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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  • Recent Podcasts Featuring Henry

    MCZCMarch 20, 20222 min read

    Henry has recently been featured on three podcasts, First Human, ManTalks, and Orthogonal. Links to each podcast and a short description are below. Enjoy... First Human with Richard AthertonFinding Zen with Henry Shukman (video version)Click here for the podcast Richard Atherton introduces Henry as a man who seems to have led several lives: author, singer and now Zen adept. His battles with severe eczema at an early age, coupled with the break-up on his parents' marriage, led him on...

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  • Attention: Dharma Talk with Teshin Matt Sweger (video)

    MCZCMarch 20, 20221 min read

    The average person checks their phone about 80 times a day, spending about two hours attached to an array of attention-seeking apps. While technology has opened many new doors, including our virtual zendo, guest speaker Teshin Matt Sweger asks us to consider how continual virtual stimulation effects our Zen practice. Teshin looks at Case 12 of the Gateless Gate to help us understand how to hold our attention in the present moment. https://youtu.be/Blfq8VZhuEo Featured photo by Mark...

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  • This Bare World: Dharma Talk with Valerie Forstman (video)

    MCZCMarch 19, 20221 min read

    Given in the wake of the February full moon, this talk shines a light on the anatomy of human judgment and raises the question,’ What is this bare world and why can’t we bear it?’ By way of response, Valerie turns to case 98 of the Blue Cliff Record, “Tempyo’s Two Wrongs,” a koan whose footprints of awakening point beyond the rift of ‘right and wrong’ to the reality at hand - intimate, indivisible, and...

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  • Three Fruits of Zen

    Valerie ForstmanMarch 17, 20221 min read

    If you can go outside and see the blue sky, you should do it. Quote from a Ukrainian mother Zen practice is about cultivating attention, awakening to the emptiness of the separate self, to unconditional belonging, and living out the implications of that realization moment-to-moment in our daily lives.  Another way of putting this is to go outside, to face this world as it is without exception; to see the blue sky - the vast empty firmament - and...

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  • Community Outreach: Feeding the Homeless

    MCZCMarch 16, 20221 min read

    The local Mountain Cloud Sangha will be preparing and serving a meal each month at Pete’s Place Interfaith Shelter. The shelter provides nightly meals to their clients, often cooked by various faith and non-faith organizations throughout Santa Fe. For many clients, this is their one hot meal of the day. This is an opportunity for our local sangha to support these community members through donations to purchase food supplies, cook meals, and serve the meals...

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  • Message from Henry: Wise?

    Henry ShukmanMarch 15, 20221 min read

    How wise is it for a species to call itself “wise, wise – doubly wise”? By what objective criteria and standards could we make this estimate, when all that we know of knowledge and wisdom is limited by what we are, and it can’t be otherwise. It’s like a puddle calling itself “deep, deep!” Yet from its own perspective, it is wonderfully deep. Message from Henry is from our March 14, 2022 Newsletter

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  • Dharmatalk: Moving Toward the Winter Light

    MCZCMarch 15, 20221 min read

    Description: Valerie Forstman explores the silence when Vimalakirti is asked, what is the bodhisattva entering the dharma-gate of non-duality (or the gate of not two)? Vimalakirti opens a portal to the world of many fragrances. How can we realize this world? Valerie turns to Chin Niu's Rice Bucket - Dear Bodhisattvas come and eat rice. Chin Niu presents the entire world to the monks, if they see it, they enter the world of not two....

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  • Did the Buddha have Faith? Dharma Talk with Maria Habito (video)

    MCZCMarch 11, 20221 min read

    Guest speaker Maria Habito returns to Mountain Cloud to give a teisho on faith. She asks - did the Buddha have Faith? Having been raised in the Catholic faith herself, Maria compares this to that of the Buddha in his determination to meditate. Before awakening, the Buddha faced many challenges to his practice, yet he was steadfast in maintaining it. Followed by a Q&A session. https://youtu.be/cRHKBCxKd40 Featured photo by Mark Paul Petrick Recorded in our virtual zendo on...

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  • Present Moment Awareness in Anxious Times

    Valerie ForstmanMarch 10, 20222 min read

    What is this moment? Who am I? How can I cultivate peace in the midst of this world just as it is? These are not different questions. They are pointers to what we come home to in the practice of zazen. Finding a posture conducive to stillness, resting in the breath, and welcoming what arises into the spacious awareness of silent sitting, we come to see the intimacy and immediacy of the present moment – and to...

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  • Message from Henry: Total Healing

    Henry ShukmanMarch 9, 20222 min read

    If the heart of trauma is separateness, aloneness, being alone with pain -- if utter isolation is an element in the deepest level of suffering, as trauma specialists such as Bessel Van Der Kolk suggest, then the path of practice is one of ever-decreasing isolation.  In mindfulness we restore the balance needed to be able to connect with others. First, we connect to our actual experience here and now. We get-to-know our reactivity. We restore the...

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  • Dharmatalk: The Context of Practice

    MCZCMarch 8, 20221 min read

    Description: Henry reminds us that training is our own work, effort, commitment and investment of time and energy. Yet the context of practice pulls us outside of ourselves, out of what we know and allows us to uncover our authentic self. Retreats are a critical part of creating this context. Henry also reminds us that seeking an end to suffering is the reason we practice. Buddhism has the most clearly articulated meditation methodology that is...

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  • Day Four of Exploring the Wild World of Koans Retreat – February 6, 2022 (videos)

    MCZCMarch 5, 20221 min read

    In this fourth and final talk from the Exploring the Wild World of Koans retreat, Valerie turns to Blue Cliff Record case 16 to explore what master Kyorin calls the “common taste” of the “marvelous medicine” of the koans. The talk begins and ends with a poem inspired by the Therigatha, a collection of verses by awakened women - as ancient as the beginnings of Chan and as contemporary as this very moment. https://youtu.be/UlhLYSIvISI Later that afternoon, a...

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  • Thoughts in Meditation

    Valerie ForstmanMarch 2, 20222 min read

    Thought by thought arising . . . Never separate from the Heart.  Kanzeon Sutra The Kanzeon Sutra, a short form of the Heart Sutra, celebrates the boundless compassion of the bodhisattva Kannon, hearer of the cries of the world. One rendering of the sutra begins, “Absorbing world sounds awakens a buddha right here!” That buddha, that awake one, is none other than you. The sutra ends, “Moment by moment the true heart arises/Time after time there is...

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  • Message from Henry: Do Look Back

    Henry ShukmanMarch 2, 20222 min read

    The real party, what we really want, is you. You are what you're looking for – to come home to you. So all the slings and arrows, all the troubles and struggles of life out there, are put on the shelf, left at the door, and we come home. It's not that we want or need to stop our lives. It's like a great cavern is always right behind, just waiting for you to notice it. Wherever...

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