Teachings
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Summer 2023: Sesshin Talk 4
August 1, 20232 min read
A sincere heart – just one – is simply the ten directions crystal clear... the ten directions themselves squeeze the marrow from the bone. Dogen A hawk travels many miles by its stillness Valerie richly unfolds Case 46 from the Mumonkan, Sekiso’s “how do you step forward from a 100-foot pole?” (...And manifest your whole body in the world of ten directions)? The pole-top evokes that state of not-one-thing: house fallen, person forgotten, not a speck of cloud...
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2023 Summer Sesshin Talk 3
July 23, 20231 min read
The Radiant Light Allows the Radiant Light to Respond To examine “radiance,” Valerie takes up Mumonkan case 39, “Unmon and a Mistake in Speech.” She turns it in a kaleidoscope with Dogen, Hongzhi, Chosetsu, heartbreak and failure, her revelatory stroll one day at Sonnenhof when the koan “where will you go when you die” accompanied her into the fields. The radiance these ancestors speak of doesn’t really have two sides – form is emptiness – yet...
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2023 Summer Sesshin Talk 2
July 18, 20231 min read
Practice-realization, suffering-compassion, wind-fan, and hyphenless reality Why do we practice, if our fundamental nature is unimprovable? Mu is a sun with stone-melting power, and the fact itself. A way and the way. Vows express our utter commitment to this reality and our seamless belonging. Effects of our practice are noticeable and unmeasurable. The unmeasurable expresses itself as our practice, regardless of whether we perceive it. In any case, the way this oneness world works, there’s a...
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2023 Summer Sesshin Talk 1: Mu and the Spirit of Dogen
July 7, 20231 min read
We can’t do it, this great release – but Mu can... “Because Mu is whole, the power of this whole Mu awakens you” ~ Ryo’un Yamada. It causes... “body and mind of self and other to fall away” (Dogen) revealing that the place where you’re sitting is vacant, as the myriad things rush in. The gateless gate of Mu, a gate with a front and no back, “a peal of thunder under a bright blue...
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Invitation only – Register for Rohatsu 2023 On-site Attendance
July 1, 20231 min read
Use this form to register and pay for attending Rohatsu 2023 on0site, as either a, lodger, commuter or camper. You MUST have received an invitation to attend on-site in order to use this form.
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Eyebrow to Eyebrow, Shana Smith (Video)
June 26, 20231 min read
Assistant Sanbo Zen Teacher Shana Smith examines “Zuigan’s Eyebrows,” Case 8 in the Blue Cliff Record, and sheds abundant light and color on what it might feel like to be “eyebrow to eyebrow” with the Zen ancestors, with one another, with our whole lives. In this effort, she stints neither on rich storytelling nor on the unimprovable intimacy of the shout. (“Teisho,” Dharma talk: literally “presentation of the shout”). One of many vivid illustrations comes...
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Only as Sick as our Secrets: the Urgency of Nuclear Disarmament, Archbishop John C. Wester
June 17, 20232 min read
Archbishop John Wester joins Jay Coghlan, Executive Director of Nuclear Watch New Mexico, and MCZC guiding teacher Valerie Forstman, to pull back the veil on nuclear business as usual. The moment is dire. Archbishop Wester speaks with a disarming combination (one hopes) of innate gentleness and distilled urgency. He says the very first thing to remedy is the severe lack of conversation in so many contexts, from casual chats to elected officials. We needn’t all...
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Nansen’s Circle and the Seamless Tomb
June 17, 20231 min read
Valerie takes up case 69 from the Hekiganroku, “Nansen draws a circle,” and traces what it might mean to accord with this “circle” (or perhaps to notice how powerfully we are in accord, willy-nilly) exactly as we are, including when we’re sick, in pain, or porous to the world’s unimaginable pains. She draws a half-dozen other koans into case 69’s circles of resonance, and students’ stories and insights, and Yamada Koun’s favorite circle: the zero...
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