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 Heart’s Longing: Dharma Talk with Ruben Habito (Video)

    MCZCOctober 1, 20211 min read

    Ruben Habito talks about how to live an awakened life. We are seeking to see what the Buddha saw and wanting to embody and realize what the Buddha came to know. In most all religions we find the same deep heartfelt longing for an infinite and boundless reality that we can never capture in words and concepts. This is the first principle of Zen: realization is beyond all concepts and words. [embed]https://youtu.be/XtDIPFd16X0[/embed] Ruben Habito is the founding...

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  • Dharmatalk: Mountains and Snow

    MCZCSeptember 28, 20211 min read

    "... The image of mountains is common to many spiritual traditions but is especially fitting for Zen practitioners ... "... This truth knows no obstacles anywhere..." Description: This talk was originally given in Spanish by Berta Meneses Roshi and is here translated into English. She discusses the koan that starts by telling us, “A thousand mountains are covered in snow;” then goes on to ask, “Why is only one peak not white?” The image of mountains is...

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  • Message from Henry: Samu

    MCZCSeptember 22, 20211 min read

    Any time you’re unsure what to do... do some samu. Tend your immediate environment. Find something - anything - perhaps the smaller the better, that could use your attention.   Photo by Sofia Geada on Unsplash Message from Henry is from our September 20, 2021 Newsletter

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  • Dharmatalk: Mind At Rest

    MCZCSeptember 22, 20211 min read

    "... Bodhidharma Puts the Mind at Rest..." Description: Ruben Roshi has been both Henry and Valerie's teacher. He is the guiding teacher at the Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas Texas and Dean of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Ruben focuses on anxiety, stress and near-despair within the context of the pandemic and our human condition. He explores what Zen practice offers our growing anxiety, pain and suffering using the koan, Bodhidharma...

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  • Henry Shukman on The Tim Ferris Show

    MCZCSeptember 20, 20211 min read

    Henry Shukman talks with host Tim Ferriss about Zen tools for awakening, Ayahuasca vs meditation, koans, and using our wounds as a doorway to practice and enlightenment.This is great conversation between two gifted communicators. Tim asks Henry probing questions which Henry answers with humor, humility and honesty. Not to be missed! Click here to listen. Show quotes from Henry... There’s something about deep wounding that can be a pathway to deep, deep love. It’s a very beautiful thing when...

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  • Passing Through the Net: Dharma Talk with Valerie Forstman (Video)

    MCZCSeptember 20, 20211 min read

    Is there passing through? What net? Valerie explores Book of Equanimity, Case 33, ‘Sansho’s Golden Scales,’ looking into awakening as coming home to this moment just as it is, empty, inexhaustible, and utterly one. [embed]https://youtu.be/cai5A3FU_HQ[/embed] Photo by Mads Schmidt Rasmussen on Unsplash

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  • Rich Aimlessness, Dharma Talk by Henry Shukman (Video)

    MCZCSeptember 20, 20211 min read

    Henry continues looking at the famous koan collection, the Gateless Gate. He explores and defines "Gateless" which includes how to be a useful participate in the this troubled world while also living from no-self. Henry then turns to Case 7 and master Joshu who practiced Zen for 100 years. When we sit, Henry asks us to consider these questions... Are we trying to get somewhere? Do we have a destination? What is it like to let go of any...

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  • Dharmatalk: Ordinary Mind Is the Way

    MCZCSeptember 15, 20211 min read

    "... how everyday experience is actually as vast and boundless as outer space ..." "... By letting everything be, things have the intrinsic capacity to release themselves ..." Description: Resuming the discussion about the koan that tells us “ordinary mind is the way,” this talk from the second day of a weekend retreat examines how everyday experience is actually as vast and boundless as outer space. Many of us who have come to Zen as spiritual seekers will be...

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  • Message from Henry: Zendo Magic

    MCZCSeptember 15, 20211 min read

    A zendo is a space that makes things beautiful. For example, this morning - a set of small lozenges of sunlight pattern themselves across the wall and floor, where the early low sun is slanting in between the eaves and the projecting beams outside. And ... very slowly they slide down the wall and toward the middle of the room. From our September 13, 2021 Newsletter

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  • Message from Henry: Loving Things

    MCZCSeptember 8, 20212 min read

    Did you have a particular pair of jeans or cords as a kid that you loved? That you hated to be parted from? Or a shirt, a jacket, a T shirt? Did you ever get that feeling that somehow this article of clothing was part of you, and helped you be you? Or maybe you felt it with a bike. We just couldn’t believe how marvelously that bike, with its knobby tyres and mud-streaked forks,...

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  • Dharmatalk: Enlightenments – One Mountain

    MCZCSeptember 7, 20211 min read

    "... Many flavors of awakening exist, constituting one mountain range ..." "... If you’re lucky enough to get up the mountain, you’ve still got to come down again ..." Description: A novice asks his master, “What is the way?” The master responds, “Ordinary mind.” This koan expresses how ultimate reality can be found in something as commonplace as a cup of coffee. When someone experiences awakening in Zen, they will not need to look beyond their ordinary reckoning...

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  • Dharmatalk: Most Intimate, So Near

    MCZCAugust 31, 20212 min read

    "... a world that is so near to us yet so well able to maintain itself that we needn’t do anything to influence it ..." "... Zazen has been described as silently not influencing anything ..." Description: Koans can provide helpful perspectives for dealing with the uncertainty of current world events. In this talk, Valerie Forstman discusses Case 20 from the Book of Equanimity, in which Jizo tells his student that not knowing is most intimate. She deeply...

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  • Extinguishing the flame, Igniting the world: Valerie Forstman (Video)

    MCZCAugust 27, 20211 min read

    Valerie continues the theme of suffering and beauty from our recent July virtual retreat, taking up the awakening story of Patacara, a renowned woman disciple of the Buddha, teacher, and foundational figure in early Buddhism. This talk was delivered in our virtual zendo on August 19, 2021. [embed]https://youtu.be/o760jHOki2I[/embed] Featured Photo by Ketan Wagh on Unsplash

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  • Dharmatalk: Deepening of the dharma – Meditation, Talk, and Q&A

    MCZCAugust 24, 20211 min read

    "... subjectivity of deeper states of meditation ..." "... What is the price of rice?’ Why is that the totality of the human experience of awakening?” ..."   Description: Following a guided meditation, a discussion of one of the Vedic Upanishads points out how the old Zen masters, whose terse teachings come down to us through the koans, expressed profound truths by referring to very mundane things. Questions from sangha members then pertain to the subjectivity of deeper states...

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