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Back to Zen: Stop Trying to Quiet Your Mind | Henry Shukman, with Henry Shukman.

What Did Suzuki Roshi Teach About Monkey Mind?

Henry Shukman says Suzuki Roshi, who wrote Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, taught a different way to meet monkey mind. Rather than trying to stop it, imprison it, or grab hold of it, picture a young foal in a field with its mother watching nearby.

As practice deepens, the meadow gets larger. The field of awareness grows, so monkey mind can skip about and keep doing what it is doing while a person stays present. The person is not caught by the skipping and is not so quickly captivated by it. The mother is not trying to stop the little animal running around. She is lovingly becoming more aware of it. The image is a perfect analogy for what happens in practice.

A longer, deeper retreat makes the paddock and the meadow bigger. The field of awareness is what grows when the retreat itself goes longer and deeper.

Grokipedia·Henry Shukman

Transcript

Zen: Stop Trying to Quiet Your Mind | Henry Shukman ·

The Kevin Rose Show

More from this episode

  1. Why Does the Great Way Dislike Choosing?Henry Shukman says the great way is the great reality, one single whole that excludes nothing. It has no size.
  2. What Is the Backward Step in Zen?Henry Shukman says the backward step in Zen is disengaging from outward activity.
  3. What Does Rumi Mean by Come Back?Henry Shukman says Rumi's call to come back, in the translation by Coleman Barks, means returning to now after the mind has wandered off.
  4. What Was Henry Shukman's Awakening Like?Henry Shukman had an awakening as a youth, far from home, so complete that he felt he could die that night because his life had already been fulfilled.
  5. How Does Practice Become a Flow State?Henry Shukman says flow states might be some kind of preparatory training.
  6. How Can Someone Walk and Still Go Nowhere?Henry Shukman says a student who declared that Bodhidharma never took a step seems to have found a reality where there is nowhere to go.
  7. Would Kevin Rose Rather Fly the Plane?Kevin Rose would rather fly the plane than ride as a passenger, silly as that sounds. Needing to know shows up as a preference for control.

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