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: Making the Buddha but Forgetting the Soul

    MCZCJanuary 15, 20195 min read

    It's not enough for the zendo merely to be ‘living'... A ‘true Zen spirit’ must now be breathed into it. It is important, in other words, for the living breath of Zen to be pulsing away in this zendo.  ~ Koun Yamada Roshi  [caption id="attachment_10161" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Rohatsu 2018 at Mountain Cloud Zen Center[/caption] On one of my first trips to Germany I had the good fortune to open up an old issue of Kyosho, the magazine of...

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  • Dharmatalk: Koan Study: Why Bother?

    MCZCJanuary 10, 20191 min read

    "... a glimpse of another order of things, in an experience of awakening from the “dream” of what we have taken our lives to be ..." Description: This talk is about why and how we study koans. Practice often begins with mindfulness training, with the breath as our focus as well as other aspects of present-moment awareness. Koan study is encouraged once we’ve had a glimpse of another order of things, in an experience of awakening from...

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  • Family Matters: Welcoming the New Year 2019 by Ruben Habito

    MCZCJanuary 7, 20198 min read

    Dear Brothers and Sisters of our Sanbo Zen Community, Let me begin by citing from an inspiring sermon I heard at a Eucharistic celebration on the Feast of the Holy Family, Sunday, 30 December 2018, at St. Johann’s Basilica, in Saarbrücken, Germany. Given the theme of the day, the preacher, as to be expected, spoke about family and its vital role in making (or breaking) us in becoming who we are as human beings. He approached...

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  • New Year’s Message from Henry

    MCZCJanuary 5, 20192 min read

    Dear Friends, When we find the Dharma, we don’t need anything else. Wealth, status, good name, comfort -- they lose whatever hold they may have had. In effect, they vanish. Once we really find the Dharma, we don’t even need life any more. We don’t even need the Dharma any more, because at last it’s clear what it has been all along. As the practitioner Jeff Shore says in his article “Rinzai Zen in the modern world”:...

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  • Dharmatalk: A Well That Has Not Been Dug

    MCZCJanuary 3, 20191 min read

    In a well that has not been dug, water is rippling from a spring that does not flow; There, someone with no shadow or form is drawing the water. Description: This talk focuses on one of the first koans in the koan training: In a well that has not been dug, water is rippling from a spring that does not flow; There, someone with no shadow or form is drawing the water. We can find with practice that...

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  • Message from Henry: Analogues of Awakening, Part 3 of 3

    MCZCDecember 31, 20184 min read

    ...self and world instantly vanish in one true awakening ... No consciousness remains. None of the previous message (click here if you missed part 1 and part 2) would be considered “awakening” in the Zen tradition, valuable though they may be. Now we start approaching the bounds of what Zen would call "awakening." 1) The first of these could be the sudden apprehending that underneath this world of apparently separate things, within this world of multifarious phenomena,...

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  • Dharmatalk: Love is the Teaching

    MCZCDecember 27, 20181 min read

    It is empty, nameless, all-embracing love Description: The Blue Cliff Record is a classic collection of koans compiled by Setcho (Xuedou) in 1028. Each koan has a corresponding verse composed by Setcho, and the focus of this talk is Setcho’s beautiful verse to Case 2: In one there are many kinds. In two there are not two. Post & Featured image: Rose by Sushuti, CCO Public Domain.

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  • Message from Henry: Analogues of Awakening, Part 2 of 3

    MCZCDecember 25, 20183 min read

    ...being open to releasing our hold on habit-patterns of the mind, allows a broader picture to show itself.  In this three part series, Henry writes about the analogues to awakening.  If you missed last week's post, click here to read part 1 in this series. Analogues... Getting into the body and learning to relax, finding hidden tension patterns and having them release – that can open up new peace, energy, and new ways of being, experiencing, relating, as...

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  • Dharmatalk: Case 75, Book of Equanimity: Zuigan’s “Everlasting Truth” (Part 2)

    MCZCDecember 20, 20181 min read

    Description: This talk continues the discussion of Case 75 and the wonder of practice. Zuigan has asked Ganto if there is an unchanging, everlasting reality. This can be taken as the central question of a lifetime. Ganto tells him that “it” -- the unchanging truth -- has already changed. We can never experience the world that Ganto inhabits through our understanding. Yet it is embodied in the koan, and embodied in the great masters. This...

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  • Message from Henry: Analogues of Awakening, Part 1 of 3

    MCZCDecember 18, 20182 min read

    There are different levels of practice and discovery and each is its own analogue. This life is full of analogues of awakening. Any process that leads from an occluded view to a leap or unveiling that offers a broader view, whereby a seeming obstacle or contradiction is resolved, might be analogous: from problem or obstruction, to answer, solution, revelation, where opposing parts are reconciled. That's one of the characteristics of these many analogues to the process of...

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  • Dharmatalk: Case 75, Book of Equanimity: Zuigan’s “Everlasting Truth” (Part 1)

    MCZCDecember 13, 20181 min read

    "... We’re facing, in all its magnitude and wonder, the fact of existing ..."   Description: To live in accord with the Dharma offers an alternative to the world of knowing-getting-having. In Case 75, Zuigan has asked Master Ganto, “What is the intrinsic, everlasting truth?” Henry recounts the story of Ganto’s training, and clarifies some of the elements in this case, addressing what a koan is and why we study them. The talk also touches on some thoughts...

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  • Message form Henry: Rohatsu Reflections

    MCZCDecember 11, 20184 min read

    What a joy it is to be able to go deeper into our human nature, then return to the world that so needs all the love and help we can give... Some reflections on our Rohatsu retreat that ended yesterday... First - as ever - it was Mountain Cloud’s strongest retreat ever! In fact, though we’ve held many six-day retreats, this was the first seven-day we have had since I was invited in eight years ago,...

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  • Dharmatalk: Why Practice

    MCZCDecember 6, 20181 min read

    "... To be aware of breath means to be aware of being alive ..."   Description: This talk offers some reflections on a path of practice, and how it can help support not only our awareness of being alive, but also make us more aware that we are not independent from all that surrounds us,  wherever we happen to find ourselves. Being on the path is its own reward. There are innumerable ways that stillness can change us,...

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  • Message from Henry: Overcoming the Unwholesome

    MCZCDecember 4, 20181 min read

    In our contemporary culture we don't address evil sufficiently, according to the writer Martin Shaw. That's why we have so much of it dominating our culture. Even in the spiritual realm today we may prefer the transcendent, the exalted, the sublime over the recognition and uprooting of the unwholesome. But older cultures, oral cultures, spend a lot more time guarding against evil. Much of their mythic life was to acknowledge and defuse evil (according to Shaw,...

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