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 Ancestors’ Love

    MCZCSeptember 16, 20143 min read

    What do we have to do to receive the love and help of the ancestors, ever more deeply and thoroughly, until finally we know that we do nothing, and they do everything? We act through and for them. They act through us. We are their hands in this world. And as we allow them to work through us, indescribable joy fills our hearts. We are free. They are free. This whole great earth and all...

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  • Addiction to Suffering

    MCZCSeptember 11, 20144 min read

    Suffering is a system to which we attach ourselves.  In a way, that’s OK.  If that’s what we choose to do, then so be it.  Except in another way it’s not OK, because we suffer.  We find it painful.  Yet, on the whole, we are quite reluctant to disengage from it.  We imagine the price of giving it up will be too high. Especially if we’re in some practice like Zen, we think of things...

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  • Little Champion

    MCZCSeptember 8, 20142 min read

    When I get hopeless about human life, which quite frankly is far too difficult for me, I like to remember that in the desert there is a little butterfly that lives by drinking urine and when I have to drive to work on Saturday, to spend an hour opening the mail, deciding what to keep and throw away, one piece at a time, I think of the butterfly following its animal around, through the morning and the...

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  • Teisho: What is Zen?

    MCZCAugust 20, 20141 min read

    Welcome to Mountain Cloud Zen Podcast (MCZP) Series! Episode Description: This talk, the first in our new audio podcast series, offers some brief introductory thoughts by way of an overview of Zen training, then an introduction to Zen's most revered koan collection, the Blue Cliff Record, and finally a look at the first koan in the collection, about the legendary Chinese founder of Zen, Bodhidharma. This talk was given by our resident teacher, Henry Shukman.

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  • About Zen

    MCZCAugust 19, 20142 min read

    Zen is a practice of meditation and action designed to free us to live compassionate, healthy and energized lives. The word “Zen” simply means meditation. The practice of meditation can bring many benefits: greater attention and awareness, the settling down of our emotional life, a growing sense of goodwill and kindness, and a desire to be of help in this world. The latest brain-imaging technology is showing what meditators have sensed for millennia—that the brain circuitry...

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  • Hokusai says …

    MCZCAugust 17, 20142 min read

    Hokusai says look carefully. He says pay attention, notice. He says keep looking, stay curious. He says there is no end to seeing. He says look forward to getting old. He says keep changing, you just get more who you really are. He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it is interesting. He says keep doing what you love. He says keep praying. He says every one of us is a child, every one of...

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  • The fundamental position of Sanbo Zen (formerly the Sanbo Kyodan)

    MCZCAugust 17, 20142 min read

    YAMADA Kôun Roshi stated as follows: "The fundamental position of  Sanbô Zen is to stand at the origin point of Buddhism through the Dharma gate of Dôgen Zenji." The "origin point of Buddhism" means Shakyamuni, especially his great enlightenment experience itself. After a long period of ascetic training Shakyamuni was confident that true enlightenment was not a product of asceticism; therefore, he nourished himself through proper meals and then sat under a tree, which later became known...

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  • States and Facts

    MCZCAugust 15, 20144 min read

    Something we should try to be clear about is the difference between a “state” and a “fact.” In America the early popularity of Zen in the 50’s and 60’s was bound up to some extent with the counter-culture’s fascination with psychedelics. A number of well-known zen teachers from that era have said that LSD brought them to zen training. The popular idea was that zen masters were living on a permanent high, without drugs. They...

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