Henry’s Messages – Page 5 – Mountain Cloud Zen Center

Message from Henry: Ensnared

So easily we get caught in fantasies of self-advancement and self-protection, of self-satisfaction. How hard it can be to recognize that we have been “ensnared” or caught in loops of

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Message from Henry: The Pivot

In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the young novice monk Alyosha falls to the ground, on the night of the wake for his recently deceased beloved spiritual mentor, and has a profound epiphany.

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Message from Henry: A Little Reflection on Zen History

Dogen said, “Practice is enlightenment; enlightenment is practice.” Tahui said: “There never was any delusion, nor any realization.” These statements are completely clear, yet we shouldn’t mistake what they

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Message from Henry: Wisdom and Awakening

Being wise and being awakened surely overlap. But they are not the same thing. We have likely all known people who were by any standard wise, but neither awakened nor

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Message from Henry: Vast and Void, Nothing Holy

Blue Cliff Record number one. What is the most sacred or holy reality? Bodhidharma is asked. He says: Vast and void, nothing holy. Nothing is sacred in Zen. Then it’s actually a

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Message from Henry: Sitting

Start with ease – with things being as they are. Sitting – don’t try too hard. Don’t sit down and immediately demand that you settle into blissful awareness or deep

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Message from Henry: Kensho

There are three ways we could look at it, especially at how veridical it is. Kensho is an intense experience a human being can undergo which radically adjusts their way

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Message from Henry: Walking Through Grasses

Walking slowly through grasses – a bit sick, weak, under-fed, with a sore belly – I saw two little birds, then a third. They were hopping, fluttering among the grass.

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Message from Henry: Simply Love

The mature human heart learns to live with heartbreak without shutting it down. It’s really so simple. It all begins with love. If we just love, life is simple. How

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Message from Henry: Just This

If you just get one taste of this – some call it the Dharma, or Buddha-nature, or no-name – just one brush with the hem of Kumarajiva’s garment, a swish

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Message from Henry: A Moment in the Mountains

The quality of evening in the high mountains – whatever has gone on during the day, now it’s a new, exalted realm, all the creatures feel it. The clouds have

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Message from Henry: Questions

The scientist sees the forest – the trees’ canopy stirring and trembling in the wind, the pair of late birds flapping off over the crest of the hill toward the

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Message from Henry: States and Facts

The quest for certain states of mind… is one more form of self-centeredness: rather than wanting material goods, we are wanting “spiritual goods.” Something we should try to be clear

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Message from Henry: Surrendering to the Tao

…the challenge is to recognize that thoughts are a strategy, a coping mechanism, and that in our sitting we must therefore be very kind with them and with ourselves. About

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