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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  • Teisho: Yamada Ryoun Roshi: Isan’s Karma-Consciousness, Case 37, Shoyoroku, Book of Equanimity (Part 2 of 4)

    MCZCJune 9, 20161 min read

    Case 37: Isan asked Kyôzan, “Suppose a man asks you, saying, 'All living beings are tossed in a vast karma-consciousness. Does this karma-consciousness have any origin from which it arises?' How would you check him?” Kyôzan said, “If such a monk appears, I call out to him, 'Mr. So-and-so!' When he turns his head, instantly I say, 'What is this?' If he hesitates, then I say to him, 'Not only is there a vast karma-consciousness,...

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  • Message from Henry, Ecstasy and Laundry

    MCZCJune 7, 20161 min read

    An idea has crept into American Zen, especially perhaps in some lines that formerly grew out of Sanbo Zen, that the point of training was to have a glimpse of the dimension of ku, or shunyata, or the “Dharmakaya,” or Dharma-body, then scurry back into “normal views.” After the ecstasy, the laundry. But actually that’s not how it is taught in Japan. Rather, it’s not “after the ecstasy the laundry,” but something more like: “glory to...

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  • Healing Ecology: Discovering Our Collective Place in the World, by David R Loy, Part 1 of 3

    MCZCJune 6, 20164 min read

    In the article below, Buddhist scholar David Loy explores the parallels between our individual and collective journey to understand who and what we are, the traps that we fall into the the path to belonging. Originally Published in One Earth Sangha, we are publishing the article in three installments. As a complex religious tradition, or group of traditions, Buddhism has a lot to say about the natural world. Passages in many Buddhist texts reveal sensitivity to...

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  • Flowers Fall, from Genjokoan

    MCZCJune 3, 20161 min read

    When all things are the Buddha Dharma, there is illusion and enlightenment, practice, birth death, Buddhas and sentient beings. When all things are without self, there is no illusion or enlightenment, no birth or death, no Buddhas or sentient beings. The Buddha way is originally beyond any fullness and lack, and for that reason, there is birth and death, illusion and enlightenment, sentient beings, and Buddhas. Yet for all that, flowers fall amid our regret and yearning, and hated...

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  • Teisho: Yamada Ryoun Roshi: Joshu’s Dog (Part 1 of 4)

    MCZCJune 2, 20161 min read

    Description: Yamada Ryoun Roshi, Abbot of the Sanbo Zen lineage from Kamakura, Japan, gives his first teisho of the North American Sanbo Zen (NASZ) sesshin for 2016, on Joshu’s Dog. In his introduction, Roshi stresses the primary purpose for practicing Zen. Settling the mind and many other fruits of practice are not the primary purpose. They are byproducts of Zen, while discovering our true nature, and then living up to it, is the real purpose. Listen...

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  • Message from Henry: Notes on Practice

    MCZCJune 1, 20162 min read

    Oddly, letting go allows our focus to get steadier and clearer. A tight grip often makes it wander, and become indistinct. It’s natural that at times our faith in practice will waver. The important thing is not how strong and steady our faith in it is, but that we don’t allow ourselves to get derailed by fluctuations in it. An old writing teacher once told me not to get “tossed away” by doubt when the writing...

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  • Photos from North American Sanbo Zen Sesshin

    MCZCMay 30, 20160 min read

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  • Photos from the May 5th Re-dedication Ceremony

    MCZCMay 27, 20161 min read

    Photos from our recent re-dedication ceremony with Ryoun Yamada Roshi.  The zendo and grounds were filled with sangha friends from near and far.  Thank you to all who made it a splendid afternoon. Roshi opens the eyes of our new Buddha A fine spread of food thanks to Sandy Anderson and volunteers Photos courtesy of Cherie Manifest Deep Gassho Cherie

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  • Teisho: Yamada Ryoun Roshi: Mountain Cloud Rededication

    MCZCMay 26, 20161 min read

    Description: Abbot of Sanbo Zen, Yamada Ryoun Roshi from Kamakura, Japan, gives this talk to an overflowing zendo in honor of Mountain Cloud’s rededication ceremony.  With over a hundred people somehow crowded into the zendo and the lobby, the Roshi recognizes Mountain Cloud founder Philip Kapleau, and expresses his personal aspiration, as Abbot of the Sanbo Zen lineage, for Mountain Cloud to become the North American center for Sanbo Zen activities.  He believes that North America...

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  • Message from Henry: Concentration

    MCZCMay 24, 20163 min read

    In truth, nothing needs to change. All things are equally the Dharma unfolding At some point the resistance, the need to control the experience we have in meditation, just evaporates. It’s gone. Instead, rather than being outside it and trying to manipulate it, we find ourselves right in our experience, When we do, it feels good. A moment ago we may have been frustrated with a recurring need to sneeze, or a wandering mind, or by...

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  • Five Blossoms

    MCZCMay 23, 20161 min read

      I originally came to China to transmit the teaching and save deluded beings. One flower opens five petals, and the fruit ripens itself. - Bodhidharma, according to Huineng       If evil flowers bloom in the mind-ground, Five blossoms flower from the stem. Together they will create the karma of ignorance; Now the mind-ground is blown by the winds of karma. If correct flowers bloom in the mind-ground, Five blossoms flower from the stem. Together practice the prajna wisdom; In the future this will be the enlightenment of  the...

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  • Far From Home: Not-knowing is most intimate, Part 3 of 3

    MCZCMay 20, 20165 min read

    ...giving up one’s own certainties can open up a door toward a deeper intimacy with things, especially with people. For some years after, I was fortunate enough to work as a travel writer, penning narratives about unfamiliar places, aspiring to be a junior emulator of the likes of Pico Iyer and Bruce Chatwin. I did it in part because I was seeking the same liberation from my own perspective that I’d tasted in the Andes. Lawrence’s romance...

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  • Teisho: Love and the Three Treasures

    MCZCMay 19, 20161 min read

    “Love is the opposite of separation.” Description: In this short Valentines Day, Sunday morning talk, Henry explores love: our love for the practice and the abiding love practice has for us. In this latter love, we are gently led to intrinsic, non-separate true nature. Henry shows how the nature of love is embedded in the three treasures:  “Buddha discovered no separation. Dharma points to no separation. Sangha manifests no separation.” Post Image Credit: Flora by AliceKeyStudio, CC0 Public...

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  • Message from Henry: Sit. See. Serve.

    MCZCMay 17, 20162 min read

    ...we are not the center of everything...earth is but one dot in an infinite cosmos. It's a comparable shift to that for Ptolemaic to Copernican astronomy. We watch the beauty of stars fading in the dawn sky, of a moon rising over the mountains, and think: what a show, put on for us, the inhabitants of this planet. But then we find... Oh no, it's not a show for us, we are not the center of...

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