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.

  • Video – Natalie Goldberg: Three Simple Lines

    MCZCJanuary 16, 20211 min read

    Natalie speaks about her new book Three Simple Lines: A Writer’s Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku. Listen to this engaging and enthusiastic talk by Natalie about her deep dive into Haiku. The final section includes a short exchange with Sanbo Zen teachers Ruben Habito and Maria Reis Habito who were part of the audience. [embed] Nathalie would love you to purchase her book, at a local bookseller if possible, or on Amazon or...

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  • Invitation to Simply Trust: Talk 1 from January’s Introductory Retreat, Valerie Forstman

    MCZCJanuary 16, 20212 min read

    When you sit, the whole world is sitting... We really don't have to do anything, just show up. The invitation of Zen practice is to sit with the world, just as it is - keenly critical now, during challenging and distressing world events. At the same time, this practice is larger than any circumstances. Valerie encourages us to entrust ourself to this practice and to the silence which has the capacity to be thoroughly transformative....

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  • Message from Henry: Fulfillment

    MCZCJanuary 13, 20213 min read

    ...allowing ourselves to be fully what we are. We chase our fulfillment elsewhere. This is our fundamental human problem. We think that we will find true fulfillment in other experiences than this one, right here and now. It will come from achieving something, or having something, or being with someone. While all kinds of experiences, events and relationships in our lives can be conducive to our fulfillment as human beings, there is only one place...

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  • Dharmatalk: A Heart Retreat

    MCZCJanuary 12, 20211 min read

    "... sutra is conveying the great love and fundamental energy that pervades throughout the universe ..." "... Hating our suffering and fighting against it will inevitably make it worse ..." Description: This third talk given during the Winter Sesshin of 2019 considers how all of the senses and sense objects that are named in the Heart Sutra can serve as foundations for awakening. The truth that the bodhisattva realizes can be accessed through smell, taste and feeling...

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  • Beginner’s Mind, Dharma Talk 3 form the Winter Solstice Retreat 2020

    MCZCJanuary 8, 20211 min read

    The knot of self has become untied. Henry returns to the basics of practice in this third talk from the winter solstice retreat picking up on Valerie's theme of trees and photosynthesis. "Pick up your Practice with a lot of hope. Know that your sitting is doing the photosynthesis of the world. Allowing the human to be." Henry quotes from William Shakespeare, physicist David Bohm, writer David Hinton and Bodhidharma "when we get to the...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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