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. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge my sincere and deep gratitude to my teacher, Ryushin Po Haller, to the abbot, Ed Sathizan. the director Mary, and the human resource person without whose support I would not be here. My gratitude to the senior staff and the residents and staff of Zen Center, the practice participants, commuters and OPP for being there in support of the Dharma and this wonderful practice that we all practice together. Deep gratitude and vows. So I'd like to start with a poem, not exactly a poem.

[01:12]

It's a verse by Tozan. It talks of the blue mountain, and that's where I'm coming from. I'm coming from the blue mountains in South India, and I thought it felt very relevant. The blue mountain is the parent of the white cloud. The white cloud... is the child of the blue mountain. The blue mountain is the parent of the white cloud. The white cloud is the child of the blue mountain. All day long they depend on each other without being dependent on each other. All day long they depend on each other without being dependent on each other. The blue mountain is always the blue mountain. The white cloud is always the white cloud. The blue mountain is always the blue mountain.

[02:15]

The white cloud is always the white cloud. So my name is Shindo Gita Gayatri. Gita is the name that my parents gave me. And Gayatri is the name that my master in India gave me. That's my dharma name from India. And Shindo is the second half of the name that my teacher, Ryushin Roshi, gave me. So I have a long name. So I was born in a city in South India. And just It's just below the blue mountains. So the blue mountain in Indian, in Sanskrit, would be called the Nilgiri Hills. Giri means hill. Nila means blue. So Nilgiri Hills. So that's where my master used to live and my parents lived in the foothills in a city called Coimbatore.

[03:24]

And my father, he was a doctor. And... He was a radiologist and a cancer specialist. And so he went for his higher studies to England, and that's where he lived while he was studying. And my mother at that time was sent to a convent. She was from the village, and she moved to a convent while he was away. So when my father and mother, when my father retired from, after he returned from England, he taught in the Madras Medical College. And when he decided to retire, they moved to this little town in South India. And that was when I was born.

[04:25]

So perhaps it was an accident, I'm not sure. So it was during their retired life that I was born. So my mother's background is that she was born in a village. And in those days, women were not sent to school, particularly because there was no transport from the village to the town. And people had to walk long distances to get to the town. So my mother... was not sent to school, but she had a personal tutor at home that would come to teach her. And she was actually born after 14 years of her parents' marriage, so they were very protective over her. And so when, and my siblings were all born while my father was in, before he went to England,

[05:31]

And also when one of my brothers was born when he was teaching in Chennai. So they're all much older than me, all my siblings. And yeah, my mother, she was peculiar in the way that she was very, very, very close to all other beings except the human being. She felt that human beings could be wicked, cunning, and false. So somehow she was very, very, she spent most of her time with animals and birds, and she loved them. And she also became a healer of birds and animals. Squirrels would come to her, and she would find injured squirrels, or she would find, or injured birds would fall on the rooftop, and she would care for them, and she would spend a lot of time with her animals and birds.

[06:37]

So I kind of grew up with a lot of animals, cows, dogs, cats, birds. Even though we lived in a town, we had all of these in the house. And actually, my mother's mother was a healer in the village. So people would come to her She was very intuitive and people would come to her and she would use something like a wooden pole which in those days was used to pound rice. So she would place it on the patient's body like acupressure and she knew exactly how to do it and people would get healed and they would come back to her. Or she would place a metal if they had stomach problems or something. I don't know exactly how she did it, but she created her own techniques, and she would do that.

[07:43]

And also, interestingly, the people in the village, she had a way to... She had her own lie detector. So people would bring a person to her... And she would cut the banana plant into a particular way and place it on top of the person. And if the person was lying, it would close in on him. And if he was not lying, it would move away. So she was an intuitive healer. So why I'm saying all this is because I feel that I've inherited some some of that genetic code, which means I'm drawn to healing. And one of my studies for now is Ayurveda, which I feel connects very well to my spiritual practice.

[08:45]

So that's why... So... And then another part of my growing up was my father would read. As I told you, I was the youngest in the family, and my siblings were all much older. They were all going to school and college, and they were all probably in college when I was born. My father would read stories of the epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata to me every night. And he was not necessarily a religious person because his world was a world of science. And he was also a Freemason. I don't know if you know what a Freemason is, if you've heard it. There were people that did not really... I don't know exactly what they were, but they were a secret organization, and he was part of that.

[09:53]

So he was not a person who would... go to the temples or do rituals or anything like that. And also he was socially engaged in a lot of charitable and educative organizations. The town that I just told you about in South India was a place where most doctors retired and went to. It was a small town in those days, and so there were a lot of other doctors, and it was a place known for hospitals. So they had a group of doctors who were very interested to study the truth. And they were also people who had deep knowledge of science in different ways. So that's one part of... my father's life.

