Namaste, as they say in India. Wow. Is that good for everybody? You know, you get asked to do this and you watch other people do it in the meantime and I couldn't help but wonder how awkward it would feel to sit here. And it does, as I expected. You know, it's a short amount of time and I think I'm less interested in telling you about me and more interested in telling you what you want to know about me. So I'm going to try to leave a lot of time for your questions. Also, do my best to tell you what I think you might wanna know about me since I showed up here about a year ago at these temple gates.

[01:09]

And I'm gonna read something that helps ground me just because I picked out two things that might help my attention. One is, from the Fukanza Zangi Dogen. You should stop searching for phrases and chasing after words. Take the backward step and turn the light inward. Your body mind itself will drop off and your original face will appear. If you want to attain just this, immediately practice just this. So as a nurse, I find it curious, the physiological response of nervousness. My hand is shaking and my mouth goes dry and yet I sit here and just observe that I feel nervous and wonder why the body still does that expression.

[02:24]

It reminds me of a funny story that when I interviewed at a trauma hospital to be an ICU nurse, I walked into a boardroom and there were 15 chairs, 14 were full, seven ICU managers and seven of their assistant managers and one little chair for me. And I wore a bright coral colored shirt. and immediately just felt this physiological rush and was completely nervous. I thought I bombed the interview, but I got the job. That speaks to what I'm discovering, especially in my year of practice here, this personal koan that I have been living with for 50 years, in addition to what I think has been a way-seeking mind my whole life, has also been the really wrestling struggle with self-esteem and awareness of consequence.

[03:43]

And I think for probably many of us that self-esteem insecurity is natural and normal and Sojin's been teaching me a lot about self-consciousness and self-consciousness not being something that ought to allow us to feel separate but to allow us to feel connected and so I think the community at BCC is really supportive that way and I feel really honored to be part of this sangha. So I'm just offering a deep bow to that. I showed up in Berkeley last New Year's Day in 2017. I came here for Buddhist seminary. I'm currently in my second year. at Institute of Buddhist Studies, which most people go, where's that?

[04:52]

It's at the corner of Durand and Oxford. We are part of the Jodo Shinshu Buddhist Churches of America building. And I'm getting my Master's in Buddhist Studies with a certificate in Soto Zen. Also training for my certification as a Buddhist chaplain. So I get to study Dogen every day and with a group here on Tuesdays, thanks to Rosblum. And how I found you guys is a quick little story. There's a woman sitting with us today, Courtney, and Courtney and I had a online exchange over a Craigslist ad for an apartment in Berkeley that she was managing and it was a lovely connection. I found out she was an ordained Zen practitioner and I said, well, when I get to Berkeley, you know, where should I practice?

[05:58]

There's so much Buddhism going on in Berkeley and so many different, she said, oh, Berkeley Zen Center. And so I got here and I said, you know, when's the best time to show up there? And she said, oh, talk to my friend Ross. And so I've been really kindly brought in and some really lovely friendships have formed from that and I feel grateful for that. My life before coming to Berkeley involved being married to a woman for 10 years and going through an incredibly painful and a completely life-disrupting divorce. That actually followed, I'm gonna do my chronology backwards, that actually followed two Buddhist journeys to Nepal and India in 2015.

[07:04]

The first being a pilgrimage that I did with my then teacher, Venerable Robina Khorten, in the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition Buddhist Tibetan School, Galupa Tibetan Buddhist. And I had taken refuge vows with her in 2001. And over the course of those 14 years, we'd get a postcard every year of this pilgrimage she was leading. And I'd say, some year I'm gonna do this. And so in the year 2015, I made the decision to spend that time and that money and that effort and take a month off from work and go to Nepal and India. And we traveled to all the sites that we refer to in our meal chant. I was at Lumbini and Bodh Gaya and Varanasi and Krishnagar. Even three years later, I try to find words to describe how that pilgrimage changed my life.

