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: Three Treasures Meditation

    MCZCOctober 15, 20154 min read

    Buddha is empty. Dharma is phenomena. Sangha is the fact that these two are one Each of the “three treasures” is its own complete gift, its own fulfillment of the Way. Each also presents its own challenges, bringing up different areas of resistance and unease in us. That’s why together they make for a helpful training. We can think of them in many ways. For example: Buddha is daily practice. Dharma is what happens in our lives....

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  • Summer Sesshin Part 4 of 4: Everlasting Practice

    MCZCOctober 15, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In this final talk of the 2015 summer sesshin Henry clarifies what has been explored during the week. He recites the opening couplets of the Shinjinmei, Verses of the Faith Mind, and discusses both Mumon’s and Dogen’s awakenings (who were alive at the same time and came somewhat close to meeting).  We hear a story about the Pang family of lay practitioners, who all became enlightened masters during the Chinese Tang period. The talk...

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  • Fundimental Meaning of Buddha-dharma

    MCZCOctober 12, 20151 min read

      Zen master Daowu visited the assembly of master Shitou. Daowu asked, “What is the fundamental meaning of Buddha-dharma?” Shitou said, “Not to attain, not to know”. Daowu said, “Is there some turning point in going beyond, or not?“ Shitou said, “The vast sky does not hinder the white clouds from flying”   Image by Rosa Bellino Text taken from Going Beyond Buddha, from thezensite.com  

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  • Is Zen a Religion? by Yamada Ryoun

    MCZCOctober 9, 20155 min read

    The true self that has been found is really one with all that is. The self and the whole universe are originally one being. Zen is not a religion. This is a position I have continuously maintained. To say that Zen is not a religion is to say that the Buddha-Way [butsudo] is not a religion. However, religious concepts invariably are entwined with words such as Zen or the Buddha-Way. Most people have no problem with...

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  • Summer Sesshin Part 3 of 4: Case 17 Book of Equanimity: Hogen’s “Hairsbreadth”

    MCZCOctober 8, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: This third teisho of the summer sesshin explores Case 17 in the Book of Equanimity. Hogen’s: "If there only is a hairsbreadth of difference, it is the distance between heaven and earth."    Henry discusses notions of heaven, the tiny size of a “hair’s breadth” and the concept of separation.  Drawing on his wide knowledge of the Chinese Zen Masters, he tells stories of Nansen, Echu, Sosan,  Hogen and Jizo; and he quotes humorous yet insightful...

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  • Message from Henry: Center and Practice

    MCZCOctober 7, 20154 min read

    But what are we learning in meditation? ...what it is to be human. Or more simply: how to be... in the end we aren’t learning, or growing, we are simply doing practice. A CENTER The main function of a meditation center is to be a place of meditative training. In this sense, the center is a focus for a path toward awakening – toward “realization,” and the embodying of that realization in every moment of life. But Zen...

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  • Bubbles on the Sea

    MCZCOctober 5, 20151 min read

    When we see truly, there is nothing at all. There is no person; there is no Buddha. Innumerable things of the universe Are just bubbles on the sea. Wise sages are all like flashes of lightning. - Yoka Genkaku (665-713 CE), Shodoka   Photo and creation by Rosa Bellino

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  • Awareness Bound and Unbound, by David Loy, Part 3 of 3

    MCZCOctober 3, 20153 min read

    What does it really mean for awareness to be here-and-now, de-conditioned from attention traps both individual and collective? Click to read Part 1 and Part 2 of Awareness Bound and Unbound The Control of Attention Dictatorships control people with violence and the threat of it, to restrain what they do. Modern democracies control people with sophisticated propaganda, by manipulating what they think. We worry about weapons of mass destruction, but perhaps we should be as concerned about weapons...

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  • Summer Sesshin Part 2 of 4: Koans, Awakening, and Belonging

    MCZCOctober 1, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: Henry addresses the process of being on sesshin.  He continues talking about the emergence of koans, the promise they hold, and the practice of “studying” them—which is really taking a koan deeply into our meditation and simply letting it be. Henry gives some background on Joshu, his apprenticeship with Nansen and his awakening, and he explores “enlightenment” as an experience of direct knowing about ourselves and the world, which changes how we see...

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  • Message from Henry: More than One Fruit

    MCZCSeptember 30, 20153 min read

    If meditation was a one-way ticket to calmness, it would surely still be worth the journey. But instead it’s more – it’s about growth, maturing, expanding and deepening our humanity. Meditation can calm the nervous system. It can reduce our bouts of reactivity and help us to respond to life’s challenges, rather than reacting blindly. It’s good for our health, physical and mental, etc. These are just a few of the many claims typically made by meditation...

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  • Awareness Bound and Unbound, by David Loy, Part 2 of 3

    MCZCSeptember 28, 20153 min read

    ...attention has become the basic commodity to be exploited. Click to read Part 1 of Awareness Bound and Unbound. The Commodification of Attention For most of us in the developed world, the greatest attention trap is consumerism, which involves sophisticated advertising that has become very good at manipulating our awareness. Today the bigger economic challenge is not production but keeping us convinced that the solution to our dukkha "dis-ease" is our next purchase. According to the pioneering advertising...

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  • Awareness Bound and Unbound, by David Loy, Part 1 of 3

    MCZCSeptember 26, 20153 min read

    Let the mind come forth without fixing it anywhere. (Diamond Sutra) The Platform Sutra makes the same point: "When our mind works freely without any hindrance, and is at liberty to 'come' or to 'go,' we attain liberation." Such a mind "is everywhere present, yet it 'sticks' nowhere." Our awareness becomes stuck when we identify with particular forms, due to ignorance of the essential non-dwelling nature of our consciousness. These are familiar Buddhist teachings, yet an...

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  • Summer Sesshin Part 1 of 4: Four Marks of Zen, How to Practice and the Koan Mu

    MCZCSeptember 24, 20151 min read

    Episode Description: In this first teisho of the summer 2015 sesshin, Henry explores the four traditional marks of Zen which result in discovering innate buddhahood.  Using warm encouragement and anecdotes from his personal history, Henry, reminds us that sesshin is challenging and discusses how we can best attend to our practice. Henry tells a story from the sutras about a hawk, a quail and a clod of earth which becomes a metaphor for our natural home...

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  • Message from Henry: Two points from the recent sesshin

    MCZCSeptember 22, 20155 min read

    Meditation training is a training in becoming more fully human, but to undergo it we have to let go of what we have believed and experienced our human-ness to be 1. Sesshin is hard. After decades of doing them, it’s easy to forget this. But on this sesshin we were blessed by the presence of seven first-timers. One of the great things about having newcomers in a sesshin is that they remind us of just what...

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