Teachings

You can find all of our weekly Dharma talks for free right here on this page, as well as on our YouTube channel and podcast. Live talks take place every Thursday from 5:30–7:00pm MT, both in-person and on Zoom (sit.mountaincloud.org — password: mountain22). Members receive access to some special archival materials.

  • 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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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  • Video – This Very Moment, Valerie Forstman

    MCZCMarch 18, 20211 min read

    Zen is the heart of the one who asks. Using modern American and ancient Zen poetry Valerie explores the unconditional now - a single tissue of constant change - by looking at grief, the heart, death, emptiness and form. One glimpse of who we truly are, speaks to all of this. Valerie asks how can we get a glimpse into the heart of the matter and surrender to the intimacy of things just as they are?...

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  • Message from Henry: Me

    MCZCMarch 17, 20213 min read

    ...it (Zen) offers us a way, a space, a practice in which to investigate just what our sense of “me” really is. One of Buddha’s three “marks of existence” is no-self – that there is no abiding, fixed self. The sense of self so entrenched in each of us is not the permanent entity it seems. Which does not mean merely that it exists now but will one day be gone. Even right now, it...

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  • Dharmatalk: Awakening to Love and Compassion

    MCZCMarch 16, 20211 min read

    "... the very first line of the {Heart} sutra links Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of love, mercy, and compassion, with awakening and liberation  ..." "... What does it take to just grow one level bigger?  ..."   Description: In this talk, which was given on the first day of the Spring 2020 sesshin at Mountain Cloud, we again take up the topic of the Heart Sutra, examining how the five skandhas may cease through a disciplined practice of...

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  • Video – Everyday is a Good Day, Talk 4 from Full Moon, Clear Mirror Retreat

    MCZCMarch 13, 20211 min read

    The full moon has a long history of being the clearest expression of awakening. For Dogen the moon represents Zazen, silent sitting, in each moment. As a way of glancing at this moon, Valerie turns to a koan from a turbulent and deadly period in China’s history: Case 6 from the Blue Cliff Record, Every day is a Good Day. This story is addressed to each of us, a living koan that we have been taking up...

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  • Video – Silent Sitting – Talk 3 from Full Moon, Clear Mirror Retreat

    MCZCMarch 12, 20211 min read

    Whole heartedly engaging in single minded sitting is naturally undefiled. The true Dharma appears of itself. ~ Dogen Full moon Clear mirror, another name for Zazen.... the still still state of this practice illuminating everything, reflecting each thing just as it is. ~ Valerie Forstman Valerie looks at a central theme: The all-pervading sitting of Shakyamuni Buddha. She explores Case 18 from the Blue Cliff Record, The National Teacher's Tombstone. [embed] See all talks from...

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  • Video – What is Going On? Bill Bruce

    MCZCMarch 11, 20211 min read

    Senior student Bill Bruce shares dharma nuggets from his many years of practice and study. Bill looks at the koan, The no gate gateway. Case: "Unmon said, the world here stretches boundless away. Why let the bell sounds tell you when to don your seven-piece robe?" Bill talks about grief, illness and loss and absolute surrender. He focuses on our shared planetary grief about environmental catastrophe. [embed] See many more talks from MCZC our

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  • Message from Henry: Invention and Discovery

    MCZCMarch 10, 20213 min read

    It's (the Dharma) a condition not a discovery..If we then turn it into a thing, we have invented something: and at the same time we have invented a self that made the invention. In religions, the boundless, formless, ever-loving freedom that we humans can discover in the midst of our troubled lives, is turned into a thing. But in Zen, we continually undercut our human urge to turn it into a thing... Once it is...

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  • Video – The Immensity of Being, Talk 2 from Full Moon, Clear Mirror Retreat

    MCZCMarch 7, 20211 min read

    Though there is south and north for humans, how can there be a south or north for Buddha nature. ~ Huineng For this second talk of the Full Moon, Clear Mirror Retreat, Valerie turns to the story of Mugai Nyodai (Chiyono), a 13th-century Japanese Buddhist nun credited with becoming the first Zen Buddhist Abbess and female Zen Master. [embed] See all talks from this retreat on our

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  • Video – Neither Good nor Evil, Talk 1 from the Full Moon, Clear Mirror Retreat

    MCZCMarch 5, 20211 min read

    This first talk from our February 2021 retreat turns to the Zen origin story about, Huineng, the sixth Chinese Ancestor whose enlightenment was sparked by a passage from the Diamond Sutra. To do this, Valerie explores Case 23 from the Gateless Gate, Think Neither Good nor Evil. See all talks from this retreat on our

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