This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. It's lovely to see you all. Get a little more time to look around. And here we go with the loudspeakers. Well, good morning, everybody. Very nice to see you. Thank you for coming. My name is Kiku, Christina Lainher. Kiku means loom of emptiness. It was given by Rabbi Anderson when I got priest ordained. I actually have three Dharma names because my first teacher, Norman Fisher... when he gave me the lay precepts, he gave me the names Choshin Hoetsu, which means pure faith, Dharma joy.

[01:10]

And then he wanted to become a high school teacher, went to school while he was practicing at Green Gulch Farm and was the head of practice there. got all his credential and was just hell-bent on becoming a high school teacher and completely clear that he did not want to ordain any priests because he would not be really available to train them because he was going to be a high school teacher. And then as so many things happen in life, Reb Anderson, who had been the abbot at that time, and I have been also seeing for Doksan, was going to ordain me as a priest. And he replaced or added, moved the first name of my two names kind of off the ledge and put in loom of emptiness and kept the Dharma joy.

[02:20]

So it's Kiku Hoetsu. But of course, you can't lose a Dharma name. It's just not possible. Actually, as you can't lose anything, it just goes somewhere else or transforms into something different. So I feel blessed having three Dharma names. But before I continue, I also would like to know who maybe is here for the very first time. Quite a few of you, welcome. Thank you for coming. And I hope in the whole morning you will find something that inspires you or encourages you in your own, very own life. So then, you know, ironically, Norman, instead of becoming a high school teacher, became the next abbot. LAUGHTER and started ordaining people.

[03:23]

So this is just a brief example of how we have trajectories, we have ideas, we have plans, and then life just keeps happening, and sometimes in very different ways than we imagined, everybody around us imagined. Everything was set on going, and then it's not going in that direction. So this is actually going the very last time I'm going to sit here in this spot, in this room. If I ever happen to give another lecture, I will be moved over there. So because in two weeks, I will step down from my position and function as the abyss here and return to being kind of a freelance, affiliated something, which actually I have no idea what it's going to be.

[04:44]

Because a year ago, seven days short of a year ago, very happy walking down Market Street and then running to catch a bus, not because I needed to or because I was in a rush, because I enjoyed, suddenly had the impulse of running and really enjoying it while I was running and having a thought, I am running really much better than I usually run, you know, because I'm getting old and usually I don't run anymore. So I fully enjoyed myself. and then took a flying fall and knocked myself out, completely in the middle of Market Street. So that changed the course of my life. First, they said four to six weeks, then they started saying several months, and then in the end of May, beginning of June...

[05:47]

The neurologist said, you know, it could take a year or more to recover. These things can take a very long time. So I spoke to the elders and I spoke to the Abbott's group because I felt that's a long time to be impacted. And how I was impacted was I had, you know, after recovering from the bruises and the broken nose and the split lip and all that stuff, That was really a pretty picture. I looked like coming from a drunken brawl or something. It was kind of a really unique experience to look in the mirror. But I had way less energy and a real decline in emotional resilience to deal with stuff I could barely be in a room with many people.

[06:50]

I was very sensitive to noise. And I couldn't keep track of many, many things parallel, you know, happening parallel, which they do here. So... And I felt that wasn't such a good thing. So I took counsel with the elders and with the abbots group and became clear that actually I... wanted to step down, and then they asked me when, and I said, well, in February, which was in June. I don't know why I thought February would be a good time. I mean, one thought was, it gives time to find the next abbot. You can't, you know, go right, pick them off the street. That's not really how it works. And they said, well, what about the practice period at Tassahura? Will you... still want to do it, you think you're able to do it.

