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.

  • The Unfamiliar Familiar: Part 6 of 6

    MCZCApril 17, 20156 min read

    ...the koan’s purpose is to see things from buddhanature’s point of view, as it were, rather than instill an idea about it from our own point of view. Click here to read the Unfamiliar Familiar Part1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Part 5. When we come to the Zen koans, we find a tradition in full engagement with the workings of defamiliarization in a most direct and compelling way. In a famous case...

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  • Blue Cliff Record Case 14, A Preaching in Accordance

    MCZCApril 16, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Henry probes the big question a monk asks of Unmon: “What are the periods and teachings of the whole lifetime of Shakyamuni? Unmon answers, “A preaching in accordance.” Henry explores the single fact demonstrated in this Blue Cliff Record case. We learn that the master’s work is to be in accordance with the student’s need and, at the same time, to cut off the student’s stream of delusion. Listen to this lofty and...

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  • Message from Henry: Just Sitting

    MCZCApril 15, 20154 min read

    How remarkable that thousands of years ago just through sitting still and observing their own process of being, people realized what modern science is just beginning to discover – that all existence is one single never-ending process made out of nothing A brief but thorough lesson in shikantaza, or “just sitting,” from Master Yakusan: Sekito found his student Yakusan sitting in the zendo. “What are you doing?” he asked. Yakusan said: “I’m not doing anything.”...

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  • The Unfamiliar Familiar: Part 5 of 6

    MCZCApril 13, 20153 min read

     ...we surely know that to be alive among things is a gift; yet it’s a gift we so often fail to unwrap. Click here to read the Unfamiliar Familiar Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. Shklovsky regarded the slowing down of perception as one of the purposes of defamiliarization. By making us work harder the artist slows our perception to the point of making it nonautomatic. Like Rain it sounded till it...

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  • Karma: Fate or Freedom

    MCZCApril 11, 20154 min read

    Yet karma is not something the self has; rather, it is what the sense of self is, because one’s sense of self is transformed by one’s conscious choices. Many Buddhist teachings seem quite modern in their emphasis on such things as impermanence and interdependence (evolution, ecology), insubstantiality (physics), and the deceptions of language (philosophy). Yet the same cannot be said for karma, which points to an inexorable moral law built into the cosmos. This doesn’t...

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  • Blue Cliff Record 62, Unmon’s Single Treasure

    MCZCApril 9, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: As the winter solstice descends, Henry Shukman explores Unmon’s Single Treasure, Case 62 of the Blue Cliff Record. This puzzling koan helps us turn our habitual views upside down. Roshi Henry describes the great invitation of Zen which is to abandon our cherished opinions and find the single jewel that makes the “one true fact” apparent. Henry talks about Christmas, the death penalty and his encounter with a Navy Seal in this elucidation...

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  • Message from Henry: Zen Musings

    MCZCApril 8, 20153 min read

    It’s part of Zen’s great and simple beauty that it is inherently ready to self-destruct. It’s a self-destructing system. It’s part of Zen’s great and simple beauty that it is inherently ready to self-destruct. It’s a self-destructing system. It must be. The heart of its liberation requires it – a nothing at all from which Zen itself can’t be exempt.  Yet it’s so beautiful. Primo Levi, the Nobel prize-winning author, an industrial chemist by trade,...

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  • The Unfamiliar Familiar: Part 4 of 6

    MCZCApril 7, 20155 min read

    The scriptures do not merely speak about the deconstruction of preconception; they enact it. Click to read The Unfamiliar Familiar Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. In the early Buddhist texts, defamiliarization is established in the content of what is said; in the later Mahayana teachings of the early first millennium C.E., it tends to occupy a central place not just in the content but in the very form of the texts. The scriptures...

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  • The Unfamiliar Familiar: Part 3 of 6

    MCZCApril 5, 20154 min read

    This kind of disbanding of an assumption—whether of something as fundamental as our sense of self, or merely of a preconception about a classical poet—can bring about a radical new openness. Click to read The Unfamiliar Familiar Part 1 and Part 2. In John Keats’s sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” the poet dramatizes a sudden expansion of view. Keats had never learned Greek and did not like Pope’s versions of the classics, but...

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  • Sanbo (Three Treasures) Zen: Part 3 of 3

    MCZCApril 3, 20157 min read

    Joan Rieck presented this piece at an international conference held at Tiantong Monastery in China in the Fall of 2014 - the very temple where Dogen had his great enlightenment experience of “body and mind falling away.”  Click to Read Sanbo Zen: Part 1 and Part 2 Yasutani Roshi’s organization Sanbō Kyōdan was legally recognized as an independent Zen Buddhist religious organization on January 8th 1954. As had been the case under Harada Roshi, there were...

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  • Blue Cliff Record 75, Ukyu’s Blind Stick

    MCZCApril 2, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Continuing with the Blue Cliff Record, this talk explores Case 75, Ukyu’s Blind Stick. Find out what happens when Ukyu wields his stick. Roshi Henry discusses the background of this intriguing koan and ponders the nature of emptiness. We learn about the five types of Zen blindness and that all beings are blessed because there is no separation. Image Credit: IMG_4768 via photopin CC BY-SA 2.0 Featured Image Credit: Zen-Mind, by Hartwig HKD, CC BY-ND...

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  • Message from Henry: Mount Sumeru

    MCZCApril 1, 20154 min read

    ...maybe we are simply learning to be more like the land in our sitting – to sit still as the rocks, yet humming with intrinsic awareness. I used to think, with many koans: there’s just not enough to go on. How are we supposed to know what to make of it when it’s so spare? Surely we need to add a lot to it, to read things into it. In fact I used to wonder...

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  • Sanbo (Three Treasures) Zen: Part 2 of 3

    MCZCMarch 30, 20155 min read

    Joan Rieck presented this piece at an international conference held at Tiantong Monastery in China in the Fall of 2014 - the very temple where Dogen had his great enlightenment experience of “body and mind falling away.”  Click to Read Sanbo Zen: Part 1. Yasutani Haku’un (1885-1973) is the official founder of Sanbō Zen, an independent Zen line formerly known as Sanbō Kyōdan and often referred to as the “Harada-Yasutani School” because it is based...

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  • Sanbo (Three Treasures) Zen: Part 1 of 3

    MCZCMarch 28, 20156 min read

      Joan Rieck Roshi presented this piece at an international conference held at Tiantong Monastery in China in the Fall of 2014 - the very temple where Dogen had his great enlightenment experience of “body and mind falling away.” Sanbō Zen is an independent lay line of Zen Buddhism that blends elements of both the Caodong (Soto) and Linji (Rinzai) traditions in its teaching and practice. Its purpose is stated on its website (sanbō-zen.org) by...

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