2023 Program
Starts March 5
A Full Year of Mindfulness, meditation, and community with Original Love
Original Love is a new approach to the ancient path of meditation.
Join us for the one year and take a continuous journey of healing, growth and awakening. Through finding the intrinsic lovingness, energy, peace and joy that are already within you, you can grow as a more clear-sighted and open-hearted being.
Henry Shukman, Zen Master in the Sanbo Zen lineage, mindfulness teacher and Original Love founder, will guide you through the program based on trainings that cultivate increased self-love, care for others and this world, and opening to nondual awakening.
What the Original Love program includes:
1-year Access
5 four-week Courses
5 one-day Retreats
56 Guided Meditations
Cohort Communities
Attend Courses live online or access recordings to fit your schedule.
Course 1: Royal Road of Breath Awareness
Explore and deepen our experience of the breath including how to rest in mindfulness of breath; taste the support of breath more intimately; find flow and more
- 4 week course: Sundays March 5, 12, 19, 26, 10am – 12pm MT
- Daylong workshop retreat: Sunday, April 2, times TBD
Course 2: Clouds, Rivers, Lakes and Sea
How our heartaches and heartbreaks can offer a rain that nourishes our practice and life, and that opens us to new loving perspectives.
- 4 week course: Sundays April 30, May 7, 14, 21, 10am – 12pm MT
- Daylong workshop retreat: Sunday, May 28, times TBD
Course 3: In the Midst of All Things
Start to rest into being held by all experience, then into becoming absorbed in it, and finally dissolving into a selfless space in which all things are present.
- 4 week course: Sundays June 18, 25, July 2, 9, 10am – 12pm MT
- Daylong workshop retreat: Sunday, July 16, 2023, times TBD
Course 4: Presence: the Heart of Stillness
Open to a sense of presence and to rest in it. This presence helps us to be aware of sense-experience here and now and relieves us of the burden of effort in meditation.
- 4 week course: Sundays, August 20, 27, September 3, 10, 10am – 12pm MT
Course 5: One Bright Pearl
Sit directly with the wisdom of Zen, in which all four dimensions of the Original Love program are manifest.
- 4 week course: Sundays October 8, 15, 22, 29, 10am – 12pm MT
- Weekend workshop retreat: Saturday & Sunday, November 4 & 5, times TBD
Guided
Meditations
Henry’s guided meditations are a powerful highlight for many students, helping to gently open the doorway to an experiential understanding of the course material. Henry offers longer guided sits during each course session and daylong retreat, and during each course, Henry will be sending out audio guided meditations to enhance your experience of that week’s teachings.
4 Week Courses
Sunday Mornings
The mainstay of the Original Love One-Year program is its Sunday sessions where Henry offers a longer guided sit, followed by a talk on a range of meditation topics, ending with some Q&A time. Many participants find these Sunday mornings over the course of the year to be a soothing and grounding touchpoint as they develop their practice.
Exceptional Guest
Teachers
Through the year, to enhance your learning on particular topics, Henry will occasionally be inviting guest teachers. These teachers will bring their deep expertise and meditative insights about particular topics to the 6 week courses and weekends. Teachers this year are likely to include Rick Hanson, Ph.D., Natalie Goldberg, and a handful of others.
More about Henry Shukman, Sanbo Zen Master
“Our basic nature is loving. It’s tender. When we awaken, we are coming back to this original loving nature.”
Henry is a teacher in the Sanbo Zen lineage and has trained in various other meditation schools and practices. After a spontaneous spiritual awakening at the age of 19, he embarked on a journey of healing and deeper awakening, guided by John Gaynor, Joan Rieck, Ruben Habito, and Yamada Roshi, international abbot of Sanbo Zen, who appointed him a Zen teacher
Henry has taught meditation at Google, Harvard Business School, UBS, Esalen Institute, and many other venues. Henry is the spiritual director of the Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico and author of One Blade of Grass: Finding the Old Road of the Heart, A Zen Memoir.
Henry Has Been Featured In:
What people are saying about Original Love:
“I felt as if the year long program was laid out beautifully, like stepping stones across a pond. Original Love is not only the name of this program, but it is what you will come to know intimately if you participate.”
“My life is infinitely richer from this year long course. It’s as if I have come back to myself, my home within. With each course, I felt that I always had an opening, and deepened my clarity and ease. Henry always touches on my present moment awareness and reminds me of our greater consciousness, our connectedness..”
How To Join
Annual Program
$1,250
- 1-Year Access
- 5 one-day Retreats
- All 5 four-week Courses
- 56 Guided Meditations
- Cohort Communities
Single Course
$175
- 1 four-week Course: Royal Road of Breath Awareness – Starts March 5
- 4 Guided Meditations
“Keep sitting. Don’t let up. This is the deepest work. And let’s open our hearts to how we express what we find in our sitting in more and more helpful ways.”
– Henry Shukman, Sanbo Zen Master
More about Original Love
Original Love is a new approach to the ancient path of meditation. It is a broad meditation training based primarily on traditional teachings of Zen and Early Buddhism.
Through finding the intrinsic lovingness, energy, peace and joy that are always already within us, even if they sometimes feel hidden, we can grow as more clear-sighted and open-hearted beings. Gradually, and sometimes suddenly, through shared practice, we start to catch glimpses of the “original love” that is always here.
While this program can serve for many as a complete training in itself, it can also serve as an on-ramp for Zen koan training.
2023 One-Year Program Schedule:
(All courses and retreats are online only. They’ll be recorded, and you’ll be able to access them if you can’t attend live.)
Royal Road of Breath Awareness
- 4 week course: Sundays March 5, 12, 19, 26, 10am – 12pm MT
- Daylong workshop retreat: Sunday, April 2, times 10am – 3pm MT
Clouds, Rivers, Lakes and Sea
- 4 week course: Sundays April 30, May 7, 14, 21, 10am – 12pm MT
- Daylong workshop retreat: Sunday, May 28, times 10am – 3pm MT
In the Midst of All Things
- 4 week course: Sundays June 18, 25, July 2, 9, 10am – 12pm MT
- Daylong workshop retreat: Sunday, July 16, 2023, 10am – 3pm MT
Presence: the Heart of Stillness
- 4 week course: Sundays, August 20, 27, September 3, 10, 10am – 12pm MT
One Bright Pearl
- 4 week course: Sundays October 8, 15, 22, 29, 10am – 12pm MT
- Weekend workshop retreat: Saturday & Sunday, November 4 & 5, 10am – 3pm MT
A Special Opportunity in 2023
Henry is offering a special Original Love Mindfulness Facilitator Training in 2023. This training includes everything in the One-Year Program, plus a vast array of support for deepening into the role and skillset of being a mindfulness facilitator. Please visit the Mindfulness Facilitator Training page for more information.
Pricing
- $1250 if you’d like to pay for the program in one installment.
- $1350 if you’d like to pay in 6 monthly installments of $225. This option is available via Paypal. Please contact Jeremy if you need help with this.
- $1950 if you’d like to contribute $700 to our scholarship fund for those needing financial assistance
Scholarships
We believe meditation is a birthright. We don’t want anyone not taking our program for lack of funds or other financial hardship. We have scholarships at different levels available for those who need one. Please contact Jeremy with a brief message explaining your situation, and we’ll respond promptly.