[07:50]

And in that moment, I just felt, yes, I would really like to do it, and I think I can do it, and I think it will be, on many levels, easier than doing the job here in the city, because at Tazahara, everything is only doing the practice period and maintaining the place, taking care of everything. pipes and sewage and you know the buildings but other than that everybody is totally focused on the practice period as during the summer they're all focused on serving the guests and doing the guest season which kind of simplifies a lot and calms it down so and to my astonishment the elders and the abbots were willing to take the risk and support that. Which brings me to what I want to say today, because I was wondering, being the last talk in this position, what is the...

[09:12]

What stands out? What is totally in front of me? How do I leave this position? How has it changed me? Or what have I learned? And what became very clear is basically all I can say is thank you. Thank you. to all of you whether you're here for the first time or have been here many times or live here as a residence or used to live here as a residence because you make this moment now each single one of us being present contribute to how this moment is for each other we do that Whether we know it, we can't really put our finger on it, but that's what's happening moment by moment.

[10:19]

So I want to say thank you. Thank you for being alive, for living your life the way you do. And I also want to thank my parents. who keep coming up in many ways. They're both not alive anymore. They died three and five years ago now, close to. But they actually had a practice. They had kind of clear views of what was important to them, and they put that into practice. that manifested in their lives. They were very different people. My father was much more dogmatic and quite rigid in how he understood the responsibility to be a father.

[11:23]

And aside from that, very tolerant and very helpful to everybody, all the stray people we brought home, he would be like a totally different person than he was to us, his children, which he felt responsible for. So... There he was quite dogmatic and rigid. And my mother was a very free-spirited, self-reliant, and in some ways irreverent, but deeply irreverent to ideas or specific forms, but deeply irreverent to life. and deeply connected. She would sense when one of us was in trouble somewhere, and if she could go there, she would go find us, and if she couldn't, she would go pray for us. She would go to her bedroom and invoke all the help to protect us where we were. And it was always when something really dangerous was about, we were in a dangerous situation.

[12:28]

And my parents, my mother once said... I think we are, you, me and your father are happy and content because we are not very ambitious people. And that stayed with me because I think there is a truth. If we are too ambitious, we can't appreciate what is. There is always the wanting to have... or to grow more or be more or learn more, and that more, more, more kind of is often in the way to actually see how much we do have. You know, we all have in this room, all of us have obviously found the time to come here, found the means to come here, and are supported to be here. So do we appreciate those factors in our lives?

[13:38]

I am, of course, deeply grateful for all the people that have crossed my path because, you know, I worked as a physical therapist and... even though you can think of that as being a helping profession, what I realized over time is each of the patients in the hospitals or in the physical therapy department that I worked with actually taught me something about life. Each of them. Then I became a psychologist and everybody I worked with taught me about life. About... how things happen out of the blue, how things happen that we cannot control, we have no control over, and how crucial it is, or that the crucial factor is not so much what is it that happens, but how do we respond to what happens.

[14:55]

And I saw that in people that had accidents, back injuries, amputations, really big things that changed their lives and how they could live their lives completely or minor things that would heal. But if the people that tried to, that could find it in them to accept the change, accept... what had happened, how it had totally upended their life the way they knew it, how they couldn't do the job anymore they were used to do, or they lost their family, or the ones that found the place to accept and in some ways surrender to those facts, they all... discovered and showed me that their life kept growing and expanding.

[15:59]

They lost a leg and so their life was amputated. The not being able to function the way they were used to and surrendering to that other rooms, other spaces of experience, other expressions of their lives. started to appear and being inhabited by them. That was an incredible teaching for me. And it was just by them struggling and trying to make sense or find a way to find value in sometimes a very changed life. It was just such a gift they gave me. And so I, you know, going along in my life and working with people, I ended up encountering this practice, which is another gift that I'm incredibly thankful for.

[17:05]

And I came here, you know, I practiced Sazen in Germany with Graf Turkheim and in Switzerland, where I'm actually from and lived, but I would go sometimes to the Black Forest to do some practice practice there, but I would never have become a priest in Switzerland. I would never have become a priest in Japan. I could only, only here at San Francisco Zen Center was a possibility for me. And that's also one of the things I learned is that, you know, theoretically, theoretically, everything is possible. We can say, well, you know, you can... you can transform, everything is possible. But in reality, that's absolutely not true. That there is certain things that for you are supported in specific circumstances and not in others.

