One Blade of Grass

Henry Shukman's is the second 'dharma autobiography' that I've read (counting Adyashanti's The End of Your World in this genre).  As befits a guy who was a professional writer before he became the main teacher at Mountain Cloud Zen Center, Shukman's book is a true memoir, not merely the collection of personal stories and anecdotes that he uses in his teaching.  Likewise befitting a writer, it is not only exceptionally literate, but often downright poetic.  

It's also immensely encouraging.  Shukman paints himself as just your basic neurotic Englishman.  His life was that unremarkable mix of privilege and suffering that characterize most of our lives in the gods realm.  The implicit (and even explicit) message is that if he can do it, anyone can.  What exactly he did, of course, remains a bit of a mystery.  He gives poetic expression to a series of mystical experiences that he interprets as glimpses of some true reality.  However, after 20 years of practice, these seem to culminate in a profound and abiding awakening experience that no longer makes any distinction between true and apparent reality.  While his description of the 'endpoint' does little to clear up what 'enlightenment' (a term Shukman pointedly denies knowing anything about) might be like, it is nevertheless fascinating to hear him try to match words to his experiences.  

Probably even more interesting than the endpoint is Shukman's description of the path that led him there.  Even though I had understood his Sanbo Zen lineage to be a combination of Soto and Rinzai Zen his practice seems to have focused mostly on koan training.  Since this is the first account I've read that includes a complete description of how koan training works, I found it fascinating.  While I can hardly claim to really understand what's going on, what struck me most about his account of the process was the sense that the important thing in a koan was observing the way your mind moves in search of a 'solution'.  It's as if the koan is a sort of force that pushes on you, and the method is to observe your own reaction to this force.  In this light, the interview with the teacher that Shukman insists is a core component of koan training becomes an interesting variation on our normal idea of communication.  Instead of transmitting fixed knowledge from student to teacher, perhaps the 'presentation' shows the teacher whether the student has followed the movement of the koan, has seen how it operates on their self.  The exact 'solution' would then be irrelevant, and the answer could only come in the form of another koan that manifests the same movement.