in the Cloud

Episode Description: Henry talks about his trip to Japan in May and its exciting and relevant connection to Mountain Cloud’s history and future.  Henry went to Japan with a film crew making a documentary about Sanbo Zen. His visit also included meetings with Ryoun Roshi, Sanbo Zen Abbot, and discussion about Mountain Cloud’s particular role in delivering Zen’s teachings to the United States. In addition to describing his travels, Henry digs into the dharma by connecting Zen teachings from an essay by Harada Roshi (Great Cloud) with an ancient Latin text written by Lucretius. Listen as Henry explores how Zen training offers the fulfillment of human potential and, ultimately, resolves the matter of life and death.

Post & Featured Image Credit: Courtesy Chris Hebard (Documentary Producer).

Post image (above) is the San’un Zendo in Kamakura, founded in 1960 by Yasutani Haku’un (White Cloud) Roshi and Yamada Koun (Cultivating Cloud) Roshi and the Featured image (thumbnail in summary list view of episodes/posts) is the Engakuji in Kamakura – a temple where Yamada Koun used to come on his bicycle at 5am each morning to sit and have dokusan, before catching the train to work in Tokyo.

Episode Description: Henry opens this teisho with a lovely look at the gift of the five precepts. He then provides an evocative exploration of the koan, “Jizo Plants the Rice Field”. We examine the core Zen question, “Where have you come from?” as the discussion moves onto various views about the “Three Worlds” of desire, form and no-form, ending with the Mahayana view that all these “three worlds” are inherently illusory. Yet the Bodhisattva ideal is still to save all beings from the three worlds. Is it possible that tasks as simple as planting rice and eating rice balls could somehow fully embody that ideal?

Post Image Credit: Courtesy Cherie Manifest.

Featured Image Credit: By Ryan Dickey, Via Photopin, CC BY 2.0

Episode Description: Henry explicates Master’s Unmon’s teaching on the “Two Sicknesses.” Learn about Master Unmon’s early practice and awakening under the two masters Bokushu and Seppo. Find out how Unmon’s “two sicknesses” are actually four diseases, which give us a kind of road-map of training in meditation. Henry correlates these sicknesses with the famous Zen Ox-herding pictures, and shows how Master Unmon’s profound teaching is pointing us toward “traceless enlightenment.”

Post Image Credit:  Enlightenment , by Hartwig HKD, CC BY-ND 2.0.

Featured Image Credit: By Ryan Dickey, Via Photopin, CC BY 2.0

Episode Description: Henry shares some thoughts on Yakusan's famous dialogue on meditation. A monk asks, “What do you think about when you meditate?” Yakusan answers, “Think not-thinking.” Henry relates this to master Dogen’s own profound awakening, in which he experienced “body and mind falling away,” and to the many writings and teachings that flowed from this life-resolving experience. Henry then turns to the Stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius’s writings on peace of mind, and shows how these two men, from vastly different times and cultures, came to recognize deep common ground in human experience.

Post Image Credit: By Bureau of Land Management, CC BY 2.0.

Featured Image Credit: By John Liu [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Episode Description: In this talk, Henry explores the dedication required for long term Zen practice. He quotes Rilke’s words, “Everything in nature tries to become itself against all opposition,” and considers Gustav Mahler’s “Song of the Earth,” which centers around a set of Tang dynasty poems. Henry places Zen in the historical context of the Tang period in China, when many of the koans we study originated. The Tang period was culturally rich but also catastrophic, with a civil war almost a decade long right in the middle of it in which two thirds of the Chinese population died. Henry shows that Zen was forged in great adversity.

Post Image Credit: SeedBlog, by US Department of Agriculture, CC BY 2.0.

Featured Image Credit: Courtesy Cherie Manifest.