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...

    Read more
  • Enter…the Bodhisattva, Part 2 of 2

    MCZCMay 4, 20155 min read

    Is there something specific within the Buddhist tradition that can bring these two types of transformation together in a new model of activism connecting inner and outer practice? Enter...the bodhisattva. Click to read Enter...the Bodhisattva, Part 1. According to the traditional definition, the bodhisattva chooses not to enter the state of perfect peace, nirvana, but instead remains in samsara, cyclic existence, to help all sentient beings end their suffering and reach enlightenment. Instead of asking, “How can I...

    Read more
  • Enter…the Bodhisattva, Part 1 of 2

    MCZCMay 2, 20154 min read

    ...when we do not acknowledge the importance of individual transformation, social transformation is repeatedly subverted by powerful elites taking selfish advantage of their position. David Loy on why the bodhisattva ideal is what the world needs now. Unless you're on a long retreat in a Himalayan cave, it’s becoming more difficult to overlook the fact that our world is beset by interacting ecological, economic, and social crises. Climate breakdown, species extinction, a dysfunctional economic system, corporate domination...

    Read more
  • What Really Matters?

    MCZCApril 30, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In this teisho given on New Years Day, Henry peels back layers of the central question: "What really matters?" exploring other enquiries along the way -- What is the grave matter of life and death? What realization can occur when patterned ways of perceiving fall away? Who am I? Henry relates a parable from the Lotus Sutra about an orphaned child from a wealthy home who learns who he really is, and shows...

    Listen to the talk
  • Message from Henry: Culture of Awakening

    MCZCApril 29, 20154 min read

    Zen only sets up simple conditions that invite us to examine or truly taste our own experience—what is this consciousness, what is this human body, what is this seeing, hearing, feeling, breathing, thinking? If we had seen incontrovertibly and for ourselves that everything was part of us; and that our sense of being a self bounded by a bag of skin in opposition to all else – if that view had become a distant memory, and been replaced...

    Read more
  • Toward a New Buddhist Story: Part 3 of 3

    MCZCApril 27, 20153 min read

    We who have language assume we are superior to animals. In fact, our linguistic representations of the world are superior to the world itself, since they can control it. Ironically, the sense of a self that uses language is itself an artefact of language—a linguistic construct   Click to Read Toward a New Buddhist Story Part 1 and Part 2 Transcending transcendence There is another aspect of maya that is more relevant today: it can also be translated as...

    Read more
  • Toward a New Buddhist Story: Part 2 of 3

    MCZCApril 25, 20154 min read

    What is called for now is not people seeking to transcend this world but people who take responsibility for its well-being. Click to Read A New Buddhist Story: Part 1 The Axial Age & Cosmological Dualism The German philosopher Karl Jaspers popularized the idea of an Axial Age (800-200 BCE). He believed that during that period the spiritual foundations of humanity (upon which we still subsist today) were laid independently in China, India, Persia, Judea, and Greece. This...

    Read more
  • Blue Cliff Record Case 12: Three Pounds of Flax

    MCZCApril 23, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In this personal discussion of Blue Cliff Record case 12, Henry talks about death, the eternality of time and the limits of rationality. We learn that failure and loss are necessary and that only through the process of non-rational experience can true opening occur. Henry shares two loving and poignant poems that he wrote for his father’s funeral. Image Credit: Life + Death, by Hartwig HKD, CC BY-ND 2.0. Featured Image Credit: It's About Time, by Steve...

    Listen to the talk
  • Message from Henry: Fruits and Lessons

    MCZCApril 22, 20153 min read

    A fresh take on the Three Fruits of Zen and Three Lessons from Death First fruit: Soothing, calming, quieting the constant chatter of the mind that produces storms of feeling in the body, which tend to make us act out of priorities other than generosity -- becoming clearer and freer of all that weather. Therefore being able to experience the immediate without so much filtering and distortion and distraction. Being present for our life, without needing to judge,...

    Read more
  • Toward A New Buddhist Story: Part 1 of 3

    MCZCApril 20, 20154 min read

    Is a new Buddhist story beginning to develop out of the interaction between Buddhism and the modern world? Both need such a new story. It’s not only a matter of seeing the problems with modernity: we need to become aware of the difficulties with traditional Buddhist worldviews as well. Anyone who is paying attention knows that we are living in a time of crisis—most obviously, severe ecological and economic challenges. They are interconnected: an economy based...

    Read more
  • The Unfamiliar Familiar: Part 6 of 6

    MCZCApril 17, 20156 min read

    ...the koan’s purpose is to see things from buddhanature’s point of view, as it were, rather than instill an idea about it from our own point of view. Click here to read the Unfamiliar Familiar Part1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. When we come to the Zen koans, we find a tradition in full engagement with the workings of defamiliarization in a most direct and compelling way. In a famous case from...

    Read more
  • Blue Cliff Record Case 14, A Preaching in Accordance

    MCZCApril 16, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Henry probes the big question a monk asks of Unmon: “What are the periods and teachings of the whole lifetime of Shakyamuni? Unmon answers, “A preaching in accordance.” Henry explores the single fact demonstrated in this Blue Cliff Record case. We learn that the master’s work is to be in accordance with the student’s need and, at the same time, to cut off the student’s stream of delusion. Listen to this lofty and...

    Listen to the talk
  • Message from Henry: Just Sitting

    MCZCApril 15, 20154 min read

    How remarkable that thousands of years ago just through sitting still and observing their own process of being, people realized what modern science is just beginning to discover – that all existence is one single never-ending process made out of nothing A brief but thorough lesson in shikantaza, or “just sitting,” from Master Yakusan: Sekito found his student Yakusan sitting in the zendo. “What are you doing?” he asked. Yakusan said: “I’m not doing anything.” Sekito said: “So you’re just...

    Read more
  • The Unfamiliar Familiar: Part 5 of 6

    MCZCApril 13, 20153 min read

     ...we surely know that to be alive among things is a gift; yet it’s a gift we so often fail to unwrap. Click here to read the Unfamiliar Familiar Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Shklovsky regarded the slowing down of perception as one of the purposes of defamiliarization. By making us work harder the artist slows our perception to the point of making it nonautomatic. Like Rain it sounded till it curved And then...

    Read more
  • Karma: Fate or Freedom

    MCZCApril 11, 20154 min read

    Yet karma is not something the self has; rather, it is what the sense of self is, because one’s sense of self is transformed by one’s conscious choices. Many Buddhist teachings seem quite modern in their emphasis on such things as impermanence and interdependence (evolution, ecology), insubstantiality (physics), and the deceptions of language (philosophy). Yet the same cannot be said for karma, which points to an inexorable moral law built into the cosmos. This doesn’t mean...

    Read more
footer support banner image

Support Mountain Cloud

You can show your gratitude for Mountain Cloud events, retreats, podcasts and other teachings by making a one-time gift, or by becoming a supporting member.

Donate to Mountain Cloud Become a Member