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 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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  • 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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