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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  • Message from Henry: Beauty

    MCZCApril 14, 20213 min read

    Zen is the mind of beauty. When we know that, we know Zen. The purpose of Zen is not just to train our minds and hearts. It doesn’t just want us to be more peaceful citizens, kinder neighbors and better denizens of this earth, so that the world may flourish as a better home for all its beings. Zen wants us to know how beautiful the world is. It doesn’t offer a teaching over here, about how...

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  • Dharmatalk: Love In Present Moment Experience – Original Love One (1 of 4)

    MCZCApril 13, 20211 min read

    "... Love that ... manifests as a deep inner journey into who we really are..." Description: Henry Shukman opens this first talk in our Original Love Retreat by looking at the word Love, one of the most loaded, variously understood and widely used word in the English language. Henry explores a facet of Love that is less about relational love and manifests as a deep inner journey into who we really are. Henry describes this journey...

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  • Why Koans? Talk Four, Henry Shukman

    MCZCApril 11, 20211 min read

    Koans are targeting my sense of me. Aiming directly at the heart of who I think I am. In this fourth and final talk from the Why Koans? retreat, Henry delves more deeply into the meaning and use of koans. He returns to Roso Facing the Wall, talks about the two primary Zen schools, Rinzai and Soto, explaining where Sanbo Zen fits in, and he embraces the grace of simplicity, of simply sitting . Henry says... "A...

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  • Why Koans? Talk Three, Henry Shukman

    MCZCApril 9, 20211 min read

    Each moment of our life is like the koan. We study this piece of life; in the controlled setting we can see more of what it really is. When we let go of all our assumptions and preconceptions we find this piece is much more than we could every have imagined. In this third talk of our Why Koans? March retreat, Henry explores on the benefits of koan study and focuses on Roso Faces the Wall...

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  • Message from Henry: Daily Sitting and the First Noble Truth

    MCZCApril 7, 20214 min read

    Everything  that comes up in our sitting is helping us. Zazen is a great blessing. What arises in zazen is always a path to healing. When Buddha gave his very first teaching, he began it with the "First Noble Truth:" that existence is dukkha –suffering, unease, restlessness, dissatisfactoriness. But he didn’t mean something along the lines of: isn’t life awful!? Rather, he meant: if you want to get better, the first step is to realize that you have...

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  • Dharmatalk: Practice-Realization

    MCZCApril 6, 20211 min read

    "... taste the indivisible dynamism of the heart of compassion ..." "... The slightest movement is a seismic gesture; the whole earth shaken to the farthest regions ..." Description: In this talk given during the Spring 2020 sesshin at Mountain Cloud, Valerie Forstman delves into Case 54 of the Book of Equanimity. The bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara is said to have a thousand hands and eyes. When one monk asks another what all these hands and eyes are for, the...

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  • Why Koans? Talk Two, Henry Shukman

    MCZCApril 4, 20211 min read

    ...it’s a matter of pointing to the human heart mind and finding that you are this great awakening. Its a matter of seeing your own heart mind, your experience of this moment now.  In this second talk from the Why Koans? retreat Henry continues exploring the path of gradual awakening (Mindfulness training) and the path of koan training (sudden awakening). The four foundations of mindfulness are the very foundation of meditation practice. Through this practice, we...

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  • Why Koans? Talk One, Henry Shukman

    MCZCApril 2, 20211 min read

    The sudden awakening sees all distinctions as a partial view - then suddenly a different view shows itself... the gradual way expands the circle of us and them and the sudden path sees that there never was us and them.  Watch the first talk from our March Why Koans? retreat, led by Henry Shukman. Henry describes the two paths to awakening, the gradual and the sudden, but focuses on the benefits of the gradual path in this...

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  • Message from Henry: The Lotus

    MCZCMarch 31, 20212 min read

    What if the problem is not how things are; if the problem is in fact us? If you're looking for a transcendent fix, an escape from all your problems, zen is not for you. Here, we don't escape our problems. As Buddha said, everyone has 83 problems. If you fix one, another will pop up in its place. He said he couldn't help fix the 83 problems. But he could help with the 84th problem -...

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  • Dharmatalk: Loving Awakening

    MCZCMarch 30, 20211 min read

    "... clinging to identification with the self ... the sense organs ..." "... Words cannot touch it. No words cannot touch it ..." Description: In this talk given during the 2020 Spring sesshin at Mountain Cloud, we examine the 12 links of dependent origination, which we find held together by our constant clinging to identification with the self. The Heart Sutra, in negating the five skandhas, the sense organs, objects of sensation, and so on, emphatically tells us...

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  • Video – Dawning of the New Moon: Beginner’s Mind, Valerie Forstman

    MCZCMarch 27, 20211 min read

    Valerie examines beginner's mind and explores the question"what is Zen?" during our March one-day Introduction to Meditation retreat. Suzuki Roshi - a Japanese Zen master who brought Zen teaching to America in the mid 20th century - said: Beginner's mind is the mind of compassion. As Zen practitioners we turn this compassion toward ourselves. Valerie describes the four motivations that bring people to Zen meditation. 1. Curiosity 2. Seeking well-being 3. Wanting to develop a practice or commit to a spiritual...

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  • Message from Henry: Zen is a Training

    MCZCMarch 24, 20214 min read

    Zazen is a path of clarification. It’s a process. It’s a training. When someone has kensho – a clear, direct and sudden meeting with the great reality of which everything is an expression – it’s like a hole drilled through that sheet of opaque glass. Suddenly we can see that there is something on the other side of it. The reality in which we’ve lived up till now is, in a sense, not the only one. There is...

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  • Dharmatalk: Gathering of the Heart

    MCZCMarch 23, 20211 min read

    "... Joshu is still sitting. I can’t but sit ..." Description: In this talk given on the second day of the Spring 2020 sesshin at Mountain Cloud, Valerie takes up the koan, Joshu's Dog. If we earnestly sit with Mu, whether our practice calls us to roar it from the rooftops or exhale it gently like snow falling, we begin to allow the koan that Dogen called a "sun with stone-melting power" to melt away the crust...

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  • Video – Meet Your Life, Natalie Goldberg

    MCZCMarch 21, 20211 min read

    Natalie Goldberg gives an inspiring talk about Zen in action. She describes some of her background experiences in both Zen and writing and how they interact and nourish each other. She talks about taking up writing as her practice, encouraged by her teacher Katagiri Roshi. Natalie reveals three guiding formations from her years with Katagiri Roshi: 1. Continue under all circumstances - keep going. 2. Don't be tossed away. Know what you need and know who you...

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