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: Zen Whisperer

    MCZCJuly 30, 20192 min read

    ...we are allowing an inner wellbeing, fulfillment, peace ... to start to show itself. The old religious idea of making one’s heart and mind a fit dwelling place for God - it’s a lovely analogy for practice. In practice we are learning to cultivate a healthy and “clean” inner space.  We might think of it like this: the three pillars of bodily health are diet, exercise and sleep, according to some experts. Of course, these also help...

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  • The Swinging Door, Shunryu Suzuki

    MCZCJuly 27, 20191 min read

    What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. When we practice zazen our mind always follows our breathing. When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world. When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world. The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is limitless. We say "inner world" or "outer world," but actually there is just one whole world. In this...

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  • Dharmatalk: A Path of Peace (Practice Pointers)

    MCZCJuly 25, 20191 min read

    "... When we allow what is, space magically appears ..." Description: This is the first talk of the Fall 2018 sesshin. Specific pointers to aid us in allowing deeper states of meditation are discussed, beginning with two ways we can practice with the mind: disciplined focus on our chosen object of awareness, and backing off entirely, letting it all just be. Post & Featured image: Kingfisher Bird by Timo Schluter, Pixabay License.

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  • Message from Henry: Clean and Sober

    MCZCJuly 23, 20191 min read

    "...the path of practice is a dis-intoxication, a dis-enchantment from false views." One of the German words for “clean” is sauber, which is related to the English word “sober”. Buddhism has embedded metaphors of purification and “cleaning up.” Purifying primarily refers to scrubbing away the defilements or impurities of afflictions and delusions that cause negative emotions, erroneous views and our clinging and grasping. Sober, of course, means “not intoxicated” in English. In some recovery circles people talk...

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  • Casa, by Rosa Bellino

    MCZCJuly 20, 20191 min read

      Casa a place I must leave I know Each step carved on the wheel of life a circle that never ends a circle of ever new vistas in a world I do not yet know and yet... Casa a place I know must return to as I walk on the path that will bring me back home where I belong where it all began       Casa the place I comeback to in every season without knowing why without a thought without a reason Casa I sit in the old chair waiting for me without a word we touch we know each other well All...

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  • Dharmatalk: Maura Noone: Allow It All

    MCZCJuly 18, 20191 min read

    "... Allow whatever's happening ... and let this practice just swallow you up ..." Description: In this heart-felt and profound account of some of the ways that practice has helped her, Maura Noone, a Senior Student at Mountain Cloud, shares some of the challenging circumstances of her life, and shows in clear and illuminating ways how the Zen practice of being still and of taking koans deep into our meditation, has transformed her life. Full of...

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  • Message from Henry: Oiling the Wheel

    MCZCJuly 16, 20191 min read

    Lubricants of compassion, humility and gratitude... Some wonderful lubricants that can help with our dukkha, our suffering, our resistance - that help to oil the wheel misaligned on its axle - are humility, gratitude and compassion. If we awaken any one of them in the heart, our practice will come to life in new ways. Try it.   Message from Henry is from our July 15, 2019 Newsletter Image: Fantasy Wheel by Kellepics,  Pixabay License

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  • How Buddhist is Modern Buddhism? Book Review and Analysis by David Loy

    MCZCJuly 13, 201911 min read

    Ultimately, the fundamental issue is not Buddhist interaction with scientific reductionism or Romanticism but how the Buddhism that is emerging might best address the individual and collective dukkha [suffering] of our time. Buddhism was the first major missionary religion, and by all accounts it seems to have spread peacefully. The merchants and monks who transported the dharma did not accompany conquering armies or attempt to defeat the local gods. Most often, Buddhism engaged with native traditions...

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  • Dharmatalk (Guest): Ruben Habito: World in a Grain of Sand

    MCZCJuly 11, 20191 min read

    To see a World in a Grain of Sand; And a Heaven in a Wild Flower ~William Blake Description: This talk was given by Ruben Habito Roshi, founding teacher of Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas, TX. Beginning with William Blake’s poem, “Auguries of Innocence,” we are invited to glimpse our true nature. Words and concepts can only point to this reality— but in stillness, with open hearts, we can become it. The basic guidelines of Zen...

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  • Message from Henry: Offering

    MCZCJuly 9, 20191 min read

    Giving up. Giving to. Giving in. Last week I wrote that Mu is not a task. Why not? If we bring the question back to practice in general -- practice can seem like a task. We do it, we have a method, we take time to do it. But from another perspective, the basic aspect of practice is to be still and silent. That is, just to be. And thus, to come into alignment with the bare,...

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  • Uji – Being-Time, Dogen

    MCZCJuly 6, 20191 min read

    An old Buddha said: For the time being, I stand astride the highest mountain peaks. For the time being, I move on the deepest depths of the ocean floor. For the time being, I'm three heads and eight arms. For the time being, I'm eight feet or sixteen feet. For the time being, I'm a staff or a whisk. For the time being, I'm a pillar or a lantern. For the time being, I'm Mr. Chang or Mr. Li. For the time being,...

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  • Dharmatalk (Guest): John Gaynor: Zen Master Dôgen Kigen (Part 2 of 2)

    MCZCJuly 4, 20191 min read

      Description: This is the second part of a talk given by John Gaynor, a Zen Teacher with The Oxford Zen Centre. The why, how and what of meditation is explored, using the wisdom gleaned from Master Dôgen’s first work, Fukanzazengi (Universally Recommended Instructions for Sitting Meditation). It closes with an engaging question and answer period. Click here for Part 1. This talk was hosted by Meditatio and recorded by WCCM and is being published with their permission. Post...

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  • Message from Henry: Re-parenting

    MCZCJuly 2, 20191 min read

    Mu. It’s not a task. Once you really get this second kind of parenting that dharma training can offer, and go through a new kind of childhood, whatever wounds there may be from inadequacies in the first, physical parenting get both healed and greatly reduced in importance.   Message from Henry is from our June 24, 2019 Newsletter Image: Childhood by Yuliya Harbachova,  Pixabay License

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  • Breathe Truth into the Word

    MCZCJune 29, 20191 min read

    Poetry does not care If you like it or not Rhymes may care What you write How you write But true poetry doesn't care About the words you use It only cares About the silence you sing The pauses The stillness That breathes into your voice The invisible wind That carries each letter Each sound on to the page Into the space.. Time and space Weaved together Till the All sings In you - in me... It sings without boundaries Without limits In the heart of a flower In the heart of a child that reaches for the stars In the...

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