[10:57]

And he, even after his death, my brother still continued to be, you know, founder members of these organizations. Now, what were these organizations? In Kerala, Kerala is known for spiritual teachers. And both my parents are from Kerala. And... In those days, that's sometime in the 1850s maybe, there was a lot of caste problem, caste and communal problem in Kerala. And it was getting really, really out of control. And at that time, there was a sage. He kind of helped stabilize the... the major problem that was socially affecting the state. And his name was Narayana Guru.

[11:59]

And he also influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Tagore. Interestingly, I happen to have a diary that is from there, so I can pass this around it. some point and then you can take a look at the pictures. It has some pictures of him and you get an idea of what it means. So, you know, Kerala is a small state and he kind of influenced the whole of the state. Even today you see his pictures everywhere and he's a much respected teacher. And he lived around the time of Ramana Maharshi. And he had millions and millions of followers. And even today, the young people of Kerala, they are not so much into religion because religious problems are very frequent in India.

[13:02]

So they look up to him for his universal teaching, which is beyond labels and boundaries. And... So my grandmother, so this great master visited my grandmother's ancestral home, and he installed the family temple, which is, today it's a well-known, unique temple in Kerala. So in the sense that he would, he made, created temples so people could come there, with an open mind and, you know, like, not carry their problems. So the temples that he made were all open, a lot of sunlight, and, you know, it was very open. And it had a beautiful garden and a good library.

[14:03]

And sometimes he just, the main altar would have just a mirror. So you would be standing in front of yourself. and praying to yourself. Sometimes he just had words, just like we have in the kitchen altar. He would have just words that conveyed a message. So he was different in that sense. So this master had a student. He had many, many students as... When I pass this around, you can see there are several pages here. You can see he had many, many, many students. All these were great saints in India, too.

[15:05]

I'll pass this around. You can take a look at it. This great teacher had a student who was highly educated. So he sent him to Sorbonne to study Western philosophy. And so that was the second person in the lineage. And so when he returned after his education in Sorbonne, and he even presented his theses in French, and that was on the personal factor in education. So when this teacher returned, my father and the rest of the doctors who were interested in studying the truth got around this teacher. And so this teacher would come and stay in my parents' house, and I was very small at that time.

[16:07]

And there were a lot of... Western students around him. That was the hippie days. So a lot of Western people from Europe and from all over. I think mostly people from Europe were around him. So he had several students that even now live in India. They never went back. They would hide when immigration came to look for them. They're old now, but they still continue to live in India. So... So I grew up with these masters. So this person, this teacher, was a spiritual scientist. So what is a spiritual scientist? He connected the ancient sciences of the scriptures. Scriptures were not religious in the sense that they were not bound to any particular dogma.

[17:08]

So they were... mostly even the authorship of the people who wrote it is not there anymore. So they were talking the science of the world and the science of life and how we connect with it. And so this particular teacher, since he had studied Western philosophy, he also was connected to math. and science and philosophy, so he connected it together. And so this person lived in the Blue Mountains, and every time he traveled from the mountain to anywhere, he always came by and stayed in my father's house, like I just mentioned. And then, so there is a tradition in India that when the masters come home, we would touch their feet.

[18:09]

It conveys two messages. It's like saying that we follow the path and also that we follow... Yeah, well, that's what it means. I guess you're familiar with it because we do a lot of bowing and bowing, so I don't have to go into details. So when my... When this teacher came to my father's house, I was about three years old when I first met them, and I was asked to touch their feet. And I skipped the main teacher, and I touched his student's feet. And the student became my teacher. He was my master, and that is this person. He became my teacher. So he was kind of like the center of my life.

[19:10]

And... So my whole life revolved around him. And he introduced me to the world of poetry, to literature, to art, theater, aesthetic, to zen. In fact, in his collection... where he was in silence for a whole year, year and a half. He never spoke. So he had very selected books in his collection. And after he passed, when I visited that particular place where he stayed, I found Moon on a Dewdrop. So I was very happy to find it there. So... So I grew up under his care.

[20:18]

And then when I was in my 20s, maybe when I was 23 or so, I came across an army officer. So this person, actually when I met him, he was a gentleman, cadet. And he decided that he was going to marry me. And I was too young at that time to even think about whether it was the right decision or not. But my master was teaching, traveling and teaching in the United States at that time. He was teaching in several universities here. He taught in Stanford. And I'm not really sure. I don't remember the university. He was mostly in California. So he was teaching psychology in those days here. And so when he got to know that I was engaged to be married, he said, hold on, wait for me.

