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: Infinite Love is the Real Truth

    MCZCJanuary 6, 20212 min read

    The real fruits are in the long training in how we live...and express its infinite love in the way we act and live in the world. Some traditions focus more on method and parse that out more thoroughly than any putative fruits of the method -- and some traditions focus more on fruits, with less detail about the method. Zen is probably more in the second category. Its basic meditation method is breath counting, or breath watching,...

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  • Dharmatalk: A Goad for Training

    MCZCJanuary 5, 20211 min read

    "... This being here like this is a marvellous arising of a mirage ..." Description: This talk, the second one given during the 2019 Rohatsu Sesshin, further discusses the group of lines from the Heart Sutra that starts, “No eye, ear, nose,” etc. The sutra breaks down our entire perception of reality by the sense organs, sense objects, and the process of sensation; and to all of these repeats - No! We may be tempted to accept...

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  • The Origin Point, Dharma Talk 2 from the Winter Solstice Retreat, 2020

    MCZCJanuary 2, 20211 min read

    Standing Still is the meaning of solstice...it's as if the sun stands still. To explore the origin point of practice, Valerie revisits the Old Plum Tree, Case Zero, from the Transmission of Light Collection. This case is the the Head Chapter which we read on Rohatsu that narrates the awakening of Shakyamuni Buddha and the simultaneous awakening of all existence, past, present and future. Springing from the one branch of the old plum tree, Valerie wanders...

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  • Message from Henry: About Self-Proclaimed, Self-Awakened Masters

    MCZCDecember 30, 20202 min read

    All is being worked out all the time. It’s all a work in progress. It's not that private self-awakenings without any guidance, without even any practice, don't happen. It's clear they sometimes do. It’s that it might be wise to be skeptical of the claims that are sometimes made about them – claims to having become an exalted human being, with the right, and even injunction, to lead others, for example, or to found hitherto unknown,...

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  • Dharmatalk: Firsthand Experience

    MCZCDecember 29, 20201 min read

    "... Practice is always, only about this moment ..." Description: The first talk given during the Winter Rohatsu sesshin of 2019 continues an ongoing exploration of the Heart Sutra by looking, in particular, at the line: “No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind.” Allowing this negating assertion to infuse our practice, we may find ourselves able to encounter and overcome the Five Hindrances more gracefully. Post & Featured Image: Sunset in Keszthely Bay by csakisti, purchased from depositphotos,...

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  • It’s All Empty: Talk 1 from Winter Solstice Retreat, 2020

    MCZCDecember 28, 20201 min read

    This moment - just as it is - is our reality. In this first talk from our Winter Solstice Retreat, Henry describes how meditation practice exclusively focused on awakening (kensho) can bypass the enormous gains practice offers our ordinary lives. Zen practice directly meets our daily anxieties, joys, losses, and gains. It meets and supports us right where we are. The whole thrust of deep Buddhist teachings is to meet our lives in normal everyday reality....

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  • Dharmatalk: Negation as Strategy

    MCZCDecember 22, 20201 min read

    "... The Heart Sutra puts forth the radical assertion that knowing is delusion, and not knowing is most intimate ..." "... This is not a morning talk on Zen ..." Description: The word “no” gets repeated over many times throughout the Heart Sutra. This talk examines why negation is such a core element of Mahayana Buddhism. What is it that gets negated through engaging in this practice? The idea of gaining some sort of knowledge so often is...

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  • Message from Henry: Thinking

    MCZCDecember 16, 20202 min read

    Another take on thinking... It's a bit like this. There's a tapestry. It's woven of many threads. The threads are thoughts. Together, they weave a rich brocade. And we sit entranced by it. It has dark, troubling areas, and bright, sunny, hopeful patches. And scary, menacing corners, and scenes of rage and hatred. In time we are so familiar with it, so habituated to it, that we only need a glimpse or glint of a single thread...

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  • Dharmatalk: The Wisdom before Knowing

    MCZCDecember 15, 20201 min read

    "... We, our mind, the world we experience with our mind; are all the same ..." [caption id="attachment_22573" align="aligncenter" width="940"] Surrealism. Woman's eye with galaxies in deep space[/caption] Description: In this first talk given during the Fall 2019 sesshin, we continue our former discussion about the Heart Sutra by looking at how Prajna Paramita is “neither stained nor pure,” and is “neither born nor dies.” The text is worded as a series of negations because in this teaching...

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  • Moving toward the Winter Light, Valerie Forstman (Video)

    MCZCDecember 12, 20201 min read

    Little bodhisattvas come and eat your rice. Valerie explores the ensuing silence that occurs 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 Blue Cliff Record Koan 74 Chin Niu's Rice Bucket.  Dear Bodhisattva's come and eat your rice. Chin Niu presents the entire world to the monks,...

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  • Message from Henry: Stoic Shift

    MCZCDecember 9, 20201 min read

    The Stoic shift is about a shift in what we value. Rather than valuing attainments, possessions and pleasures in the external world, we value the development of character. Character means growing into ourselves, so that we are less dependent for our contentment on external factors. We become happier about facing a setback, and being unperturbed by it, than about a success in the world. Indeed, a success that captures us with pleasure or delight is a...

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  • Dharmatalk: The Land of Neither, Nor

    MCZCDecember 8, 20201 min read

    "... we need only learn how to let go of our body, mind, feelings, senses and consciousness as naturally as leaves letting go their stems and falling to the ground in autumn ..." "... Emptiness is the most marvelous fullness ..." Description: The Prajna Paramita teachings of Buddhism in some cases may comprise up to 100,000 verses of scripture, or be expressed in a few dozen lines, in the case of the Heart Sutra, or arguably in just one...

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  • Talk 4 from the Original Love 4 Retreat, Vimalakirti’s Silence (Video)

    MCZCDecember 6, 20201 min read

    This is about the suffering of the whole world and the bodhisattva work for the welfare of all beings. Don't dismiss your wounds, offer them, let them be portals, such freedom. Valerie and Henry give the final talk of the Original Love 4 retreat. Valerie asks this question: What is the gate to the one and only? Then, she dives deeply into Vimalakirtis' Sutra - Blue Cliff Record Case 84 and arrives at essential wisdom/compassion and...

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  • Talk 3 from the Original Love 4 Retreat, Mu Koan (Video)

    MCZCDecember 4, 20201 min read

    This isn't something we get, it's something that happens to us and continues happening. Henry explores the koan Mu in this third talk from the Original Love 4 Retreat. Henry begins with a monk's account of what it's like being awakened by the koan Mu. "... I was awakened into a world in which there was no me... the one thing I am sure of.... the functioning of the heart in which I was born came...

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