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: Koan Study

    MCZCJuly 4, 20173 min read

    ...koans hold us to a certain “standard” of training and practice...They hold out the possibility of really transformative practice for human beings. Koans are not riddles, not “dreams” as I recently read one teacher say, and not enigmas. They simply establish the teaching of Zen. They show with clarity and wakefulness, and sometimes force, the reality that the old Zen masters had awakened to. They could not be clearer. They could not be less dream-like. They...

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  • In Search of the Sacred, by David Loy, Part 2 of 4

    MCZCJuly 1, 20174 min read

    Desacralization occurred because God came to be understood as dwelling far above this corrupted world and also deep inside the human heart. But where God all but ceased to dwell was in the everyday world of our social lives. Read Part 1 of In Search of the Sacred. The result of this hugely complex historical process (which I of course have had to greatly simplify here) is that religion became privatized. God was booted upstairs, far...

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  • Teisho: Sesshin Day 3, Case 4 of The Blue Cliff Record

    MCZCJune 29, 20172 min read

    "The alchemy of slow-cooking—that’s also zen…" “When the mind is quiet, we notice so much more…the things we encounter are the teachings.” Description: This teisho is the third of the Spring 2017 sesshin. Henry begins by discussing how we all start to simmer down, as sesshin progresses. “When the mind is quiet, we notice so much more…the things we encounter are the teachings.” Snowflakes, bridge, flower, floor, dog. Henry picks up on the story of Tokusan and the...

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  • Message from Henry: Priorities

    MCZCJune 27, 20172 min read

    ...it’s unreasonable to chase things that are inherently unsatisfactory and expect to be satisfied.   Master Sheng Yen says we must be patient with our practice. We also should be realistic with ourselves. If we are expecting to feel much better just by doing the practice, without changing our priorities at all, we are likely to stay disturbed by things that are likely to disturb us -- in other words, things that are driven by our craving...

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  • In Search of the Sacred, by David Loy, Part 1 of 4

    MCZCJune 24, 20174 min read

    The idea of a secular world was originally one half of a duality—and it remains haunted by the loss of its other half. Modernity developed out of the separation that ensued when that other half gradually disappeared into the clouds. Today Buddhism faces what is likely its greatest challenge ever, as it makes its way into a modern world completely different from anything it has encountered before. In sharp contrast to the traditional Asian cultures that...

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  • Teisho: Sesshin Day 2, Case 28 of The Gateless Gate

    MCZCJune 22, 20172 min read

    "We know we are really practicing because we are OK even when it’s difficult…" "... who was ripe, was freed of the vine. Body and mind gone ..." Description: This teisho is the second of the Spring 2017 sesshin. Henry encourages everyone to stay with their practice, as the sesshin continues and we learn to mind less. He discusses the adaptation process at the start of each sesshin and says, “I personally do not know of another way of...

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  • June Work Retreat Photos

    MCZCJune 22, 20171 min read

    Enjoy these pictures from our work retreat June 4-10. Thank you so much to the participants:  Christy, Tor, Chris, Bill, Maura, Hans, Lucas, Sherry, Duncan, Connie, Neal, Sandy and Gudrun. Apologies if I missed anyone. [caption id="attachment_7135" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Work crew and adobes[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_7147" align="alignleft" width="300"] An energized crew[/caption] [caption id="attachment_7145" align="alignright" width="300"] Connie and Maura[/caption] [caption id="attachment_7136" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Brick village[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_7137" align="aligncenter" width="768"] MCZC Carpenter Bill[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_7138" align="aligncenter" width="795"] Chris on the frame[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_7139" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Path-lights,...

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  • Message from Henry: Most Profound Opportunity

    MCZCJune 20, 20172 min read

    Perhaps the further we go, the more of a student we become, and the more teachers we have… until there is nothing that is not our teacher. Last week I wrote about not getting tossed away from our practice by things we don't like that arise in the course of it. After it was posted someone sent me a far better and briefer statement: “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you ever be polished?”...

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  • What is a Koan?

    MCZCJune 17, 20172 min read

    The koan is a little nugget of something an awakened master did during his time. ~ Henry Shukman Henry Shukman, answers the question: What is a koan? The text is taken from a 2-minute video clip from an upcoming full length feature film on a conversation between Henry Shukman and Chris Hebard about Zen and more. The word koan actually means "a public case" which has a legal background, like an established legal precedent. The world transferred over to the spiritual realm of Zen. Henry...

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  • Teisho: Sesshin Day 1, Koan Mu (Jôshû’s Dog)

    MCZCJune 15, 20171 min read

    "This is a practice of allowing and loving." Description: This teisho is the first of the Spring 2017 sesshin. Traditionally, the first talk, during sesshin, is about the first koan, Mu, or “Jôshû’s Dog.” Henry begins by discussing prostrations and poses the questions, what does the term “buddha” mean?, which leads into why do we do a sesshin? (what are we doing, sitting all day, for days) and two great questions of zen—how to live as a...

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  • Message from Henry: Seize the Jewel

    MCZCJune 13, 20173 min read

    We’re not here for us. We’re here to dispel illusion - our own primarily, and then we see where we go from there. Sometimes we think we like practice, we know what it is and believe it’s good for us. We have no idea. The dragon sleeps with the mani-jewel in its jaws. The wish-fulfilling jewel is the dharma: the one fact that is no fact and all facts, and never changes yet is all change. So what if...

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  • Be Still & Know: A Zen Reading of a Biblical Saying, by Ruben Habito, Part 3 of 3

    MCZCJune 10, 20176 min read

    Be Still and Know that... I AM. Read Part 1 and Part 2 of Be Still & Know My teacher Yamada Koun gives an account of his own experience of opening to this infinite and boundless “I am.” In 1953, he wrote to his own teacher, Soen Nakagawa, about how he was riding a train and reading a passage by Dogen that said, “The mind is no other than mountains and rivers, the great wide earth, the sun,...

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  • Teisho: Tokusan and Consciousness

    MCZCJune 8, 20172 min read

    We are born into this life, and we can decide that we know certain things about it. We can become convinced that we know enough… and therefore stop noticing that we have absolutely no idea what this is. Consciousness is Zen’s realm.     ~ Henry Shukman Description: What is this experience called life? What is consciousness?  Henry talks about how these questions form a major scientific quandary. We don’t know what consciousness is or where it is located....

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  • Message from Henry: Most Foolish Person

    MCZCJune 6, 20172 min read

    It is said: Someone who does not know is Buddha. In a book on Soen Nakagawa Roshi, I recently read a story about a master who gave his servant a staff, saying “This staff is for the most foolish person in the land. Find someone more foolish than yourself, then give it to him or her. Until then, always keep it with you." Feeling mortified, the servant took the staff and searched high and low, but couldn’t...

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