Teachings

You can find all of our weekly Dharma talks for free right here on this page, as well as on our YouTube channel and podcast. Live talks take place every Thursday from 5:30–7:00pm MT, both in-person and on Zoom (sit.mountaincloud.org — password: mountain22). Members receive access to some special archival materials.

  • Message from Henry: Like a Koan

    MCZCMay 28, 20191 min read

    A retreat itself is like a koan -- the more we let go of the self and its understandings, the more the retreat makes sense. The more beautiful and wonderful it becomes. Like a koan. What we need to do is just trust, and just let go. Message from Henry is from our May 27, 2019 Newsletter Image: Landscape-Freedom by SOFCOR,  Pixabay License

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  • Dharmatalk: Case 19, The Gateless Gate: Ordinary Mind is the Way

    MCZCMay 23, 20191 min read

    "... Ordinary experience is extraordinarily miraculous. It is “as vast and boundless as the great empty sky ..." Description: This talk focuses on a teaching story from very early in Master Jôshû’s training with his teacher, Master Nansen. Nansen tells Jôshû that the ordinary mind is the Way. What is ordinary mind? What is the Way? Ordinary experience is extraordinarily miraculous. It is “as vast and boundless as the great empty sky” and it is always right...

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  • Message from Henry: Authentic Fulfillment

    MCZCMay 21, 20192 min read

    ...to be more free of “me" -- and to begin to taste a far more real and profound fulfillment. The basis of what used to be called a religious life, and nowadays we might call a life of spiritual practice, is learning to stop serving the sense of self. It’s pretty radical for many of us, as we live in a culture and society that seem to want us to believe that the whole point of...

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

    MCZCMay 18, 201913 min read

    “...clinging to emptiness” can function in the same way as cosmological dualism, both of them devaluing this world and its problems If you missed part one of this article by David Loy, click here to read it. The Challenge A few years ago I was reading a fine book by Loyal Rue, titled Everybody’s Story: Wising Up to the Epic of Evolution, and came across a passage that literally stopped me in my tracks, because...

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  • Dharmatalk: Case 28, Book of Equanimity: Gokoku’s “Three Disgraces”

    MCZCMay 16, 20191 min read

    "... At the deepest level, nothing is separate from the Dharma ..." Description: This talk focuses on Henry’s trip to Germany, beginning in Nuremberg, then on to Benediktushof, a former Benedictine monastery, now a spiritual center, then to Sonnenhof Zen Center in the Black Forest, and, finally, to Domicilium, a joint hospice and Zen center. This leads into Case 28 where Gokoku expresses what Buddha realized. At the deepest level, nothing is separate from the...

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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...

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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...

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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....

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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...

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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...

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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:...

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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...

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