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: Thoughts

    MCZCFebruary 10, 20162 min read

    If the mind can get it, it’s not the “unborn.” So what is it? “Empty your thoughts,” says Daio Kokushi. This could be taken two ways: Have quiet meditation periods, fairly empty of thought. Let your mind be quiet. Allow your thinking to go quiet. Or:Let go of deep assumptions, opinions, views, conditioning that we don’t even know we have. Let those go. * * * We are all children of our time and place. To encounter the Dharma is...

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  • Rediscovering the Breath, by Ruben Habito, Part 1 of 2

    MCZCFebruary 8, 20164 min read

    ...breathing, for most of us, has come to be nothing but that – a mere biological function that our lungs take care of for us... Excerpted from Healing Breath (Orbis Books) It seems that most of us living in this fast-paced contemporary society have actually forgotten how to breathe. Not that we have ceased to perform the biological function whereby we inhale this invisible mixture of gases, including oxygen, that we need for sustaining life, and exhale...

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  • Ten thousand miles – No clouds, Ten thousand miles – Sky

    MCZCFebruary 5, 20162 min read

    “萬⾥ 無雲 万里天 Banri Kumo Nashi, Banri no Ten”. This is the second line of a couplet which follows the first one... “千江有水千江月 Senko Ni Mizu Ari Senko No Tsuki". Together they read: A thousand rivers of water, A thousand rivers of moons Ten thousand miles No clouds, Ten thousand miles Sky. [From the: Compendium of Five Lamps]   It reminds me of the Heart Sutra: Form does not differ from Emptiness And Emptiness does not differ from Form. Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form. And Yamada Ryoun commentary on: Case 46 –...

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  • Teisho: Hakuin Zenji’s Song of Zazen, Rohatsu Part 4 of 5

    MCZCFebruary 4, 20162 min read

    How boundless and free is the sky of samadhi, how bright the full moon of the four fold wisdom. Truly is anything lacking at this moment? Nirvana is right here before our eyes. This very place is the lotus land, this very body, the Buddha. - Hakuin Description: Henry continues his discussion of Hakuin Zenji’s Song of Zazen. He explores the “four-fold wisdom,” which includes “perfect mirror-wisdom,” where all things are seen just as they are, “equality wisdom,” (where all things are...

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  • Message from Henry: A Basic Problem

    MCZCFebruary 2, 20163 min read

    Suffering is not the same as pain, grief, tenderness, dislike, vulnerablity and so on. Mental well-being doesn’t mean that we don’t experience these feelings. Scientist David Krakauer, a systems theorist, and director of the Santa Fe Institute, regards intelligence as the ability find simple solutions to complex problems. He sees genius, on the other hand, as the ability to make problems disappear. (And stupidity, as opposed to ignorance, is the failure to solve problems even when...

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  • Living Death of Being Unknown, by David R. Loy

    MCZCFebruary 1, 20168 min read

    The basic problem is that preoccupation with fame plugs all too easily into the sense of lack that haunts our (deluded sense of) separate self. Written by David R. Loy, first published in the Huffington Post Blog,  May 2014 Why would anyone want to become famous--I mean really famous, like an A-list movie star? Of course, fame is often convertible into other things that we crave: money (selling your story to the newspapers), sex (admirers throwing themselves at...

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  • Speck of Snow on a Red Hot Oven

    MCZCJanuary 29, 20162 min read

      The Calligraphy on the scroll reads: 紅爐一点雪 Koro Itten No Yuki This is one letter shorter version of 紅爐上一点雪 (Korojo Itten No Yuki), “a speck of snow on a hot oven” This saying appears in the Blue Cliff Record - Case 69 “Patchrobed monks who have passed through the forest of prickly briars are like snow on a red hot oven. Putting aside for a while the ability to pass through seven loops and eight holes on level ground, how...

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  • Teisho: Hakuin Zenji’s Song of Zazen, Rohatsu Part 3 of 5

    MCZCJanuary 28, 20161 min read

    Suffering and liberation are impossibly close, not even an atom’s distance apart. - Henry Description: Henry opens this teisho by offering understanding and encouragement on this third day of sesshin, sharing some of his personal challenges on sesshin during his years of training.  He then continues explicating Hakuin Zenji’s Song of Zazen by first defining the meaning of zazen. Za is training and sitting, Zen is “seeing through” or awakening. Hakuin had thought that Buddhist practitioners of...

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  • Message from Henry: Inner Beauty Industry

    MCZCJanuary 27, 20163 min read

    ...the Dharma is untouchable, undistortable, unsulliable. Perhaps meditation will only really take off when there’s an “inner beauty industry” to match the regular outward one. It may be coming. I recently heard about a “meditation feedback monitor” that scientists and engineers have invented, whose screen shows you how you’re doing in your meditation, how quiet your mind is getting. It turns blue when you’re “in the zone” – when the midline network of the brain is...

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  • Listening to the Buddha: how greed, ill-will and delusion are poisoning our institutions, Part 3 of 3

    MCZCJanuary 25, 20164 min read

    The institution that is most responsible for molding our collective sense of self is the media, which has become a kind of “international nervous system”. This article, written by David R. Loy, first appeared in Open Democracy on May 12, 2014. Click to read Part 1 and Part 2 of Listening to the Buddha. What about the third of the three poisons, or delusion? “The Buddha” literally means “the awakened one,” which implies that the rest of us...

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  • The Fire Boy Comes Seeking Fire, Dogen

    MCZCJanuary 22, 20162 min read

    Zen Master Xuanze had affinity with Fayan. Once Xuanze was appointed as director in the assembly of Fayan. One day Fayan said, “How many years have you been here?” Xuanze replied, “I have already been in the teacher’s assembly for three years.” Fayan said, “You are a student, so why don’t you ever ask me about Dharma?” Xuanze said, “I dare not deceive the teacher. When I was at Qingfeng’s place, I realized peace and joy.” Fayan asked, “Through which...

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  • Teisho: Hakuin Zenji’s Song of Zazen, Rohatsu Part 2 of 5

    MCZCJanuary 21, 20161 min read

    Heaven and earth collapsed and were reduced to dust. All my karmic sins were extinguished as if in a bolt of lightning.  —Yamada Koun, poem upon his awakening. Description: Henry continues exploring Hakuin Zenji’s Song of Zazen. We look at suffering as portrayed in the “six realms” of existence. Henry asks, What makes us take a step toward a better way to be human?  The first ox-herding picture represents this first step, where we begin to...

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  • Message from Henry: Surfing at Swami’s

    MCZCJanuary 20, 20164 min read

    The other weekend when I was in San Diego I was very lucky to have a chance to go surfing. Luke Wientzen, who is helping to coordinate the fledgling meditation activities of this sangha in southern California, is a skilled and experienced surfer, and kindly took me to a famous break, Swami’s, in Cardiff by the Sea, about half a mile from Mandiram, the yoga studio where we were holding our sits. Swami’s break got...

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  • Listening to the Buddha: how greed, ill-will and delusion are poisoning our institutions, Part 2 of 3

    MCZCJanuary 18, 20162 min read

    If terrorism is the war of the poor and disempowered, then war is the terrorism of the rich. This article, written by David R. Loy, first appeared in Open Democracy on May 12, 2014 Click to read Part 1 of Listening to the Buddha. In short, our economic system has its own built-in motivations based on greed. It’s the same with ill-will. One example of ill-will at work is the punitive legal system of the USA, which incarcerates vast...

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