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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  • Radiance, Valerie Forstman

    MCZCJune 9, 20232 min read

    Just back from leading a month-long sesshin with John Gaynor, Valerie fairly sparkles to convey some of its flavor: a flavor of disparate hours, places, perceptions brought radiantly close, though no less of a rainbow for that. What are some qualities of this radiance, qualities our sitting might open onto? Equanimity, for instance, born of oneness. Equality – each thing whole, complete, and absolutely equal in value. (“How could it not be!! We’re so very...

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  • In the Seeing, Only What is Seen, Diana Clark

    MCZCJune 9, 20232 min read

    Guest teacher Diana Clark gives loving attention to the koan-like Bahiya Sutta of early Buddhism, imaginatively walking in the protagonists’ shoes quite as one might do for a koan. The Buddha tells Bahiya: “In the seeing, Bahiya, there will be only what is seen; in the heard, only what is heard; in the cognized only what is cognized,” at which point “you are neither here nor yonder nor between the two: and just this is...

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  • Message from Valerie: Before Knowing

    Valerie ForstmanJune 7, 20232 min read

    In coming and going, we never leave home.~ Hakuin, Song of Zazen Last week I returned from a four-week sesshin or ‘mini-ango’ in a serene mountain Zen center in the Black Forest region of Germany. The experience brought to mind Hakuin’s ‘Song of Zazen.’ Going and returning, never leaving home. Just one sitting. Boundless, timeless; going nowhere - and yet, how lively! The theme of the sesshin was Practice-Realization, Dogen’s name for what we do every time...

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  • Reduced Fee: 15 Day Koan Course

    MCZCJune 1, 20231 min read

    If you need financial assistance to attend the 15 Day Wild World of Koans course, contact Sarah and work out a payment amount with her. Then, use this form to register and make the payment you worked out with Sarah (of Johanna).

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  • Joshu’s “Wash Your Bowls”(Case 7 in the Mumonkan)

    MCZCMay 29, 20231 min read

    Scott Thornton brings out the gentle luminosity in Joshu’s Zen of a few words. At one level the koan’s injunction seems straightforward enough: have you eaten (tasted awakening)? Then wash your bowls (forget it, let it go, wipe it away). But in Joshu’s kind-hearted invitation into a way of being as unstinting as falling in love – falling in love from morning to night in all directions! – he isn’t instructing the monk to wipe...

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  • Message from Scott: Washing Bowls

    Scott ThorntonMay 18, 20231 min read

    Wash your bowls,Today, right now.Not tomorrow. Not when the mood strikes.  Not when it’s time to cook supper.  Not when it’s urgent because all the bowls are dirty.  Not when you’ve finally gotten all your affairs in order.  Not when you cannot see that the bowls are empty. Not when you cannot see that the washing is empty. Not when you’re still telling yourself stories about bowl washing.  Stop everything, and “washing bowls” will fill you up! Photo by Ripley Elisabeth Brown 🧿...

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  • Spring Retreat Talk 4, Gathering the Heart Mind with Valerie Forstman

    MC PodcastMay 16, 20231 min read

    Dwelling no-where, mind comes forth~ from the Diamond Sutra Heart mind directs us to the fundamental point of who and what we are. In Chinese there is one term for Heart Mind. No hyphen necessary, simply one. Contemporary Sanbo Zen teacher Migaku Sato wrote a poem with this line: In nothing at all-ness, there is endlessly everything. Out of nothing, here we are practicing, says Valerie or That thou art, says Ruben Habito. To further open,...

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  • Mu: the World in a New Light, Maria Habito

    MCZCMay 15, 20231 min read

    Maria Habito offers warm and deep encouragement, and lush context, for the practice of Mu. She encountered Mu amidst her Christian doubts about God’s love in the face of an earthquake – or Auschwitz – and felt a kinship with the famous monk who asks about the dog. “Is God love?” “Mu.” She compares Mu to St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night, wherein will, memory, and intellect are extinguished: to reach the whole, one...

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  • Cause and Effect Cannot be Obscured: Carolyn Seburn

    MCZCMay 15, 20231 min read

    Maybe a “mistake” is a characteristic of separation, while perfection is a characteristic of oneness – yet ”mistake” and “perfection” describe one and the same world. Case 2 in the Mumonkan, “Hyakujo and the Fox,” examines this contrast at different levels: of commonsense distinction, of undeniable wholeness, of intimacy bare of such explanations. If this very moment encompasses all past and future – if the sound of a bell is everything – how could there...

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  • Message from Scott: Hindrances

    Scott ThorntonMay 10, 20231 min read

    The hindrances to practice  -  liking and disliking, worrying and calculating, fantasizing and regretting, lethargy and boredom, doubt, criticizing ourselves and others, even criticizing the quality of our sitting for having allowed these hindrances to occur  -  these are our very teachers! Noticing them as they arise, yet maintaining our zazen, we “Study the Way” by this method of “Studying the Self”, as Dogen puts it, and we let it all fall away.  Thus “Forgetting the Self”,...

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  • Spring Retreat Talk 3, The Boat is on the River with Valerie Forstman

    MC PodcastMay 9, 20231 min read

    Valerie explores the clarity and simplicity of Master Hogen who came to be known as the dharma eye of deep clarity. Focusing on Case 51 from Book of Equanimity, Valerie illuminates mind and consciousness through Hogan’s clarity. If you want to study buddha-dharma, everything you see is buddha dharma, a door, a window and the exquisite beauty of the boat is on the river. For Hogan there is no difference between phenomena (worldly dharma) and...

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  • The Essential World and Total Circumstance, Valerie Forstman (Video)

    MCZCMay 7, 20231 min read

    How does just-sitting nourish the positive samadhi of activity? How to step off the 100-foot pole of cessation into everywhere, everyone? Ryoun Roshi says “the dewdrop world must be forgotten – but we can’t forget it, only deepen.” There is nowhere else. Hekiganroku Case 36, Chosa Goes for a Walk, speaks generously to such subtle relations, and of the beauty and thoroughgoing activity of this all-too-human, all-too-creaturely world. Spring mountains, personal tragedy, an absorbing sadness:...

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  • The Temple is Built, Valerie Forstman (Video)

    MCZCMay 6, 20231 min read

    Our survival depends on the whole. The earth is my body. Shakyamuni Buddha attested to this right before his awakening when challenged by Mara. “I call the earth as my witness” says the Buddha-to-be as he touches the earth. We are all implicated in this awakening. For this Earth Day Dharma Talk, Valerie turns to a koan that resonates with the earth: Case 4 from the Book of Equanimity, The World Honored one Points to...

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  • Message from Scott: Knowing Yourself

    Scott ThorntonMay 3, 20231 min read

    It’s good to sit alone Outdoors sometimes Listen to the wind…This is how to know yourself  It’s also good to sit with others In the zendo deeplyFor an hour, a day, a week…This is how to know yourself Photo by Keegan Houser on Unsplash

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