[08:11]

But as Dogen says, I don't just forget the phrases. I don't need to find the words for it. It just, it happened. And I came back with two really strong senses. And one was that it was time for me to surrender and to stop reinforcing my type A tendencies and my desire to plan out and control pretty much every minute of my life. And when you're the daughter of a right-wing, Harvard-trained, conservative, former Olympic athlete lawyer, that's a hard one to shake off. even with 25 years of psychotherapy. But I really took that vow, and had you told me that my marriage would be part of what I had to surrender, the home that I partially designed and loved in the neighborhood I lived in for 10 years,

[09:27]

A lot of the comforts that came from feeling like I was in control, if you told me I had to give all that up, I would have clung tighter. But it happened. So there I am. As a nurse, I've been a nurse for 15 years. I've wanted to do humanitarian work around the globe. I feel very called to the needs of 65 million displaced persons on this planet because of climate crisis, because of conflict. And I feel as a nurse, I have skill to offer that can help. And so in looking into Doctors Without Borders organizations I could be part of, the big ones want you to have done smaller assignments, because they take you for a year.

[10:37]

So I looked for a one or two month project I could go on, and I was happening to spend some time at Upaya Zen Center, doing workshops there, and realized that Roshi Joan leads a group to Nepal once a year and has done so for almost 40 years. And so I applied, and I got an email from her at 11 o'clock that same night, and she said, can you FaceTime with me tomorrow? So as a hospice nurse, which I have been for the last eight years of my career, Roshi Joan is one of the pioneers in the death and dying movement, and we all look to her in the hospice community as a very strong, heartfelt voice. And so the honor of being selected to go to Nepal and her group was really exciting for me to gain wisdom from her. And so the same year, that fall, I got to go back to Nepal.

[11:41]

The earthquake had happened, and so we weren't sure if the plan she had laid out before the earthquake would work. but she had selected the Dolpo, which is one of the most sparsely populated areas on the earth. And it involved 30 days of walking 140 miles over three 18,000 foot peaks in the Himalayas. And a team of 40 support staff, 70 mules, 10 clinicians, 10 volunteers, And again, my life was altered by this in ways that it's hard to describe. But being with a lifelong Zen abbess and deep practitioner profoundly affected me. And every day we would be reminded to practice the Three Tenets of the Peacemaker Order to

[12:46]

not know, and to bear witness, and to act compassionately. And I found that I have to pretty much do that every day, every minute, but especially in trying to do medical care in an area where I didn't have any technology I was used to, I didn't have the medications I was used to, and we were in situations where a lot of what I was trained to do was not applicable. And it shifted a paradigm for me of, again, this sense of control, this, I have to come in and fix this, I have to intervene, I have to know what to do, and I have to solve this, or be in charge of this. And that doesn't work there, but it, actually, I realized it doesn't work, period. So I'm not going to tell you a super long story, but if you're interested, ask me some time about the 38-year-old woman that was carried to our tent one day who had fallen off the roof and could no longer move or feel anything below the waist and how we handled that.

[14:07]

It broke me open in another way. So that year was really pivotal in why I ended up here in seminary. Those of us who've been through seminary or a calling to chaplaincy or maybe priesthood or teaching a spiritual path to others, that calling is really hard to describe except that it's a feeling that just continues to gnaw at you until you surrender and just say, okay, what do I do? And I could have chosen, you know, 205 different seminaries in the United States, but like 180 of them are Christian. And I didn't want to be in that environment. So, um, And that speaks a little bit to my background. Born to a, I told you about my dad.

[15:12]

You can guess that he was an atheist. There's absolutely nothing after my heart stopped beating. And then my mother, who was an emotionally labile, depressive disordered, dysthymic, alcoholic, lost little girl. She didn't have a sense of spirituality other than being an agnostic. I think she took us to church a couple times out of guilt because she thought maybe she was supposed to. I had to go to Catholic school for a couple years because the Pittsburgh school system was not so great. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, not California. Pittsburgh Steelers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Gina, I see you back there. So I didn't really have any religious identity growing up. I did end up in this summer camp that was a youth conference, which really turns out to be kind of a brainwashing cult experience along Lake Erie in this summertime.

[16:24]

And I was saved. And I came home with a really confused sense of not knowing what the heck had just happened. And then had my first transcendental experience like a week later. So maybe it served a purpose on that level. But it definitely turned me far away from Christian dogma. And then in college, as a budding feminist, I discovered Celtic worship of the goddess and went down that road for quite a while. I was ordained as a priestess in the Gardnerian tradition. It brought me into a sense of connectedness with nature as a very deep place of spirituality. greater understanding of the concept of Gaia and Mother Earth and understanding the spiritual nature of my body as a woman.

