Henry Shukman Books

The essential meditation guide for the twenty-first century: renowned mindfulness teacher Henry Shukman replaces the concept of original sin with original love, teaching us to tap into the love that shapes our world and can transform who we are. An increasing number of people today feel disconnected, disengaged, and lonely. Many of us are seeking solace, beginning with ourselves. Original Love is the secular spiritual handbook we need to ease our troubles and find the highest possible happiness. Henry Shukman, spiritual director of Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, provides a way forward based on four paths--Mindfulness, Support, Absorption, and Awakening--that promote growth and healing through meditation for practitioners of any level. And it works! Shukman includes inspiring stories from the students of his Original Love program that reveal how it has transformed their lives. Urgently needed, Original Love helps us create peace for ourselves and our times by reducing stress, anxiety, and depression; relaxing the mind and body; easing feelings of worry, regret, anger, and irritation; and improving decision-making and executive functioning. Finding a sense of love is a critical purpose of meditation. Finding your way back to the loving peace that lives at the center of things is Original Love.

Exploring the journey of a troubled youth discovering Zen wisdom, this book offers an engaging adventure that resonates with readers who may see themselves in the protagonist. It invites reflection on personal growth and the realization that one might be more advanced on their path than they initially believed. Through its narrative, the book serves as both a companion and a guide, encouraging readers to embrace their own journeys toward understanding and enlightenment.

A memoir of author and poet Henry Shukman's lifelong journey through Zen Buddhism and the experiences in his life - both positive and painful - that fuelled his quest.

Whatever the theme, though, these are all love poems: poems lucid with intensity, bright with the longing for love - both its fleeting rapture and its slow contentment - and Archangel is a book of great reach, power and beauty.

Invalided out of the army at barely twenty, Jackson Small returns to England traumatised by the violent death of his fellow soldier and blood-brother Connolly. Unable to settle and incapacitated by grief, Jackson sets off on a lunatic quest, back to the Peruvian jungle in search of something he cannot even be sure is real: the lost city of La Joya, the ancient capital of a vanished empire - a place of rare wonder once glimpsed by Connolly and never forgotten. The city is hidden in the cloud forest that hangs between the copper-green rivers of the Andes and the impenetrable jungle of Amazonia. The pilgrimage Jackson has to make to reach it will bring him into contact with worlds he has never before imagined: that of the American patriarch farming in the wilderness, a great-hearted native priest, and the love of his life. But the lethal green depths of the forest that hide La Joya turn out also to conceal other searchers, with motives far more sinister and complex than Jackson's. Gripping, vivid and hauntingly beautiful, The Lost City combines crystalline prose and psychological intensity in a narrative of perfect pitch and heart-stopping tension.

Exploring themes of identity and self-discovery, this debut collection features a diverse array of travelers whose journeys around the globe reflect their inner struggles. With a blend of psychological depth and dark humor, the characters navigate their complex lives, ultimately revealing the intricate relationship between their external adventures and internal uncertainties. Henry Shukman crafts a compelling narrative that resonates with anyone grappling with the quest for self-understanding.