Teachings

  • Message from Valerie: An Invitation to Serve

    Valerie ForstmanJanuary 25, 20232 min read

    Mountain Cloud sangha members are currently coming together once each month to prepare and serve a delicious meal at the Interfaith Shelter, known as Pete’s Place, here in Santa Fe. For members interested in further engagement with vulnerable segments of our community, we have an opportunity to serve with fellow practitioners in Upaya’s Street Ministry project.  Upaya’s Street Ministry focuses on supporting member’s of Santa Fe’s community who are experiencing homelessness. Volunteers in the Street Ministry not only...

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  • How does an Awakened Person Perceive the World, Part 4 of 4

    MCZCAugust 31, 20157 min read

    I came to realize clearly that mind is nothing other than rivers and mountains and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars. -Dogen Click to read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of David Loy's How does an Awakened Person Perceive the World? Nonduality Traherne’s account builds upon itself, becoming more moving and profound, until it reaches a climax: “The streets were mine, the temple was mine, the people were mine, their...

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  • Thoughts about Practice: Mu

    MCZCAugust 29, 20151 min read

    The idea seems deep in our culture that “eternity” is vast and somehow distant...that it stretches away from us. But what if it’s the reverse, and it reaches not away but toward us, it presses ever closer to us, and our part is to let in?         This is Mu and what Mu does. We seem to be virtually impregnable to it, like a fortress. But all that is holding it out, and all that we are...

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  • Case 11, Book of Equanimity. Unmon’s Two Sicknesses

    MCZCAugust 27, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Henry explicates Master’s Unmon’s teaching on the “Two Sicknesses.” Learn about Master Unmon’s early practice and awakening under the two masters Bokushu and Seppo. Find out how Unmon’s “two sicknesses” are actually four diseases, which give us a kind of road-map of training in meditation. Henry correlates these sicknesses with the famous Zen Ox-herding pictures, and shows how Master Unmon’s profound teaching is pointing us toward “traceless enlightenment.” Post Image Credit:  Enlightenment , by Hartwig HKD,...

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  • How does an Awakened Person Perceive the World? Part 3 of 4

    MCZCAugust 24, 20154 min read

    If the doors of perception were cleans’d, everything would be seen as it really is, infinite.  -William Blake Although form is not other than emptiness, it’s also true that emptiness not other than form.  -Heart Sutra Read Part 1 and Part 2 of David Loy's, How does an Awakened Person Perceived the World? Emptiness   “Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day, and something infinite behind everything appeared…” Traherne does not mention God, except at the very end...

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  • Progress / Regress

    MCZCAugust 22, 20152 min read

    ...this Way is a path: every moment is a path. One of the marvels of the Zen way is that you can actually never regress on the path. You can’t lose ground. You can’t fall back or drop back or reverse the progress. But it can surely feel like it. We could look at this two ways... First, whatever is arising at any moment is always the path itself, the Way. How could there be such as thing...

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  • Think Not-thinking

    MCZCAugust 20, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Henry shares some thoughts on Yakusan's famous dialogue on meditation. A monk asks, “What do you think about when you meditate?” Yakusan answers, “Think not-thinking.” Henry relates this to master Dogen’s own profound awakening, in which he experienced “body and mind falling away,” and to the many writings and teachings that flowed from this life-resolving experience. Henry then turns to the Stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius’s writings on peace of mind, and shows how...

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  • Message from Henry: Master Hyakujo

    MCZCAugust 19, 20154 min read

    We might choose to follow the example of the Little Prince in Saint-Exupéry’s famous book, who cared for just one thing, one plant, and found all life’s meaning in it. Great Master Hyakujo – Hyakujo meaning “100 Fathom Cliff” – a towering verticality of a human being, a man whose core was a mineshaft plunging infinitely downward and a cliff-face looming up into empty sky, a man so simple that when he took a step the...

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  • How does an Awakened Person Perceive the World? Part 2 of 4

    MCZCAugust 17, 20154 min read

    Eternity was manifest in the Light of the Day…  -Traherne Click here to read Part 1 of David Loy's exploration, How does an Awakened Person Perceive the World? Light and Ecstasy The world that Traherne describes is incredibly beautiful and blissful. The trees ‘transported and ravished’ him, their unusual beauty made his heart leap ‘and almost mad with ecstasy.’ And he is specific about the nature of that loveliness, referring again and again to the luminosity of things:...

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  • Contingent Arising

    MCZCAugust 15, 20152 min read

    ... we are nothing but this very moment arising. As kids, our parents’ lives seem to us so solid and established – the jobs, the house, the routines. Personally, much of my earlier adulthood I was waiting for that kind of a sense of solidity to arrive in my own life, especially once we had kids of our own. Why didn’t it come? Now it seems clearer that all people’s lives are contingent, and it’s only the...

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  • Zen: A Long Hard Path

    MCZCAugust 13, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In this talk, Henry explores the dedication required for long term Zen practice. He quotes Rilke’s words, “Everything in nature tries to become itself against all opposition,” and considers Gustav Mahler’s “Song of the Earth,” which centers around a set of Tang dynasty poems. Henry places Zen in the historical context of the Tang period in China, when many of the koans we study originated. The Tang period was culturally rich but also catastrophic,...

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  • Message from Henry: Five Skandhas

    MCZCAugust 12, 20153 min read

    When like and dislike do not arise, the Way stands clear.  - from the Shinjinmei These are the five “skandhas” or “aggregates”: matter or form (rupa), sensation or feeling (vedana), perception or recognition (sañña), mental formations or reactions (sankhara), consciousness (viññana). The five skandhas are not just basic elements of experience, but constitute stages in a process, according to early Buddhist psychology. Basically, they break down the process by which sensation leads to action. The purpose of this breakdown was or is...

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  • How does an Awakened Person Perceive the World? Part 1 of 4

    MCZCAugust 10, 20154 min read

    The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never should be reaped, nor was ever sown.  -Thomas Traherne David Loy explores the nature of reality, and ourselves, when we experience the world as it really is. How does an enlightened person perceive the world? Obviously, that’s an important question for non-dualists including Advaitins and Buddhists. ‘Waking up’ – attaining moksha or nirvana, experiencing satori, realizing your true nature, etc. – is the ultimate goal for both, and we naturally...

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  • What Matters Most

    MCZCAugust 8, 20152 min read

    All Zen asks of us is that we become quiet and still with ourselves, and find out who we really are. I would like to urge each of you to look into your heart and ask yourself what matters most in this brief span of years we have been granted. It won’t be long before each of us is shuffling off this mortal coil… Some ancient worthies have said that only three questions really matter: 1. Who am...

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  • Case 7 Book of Equanimity. Master Yakusan Ascends the Rostrum, Part 2 of 2

    MCZCAugust 6, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: This talk continues with Case 7, “Yakusan Ascends the Rostrum,” exploring Yakusan’s own process of transformation. It begins by reflecting on how revolutionary Zen practice is -- an overturning of how we think things are. Yakusan offers a great example of how to proceed in this revolution: “Sit down and be silent.” Henry discusses how Zen lacks an object to venerate, unlike theistic religions with their deities. For Yakusan, the object of veneration is...

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