Healing Versus Awakening | Zen Teacher Henry Shukman

The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks · Sep 17, 2023 · 1h 3m · transcript

Henry Shukman is a Zen teacher and meditation instructor who has woven together meditative practice, psychotherapy and plant medicine on his own road from eczema, anxiety and despair toward something steadier. This conversation sits on the line between two words people often blur: healing and awakening.

Healing is mending what is broken. Awakening, in Henry's telling, is seeing that at some level there was never anything to fix. So do you skip the healing and go straight for the awakening? His answer is more careful than that, and that nuance is the heart of the episode. We get into his own…