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: Friends

    MCZCAugust 8, 20173 min read

    One recent Sunday my father-in-law took me to the Quaker house in the village of Ettington, Warwickshire, seven miles from their home. Built between 1681 and 1684 as one of the first Friends’ meeting houses in England, it’s a stone cottage comprising one well-proportioned room, its rough plaster walls hung with woven rush matting (a feature of 17th century houses, both for warmth and for protection from the rough render on the walls). A bench...

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  • Koan: Seizei the Poor

    MCZCAugust 4, 20171 min read

    A monk, Seizei, asked Master Sôzan in all earnestness... Seizei is alone and poor. I beg you, Master, please help me to become prosperous. San said, Venerable Zei!  Yes, Master! replied Zei. San said... You have already drunk three cups of fine Hakka wine and still you say that you have not yet moistened your lips. ******** From The Gateless Gate: Case 10, Seizei the Poor Translated by Yamada Kyoun, The Gateless Gate, Boston 2004 Image by...

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  • Teisho: Sutra: “On Opening the Dharma”

    MCZCAugust 3, 20171 min read

    Description: This talk focuses on the sutra, “On Opening the Dharma,” which reads: The Dharma, incomparably profound and minutely subtle, Is rarely encountered Even in hundreds of thousands of millions of ages; We now can see it, hear it, receive and maintain it; May we completely realize the true meaning of the Tathagata. What are we saying when we chant these words? What is “The Dharma”? What is “receiving it? What is “maintaining” it? What is the...

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  • Message from Henry: London

    MCZCAugust 1, 20173 min read

    back to the breath… empty core… great space… Sitting outside my brother and sister in law’s house, in the back garden, facing the brick wall at the back of the house, on the cool paving. Morning. Sunny day, blue sky, a rug of sunshine hanging on the garden wall. The rest of the garden in shade – shade of trees and houses. In the middle of the sitting, a neighborhood sound wells up. A nearby...

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  • Henry Shukman: Shinku and Shunyata

    MCZCJuly 29, 20173 min read

     "Being here is not what we take it to be."   Henry Shukman shares his thoughts on shinku and shunyata, true vast emptiness, as defined and encoutered in Zen and Buddhist traditions. The text for this blog is taken from the short video clip featured at the end of the post.  Henry's words are in italics. ****** Henry opens with phenomena... This world of things— apparently solid, liquid, gaseous…. the world of things that we perceive before us,...

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  • Two Poems from a Mountain Retreat, Dogen

    MCZCJuly 25, 20171 min read

    In the stream, Rushing past To the dusty world, My fleeting form Casts no reflection.   The moon Beyond the peak Is not my companion on this hill, For it must return To cast its light on the floating world.   ~~~ Text from the Zen Poetry of Dogen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace,  by Steven Heine. Images: Water flow by dietrecn and Moon by Stux, both are CC0 Public Domain.

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  • Dogen: Zazen Practice

    MCZCJuly 18, 20171 min read

      The moon mirrored By a mind free Of all distractions; Even the waves, breaking, Are reflecting its light. ~ Zen Master Dogen ~~~ Text from the Zen Poetry of Dogen: Verses from the Mountain of Eternal Peace,  by Steven Heine. Image: Water Moon, by AhmedRadwan, CC0 Public Domain.

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

    MCZCJuly 15, 20176 min read

    Enlightenment, we might well say, is the means by which the self-organizing cosmos wakes up. Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 of this series by David Loy. The American cosmologist Brian Swimme spoke in an interview of what he saw as the “greatest discovery of the scientific enterprise: you take hydrogen gas, and you leave it alone, and it turns into rosebushes, giraffes, and humans. . . . If humans are spiritual, then...

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  • Teisho: Sesshin Day 5, Case 14 of The Book of Equanimity

    MCZCJuly 13, 20171 min read

    "Coming to what has grown up in the nursery of the mighty tree of Buddha’s awakening…to a refuge of practice…we are being taught how to live as helpful humans." Description: This talk continues the arc of Tokusan’s life by looking at the last koan in his biography, Case 14 of the Shôyôroku (Book of Equanimity), “Attendant Kaku Offers Tea.” At this point, Tokusan has “mellowed beyond all mellowing—unbound, consciousness gone.” The monk in the koan does...

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  • Message from Henry: Let go into Stillness

    MCZCJuly 11, 20171 min read

    We are caught in the space between a great receiving and a great offering. Sometimes it seems astonishing that anyone can ever let go in the thorough way Zen supports and encourages. How on earth does it happen? It is so hard to let go of our world and all we believe our life to be. Other times it seems perfectly natural, in some ways the most natural thing in the world…. ****** We are...

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  • In Search of the Sacred, by David Loy, Part 3 of 4

    MCZCJuly 8, 20174 min read

    What if we try to understand the physical universe according to a biological model—that is, as alive? Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. For the Protestant reformers, secular life was a preparation for our ultimate destiny: this world is a means to a higher end. However, as the sacred pole—God, the guarantor that life is meaningful and salvation possible—faded away, the original religious reason for that distinction (eternal life in heaven) was lost....

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  • Teisho: Sesshin Day 4, Case 13 of The Gateless Gate

    MCZCJuly 6, 20172 min read

    "All we really have to do is get out of the way and the beautiful energy of the practice will just take over." "... we learn to let go and let it do the work ..." Description: This teisho is the fourth of the Spring 2017 sesshin. Henry begins by discussing how the practice of sesshin gets much better over time—”we learn to let go and let it do the work.” Having a difficult time can be...

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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....

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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,...

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