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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  • Listening to the Voices of the Great Wide Earth, Part 3 of 3

    MCZCJuly 13, 20156 min read

    It is about undergoing a conversion of heart, so our whole life is seen from the perspective of mountains, rivers, and the great wide earth Read Listening to the Voices of Great Wide Earth, Part 1 and Part 2. The fourth point is important. “Change the way you consume”. Look at our lives from day to day. What are we eating, drinking? Where does that come from and how does that affect the circle of life? What...

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  • Mountains and Oceans

    MCZCJuly 12, 20151 min read

    Mountains and oceans have whole worlds of innumerable wondrous features. We should understand that it is not only our distant surroundings that are like this, but even what is right here, even a single drop of water. Dogen Zenji Photo and creation by Rosa Bellino, used with her permission

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  • Light and Dark: Koans and Dreams, Part 2 of 4

    MCZCJuly 11, 20154 min read

    Zen teaching is quite clear... the training is not about “transcending” the self but seeing clearly what the self is, seeing through it, and thus being free of it. Click to read Light and Dark: Koans and Dreams Part 1 The Buddha’s Awakening According to the Pali Canon, when Shakyamuni Buddha experienced his great awakening at the age of 35, it did not come about through grueling ascetic practices. Rather, after several years of mortifying his flesh...

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  • Case 3 Book of Equanimity. The Indian King Invites the Ancestor

    MCZCJuly 9, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In this talk, Henry explicates Case 3 in the Book of Equanimity koans, and explores the Buddhist “Middle Way.” This koan shows how Prajnatara’s teaching on sutras, “suchness” and breath exemplifies the Middle Way. (Prajnatara, Bodhidharma’s teacher, may well have been a female master, in spite of what the Zen tradition has said.) Henry describes how a life focused on either desire or self-mortification is profitless. He explores the “excluded middle” between these two...

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  • Listening to the Voices of the Great Wide Earth, Part 2 of 3

    MCZCJuly 7, 20156 min read

    How may I live my life realizing that the wounded world is my own true self, I am that, crying out in pain? Click to read Listening to the Voices of the Great Wide Earth, Part 1. Let me share some thoughts based on a posting I read, which summarizes the recommendations for a change of lifestyle following Pope Francis’ encyclical. The article, "Five eco-lifestyle changes the Pope wants you to make" offers five points laying out...

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  • Message from Henry: More on Kensho

    MCZCJuly 6, 20152 min read

    ..this whole solid world arises but in the act of doing so it is completely substanceless... real nothing, without even a trace of a witness to it: all gone. What actually happens in a moment of kensho? Experientially there are three phases – first the lightning strikes, in the suddenness known as “kachi ichige” in Japanese. The moment of surprise. Then there may be an impression formed of what was revealed: that all is one body;...

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  • Light and Dark: Koans and Dreams, Part 1 of 4

    MCZCJuly 4, 20157 min read

    A Moment of Awakening Many people first get into Zen by reading a book about it, or by meeting a Zen master, or from a general curiosity about meditation. For me it was different. One afternoon when I was nineteen years old I found myself alone on a beach. As I stared out at the water, I saw that it looked coal-black yet at the same time dazzingly bright, where the sunlight licked over it. I was...

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  • The Ecological Crisis: Can Buddhism Help? Reflection by David Loy

    MCZCJuly 3, 20152 min read

    "We are here to overcome the illusion of our separation." -- Thich Nhat Hanh   "I came to realize Weed seed puff clearly that mind is nothing other than mountains and rivers and the great wide earth, the sun and the moon and the stars. "  -- Dogen   Is the ecological crisis a larger version of our usual individual predicament, according to Buddhism? The Buddha emphasized the connection between dukkha - "suffering" in the broadest sense - and the delusion of...

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  • Case 2 Book of Equanimity, Bodhidharma’s Vast and Void

    MCZCJuly 2, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: This instructive teisho reviews Buddha’s earliest core teachings: The Four Noble Truths and The Three Marks of Existence. The Three Fires of greed, hatred and delusion mislead us, so we get caught in the Three Worlds of desire, form and no-form. Henry applies these early teachings directly to Case 2 of the Book of Equanimity in which Emperor Bu asks Bodhidharma, "What is the highest holiness?" Bodhidharma’s answer is “no holiness, only vast and...

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  • Message from Henry: Great Matter

    MCZCJune 30, 20152 min read

    We are all on the sesshin called life and death whether we are aware of it or not, and which we share with all beings, great and small. I used to hear about the “great matter” in Zen and tend to feel a bit afraid: oh no, not another thing I’m not attending to… and what is it anyway, this ominous “matter”? On the one hand, of course, the “great matter” is simply life and death: the...

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  • Listening to the Voices of the Great Wide Earth, Part 1 of 3

    MCZCJune 29, 20157 min read

    “I came to realize clearly that the mind is not other than mountains, rivers, the great wide earth, sun, moon, stars”.  -Dogen This is a passage from thirteenth century Zen Master Dōgen that triggered the awakening experience of my teacher, Koun Yamada. “I came to realize clearly that mind is no other than mountains, rivers, the great wide earth and everything in it” “Mind” here refers to no other than the True Self, my true self,...

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  • Tree of Wisdom

    MCZCJune 27, 20152 min read

    Oak and maple, palm and pine—trees are our closest neighbors and most patient teachers... on the common roots of people and trees. There is a cabin in the remote mountains of northern New Mexico that stands on the side of a steep, wooded ravine. It is hidden deep among the huge ponderosa pines that thrive in the high air. Near the cabin, one lone dead pine soars a hundred feet into the sky. It has been...

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  • Case 1 Book of Equanimity, The World Honored One Ascends the Rostrum

    MCZCJune 25, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: This teisho begins Henry’s journey through the Book of Equanimity. Case 1 shows the importance of just sitting, being still and quiet. Henry discusses Shakyamuni Buddha’s first teachings. He explores the teaching on dukkha (intrinsic dissatisfaction) and asks: Is there something in the core of ourselves that is intrinsically dissatisfied and dissatisfying? Henry then turns to Shakyamuni’s second teaching, on anatta—not self -- and provides some background introduction to the Book of Equanimity which...

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  • Message from Henry: Touching the Heart

    MCZCJune 24, 20154 min read

    In sesshin we are like rows of seeds planted in the loam of the teaching, partially shaded from the fiercest sun by the leaves of Buddha’s original tree, and watered by the presence of the community of fellow-sitters…  SESSHIN – TOUCHING THE HEART As practitioners we are in effect servants, or agents, of happiness. But it’s a fundamental, non-conditional kind of happiness we are talking about. So its path is not always easy. It will involve learning...

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