This is a curated selection of Henry Shukman quotes (primarily sourced from publicly available videos, and personally curated by me on my own lifelong learning journey). This page is intended as a learning resource for educational purposes and only meant to offer an overview/introduction. Short quotes aren’t a substitute for source material, so if this page sparks your interest, explore more deeply by checking out Henry Shukman’s books (Amazon).
Page Contents:
- Zen & Koans Quotes
- Inquiry & Awakening Quotes
- Peace & Happiness Quotes
- Separate & Inseparable Quotes
- Everything & Nothing Quotes
25 Henry Shukman Quotes on Zen, Koans, Awakening, & More
Henry Shukman Quotes on Zen & Koans
“What ‘Zen’ really means is a deep path of existential training—a way of coming to experience life in a different way that’s so much richer and so much wider, where in any moment you can come back to here and now … The deeper side of it is the study of who am I? What is this experience I’m having right now?” — Henry Shukman
“The key thing being transmitted is not cultural trappings, instead it’s looking into the core of a human being and seeing what we really are.” — Henry Shukman
“The Zen form of Buddhism is a meditation form of Buddhism meaning that it’s not so interested in scripture, it’s not so interested in doctrinal study, it’s not so interested in ritual, it’s not so interested in what we might regard as forms of worship. It’s interested in the practice of meditation.” — Henry Shukman
“We hope to be consciously practicing all the time. We realize that it’s not just on the cushion. We could call it a cultivating of a state of deeper awareness and to be able to bring that into all activities … There’s even more to realize, and there’s also the great project of really living what we realize, moment by moment, all the time.” — Henry Shukman
“Zen’s got this big emphasis on ordinary life. There’s one koan that says, ‘Ordinary mind is the Way.’” — Henry Shukman
Henry Shukman Quotes on Inquiry & Awakening
“That’s the big matter: what is our life about? I found myself. I found who I really am. I found a kind of answer. Home. Peace. Love.” — Henry Shukman
“What we awaken to when we awaken: finding we’re part of everything, finding in some sense it’s all empty, finding that it’s all arising right now, that we’re inseparable from it, and all creatures and all creation is participating in it.” — Henry Shukman
“Human living is the arena for awakening to happen … We’re human in order to awaken, but we awaken in order to be human. After awakening, or as we get clearer and clearer in the process of awakening, we must live our human side ever more fully, and ever more helpfully, and ever less harmingly.” — Henry Shukman
“What happens in a moment of awakening is this shift where you discover something that had been going on all along anyway that you just hadn’t noticed.” — Henry Shukman
“I just saw, ‘Oh my god, I’m not anybody. There’s no one here’ … This ‘me’ that I’ve taken myself to be doesn’t actually exist and never has.” — Henry Shukman
Henry Shukman Quotes on Peace & Happiness
“If happiness is conditional, it’s not really happiness.” — Henry Shukman
“The fundamental existence is available to us all the time, so that’s where the unconditional well-being is to be found.” — Henry Shukman
“It’s about letting go, it’s about trusting, it’s about less effort.” — Henry Shukman
“It’s finding through a kind of effortlessness that we we don’t need all those efforts. It’s actually always here. We’re always living in a kind of infinite support.” — Henry Shukman
“Out of the state of rest, a deeper, clearer awareness emerges by itself … We could almost call it a rest from the project of being human.” — Henry Shukman
Henry Shukman Quotes on Separate & Inseparable
“We discover that we are utterly inseparable.” — Henry Shukman
“The self that defines itself by separation is only a self because it’s not all other things. That is its definitional condition.” — Henry Shukman
“All we’re doing is just releasing, we’re just letting go. We got this kind of like a coagulation or a contraction into this sense of self that’s separate, and we’re just releasing it. When it releases, we see, ‘Whoa, it was never really here—not the way I thought. It just invented itself and believed in itself, and we just release.” — Henry Shukman
“What we find we are is inseparable—total inseparableness.” — Henry Shukman
“In a nutshell, I found that I wasn’t just sort of part of everything—like a part within a whole—I just was the whole. What I really was, was not this separate sense of being a ‘me’ … I found that I wasn’t who I thought I was. I wasn’t this sort of separate being. I was everything. There was one whole that included everything, and that’s what I was—and the ordinary ‘me’ was gone.” — Henry Shukman
Henry Shukman Quotes on Everything & Nothing
“I just was everything, and what that everything was, was kind of also somehow empty.” — Henry Shukman
“Everything is present, and nothing is left out. We find that we’re so easily just home with everything.” — Henry Shukman
“Everything is actually nothing, but that nothing is very busy all the time making everything, being everything.” — Henry Shukman
“Everything is in fact singular—all the multiplicity phenomena are all one, and we are part of that one.” — Henry Shukman
“Add nothing. Just sit and watch.” — Henry Shukman
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