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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  • Katie Arnold: Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World

    MCZCAugust 29, 20241 min read

    Ultramarathon runner, Zen practitioner, and author Katie Arnold shares her compelling story of running, Zen, writing, and living life - all through the lens of not-knowing and accepting uncertainty. Katie’s recent book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, emerged in the aftermath of her father’s death, her associated anxiety, and a life-altering accident that occurred while rafting a whitewater river. “Brief flashings,” she says, “are moments of wonder that make us feel alive and connected.”...

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  • Carmen Afable: Breathing Mu

    MCZCAugust 22, 20241 min read

    Zen teacher Carmen Afable grounds her teisho in Shoyoroku case #93: Roso Does Not Understand. After reading the case, Carmen reminds us that we are the treasure and pearl of great value discussed in the koan. She says, “the Kensho experience is right before our eyes but we cannot see it as we are full of our delusive selves.” But Mu is everywhere, and the entire universe is “Mu-ing.” We are Mu, the finest jewel....

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  • Sean Tetsudo Murphy: Demystifying No-Self

    MCZCAugust 15, 20241 min read

    Zen teacher, meditation professor, and author Sean Murphy invites us to consider our illusion of separateness, the notion that we have a sense of self as an independent creature within the world. Much of our suffering – loneliness, feeling unsafe, disconnection, anxiety, difficulty with others – may emerge from this sense of being fundamentally separate. Rather, our true reality is one as an integral part of the universe. He implies that we cannot remove ourselves...

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  • Shana Smith: Dharma Rain

    MCZCAugust 8, 20241 min read

    Shana begins by noting the concurrent and successive rainstorms both in her area of Florida and at Mountain Cloud in Santa Fe as an introduction to the understanding of oneness or unity of all phenomena in the essential that is realized through the practice of zazen. Recalling Dōgen’s argument that although all beings are inherently enlightened, practice is needed to realize it, Shana argues that “all of us do it according to our own unique...

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  • Valerie Forstman: The Skin, Flesh, Bones, and Marrow of Bodhidharma

    MCZCAugust 1, 20241 min read

    Valerie starts by sharing a quote by Kieran Meade-Ward from the last day of the 30 Days of Dogen course. “And isn't it interesting that such relaxed clarity doesn't obscure but makes more plain how these impressions are also made of vanishing…. When thought opens its hand, it's like the hand wasn't even there. There's just the world." Valerie asks, “So how do we empty our hands….?” She enters into the story of Bodhidharma asking...

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  • Valerie Forstman: Dew Drops Shaken from a Crane’s Bill

    MCZCJuly 25, 20241 min read

    We enter just now into the vast, limitless oneness of the practice of Zen. Flowing but at the same time perfectly still. Valerie picks up a thread from another of her recent dharma talks about Bodhidharma. Recall the challenge Bodhidharma presented to his disciples to demonstrate their understanding. This talk highlights the third disciple to speak, Dao Yu. He said, “The four elements are all empty. The five skandhas are without actual existence. Not a...

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  • Natalie Goldberg: Everything is dharma

    MCZCJuly 18, 20241 min read

    Writer and Zen teacher Natalie Goldberg reads from her new book “Writing on Empty” and speaks about the value of noticing that something is always awake in us. In writing her new book Natalie finds language to finally express her experiences of her mother and other topics cracked open during the void of Covid. Natalie states, for her “there is no difference between writing and the dharma.” Both are practices; both initiate compassion. The talk...

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  • Valerie interviews scholar David Hinton

    MCZCJuly 11, 20241 min read

    Valerie interviews scholar and author David Hinton about his new book, “The Blue Cliff Record.” David speaks about several fascinating topics, for example “absence” and “presence.” Absence, David says, is the generative absence from which the 10,000 things arise. They live their lives, then dive back into absence where they are reconstituted into energy. Presence is the 10,000 things that absence forms itself into and forms empirical reality. (Yes, it is that kind of mind-expanding...

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  • Valerie Forstman: Case 81 of the Book of Equanimity

    MCZCJune 27, 20241 min read

    Valerie Roshi began by recalling the NASZ sesshin of the previous week, led by Yamada Ryo’un Roshi, abbot of Sanbo Zen International, and his impact on several students. The Roshi’s urging that participants realize their true self and his statement on not wanting to deceive his true self, along with the celebration of a sangha member’s awakening that ended the sesshin and the social gathering that followed it, reminded Valerie of Case 81 in the...

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  • June 13, 2024 Teisho with Valerie

    MCZCJune 13, 20241 min read

    https://youtu.be/9kSatLpfx0Q

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  • Valerie Forstman: Case 37 of Hekiganroku (Blue Cliff Record)

    MCZCJune 6, 20241 min read

    In this talk, Valerie weaves through our Zen inheritance from Shakymuni Buddha, to Prajnatara  to her disciple Bodidharma, to Bodidharma's disciple, to Baso and his student, Banzan, and here to us. She then takes up case 37 of the Hekiganroku, "Banzan's Not One Thing in the Three Realms; where should we seek the mind?" She weaves in Bodhidharma's answer to a question from Emporor Wu, "What is genuine merit?" We learn that Bodidharma’s answer to...

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  • Bill Bruce: The koan of the Earth

    MCZCMay 23, 20241 min read

    In this teisho, Bill shares Susan Murphy Roshi's compelling, “Koan of the Earth.” Bill offers a quote from John Tarrant at the beginning of his talk, “Pessimism implies too much knowing.” In the 45 minutes it takes to read the koan we have the good fortune to consider the current precariousness of life/Earth, as well as our response to the current crisis. How might practice-realization or enlightenment help? Can we look deeply and see that...

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  • Carolyn Seburn: Shakyamuni holds up a flower

    MCZCMay 16, 20241 min read

    In this teisho on Mumonkan case 6, “Shakyamuni Holds Up a Flower,” Carolyn Roshi notes that this koan is uniquely important as a record of the first transmission, the foundation moment of Buddhism. She notes that not a word is spoken at the key moment when Shakyamuni Buddha, on Vulture Peak, gave a teaching by simply holding up a flower. Among the many disciples in attendance, only Maha Kasyapa reacted, also wordlessly, by smiling. Recognizing...

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  • Sean Tetsudo Murphy: Creativity applied to Zen practice

    MCZCMay 9, 20241 min read

    Remarking that along with structured activity in the zendo, Zen is also characterized by creativity and playfulness, especially in dokusan, Sean noted that this creativity can help keep zazen practice alive when we feel we are getting stuck and, without judging our zazen, discern that it is not working. Creative solutions include knowing when thoughts involve memories, future events, or judgments of the present, and instead recognize that the present moment, the reality of our...

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