Teachings

You can find all of our weekly Dharma talks for free right here on this page, as well as on our YouTube channel and podcast. Live talks take place every Thursday from 5:30–7:00pm MT, both in-person and on Zoom (sit.mountaincloud.org — password: mountain22). Members receive access to some special archival materials.

  • 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...

    Read more
  • 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...

    Read more
  • 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...

    Read more
  • 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...

    Listen to the talk
  • 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...

    Read more
  • 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...

    Read more
  • 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

    Read more
  • 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...

    Read more
  • 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...

    Listen to the talk
  • 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...

    Read more
  • 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...

    Read more
  • 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....

    Read more
  • 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...

    Read more
  • 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...

    Listen to the talk
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