About Rev. Liên
Photo by Deb Svoboda
For some Rev. fun facts, check out Lion’s Roar magazine’s Meet a Teacher feature on Reverend Liên.
Making Zen accessible to all
Reverend Keiryū Liên Shutt is a Dharma teacher in the tradition of Shunryū Suzuki Roshi. She served as Shuso in 2011 and received Dharma Transmission from Zenkei Blanche Hartman Daiosho in 2013.
Born into a Buddhist family in Vietnam, Rev. Liên began her meditation practice in the U.S. Insight tradition, serving as a Co-Founder of the Buddhists of Color in 1998. Her Soto Zen training also began in the U.S., and she practiced monastically in Japan and Vietnam. While she has placed her trust and faith in Soto Zen, she continues to enjoy the deep silence of Insight practices and has completed retreats in the United States and Thailand.
Drawing from her monastic experiences, she endeavors to share ways in which the deep settledness of traditional practices can be brought into everyday life. Zen style, she believes, has maintained more of its monastic vestiges and is therefore at times harder to engage with. It is Rev. Liên’s intention to help make Soto Zen, with its focus on connecting to our inherent liberation, more accessible to all. — Or, as Suzuki Roshi said, “Hinayana practice with Mahayana spirit.”
Rev. Liên is the Founder and Guiding Teacher of Access to Zen, a non-profit and practice community in the San Francisco Bay Area. She also teaches at East Bay Meditation Center and other Bay Area groups.
Rev. Keiryu Liên Shutt is a Dharma heir of Zenkei Blanche Hartman
Photo by Shundo David Haye. Check out his blog at: shundophoto.tumblr.com
Senior Dharma Teacher Zenkei Blanche Hartman began sitting in 1969 at the Berkeley Zen Center with Sojun Mel Weitsman and in San Francisco with Suzuki Roshi. She was priest ordained in 1977 by Zentatsu Baker and received dharma transmission with Sojun in 1988. Zenkei was the first woman Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center, serving in that position from 1996-2003. She was an expert in the ritual of sewing the priest’s robe (kesa) and the lay precept-holder’s garment (rakusu). Her teachings are found on SFZC’s website and in her book Seeds for a Boundless Life.
