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.

  • Valerie Forstman: Complete Exposure of the Golden Wind

    MCZCOctober 10, 20241 min read

    Valerie begins this teisho with the reminder that we are here, right where we are, as is everything else, nothing excluded. She recounts driving to Telluride last week and seeing the gold of the autumn foliage filling the whole land. In the face of this beauty your separate self cannot survive. You embrace as one, emptiness, complete beauty. Valerie reads an excerpt from the poem “Dandelion” and asks the question, “What does one moment of...

    Watch the video
  • Teshin Sweger: Am I too old to realize my true nature?

    MCZCOctober 3, 20241 min read

    Teshin Sweger invites us to consider a koan that is not in any of the koan collections. He asks us to consider the koan of our aging. In practice he often hears the question, am I too old to sit and realize my true nature? As we are all aging, Teshin encourages us to hear the messengers of sickness, old age, and death. At what point will we stop having a need to shine and...

    Watch the video
  • Henry Shukman: Breakthroughs

    MCZCSeptember 19, 20241 min read

    Henry begins with the question “is there such a thing as a breakthrough?”  Maybe. Maybe not! The dharma is everywhere, you cannot escape it, and to realize this one simply needs to come back to “now,” just this. We are told that to taste Zen, one is invited to break through the barrier set up by the ancestors. The barrier is “Mu.” When we open to this barrier and our worldview is shattered…we are still...

    Watch the video
  • David Loy: A Buddhist Response to the Ecological Crisis

    MCZCSeptember 11, 20241 min read

    Author, Zen teacher, and Ecodharma activist David Loy begins his talk reminding us that the ecological crisis is the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, and that we are doing this to ourselves. He then poses the question: what do our spiritual traditions have to offer to help us respond appropriately? The Buddhist tradition offers the bodhisattva path. David shares with us a rich trajectory of the Buddhist path, the natural world, and our engagement....

    Watch the video
  • Valerie Forstman: What is love? (Denkoroku Case #41)

    MCZCSeptember 5, 20241 min read

    Valerie begins her teisho with impressions from the teacher training in Germany – the consistent theme of life as a dream, already gone, and yet…shared sitting, shared practice, shared koan study in fellowship. Then life and death, side-by-side, offered in a week-long sesshin practicing next to a hospice house, sitting in earnest bare-hearted togetherness. Valerie states that “love” arises from all that is arising, just this, nothing but love with no opposite, no separation.  Case...

    Watch the video
  • Katie Arnold: Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World

    MCZCAugust 29, 20241 min read

    Ultramarathon runner, Zen practitioner, and author Katie Arnold shares her compelling story of running, Zen, writing, and living life - all through the lens of not-knowing and accepting uncertainty. Katie’s recent book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, emerged in the aftermath of her father’s death, her associated anxiety, and a life-altering accident that occurred while rafting a whitewater river. “Brief flashings,” she says, “are moments of wonder that make us feel alive and connected.”...

    Watch the video
  • Carmen Afable: Breathing Mu

    MCZCAugust 22, 20241 min read

    Zen teacher Carmen Afable grounds her teisho in Shoyoroku case #93: Roso Does Not Understand. After reading the case, Carmen reminds us that we are the treasure and pearl of great value discussed in the koan. She says, “the Kensho experience is right before our eyes but we cannot see it as we are full of our delusive selves.” But Mu is everywhere, and the entire universe is “Mu-ing.” We are Mu, the finest jewel....

    Watch the video
  • Sean Tetsudo Murphy: Demystifying No-Self

    MCZCAugust 15, 20241 min read

    Zen teacher, meditation professor, and author Sean Murphy invites us to consider our illusion of separateness, the notion that we have a sense of self as an independent creature within the world. Much of our suffering – loneliness, feeling unsafe, disconnection, anxiety, difficulty with others – may emerge from this sense of being fundamentally separate. Rather, our true reality is one as an integral part of the universe. He implies that we cannot remove ourselves...

    Watch the video
  • Shana Smith: Dharma Rain

    MCZCAugust 8, 20241 min read

    Shana begins by noting the concurrent and successive rainstorms both in her area of Florida and at Mountain Cloud in Santa Fe as an introduction to the understanding of oneness or unity of all phenomena in the essential that is realized through the practice of zazen. Recalling Dōgen’s argument that although all beings are inherently enlightened, practice is needed to realize it, Shana argues that “all of us do it according to our own unique...

    Watch the video
  • Valerie Forstman: The Skin, Flesh, Bones, and Marrow of Bodhidharma

    MCZCAugust 1, 20241 min read

    Valerie starts by sharing a quote by Kieran Meade-Ward from the last day of the 30 Days of Dogen course. “And isn't it interesting that such relaxed clarity doesn't obscure but makes more plain how these impressions are also made of vanishing…. When thought opens its hand, it's like the hand wasn't even there. There's just the world." Valerie asks, “So how do we empty our hands….?” She enters into the story of Bodhidharma asking...

    Watch the video
  • Valerie Forstman: Dew Drops Shaken from a Crane’s Bill

    MCZCJuly 25, 20241 min read

    We enter just now into the vast, limitless oneness of the practice of Zen. Flowing but at the same time perfectly still. Valerie picks up a thread from another of her recent dharma talks about Bodhidharma. Recall the challenge Bodhidharma presented to his disciples to demonstrate their understanding. This talk highlights the third disciple to speak, Dao Yu. He said, “The four elements are all empty. The five skandhas are without actual existence. Not a...

    Watch the video
  • Natalie Goldberg: Everything is dharma

    MCZCJuly 18, 20241 min read

    Writer and Zen teacher Natalie Goldberg reads from her new book “Writing on Empty” and speaks about the value of noticing that something is always awake in us. In writing her new book Natalie finds language to finally express her experiences of her mother and other topics cracked open during the void of Covid. Natalie states, for her “there is no difference between writing and the dharma.” Both are practices; both initiate compassion. The talk...

    Watch the video
  • Valerie interviews scholar David Hinton

    MCZCJuly 11, 20241 min read

    Valerie interviews scholar and author David Hinton about his new book, “The Blue Cliff Record.” David speaks about several fascinating topics, for example “absence” and “presence.” Absence, David says, is the generative absence from which the 10,000 things arise. They live their lives, then dive back into absence where they are reconstituted into energy. Presence is the 10,000 things that absence forms itself into and forms empirical reality. (Yes, it is that kind of mind-expanding...

    Watch the video
  • Valerie Forstman: Case 81 of the Book of Equanimity

    MCZCJune 27, 20241 min read

    Valerie Roshi began by recalling the NASZ sesshin of the previous week, led by Yamada Ryo’un Roshi, abbot of Sanbo Zen International, and his impact on several students. The Roshi’s urging that participants realize their true self and his statement on not wanting to deceive his true self, along with the celebration of a sangha member’s awakening that ended the sesshin and the social gathering that followed it, reminded Valerie of Case 81 in the...

    Watch the video
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