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: Dharma Drops

    MCZCJuly 5, 20162 min read

    Stop and see, Buddha said. Stop means be still and quiet. See means see what is going on, within and without, in the totality... We're human, our hearts are not at peace. We want them to be at peace. So the first step is to become at peace at least with the fact they are not at peace. This the first noble truth--accepting that suffering is part of life. *** This is how Buddhas and ancestors are being...

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  • Collective Bubbles of Delusion, by David R Loy, Part 2 of 2

    MCZCJuly 4, 20164 min read

    ...by truly letting-go of one’s sense of self – the ego-self whose well-being is separate from others’ well-being – the self-interest that sustains the bubble is undermined. Click to read Part 1 of Collective Bubbles of Delusion. In place of the Abrahamic duality between good and evil, Buddhism focuses on ignorance and wisdom – the insight that comes with awakening. Delusion (moha) is one of the “three fires” or “three poisons” (the others are greed and ill...

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  • Teisho: Reflection on Tea and Dharma

    MCZCJune 30, 20161 min read

    “As we do our practice, we are also part of much greater processes...One such process is simply: this dharma finding its way to express itself in a new culture” Description: In this short talk, Henry reflects on dharma practice and tea. Henry compares the varying manifestations of tea drinking and ceremony with the differing types of dharma practice throughout the world. He points to English high tea, Chinese simple tea, and to the formal and beautiful Japanese tea...

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  • Message from Henry: Kensho

    MCZCJune 28, 20163 min read

    We have been caught in a false prison. A spell was cast and entrapped us. Then we dissolve the spell through zazen and wake up from the prison, and leave it. While it may be unhelpful to suggest that we sit in order to have kensho, it’s undeniable that these experiences have been valued and memorialized through Zen’s history. Indeed, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that for Zen masters, these experiences, when deep and thorough,...

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  • Collective Bubbles of Delusion, by David R Loy, Part 1 of 2

    MCZCJune 27, 20163 min read

    We are good at finding reasons to justify what we believe, but it is much more difficult to examine critically and sincerely our deepest beliefs. What makes human beings unique is also our Achilles heel – the defect that may yet destroy our species, along with most others. Like other animals, we have instincts, but, thanks to our large neo-cortex, we can gain some degree of freedom from them by choosing how to respond to them. This...

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  • Unborn and Undying, from Genjokoan

    MCZCJune 24, 20162 min read

    Once firewood turns to ash, the ash cannot revert to being firewood. But you should not take the view that it is ashes afterward and firewood before. You should realize that although firewood is at a dharma-stage of firewood,  and that this is possessed of before and after, the firewood is at the same time independent, completely cut off from before, completely cut off from after. Ashes are the dharma-stage of ashes, which also has a before and...

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  • Teisho: Yamada Ryoun Roshi: Joshu’s “Wash Your Bowls,” Case 39, Shoyoroku, Book of Equanimity (Part 4 of 4)

    MCZCJune 23, 20161 min read

    Case 39: A monk asked Joshu: “I have just entered this monastery. I beg you, Master, please give me instruction.” Joshu asked, “Have you eaten your rice gruel yet?” The monk answered, “Yes, I have.” Joshu said, “Then wash your bowls.”   Description: Yamada Roshi offers his final talk for the 2016 NASZ sesshin on Case 39 from the Shoyoroku, “Joshu’s Wash Your Bowls.” This famous koan is easily misunderstood as either advice for daily living, or as instruction on approaches to...

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  • Message from Henry: Just Sitting

    MCZCJune 21, 20161 min read

    Some thoughts on the practice of shikantaza or just sitting... Becoming aware of space right in the middle. A gentle but global awareness, a spaciousness, which allows everything to flourish. A lucidity in which all things can be themselves with ease. The practice of not influencing anything. Shikantaza: nothing but exactly sitting. With patience and stillness, somehow, like a lightly charged compass needle, after much trembling and wavering, it starts to align, by itself. Intimacy: all things immediately present.Mind drowned in not-knowing. Coming...

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  • Healing Ecology: Discovering Our Collective Place in the World, by David R Loy, Part 3 of 3

    MCZCJune 18, 20165 min read

    When we meditate, for example, we are not transforming ourselves. We are being transformed. Quiet, focused concentration enables something else to work in us and through us, something other than one’s usual ego-self. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2 of Discovering our Collective Place in the World. This brings us to the second implication mentioned earlier: our collective response to this collective dukkha is just making things worse. First, let’s remember how things go wrong individually. We...

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  • Man in a Boat at Sea, from Genjokoan

    MCZCJune 17, 20161 min read

    When a man is in a boat at sea and looks back at the shoreline, it may seem to him as though the shore is moving. But when he fixes his gaze closely on the boat, he realizes it is the boat that is moving. In like manner, when a person tries to discern and affirm thoughts with a confused notion of his body and mind, he makes the mistake of thinking his mind, his own...

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  • Teisho: Yamada Ryoun Roshi: Rinzai’s “True Person,” Case 38, Shoyoroku, Book of Equanimity (Part 3 of 4)

    MCZCJune 16, 20161 min read

    Case 38: Rinzai instructed his assembly and said, “There is one true person of no rank, always coming out and going in through the gates of your face. Beginners who have not yet witnessed that, look! look!” Then a monk came out and asked, “What is the one true person of no rank?” Rinzai descended from the rostrum and grabbed him. The monk hesitated. Rinzai pushed him away and said, “The true person of no rank...

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  • Message from Henry: The Old Hurt

    MCZCJune 14, 20164 min read

    There was simply a ring of fire, of pain, of grievous loss by which the entry had to be made. In Die Wise Stephen Jenkinson mentions a term that has come rolling out of the Welsh mountains and mists, namely herath, which he translates as “the Old Hurt.” What is the “old hurt”? It begins in longing, moves into love, then loss of what is still loved though gone. It's the one old way. Our ancestors...

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  • Healing Ecology: Discovering Our Collective Place in the World, by David R Loy, Part 2 of 3

    MCZCJune 12, 20164 min read

    For Buddhism the only true solution lies in realizing our nonduality with “others” and understanding that our own well-being cannot be distinguished from their well-being.  Click to read Part 1 of Discovering our Collective Place in the World. Does this basic insight about the intimate connection between sense of self and dukkha also apply to the sense of separation between ourselves and others? The issue here is whether “separate self = dukkha” also holds true for our biggest...

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  • The Buddha Way, from Genjokoan

    MCZCJune 10, 20161 min read

    To learn the Buddha Way is to learn one's self. To learn one's self is to forget one's self. To forget one's self is to be confirmed by all the dharmas. To be confirmed by all dharmas is to cast off one's body and mind and the bodies and minds of others as well. All trace of enlightenment disappears, and this tracless enlightenment continues on without end. The moment you begin seeking the Dharma, you move far from...

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