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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  • Blue Cliff Record 66, Ganto and the Sword

    MCZCFebruary 19, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: This talk explores Case 66 from the Blue Cliff Record, Ganto and the Sword. Roshi Henry Shukman guides us to open our hearts to the alternate dharma reality in which we naturally exist, a consciousness radically different from the “getting and spending” (as Wordsworth called it) of our consumerist lives. This talk also describes the Zen practice of bowing and explains the nature of koans. Featured Image Credit: from Mountain Cloud Image Archives

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  • Message from Henry: Allergy of Self II

    MCZCFebruary 18, 20156 min read

    ...the relationship between self and world is revealed to have been part of the screen itself. That relationship falls away. There is no longer self and world as two – so naturally the friction between self and world is then gone, and with it the “allergy of self”. Following on from last week’s message: if the self may be viewed as an allergic reaction to the world, that’s not the end of the story of self-creation....

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  • How to Be in the World: Part 5 of 5

    MCZCFebruary 17, 20154 min read

    Koans, too, return us to our daily lives. This is surely why Salinger used one as the epigraph to one of his greatest books: It was in harmony with the thrust of his tender, farreaching morality. Click to read: Part 1, Part 2,  Part 3, and Part 4 of How to Be in the World. Chekhov said all that is necessary for a writer is to present a problem as completely as possible. When later in life...

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  • How to Be in the World: Part 4 of 5

    MCZCFebruary 15, 20154 min read

    Mu soon opened me up: suddenly, one evening... the world vanished; there was nothing at all. I remember thinking: all this training of the mind, yet there is no mind! There’s absolutely nothing! Not a speck in the sky. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2  and Part 3 and Part 5 of 5 of How to Be in the World. In what ways is literature a sufficient response to deep spiritual experience, in what ways not? Why...

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  • How to Be in the World: Part 3 of 5

    MCZCFebruary 13, 20158 min read

    “To study the self is to forget the self,” said Dogen. If you try to find who you really are, you may discover you’re not there at all. Dogen also said: “To forget oneself is to be actualized by all things.” Click to read Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 4 and Part 5 of 5 of How to Be in the World.. All good literature, in a way, is an emissary from this other land of...

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  • Rohatsu Sesshin 2014 Day 4 of 4

    MCZCFebruary 12, 20151 min read

    The last talk of the sesshin again returns to Continuous Practice, taking us through discussions of Tennyson's poem "Crossing the Bar," sweatlodges, cults, faith and the Three Treasures. Image Credit: Above image from Mountain Cloud Image Archives Featured Image Credit: Stones, Meditation by memyselfaneye, CC0 Public Domain, from pixabay.com

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  • Message from Henry: Allergy to Self

    MCZCFebruary 11, 20154 min read

    There’s debate about what a self is, but most would agree it involves choosing. Wanting and disliking. Craving and aversion. The “three fires” of Buddhism—greed, aversion and misunderstanding—are all aspects of self. This message is not clearly thought out still less backed by any kind of hard evidence. Please bear with me… What if the self is basically an allergy? Allergies are an over-reaction of the immune system to a perceived danger that is in fact no danger....

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  • How to Be in the World: Part 2 of 5

    MCZCFebruary 10, 20155 min read

    Dogen said: “Directly upon encountering the dharma, we will abandon the law of the world.” Click to read Part 1 and Part 3 and Part 4 and Part 5 of 5 of How to Be in the World.. Salinger became an entry point into the dharma for me in two ways. First, that inherent seeking manifest in his characters, who, with their troubled integrity, seemed to be searching for a truer way of living spoke to me of...

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  • How to Be in the World: Part 1 of 5

    MCZCFebruary 8, 20156 min read

    How to Be in the World: J.D. Salinger and a Zen Koan for Authenticity Click to read Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4 and Part 5 of 5 of How to Be in the World. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” J. D. Salinger inscribed in the opening pages of Nine Stories. An epigraph made in heaven: What on earth were his readers going to make of that? Whatever it was, coming from him...

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  • The Art of Being Wrong: Part 4 of 4

    MCZCFebruary 6, 20154 min read

    ...a truth of spiritual life: that there are moments we come to when our thinking is suspended, and when an old knowing has been dropped and the attachment to a new knowing has not yet arisen.   This post is the final installment of the four part series, The Art of Being Wrong. Click here to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. One sees a comparable pattern in various types of psychotherapy. Cognitive therapy seeks to...

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  • Rohatsu Sesshin 2014 Day 3 of 4

    MCZCFebruary 5, 20151 min read

    The third talk of the sesshin focuses on "nothing to attain" and "allowing", and includes beautiful and relevant stories of Tolstoy's. Image Credit: Above image from Mountain Cloud Image Archives Featured Image Credit: Stones, Meditation by memyselfaneye, CC0 Public Domain, from pixabay.com

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  • Message from Henry: A Few Thoughts

    MCZCFebruary 4, 20152 min read

    The sudden clear recognition that we never existed the way we thought we did: true kensho. We are all falling into the loam of Mu, where our self can split open, die and bring forth the shoot of the original face of all things. *** Please just don’t forget: it’s for real. The purpose of this training is to help us first to have a glimpse of reality, and then slowly painstakingly to help us shift our center of...

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  • The Art of Being Wrong: Part 3 of 4

    MCZCFebruary 3, 20155 min read

    ...as Nansen told Joshu, we are more likely to stumble upon the Way when we cease our vaunting efforts to “attain” it. Rather, when we succumb with grace to the fact that we are, basically, hopeless cases, we have an extraordinary opportunity to discover in what sense we are not hopeless. This post is Part 3 of The Art of Being Wrong. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2. Chekhov said that the fiction writer’s task...

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  • The Art of Being Wrong: Part 2 of 4

    MCZCFebruary 1, 20156 min read

    This is where a koan’s capacity for liberation lies—not in the discovery of some new knowledge but in its power to help us give up our familiar template of knowing. This post is a continuation of The Art of Being Wrong Part 1. Peripeteia as defined by Aristotle is a literary device. But it seems to share a deep resonance with the way our actual lives unfold. Our lives are stories too, after all. Peripeteia of one...

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