[21:23]

Don't get married till I come back. So he probably knew that my marriage is not going to last very long. So I wait. He sent me, immediately he sent me the I Ching, you know, the I Ching. Yeah, he sent it to me through snail mail. And so we waited, and then when he came, returned back to India, he gave my hand in marriage to this person. And we had two sons born out of this marriage. And they presently live in Mumbai. They're both musicians. The oldest son is a guitarist. He plays the lead guitar. And they both work in a music store. The younger one is a drummer.

[22:24]

And they're both brand managers in the store. And they perform with their own bands. And the older one also does theater. So they live in Mumbai. And their father married an army widow. She lost her husband in action in Kashmir. And so she has a son. who is differently abled. They live, they're a happy family. So they get along very well together. And they also live in Mumbai, but not with the boys. They live separately. So my master passed on 14th of May, 1999. Now that was the end of my worldly life. So I picked up a begging bowl, and renounced everything and set out traveling to the Himalayas. So it was my way of grieving, actually, because I was very, very close to my master, and I did not know until he passed how that affected me.

[23:39]

So even though he would always joke about his passing, I never took him seriously. But I found that I was grieving through traveling. I was never in one place for more than 10 days. I was traveling and traveling and traveling. And there was another student who studied with my master. He is today a writer in Kerala. He's a writer who writes spiritual books. His own thoughts on spirituality. So he writes commentaries on what he thinks, on certain texts, like he even did one on the Tao Te Ching. So we both set out traveling to the Himalayas, which we did for about six years. We traveled without any agenda, no destination, and with very little baggage.

[24:48]

during one of our travels, so why we traveled together was, you know, like he, this person could not speak Hindi or English well. So he decided to travel with me because I could speak both languages. And then we ended up living together. We became co-travelers and we traveled. And I find that now we are co-travellers in life. We mirror each other, and we're kind of growing and balancing through mirroring each other. And we're not really dependent on each other, just like the poem. I think it's becoming that way, not that it was intentional. So during one of our travels, to the Himalayas, he said to me, you know, usually I carry a lot of books when we travel.

[25:58]

And so he said, you carry a lot of books to read, and so this time you'll only carry one book. And so he went to the library. We have a small library in a remote place. And he just picked up the thickest book on the shelf, and it happened to be Crooked Cucumber by David Chadwick. So I read this book. I mean, it was a three-month-long travel, and I read this from cover to cover. I said, why would I want to know the story of a Zen master? I was not looking for Zen, or I was not looking for anything. But then it just happened that way. And coincidentally, after that, my niece, who lives in San Jose, my sister's daughter, she delivered a baby, and she called me to ask for my suggestion for a name for her child. And at that time, my brother sponsored my ticket to come and visit the United States and to visit my niece who lives in San Jose.

[27:06]

But when I came to San Francisco and when I landed here, it just felt like home. I was so drawn to this place. I had no idea why. And I thought, maybe because I so much like St. Francis. And I even watched his movie, Brother's Son, Sister Moon, with my master. And when I traveled from L.A. to San Francisco, there was a Franciscan nun who sat next to me, and the train was delayed for nine hours, and we had long conversations, and I feel that... I just came into San Francisco, which just felt so much like home. And at that time, because I'd read the book Crooked Cucumber, I came to the Zen Center, to City Center, and I had to see this place. Everything else was no priority at that time.

[28:08]

And when I came in here, Vicky Austin was the director, and she was very warm-hearted and welcoming. I don't know if she's... Oh, she's here. Thank you, Vicky. So she was very kind because I said I have no money on me. I cannot... I didn't know how it worked here. So then I became guest student for three days and I met all the teachers here except my teacher, Ryushin Roshi. He was away in Ireland. And I think somebody brought bread from Green Gulch, and so I could go with them to Green Gulch. And I got to visit Green Gulch as well, met Emila, all the lovely people there, and the teachers. So that was my connection with Zen Center. And then I returned back to India.

[29:11]

And I could not visit Tassahara because Tassahara was closed for the practice period at that time. And Crooked Cucumber has a lot about Tassahara. And I was very curious. I even felt like walking to Tassahara, whether it's closed or not. But then I had to return back to India. So I did not undertake that because I was adventurous of having traveled in the Himalayas. So I returned back to India. And then after several months, I got a call from the abbot, which was my teacher. And we had not met, but we spoke on the phone. And he invited me to Tassahara to do the practice period. And at that time, my partner and I were getting ready to go to another part of the Himalayas, which is kind of risky. We had to walk over the glaciers and jump from one glacier to another.

