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: Square One

    MCZCMay 12, 20155 min read

    ...we should live in intimate reliance on one thing only: “care for skillful states” – meaning practicing the path" If I have everything, but lack that, then I have nothing; if I have that, but nothing else, then I have everything. The traditional view of the above saying is that it’s theistic. As long as I have God (or am with God), then nothing else is needed. And if I don’t have God (or am...

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  • Sanbo Zen Documentary: A Preview {VIDEO}

    MCZCMay 11, 20151 min read

    Here's a preview {4:56} of the upcoming documentary feature film about Sanbo Zen. This preview features : Migaku Sato Roshi (Associate Zen Master), Ruben Habito (Roshi at Maria Kannan Zen Center), Brian Chisholm (Ottawa Sangha of Sanbo Zen), Valerie Forstman (Maria Kannan Zen Center), Ryoun Yamada Roshi (Abbot of Sanbo Zen), Pierre Philippon (Zen Association of Isle d'Abeau). Full details about the documentary will be forthcoming, in due time, here on our website.

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  • The Dharma of Alienation: Part 1 of 2

    MCZCMay 9, 20157 min read

    New media technologies sometimes encourage a kind of "hyper-individualism" because we spend less and less time meeting and interacting with other people - often not even with members of our own families. We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.  - Thich Nhat Hanh The English word "alienation" is from a Latin word that means "to be other." To be alienated is to feel separate from. There are three issues involved in...

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  • Shin-Jin-Mei (Verses on the Faith-Mind) by Sosan, Part 1 of 2

    MCZCMay 7, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In part 1 of this 2-part series about the Shin-jin-mei (Hsing-Hsign Ming, Verses on the Faith-Mind), Henry provides background details about the second patriarch Sosan (Ch. Seng-T’san). We learn about his serious illness, his desire for release from karmic debt, and his awakening encounter with his teacher, the second Chinese Ancestor Eka (Ch. Huike). Henry begins to explicate the opening verse of this 6th century Zen document by questioning our daily lifelong habit...

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  • Message from Henry: Daydreaming

    MCZCMay 5, 20152 min read

    The insight was stunning. I began to realize what daydreaming had done for me — and to me...." This week, here is a short piece by the writer Vivian Gornick about her own discovery of the constant audio-visual broadcasts that had been going on in her head for as long as she could remember.... and what it was like to have them shut down for a while: the unimaginable space, peace, energy and joy that...

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  • Enter…the Bodhisattva, Part 2 of 2

    MCZCMay 4, 20155 min read

    Is there something specific within the Buddhist tradition that can bring these two types of transformation together in a new model of activism connecting inner and outer practice? Enter...the bodhisattva. Click to read Enter...the Bodhisattva, Part 1. According to the traditional definition, the bodhisattva chooses not to enter the state of perfect peace, nirvana, but instead remains in samsara, cyclic existence, to help all sentient beings end their suffering and reach enlightenment. Instead of asking,...

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  • Enter…the Bodhisattva, Part 1 of 2

    MCZCMay 2, 20154 min read

    ...when we do not acknowledge the importance of individual transformation, social transformation is repeatedly subverted by powerful elites taking selfish advantage of their position. David Loy on why the bodhisattva ideal is what the world needs now. Unless you're on a long retreat in a Himalayan cave, it’s becoming more difficult to overlook the fact that our world is beset by interacting ecological, economic, and social crises. Climate breakdown, species extinction, a dysfunctional economic system,...

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  • What Really Matters?

    MCZCApril 30, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In this teisho given on New Years Day, Henry peels back layers of the central question: "What really matters?" exploring other enquiries along the way -- What is the grave matter of life and death? What realization can occur when patterned ways of perceiving fall away? Who am I? Henry relates a parable from the Lotus Sutra about an orphaned child from a wealthy home who learns who he really is, and shows...

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  • Message from Henry: Culture of Awakening

    MCZCApril 29, 20154 min read

    Zen only sets up simple conditions that invite us to examine or truly taste our own experience—what is this consciousness, what is this human body, what is this seeing, hearing, feeling, breathing, thinking? If we had seen incontrovertibly and for ourselves that everything was part of us; and that our sense of being a self bounded by a bag of skin in opposition to all else – if that view had become a distant memory, and been...

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  • Toward a New Buddhist Story: Part 3 of 3

    MCZCApril 27, 20153 min read

    We who have language assume we are superior to animals. In fact, our linguistic representations of the world are superior to the world itself, since they can control it. Ironically, the sense of a self that uses language is itself an artefact of language—a linguistic construct   Click to Read Toward a New Buddhist Story Part 1 and Part 2 Transcending transcendence There is another aspect of maya that is more relevant today: it can...

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  • Toward a New Buddhist Story: Part 2 of 3

    MCZCApril 25, 20154 min read

    What is called for now is not people seeking to transcend this world but people who take responsibility for its well-being. Click to Read A New Buddhist Story: Part 1 The Axial Age & Cosmological Dualism The German philosopher Karl Jaspers popularized the idea of an Axial Age (800-200 BCE). He believed that during that period the spiritual foundations of humanity (upon which we still subsist today) were laid independently in China, India, Persia, Judea,...

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  • Blue Cliff Record Case 12: Three Pounds of Flax

    MCZCApril 23, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In this personal discussion of Blue Cliff Record case 12, Henry talks about death, the eternality of time and the limits of rationality. We learn that failure and loss are necessary and that only through the process of non-rational experience can true opening occur. Henry shares two loving and poignant poems that he wrote for his father’s funeral. Image Credit: Life + Death, by Hartwig HKD, CC BY-ND 2.0. Featured Image Credit: It's About Time,...

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  • Message from Henry: Fruits and Lessons

    MCZCApril 22, 20153 min read

    A fresh take on the Three Fruits of Zen and Three Lessons from Death First fruit: Soothing, calming, quieting the constant chatter of the mind that produces storms of feeling in the body, which tend to make us act out of priorities other than generosity -- becoming clearer and freer of all that weather. Therefore being able to experience the immediate without so much filtering and distortion and distraction. Being present for our life, without needing to...

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  • Toward A New Buddhist Story: Part 1 of 3

    MCZCApril 20, 20154 min read

    Is a new Buddhist story beginning to develop out of the interaction between Buddhism and the modern world? Both need such a new story. It’s not only a matter of seeing the problems with modernity: we need to become aware of the difficulties with traditional Buddhist worldviews as well. Anyone who is paying attention knows that we are living in a time of crisis—most obviously, severe ecological and economic challenges. They are interconnected: an economy...

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