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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  • Teisho: Valerie Forstman: You Are That Shining

    MCZCJanuary 25, 20241 min read

    This teisho by Valerie is offered on the night of the first full moon of the new year while a gentle snow settles on the piñon pines outside the zendo. Questions like: “What is this? Who am I? What is the full moon?” settle on us like snowflakes on the pine trees. Our koan to consider is Case #13 from the Blue Cliff Record, or Hekigonroku, “Haryo’s Silver Bowl.” A monk questions, “What is the...

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  • Teisho: Sean Murphy: The “Five Conditions”

    MCZCJanuary 18, 20241 min read

    This Dharma talk is presented by Zen master and author Sean Murphy. Drawing on his long career as a Zen teacher, he presents a reframing of the important Buddhist concept of the five skandhas. The English translation of the five skandhas is often presented philosophically or as Buddhist psychology which may be difficult to understand and apply. Sean offers a simpler system called the “five conditions” which he originally learned from Zen teacher Bernie Glassman....

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  • Teisho: Ruben Habito: What is Zen?

    MCZCJanuary 11, 20241 min read

    In this rich and compelling teisho, Ruben starts with the question, “What is Zen Practice?” He broadens this, somewhat playfully, to “What’s it all about?” The koan he uses is Case #38 “A Cow Passes Through a Window” from the Mumonkan or The Gateless Gate, The cow or ox stands for our Original Nature, and the koan gives us a way of understanding our precarious human condition and how Zen practice leads us on a...

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  • Valerie Forstman: Opening Hands in the New Year

    MCZCJanuary 4, 20241 min read

    In this heartfelt teisho, Valerie uses Case 25 of the Hekiganroku, or Blue Cliff Record, known as “The Hermit of Lotus Flower Peak Holds Up His Staff.” This koan was one of Yamada Koun’s favorites. She also uses “The Song of the Grass-Roof Hut” by Shitou. Quoting passages and important phrases from both, she invites us to bring our hearts into the New Year and open ourselves to the empty infinite, the vast inconceivable source. https://youtu.be/E7Os69-9DOM...

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  • Exploring a Koan by Touch, Carolyn Seburn

    MCZCSeptember 28, 20231 min read

    Carolyn speaks of an important case that appears in three koan collections, Gutei’s One Finger. It is the story of a Chinese monk and his attendant, who attained sudden enlightenment after seeing Gutei hold up his finger. This case is a tactile trigger to kensho. “[Yet] you already have everything this one finger can teach you.” https://youtu.be/-bbD14WBjFY Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash

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  • The Ecological Crisis

    MCZCSeptember 27, 20231 min read

    David Loy discusses how the ecological crisis is much bigger than the climate emergency. In the Ecodharma movement, there is a lot of emphasis now on connecting the ecological crisis with BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) issues. Disadvantaged people, often diverse, indigenous people of color, are already suffering the brunt of the ecological crisis. He also discusses the vast inequalities of wealth in the US and the connection between the ecological crisis and...

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  • Henry Shukman, Day 1: Past the Land’s End

    MCZCSeptember 24, 20231 min read

    Talk 1 Fall 2023 Sesshin In the opening talk of the 2023 autumn retreat at Mountain Cloud, Henry likens a sesshin to a journey of practice where growing means finding what we do not already know or anticipate. The voyage starts here, always here. “We are here to become more and more aware of here.” Henry talks about welcoming and being patient with the currents and tides in meditation and discusses the settling and releasing process....

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  • Message from Valerie: Return

    Valerie ForstmanSeptember 20, 20232 min read

    I follow the stream to its very source, then sit and watch where the clouds rise.  ~ Wang Wei, 699-761, record from a retreat at Mt. Chungnan The Autumn sesshin at Mountain Cloud just ended. Throughout, the words ‘homecoming’ and ‘return’ kept surfacing – inviting us to follow the stream of experience to its source.  What is that? Where is it? Can it be anywhere but here?  One of our guides was a verse from Shitou’s ‘Song of the...

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  • Which Way to Mount Taizan? Valerie Forstman (Video)

    MCZCSeptember 12, 20231 min read

    Each step, each sound, every word is Mount Taizan, the highest peak – this landscape that we can’t, actually, fall out of. Entirety. Shoyoroku Case 10, “An Old Woman near Taizan,” gestures toward such a complete and dynamic landscape. So do a passage from Dogen, an exchange between Bodhidharma and Huike: “Which way shall we go?” “Go straight on.” “If you go straight on you cannot move a step” – at which, Huike’s body-mind just...

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  • Message from Valerie: Sesshin

    Valerie ForstmanSeptember 12, 20231 min read

    The Great Homecoming: Returning exactly where you are This coming Thursday, September 14, the 2023 Autumn sesshin begins at Mountain Cloud. The sesshin will be online - sitting in your home, long sitting in the midst of everyday life - with a small group of residents and staff sitting in the zendo, anchoring our jeweled web of practice in that quiet earthen space.  Sesshin - a time set aside to dive deep into practice; to immerse in...

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  • Mount Sumeru Vaporizes Mistakes, Scott Thornton

    MCZCSeptember 6, 20231 min read

    A monk asked, “Not a single thought arises. Is there any fault?” Unmon said: “Mount Sumeru.” Sumeru by tradition is higher than the stars, cosmically vast (much vaster than getting it right or wrong), and should be visible from everywhere. Maybe it’s a bit like Unmon’s responses – which, it’s said, always perform three functions: they cut through, they cover the matter entirely, and they fit the question perfectly, like a box its lid. “Mount...

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  • Message from Valerie: Coming Home

    Valerie ForstmanAugust 16, 20232 min read

    Scott and I returned late Sunday night from the annual Sanbozen teacher training in Toronto. It’s good to be home! Home in the ordinary sense of daily life in and among the Mountain Cloud community, and in the fundamental sense of our true home – the essential fact that is always exactly where you are.  During the Kenshukai, a theme emerged early on: “Dwelling nowhere, mind comes forth.” This line from the Diamond Sutra is a...

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  • Summer 2023: Sesshin Talk 6, Final Talk

    MCZCAugust 7, 20231 min read

    Taste and See: Be what you are For the six days of this sesshin, as is typical of Zen, we’ve been talking about reality and experience, a fact that is beyond words. A reality that is not mappable by our assumed ways of knowing or our normal understanding. What this world is intrinsically by nature, — waits for our discovery, and always waiting for more discovery. We’ve been immersed in practice realization or entering the 10,000...

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  • Summer 2023: Sesshin Talk 5

    MCZCAugust 5, 20232 min read

    A World So Full it Can’t Accept One More Thing Valerie takes up Seppo’s “What is This” (Hekiganroku Case 51), together with earlier and later episodes in Seppo and Ganto’s long, poignant friendship. At one point in the Case Ganto says, “I never told Seppo the last word.” Conventionally a “last word” is someone’s dying words, but in Ganto’s mouth the phrase sheds ordinary measures of before and after, delivering us right-here, where each word is...

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