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.

  • 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...

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  • 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...

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  • 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,...

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  • 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 preview clip from the documentary feature film (Awakening in the West) coming in 2017 – a Stillness Speaks...

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  • 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...

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  • Message from Henry: Third Paramita, Kshanti, Patience (Part 2 of 3)

    MCZCApril 11, 20172 min read

    ...try allowing yourself to surrender to what is, just enough to taste the peace, an everlasting timeless peace... Read Part 1 of the Third Paramita. Last week’s message touched on patience with our practice as an aspect of kshanti: that is, learning that an important part of our practice is allowing our meditation experiences to be as they are. Here we might sense a little parting of the ways with the so-called "mindfulness movement" –...

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  • Foreword to Flowing Bridge: The Miscellaneous Koans, by Ruben Habito, Part 3 of 3

    MCZCApril 8, 20177 min read

    The three fruits of Zen, in other words, are all about becoming truly human, in all that this entails. Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Miscellaneous Koans There is a word in Spanish, aterrizar, used in referring to airplanes as they gradually approach the earth (terra) and land safely on the ground. This term is most apt to describe what needs to happen to the practitioner who has been graced with a glimpse...

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  • Teisho: 2nd Revisitation of Case 53, Book of Equanimity: Obaku’s Drinkers

    MCZCApril 6, 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,...

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  • Message from Henry: Brief Bulletin

    MCZCApril 4, 20173 min read

    A day without work, a day without food. This week we have our first work retreat going on at Mountain Cloud. This is more or less the first phase of the “First Phase” of our development plans. A crew of varying size is working on moving Cabin 1 and creating the new maintenance shed out of it, in preparation for the construction of our residency “cottage” later in the year. Master Hyakujo lived to the ripe...

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  • Foreword to Flowing Bridge: The Miscellaneous Koans, by Ruben Habito, Part 2 of 3

    MCZCApril 1, 20174 min read

    Kensho is a realization, in all immediacy, of what the Heart Sutra affirms: Form is no other than Emptiness, Emptiness no other than Form. Read Part 1 of The Miscellaneous Koans As one continues Zen practice, enjoying the different manifestations of this first fruit in one’s life, there may come a moment, unexpected, unprepared for, whereby one is hit by a sudden flash of realization. “This is it!” As noted above, this could be a...

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  • Teisho: Revisitation of Case 53, Book of Equanimity: Obaku’s Drinkers

    MCZCMarch 30, 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,...

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  • Message from Henry: The Third Paramita – Kshanti, Patience, part 1 of 3

    MCZCMarch 28, 20173 min read

    ....there is a peace, wellness and intrinsic joy that is not dependent on conditions, and that compels us to forget what we thought ourselves to be, and instead live for whatever benefit we can offer other beings. Fortitude in adversity, temperance in prosperity, said Francis Bacon, the great Elizabethan essayist and Renaissance man. To withstand the pressures, disappointments, frustrations that the world inevitably tests us with, and not be pulled away from the "truth" –...

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  • Foreword to Flowing Bridge: The Miscellaneous Koans, by Ruben Habito, Part 1 of 3

    MCZCMarch 25, 20174 min read

    This first fruit of Zen is about con-centration...coming together toward the center of one’s being or centering... The Zen experience of kensho, or “seeing one’s true nature,” is a pivotal point in a practitioner’s spiritual path. While for some it can be a spectacular event that takes one entirely by surprise, accompanied by spontaneous outbursts of laughter and tears, or both, for others it can be simply an unobtrusive, yet nonetheless momentous and life-changing, quiet,...

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  • Teisho: Henry Explores Reincarnation

    MCZCMarch 23, 20173 min read

    "If you think such a theory (that there is a soul that exits the body at death and re-enters another upon birth) constitutes the Buddha’s teaching, you are even more foolish than someone who picks up a roof tile thinking it’s a gold coin.” ~ Dogen "All other lives are not separate from you yourself. Where can you reincarnate? A grain of sand contains all time and space. When will you reincarnate?" ~ Henry Shukman...

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