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.
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Mount Sumeru Vaporizes Mistakes, Scott Thornton
September 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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Summer 2023: Sesshin Talk 6, Final Talk
August 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
August 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
August 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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2023 Summer Sesshin Talk 3
July 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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2023 Summer Sesshin Talk 2
July 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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2023 Summer Sesshin Talk 1: Mu and the Spirit of Dogen
July 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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Invitation only – Register for Rohatsu 2023 On-site Attendance
July 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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