Teachings

  • Dharma Talk: Breakthroughs Part 2 with Henry Shukman

    MCZCNovember 26, 20241 min read

    At this time when many of us may be feeling daunted and uncertain, we gather in the zendo to tap into our shared deeper nature that meditation can open up, drawing sustenance and new perspectives from it. In this talk, Henry explores breakthrough experiences — sudden shifts in how we understand and experience this life. They can show up in many forms, and in many areas, both personal and collective. Zen’s history is full of stories...

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  • Poetry, Practice, and the Wild Ethics of Love: A Conversation with David Hinton

    MCZCNovember 14, 20241 min read

    David Hinton has published numerous books of poetry and essays, and many translations of ancient Chinese poetry and philosophy—all informed by an abiding interest in deep ecological thinking. This widely-acclaimed work has earned Hinton a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous fellowships from NEA and NEH, and both of the major awards given for poetry translation in the United States: the Landon Translation Award (Academy of American Poets) and the PEN American Translation Award. Most recently, Hinton received...

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  • Valerie Forstman: Zen’s Subverting Impulse: Overturning the One

    MCZCOctober 31, 20241 min read

    Valerie begins this Halloween night teisho referencing Colleen’s Wednesday Wisdom talk based in part on Kamilah Majied’s book “Joyfully Just.” Colleen invited us to weave wonder, joy, and resilient compassion and creativity into our practice. Valerie quotes “awakening is to follow any one thing through all the way to the end” with joy and wonder. On All Hallows Eve, tradition overturns the boundary between life and death bringing together ancestors living and beyond. Valerie then...

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  • Kali Basman: Cultivating Wonder

    MCZCOctober 25, 20241 min read

    Kali invites us to examine the wide array of features that comprise “The Practice Field,” the many aspects of our path of practice. She states that as a species we are quite proficient at ignoring our “shadow side of life,” those parts of us that help inform the richness of the practice field. Through this avoidance of difficult experiences, we contribute to our own suffering. Kali suggests that, with kindness and insight, we can lovingly...

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  • Valerie Forstman: A Preaching in Accordance

    MCZCOctober 17, 20241 min read

    Valerie begins this teisho noticing the full moon, The Hunter’s Moon, rising in the night sky. Dogen’s writings include several aspects of the moon as realization, one drop of water reflecting the moon, one illumination. Valerie then invites us into Case #14 of the Hekiganroku (Blue Cliff Record), “A Preaching in Accordance.” A monk asks of Yunmen: “What are the periods and teachings of the whole lifetime of Shakyamuni? Yunmen answers, “A preaching in accordance.”  https://youtu.be/Qw6j_-ymHYk?si=tolfTXqQlUtDyliy...

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  • Valerie Forstman: Complete Exposure of the Golden Wind

    MCZCOctober 10, 20241 min read

    Valerie begins this teisho with the reminder that we are here, right where we are, as is everything else, nothing excluded. She recounts driving to Telluride last week and seeing the gold of the autumn foliage filling the whole land. In the face of this beauty your separate self cannot survive. You embrace as one, emptiness, complete beauty. Valerie reads an excerpt from the poem “Dandelion” and asks the question, “What does one moment of...

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  • Teshin Sweger: Am I too old to realize my true nature?

    MCZCOctober 3, 20241 min read

    Teshin Sweger invites us to consider a koan that is not in any of the koan collections. He asks us to consider the koan of our aging. In practice he often hears the question, am I too old to sit and realize my true nature? As we are all aging, Teshin encourages us to hear the messengers of sickness, old age, and death. At what point will we stop having a need to shine and...

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  • Henry Shukman: Breakthroughs

    MCZCSeptember 19, 20241 min read

    Henry begins with the question “is there such a thing as a breakthrough?”  Maybe. Maybe not! The dharma is everywhere, you cannot escape it, and to realize this one simply needs to come back to “now,” just this. We are told that to taste Zen, one is invited to break through the barrier set up by the ancestors. The barrier is “Mu.” When we open to this barrier and our worldview is shattered…we are still...

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  • David Loy: A Buddhist Response to the Ecological Crisis

    MCZCSeptember 11, 20241 min read

    Author, Zen teacher, and Ecodharma activist David Loy begins his talk reminding us that the ecological crisis is the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced, and that we are doing this to ourselves. He then poses the question: what do our spiritual traditions have to offer to help us respond appropriately? The Buddhist tradition offers the bodhisattva path. David shares with us a rich trajectory of the Buddhist path, the natural world, and our engagement....

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  • Valerie Forstman: What is love? (Denkoroku Case #41)

    MCZCSeptember 5, 20241 min read

    Valerie begins her teisho with impressions from the teacher training in Germany – the consistent theme of life as a dream, already gone, and yet…shared sitting, shared practice, shared koan study in fellowship. Then life and death, side-by-side, offered in a week-long sesshin practicing next to a hospice house, sitting in earnest bare-hearted togetherness. Valerie states that “love” arises from all that is arising, just this, nothing but love with no opposite, no separation.  Case Denkoroku...

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  • Katie Arnold: Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World

    MCZCAugust 29, 20241 min read

    Ultramarathon runner, Zen practitioner, and author Katie Arnold shares her compelling story of running, Zen, writing, and living life - all through the lens of not-knowing and accepting uncertainty. Katie’s recent book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World, emerged in the aftermath of her father’s death, her associated anxiety, and a life-altering accident that occurred while rafting a whitewater river. “Brief flashings,” she says, “are moments of wonder that make us feel alive and connected.”...

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  • Carmen Afable: Breathing Mu

    MCZCAugust 22, 20241 min read

    Zen teacher Carmen Afable grounds her teisho in Shoyoroku case #93: Roso Does Not Understand. After reading the case, Carmen reminds us that we are the treasure and pearl of great value discussed in the koan. She says, “the Kensho experience is right before our eyes but we cannot see it as we are full of our delusive selves.” But Mu is everywhere, and the entire universe is “Mu-ing.” We are Mu, the finest jewel....

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  • Sean Tetsudo Murphy: Demystifying No-Self

    MCZCAugust 15, 20241 min read

    Zen teacher, meditation professor, and author Sean Murphy invites us to consider our illusion of separateness, the notion that we have a sense of self as an independent creature within the world. Much of our suffering – loneliness, feeling unsafe, disconnection, anxiety, difficulty with others – may emerge from this sense of being fundamentally separate. Rather, our true reality is one as an integral part of the universe. He implies that we cannot remove ourselves...

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  • Shana Smith: Dharma Rain

    MCZCAugust 8, 20241 min read

    Shana begins by noting the concurrent and successive rainstorms both in her area of Florida and at Mountain Cloud in Santa Fe as an introduction to the understanding of oneness or unity of all phenomena in the essential that is realized through the practice of zazen. Recalling Dōgen’s argument that although all beings are inherently enlightened, practice is needed to realize it, Shana argues that “all of us do it according to our own unique...

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