[17:34]

I also studied informally some Native American traditions and then was living in the Bay Area in the early 90s and a friend said, oh, we should check out this place Green Gulch. So I ventured over to Green Gulch and I don't know, probably sat there six times in six months. And I think, I don't know in 94 if Rev was coming in and Norman was leaving, but I know I heard both of them talk. Oh, Okay, so I heard them both. And I mean, I remember wondering why one was leaving and why one was coming. And I was really, really drawn to that temple and the forms. But I didn't follow it.

[18:39]

And I ended up leaving the Bay Area to move to Montana, where I lived for six really lovely years in Missoula. And that's where I encountered Venerable Ravina. And I don't know if any of you have ever heard of her or heard a Dharma talk by her, but she's a feisty New Zealand nun who is, she's kind of angry and she kind of scared me. But something about her teachings was really awakening. And so I spent that whole kind of 12-year period reading. I didn't really practice. And it was those two trips to Nepal that shifted for me the desire to practice and practice deeply. That pilgrimage with her, doing puja at Deer Park in Sarnath, going to Nalanda, seeing these ancient monasteries and sitting zazen on the same ground that Buddha taught

[19:49]

you know, 25 years in the rainy season and being at Bodh Gaya, I really felt called to practice, but I was not called to Tibetan practice. And so then traveling with Roshi Joan, just, it brought Zen back into my life. And so when I got back to Seattle, I sought out Seattle Soto Zen. which is a tiny little sangha that rents space in Aikido studio. And Jeff Kelly is the teacher. I think he is, he's from Minnesota. So I think that's Katagiri Roshi's lineage. I'm not really sure. Cause I didn't, I was only with him about five months before I realized I needed to leave Seattle. And so here I am, I came here and, um, I feel like I just walked into something that woke up in me in 1994 and now needs to be respected and bowed to.

[20:58]

And so I'm in your midst, uh, as your new kitchen keeper and as a student who is sewing her rakasu and, um, I feel incredibly grateful and honored to practice with you all and to sit in a seat that for 50 years, I can't even imagine all the amazing experiences and stories people who've sat here have brought. So again, another bow and questions, Sojin. Thank you.

[22:02]

Thank you. Thank you. I do. I have, so he has five siblings. I have an older sister. We were estranged for a long time and we've been, both of our parents are now dead. So we've been trying to reestablish a connection. And that's been challenging, but we have agreed to erase everything that happened prior to this time in our lives and try to meet each other and understand who each other is now. And it's working. It's the best part is we can both own when we get triggered and we talk about stuff and we'll be like, well, but the way I used to understand you and then we get a chance to say, yeah, and I'm not like that anymore. And then I have a half-brother who's kind of somewhere out there.

[23:11]

That's a whole nother story. Yeah. Yeah. Karen? Yeah, so my program, the academic part is three years, so I'm halfway. You're required if you're going to train to be board certified as a chaplain to do what's called clinical pastoral education, which is kind of a didactic and hands-on clinical residency. It's a year long.

[24:13]

You can do it in different portions. So I've been accepted this summer to a summer portion at Alta Bates, which I conveniently live next door to. But it's a great hospital and I'm excited to do my first chaplaincy unit there. And then when I finish school, I would have nine months still to do in a residency somewhere. And I'm hoping to do that tied to the jails or prisons here in the Bay Area. Sue, hi. Well, you know, the way I think of a chaplain I'm going to back up for a second. So as a hospice nurse, the model that we work within is a model that is for all hospices, and it's an interdisciplinary model of a nurse, a doctor, a chaplain, and a social worker.

[25:18]

And the reason why we bring all four of those people on a team is because we recognize that at that time of life, that end of life, that's an existential time. And we're not just going to support you medically and physically, but we're going to support you spiritually. And so chaplains originally come out of the Christian model. How can we get a priest to someone in the hospital or someone in a prison? But it has been broken open and expanded greatly to include all denominations slowly. But Buddhist chaplains are probably the fastest growing denomination in chaplaincy, and it's about bearing witness. If someone needs to be prayed with, then we'll pray with. If someone needs to cry, we're going to support. If someone needs to dig deep and understand what their fears and worries are about what they're facing, we're there to hold the space for that. And for me, it comes out of that shift that happened in Nepal of like, I'm not here to cure you and fix you.

[26:30]

I'm here to bear witness with you. Is it time? Okay. I'm sorry Gary, it's time. Will you ask me outside? And Judy? It's gone!

[26:45]