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.

  • Hyakujo’s “Turning Word” from The Book of Equanimity

    MCZCMarch 26, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Roshi Henry presents a case from the Book of Equanimity in which Master Hyakujo’s "turning word" about the law of causation releases an old man into authentic freedom. Hear a magical story about how a man receives healing, love and timeless understanding from a gentle whale. Using personal disclosure and koan explication, Henry shows us how a kensho experience can lead to a dualistic split between "awakening" and "delusion," which ongoing koan study...

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  • Message from Henry: Coke Zero

    MCZCMarch 25, 20155 min read

    Only through the gateless gate of absolute zero does our real life spring forth most wonderfully: "the iron trees come into bloom." COKE ZERO: TRADITION AND INNOVATION Sometimes people talk about “traditional” versus “innovative” approaches to practice. I want to suggest that both these terms might be missing one point. The true fact, the fundamental reality of Zen is enshrined in the core of the Heart Sutra. Commonly translated as “form is emptiness, emptiness is...

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  • The Unfamiliar Familiar: Part 2 of 6

    MCZCMarch 23, 20154 min read

    The early Buddhist scriptures tend to be didactic and discursive, often familiar to us moderns in their reason and rationality. Yet even here defamiliarization is at work, not so much in the style as in the content. Click to read The Unfamiliar Familiar Part 1 The world is dynamic and changing; therein lies its freshness. But our ideas about it tend to grow static and calcified, even our ideas about the most important things: who...

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  • The Unfamiliar Familiar: Part 1 of 6

    MCZCMarch 21, 20154 min read

    Learning to see the world anew "A fresh look and a fresh listen,” said Robert Frost of a good poem. “Read it a hundred times: it will for ever keep its freshness as a metal keeps its fragrance.” A poem may not show us anything new, but what we see, we see afresh, and what we hear, we hear anew. Frost was talking about the poem itself: what it presents, and the way it does...

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  • Blue Cliff Record 70, 71, & 72, How does one Speak with Lips and Throat Closed?

    MCZCMarch 19, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: This talk combines three related Blue Cliff Record cases 70, 71, and 72. We meet Hyakujo, Isan, Goho and Ungan, who grapple with the nature of speech and ultimate understanding. Roshi Henry Shukman draws on his extensive literary background to relate koan structure with narrative storytelling, which includes references to character transformation in Tolstoy’s War and Peace and a discussion of epic poetry’s roots in the shamanic journey. This far-reaching and inspiring teisho is...

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  • Message from Henry: After Enlightenment, the Laundry

    MCZCMarch 18, 20155 min read

    The clarity is what matters. And clarity in Zen can only come from depth of experience. “After enlightenment, the laundry,” as one Zen proverb has it: whatever may happen in our practice, no matter what revelations may or may not befall us, we always trust our daily life to be our endless primary teacher. This very moment and its needs and demands and challenges – in a sense, how could this immediate reality be anything...

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  • Pink Panther Practice

    MCZCMarch 16, 20154 min read

    Here’s what we can do: hand it all over to the Dharma, to the practice. This tangle is just too much. Please take it. I don’t know how popular the Pink Panther movies with Peter Sellers were in the US in the 1970s, but in the UK they were big, and we couldn’t wait for the next one. We’d clamor and lobby to get our parents to take us to see even the re-runs when...

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  • Making the Buddha but Forgetting the Soul

    MCZCMarch 14, 20156 min read

    Let’s not overlook this: meeting the world, opening to beauty, living out of love rather than rigidity – this is the “soul” we might forget if we are too focused on practice on the cushion, and on the insights and experiences Zen can open up. Let’s not make Buddha but forget the soul. The last time I was in Germany I had the good fortune to open up an old issue of Kyosho, the magazine...

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  • Blue Cliff Record 69, Nansen Draws a Circle

    MCZCMarch 12, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: This talk delineates the classic koan, Nansen Draws a Circle, Blue Cliff Record Case 69. Roshi Henry describes the brilliant craziness of this koan and draws on wisdom from Dogen’s Genjokoan. The talk explores both the substance and function of the “nameless fact” and concludes by describing Zen’s healing power. Image Credit:This Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image is from the user Chris 73 and is freely available here  under the creative commons cc-by-sa 3.0 license. Featured Image Credit:By Tangopaso (Own work)...

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  • Guest Message from Ruben Habito

    MCZCMarch 10, 20154 min read

    We...are called to an encounter with that which is both so close to us that we can't see it and so far away that we can never reach it. This week we have some words from Roshi Ruben Habito’s recent new book, Zen and the Spiritual Exercises. Ruben was educated within the Jesuit Order in the Philippines, then joined the order as a young man and was sent to Japan, where he found his way,...

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  • Beautiful Storm: Part 3 of 3

    MCZCMarch 6, 20154 min read

    It seems too much to hope that right in the heart of our troubled selves there might actually be the healing we seek. Beautiful Storm: Finding the hidden remedies in our troubles selves Click to read Beautiful Storm Part 1 of 3. Click to read Beautiful Storm Part 2 of 3. In the course of that bright, rooftop morning in Puerto Rico—a morning touched by the sun’s benison after the ravages of the storm—sipping coffee...

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  • Blue Cliff Record 68, Kyozan and Your Name

    MCZCMarch 5, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Continuing with the Blue Cliff Record, Henry presents Case 68, Kyozan and Your Name. The talk explores the point of Zen and shows how each of us is born perfect and complete. Henry relates the experience of kensho or sudden realization and explores the idea of no separation, asking the question: Is there a me and a you?. Image Credit: Evalynn, by Ray Duma, CC By-SA 2.0, from flickr.com Featured Image Credit: Baby, by...

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  • Message from Henry: The Point of Practice

    MCZCMarch 4, 20154 min read

     All this existence is in fact nothing but practice. What’s the point of this practice? Well, we could say: it grants space for things to be imperfect. It helps us to let things be as they are, while at the same time energizing and clarifying our efforts to work on what needs our work. It gives us peace. We somehow learn that the imperfect state of everything is also perfect. Things like that. Beneficial things....

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  • Beautiful Storm: Part 2 of 3

    MCZCMarch 2, 20154 min read

    Beautiful Storm: Finding the hidden remedies in our troubled selves Click to read Beautiful Storm Part 1 of 3. San Emeterio’s story began in Cuba, the island where he was born and raised, and which he resolved to leave as a young man in 1972. He did so by swimming seven miles through the Caribbean on a moonless night, risking the possibility of encountering sharks or drowning, to come ashore in the American naval base...

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