[18:11]

So how here in Suzuki Roshi's lineage, which I didn't come to become a priest, that was the farthest away from my thoughts, I came to practice with Charlotte Selver and to reconnect with Zen meditation, which I'd been doing for several years and had stopped for a little bit. And Charlotte Selver sensory awareness offered that at Green Gulch Farm, and that was what made me come so far. I wouldn't have come just for Charlotte, I wouldn't have come just for Zen, but that they were in the same place brought me here, and then... It changed the course of my life. And here I am still. And it's very clear to me. I would never have gone to Japan to be a nun and become a nun in that culture. I would never have done that in Switzerland. And here that's something that just resonated in a way that kind of kept moving me along.

[19:20]

So, you know, there's this little book that came out for the 100th anniversary of Suzuki Roshi's birthday. And he says, there's a quote from a lecture which he gave in 1966. You should not stay at the edge of the teaching. You are quite free, but you should enter our teaching. Don't try to understand it just intellectually or by means of experience only. Experience, of course, is important, but a more important thing is the confidence to believe in yourself. And you should be faithful to what you feel and to what you think. You should be faithful to what you feel and to what you think.

[20:29]

You should not fool yourself. It is quite all right to say, I cannot agree with you, or I cannot accept the teaching. That is how we make our understanding deeper and deeper. So he says that, and in other places he says, you should always say yes, because when you say yes, you give yourself the opportunity to encounter a different, a new self. The one that says yes and then gets shaped by what it has said yes to. And when you get used to that self, he says, then you should say yes again, so that you get disabused of that self and get a new self. So, It seems like, are these contradictions, or what is this? But I think both is true. I had to say yes to what arose in me when they asked me, well, are you asking to step down?

[21:34]

And I didn't go in those meetings with the idea I'm going to ask to step down. I was really going to find out with them, what should we do? Wouldn't it maybe be better to find another abbot sooner rather than later? So when they asked me, you know, it took a while for that answer to arise and be clear and then be received, which also meant all the elders said yes to it, and it changed, you know. I mean, it changed what everybody had thought would happen, which would be I would be here giving lectures on this side of the Buddha Hall for two more years. which is not going to happen. And so that was kind of a both. That was like the coming together of saying yes to how it feels and what is true for you and saying yes to how that changes your life.

[22:41]

How that and how it changes in some ways everybody's life. So that unpredictability, that changeability, that ability of reality to change us and for us, for our response to it, to be transformative, it's a two-way street, is... something that for me has become so apparent and so supportive. And it feels that once what is, the way it appears to us, to each of us, which doesn't mean it is the truth, the absolute ultimate truth, but it's the truth of how

[24:02]

it appears at this moment to me or you, to each of us. When we can fully accept that, knowing that it's a tentative truth, it's what we can see, and if we surrender to that, there arises actually an exquisite... absolutely exquisite lightness of being. There is something so simple and light about it, even though there are a lot of questions, a lot of unanswered that don't have answers. It changes everything, but there is also a lightness in it. And that lightness includes everything. It's not... oh, it's an exquisite likeness of being, and so then that's a very nice, nice, nice feeling.

[25:07]

No, that is there in the middle of maybe deep sorrow, maybe deep loss, of maybe fear, of maybe limitations, of maybe pain, of maybe joy. So it includes all things all the feelings, everything. It really includes everything. So Rick Fields has a recollection of Suzuki Roshi that Suzuki says, we bow to Buddhas, We bow to each other. We bow to dogs. We bow to everything.

