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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  • Message From Henry: Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction

    MCZCAugust 5, 20153 min read

    In the end the world becomes too dry and narrow under the rule of the self – hence we are driven to blow open the prison door. Just coming back again and again to the one thing that is surely here and now – the in-breath, the out-breath. Learning to settle more and more in the reality of here and now. We get lost in labyrinths of the mind, in what Buddha called prapanca, or mental...

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  • Zen and the Art of… Art

    MCZCAugust 3, 20157 min read

    Zen art suggests a new way of seeing, a new way of being, that cuts to the core of what it means to be fully human and fully alive. -- John Daido Loori Sesshu Toyo (1420-1506) -this is an example of a Zen landscape done during the Muromachi period. Sesshu trained as a professional painter in China and returned to Japan as a professional painter. Ever since Robert Persig’s 1974 iconic novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle...

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  • When Heaven Meets Heart

    MCZCAugust 1, 20151 min read

    “When heaven meets heart a flower blooms unborn and undying it lives with a care till it turns the heard towards the ground and bows in gratitude” Photo and poem by Rosa Bellino, used with her permission

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  • Message from Henry: A Little Reflection on Zen History

    MCZCJuly 31, 20154 min read

    Dogen said, “Practice is enlightenment; enlightenment is practice.” Tahui said: “There never was any delusion, nor any realization.” These statements are completely clear, yet we shouldn’t mistake what they mean. They are speaking from the perspective of complete awakening. Outside of that point of view, what they’re saying does not make sense. In a sense, there is a kind of dividing line right at this point between Soto Zen and Rinzai Zen. Soto, following Dogen, says: just sit;...

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  • Case 7 Book of Equanimity. Master Yakusan Ascends the Rostrum, Part 1 of 2

    MCZCJuly 30, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In this teisho, Henry helps us on our journey of letting go of ourselves by introducing us to great Master Yakusan’s “speciality.” Henry explores the true path of Zen and probes the question: What is this existence? Yakusan’s noble silence in the koan offers an infinite, supreme and endless answer to this question. Post Image Credit: Anzio by Moyan Brenn, CC BY 2.0. Featured Image Credit: Zen Stone Garden, by t_s_l, CCO Public Domain...

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  • Message from Henry: Thoughts on Zen Training

    MCZCJuly 29, 20154 min read

    To be on that path is enough. If we try to hurry it, we only slow it down. The awakening experience that Zen recognizes is not one where we check out from this world. Rather, we see into the nature of this world composed of self and other, just as it is. As we come closer to the nature of things as they are, we discover them to be more than we had previously thought. Or...

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  • Real

    MCZCJuly 27, 20153 min read

    The purpose of this training is in fact to lead us to a sudden clear recognition of reality. Zazen is many things: here is another... It allows us space in which to explore other ways of experiencing difficult feelings than our normal strategies. Typically most of us first try one of two things to deal with difficult feelings—either to fix whatever we deem to be causing them, or if that doesn’t work or isn’t possible or available,...

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  • Light and Dark: Koans and Dreams, Part 4 of 4

    MCZCJuly 25, 20154 min read

    Whatever is the way to wholeness, to healing, to true helpfulness for ourselves and others, it surely cannot ignore suffering, any more than it can ignore illumination by unnameable love. Click to read Light and Dark: Koans and Zen Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 Is There a Difference? The way I see it now, that experience could not have happened, or would have taken much longer to happen, had I not done the emotional healing of...

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  • Case 6 Book of Equanimity. Master Baso’s Black and White

    MCZCJuly 23, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Henry examines this fascinating koan in which a monk asks Master Baso, “What is the meaning of Bodhidharma’s coming from the West?” or, more specifically, what did Bodhidharma really hope we would discover when he brought the Zen meditation school from India to China?  The talk briefly examines the “4 Propositions” and “100 Negations” of Buddhist philosophy, which are mentioned in the koan, and gives us some background on the characters in the case,...

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  • Message from Henry: What is This?

    MCZCJuly 21, 20152 min read

    This never tires. This never hurts. This could never lack, or own, or want, or desire, or feel. Yet this, though it has nothing, is always fulfilled, as Dogen said. WHAT IS THIS? This has no time. This has no place. This has no words. This has no characteristics at all. Anything that comes into this, dissolves and evaporates – like a snowflake in a furnace, as Kakuan said of the eighth ox-herding picture. This is reality. This is home. This is...

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  • The Dharma

    MCZCJuly 20, 20152 min read

    Once there is even a small hole, the Dharma can start to seep through. At first it’s not evident to us. We can conceive of it intellectually—it’s the Buddha’s teaching, it’s the law of cause and effect, it’s all phenomena—but not truly experience it as a living fact. For that to happen, apparently we have to drop our bodies and minds, as Dogen puts it. All we ever knew has to fall away, as Kyogen said....

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  • Light and Dark: Koans and Dreams, Part 3 of 4

    MCZCJuly 18, 20159 min read

    Yet all this – kensho, koan training, deep awakening, and so on – is only one side of the practice. Zen training opens up space for another side too, less dramatic but equally important. Click to read Light and Dark: Koans and Dreams, Part 1 and Part 2. Koans and Dreams: Zen and Psychotherapy What is the sound of one hand? What is your original face before your parents were born? Why has the bearded Bodhidharma no...

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  • Case 4 Book of Equanimity. The World-honored One Points to the Ground

    MCZCJuly 16, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Henry presents this simple koan about the Buddha, Indra and the building of a temple. This talk explores how something as simple as a piece of straw can illuminate infinite abundance, ultimate reality. Henry quotes from Sri Nisargadatta, from the 17th Century English cleric Thomas Traherne, and from Master Bansho to expose what Bansho calls “the fundamental matter.” Henry shows that to clarify who we really are, to see the fundamental point of our...

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  • Message from Henry: Gift of Practice

    MCZCJuly 15, 20153 min read

    This is all part of the gift of practice: that its fruits and wisdom are tasted only in the doing, only in the actual experience of practice. I’ve heard sesshin called the heart of Zen training. Whether it is or not, it’s like a musical score that has been handed down to us by generations of ancestors. It doesn’t live on paper, but by practitioners stepping in and playing their parts, and thus making it actual....

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