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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  • The Art of Being Wrong: Part 1 of 4

    MCZCJanuary 30, 20156 min read

    Nearly always, in great literature, there is some kind of turning point in a narrative arc which is also a turning back—something like Dogen’s “backward step that shines the light inward”—wherein a character is granted an opportunity to understand himself in a different or better way, and it’s that that makes all the difference. There’s a scene in the fine and dark TV series Breaking Bad in which a villainous drug dealer, half-dead and half-blinded by...

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  • Rohatsu Sesshin 2014, Day 2 of 4

    MCZCJanuary 29, 20151 min read

    In day two, Henry continues the exploration of "Continuous Practice," and brings in a discussion of the process of sesshin, as well as the book "The Authentic Gate of Zen" by Yamada Koun Roshi, and stages/no stages in practice, among other things. 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: Generous Universe

    MCZCJanuary 28, 20154 min read

    There’s an infinite generosity arising all the time, every moment – in other words, right now – freely giving itself. We’re so used to it and so close to it that it is hard to notice it for what it is. We recently looked at the 8th precept in the Sunday morning discussion group: don’t be stingy. Or more formally: “Don’t begrudge the Dharma treasure.” That is, don’t hoard or keep for oneself either Dharma teachings,...

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  • A Matter of Misdirection: Part 3 of 3

    MCZCJanuary 25, 20159 min read

    For while original enlightenment is without limits, its expression is always particular. We don’t live life in general; we live life in particular ways, and it is in its particulars that life is invested with wisdom and meaning. This is the final installment of A Matter of Misdirection. Click to Read Part 1 and Part 2.   The Lotus Sutra is probably the preeminent text in East Asian Buddhism, and it is often referred to as the king of...

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  • A Matter of Misdirection: Part 2 of 3

    MCZCJanuary 23, 20158 min read

    It seems paradoxical, and it is: by becoming absorbed in the foreground, we allow the background gently (and sometimes suddenly) to come to life. This post is a continuation of A Matter of Misdirection: Part 1 In his first teaching, the Buddha explicitly taught that we exist in a state of suffering and that we can be liberated from it. There’s a stick, and there’s a carrot. There’s a path from A to B, from dukkha to...

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  • Rohatsu Sesshin 2014, Day 1 of 4

    MCZCJanuary 22, 20151 min read

    In this first teisho of the sesshin, Henry introduces Dogen's fascicle on Continuous Practice, and starts to explore what Dogen meant by that term.  The talk includes poetry by Yeats, explores the awakening of Shakyamuni Buddha, and spends time with the koan Mu, among other things. 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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  • A Matter of Misdirection: Part 1 of 3

    MCZCJanuary 21, 20156 min read

    Misdirection is akin to a principle of growth and development, and it’s no accident that its operations can be detected within the structures of many wisdom traditions. How we learn by looking in the wrong place In “Indian Camp,” the first story in Hemingway’s first book, In Our Time, a boy and his father paddle out on a lake to an island where a pregnant Native American woman is having a hard labor. The boy is shocked...

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  • Dangerous Formulae

    MCZCJanuary 16, 20153 min read

      When treasures of the human heart become explicit, there is a greater risk of their becoming doctrinal, then formulaic, then ritualistic and ceremonial, and ultimately banal, mere forms of words and no longer living treasures at all. When Jesus talked about dying and being reborn in the kingdom of heaven, for example, it seems likely he was referring to an actual experience he knew himself, which caused a fundamental shift in his entire experience. When...

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  • Message from Henry: Self and Non-Self Based Practice

    MCZCJanuary 14, 20154 min read

    The teachings are nothing but guidance, a set of instructions perhaps, for something we have to do ourselves. Which is to settle down and drop into the reality of who we are. The reason the old masters often railed against students who went here and there picking up fag-ends of teachings, trying to get this and that piece of teaching, “as if trying to take some from a dog’s mouth,” as one old worthy put it,...

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  • Going Back To The Source: Sharing An Identity With Everything That Lives {VIDEO Clip}

    MCZCJanuary 13, 20153 min read

    This is the 13th short video clip (1:29) from the conversation between Stephen Batchelor and Henry Shukman, on June 4, 2014, at the Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico on “Going Back to the Source.” This is the final clip of this series. The entire talk's video (1:03:15) can also be viewed on our YouTube channel. Their dialogue covers : Eastern and Western thought, the great doubt, dismantling of knowing, ancient greeks and buddhism, zen and classical philosophy, seeing with clarity,...

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  • The Point of Practice

    MCZCJanuary 11, 20153 min read

    All this existence is in fact nothing but Zen practice. What’s the point of this practice? Well, we could say: it grants space for things to be imperfect. It allows us to let things be as they are. It gives us peace. We somehow learn that the imperfect state of everything is also perfect. Things like that. Beneficial things. New attitudes, new opportunities for healing and constructive action, new kinds of helpfulness that we may be able to...

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  • Going Back To The Source: Like-Mindedness {VIDEO Clip}

    MCZCJanuary 9, 20152 min read

    This is the 12th short video clip (1:49) from the conversation between Stephen Batchelor and Henry Shukman, on June 4, 2014, at the Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico on “Going Back to the Source.”  The entire talk's video (1:03:15) can also be viewed on our YouTube channel. Their dialogue covers : Eastern and Western thought, the great doubt, dismantling of knowing, ancient greeks and buddhism, zen and classical philosophy, seeing with clarity, humanist enlightenment in the west, roots of...

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  • Message from Henry: The Mongol Longsword

    MCZCJanuary 7, 20154 min read

    Just as we receive power and help (tariki) in our sitting, so our own sitting actively offers help throughout the universe. The interconnection is actual, not conceptual.  ...our meditation is not merely shared with all beings and the whole universe. When we sit we are sitting not just with, but as everything. --From Zen Master Dogen To be on a path of practice is basically to trust that that path knows more about what a human being...

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  • Going Back To The Source: A Transitional Phase For Zen {VIDEO Clip}

    MCZCJanuary 6, 20153 min read

    This is the 11th short video clip (2:50) from the conversation between Stephen Batchelor and Henry Shukman, on June 4, 2014, at the Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico on “Going Back to the Source.”  The entire talk's video (1:03:15) can also be viewed on our YouTube channel. Their dialogue covers : Eastern and Western thought, the great doubt, dismantling of knowing, ancient greeks and buddhism, zen and classical philosophy, seeing with clarity, humanist enlightenment in the west, roots of...

    Watch the video
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