Teachings
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A Very Impressive Gentleman, by Guy Zimmerman
September 21, 20158 min read
Seeing Gotama so deeply engaged with the radical contingency of his time and place underscores how dogma will not help us – we must engage with experience breath by breath. Reading Stephen Batchelor’s Confession of a Buddhist Atheist is likely to have an irreversible impact on your image of the historical Buddha. Far from a demi-god who woke up one day beneath the Bodhi tree and lived out his life in an alternate universe defined by...
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A Universe Struggling to Become Aware? by David Loy
September 19, 20154 min read
Is my desire to awaken... the urge of the cosmos to become aware of itself, in and as me? "God" is one way of trying to say something very important, something that ultimately cannot be captured in words. So we can't avoid metaphors, but the idea of God as heavenly Father -- as an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving Creator who wants us to behave in certain ways, who rewards us if we do, and who punishes us...
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Case 15 Book of Equanimity, Kyozan Thrusts his Hoe into the Ground
September 17, 20151 min read
Episode Description: This koan explores the key question: Where have you come from? Henry gives background anecdotes on the two characters in this koan, Isan and Kyozan, then startlingly describes a koan as an “affront to our humanity,” and the reality uncovered through Zen practice as “an intrusion on our experience.” Methodical and persistent Zen training, however, takes this experience and slowly refines, integrates and stabilizes it as our lived reality. Practice is much more...
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Spiritual Discourses from the Mountains and Water
September 15, 20151 min read
“Generally speaking, we say that mountains belong to some country or region, but it is to those who love mountains that they really belong. Invariably, when a mountain loves its Host, the lofty virtues of the saintly and wise enter the mountain. When those who are saintly and wise dwell in the mountains, the mountains belong to them; as a result, the trees grow luxuriant and boulders abound, the birds are wondrous and the animals are surpassing fine. This is because they are...
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A Meditation on Impermanence, by Guy Zimmerman
September 14, 20158 min read
It’s not uncommon for me to complete the sequence of meditations and discover I have left one out – it is always the death meditation. While I know I will die, I still don’t believe it... Like pharaonic retainers the passengers leaving the Swissair terminal ahead of the Yellow Man seemed to convey all his worldly possessions into the vast crypt of the LA basin, where he had descended to breathe his last. Out walked American...
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Thoughts about Practice: Finding the Dharma
September 11, 20151 min read
If you want to hear the Dharma, just listen: it is always being spoken with perfect precision... It is all the sounds we can hear. If you want to see it, just look: it is always being shown to us with perfect clarity, in all we see. So to find who we are, all we need to do is listen, and look. Everything is the voice of the Dharma. As Dogen said, if there is...
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Updates from Japan and Why we practice Zen
September 10, 20151 min read
Episode Description: Henry talks about his trip to Japan in May and its exciting and relevant connection to Mountain Cloud’s history and future. Henry went to Japan with a film crew making a documentary about Sanbo Zen. His visit also included meetings with Ryoun Roshi, Sanbo Zen Abbot, and discussion about Mountain Cloud’s particular role in delivering Zen’s teachings to the United States. In addition to describing his travels, Henry digs into the dharma by...
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Along the Stream, Doing Nothing, by Guy Zimmerman
September 7, 20158 min read
Insight arrives through an act of not-doing rather than through an effort of will, in other words, as if the insight were already there, beneath the hyper-active operations of the self Of fascination and its opposite Behind the house in New Hampshire where we lived when I was young there was a steep, overgrown hillside, and, at the bottom of the hillside, a wide parking lot. Marking the far end of the lot a stream curved and...
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Mountains and Waters
September 6, 20151 min read
Mountains and waters right now are the actualization of the ancient Buddha way. Each, abiding in its phenomenal expression, realizes completeness. Because mountains and waters have been active since before the Empty Eon, they are alive at this moment. Because they have been the self since before form arose they are emancipation realization. * * * Sansui-Kyo - Mountains and Waters Sutra by Eihei Dogen Zenji Image and creation by Rosa Bellino
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Thoughts about Practice: Non-abiding
September 5, 20152 min read
...thoughts are not unimportant, but they’re not so important; feelings are not unimportant, but they’re not so important. -Dogen Our minds ordinarily are always “going somewhere”, aiming for something then digging in and attaching themselves to it. Some masters speak of “non-abiding mind” – a mind that doesn’t seek an object to attach itself to. We could equally call it a mind that doesn’t go anywhere. Mind that rests. That stays still and watches; it lets things...
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Case 12, Book of Equanimity. Jizo plants the rice field
September 3, 20151 min read
Episode Description: Henry opens this teisho with a lovely look at the gift of the five precepts. He then provides an evocative exploration of the koan, “Jizo Plants the Rice Field”. We examine the core Zen question, “Where have you come from?” as the discussion moves onto various views about the “Three Worlds” of desire, form and no-form, ending with the Mahayana view that all these “three worlds” are inherently illusory. Yet the Bodhisattva ideal is...
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