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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  • Primordial Wisdom: Dharma Talk with Henry Shukman (Video)

    MCZCAugust 1, 20211 min read

    Henry reads from a piece by Chan master Jing Hui, titled “On Chan” (part 5), in which he discusses fundamental points of Chan/Zen. Jing Hui was born in 1933 and trained under Chan master Xu Yun (who died in 1959 at the age of 120) at Yun Men monastery, where Unmon or Yunmen (864-949) taught. The recent abbot of Joshu's old temple, Ming Hai, studied with him. Chan (Zen) is a path.... "of seeking for profound...

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  • Falling… In Love: Dharma Talk with Valerie Forstman (Video)

    MCZCJuly 30, 20211 min read

    Valerie continues to explore the phrase, ‘preaching facing oneness.’ She invites us to follow Tozan on his final pilgrimage to a liberating encounter with what Zen calls his original face - an experience the poet, Ikkyu, describes as "love at first sight." [embed]https://youtu.be/LNu3akx1n7U[/embed] Featured image by Mark Paul Petrick  

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  • Dharmatalk: The Whole Earth Is Medicine

    MCZCJuly 28, 20211 min read

    "... Koans are invitations to pass through the gate of separation ..." Description: How can we learn through the pandemic crisis to let go of the sense of separateness that is the source of so many of the world’s problems? This talk takes Case 87 from the Blue Cliff Record, where Unmon states that “Medicine and disease correspond to each other,” and asks what the disease might be if the whole world, including current events like the...

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  • Message from Henry: The Pivot

    MCZCJuly 28, 20211 min read

    In Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, the young novice monk Alyosha falls to the ground, on the night of the wake for his recently deceased beloved spiritual mentor, and has a profound epiphany. When he gets back up he knows his soul has changed permanently, and for the rest of his life he will look back on this moment as a time something entered him that could not be turned out. Somehow, he got out of the way of...

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  • Methods of Practice

    MCZCJuly 27, 20211 min read

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_pS-rMDCGE

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  • Four Kinds of Practice

    MCZCJuly 27, 20211 min read

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHv9BVYtP5w

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  • Three Fruits of Practice

    MCZCJuly 27, 20211 min read

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgynL59QV5Y

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  • Present Moment Awareness

    MCZCJuly 27, 20211 min read

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eONCPntZs8M

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  • Thoughts

    MCZCJuly 27, 20211 min read

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbBXE6dNttg

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  • Fundamentals of Why We Sit

    MCZCJuly 27, 20211 min read

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niPekdemiHI

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  • Message from Henry: A Little Reflection on Zen History

    MCZCJuly 26, 20214 min read

      Dogen said, “Practice is enlightenment; enlightenment is practice.” Tahui said: “There never was any delusion, nor any realization.” These statements are completely clear, yet we shouldn’t mistake what they mean. They are speaking from the perspective of complete awakening. Outside of that point of view, what they’re saying does not make sense. In a sense, there is a kind of dividing line right at this point between Soto Zen and Rinzai Zen. Soto, following Dogen, says: just...

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  • Original Love Launch Evening, July 19 Video

    MCZCJuly 22, 20212 min read

    Watch the Original Love launch evening - guided meditation, talk, and Q&A. Henry introduces the concepts and practices that come together in Original Love. For me personally, this is quite a big evening... Original Love has been brewing and developing in me for some time, actually. Maybe a year or more… but on the other hand, maybe it’s really more like 40 years. I feel it’s the fruit of a lot of practice, a lot of...

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  • Message from Henry: Wisdom and Awakening

    MCZCJuly 21, 20211 min read

    Being wise and being awakened surely overlap. But they are not the same thing. We have likely all known people who were by any standard wise, but neither awakened nor interested in awakening, and perhaps that disinterest was even an aspect of their wisdom. From our July 19, 2021 Newsletter Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash

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  • Dharmatalk: A Koan for the World (3 of 3)

    MCZCJuly 20, 20211 min read

    "... koan Mu can give us a glimpse of the boundless love that pervades the whole universe ..." "... Whatever we’re not welcoming, that’s our great teacher ..." Description: Continuing on the theme of uncertainty, this talk considers koan practice as a way of helping us find our true home in a world where nothing is ever certain. We look at how Case 45 from the Book of Equanimity and the famous koan Mu can give us a...

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