About
Jaku Kinst is a Soto Zen priest and licensed psychotherapist. She has taught at San Francisco Zen Center, Tassajara, Santa Cruz Zen Center, and Gampo Abbey under Pema Chodron. Kinst teaches graduate courses in Contemplative Psychology, Psychology of Spiritual Direction, and Buddhism. She completed chaplaincy training at UCSF Medical Center.
Teaching focus
Kinst's core teaching draws on shikantaza (just sitting), breath-counting, koan introspection. The frame is the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing, but the language stays plain. Kinst doesn't lecture from height. The talks tend to think alongside whatever's actually present in the room. Recurring themes include zazen, samu, and sangha. None of those get presented as abstract ideas. They're worked into the body, into ethics, into how a practitioner shows up in family life or at work, so that the dharma stops feeling like a separate compartment. Kinst works comfortably with longer-term practitioners. Talks assume some familiarity with sitting, and the questions tend to circle around how to keep practice alive once the early enthusiasm has thinned out. Format-wise, Kinst teaches in online, in-person, retreat, and the tone moves easily between guided sittings, dharma talks, and Q&A. Questions tend to get answered the way they were asked, without being reframed into something cleaner. That alone tells you a lot about how the room feels.
Background
Jaku Kinst is a Soto Zen priest and licensed psychotherapist. She has taught at San Francisco Zen Center, Tassajara, Santa Cruz Zen Center, and Gampo Abbey under Pema Chodron. Kinst teaches graduate courses in Contemplative Psychology, Psychology of Spiritual Direction, and Buddhism. She completed chaplaincy training at UCSF Medical Center. Jaku Kinst is a priest and teacher in the Soto Zen tradition and is a licensed psychotherapist. She has taught at the San Francisco Zen Center, Tassajara, Santa Cruz Zen Center and Gampo Abbey with the Venerable Pema Chodron. She teaches graduate courses in Contemplative Psychology, the Psychology of Spiritual Direction and Buddhism. Jaku also trained as a chaplain at the UCSF Medical Center. Kinst teaches across several communities, including Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. That work sits within the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing, and the recurring concerns of Kinst's teaching, ethical foundation, steady attention, and the slow softening of habitual reactivity, echo the older texts without sounding distant from a 21st-century practitioner's life. What stands out across Kinst's talks isn't a single technique but a steadying tone. Practice is treated as something built slowly, in ordinary life, with care. There's room for the difficulties practitioners actually bring into the room, grief, restlessness, the body's complaints, family obligations, and the encouragement is consistent without being pushy.
Lineage
Kinst teaches within the Zen tradition of seated meditation and direct pointing. Source notes mention training with Pema Chodron. Current affiliations include Insight Meditation Center, Insight Retreat Center. The lineage shows up less in titles than in the way Kinst talks about practice, with steady reference to the older Buddhist vocabulary while keeping the door open for people who've never read a sutra. Whether that framing lands as monastic or lay depends on the specific talk, but the consistent thread is care for the form without letting the form become the point.
What to expect
Sitting with Kinst, you can expect grounded instruction in shikantaza (just sitting), with space to ask questions and bring whatever's actually showing up in your practice. On retreat the structure follows a classical rhythm of sittings, walking practice, and dharma talks, with silence held between sessions. Online sessions tend to keep the same shape, shorter sits, a talk, and time for Q&A, in a format that's accessible from home. The teaching voice is steady. Kinst won't push you past your edge, and there's a clear preference for slow, sustainable practice over breakthrough chasing. Bring a notebook if you like, or don't. Either way, you'll be met where you are.
