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: Ordinary Marvel

    MCZCApril 24, 20182 min read

    A superior vessel takes longer to make (old Japanese proverb) It’s good to have devotion to your teacher, but not to the point of quitting if for some reason you lose them. The Zen way requires a teacher but is not about the teacher. Our commitment is to the Way. The teacher is only another expedient means. To make the ordinary the marvel that it is: Zen training. *** Sometimes the old Zen masters said that...

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  • Are Human’s Special? Part 3 by David Loy

    MCZCApril 21, 20186 min read

    Let one’s thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world — above, below, and across — without any obstruction, without any hatred, without any enmity.  ~ Metta Sutra We are featuring some of David Loy's recent writing on our website to introduce you to this thoughtful and brilliant Zen teacher, writer and environmental activist. David will be offering an Eco-Dharma lecture and Workshop at Mountain Cloud, May 18-20.  Click here for details about the Eco-Dharma weekend. ...

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  • Teisho: A Map of Zen Training (Part 5)

    MCZCApril 19, 20181 min read

    "... There is no self, no witness, and no world and it is marked by a sense of deep relief and joy ..." To reach satisfaction in all, desire its possession in nothing.                      John of the Cross Description: This is the fifth and final talk from the Fall 2017 sesshin. To wrap up the journey through a map of Zen training, Henry begins by pointing out that John...

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  • Message from Henry: Healing

    MCZCApril 17, 20182 min read

    The real healing is the dropping away of the unreal self... Recently while teaching in San Diego, during a question-and-answer session, someone asked about the healing aspects of practice. I said something like: first there's the wound of separation, that we feel separate from all else. That "heals," in a sense. But it happens through the practice dealing us a greater wound, an infinite wound, an absolute gulf of a wound. As a result of...

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  • Are Human’s Special? Part 2 by David Loy

    MCZCApril 14, 20184 min read

    ...we are creatures that know we are creatures; moreover, we are creatures that create, and know that we create. We are featuring some of David Loy's recent writing on our website to introduce you to this thoughtful and brilliant Zen teacher, writer and environmental activist. David will be offering an Eco-Dharma Workshop at Mountain Cloud, May 18-20.  Click here for details about the Eco-Dharma weekend.  Click to read Part 1 of this essay on our website....

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  • Teisho: A Map of Zen Training (Part 4) & Case 64, Book of Equanimity: Shuzan’s “Bride”

    MCZCApril 12, 20181 min read

    "... the most important thing about Zen training. It is the experiential discovery that we are not alone, we are not individual, we are not separate from anything ..." Zazen is the gate of ease and joy.                                           Dogen Description: This teisho is the fourth talk from the Fall 2017 sesshin. Sitting is a life-long settling down process. We...

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  • Message from Henry: Enter Practice

    MCZCApril 10, 20182 min read

    Perhaps with the disenchantment of old formal religious institutions many of us are left with a reflex toward the sacred ... without having ... frame of reference ... Enter Practice.  Koans are ingenious teaching devices. You can’t “get” them but by radical shifts in perspective. As a means of spiritual training they are superb: they give us one aspiration after another; they gauge our clarity; they scour and scrape the mud-encrusted windshield of our vision....

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  • Are Human’s Special? Part 1 by David Loy

    MCZCApril 7, 20185 min read

    ...according to traditional Buddhist teachings, only humans can awaken and become Buddhas. That is why it is so important not to waste our precious human birth. David Loy will be offering an eco-dharma lecture and workshop at Mountain Cloud, May 18-20.  Click here for details about the Eco-Dharma weekend. We are featuring some of David's recent writing on our website to introduce you to this thoughtful and prescient  Zen teacher, writer and environmental activist.  ******* Obviously...

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  • Spring Sesshin Photo

    MCZCApril 5, 20181 min read

    March 2018 - Spring Sesshin Participants

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  • Teisho: A Map of Zen Training (Part 3) & Case 65, Book of Equanimity: Shuzan’s “Bride”

    MCZCApril 5, 20182 min read

    "... only one well-being that unites all things in boundless love ..."  To come to be what you are not, you must go by a way in which you are not.                                                 John of the Cross Description: This teisho is the third talk from the Fall 2017 sesshin. Henry discusses Bodhidharma’s entry by practice and entry...

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  • Mountain Cloud Goes Solar

    MCZCApril 3, 20181 min read

    Solar Electric Panels are installed on the roof of our main building! We are online, interconnected with the power grid, generating our own electricity and supplying excess to the grid. Donations are requested for our eco-friendly power system. Click here to donate.  

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  • Teisho: A Map of Zen Training & The Jhanas (Part 2)

    MCZCMarch 29, 20181 min read

    "... The work of concentration, deepening and clarifying makes us more available to the moment ..."   Description: This teisho is the second talk from the Fall 2017 sesshin. Henry continues to outline an overall map of what Zen offers as a means of extinguishing the three fires—desire, aversion and delusion. This unfolds into further discussion of the jhana states, followed by the Four Noble Truths, the three marks and the five skandhas. The work of concentration, deepening...

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  • Message from Henry: Great Freedom

    MCZCMarch 27, 20182 min read

    This is the great freedom of our existence which Zen practice can open up -- truly life beyond life, life in life, life in death. This is Holy Week, when Christians remember the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, an agonized and ecstatic spiritual transformation that defies rationality, through which Jesus revealed a total liberation. For Jesus himself, and for numberless Jews, this was and is also the season of Passover in the Jewish calendar,...

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  • Teisho: A Map of Zen Training & The Jhanas

    MCZCMarch 22, 20182 min read

    "... Whatever your practice is, let it absorb you ..."   Description: This teisho is the first talk from the Fall 2017 sesshin. In the first half of the talk, Henry outlines a map of Zen training, beginning with Bodhidharma and the two entries of Zen practice—by “practice” and by “principle”. This leads into the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the Six Paramitas, which are analogous to the early stages of  the ten oxherding pictures which...

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