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 Valerie: Sesshin

    Valerie ForstmanSeptember 12, 20231 min read

    The Great Homecoming: Returning exactly where you are This coming Thursday, September 14, the 2023 Autumn sesshin begins at Mountain Cloud. The sesshin will be online - sitting in your home, long sitting in the midst of everyday life - with a small group of residents and staff sitting in the zendo, anchoring our jeweled web of practice in that quiet earthen space.  Sesshin - a time set aside to dive deep into practice; to...

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  • Mount Sumeru Vaporizes Mistakes, Scott Thornton

    MCZCSeptember 6, 20231 min read

    A monk asked, “Not a single thought arises. Is there any fault?” Unmon said: “Mount Sumeru.” Sumeru by tradition is higher than the stars, cosmically vast (much vaster than getting it right or wrong), and should be visible from everywhere. Maybe it’s a bit like Unmon’s responses – which, it’s said, always perform three functions: they cut through, they cover the matter entirely, and they fit the question perfectly, like a box its lid. “Mount...

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  • Message from Valerie: Coming Home

    Valerie ForstmanAugust 16, 20232 min read

    Scott and I returned late Sunday night from the annual Sanbozen teacher training in Toronto. It’s good to be home! Home in the ordinary sense of daily life in and among the Mountain Cloud community, and in the fundamental sense of our true home – the essential fact that is always exactly where you are.  During the Kenshukai, a theme emerged early on: “Dwelling nowhere, mind comes forth.” This line from the Diamond Sutra is...

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  • Summer 2023: Sesshin Talk 6, Final Talk

    MCZCAugust 7, 20231 min read

    Taste and See: Be what you are For the six days of this sesshin, as is typical of Zen, we’ve been talking about reality and experience, a fact that is beyond words. A reality that is not mappable by our assumed ways of knowing or our normal understanding. What this world is intrinsically by nature, — waits for our discovery, and always waiting for more discovery. We’ve been immersed in practice realization or entering the...

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  • Summer 2023: Sesshin Talk 5

    MCZCAugust 5, 20232 min read

    A World So Full it Can’t Accept One More Thing Valerie takes up Seppo’s “What is This” (Hekiganroku Case 51), together with earlier and later episodes in Seppo and Ganto’s long, poignant friendship. At one point in the Case Ganto says, “I never told Seppo the last word.” Conventionally a “last word” is someone’s dying words, but in Ganto’s mouth the phrase sheds ordinary measures of before and after, delivering us right-here, where each word...

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  • Summer 2023: Sesshin Talk 4

    MCZCAugust 1, 20232 min read

    A sincere heart – just one – is simply the ten directions crystal clear... the ten directions themselves squeeze the marrow from the bone. Dogen A hawk travels many miles by its stillness Valerie richly unfolds Case 46 from the Mumonkan, Sekiso’s “how do you step forward from a 100-foot pole?” (...And manifest your whole body in the world of ten directions)? The pole-top evokes that state of not-one-thing: house fallen, person forgotten, not a...

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  • Message from Valerie: Am I Enough?

    Valerie ForstmanJuly 27, 20232 min read

    This past week we formally welcomed Sarah Giffin as the new Executive Director of Mountain Cloud. With glad appreciation, welcome, Sarah! Thanks ring out to Bryan Baldwin for shepherding the MCZC organization during the generative transitions of the past year.  Last Sunday, with Sarah’s oversight, Mountain Cloud’s 15-Day ‘Wild World of Koans’ course began. The opening session included the prompt, “What brings you here? What is your intention? What is your earnest question?” One participant...

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  • 2023 Summer Sesshin Talk 3

    MCZCJuly 23, 20231 min read

    The Radiant Light Allows the Radiant Light to Respond To examine “radiance,” Valerie takes up Mumonkan case 39, “Unmon and a Mistake in Speech.” She turns it in a kaleidoscope with Dogen, Hongzhi, Chosetsu, heartbreak and failure, her revelatory stroll one day at Sonnenhof when the koan “where will you go when you die” accompanied her into the fields. The radiance these ancestors speak of doesn’t really have two sides – form is emptiness –...

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  • Message from Valerie: Already Home

    Valerie ForstmanJuly 20, 20232 min read

    Turn around the light to shine within, then just return. The vast inconceivable source can’t be faced or turned away from. Shitou Xiqian In his 8th century poem, “Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage,” Master Sekito Kisen (Shitou Xiqian) offers a dharma wellspring of instruction for practice and a presentation of the fact - the fact of who and what we truly are.  “Turn around the light to shine within, then just return. The vast...

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  • 2023 Summer Sesshin Talk 2

    MCZCJuly 18, 20231 min read

    Practice-realization, suffering-compassion, wind-fan, and hyphenless reality Why do we practice, if our fundamental nature is unimprovable? Mu is a sun with stone-melting power, and the fact itself. A way and the way. Vows express our utter commitment to this reality and our seamless belonging. Effects of our practice are noticeable and unmeasurable. The unmeasurable expresses itself as our practice, regardless of whether we perceive it. In any case, the way this oneness world works, there’s...

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  • Message from Valerie: To Know Oneself Completely

    Valerie ForstmanJuly 12, 20232 min read

    Watching the moonat dawn,solitary, mid-sky,I knew myself completely:no part left out. ~ Izumi Shikibu It is not unusual to take up meditation practice out of a longing to know ourselves, to be more authentic, to see and be who we truly are. What might that be? What is it to ‘know myself completely’? What if ‘no part left out’ means ALL - whole world included? Mustn’t it then also mean ONE - no border, no...

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  • 2023 Summer Sesshin Talk 1: Mu and the Spirit of Dogen

    MCZCJuly 7, 20231 min read

    We can’t do it, this great release – but Mu can... “Because Mu is whole, the power of this whole Mu awakens you” ~ Ryo’un Yamada. It causes... “body and mind of self and other to fall away” (Dogen) revealing that the place where you’re sitting is vacant, as the myriad things rush in. The gateless gate of Mu, a gate with a front and no back, “a peal of thunder under a bright blue...

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  • Message from Valerie: Gratitude

    Valerie ForstmanJuly 6, 20232 min read

    Continuous practice, day after day, is the most appropriate way of expressing gratitude. ~ Eihei Dogen The summer sesshin at Mountain Cloud ended on Sunday. The sesshin opened with a line from Dogen: “When you walk in the mist, you get wet.” Six days later, soaked in the dharma, the week of shared practice culminated in expressions of thanksgiving. At Mountain Cloud, we celebrated with a feast of delicious food prepared by master chef, Nic,...

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  • Invitation only – Register for Rohatsu 2023 On-site Attendance

    MCZCJuly 1, 20231 min read

    Use this form to register and pay for attending Rohatsu 2023 on0site, as either a, lodger, commuter or camper. You MUST have received an invitation to attend on-site in order to use this form.

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