Zen Awakening, No-Self, and Levels of Practice
Summary: This conversation explores Zen practice as a path of healing, surrender, and deepening realization. It touches on awakening, no-self, koans, teachers, humility, and the surprising role of love in practice.
Questions This Interview Explores
- How can Zen practice help heal emotional wounds while also deepening awakening?
- What is meant by the different levels of practice and realization in Zen?
- How do koans, teachers, and ongoing training support a shift beyond self-centered identity?
- Why does humility matter so much as the path opens into no-self and mystery?
- How can practice become less about attainment and more about love, gratitude, and responsiveness?
Henry Shukman (Ryu’un-ken) is an Associate Zen Master of the Sanbo Zen lineage, based in Kamakura, Japan. He has trained primarily with Joan Rieck Roshi, Zen teacher John Gaynor, Ruben Habito Roshi, and now continues his training under the guidance of Yamada Ryoun Roshi, current abbot of Sanbo Zen. Henry is dedicated to what he sees as core Zen training—clarifying our essential nature to our own satisfaction, and thereby finding true peace of mind, and then living that essential nature in every moment of daily life, in freedom, love and deep responsiveness.
As it happens, Mountain Cloud Zen Center was originally founded by a teacher whose training also took place within Sanbo Zen back in the 1950s, and Henry is the first Sanbo Zen teacher to have taught at Mountain Cloud since its founder.
Henry is a writer and poet of British-Jewish origin, who has published eight books to date, of fiction, poetry and nonfiction. He writes regularly for Tricycle, The New York Times and other publications, and his most recent book is the poetry collection Archangel
Henry adds, “At one point in our conversation I start to outline several “levels” of practice that have traditionally been outlined in zen. But partway through I slipped into another categorization of “wisdom levels” as given by Shinzen Young, a mentor of mine. I should have credited him. With apologies, I’m doing so now. Many thanks.”
Earlier books:
- One Blade of Grass: Finding the Old Road of the Heart, a Zen Memoir
- The Lost City (Vintage Contemporaries)
- Savage Pilgrims
- In Doctor No’s Garden
- The Lost Continent
Discussion of this interview in the BatGap Community Facebook Group.
Transcript, summary, and key takeaways from this interview
Interview conducted October 12, 2019
YouTube Video Chapters:
- 00:00:00 – Introduction to Buddha at the Gas Pump
- 00:04:10 – A Brief Introduction and the New Book
- 00:07:37 – Finding Belonging in the Universe
- 00:11:54 – Emotional Wounds and Healing Journey
- 00:16:00 – Recalibrating and Finding Balance
- 00:19:55 – The Different Levels of Personal Psychology
- 00:24:16 – Discovering Zen Meditation
- 00:29:02 – Awakening through Different Senses
- 00:33:34 – Becoming Inseparable from All Phenomena
- 00:37:56 – The Importance of Having a Teacher
- 00:41:53 – A Shift in Perception and the Dissolution of Self
- 00:46:13 – The Marvel of Each Moment
- 00:50:06 – Humility and ongoing training in spiritual practice
- 00:54:22 – The Wall of Awakening
- 00:58:19 – Shifting to a Perspective of No Self
- 01:02:24 – The Importance of Multiple Valences in Practice
- 01:06:51 – Feeling Excluded in Pickleball
- 01:10:49 – Presenting the Koan
- 01:14:52 – Trusting the Process and the Yearning
- 01:18:59 – Awakening and Levels of Realization in Zen
- 01:23:06 – The Ten Stages of Zen Awakening
- 01:26:59 – The Beauty of Not Knowing
- 01:31:08 – Humility, Gratitude, and Compassion
- 01:35:11 – The Latent Energy of the Universe
- 01:39:40 – Falling into the Mystery
- 01:44:02 – The Cup Running Over
- 01:48:04 – Beings in the Buddhist Realm
- 01:52:17 – Finding the Hara in Zen Practice and What is Looking?
- 01:56:41 – The Importance of Teachers
- 02:01:12 – The Buddha with a small “b”
- 02:05:10 – Wrapping Up the Interview
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