[26:09]

No exclusion. No exclusion of respecting and being respectful to everything. Inside, what arises inside and what appears outside, what we perceive. as inside or outside. So I have no idea what my life is going to look like. I mean, I have a few ideas. I will move back to Middle Valley, and I have the idea that I will somehow continue to work with students that want to work with me, but I have no idea how, what that's going to look like, and what is going... to be the next manifestation. When I got ordained, before I got ordained by Reb, I said, you know, I can't imagine that being a priest will ever have an outwardly visible manifestation.

[27:13]

I have a feeling it is like a lining, you know, like the lining of a coat, the inside lining, that it's going to be like... the lining of my life much more than an outward visibility like this. You know, what did I know that I'm going to sit in this seat for a while? It wasn't imaginable. And now it feels like, oh, maybe now that thought comes back up and that feeling. Maybe manifesting as outwardly as a priest will not be so much part of my life. I don't know. Maybe it will, because I also know that I don't actually shape this by myself. Nobody is who they are independently of everything that is in their life co-shaping it.

[28:14]

So I'm very curious what it's going to be. And I... And I'm very thankful because I can be curious. I'm supported to actually be able to find out. So these are also circumstances in my life that I can find out. I don't have to immediately go find a job that assures my survival, which is actually not my merit. It's not something... I created. It's just something that is so in my life. And that I am deeply grateful and it co-shapes the possibilities. And that is true for each one of us. Suzuki Roshi did bring the practice and the practice of practice to us.

[29:22]

the practice of sitting and cultivating the capacity to be still in the midst of whatever the experience is. In the middle of everything, continuously being in motion and changing and invisibly changing and sometimes very visibly changing. And that intention, that the intention of having at the base of your life qualities and intentions that you keep using as the... How would you say that? As the... or the basis or the fundament of your actions is giving a compass, illuminates and creates stability in the middle of everything continuously being changing and most of it not being in our control.

[30:41]

But having an intention, having a practice, having... having something you do daily, you don't do just once in a while, so that it becomes just available to you when you need it, is really like the ballast, is that the word? In a boat. You know, that keeps you from capsizing when there are big waves. And it's like the rudder. No, what is it? The rudder. So, that... that I got to meet this and find this and be supported in it and be supported here by the schedule, by all of you coming for Sunday and Saturday lectures, Sunday lectures maybe at Green Gulch, Saturday lectures here, that keep supporting that is something that I am just deeply, deeply thankful for. Suzuki Roshi also says,

[31:48]

Something else is this. Even if you attain enlightenment, you will have the same troubles. You cannot flee from your difficulties. And don't we all try. And keep on trying even though we know this. If you know the meaning of the difficulties you have, the difficulties will help you. If you do not know the meaning of them, they do not help. Same thing with zazen. If you do not know the meaning of everyday practice, then zazen will not help you. So I think... You know, maybe not all of you know what Sazen is, not all of you know practice Sazen, but it can be something else that you practice every day, consciously that supports your values, not your habits.

[33:04]

So you can practice having 10 beers every day, but that's not what this is talking about. or being mad, you know, at everything, everybody on the road. So, I mean, there is a choice, but we always practice something, you know. So, but an intentional practice, it can be just be still five minutes before you go into your day, you know, before you drive off in your car, before you step in your car, to think what... What is important? What quality is important? How can you cultivate that in exactly the environment you're in? In the stressful office you're in, you can start practicing saying friendly good morning to everybody, whether or not they respond to you. It will change something if you do that every day. That would be, for example, something that changes or would...

[34:07]

be it daily practice of cultivating a quality you feel is helping you to keep composure in the middle of the unpredictability of what's going on, what's happening moment by moment. So enlightenment does not get rid of all the troubles. It doesn't change us into non-human. It makes us more human, more open to accept and respond in helpful ways. I think that's it.

[35:11]

I will be in the dining room in a little while if you want to continue a conversation or comment or share from your life or ask questions. I wish you all very well. I'll still be here for two more weeks, and then I will be appearing occasionally. And we'll all find out together what shapes this is going to take. Thank you.

[35:57]

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