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: After Enlightenment, the Laundry

    MCZCMarch 18, 20155 min read

    The clarity is what matters. And clarity in Zen can only come from depth of experience. “After enlightenment, the laundry,” as one Zen proverb has it: whatever may happen in our practice, no matter what revelations may or may not befall us, we always trust our daily life to be our endless primary teacher. This very moment and its needs and demands and challenges – in a sense, how could this immediate reality be anything other...

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  • Pink Panther Practice

    MCZCMarch 16, 20154 min read

    Here’s what we can do: hand it all over to the Dharma, to the practice. This tangle is just too much. Please take it. I don’t know how popular the Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers were in the US in the 1970s, but in the UK they were big, and we couldn’t wait for the next one. We’d clamor and lobby to get our parents to take us to see even the re-runs when...

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  • Making the Buddha but Forgetting the Soul

    MCZCMarch 14, 20156 min read

    Let’s not overlook this: meeting the world, opening to beauty, living out of love rather than rigidity – this is the “soul” we might forget if we are too focused on practice on the cushion, and on the insights and experiences Zen can open up. Let’s not make Buddha but forget the soul. The last time I was in Germany I had the good fortune to open up an old issue of Kyosho, the magazine of...

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  • Blue Cliff Record 69, Nansen Draws a Circle

    MCZCMarch 12, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: This talk delineates the classic koan, Nansen Draws a Circle, Blue Cliff Record Case 69. Roshi Henry describes the brilliant craziness of this koan and draws on wisdom from Dogen’s Genjokoan. The talk explores both the substance and function of the “nameless fact” and concludes by describing Zen’s healing power. Image Credit:This Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image is from the user Chris 73 and is freely available here  under the creative commons cc-by-sa 3.0 license. Featured Image Credit:By Tangopaso (Own work) [Public domain],...

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  • Guest Message from Ruben Habito

    MCZCMarch 10, 20154 min read

    We...are called to an encounter with that which is both so close to us that we can't see it and so far away that we can never reach it. This week we have some words from Roshi Ruben Habito’s recent new book, Zen and the Spiritual Exercises. Ruben was educated within the Jesuit Order in the Philippines, then joined the order as a young man and was sent to Japan, where he found his way, via...

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  • Beautiful Storm: Part 3 of 3

    MCZCMarch 6, 20154 min read

    It seems too much to hope that right in the heart of our troubled selves there might actually be the healing we seek. Beautiful Storm: Finding the hidden remedies in our troubles selves Click to read Beautiful Storm Part 1 of 3. Click to read Beautiful Storm Part 2 of 3. In the course of that bright, rooftop morning in Puerto Rico—a morning touched by the sun’s benison after the ravages of the storm—sipping coffee and sharing stories, I...

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  • Blue Cliff Record 68, Kyozan and Your Name

    MCZCMarch 5, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Continuing with the Blue Cliff Record, Henry presents Case 68, Kyozan and Your Name. The talk explores the point of Zen and shows how each of us is born perfect and complete. Henry relates the experience of kensho or sudden realization and explores the idea of no separation, asking the question: Is there a me and a you?. Image Credit: Evalynn, by Ray Duma, CC By-SA 2.0, from flickr.com Featured Image Credit: Baby, by Galloo, CCO...

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  • Message from Henry: The Point of Practice

    MCZCMarch 4, 20154 min read

     All this existence is in fact nothing but practice. What’s the point of this practice? Well, we could say: it grants space for things to be imperfect. It helps us to let things be as they are, while at the same time energizing and clarifying our efforts to work on what needs our work. It gives us peace. We somehow learn that the imperfect state of everything is also perfect. Things like that. Beneficial things. New...

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  • Beautiful Storm: Part 2 of 3

    MCZCMarch 2, 20154 min read

    Beautiful Storm: Finding the hidden remedies in our troubled selves Click to read Beautiful Storm Part 1 of 3. San Emeterio’s story began in Cuba, the island where he was born and raised, and which he resolved to leave as a young man in 1972. He did so by swimming seven miles through the Caribbean on a moonless night, risking the possibility of encountering sharks or drowning, to come ashore in the American naval base at Guantanamo...

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  • Beautiful Storm: Part 1 of 3

    MCZCFebruary 28, 20154 min read

    The Kuna believe that a violent storm is a being that has lost its way, blundering about blindly, desperate to get its bearings once more. Beautiful Storm: Finding the hidden remedies in our troubled selves One night some 16 years ago, while on a writing assignment in Central America, I got caught by a violent storm in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The fronds of the palm trees along the shore were breaking apart and bending double like...

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  • Blue Cliff Record 67, Fu Daishi Expounds the Sutra

    MCZCFebruary 26, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: This compelling talk, given in our zendo under the light of the full moon, explores Case 67 of the Blue Cliff Record. In a hushed atmosphere, Roshi Henry talks about Fu Daishi’s surprising sutra presentation. We see that words and other symbols only point to reality, but are not the reality themselves. The talk includes wisdom from Harada Roshi and encourages resolute practice that uncovers unimagined treasures. Featured Image Credit: from Mountain Cloud Image Archives...

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  • Message from Henry: Perfection and Imperfection

    MCZCFebruary 25, 20153 min read

    ...the Dharma, the great “fact,” functions flawlessly... It is a “perfect mirror,” as Joshu says. The best one can reasonably hope for from any system of profound self-enquiry and practice is that for the most part it works. It’s never going to be perfect. The system, the “yoga,” the training, the set of methods and guidance, the tradition and lineage in which we train at Mountain Cloud is surely no exception. There may be better ways out...

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  • Wrongness and the Blues

    MCZCFebruary 23, 20153 min read

    Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so, said Shakespeare. When we’re depressed, or despairing, depondent, down or we’ve got the blues, the blah’s, feeling browned off… we often tend condemn circumstances as being wrong, not the way they ought to be. And we tend to condemn ourselves as likewise being wrong, not good enough. I should have done this, I shouldn’t have done that. We can do it quite mercilessly – this or...

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  • Self Improvement

    MCZCFebruary 21, 20152 min read

    We believe ourselves to be solid and separate "lumps of ice." Don't expect to be perfect. As we know, Zen is not about self-improvement. Zen may indeed help to alleviate some of the things we dislike about ourselves, but that is not its real purpose. Rather, give it time and diligence, constancy and faith, and it just may dislodge the one sitting in the middle who is busy doing the disliking. The disliker may suddenly evaporate, or...

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