[30:20]

So I wasn't sure. And I didn't have money to get a ticket. So I wasn't sure if I'll be able to make it. But I said to him that I will if I can. And so we did return back safely. And then somebody... You know, the place that we lived in at that time had no water. It was a rain shadow area. So there was no water. And we had a car which we used to drive to the village to bring water. So somebody offered to buy that car. And so I was able to get my ticket to Zen Center back again. And then just one day... Yeah, I reached the city center and Wendy Lewis was at that time here as the director, I think.

[31:21]

I don't know whether she was acting director or real director at that time, but she was very kind. I had just my Indian clothes and she made a work circle announcement and then I got everything from raincoat to everything, shoes and everything. So everything just happened. And one day before Tangario, I reached Tassahara. And so began my Zen training with my teacher. And some years ago, oh, he ordained me, I think in 2009. I'm not very good with numbers. I don't remember years so much. So I think 2009, I got ordained as a Zen priest. And that was just before I left to India. And very interestingly, he said at the ceremony, he said, I'm this Irish man ordaining an Indian woman into a Japanese tradition in California.

[32:27]

So that was just one world right there. So a couple of years... Okay, so some years later, Ryushin Roshi came to India with some priests and monks from the Zen Center, and they visited my master's ashram. And he said to me, this is a beautiful place, and it looked run down. He said, why don't you take care of this place? And that kind of made an impression, and I thought, That was great. Like my Zen practice took me back to the roots of my own tradition. And also, yeah, I ended up buying a small piece of land in Tiruvannamalai, which is where the Arunachala hill stands.

[33:37]

It's a sacred hill. And then Ryushin Roshi blessed the land and we did a ceremony there. So I think I'll stop now. I'd just like to say one last word from Suzuki Roshi. In your very imperfections, you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind. And this teacher, who was the spiritual scientist, as I said, and this is from him, he said, the mind should find rest in the self to be emptied of all content. There's time for a few questions. Sorry, I was supposed to stop ten minutes before. But, yeah. Okay. So, we can pass this on. Any questions? Yes, I...

[34:43]

I was very ambitious when it started, but I realized that I have to listen to what the land says rather than me telling the land what to do. So I built a small little place where a small room and a bathroom and a kitchen and a small zendo on the top. And also built a foundation for a bigger zendo. And the Ramana ashram there... It's very popular. They were kind of, you know, like renovating their library. And so I bought the doors and the windows from them. So it's ready. Everything is ready to put together for a Zendo. So that has pictures you can turn around and see in the beginning of the diary. It has pictures of my master, of the first teacher. I didn't know that there was ever a training, even though I was getting trained.

[36:09]

Like, it was just living with the teacher was the training. So cooking with him, cleaning with him, writing notes from when he dictates. Everything, like he would hold a tomato and he would say how to cut it. in the most beautiful way, without hurting it much. I was very thin and frail as a young woman, not that I'm very fat now, but he would ask me to take the cow to the cow shed and do things where men in India would not allow me to do that. They would volunteer to do the hard jobs. He would make me do the hard jobs. and when we wrote notes or wrote letters for him as he grew older we were you know like he would play a little music and beautiful sunrise over the tea gardens by the window and you know we would have to pay complete attention to what I was writing like

[37:24]

there was a particular format in how it has to be written, and I should not be asking him again and again, what did you say, what did you say? So it was all a kind of mindfulness practice, and the way that we were taught to stick the letters that he wrote together. I realized that I was trained only when I came here, because it did... It seemed like I've done these things before sometime. Yeah. Well, he told me that I should only look at the I Ching... when I really, really need it. So, you know, I don't even remember that it's there until I'm in such a need.

[38:31]

And sometimes life gives me the answer. But the I Ching is still, I hold it as a precious book with me because it has his signature. And I do consult it sometimes. You know, when I came to Tassajara, I was brand new to the Zen practice, per se. But then I felt very much at home in Tassajara. But I find being in city center is more where I'm practicing, where I'm struggling with so many things because I've not lived so much in an urban place.

[39:32]

And I'm so grateful that I'm doing my practice now again in a city temple. because Tassahara was just like being back home. And I find a deep connection between Zen, practice of Zen, and what I studied with my teacher. So it was more a science, like what I studied there, and even now I'm connected back, and we do a lot of seminars, which is basically talking about the whole science of life. And here we're not talking about it, we're just doing it. And there we're talking about it. So it kind of blends very well. And I'm using it in action in the field of Ayurveda, which is about the body, and so it's connecting both these practices together.

[40:36]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:02]

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