In Stages of Practice, Sam speaks with Henry Shukman. They discuss Henry’s new book and app; his poems, two of which he recites; integrating meditative insight; the generative quality of emptiness; resistance and clinging as opportunities; jhana meditation and flow states; aesthetic appreciation in Zen; the increasing accessibility of nondual teachings; emotional reactivity, and the need to train it; the centrality of compassion to the project of awakening; the value of practicing with others; the intrinsic dysregulation of the human mind; shortcomings in science and secular philosophy; Eastern vs. Western wisdom; the relationship between ethical conduct and nondual recognition; and other topics.

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.