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...

    Read more
  • Teisho: Mindfulness

    MCZCMay 4, 20171 min read

    Description: In this episode, Henry talks about mindfulness training in general. Not a week passes that he doesn’t meet someone who is a ‘mindfulness teacher.’ There are online trainings in mindfulness that take only a month to complete. In zen it generally takes at least 20 years for there to be any chance of being a teacher, and many sit for much longer without becoming teachers. Why so? We have found that human beings are deeply...

    Listen to the talk
  • Message from Henry: The Fifth Paramita – Dhyana

    MCZCMay 2, 20173 min read

    In meditation we can drop the whole caboodle. Instead we can sit in the vast timeless reality of the present moment, with no agenda but appreciation. Dhyana means "meditation" – or meditative concentration, or meditative absorption. We can take it as absorption, the practice of becoming absorbed in meditation. In other words, being absorbed by. So what gets absorbed? And what does it get absorbed in? Precisely, our self, our "me," gets absorbed. And it gets absorbed...

    Read more
  • The Meeting: Zen’s Challenge to An Individual, Interior Spirituality, Part 5 of 7

    MCZCApril 30, 20175 min read

    As Dogen said, to attain the Way is merely “to put one’s head through a gate.” There is a path beyond the door. It must be stepped through. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of The Meeting. One of the best-known opening passages in literature comes from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Tolstoy never explains exactly what he means by...

    Read more
  • Ruben Habito: Earth Day Zen Talk – Guest Episode

    MCZCApril 27, 20172 min read

    "Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet." ~ Thich Nhat Hanh Description: This week we are fortunate to offer a guest episode. It is a talk given by Ruben Habito Roshi, at the Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas. His talk's theme is Earth Day 2017. NOTE: The original recording is at a very low audio level, however the quality is very good. Please increase/adjust your volume when Ruben's talk begins (@ ~ 1:27 minute mark) and you'll be able to listen...

    Listen to the talk
  • The Meeting: Zen’s Challenge to An Individual, Interior Spirituality, Part 4 of 7

    MCZCApril 26, 20173 min read

    To meet, to really connect, to encounter another as deeply as possible—this is an abiding human concern. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of The Meeting. Like other Buddhist schools, Zen is interested in dismantling the tough shell of self, but it seems to insist that this be done within the vessel of relationship. Whatever else this seminal moment in Zen’s lore may be, it is unavoidably about relationship, and about relationship as both an...

    Read more
  • Message from Henry: Virya, the Fourth Paramita

    MCZCApril 25, 20172 min read

    All we could ever find, need or want, is right here, closer than the nose on our face. Virya, the fourth paramita: determination, diligence, constancy. It connotes both not giving up, and diligent attentiveness. If we keep our eyes on practice, we are keeping them on the present moment. Then in a sense linear time loses any interest for us, so why would we not just keep going? To give up on practice implies some sense of...

    Read more
  • The Meeting: Zen’s Challenge to An Individual, Interior Spirituality, Part 3 of 7

    MCZCApril 24, 20174 min read

    In the “four marks of Zen” attributed to the great ancestor Bodhidharma, Zen is identified as a “mind-to-mind transmission outside scripture.” Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Meeting Zen Buddhism’s ancestral narrative begins when the Buddha recognizes his disciple Kashyapa as his one true successor. During an assembly on Vulture Peak attended by hundreds of his most accomplished disciples, Buddha holds up a flower and twirls it in his fingers. All those present sit silently,...

    Read more
  • The Meeting: Zen’s Challenge to An Individual, Interior Spirituality, Part 2 of 7

    MCZCApril 22, 20174 min read

    Having awakened, the Buddha then says, “I and all beings and the whole great earth have simultaneously attained the Way together.” His realization implicates all beings, and the very earth too. It is relational. Read Part 1 of The Meeting. As Buddhist teachings have grown in popularity in the West, it’s only natural that we view them in the light of our own most adjacent fields, religion and psychology, and understand them too as primarily internal. In...

    Read more
  • Teisho: 3rd Revisitation of Case 53, Book of Equanimity: Obaku’s Drinkers

    MCZCApril 20, 20172 min read

    Case 52: Ôbaku instructed the assembly and said, “You are all drinkers of lees [dregs]. If you continue to go on your Way like this, when will you have your ‘today’? Do you know that in this great empire of Tang there is no Zen master?” Now a monk came forward and said, “What would you say to the fact that in various places there are people who accept students and direct their assemblies?” Ôbaku said,...

    Listen to the talk
  • Teisho: Case 54, Book of Equanimity: Ungan’s Great Mercy

    MCZCApril 20, 20172 min read

    Case 54: Ungan asked Dôgo, “What does the Bodhisattva of the Great Mercy use so many hands and eyes for?” Dôgo answered, “It is like a person in the middle of the night reaching with his hand behind his head groping for his pillow.” Ungan said, “I understood.” Dôgo said, “How did you understand it?” Ungan said, “The whole body is hands and eyes.” Dôgo said, “You said it very well. But you expressed only...

    Listen to the talk
  • The Third Paramita, Kshanti, Patience, part 3 of 3

    MCZCApril 18, 20172 min read

    Meditation alone is not enough. We also need a guide, and we need a community of fellow practitioners. Read Part 1 and Part 2 Patience also means patience with our self.  Not asking, still less demanding, too much of ourselves as fallible human beings, and as fallible practitioners. At the same time, we are not to give up in our practice, nor to rest on our laurels, nor to abide in a comfortable nest of good feelings. We...

    Read more
  • The Meeting: Zen’s Challenge to An Individual, Interior Spirituality, Part 1 of 7

    MCZCApril 17, 20174 min read

    Like other Buddhist schools, Zen is interested in dismantling the tough shell of self, but it seems to insist that this be done within the vessel of relationship. When Soko Morinaga Roshi was a young monk in the late 1940s, he left the small temple where he had studied under his first master, Zuigan Roshi, and moved into the large training monastery of Daitokuji several miles away across Kyoto. There the monastic training was severe,...

    Read more
  • Zen for Troubled Times

    MCZCApril 15, 20172 min read

    Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself. Your body and mind will become clear, and you will realize the unity of all things. Dogen 1200-1253 Henry Shukman briefly talks about Zen history and how it can be used to deal with crisis – individual and societal. His talk is an excerpt from the documentary feature film (Awakening in the West) coming in 2017 - a Stillness Speaks production. “Zen was born in a time of...

    Read more
  • Photos from our April Work Retreat

    MCZCApril 14, 20171 min read

    Sangha members, from near and far, joined us from April 1-8 to take down cabin one and begin the first phase of our expansion project.   Thanks to Chris, Bill, Tor, Hobbs, Nancy, Ed, Henry and Maura for their dedicated work --  and thanks to anyone else inadvertently omitted. Also many thanks to Sarah for providing meals for the crew.                 We can use more help. Come to our next work retreat June 4-10, or click the donate button on this website...

    Read more
footer support banner image

Support Mountain Cloud

You can show your gratitude for Mountain Cloud events, retreats, podcasts and other teachings by making a one-time gift, or by becoming a supporting member.

Donate to Mountain Cloud Become a Member