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: Skilled Practice

    MCZCMarch 20, 20181 min read

    Everything, each thing, is just waiting to be met. A musician, through practice, not only gets skilled at their instrument, but also learns to hear in greater detail what a whole orchestra is doing - both overall, and with specificity. Their own focused skill develops the clarity and range of their listening. In an analogous way, the meditator develops their own skill at observing and noticing the "symphony" of sense-experience that actually constitutes our life....

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  • Walking Meditations, by Gail Snyder

    MCZCMarch 17, 20183 min read

    The Earth is sacred and we touch her with each step.  ~ Thich Nhat Hanh As a new arrival to this world, just delivered from our mother’s body, each one of us knew to do the exact same thing as our first action: Draw a breath. We didn’t dither around in our heads worrying because we’d never breathed before and what if we did it wrong or forgot to keep doing it? We were entirely...

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  • Teisho: Practice & The Jhanas

    MCZCMarch 15, 20182 min read

    "... where the entire body is pervaded by pure awareness ..."   Description: The focus of this talk is basic awareness practice and the jhana states, which are meditative states marked by deep stillness and concentration. Henry reads Stephen Batchelor’s translations of the metaphors associated with the first four jhana states. The first is a state of complete absorption; there is well-being and delight derived from solitude, or withdrawal. The second is a well-being born of concentration and...

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  • Guest Message: The Bodhisattva’s Joy of Offering by Sandy Chubb

    MCZCMarch 13, 20182 min read

    ...in the act of giving, one who gives and one who receives form a connection with each other…  ~ Dogen This week, a message from Sandy Chubb, Zen Teacher at Oxford Zen Centre, UK. Dogen said that when we study ourselves thoroughly, we understand others thoroughly as well; as a result, we cast off the self and the other. He said: The self gives the self for the sake of giving the self; the other...

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  • Teisho: What, Why, & How

    MCZCMarch 8, 20182 min read

    "... We sit when we are sitting, eat when we are eating, walk when we are walking. We taste the wonder of being alive ..."   Description: Henry begins with further discussion of two aspects inherent in the Zen lineage as expressed by Bodhidharma—practice and principle. Practice is a means of investigating what it is to be human, to be alive. It is the method or the instrument to help us dive in; it is not a thing,...

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  • Message from Henry: Systematizing

    MCZCMarch 6, 20182 min read

    (Koans) are a lucky-dip of insights, experiences, tastes and transformations, from 2,500 years of practice. I recently read a statement from a teacher who developed a methodology of dialoguing, around “koan questions,” that they say will promptly bring about a “taste of the actual liberating experience of no self.” Apart from the doubts one might have about any system that promises something like the above in one (costly) session, I want to pick up on...

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  • Teisho: Ruben Habito: All Beings Are Buddha – Guest Episode

    MCZCMarch 1, 20183 min read

    All beings are by nature Buddha, As ice by nature is water. Apart from water, there is no ice. Apart from beings, no Buddha   "... we are, and have always been, immersed in an infinite reality ..." ~ Ruben Habito Description: This talk was given by Ruben Habito Roshi, founding teacher of Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas, TX. Its central theme is the first line of Hakuin Zenji’s Song of Zazen, “All beings are by...

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  • Message from Henry: Out of the Woods

    MCZCFebruary 27, 20181 min read

    Cherish your errors. They mulch your humanity. There’s a British saying: you’re not out of the woods just yet. Meaning: you’re not yet fully free of whatever trouble you may be dealing with. This practice we follow at Mountain Cloud can get us “out of the woods” in a thorough kind of way. What then? Then we may see there’s really no point in being out of the woods. No need! Then it’s no bother...

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  • Teisho: Case 64, Book of Equanimity: Shishô’s “Succession”

    MCZCFebruary 22, 20181 min read

    "... no difference between “swept away” and “not swept away,” between form and emptiness, between deluded and awakened ..."   Description: The Zen tradition embodies a basic fact or reality of our human experience, and says there are two entries or gates into it, as expressed by Bodhidharma—by “principle” and by “practice.” Henry talks about these two gates and elaborates on a prior discussion about quantitative and qualitative practice. In Case 64, Master Hogen poses the koan’s central...

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  • Message from Henry: Authorization

    MCZCFebruary 20, 20182 min read

    ...the lineage of overlapping, long-lasting relationships have nurtured a way of being, in each successive pupil... There are different kinds of authorization in spiritual teaching in the West today. One is by commerce, the marketplace. If someone has followers who pay for their workshops, buy their books, etc., that is proof enough – they are "authorized" by their buyers. Often books become a kind of commercial certification. If there's a book, whoever wrote it must...

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  • Teisho: Case 63, Book of Equanimity: Joshu Asks About Death (Part 2 of 2)

    MCZCFebruary 15, 20181 min read

    "... study our experience and ... see how things truly are - this is called kensho ..."   Description: This talk begins with a discussion of the Three Refuges: buddha, dharma, sangha. It unfolds into further discussion of Case 63 and how Zen practice views awakening, or enlightenment. When we study our experience and suddenly see how things truly are—this is called kensho. In this koan Jôshû refers to this as a person “who has died a great...

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  • Message from Henry: Ferries

    MCZCFebruary 13, 20182 min read

    It wouldn't make sense to keep venturing forth in different craft. Better to board one ferry and get over the water. Master Sheng Yen said he had met students who went to many masters, thinking they could get more that way, as if each teacher could give them one dollar, so if they saw ten they would have ten dollars. Whereas in fact the teacher is more like a physician, and if you receive treatments...

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  • Three Fruits of Zen

    MCZCFebruary 10, 20183 min read

    ...if we really lived out the reality glimpsed in a moment of realization, and in every instant of our lives were free of all last shreds of clinging or grasping...then we might indeed be something like "perfect." Traditionally there are said to be three fruits of zazen. The first is concentration—meaning in part simply the ability to hold our mind steady on a given task or object, but also more than that... ...a con-centering, a...

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  • Teisho: Case 63, Book of Equanimity: Joshu Asks About Death (Part 1 of 2)

    MCZCFebruary 8, 20181 min read

    "... Zen training involves letting go of anything special, profound or dramatic—it is just this, moment by moment ..."   Description: This talk begins with a discussion of two purposes of practice: 1) to calm the reactive nervous system, cultivate present-moment awareness and experience states of deep meditative absorption; 2) deep investigation into the nature of our existence. In Case 63, when Jôshû asks Tôsu, “What if a man who has died a great Death comes back to...

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