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: Hearts on Fire

    MCZCMay 14, 20191 min read

    Desperation -- in a way, it’s quite right. We should be desperate. This situation we are in called life -- what is it? Why is it happening? How should we live? Who really are we? Not just hair on fire, but hearts on fire! Zen is passionate. It loves the world, it cares for beings, it loves beauty, and it passionately wants beings to be well, to be free, to be healthy and happy and free from...

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  • Can Buddhism Meet the Climate Crisis? Part 1 of 2, by David Loy

    MCZCMay 11, 20199 min read

    The challenge that confronts us is spiritual because it goes to the very heart of how we understand the world, including our place and role in this world. Is the eco-crisis the earth’s way of telling us to “wake up or suffer the consequences”? It is no exaggeration to say that today humanity faces its greatest challenge ever: in addition to burgeoning social crises, a self-inflicted ecological catastrophe threatens civilization as we know it and (according...

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  • Dharmatalk: Case 81, Book of Equanimity: Gensha Reaches the Province (Part 2)

    MCZCMay 9, 20191 min read

    "... We can drop our construction of self and world, space and time ..." Description: This talk begins with the sound of rain and gentle rolling thunder. It is a continuation of the exploration of Case 81, with a focus on Gensha’s comment at the end of the story. Gensha is trying to help us to appreciate what we really are by sharing with us a reality that can never be known by our mind. Post &...

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  • Message from Henry: New Levels

    MCZCMay 7, 20191 min read

    The meditative, contemplative life - you might think it sounds so placid... But it’s more like hopping on a throaty old Triumph motorbike and putting it through its paces, seeing what it can really do. Taking this body, mind and heart for ride after heavy ride, taking them for all they’ve got - and finding there’s far more to them than met the eye. And the number one liberating move that really opens them up is to...

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  • Dharmatalk: Case 81, Book of Equanimity: Gensha Reaches the Province (Part 1)

    MCZCMay 2, 20191 min read

    "... This world is one single act of love ..." Description: Koans can open up the potential of a human being. Case 81 is a Dharma dialogue between Gensha and Shôtô. They converse about a party the day before—all the revelry is right here, right now. The point of Zen training is to experience this one fact and to make it our ongoing experience. Post & Featured image: Heart Universe Love by geralt, Pixabay License.

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  • Message from Henry: Daily Sit

    MCZCApril 30, 20191 min read

    ...being still daily... We have to sit every day. Then it becomes a path. We start to feel the earth under our feet, and the fact that we are following a trail, an old road, begins to show itself. By being still daily. Don’t struggle with it. Just let it be part of your life, however you feel about it.   From our April 29, 2019 Newsletter Image:  Treker by skeeze,  Pixabay License  

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  • “This”

    MCZCApril 27, 20191 min read

    This has no time. This has no place. This has no words. This has no characteristics at all. Anything that comes into this, dissolves and evaporates... like a snowflake in a furnace, as Kakuan said of the eighth ox-herding picture. This is reality. This is home. This is the truth. People don’t generally seem to know this, though it can only always be here. It’s not here, but it’s never gone. This connects to nothing else. ~ Henry Shukman...

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  • Dharmatalk: Case 80, Book of Equanimity: Suibi and the Chin Rest

    MCZCApril 25, 20191 min read

    "... How incredible to wake up into the heart of this moment ..." Description: Koans are not confined by our typical assumptions about reality. Case 80 refers to the story of Bodhidharma, who is credited with bringing Zen from India to China. What did Bodhidharma bring? In this koan, Ryûge is asking Suibi and Rinzai this very deep question, and they respond, showing us what it is to have “no meaning.” Post & Featured image: Sunrise by...

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  • Message from Henry: Pushing

    MCZCApril 23, 20192 min read

    Isn’t it a relief to have found a practice that doesn’t respond at all to pushing? It’s a granite rock, implacable, unmoveable. Try to push ahead and it just pushes back. Utterly stubborn. Thinking back over the eight or so books I published when I was busy as a writer, I remember that some were “pushed” and some weren’t. “Pushing” meant that the publishers made efforts to get bookstores to stock them, to get reviewers to...

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  • The Ultimate

    MCZCApril 21, 20191 min read

    All objects point to the Ultimate,  and a real work of art actively brings whoever  sees or hears it  to his real nature, which is beauty.  The difference between an ordinary object and a work of art is    that the object is passive in its pointing towards the Ultimate  whereas the work of art is active. Jean Kline  (Neither This Nor That I Am, 10; cf. 'A Conversation on Art' in Who Am I?) **** Photo and creation by Rosa Bellino...

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  • Dharmatalk: All Beings, One Intimacy

    MCZCApril 18, 20191 min read

    "... Everything is constantly pouring into existence in this magnificent generosity ..." Description: The Buddha spent his life trying to help others to be freed from suffering. Zen practice exposes our weaknesses, limitations and challenges—this is the grit that makes the pearl. We face things we may not want to face and, therefore, fuel the possibility of discovering that what we thought we were is an invention, that we are not separate, and the true self can...

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  • Beauty – Truth

    MCZCApril 13, 20191 min read

    Try to find the Way  to marry  your love of  Beauty  to your love of  Truth  they are the same  Love   ~ Rupert Spira  Image: Rosa Bellino

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  • Dharmatalk (Guest): Ruben Habito: Case 3, Blue Cliff Record: Master Ba is Ill

    MCZCApril 11, 20191 min read

    "... See with the eyes of the heart ..."  ~ Ruben Habito Description: This talk was given by Ruben Habito, founding teacher of Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas, TX, on the occasion of a memorial service to celebrate the life of a sangha member. In Case 3, Master Ba is close to death and the temple attendant asks him how he is feeling. What does Master Ba’s answer show us about how he lived? How does...

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  • Message from Henry: Kindness

    MCZCApril 9, 20191 min read

    Wisdom asks: how can we live better? Zen is ethical. Like all schools of Buddhism. The karmic problem it addresses is that while humans can be extraordinarily kind and altruistic, we can also be spectacularly selfish and cruel. It’s a wisdom tradition. Wisdom asks: how can we live better? What would it mean to live well? What would it be, to make the most of this human opportunity, wherein we can even ask that question? And...

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