators, Zen practitioners, and anyone interested in how Buddhist frameworks can address grief, intergenerational trauma, and the psychology of forgiveness. 20. Listeners seeking structured meditation technique instruction, rigorous academic Buddhist studies, or a faster-paced conversation will likely find this episode too loosely structured.

As heard by us

Zen biography, family life, and timeless love, told with patience.

This episode settles into a warm, wandering conversation about Zen practice, spontaneous awakening, and the way timeless love is carried into ordinary life.

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Why you'd press play

If you want Zen reflection that still sounds like family life, start here.

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